Annoying or dangerous?
Find a Conversation
| Thu, 07-28-2005 - 3:35pm |
This is a question I never thought I'd have to ask. Is this abuse or just incredibly childish behavior? My boyfriend tends to rough house a lot and more often then not he goes way beyond just goofing around with it and pushes things to the limit. He's never broken a bone although bruises on my arms or legs aren't unusual. For his job he's had formal training in defensive techniques designed to incapacitate your attacker and he (for lack of better terminology) jokes around with these techniques sometimes. Many of these moves call for hyper extending joints of your opponent and that seems to be his favorite. The worst is when he goes for either my wrists or my shoulders because these joints are weak to begin with due to a previous injury. When it's my wrists or my shoulders that get hurt I usually am in pain for the rest of the day from it.
He always seems like he's just kidding around when he does it but he will do something like this sometimes completely out of the blue. If I tell him that something hurt he will usually make a joke about it. I actually set him down about a month ago and told him flat out that I wanted him to stop or at least be more careful about and for about a month he was great about all of it. Recently, though, he's started rough housing again and going too far.
I'm seriously starting to wonder if this is some form of passive aggressive abuse. Is there such a thing as passive aggressive abuse?

Hi and welcome -
Passive-aggressive abuse.
CL-Blueliner4
DANGEROUS and not to be allowed. You are not there for him to use for practice. One time would have been enough for me to be out the door. Listen to Blue, she knows what she is saying. Be safe,
Luv, Sherry
ITA with blue & slockhart. This is very active abuse. He's hurting you because he chooses to. You have told him he's hurting you and that you have been injured before. That's all a person of normal intelligence needs. It is his responsibility and only legitimate choice to STOP. Instead he's deliberately toying with the possibility of damaging your body. Please take care of yourself. Be safe. Read the material on safety planning on the homepage, clear your history, and don't tell him you're hanging out here. This kind of deliberate physical torture scares me. The time may come when bruises and dislocations no longer satisy him.
Keep us posted, saydar. The caring and support on these boards is hard to believe.
Wow, you were right cl-blueliner4! At least I think you are - I had just never realized before. I read through the check list you suggested and I started to realize that there was a lot more going on than I had thought of. I guess it's been difficult to notice because he's not really blatant about a lot of what he does (like the joking around way of hurting me).
What hglucky said about her ex is right on the mark with this guy. Just this morning he was complaining how disappointed he was that there was only one call for back up last night and it was cancelled before he arrived on scene so he didn't get any "fun". Actually, what first got me thinking that this might actually be an abusive relationship was one night he was roughhousing with me and I made some joke about domestic abuse. He laughed at me and said something like "with what I do for a living, who do you really think they would believe?"
I've also heard the "this is who I am" excuse from him for things like this. When he says little things that put me down and I point it out his excuse is that he's just being honest and he's not the type of person to sugar coat things. Is there any way to try to get people like this to change? I've asked him before to go to therapy about other things but he's refused saying that it's a waste of time.
First let me say thank you to everyone for their quick responses and plethora of information. I've read over much of the websites and links that you directed me to and I am amazed at things that I had never believed was abuse before. What I mean by that is: things in our relationship that upset me but when I told him about it he would find a way to turn it around on me such as - I was just too sensitive or I'm just trying to cause a fight because he is being honest.
I went to the link for Traits Of An Abusive Personality.
http://messageboards.ivillage.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=iv-rldomesting&msg=148.1&ctx=4194304
I was able to identify 19 characteristics that are listed here that are a normal part of our relationship. According to the list after 7 characteristics crisis intervention is needed.
Thank you all for the validity that you gave to how I have been feeling. I really thought that I was just going kind of crazy but I'm glad to see that might not be the case.
Saydar,
You have a real jerk on your hands.
Now it's up to you to either get rid of him for good or put up with it.
I think you'll make the right choice. All the girls here are right...
Elyse