Re: 75156

The particular person in question was instigating and not making posts that were helpful, positive, or knowledge-based.

It's very easy to say that a person should be able to tell, in advance, that someone is a violent abuser.  If that were true, we wouldn't be hospitalizing and burying tens of thousands of men and women each year as a result of domestic violence and abuse.  The dynamics are not as simple to explain as we wish.

Having survived domestic violence and abuse, I am qualified to speak from experience and wisdom.  "Experience" refers to having actually endured the physical, verbal, emotional, spiritual, sexual, and financial abuse.  "Wisdom" refers to having educated myself on the dynamics of domestic violence/abuse and evolving from "victim" into "Survivor." 

You see, I (like some members' posts) had always believed that domestic violence and abuse were issues that belonged in trailer parks or back alleys.  I believed that women who were abused were uneducated.  I also believed that women who were victims of abuse had somehow "done something" to set off their abuser, thus making their injuries (or, deaths) their own faults.  I also believed that women who were abused were foolish, stupid, low-income, and low-rent - strictly ghetto.  And, I believed that victims of domestic violence and abuse were not worthy of my personal empathy or compassion as, like you, I also believed that they had made stupid choices and were getting what they deserved.  It was not until I found myself spiralling down into the cesspool of domestic violence and abuse that I experienced a personal epiphany and begged forgiveness for my arrogance of stereotyping victims of abuse!

In my case, my former perpetrator is a narcissist who is bordering on sociopathy.  Narcissist Personality Disorder is not an organic disorder like Schizophrenia or diabetes.  NPD is a learned behavior, either as a method of protection or by example from a parent.  Like all NPD's, my ex did not have his own personality.  Whatever qualities that I believed that he had were just learned and parrotted through trial and error in an effort to seek his own needs, whatever they might have been.  Once I became ensnared by a legal civil contract (marriage) with a child, he began to unpeel himself, like an onion.  First, one layer of "niceness" came away.  Then, another, and so forth, until the core of our union was based upon terror, dehumanization, degradation, deception, and emotional and physical rape.  It was all about control.  And, I had to get myself out of a situation that was literally killing me in every manner imaginable.

The point of this ramble is that, saying something like, "You gals made your bed, so lie in it!" is not positive, encouraging, helpful, or educated.  Any victim, male or female, did not make the bed of violence - it is a vicious cycle that is learned by observation and forceful indoctrination, it continues, and it is escalating because of stereotyping and willful ignorance.  And, so that you might better educate yourself on this subject, accept that anyone can become the victim of domestic violence and abuse.  Please, see:  www.ndvh.org and www.ptypes.com/narcissisticpd to learn more about this subject if you wish to formulate an opinion that is based upon fact, not "common sense."

If we don't educate ourselves about a particular subject or topic, where do we get off attempting to voice an opinion that is devoid of knowledge?  Good luck to you in your journey to greater knowledge, understanding, and compassion.