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Is your spouse verbally abusive?
yes 63%  63%  [ 5 ]
no 38%  38%  [ 3 ]
Total votes : 8

slenkar
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15 Dec 2014, 11:23 am

I have heard a few people talking about how their spouse shouts at them a lot.
I am in this boat too, Im wondering how many of us have spouses like that?



BuyerBeware
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15 Dec 2014, 12:18 pm

I'm not sure "shouting a lot" qualifies as verbal abuse. To my mind, verbal/emotional abuse is being constantly threatened, insulted, and cut down. Not someone getting frustrated and yelling, or saying something stupid in the heat of an argument that they have to apologize for later. That's just human nature.

That said, I do think we're more likely to marry an abuser, or end up getting abused even if the partner wasn't abusive at the outset. We're more prone to nonexistent self-esteem and more prone to be very isolated, and those are traits abusers look for. We're more likely to be willing to make excuses for bad behavior, since we have to ask for so much tolerance. We're more prone to miss the little signs, and not realize that a relationship is abusive until the abuse becomes critically obvious.

I also think we're more likely to end up driving a partner to become abusive. Abuse isn't always something that comes from a profoundly f**ked-up paradigm or a malignant heart. A lot of the time, it's something that happens when a basically decent person just doesn't know how to cope with the situation, becomes so overwhelmingly frustrated that they do things they know are wrong just because they're fed up and don't know what else to do.

I'm not saying we deserve abuse-- nobody does. But I am saying that we can be a very frustrating lot. In the absence of the knowledge to understand what is going on and the tools to cope with it effectively, that can just create a really bad situation.


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slenkar
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15 Dec 2014, 2:27 pm

Yes what you are saying sounds right



elkclan
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20 Dec 2014, 3:56 am

I didn't take the poll, because I'm the NT partner. My spouse is certainly verbally abusive.



League_Girl
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20 Dec 2014, 4:40 am

I don't think yelling alone counts as abuse. We would all have to be robots to not ever yell because yelling is part of being human and it's part of having emotion.

I have never been with an NT but one of them was abusive and he was aspie and I did make excuses for it and didn't believe for a while he was abusive because I thought it didn't count. That was me making excuses and he didn't shout at me often, he was just very closed minded, very negative, always put people down including me and my family, and he would make me feel bad but I realize that was emotional manipulation he was doing, making me feel guilty and bad about myself I would do what he wanted. But the confusing part is he would tell me he didn't want me doing it because he wants me to, he only wanted me to do it because I want to. But yet if I didn't do it, I would feel bad do that was why I would do it. He was also a very jealous guy and had low self esteem and was insecure about himself and he was so paranoid and worried what people thought of him, he had to listen in only my phone conversations and I had to wait until he was at work before I could call my parents and I had to take a step outside just to talk to them and he would take what I would say out of context and get very upset and I felt I had to keep my feelings bottled up or it would upset him. Yeah I blamed this all on his AS and his PTSD and his paranoia and thought "Oh he isn't being abusive, that was different." He would also make fun of me too and let his son listen in on everything and tell him everything I did and tell him what we were talking about and what we talked about. Nothing could ever be private between us and his kid was nine. NINE. I wonder if he did this for humiliation because this is what I read about abusers, they will do this to humiliate you. I just thought then he didn't have a filter and it was his social issue and he just didn't understand.

I realize now there is never an excuse for abuse, even if it's not intentional. I will agree a mental illness or autism can contribute to the abuse, same as for anger and having poor impulse control and meltdowns or low self esteem or insecurity or jealousy.


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alpineglow
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20 Dec 2014, 7:57 pm

OP, your question I cannot answer except for myself: and that would be, "yes".

League_Girl, sorry you went through that. Though a short description it was intense for me because it was very much like my ex's behavior. I found his behavior completely confusing at first, and then overwhelming. I left the relationship quickly, luckily, and raised my offspring by myself.



League_Girl
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24 Dec 2014, 11:20 pm

alpineglow wrote:
OP, your question I cannot answer except for myself: and that would be, "yes".

League_Girl, sorry you went through that. Though a short description it was intense for me because it was very much like my ex's behavior. I found his behavior completely confusing at first, and then overwhelming. I left the relationship quickly, luckily, and raised my offspring by myself.



Was your ex aspie or NT?


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Dear_one
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25 Jan 2015, 11:03 am

My spouse shouted and threatened until I left. It was supposed to be a fresh start for her, but it didn't last. Overall, I wasted my life trying to be with feminists because they reminded me of my mother, so I expected to be acceptable to them.



skoolsike
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27 Jan 2015, 12:06 pm

I am currently getting ready for divorce #2 and NT wife #2 has been verbally abusive, both because of her own issues (PTSD) and because of her inability to "get" me. I told her when we met that I would hurt her without meaning to (a typical Aspie problem), but she was never able to logically separate her hurt from my lack of intention. To be totally fair, I have been verbally abusive to both of my wives by going off on all-too-frequent anxiety-ridden rants that I am usually unable to stop because I am SO TIRED of being misunderstood. Wife #1 remained enigmatic by being silent (she later admitted to a lot of passive-aggressive stuff). Marriage #1 lasted 24 years (on paper), #2 lasted one year.

Right now I expect to be alone for a long time. For down the road, I hope to learn how to better assess whether someone can learn to live with me before I let my heart get involved again.