Written under the pseudonym Kate Hamilton, the literary memoir Mad Wife chronicles the insidious will-bending that can play out over the course of a 20-year relationship.
Is this the story of a woman terrorized, emotionally and physically abused, and threatened with death by a man who claimed he loved her? Or is it a story about the unbearable suffering of a man so heartbroken by his cheating wife that he snapped? Writing this account over a decade later, I can say: it is both. —Kate Hamilton (pseudonym), Mad Wife
If you're being honest, how do you find yourself relating to stories of abuse? Do you empathize with survivors, unconditionally? Is it sometimes tempting to believe in the lie of "mutual abuse" when there's evidence that multiple parties in a relationship are suffering? Do you, like many people, pity those who end up in abusive relationships but see yourself as invulnerable to the same fate—seeing your ideals and your “good choices” as unassailable protection against the structural inequities and violence that shape our relationships, our culture, and our legal system?
These are of course leading questions. We all struggle to have empathy sometimes. All of us are only human—yes, even those of us who work with survivors and are deeply familiar with the damaging tendencies in our society to discredit or blame victims of violence. We're all susceptible to casting judgment and that can be an involuntary survival tactic: The violation that occurs in abusive relationships and acts of sexual violence are often horrifying to anyone whose sense of humanity is intact. It's natural to want to distance ourselves from the traumatic experiences of others because we don't want to believe they can happen to us. It's especially unsettling to contend with the notion that the erosion of a person's sense of will and autonomy can (and often does) unfold slowly over the span of years within a long-term relationship.
Written under the pseudonym Kate Hamilton, the literary memoir Mad Wife is a chronicle of this insidious will-bending that can play out over the course of a 20-year relationship. It's a testament to how the forms of social, financial, and material stability that develop in that time—things like children, homes, shared bank accounts, and the approval of families and religious communities bent on preserving even disastrous marriages—far from diminishing the harm survivors experience, can actually be weaponized by abusers to sustain their domination and make it all seem normal to the victims, and invisible to outside observers.
One of the most devastating things about Hamilton’s gradual loss of control and power is that as she recounts the increasingly desperate and painful measures that she took to salvage her marriage, she can't discern which actions she freely engaged in over years of her life. Already conditioned to submitting to the manipulation of her husband (pseudonym Rick) and guilted into believing their sex life was the key to saving their bad marriage, Hamilton engaged in multiple forms of unwanted sex, ranging from frequent forced intercourse at home to reluctantly agreeing to start swinging with her husband. For years, the sexual abuse that became normal in her marriage left her feeling disgusted and sometimes nauseous to the point of rushing to the bathroom to retch after sex.
Perhaps it feels easy to see Kate as a "sympathetic" or "credible" victim based on that description. But do you feel the same also knowing that she credits extra-marital relationships she had near the end of her marriage for saving her life? In a November 2024 interview for Anne Helen Petersen's Culture Study newsletter, Hamilton explains that the affairs made her feel like a person again. "Engaging in them didn’t feel like a matter of ethics, but like air feels to someone on the verge of drowning," said Hamilton. In the same breath, she acknowledges that while the affairs saved her, they hurt others—not just her abusive husband, but a close, long-time friend.
Whether that clouds your ability to recognize and empathize with the very real abuse that defined Hamilton and her two sons' relationships with her husband is not something we’re interested in judging. In fact, we'd argue that just as valuable as the narrative of Hamilton's story as a survivor is her willingness to examine the hurt that she caused. The dialectic of the two realities is central to what she is trying to accomplish with the book: Namely, illustrating the "crucial differences in the kinds of behaviors that can be meaninglessly collapsed into 'abuse’." She goes on in a passage worth citing in full:
There are many ways to hurt someone in an intimate relationship, not all of which are abuse. You can stop loving or desiring them, and you can lie, love, or have sex with someone else. You can break their heart. These are tragic and perhaps immoral, but they are not abuse. Profound pain is their inevitable result but not their intention. They are motivated by a need to assuage the suffering self, not a desire to eradicate the other. Threatening to kill someone or to hit them, throwing furniture at them—these make someone feel physically unsafe, that their life is in danger. Threatening to publicly humiliate someone, to defame them in their workplace, to withhold needed finances—these make someone feel socially, professionally, and economically unsafe. These are existential threats, initiated explicitly to terrify and control someone whose suffering is not an unfortunate byproduct but the abuser’s primary intention.
What distinguishes Mad Wife so admirably as a memoir is this invitation and safe, non-judgmental space Hamilton gives to readers to consider how they might weigh ethical threats against existential ones. Although we might not state it in exactly those terms when we talk about the logical implausibility of “mutual” abuse, Hamilton is speaking to a litmus test domestic violence advocates are well versed in: What types of harm are motivated by self-defense and a needed reprieve from suffering, and which are only meant to control, coerce, threaten, or make someone fear for their life?
Mad Wife covers a lot of ground. Besides the topics of sexual abuse and forced consent within long-term relationships, the power imbalance in abusive relationships that makes mutual abuse impossible, and the challenge of not letting our moral judgments prevent us from believing survivors, Hamilton’s story highlights the ways the outward appearance of an intimate relationship can belie the severity of abuse happening in secrecy for years. It also shows the tactics of legal bullying abusers deploy (often with chilling success) in divorce and child custody proceedings, and the misogyny still rampant in courtrooms that can punish women even further if they appear too capable and too prepared. Maybe most upsetting in Hamilton’s account, however, is the long-term toll her husband’s abuse took on her youngest son (pseudonym Kevin). At one point, one of Kevin’s doctors explained to both parents that his emotional pain had started to manifest as physical illness because of Rick’s commitment to insulting him and dismissing his emotional distress.
Hamilton’s story may also challenge people’s assumptions about the typical victim of domestic violence. She’s a college English professor with a background in postmodern literature and feminist scholarship, weaving cultural criticism and feminist literary references throughout her personal narrative with the finesse of a seasoned academic who knows her material. That’s to say, Hamilton found herself trapped in an abusive marriage, not for lack of exposure to feminist ideals of choice, independence, and empowerment, but something much more mundane. What her story makes legible is the enduring social pressure to make marriage (especially marriage with an assumed mandate of hetero-monogamy) work at all costs—regardless of the personal sacrifices required.
True to the postmodern and post-structural ideas Hamilton writes and teaches on in her life as an academic, Mad Wife is a clarion call to question rules accepted as absolute truth—especially the blind self-abnegation that patriarchal society mandates to keep control in the hands of cisgender men. That mandate harms everyone¸ and it’s a huge driver in the simmering, normalized pattern of will-bending and coercion present in so many relationships long before they precipitate in full-fledged violence. Hamilton’s antidote to the self-abnegation she endured, far more radical than making herself out to be the hero in her story, is self-interrogation.
In Mad Wife, Kate Hamilton paints herself as neither a hapless victim, nor a cheating wife. She rejects a simple characterization of herself, or even a simple interpretation of what happened to her and her doomed marriage. She does, however, give us this important north star: The act of self-interrogation is the point in all of this. It is what helps us take in information and other people’s stories. It’s what makes us more compassionate people who can articulate the difference between social or ethical impropriety and the true existential violations to a person’s safety, welfare, and autonomy that characterize abuse.
If you want to get your own copy of Mad Wife, you can support our local bookstore here in Helena by ordering your paperback or Libro.fm audiobook through Montana Book Company! If you're reading for a book club, email staff@mtbookco.com and mention that you’re reading for The Friendship Center’s Book Club to get 10% off your purchase. If you’re out in Townsend, you can support your local bookstore by ordering from Reading Leaves.
Mad Wife contains the author’s personal recollections as well as quotes from emails and court documents covering a long period of her ex-husband’s emotional abuse, sexual manipulation, threats of violence, and neglect of her children. While it’s powerful and important to engage with survivors’ stories, we encourage everyone to read with care.
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