My little sister-inlaw, who is about to turn 20, works as a part-time bartender in a local social club. A couple months ago she started seeing a new fella who she had met at the club.

One night, whilst my mother-inlaw was picking her up to go home, this new fella (who was also drunk at the time) started acting a bit strange around her and it caught the eye of my mother-inlaw. As far as I've been told, it wasn't anything majorly "bad" just a bit creepy (I hate this term, but its what was used to describe his behaviour when I was told about it). At the time we didn't know this guy was seeing her, so all the usual guards were up.

We later found out that yes, this "creepy" guy was her new fella, and with it brought some stories. He was known by some outlying family members, who had heard whispers in the wind about his previous relationship. The story was that he was a wife beater, and his wife had left him after 12 years of marriage due to this. We believed this, as it came directly from people we know closely, as well as our own family. But none of us knew if this was 100% accurate.

All of my immediate family pretty much came down on my sister-inlaw for going out with a guy like this. We hated the guy, to the point where my wife and I went to pick her up one time from his house, and I had to make sure I parked far enough away so that if he came outside with her, I could avoid him to avoid potential confrontation.

Fast forward 4 months, and we have slowly found out (through rigorous investigation) that he had previously worked with my uncle at one time. Well, I had a chat with him to find out if he knew anything, because we were truely fearful of my sister-inlaw seeing this guy and getting hurt.

Turns out, the reason the guy had this reputation, and the reason he was going to anger management, was because his wife of 12 years came home one night and told him she was having an affair and that she was divorcing him for this other man. A heated arguement took place, whereby his "wife" got physical and threw shit at him. He had put his arms up to defend himself and caught her in the face which gave her a black eye. The anger management? He put himself through it, because he couldn't forgive himself for hurting her whilst defending himself and thought HE was the one who needed help.

I feel really bad over this. I don't post here, but I am a daily lurker and have been following this sort of thing for the last couple years. I am trying to further the cause as much as I can, but it makes me feel like shit that I wasn't able to apply the same logic to this situation. The need to protect my sister-inlaw blinded me. Social conditioning won.