How My Husband Tamed Me With Gentleness

My first husband loved the feel of his hands. He especially loved how they felt on me.

The last beating I received from him landed me in an emergency room in a foreign land. It was the last time a man or anyone for that matter would lay a hand on me.

He was a very tall man, my first husband.  Big in stature and in personality. Intelligent and charismatic but in relation to his partners, he did not understand that gentleness is strength. His perception was that a woman like me was best "controlled" with the fist. Little did he know that his mouth would and had done a better job of taming me, at least temporarily. 

No, I am not talking about oral sex. That can be the topic of another post. Lol.

This man was eloquent when he wanted to impress someone. When we were courting, where we lived did not have the amenities of Western societies. As such, coffee shops, fine dining establishments, movie theaters and the places that courtship might occur in other countries were either too expensive for our budgets, needed reservations well in advance or we would be too "strange-looking" in them.

We talked a lot. Our political views were very similar and so that formed the basis of many of our conversations. However, it was another use of his mouth that moved me and showed me a level of gentleness in him that was never before displayed.

Soon after our daughter was born, I was having major difficulties with breastfeeding her.  Obviously I was not following the instructions as it could not have been that my nipples were just too small or big or something why this child refused to feed!

After a few weeks of trying and failing, my nipples and in fact my entire breasts were inflamed. The darn pump that a friend loaned me was barely able to suction a tablespoon. Using it made me cry for mercy and asked to be punished in some other way.

I soon gave up on the idea of breastfeeding or using the pump but my breasts kept swelling. 

One night, they got so huge, the skin stretched to bursting point, shiny and fire hot. I swore they were either going to erupt or I would take a knife and cut them off! The screaming baby was beside me on the bed, possibly hungry but I was in too much pain physically and emotionally to do more than put a bottle of formula in her mouth.

"What's wrong?" He said to me, coming into our little studio apartment and finding me curled into a tight ball on the bed with a pillow over my face to muffle my screams. "My breasts are worse and I think I'm going to die!" Or something to that effect was all I could muster.

This man, who a few weeks before had slapped me senseless, went and got warm water and something else - what I am not sure. He knelt at the side of the bed, removed my blouse, spread a towel on me and washed then massaged my watermelon-sized breasts.

Weeping cannot begin to describe my reaction to this demonstration of tenderness. Hysterically happy, thankful and totally blown away would aptly describe my responses when I felt his mouth against my breast.

It lasted maybe 10 minutes but they were some of the sweetest minutes of my life.

The lion, my husband, the wife beater of a man, sucked enough milk from my breast to ease the debilitating pain and the agony that I was undergoing. Never mind that that was the last moment of gentleness I would experience at his hand - one that was pure, unmotivated by sex.

In life we get moments and from those moments our memories come. In later years, after the bitterness of our divorce had subsided, memories of those 10 minutes would always leave me subdued and glowing. That was exactly what he always wanted but never did understand that the definition of gentleness would have taught him how to go about it and what to expect:

"1. Considerate or kindly in disposition; amiable and tender.

2. Not harsh or severe; mild and soft: a gentle scolding; a gentle tapping at the window.

3. Easily managed or handled; docile: a gentle horse." Source: thefreedictionary.com

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Have a great weekend!