If Your Man Knew What to Say, Here’s What He Might Say If He Knew You Feared His Potential For Violence...
Excerpted from Warren Farrell's Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say.
(Permission to reprint granted by Warren Farrell.)
See www.warrenfarrell.com
and
www.warrenfarrell.info.
Psychological Abuse
When lesbian abuse is studied, psychological abuse is often considered as important as physical abuse.91 Studies of heterosexuals, though, have noticeably avoided psychological abuse. Psychological abuse comes up only when the evidence is clear that the sexes physically abuse equally;
then
the first response is, “when women abuse men physically it’s because men have abused women psychologically first.”
Why have we been so hesitant to study psychological abuse among heterosexuals? Was it because we sensed all along that women are more likely to use psychology to abuse men because that’s their strength and men’s weakness? Were we afraid to explore anything that might make men look less guilty (“the men were also abused”) or force women to take responsibility (“the women were also abusers”)? If that was not the reason, why is it that psychological abuse is suddenly so important when women (as in the lesbian community) are its victims, or when a woman is the perpetrator of physical abuse?
Now that we know that men are abused at least as much, though, it will be easier to study the entire abuse
system
– male
and
female, psychological
and
physical.
What little we do know about heterosexual psychological abuse seems to indicate that the sexes swear and insult each other about equally, and that women threaten men with violence more. One study is from New Zealand, and the other is unpublished raw data from the University of New Hampshire’s Family Research Lab.92
A few men have said to me, “And women manipulate us psychologically by crying more.” The New Zealand study did verify that women cry more during conflicts, 55% vs. 16%,93 but I do not personally feel that all crying can be called manipulative and, therefore, psychological abuse. That is, many men do feel manipulated by a crying woman, but that does not necessarily mean that the woman intended manipulation.
In my own observation of the sexes over three decades, I find women and men psychologically abuse each other in different ways. Men are more likely to disappear at work, disappear into a project in the garage, or disappear into a bottle; to withdraw behind a newspaper or in front of the TV; to become addicted to sports or to gambling. Women are more likely to shop and spend, nag and manipulate, or withdraw from sex or into a romance novel. Contrary to popular opinion, both are about equally likely to have affairs. Both sexes employ forms of power intended to compensate for feelings of powerlessness. Both sexes experience Pyrrhic victories.
“My Partner Knows Just Which Buttons To Push”
Perhaps the most Pyrrhic victory is “pushing our partner’s buttons.” Spouse abuse is usually preceded by a pattern of unwanted dialogue that is nevertheless repeated.94 Think about “unwanted” and “repeated.” Meaning both sexes know they are escalating their partner’s anger, but continue to do it anyway. Do some people on some level need to verbally batter more than they need to avoid being physically battered?
Yes. Why? Words contain more potential for rejecting us than being hit. The old saw should be, For “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names
can break my heart.”
For some people physical battering allows them to express themselves without doing as much damage as they would with words.
Which is why the solution is reworking the entire system of communicating criticism. Then we can focus not on abuse and victims, but on ways of using disagreements as opportunities to deepen our compassion and therefore our love.
92
The New Zealand study by Magdol, et. al., “Gender Differences in Partner Violence in a Birth Cohort of 21-Year-Olds,” op. cit., found that women were more likely to insult or swear: 67% vs. 53%. The New Hampshire study, from the 1992 National Alcohol and Family Violence Survey and based on a nationwide probability sample of 1970 cases (with a 4X Hispanic over-sample and the data weighted accordingly) was conducted by Dr. Glenda Kaufman Kantor of the Family Research Lab (University of New Hampshire). Raw data printout provided by Dr. Jana L. Jasinski (New Hampshire: Family Research Laboratory, July 8, 1996). It found 11% of the women threatened to hit or throw something at the man; 8% of the men threatened to hit or throw something at the women; 46% of the women insulted or swore at the men; 45% of the men insulted or swore at the women.
94
Linda M. Harris, Ph.D. and Ali R. Sadeghi, “Realizing: How Facts are Created in Human Interaction,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Vol. 4, 1987, pp. 481-495. She found this true not only of spouse abuse, but of sibling abuse and abuse between generations.
