A divorced friend has been using Match.com to try to meet someone new. She has been on it for 6 months and while there has been no shortage of guys to talk to, there hasn’t been any chemistry with any of them… until recently. She met this wonderful guy who is everything she is looking for: intelligent, witty, opinionated yet open-minded, thoughtful, doesn’t live too far away, attractive (to her tastes at least), also a parent, shares similar attitudes about everything from religion to sex - and he seems to be just as crazy about her. They have been on a few dates. The last one was at his house. She noticed on the way out of his house that there was a hole in the basement door that was about the right size and height to have been kicked in (cheap hollow core door made out of paneling). She asks “What happened? Was someone rather upset?” jokingly, not expecting that it was true. The guy made a very uncomfortable face, and nodded yes. The subject was dropped as she was already late to get home and relieve the babysitter.
Now she is worried that he might be prone to domestic abuse. What would you make of a hole kicked in a door? What do you suggest she does?
She should be careful. That being said I think it is entirely plausible that he was just upset with himself while hea was at home and somethimes you just feel like hitting or breaking soemthing when you are that frustrated or mad. He might have just kicked the door because it was an inantimate object.
Christ. She’s being a bit of an alarmist in my opinion. There are a million reasons a person could have a hole in the wall. Maybe it wasn’t even him who created the hole!
That’s really stretching it, IMO, to think that a hole in a door is a possible indication of an abuser. She’d do better to watch how he treats her, other people, children, and animals to see if he’s prone to abusing those he believes are “helpless.” (Obviously at the first sign that he has any violent tendencies, she should run like hell.)
He admits he was the one who damaged the door. He had also stated in a discussion about parenting that he has done some things in anger that he regrets. Still, if he had done something that bad to his 15 year old son with ADHD, he wouldn’t have him every other weekend. Yet his son had lived with him full time up until 18 months ago.
Are you speaking from experience? It is my understanding from reading domestic violence and anger management websites that indications of abusers is more about people who get upset when they don’t get their way rather than taking advantage of the helpless. Issues of control are what to watch for - wanting to know where she is every minute, trying to separate her from her family and friends - according to them. If it were just the helpless part, she wouldn’t have to worry as he has two cats that adore him.
But that stuff about controlling and missed expectations is just what I have read. If you have first hand experience, I would like to hear more about it.
Another thing the sites say is that people who inflict domestic violence often have Jekyll and Hyde type personalities, where they can be terribly sweet and wonderful some of the time, but then change gears when they are upset. If it were that obvious by someone’s behavior all the time, no one would marry abusers, now would they? People who purpetrate domestic violence are usually just people who have not learned to express their anger in constructive ways, not evil villains or psychotics. They can seem normal in all other respects. They come from all walks of life.
I would suggest that your friend be wary with anyone she met online, or otherwise, for that matter. I don’t think that a hole in the wall that he admits to having made when he was angry warrants the assumption that he may be an abuser (I recently kicked a hole in our plastic trashcan) - in fact, it seems as though she might be jumping to conclusions; however, when dating anyone new, your friend should exercise extreme caution, and run in the opposite direction if he does exhibit even slightly abusive behavior.
She should be careful and keep her wits about her. Don’t drop the guy because of this only.
How does he treat people who serve him? Retail workers, waiters, anyone he tips. Is he courteous or is he rude and ignores them as people doing him a service?
That’s always been a good indicator of true personality to me.
Thank you, overlyverbose. I guess that is part of this question - how common is it for normal people to damage inanimate objects in fits of anger? I can say my own father and my ex-husband were both known to do so, but they never let their anger out on people. I know in their cases, one did not equal the other at least. I don’t think she is jumping to conclusions - just trying to be wary and do the right thing, as you suggest. I guess he has felt “too good to be true” and she couldn’t help wondering if this was the skeleton in the closet. I don’t have any first hand experience in this area either, so I wasn’t much of a help one way or another. So we have turned to the SDMB for the level-headed answer.
That’s a good one **FilmGeek ** - very true in lots of respects. I had to call and ask her. He was well-mannered and polite, and left a good tip. He wasn’t going to win customer of the day award, just politely average. One of the times they went out, the chef made him the wrong thing (it was supposed to be a 1/2 pound burger but was only a 1/4 pound burger with the wrong toppings). He asked my friend what she thought he should do. She suggested they tell the waitress so the bill reflected what happened, but not send it back. He agreed, and did so calmly. He wasn’t at all irritable about it.
Not to sidetrack my own thread, but I have been out with the kind who are rude to the help - boy is that embarrassing, and it usually is a fairly good indication of their level of selfishness…
Dating can be a scary thing - yeah, it’s fun, but you can invest a lot in a relationship, and finding out that he wasn’t worth it is never a good feeling. I’ve done it myself (in my case, the guy was an abuser), and I felt really betrayed. I don’t blame you or your friend for being wary - I’d feel the same way.
Good luck to her, and I hope that her guy is as good as he seems.
Yep, that’s a good description of me. I’m prone to the occasional outburst but I keep any resulting damage to inanimate objects. I would never hurt anyone (or anything) I love.
My boyfriend has punched walls a couple of times in his life. He also carefully captures any insects that get into the house and gently places them outside. When we went camping, I had to make him promise to squish any mosquitoes that got into the tent rather than releasing them.
I don’t think that door-kicking or wall-punching by itself means anything. Random destruction of household objects might be a stronger warning sign, but I feel like someone kicking a door would probably not be expecting to actually do any damage to it.
There is a broken door in my house. My teenage daughter kicked it in in a fit of anger with her boyfriend. Doors are fair game, in my opinion, heads are not.
Thanks so far for the examples, everyone. It helps.
Thank you for the well wishes overlyverbose I will pass them on. I hope I am not snooping too much, but as someone who has been there and done that, how long did it take until the truth surfaced in your case? Looking back, were there any signs you might have missed prior to whatever convinced you? Was it a terrible drama to get away?
I’m another door kicker, pillow puncher, floor stomper. I find it amazingly cathartic, I’ve never damaged anything beyond repair and it usually makes me much calmer and able to handle the situation that upset me in the first place. It would never occur to me to hit or abuse someone I loved.
That being said, my father was emotionally and mentally abusive and used to hit wall and slam doors hard enough to make dents in the wall. As a child it was terrifying and psychologially damaging. He’s a jack a$$ so he didn’t seem to feel bad about it. But a nice guy not prone to such actions might feel guilty for doing something similar in front of his children and scaring them. This could be why he’s embarrassed about the hole in the door or what he’s referring to when he mentions “things done in anger he regrets”
Basically, I’m with everyone else. It doesn’t hurt to keep an eye out for negative signs, but this alone does not an abuser make.
Back when my ex-wife and I were getting a divorce, about twenty years ago, I was over at her (our, grrr ;)) house picking up some stuff and visiting my kids. It was a hot day and all the windows and doord were open, and I was outside yakking with the kiddies. I looked up at the kitchen window and saw my ex, who promptly flipped me off. We used to do that all the time so it was no big thing.
Well, I headed to the front door and about half way there the door shut. I instantly got pissed, reared back, and kicked the door open. There she stood three feet away and with eyes as big as saucers, holding a glass of iced tea she had fixed for me.
The wind had shut the door. It wasn’t even locked.
Shit!
In our ten years together I never abused her.
Sometimes people just have little fits, and it don’t mean nuttin’.
Your friend should check the guy out, sure, but not toss him for just the door.
Peace,
mangeorge
Actually, I was in high school at the time. I was too young and too stupid to think beyond, “Oh, but I’m in love. And he loves me. He doesn’t mean to be mean.” My first clue that he was abusive was when he threw me into a locker during a basketball game at our high school. I made a dumb joke at his expense in front of some friends, and he went from sweet to furious in a second. He gave me a concussion. But he apologized and started crying and such, and I forgave him then and nearly every time something like that happened after that point. It was about a year into our relationship, and I stayed with him five years. I really wish I had told someone - I thought I was all alone and didn’t even realize that my parents and teachers would have helped me through it. And it’s hard to leave someone when you know they’ll make good on their promises to beat the shit out of you, so why should you disbelieve them when they say they’ll kill you?
Anyway, I didn’t get the courage to break up with him until my sophmore year in college. Fortunately, we went to college in different states. He threatened to come get me, and actually showed up at my dorm a few times, but my friends had him thrown out. It was really traumatic to break ties with him. I was terrified, and it took me years to get move on from that relationship.
Fortunately, I sought counselling, and my husband and I have been together for a little under 4 and 1/2 years (we began dating about 4 1/2 years ago - just got married in April). If you were to ask me if there’s anything I wish I had done, I’d have to say that I wish I had told someone, anyone, what was going on as soon as I got that concussion. I was on varsity volleyball for about three years and often got bruises and other injuries, so all my wounds were pretty easily explained away. I know that anyone I had told would have been thinking more clearly than me and could have helped me more than I could have helped myself.
As for any other warning signs, well, he was very good at hiding his true self. He was a really big guy - 6’2" and 250 pounds to my then 5’9" and 135 pounds, but he was always quiet, meek, and polite to everyone. In fact, the guy who plays Norman Bates reminds me a lot of his personality. Huh. Go figure. :rolleyes:
