Living with the Dominator

Product Information

If attending our face to face sessions you will receive a free copy of ‘Living With The Dominator’ and a copy of The Home Study Workbook which is a supplement to ‘Living With The Dominator’. This manual provides detailed instructions which are simple and easy to follow. This programme is aimed at men who have volunteered to attend and many of whom have never come to the attention of authorities. Women should believe and accept all the excuses he gives us for his abuse’ – uses the ‘only’ word! It was ‘only’ a slap, blames drink, stress, YOU! The book is good in that it is concise and informative. There are many elements of abusive dynamics that people rarely consider, and the links to wider society and how abusers' beliefs can become internalised in everyone were really interesting to me. It places a lot of abuse survivors' issues into context and highlights warning behaviours so you can protect yourself in the future. There are also some images that are vaguely funny but don't detract from the points, which is good.

It is eye opening, informative, empowering, sometimes funny and often times sad, a lot concerning but also powerful, relieving, validating and insightful. The friendship and power that a group provides is invaluable. I have produced this manual in response to requests from hundreds of practitioners who have asked for a different approach to working with men who use violence against women. Reading through this was tough for me, both as the daughter of an abuser and as a survivor of an abuser. The Programme was primarily designed for women as victims of domestic violence, since research shows that in the vast majority of cases of serious abuse are male on female. The Dominator uses various and numerous tactics to keep these rules in place. Here I have described some tactics The Dominator may use to keep each of the above ‘rules’ in place:

I listened to everything they said and became determined to impart this information to the people who had no understanding of such violence. This included other ‘professionals’ and the women and girls whose lives could be changed or even saved if they were just given this vital information.

I am Pat Craven a former probation officer who ran perpetrator programmes for Merseyside Probation Service in the UK between 1996 and 1998. I concluded that the programmes could have been much more successful if they were run in a different style and by a different agency which was not subjected to the same constraints as a statutory body.I may be unfairly rating this book a 3 star but I think that’s because I was reading this from a slightly different perspective. From an unbiased perspective, this is an incredibly important and useful book and should be read by all women starting from college age so that they can avoid relationships with abusive men. I recognise a lot of characteristics of abusive men in this book that were present in men I have dated in the past- and I found that disturbing.

I knew Sharon as a work colleague over ten years ago. At the time, she was supporting vulnerable people, some of them were homeless due to domestic abuse and substance misuse. For me, assisting such people was what anyone in her role would be expect.. The programme, when provided as an intensive two day course, is also suitable for men, whether abusive and wishing to change their attitudes and behaviour or whether victims of same sex domestic abuse themselves.The ‘Rules of the Game’ are the beliefs of The Dominator. This is how he expects women to behave! It is also how he thinks he should be able to behave! The Dominator has hundreds of ‘rules’. Lets look at a few of them: A woman should never be allowed to leave or end a relationship, no matter how abusive or violent it is. To help women understand the beliefs held by abusive men and in so doing, recognise which of these beliefs they have shared