Why do guys leave bruises

57% of women fantasize about forceful sex, according to a study by The University of Northern Texas.

But ‘rough sex’ gets a bad name. It’s all about consent. It’s all about the ‘yes’ word.

Except for the fact, that OFTEN it isn’t!

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The other night, I said ‘no’ to a man when I truly meant ‘YES’.

Fortunately he didn’t listen to my lies and rode me ferociously past the finishing line, slamming me against two walls in the chaos.

Whilst the PC police prance about swinging their batons. I prance about swinging my sexual freedom from my gyrating hips.

We are living in a politically correct world. Everything we say or write is taken literally. There is no longer space for nuance. There is no longer space for what’s left unsaid.

The arseholes attempt to police my thoughts and mince my words but they’ll never control my love and need for sex bruises.

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In unconventional circles, like the ones I belong to. Bruises on women’s thighs and buttocks signal lust, passion, virility and animality.

Women (and men) wear their bruises with pride. They are like the medallion one wears after warfare. They are like the blood one wears after the kill.

And before you throw your acidic bile over my column with comments like:

“ You wouldn’t say that if you had experienced domestic violence”

“ You wouldn’t say that if you had experienced sexual assault”

I’ve experienced both as have umpteen women who enjoy the pleasures of rough sex and rape-play. Thankfully award-winning sex-journalists like Cara Sutra from the UK, continue to write articles of great significance about this taboo topic.

As fecal matter pours out of people’s mouths at a frenetic pace, I hold on to my kinks like a long-lost-lover.

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As the PC police continue to throw good men, great porn and crude humor under a bus. I find myself craving rougher sex and riskier situations.

When rules are tightened, I rebel. Political correctness makes me behave like an uncontrollable teen. I want to wipe my menstrual blood over commentator’s faces. I want to throw my shit at politicians like a monkey at the Taronga Zoo.

Could political correctness possibly be responsible for the success of Fifty Shades Of Grey where BDSM goes mainstream and is debated on morning shows throughout the world?

Outrage recently erupted when Moroccan TV Channel 2M had ‘the vagina’ to air a clip teaching viewers how to hide domestic violence bruises using make-up. Gasp! The masses responded with their usual vitriol. What’s new?

I thought it was a great clip. The fact is, women get beaten. And when you have bruises all over you, sometimes you like to venture out inconspicuously. (God, forbid). Without interrogation.

Knowing how to cover up bruises with make-up is priceless information. It saddened me that 2M apologized. As far as I’m concerned, no apology was needed.

The world is heading into a safe-space and the safe-space is called conservatism. Soon, we won’t be able to belch without a dissertation being written about it.

I suggest you get yourself all bruised up before the PC army arrive. And I have no doubt, they are on their way to ruin our sex-lives next.

As my Irish ancestors would say: “ To be sure, to be sure”.

Vanessa de Largie is an actress, author, freelance journalist and sex-columnist.

In light of Domestic Violence Awareness month, The Daily Collegian wished to raise awareness of the issue and those who find themselves in abusive relationships.

Domestic violence takes many forms and is a serious and complex issue.

In light of the content of this column, it was published anonymously.

I sat in the shower frozen. My body had been shaking for so long that I crumpled into a ball and held my knees tight to my chest. I wanted to be still just for a minute. As the hot water pounded on my back, I kept my eyes locked on the bathroom tiles in front of me as I recited multiples of two in my head.

Two, four six, eight, ten — and then I would begin again — two, four, six eight, ten.

I didn’t cry. Not even after getting out of the shower and seeing the bruises begin to form where he had grabbed my arms. I wasn’t mad, I wasn’t sad. Instead, I was confused — confused because I didn’t feel anything at all.

My mind kept replaying one scene over and over again as if searching for something it had missed. As ridiculous as it may sound, it wasn’t the act of him pushing me I was stuck on, but rather the way he enveloped me in his arms afterward. While I had no emotion, he had tears coming down his face as he kissed my head and recited the words, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

I was seventeen and had never been harmed by my boyfriend before. We had been dating for almost three years at this point so I believed I owed him forgiveness. I believed I owed it to all the sparkly memories to forgive this tarnished one — we could both just forget this.

However, that wasn’t so easy when I had to convince 14 other girls to forget it too. I had been able to hide the purple and brown bruises under my sweater for two days, but I was finally caught when I had to be graded for my health assessment in gym class. As I prepared to be bombarded with questions, my mind raced to find an excuse believable enough to keep me from being referred to the guidance counselor. The first of the web of lies I would tell for him: the bruises were from lacrosse. At the end of class, I locked myself in a bathroom stall and cried for the first time.

From that moment on, I would spend the next 21 months excusing the abuse that would become so common to me. Actually, that’s a lie. I still make excuses for him today. I am still blind to what had happened during our relationship and how I allowed it to continue for so long. It’s strange how something that once seemed so black and white – a guy hits his girlfriend, she should leave him —can turn into a deep shade of gray. It was all gray, like a rain cloud hanging above my head everywhere I walked.

I was functioning, but hardly living. My days revolved around whether or not that night I would need to space out an extra hour before bed to plan out what I would wear, or if I would have to watch YouTube videos of different methods for covering up bruises.

We did have our good days though, and maybe that’s why, even to this day, it is so hard for me to accept how everything played out — I had danced around it for so long. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and I held on to the hope that medication and therapy would bring back the boy I met when I was thirteen.

And even when I would cry, it would be his shirt I’d stain with my tears and his arms I’d fall asleep in.

There will be some of you reading this saying it was my fault for not leaving and that I was stupid and weak. Trust me, I won’t disagree. I thought as long as no one could see what he was doing to me, that no one would know, then it wasn’t really happening.

But I knew, and that struggle between wanting him to hold me and wanting him to leave me alone was his hand gripping onto me even when I wasn’t with him.

He picked me up from work almost every night. We would drive in his car and take turns picking out what songs to play on the radio. One particular night we had stopped in the parking lot and began to kiss. I insisted we stop so I could go home and finish my homework. He stopped, but I could tell he was angry with me because he wanted more than I did that night. As we drove away, I tried to lighten the mood by reaching out to hold his hand. He jerked away from my touch, unbuckled my seatbelt and shoved me out of the moving car. I remember the song he started to play before he pushed me. It was “Trouble Sleeping” by the Perishers.

My leggings were torn and scrapes covered my bare skin. My palms were blood red where the skin had been ripped off from the street gravel digging into them. Pain seared from a large cut on my chin. He stopped the car and tried to help me back in, but through my sobs I hyperventilated, screamed and attempted to move away from his grasp. I didn’t want to get back in the car with him, but he picked me up and sat me down in the passenger seat anyway.

As he began to drive, he reached over and grabbed my hand to hold.

I forgave him.

I did it too easily, and for that I will never forgive myself.

When people questioned those injuries, I said we were goofing around on his bike and I fell. Why did I lie for him?

Why didn’t I leave? I’ve been asked this before by parents, friends, siblings and a therapist, even though I thought she was the one who was supposed to be giving the answers. I’m not trying to defend his actions, but I want those who have never been in an abusive relationship to learn why each time these questions are asked, it only prolongs the dangerous cycle of victim-blaming.

His anger I could handle. I was able to glaze over the harsh moments, hold him and forget the bad parts. That was the easy part—making the anger go away.

The hard part was trying to breathe. Each day felt as though his hand was gripping my neck, making it harder and harder for me to get air. I was afraid to abandon him. Whenever I attempted to leave him, he threatened to kill himself, and I was too afraid to test his threats. He would regularly point out the scars on his arm from cutting himself and blame them on me. “This is because you didn’t answer the phone. This is because you weren’t there for me.”

I felt like I was the only one keeping him afloat. But in the meantime, he was the one drowning me. Yet I still loved him. I accepted everything he did to me because I reasoned that he was going through a harder time and that he couldn’t help himself.

When people would tell me how jealous they were of our relationship, it made me want to scream. Scream for them thinking that, scream for me letting them think that and scream for how much I had let my life fall apart. None of it was true.

There was nothing to be jealous of.

We broke up the summer before I went to college. It took 200 miles for me to get away from him, but even then I found myself receiving phone calls every night — multiple times a night —and if I didn’t answer I’d be told he was going to mutilate himself or worse. The summer following freshman year was the worst of my life.

Even though we were broken up, I still found myself spending time with him. He would lay on the guilt if I didn’t see him, but I also still believed one day everything would work out and we would have a healthy, happy relationship again.

But the web of lies I had been spinning for more than a year was finally torn down the day he gave me a concussion. In the heat of an argument over how I wasn’t talking to him enough while I was away at school, he shoved me against the wall of his dark basement, slamming my head into the cement.

I ignored his apologies and walked straight out of the house. I walked home, squinting my eyes and holding my throbbing head in my hands.

Once I got home, I undressed and got in the shower. Once more I found myself crumpled on the floor, arms wrapped around my knees, repeating: two, four, six, eight, ten — two, four, six, eight, ten.

I couldn’t ignore the nausea and dizziness. A doctor confirmed I had a concussion and I had no lies left to tell my mother. The next morning, she sat with me as I filed a temporary protection from abuse order for the court.

Even with all the pain he had caused me, I spent the remainder of the summer grieving. I sobbed out for him at night, I fell to the ground at the mention of his name. I felt like I was mourning a death.

Pause.

You know when you spin around really, really fast and you have to keep your focus on one thing or else you’ll fall? That’s what domestic violence is like — losing your balance. Maybe if I had stopped spinning sooner, I would have seen the warning signs. Maybe I would have paid attention and noticed his possessiveness. Maybe I would have felt his grip pulling me down with him. I didn’t though, because at the time he seemed so comforting. I liked the idea of being held, and I was scared of the uncertainty a life without him would bring, almost like being dizzy.

I still am, I’m still trying to figure it out. I liked being his, but in being his, I lost myself.

Although October is Domestic Violence Awareness month, this is an issue every day of the year. At any moment, the girl in your gym class could be lying about her scrapes or the boy wearing long sleeves in warm weather could be hiding his bruises. The classmate who flinches when you move too quickly, the friend who has become more timid — any of them could be struggling with an abusive relationship. We need to be aware of these signs so we can let them know they are worth more than this situation, this relationship, this pain. And we need to realize that domestic violence is more than a black and white issue and the solution is much more complicated than asking “Why didn’t you just leave?”

I would be lying if I said he doesn’t still get to me. I wonder about him and still worry about his wellbeing. But love shouldn’t cause pain. It should comfort you in times of pain. I stayed with him because I loved him, but that’s not what love is supposed to be.

And for anyone who has also found themselves lying about bruises and making excuses for their partner – a sparking moment of violence does not need to define your life. You are worth more than a single slap, a single insult, or a single threat. You are worth a love that builds you up, not tears you down.