By Anietta Strong - author
My name is Anietta Strong. I’m an author who writes books where men hardly feature, or certainly not in a positive way. I have often wondered to what extent violent abusive men drive women into relationships they never imagined ever taking place. Where another woman provides the affection, comfort and security they desperately need. An escape from violent abusive relationships with men. But does it necessarily become sexual?
Recently, I wrote two books which explores this subject. Trelawny, features a woman who has escaped from an abusive relationship with a violent partner. Midge another. Both books tackled the abuse from different angles. Okay the end results were the same, bruises and loose teeth, but the reasons for the abuse were very different. Many men are controlling, the typical signs are to isolate the woman from friends and family, to decide what the woman wears. He controls her financially too. Worst still is their refusal to let go and in the case with Trelawny to pursue the woman who has left the abusive relationship and then turn up again in her life to reclaim his property. In the case of Midge, the cause of the violent abuse is not that different. A man who lives with the woman out of convenience, somewhere to live free of charge, sex on demand and violence meted out just for personal enjoyment. In Midge’s case the woman has gone for a day out at a coastal resort, needing time to think of a way forward, to seek a means to escape. She meets a man trying to move on after losing his wife to cancer. Even her day out is being closely monitored.
In many cases having left such a relationship, there will be reluctance to enter a new one. The woman might meet someone who doesn’t display those traits, but wasn’t that how the abusive relationship turned away from began in its infancy? Wasn’t the partner then attentive, loving and affectionate, but that changed over time? Can she risk entering a new relationship and gradually see the same signs of abuse returning? That first blow, the slap. The remorse that follows, “It’ll never happen again!” Knowing that it will, given time. In all my books, most of main characters suffered shocking abuse at the hands of men, two in particular, Petra Larson and Jennifer Wallace. In the case of the latter character, this abuse took place in childhood. Ironically both women have killed men. Both feature in The Petra Larson Story.
I realise not all women end up attracted to other women out of adversity. I imagine most are naturally attracted. There will always be women who seek out and find women attracted to themselves too. But, what about the woman who isn’t sure? She’s always wondered, but she hasn’t dared explore that path, preferring to remain in safer, well trodden territory. Usually marrying but being emotionally and sexually unsettled. Then, one day she meets someone of her own sex. She feels something – intimacy? Then the big dilemma, what to do about it. It might be at work, it might be her boss’s wife, worst still her husband’s boss’s wife. Dare she risk an approach and if so, how? She becomes obsessed, she yearns for that woman’s company, but doesn’t that make it even worse. Being close to someone, to look at lips she yearns to kiss, breasts she has a desire to touch, nipples protruding she is desperate to suck! A plump bottom she wants to reach out and grope. How does she deal with that because it won’t go away. In The Kiss, I explore that in a round about way, a woman has strange but disturbing feelings towards a work colleague, she’s unsure about her own feelings, let alone whether those feelings are shared. Kiss and all hell breaks loose! She tries it on in the lady's toilet, she got it wrong – or did she?
A writing partner of mine Sadie Stern, is a past “mistress” of this storyline. She has explored this in The Dinner Party and Two Women. She went on a different tack in The Interview, which explores another line of approach. In this case to grasp the nettle and seek another woman by answering an advertisement on a contact website featuring lesbian women. Whichever, something will eventually give, and sadly most women will remain in denial, remain fearful of exposure and be outed, risk destroying a working career because of misreading a situation or trying to find out if mutual attraction exists. Possibly the halfway house can work too, whereas in the case of most, but certainly not all, the characters in my books, swing both ways like a pendulum.
I’ve enjoyed heading down this fascinating path and it is my intention to write still more.
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