Blog #8

I have never been a victim of violence but a few of my close friends have been either the abuser or the abused victim. In two seperate situations, my close friend for nine years, Josh have abused almost all of the major females in his life except for me. He has hit, threatend to choke, and even slapped almost every girlfriend that I have known him to be in a relationship with. He is the epitome of what the "alpha male" is defined to be. His father taught him to be strong and unemotional. When I first met him, he did contain most of the early signs of an abuser: controlling, possessive, and easliy angered. He was and still is a nice, sweet person, but he had low self esteem and was a little weak and scawny. When he got older, he started working out and he developed higher self esteem, and a little bit too much confidnece. Later on in life, he began telling me about his relationships and  he metioned several times where he actually got into physical incidents with his female partners. He even was arrested for domestic violence.

Later on, after starting college, I became close to a friend who was in an abusive relationship. Her boyfriend John contained a lot of the signs that Josh had. Even though she told me that nothing was happening and  that everything was fine, I still saw little hints of possesiveness and control issues. I was almost surprised that no incident of abuse had happened yet. She was hiding her problems too well, and later on there was a major fiasco leading up to abuse. He sent her text messges such as "hmmph, You? Leave me? You couldnt leave me if you tried" and as much as she tried to get away from him, they still stayed together. I got a weird feeling when I found out what happened. I felt weird because I was 50% shocked and 50% not surprised at all. He punched her and left her bottom lip bleeding and swollen. I was shocked at how he was treating her and what he had done, but in a way I saw it coming because of the signs that I saw from the beginning. Comparing him to Josh, they acted almost exactly alike.
In class we talked about masculinity and strength when it comes to men. At first Josh was not the big, strong, "Manly Man" but society showed him that big, strong, and controlling men are respected and often feared. I saw him change before my eyes and the next thing I knew, he was out of control. First we used to talk about our problems and explain our emotions, but during his change, he slowly stopped telling me things. He became the stoic and unemotional man that society pushed him to be. The characteristics of the unemotional and stoic man combined with physical strength created a person filled with violence.