‘A Survivor’s Education’ Contains Lessons About Domestic Violence for Us All

Trying to explain why abused people stay with abusers has been an almighty challenge for survivors’ advocates for decades — one that has only grown more difficult as women have gained increasing independence in society. If you’re not trapped by financial constraints, skeptics wonder, why else would you stay?

Anyone still perplexed by how people get ensnared in abusive relationships would do well to read Joy Neumeyer’s new book, A Survivor’s Education: Women, Violence and the Stories We Don’t Tell. In it, Neumeyer boldly and unflinchingly describes a relationship spiraling out of her control while in the process of earning her PhD at UC Berkeley.

Neumeyer’s partner at the time — referred to only as Daniel — was a man who was “disarmingly vulnerable and reassuring” the day she met him. He was a dear friend who became “the closest person in [her] life.” Only after three years of extremely close friendship did Neumeyer and Daniel become “enraptured with each other” as a couple. It was shortly after physical intimacy became part of their relationship that Neumeyer suddenly found herself on the receiving end of verbal tirades, guilt trips, death threats and waking up with Daniel’s hand around her throat.

In Neumeyer’s case, her roots with Daniel were so deep and his manipulations so pernicious, she first attributed his erratic mood swings to mental health issues and the disadvantaged background that Daniel said made him feel like an outsider. Neumeyer, like many people in similar situations, blamed herself for Daniel’s sudden change in behavior, thought her love and support could help him to stabilize, and feared revealing the extent of the abuse to friends lest they judge him too harshly. This despite the visceral fear she was living with daily. (“It’s like a solar eclipse,” she writes at one point, “the moment you realize that someone you trust might kill you.”)

In A Survivor’s Education, Neumeyer doesn’t just detail the degeneration of her relationship with Daniel. The book relays everything she learned in the process of extricating herself from him, as well as the arduous legal actions she was eventually forced to take to keep him at a safe distance from her. With a sense that they might assist others, Neumeyer even dutifully passes on the texts that most helped her understand her own predicament. These include: Lundy Bancroft’s Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men, Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, and Deborah Blum’s Bad Karma: A True Story of Obsession and Murder. (The last book tells the story of Tanya Tarasoff, a Berkeley student who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend.)

Neumeyer vividly tells her story against the backdrop of Berkeley student life, her studies of Russian history and the pop culture of the period. The end of her relationship happened to coincide with the #MeToo movement, which seems to have equipped her with a wider understanding of just how depressingly commonplace her situation was. While reading correspondence between Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, Neumeyer notes: “The texts matched my dynamic with Daniel so closely that it hurt to look at them.”

Neumeyer is also not shy when it comes to explaining how UC Berkeley has failed women like her on many occasions before. In a chapter titled “Patterns,” she writes:

In Berkeley’s overview of 2017–2018 — the year of my case — [Berkeley’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination] received 446 reports of sexual violence or harassment … Only 14 percent of the cases it closed that year included an investigation … The vast majority, 77 percent, were ‘administratively closed’ — in other words, nothing happened.

She also widens that scope to look at national trends, pointing out:

Nearly half of all murdered women in the US are killed by their current or former male partners, with Black women the most likely to die of all groups. According to a 2021 study, around two-thirds of American mass shootings are rooted in domestic violence.

Neumeyer is a lively, frank and passionate writer. By combining her very personal story with an analysis of misogyny in the wider culture, she has created a book full of invaluable information. It will surely be of assistance not just to survivors struggling with both legal processes and trauma, but also to people struggling to comprehend intimate partner violence in a theoretical sense. In passing on the extracurricular education she was forced to take on during her time at Berkeley, Neumeyer is illuminating some of the darkest corners in our midst.

‘A Survivor’s Education: Women, Violence and the Stories We Don’t Tell’ by Joy Neumeyer is out on Aug. 20, 2024 from PublicAffairs.

Neumeyer is scheduled to appear at Book Passage’s San Francisco Ferry Building store on Sept. 22, 2024.