Hitting my wife of ten years was one of the saddest days of my life, but also one of the most important turning points. Our relationship had been difficult for some time when, after one incident, I hit her. I think she was as shocked as I was. We had argued many times but I had never threatened violence. As a matter of fact I looked down on men who hit women, so when I did this thing that I detested I tried to make sense of my actions. I could not face my friends, and when I heard that women activist friends of ours were planning to beat me up I almost wished they would. Not that I could live with that either.