Domestic Violence Includes Verbal Abuse and Raging

There’s a lot of talk right now about domestic violence because a celebrity guy has beaten up his celebrity girlfriend. Sadly, these stories only seem to get ink when they involve famous people. In my recently published book, The Key to the Men’s Room: What Men Talk About When Women Aren’t Around, I give the reader a front row seat at men’s group meetings where men speak in their own voices about their issues. What women will discover is that men really do want to get it right in relationships with women, but that for the most part, they simply don’t know how.

But there is a larger issue here than battered women. Certainly battered women deserve all of our compassion and concern. No woman ever, ever deserves to be physically abused. There are no excuses for this type of dysfunctional male behavior. But there are reasons for it that need to be examined closely and discussed publicly. Since nearly everyone agrees that women don’t bring violence on themselves but are unwilling, unwitting victims, it is men and their dysfunctional behavior we should be talking about in terms of stemming the violence.

I watched several television programs after the Chris Brown/Rihanna tragedy and the most I ever heard anyone say about men is that batterers need to get help. That’s not very useful advice since it carries no meaningful message. Of course men who batter women need help, but what kind of help and where can they get help is of tantamount importance. There is a price tag for this kind of help that many men aren’t able to afford in tough economic times. That leaves many men out in the cold in terms of being able to work through their issues.

While my personal experience and expertise are more related to verbal abuse and raging, the causes of physical violence are similar. What I know about male anger and men abusing women is that what makes men act out in sordid ways is the unresolved pain they carry with them that lives in their psyches, their souls.

A man who rages at his girlfriend, wife, and/or his children does so because he carries inside of himself unresolved pain that frequently finds its way up from his troubled and damaged soul and inflicts pain on women who are completely in the dark regarding why they are being verbally thumped. I know about this first-hand because I was an out of control, angry man who raged at women in most of my previous relationships. Men who rage get out of control because when their unresolved pain rises up and lashes out at its victims, they are powerless to stop it or circumvent it. Since men likely don’t know what sets them off it is impossible for them to stop it from occurring. The rage runs its course and leaves devastation and a wounded woman in its wake. In tough economic times men will rage even more as they struggle with their issues and feel less manly in terms of putting food on the table.

It wasn’t until I started a men’s group 16 years ago that I was able to confront my anger in a meaningful manner. It was in my men’s group that I discovered why I was angry in the first place. I had been beaten and verbally abused by my father for most of my childhood. I never really knew why he raged at me both physically and verbally; I just knew that it hurt physically, but it wasn’t until I was in my 40’s that I understood how it had affected me emotionally. I was a time bomb waiting to go off and all it took was an innocent remark from a woman to set the bomb off.

What I also learned in doing the work in my men’s group was that the more I talked about the abuse I suffered from my father, the better I felt about myself and the less I raged. The value of identifying the cause and talking through my anger with other men was immeasurable. I doubt I would have my anger under control today unless I had done this men’s group work. After several years of talking about being abused and thinking about what had happened to me as a boy I even managed to forgive my father which helped in my efforts to finally end my pain.

Very few men know about the opportunity that exists for men to reach out to other men for help and support. Very few men have intimate male friendships, friendships that allow men to drop their egos and open up honestly and authentically with each other. While the lack of this type of friendship can be traced to several places, fear of other men seems to top the list. Fear and lack of trust pit men against one another instead of helping them support one another.

Men need to find their inner heroes with the help of other men if they hope to stop the cycle of violence. A man needs to do the emotional work involved in identifying his issues so that he can be in a relationship with women that eschews violence and intimidation of any kind. I have watched other men heal themselves with the help of the men in my men’s group, so my story isn’t unique.

In the end, I believe that it is only men who can help other men heal their past wounds because male pain is unique to men. Men can and should get together with a group of men dedicated to helping one another heal their wounds. Absent that most men will continue to rage. There is a terrific opportunity for men to make the kinds of friends they don’t have in their lives, friends who they can call when their life begins unraveling, friends who care about their well-being. A men’s group can offer men that kind of deep friendship.

I am often asked by women what they can do to help men move beyond their pain. The best answer I can offer is to create a “safe space” in your relationship for your man to talk about his issues. That means telling a man that he is safe in talking about his issues because a woman’s only interest is in helping him move past it. It means that a woman never uses any information a man has shared with her about his painful past, against him in an angry moment. It means holding your man’s pain in your heart and respecting how difficult it was for him to share that pain with you. A woman who can hold a man’s pain closely and only with the aim of helping him will find that man willing to talk about many other issues in their relationship.

Tags: domestic violence