Abusive relationships

When the SO, often a male, is abusive. How much it has to do with educational patterns?

Noone can ignore the figures of mistreat within a couple. I would call it family terrorist. So, we have a problem here.

What do you have to say in regards? How much important are the roles we are given since we are little kids. Is something else failing? The response from other people, what do you think?

Can you reword your question?

Educational patterns? Do you mean people are taught to behave in certain manner since childhood? Like women were taught to put up with stuff and men were taught it’s ok to dominate others even if it’s borderline abusive?

In my family women stood on their own two feet as early as early 1900s. I had somebody telling me that “our” generation taught women to be submissive and men we’re providers and women sat home and put up with nonsense. I found it very funny because that’s certainly not what was happening in my surrounding at all. In my family women stood up on their own feet starting with my great great grandmother very long time ago and didn’t need a man to survive. I think when you don’t need someone, you are less likely to tolerate abuse.

So story of submissive women and dominant men don’t play a role in my surrounding at all. My mom was an engineer and she was born in 1945 etc I’ve never had stay at home mom in any family in my surroundings. So this narrative is very foreign for me

But I heard of families where women were told their place is in the kitchen and because men provide, women should shut up.

You also have to include cultural component. I hear a lot about 1950s in the US where men worked and women stayed home and wouldn’t manage on their own. But it’s not true for every culture at all. Personally it’s not how I or previous generations of women in my family grew up at all. In my surrounding women had their own careers and decent lives generations ago so putting up with abuse was unnecessary then and certainly is unnecessary now

Sure, there are cultural influences, but I do think abusers need to take responsibility for their own actions. You can break the chain of violence.

Absolutely

Yes of course!
I wanted to introduce the topic of abuse in a family and in a couple, which roles still play the patterns we are taught since we are kids. Not only patterns and values transmitted by our family but by other social groups as well.

The thing is I was wondering why abuse and chauvinist attitude are still present in young people. As if we still didn’t get to find a solution for this problem.

Only now it seems is being putting in the spotlight but I miss more researchers, more measures, more publicity for an issue that leads to more deceased people and broken lives than the ones because of for example, terrorism.

There I go. What it’s being doing for them to take responsibility.
Are the rest of us also responsible somehow for doing or undoing something?

Here I leave these questions.

Calling Divine, go back to planet Earth. lol!
I told you with affection.
I’m glad you didn’t have to deal with this problem. I saw these patterns at home, at school, at work, in the street, in the mass media. And I was lucky since my generation lived these influence in a lessen level that my previous generation.

I’m not referring to something so obvious as women in the kitchen, man bring the bread home.
I’m talking about a more subtle learning of what to expect from a guy and what to expect from a girl. And how, it’s still so different.
It seems as if we couldn’t get rid of the monkey.

I'm not sure I fully understand your question. Are you asking why abuse gets passed on from generation to generation?

I think normalcy prevents young victims to have awareness that their reality is abusive. They adopt both survival instincts and learned behaviours that they then forward on as adults without realizing their behaviours are dysfunctional and abnormal. They are then drawn to other dysfunctional people for comfort. Many people are afraid of the unknowns so if you were to pair up a dysfunctional person with a healthy minded one, they're not going to know how to relate with them.. or may even be afraid to.

I'll stop there because I don't think I'm answering this correctly.. and maybe I'm not saying very much at all.

Oh I am very much on the planet Earth, I think my view is in fact very realistic. I don’t think I conveyed my message well.

What I was trying to say that you cannot generalize that boys are taught this and girls are taught that and what to expect of each gender.

It all depends where you live, what’s your culture, religion, socio economic level, what country, what region within a country etc etc There are many factors involved.

I know ton of families where wife and mother is abusive, not men at all. And we see men sharing it on this forum, although men are less likely to share being abused by women

And what about homosexual couples? How is this men taught this and women taught that plays out for them? If all men taught certain way, would two men just perpetually abuse each other? And what about two women?

I know you didn’t mean to generalize but scenarios of “boys taught this or girls taught that” doesn’t really hold the universal truth everywhere and in all circles and all groups of people.

I’m the one who is not being very lucky expressing myself.
Thanks for sharing.

Looking at my own situation I can see how culture and upbringing have played into abuse. My upbringing was very egalitarian. My mom works as a nurse and my dad was a navigator. They were very equal and but had some "traditional" values. My mom originally just wanted me to marry well, but she accepted my career choices. My dad is very supportive of my career. I've always believed that women can achieve what they want.

I'm married to a guy who wanted a trophy wife, someone to look good and take care of the house. That was his upbringing. He would be perfectly fine if I sat on the couch all day and ate bonbons and filed my nails so long as I did everything around the house. His upbringing also made him a neatnik, someone who frets when something is a tiny bit out of place at home. He is very cold and critical, something that his mother was. I'm going to say that he chose his wife poorly to meet what he considers to be the ideal relationship.

I also have a friend turned stalker for whom I can see clear cultural and upbringing issues in his abusive behavior. I met him as part of a 8 to 10 person group devoted to anime, fantasy gaming etc. He was very shy around women and kind of a lost soul. At about the six month point of our friendship it was like he flipped a switch and became someone different. He declared his undying love for me and became this arrogant, overwhelmingly emotional person. He made these outrageous and abusive demands of me - that I abandon my friends and family, I cease all contact with any other male, I pay attention to him 24/7, I give up my job, I take him in and support him financially and that I be available for sex whenever he wanted. Never mind that I'm married. I frequently confronted him on his views of how women should behave and how it was downright medieval and regressive, but he saw his attitude towards women as normal and that she should obey and submit to him. He told me his culture limited any contact that he had with women and that he could only interact with a woman he was romantically attached to. So, basically, he had no idea how to treat women or talk to them as human beings. They were some sort of mystical taboo.

Knowing his family I can see where some of these attitudes come from. His parents are immigrants to the US and have very hardened attitudes about relationships. Their view was that I should submit to his will. Again, never mind that I'm already married. His upbringing was abusive and he was frequently beaten and was also sexually abused by a male relative when he was young. His father has an attitude of beating his children into submission for a quiet home. My friend said that was common practice where his parents were from. I would explain that they were in the US now and that was not acceptable. I would also explain that, as a 21st C American woman I wasn't going to give into his regressive notions of what a woman has to do. He would freak out, throwing tantrums and destroying his room, over and over, calling me all sorts of horrible names. His behavior was beyond abusive.

One other weird cultural issue/paraphilia that would come into our interaction was his absolute obsession with white women. With all of the media hype on beauty he saw white women as the pinnacle of beauty and the measure of success for a minority man to possess one. Before we saw his violent outbursts, my friends and I tried to set him up with other women who more closely matched his viewpoints. He would lose his marbles when he found out they weren't white. He had this other bizarre paraphilia in that he told me that his lifelong romantic dream was "to cuck a white guy with a white girl." My being married just drove him harder.

I tried to reason with him that I was the absolute worst choice for him as a romantic partner. Never mind that I'm already married. I'm very independent, my work is 80% male and most of those males are alpha types, my work would prevent my giving him 24/7 attention, I hate clingy guys, and we were such a huge mismatch in terms of looks, physical shape, education, financial status and career. I told him that he would be miserable with me.

But I strongly believe that his upbringing and culture drove many of the abusive behaviors and attitudes that he had.

Anyhow, that's my female experience on the subject.

I think this disturbed individual is just very mentally unwell. I doubt his obsessions and abusive behaviors towards other people’s wives are due to cultural upbringing, more like due to his mental health issue. This behavior is quite extreme.

I have been in many abusive relationships throughout my whole life. MANY. And I often wonder WHY this is. My dad wasn't the best towards me growing up and I thought he belittled my mother, which he often did in front of us. My mother was very depressed while we were young and kind of withdrawn into herself. She was not a strong role model. And my dad was overly critical and condemning of me. He wasn't emotionally supportive. Every emotion I had, he criticized me for. I learned later in life that he has narcissistic tendencies -- he could even be a full-blown narcissist. But I grew up feeling like his needs mattered most, his feelings and opinions mattered most, mine did not matter and I was not worthy of his love and affection. I had major self esteem issues that I fought with my entire life to build. And I ended up in multiple abusive relationships, many of them being with narcissistic men. So, at least for me, I was drawn to relationships that mirrored the relationship I had with my father: emotionally abusive, unavailable, self-centered and narcissistic.

From my own experience you are all correct! I came from a family where my parents would leave the house to argue. Great, though I never saw them negotiate or compromise. A very equal relationship work-wise, but mum was still expected to handle the household and pretty much raise 3 kids. Something we all noted early on. I found myself with narcissists, attracted to their confidence and charm. But my worst most recent relationship was very violent, manipulative and chaotic. I'm from a minority prone to domestic violence, alcoholism and unemployment. All things that my particular family was NOT, but I still found/find myself attracted to these men, and they to me. I don't consider myself submissive, more stubborn, but I must be. In fact, not surprising, defending yourself makes things worse.

Effects of Individual and Proximate Educational Context on Intimate Partner Violence: A Population-Based Study of Women in India

I don't know why I listened to this song tonight, but I sent it to an ex abusive boyfriend once to let him know he was cruel. It's about the jekyll and hyde personality of an abuser:

In my family, my sister was the abusive one. She would beat me up since we were toddlers. I was the older brother but she was a dirty fighter and very aggresive. My family was Mediterranean so people shamed me for being a sissy and losing fights to her. The fact that in our culture, I was taught that I was supposed to be in charge made it extra humiliating for me for being constantly getting beaten up by her. Even now, there is hardly any research on abuse by sisters and if you search sibling abuse, it will go automatically to older brother abusing younger brother or sister. I still find what happened to me very humiliating and have only shared it with my therapists. Unfortunately, she did that a lot in front of cousins and outside in front of neighbours so everyone knew!