You know, I think that answer doesn’t really get to the root of it. It’s probably a fairly reasonable and true explanation, but the questions I ask are: why do they feel the need to control? And:why does the need for control manifest itself that way?
Perhaps, as was said later on in the thread, it isn’t worth spending mental energy on, but I don’t think that is the case. In many cases, it seems to me, the need for control comes from a deeply felt sense of a lack of control, one that the person feels unable to admit or express.
Agree w/ this 100%. It’s not that HE thinks she’s worthless, it’s him TELLING her she’s worthless to keep her in her place (in the abusive relationship).
If the asshole tells her she’s worthless for the 100th time, and she goes outside crying for the 100th time, and just that one time another guy strolls by and consoles her, suddenly the original asshole feels threatened. His total hold over her is being threatened by some stranger.
That’s about the time the original asshole gets a bug up his ass and feels the need to lash out at the guy who’s trying to council the poor girl out of her miserable cycle of violence.
More men dont hit, they just hit more. Indications are that women actually are more abusive in relationships, you just hear about the female victims because of the stigma attached to male to female violence.
A friend of mine tended bar for a few years and said he was constantly seeing guys starting fights with other guys for supposedly fucking their wives or girlfriends.
He said, “I don’t understand…if my wife fucked someone else, I think I’d be more angry at her than at the guy she’s fucking. What’s the point of starting a fight with the guy?”
This would explain it. It’s not really about the woman, it’s about the guy’s delusions of power.
That said Im going to join the “control” crowd here. All people feel the need to have stability and/or control in their life. The hitting is not so much an attempt to regain control as a violent outburst, a childish tantrum if you will, as a reaction to the feeling of loss of control. This violence actually adds to the loss of control and the feeling of powerlessness. Thus adding to the violence and upping the “spiral of violence”
“The bitch stepped out on me”.
Its not about regaining control its about revenging that percieved loss of control.
You’re right - and I wouldn’t dream of trying to stifle inquiry.
Point is though, that whatever was going through his mind in one situation may not have been similar to, related to or consistent with whatever was going through his mind in another situation - we should not assume there is some single, coherent underlying pattern of thought.
I dont believe there IS much thought going on. Man hitting a woman is a creature reacting to stimuli, not a cold calculating bastard trying to inflict damage.
Then maybe trying to find what stimuli sets them off might be worthwhile. Maybe it is insanity and maybe it is curable.
ETA: I just realised the following doesnt add anything but bad english to this post:
But I dont think its insanity either, unless you see insanity as a result of the inability, by either inattention by peers or mental defects in the individual, of a culture to instill its values, norms and taboos into some individuals.
And, presumably, because ales tend to be able to inflict more damage?
I think that one factor that people may be missing is that if a guy is love with a girl (or vice-versa) that gives them huge power to hurt.
A comment that might be insignificant coming from anyone else, can wound far deeper if he loves her (real love, not Disney love). This can mean that tempers can flare hotter than would otherwise would happen.
I dated and then lived with a woman who had been abused by her parents throughout her childhood. The abuse was both physical and mental.
After living with her a short time, I realized that I was acting like a battered woman, even though she never hit me or abused me in anyway. She was, however, enraged most of the time. Anything could set her off.
I would try to reason with her because most of what set her off was so small and insignificant (in my view) that I just couldn’t understand her rage. I finally realized that when she was in that place, there was no reason or logic - only the rage.
As difficult as it is to relate to the acts of these people, it’s remarkable how similar they are to us in appearance. It seems we are all capable of acts of madness and we each have different breaking points.
I think it’s a combination of two factors at work.
One is never learning that you have to control your emotions, not let your emotions control you. This is an important lesson that most people internalize as they mature. Some, not so much. That rush they feel after venting or raging or somehow releasing that emotion makes them think it’s good for them at some level. And if you’ve ever once gotten your way in this fashion, it’s not hard to see how you’d get to thinking it’s an okay life strategy. It’s not, it’s highly dysfunctional.
Secondly, it’s sort of tied into my first point but slightly different, it’s the reasoning that says, “She made me…”, that somehow someone else’s actions or words ‘makes’ you, and is responsible for, your reaction. Her actions ‘caused’ my reactions. Bad thinking, but you’d be surprised how many people use this as justification for their own bad actions.
If you’ve given yourself permission to let your emotions rage (perhaps you were modeled this behaviour in your home as a child?), and if you’ve jettisoned responsibility for your actions to the victim, (I told her to shut up, but she just kept shouting…) then you can see how these two things come together to create the kind of tragedy you’ve described.
Abusers have to have ultimate control over their abusees. It gives them a feeling of power. If they even perceive the abusee might be thinking they can do something at 3:00 if they were told to do it at 3:05, they will go off on them.
An abuser will not say “I get angry when you do that.” It’s always “You made me.” If there is a real problem, it is never their fault, nor do they want to fix it and move on. They have to prove themselves better than the abusee.
In the end, the abusee is stripped of any sense of self at all. It’s a totally parasitic relationship–I’m only alive because my abuser lets me live. I am totally dependant on them. If they act like they don’t believe this, even for a second, the abuser will figure it’s okay to kill them.
Stephen King’s Rose Madder is an excellent novel on the psychology of abusers.
Nah, in that case it’s because it’s socially acceptable to hit the woman, and it also establishes the dominance hierarchy of the primate relationship, by asserting your virility against the challenger.
The “It’s mine, I control it” thing sounds right. I guess what really got me baffled was the part about him apparently willing to risk killing another person (and probably getting the death penalty) if they didn’t tell him where she was.
Is the desire/need to control that strong in these cases that the abuser is actually willing to die for it?
I went with a cop for ten years, and the stories he told me were so maddening and sad. Usually a neighbor would call the cops, and when they got there the woman would be black and blue, bleeding and crying. The guy would be scratched and maybe hit a little, and the first words out of his month would be “Look what that fucking bitch did to me.”
One such creature had been punching his pregnant wife in the stomach. When she tried to defend herself and the baby, he literally picked her up and smashed her head (and stomach) first into the wall. He started hitting the cop when he was being handcuffed.