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I was reading a story about a woman talking about her abusive husband who is verbally abusive to their two boys. He's not progressing as an entrepreneur as COVID wrecked his relationships with clients and he wanted to become a professional basketball player but didn't make it.
His sons play basketball and he berates them when he feels that they haven't played as well as he would've liked them to. The lady admits that one day, he took it so far and ranted at the children for an hour, only to get home and act as if nothing had happened. She mentioned how shocked she was; his behaviour went from tyrannically angry to as cool as a cucumber. She hesitated to say it but she, no doubt, is berated by him too and is terrified at the rage he has inside. He doesn't express his feelings so it's hard to communicate with him. She also mentioned how he had cheated on her earlier in their marriage too (surprise, surprise).
With that backstory in place, it makes me wonder why so many men that suffered abuse go on to perpetuate it, especially to their own family members. I've always thought that if they hated what happened to them, then they'd never want to inflict the same pain onto someone else, let alone their wife or children.
Who has insights into why this? I'd love to get everyone's thoughts on this topic.
I've almost finished reading "Why Does He do That" by Lundy Bancroft, as I've seen it recommended on FDS several times.
To summarize:
1-) Because it benefits him:
Bancroft used the example of a father having dinner with his family. It's his turn to wash the dishes, and his daughter reminds him of that. He gets angry, the rest of the family is terrified. For the next few weeks, nobody pressures the father into washing the dishes or doing other household chores. He got away from doing an unpleasant task. He displayed anger and has been rewarded for it. Why stop the cycle of abuse when it benefits him ? It's much easier than putting in actual work.
2-) Because he can get away with it:
Men are rarely held accountable for their abusive behavior in our deeply patriarchal society. Emotional abuse is rarely taken seriously. Even batterers can get away with it. Abusers know how to shift the blame, be calm and collected when facing others, while their abused partner seems emotional/understandably shaken. He can shift the blame to her and just say that she's crazy.
Basically, boys see that abuse towards women is normalized at home and more largely, in the media (including but not limited to porn) and in society. They notice how you hardly face any consequences for it, and how they can get their way by being abusive. It's a win-win situation for them. So they grow up to become abusers.
They're just garbage with a warped sense of morals, and society enables it.
It's also worth noting that not all men who grew up in abusive households become abusive, and vice-versa.
I want to add to this that the vast majority of abusive men did not have abusive childhoods. They are less likely to abuse if they were abused. (Slightly more likely to abuse if they witnessed their bio father abuse mom, specifically)
Child molesters also claim to have been abused as children. Something like 70%. When told they They would be hooked up to lie detector tests, the majority admitted to lying and only about 20% insisted they were really abused.
Men lie. Sob stories benefit them just as much as anger and violence. In my personal experience The Victim is the most common and widespread abuser.
I'll never forget a man who was trying to mirror me/bond with me about my childhood. His example of his abusive upbringing?
"We didn't go on enough vacations. And my dad tried to teach me things, instead of taking me on more fun vacations."
This man was born into wealth, never went hungry, destroyed about 3 cars before he even graduated highschool, and went on a minimum of 2, month-long each, vacations a year.
Being not quite as spoiled as he was the month before, was his example of abuse.
Another man admitted to me that he cornered all of his ex girlfriends and grabbed their hands and made them hit him. He would block their exits when they tried to leave him, and chimp out and break stuff if they tried to kick him out. He still to this day wears his victim badge loud and proud.
Look at the world-wide BoyKing problem. Male babies are cherished. Unless his childhood had a narc - scapegoat/golden child dynamic, he more than likely had a pleasant upbringing, and is lying for both attention and to dodge accountability. You know, that thing that grown men accuse female children of doing.
I think like caffeinatedkittycat said, because he can. What I can recall from Lundy's book, it doesn't matter if he was abused as a child or if he is depressed or if he experienced another tragedy, that doesn't make him become an abuser. He has learned that he can abuse without consequence, that he believes has the right to abuse.
It's also telling that he is abusing the people that are more vulnerable than him - his wife and children. Why doesn't he try to get his anger or whatever out on his boss, or other men of his same level...
My abusive ex (kicking him out of my home and all the aftermath and searching the internet for answers inadvertently led me to FDS) told me within a few weeks of us meeting that he had been sexually abused as a child.
It later became an excuse for why he was "messed up as a person" as he said. He couldn't hold a job besides for the first few months together-for almost 4 years- but always seemed to be trying, to my naive mind back then. It was always just enough to buy lots of weed and video games but not enough to pay for anything once we moved in together about 2 years in.
It escalated pretty quickly after moving in to me sleeping with a weapon scared of him after the first time he put hands on me. The emotional abuse escalated to becoming very intense as well.
I was in disbelief of how a person who had been abused could have done the same to someone else. Oh, and of course he was addicted to degrading porn, and talked to other women and admitted toward the end of things that he had only been talking with them because of the possibility of using them for sex. Mostly a few exes he had spent years each with.
He had these weird justifications for hitting me and destroying my property and for destruction of his last exes property, tons of holes in walls, dunno if he hit her too.
My last words to him were that he was no better than the person who abused him, and that coersion to have sex by telling people he cared about them and all the other ways he did it made him a sexual predator. I blocked forever after that text. Didn't even occur to me the other ways i was used back then. Financially, domestically, emotionally.
Anyway sorry for the looong explanation but what I gathered is that he felt sorry for himself for being a MAN who was abused, but that women were lesser creatures and deserved their abuse. He would say we deserve it if we are being hypocrites, if we won't stay in a room to finish an argument instead of cooling down, if we did want to finish an argument but said something that hurt his poor little abuse victim feelings by speaking up for ourselves. I was always told I took no responsibility for my actions and it made no sense to me given how I held up the whole burden of things.
And yes I love the "why does he do that" book! So much! It should be required reading for young women. as others have mentioned, it breaks it down really, really well.
I never would want to accuse someone of lying about being abused and thats why I never did accuse him of that-but I STRONGLY believe he lied about it after reading about love bombing tactics. it was just such a huge excuse he used all the time for his behavior that my instincts tell me he made it up. I do wonder how many of these men lie about being abused. The combination of that, and seeing women as lesser, is terribly toxic and how you get an abuser a lot of times I think.
Edit: forgot to mention but I think it's important to add that he accused me of being abusive before I put it together and looked up what abuse actually is. He was so good at it that he had me worried I was the abusive one! Don't remember but I think Bancrofts book mentions that tactic as well.
power. it is a concept that is also common in society at large. he who has the most power controls the narrative. coming from an abusive environment, he saw what power could do and that infuriated him so he seeks to regain power no matter what. abusing his family is a familiar and easy concept because he knows how things go except he's the one with the upper hand now. and he gets to reclaim his past and regain all the power his younger self once lost.