And, it's not just blokes - anyone hits me, I might be puny, but by Woollies and All Her Chocolate Angels, they'll pay. So ArwenLune's post, and Batsgirl's and the others below, do seem to sum this up. This isn't about fighting - equals trading blows - it's about grinding someone down and using their own lack of self-esteem (such a cliched term - so hard for some people to own) to make them think they bring this abuse on themselves, and/or cannot ever be free of it. It's UGLY. I am a female person, I have by my age dated many men, for varying lengths of time, and no-one has ever HIT me - so IMO it's not like X% of men automatically hit, or Z% of relationships go to that first punch. (And, it's not like I'm not, at times, REALLY annoying - anyone who's seen me post replies here knows I'm gobby, rude, opinionated - and in real life, I can screw things up just like anyone else!) Fact is, I dated one guy who tried to grind me down - this was after I'd just got my heart majorly broken - did he sniff the blood like a shark? Because he was in my social circle before, and knew all about my unhappiness - he tried to play the games Batsgirl describes so eloquently below. When I was dating him, we argued and 5 minutes later, he accidentally bumped me down 2 steps, grazing my knees (first time with grazed knees since my age hit double figures, howja like that?) - another time I spoke back and accidentally, purely by chance, he kicked me.... But I - glad to say - freaked him out too much by not going along, and he shortly dumped me in the most horrible way he could think of - I won't detail it, but my birthday, middle of the street, whatever, you get the picture. 48 hours later I was so glad to be rid of this moron, and began to see through his hard work to make things be my fault. Plus all those "accidents" I had, started to point to a pattern! I hesitated to post about this, for a bit, fearing it would look like a big FU to people who've been abused, but then I re-thought things and wanted to demonstrate that abusers - and this guy was a City Gent, none of your estate scumbags - are trolling 24/7 for targets, and are not limited in their reach. He saw what he thought he wanted in me - happily, my mum made me able to be the right kind of selfish/self-assured/hard headed, and even though I was at the lowest point (emotionally) of my life, I shook him off like a cold and moved on to better things. But - I was nearly there - I kind of loved him, we did have lots in common, he was funny, charming, intelligent, and sweet at times - if he'd played me a bit differently, if I'd been just a bit more inclined to feel bad about myself.... this post might have been about me. I hope not, I hope I'd have spotted the warning signs? But it might.