To want my husband to take up a martial art to develop his confidence?

[fleeceyjumper]

Basically my husband is a very timid, anxious, scared person. He was bullied as a child. If he sees a group of teenage boys walking towards him, for example, he will want to cross the road. They are not doing anything other than being your average somewhat rowdy teenage boys.

This has come more to a head lately because I come from a minority ethnicity, and lately there have been local news reports of people of my ethnicity being racially abused. I feel like if push came to shove, I would not be able to rely on him at all to back me up. I don’t say this as a sexist thing, like as in a man-up thing, I think we should feel like we have each other’s backs. But I know I can’t rely on him if I needed it. I don’t expect him to start throwing down or anything like that, but just to not be so timid and frightened all of the time. I’m only 155cm meanwhile he’s 180cm and muscley, yet when we go out it’s me who is making him feel safe rather than me feeling safer with him with me. It’s stressful for me.

I want him to do something to build his confidence so that he is not so afraid, and I thought a martial art would help him. Would I be unreasonable to try to get him to do this? I’m willing to go with him to support him. Do you think this would help him?

Look up the Gray Man books by Matthew Dermody. Gray Man is the philosophy of not drawing attention to yourself as a form of self defence.

Martial arts isn't great against street fighters. You have to train long and hard to be really good. It is more difficult as you age. We were taught blackbelt meant you were now a beginner ready to understand the art.

Getting away is the first thing taught to children in lessons.

Sparring is a different beast and not everyone is suited to it emotionally. It can be intimidating.

However, I think taking classes together is a great idea regardless. It does help with confidence in general.

You can use it to protect yourself

My husband is a black belt in karate as are his children.

His daughter was able to use her karate when she was groped.

You should both try karate. It is an amazing skill to have.

My husbands teacher was was able to use his karate when he was attacked. The police didn't do anything to him.

I think as long as you're willing to learn it too it won't do any harm.

But I will say, some people are slapless. They might run into a burning building to save their loved one, or leap in front of a bullet, but they will never be able to deal with physical confrontation.

It is also probably true that men who are confident to get involved physically are more likely to get stabbed than ones who back down.

Which martial art do they do?

All my step children who are black belts in karate say that they feel much safer.

One of my step sons is below average height and he says that his skills mean that he isn't intimidated by bigger guys.

It also meant that he wasn't bullied at school and that he could protect his friend who was being bullied.

'Very timid' doesn't sound like an attractive trait at all in a man. Nor does crossing the road to avoid some teenagers.

Not sure if a martial art is the answer but I'm not sure I'd want to be with someone like this tbh

Agree with the consensus that if you want to feel he has your back and can protect you then the best things he can learn are how to de-escalate situations and how to get away from them.

It's highly unlikely that he (or most people) would ever be a match in a fight with someone who really wanted to do you violent harm.

Building up his confidence should be an entirely separate matter to a hypothetical fist-fight and depends mostly on whether he wants to tackle it and what kind of thing he thinks will help. If he's interested in taking up a martial art by all means go for it.

One person or a male/female couple doesn’t stand a chance against a group. No amount of self-defence classes are going to alter those odds.

I did martial arts for years and met many people from all walks of life. I'd suggest he tries CBT to help him make peace with his past, for his own benefit firstly.
I'd also suggest both of you try a martial art. Taekwondo has become popular recently. It would help with many aspects, his confidence, making friends or atleast realising not everyone is an idiot. I was maybe lucky in my groups but we all supported eachother like a mini family.
And I 100% would use my skills as a black belt on someone in the street to protect myself. Even though it would work against me in court if I use unnecessary force, due to my training.

My view is, you should avoid fighting if you can, but if you can't, well, what's that saying... Better to be a soldier in a field, than a farmer in a war. Something like that. I'm fully confident in myself in a fight with a man as they're who I trained against but not under any illusion that someone with greater body strength has the upper hand if I don't move first and fast. They should teach you self defense techniques like for example with a baseball bat, don't avoid it but get closer etc. i think it's always a good thing to know how to disarm/manipulate someone with a knife/weapon. But if he's not confident, he's got no chance.

But the main thing is, you never know what the other person is carrying if it comes to being physical. It's awful that anyone should do this, but keep a spray in your bag. Hairspray or something that will sting their eyes to give you a chance to avoid further conflict.
100% if he's ready to, he should seek therapy regardless of anything else.

It isn't. IMO Aikido is not particularly useful for self defence as it is too difficult for the average person to master. People who take martial arts for self defence purposes would benefit from a simpler approach.
I have tried most of them and found kickboxing to be the simplest and most confidence building.
It's not true that all martial arts classes teach you never to use the techniques outside the class. You're taught you can use them for defence but not for offence. So please ignore that prohibition about not using them outside of class and go ahead and sign up. Ask your h if he wants to sign up too, but be aware that it won't make him somebody he is not. As you say, it might at least boost his confidence and you can both get some exercise in.

Op I actually agree with you, I recently took up boxing. I am gym fit and more recently I've been doing intensive strength training. I realised I was actually sorting of jacked when I won an arm wrestle against a fit younger man, and surprised us both. I decided to take up boxing after that. There is nothing quite as empowering as actually knowing your own strength. Martial arts are pretty useless outside of their chosen arena. They are a sport, designed for competing against fellow sports people following the same set of rules. Outside of that specific environment they aren't particularly applicable. Suggest he joins a boxing gym instead, you don't have to spar unless you want to.

Boxing is both a marital art and a sport and is not inherently more effective outside the gym than any of the others. How effective any skill is depends on the person and the situation.
The difference between traditional boxing and most other martial arts is that boxing does not involve kicking. Since most women tend to have good lower body strength relative to our low upper body strength, skill at kicking is an advantage for women, a way of somewhat evening up the odds. I doubt it's that much of an advantage for men.

I'm sorry, was the OP asking you to date her husband or something? 🤔

This is one of the stupidest responses I've ever heard. It shows a profound lack of understanding of either fighting or sport. It actually sounds like something spouted by those defuncted personal trainers run useless self defence classes, that do little more than make the person attending them feel better and offer no real world use.

I was a professional ballet dancer for years before I was too old to do it any more. It involved a lot (I mean truly a lot) of strength in my legs. It involved an enormous amount of balance. It involves huge amounts of discipline and practice every day for many hours. The strength and skills I learned would be completely redundant in any form of physical altercation. In fact being on one leg (even to issue a kick) puts you in one of the weakest positions and makes you incredibly vulnerable in a fight. If you go down, you're fucked. If somebody grabs your legs, you're fucked. If you're doing anything on one leg in a fight you have already lost.

If you use Google and search 'marial arts Vs boxing fight' then look on videos. The top three results are these.

Which shows 3 martial art experts having their asses handed to them by weofully average boxers. Please fact check yourself before you spout this type of misinformation because it's dangerous for anybody to believe that their black belt in taekwondo would hold any real power against somebody who intends to beat the shit out of them, and knowsnhow to throw a punch. This is especially true for women.

I replied to you but the quote didn't take when I added links.

I agree. We all have preferences in life but a timid man isn’t one of mine, it’s rather off putting to think about.

@YaCannyKickYaGrannyInTheShin hope not! I'm not into very timid, anxious men

@Luxer I know, right?

I don't want to be mean actually. Probably shouldn't have posted that a timid man is just one big ick really and wondering what his redeeming qualities are

Your reply was needlessly nasty and had little to do with what I said, so it's just as well the quote did not appear with such an irrelevant and irrational response.
Why so defensive about different opinions? There is no fact checking because this is not about fact. It's completely subjective which martial art is more effective for what situation, because everyone is different and every situation is different.
Nor did I say anything about any marital art making one invulnerable to attackers, so spare me the straw.
Claiming some video is proof of any claim to fact is so silly that I'm embarrassed for you.
Try to keep your temper in check FFS.

This is exactly the type of response I have come to expect on here.

Call another person unfair, rude, unkind etc for disagreeing. as though that somehow grants moral supremacy to the situation.

Pretent it's an opinion when shown fact, pretend that personal acedotal life experience is absolute proof.

When shown proof deny the proof, because they can't stand anything that challenges their opinion of disproves their ill informed belief. Would rather be wrong and ignorant than corrected.

The entire response confirms my suspicion, that people who buy lessons in self defense and such things, believe that because that is what they were sold, that is what they are now capable of. It regardless of the truth.

I feel very sorry for you. I do hope you are not forced ever in a situation where these beliefs are disproven.

You’re not being mean at all, everyone has preferences and a “timid” man wouldn’t float my boat either. I’m happy to protect and stand up for myself but I wouldn’t want a man (or any other sex partner) cowering behind me.

His qualities are none of your business though.

That sort of man isn’t for me either but clearly the OP doesn’t feel the same or she wouldn’t have married him.

You are actually being mean and I think you know it.

Wow, that is one weird, intellectually dishonest, pompous and windy rant.
Then we have the old hat ploy, the disingenuous "I pity you" form of passive aggressive insult. This is right out of central casting and was considered stale twenty years ago. Perhaps you are fairly new to the internet, because I rarely see these particular manipulative tactics lately.
At any rate, a thirsty ego has obviously gotten the better of your common sense and I do not wish further communication with you.

We don't always get what we want though do we.

Your opinions are Franky ridiculous and you have embarrassed yourself with your lack of knowledge on any of the given subjects and lack of ability to be introduced to new information. You have missed the point of everything I said in the first post and continued this in the second, seemingly unable to grasp anything outside of what you want to be the truth.

Irregardless of what you consider stale my pity stands. I would be ashamed to be so maladjusted that when presented with facts, information, and places to source my own information I couldn't bare to do so for pathologic fear of being proven wrong. Perhaps you are humiliated by your incorrectness but it is more of an embarrassment to continue to be incorrect and spout dangerous and ill informed opinion.

Or perhaps you just really love teakwondo lol