“My Husband Choked Me”
I’ve heard the heart-wrenching accounts of women who recount with terror, “My husband choked me.”
How terrifying it must be to have someone’s hands around your throat, hurting you and restricting your breathing.
The correct term for this experience is strangulation, and in many states it is a felony offense.
Strangulation is the ultimate form of control as the abuser literally controls every breath you take.
What is strangulation?
Strangulation is when someone applies pressure to your throat or neck, obstructing the blood vessels and/or airflow in the neck. This pressure can lead to loss of consciousness within five to ten seconds and cause death within a few minutes.
Death can also occur days or even weeks after a strangulation incident due to internal injuries.
Strangulation is one of the deadliest forms of domestic violence.
Other important things to know:
1. Strangulation may or may not leave visible marks and bruises.
2. Often internal damage is done that can cause long-term health effects. If you have been strangled, please visit your local emergency room or personal physician.
If your husband has choked (strangled you) in the past, it is important to understand increases that this is a massive red flag for the potential for future violence.
- If your partner has strangled you in the past, your risk of being strangled by them again increases by ten.(1)
- If your partner has strangled you in the past, your risk of being killed by them (by any method) increases by seven.(2)
- Of women murdered in domestic assaults, 43 percent had been strangled by their partner within the year before.(3)
Let me be clear: strangulation is one step away from murder.
Pornography use has made strangulation into something “sexy.” There are tens of MILLIONS of pornography videos available online that feature strangulation and other forms of violence. Many women with a porn-addicted partner are finding that their partners are “turned on” by strangulation. But strangulation is not sexy; it’s violent. It’s holding the power of life and death over another human.
Whether it is done in a sexual context or not, strangulation means it is time to get to safety.
If your partner tells you it is sexy for them to choke you, or they didn’t mean to do it, or they would never hurt you, you must realize they have already hurt you.
They have held you in the small space between life and death — which means they nearly killed you.
That is not love. It is violence.
If you have been strangled by your partner, please call the police.
If you are in the United States, you can also call the Domestic Violence hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE. Or text the word START to 88788.
You are precious and valuable.
(1)https://www.strangulationtraininginstitute.com/strangulation-the-red-flag-of-domestic-violence-that-we-never-discuss/
(2)https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2573025/
(3)Ibid.
