When I met Jerry, there were no obvious red flags. There were several green ones. Jerry could write well. He was thoughtful and expressive on the page, and in person he was easy to talk to, funny, and able to laugh at himself. He was clearly intelligent without coming across as arrogant.
What I knew about his life also gave me reasons to feel comfortable. He had been served as ordained clergy for sixteen years and was very educated. He had a job, shared custody of his children, and had been married to his high school sweetheart for more than twenty years. He had close, openly affectionate male friendships.
I knew none of that guaranteed that there was no risk. I considered what I knew and made choices about what I was willing to accept. A year later, I learned about lies, other relationships, and consent violations that completely changed my understanding of what had happened between us.
I had done what I could to assess the risk of being involved with Jerry. I gleaned what I could from our interactions and of course I googled him and found out what I could on the internet. Despite all my efforts, I still did not have the information I needed to understand what the risks actually were.
In kink, there is an acronym called Risk Aware Consensual Kink, or RACK. It acknowledges that risk cannot be eliminated and emphasizes the need to be aware of risk as a critical component of informed consent. I think that idea has value in any intimate relationship. We all have responsibilities to be honest, respect boundaries, and consider how our choices affect each other.
However, being responsible for considering risk doesn’t mean we always have a way to identify it. If we are considering a new kinky activity, we can do our homework so we can actually give informed consent. When we are starting a new relationship, the information available may be much more limited. The more I think about what we ask people to figure out before becoming involved in a relationship, the more I recognize that the task might just be impossible.
From a young age, women receive plenty of warnings about men. Watch your drink, meet in public. Tell someone where you’re going, be careful about being alone with him. Before we can even attempt to know anything about him, we have to consider whether someone might sexually assault or kill us. Anyone who has dated cisgender men does not need to be told this. I have wondered for a long time if cis men can truly understand how much time and energy is invested in this assessment.
We also learn a picture of the man we should fear. He is aggressive, threatening, sexually pushy, or unwilling to accept no. Our picture of an abuser may be someone who hits, bullies, yells, controls what his partner wears, or tells her who she can see.
Those are real dangers, but that picture can also influence what reassures us, too. A man who seems gentle, listens, talks about his feelings, and appreciates our independence can seem very different from someone who could harm us. When avoiding assault or death becomes the measure of safety, anything else just seems like a bonus. Honesty, care, and accountability become perks.
We may recognize something as unpleasant or unfair while understanding it as part of what relationships with men require. We are told men struggle to communicate and women tend to be better at relationships. We should be patient, explain ourselves differently, or help him understand. Those expectations influence what we question, what we accept, and how much responsibility we take for making things work.
All of this contributes to the generally accepted idea for cis men, especially when it comes to dating, that the bar is so fucking low. When you have to work so hard to avoid the worst, it is no surprise that you might put up with a great deal of harmful behavior.
Some of the research studying LGBTQ relationships gives us reasons to question those expectations. Emotional care can be more reciprocal between women, and men partnered with men can do more of that work than men partnered with women. These comparisons don’t tell us every relationship will be healthy. They do suggest that what women are expected to accommodate in heterosexual relationships isn’t simply inevitable.
We draw on our own experience. We recognize familiar situations and interpret them based on past learning. That is a reasonable way to make decisions, but our past may not have prepared us to recognize all forms of harm we might encounter.
Jerry spoke openly about his ADHD. Some of his inconsistency and difficulty communicating made sense within what I understood about him. Later, when I learned about his struggles with drinking, I connected it to many of his bizarre behaviors. I was noticing things and trying to understand them. I had explanations that seemed reasonable, without knowing what those explanations left out.
I also didn’t know how many women he had pursued after his separation. Looking back, I believe he learned and adapted through those experiences. He learned what women responded to, what raised questions, and what helped him maintain trust. I was getting to know him without knowing much of the experience he brought to getting to know me.
The advice about red and green flags is also far from a secret. We’ve all seen articles or social media posts about red flags to avoid. Someone who wants our trust can easily learn what reassures us and avoid showing behavior that would make us hesitate. We all put our best out there when we are first dating. Their positive qualities may also be truly sincere. Someone can be affectionate, generous, and enjoyable to spend time with while withholding information that would change our choices in the relationship.
Other people can add credibility without ever explicitly vouching for him. Pictures of Jerry with people involved in a local group led to assumptions that he was also a member. The photographs suggested social and community connections he didn’t actually have.
We may feel reassured by seeing them with people we recognize or respect. Whether those people realize it or not, intentional or not, their presence can influence what someone else concludes. Even an explicit account of a good relationship has limits. Someone can truthfully say he has always treated them well. That doesn’t establish how he treats other people or how he would treat us. We can overlook that distinction if we expect an abusive person to behave abusively in every relationship. People have different information, resources, experience, and support. What someone has access to, and what they can control, varies across relationships.
Being strong or intelligent doesn’t remove those differences. Jerry has a particular interest in strong, independent women and also in partners with less BDSM experience. Relying on someone else’s knowledge in an unfamiliar area affects the power structure of the relationship. She can also make her own decisions while being denied facts that would change them.
None of her strengths gives her access to information she doesn’t know exists.
Even when we notice a concern, finding out what it means can carry real danger. We tell women to ask questions, assert boundaries, and pay attention to how a man handles rejection or criticism. Those are all really important things, and doing any of them could also easily risk a woman’s life.
We have to decide how to approach him before knowing how he will respond to something difficult to hear. Asking questions can expose us to the very danger we are trying to assess. It is absolutely exhausting thinking about what is required to navigate these situations and assess the real and serious risks to our lives and our bodies.
Sometimes it takes time to learn more and gather enough information to make a full assessment. However, while we’re learning, we may be falling in love, sharing private information, spending time alone together, or making commitments that affect how easy it is to exit the relationship. We may also feel safer because someone has become more familiar, even if we know that as he gains more access to our lives, he also finds more opportunities to do harm. By the time the risk becomes clear, leaving may be dangerous or practically impossible. Housing, money, children, health, and the availability of help can all affect whether someone has a way out. Leaving doesn’t guarantee support, and speaking about what happened can carry consequences of its own.
I know Jerry has hurt other women. So far, I have not found anyone willing to speak publicly about a negative experience with him. Given what speaking publicly has cost me, I do not blame anyone for choosing to remain silent.
Someone getting to know him may see the people who support him without hearing from the people he has harmed. She may encounter my writing, but she may also be told it is a “smear campaign” by a jilted girlfriend. Before she has read what happened, she has been given a reason to question why I’m telling it.
I have suffered far more consequences for telling the truth about Jerry than he has for the behavior I described. That has changed how I understand the choices available after someone has been harmed.
We ask why a woman trusted him, why she stayed, and why she didn’t speak sooner. When she does speak, we may question her motives or blame her for damaging his reputation. Victim blaming follows her through decisions that may never have offered a safe outcome. It also affects what the next woman will have a chance to know.
This is what makes our approach to risk unsustainable. We expect women to recognize danger before becoming involved, question it safely, leave when necessary, and warn others afterward. We do not ensure that the any of the information, support, or practical choices needed to do those things are available.
I keep wondering why so much of our teaching concerns how women should identify dangerous men, and so little concerns what men are responsible for doing to avoid harming others. That responsibility has to extend beyond not hitting or sexually assaulting someone. It includes being honest, accepting boundaries and rejection, and taking responsibility when harm occurs.
I knew I was taking risks. I also deserved the information that would have allowed me to decide whether to take them. Jerry withheld a tremendous amount of critical information for a long period of time.
What have we learned to count as evidence that someone is safe, and how much can that evidence actually tell us? Why does so much responsibility fall on the person who has less information? What would make it possible to share an experience of harm without becoming the problem for telling it? How can we share responsibility for preventing harm more fairly?
I don’t have all those answers. But I believe there has to be a better way than asking women to do the impossible and blaming them when they are harmed.