Verbal Aggresiveness Verbal Aggressiveness Every

Verbal Aggresiveness Verbal Aggressiveness Every year the divorce rate gets a little higher. About 50% of all marriages in the United States fail. Almost nobody goes into a marriage thinking they will fail, and yet half do. Not all, but many marriages fail because of communication problems. While communication is not a panacea, and will not solve all one's problems, effective communication strategies can greatly help couples who wish to strengthen their relationships. This is particularly important if one of the partners is verbally aggressive.

Verbal aggression can ruin a marriage and cause it to fail. A combination of verbal and nonverbal aggression, if uncorrected, will nearly always be fatal to the relationship. I have neighbors who recently divorced. Nobody blamed the wife, whom I'll call Sue. She was frequently the recipient of verbal aggression from her husband whom I'll call Pete. Pete did not know any other way to fight but dirty. If ever anyone needed to learn some conflict management skills, Pete did.

Pete seemed to enjoy ridiculing his wife in front of people and often hit "below the belt." For example, he proclaimed loudly at a party that her dress made her butt look like "two big watermelons." Sue has a generous figure and is especially sensitive about the size of her hips and rear end. They really aren't that big and certainly don't look like two big watermelons, but Pete knows she's sensitive, so he plunged the knife in and twisted it to make it hurt.

When Sue got tears in her eyes (who wouldn't feel humiliated by such treatment?), he said, "Oh, poor little baby. The truth hurts," in a baby-talk voice. Sue confided in her friend Luanne (who told me) about an incident that happened when the two were on vacation in Mexico. When Sue came out of a restroom, she didn't realize it, but her skirt was caught up in the back in the elastic in her underpants. Pete didn't say a word to her about it.

He let her walk around that way for several hours. (I'd have divorced on that alone.) After she discovered it herself, and she was totally mortified, then he rubbed it in by teasing her about it afterwards. For the rest of the vacation, every time she went to the bathroom, he said, "Hey...don't forget to pull up your undies." Pete often criticized the work that Sue did. She was a dedicated social worker.

In a restaurant one morning while having a coffee with a group of people from the neighborhood, Pete said bitterly that the government program Sue worked for was "the biggest waste of money the government ever dreamed up because the people she was trying to help were "low lifes," "down-and-out blood suckers," and "trash who belong in jail, not getting free hand-outs." Sue tried to defend herself.

She said, "Some people think what I do is the only good thing the government does." During this scene, Pete seemed to be enjoying the attention, although I don't know why because the other people at the table didn't appreciate what he had to say or the way he treated his wife. He acts like he's the only one who really knows the truth about these things and has a very cynical outlook. But the clincher, the incident that triggered Sue leaving Pete, was not verbal, it was non-verbal.

Sue had six pigeons she kept as pets. I'm not sure how she happened to get them, but she gave them names, fed them every day, and really doted on them. She thought they were very interesting creatures and more intelligent than most people think. They cocked their heads and listened when she spoke to them. Pete hated them because they messed in the yard. He kept telling her to get rid of them. Then one day while she was at work, he took matters into his own hands.

He wrung their necks and threw their bodies in the garbage can. When Sue took the trash out, she found her pets dead -- murdered. This sent a message to Sue that Pete couldn't care less about her feelings, that he was capable of violent behavior, and probably things were only going to get worse. The next time, it might be she who got her neck wrung. In this instance, verbal aggression led to non-verbal abuse. It was mean and cruel. Verbal aggression never helps to resolve a conflict.

It reduces the credibility of the person who engages in it, and increases the credibility of the person who is the victim of it. Why people behave in a verbally aggressive manner is a wonder. It may be they just don't like the person they are attacking. The most frequently given reason by aggressors is that they are simply responding to someone else's verbal aggression. Verbally aggressive people are often angry people who are seeking any and all outlets for their anger. I'm pretty sure Pete is such a person.

Since Sue left him, he refers to her as "the whore." He may have grown up in a household where people treated each other this way. Maybe they treated him in a verbally aggressive manner, and that's how he learned it. Some things he has said about his father suggest this. It may also be that he is unable to argue effectively so he uses verbal aggression instead. He attacks on a personal level and below the belt to diminish the other person's sense of self-worth.

it's a way of winning by inflicting psychological pain on the other person. Because this behavior is disconfirming, the other person feels discredited and his/her view of self is damaged. It is a very destructive way to win in a conflict. In terms of conflict management skills, verbal aggression is a strategy that fails every time. There is evidence that marriages, in which verbal aggression is present, are also likely to also include violence and abuse. Certain characteristics can be spotted in verbally aggressive people.

When confronted with stubbornness, for example, they employ insults. If a person doesn't do what they want them to do, they tell the person he/she is unreasonable. When trying to influence another person, they attack the person's character. They lose their temper and say strong things to people who don't cooperate. When somebody insults them, they get a lot of pleasure from "telling off" the person. They "stimulate" the "stupid" person's intelligence by poking fun at the person.

They "correct" bad, mean, or cruel behavior by attacking the character of the person who does.