Living with the Dominator

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We have recently commissioned the wonderful Offshoot Film Company to animate the entire Freedom Programme. I listened to everything they said and became determined to impart this information to the people who had no understanding of such violence. This included other ‘professionals’ and the women and girls whose lives could be changed or even saved if they were just given this vital information.

One of our facilitators has been playing one of the animations to the women on her programme every week at the end of each session. Another uses them at the beginning as a 'warm up' to help to make the session run smoothly. Another of our facilitators uses them for her Freedom Programme for women with learning disabilities.Women should stay at home and not have a life of their own’ – isolates us from our family/friends, stops us from working.

The programme, when provided as an intensive two day course, is also suitable for men, whether abusive and wishing to change their attitudes and behaviour or whether victims of same sex domestic abuse themselves. I published ‘Living with the Dominator’. I wanted to reach everyone who was unable to attend a Freedom Programme. I may be unfairly rating this book a 3 star but I think that’s because I was reading this from a slightly different perspective. From an unbiased perspective, this is an incredibly important and useful book and should be read by all women starting from college age so that they can avoid relationships with abusive men. I recognise a lot of characteristics of abusive men in this book that were present in men I have dated in the past- and I found that disturbing. A woman should never be allowed to leave or end a relationship, no matter how abusive or violent it is. I initially wrote the ‘Freedom Programme’ to educate women, girls, men and boys. Then in 2008 I published ‘Living with the Dominator’. I wanted to reach everyone who was unable to attend a Freedom Programme.For that reason - I think this book didn’t go into enough detail for me. Whilst the book does touch on affects of violence on children, I would have liked this part to be lengthier and what was written wasn’t relevant to me. Women should be responsible for all childcare’ – moans when he has to ‘babysit’! Threatens to take the children away. This is now available with the supplementary work book ‘The Freedom Programme Home Study Course’. This workbook makes the Freedom Programme even more accessible."

I also realised that abusive men do not understand their own behaviour. They do not realise that they decide to use violence when they realise that their other tactics are failing. To help women understand the beliefs held by abusive men and in so doing, recognise which of these beliefs they have shared Women should believe and accept all the excuses he gives us for his abuse’ – uses the ‘only’ word! It was ‘only’ a slap, blames drink, stress, YOU! If we look at this cycle, we can see that at no point is The Dominator actually angry or out of control. He is choosing his behaviour and is in total control of what he is doing and saying!A woman should never be allowed to leave or end a relationship, no matter how abusive or violent it is’ – says he loves us, threatens suicide. The programme usually lasts for 11 or 12 weeks and is FREE. It provided by hundreds of agencies across the UK. Some of them are rolling so women can join at any time but this varies according to local needs, etc. The ‘Rules of the Game’ are the beliefs of The Dominator. This is how he expects women to behave! It is also how he thinks he should be able to behave! The Dominator has hundreds of ‘rules’. Lets look at a few of them:

The Freedom Programme examines the roles played by attitudes and beliefs on the actions of abusive men and the responses of victims and survivors. The aim is to help them to make sense of and understand what has happened to them, instead of the whole experience just feeling like a horrible mess. The Freedom Programme also describes in detail how children are affected by being exposed to this kind of abuse and very importantly how their lives are improved when the abuse is removed.

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A woman should provide services and act as an unpaid servant’ – does nothing around the house to help, Burn everything he cooks. However I am very much not in a violent relationship so that wasn’t the purpose I was reading this for. I was raised in a violent home and was a victim of the abuse mentioned in this book as a child. I am now a 29 year old woman suffering the consequences and have struggled my whole life with anxiety, low self esteem and feelings of guilt and shame.I am trying to understand what happened in my childhood and was recommended this book to understand how my parents relationship may have impacted on me. perpetrators’ of violence against women and children. For two years I sat among groups of men who had injured, raped or killed their victims. I realised that abusive men use a range of tactics to control women To introduce women to community resources such as Women's Aid, the Police Domestic Violence Unit, The Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre, local Colleges etc.