What did it/will it take for the woman in your life to understand home safety?

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JLStorm

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My wife thinks I am "silly" to lock the door before I leave the house while she is home, or when I ask her to never open the door for anyone she doesnt know, even if its a delivery person. She thinks its silly that I have a gun around at all times while home (even though on occassion she has appreciated it. She believes we are in a neighborhood where "it cant happen here" even though a bad area is less than 3 miles away.

I have given up trying to figure out what it will take short of something horrible to get her to recognize the need for home safety. I think part of the problem is that she is a tall (6 ft) independent, tough, and strong woman who thinks she can just take on the world, or that someone will be there to help the minute she needs it. I cannot win these conversations, so I have all but given up trying, is there anything I can do to convince her home safety is not simply a paranoia issue?
 
how about trying this...

hon, imagine a knock at the door, you open it to a well dressed man in his mid to late 20's. He's 6' 5", weighs in at about 280 muscular lbs. and he wants to rape you. It doesn't matter how mean or tough you are hon, somebody is meaner and tougher, and that person hold the element of surprise, because he knows what he wants to do, and you don't. It happens, and I don't want it happening to you!!
 
how about trying this...

hon, imagine a knock at the door, you open it to a well dressed man in his mid to late 20's. He's 6' 5", weighs in at about 280 muscular lbs. and he wants to rape you. It doesn't matter how mean or tough you are hon, somebody is meaner and tougher, and that person hold the element of surprise, because he knows what he wants to do, and you don't. It happens, and I don't want it happening to you!!
Click to expand...

I tried that approach...I get laughed at and told that kind of thing WONT happen..."you are being paranoid" :banghead: :banghead:
 
Don't try to "win" conversations with your wife. Trust me on this one. :D

Instead of arguing with her about it, ask questions.

Resist the temptation to answer the questions for her. Don't correct her answers or argue with her about the answers. Just ask questions and let her think about it.

The goal is to get her asking the questions herself. Which will happen only as long as you don't force-feed her the answers.

My .02. ;)

pax

If in any domestic dispute, it turns out you were right, apologize immediately! -- 'Lazarus Long' (Robert A Heinlein)
 
My sarcastic, smart-___ self says when she gives you the line about how tough she is, agree with her. And remind her how thankful you are that she's there to protect you. And the next time something spooky in the house needs investigated, refuse to go look yourself, but encourage her to go check it out.

But, hey, that's just me.


Mauserguy said: A friend of hers left a street facing window open one night, and had a group of drunks come in and rape her.
Click to expand...

Um, OK. Please elaborate. Is that a suggestion, a personal story, or a recommended course of action? Its quite unclear, and I'm not sure what to do with this contribution.
 
What did it/will it take for the woman in your life to understan home safety?
Click to expand...

Mauserguy's has to have been a personal story. Nobody would suggest that, and it was a direct answer to the title of the first post. Sorry to hear about it too, it's not the way anyone would like to learn their lessons.

Just watch the local news and papers. Stuff will happen close enough to home that the message will sink in. It's a change of mindset though, so it'll take some time short of a traumatic event (see Mauserguy).

For the time being, try to get your wife to do as you ask as a favor to you. Tell her she doesn't have to be paranoid too (I've found it helps to make "I'm paranoid" jokes), just do it to humor you.
 
BullFrogKen,
That is a true story. This freind left her window open and these drunks entered. The police made no arrests, and apparently didn't really care. This was in Korea, but don't think that this couldn't happen in the US. There are A-holes everywhere and you must be prepared. Violent crime is not some theoretical concept. It is dirty, horrible and it happens every day. Don't let it happen to anybody you love.
Mauserguy
 
Zombies...

I tried everything else, but getting her to be prepared for when the zombies come is the only thing that worked.

It takes the doom and gloom out of being prepared and turns it into a game. We need more water for when the zombies come is a lot better than worrying about the next earthquake. Having to react to an animated zombie crawling across the living room floor is much more fun than discussing home invasion.

Make it fun. I've had success at the personal level as well as with corporate disaster preparedness training. I figure this technique would work with kids, too, although I haven't tried it with any yet.

http://zombiehunters.org
 
Mauserguy,

I'm quite sorry to hear that happened to your woman. As I said, I wasn't sure what to do with that. You offered it, so I'll let it stand as is. Most women wouldn't want it discussed cavalierly, but I'll assume you and she are OK with you sharing it publicly.
 
well... I guess she IS right, you're just being paranoid. After all, it ALWAYS happens to someone else. I mean- that's what you see in the news, some poor woman named Jane Doe got raped/mugged/murdered/kidnapped/all of the above. Sure glad it wasn't your wife. It was someone elses, the chances of that happening to your wife are so miniscule as to not worry about it at all. What? .000005% (1:5,000,000) or less? Too bad Miss Jane Doe who had that same .000005% chance won that lottery, because it became a 100% chance to her.

Yep, it always happens to someone else. It happened to Jane Doe right? Well, to every Jane Doe out there, your wife is "someone else".

Hope that helps, maybe a little paranoia is good for us. How many millions of women would be better off if they had a touch of healthy paranoia?

Good luck, Sir.
 
Perhaps you could treat her like an adult who is responsible for her own safety instead of a child who needs instructions not to talk to strangers?

FWIW, men are more likely to be the victims of violent crime than women. Men comprise 79% of murder victims. I'd worry more about myself than her, if I were you. :neener:
 
Fortunately, I guess, the "bad guys" solved this problem for me. We had someone try and enter the house while we were home several years ago. Midnight and some doorknob jiggling. Took the police 20 minutes to show up - they were on the other side of town - and it was obvious how close we came to someone getting in.
 
Actually Barbara, those are mostly gang bangers blowing each other away with a lot of the balance made up of other kinds of macho-ego, testosterone fueled BS.

As far as violent crime (robbery, assaults and rape...as well as murder) as we are discussing it (good citizens who don't go to bad places or do bad things) it is women who bear the brunt of those and are most at risk at least in public. At home, whomever is there is at the same risk discounting surveillance first by the criminal to establish exactly who is there.

Heck, even if 100% of murder victims were men...that still leaves a whole lot of misery left to go around in the assault and rape categories.

A male, not involved in gangs or criminal activity, with his ego in check (probably rare?) and common sense will have lesser chances of becoming a statistic. One category (rape) is almost completely off the list outside of prison so that only leaves assault and robbery. Most assault threats (again, for males) are taken care of by staying sober in public, out of rowdy places, and by keeping the ego in check. All that's left is robbery/mugging.

This is all based on my general knowledge (Crim Just. deg etc) but if someone wanted to they could wade throught the FBI UCR and DOJ NCVS data, separating out the gang and macho stuff as best as possible getting to better numbers on male/female breakdown in each crime category when the victim was basically minding their own business.

You'll run into problems with what is probably a woman's biggest threat muddying up the waters (domestic violence). Probably have to discount family assaults too (now our murder rate will be near zero) and assaults go way down. All that will be left is stranger robberies, rapes, assaults and murders.
 
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I was 8-years old when I experienced the first home invasion...during a thunderstorm. A whole family of thieves invaded our home under the guise of needing "protection from the storm...there's thumbleweeds blowin' 'cross the road!" We didn't have tunble weeds around our home...pine trees yes, but no tumble weeds. This pack of thieves proceeded to pocket everything that wasn't nailed down...including my toys. Their one child brandished a knife and told me they would kill me, and my family, if I told my Dad what they were doing.

I made a b-line to my Dad and told him. :evil: He rounded their @sses up, tossed them out into the storm and called the police. They didn't have any trouble driving off. The storm was just a cover to a well-planned, albeit spontaneous home invasion. That the screen door was closed meant nothing...they just pulled it open and barged right in. The inside door should have been closed and locked.

All you can do is communicate. You can't be there 24/7. This is one of the reasons we men have more heart-attacks. We worry too much. Do what you can, and don't worry over what someone else will not do. If you have children, now you have legitimate grounds to drop the other shoe and demand the door be locked. If, however it is just her, she's an adult, and as such is free to make decisions: good, bad and indifferent.
 
This is what I did to convince my wife. Visit the local Police website and get a couple of weeks worth of blotter information. Make little marks on a map of the city of where these crimes occur. Show her how close these things are and how often they hit, and show her the time period. My wife grudgingly accepted my CHP when I showed her on a map where an MS-13 gang crime had taken place; less than 2 miles from where we lived. I then showed her the general area, turns out we drive by it most of the time, where the attack took place. She then made me get a safe for the bedroom:D
 
Nightmare in Pleasantville
An attack at a respected facility raises questions about foster care
By Arian Campo-Flores (With Pat Wingert) | Feb 25, 2002 | 760 words, 0 images


In appearance at least, Pleasantville Cottage School seems aptly named. The campus--a residential treatment center for troubled foster kids--sits serenely on a hilltop 25 miles north of New York City. Maple trees and weeping sycamores tremble in the wind. In a girl's room in one of the bucolic cottages there's a bed crowded with teddy bears, and pink walls plastered with posters of Bob Marley. But on Feb. 7 at around 11:15 p.m., horror struck. Eight female residents of Cottage 12, age 14 to 16, brutally attacked the lone night counselor minutes after she reported for duty. They snatched away her cordless phone and beat her on the head with it. "Don't hit me, don't hit me!" the petite counselor pleaded, according to the account her mother gave to a neighbor. The assault grew more vicious. The girls chopped the counselor's hair with scissors, doused her with rubbing alcohol, set her aflame, threw her down two flights of stairs and poured bleach on her raw flesh. Only when one of the girls spotted a staffer walking outside did the torture, which lasted more than an hour, finally end. At their arraignment several days later, some of the girls giggled




I live about quarter of a mile from this facility. It's not uncommon to see young teens roaming the streets at night around 8 or 9 in Pizza Hut costumes. I recently talked to an LEO friend of mine who'd noticed that and he was told that they put the work uniform on and forge working documents, saying they're working until 10 or 11 and hanging out with friends instead.
 
Perhaps you could treat her like an adult who is responsible for her own safety instead of a child who needs instructions not to talk to strangers?
Click to expand...

It's very difficult to treat someone like an adult who didn't learn the things she should have when she was 8.
 
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I mostly approached this stuff from the other direction with a long discussion about how leaving doors unlocked or opening the doors to strangers makes ME feel uncomfortable.

I also did the same as TinyGnat with the police reports.

For the most part that worked. Then she got in the habit of leaving the apartment door unlocked when she goes to the 1'st floor laundry room. "It's only two floors down and I'm coming back with an armload of laundry so it's easier".

NOTE/Disclaimer: I only pulled the following stunt because I know my wife is unarmed and I know roughly how she'd react. This would have been a bad idea to play in reverse.

I came home to an unlocked door, laundry stuff on the table, and no wife to be seen. Damn she's done it again! So I went in, moved some stuff around and hid down the hallway. About two minutes later she comes in with both arms full of laundry and walks obliviously right in through the door (I left it slightly ajar). Then she sees stuff moved around and comes to a halt with an "oh ****" look on her face. I step out and say "You know I could have been anyone". She looks at me and says "I'll keep the door locked".

She has ever since.
 
I had my eyes opened

when back in college my girlfriend (we were arguing) punched me square in the chest with absolutely eveything she had. I didn't even feel it. Granted I'm 6'3" and weighed 205# (at the time ;) ), but she was not a small girl at 6'1" and 160#. It was an epiphany for me.

My sister is 6'1" and weighed 175# when she played college basketball. We have played ball and wrestled together, I have been punched by her, and she is VERY strong. She would have a better than average chance against an average man, but not against a strong man.

I don't want to come off as macho or sexist, but there are very few women who could successfuly fight off a man. If they think they can it's because they've never been in a fight with a man. I think it's wrong for people to teach them "defense" fighting techniques that give them false confidence.

Like go to the ground and kick, because your legs are stronger than your arms (seriously, that's what they taught my wife :eek: )

But to "answer" the question, it takes time. I was married 9 years before my wife bought a gun. She realized her fear of guns was irrational due to past life experience. She still hasn't been to the range to fire it. She says it's because it's my job. :confused: I'm not always there, honey.

It's gonna take some more time...

I still haven't been able to get her to read pax's web site.


edit:

P.S. I lock the door behind when I leave AND when I come home. I live on a _very_ quiet street.
 
My wife grew up in EAST DETROIT. Her sister is ex LEO with the City of Detroit. She rode in APCs to her job at Bell Telephone during the "riots". If she had her way I would have a .500 and carry it in the woods for bears when we go hiking in the Smokey Mountains.

We also do a great deal of highway traveling. While waiting for AAA to fix a tire on I75 at 11:00 PM a car pulls up behind....and it isn't the law. :what:

Put on a Dawn of the Dead Movie Marathon. :D Until she gets it. Better yet have her watch The Hills Have Eyes.
 
My wife is stuck in the middle as far as guns and self defence. Dad was a deputy sheriff in Milwaukee where she grew up, she is a mental health nurse, so she knows the kind of scum that walk freely upon this earth. She likes shooting, but is indifferent to getting a ccw. I worked away from home for 18 months, and just came back on weekends. That woke her up a little bit, and she wanted an alarm system installed, and confiscated my Keltec P32. She feels more secure in SC than she did in AZ, and so do I, even though I miss AZ terribly.

We had this one incident in AZ round about 1997 where we got followed in the desert by a truck full of tonks, while we were out coyote hunting (4 legged kind). Paranoid sob that I am, I picked up on it right away and deliberately made a couple of turns to throw them off. They kept following 1/2 mile behind, where they thought I would not see them. I finally stopped in a wash, and got out dressed in camo with my thumbhole stocked L1A1, put on my facemask, opened the rear of my SUV so they could not read my license plate, and when they came around the bend, jumped in the road in front of them, and told them to get the &*^& out of there. I was pissed, screaming at them and ready to shoot. These were a bunch of nasty nasty guys, did not take a degree in profiling to figure that out. Not gangbangers, more like the mehikan cowboy types. Fortunately for them, they figured I had the drop on them, because I was sure they were armed, and left in a hurry. My wife was backing me up with a pistol, and she told me later she was ready to shoot, because she realized that these guys were out to get HER. She always told her mother not to worry when we went camping, because we had bigger guns than the criminals. Wish I can impress upon her you need to be aware all the time.
 
>Fortunately, I guess, the "bad guys" solved this problem for me. We had
>someone try and enter the house while we were home several years ago.
>Midnight and some doorknob jiggling.

Heh.

The g/f surprised a couple of guys in her house in the middle of the night. Screamed at them and they beat it, but she didn't know there was a guy behind her in the kids' room as well (Fortunately the kids were not there that night). He gave her a few bruises shoving her out the way -- guess they figured I might have been on the way, armed and dangerous.

Now she doesn't feel so safe any more, has a baseball bat, a panic button and pepper spray, but still no gun (OK, she has to go on a course and pass an exam and wait two years to get a gun so...).

She claims she can't have a gun in the house with the kids. So my next job is to gunproof the kids (8 and 11, and the in-laws are anti *sigh* although less anti than they were before they met me :)

W
 
I just get tired of "the Lord will protect me" line :rolleyes:

Maybe that is true, after all the Lord(or Lady?:) ) gave us men like Sam Colt and John Browning ;)

I finally came to the conclusion that I can't protect her all the time, and if she won't take steps to protect herself, then she is a grown woman and will have to live or die with her decisions.

I also fell back on the locking the door to protect me argument - at least it protects me from drawing down on somebody who just bumbles in :p
 
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