This is definitely a red flag, and it's not a healthy reaction to hypothetical cheating. I think when he said "you're not going to cheat on me so you have nothing to worry about," it was really threatening and was basically the same as saying "if you cheat on me, I really will do this."
Why Does He Do That is a book that was written by a counselor who specializes in working with controlling and toxic/abusive men. He uses his knowledge of how abusers think and his history of work to help women understand if their relationship has escalated to abuse, recognize abusive and controlling behavior in their partners, and inform women on how to leave an abusive relationship.
You can read it here for free.
This book has seriously helped me and other women that I know. I'm not saying that your partner is abusive, because only YOU can determine that. But this book will help you to figure out what's going on and give you strategies to deal with this kind of behavior. And if what you want is to leave, this book can help you make a plan to do that.
Good luck <3
I'm so sorry for your loss. The only correct response to a death in the family is "I'm so sorry, how can I help." Your boyfriend can't even display baseline human decency. Please think about how/if he makes your life better. You already wait on him hand and foot and that's apparently not enough for him.
Please read this: Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000Q9J0RO/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_WXVGE4MKDTXHDBW20MN7
The good times are part of the abuse. They keep you questioning whether you’re imagining it or whether you should stay.
I highly suggest this book:
Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men https://www.amazon.com/dp/0425191656/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_nSHMFbK2HKG7E
Define borderline for Harvard. Top 10% of his class? I've heard contemporary interviews (podcasts or NPR) with his classmates that he didn't have solid grades and wasn't smart (no where in the top 10%). There's literally a book about Kushner being bought into Harvard. $2.5m is a lot of money in 1998 dollars, and the book was published back in 2008.
https://www.amazon.com/Price-Admission-Americas-Colleges-Outside/dp/1400097975
Ma’am, your husband has a personality disorder and is an abuser. That bathroom wall banging is 100% a manipulation tactic. So is the sulking and the temper tantrums. Please read this book, ideally on an e-reader where he can’t see it - https://www.amazon.com/dp/0425191656/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm_0A33SF6RMKT4WM9Y36NP
He invests a lot of energy in making sure that you always feel like garbage if you don't do what he wants. It's a choice he makes. Nothing he does is an accident.
Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000Q9J0RO/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_WXVGE4MKDTXHDBW20MN7
Not surprised but jumping in on this PURELY to say:
MEN ARE NOT VIOLENT BECAUSE THEY DRINK. THEY ARE VIOLENT BECAUSE THEY ARE VIOLENT.
They may use the booze as an excuse (and it's almost a guarantee that they will, since that's an external habit that can be stopped and they'd rather blame that than actually change), but when it comes down to it, if alcohol never existed? He'd still hit you.
Mandatory reading for every single woman on the planet: Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft. It explains why abuse really happens and all the bullshit excuses that men use to try to make it seem like it's everyone's fault but theirs.
Going against the grain here, I don't think this is actually about logic OR emotions.
I think it's about control. Alarm bells started going off the more I read that this, I think it's a delibrate tactic to get you under his control, which is what abusive people want most of all.
>Queue 'why are you being so stubborn?', 'are you trying to deliberately hurt me?', 'are you trying to prove a point or something?', 'would it hurt you to do it this way?', 'I thought you cared about my feelings and my support'
🚩🚩🚩 so from this paragraph I see him deliberately: 1) making you feel like you need to justify your actions to him. You don't, but making you do so changes the power dynamic in his favour. It also keeps you focused on your actions and behaviour so you don't have the time to take a critical look at his behaviour.
2) using emotional manipulation. Not only do you owe him an explanation, but when you do something he doesn't like he turns it into you hurting him. This is manipulative AF and intentional.
3) wearing down your defences. This shit sounds exhausting, and while you can fight back now, I imagine that after weeks/months/years of it you'll just get so tired you'll stop fighting back. Then you'll just do what he wants how he wants to avoid the fight. THIS is his ultimate goal, to make you compliant.
>What should I do?
Fucking run, this is only going to get worse.
And please, take a look at the book 'Why Does He Do That' by Lundy Bancroft, you can find the PDF for free online.
Read the book "Why Does He Do That" by Lundy Bancroft. It's enlightening. I'm so glad you left, you were being abused. Good luck on your next journey. Go heal. You deserve better! We're here for you.
> have them do the work.
There is literally no more effective learning method than this.
Everything else is forgotten within 3 months. Look up knowledge retention rates for state-funded education.
It is horrible and utter waste of everyone's time and money.
Angry and controlling men seem to think that there is no way they can be abusive if they don't physically hurt their wife.
YOU ARE ABUSIVE.
Wish I could give your wife this book.
That doesn't mean everyone who tells you to up your meds is right, or coming from a good place. Abusive men LOVE to tell their partners they're crazy/paranoid/overly senisitve/imagining things/overreacting
Please read this book
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-He-That-Controlling/dp/0425191656
Ok, the idea that you give up on your career and stay home watering the plants while he works even though you don't plan to have kids is rather strange by itself, but coupled with what you found... there's really very little chance these things are unrelated. Whatever you do, don't become financially dependent on him ever. He sounds kinda gaslighty and manipulative to me, I recommend you read this book as I'm worried there might be a lot more there that you're not seeing, you should be able to find a pdf online
I'd encourage you to do more research. Most abusers are extremely charming and emotionally manipulative. Many abusers seem like genuinely great people to everyone around them because they're not just some general indiscriminate asshole, and they may treat everyone other than the victim very well. There's a book about exactly this, the author did a lot of investigation through interviews with both the abused and the abuser. Most of the abusers saw nothing wrong with their actions because they veiwed the victim as sub-human and belonging to them.
At the end of the day, it's a power thing and abusers use a wide variety of tactics to gain power of their abuser, ranging from physical abuse to often making the victim doubt their own mental facilities through creative methods.
Two of the most fascinating to me were the following.
One guy would hide things his wife needed, like keys when she was leaving, and then watch as she became increasingly frantic. Once she was in tears, turning the house upside down, tearing her hair out, he would leave the keys in an obvious place like a table and say something along the lines of, "look it's right there. I don't know why you can never find things, you're losing you mind"
Another guy dimmed the lights, Everytime his wife left the room and then would adamently deny it, and call her paranoid and imagining things.
I know people won't like to hear this. But this book basically shows that education is basically just [signalling]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics\) ). The thing is though, that he also shows that people that have higher degrees (like Bachelor's or Master's) actually earn more money even if they are employed in fields like being a bartender or waiter funnily enough. I guess it is literally becoming true that you need a degree to help get these jobs (at least the higher end of these).
Everyone getting a Bachelors degree is basically just the same as everyone having a high school diploma. It is like standing up in a concert to see better, if you do it that is fine, but then if everyone does it we are all in the same position again.
https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691174652
Dave Cullen's book Columbine is a fascinating read/analysis and goes into a litte more detail on this.
Basically Harris was the psychopath/leader and Klebold was the manic depressive/follower, not that that excuses his actions.
It takes guts to speak up as she has. Harris' parents have never spoken publicly about Columbine.
Abusers will try to convince you their feelings are the problem. "I was mad, I was frustrated, I felt scared of losing you, I just love you so much". But everyone experiences those same emotions without abusing others.
An abuser does not have a problem with how they feel, they have a problem with how they think. They think they're entitled to attention, care-taking, interest, to a person giving up who she is to focus entirely on the abuser's needs. And when they don't get what they think they're entitled to, they feel entitled to call that person horrible things. They give themselves permission to express those feelings based on how they think.
Never be misled; if someone talks to you this way its not because "they were mad". It's because they think it's okay to express their anger in that toxic unfair way. Read more here if you need
I recently read Lundy Bancroft's book on abusive men: "Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men", and I was really impressed with it.
It totally opened my eyes to men's abusiveness, and dispelled a lot of the misconceptions that I had about men's harmful and cruel behavior. (It also honestly helped me wrap my head around how contradictory the men who espouse gender identity are (Riley Dennis, Zinnia Jones, Contrapoints, etc), because once you get down to it they're just another flavor of abusive man)
I made this little review video to encourage people to check the book out if they've never heard of it before.
Link to the book on Lundy's website (2nd book down from top of page): http://lundybancroft.com/books/
Link to the book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-He-That-Controlling/dp/0425191656
Not a summary, but I was curious to know more about the plot as well, and this Amazon link has a good product description and excerpts from the book if you scroll down.
I used to think this to. That my lack of education or caring somehow triggered the violence in my life. If you can find a library, many offer free audio and ebooks, please check out this book. It helped my world make sense.
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-He-That-Controlling/dp/0425191656
> After the dinner date we went back to his place. We were on the couch. Nothing had happened yet, he just had his arm around me. I was a little buzzed off the wine, and he said "I want to show you something."
So he didn't talk to you about hypnotizing you, and get your consent? Did you have a talk about limits and what's okay, and how much control he should have?
> He told me a little more about how he likes to use hypnosis to enhance the bedroom. So as we would text, he would send me images about erotic hypnosis all day. When I wasn't at work, he would send me videos, audios, or we would have hypnotic phone sex.
It sounds like you got into a steady relationship, but he sounds like he likes to push past your limits and uses hypnosis to do so, and is isolating your from your friends, family and work. These are all classic abuser techniques. Do you feel safe in your relationship? Are you able to say no and have him respect that? Does he try to control you or speak for you outside of your sexual relationship?
Me too, my parents are foxhunting tories. That wasn't forced upon me, but the bubble is such that you can't see out of it.
Now I see people like Shapiro call this cultural/class awakening actually another form of indoctrination. Even if that did exist, you wouldn't need it to see inequality is very real https://www.amazon.com/Brainwashed-Universities-Indoctrinate-Americas-Youth/dp/1595559795
A book was literally written about how poor a candidate for admission to Harvard Kushner fils was, how much Kushner père had to pay that university to buy the former entrance, and how that process writ large contributes to structural inequalities throughout America.
A book I found invaluable was Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft. I never thought my ex was abusive; I just thought he was a dickhead. Reading about the patterns of anger I was shocked into recognition. It was devastating in its way... But helped me to detach, eventually.
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-He-That-Controlling/dp/0425191656
Good on you for getting out! Best wishes for the days ahead.
> They were bullied students who killed the kids who picked on them and then some.
This isn't actually true. Dave Cullen's book <em>Columbine</em> goes into a lot of the myths that came out of Columbine because of the hysterical reporting in the immediate aftermath. Harris in particular was a bully himself, and the FBI concluded he was likely a clinical psychopath.
The fact that he’s making this all about himself when you were the one who had to go through all of the serious physical aspects of pregnancy and loss ... is truly terrible. The fact that you don’t believe you can safely talk to your therapist about this is not okay. I hope that you can get the help you need. https://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-He-That-Controlling/dp/0425191656/ref=sr_1_1?crid=9H84TET0I137&keywords=why+does+he+do+that+lundy+bancroft&qid=1576347460&sprefix=Why+does+he+%2Caps%2C152&sr=8-1
Please read this book
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-He-That-Controlling/dp/0425191656
https://archive.org/details/LundyWhyDoesHeDoThat
If you can get your mother to read it, it would be great. Buying her a copy is probably a risky idea, maybe send her a link once she has a laptop? Assuming your father doesn't have access to it? Please keep in mind that abuse tends to escalate when the abuser feels his victim might be getting ready to leave him, it's the most dangerous time for her.
Big discrepancy? I see a range from ~$50k in low cost-of-living states to ~$70k in high cost-of-living states. Seems like splitting hairs, considering that the value contributed to society by the typical teacher is less than zero.
The book Why Does He Do That was really helpful for me after leaving my ex.
Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000Q9J0RO/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Iq.kCbCX62B9H
He's not abusing you because his grief is making him do it. He's abusing you because he is an abuser, and grief is what it took to bring it out of him. Somewhere in his mentality is a mysogynistic belief that it's ok to blame and hurt women. At some point in your lives, something else bad will happen, and that side of him will show again. It will probably become more and more frequent, with less provocation required, because he'll get more and more comfortable doing it. And right now, because you stay, because you make excuses for him that it's because of his grief, because you protect him by not telling the therapist, he's learning that he can get away with it, which will probably just lower his inhibitions.
Please read the book Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft. Please get yourself to safety.