I don’t want to give any details, but holy shit, one of the mildest-mannered and good-natured people I know is with a roaring bitch.
And the funny thing is that she said to us, on more than one occasion, “you know everyone (his friends, my family & friends) thinks he’s super nice, but he’s really mean and he only shows that side of him to me”
Of course, the plural of anecdote is not data, but I have seen this sort of pattern before.
Questions for you guys:
[ul]
[li]Is this common, in your experience?[/li][li]Is the converse also common (nice girls ending up with roaring jerks)? I assume yes.[/li][li]Is there a name for her condition, regarding the fact that she thinks the guy is a “master at deceiving everyone in the world into thinking that he is super nice, when in fact he is mean and only exhibits that trait when only she is around”?[/li][/ul]
Why are you so sure she isn’t telling the truth? I have been surprised in my life by finding out that guys who can seem very mld and nice have crazy dark sides. One of my wife’s sisters is going through some scary stuff right now with her estranged husband - a guy I’ve known for over 20 years and never saw as anything but passive and mild. One thing I know about people is that you never really know about people. You also can’t know what really goes on in a marriage without being in it.
I should have mentioned in the OP that there is a tiny possibility that she is telling the truth, in theory.
However, given her behavior towards her husband when we are there, and given her behavior towards everyone else during our get-togethers, I think it is highly unlikely that he’s the bad guy.
I think she knows, to some degree, that she is the “bad guy”, and on a subconscious level created the “he’s actually secretly very mean” story to be able to live with herself.
The problem you face here is if the condition really is common, you’re going to get plenty of replies from people who think they’re the nice people and the other person wasnt, when the reverse is the case.
Without more info its hard to say much. As pointed out, public and private behaviour can vary a lot in either direction, particularly when drugs and alcohol or domestic violence are involved.
Most likely if there is any lying going on, its fairly conscious, ‘conditions’ may be involved as part of the story, eg antisocial or borderline personality disorder, but are not required.
That may be true if I were asking if this was true of your own relationships. I’m just asking if you’ve seen this in your friends.
Also, I don’t want to get hung up on the “one person in the relationship thinks the other is secretly mean”
What I wanted people to share was the prevalence of nice guys ending up with very difficult women (and nice women ending up with very difficult men), as experienced from the behavior exhibited at friendly get-togethers.
How often have you come back from a get-together with friends and thought “Oh my God, why is he/she with her/him?”
This - a former friend was married to a guy that seemed totally easy going, down to earth, etc.
Before I knew them he had beaten her so badly she had been hospitalized and he had been in jail for a (very) short time. He attended court mandated therapy/anger management which I assume accounts for his seemingly passive exterior.
FWIW, she was a raging bitch to him too, but I guess he kind of had it coming. I mean, if you kick the crap out of someone, you shouldn’t be surprised if they’re kind of a bag, ya know? Should they have been married? Probably not. But there you go.
I’ve seen this many times – in fact, a few of my female friends and their husbands fit the scenario quite nicely.
I wouldn’t call them roaring bitches, though. Assertive? Oh, yes, definitely. There’s a difference.
My theory? Have no idea if it’s true, but I wouldn’t be surprised if their husbands were raised by very strong, opinionated women. Perhaps they nagged (as some mothers do), perhaps they called all the shots, especially if they were SAHMs. They grew up with that, so in a maybe not-so-strange way they married a woman who possesses similar qualities.
This belongs in another thread but: Why do women stay with men that beat them so hard that the woman needs to be hospitalized and the man goes to jail?
Dunno. She had/has many, um, issues, which is why she’s a former friend (too much drama for me). However, I can say that they’re still together, have a couple of kids and seem to be doing ok. I think the anger management/counseling thing actually worked for him, but who knows.
ETA - anyhow, my point was - nobody really knows what someone is like in a relationship unless they’re in the relationship with them. Maybe your ‘nice guy’ friend actually is quite a douche to her, and she’s just more vocal about it.
Maybe he’s super nice and she’s a roaring bitch, but gives great head so he figures its worth it.
Like I said - who knows. All I know is in my experience, most ‘nice guys’ aren’t actually that nice.
I am a “nice guy” who is actually nice. I almost never raise my voice and I absolutely never resort to violence.
My wife, while not a “roaring bitch,” is a strong, opinionated person. I could see why someone of a similar ilk might not get along with her–there’s only enough room for one person to dictate where a couple goes to eat, what they do, etc. Which also isn’t to say she bosses me around, but I’m pretty easygoing, so if she has a preference I’m usually amenable to letting her have it.
Possibly she’s so controlling and possessive that she must possess and control not just him, but also the image he holds for his family and friends.
Possibly he’s not really submissive, just emotionally inarticulate, and like many such people he responds to her dominant signals not as a challenge/request to match her energy level, but as prima facie dominance; so he submitts because that’s the only way he knows to show his love.
I suggest that the next time you three are together, ask “so when is the little bugger coming home?” and set off the big, final battle.
I can totally see that a more easy-going person would find it easier to tolerate someone who tended towards extremes–both fantastically dedicated and fantastically control-freakish, or whatever.
I see this with my husband and his friends. He’s extremely laid back, so he’s totally willing to be friends with people that have 1 good trait and 5 annoying ones: he enjoys the good traits and lets the annoying stuff roll off his back. I am MUCH less tolerant by nature, but try to remember that he shows a similar tolerance toward me, so I have to accept the package. Though I don’t think I’m a roaring bitch!
Context probably also matters. People don’t marry (or at least, don’t stay married) to the other person’s public persona. And who they are in private may be very different. Someone with social anxiety may come across as bossy or bitchy in public but be fine in private.
Yes, all the time. Especially, I see men who keep repeating this relationship over and over again. They’re picking bitches because bitches are attractive them. Until they understand and deal with that, they won’t stop.
IMHO: Instinctively, men tend to want to be a dominant “alpha male”, while women instinctively desire such males. But exactly what a “alpha male” actually is seems much more personal/cultural. Rather the same way we have an instinct for language in general; but not specifically for English, Russian, etc. Instinct in humans tends to provide the psychological/intellectual framework not the details.
When a male and female both share the same destructive/unhealthy definition of “alpha male”, you get the kind of unhealthy relationships you are talking about. Which is one reason why the kind of woman you are describing tends to find another abusive man even if the first is jailed or killed; part of the problem is her taste for such men.
I would say that sometimes, the BQ (bitch quotient) develops over time. A local couple here for instance. I’ve known them for over 10 years, and she has had a very steady slide into what I now consider to be a full blown rage disorder.
He’s a ‘good ole boy’ rural type, and there are times when I am around them I have to leave because she is so vile. I have no idea what has caused her progression into this, she has a nicer house, and is ‘comfortably’ well off. But, Gawd, what a foul mouth, and what a hair trigger temper. If I was closer friends (unlikely now, I am keeping my distance) I would approach her (remaining) friends and discuss an intervention.
No idea what all this rage is a symptom of, this does not seem like depression or OCD to me. Also, since there never seems to be a ‘nice’ person in her (she can and does go off at the slightest affront, real or perceived, every time) I think we can rule out mood swings, she is always primed to be in a bad one.
I don’t like using the ‘b word’, but she is exhibit A.