Matt Davis 9/2/10

In What We Talk about When We Talk about Love Mel claims that what happened to his current wife Terri with her past husband was not true love. Terri claims that even though her ex-husband beat and threatened to kill her that he really did love her in his own way. Now in my opinion I agree with the character Mel because truly loving for someone is at the very least caring for their wellbeing. And frankly if you care for someone else’s wellbeing you are obviously not going to beat them and drag them across the floor as described in the story and you certainly would not seriously threaten to kill them if you cared for them in any way at all. Nonetheless Terri claims that her ex-husband just had a very different way of sharing his love than other people do. I agree with Mel in this case because this is not love in anyway.


In my opinion Terri is not alone in her thinking. I think probably that many of the women who have been in an abusive or that are currently still in a abusive relationship have the common mindset, that their partner really does love them and that the reason they were beat was because they are just different than the rest of the world or just have a different way of expressing their love. Now I do not think that the only reason people stay in these relationships is because they feel loved when their beaten or feel bad for the person beating them. I clearly understand that many women stay in these relationships due to the fact that they are scared for their lives to leave especially in cases where the lives of the women are threatened. Here I am simply saying that this may be a reason that women stay in relationships with abusive men.