To think that most abusive people have a better life than average

[Hobnobwithtea]

I was thinking about this last night and I can thing of several examples of people who have been abusive / bullies and yet they seem to live a good life :

1. My best friends parents were and still are horrible but they have plenty of friends, money etc
2. I’ve had bosses who have been vile (mainly to others but I have been on receiving end ) but still hold a high position / are successful in their career
3. I have two ex boyfriends who were emotionally and financially abusive but both are now with lovely women living a very comfortable life
4. I have lovely friends who have never hurt anyone and yet have had misfortune either with jobs, relationships, finances or all of these.

I’ve yet to see karma in existence and I struggle to make sense of why this is so I’m interested to know what other people think ?

Yes tea for the win!

I agree they don’t care. And they are so lacking in self-awareness that I’m not sure they know or care if they are happy or not.

*@TeaForTheWin** - I think there's some truth in what you say. The nastiest people I know are the most popular. They do have an energy to them, I suppose. And they demand attention. they seem to attract people who love to watch from the sidelines while they act out the grand dramas of their lives.

@TeaForTheWin is right that their bad behaviour is normalised. Madonna wa sin the paper this week saying how Harvey Weinstein got away with it because everyone said, 'Oh that's Harvey, that's just what he's like.' So new people on set were programmed to just tolerate it.

Hmm - that's MN's brilliant new improved @ system screwing up. That first comment was for @Hobnobs which is what I typed in.

In a book I was reading recently they talked about how linked superiority complexes are to inferiority complexes. It was interesting.
My x is impervious but also, constantly needing to prove to himself that he's better than I am. A decade on he still needs to score points off me. He has a lovely house, car, new partner, qualifications, income.......... but he still needs to 'win'. People are competition to him. People are comrades to me. (Albert Adler).
I honestly pity him if I think about him. He was abusive to me for years and I've changed so much and he hasn't changed at all. We all only get one life and he's spent his caught up in appearances, managed entirely by his ego and his narcissistic injuries. When I left him I had nothing but debts and dependents. Time passes. My life has changed a lot. Nothing extraordinary but it's real. All the people in my life know me and accept me. He is still trying to get his way by guilting people and controlling their perception of him.

I wouldnt call that a better life than average. It's a far worse life than average.

Exactly - people who push others around and are used to getting their own way can't really be happy can they? However their actions make other people unhappy as well and there is the rub.

So do these people bully others because they have a secure and nice lifestyle and feel they are untouchable or do they end up with a nice lifestyle and valuable possessions because of their bullying ways with others? Interesting

Psychopaths are reportedly quite common in the higher reaches of business and the super-wealthy oligarchs
because they have the right characterics - ruthlessness especially - to succeed

their actions make other people unhappy as well Competitive people see this aspect of their behaviour as another win. They can't see they are also harming themselves.
If you see everyone else as a competitor you learn to despise other people, you can trust no one and have no relationships or community.

Bullying is an evolutionary advantage. All animals with a social hierarchy have some who bully. Because it pays off.

My hypothesis: entitlement. They believe they deserve it. And a self fulfilling prophecy kicks in. The confidence is interpreted as competance, they go ruthlessly after what they want and because they dont consider/arent bothered the effect on other people they usually keep going where others would stop.

Sadly many bullies do prosper but many non bullies do too. As someone who was bullied i feel i have been disadvantaged by it but tbh i am happy with who i am to a certain extent. It means i don't like people very much ...but i'm fine with that!

Agree with both TeafortheWin and Ronsters.

I've noticed that people like that have different priorities. Money and visible wealth in the form of possessions are important to them.

To the rest of us, the really important things in life are love, happiness, family, friends, and good health. You can't buy any of those. And anything else is just stuff.

They’re always ok. Because they just don’t think like us. I would worry if I hurt someone. They just don’t care.
And there is no such thing as karma. Sadly

My former step-dad does not have a nice life so I don’t think this is always the case at all. He is in his early fifties and owns nothing, still lives with his parents and still spends his life at the pub. He’s a miserable old man now by all accounts and I’m glad.

I'm sure there's some truth in what you say, but there are ways and ways to be abusive, and reasons and reasons for it. My ex was a horrible bully, but crippled with self-loathing and had a totally defeatist attitude to life. He was reasonably successful in what he did (music) and had plenty of fawning fans, but was frighteningly embittered by not being a super successful millionaire in spite of being, as he considered, the most brilliant musician ever to have graced the planet. He was always full of bluster about how "if he wanted to" he could write a totally anthemic song that would define generations and be at number one for years, but would never "sell out" like that. This wasn't true at all - he made great music but could only do it how he did it, and instead of being gratified that he found a reasonable degree of fame and success with that, he was furious at the world for the fact that his type of music wasn't mainstream.

Anyway - he lost a lot of friends and girlfriends by being a bully, and because of his attitude, this was always Everyone Being Totally Mean And Unfair so just got more and more angry. He's now married with a baby and has apparently calmed down a lot, so I assume he finally grew up and realised he couldn't have any quality of life whilst being a bully.

I think sometimes abusive people prosper because they are not weighed down by the reservations most of us have around abusing other people or behaving unethically.

For example, in my current line of work (internet business) I've seen businesspeople do unethical and exploitative things that resulted in a lot of profit for them in the short term.

Also abusive people are often good at presenting a front to the entire world, and are very motivated to do this because they care so much about their image. People who are emotionally more 'normal' (shall we say) will often show more vulnerability. Abusive people are invested in their life appearing 'perfect' because that's all they have. Underneath their relationships are often very poor.

I come from an abusive family.

I think there are people who will just take what they can-everything they can-in all aspects of life, and sometimes that plays out materially as well as emotionally.

My personal experience with abusive people is that mostly they were either successful or beneficiaries, financially.

But they are also never happy, whatever they have. My father has no friends, at all, he cannot keep them. They always left. I can't properly describe the sorts of things he does engage with, it would out me big-time. But it's all based on complaining.

There's a definite correlation between people with means and the propensity to control, micromanage, etc. But the last abusive person I had the misfortune to align myself with, had nothing and would never amount to anything.

The clincher for me is this: can you think of any abusive, bullying person that you've met, with whom you would swap places?

No I wouldn't because I could not live with myself treating people that way. But yes I swap and have their good jobs and greater material wealth.

There you go Jenny. Exactly what I said ‘karma’ has already played out as ultimately they are the shit person they are. Who’d want that!

My father got his comeuppance.

He was very abusive and a real snob. His alcohol problems got worse, he lost his business.

They got worse again and his sister had to find him and take him back to her home town where he lived in a flat owned by his nephew. He didn't treat the flat well owing to his alcohol issues so was eventually thrown out and lived out his years in a little council bungalow.

He never had another relationship.

At 70 he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and had 12-18 months of extremely horrible illness, apparently looked like a skeleton at the end and would have died quite a painful death. He arranged to be cremated with no funeral (no one would have gone).

Couldn't have happened to a better person!

Manipulative people learn how to get their way with non manipulative people. They learn that others don't see them coming, don't realise that they're lying, don't question them. They know that it's easier for them to get their own way than it is for gentle people to confront them.

Imagine a situation where there's a bully bullying a gentle person. Other people who could help don't want to be hurt themselves. It's far easier to tell a gentle person to do anything (shut up, put up, whatever) than to properly confront a nasty person.

So, the bully's path is cleared.