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.

What is being missed is a precursor crime of coercive control, which often means there is no physical violence but that stronger party, invariably a man, does not hit or strike a woman or child, but creates a constant condition of fear around elements in the home, often domestic tasks.

The above is actually the one bit of law, and the statutory definition of domestic abuse, which is making a difference: the law now recognizes a person within a relationship can exert control to the point of inflicting psychological harm.

We have moved on from the police ignoring matters because no one got hit.

Of course they don't start off abusive or no woman will go near them.
They often lovebomb, are the perfect man and will test a woman's boundaries early on.
Example
Woman says she can't see him, has stuff to do.
He turns up anyway, flowers or other OTT gesture
Ignoring her boundaries ,making it all about him and oh he is so " nice" she can't put her foot down .
This is a 🚩
He will continue to be nice and perfect until she is either married or pregnant then it really ramps up.
Often men become very nasty if they want to leave
It can't be his fault so he is unpleasant to provoke a reaction or invents stuff she has done .
Cue " my crazy ex"
See The Script -all cheating men follow this 🙄

According to certain studies, it has been observed that coercive behaviour in relationships is somewhat ubiquitous, with almost 53% of men having been subjected to bullying or controlling behaviour by their partners. This indicates that men and women seem to be equally abusive towards each other, suggesting that the only form of equality achieved between the sexes is abusive behaviour.

What does that bullying behaviour look like?

Telling him to do his share of the dishes, cleaning etc?
Asking him to pick his clothes up off the floor?
It sounds like the stop nagging argument to me.
Pick your shit up then!

what “Studies”?

The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) year ending March 2023 shows the following trends.

• An estimated 1.4 million women and 751,000 men aged 16 years and over experienced domestic abuse in the last year; a prevalence rate of approximately 5.7% of women and 3.2% of men.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/domesticabusevictimcharacteristicsenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2023

Often perpetrators of abuse will deliberately trigger their partner into reacting to their abusive behaviour.

Abusers use it as manipulative tactic to shift blame away from themselves by claiming abuse is 2 sided , it's called " reactive abuse " i think ..

I think you have a point here, but not sure it’s the dark triad traits of manipulation and abuse that women find attractive.

its the other traits that go along with it that are attractive:

self confidence- many of these types are very charismatic at first. They are interesting people to be around and are often popular with friends and acquaintances. We all find confidence attractive- whether in romantic or social relationships.

Charm- these types often come across as ‘good listeners’ who really understand you and at first offer support. They are often in caring professions too.

This is way off the truth and completely wrong.

https://refuge.org.uk/what-is-domestic-abuse/the-facts/

93% of defendants in domestic abuse cases are men.

84% of victims are women. ( we can surmise from these figures that there’s a fair amount of domestic abuse in male same sex couples)

I also don’t believe that bullying is 50/50 in relationships. While we can’t measure this as it’s not a crime in itself, the more serious crimes can give us an indication of how it’s weighted- as assault and murder can be seen as the most extreme forms of bullying in this context.

2 women a week are killed by their partners. According to the charity, Mankind, For men, it’s one man every 3 weeks. ( but no statistic if this is male or female partners)

3 women a week die by suicide.

@Missamyp / it can be a crime, depending on intent. A man does not have to hit. He can control by fear alone, with small violent episodes. The law now sees this crime. A good thing too, imo

@bombastix i think what is frustrating is that the bar needs to be very high and the behaviour pretty severe for these non physical offences to be proven in court.

my ex was arrested for harassment but it didn’t meet the threshold for criminal conviction- though the police said it was right on the edge.

The ones who hit their partners are the easiest to catch.

Yes I agree. It's very difficult. Look at the conversation here. Even if the law does provide these protections, it has to be recognised, evidenced and pushed through.

Most men in prison disclose they had violent,abusive fathers. They go to prison and have a stark choice of adopting more violence or being beaten by other men in a similar way. Relationships with children in where the woman does not leave sets boys up often to exert a toxic revenge against his future partners. The perception is his mother was weak, his partner is weak, and then he beats his own boy to toughen him up against what he sees as a woman's failure. That is one abusive man.

The other never encounters prison because he inflicts psychological harm, and he is very difficult to spot. He gets satisfaction from controlling everyone in his house, but he too will have had an abusive parent. He is socially acceptable because he smiles at parties and makes polite conversation. And he only loses his temper a bit. He is the Everyman, high standards, a bit fussy but probably charming.

It is absolutely a dominance of male conduct, based on physical strength: I do think there is so much more to do in acknowledging this as a society.

Completely agree.
This is likely men reporting violence and abusive behaviour that constitutes DARVO
A well known tactic with abusive men
Remember they can never be wrong " she's crazy"
Also crime that is reported as she which is due to gender identity .
The British courts and judges are well aware of DARVO and that's why a recent well known celeb lost his case in a British Court but won in the US.

If you analyse the data even briefly we can conclude that 4x as many women as men report being victims. However, only 10% of male victims of Domestic Abuse report their abuse to the police, compared to 29% of women.

Here's a research review:-political stakeholder bias is absent.
https://equi-law.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/bi-directionally_violent_couples.pdf
Another article.
https://www.psychreg.org/women-perpetrate-domestic-violence-in-self-defence/

Telling someone to pick their shit up is hardly conducive to a stable partnership.
🙄

Exactly!
No woman ever wants to have to remind a grown adult to basically behave like an adult

Relationships with children in where the woman does not leave sets boys up often to exert a toxic revenge against his future partners
Excellent point
It sets girls up to be vulnerable to future abuse also

It also sets up lateral violence amongst siblings, probably the most under reported form of abuse.

Well fortunately even the law is a bit more sophisticated on this and looks at harm, actual or intended, and motive.

That is an equal test. The issue is that some men like to construe this as meaning they are the same as s woman. But physically that is not true; the quality of the actions and the person matter.

The majority of men understand that their strength can intimidate as well as protect: but the abusive man says "you are the same", "look what you made me do" and denies it. The argument of equality gives him mental permission to do what he likes. And it is a pretty good warning early on that he is not relationship material if you having thst "debate".

With all due respect @Missamyp I have no idea who you are and where you are getting this information you are waving around with, but your "statistic" is absolute bulshit! There is no way that men and women are equally abused in a relationship, in any country, in any continent, it is impossible and that is what you are claiming.

Not an assumption! Proven over and over again by clear and unequivocal evidence. Men are far more likely to be abusive and violent than women!

Not an assumption! Proven over and over again by clear and unequivocal evidence. Men are far more likely to be abusive and violent than women!

Men are certainly more violent and overtly controlling. Women are generally abusive in more subtle but nonetheless highly damaging ways.

Thanks @bombastix @Iamnocook and others for interesting replies and thoughts on how and why men abuse.

I'm nearly 50 and am only now starting to see trends across a large majority of the men I have encountered in my life. They are mostly abusive at some level - from baseline male self absorption through to low level emotional abuse, on to (only recently) legally recognised emotional abuse and coercive control and on up to full on violence.

There are indeed many warning signs but I was never educated on them. My last ex exhibited many of the sort of behaviours that, at the time, seemed reasonable or even sweet, but in hindsight made it obvious he had 'issues' which underpinned his eventual emotionally abusive behaviour.

No matter what, where or when women have a conversation about men and the ongoing, indisputable inequality between the sexes, the much higher prevalence of criminal behaviour in men, the world problems perpetrated by men (violence, abuse, war, etc etc), there will always ALWAYS be someone along to make the case that all these things are just as much women's fault as men's. Similar to the theory that if an internet thread goes on long enough someone will mention the holocaust or call another poster a Nazi. Such people are just best ignored.

Truly shocking statistics and I wonder how many murders are commited arround the world that never see the light of day in a courtroom.

I quite like the uneven playing field analagy although I don't think it goes quite far enough. Another pp said rather sucinctly that power creates abuse and it does, reasoning, fairness and mercy of a stronger sex does not happen naturally, in many cases it has to be enforced. Men have no idea of the power they have enjoyed and expected through the generations, education has been slow to protect women.

Why should men learn, why must women be the ones to constantly break barriers of shame to make the male species understand that many behaviours are cruel and akin to slavery.
We are taught to find a mate to provide and protect and many, many times this turns out to be the worst possible avenue but women are told that this is expected from your choices, there is no room for error and little sympathy for ending up with a cruel entitled bully.
It looks imposible to change when those who are in power are the abusers, why would men want any less from women, many men use, and feel wholly entitled to do so.

The law of the jungle will always win, strength eliminates the weak.

The only answer I can see is to separate the sexes, through protection of women, more money, resources, a different solution to just isolation for the female and her offspring when seperation has occured, often making the female feel she is somehow to blame.

In an abused female's Utopia, what would I like to happen, for their to be communities whereby women chose to live alongside other women, in homes and areas which are segregated without men, and yes, some women, are that damaged whereby they feel they could live without another male in their lives.

Along those lines.

The key thing is education, because I agree; women don't pass this down to their girls.

I have sometimes found men much more accurate and clear about what makes a man abusive; they are more critical than women and less forgiving, particularly on overt violence or displays of aggression. They know what this means well because male violence is generally on men first. Men are statistically more likely to be attacked than women. They understand it and the signs better than women because of that.

This debate some men put forward is revealing, re equality when the strength disparity is massive.

Women should not read this as an interesting debate imo, but attitude. The man is communicating to you something pretty clearly. Walk away from them. It is sometimes boundary pushing or testing, particularly if you do not know a man well.

This will probably be phrased clumsily but here goes...

Statistics of 1 in 4 do not mean that out of every 4 friends/relatives, 1 of you will be in an abusive relationship. It's an average across all of society. I don't think it's holier-than-thou (as a PP suggested) to say that some people are much less likely to be abused than others. Financial vulnerability, no family ties, no community ties, abuse in the past etc would all up your risk considerably. So I think it is actually very likely that in some families there is close to 0 abuse and in other families its close to 100%.

It's similar with something like homelessness. I am not exaggerating by saying it is virtually impossible for me to ever end up homeless. Not because I'm oh-so-wonderful, but because there are a good 15 homes of various siblings/aunts/cousins etc that I could stay in before ending up on the street. So basically we would all have to end up homeless simultaneously, otherwise we'd all have somewhere to stay if worst came to worst.

I am very thankful that I grew up in a safe home with 0 abuse. That fact alone makes me less likely to be in a long-term abusive romantic relationship, although obviously there is still a risk. Everyone should remain vigilant (my granny always told us growing up of the importance of having 'running away' money just in case), but looking around my social circle I don't think I'm being naive in thinking we've all got quite safe/stable homes.