The most controversial view I have is "everyone can be redeemed" — Yes, even more controversial than "no one deserves to live in poverty" — and this always leads to a lot of questions, including "do you know that there's a limit in how many chances you can give to someone?" and "you're not suggesting to anyone that they should forgive their abuser, do you?"

To answer the first question, yes, I do know that there can only be so many chances you can give to someone before it wears you down and you don't have the energy to deal with them anymore. As for the second question, I would never tell anyone or even suggest to anyone that they should forgive their abuser under any circumstances. This is more to show others why I tend to give people more chances than they initially deserve.

In 2009, Victoria Lockwood, a cultural anthropologist and associate professor in the anthropology department of Dedman College, did a study regarding domestic violence, where she had a month-long stay in Tubuai and Rurutu, two islands in the South Pacific which have a fairly gender-egalitarian society and domestic violence is no more common there than it is anywhere else. Lockwood has worked in these islands for more than three decades, so many of the families have talked to her about abuse.

Lockwood has asked the wives of these families, "has your husband ever hit you or shoved you or kicked you?" and most of the wives opened up and said that they have, but there was no consistent pattern of domestic abuse in their families. They would mention that their husbands have either lost their jobs or they were stressed out because of something else, but it does not happen all the time, and it would often go away. When Lockwood would ask these women if they consider it domestic abuse, they would say that it wasn't.

Lockwood has said during the study, "If we don't acknowledge that there are two different kinds of domestic violence, then we'll never understand what the causes are. The causes are very different so if we wish to devise policies or social programs, we need to be doing two different things to address the issues."

There is a distinction between short-term abuse and long-term abuse, and situational couple violence is described as sporadic domestic abuse that occurs early on in a marriage as a couple attempts to work out balance-of-power issues and decision-making. This violence is initiated by either the husband or the wife, then it later fades away after these issues are worked out.

Many people would be reading this and will automatically assume that I'm defending abusers when this is not the case. I have a firm belief that everyone should be held accountable for their actions and that every action has consequences. However, abusers can choose to either learn from these actions, or continue on, and everyone does have the ability to learn from all of their actions and consequences.