Rihanna ( and other young women )

I was just reading a yahoo news story, one of many about Rihanna and I have watched with interest and concern as her story has unfolded in the media's lens.

It is hard not to feel uncomfortable sometimes when reading these stories even when they are sympathetic because it is easy to feel the undercurrent of thought . People it seems, wonder why she would go back to him?, why is she talking about it in her songs?, why drag it out into the media?,and now the question I am hearing is, why would she get involved with a man like that in the first place? After all, she has talked about how her father beat her mother and how she was terrified to sleep at night ,and told herself she would never marry a man like her father.

There is a strong tendency to judge women who already have had to survive this kind of terror, our society judges these women as deserving of what they get if they go back to the men that hurt them. The mildest form of this judgement usually is expressed as a shaking of the head in dismay and a (genuine) sympathy.

I would like to add something valuable to the conversation as a woman who has lived through some domestic violence myself and come out the other side. I want to say this because in the past I have wondered myself why women go back, why they don't leave, why do they begin relationships with these types anyway?
A key to better understanding is to realize first of all that some women do not possess these answers themselves.

Women like men, are comfortable with what is familiar. One of the biggest fears any society or individual faces is the fear of the unknown. So it should follow that women would be comfortable with a man like their father, even if a woman hates her father she may still end up finding some of his masculine traits attractive when she sees them in other men( without realizing it of course ). These traits are part of the script of life for all of us whether good or bad.

Something that also rings true for me is that when you are taught or told something about yourself by a parent, male or female, that is negative you will believe it. My father and I never got along. I heard alot of negative messages from him when I was a child, not just about who I was, but specifically as a female. I hated hearing the horrible things and I didn't want to believe that about myself but because it was my father telling me these things and my mother not putting up any kind of argument for me, I thought somewhere inside that it must be true. I can't say the pain this has caused me with work relationships, school, friends and strangers. I had that bad script playing itself over and over again in my head each time I encountered an obstacle in any relationship. So I blamed every bad thing that happened on myself, I took it all in. I waited for other people to give me approval rather than believing in myself. I asked other people what to do instead of believing in my instincts. I let other people take advantage of me because no one ever stood up for me so I didn't believe that I was worth standing up for, or even worse, that I had the right to.

So it makes perfect sense to me why she would go back to Chris Brown, and why she would be attracted to him in the first place. I don't mean that I think it was healthy, not anymore than I was healthy for choosing a man for a husband that didn't respect me, but it is the fortunate few that realize in time exactly how to take the steps to breaking the pattern, or to rise above your raising. The process of learning takes time and hard work. That is true for women and men, for men are also victims of domestic violence in the sense that a young boy has his world shattered by seeing his mother brutalized by his father. He hates what he sees but what other example does he have? what other male figure? Most of us only have one human father, and it is important that the example is healthy parents who have love and self-control among many other good qualities.

Young women like Rihanna need more support, strengthening and understanding, they need also the room to make mistakes, just as we give men the room to make mistakes. They do not need our judgement. If you can change that script you can change your opinion of yourself.