So you, unlike the court system, do not recognize emotional abuse.
Sure I do, but I’m having trouble coming up with scenarios of emotional abuse that do not contain at least verbal abuse. I’m not sure what your definition of “emotional abuse” is. Maybe you can tell me.
Thanks, but most of that is verbal abuse. I’m not sure what is to gain by calling it emotional abuse.
What I said. A woman knows her husband can’t leave–for whatever reason, rational or not So she has a series of affairs and doesn’t bother to hide them from him. She frequently cries all over him and leaves him with the impression that it’s his fault, but offers him no real way to fix it: she’s vague and evasive when he tries to help, to change, to anything. She goes out of her way to sleep with his friends and co-workers because it humiliates and isolates him even further, and that gives her a feeling of satisfaction. All this gets incrementally worse over the years until it’s truly horrific.
That, to me, is emotional abuse. You seem to feel that it only becomes abusive if she what. . .screams at him about it instead of crying all over him? Calls him names when she’s talking about her boyfriends? Does there need to be a violent element to make it abuse?
A violent element would certainly remove all doubt that it is abuse. Other than that, it just looks like a woman being an asshole.
In storytelling, we learn about a character through their words and their actions. We do not get to learn their thoughts directly except through their words and actions, or if they are narrating or the narrator tells us directly. Perhaps emotional abuse is like that; we only learn about it indirectly through words (verbal abuse) and actions (physical abuse).
And much of that is what Hardwick allegedly did to Dykstra - controlling her behavior, belitteling her, invading her privacy. Of course he often used language to do it (probably verbal but probably also non-verbal), but its not screaming “Fuck You!” at the top of your lungs, its subtle.
So in the case of your woman who cheats on her husband, knows it hurts him, but doesn’t stop. The abuse is the behavior as well as the words “I don’t care” or “no, I won’t” when he asks her to stop.
I believe that’s called infidelity, which is certainly grounds for divorce in a married relationship.
Subtle, but not illegal, and certainly not something for which one should lose their career. If Chloe had a shitty relationship with Chris, she should learn from it and move on. If her next boyfriend also does not treat her well, one might well wonder what she’s looking for in a partner. Based on the age difference between Chloe and Chris, I’d say she was looking for a sugar daddy.
Yes, and I agree that this part from her story “After three years of being snapped/yelled at constantly” is abuse.
Again, that’s just not caring. Not caring is not abuse.
There is no longer any locality in the United States that requires grounds for divorce. The only legal requirement for divorce is that one person in the marriage wishes to end the marriage.
That doesn’t mean a person can leave. Maybe they have a deep moral conviction that loyalty and commitment must be honored. Maybe they feel like it’s in the kids’ best interest, however awful it is for them. Maybe they have a crippling fear of being alone, and they can’t make that leap. Maybe they are weak-willed and have trouble initiating change. Maybe they are mentally ill and that illness makes it impossible to leave.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. If you know your partner’s vulnerability gives you enormous leverage, and you exercise that leverage to get everything you want and ignore or enjoy the misery that causes them, you are exploiting them. If you do it over an extended period of time with full understanding of what’s going on–or willful ignorance–you are abusing them.
Why is this word so problematic for you all? Why do you need to draw a clear line between “being a sadistic asshole” and “being abusive”? What would be true if it were abuse that’s not true if it’s just the actions of a sadistic asshole? Do you sympathize differently with the victim? Are you willing to have a beer with a sadistic asshole but not an abuser? What makes the charge of “abuse” so loaded that the standard to classify behavior as “abusive” has to be so explicit and so unambiguous?
Because words with clear, distinct meanings allow a discussion about a topic to be productive, and not depend on what one person “feels” is abuse or not.
But we aren’t being productive. I’ve asked you to explain what you feel distinguishes an “abusive” person or relationship from one that is “uncaring”, and you haven’t articulated it. It seems like a distinction without a difference to me, and I can’t figure out why you feel like it’s important to know if someone is an “asshole” or an “abuser”. I am not being coy or setting up a gotcha. I just don’t get what the one term implies to you that the other doesn’t, and why it matters.
IMO, we aren’t being productive because we are arguing about what is abusive behavior and what is just not caring or being an asshole.
In the original story that started this thread, there was a description of the guy asking when she could have sex again after her ectopic pregnancy. I don’t consider that abusive, but others seem to find it abusive behavior. It’s just a guy who doesn’t actually care about the woman and just wants sex. I also don’t consider only wanting to have a sex with a person abusive, but it seems some people DO find that abusive. I’m trying to understand that. I’m not trying to “win” or anything. I’m not trying to change your mind. Reading people’s opinion on things like this is interesting to me, that’s all.
What’s abusive in that particular case is the asking her doctor, in front of her mother, when he can use her again. That’s humiliating. It’s literally the lowest status a woman can have --she’s an object not worthy of love or respect, and he’s exposed her shame to her mother and doctor. She’s worth so little that he doesn’t even need to pretend any different in front of both her mother, whose opinion probably matters to her, and her doctor, who is a respected stranger.
But more broadly, abuse isn’t about any one action: it’s about a pattern of toxic behaviors that erode a person’s sense of agency and worth until they are incapable of resistance. One of the most effective techniques of abusers is to get hyper-defensive about individual instances and force the target to accept the rationalization for what happened that one time–and to then to feel guilty for making a “big deal” out of it. They then use this submission to browbeat and humiliate the target into accepting all the other instances as acceptable as well.
I have probably done asshole things in my marriage that were not abusive, but that I would consider abusive if they were part of a larger context of constant humiliation and submission.
Does that illuminate anything?
Because he doesn’t actually care. Not caring is not abuse.
It does, actually, thanks!
One, how can you be so sure that he isn’t intending to humiliate?
Two, does it matter? I mean, if a man fucks a woman when she’s dry and and it causes her horrible pain, does it matter if he enjoyed hurting her or if he just doesn’t care? At some point, you can’t willfully ignore the pain you are causing and say it’s okay because it wasn’t your intent.
Not sure. But how does asking that humiliate her? If anything, it humiliates himself, by showing people he is a jerk.