The Viable Alternative

NOTE: The story below is a TRUE story but at the request of the subject of the story, the names have been changed. Also, the individual in the photo is not the subject of the story.

The Background:

Chris Bernard was the quintessential ladies man: close to 6 feel tall, good looking, and buff. At college, where I first met him, he had this reputation as a player who got with a lot of girls.

The Problem:

However, as I really got to know Chris, it became quite apparent that he had a problem of being violent towards women. The two of us were in a close circle of friends, and each of us who had gone out to a club, bar, or party had our own story of having to come in between him and a girl.

In one instance, a friend of mine told me that he and Chris were out at a club and Chris had asked some girl to dance. The girl said no, and he then grabs her backside. She then takes a drink and throws it in his face, and in response he takes a wine glass and hurls it at her. Luckily he missed and my friend had jump in and hold him back.

In another instance, we were at a party and some random girl was busting his balls. After trying to laugh it off a few times, he finally told the girl if she kept on running her mouth he was going to take a wine bottle and break it over her head….the girl wisely got the “hint” and shut her mouth.

Another time, he was crashing at the place of another friend of ours, Jackson, during spring break, and the two of them had invited some girls over for some “fun.” Jackson, though having known his girl for only a few hours, was in the room having sex with her but Chris’ girl, who he felt invested more time and effort into, didn’t want to do anything, so taking this as a “slight,” he went berserk. He violently pushed her on the floor and had lifted a huge trash can above his head and was about to slam it on top of her right when Jackson rushed in to hold him back and tell him to calm down. When Jackson tried to talk to him about this incident, Chris shrugged it off saying, “Hey, I just lost it.”

When I heard this particular story, I said to myself that this guy was going to get arrested if he didn’t calm down. I tried to speak to him about it and his response was the girl was always pushing his buttons, always “fronting” on him, and that it wasn’t right that Jackson was in the room going beserk with his girl after only knowing her for a few hours while his girl who he had known for much longer and put more time into didn’t want to do anything so he finally had enough. All I could do was shake my head because I saw there was no reaching him., As a matter of fact, a few weeks later, he wound up throwing a 40 bottle at this same girl’s head over another perceived “slight” by this girl, and missed her by only a few inches.

The one particular instance that sticks out in my mind was a story told to me by both Chris and one of his friends. Basically Chris had a get together at his house comprised of a bunch of women and several of his male friends. Everybody seemed to be having success with women that night except for Chris, who that particular night kept on getting blown off left and right by the girls. This got him enraged, and after most of the party had cleared, Chris started throwing things around, and then he went out into the hallway and took the fire extinguisher hanging on the wall and threw it against the wall. He then went out to a club and along the way he was purposely bumping people in the street in an attempt to start a fight. While he was gone the campus police came to his dorm looking for him. Luckily for him not only that he was not there, but also that they never came back.

As I was being told this story, my face was an expression of utter shock and disbelief. While we were talking about this, Chris’ friend and I tried to tell him he had a problem and that this situation was a clear sign that if he didn’t chill out, he was sooner or later going to get arrested. However Chris saw this situation as no big deal and went on to make excuses including that everybody had their own faults and that it wasn’t right for the girls to be acting all stuck up and to be giving everyone else attention except for him in his own house. When we pointed out that this was an extreme reaction to having a bad night with girls, his response before shrugging the whole thing off was, “Hey, I’m a very jealous person.”

…and the stories went on and on.

When I came to visit him 9 months after I graduated from college and moved back to NY, we were outside of a club after it let out, and he called some girl a bitch. The girl then started getting up in his face and yelling at him about calling her a bitch. He becomes enraged at the girl’s “audacity” to stand up for herself, and starts to push her, telling her if she wanted to act like a man he’ll treat her like one. I had to get in between him and her to de-escalate the situation, asking him what else was he to expect from calling a girl a bitch. At this particular instance, several friends of ours who witnessed this told me this happened EVERY weekend with this guy.

What was interesting about this trip was that he had been chilling with this new girl. He was a widely known Lothario so the girls came and went in his life but I could tell right away upon seeing him with her that he liked her more than just a casual fling. He admitted to me that he was into her after I had asked and shortly after, they started to date exclusively and wound up living together. Several of his friends including myself would wonder among one another whether he was beating her or not, and whether he’d pull an “O.J. Simpson” if she had ever decided to leave him.

Two and a half years into their relationship, a friend of ours came to New York and crashed on my place and told me that Chris’ relationship was on the rocks. I asked him, “Is it because he’s beating her?” He responded that he didn’t know, and to call and ask him.

The Turning Point:

I called Chris after my friend had left to find out what was going on and also to give him moral support as I know breakups, especially with your first love, aren’t easy, and he affirmed that they were broken up and he was trying to work things out. I then asked him if she left him because he was putting his hands on her and he paused for a moment and then asked, “How did you know?” I then told him that it was clearly evident for years to all of us that he had a problem and that we all had stories of having to hold him back from beating up a girl, and for the first time in his life, he responded with, “Isn’t that pathetic?”

He then admitted to me that he knew he has a problem and he was trying to get help for it. Shortly after, he joined a program he found called Emerge, a Massachusetts Certified Batterer Intervention Program & Training Site which counseled men on how to stop committing domestic violence. Most of the people at the program were sent as a court order from a judge, or as a condition of parole or probation. Chris was one of the few, if not the only one who went on his own free will. He shared with me that his violent tendencies came from childhood during which his father, a strict disciplinarian from the Caribbean, would physically discipline him for the littlest thing, without giving him a chance to explain himself. This caused a built up rage within him that would express itself through violence towards women.

The Transformation:

Initially, he had gone to get back his girlfriend, who had refused to ever take him back, but after he started going to the program and immersing himself in the experience, he started finding out all the dirt that she did behind his back, so he decided to let her go and do this instead for himself. He eventually became the star student of the class, not missing a single class of the 40 week program, and was picked by the instructors to go out to local colleges to speak out against domestic violence and to participate on panel discussions on the subject. He marveled to me how the other participants of the program were still arguing with the instructors and refusing to take responsibility for their actions even AFTER they were sent there by a judge.

One of the biggest revelations he had from the program that shifted how he saw things was the explanation the instructors had given to the excuse that he and many of the participants had that the reason why they got violent with their significant others was because the girl would “push their buttons.” The simple explanation in response was “Don’t have any buttons to be pushed,” and that when your significant other attempts to push these buttons, you don’t have to react violently and can choose a different reaction like walking away. By reacting violently, you give away your power, but by walking away, you keep your power.

Seeing he didn’t want her anymore, his ex suddenly decided she wanted him back but he now refused to change his mind. This is when things started to get real interesting. When I would call him on the phone, he’d talk in very low tones, telling me that he couldn’t talk too loud because his ex, who was still living with him, may hear and come into the room to start trouble and try to fight him, I was utterly surprised. I said to myself, “Wow, Chris talking low so a woman won’t hear and try to fight him? Who is this guy?”

Now that he refused to get back with his ex and was trying to be a better person, his ex, the one who vowed to never take him back and initially told him she wanted him to get help for his problem, because he wouldn’t take her back would try to provoke him hit her. He had to put a lock on his door because she would burst into his room to start all types of arguments and at one point tried to stab him with a pair of scissors, another time she grabbed out of his hands a self improvement book he was reading to help him turn over a new leaf called “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill, ripped it in half and threw the pieces across the room.

One day when we spoke, he told me he knew he had beaten this thing when he faced and passed his biggest test at that time One night, he was in the driveway of the house he lived in with his ex, having just come home from a club, and he and some guys he was with were talking loudly and boisterously about the fun they had at the club and the girls that were sweating them. His ex, hearing this conversation from inside the house, burst out of the house and storms into the driveway, flipped out on him, and punched him dead in the face. He said that this was his biggest test because many of the violent incidents he had were when he was drinking, and this particular night he was intoxicated, but this time, he simply just walked away and went into the house.

During and after his transformation, when he would recount his violent past, he would express utter disbelief and embarrassment at how angry and ignorant he was. He would also marvel at how lucky he was that he never got arrested when at times he could’ve. Way after he went through his transformation, he shared with me a time when he had gotten into an argument on the street with his girl at the time, and wound up pushing her into some bushes. A cop was a couple of yards away, but he had his back turned, so he didn’t see the incident, but he did see her getting up off the floor crying, and asked what was going on. His girl explained that she tripped and fell, and the cop, though he had a suspicious, incredulous look on his face, let it go and went on his way.

Eventually, his ex moved out and he went on to have a new, more healthy relationship. He was so different that when he told his new girl about his violent past, she didn’t believe him. When they’d get into arguments, and he’d raise his voice, she’d sternly tell him not to yell at her and he said he admired the fact she did that because it showed she could stand up for herself. Hearing this, I knew he really changed.

Several years later, a group of us were in Vegas having breakfast at a restaurant, and he asks the group, “Okay, seriously guys…was I THAT bad?” And then we all said YES and a cacophony of voices followed, comprised off the different stories we each had of him and the excuses he would make as to why he did them. His shocked high pitched response was, “Wait, I said that? Damn, I was a MESS!” We all subsequently laughed and said, “Yes you were.”

Where He Is Now

Presently, Chris continues to be on the path of seeking constant and never ending improvement, so he can be the strongest version of himself on all levels. He even said that when he becomes wealthy, he would like to help in some way women who’ve been victims of domestic violence, since he was once a perpetrator.