Sharing About My Experience of Domestic Violence

Good evening BN Sunim By chance I came across your Jungmun Shuk cell on YouTube and it brought a sense of relief to my heart.
I realized that the worries I had been carrying were not as significant as I once thought.
Now as a mother of three, I feel a bit of more at peace.
About 10 years ago, I fled to the United States to escape domestic violence from my ex husband.
I chose to marry him because

having no surviving parents or siblings, I longed to create a big family of my own through marriage.
However, due to the domestic violence, I ultimately had to end the relationship.
And now I live in the United States.
Although I don't wish to maintain contact with my children's father given that I have no family, I actively encourage my children to stay connected with their father's family as they are the only blood relatives my children have.

Recently, I explained to my eldest child why we had to not only leave the lived for the United States without their father.
After hearing this, my child has been deeply disappointed in him and struggled to understand how he could act as though nothing had happened when we visited Korea two years ago without offering any apology.
It seems my child is upset by this awareness.
I'm wondering for the sake of my children whether I should continue to shield them from

the full truth or if I bringing open and honest with my children as the right decision I would appreciate your guardian's sne.

Every child wants their parents to be good people.

If you think that your father is a bad person, then that affects your self esteem.

And if somebody else, a stranger, you know, criticized your dads, you still have some excuse.

You can say you don't really know my dad.

If my mother criticized my father, then you can't escape because my mother would not tell me a lie.

So in that sense, it becomes really clear that my dad is not a good person.

On the other hand, imagine if the child thinks that my mother is lying,

then my mother, who's a liar to me, to her own children, becomes a bad person.

That causes a kind of a psychological issue because you know, confusion among the, in the child.
If the mother and father criticize each other,

you know, whether it's a, you know, husband and wife.
No one is a bad person here.
You know you had your own issues.
There's no problem for you splitting up

because you chose him as your husband, then you gave up on him as your husband.

So I think it's better for you to explain that you divorced him or you left him not because he was a bad person, it was because you could not deal with the situation

but he's a better person.

But if you do that then it's not a good effect on your children.

Then your child cannot escape from the fact that their dad is a bad person.

I mean they can accept the fact that you guys separated as a couple because we were incompatible.
That's different from bad person.

So you know, we had the first questionnaire as well.
You can get divorced but at the same time you can maintain that respect as co parents of the same children

because your problem is a problem between two adults.
So it's not a problem for the children.

And so that responsibility should remain with the adults.
It should not be handed down to your children.

Perhaps you feel a possessiveness or ownership over your children because they are your childre.

You have this perspective, subconscious perspective that you think their father's bad.
Therefore your children should also think their father's bad.

That means you're not recognizing your children as independent agents

but your children are independent agencies

and as a parent you want to help them grow up right?
The children do not exist for me, exists for the children.

If the children are better off with me, no matter what challenges I face, I should keep the children with me.

If the children are better off with parents with a father or somebody else, then no matter how pained you are, how much you may miss your children, you should let them go.

In other words, your children aren't your pets or are not your possessions they are independent agencies that you are there in your role as parents to help them grow into independent adults.

So when you discuss custody, when you discuss other issues related to divorce, you're not putting the children in the center.
You are actually negotiating the rights of parents among each other.

So I don't think that helps with the children.

Actually, my question was, should I be open with my kids?
What happened in the past in Korea when I shared with my son, he was struggling to know the truth.
So my question was, should I be open, honest with my children or I, just like Snam said, I'm, you know, being a good parent and just covering her up

so you insist what you said what happened in the past because when you left him that situation, you're saying that's what happened that's the truth of the situation.
But even that is just merely your perspective.

Because if you approach that story from the perspective that he is a bad person, then you are already making a value judgment and you are really relaying that story from a self centric perspective that actually is worse than not seeing it all.

But if you can actually remove that emotion or that value judgment from that story, then I don't think that story I think you can be transparent with your children about why you left.

I think your son was in shock and had a hard time dealing with this because the lesson learned from that story that your son got was that his dad was a bad person.

So if you feel like your ex husband is a bad person, he's no better than an animal obese, then your child becomes a son of obese.

I'm sorry I don't understand and I don't agree.

Basically if you say your ex is a bad person, your children become children of a bad person.

They're different. My son is not I mean not my ex husband I mean Sims said if I describe my ex husband as a bad person, that means my son is the blood of my ex husband.
But I don't agree because I mean my children will blame me because I left their father behind in Korea and I brought them.

So if you have no choice, if you feel like you have no choice but to tell your children that their father was a bad person, I think it's better not to say that and say, you know, you are my children.
I don't know who the dad is.
I'll tell you about your dad when you grow up

your choice.

My son got hurt because two years ago we visited Korea and my ex husband acted like nothing happened and he didn't even apologize and that's why my son got really hurt and I'm a survivor of domestic violence.
If I were still in Korea, I would be died by him.

So the fact that your husband hits you, it means that he is a criminal he's a violent criminal

he should be reported and be forced to face justice.

But, but nevertheless, even if he's in prison, you should go see him because he's still your husband.

I already did 15 years ago in Korea but the police said this is a family stuff though they didn't help me.
That's why I had to escape from there.

Whether it's somebody, it's your husband, whether it's your parents, whether it's even your own children.
If they lash out in violence, that's a crime.
So they become criminals

they may be criminals but they're still your husband, your parents or your children.

But you know, if they're my relatives, we tend to want to cover up even they're crimes

then we cause hurt to the cause of social justice and make a bad situation worse.

So no matter who it is, if they have gone against the law, they should face justice.

But whatever crimes they committed, they are still your husband, your parents or your children.

And so my friend might have committed a crime but he's a criminal now but he's still my friend.

You know, that's a way for them after paying for their crimes can come back and rehabilitate themselves and be with their families again.

Because if you think according to your perspective, a person who has committed a crime once always should be forever shut out from the society.

So if your ex husband hit you, raped you or committed other violence upon you, then he should be facing the justice.

But just because he committed a crime does not necessarily mean you have to hate him.
That's why we can't solve this problem because hatred is really self suffering.

That's why you're not even now you're not free yourself from that person.

You can truly only liberate yourself from that person.
Once you stop hating

you might think that your hatred is justified.
It's a wise reaction to have to what you suffered but it is an action that actually brings upon your own suffering.
Thank you. Then you have no choice but to continue to suffer.
Please do you want to share your experience?

I heard that she needs to think about the kids because I have the same situation when I get divorced and my kids were 8 years old and two years old at that time and I constantly talked with my friends telling them how bad was my ex husband but I didn't realize that my kids hear everything and they suffered too much but they didn't look like they were suffering.
They were excellent kids they go to college, they have degrees but after when my older son,

they started his family, everything go down and now my both kids are with psychiatrics because they were with drugs, alcohol at the adult age because they were suffered for all the words that they heard for me.
And I hope she realized that this is it's important that she stooped saying something bad about their parents because the kids lost their self esteem and destroyed their lives.

So I think you need some more time, maybe to be more self reflective about your actions

because if you discover later on that you have actually passed down your own suffering to your children, allow it to amplify itself then you'll engage in regrets at that time.

But just because you suffer doesn't mean your children has to what kind of self free

you should be able to you should handle it at your level and prevent that being passed down to your children.

But because we're all foolish, we tend to inherit our parents' suffering and then also pass that down to our children.