Is abuse subjective?

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Well, I would honestly suggest you and brother A be honest about it and confront brother B. It may cause a lost temper or something so word it carefully. However, you need to present it in a way that he recognizes he could seriously hurt someone he cares about even possibly kill them.

You above all need to make sure the cycle is broken.

@ Kailuamom

It has to do with changing what is allowed to suit one group opens the door for other groups to demand they get the same treatment as the group you are changing the laws for or we are being discriminatory.

I guess I still don't understand. The laws having to do with assault and battery, or domestic violence don't take gender into consideration or marital status now (currently applied to gay/straight couples married or not). I just don't understand how that would change.

That's my main concern and the reason the talk I mentioned in the OP took place. His attitude about it was surprising to me, I had no idea he felt this way and I didn't want to push things without thinking about it first.

For the sake of being redundant, I will reiterate once again:

Regardless of your wonderful intentions, unless Brother B is interested in addressing his perception of his childhood and the issues it may have caused him, you are wasting your time. You both also run the risk of alienating him.

No matter how much you would like to help, you cannot force anyone to face something that they don't want to. You can't force them to look at things your way. You can't force him to read a book that could help him with problems that he doesn't see he has.

If he is getting married, he obviously has found someone willing to tolerate his behavior. Has anyone talked with his prospective spouse to see if there is cause for concern?

Cycles of abuse are never truly broken. Survivors of abuse will slow the cycle down progressively with each generation taking for granted that they recognize the abuse was present. If you both are genuinely concerned, it might be more beneficial to talk to him when a problem arises and suggest that perhaps the situation could have been handled differently and offer support. Approaching him in this manner comes across as being highly judgmental and could potentially have the opposite of your desired effect, particularly if he is as volatile as you're presentation of his personality suggests.

How ironic of you Countess, to call me judgemental and accuse me of trying to force people to see things my way.

Thanks to those who actually tried to help - I understand how this was not the best place for something so personal and I'll ask mod to lock it.

I'd have to disagree with you there the cycle can be broken but it takes a lot of willpower and a child of an abusive parent to decide they will not be like their abusive parent.

Then let me please apologize. I meant no insult though I do see how it could have been perceived that way.

I said what I did and meant if with good intentions. I wish I could get back all the time I've devoted in my life to trying to help people, even people who claimed to want it.

I wish you and your friend the very best and I hope all works out well.

I will respectfully disagree. Perhaps I'm hung up on the wording... Semantics cause me tremendous issue, I apologize.

Willpower is not always enough. I can't tell you how many times I have been embarrassed and angry at myself for being abusive to people in my life simply because it's what I was exposed to and thought was normal until a certain point in my life. It is very realistic to want and be better. It is not to deny who you are or where you came from. I do much better when I remember that I am very capable of making the same mistakes that made me what I am, but I will never be perfect.

I will not break the cycle but I may give my son the tools to remove it from the tapestry of our family's history, and that is my great wish.

Ive heard this argument before.

The basic idea is that a group claims something along the lines of:

"This is the way I was born. I have no choice but to be this way. You are discriminating against me based on my genetics and treating me like a second class citizen. I want to be treated like an equal, and have my differences be respected, even if that goes against your cultural norms."

This can be said of the civil rights movement of the 1950s where black people where being treated like second class citizens because of the traits (skin color) that they were born with. They held marches and rallies in an attempt to gain equal respect, despite the culture which viewed them as inferior. They demanded that the culture change their views in order to accept the equal rights of people who were different from them.

The same thing could be said about the woman's rights movement. The culture at the time viewed women as being weaker, and they were discriminated against by society. They couldn't get certain jobs, vote, or whatnot. And so they said something along the lines of, "You can't treat me like a second class citizen just because I am different from you, I demand equal rights".

And again the same thing is being said today by homosexual people who wish to get married, and be accepted by mainstream culture. They don't want preferential treatment, they just want to not be discriminated against because of the way they are born. They want to be treated like equal citizens, despite the cultural norms to the contrary.

The argument from there says that if we grant gay people equal treatment, then it sets us on a slippery slope where we have to grant equal treatment and acceptance to ALL people who claim that their actions are the result of their genetics. So, rapists would claim, "I can't help being a rapist, I was born this way, and your discriminating against me by punishing me for being who I am". A good example of this would be NAMBLA (don't look that up if you don't want to be offended). And as such, certain people say that they are opposed to granting gay people equal rights, and equal respect because doing so would set us on a slippery slope to allowing rape, theft, and the destruction of society.

Personally I think that is a silly argument. There is a clear difference between respecting a person's right to live their lives the way they want when that choice does not negatively affect society, vs allowing people to harm other people. Being gay, and being respected irregardless, does not harm our society, nor does it cause law, order, and other people's rights to break down. Conversely, unregulated rape does cause harm to our society, and infringes upon the rights of other people. As such, I don't think that treating gay people like equals will set us up on a slippery slope into the destruction of society. There are clear and obvious stopping points that cannot be excused by saying, "I was born this way".

Ok, I'll try to start over - I don't want to force anybody to do anything, during our discussion he expressed a degree of interest in reading on the subject and I thought that might be a better way for him to gain some insight - he can think about it and make his own mind. It's not my business to confront him and I have no intention to do it - I don't like meddling in people's lives or telling them how to live it and I'm painfully aware of the way we are all responsible and pay for the decisions we make, so I don't try to make them for others.

I know brother A suffers because of B's denial - it's like saying that what happened to him was not a big deal, so it's up to him if he wants to do something about it.

I had no intention of dissecting these people's personal life here - I was more interested in the theoretical aspect of the problem, trying to gain some insight in the thought process of brother B hoping to understand what would be the best way to approach him, if his brother decides to do it.

I'm not sure what the statistics say, but I know several people who were badly abused as children and still became wonderful parents - including several members of this forum. They went through therapy and an arduous process of rediscovery and healing - it would be sad if they would have seen themselves as doomed to repeat their parents mistakes. But I understand now better why some are so secretive about that - where I live there's no stigma attached to it.

The situation you describe with this man is similar to that of an alcoholic. He will not change his behaviour until he recognises that there is a problem, and I really don't think that giving him books to read or talking to him about this will make him come to that realisation. I can see that you are worried and that you mean well, but really there is little that you can do other than be there for him in the future should he eventually come to the realisation that he does need help. And if he does come to that realisation then he may not go to you for help, but to someone else.

Interestingly, I watched an episode of Supernanny USA the other night and she was called in to help a family in which the father was abusive towards his children. He behaved towards them the way his father had behaved towards him. He shouted at them, belittled and humiliated them, hit them with his hands and with his belt. Supernanny was clearly shocked and she did tell this man that he was an abuser.

She did make progess with him, but she had to employ different strategies from her usual ones, and she spent a lot of time working with this man to increase his understanding of himself and his behaviour. He did care very much for his small daughters, but he hit them. She enlarged photographs of these beautiful little girls, and made him throw darts at them. That was a practical and visual exercise in letting him appreciate the damage he was doing to them and how he was normalising abusive behaviour in their lives in the way it had been normalised in his.

The big difference between your situation with the brother is that you are an insider, someone he knows and someone he does not want help or advice from. Supernanny was there at the request of this man and his wife because they were having problems. His wife had left him for a while and then returned. He didn't realise that he was the source of the problems, but Supernanny was there from outwith their usual circle, at his invitation, and as an expert and authority figure for whom he did have respect. She also put him in contact with a counsellor who specialised in helping abusive men and he spoke with a man who had been helped by the programme. It wasn't simply a matter of telling him what the problem was. She made him do things which got the message across and introduced him to a man who had been there and got through it.


Edited to add: I was posting at the same time as the OP and I've just read your latest post. If there are glimmerings of recognition of this being a problem, then that is good and he may be more open to learning more about himself.

Marcia, your post is very insightful and I appreciate you taking the time to answer, but I'd like to ask everybody to read the OP again - I didn't directly offered this man any kind of help or advice and I have no intention of doing so. Brother A - a close friend - is the one who might choose to do it - all I wanted was a better understanding/more perspective of the problem.

My husband and his brothers and sisters were abused as children - verbally, emotionally and physically - by both parents, but particularly their mother.

My husband and I are now going through a divorce, because of his abusive and bullying behaviour towards me. I remain very close to one of his sisters and we have talked a lot about their childhood experiences of abuse. One very interesting thing she said to me a while back was that she stored those experiences away at the back of her mind, but ... she is able to take it out (visualise it like a ball or multi-faceted object), turn it round, look at it, think about it, learn from it, then put it back. She is aware that it is there and she is aware that it can and has affected how she behaves as an adult. She thinks, and I agree with her, that my husband is unable to do that for some reason. He does not, or cannot, look at it in this way. He knows it's there, but he keeps it buried. Or tries to. It comes out in his behaviour, but he denies that. He denies that his behaviour is abusive, he says that his behaviour is normal and would tell me that I was the one with the problem.

His sister says that my husband was the one who bore the brunt of their mother's abuse, so maybe that is part of it. I don't know. He lacks self awareness, and it is possible that that is a defence mechanism of some kind.

So yes, siblings can have a shared experience of abuse, but deal with it in very different ways.

The exact same situation will be experienced by two people completely differently. This applies to abuse and many other experiences. Brother A had a different experience than Brother B. I don't think abuse is subjective but perception is. I can use myself and my brother as the same example. We were 2.5 years apart in age, had the same experiences. He dropped out of high school and committed suicide. He felt extreme rage and hate. I got outta dodge ASAP, had a kid, got my MBA and worked my butt off the whole time. Sure it affected me, but different. We experienced it and dealt with it different.

This is indeed very helpful - your husband and his sister's attitudes reflect very well those of my friends. So it's getting more and more clear that as long as B is not ready to face the problem himself, nobody can help him do it either directly or indirectly. Since he's 43 I imagine the chances he'll do it are getting slimmer as I understand the process is long and painful, so maybe my friend A should just adjust his expectations...

I'm very sorry Marcia for the abuse you suffered and bjtao - I hope you found some peace about your brother's sad story

Abuse is subjective in some ways and others, black and white.
cultural norms play a big role, but on the other hand, a culture that permits abuse is more likely to behave like brother B and think it is normal.
So here I go chasing my tail again, arguing both sides of an argument

Anyway, my parrents used to ground me for months for my out of control ways until an autism expert said they were being too harsh on me and making me oppositional defiant by grounding me so long. She said that the duration of the punishment exceeded my ability to comphrend what I did wrong. Example: I was punished a whole summer for running up a 300 dollar phone bill talking to my boyfriend, by 3 or 4 weeks, I pretty much felt that if I was going to be grounded for eternity, that I should do whatever I wanted to do cause I was still being punnished anyway.

Well anyway she told them, that it was abusive to punish me beyond the time frame I was able to connect what I did wrong to the punishment and that was why my behavior was so out of control (and it was). So then she had my parrents disipline me imediately after I done something wrong for no longer than 2 days. My behavior improved very quickly and my grades improved and within a year, I was outgrowing most of my oppistional defiant behavior...athough some of it is still with me as an adult, but only comes out when I feel backed into a corner.