I think there is a difference between “abuse” and “being cruel/crude/whatever.” Abuse indicates a pattern of controlling behavior. People can say mean things without rising to the level of “being abusive.”

Unless we are classifying every time one partner loses their temper, raises their voice or uses profanity as being abusers which I think minimizes more egregious behavior.

Feel free to huff and puff about what is acceptable, but it's actually not a good thing to take imperfect but normal things that happen because even well-intentioned people are human and compare them to physical beatings and abuse.

I agree put downs are bad and to be avoided but putting everything in the same abuse bin is not really helpful IMO.

“Normal” (in terms of how frequently you may see it) does not equate to acceptable,

I think anyone who has been married for more than two years and says there is NEVER a put-down spoken between them and their spouse is a liar.

I'm not saying it's regular or everyday or OK or normal, I'm saying once in a very blue moon, it happens. Apologies are forthcoming and sincere, but they happen.

Seriously normal marriages never have "put downs"? The people here never say anything harsh or negative directly to their partners?

I mean, I'm down with preventing abuse but when people say that typical marriages never involve put downs I feel like it's defining abuse down.

I was verbally abused for 15 years. When it began I started marriage counseling and spent 15 years being told "in sickness and health" and a whole bunch of other bull that made me believe this was why "marriage is hard".

It's anxiety, it's stress, etc.

Now that I'm on the other side of it I see men talking to and about their wives in ways that are abusive and I see the wives, like me, think "it's stress"... or. "He's having a bad day" etc.

I think low level of abuse are common. Severe abuse uncommon.

Anonymous wrote:Nope. Literally never.

Sorry, I was in a rush before. DH and I agreed early on that we'd never call each other names or curse words. Once, he yelled "are you f-ing kidding me?!" at me. He never did anything that made me scared of him. He's never done anything that has made me wonder "Is this abuse?"

When he's angry he goes quiet. When I'm angry, I want to yell, so I go for a walk to avoid yelling.

It happened to my sister-in-law, and to one of my acquaintances, but I definitely would NOT say it is normal, or ever acceptable.

Common and normal do not mean the same thing. Abuse is common but it is not normal.

Depends on the put down, I guess, ("you throw like a girl" might not raise any flags) but punching walls is a show stopper.

Never.

I think there is a huge range of unacceptable behaviors we could call “abuse” but some of them a marriage can get over and some they cannot. I can say for myself that DH and I were frequently cruel to each other early on in our marriage and it could definitely be called abusive. Over time we learned how to handle conflict and have fewer conflicts.

No. In 20 years, never.

Nope. Literally never.

How common is abuse? I'm talking things ranging from put downs to punching walls. Do these things happen occasionally in normal relationships?