Damaged men

IIRC, the boy grows up thinking the field will be his. Then when he takes possession of it, there are people on the land! Doing their own thing! Those people should get the fuck off my land, thinks they boy. How dare they have lives and houses and livestock that I haven't said could be there?

The "people" in the parable being the abused partner's own thoughts and needs and desires. Abusers are incensed by their partner's needs: the partner is supposed to be there for the abuser's benefit, in the abuser's mind. None of this separate-entity-in-her-own-right nonsense. Hence why I theorise it stems from poorly experienced maternal separation.

Anniegetyourgun, I haven't read St Lundy. Are you able to do a quick precis of the boy and the field parable?

HotDamn, that makes it sound like abusiveness is innate in (some? most?) men, and that there is little we, as mothers, can do.

I don't think it's innate, no. Just that a poorly experienced separation will breed this resentment more in men than in women. But I don't think all separations are traumatic: at the time that child becomes conscious of separateness, if s/he experiences that mother - although separate - continues to care for and support him/her, this will foster the child's sense of self-worth and healthy independence.

The people I know who have become abusive to their partners in adulthood all experienced separation trauma of some kind: neglectful mother, death of mother, or birth of hated sibling, during the key years.

How the child experiences the trauma is down to the individual child, and his individual circumstances, too. (For example, not all children will count the birth of a sibling as a trauma they never recover from. But I have no clue whether that is down to the child's nature, or how his carers handle the event.)

Just wanted to add that I don't think male tendency to control or abuse is in any way innate! I do believe boys (perhaps even more now than say 20 or 30 years ago, depressingly) are conditioned through societal messages that to be a "proper man" you have to be aggressive, competitive, a bit slippery and conniving and whatever you do, be nothing at all like a girl. These messages also discourage boys from taking responsibility for their own actions. Bundle it all together, especially for a lad who's experienced abuse or neglect and it's not looking good.

However, parents and other adults in a child's life can make that crucial difference, can provide the counter balance to all those messages trying to pull boys and men to be something that I don't believe for a minute comes naturally to them. I don't think it's impossible to unlearn what is effectively learned behaviour at any stage in life. The tricky thing can be whether there is enough of an incentive for many men to do so. If anything, they may feel they are having to "give up" something to be a different kind of man (e.g. power, control, sex, entitlement, most male friends who'll think you've gone soft and stupid, etc.) But, it's not impossible.

Lots of good insights in Hot Damn's post.

I think children of both sexes can have challenging, often traumatic experiences in early life and later on that will affect how the relate to other human beings. There experiences may be different because they are boys or girls both to do with social conditioning and differing risks of certain phenomenon for boys and girls (e.g. sexual abuse 6 times more likely for girls, physical abuse more likely for boys.)

How they internalise the experience, try to make sense of it (or not) and how it influences their later relationships can also vary between the genders. In simplest terms, girls and women tend to internalise the bad experiences, feeling they were somehow to blame, often punishing themselves in some way like self-harming, alcohol or drug use, eating disorders. Boys tend to externalise the experience, someone else is to blame for the pain they've suffered so they have to get one back by hurting someone else (e.g. getting into fights, aggressive and anti-social behaviour, offending, etc.)

So if two people bring this conditioning to a male-female relationships, you can kind of see where it's likely to go.

On one hand, it can be beneficial to try and understand why another person has done something that has hurt you. It can be harder to just accept that sometimes "shit happens," particularly when the shit came from someone you loved, respected and trusted and felt loved, trusted and respected you.

But, and it's a big BUT, there's also the risk that women will seek to understand unacceptable, abusive and controlling behaviour from men as a way of effectively excusing it. There are shelves heaving in bookshops across the land, selling solutions to women in abusive, controlling relationships based on the idea that if they just understood their men, just adjusted their thinking and behaviour to take account of what their men are feeling, all would be sunny in the garden. That really sucks because frankly, it don't work like that and when it doesn't work, women are likely to blame themselves (again) because they didn't "do it right."

Sometimes, it's really best to just accept that something is rather than try to unpick it to the nth degree, seeing an answer, an understanding that may just not be there at all. It can take up alot of valuable time, energy and creativity in that pursuit - resources that women can better use getting on their feet and moving forward.

Saint Lundy of Bancroft is good on this. His parable about the boy who was brought up to believe he owned a field, whilst not the same as your theory, HotDAMN, complements it quite well I think.

Posted too soon: forgot to say that my theory concerns instances when the separation goes badly: why it may breed lifelong resentment of women in men, more than it does in women. Not every child's separation from his or her mother.

Then there are all the social influences - promoting male aggression, and the view of women as domestic appliances - which of course contribute to the abuser's self-justification.

Here's one of my theories. Completely unscientific, of course.

Children have a really, really hard time accepting that they are separate from their mothers; that she is not an extension of themselves who will always provide warmth and comfort and nurture.

Abusive people treat their partners like the partners are extensions of themselves, to move about as will, and who must provide comfort (however the abusive person defines that comfort) OR ELSE.

Men are abusive more often than women, because since they themselves are not women, their resentment of their mothers seethes on, subconsciously encompassing resentment of all women, including their partners.

Women are abusive less often than men, because since they themselves are women, they can project themselves in the role of mother who must one day separate from her child, and accept their own separation from their own mother more easily.