Discussing the Cycle of Male Verbal Abuse

He used the same words. He used the same towering posture. This wasn’t about teaching me or guiding me to be a man. This was about control.

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There was a time when I thought I was the only man that grew up with a verbally abusive father. The words and the mental issues I would later face were unique to me until I found out otherwise.

The role of a father in a child’s life is most crucial in the years after the child has developed independence. The role of a father has been lost in male society leading to anger, frustration, and a cycle of self-destruction.

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A few days ago I listened to a guy yelling at his son behind my house. It was like reliving a moment from my own life. The father, a local landlord, was working on a house to get it rented out and had his teenage son with him to help out with the work. Then the degrading assault happened.

“What the f**k is wrong with you? You don’t think. I’m not going to tell you every little detail of every f**king job. How does that help me? All you do is make my life f**king miserable. Are you stupid?”

How does this help his son? What part of this is teaching him to be a better man? The disconnection between father and son is growing more with every generation. I doubt that kid respects his father. He may fear him as I did with mine but there is very little respect for someone that treats people like that.

I want to tell his son that things will get better. I want to tell him to move out as soon as possible. Put space between yourself and that man as you can. We have this notion we are to respect our parents. The truth is that respect is earned and should never be given indiscriminately.

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The person that had the titles Father and Dad in my life was not a kind man. It has been several years since we last spoke. While the silence between us has not healed old wounds it has prevented new ones. That is the danger of keeping toxic people in your life. There were phrases he would say as I was growing up that still cut deep and bring back the self-loathing that it created.

“Are you stupid?”

“What is wrong with you?”

These are the immediate two that come to mind and there were several others. He used the same words. He used the same towering posture. This wasn’t about teaching me or guiding me to be a man. This was about control. For whatever reason he is disappointed in himself and where he is in his life and seeing me with all the potential infuriated him knowing he blew his chance to be great. So instead of teaching me how to be great, he made it his goal that I not end up any better than him.

I know that some people out there are going to talk about some tough love garbage and say that it makes you into a real man. If you talk about how bad your childhood was and how bad your parents made you feel then you turn around and do that to your kid, you are just like your parents. You are no better. You are not doing your child a favor. When you tell people how bad you had it then pass that on to your child you are now the abusive parent that you loathe.

I still deal with the demons that were pushed on me. The self-hatred I was taught by the same person who was supposed to nurture me into a man. I cringe when people insult my intelligence. I shy away when people ask if there is something wrong with me.

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There was a time when the father would bond with his son, teaching him how to be a man. The late Joseph Campbell, a scholar in comparative religion and comparative mythology, discussed this in one of his many lectures on mythology and symbolism. The son would be removed from his mother for a period of time with the rest of the men in the family. This was usually in the form of a hunting trip. For several days the man would teach, hunt, and talk. A connection was built, and when the son returned he was now a man in the family and no longer the boy who was to be looked after and coddled.

Some parts of our society have replaced this. In some families, it is graduating high school; others joining the military. In many cases like mine, there was no defining line. Adulthood was a crapshoot that I was supposed to figure out on my own. Add to that being told I was a constant failure and screw up, and you have a formula for disaster.

We need to reclaim this tradition of transition into adulthood. For most women, the defining moment between girlhood and womanhood comes after her first menstruation. Where is the defining moment for manhood in a boy’s life? Fathers need to set aside the time for their sons to teach them and talk to them. I don’t think it really matters anymore if it’s spending time working on the car or a day in the woods hunting. There needs to be that education and patience.

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I’m in my mid thirties now, and after hearing my neighbor, I know I’m not completely over it. I’m sure there is a part that never will be. Maybe that is the part I need to hold onto in order to not do the same thing to my children when I have them.

I have progressed over the years on what it means to be a man. Events that usually happen during childhood I made happen years later. I bought my own Red Rider BB gun for my thirtieth birthday. My aunt took me shooting for the first time at a shooting range.I went hunting for the first time last year for small game and deer. I learned to fix the brakes on my car years after asking as a teenager.

There is something encouraging about becoming a self-made man. The disappointment is the loss of memories I could have had with the man I should have respected and the bond I should have with other men. Little by little I reclaim what was lost and learn how to be the type of man that I can look up to. I try to find aspects of others I respect and learn from that. What is hard are the moments that those triggers happen and I find myself asking, “Am I stupid?”

I can go weeks or months taking great strides and out of nowhere I’m taking several leaps back. Mental and verbal abuse doesn’t end when you leave the house and stay away from the people that broke you down with it. It continues on for decades after, and I hope that there will be an end in sight.

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Image credit: crosathorian/flickr

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