Lovefraud Women Take Issue with Dear Abby's Advice to an Abuse Victim

I know I recently posted about a Dear Abby column, but today there was yet another one that was causing a lot of online conversation, specifically on the Lovefraud blog. This particular Dear Abby piece is about a woman who is divorcing her abusive/controlling husband after 15 years of marriage, and she's worried about how others will perceive her since everyone else seems to think that he's such a nice guy. Abby responded to her that she should gossip with her girlfriends about his abusive behavior so that the "truth will spread like wildfire."

Needless to say, many women commenting on the Lovefraud blog today took issue with Abby's response. In fact there are over 50 comments.

Not only was it a little 1950's (Really? Like all women do is gossip??), but gossip is most likely the last thing this woman needs in her life as she goes through a divorce. One of the blog commenters believes that the "truth" is never actually realized; she believes that when abuse survivors attempt to speak out, others criticize her for being bitter and not moving on with her life.

Donna Andersen, on the other hand, commented that the only person who accused her of being bitter was her ex-husband. And she also says that she launched Lovefraud after her divorce for 2 reasons:

"1. It enabled me to learn about sociopaths, so I could talk intelligently about the personality disorder that explained what happened to me.

2. It enabled me to heal, so that I could talk about what happened to me without the anger and pain that I felt in the beginning. This makes it much easier for the listener to receive the message."

Kudos to Donna. Personally, I think she has done an amazing job of turning around her horrible experience with a sociopath into something positive that is helping other women find a community of other abuse survivors and heal through writing. Lovefraud.com offers a solid resource for women who are in an abusive relationship, getting out of one, or simply curious about the percentage of people in our society who lack remorse and have no problem abusing others to get their needs met.

So I guess I'm not all that enchanted with Dear Abby's take on how to handle abusive relationships - I think the column should focus on fluffier topics instead.