I mentioned it in another comment, but I’ll repeat it here: This doesn’t necessarily have to be emotional abuse. It can well be a result of the wife being in a bad place, having little self-worth, and convincing herself that anon would be better off without her. Perhaps anon’s response caused her to re-think and reconsider, hence the subsequent breakdown.
I would leave Lemmy if it weren’t for sane, rational people like you who have empathy and don’t just jump to the most damning conclusions without any insight into the situation.
This doesn’t necessarily have to be emotional abuse. It can well be a result of the wife being in a bad place, having little self-worth, and convincing herself that anon would be better off without her.
Abuse is behavior, not intention. The majority of abuse is not intended to be torture, but is still abuse.
This might be a language think, but as I understand “abuse” implies some degree of intent, repetitiveness, or suppression of the victims response, no?
If someone is punched, you would typically call that assault, while if they are punched on several occasions while being prevented from seeking help, you would call it abuse.
Likewise, if someone is yelled at or scolded or manipulated on one occasion, you usually would say that they were “yelled at, scolded, or manipulated”, while if it occurs systematically over time you would refer to it as abuse.
I think you’re wrong here. I think a person can be emotionally abusive without intending to be abusive. They might continually seek to block or inhibit the victim’s response, but they might not think of it as such.
My mother used to harangue me for hours at a time when I was a child. It was a textbook case of emotional abuse. Her intention was to protect herself from me, to raise me to be a good person by pointing out to me when I was being harmful to her. The trouble was, her perception of all this was off. I would hang out with my friends and she would take it as me not loving her, and then I’d be in for hours of her crying and talking to me in this horrible tone and her just laying out everything I’d ever done wrong, and she would be breathless and just keep going.
She wasn’t trying to hurt me. She was trying to protect herself. But she was hurting me.
She was one of the kindest, most generous people I’ve ever met. She was also deeply wounded, and miscalibrated in terms of her sense of proportion.
It is emotional abuse. Just like it’s still assault if a veteran with night terrors gets a adrenaline rush while waking up at night and beating the wife sleeping next to him in his confusion. It is not intended, but the damage is done. And it’s done by the veteran; or the wife in the OP.
The emotional abuse may be coming from a deep emotional wound, but it’s on her to fix it. She gets to keep her shards, or attempt to fix herself. By choosing to not work on herself she effectively chooses to burden the people around her. And they have no obligation to keep her around.
We all burden each other with stuff constantly. It’s on her to fix it but fixing yourself is impossible tlsince their is no template for what fixed looks like.
It’s also on the husband as much as it is the rest of us to see what level of burden we are willing to take on for those we care about. That’s humanity.
what they mean by that is “there is only an increasingly less problematic state” you can be in, you cannot achieve “perfection” there is no “correct” model, there are only “ideal models” which cannot be achieved, and merely working towards that, is good enough
People are flawed, some people work through those flaws, some people work around those flaws, and some people just live with them. You cannot get rid of them however, they will forever be a part of your lived experience, and necessarily influencing your psyche. Whether for good or bad, it’s always present.
Society does not have the end-all of best of humanity in mind. Often it just means productive at work and cares little for your well being.
You can self improve but that’s not fixing anything. That’s just getting better at not being a burden to others. But the burden is the point. We are all in it together and are a burden on each other. But we do it anyways.
Don’t tell people that they can be “fixed” that is nonsense and just makes them feel more of a burden without the kindness.
The burden is not the point. You should be improving people’s lives, not making them worse. Unless by “burden” you mean like the mundane parts of dealing with living with other people, which is not what I’m talking about.
I do mean the little things. But it also is the big ones. A loved one can need you to help them do paperwork, or they could be dying of an incurable disease and raging against the end.
I’m saying expecting everyone to work to make your life easier to be around them ignores that everyone has their own issues to deal with and we are constantly impacting each other.
It’s good to work on yourself and we all should but expecting it as the only way to be around people is not reasonable for how humanity is. We are flawed emotional creatures.
We burden those we love in lots of ways waiting on them to be fixed to show love doesn’t make it seem like you loved them at all. You love people knowing they can change not waiting until they do.
You might want to think about how you view others. If everyone around you takes their relationship with you hostage, or worse their life, then the people around you are constantly taking advantage of you. On the other hand if you think of others as burdens constantly you need to change the people around you. Go to a different setting, a club or something were different people hang around.
It’s on her to fix it but fixing yourself is impossible tlsince their is no template for what fixed looks like.
Oh cool, I finally have the argument I can use when screaming at my wife.
Sorry for that, but your sentence is just nonsense. Worse even, it’s an excuse. I get the feeling behind it, but she is the one who needs to seek help. Nothing will stick if she doesn’t want it.
It’s also on the husband as much as it is the rest of us to see what level of burden we are willing to take on for those we care about. That’s humanity.
No longer a husband. She filed for divorce, remember? Also: even if he still was, he cannot take responsibility for her mental health. He can help, but never do it himself. That’s 100% on her. She can accept help, but it’s a thing she has to do herself. Everything else would be manipulation on her.
Now you spin this as a failure to provide assistance, but that’s not what’s happening in the story. She doesn’t ask for help, she severes the bond.
No, I don’t think of it as a failure to provide assistance I think we choose the burdens we are ok with and you don’t have to aim to fix everything. We can’t fix dyslexia or genetic disorders, and we don’t just demand they figure it out to change nothing.
And it’s not so easy to just pick to be better and yes she has to do things herself. We all do. It it’s not over or even done when they decide to get better. And it is still on the rest of us to accept the burden of their issues to make life safe for them as well.
I point out that you give love first. You accept that people are broken and you love them anyways. I don’t want vapid relationships that only go surface level so that they can never burden me.
Oh cool, I finally have the argument I can use when screaming at my wife.
Ok wow. That’s a takeaway to being told that their is no such thing as perfect or fixed. That’s in you for wanting it as an excuse to be worse.
Ok wow. That’s a takeaway to being told that their is no such thing as perfect or fixed. That’s in you for wanting it as an excuse to be worse.
Good on you for abandoning the unwilling. It sounds horrible, but it’s a matter of cutting costs before you yourself become an emotional burden on others. That’s what I wanted to show.
No, I don’t think of it as a failure to provide assistance I think we choose the burdens we are ok with and you don’t have to aim to fix everything. We can’t fix dyslexia or genetic disorders, and we don’t just demand they figure it out to change nothing.
I have no idea how that matters in the context of a wife filing for divorce and breaking down crying when it’s accepted. Sounds like the husband did everything perfectly in your opinion.
And it’s not so easy to just pick to be better and yes she has to do things herself. We all do.
It’s 100% on her. No wiggle room, no “things” or parts of it. She is the only one with access to her head, meaning people around can help, but never steer. And if she won’t then she will have to find someone willing to put up with her problems. And even that relationship gets thrown out the window the moment she asks for a divorce.
It it’s not over or even done when they decide to get better.
Yes, it’s an incredible amount of work that not a lot of people even begin to tackle. There are even “therapists” that tell people that everything will be fine, that all other people are the problem. This is a problem in itself, which is why it’s 100% on the wife to get better. Bad help is not an excuse to be a dick.
And it is still on the rest of us to accept the burden of their issues to make life safe for them as well.
Then do you it. Why would you make that decision for the husband? Or the wife?
I point out that you give love first. You accept that people are broken and you love them anyways.
And then they tell you they don’t want you in their life anymore. Like the wife did in this story. Would you be the creep that sits by the street lantern watching her every move? Or would you honor her wishes?
I don’t want vapid relationships that only go surface level so that they can never burden me.
Seems like a good call. I’m trying to do the same. This still doesn’t make me responsible for someone’s mental health. It does make me inclined to help when I can, but only to the point where they tell me to get the fuck out of their life.
I disagree, I don’t think these two are comparable.
Physical violence cannot be undone. Saying that you want to leave someone, and then breaking down upon noticing your mistake is something that can be talked through. If someone beats you, and says it was an accident, you’ll still be bruised and feel unsafe around them, even if you understand them and have empathy for them. On the other hand, if you understand and have empathy for a partner that said they would leave you because they honestly though you would be happier without them, you can help them get better and move on.
Neither can emotional manipulation. You cannot see the scars, but they will bear a violent fruit.
Saying that you want to leave someone, and then breaking down upon noticing your mistake is something that can be talked through.
Don’t be a doormat for emotionally unstable people. There can be a conversation, a couple counseling or something, when people talk to each other. Putting signed divorce papers in the other persons hand is a gesture, not a conversation. There is nothing left to be said.
If someone beats you, and says it was an accident, you’ll still be bruised and feel unsafe around them, even if you understand them and have empathy for them.
Yes, trust can easily be broken by physical violence. It can also be broken by the spoken or written word.
On the other hand, if you understand and have empathy for a partner that said they would leave you because they honestly though you would be happier without them, you can help them get better and move on.
Oh, it sounded like the husband would be responsible for her mental health, but this is about helping? Then yes, you can help someone get better. If she works on herself to get better you can help her.
Just like you can help a veteran with PTSD. If they work on themselves so they can get better.
i think in a strict sense, they are necessarily the same, primarily because time moves forwards, and you cannot move backwards. Physical violence is arguably worse than emotional abuse, but it depends on the severity.
Punching someone in the face is probably worse than a weird emotional breakdown. But gaslighting someone and emotionally abusing them over the course of a few years is probably worse than punching them.
It’s entirely relative. Emotional abuse is often harder, and more complicated to deal with, physical violence is often extremely apparent. (the reason it’s problematic most of the time is because of emotional abuse)
Emotional abuse detected.
I mentioned it in another comment, but I’ll repeat it here: This doesn’t necessarily have to be emotional abuse. It can well be a result of the wife being in a bad place, having little self-worth, and convincing herself that anon would be better off without her. Perhaps anon’s response caused her to re-think and reconsider, hence the subsequent breakdown.
I would leave Lemmy if it weren’t for sane, rational people like you who have empathy and don’t just jump to the most damning conclusions without any insight into the situation.
Abuse is behavior, not intention. The majority of abuse is not intended to be torture, but is still abuse.
This might be a language think, but as I understand “abuse” implies some degree of intent, repetitiveness, or suppression of the victims response, no?
If someone is punched, you would typically call that assault, while if they are punched on several occasions while being prevented from seeking help, you would call it abuse.
Likewise, if someone is yelled at or scolded or manipulated on one occasion, you usually would say that they were “yelled at, scolded, or manipulated”, while if it occurs systematically over time you would refer to it as abuse.
Please correct me if I’m wrong here
I think you’re wrong here. I think a person can be emotionally abusive without intending to be abusive. They might continually seek to block or inhibit the victim’s response, but they might not think of it as such.
My mother used to harangue me for hours at a time when I was a child. It was a textbook case of emotional abuse. Her intention was to protect herself from me, to raise me to be a good person by pointing out to me when I was being harmful to her. The trouble was, her perception of all this was off. I would hang out with my friends and she would take it as me not loving her, and then I’d be in for hours of her crying and talking to me in this horrible tone and her just laying out everything I’d ever done wrong, and she would be breathless and just keep going.
She wasn’t trying to hurt me. She was trying to protect herself. But she was hurting me.
She was one of the kindest, most generous people I’ve ever met. She was also deeply wounded, and miscalibrated in terms of her sense of proportion.
It is emotional abuse. Just like it’s still assault if a veteran with night terrors gets a adrenaline rush while waking up at night and beating the wife sleeping next to him in his confusion. It is not intended, but the damage is done. And it’s done by the veteran; or the wife in the OP.
The emotional abuse may be coming from a deep emotional wound, but it’s on her to fix it. She gets to keep her shards, or attempt to fix herself. By choosing to not work on herself she effectively chooses to burden the people around her. And they have no obligation to keep her around.
We all burden each other with stuff constantly. It’s on her to fix it but fixing yourself is impossible tlsince their is no template for what fixed looks like.
It’s also on the husband as much as it is the rest of us to see what level of burden we are willing to take on for those we care about. That’s humanity.
This is nonsense. Self-improvement is possible based on your own or societal standards.
what they mean by that is “there is only an increasingly less problematic state” you can be in, you cannot achieve “perfection” there is no “correct” model, there are only “ideal models” which cannot be achieved, and merely working towards that, is good enough
People are flawed, some people work through those flaws, some people work around those flaws, and some people just live with them. You cannot get rid of them however, they will forever be a part of your lived experience, and necessarily influencing your psyche. Whether for good or bad, it’s always present.
Agreed
Society does not have the end-all of best of humanity in mind. Often it just means productive at work and cares little for your well being.
You can self improve but that’s not fixing anything. That’s just getting better at not being a burden to others. But the burden is the point. We are all in it together and are a burden on each other. But we do it anyways.
Don’t tell people that they can be “fixed” that is nonsense and just makes them feel more of a burden without the kindness.
The burden is not the point. You should be improving people’s lives, not making them worse. Unless by “burden” you mean like the mundane parts of dealing with living with other people, which is not what I’m talking about.
I do mean the little things. But it also is the big ones. A loved one can need you to help them do paperwork, or they could be dying of an incurable disease and raging against the end.
I’m saying expecting everyone to work to make your life easier to be around them ignores that everyone has their own issues to deal with and we are constantly impacting each other.
It’s good to work on yourself and we all should but expecting it as the only way to be around people is not reasonable for how humanity is. We are flawed emotional creatures.
We burden those we love in lots of ways waiting on them to be fixed to show love doesn’t make it seem like you loved them at all. You love people knowing they can change not waiting until they do.
Ok, but I didn’t say it was the only way to be around people. You said that it was impossible.
I think what you’re meaning to say is right, but what you’re actually saying isn’t consistent so it can’t be as right as you’re trying to express.
You might want to think about how you view others. If everyone around you takes their relationship with you hostage, or worse their life, then the people around you are constantly taking advantage of you. On the other hand if you think of others as burdens constantly you need to change the people around you. Go to a different setting, a club or something were different people hang around.
Oh cool, I finally have the argument I can use when screaming at my wife.
Sorry for that, but your sentence is just nonsense. Worse even, it’s an excuse. I get the feeling behind it, but she is the one who needs to seek help. Nothing will stick if she doesn’t want it.
No longer a husband. She filed for divorce, remember? Also: even if he still was, he cannot take responsibility for her mental health. He can help, but never do it himself. That’s 100% on her. She can accept help, but it’s a thing she has to do herself. Everything else would be manipulation on her.
Now you spin this as a failure to provide assistance, but that’s not what’s happening in the story. She doesn’t ask for help, she severes the bond.
No, I don’t think of it as a failure to provide assistance I think we choose the burdens we are ok with and you don’t have to aim to fix everything. We can’t fix dyslexia or genetic disorders, and we don’t just demand they figure it out to change nothing.
And it’s not so easy to just pick to be better and yes she has to do things herself. We all do. It it’s not over or even done when they decide to get better. And it is still on the rest of us to accept the burden of their issues to make life safe for them as well.
I point out that you give love first. You accept that people are broken and you love them anyways. I don’t want vapid relationships that only go surface level so that they can never burden me.
Ok wow. That’s a takeaway to being told that their is no such thing as perfect or fixed. That’s in you for wanting it as an excuse to be worse.
Good on you for abandoning the unwilling. It sounds horrible, but it’s a matter of cutting costs before you yourself become an emotional burden on others. That’s what I wanted to show.
I have no idea how that matters in the context of a wife filing for divorce and breaking down crying when it’s accepted. Sounds like the husband did everything perfectly in your opinion.
It’s 100% on her. No wiggle room, no “things” or parts of it. She is the only one with access to her head, meaning people around can help, but never steer. And if she won’t then she will have to find someone willing to put up with her problems. And even that relationship gets thrown out the window the moment she asks for a divorce.
Yes, it’s an incredible amount of work that not a lot of people even begin to tackle. There are even “therapists” that tell people that everything will be fine, that all other people are the problem. This is a problem in itself, which is why it’s 100% on the wife to get better. Bad help is not an excuse to be a dick.
Then do you it. Why would you make that decision for the husband? Or the wife?
And then they tell you they don’t want you in their life anymore. Like the wife did in this story. Would you be the creep that sits by the street lantern watching her every move? Or would you honor her wishes?
Seems like a good call. I’m trying to do the same. This still doesn’t make me responsible for someone’s mental health. It does make me inclined to help when I can, but only to the point where they tell me to get the fuck out of their life.
I disagree, I don’t think these two are comparable.
Physical violence cannot be undone. Saying that you want to leave someone, and then breaking down upon noticing your mistake is something that can be talked through. If someone beats you, and says it was an accident, you’ll still be bruised and feel unsafe around them, even if you understand them and have empathy for them. On the other hand, if you understand and have empathy for a partner that said they would leave you because they honestly though you would be happier without them, you can help them get better and move on.
Neither can emotional manipulation. You cannot see the scars, but they will bear a violent fruit.
Don’t be a doormat for emotionally unstable people. There can be a conversation, a couple counseling or something, when people talk to each other. Putting signed divorce papers in the other persons hand is a gesture, not a conversation. There is nothing left to be said.
Yes, trust can easily be broken by physical violence. It can also be broken by the spoken or written word.
Oh, it sounded like the husband would be responsible for her mental health, but this is about helping? Then yes, you can help someone get better. If she works on herself to get better you can help her.
Just like you can help a veteran with PTSD. If they work on themselves so they can get better.
i think in a strict sense, they are necessarily the same, primarily because time moves forwards, and you cannot move backwards. Physical violence is arguably worse than emotional abuse, but it depends on the severity.
Punching someone in the face is probably worse than a weird emotional breakdown. But gaslighting someone and emotionally abusing them over the course of a few years is probably worse than punching them.
It’s entirely relative. Emotional abuse is often harder, and more complicated to deal with, physical violence is often extremely apparent. (the reason it’s problematic most of the time is because of emotional abuse)