Capable
If you verbally abuse someone, I don’t trust you. If you break things in anger, especially to intimidate or otherwise send a message to your partner, I don’t trust you. You can say it a million times: “I would never raise a hand against anyone!” “I’m not the violent type.” “I know not to cross the line.” Yeah, sorry. I still don’t trust you.
When I was a kid, no one sat me down to lay out the List of Unacceptable Behaviors. I honestly didn’t know that breaking things and punching holes in walls right next to me were red flag activities. I thought that if a guy didn’t hurt me, I wasn’t really allowed to complain. I didn’t understand that when a partner takes steps to try to isolate you from your friends and family, it’s time to dump the motherfucker already. If he told me he cared about me, well, that meant he did! Why would anyone bother to lie about that?
Yes, I was naive like the cosmos is big: beyond imagining.
I can’t blame anyone for my lack of education here. My parents certainly didn’t expect their daughter to find herself in an abusive relationship as a teenager (or ever, probably). In fact, I’m sure they thought I’d meet a nice Christian boy who would agree with my dad and treat me like a treasured helpmeet, and we’d get married young (the most reliable way to prevent premarital sex) and bless them richly with WASP grandbabies approximately nine months after I finally discovered on my wedding night what a penis looked like. They may or may not have also expected me to learn to speak in tongues, but this was merely implied, never discussed.
But despite my parents’ peculiar and inaccurate prophesies concerning my romantic future, I think they were deceptively typical: few parents want to plan for the worst, and perhaps fewer see the looming specter of an asshole on the horizon. I wonder how many parents ever give the List Of Unacceptable Behaviors talk.
Do people pick the list up from pop culture, peers, mentors, or their own common sense (of which I’ve never claimed adequate amounts)? The chilling answer is that far too few of us do until we’re taught the hard way. Far too many of us learn what’s unacceptable by accepting the unacceptable until we reach a crisis point. For me, the crisis point occurred with Reginald Sleeth after he broke things, after he called me names, after he hit me, after he choked me, after he threatened to kill me, and after so many other Fucking Well Unacceptable Behaviors.
I’m not a therapist or any other kind of expert in abusive relationships, but I have spent a lot of time processing and examining my experiences and the stories of other abused partners. Often there seems to be a pattern of escalation. An abuser might test to see if he (or yes, she) can get away with throwing something across the room so it almost hits his victim. If he liked the response from that, he might smash something right next to her, seeming almost about to strike her with it, and scaring her even more. After that, he might start shoving. Just a little. And so on.
The Slippery Slope is a fallacy because it does not logically follow that circumstances will inevitably escalate. But neither does not logically follow that an argument’s automatically invalid if it notes a process of escalation. When a person self-justifies abusive actions shrewd to provoke fear and grant him control over someone, he can’t be trusted to adhere to higher frequencies on an honor code spectrum he’s already breaking. Not all verbal abusers and object-violent abusers graduate to hitting their victims. But many do, and those who don’t are still abusive and still patently Unacceptable. And if no one’s ever told you that before, I’m damn well telling you now.
I *am* an expert in abusive relationships (domestic violence counselor) and you’re dead on. Especially in the beginning of a relationship, note the way someone handles stress or anger. Because it’s an indication of how they’ll handle it in the future, and there’s a big chance it will escalate once they settle in and gain more power and control over their partner.
I just wanted to tell you I’m so glad you’re here and so glad you’re saying these things that need so much to said.
One time, when my dad was experiencing massive frustration with a plumbing repair, he punched right through the tiled bathroom wall into the bedroom where me (as a child) and my little brother were. We were really scared; I still remember it pretty clearly after 32 years or so. When someone is dependent on you, losing your temper scares them much more than you’d think.
(My dad was not an object-violent abuser. He never hit or broke things when he was angry with a person. He didn’t know he’d scared us at the time, he couldn’t see us in there, and he was angry with the plumbing not us. Later, when he found out, he apologized for scaring us and used himself as an object lesson in the problems with losing your temper, how he’d hurt his hand and how he now had to fix the wall.)
@Britni TheVadgeWig Well put. I wish people had more of a chance to learn these warning signs. Preferably before the dating drive kicks in.
@Jamie Thank you. That means a lot to read.
@Mousie00 Your dad sounds cool.
I think it’s natural for many of us to want to punch a pillow, slam a door, or even HULK SMASH something once in a while when we’re frustrated.
It doesn’t feel like abuse to me until it’s being used to intimidate or control, or at least shows that a person is excessively surrendering to the anger impulse. Those who break things when mad at a person need to honestly examine themselves. That, I believe, is often an act of control and abuse.
I learned as an adult that all the scary, aggressive behavior my dad had when I was young and my parents were married was simply abuse. Stuff-breaking, wall hitting, constant yelling, punishment for random shit, physical punishment, insulting mom to her face, yadda, yadda. And that shit will always stay with oneself- the brain stores threatening memories differently, more permanently.
I’ve watched enough Law and Order: SVU to know that abusers and rapists escalate. Also that they’re mostly “narcissists”.
My parents taught me some of it by maintaining a policy of apologizing whenever an actual loss of temper happened and making it generally clear that coming anywhere near that line was not acceptable. That, and the “waitress rule” of noticing how someone behaves toward someone they think they have power over and aren’t out to impress.
My step-mother taught me the rest of it by showing me what manipulative behavior designed to hurt (nothing ever physical) was, what it depended on to work, and to make a policy of instantly distancing myself from anyone who acted remotely the same way in small ways.
And no, ladies, you cannot change him.
Wow. A disturbing amount of gender-specific language in this discussion. Just a reminder: abusive behaviour isn’t confined to men, or to hetero relationships.
@Rob Absolutely true. And that’s an important reminder I should’ve been more explicit about.
In the beginning paragraph of this entry I intentionally kept gender vague, but after moving into my personal experiences I picked the genders that matched them. The parenthetical “she” I put in the second-to-last paragraph was meant to remind people that I made a diction choice and wasn’t taking the genders involved for granted, but I didn’t make that as clear as I might have.
I used to hear my previous neighbours fighting constantly – he was a high-strung “artiste” type, and used to flip out a lot. We could hear him screaming and swearing, throwing crockery and furniture, but I never knew if I was doing the right thing by not calling the police, because I knew his girlfriend, later wife, was not being hit by him or the objects he threw.
A situation I hope I react to more strongly, should it ever happen again.