Abuse is everywhere

[Eastwestt]

Cheating, lying, financial abuse, emotional abuse etc is so common, I’m actually shocked to come across any relationship that doesn’t feature abuse.

Not sure why I’m posting. It’s just something I have very depressingly realised lately.

Friends, colleagues, relatives etc - the experiences are countless. From all walks of life. Including my own experiences of men too.

Well no not every relationship is abusive 🙄

I think official statistic is 1:4 women are in an abusive relationship as victim
1:10 men
One thing that I find interesting is that the verbal abuse associated with domestic chores, eyerolling and derision when men are asked to shape up is DA .
I wonder how many women would be subject to verbal abuse if they stopped doing all the CC, domestic stuff?
Probable 3:4

There is a lot of it about. I sometimes take the long view to try to understand it.

Until 1994, the right for a husband to abuse his wife was written into the marriage contract in the UK, as there was no such crime as marital rape. Essentially a wife had signed away her right to bodily autonomy if her husband wanted "sex", because that was his right.

Financial abuse has only recently become a crime - before then it could have been defended as just a part of traditional marriage. A few decades before that, financial control was enshrined in law, as a woman needed her husband's agreement to get financial products like a mortgage.

Police never used to take domestic violence seriously in the slightest, it was seen as a private matter. I think this has finally changed somewhat.

Violence against children was normal and even encouraged at school until the 80s (90s for private schools). Many adults around now were beaten as children, and told it was normal and for their own good.

We've only very recently developed a common language to describe emotional abuse and abusive dynamics.

So, thankfully things have improved somewhat in the past few decades, but for many centuries previous, relationship abuse was considered normal and even a positive thing.

There are some interesting writings about "breaking the cycle" from Jung and others who follow his path. The idea being that abuse has been passed down from generation to generation for so long, that we need to actively work towards breaking that cycle of abuse to ensure future personal and societal happiness.

@MarnieMarnie
I'm stunned at your naivety!!!

Statistically you will definitely have friends or family members in abusive relationships.
Nobody knew I was and to this day people talk about what 'a wonderful man' my ex was.
I chose to keep my awful relationship private, many many others do the same.

I work in social care and the many women (and yes, I know men are abused too but I've only ever supported female victims) tell me that nobody knows how bad their relationship.

People with your attitude really don't help, let me guess you're from a 'naice' family with 'naice' friends who aren't touched by such things?

This is exactly why so many people prefer to live on their own, even if they struggle financially.

@MarnieMarnie also very stunned by your blinkered view.

I know quite a few relationships where the dynamics are definitely ‘off’ but the people in them would say everything is rosy.

if you’re talking about physically abusive, then I’d say I don’t know anyone in my immediately family who has been a victim of DV, but I now see many of my uncles for what they were- sexist, controlling ( financially and emotionally) to my lovely aunts. My own dad - while in many ways a doting husband and father- has also been very emotionally abusive and a bully with my mum, me and my siblings.

I think we are less likely to see it in our immediate circles because we can’t believe that any of our friends or family can be capable of it.

and as @otherwayup notes, there’s an attitude among some that it only happens in lower class families. I know one person who see herself as upper middle class who was bitching about all the DV that goes on among poor people. Ironically, her DH is abusive to the point that her neighbors reported him to the police

I agree it's often hidden.
My F was vile.
Street Angel House Devil
They can charm the birds out of the trees if they are in public.
Behind closed doors he was vicious, violent and emotionally abusive.
If I hadn't witnessed it I wouldn't believe how that " nice old man" behaved.

I'll admit I used to be in the "my Dave would never do that to me" camp. But after he left me with no warning, made me out to be the villain of the piece, gaslit the hell out of me and has potentially shacked up with someone young enough to be his daughter, I will never trust a man again.

but if you think about that 1:4 statistic, what that means is that 3 in 4 don't experience DA, hence it is a minority experience, albeit that's far too many

I think there is some truth in this OP.

However nearly all in my case have been women.

Narcissistic mother.

Psychopath female manager at work (I was the victim and a massive battle ensued where I was smeared and attacked in my community too; I won though) (if you can call it a victory, I barely can)

A narcissistic female friend and a borderline friend.

Some nasty female bullies at my various office jobs.

(There was a short term boyfriend who was into deviant sex - glad I got out of that one but also sorry I played the “cool girl” going along with alot with it).

But most men have been more or less fine if casual or commitment phobic, just as lost as me mostly (which wasn’t great for me of course).

There is so much online now for the young and naive to help protect themselves and that’s a good thing.

And sometimes MN wise women who say to younger or more naïve or vulnerable (for whatever reason) women - you don’t have to go along with or accept that.

I'm not in an abusive relationship

Thing is, you don't really know that about your friends.

I'm the opposite. My ex h was abusive, as was my dad. My mum's dad was abusive to her, her step granddad was a dreadful man. I have a couple of friends supposedly happily married but the husband is somehow not quite as nice as he seems.

My neighbours one side of me the husband is horrible to his wife, the other side she divorced a verbally cruel man, who she had got together with after going out with a bloke who burnt her with cigarettes. I live in a decent neighbourhood.

My step sister's husband puts her down regularly and when she was on maternity she got into debt because she had to survive on mat. pay whilst he earns £100k+.

My half sisters' mum physiacally abused them all through their childhoods.

Abuse is rife!

I found out, upon finally managing to leave my ex husband, that several of my friends have used this as a catalyst to come forward to me (in private) to air out their own marriage problems, with what has turned out to be abusive husbands.

I had a fairly good guess beforehand but I didn't know it was so bad, for one in particular. I'd say there's a LOT of hidden terrible behaviour behind closed doors, in seemingly normal, good and ok marriages.

I agree. It makes sense. But in a conventional context it also means uncertain support and also relative poverty.

I don't agree with that statistic though.
Essentially many women are not in abusive relationships whilst they do most if not all CC and domestic tasks.
If they complain they are likely to be ignored, belittled or " have a row"
This is emotional abuse.
It's then " my ex was crazy"
No she just wanted you to do your share 🤔

I think it's far higher than 1:4

I think you're spot on here. With such recent changes, and a long history of acceptance, it'll take a while to change things.

When I was a teenager in the 80s we all knew the local bobby beat up his wife, but it was seen as one of those things. Attitudes can take time to shift.

I started working with victims of domestic abuse more than 15 years ago, it made me look at all of the relationships around me differently. There is so much inherent misogyny in the world, women are rarely truly equal in any setting

I understand why you might feel that way, OP, but truly it isn't.

Very eloquent and well written.

Possibly why, I think, unless a man was going to go all out and worship and genuinely “see” me and love me (in a realistic way if that makes sense, and of course reciprocated!), then the game wasn’t worth the candle. So I’m still single!

I think there's something like confirmation bias as well
I know for a fact my relationship is not abusive but I don't go round telling people this, and as PPs have said it's often hidden and in no way confined to certain groups of people.
If you believe that 'most' men are abusive, that's close to believing it's somehow natural for them and they can't help it.
I'm saying bullshit, they do it out of choice and know very well it's wrong.

Just to add
All the women in my family except me are or have been in violent abusive marriages,going back as far as I can .
The men are violent abusers, they, the men and the women have all been abused by their fathers and so it goes on.
Mothers enabled
I stopped the generational trauma by refusing to allow my own 3 DC to be in contact with my violent F.
This meant my whole family turned against me.
Best thing I have ever done

Also - it’s at work, it’s in families. In that sense everywhere. And of course women can be nasty and abusive. At least in romantic / partner relationships one has more of a choice. But I think MN is very focused on romantic partner relationships.

Yes I’ve just had a BT engineer tell me how lovely my 83 year old mother is and how he’d love to take her out for breakfast 😮 . Very charming.

Street devil, house angel indeed.