It's not only a domestic

When Tamara's husband hit her one morning late in January, she knew that her body had had enough.

It was the eighth time in the five years they had been together, and compared with previous occasions was one of the mildest.

"She would say something that would really irk me," says her husband, Samir. "Once the fuse goes off, for the next 30 seconds, I'm danger to be around."

Twice, Tamara thought she was going to die when he strangled her. "I couldn't breathe. My face was swollen. My lips were bleeding."

But seven times, she took it. She loved him. He did not yet have permanent residence and she knew that if she brought in the police, he would be deported back to India.

Finally, in January, just after he had gained his residence, it happened again. She called the cops. "With a woman, your body makes a statement which tells you that is the last time, I'm not going to bear with this," she says. "I just didn't care."

Samir spent the night in a cell. Tamara moved out to a motel before he came back. They both thought their marriage was over.

"After I came out of the cell the next day, I was very, very angry," says Samir, 32. "I wanted to walk out from the relationship. But something made me say, 'Wait'."

Luckily, Samir's mother was visiting from India. She was in Wellington. Tamara called her, and she was in Auckland within two hours.

"We didn't talk to each other for a week, but having his mother in the house helped. We didn't have to worry about anything, she is there," says Tamara, 25.

"And then we had to start talking: what are we going to do? Are we staying together? So we sat down and talked. We went for a walk. We talked."

In some ways, New Zealand's attitude to domestic violence is a bit like Samir's and Tamara's in their first five years. We'd rather not think about it - partly because we feel helpless to stop it.

A Justice Ministry survey of 5300 people aged 15 and over in 2001 found that, of those who had had partners, 26 per cent of women and 18 per cent of men had at some stage been hit, threatened or frightened by a partner. Among women the rates were 23 to 25 per cent for European, Pacific and Asian women, but 49 per cent for Maori women. For Maori men, it was 28 per cent.

Their health suffered. The survey found that 30 to 33 per cent of the women who had suffered violence at some time in their lives had taken painkillers in the month before the survey, compared with 21 per cent of other women.

Half of all women who are killed in New Zealand are killed by their partners.

Every time he hit Tamara, Samir felt so awful afterwards he would hit his head against the wall so hard, he sometimes made a hole in it. He would invite Tamara to hit him too. She did. "It hurt. She hits hard."

Violence is also a big factor in marriage breakups. A US study found 60 per cent of men who attended anti-violence courses split with their partners within 30 months.

There is no simple cause. But domestic violence occurs within a culture of gender roles that goes back deeply into our past, to the days when men hunted and killed animals while women nurtured the children.

A World Health Organisation Report on Violence and Health in 2002 found that "in more traditional societies, wife-beating is largely regarded as a consequence of a man's right to inflict punishment on his wife - indicated by studies from countries as diverse as Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania and Zimbabwe".

An Indian woman said: "If [the wife has made] a great mistake, then the husband is justified in beating her. Why not? A cow will not be obedient without beatings."

In New Zealand until 1884, married couples were legally regarded as a single unit. A married woman was unable to own property. When she married, all her property became her husband's.

Some official forms still ask for the "head of the household", who is culturally still expected to be the husband if there is one. On average, men are bigger and stronger than women, and expect to earn more.

American author Paul Kivel, 57, told a domestic violence conference in Auckland this week he grew up thinking women were "not too smart", "too emotional", and that "men had done everything important in the world".

Child-abuse expert Emma Davies quotes studies from places such as Northern Ireland showing that wars are often associated with higher rates of domestic violence.

Samir's fits of violence against Tamara often erupted when she threatened to undermine his superior position.

"It started five months after we met. We were struggling financially. I was a fulltime student and he didn't have a proper job," Tamara says.

"The worst thing that slightens me is, 'All these degrees you have, you only earn so much.' And I'll say, 'You don't even earn enough and you don't have a degree!"'

When Samir got a better job and things improved financially, his fits stopped too.

"In the first year [of their relationship] it happened three or four times; in the second year, twice; then two and a half years - nothing," Tamara says. January's relatively minor outburst was more shocking because it came after this long break.

Brad Kunin, a family counsellor who chairs Man Alive in Henderson, says men are taught they need to be providers because that's what women want.

"We see that in surveys asking women what they are looking for. Usually it's things around earning power, security - whereas for guys, we look for appearance," he says.

Kunin says most violent men lash out when they feel powerless. Powerless men sometimes drown their sorrows in drink, or turn to gambling. Either may make both money problems and the violence worse. That means overcoming family violence has to be tackled at several levels, social as well as personal.

Socially, Kivel says "poor working conditions and low pay, lack of support for parenting, poor housing, poor educational systems, racial and sexual violence in our own past and in our communities, female and male role expectations - these are some of the things that cause pain, despair, anger and violence".

Domestic violence is still an expression of anger or frustration within a personal relationship. Tackling it has to involve helping couples deal with conflicts that develop.

Auckland's Domestic Violence Centre, now called Preventing Violence in the Home, promotes a change - from the "power and control wheel", where men try to control their partners - to the "equality wheel" where men and women listen to and respect each other, share work and parenting, and make decisions together.

Psychotherapist Anne O'Kane says we need to start young.

"It's about getting programmes to children to help young people learn how to communicate, especially in high school, and even younger. There needs to be much more on communication and relationships.

"We need to put as much input as we can on the fact that it's okay to have feelings, it's okay to express your feelings in ways that are more vulnerable. And as much parent education as we can."

This is starting with programmes such as the Peace Foundation's Roots of Empathy, where children learn to understand how other people feel through watching a baby.

At Preventing Violence in the Home, men's co-coordinator David Neilson tells violent men that being wrong sometimes is not "non-masculine", and that men "don't have to win all the time".

"It's the belief in those rigid role models where the troubles can start."

As women go out to paid work more and seek other rights of individual citizenship, so men have to adjust their roles.

"There is the potential there for men to be more nurturing," says Helen Jones of the Waitakere Anti-Violence Essential Services (Waves) Trust. "For women bringing up men, it's to teach them to be aware of other people's feelings, to recognise women as equal partners, to really demonstrate in their own relationship with the father that they are equal partners. It's those things that in most families you see demonstrated all the time. It means we don't lose faith," says Jones.

Tamara's own parents were not violent, so she was shocked when Samir was. His upbringing was different. He hated what he saw his father do to his mother, but has ended up reproducing it. After his night in the police cell in January, he decided to heed Tamara's suggestion and sign up for a course at Preventing Violence in the Home.

He learnt to recognise the symptoms when he was about to react violently, and he developed useful techniques such as slow breathing, shutting the issue out of his mind, and simply leaving the room.

When the symptoms came on at work recently, he walked out of the conversation and went and sat in a lift. He told people later that it was an urgent phone call. "I don't know what sets me off," he says. "I will always be an angry man, but my friends say I am much calmer ... "

Tamara has been hurt. "If I see a man hitting a woman on TV, I feel like crying," she says.

But when she finally called the police someone from Victim Support visited her within hours, gave her contacts and advice, and kept ringing to check that she was coping.

"She helped me in that I didn't want him convicted. They said it was entirely up to me. They never said, 'Leave him'."

When she stood up to the violence, it changed everything. As well as Samir's anti-violence course, he and Tamara have been to marriage guidance at Relationship Services.

"Our relationship now is a whole new thing," Samir says. "It's not just me changing. She has also responded to my changing. Because I'm being more calm, she is responding positively. Before, when I was being negative, she was being negative."

Tamara says: "I used to be scared of him. I could never tell him how I actually felt. Now I can actually tell him things.

"If you know that you can definitely make it work. I recommend going outside and getting counselling. No one in this world has a right to lay hands on you. Every woman must know that."

Preventing Violence in the Home, (09) 303 3939