I agree, it’s depressing. As someone who had to divorce my abusive ex after having a child together, I think honestly it’s for one thing simply because so many men ARE horrible, and in particular they are horrible to the women in their lives sadly. I never understood Germaine Greer saying that “women have very little idea how much men hate them” when I was younger, but I really do now. I genuinely now feel there is a large minority of men out there who would happily rape women left right and centre if society completely broke down tomorrow resulting in it being easy to achieve without fear of reprisal or consequence.
I do know it’s not all men and thankfully I have an absolutely amazing father for example. But domestic abuse isn’t happening in a vacuum. Men are in general physically superior to us, and we still live in a patriarchal society. Yes, the bar should be much higher for men in general. But I don’t know how we achieve that and certainly it will take time to dismantle the patriarchy completely. I’m trying to do my bit in raising a son who has deep respect for women and girls.
I also think that due to the patriarchy, many women are and certainly were in the past, socially conditioned to be people-pleasers, kind, caring and hospitable people who need to avoid showing anger, or any emotion or behaviour that could come under societal misogynistic concepts and tropes such as “the nag”, “the bitter shrew” etc, and in particular to put a partner’s needs and wants ahead of their own. And also that marriage is the pinnacle of achievement for a woman (I do think we’re making progress on that one but concepts like being “left on the shelf” as a “spinster” still linger, as well as the much higher frequency of young women being asked when they’re going to marry and have children compared to young men in the same settings etc. I definitely felt significant social pressure in my social circle to marry in my early 20s or be considered by mid-20s to be really risking a lifetime as a spinster etc. Which yes, I saw as a terrible fate at the time in a way I don’t necessarily nowadays.
I also think we don’t do a good enough job of educating young women in recognising domestic abuse and conversely a healthy relationship, boundary-setting etc, and we also aren’t doing a good enough job in raising young men to do better for the next generation.
This is simply the result of all of this and part of VAWG. And even if we aren’t talking about actual abuse, the rest of generally crappy behaviour in men is just the tail end of that showing.
I guess it’s also important to point out that abusive men don’t tend to show their full colours right away. Of course it’s hard to understand why OP is in this sort of relationship from the outside. But he may have started out appearing to be Mr Right and a dream come true in every way. When I married my ex, he said all the right things about women etc, treated his mother really well, my family had no concerns. Somehow we went from that to his telling our marriage counsellor (before I’d fully woken up to the reality of it being an abusive relationship) that “the problem is, that she is a feminist”. The female counsellor was like “Ummm and why is that a problem exactly?!” 🤣