Eric G and author Ann Silvers dive into a topic that's often swept under the rug: the reality of male victims of domestic violence. With her newly released book, "Abuse of Men by Women: It Happens, It Hurts, Let's Deal with It," Ann brings to light the painful truths and unspoken experiences that so many men face. Together, they tackle the complexities of emotional and physical abuse, offering insights that are both eye-opening and necessary. Drawing from personal experiences and recent news stories, they discuss the societal double standards that often leave men feeling isolated and unheard. If you or someone you know is navigating these turbulent waters, this conversation is here to remind you that help is not only available, but it’s also crucial. Buckle up, because this hour could very well change your perspective and maybe even save a life! Delving into the complexities of domestic abuse, Eric G welcomes author Ann Silvers to the show for a heart-to-heart on a topic that's often swept under the rug: male victims of abuse. With a nod to Father's Day and Men's Health Month, this episode unpacks the second edition of Ann's book, 'Abuse of Men by Women: It Happens, It Hurts, Let's Deal with It,' shedding light on the often ignored struggles men face in abusive relationships. Eric, who shares his own experiences, emphasizes the importance of recognizing emotional, financial, and physical abuse that can occur in the home. The conversation is refreshing and candid, challenging the long-standing stereotypes about domestic violence, while also providing listeners with vital resources and strategies for safety and support. They dive into personal anecdotes, discuss societal double standards, and explore how awareness can help break the cycle of silence surrounding this issue. By the end of the hour, listeners will not only feel informed but also empowered to seek help or support others who may be suffering in silence.

Takeaways:

• In this episode, we dive deep into the often overlooked issue of male victims of domestic violence, highlighting the emotional and psychological impacts that can often go unrecognized in society.
• Ann Silvers shares her insights from her book, emphasizing that abuse can come in many forms, not just the physical, and that awareness is key to addressing these issues effectively.
• Eric G opens up about his personal experiences with abuse, making it clear that men too can face domestic violence, challenging the stereotypes that surround this topic.
• The conversation explores the double standards in the perception of abuse, illustrating how societal norms often minimize male victimhood while amplifying female victimhood.
• Listeners are encouraged to recognize the warning signs of abusive behavior early in relationships, as ignoring them can lead to prolonged suffering and confusion.
• The episode provides practical advice on seeking help, emphasizing the importance of knowing that resources exist for men suffering from domestic violence.

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Foreign.

Welcome to around the house.

I'm Eric G. This weekend for Father's Day and Men's Health Month, we're tackling a topic that's been unspoken for far too long.

Male victims of domestic violence and abuse.

Years ago, I was one of them.

Back then, resources were almost impossible to find.

That's why today we're having a real conversation, sharing stories, busting myths, and most importantly, giving you the help that that's available.

Now, fellas, if you're dealing with emotional abuse, physical intimidation, financial control, or anything that makes you feel unsafe in your own home, you are not alone.

Help exists.

We'll be covering warning signs, safety planning, local resources, and how to support someone who's struggling.

Stick with me on this.

This hour could change a life or maybe even save one.

Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

I'm Eric G. Thanks for joining.

This episode is going to be a little bit different.

This is part of our new health and lifestyle series that we're doing here on the show and what I call added and bonus content.

And I thought we'd start out the first one with my friend and author Ann Silvers.

Welcome to around the House, my friend.

Glad to be here.

Wow.

Your inaugural session.

Yeah.

This is such an important topic and it's back in the news again.

We had a few years ago, we had the world of Johnny Depp and all of that.

And now you've come out with the second edition of your book, a new revised version.

And let's talk about that today.

And by the way, guys, this involves me.

So this is a very personal side of this too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just yesterday there's big news about a woman, I can't remember, it's Colorado.

She had poisoned her husband by, by putting a huge dose of fentanyl in his Moscow Mule.

And just, and she was found guilty recently and just sentenced yesterday to life in prison.

I watched that and got chills on it because it was on like a. I'm going to mess it up.

It was dateline.

It was one of those evening one hour, two hour murder shows that they have the air on network TV on Friday or Saturday nights, whatever night it was.

And I was watching that.

And holy smokes, she was so out of it from what I saw at least that she wrote a book about her kids not having the dad to try to kind of hide it.

Oh, yeah, she, well, she drew attention.

So I think we haven't yet mentioned the name of the book.

Oh, yes.

And the topic let's do it's Abuse of men by Women.

It happens, it hurts.

Let's Deal with It is the title.

Now I had a slightly different subtitle at the end.

I had.

Instead of let's Deal With It I had it's time to get real about it.

And so to move to.

There's 10 years between the two books and there has been some movement forward on the topic.

Johnny Depp I think is a lot of the reason why it moved forward.

So the subtitle I wanted it to reflect we are in a different time.

We still have lots of room for growth and around awareness and the system in terms of handling it.

Double standards.

Double standards.

Men being able to recognize what's happening to them.

Women being taken to account.

Yeah, it's wild.

And one of those what you're mentioning there, I think it was just this week.

Yeah.

She got sentenced to life in prison on that.

The almost Johnny Depp ish story that's been coming out this year was the whole thing with the Bachelorette.

I don't know if you saw that for sure.

I mean holy smokes.

That whole thing that has been going out and again, I, I, I don't watch a lot of these reality shows.

It's not my thing.

But that whole Mormon wives and Taylor Frankie Paul's domestic violence stuff again was insane.

And there's always a he said, she said part of it.

But when one of the co stars in that show released the video of her throwing those bar stools and there's one of the things I hear out, oh, she weighs 90 pounds.

What hurt could she do?

She was hawking barstools probably better than I was.

Hook could ever huck barstools bouncing off head, bouncing them off her kid.

And, and I usually say allegedly but there's video that's that made it into that show.

The video was very profound.

I think another level of awakening for people when they can see it.

Yep.

And you know what?

It, when it happened that it happened to you.

Yeah.

But it can be hard for other people to recognize it and without their brain going to this, minimizing it kind of just like you kind of walk through.

And so I love the, I mean the video is very dramatic and, and so there's five, there's at least five ways.

Five, five ways that women overcome their size disadvantage when they are physically abusing their male partner.

So let's see how many of them I can name.

So one is throwing things.

Okay.

So we got that in, in that Bachelorette video, she's throwing something that can really hurt somebody.

Right.

So she's throwing heavy barstools.

And it's a bit of physics that when something is got that distance, it can do more harm and she can be a distance away and still create harm.

Then another one that I saw play out in that video, another one of the ways that women overcome their sizes disadvantage is by men doing the man manly thing of not hitting a girl so he doesn't pick up the barstool and throw it back at her.

Exactly.

Like you might do if two guys are fighting.

Right.

No question.

Yeah.

If that was a buddy and we're having some kind of argument and a barstool flies, there's another barstool or a fist going.

And it's an equal fight.

Yeah.

And so.

And we know she wasn't that afraid of him because she actually physically advances towards him.

So she's already thrown barstools at him and then she comes towards him.

She's not afraid of him.

No.

And like I had a guy who was elderly, when he was talking to me about his story, he had endured like severe physical abuse from his ex wife for like 20 years.

And she would beat him up in front of the kids.

He one time tried to squish himself under the kids bunk beds to try and get away from her kicking and she would choke him.

He would put his hands in his pockets to stop himself from hitting her back.

Yeah.

And he didn't even identify as being abused until he went to work with a black eye.

And his co worker, who I suspect was already like seeing the signs for some period of time.

Sure.

And a lot of people will hold back from saying anything.

You don't know what to say.

You don't want to embarrass the person, et cetera.

So he went to work with the black guy.

The co worker says, what happened to you?

And he did the classic I walked into a door kind of thing.

And.

And the co worker pressed him and until he said, well, my wife hit me.

And the co worker said, you're an abused man.

Yeah.

And it was an awakening after 20 years of putting up with this.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's insane.

Yeah.

But that's how everybody processes things differently.

And, and I'm not saying this to say that one is worse than the other.

All abuse is bad.

But this is something that is just so underreported and not talked about.

And that's the whole reason why we need to do more of that.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's the reason why the guy didn't recognize for 20 years till somebody named it.

He didn't.

He didn't know.

And.

And we.

And I think we set men up because we're not talking about it enough.

Some men don't know.

Don't know the red flags to look for.

Don't even know they should be looking for it.

Don't know this can happen to them and then are confused when it does 100%.

And trust me, guys, I've been in this boat, no shame towards this guy.

I was in the same thing where it wasn't 20 years, but I put myself in that position.

Didn't recognize it.

Didn't know how to deal with it.

And, yeah, things get out of hand quickly.

Yeah.

So back to the five, because I'm gonna switch us up and.

Okay, back to the five.

So we named.

We named throwing things.

Yep.

We named man not fight woman.

Counting on a man not to fight back.

Yep.

Another one is when surprise, surprise attacks.

Yep.

Well, there's.

That happened to me exactly.

While they're sleeping, while they're driving, while their back is turned.

Yep.

Another one is like when they're in a vulnerable position so they could be intoxicated.

If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available right now.

The around the House show will be right back with more real talk and warning signs after this.

And the kids these days will never understand what it's like to play an instrument, to be in a band.

What's up?

This is Sticks it in YA and.

Satchel from Steel Panther.

And you are listening to around the.

House with Eric G. Yeah, we love.

Eric G. And you should, too.

Welcome back to the around the House show.

For Men's Health month and Father's Day, we are doing a special show.

We're talking with Author Anne Silvers, MA, about her book abuse of men by women, a topic Eric G. Knows personally.

If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available right now.

Now let's get back to the conversation.

So back to the five, because I'm gonna switch us up and.

Okay.

Back to the five.

So we named.

We named throwing things.

Yep.

We named man not fight woman.

Counting on a man not to fight back.

Yep.

Another one is when surprise, surprise Attacks.

Yep.

While they're.

That happened to me exactly.

While they're sleeping and while they're driving.

While their back is turned.

Yep.

Another one is like when they're in a vulnerable position.

So they could be intoxicated or sick.

Hurt.

Yeah.

One man in particular has told me that the violence got much worse after they had a child and she would physically attack him while he was holding the child.

A baby.

And.

And so he couldn't fight back.

Yeah.

And that's tough.

And then.

And not only is there, but there's also financial stuff out there as well.

When.

When financial times are tough.

I've seen it then too, where maybe the.

The man doesn't have a way to get out of the situation and they're just barely making along.

It seems like, oh, we're vulnerable.

Okay, let's go.

Oh, for sure.

Or they're trapped by a child or by a marriage or some level of commitment, like living together even.

Yeah.

They can use commitment as a way to keep attacking.

Yeah.

It's wild Again.

The first time I ever had violence against me was a sneak attack and alarm clock coming from my head in my sleep.

It one o' clock in the morning when I was sleeping.

So these are things that.

And no warning.

That was my first time dealing with it.

And all of a sudden you're put in a really horrible situation.

And for me, I was so lucky that I didn't wink, wake up instinctually trying to fight back.

Yeah.

I think if that hall light hadn't been on where I noticed who it was instantly, I could have put myself in a lot of legal trouble.

Right.

Because I would thought, hey, some guy broke into my house and is trying to kill me.

It's a fight.

Right.

And that was probably part of her intention was not only to harm you physically, but to get you to react in a way where she could call the police.

Yep.

Police are.

Are still much more likely to arrest a guy and then get all kinds of entrapment going on.

Financial, legal.

And you know what that's like when.

Oh yeah.

It's expensive.

Yeah.

So the false accusations.

So sometimes it'll get made up when nothing has happened.

Yep.

When the guy hasn't done anything like.

Like what happened to you.

And sometimes it'll happen because she instigated.

Yeah.

100%.

100%.

And.

And to go back and.

And this is a problem that I see out there is we're making progress.

But in this whole Taylor Paul thing here that I'm seeing, Hulu know, knew what was going on with this.

And they used it to market the show.

Yeah.

In my opinion, they used it to market the show I saw over the weekend.

Again, this is a show I never would have watched.

But over Mother's Day, it was on over at the house that we were at, and one of the people in the house was watching it, and I was just like, holy smokes.

These guys knew in episode one, they showed the video.

So they had it.

And in the first episode of the series, they addressed it and just kept going.

And I'm like, wow, okay, you guys still went with it.

I thought they canceled the season.

Did they re.

That was season five that they canceled.

That they haven't done.

But they knew through season one, two, three, and four, they knew exactly what was happening.

Okay.

Episode one that I saw part of it with, they're talking about it and that brought my attention.

I'm like, you guys did four and we're gonna do five seasons until this got released.

Yeah.

It's just not taken seriously enough.

It's not.

Because what they did was.

When then.

When.

Oh, it was the.

You were watching Mormon Wife.

So it was the Bachelorette one.

Oh, yeah.

That's the one that they.

Which she was.

They were pulling her on because they wanted.

Her mom's a tick tock whatever.

They wanted that audience to catch the show.

Right.

They knew exactly what was going on.

ABC knew exactly what was happening.

So they knew they had.

Were making an abusive woman physically dangerous.

A physically abusive woman.

The Bachelorette.

This glorified.

And then get men to vie for her for her affection, attention, etc.

Disney.

Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm gonna call you out on that.

Disney.

Come on.

Yeah.

And what they were doing in reality was putting all those other men in danger.

And that's part of why we have to raise awareness, is people do not understand that this is actually dangerous.

Yeah.

There's all kinds of partner abuse, but the end.

The physically abusive stuff is physically dangerous.

The financially abusive stuff is financially dangerous.

It has psychologically abusive stuff is psychologically is dangerous.

Yeah.

And people need to recognize that so that they will get away from it before they are more harmed.

Yeah.

It's interesting.

And.

And it was so interesting that I knew.

I know that ABC had seen that video, but until it showed up on TMZ and it was made public.

Yeah.

They went.

All of a sudden, everybody clutches the pearls and goes, oh, my gosh, we gotta take this down.

I'm like, you are banking on that.

And to me, the double standard is insane.

If you Go back and watch an old James Bond movie and James Bond slaps the Bond girl in the movie.

People go, oh, my gosh.

But if a guy gets kicked in the groin, there's a laugh track attached to it.

Yeah.

And both are equal.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There was, there's been like there was a Super bowl movie before I wrote the first edition of the book and so it made it into the first edition and it was one of the, I think what it was definitely a soda, a soda company.

And a woman throws a soda can at what obviously is her partner.

He's sitting on a park bench and she throws a soda can at his head.

Yeah.

A full soda can.

Yeah.

That, that could kill a person.

Yeah.

Not good.

Give them a concussion.

Right.

And so it's so seen as okay, maybe endorsed maybe and comical that they put it into a commercial where they're trying to sell their product with that idea.

Yeah.

It would not happen with the genders reversed because it would be so obvious to people.

Absolutely.

Is not a good thing.

This is not a good message.

This is not marketable around the house.

We'll be right back with author Ann Silver's MA and her book Abuse of Men by Women.

If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available right now.

To find out more about the show, head to aroundthehouse online.com we will be.

Foreign.

Welcome back to the around the House Show.

For Men's Health Month and Father's Day, we are doing a special show.

We're talking with Author Anne Silvers, MA about her book Abuse of Men by Women, a topic Eric G. Knows personally.

If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available right now.

Now let's get back to the conversation.

So I started looking, I'm going to go on a little side side note here.

And this is in this awareness thing I decided the other day I was thinking about you coming on the show and I started looking around at what they were calling domestic violence shelters in my region around Portland, Oregon.

Yeah, there's not one that I see that takes men.

Yes, that is the situation.

There's somewhere around three in the United States.

Three.

Yeah.

Somewhere in around that number, I think.

No, maybe it's bigger than that now.

I researched it a Couple years ago, I would say it's probably still under 10.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And because.

Well, there's a lot of reasons for that.

One is that the whole domestic violence system was begun by women who were helping women who were in that situation.

So all of the basis of the entire system is on that premise that it happens to women and we need to protect women.

Even though there was research at the time that showed it's about equal, that it happens, that equality research was squelched, and we're still having to just make tiny inroads into that system because it has become so strong and taken all the oxygen out of the room.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's.

It's maddening to me because when my whole situation went around, and this is.

This is where it hits home with me, where I could have used that service back when I went through it.

Because what happened was.

And we'll tell my story here, just kind of a short way.

But I had a week or so before, had caught what I thought was, in my world at least, very unacceptable behavior of a parent treating a child.

So I had walked in and watched at the time, my wife dragging her daughter, not mine, that was my step kid at the time, backwards, down the hall by the hair.

And I went, whoa, whoa, whoa.

We do not do this.

Unacceptable.

No reason for that.

I mean, kid was probably 12, maybe out of memory.

So big enough, you just.

Anyway, you don't do that, no matter if they're 5 or 18.

But I was like, holy smokes, heel dragon.

Backwards, dragging down the hall with a fistful of hair.

And I'm like, unacceptable.

I don't care.

This is my kid.

Don't get in the middle of it.

I'm not going to allow abuse in the house, Period.

Not acceptable.

That was clearly the line I had crossed with my ex.

And so the next week, we were actually a couple days going out on vacation to go camping, and I go out to go get dinner.

I hadn't heard from her all day, and I'm like, okay, she's mad.

Whatever.

I went out to go get dinner and went into like Panda Express, I think.

And they're like, hey, your card declined.

I'm like, there's money in that account.

Well, use this next one.

That card's declined.

All of my cards were declined.

Come to find out, she had gone into the bank, talked that bank teller who was familiar with both of us, to transfer all the money into her account.

So my bank account was zero.

And she went through and had canceled all of my credit cards.

Saying that they were lost or stolen.

Wow.

All I had was cash in hand.

That's not enough to get a hotel.

Right.

So I ended up crashing at a friend's house for a few days until I could get that straightened around.

It took me over a month to get the banking stuff figured out because I'm like, she's not on that.

These were not joint accounts.

This was an account in my name only that she wasn't on.

But the bank teller went, oh, yeah, you guys are in here all the time.

I'll take care of you.

Wow.

So you know what I mean?

It was deep.

And then that night is when that happened.

And so this was very well planned out.

Right.

Yeah.

So I didn't actually remember, remember that part of your story, the financial part.

It speaks to financial abuse.

Yeah.

And it speaks to that getting locked.

Like, getting locked in.

Yeah.

And also gives us more evidence that, yes, she had this grand plan, which now a lot of people.

Malicious women.

This is not.

This is not women in general we're talking about.

We're talking about malicious women.

But there's like.

There's malicious men.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

And so they're.

The system now is so known that there are many women who will work it.

And so she was trying to get you to hit her.

Oh, yeah.

It was well planned out.

Yeah.

You know, so luckily you fled.

Luckily you found your car keys that night.

Yep.

And you were able to after some running away from her and.

Oh, I made four laps around the kitchen, at least, just trying to stay away.

Yeah, yeah.

So I was the one when and called the police.

I was the one that had blood running down my head.

She didn't have a mark on her, which was awesome.

But still, be prepared.

They're going to detain everybody in that situation.

That's common, especially in Washington.

Yeah.

So even though you had blood running down your face and like you said, she didn't.

Yep.

And yours, at least they detained you but did not charge you.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But unfortunately, since she had no criminal history, they charged her and then later dropped it because they went, well, it's just that he said, she said.

And.

And she was charged, but they didn't ever take her to trial on that.

Down the road.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's the double standard, right?

It is.

If the genders were reversed, there's no doubt that would have been prosecuted to.

The fullest extent on that one.

I guarantee it.

And that's the tough part.

And I'm seeing it so common.

And I'm where I'm seeing it a lot is in the divorce process as well leading up to that.

And again, I agree, obviously people that are in that situation should not be together.

But I'm watching friends of mine going through the financial abuse.

I'm watching just all of those crazy things with kids.

And I mean, you've seen it, you've done so much research.

But when there's kids involved, I just feel so horrible for the family as a whole, as well as the kids that are trying, that are just have turned into pawns in the game, shall we say?

So we have these high conflict custody battles where a woman is more likely to be a believe than a man is likely to be believed.

And it's called this.

The silver bullet in, in divorce is for a woman to accuse the guy of abusing her or the kids.

And so we have a lot of false allegations and need to find a better way to sort those out because now we've got a lot of bias going on.

And it's partly because the statistics have been distorted.

And so there's a sense for judges and the system to think we have to protect all of these fragile women.

Vulnerable, we'll call them.

Vulnerable is a better word.

Vulnerable women from all these horrible men.

And that's based on a lot of distortion of stats.

Yeah, it's far more equal than people realize.

Yeah.

And it would be interesting if we had some kind of.

Again, this is just me thinking out loud.

It would be interesting if we had some kind of a national database for this because for instance, my ex, her previous husband, she had hit him with a car in the driveway.

And she says that didn't happen now.

But I remember asking her in her Mustang going, what's with this dent in the car?

She goes, oh, that's where I hit my ex husband with it.

And I thought she was kidding because I went, oh, funny.

Oh, wow.

And then he later on after this all comes out when she was running for Congress and it hit the news, I'm like, holy smokes.

She admitted to me that happened.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's the awareness we're trying to raise.

We're trying to have not other guys not go, that's outside of anything that could possibly happen.

No, but a woman would do that.

Yeah, I mean, I mean at the time I was a 210 pound guy probably and she was 52 and 125 pounds and oh my gosh, that how could that happen?

Yeah, I hopefully these videos that we're starting to see that come out and The Amber Heard story and some of these other things start to paint a picture that people dismiss by the size.

And that's kind of one of the biggest up.

What could she do?

A lot.

Right.

You know, and so back to the size issue.

We named four of the giveaways.

They're.

The fifth one came to mind as you were telling that story and that it's engaging other people.

Yes.

So hiring a hitman, which we had one in my little town here, hired.

I was a nurse who was in a custody battle with her, with her ex.

She hired a guy, was giving her him her engagement ring as, like the down payment.

Wow.

Turned out, though, it was an undercover police officer.

Nice.

Yeah, exactly.

So she got tried and found guilty.

But in the.

It was either in the defense part of the trial or in the defense part of the sentencing.

All these people came forward about, oh, she's such a wonderful person.

Oh, don't punish her that badly because she's a wonderful person.

And that's.

That's the line that women tend to use where men won't get the same kind of sympathy.

But they did give her a decent sentence.

That's good.

That's good.

And there's so many things that I think.

And in the Pacific Northwest, here in Washington, that's where I used to live.

I'm down in Oregon.

But I see such a disparity still to this day in the legal system of how things are treated.

There's one set of rules for men, there's one set of rules for female, and it's in domestic violence, it's in divorce, it's in all of these things.

And it's one of my biggest complaints in the Pacific Northwest is if you're a family going through a divorce and you've got a child, the kind of standard go to for the court system is for the guys is cool.

You get to see your kid every other weekend.

And some of that is used as a bargaining chip of, well, guess what?

If you report this, if the guys report it, we're going to divorce and you're going to see your kid a couple times a month.

Right.

And that's what keeps those guys sucked in.

And they know that, man, it's going to be an ugly battle.

It's going to cost me 60 to $100,000 in court because everything's going to be ugly.

Yeah.

The temper that is in that violence is going to show up in the court system.

Right.

There's not going to be any reasonable discussions here.

And it's going to Be a six figure.

The attorneys are going to get a year, year to two years worth of work out of it and the guys go, just take it one more time.

Exactly.

And so you're speaking to reasons why men stay in these abusive relationships.

And I, there's a whole part of the book about that, and you're touching on that, that they may be staying to protect children.

They may be staying out of various fears.

They may be staying for economic reasons, feeling like, well, they can't afford a household for themselves and continuing to pay for the household of children and likely having to lean in, be forced to pay the other for child support and potentially spousal support.

And it could be not knowing what's happening to.

It could be confusion.

It can be the lowered self esteem that can happen in these lengthy abusive relationships where they're told so often they're not good enough, they wouldn't be able to do things on their own that they absorb that idea and so don't.

Aren't able to see a way out.

It can be anxiety because they're in such an anxiety provoking situation.

And the anxious brain is not a problem solving brain.

No.

So the anxious brain can't see the way out.

And this is where intervention can really help.

I wish there were more therapists that got it about abusive women.

Yeah, I think unfortunately it's hit or miss.

But I will say if a guy is going to go for therapy, which would be wise in this scenario, is to do some good interviewing of the person and try to get a sense.

Do they even recognize that abuse of men by women is a thing?

And that's, that's how you and I met.

Because I can't.

I got out of that and went, okay, I need to heal, but I need help and healing.

So I don't even understand how this happened because I had only been married maybe a year at that point.

And then I had a two year court battle which was ugly.

She got spousal maintenance.

She got spousal maintenance longer than we were married.

And that was just going through the court stuff because it was a two year court battle.

And I was like, wow, I need to understand this so I never make this mistake again.

And she had been doing this, I was husband number four that she had taken advantage of.

And it was a plan from the start.

And I knew there was issues the day after we got married because it was one of those things that I went, oh no, something really changed.

Right, right.

And so that's a.

You put a ring on it and you're trapped now.

Yep.

And the real personality can come out.

Yep.

And just what you're describing is a way a lot of people get, whether it's a man who's being.

Who's been abused or a woman who's then abused, get trapped into these abusive relationships.

It wasn't necessarily the personality that they were presented with before the commitment.

100%.

And then it's a free for all.

They let their personality come out.

So what I would hope in raising awareness is that more men will be able to.

On that day after the wedding, when the personality comes out, they go, oh, okay, I know what's going on.

Yeah.

What's going on is she hooked me with a different personality.

Now this, what's going on today, is real.

Yes.

Because that's what the mind tries to tell you.

This isn't real because I had four months or whatever.

Oh, we've been together a year, a year and a half almost.

So it was like, oh, maybe it's a bad mood, but we're on the honeymoon and I'm like, oh, where is this?

And that was my biggest mistake, was not dealing with it then, because it would have been much easier to deal with it then than I did.

Months later, you pull the plug on day one and.

And you don't have as many entanglements, and it's an easier out.

Yeah, yeah, it is.

And it's one of those things, and it's.

And I want to bring awareness to this.

You've got a great book that is so helpful to people out there.

Every time I have a buddy that is going through divorce, I just jump on Amazon and I go, hey, man, what's a safe address that I can mail this to where you can pick it up?

And that's a key one because the last thing you need is your friend's spouse, girlfriend, whatever, to see this sitting around on the coffee table.

That's going to spark its own anger.

Exactly.

And so I had a buddy that I sent it to because he was getting that same treatment as.

And some of the warning signs.

Guys, I want to talk about here real quick because I think it's important, and here's what I've noticed.

If they get angry and throw something at you, that should be your biggest red flag in the dating side of things.

If they got mad or something, whether.

Whether you did something bad or not, if that hinge of violence comes out, that should be the warning sign of, oh, this could be just the start of what's to come.

Yeah, yeah.

And I'm remembering a story that you told about, so correct me if I remember this wrong.

Yeah.

You being on the phone with her after you're married and she got mad on the phone and you could hear her cereal bowl hit the wall.

Yep.

And I came home with a dent in the wall.

She threw the cereal bowl at the wall.

Absolutely.

So I'd actually forgotten about that until you mentioned that.

I'm like, yeah, that did happen.

So we haven't talked about it in a decade, but that is exactly what happened.

And yeah, those are those things that I look back and go, should have known better.

That's, again, one of those things.

If damage, violence, whatever is okay, mistakes happen.

I get that.

But that should be a warning sign that you should say, I better pay more attention to this.

This could get out of hand.

Yeah.

So let's talk a little bit about the conversation that probably came next between you and her, because that's another part of an assessment.

So in the book, I have a whole part on how to do analysis for your situation and figuring out, should I stay, should I go, what steps, what steps forward can I make?

Because there's steps in between staying and going as well.

So if you go home after an incident like that and you're talking to her about, okay, this happened, I see.

Evidence that, yeah, I gotta fix the evidence now.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And so then there's a lot of information in that conversation that comes next.

Are, is she saying, Is she being defensive and saying, or what did she do?

Do you remember at all?

Yeah, she was super defensive.

I caused it.

If I wouldn't have made her mad, that wouldn't have happened.

Don't blame her, blame me.

It was that kind of.

That was the.

The instant reaction.

Yeah.

So that's such a big part of the assessment about how your situation is likely to play out.

Ownership is the ownership piece.

Yeah.

And sometimes people fake the ownership and it'll just go around in a circle where there's an abusive action and remorse and promises to change and then increases intention and then abusive act.

And you just go around and around and around.

And then, then when that's happened, if that's happening, then the decision is, did I just go around the loop for the last time?

Am I.

Am I up for another round or not?

Jen's where it's like genuine, like the person is aghast that they lost control like that.

And they say to the, out loud to you that, yeah, okay, I gotta go do something.

I gotta get some help.

I've gotta figure out how to not do this anymore.

That's a good sign.

If they're honest about it.

If they're honest about it.

So then you're looking for does is there follow through?

Is there actual change?

Or does that get lost and they.

And their ego can't actually handle staying in that I have done something wrong space.

Interesting.

So that's how I met you.

And another thing that happened.

I don't even know if I told you this story.

So this is an interesting one that just again, you just spark something.

After I'd gotten out of that relationship, divorced, was doing a little dating.

There was somebody that I knew that from years ago that mutual friends, I went, this could be an interesting relationship.

She had been a victim of violence before, and I think maybe we had something in common in that and the healing side of things.

We'd gone on a few dates and two things happened.

One, one night I noticed she got she over consumed alcohol and realized that I realized and went, oh, she gets violent when that happens.

Oh.

So she came up and did the old almost like a guy shove off in the shoulder, like wanting to fight.

And I went, oh.

The ironic thing was, is the weak.

Before that, we had been hanging out with her family, mom, brothers, all that stuff.

And the mom pulled me aside and said, who I'd known since high school, because we all went to high school together, said, eric, I love you.

Don't date my daughter.

It's going to be a mess.

Save yourself.

And when the mom says that, gives you a hug and says, don't do it.

This isn't going to go well and I don't want it to hurt all of our relationships.

That was an opening one.

And did you end it then?

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay.

It's just like, yeah, it was done.

But I mean, in my defense, too, once I got violent, got hit with the violence from my axe in that at that time, that happened on a Thursday.

The next day was like the 4th of July, because that was on the 3rd of July.

Next day with 4th of July, Monday morning, I had contacted my attorney.

By Wednesday morning, I'd filed divorce papers.

Yes.

Yeah.

Good for you.

Yeah.

And I was like, this can't happen.

And I remember calling him up on Tuesday going, chop, chop.

Where's that at?

I want this done.

Yeah.

And it was one of those things, but again, that was one of those things that the warning signs that I had learned of, like, oh, I'm not doing this.

Not doing this.

Yeah, you know, exactly, exactly.

And we need more men knowing that.

And so they will end these relationships instead of getting caught up in them.

And after that, there were two or three other guys that she had been dating that ended up getting arrested for dv.

And I went, I know how that started.

I know how that started.

Yeah.

Because she was all over social media.

I can't believe this happened.

And I'm like, oh, another one.

Yeah.

And now we're talking about another kind of abuse, which is the cyber abuse.

And oh my gosh, that's huge.

That's new.

Yeah.

And so I talk about that way more in this edition of the book than I did in the first.

Yeah.

And that's big out there.

And you guys too.

The one thing I want to talk about here before we run out of time too, is this doesn't have to be physical abuse.

It could be financial and mental, which will do as much or more damage as the physical if you're not careful.

Yeah, exactly.

So let's talk about the seven forms of part.

Yes, let's do it.

All right, so let's.

Seven.

Seven.

Yeah, yeah.

Right.

Okay.

So there's the verbal abuse, there's the psychological and emotional.

I put that as one category.

Yep.

And basically every other kind of partner abuse has a psychological, emotional component.

I think that's one of the reasons why it gets.

It's most known.

Okay, so we had, we had verbal, psychological, emotional, physical, which we've been talking about.

There's sexual.

Yep.

And that can be a hard one for people to grapple.

Yes.

Women can sexually abuse males.

Male partners.

Then we've got legal.

Yeah.

Which we've mentioned.

And so legal.

And also now sometimes called administrative abuse.

Financial.

That's a big one.

And spiritual.

Yeah.

And so those.

Yeah, those are all big ones.

Absolutely.

And so I go into.

I've got a cough again.

Yeah.

Yes.

And I go into each one of them in the book in detail with explanation.

And I do a lot of bullet points.

I make it very easy read.

It's an easy read, guys.

Trust me.

Yeah, yeah.

It's an emotional read for men who are experiencing it.

But it's, it's laid out in a very sequential, systematic and easy to read format.

And then I couple it with little, little stories, like real life stories.

I don't make anything up.

And there's stories throughout for the most part.

It's not like, like a lot of self help books will be written as a huge, big story with all the details and then go into explanation for the most part.

I don't do that.

There's only one man That I tell a whole lot of his one story, and it's new in the new edition.

Nice.

It's Baron Lee, who's from our area, generally, like up in the Seattle area, who I've met a couple of times, whose ex wife hired two teenagers who then shot him nine times.

And he survived.

That is.

Nine times is tough to survive.

Yeah.

And he.

He had been abused by her prior to this.

So then he was divorced.

And then she was after the child trust fund.

Yep.

They had a disabled child.

She wanted the trust fund.

She was running out of Runway to get her hands on that.

And so she tried to have him killed.

And.

And a lot of his.

So I use his example because there's so much legal abuse.

Oh, yeah.

He checks all the boxes in this.

One in his story that I use it at the.

As a culminating story in the chapter about legal and administrative abuse.

And other than that, I use snippets throughout.

Yeah.

And yes, guys, I'm in there, too.

And a few little spots.

So you are.

And they'll recognize it now.

Yeah, I'm okay with that.

I'm okay with that.

That's.

That's one of those things that I've had so many people go, oh, you don't talk about it much.

And I'm kind of in the point of my life now that I'm like, I need to talk about it a lot more and do it.

I mean, they did a story.

I mean, I was shocked as playing in a kid in a rock and roll band in high school and.

I kind of always wanted to have my band in Rolling Stone.

This was not how I wanted to get in Rolling Stone, but it still got me there.

But, you know, got into Rolling Stone.

Yeah, they actually did an article on it.

I actually.

I have the Meg.

I bought it around here.

I have a copy of it because I ordered it from them when it came out, but it made it in Rolling Stone.

Or they talked about her and they did a whole hit piece on her and mentioned me, her other ex husband, and in that whole thing.

And she was doing a campaign.

I felt bad for her current husband, which I think is number five.

I could be wrong, but she was running for elected office.

And I felt bad for him because I knew he didn't know the story because she was out saying that.

When I came back and went, well, here's her four divorces to an interview that one of the press people were doing.

And I was like, here's all the paperwork out of the legal system.

Public knowledge.

Here's what I have.

And she's like, oh, no, no, I was only married two times.

And I'm like, no, there's.

Here's the four divorces.

Yeah.

So that's that lying and that's that other stuff that again, that goes with all this stuff.

And we're talking and there's degrees.

Right.

So that's 100%.

That's particularly malicious.

Yeah.

And so sometimes it's not going to be that far gone and still be causing a lot of harm.

Yeah.

Another thing, too, that I've noticed, too, and in my experience, I don't know if there's any facts to back this up, but from what I've seen in females that are abusing their partner, it seems that they're okay with doing the same thing to their kids as well.

I don't know.

So I want to.

I want to.

Again, I don't know.

I don't know.

I'm just saying that it seems that.

Because every time that I've seen it, it seems that.

That.

That, at least on the violent side is okay.

It's okay for them.

And maybe they're not doing something illegal, but they're definitely rougher with their kids.

So I have seen it go either way.

Okay.

And so for some men who are assessing, do I stay?

Do I go?

Is part of it, Is it happening?

Is she also the kids.

Yeah.

Because sometimes they won't be.

Sometimes they're t. They could be a man hater or they could have other stuff going on.

True.

It could be more because it's culturally, I have to say, it's pretty much culturally sanctioned for a woman to abuse her man.

And so whereas it's not for children.

Now, a great thing I found in going down this adventure of doing a second revised edition of the book, by the way, I thought it was going to take me a few days and it took me a better part of a year because there's been so much research before.

When I did the first one, there really was not much research.

I wasn't really kind of out there on my own figuring this out.

And now I know a lot of the professors around the world who are researching, and this is a small community because there's not many, so we do tend to know each other.

And I really dove into what the research has been coming up with.

Yeah.

The first edition I avoid is statistics entirely because I didn't want to get into controversy.

Correct.

And when I was interviewed, people Always wanted to know the comparable statistics, so I thought, I'll just go for it this time.

And then what I found was this great bounty of.

In a book, you can cover so many statistical areas compared to, like, a research project where you're diving into one.

Yeah.

So I could talk about.

It's about equal numbers for the different kinds of abuse.

Even when you get down to severe physical abuse, it's pretty much equal numbers.

Yeah.

And then I was able to find research on, well, how much do men get hurt?

Because that's another line.

There's another myth that, well, it doesn't really hurt men.

Well, it turns out it does.

It does.

And yeah, the statistics on, like, one astounded me on just 300 men who were abused and had called when we had a domestic violence helpline for abused men, which ran out of funding and couldn't.

Couldn't keep existing.

But when we did, they got 300 of those men and did a research project on them.

And it's astounding how badly hurt they were.

Yeah.

So getting choked multiple times a year, going unconscious multiple times a year, multiple broken bones.

And this was all looking at what happened to you in the.

In the previous year.

Wow.

And the percentage that were the fought for it have gone to the hospital or did go to the hospital.

Wow.

About their injuries.

So I was able to bring that out in the book.

And also looking at when wives.

When women do kill.

Yeah.

They are much more likely to kill in the family than a man is.

And I think that's an important statistic that family court needs to know more about and recognize more when they're assessing who's at danger here.

Yeah.

Because both parties.

If there's a lot of physical violence, both parties are at danger.

Yeah.

No question.

And it's interesting, too, because I've been watching.

My girlfriend loves those crime shows.

And there are so many of the, oh, yeah, she was putting antifreeze in his smoothie.

To the fentanyl overdose, the guy that didn't do drugs and all of these kind of situations.

And you go, wow.

To the guy in the book.

They got shot nine times.

It's no joke.

Right.

Take it seriously.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You got to.

And I think this book is something that parents, if you've got that young adult growing up and you want to help him get into life and dating and everything else, I think this is a smart read for them to know the signs before they get into that relationship.

Yeah.

And I think it will give them the tools to be able to handle it and go, oh, I read about this.

Yeah, I'm not staying.

I'm not staying.

And yeah, could it get better?

Yes.

But that goes back to that assessment.

Part of it is, okay, what's there?

Oh, my gosh, I need help.

And they do the action part of that.

Exactly, exactly.

Everyone makes mistakes, however, comma, if they're not apologetic for it and it's not real, it's not going to change.

The odds are, to me, it's going to get worse.

Yes, yes.

And that's part to put into the assessment.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, Ann, I know we're running out of time here pretty soon.

I know people want to get this book and there's always ways to get it for the Amazon people out there.

I've seen it on Amazon.

It's out now.

And then you've got a place for those people out there that go, I don't do Amazon.

I like to go to my local bookstore.

I want to order it online from somebody.

You have a place as well for that.

So I think you.

You've got the link.

Did you get that?

I have it right there.

Okay, so what will you do with the link?

How will people.

So I'm going to put this up in the podcast and everything out there as well as we're going to put the Amazon link on our website as well.

So we'll have it all there.

But for all the people out there listening that don't want to go to that, just go to ansilvers.com and you can go in the products and find it right there.

Correct, Exactly.

And if you're on Amazon, by the way, the first edition is still on Amazon.

I have to keep it there because of all the old links.

Right?

Yeah.

And I have tried and tried to make it very clear this is the first edition.

Go get the second edition.

But I still feel.

See people buying the first edition.

Yeah.

Makes me kind of sad.

So just be sure you're looking for the second edition.

And it's up on my shelf there.

It's got a blue cover, whereas the first edition has a white cover.

It has the same red heel and black.

The man's shoe and the red heel pressing down on it.

And.

But it's.

You're looking for the revised second edition.

Yeah.

And I just want.

I have to thank you for the help you've given me and the help you're giving men out there of the awareness.

I mean, you've been doing this for.

Sheesh.

This is a subject you've been diving into for at least 15 years that I know of.

You and I have now known each other for a long time.

But this is something that I don't know of anybody that has brought more awareness to this subject than you have.

And I just gotta say for all the guys out there and all the families out there, thank you for what you're doing and keep up the great work because this guys is an amazing read.

This is not something you'll.

You'll pick it up and you're going to want to work your way through it.

It's an easy read, but it is so jam packed full of useful information and tools you or someone else can use.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

And I get backlash at times and so it really feels good to get the.

Yeah, it made a positive difference.

Yeah.

And guys, just so we're clear, abuse is never okay.

What we're talking about here is the thing that's not or rarely discussed is the other half that no one's talking about right there.

This is serious all around.

So we're not downplaying anybody else's story, but we're saying, hey, it's us two.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I attended the United nations conference on women in China.

Wow.

Yeah.

So I have my, like I'm a card carrying, care about woman.

Yeah.

Person.

Which.

So I bring that.

I think that's part of what makes the book really good too is I bring this balance.

I'm not anti woman.

No.

I am anti abuse 100.

Yeah.

And I want to be clear with that.

Just I'm like, let's, let's make sure we say that out loud for people out there because I think it's important.

But it also brings in that your expertise as well from that.

And I think that's what gives us such great balance.

And it's just one of those things that I'm going to spend a lot more time.

This is one of the causes that I'm going to be as my show has gotten bigger nationally and stuff.

It's like I need to have a couple things that I'm working on.

And boy, wouldn't it be nice if we could get a group of people to get together to start out with some.

Creating some homes for men that are going through abuse across the country, bringing back some kind of hotline or chat some way that they could jump on their phone and have some kind of a text chat or something.

Technology has gotten better where we can do some of that, and it doesn't have to be the phone call that shows up.

And there's got to be a better way to do it.

And I think.

I think we need to get some smart heads together to say, how do we create help for people?

Awesome.

I'm in.

All right, let's do it.

And guys, if you want to message me about that and say, hey, I'm in, head over to aroundthehouse online.com, hit the contact us button, and you can find me right there.

That goes right into my inbox.

And thanks again, guys.

Check out this book.

The links are in the podcast.

The links are on the website.

We can find it there.

And Silvers, thanks again, my friend.

Oh, thank you, Eric.

I'm Eric G. You've been listening to around the House.

They didn't take drinks.

They never drank.

Hell, they never raised.

Yee haw.

Y', all, it's only 9:30.

No one ever talks about the nights they went to bed early.

If we wake up in the morning.

And we can't remember.

Wish I live.

That said, no one ever.

No one ever.