In a relationship everyone has certain boundaries and peccadilloes that must be addressed to create a harmonious house; be it loading the dishwasher the second you've finished or squeezing the toothpaste from the middle of the tube. It's when these basic rules start getting extreme you have to worry though, as in the case of Tracey Eyett whose boyfriend, policeman Andrew Shovelar treated her to a series of more and more bizarre demands.
She was not allowed to talk for half an hour after she arrived home to give him 'quiet time', and she would have to spend hours driving around in her car as she wasn't allowed in the house when he wasn't there. Whenever she disobeyed these ludicrous demands he would allegedly beat her, and she is now suing him for assault. But why did she put up with his behaviour for this long?
We've all had boyfriends who have treated us badly, broken out hearts and walked over our feelings with lack of interest, regard and concern for our well being. Again and again intelligent women fall prey to losers and deadbeats, and we all know about the terrible attraction to bad boys. The problem often is in drawing the line, and in Miss Eyett's case the boyfriend was a respected pillar of the community, an officer who had won bravery awards for his courage, and up till the violent stages she probably dismissed his behaviour as that of somebody under a lot of pressure. The difficulty with violent men is that they are often incredibly apologetic and promise it will be a one off, and when the third time you hear that you don't leave you start to feel fairly guilty and blame yourself. Combine this with the constant emotional abuse Miss Eyett was receiving and it's no longer a open and shut case.
While physical abuse is obviously the extreme end of the spectrum there are a lot of women who probably recognise the pattern of setting rules in a relationship, and, though it never becomes physical, find themselves cowed by the unreasonable restraints placed on their everyday activities. One of my exes was really obsessed by locks. Locks on his mind, his heart, or if we're going to be less metaphysical, we'll say his front door. He lived in a plush apartment building in a nice part of town but was permanently obsessed that he was going to be broken into, and as such he always wanted his door double locked.
Fair enough, you may think, but when I stayed over and had work at ten, while he started at nine, it started to get a little tricky. We'd been going out six months so it wasn't as if he thought I was going to run off with his possessions, but the fact that he forced me out of bed an hour earlier than I needed to get up so he could lock me out of his flat really became an issue. He could have given me a spare key so I could double lock the door, but apparently he didn't trust me enough, so I was left roaming the streets for an hour while he went off to work whistling. The crunch point came when I moved in with him for a few months, and still didn't get a key. Thankfully, he's history now.
I got out of my relationship unscathed, if a little more bitter, but the more unlucky ones can end in bloodshed and broken limbs. Any relationship where people are that rigid and demanding can't end well, as the defining qualities of social interaction are based around respect; someone who is going to impose their 'rules' or their demands upon you is lacking the flexibility needed to relate to a person. With the case of Miss Eyett and the politically incorrect PC, we can just keep watching and hope she wins. Remember, there is never any reason for abuse, and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is not someone you want to be with.
