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There is an expectation in our society that women and girls will take responsibility for men and boys who refuse to take responsibility for themselves.
We don’t always say it out loud. We dress it up in the language of “love, loyalty, kindness, compassion, patience, and forgiveness.”
But the expectation is there. Because that language is directed at women and girls. A man can be angry, threatening, controlling, or violent, and somehow the conversation turns to what the woman in his life should do to help him.
She should “understand him better. Encourage him to get help. Be careful not to upset him. Remember what he’s been through.”
And if she decides she has had enough, people may question whether she has done enough.
At what point did his problems become her lifelong assignment?
Another Chance for Him. Another Risk for Her.
The recent killing of Val-Tricia Garrett in Vicksburg, Mississippi, raises questions that deserve more than a few days of public outrage.
Her husband, Cedric Garrett, reportedly killed her and later appeared in a Facebook video crying while her body was in his vehicle. The incident ended in a police standoff and his death.
Reports also describe a troubling history, including previous domestic violence arrests and a reported earlier fatal stabbing involving his brother. The final legal disposition of that earlier case needs to be established before drawing conclusions about it.
According to her family, Val-Tricia had already separated from her husband and was trying to move forward with her life.
She was not waiting around for somebody to tell her that she deserved better. She was reportedly trying to leave the relationship behind. Yet she was killed.
Her death raises questions about what happened after earlier reports of violence, what protections were available, and whether the danger to her was adequately recognized.
Those questions should not disappear when the headlines do.
A woman’s life should not become the price of discovering whether a violent man is finally ready to change.
We Start Teaching Girls This Early
A little girl comes home from school because a boy keeps bothering her. Maybe he pulls her hair. Maybe he follows her around. Maybe he just won’t leave her alone.
Instead of addressing his behavior, an adult tells her he probably likes her.
Now she’s supposed to reconsider something that made her uncomfortable as a compliment.
Another girl doesn’t want to play with a boy who has been mean to her. She’s told to include him anyway.
A girl objects to somebody touching her, and the adults become more concerned about whether she embarrassed him than whether he respected her.
These experiences aren’t universal, but they’re familiar enough to deserve examination.
We teach girls to be considerate of other people’s feelings. That’s a good lesson. The trouble begins when consideration becomes a requirement to tolerate mistreatment.
A boy’s disappointment is not evidence that a girl has done something wrong.
He can be upset when she says no. He can feel rejected. He can have a difficult day, a difficult home life, or difficulty making friends.
Those experiences deserve appropriate adult attention.
They do not make a little girl responsible for fixing him.
Children need to learn how to handle disappointment without making somebody else pay for it. That includes boys.
Then the Little Girl Becomes a Woman
By adulthood, the excuses have become more sophisticated.
He had a difficult childhood.
He struggles with abandonment.
He’s under enormous pressure.
He doesn’t know how to communicate.
He needs somebody who won’t give up on him.
Some of those explanations may be true. People carry painful histories, and many deserve compassionate support.
But an explanation for harmful behavior is not an obligation for somebody else to endure it.
A woman can recognize that a man has suffered without agreeing to suffer alongside him indefinitely.
She can hope he receives treatment without becoming his treatment plan.
She can wish him well from a distance.
And she can leave a relationship without proving that he is beyond redemption.
We have to stop treating women’s boundaries as evidence of insufficient compassion.
Why Is Her Departure Treated Like His Punishment?
There is another part of this conversation that troubles me.
When a woman leaves a destructive relationship, people sometimes describe the man’s situation as though something terrible has been done to him. He’s devastated. He’s lost everything. He doesn’t know what he’ll do without her.
But a relationship is not something a man owns. A woman’s decision to leave is not an act of violence against him.
Her departure may cause him grief. It may force him to confront circumstances he would rather avoid. He is still responsible for what he does next.
A woman is not required to remain in a relationship to prevent a man from experiencing the consequences of losing it.
And when a man threatens to harm himself or somebody else if she leaves, that is a serious safety concern requiring appropriate intervention. It is not a reason to appoint her his permanent caretaker.
Our Institutions Must Stop Passing the Responsibility Back to Women
We tell women to report threats. Seek protective orders. Document incidents. Make safety plans. Change their routines. Find somewhere else to stay.
Those measures can be necessary, sometimes lifesaving.
But there is something profoundly unfair about a system in which the person being threatened must continually rearrange her life while the person making the threats remains the center of everyone’s efforts to understand, accommodate, and rehabilitate him.
Effective intervention requires more than advising women to be careful.
It requires serious responses to threats, stalking, coercive control, and repeated violence. It requires institutions to examine patterns rather than treating each incident as an isolated misunderstanding.
It also requires accountability for the people who commit harm.
Rehabilitation and due process are important. So are opportunities for people to change.
But rehabilitation cannot depend on continued access to the people they have harmed.
A violent man can receive services without a woman being required to reconcile with him. He can work toward becoming a better person without expecting his former partner to supervise the process.
And a woman should not have to wait for him to become dangerous enough to convince everybody else that her concerns were reasonable.
We Need to Change What We Expect of Boys and Men
Girls are already receiving lessons about protecting themselves.
Boys need to learn that rejection is part of life. That anger does not grant authority over another person. That a relationship can end without anybody being entitled to revenge.
Men need to be expected to seek help, respect boundaries, and take responsibility for their conduct.
Families need to stop protecting harmful behavior because the person responsible is a beloved son, brother, father, or husband.
Churches, schools, workplaces, and community organizations need to recognize that preserving a man’s reputation is not the same as protecting the people around him.
And when a woman says she is afraid, the response should not automatically become another discussion about how she might communicate with him more effectively.
Sometimes the problem is not communication.
Sometimes the problem is that he understands her boundaries perfectly well and refuses to respect them.
Women Are Not a Lifetime Assignment
I believe people can change. I believe in second chances. I believe that men who are struggling deserve access to meaningful help.
I do not believe women and girls should be required to provide that help at the expense of their safety.
There is a difference between loving someone and being made responsible for keeping him from harming others.
There is a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation.
And there is a difference between supporting rehabilitation and repeatedly exposing women to men who have already demonstrated dangerous behavior.
We cannot keep measuring society’s compassion by how many opportunities we give a violent man while barely examining how many opportunities a woman has been given to live safely.
Val-Tricia Garrett had a life beyond her husband’s troubles. She had relationships, hopes, ordinary days, and a future that belonged to her.
Her life deserves to be remembered for more than the circumstances of her death.
And the girls watching how adults respond to these tragedies deserve something better than another lesson in how much suffering a woman should be willing to absorb.
Women and girls are not society’s unpaid containment system for dangerous men.
We are not assigned to them at birth. We do not inherit responsibility for their behavior through marriage, motherhood, friendship, or proximity.
We can care about people without belonging to their problems.
We can believe in rehabilitation without volunteering our lives as proof that it worked.
And we can insist that the safety of women and girls be treated as a responsibility of families, communities, and institutions, rather than another burden women must somehow manage alone.
A man’s opportunity to change should never depend on a woman’s willingness to remain in danger.
