GQ_Australia-December_2017

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“But I said I’m sorry, that I won’t do it

again, that I shouldn’t have grabbed her like

that. Because that’s the easiest thing to say,

that you won’t do it again. And then you do.

And she comes back.”

Even more typical is that, after the night

of dragging, kicking, punching, screaming,

abusing – Corinne came back. They again

co-parented for a bit. Had sex a few times.

But then she got a new man, told him the

history, and now Adam no longer sees his

son. Ever.

“He’s the collateral damage of all this,

my boy.”

Adam’s moved on too. He has a new wife

and a new baby on the way and she knows

about his past. He didn’t tell her straight away,

of course, and Corinne threatening to do so

during their disputes over child access might

have helped spur his confessions.

Through counselling and a painful journey

of self-realisation, Adam’s found a way to

control his anger.

“I’m a pretty easygoing guy, but I do

have a switch. I still do. I’m not gonna put my

hand up and say, ‘I’m a saint now,’ and I don’t

get shitty, I do, but I think we all do. I think

genetically, people like me have something

in us that gives us the propensity to go,

‘Fuck you’ in situations were most people

would go, ‘Oh, I’m sorry’.

“It was really easy for me, previously, to just

let emotion drive the behaviour. That emotion

would come so quick, I wouldn’t often have

a chance to actually stop it. But now I can

actually manage that. I know and understand

where it’s coming from, and I can kind of

talk myself down and go, ‘just let it go’.”

Adam says it’s impossible for him to

describe how lucky he feels to be getting

another chance. For a long time he didn’t

dare hope for that.

Adam’s story has so many elements typical

of men who’ve committed violent acts against

partners and who’ve lost families because of

it. He grew up with domestic violence, it was

normalised for him, he was never told it was

wrong. But what typifies Adam most of all is

that he wishes he could go back in time. That

if he knew then what he knows now, about

controlling his emotions, about recognising

his failings, and those within a relationship,

he’d be able to fix it.

“I just wish I’d had the counselling before,

years ago, before any of this happened. Because

things would have been different then.”

‘I wish I’d asked for help

earlier’ is one of the most common phrases

relationship counsellors hear from broken

men. Still, the most common word to burble

up is ‘shame’ – the kind that burns inside,

to the point where it becomes white-hot,

angry denial.

Charmaine Bradley’s been working in

counselling with Relationships Australia

for nine years, and says the other common

utterance of many men is, “she made me

do it”.

“When we see blame – ‘it’s not my fault, it’s

her fault’ – what we do know is that blame

and shame are very close cousins, that’s why

you hear that language a lot,” says Bradley.

“They do feel shame, but it’s too hot to hold,

they’re not ready, so they switch to blame.

“And if they’re feeling shame, it actually

shuts down their thinking, they can’t hear

you, they can’t take in the information.”

It’s why she says the language used in her

work is so important.

“The way you ask them: ‘Tell me about the

part of you that thought it was OK to club

her with a baseball bat. Tell me about the

part of you that would do it differently.’ You

need to try to sidestep that sense of shame.

“Not everyone learns that you don’t hit

girls, and some of them don’t even accept that

they’re the kind of men who would hit girls,

they can’t hold onto that shame, so they

rationalise: ‘It was just a one-off, she asked

for it, she made me do it’.”

The counselling sessions, as both Adam

and Kay will tell you, aren’t easy, and Andrew

King says it takes courage and commitment

to get through the first six weeks – a “brutal”

experience often soaked in tears.

What tends to come after that, for most

men, is an ‘aha’ moment. And it can be ugly.

“Quite often it comes when we get them

to think about what impact their behaviour

is having on their children,” explains King.

“We had one father who was very adamant

that the issue of domestic violence had no

impact on his children, that he was dealing

with it the best he could, that he was

minimising any suggestion of it affecting

his family and saying it was under control.

“One day, he came back to the group and

he just looked completely different. And he

told the story that on the previous weekend

he’d been watching TV with this three-year-

old daughter on his knee, and he went to

scratch his head. He lifted his hand, and

he saw his child flinch away. Instantly he

realised that his three-year-old knew about

the violence, he just knew. And he’d been

absolute, up to that point, that they didn’t

know, because the arguments only

happened at night.”

Bradley adds that men need an ‘aha’ to

push them past denial and on to a path of

wanting to change. One of her recent clients

was sent to the program by court order, as

part of his probation, and it gradually came

out that he’d been beaten by his father as a

child and also witnessed his mother being hit.

“His whole life, he just really wanted to be

different from his father, but he went through

that cycle of denial, and then escalation, and

then he hurt his wife so badly he almost

killed her and ended up in court,” says

Bradley. “Yet that wasn’t enough for him

to change. But he’s recently had his ‘aha’

moment, where he said, ‘I am my father.

In fact I’m worse than him’. And that’s his

motivation, now, that he wants to be

different from his dad.”

“She was kicking at me and I dragged her off of the bed,

and I think she realised, ‘Fuck. He actually might hit me’.

Then instead of shouting at me she was trying to get away.”

MEN OF THE YEAR 2017 GQ.COM.AU 215