How do you tell people your husband gave you a black eye?

[Anonymous]

without them thinking he is abusive? The thing where we live there have been a few cases of rape recently. My husband is in the army and does kickboxing, so I though he could teach me some thing. And we tried but somehow in between he threw a punch and it hit me right in the face. And it left a quite obvious bruise there. Now obviously everyone always asks "Who did that to you?" and at first I was like "my husband" but then people wouldn't really be listening anymore and be all like "omg you have to get help" So I started leading with the rape cases in the area, as I did in the question but then everyone just assumed I was raped and didn't really listen anymore. The I started leading with him trying to teach me some self defense and that works ok, I guess. It's just that people don't really buy it. Everyone always says things like "you know if you need a place to stay, you can stay with us" And what's worse, apparently gossip travels fast around here. Th other day while my husband was at work this Colonel came over saying something like "the army takes domestic violence very serious" and I should give him or his wife a call if there is any problem. And then he told me this really heartbreaking story about how his daughter husband hit her, leading to her having a miscarriage. But well anyways my husband isn't abusive. And I understand that it looks odd to other people, but I don't know there has to be a good way to tell the story without lying

[islands7]

Sweety, all that's needed here is some counseling with...
an etiquette teacher!
She'll teach you some etiquette of course
but more importantly SOCIAL SKILLS
so you'll be MUCH better equipped to deflect - like a kickboxer - such leading questions & secret assumptions that gossips lover to practice.

For instance, your answer to ANY question on this black eye is NOT to answer it directly but instead,
say I AM LEARNING & TRAINING IN THE THAT ART OF KICKBOXING, so I can be with my loving husband. Eventually, only our close friends will be allowed to PRY out WHO did it. IF close friends, they should be able to handle social prying by others in a proper way.

This Pandora's Box you opened by stepping into their traps now compromises your husband's career, promotions and feeds jealousy among those too lazy to train as boxers. Although lying is bad & causes too much storytelling to follow, withholding evidence to strangers is BETTER than telling the truth in such an sophomoric way and kill his deal = your future quality of life that he's training SO HARD to improve & impress you, care for you. UGH

Now my bashing is over, what to do to heal all this?
To each & every person you've poisoned with this "truth",
you will happen upon some day.
If you can do the following instructions only in passing, OK but see if you can take them aside
as if to convey more gossip in confidence... over coffee, et al.
and begin telling them all about your new passion = kickboxing
all the favorite things about it, the struggles, rewards and how in love with hubby you are, now able to be closer to him, how devastated he was that day when his training punch went wild, how you had to beg him not to quit training you over that.

[saccharose]

Well, I am thinking of three ways, maybe one of them will work.
1- You guys were trying to go kinky and you hit something accidentally
2- You can start with saying that you live in rough area so there was someone you got in fight with and you got punched but thankfully you got rescued by your husband. (I think it's not lie as you were actually punched by someone which turns out to be your husband and he must have apologized you after punching you so there you go=truth)
3- You were trying to learn kick boxing and got hit.
Good Luck :)

[SirenDep]

tell them that you started kickboxing.

[InquisitiveMale]

You don't even need to say your husband did it. At the very least don't open with that... tell them you got it while kickboxing- the truth.

[Tractorbeam]

Just tell them "Martial arts practice. It doesn't always go to plan, but you're not giving it up".

[yaddayaddayadda02]

Ok, here's what you say. "I was trying to take some self-defense classes and stupidly thought my face would be the best thing I could use to block a punch". No more, no less.

[BertMacklinFBI]

I think explaining it like how you did in your first paragraph will suffice. it was a training exercise and accidents happen.

[Asker]

well I did but as I said people then just go to assume I was raped or attacked. It's obviously big news here

[delrey]

You must live in a really small town or something, nobody would care in the city.

[Nik1hil]

My honey was giving me trading exercise to defend and well I made a sloppy move and got a gift.

[Anonymous]

Thats the demonization of guys nowadays, first thing that jumps to mind is that he must be shit kicking you, not that it was an accident or whatever.

[Anonymous]

Why tell the story, when you KNOW people aren't listening to you when you talk?