I would assume that he’d been aggressive in the past. If, via a magic ball, I knew that he’d never been aggressive, I’d think “WTF?” I wonder what his reaction was. If a woman was afraid of me purely because I was practicing martial arts it’d freak me out.
Assuming his behavior hadn’t changed and she felt safe before, that sounds bizarre. There have been two times in my relationship that my SO was angry enough with me I thought he wanted to hit me (in calmer times he said that wasn’t the case), and I was a little scared at the time, but I’d never stick around in a relationship where I consistently didn’t feel safe.
If her husband hasn’t changed then I can’t imagine what her problem is.
There is not enough background information to form a valid opinion. On the one hand, if you’re in a relationship that makes you feel physicaly threatened, then it’s time to leave. However, she could have been joking or even just a nut case. (I dated a woman once who seemed to feel physically threatened by every single person she encountered, bar none.)
Melon voiced my opinion succinctly enough, that I don’t feel a need to otherwise comment.
Or she is just a manipulative former human bowling ball who just wants some attention. There is no way to know based on the information given. She could have been slamming him into walls and killing his former pets before he decided to grow a pair and lose some weight in a healthy way before he gets another girl and leaves her. She gave circumstantial evidence in an accusatory way just like lots of people do.
Anyone can make passive accusations but some females just through it out there as a weapon to plant mental evidence for later use that isn’t deserved. I am not saying it happened in this case but that is the point, I don’t know, and nobody except them doesn’t either. However, there is an extreme societal and legal bias that some females can use if they want anytime a man displays an aggressive tendency. Good forbid he chose outdoor sports. There could be an expose of knives and guns appearing around the house.
The fact remains, if there is a real threat that she knows about, she needs to needs to stop talking to the media and let those club feet do the walking.
I dated a guy for a short while who was getting into MMA. He maybe had some anger issues with his dad who’d abandoned the family years and years earlier, but he never seemed like an angry guy or ever gave the slightest impression that he wanted to kick anyone’s ass. He just really liked MMA as a form of exercise because it was intense. In fact, he lost a ton of weight by doing it - which was his goal.
He’s still into MMA and is married and has step kids. He’s probably super stress-free from going in and getting his ass kicked a few times a week.
I can see a woman (or man) who has had a violent partner in the past projecting onto their current partner at times, regardless of what the current partner is doing. That person has a responsibility to not let their past experiences ruin their current life, though, and recognize that their response is more about them than their partner.
My husband coaches baseball - I’ve lost count of how many baseball bats we have in the house. 
Her statement does sound weird to me. Someone starting to participate in a violent sport isn’t necessarily going to get violent at home.
I would assume some of this:
Mixed with some of this:
And, if I were feeling more pessimistic than I am currently, Shagnasty’s second paragraph seems possible to me, as well.
Granted, I did kickboxing and muay thai while i was growing up, and am looking forward to being able to pick it back up when I’ve got the financial leeway, so my opinion is hardly unbiased.
Again, assuming there was no indication that the man might get violent, I’d say she was being ridiculous. Hell, he might’ve been able to slap the heck out of her before he started doing martial arts - but he never did. Him learning martial arts (which, the way I understand it, is more about discipline than kicking butt) should make absolutely no difference.
Well… there was something of an indication in the fact that she made the remark. I understand you mean “no corroborating evidence whatsoever” of her apparent fear. But then, would there be, this is a weight loss show, I doubt they’re pulling police records and arrest reports between visits to the contestants.
Thus, it seems to me, we have the following:
(1) An odd remark that suggests the husband has behaved aggressively towards the wife
(2) No apparent problematic behavior has been documented by the show. The husband knows he is appearing on national television when the show’s cameras are around
(3) No real knowledge of what goes on during the months that the show’s cameras are absent.
Thus, the weight of this evidence, to me, suggests that the wife should be asked about why she so nervous, has the husband threatened her in any way (and if so, how) for voicing her opinion, etc. etc.
It may very well be a joke in poor taste or an attempt to make her husband look bad—although I think the face-value explanation is probably more likely, I’m afraid.
But what I really wanted to add is that these threads are so much more interesting as Rorschach tests of SDMB posters than they are as amateur detective hour.
I have never seen the show, and have no idea of the context in which it was said, but “You study martial art X? I better not mess with you” ranks up there with “Have you ever had to use it?” as something people commonly say.
I can’t see why she would be more afraid of him after four months of MMA training than before.
If either or both of them loses significant amounts of weight, it is going to change their relationship - for better, for worse, or (most likely) both. Maybe that is part of what she is afraid of.
Regards,
Shodan
My first reaction upon hearing that someone’s husband is learning MMA is that the wife should feel more safe.
Either the wife has a problem with feeling safe around her husband and doesn’t want him to learn MMA, or she has a problem with him losing so much weight that she made up an excuse to hate MMA.
My first reaction is that she’s an idiot.
Seriously, if my wife decided to become a hair stylist, I wouldn’t be afraid to go to sleep when she’s mad. She could cut my hair while I’m sleeping before she was a stylist, she could certainly do it afterward too.
ETA: My reaction is assuming she has not been abused by anyone previously.
Well, she could cut something anyway, a la bad Thai relationships.
Like Kimmy_Gibbler, I enjoy these threads more for their Rorschach value than anything else. I was going to mention that idea if she hadn’t.
The fact Kimmy’s Rorschach reading is that somebody should investigate to find the probable abusive history is itself telling.
My take? Strictly speaking, there’s way too little evidence to offer any conclusions. Anything from he’s certain to kill her next week to she’s a certifiable paranoid schizophrenic are possiblities.
People are funny about fighting skills though.
My wife teaches / coaches boxing. Not pro, but not arm-waving aerobic “Tae bo” (sp?) either. The real thing for folks (almost all men) who want to mix it up with gloves but without headgear. The only way you get to coaching this stuff is to have done it a bunch.
Almost without fail, when somebody hears about her activities, say somebody we meet at a party, they’ll immediately say something like “You better watch yourself & *always *take out the trash.” (to me), or “I hope you don’t practice at home.” (to her). Any conversation about how unusual it is for a small 50+ y/o motherly-looking sort to be a success in that role comes much later, if at all.
Apparently in most folks’ minds, martial sports are primarily for use in domestic combat.
The woman on the TV show is probably trotting out the same tired thought that seems to be sitting dormant in 90+% of peoples’ heads.
And that’s *my *Rorschach reading based on *my *experiences in the genre.
Not a male Doper, but one thing I thought of (unlikely, I’ll admit): Wikipedia says that Mixed Martial Arts is a combat sport. Could he be taking artifical hormones or similar to increase muscle builds? In some sports - mostly body-building and weight-lifting - the majority (up to 90% in some survey, I think Men’s Health or similar magazin) of amateurs take anabolika, often from the black market, believing it increases their performance and muscle building. And steroids/ anabolika used in excess have been shown to increase aggressive tendencies not present before.
On the other hand, if his goal is weight loss, and TV is following him around, I think that’s unlikely.
Still, it sounds possible to me - and at the beginning I was biased towards doing martial arts, because I did Jiu-Jitsu myself - that by taking up an aggressive combat sport, not the philosophy/ workout-oriented traditional martial arts, that his trainer/ team mates are encouraging the husband to become more assertive/ aggressive - to win a competition, you need to activly get aggressive and attack the opponent. Passivly just defending yourself won’t win points (which is why citing tournaments like these as proof that self-defense doesn’t work is a false comparision, but that’s another issue).
So maybe his training did change parts of his personality, maken more prominent what was hidden before. And esp. if both are cranky because of the stress of weight loss and dieting, this new side would be more visible than before, both when the husband is cranky, and when the wife is cranky and causes a reaction from him in kind.
(that’s mixed MARTIAL arts. not marshall arts)
Maybe they’ve mistaken them for marital sports.
Back when I was engaged to my future ex-wife, she pulled out the “I’m afraid of you” card a couple of times. I had never given her any cause to fear me and never would, so it was a shot in the heart to me. I immediately said, each time, that I needed to end our relationship then, because I would not be with someone who feared me. Each time she went into a panic, saying “No, don’t break up with me” and swearing that she knew that I wasn’t doing anything to make her afraid of me, that it was her problem, that she needed to work on it, blah, blah, blah. Like every other promise she made, this was pure bullshit.
When we went to Marriage Counselling, she pulled it out again. I repeated that I needed to end the relationship, and she did a big breakdown, swearing again that this was HER problem, not mine. Of course, the she pulled out several other “blame Chimera” cards to explain why she feared me. (Hey, the fact that I was abused as a child is NOT an excuse for you to fear me or declare me a potential abuser.)
HOWEVER, when I finally had her removed from the house under the Order For Protection and she filed false charges against me, she stated in those charges that she had been “living in fear” of me since February 2002. The month SHE INSISTED on moving into my house. I never asked her, had never brought it up, she just declared that she was moving into my house and I stupidly let her. Never got into court to ask how come she moved into my house when she was “living in fear” of me, or why she refused my every offer or statement about ending our relationship over this alleged fear.
Of course, she was pulling all this fear bullshit while she was actively battering ME, so it was really a cover to have cause to make charges against me while throwing a smoke screen across her own violence.
So when I hear things like this now, I don’t think “he’s dangerous”, I think “Well, he might be dangerous, or there may be something else going on there, but she may be playing the martyr game like (ex-wife)”.
My take is passive-aggressive made-for-TV manufactured drama on her part. Given the physical description of them in this thread (I’ve never seen this show), it doesn’t seem to me that him studying martial arts would make him any more of a threat than before. I mean, they had a foot and a hundred-pound difference between them; if he wanted to beat on her, he certainly didn’t need martial arts training to do so.