@Deiter Yeah well, the therapists and other professionals aren't the ones getting murdered.

@Deiter It's hell either way. One choice is a living hell, the other choice may get you dead. At least there are resources and help. I know women who spent years hiding from abusive and violent men. Maybe a good place to start is ditching religion so men don't grow up with the idea that women are property to be owned.

@Deiter There isn't one. And that's the whole point. Unless you've actually been in that situation you don't know what someone is facing. And yes, I do know from first hand experience.

@Deiter Thanks. More than anything, support your friend, no matter what her decisions are.

@Deiter It's better to be reasonable in any situation, but with an abuser it matters very little. Victims can often feel it's their fault for making their partner angry, thinking that the nicer they are the better they will be treated, but that's not the case. The abuser will always find something to set them off, and/or deal with even normal anger by acting out.

@Deiter

Thank you.

Do you think if he was working, or the breadwinner, his verbally abusive ways would stop or lessen? I do not think so. I think his work situation exacerbates or worsens his abuse, but regardless of his situation, he was always going to abuse her or someone else.

@demifeministgal I would like to point out the contridiction in your own statement as evidence for the success of this method.

You can not both think that his jobless situation exasperated his abuse and that he was going to be just as abusive anyway.

This is double think at its finest.

We need to give more credit to society at large for the temperament of individuals. For example, all death row inmates have a similar story. They were raised in a broken home, dropped out of school, got into several abusive relationships, drugs, alcohol, gambling, can't hold down a job, violent crime, until it catches up with them.

My point is that there are probably tons of other factors resulting in his abusive nature, but without the context and raw data I can't pinpoint what they are. I can only give this as a potential cause because I know it to be a likely cause of abuse because of the paper from social sciences.

To a certain extent I agree with what you are saying, or implying really, that if he sudenly started making twice as much as her or won the lottery or received a large inheretanc that he would not change overnight. His nature is deeply engrained in who he is, in order to be completely effective it needed to happen decades ago.

@Happy_Killbot What I meant was he was going to be abusive regardless and that bad circumstances made his abuse worse or more pronounced... it is not double think AT ALL this is literally documented in abuse research whereby abusers will become more abusive when things are going poorly in their own lives or they are feeling lousy about themselves. Think of it in normal or regular people as being more grouchy or short-tempered/impatient when they have had a long and bad day.

@demifeministgal This is the age old nature vs. nurture question. Personally I believe that nurture plays a much bigger role in the development of a human mind than nature, because of the relatively small genetic variance between humans. ( about 0.1% )

Sure, it's possible that for whatever reason he was just born an asshole, but I think it's much more likely that he was sculpted into an asshole by his environment. With the right psychological conditioning, you can make anyone believe just about anything, or act in just about anyway.

I think we agree, with the only difference being that you are looking at this in situ, and I am looking at this across time.

@Happy_Killbot No I actually agree with you that nurture has more of an impact than nature, barring not having a personality disorder like sociopathy/psychopathy/narcissism that makes one more likely to hurt others. But, I think that that is an important thing to recognize that even if he were the breadwinner if he had that fckd up conditioning, his breadwinner status would not make him not an abuser.... it would just cause his abuse to manifest in different ways... perhaps using his money as a way to exert power over the partner in addition to the verbal abuse.