A woman in my community was the victim of domestic violence for over 15 years before she finally decided to leave her husband. One guess as to why she waited so long is that she wanted to wait until her kids were grown before she divorced their father.

I'm sure that it's probably much more complicated than that, but sadly, we'll never know the answer because last week her husband murdered her. A terrible tragedy and a totally unnecessary loss, yet it happens every day.

In fact according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline on average, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends every day and 70 percent of all instances of domestic violence in a marriage occurs after the couple has separated.

What does this mean to us? To me, it means that something needs to change. To me, it means that women need to be educated on the subject of domestic violence. We need to know how to prevent it. We need to know what the warning signs are, and what we can do if it happens to us.

Domestic violence wasn't relevant to me until, well, it was... My ex-husband Levi was never physically abusive to me throughout our entire relationship. Then, near the end of our relationship, we decided to go to therapy together. We went to one session and when we got home, we got into an argument — he didn't appreciate some of the things the thearpist had to say — and he punched me in the face. I'll never forget how shocked I was and I'll never forget the look on his face; he was equally as shocked.

After I found the Dump Your Wife Now Web site, I started to wonder if there were other sites out there like this one. I started to wonder if there were sites dedicated to men going through divorce, as there are for women. So, keeping in the vein, I googled 'Dump your wife' and was astounded by the results.

First was: How To Dump Your Wife which is a book, written by a women, on — you guessed it — how to dump your wife. Here's what the site has to say: "Odds are you WILL get divorced sooner rather than later. The majority of divorces are initiated by women who destroy and financially ruin men in court because they prepare." Ouch.

The next one that came up was, Fire Your Wife, another Web site for a book which bills itself as a "Pre-divorce guide for men preparing to divorce modern American women". They say "modern American woman" as if that's a bad thing.

Lastly, there was Help Mr. Divorce, which boasts the top 14 "Guerilla Divorce Tips".

So, it seems that the general consensus among the men out there is this: Men get screwed in a divorce. It seems that the general consensus among women is this: Women get screwed in a divorce.

All of it just left me thinking, wouldn't it be nice if we didn't make this such a gender issue? Wouldn't it be nice if all of us women realized that men aren't to blame and men realized that women aren't to blame? Maybe then we could figure out that there are good people and bad people, honest people and liars, and none of it has anything to do with gender.