Our neighbors when I was a kid were Sicilian. The couple yelled at each other a LOT. I don’t know if they were spewing hatefulness, because a lot of it was in Italian…
They never yelled at their 2 girls.
The wife never said a bad word about him, even after he died.
I was told it’s because they are passionate and expressive. And we were only hearing the ‘loud’ part of their relationship.
My parents had many silent ‘arguments’. Then they’d explode. I don’t ever recall hearing what they were arguing about. And I don’t think they ever resolved anything. They went to counseling after I left home and worked out some sort of detente, but I don’t think either of them were happy.
My ex believed if we didn’t fight it meant we had a perfect marriage. She also believed it was OK to agree with something just to stop talking about it, so we had no method of conflict resolution. Because we didn’t fight, we didn’t make up, so no make up sex. The concept of it elludes me…
So 3 very different relationships - and the yellers were the happiest.
This is one of my biggest peeves about (some) relationships. I know that not everyone gets really mean and insulting when they’re mad, but it seems to me like a lot do, and I’ve never really understood it. It leaves me thinking, “if you didn’t mean it, then why did you say it, and if you meant it, then why are you still here?” It doesn’t really make sense, does it?
Lasciel pretty much nailed it.
As someone who used to be vicious…
- I’d get very offended, very quickly, and physical responses and instincts would take over.
- Hurting the other person made me feel like I’d won
- Having intimate knowledge of a person so I could inflict pain where it would most hurt made me feel superior
I certainly never meant it. Hurting people is horrible. It felt horrible. It was both animalistic and childlike. Defensive. And I don’t know where I learned it–my parents never fought, and I was rarely attacked in that manner.
Acting that way is a choice. Intimacy is about someone giving you weapons, about making themselves vulnerable, and maturity and respect are about never using those weapons.
I think this explains it for some people, some of the time.
I have experienced this phenomenon where I’ve gotten wound up and basically lost real control and some of the stuff that came out was not based on how I actually feel. It was just - oh, I don’t know - weaponry. I am reminded of the famous drunken Mel Gibson rant - I can relate. Even while it was happening, a part of me was aware that I was wound up and out of control (one voice in my head was saying, “Wow, where did that come from?”), but that’s just it - I couldn’t control it. This is why the old trope exists of counting to 10 in order to cool down before reacting/responding.
Now for myself, being aware that this can happen makes me more diligent about keeping it from happening. I think for some people they don’t care - they get wound up and let fly - over and over again and don’t think it’s something they need to work on.
I was that mean person in the relationship a few years back. The slightest upset, even if I brought it on myself, would trigger me to lash out and say some really awful things. I remember him standing there with a sad face and just saying “why are you being so mean?” It took me completely destroying that relationship to see what I was doing wrong. I never came to understand why I acted the way I did, I think I just didn’t develop the social skills to learn how to cope in a relationship with someone else. My parents divorced when I was 2, my mom wasn’t present so I never saw them fight. I didn’t know how to act in a situation of conflict, so I think I resorted to instinct. I was a quiet kid growing up, I didn’t have many friends. That relationship taught me how to interact with other people (or rather, how not to).
My most recent relationship was with someone that got mean during arguments. Somehow I stayed calm in all of it, I never got angry and resorted to name calling in return. I think if my old ways had worked for me then I would’ve, but they were a large part of what killed a relationship with a really great guy. I learned to not be that kind of person.
I think it comes down to what you learn. If your parents or peers teach you how to argue effectively, you use those tools. If they don’t, then you do whatever you know to do until you learn otherwise. Maybe some people never learn.
This. When I see that sort of behavior justified with “I was mad” my first thought is “yeah, but you didn’t say you were lying…”
Props for a quoteworthy summary. Excellent.
I haven’t been in an intimate personal relationship with a man in almost seven years. And when I was, we didn’t fight like that. I’ve never fought that way or been with anyone who did.
But I have two extremely close friends, a married couple, who do. And it blows my mind. And contrary to what someone else said here, they DO love each other, VERY much. In their particular case, I think it has a great deal to do with his issues…but I don’t want to get too far into that.
What prompted the thread was watching “August: Osage County” which I thought was excellent, but I cried for two hours afterwards thinking about the way people treat each other. I have a long list of flaws, but I’m not mean. I don’t seek to wound anyone, ever. I don’t get the whole idea of hurting someone who has hurt me in retaliation or revenge, it holds exactly zero appeal, for many reasons. Even if I don’t like them or love them or care about them at all.
What I want is not to hurt someone who has hurt me, I want them to stop hurting me and for us to understand and communicate and come away better, and striking back kinda kills that possibility.
Same here
Pending on what the person was saying and the relationship it can be true. Nobody is perfect and you can love someone despite the negative things you were making them out for.
You also don’t have to mean what you’re saying. Most people that do say very insulting things during a fight/argument are saying that to hurt the person at that moment in time and are not thinking straight.
I used to be very mean when fighting arguing with my parents and siblings. Mainly because they were (are) also very mean and manipulating. Now I don’t engage in those kind of arguments. I’ll wait till things have cooled down, either by walking away or just sit there till they’ve lost their steam.
My ex and I never fought. We had one or two semi heated arguments when we were drunk once, but immediately realised it was too stupid and pointless to carry on whilst intoxicated and apologised to each other the next day. My current girlfriend on the other hand… A few things have to chance and it’s a bit too difficult and lengthy to explain why I’m with her (yes, she is very hot but that’s not all)
What I’m thinking of is more along the lines of words that reveal that the speaker truly has little or no respect or affection for the person, not truths about the person themselves. I had a friend whose boyfriend regularly expressed contempt for her when drunk (alone and in public) and then apologized the next day. She always wrote it off to alcohol or upset, but that attitude was always there - removing his inhibitions just let them out.
I think it’s entirely possible for someone to love another person but not respect them or even like them (family life is where most people first encounter this), but it’s a huge dysfunction and ultimately unsustainable if not being miserable is of any interest to you.
A good pop-culture example was Firefly’s Mal and Inara. There’s no doubt he liked her, maybe loved her, but he had no respect for her. He always said it was her career he didn’t respect, but it was her he called a whore whenever things got rough; I didn’t find the relationship all that star-crossed and she was well out of it.
One of my favorites " You pot bellied bald headed old creep! I should have married Woody, he was a real man!" Then my dad would say, " I wished the hell you would have married Woody".
Aha yes, I know those too. Don’t understand them either.
I’ve experienced it the other way around myself; interacting and being nice to people while drunk that I absolutely loathed when sober. Don’t understand why I do that and I’m still working on hating them too while drunk 
Preach it! I put up with it for many years because I didn’t know any better. When I finally got tired of it and the other abuse I unloaded without mercy even after I had her in tears. It needed to be done, but I didn’t like it and decided that was the end of it. I gave her the divorce papers less than 12 hours later. Wife 2.0 and I are very good to each other, and while we disagree on stuff from time to time we both know if it ever gets mean, it’s over.
Exactly. My mom was like this when she’d get sufficiently angry, lashing out and saying all kind of hurtful things targeted to do damage. Then she’d apologize saying she didn’t mean any of it.
But of course she did. She didn’t say completely nonsensical, off-the-wall things to me. She didn’t call me a murderer, or something else that she obviously could not have meant because they were clearly false. She said things that directly corresponded to reality, which she knew would hurt. She absolutely did mean those things, at the time.
They were especially hurtful because they’d contradict her usual praise. Like if she told me over and over how proud she was of me, but in rare moments of anger, told me what a disappointment I was to her, well…I figured what she said in anger was the truth and all those dozens of instances of praise were empty words. So not only did being told I was a disappointment hurt, but being told she was proud of me now hurt, too, just in a different way.
My ex fought like there was a panel of judges watching and she was trying to score points. She could be mean and insulting. Living with her took a lot of self control. How far is one person supposed to be pushed? I certainly did not respond with violence. I didn’t even respond verbally like I could have. I don’t know if she realized what I could have done. I knew every little insecurity and weakness (and there were many) and I’m much quicker than her verbally. I could have destroyed her self esteem in any one of dozens of fights. Despite everything she did to me I never responded in kind. I certainly stuck up for myself but I tried to never be mean or insulting. It just isn’t right.
Why would you assume that she was only truthful when she was angry?
Because that’s when the truth comes out? I don’t know, why do people say mean shit that they do mean to the people they love, and then expect them to handwave it away?
I know it’s hard to change your viewpoint on these things, but I would really question your take on this.
Only your mother knows what’s true and what isn’t, but it’s definitely a mistake to assume that the negative statements said in anger are more true than the positive statements made at other times. It’s very easy to be angry and disappointed with someone at one moment in time and then say something hurtful that you don’t really mean. Not everyone is very good at communication and emotions can make that worse.
My father sounds a lot like your mother. If I forgot something stupid when I was a kid, like forgetting to do the dishes before he got home from work, nine times out of ten he’d ignore it. The other one time out of ten, he’d launch into a tirade about how I never helped around the house, never took responsibility for things, blah, blah, blah. Looking back, I like to think that what he really meant to say was “I just had a lousy day at work. It would have made my day much better if the dishes had been done. I’m disappointed that you let other things distract you from your responsibilities on this occasion.”
That reminds me of my old boss.
I never meant the things I said when I was mean/angry, in the sense that it didn’t matter. Hurting or embarrassing you over a fault, and then not caring at all about the fault when calm… Obviously it’s hurtful, but it’s not a secret window to the soul. It’s complicated.
Also plenty of people have told me things they mean when they’re drunk that they don’t mean when they’re sober. I always go with the sober explanation. Even if there’s truth in the drunkness, what’s the point? It’s not like they can ever act on it with any degree of sanity.
Upon preview, what dracoi is trying to say is what I’m trying to say too.