Annoying or dangerous?

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-16-2004
Annoying or dangerous?
8
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?

dreaming of becoming a mommy blinkie

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-12-2003
Thu, 07-28-2005 - 3:43pm

Hi and welcome -


Passive-aggressive abuse.

CL-Blueliner4

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-12-2001
Thu, 07-28-2005 - 7:00pm

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

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-14-2003
Thu, 07-28-2005 - 9:29pm

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.

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-12-2004
Fri, 07-29-2005 - 12:09am
I agree it is very unacceptable behavior. The AHL I was with for way too long was into security and military as well. He also roughhoused from the very start and seemed to enjoy the expression of pain on my face when he would slap me or squeeze me. Outside of this, he was obsessed with talking about how strong, powerful, and clever he was. He would talk about how he could take people 'out' so fast, or get excited about describing how he 'incapacitated' or hurt someone at work. There have been incidents where he joyfully described how he smashed someone's head into the wall. He spoke about how his uncle, a police officer, would break bones of people who crossed him or even kill them. AHL even proudly described how he could quickly kill people, and proud to think he had power over life and death of someone, as if he was granting mercy on those who he 'chose' not to hurt. It seemed to me that he equated physical control or power over people as a sign of strength. Once when I told him how uncomfortable and even afraid I was about the way he would intimidate me or handle me, he stared at me kind of like a cold blooded criminal and said 'that's what I do for a living so deal with it'. Sorry, I am not a criminal, work colleague, or test subject and neither are you. But something to also keep in mind is why he does it. I am convinced AHL got a bizarre sense of power out of it, and each time it would get a bit worse. In other words, this type of sadistic high they get from this may not always be limited to just a bit of roughhousing. If he is getting off on your pain and by contraining you, I think this is not a hobby you should put up with. Anyone who is obsessed with power over others is a sick person in my opinion. I think this kind of behavior is anti-social and dangerous.
iVillage Member
Registered: 11-16-2004
Fri, 07-29-2005 - 9:32am

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.

dreaming of becoming a mommy blinkie

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-08-2005
Fri, 07-29-2005 - 10:36am
My abusive ex was/is a correctinal officer in a max security prison and he told me he acts the way he does because of who he was and how he has to act at work because he deals with inmates all day.
5yrssm 
iVillage Member
Registered: 11-16-2004
Fri, 07-29-2005 - 11:14am

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.

dreaming of becoming a mommy blinkie

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-28-2003
Sat, 07-30-2005 - 10:52pm

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