During last night’s English Corner, we got an interesting debate over cooling-over period before divorce. Interesting is a mild expression, actually it’s an emotional, intense, bloodless verbal war.

One of the opposite views is that the cooling-off period would leave the partners who are suffering from domestic violence more vulnerable.

And you know what’s the rate of domestic violence in China? ----it is 30%! 3 out of 10 partners (mostly women) are suffering from family violence. That real figure might be even more, because a lot of victims like Celeste in Big Little Lies, they bottom it up and the others would never know. It chills me.

However, I don’t think without cooling-over period could make a big difference. To face it, how many victims could go as far as suing for a divorce? There’s no figure about that, but I met there wouldn’t be many. Most of the victims are suffering in silence---that’s the worst part about this problem.

There are so many cases when the police step in and put the husbands into the custody but the wives show up and beg the police to let them go.

What prevented the victims from getting out of a violent, twisted marriage is never the process of a divorce---how hard it could be?---but themselves.

I am not saying the victims should take the blame, here I am just presenting the sad truth. A woman like Celeste, beautiful, highly educated, once being a fighter, finds it hard to leave Perry. How could we expect so many women, who are mentally, physically, financially dependent on their batterers, could make that decision?

Victim blame theory helps lay the groundwork their mixed-up humiliations about this crap. Lack of supports from the society has done it’s bit and women in general, with their willingness to feel bad about themselves, and then the fears about unknown have finished the job.

I truly hope that our governments, our society could focus more on addressing this problem.