Yes, this was definitely something that makes him look bad.
As to not stopping for cigarettes, we can’t know if that’s so bad, if for example they will be home in a minute (we don’t have enough info)
I think we have enough info to state that this is not a breakdown. Notice that towards the end, when she takes out her phone, she calmly opens Facebook (or whatever) and starts typing, and she switches between calmly typing and crying to her husband with ease.
IANAD, but I would think someone having a breakdown would not behave this way.
In the video we clearly hear him say (and I think she acknowledges it) that she puts stuff on Facebook about them and how he behaves, so “we do know she is the kind of girl who takes marriage arguments, writes things that show her husband in the worst light possible (if not outright lying), and puts them up on the internet, repeatedly”.
Maybe if someone did this to you enough times, you’d want some proof to show your friends that you’re not the crazy/bad one.
Some men/women in this thread “defending” what she did, by saying he was winding her up or being a jerk or whatever, and not acknowledging that no matter how much someone winds you up or is being a jerk to you, you are not supposed to act like a four-year-old and throw a tantrum (a fake one at that, since she was calm when using her phone), seem like real catches.
Wonder just how her employer will feel about seeing how out-of-control she gets when thwarted, or finding out about the DUI problem? Seems to me there’s some chance she won’t be making 3x STBX’s pay very much longer.
Add me to the “they’re both losers and I wouldn’t want to deal with either one” camp.
That doesn’t make him any less of an asshat, though.
[QUOTE=Polerius]
Maybe if someone did this to you enough times, you’d want some proof to show your friends that you’re not the crazy/bad one.
[/QUOTE]
Because that’s how it works in bad relationships, right? One person is evil and the other one is pure as the driven snow. The only important thing is who is the real victim. That is the exact mentality that perpetuates relationships like this shitfest of a marriage. They both probably have legitimate hurt feelings with regard to one another, but rather than dealing with it like mature rational adults, they engage in this destructive pissing match.
There’s a good, old song with the line, ‘‘Don’t trade our love for tea and sympathy.’’ These folks are doing just that.
As for him posting this on the internet, maybe if this was 1990 I’d buy it. But the dude has to be old enough to know something like this could be spread all over the internet. Recording abuse for a police or legal investigation, or even just to vent to your friends, is different than what this is. The fact that he’s gone out of his way to elaborate when this video got popular also does not go in his favor.
Ask yourself this question: If he’s been in a long relationship with this lovely lady, what does that say about his judgment?
One more thing: If this was an abusive husband beating his wife, and she recorded it and put it on the web, would people in this thread be saying
[ul]
[li]“Because that’s how it works in bad relationships, right? One person is evil and the other one is pure as the driven snow. The only important thing is who is the real victim. That is the exact mentality that perpetuates relationships like this shitfest of a marriage. They both probably have legitimate hurt feelings with regard to one another”[/li][li]“Ask yourself this question: If she’s been in a long relationship with this lovely gentleman, what does that say about her judgment?”[/li][li]“She was winding him up”[/li][/ul]
I don’t think *anything *the woman would do in that scenario would be condemned or seen as the reason the man was beating her. The reason some men beat their wives is because they are assholes, and not because their wives “caused them” to do so.
In the same vein, the reason some women behave like the one in the video is because they are bitches, and not because their husbands “caused them” to do so.
Don’t think so. According to him, this is a common reaction when she is told “NO”. So that’s a lot of nervous breakdowns. As mentioned already she calms down and starts playing with her phone, then snaps back into psycho mode.
[QUOTE=even sven]
He’s not distressed, upset, or scared that this is happening. He’s smug. He wanted her to break and she did.
[/QUOTE]
That’s what it tells you? It tells me that he’s seen this shit enough times to know exactly when to rig the cam, and to know there is nothing to be distressed about. I think that is much more likely than the idea that he is a psychological mastermind who has been slowly gas lighting her until this very moment, sensing her inevitable break, he broke out the camera at just the right time.
Exactly. Years of dealing with someone with a selfish streak a mile wide and an advanced degree in drama trains you to emotionally distance yourself and not get sucked into the imaginary tragedies they try to conjure.
Ethically?!? I think that he and ethics parted ways the moment he uploaded that video, and probably before that.
I am not pardoning or excusing her. Emotionally healthy adults do not throw screaming, out-of-control tantrums no matter what the perceived degree of provocation. But she’s clearly all kinds of disturbed, and he’s taking perverse (he even LAUGHS at her) pleasure in pushing her buttons. How he speaks to her, and that he won’t even let her out of the car to buy cigarettes, speaks volumes about the contempt he feels for her.
And emotionally healthy adults do not stick around for this kind of verbal abuse, nor do they film it and upload it to the internet. He should have shown at least a vestige of concern for her, stopped the car and let her out, stopped provoking her with the “daddy” voice, hell, even just given in at that moment and agreed to take her drunk ass to the lake. Then brought her home, dropped her off,.and RAN, not walked, to the nearest divorce attorney. That would be the ethical choice, IMO. Not winding her up for his amusement and internet posterity.
They are both assholes, and I echo the hope that they haven’t brought any Junior Sociopaths in Training into the world.
He’s not clueless. He is deliberately leading her on so he can record more of her temper tantrum. Though I doubt he causes all her tantrums (she clearly has issues), he clearly knows and likes to push her buttons.
Of course, what you describe is in no way similar to this video. The woman is not beating her husband in this video. I will agree with you, though, that if a completely different video had been posted, then people would have reacted to it in a completely different way than they did to this video.
No. When your life is at stake, it’s a different ballgame. But you know that.
I think it’s interesting you think she is being emotionally abusive. I only watched the video once, but I don’t recall her screaming that he’s a fucking bastard who is worthless and deserves to die and only ever thinks about himself, etc. At no point did she threaten to jump out of the moving vehicle or kill herself or crash the car. That is what emotional abuse is to me. What she’s doing is immature and troubling and probably indicative of mental illness, but I’m not sure I would call it emotional abuse. If she has in fact broken doors and such, that qualifies, but none of that is in the video.
If it was a woman being beaten by her husband, I know people would be sorry for her, but do you really think NO ONE would tell her to stop recording and GTFO? And that they would not question her judgement?
Of course when you are in such a bad relationship your judgement is impaired! And we can have compassion for you…but we also think you can, and should, do something to get out.
And by the way, even in cases of domestic violence, the victim has his/her own dysfunctional behavioral patterns. That in no way excuses the abuse and is most likely compounded by the trauma of said abuse, but yes, if you willingly stay in an abusive relationship, I do think it’s an indication you have some issues to work on. Having never been a victim of domestic violence, however, I’d be hard pressed to judge someone in that situation.
This thread is unusually bothersome for some reason. I feel like so many relationship issues are glaringly obvious and people are just throwing away a chance at real happiness. Things got to this point because both of them made choices to get into routine patterns of behavior and all of this angst could have been avoided if they had both considered the long-term ramifications of their actions. The reason both of them behave as they do is because they have hurt feelings, but for some reason they feel like those feelings are only valid if the other person is completely in the wrong. There is a deep fear in some people that even if they are a tiny bit wrong that means they are a bad person and deserve to feel bad. Only by villianizing The Other can they really feel justified in their pain. Don’t they realize it’s actually possible for both people to be wrong, or neither of them? You can have pain without a villain. The trick is to use that pain as a point for coming together.
I see it all the time on the Straight Dope and it drives me nuts, particularly because it is often used to justify misogyny/misandry. I’m tired of seeing people blame their shitty relationships on an entire gender. This is easier than really stopping to think about how you approach relationships, the kind of people you choose to be with, or what you can do to improve the situation. But ultimately by deflecting responsibility you sentence yourself to misery.
But maybe that’s not obvious if you haven’t witnessed so many relationships falling apart. People don’t realize how fragile relationships are. You have to guard them zealously.
[QUOTE=Ana]
If it was a woman being beaten by her husband, I know people would be sorry for her, but do you really think NO ONE would tell her to stop recording and GTFO? And that they would not question her judgement?
Of course when you are in such a bad relationship your judgement is impaired! And we can have compassion for you…but we also think you can, and should, do something to get out.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, because, screaming and hitting someone are even remotely similar. And like such a video could ever be posted in the first place–hint, if it were abuse, she’d be dead.
There’s no abuse in this video. There’s a woman doing something crazy, and a guy filming it to put online. Trying to connect the two is sick.
I’d be even more inclined to think it was staged. If someone is abusing you, and you have enough wherewithal to film it, you have enough wherewithal to get out. And who in their right mind would obviously film someone abusing them, anyways? That would be practically signing your own death warrant.
No, the situation would have to be completely different. A hidden camera. Or he actually films what he’s doing to her. And even then I’d wonder how the thing got online.