Flood Randy - Stop hurting the woman you love : breaking the cycle of abusive behavior

Stop Hurting the Woman You Love

It takes real courage for a man to admit to himself that his life is not working out as he had planned, especially if he has to face the fact that he has hurt the women and children he loves. Fortunately, when a man decides he is ready to make positive changes, he can draw on the wisdom of people like Charlie Donaldson, Randy Flood, and Elaine Eldridge, and learn from the numerous men whose stories they recount and discuss with great insight and compassion in these pages.

J ACKSON K ATZ , creator of the award-winning educational video Tough Guise and author of Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help

There are tools on nearly every page of this important, practical, down-to-earth book. I highly recommend it to any men who want to stop hurting the women they love and themselves. I also encourage therapists to draw on the authors insights and exercises.

J OHN L EE , author of The Flying Boy and Facing the Fire

Stop Hurting the Woman You Love

Breaking the Cycle of Abusive Behavior

Charlie Donaldson, M.A., and Randy Flood, M.A.,
with Elaine Eldridge, Ph.D.

Hazelden Publishing
Center City, Minnesota 55012-0176
800-328-9000
hazelden.org/bookstore
2006 by Charlie Donaldson, Randy Flood, Elaine Eldridge

All rights reserved. Published 2006
Printed in the United States of America
No portion of this publication may be reproduced in any manner without the written permission of the publisher

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Donaldson, Charlie, 1945
Stop hurting the woman you love: breaking the cycle of abusive behavior / Charlie
Donaldson and Randy Flood, with Elaine Eldridge.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-1-59285-354-0
ISBN-10: 1-59285-354-4
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-59285-963-4
1. Family violenceUnited States. 2. Family violence United StatesCase
studies. 3 Family violenceUnited StatesPrevention. 4. Wife abuseUnited States. 5. Wife abuseUnited StatesPrevention. I. Flood, Randy, 1963 II. Eldridge, Elaine, 1951 III. Title.

HV6626.2.D62 2006
616.85822dc22

2005056393

09 08 07 06 05 6 5 4 3 2 1

Cover design by David Spohn
Interior design and typesetting by Stanton Publication Services, Inc.

W e cannot begin to acknowledge all the people and organizations that have contributed to our professional development, but we do want to thank the Coordinated Community of Domestic Abuse, the Lakeshore Alliance Against Domestic and Sexual Violence of Ottawa County, and the Domestic Violence Coordinated Community Response Teams of Kent County. We have also benefited from conferences, training, and relationships with other professionals in the field of domestic abuse: Paul Kivel, Jackson Katz, John Lee, Michael S. Kimmel, and Robert Bly have helped us develop our ideas about the state of masculinity in the twenty-first century, and Ellen Pense, Donald Dutton, Jacklyn Campbell, Lundy Bancroft, William Gondolf, and Anne Ganley have broadened and deepened our understanding of the dynamics of domestic abuse.

We also want to acknowledge the men in our domestic abuse treatment groups who have been courageous enough to engage in the difficult work of change. Their experiences and struggles as they reach for accountability have given us the intimate knowledge we needed to write this book with truth and care. We also want to acknowledge the partners of these men. We admire their strength in making difficult decisions about their relationships with abusive men, and we admire their courage to make new lives for themselves and their children.

Melissa Dunham and Becky Plantinga at Fountain Hill Center for Counseling and Consultation assisted in developing cycles and graphs. Brian Distelberg helped us create the What Kind of Man Am I? questionnaire by using statistical norming to select questions and to standardize the scoring, and Al Heystek administered the questionnaire to his group members.

Thanks to our readers, Amy VanGunst, Stephanie Flood, and Al Heystek, for their useful edits and suggestions.

Randy Flood

Charlie has been an energetic and disciplined presence in my life, helping me stay focused on this project when life got busy. Elaine joined us as a writer, but she contributed above and beyond in challenging Charlie and me conceptually and theoretically as well as grammatically.

I particularly want to thank Amy VanGunst; her insights on the effects of domestic abuse on women and families have helped me in my work with men. I have also learned from my discussions of difficult cases with Al Heystek and Bev Becksforth and with Kirk Brink and Sally Ryan.

I would like to acknowledge my wife, Stephanie, and our children, Zachary and Anna, who were supportive and patient during the time it took to write this book. These relationships have taught me a lot about intimacy: love, vulnerability, commitment, and emotional involvement.

I thank my parents for showing me that troubled relationships can heal in spite of past pain. My father, Larry, broke the generational cycle of domestic abuse by refusing to stay on his fathers path. Because he had the strength and love to change his course in life, I have been able to take the next step of helping other men to develop more loving and respectful relationships with their partners.

Charlie Donaldson

I am grateful to colleagues who have helped me grow as a therapist and deepen my understanding of domestic abuse. In addition to members of the institutions mentioned above, I want to thank the staffs of the 58th District Court and the Center for Women in Transition. I also want to thank Dave Schipper, Ortencia Bos, Jill Vaandering, and the Honorable Susan Jonas, who have served as mentors and standard bearers in the essential work we do. I thank Elaine for her exceptional writing and organizational skills, and for her persistence in seeking excellence. Finally, I am grateful to Randy for ten years of collaboration, for partnering to create the Mens Resource Center and so many other endeavors, and for his humor and perseverance no matter how deep the slough or frightening the torrent.

I also want to announce my daily and heartfelt gratitude to Patricia Genesky, manager of the Mens Resource Center, Holland, who makes all things possible; my colleague Tara Romano, whose depth, clinical skills, and wisdom continually amaze me; the women in my life, Carol, Diane, and Sylvia, and the men in my mens group, all of whom have sometimes taught me more about myself than I wanted to know; my sisters, Kathy and Nancy, my cousin, Linda, and my son, Shawn, who have been so loving and who do such important work of their own; and most importantly, my mother for her love, advice, and encouragement, and for demonstrating the heartiness and courage that I want to flow through all of my life.

Elaine Eldridge

Thanks, first, to Charlie for his excellent idea for this book and to Randy and Charlie for their collaboration. We stayed the course.

I am grateful to authors Terence Real, Susan Forward, Paul Kivel, Michael S. Kimmel, Lundy Bancroft, Ellen Pense, and Michael Paymar, whose work has furthered my education in the study of the male personality and the dynamics of domestic abuse. Thanks also to Karen Chernyaev, senior acquisitions editor at Hazelden Publishing and Educational Services, for her calm and even-tempered assistance.

I extend my heartfelt gratitude to my sister Irene, and to Marie, Marjorie, Maud, and Betty for their continued love and support, and my love and thanks to my daughter Claire, who has been with me as this book took shape and waited patiently as it took up my time. Finally, I want to thank my mother, whom I miss always, and without whose model of strength and perseverance I could never have made it this far.