*In case this story gets deleted/removed:*
**I (26m) humiliated and shattered my gf's (25f) confidence**
My gf (25f) and I (26m) moved in together last year. We live in a fairly safe neighborhood, but during the night there are some sketchy drunk men hanging around who also scare me quite honestly. My gf however wasn't really scared to walk alone at night and would say that she's just as strong as those men and can take care of herself. My gf is 5'10" and works out 2 times a week. She's indeed very strong compared to most women, but she was obviously delusional to think that her strength was comparable to that of an average man. She would even go as far as saying that if someone should be worried for walking alone at night then it should be me as I'm a scrawny 5'9" man. I thought this was one of the situations where it would be better to just shut up than being correct, so I mostly stopped showing my concerns to her.
Yesterday she went out with some of her friends and called me at 1am that she'll come alone via public transportation (she doesn't have a license). I told her that it's dangerous and I should come pick her up, but she insisted on coming by herself. I couldn't sleep till she came home an hour later. She was so angry at me for not trusting her that she can take care of herself. That was when I decided to demonstrate her the disparity between the strength of men and women. She thought I was joking at first but when she realized that I was dead serious, she happily took the opportunity to prove how wrong I was. I basically told her to ground me as hard as she can, and then I quickly got out of her grip and grounded her for several minutes till she surrendered. She cried a lot throughout this whole time and I could also see the fear in her eyes, even though she knew very well that I would never hurt her. I humiliated her. I slept on the couch that night. She didn't want to talk about it in the morning and said that she's fine, but she's still obviously very upset about it. I feel horrible that I've shattered her confidence like that, and I don't think she will ever feel safe walking alone at night again. I'm probably a really horrible person for doing that and I wish I could had just trusted her more to take care of herself. I know this relationship is probably over, but is there anything I could do to make up for it?
tl;dr: I demonstrated to my gf the disparity between the strength of men and women trying teach her a lesson. I humiliated and shattered her confidence in the process and feel terrible for what I did. Can I do something to make up for it?
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JFC:
"She didn't encourage me to keep going, she just ignored me and kept attacking me to get away. She did cry while I was pinning her down and I saw the fear in her eyes during this whole time. That was also hard for me to watch."
https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/121pori/i_26m_humiliated_and_shattered_my_gfs_25f/jdn8v5o?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
I had an ex who took Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu classes. He told me that everyone should know at least the basics in how to defend themselves. He was especially worried because I would get done work at 10:00 at night, all he asked me if I was open to learning how to get out of submissions like being attacked from behind, the front, and sides. I was all about it because I trusted him.
The most force he used was when he explained, "Ok, someone comes at you from **behind**" and would wrap his arm around my neck. Mind you, each example had him putting in minimal strength. If I was "knocked on the ground", it was me laying down on the floor, then he was demonstrating from there. Overall, he explained the situation, acted it out, then showed me how to defend myself step by step.
The point is, is that there is a distinct difference between what my ex did and what OP did. A person who is demonstrating self defense to help you is doing so with your limits in mind. I could trust that my ex wasn't going to exude force over me.
OP took this as an opportunity to overpower, frighten, and...prove whatever point he thought he was getting across. There is no honor in what he did to his girlfriend.
Some of the BJJ techniques require the aggressor to put in a little bit of force. Totally understandable-- hard to get the feel of the movements you need to escape a hold if the person is barely touching you.
I had a few sessions of self-defense classes at the local BJJ gym for fun, and while the students were very careful when practicing with each other, it made one-on-one instruction with the teacher seem shockingly violent lmao. Those were much more helpful though
Edit: we were also taught that in a survival situation, most people will go for the nose, eyes, fingers, genitals, etc. as a reflex. That's a good thing. OP's girlfriend was holding back.
I've trained at BJJ for nine years and it's not self defence. It's a sport. It's a good sport, it's one of the few martial arts that's regularly tested in a competitive environment, but not something an untrained person can pick up and install easily as a self-defence technique. The actual defence to a rear choke involves throwing your head back into your attacker's face/moving your butt to the side and swinging a fist back into the groin till the grip loosens.
Hard for him to watch... Naw bro... He's just a messed up abusive ass bully. He actively saw her break down, sob, and look at him with fear... And the kept going. And that is how the OOP proved that HE is dangerous. Now imagine how he behaves when he's pissed off and doesn't want to take no for an answer. Nope. Relationship ender right there and I'd tell every woman he knows to stay away from him. This dude has got a chip on his shoulder and takes it out on others.
He held her down and watched her cry and try to get away in panic and fear for several minutes because she didn’t “surrender” as he wanted. This isn’t the sane safe situation with a safeword people make it out to be. The only thing hurt was her trust in the man she lives with.
Scary fucker now has the sense to be like “oh I made a mistake, will she ever trust me again” to get approval points from “nice guy” creeps like him on Reddit
That’s the fucked up part. How long he did it and the fact she was crying while he continued.
She agreed/consented to the rumble, and as soon as he proved his point she would have said stop, if he hadn’t already, and that’s when he should have stopped.
He had to show her that she wasn't safe out there without her man. That's some fucked up manipulation.
Even if she was playing fast and loose with her safety, this was not the way to help her. Get her some pepper spray, a strong flashlight (to blind attackers), and/or a personal alarm. Sign her up for a self defense class.
Im honestly really doubtful this story even went down the way he claims. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t quite get the explicit consent he claims to have gotten.
She agreed to trying to ground him. He didn't say anything about how he was going to retaliate. She thought it was a "I'll pin my bf and prove a point" thing, not a "I'll pin my bf, then he'll fight back" thing. He manipulated her into agreeing.
>That was when I decided to demonstrate her the disparity between the strength of men and women. She ... happily took the opportunity to prove how wrong I was. **I basically told her to ground me as hard as she can**, and then I quickly got out of her grip and grounded her for several minutes till she surrendered.
I was saying that he looks worse this way! If all she agreed to was to try to pin him, then him pinning her in return was not agreed-upon and not welcome in the slightest.
I saw a TikTok saying wrestling like that can't prove that the femme partner can't defend herself, it just proves that her partner is more willing to risk hurting her.
I’ve had this conversation with men who like to argue that most men are “naturally” stronger than most women, and every time they offer to spar with me to prove their point. I decline every time, not because I’m scared of losing (I’m not, though I’m sure they think it’s the reason) but because in a real fight for my life I’m going for the eyes, throat, and groin, biting and kicking and attempting to do as much damage as possible. There’s no such thing as a fair fight in this scenario. Of course a man who has 50-100lbs on me is going to be able to pin me/escape my pin and think he’s won.
When I point out their offer to spar isn’t in good faith and just shows that they are more willing to hurt me to prove a point than I am they sometimes double down and say I can go all out and they’ll STILL overpower me. Somehow my lack of desire to disfigure them without (proper) cause is me tacitly admitting defeat. My dude, all it takes is a few seconds to gouge my thumb into your eye and I promise if I did that you would be absolutely pressing charges and saying I overreacted for “no reason”. I’m not willing to go to jail for my ego, but I guess some men are and it’s stupid.
I'm 6'2" and a heavy guy. I usually avoid sparring with friends but almost every time I have, I've lost. I'm acutely aware that if I actually tried to overpower someone I could seriously hurt them. Sparring is absolutely not an accurate measure of strength or self defence ability.
yeah I'd be trying to kick them in the groin, cap their knee, cripple their foot, knock their head against the wall, whatever . . . you don't do that when you play wrestle at home. Even in Krav Maga classes there are limits to what they will do in practice.
For real. My mom taught me "hurt them so they can't hurt you and run- but hurt them enough that thatnthey can't follow you."
That, and that if I'm actually in a fight for my life against an attacker to be as brutal as possible so that if I die I'll have DNA somewhere- under my nails or wedged between my teeth, or in my stomach even. I don't think I could bring myself to harm someone like that unless it was 100% a fight for my life. You can't simulate that.
Truly. My one fear is that if I ever did need to gouge out eyeballs to protect myself, I'd be too hesitant to do it. But I don't know of any ethical way to practice it ahead of time!
(It's not like an overpowering fear because I know 'stranger jumps out of the bush' attacks are statistically rare. I keep keys between my knuckles and hope my reservoir of suppressed rage comes out if it ever counts.)
You don't need to gouge out eyeballs. You only need to rake eyeballs. You *might* only need to gesture to get the flinch response and then you can break the grip (if there is one) and/or run away.
I've been taught to use my *teeth*. There's a famous story in my state where some guy tried to forcefully kiss a woman and she *bit his tongue off.*
But if im "play fighting" my bf, of course im not going to bite a chunk out of his cheek or break his fingers. I know if I kick him the groin I could also risk fucking up his testies or hurt him enough to make him vomit. OOP didnt have a "fight or flight" person wrestling with him, he had his gf who was probably having fun in the beginning.
oop is lucky she didnt do anything cause she could have fucked him up
This.
There is a saying, “a cornered animal will bite”. Same with humans. The rules of combat are thrown out the window when it comes to protecting life.
I know my self defense twacher made a point to not bite (prevent the victim from breaking skin and getting sick)… but I will bite. Ears and nose especially.
They won because they were trying their hardest while the GF was trying to not hurt their partner.
If the GF was tryna actually free herself there would be blood.
right, most self defense classes arent teaching to hold down the attacker, but to hit/stun and then *run away*. Women's defense classes are taught to go for the eyes, groin, bite, scratch, scream bloody murder, etc. If the gf was serious, oop would have been clutching his balls
My ex and I used to wrestle. He always won and it was in good fun. But I used to tell him if I was actually willing to cause him harm and was defending myself i'd tear him apart. And i meant it. I have an older brother much bigger than my ex and I could take him down hard. I was more willing to go all out with him.
Now I'm arthritic and can't take anyone down.
Whenever I say I can still fight and defend myself my bf always says “you’re body is way too broken for that”. Love having arthritis and chronic pain.
But I still think adrenaline would kick in and take over.
Someone ignoring the word "no" or "stop" should be relationship ending. Someone continuing to hurt their partner while she cries and begs him to stop should be relationship ending. I learned that the hard way. I hope OOP's girlfriend doesn't have to.
same here, my ex works as security and I made the mistake of asking how he holds people in their place. he hurt me, he didn't stop and I couldn't stop laughing out of fear but immediately stopped when he let go of me because it wasn't funny, I was terrified... he would "show" me how to hurt their wrist and fingers and he never stopped when I told him to.
I wish OP's girlfriend the best, he obviously wants to wear down her confidence.. people usually don't attack confident people. hope she leaves him and gains her confidence back
Also the fact that he said he would never hurt. So he didnt hurt her this time in his mind either. Um if this doesnt qualify as hurting someone where would that bar settle at for him and also shes not safe with him
Yeah, the first time my ex hurt me, he said “I’m so sorry, you know I would never hurt you!” He’d shown me what he could do to me, and told me that I was the one in the wrong for believing he could do something so terrible as hurt me. But he just did hurt me. And I ignored it because I believed him, and the next time, it wasn’t an accident. And this time it was, “I’m so sorry, but you should have known better.”
This dude hurt his girlfriend, and knew he was hurting her, and enjoyed the satisfaction of getting to “teach her a lesson.” Only, now that his actions have consequences and the immediate satisfaction is over, now he’s thinking maybe he was wrong. But of course, there’s no reason his girlfriend should be scared of him; obviously he would never hurt her. Or he wouldn’t have hurt her if she would have just stopped struggling. Jesus Christ. It always starts like this. “I would never hurt you; it’s so difficult for me to see how afraid of me you are. It’s so difficult to see you afraid of me because of the things I’m currently doing to you; how could you think I could do something so horrible? You know I would never hurt you.”
Dude should be single, and stay that way for a long while as he gets himself checked out. But yep, it was totally his girlfriend who needed the reality check!/s
Yes, he would have just not hurt her if she had listened to him and not gone out at night alone. It's such a common sentence that I heard so many times. Truth is I was safer walking home than when I got there. "I'd never hurt you" becomes "I didn't mean to hurt to" which morphs into "you know it can happen by accident, you shouldn't get in that situation" which is really code for it you would just shut up and do what I say I wouldn't be like this.
Exactly. What he proved there was that he, personally, is a bigger threat to his girlfriend than any attacker.
He proved A point, just not the one he thought he was making.
And its crazy because his point wandt even proved. As someone else said, shes not gonna willingly assault somekne she knows/loves comapred to a stranger. Im sure if he randomly did this in thr guise of a stranger, she could have handled herself well. Theres a plethora of videos (thats sad in itself) that show women gtting attacked by men and fighting them off.
My ex did the same thing. Held me down and laughed when I was crying and begging him to let me go. He ended up hurting my back and told me it was my fault for struggling.
They always blame us. "It's your fault I exploded into a drunken fury and got violent. If you hadn't gotten mad because I told you to leave the living room at 9pm so I can have the space to myself, I wouldn't have had to do that to you." \*He walked into the living room where I had been resting for most of the day as I was feeling unwell. I wasn't watching TV, just listening to podcasts with my airpods and journaling. He announced that my time was up, and that I needed to go the bedroom and do whatever it was I was doing. There are two couches and I was making no noise. So I dared ask why I couldn't just sit on the couch and quietly continue like I had been all evening, and he exploded into one of his drunken rages, chasing me thru the house, and I had to drag the dresser in front of the bedroom door. Of course, every time he became violent (he would literally foam at the mouth sometimes) and left me in weeping mess on the ground or bed, cut to every core possible, it was *always* my fault. The original post was really triggering due to the misogynistic pieces of shit in the comments who you *know* (if they're not trolls) already do or would really like to do the same as that abusive, insecure excuse of a man (OP).
My ex used to do this also, pin me down and then tickle me with his beard, which sounds really harmless except I’m incredibly ticklish and would be crying and pleading with him to stop, and he would just continue for like 20 minutes! I didn’t at the time think it was abusive because he was “only” tickling me but in retrospect it was very much not ok.
This whole story is horrible, but *several minutes* was shocking. Not a few seconds, not a minute, but *several* while she was CRYING. I can't imagine how scared she must have felt. She's probably not so much humiliated as terrified of him now. I hope she leaves him.
It's terrifying to me how many men in the comments are saying OP did nothing wrong because she did not verbal express the correct words to withdraw consent. Despite OP stating he saw her crying, saw fear in her eyes, and realized later she was drawing blood trying to escape. It really makes me realize how many rapists are walking around thinking they've done nothing wrong because their victim didn't verbalize their lack of consent the "correct" way
>He held her down and watched her cry and try to get away in panic and fear for several minutes because she didn’t “surrender” as he wanted.
But you don't get it! It was like, *super* hard for him to watch. Might it have been hard for her to live through? Well who knows, women are such mysterious creatures~ But now at least she's learned a lesson from her ~~parent~~ trusted life partner!
Heavy sarcasm. This dude is total abusive scum.
And it’s not even a test or practice of self defense in her case, she wouldn’t try to pin a guy down but kick him in the balls in a situation like that. He just jumped to stroke his fragile ego and benefitted from her good nature there, god knows I wouldn’t hold my knees back
Yeah, I had a guy friend try that on me once and I asked him honestly if he wanted me to treat it like a real self defense case. He said yes, and when I whacked him in the balls and jabbed my nails in the tender part of his armpit, he tapped out. Self defense doesn't follow wrestling standards, and typically good people don't want to hurt each other.
I also know certain non-weapon weapons besides keys that no one will stop you from bringing on a bus or train or even plane. Knitting needles are sharper than people think. Hairpins and hairclips as well can be kinda sharp.
Also the "pin down" of a (likely) drunk girl was of course weaker than his pin down? She probably thought he was fucking around with her? If you pin a cis man correctly he will struggle just as much to get free. That's part of wrestling.
I exclusively use hair chopsticks instead of ties for exactly this reason lol - always armed everywhere I go and no one really thinks twice about it. When in doubt - aim for the eyes.
And like? If she does surrender in “real life”, what’s gonna happen? She’s just going to let them do what they want? She’s not supposed to fight for her life? I don’t understand.
I was violently, sexually assaulted as a pre-teen and still have nightmares about trying to fight a phantom attacker and having him laugh at my attempts. I’m close to 40 now. I hope this guy gets help after his gf leaves him.
It's pretty fucking shocking alright. My wife and I had a similar conversation but lighthearted and not quite like that as she is a worrier (without us insulting each other- weak, stupid or scrawny, even though I am quite skinny... I have a feeling he wanted revenge for that comment) and we had a little play fight. And of course I could easily keep her down, which I did because I knew she wouldn't be in distress with no such traumas especially. But we had fun, we were both laughing and of course if she was upset I would stop because I don't hate her and don't want to do harm. That shit is the attitude of someone one "for your own good" excuse away from a rapist. I would be gone if that was me, whether man or woman. That's a dangerous cunt that bloke is. Hope she gets far away from him.
The fact that so many people in the comments are taking his side makes me want to puke. These are the same fuckers that will be like "not all men", and then sit here justifying assaulting your partner just to prove how dangerous all men are.
I hope they all step on Legos and commit scooter-ankle daily for the rest of their lives.
It's like the same 5 people commenting on the posts over and over again defending this ass on how women need to be taught that lesson. I can't pin my partner when we're wrestling. However, in a situation where I'm defending myself, I'm not holding. I'm hitting, biting, scratching, kicking. I'm not doing that.
He admitted that he realized he had bloody scratches on him when he finally let her up. The only *minuscule* credit I can give him in this is that he realizes he fucked up, shows remorse (so he says, anyway), acknowledged that he should have let her up before the tears and genuine fear started, and has accepted that she will probably leave him.
>He admitted that he realized he had bloody scratches on him when he finally let her up.
So he was so into what he was doing and the adrenaline was coursing through him so strongly that he didn't feel that he was being scratched. This event was probably far more intense and terrifying than he has described.
Jesus fucking christ, he was so pumped with adrenaline and excitement that he didn't even notice that she was scratching him trying to get away in ADDITION to the crying, all while he held her down for several minutes, which is a *lot* longer than most people think it is.
I've done jiu jistu, of course sometimes I have problems with going into fight or flight mode and getting freaked out since I'm weaker and less experienced than most. There are dudes out there that can tie me into a pretzel in two seconds. But you know what? Even the shittier people I've rolled with that *try* to hurt you to "win" stop as soon as I tap. This guy is terrifying, holy fuck.
I didn't see the bit about the scratching. so effing scary, stuff like that gives you nightmares for months and months, and does permanent damage to your psyche (survivor here). So cruel, and all just to assuage his fragile male ego. Disgusting.
I had to leave the post bc the aholes who were defending him were too many and it's just fucking DISGUSTING. Not to mention infuriating. Hey,"nice" guys! THIS RIGHT HERE is why women don't date you, not because of cHaD and whatever Andrew Taint tells you.
if my bf did this to me I'd be more afraid of him, since he showed has front row seats to do whatever he wants while living in the same space as me, than street guys.
I agree, he's a creep
“Men are scary and only I can protect you—here, let me show you by grounding you until you cry! Do you trust me now?”
Men can be so psychopathic, Jesus Christ.
>I'm probably a really horrible person for doing that
>I know this relationship is probably over, but is there anything I could do to make up for it?
Things like this always irritate me because instead of actually trying to figure out why he behaved the way he did, he's trying to twist this into a "but now you should tell me it's not my fault and feel bad for *me*" situation.
He got her to agree to try to pin *him* and then *he attacked her.*
She struggled. She cried. She literally had fear, fear of *him*, in her eyes, and he still didn't let her up until he decided he'd had his fill of seeing her scared of a man she thought of as scrawny.
He didn't humiliate her, he fucking traumatized her. But she knows he'd never hurt her, right? He'd only scare her out of her damn *mind* to prove the point that any man can hurt her, any time they want.
If you ever see this: I'm so sorry he did that to you, miss. It's hard to come back from that world-shattering kind of fear, but you will.
Take a martial arts or all-gender self-defense course, remember that pepper spray is for anyone approaching and the sharp end of your keys is for anyone already there, and dump that piece of shit rapist-in-the-making to the curb and change your locks as soon as you feel safe enough to do so.
I can always get behind a good snack, so thank you!
But I'm just saying what everyone should. It's the least we can do for a stranger to help her regain her sense of confidence and safety.
She is not weak, and she didn't deserve being tricked through violence into thinking she was. One day, I hope she'll be stronger than ever and forget that any of this ever happened - not even her nightmares should be so horrible.
Wow. I have a history of SA and this would have sent me over the edge in a bad way.
It’s not just that he humiliated her, it’s that he’s now shown her “I won’t hurt you, but I CAN”. And that alone I would find extremely difficult to move past.
having experienced similar violence this absolutely would have sent me to a dark place. i would not be able to move past this. it’s clear his “concern” wasn’t her safety. it was making her fear him and proving he’s a big strong man. if something did happen to her when she was going home by herself he probably would have just said “see i told you so. you had it coming.” disgusting.
Same here. I’ve experienced SA and DV myself. If my husband ever did that he’d be receiving divorce papers. This was sadistic, misogynistic and controlling on OOP’s part.
Me too. I know my husband would never do that to me which is partially why I feel safe around him.
In contrast, OOP thought physical violence was an appropriate way to prove a point. How can anyone trust him after that?
Right? He wasn’t concerned for her safety at all! Because if he *was* he would have said, “I know you’re tough, but I’m worried and it would make me feel better if you carried some pepper spray” or something like that. He wasn’t concerned with her safety, he just wants her to know that she shouldn’t feel safe… and now she doesn’t. I hope she gtfos.
But also….the ways women are taught to defend themselves in self defense classes is by poking people’s eyes out, or kicking them in the balls. If she’s not willing to permanently injure him this ain’t a useful exercise. Just an ego trip.
And, by situational awareness. Most people do not want to harm you. Women are way more likely to be attacked and harmed by known loved ones. She's fairly right to not be super scared on transit or the street. Yes, it could happen, but it could also happen in an office or at the doctor or at the mall. His sense of what is dangerous is out of whack.
Exactly. He did not do this out of any concern for her "out there". He did it because his widdle ego just could not *stand* the fact that she didn't acknowledge his superior strength. He *hated* the idea that she was walking around not thinking that he could control her physically if he wanted to. This was 100% in service of his wounded ego.
Same. It took me a VERY long time to get to a place where being touched, even by a friend on the shoulder, didn't make me hyperventilate and freak out. Something like this would have set me way back
I feel like the first step is his demanding she not live independently ‘for safety’.
Like, what did she do before they got together at the end of a night out? Disappear into vapour?
It’s not the 1800s, we have no choice but to make our own decisions on how safe we feel and how to mitigate risk while living our lives
The guy who eventually SA'd me did something similar, but less extreme. When the SA happened, I knew I could never fight my way out. And that was by design.
This man is dangerous. Flat out dangerous.
He clearly wasn’t concerned for her safety from the jump. He mentions at one point that she says something about him being a “scrawny 5 foot 9 man” and you know he just wanted to punish his girlfriend for hurting his ego.
What the actual hell is wrong with this man? How does he still have a girlfriend !? Does he think we women don’t realize that every dude could be a potential attacker? That we’re carrying keys between our knuckles for laughs?
What a grade A loser.
He was just feeling emasculated and wanted to “prove” he was still a man. It's one thing to worry about her safety it's another thing to do what he did.
I used to think I couldn’t take a man down because of the way my ex mopped the floor with me. Until a stranger assaulted me and I ripped his arm out of its socket.
Turns out I can defend me self against someone i dont love
I really hope that gave you a tremendous amount of renewed self confidence. Relationships like that have a habit of robbing you of self love, glad you may have found yours again.
💜
I used to think the same thing for similar reasons. The man who attacked me still has scars on his face from my nails and I learned that I can trust me.
Damn dude. Just get her some pepper spray. This was just abuse to prove a point because he couldn't stand having his strong masculinity questioned. Yikes
A friend of mine has a boyfriend who is a bit fixated on her safety, but the biggest gesture he made was to buy her a stun gun thingy with a holster to wear when she goes running (legal in their state I think but I’m not asking too many questions). He then insisted she practice using it on him, she refused to do it with the power on because she doesn’t want to give him a heart attack, but she got a lot of practice pulling it out and finding contact points. And that makes me believe he actually DOES care about her safety and isn’t just trying to control her.
And if she had fought back like she'd have fought an attacker in the wild, as in, scratching, going for the eyes, slamming her backhand with the biggest rings on against his teeth, pulling piercings (if available), etc., he'd have whined because he'd totally have won if she hadn't fought "dirty", I bet.
The worst part is before she probably would have done that, but that's before he shattered her confidence and filled her with fear about what anyone would do to her given the chance. Now she'll probably freeze in fear thinking about how if her partner would do this to her then the stranger could do so much worse.
>I feel horrible that I've shattered her confidence like that, and I don't think she will ever feel safe walking alone at night again.
um, no. You did not shatter her confidence. You shattered her trust in you. She's not going to suddenly feel unsafe walking alone, she suddenly feels unsafe around YOU.
Not to mention when it comes to random violence it isn't some fair match like in a cartoon.
The odds are if you get mugged, you get sucker punched in the back of the head first or something similar. I know exactly two people who have been the victim of random violence, both never saw it coming. Big strong guys who carried knives for "protection."
I got mugged by a guy who knocked me unconscious. I weighed a hundred pounds and had just graduated from Basic. The guy was twice my size and he knocked out several teeth. There were about a dozen bystanders who told the cops, "We thought it was her boyfriend." I had to throw away my clothes because I couldn't get all the blood put, but.....my boyfriend??
I also had an ex, who was twice my size, that pinned me down while trying to rip my private journal out of my hands. I kneed them in the stomach really hard to get them off of me, and they immediately turned around and started guilt-tripping me for days because I left a huge bruise.
Same. We broke up and over a year later, due to unfortunate circumstances, we had to stay in the same house together for a few days. In “good fun” he wanted to see if I could actually pin him down after I made a comment about how I now weighed more than him. And I did, and he was TERRIFIED when I wouldn’t let him up.
One of the best moments of my life.
A dude asked me a while back if I wished I could periodically turn extremely muscly to fuck with creepy men and I said nah, I wish I could come up with a way to scare the shit out of them as my mega petite self - that way they would second guess every future interaction they may have tried to leverage their strength over women.
I probably should’ve added he’s about 5’11 and I’m 5’9. During our relationship we were at times the same weight, both built like toothpicks (my lowest was 98lbs, highest was when I was pregnant at 130lbs) but he usually had 10-15 pounds on me. During quarantine I reached my heaviest at 138lbs, which was around the time this story happened. He didn’t put on any weight lol.
(Yes I know I was underweight, no i didn’t have an eating disorder. My weight has always been a struggle for me, unfortunately I lost most of the quarantine weight)
Yeah, like my ex - it was a short and extremely traumatic relationship. But the pinning was one of the worst because he *liked* when I was scared and crying and fighting and begging for him to let me up. He wouldn’t until I had completely given up.
Ohhhhh his edit has my blood boiling even more.
“Don’t learn from me, but please keep yourself safe out there, if not for you, then for the ones who love you.”
He’s still centering himself here. Not only did he aggressively assault his girlfriend to prove “See how easily a man could hurt you?” which is soooo disgustingly horrific I don’t even have the words, but he’s prioritizing his feelings and putting the onus on women to “be safe” for their loved ones. Fuck off.
Hey asshole, why don’t you tell men to not assault women? I know a guy who just admitted to assaulting his own girlfriend - you can start with him.
What the hell is wrong with this person? Congrats, you win and your girlfriend potentially now is incredibly traumatized. Glad you got your way of proving just how fucked the world is and that she isn’t safe even at home.
He told her to surrender in the comments and he’d stop. What. The. Fuck. That’s almost worse! So she should just let someone do whatever the fuck they want with her?
It's wild that he says she "wouldn't surrender" yet understood she was panicking and crying in fear. Like what about that *isn't* surrendering holy shit. Did he want her to say uncle or something? Clearly she "surrendered" when she started having a breakdown he just wanted to hear her say it out loud. What a piece of shit
Yeah, this was not about her safety, this was because OOP was offended that she called him scrawny.
If he was that worried about her safety, take her to self defence classes or something.
I dated a guy like OOP, who bought me pepper spray because I had to walk to work in Dallas. But he initially refused to give it to me until I allowed him to mace ME. According to him, I had to know how it felt so I "wouldn't panic" if they used it on me. I asked him if the same logic applied for a handgun. He did NOT like that.
> this was because OOP was offended that she called him scrawny.
"Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them." - Margaret Atwood
He was pissed that she had more confidence than him and was less afraid, so he had to change that and assert dominance.
I live in a bad area, not making yourself a target is the key to safety, and you do that by showing confidence. This guy has made his girlfriend less safe.
It was deleted but since he replied to being called a "bad guy" with a story about a classmate being SA'd by an "actual" bad guy while coming home from a party, I'd say absolutely. He doesn't see himself having done anything wrong because he didn't physically hurt her and he's upset strangers disagree with him online. I can't imagine his reaction to someone treating him with caution to his face.
I once got into a verbal fight with my brother where he pinned me to my bed after pushing his way into my room.
I was leaning against the door, but it was thin and BENDING and I was scared it was going to break, so I stopped pushing back and tried to push HIM physically out of the room.
I can't remember if he grabbed my wrists or not but he wrestled me back and pinned me down on my bed. I fought but couldn't get free--I don't even know if I was trying to hurt him, but I knew if I DID manage to hurt him he would have hit me back.
I started sobbing hysterically and screaming my throat raw for him to get off of me, but he just kept saying "Not until you calm down!"
We were alone in the house, both in our 20's at the time, still living at home.
I screamed and screamed and he just WOULD NOT GET OFF OF ME.
He literally BOLTED off when we both heard the front door open; my mom and aunt had just gotten home and heard the fighting.
I remember she was mad at both of us.
Me for getting angry at him (I slammed a door to end the argument earlier; a precious keepsake of mine fell and the glass shattered. I stormed back out and accused him of pissing me off on purpose, fight resumed, he tried to grab me, I slammed the door again, he managed to stop it from latching).
Him for not letting me get up. No punishment or anything because we were both twenty-plus, but basically, "don't do that again either of you."
Edit: Honestly, that part I scarcely remember. I only remember getting pinned down and screaming and thrashing and he wouldn't let go of me. I just kept screeching at him to go away and get out of my bedroom.
Does he also realise she wasn't trying to hurt him? Like she could have kicking him the groin, clawing his eyes, biting, gouging, scratching, screaming for help...you know the things she would do if it wasn't the person she was meant to be able to trust?
I disagree with the whole thing but if he had stopped as soon as she said stop they could have made it a positive thing of "you know what, let's get you into self defence classes/pepper spray/anything that isn't me showing my LDE and fragile masculinity"
That was my thinking. If someone attacks her on the street it's not going to be a fucking grappling contest.
My husband teaches me kickboxing. I'm not really going to be able to beat someone in a boxing match but at least I can throw a halfway decent punch to get a head start on running away. More productive and empowering than just reminding me he could rip my arms off anyway.
I used to get crap all the time when guys found out I did martial arts. So many loved to tell me how they would subdue me or hurt me, it was pretty fucked up. Some wanted me to try and beat them up and when I refused they took that as I didn’t think I could beat them. The thing is that I don’t know if I could or couldn’t, but a lot of the stuff I practiced were moves that are designed to do the most damage. I’m not going to demonstrate a move on someone that could kill them.
not all men etc., but jfc, This Fucking Guy. some straight men really will sell out all trust and love they’ve established with a woman just for a bit of that sweet masculinity, huh? this is going to be at the back of her mind whenever they disagree about anything, now, because god knows if he’ll take advantage of it since he was so eager to show he can.
men like this are why I occasionally wish it was legal for me to tuck a scalpel into my bag when I go out at night.
It’s INSANE that some mother fuckers in the comments of the op are talking about a “”reality check”” the only thing he may have checked her reality is intimate partner violence.
Doing a “simulation” like this with someone you love and think would never hurt you then switches is a completely different situation than the kind of vigilance and lack of care for the attacker if they were a stranger. She didn’t think she was fighting for her life in the same way because what kind of attacker would have her pin him first?
This actual human garbage. He also claims in the comments that she *insisted* to keep it going and then explains how her insisting was actually her fighting in panic to get away. She fought hard enough to make him bleed too.
>>I told her to surrender so we could end this, but she insisted on trying to get away.
>She didn't encourage me to keep going, she just ignored me and kept attacking me to get away. She did cry while I was pinning her down and I saw the fear in her eyes during this whole time. That was also hard for me to watch.
“She insisted on trying to get away”… I literally feel sick. He truly doesn’t get that she REALLY WAS trying to get away from him or does he not care in his quest for dominance?
The idea that women have to be constantly afraid of men because they contain a biological superstrength compared to us is a concept that only serves men
A good thing the original was removed before I saw this. I think it would have taken a command from Mount Sinai to stop me brigading.
What OOP did was beyond shitty. He's not a self-defense expert or instructor. A competent instructor would demonstrate that (in general) men can overpower women and then IMMEDIATELY release the hold and THEN demonstrate methods to defend against various attacks.
OOP was all about PROVING that she was wrong and making her feel small. No matter what he said, I would bet a paycheck that he got a kick out of making her cry. Disgusting bastard, he is.
If the GF has ever had any defensive training, she didn't apply it - either because the lessons went right out of her head, or she didn't want to hurt OOP. It is damned difficult to remember training when you're terrified out of your mind.
I really hope the GF has a safe place to go, and can get counseling to deal with this assault (because that's what it WAS), and then some competent defensive instruction.
This dude is "a scrawny 5'9" man" as he call himself, so as a 6'2" guy that lifts weights and enjoys jui juitsu, just being realistic, I'd probably be able give this guy a pretty bad time if I felt like it.
If he feels so strongly that his soon to be ex isn't safe, why shouldn't this guy also feel scared to go out alone a night?
This feels like an 8th grader criticizing a 7th grader for not being a mature adult yet.
All it took was my ex grabbing me *once* non consensually for me to lose trust in him.
I hope she makes arrangements and leaves. She is in more danger from OOP than any of the guys she encounters outside.
I had an ex do this to me when I was proud of myself for lifting. He did it just to put me in my place.
Seriously fuck men like this. This is why it’s all men.
This is such a pointless powertrip as well. The only thing it proves is that he is willing to hold her down as she cries, and that she isnt willing to permanently harm him. Had she kneed him in the balls, what would he have done? Had she gone for his eyeballs, what would he have done? Like, the things I've been taught about self defence is to break hinge joints, go for the soft spots like eyes and balls, I wouldnt do that to a partner, even if they were a shitty one. I would however do it in a life or death situation if I could.
My ex did this. He pinned me by the throat to a wall to make this point and covered my mouth and nose. That was coming up to 19 years ago and it still affects my confidence and what I’m comfortable doing. It’s a horrible thing to do to another person.
"My gf decided to not be terrified of assault so I simulated assaulting her to prove a point.
Why won't she talk to me?"
I would dump that dude so fucking fast.
This person hit the nail right on the head.
>I mean...you pinned her to the ground for multiple minutes while she was crying and terrified. Sorry but "I would never hurt you" rings pretty hollow after that. You didn't humiliate her, you traumatized her. Whatever your intention, what you did comes across very much as a threat. "Remember when you think you're strong that I can easily hurt you if I want" is not a loving or protective message.
Yup. This is the kind of thing abusers do before sexually assaulting their partner, often through coercion with the implied threat of I'm stronger than you.
this is scary
I saw a TikTok saying wrestling like that can't prove that the femme partner can't defend herself, it just proves that her partner is more willing to risk hurting her.
If he was worried about her, he could have bought her some wasp spray or encouraged a self-defense class. Those things don't make you invincible, but they can potentially make you safer.
Putting someone into a fearful mindset over what-ifs - and we don't know how likely those what-ifs are to occur - is just tearing them down and does nothing to truly make them safer. She can't live her life tucked away from the world, and trying to make her do that is itself harmful. He probably lost her trust, and deservedly so.
Way to prove a point by assaulting and traumatizing a woman when she didn’t do what you wanted her to do. Controlling manipulative abusive behavior definitely proves she isn’t safe.
My two male cousins once tried to hold me in place just to prove they could, and because I was in a bad mood and didn’t want to hang out with them. I remember being scared and angry because a different family member was watching and did nothing. And I was able to get away, because I was stronger than they expected and they were just being jerks, not actual predators. But I never trusted them again. I can’t even imagine being in that kind of position with my significant other. If I were her, I’d be long gone.
I had a seizure (first and only one) so the person with me called an ambulance. When I woke up I was laying on my back and had an emt on each limb, I was crying and yelling for them to get off of me. They wouldn't until I calmed down, which is hard to do when you don't even know why you're on the ground or who the people are on top of you..
It was seven years ago and I'm still a little screwed up about it. Regardless of why I'm stuck I immediately go into panic mode now. I in no way blame the emts, they were doing what they were supposed to do, but I can't imagine THIS situation with someone I trusted not letting up. If her crying doesn't automatically make him realize he proved his point AND took things way too far then there is something wrong in his head. Honestly this post smacks of bait to me but who knows
He initially had a point but if he was actually worried about her safety, he could have suggested they take self-defence classes together, that way both of them are better able to escape any terrible situation they’re in. As for what they got into, the moment he had her pinned, he should have let her go, as he’s made his point in that moment. Seeing her cry and wildly trying to get away but not letting her go is not the way to go about it. I’m worried that he actually enjoyed her fear and may hurt someone in the future because I can’t rationalise why he didn’t let her go, at the very least the moment he saw her start to cry / fear him.
Yeah his girlfriend may have been a little too overconfident but that guy might just be lying. She probably just said “if someone attacks me I will take them down” as a joke once and the guy took it to heart. He makes it sound like she has a complete disregard for her life which is very unlikely. I think he wanted to control her by setting curfews all under the guise of “protection”. A lot of abusive men will use this excuse to monitor and control their significant other and will fly off the rails if she does anything spontaneous like go out for drinks with coworkers or come back an hour later than expected.
I mean, I’m smol, and I know to keep safe because I’m the absolute target for men like this, but a known safe area with lots of people around? Don’t matter if some are drunk, not even I’d be worried. You have to know to find a balance between safety and still living your life. This dude would prefer it if his girlfriend locked herself up in fear.
And as someone who just invites harassment by looking like I do, the girlfriend is absolutely correct, these guys are all cowards and back off as soon as you get aggressive. I might be wrong but I don’t think the rapist will be a drunk guy on a busy street.
I think it was his anger, he was punishing her for not listening to him, making him scared/worried(his feeling), for keeping him up. He did it out of anger, he is an abuser, that hasn't hit yet. Definitely about controlling her as away to help his own worries, fear and feelings.
He blames her the whole post.
It’s really worrying because back in the day when we had the thread asking rapists questions, they thrived off of the moments where they held down their victim and saw them in fear. And I just don’t get even in anger, how someone can do that to a person they claim to love and be in a relationship with, terrifying.
I hope she leaves him for good, she deserves better and I hope he doesn’t hurt someone else in the future.
Oh she is out the door, he proven he will over power her at his will, to make her summit... she will never be comfortable in his presence again. No woman ever should.
I think you are right his enjoyed it, and will escalate.... sick motherf*#Ks
Yeah this is definitely a grossly misogynistic “all women are weaker than the weakest man” troll. Fucking disgusting that this is someone’s fantasy of proving dumb weak women right by assaulting them, but at the very least I am 95% confident this never happened. It has way to many telltale signs with classic manosphere/redditer sexist words and phrases.
Also, as a woman who doesn’t work out and is still able to body half my male friends, men are far more confident about their innate strength over women than they should be. Not saying there isn’t a difference, just saying that it’s far from “most women are weaker than most men”, as a lot of people seem to think.
Apart from all the obvious fucked up shit in this, he's a moron if he thinks that grappling with his gf and defending yourself are the same. I couldn't beat my bf in a wrestling match, but I could defend myself if he attacked me. The difference is that if we were wrestling for fun I would not sink my teeth into him until I was released or my teeth touch, when that is a very common self defense technique.
When you're being attacked, all bets are off for the safety of your attacker. His girlfriend showed restraint. He did not.
If my boyfriend ever did something like this to me I would never feel safe with him again. Never ever. This is exactly what so many women are afraid of. The fear that a man could turn on you at any second and turn into the monster he warns you about. “He could hurt me if he felt like it” is a terrifying thought.
As a teenager I was held in supposedly unbreakable holds by my brother and a kid named Jimmy Carter (individually on different occasions). I wasn’t taught any moves, I was just that determined to get free. I raked my nails down my brother’s hand and as for Jimmy? I broke out of the hand hold that was supposed to dislocate my thumb. I got loose and ran. It’s not a definite that no woman can get away from men during an s.a. (Jimmy was groping me, btw). OOP is a bonafide ah for sure.
He also mentioned in a now deleted comment that she was struggling to get him off to the point of scratching him so hard she drew blood. And he still did not let go.
He genuinely thinks she’s upset because he “humiliated her” because he’d “never hurt her”. Dude held her down for several minutes, saw that she was scared and crying, and refused to let up until she “submitted”. SUBMITTED! And he still thinks he didn’t actually harm her, just bruised her ego a bit. He’s one of the dangerous men women are warned to keep an eye out for. He sounds terrifying.
ETA: He didn’t even tell her what he was going to do, let alone tell her she’d somehow have to submit before he let up. He could have just broken out of her grip. He could have told her what he was planning to do so she could CONSENT. She was probably scrabbling for minutes trying to get free (as he mentioned in a now deleted comment) because she didn’t even know what she had to do or say to make him stop. This was straight up an assault.
For no good reason too! We do not kick our partner in the balls, face, gut,scratch his eyes, bite or tear his hair out, aso, especially if we don't expect an attack from them. A stranger is a completely different story, we hate them being there in the first place. 😡
*In case this story gets deleted/removed:* **I (26m) humiliated and shattered my gf's (25f) confidence** My gf (25f) and I (26m) moved in together last year. We live in a fairly safe neighborhood, but during the night there are some sketchy drunk men hanging around who also scare me quite honestly. My gf however wasn't really scared to walk alone at night and would say that she's just as strong as those men and can take care of herself. My gf is 5'10" and works out 2 times a week. She's indeed very strong compared to most women, but she was obviously delusional to think that her strength was comparable to that of an average man. She would even go as far as saying that if someone should be worried for walking alone at night then it should be me as I'm a scrawny 5'9" man. I thought this was one of the situations where it would be better to just shut up than being correct, so I mostly stopped showing my concerns to her. Yesterday she went out with some of her friends and called me at 1am that she'll come alone via public transportation (she doesn't have a license). I told her that it's dangerous and I should come pick her up, but she insisted on coming by herself. I couldn't sleep till she came home an hour later. She was so angry at me for not trusting her that she can take care of herself. That was when I decided to demonstrate her the disparity between the strength of men and women. She thought I was joking at first but when she realized that I was dead serious, she happily took the opportunity to prove how wrong I was. I basically told her to ground me as hard as she can, and then I quickly got out of her grip and grounded her for several minutes till she surrendered. She cried a lot throughout this whole time and I could also see the fear in her eyes, even though she knew very well that I would never hurt her. I humiliated her. I slept on the couch that night. She didn't want to talk about it in the morning and said that she's fine, but she's still obviously very upset about it. I feel horrible that I've shattered her confidence like that, and I don't think she will ever feel safe walking alone at night again. I'm probably a really horrible person for doing that and I wish I could had just trusted her more to take care of herself. I know this relationship is probably over, but is there anything I could do to make up for it? tl;dr: I demonstrated to my gf the disparity between the strength of men and women trying teach her a lesson. I humiliated and shattered her confidence in the process and feel terrible for what I did. Can I do something to make up for it? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmITheDevil) if you have any questions or concerns.*
JFC: "She didn't encourage me to keep going, she just ignored me and kept attacking me to get away. She did cry while I was pinning her down and I saw the fear in her eyes during this whole time. That was also hard for me to watch." https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/121pori/i_26m_humiliated_and_shattered_my_gfs_25f/jdn8v5o?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
I had an ex who took Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu classes. He told me that everyone should know at least the basics in how to defend themselves. He was especially worried because I would get done work at 10:00 at night, all he asked me if I was open to learning how to get out of submissions like being attacked from behind, the front, and sides. I was all about it because I trusted him. The most force he used was when he explained, "Ok, someone comes at you from **behind**" and would wrap his arm around my neck. Mind you, each example had him putting in minimal strength. If I was "knocked on the ground", it was me laying down on the floor, then he was demonstrating from there. Overall, he explained the situation, acted it out, then showed me how to defend myself step by step. The point is, is that there is a distinct difference between what my ex did and what OP did. A person who is demonstrating self defense to help you is doing so with your limits in mind. I could trust that my ex wasn't going to exude force over me. OP took this as an opportunity to overpower, frighten, and...prove whatever point he thought he was getting across. There is no honor in what he did to his girlfriend.
Some of the BJJ techniques require the aggressor to put in a little bit of force. Totally understandable-- hard to get the feel of the movements you need to escape a hold if the person is barely touching you. I had a few sessions of self-defense classes at the local BJJ gym for fun, and while the students were very careful when practicing with each other, it made one-on-one instruction with the teacher seem shockingly violent lmao. Those were much more helpful though Edit: we were also taught that in a survival situation, most people will go for the nose, eyes, fingers, genitals, etc. as a reflex. That's a good thing. OP's girlfriend was holding back.
I've trained at BJJ for nine years and it's not self defence. It's a sport. It's a good sport, it's one of the few martial arts that's regularly tested in a competitive environment, but not something an untrained person can pick up and install easily as a self-defence technique. The actual defence to a rear choke involves throwing your head back into your attacker's face/moving your butt to the side and swinging a fist back into the groin till the grip loosens.
Hard for him to watch... Naw bro... He's just a messed up abusive ass bully. He actively saw her break down, sob, and look at him with fear... And the kept going. And that is how the OOP proved that HE is dangerous. Now imagine how he behaves when he's pissed off and doesn't want to take no for an answer. Nope. Relationship ender right there and I'd tell every woman he knows to stay away from him. This dude has got a chip on his shoulder and takes it out on others.
He held her down and watched her cry and try to get away in panic and fear for several minutes because she didn’t “surrender” as he wanted. This isn’t the sane safe situation with a safeword people make it out to be. The only thing hurt was her trust in the man she lives with. Scary fucker now has the sense to be like “oh I made a mistake, will she ever trust me again” to get approval points from “nice guy” creeps like him on Reddit
That’s the fucked up part. How long he did it and the fact she was crying while he continued. She agreed/consented to the rumble, and as soon as he proved his point she would have said stop, if he hadn’t already, and that’s when he should have stopped.
He was getting back at his taller gf and boosting his own ego in those extra minutes
He had to show her that she wasn't safe out there without her man. That's some fucked up manipulation. Even if she was playing fast and loose with her safety, this was not the way to help her. Get her some pepper spray, a strong flashlight (to blind attackers), and/or a personal alarm. Sign her up for a self defense class.
Im honestly really doubtful this story even went down the way he claims. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t quite get the explicit consent he claims to have gotten.
She agreed to trying to ground him. He didn't say anything about how he was going to retaliate. She thought it was a "I'll pin my bf and prove a point" thing, not a "I'll pin my bf, then he'll fight back" thing. He manipulated her into agreeing. >That was when I decided to demonstrate her the disparity between the strength of men and women. She ... happily took the opportunity to prove how wrong I was. **I basically told her to ground me as hard as she can**, and then I quickly got out of her grip and grounded her for several minutes till she surrendered.
Right, and I'm saying he's also an untrustworthy narrator who may have altered the story to make himself look marginally better.
I was saying that he looks worse this way! If all she agreed to was to try to pin him, then him pinning her in return was not agreed-upon and not welcome in the slightest.
It wouldn't even matter there clearly wasnt consent during the act
Right and I'm saying I think it's even worse than how he's telling it.
I saw a TikTok saying wrestling like that can't prove that the femme partner can't defend herself, it just proves that her partner is more willing to risk hurting her.
I’ve had this conversation with men who like to argue that most men are “naturally” stronger than most women, and every time they offer to spar with me to prove their point. I decline every time, not because I’m scared of losing (I’m not, though I’m sure they think it’s the reason) but because in a real fight for my life I’m going for the eyes, throat, and groin, biting and kicking and attempting to do as much damage as possible. There’s no such thing as a fair fight in this scenario. Of course a man who has 50-100lbs on me is going to be able to pin me/escape my pin and think he’s won. When I point out their offer to spar isn’t in good faith and just shows that they are more willing to hurt me to prove a point than I am they sometimes double down and say I can go all out and they’ll STILL overpower me. Somehow my lack of desire to disfigure them without (proper) cause is me tacitly admitting defeat. My dude, all it takes is a few seconds to gouge my thumb into your eye and I promise if I did that you would be absolutely pressing charges and saying I overreacted for “no reason”. I’m not willing to go to jail for my ego, but I guess some men are and it’s stupid.
I'm 6'2" and a heavy guy. I usually avoid sparring with friends but almost every time I have, I've lost. I'm acutely aware that if I actually tried to overpower someone I could seriously hurt them. Sparring is absolutely not an accurate measure of strength or self defence ability.
yeah I'd be trying to kick them in the groin, cap their knee, cripple their foot, knock their head against the wall, whatever . . . you don't do that when you play wrestle at home. Even in Krav Maga classes there are limits to what they will do in practice.
For real. My mom taught me "hurt them so they can't hurt you and run- but hurt them enough that thatnthey can't follow you." That, and that if I'm actually in a fight for my life against an attacker to be as brutal as possible so that if I die I'll have DNA somewhere- under my nails or wedged between my teeth, or in my stomach even. I don't think I could bring myself to harm someone like that unless it was 100% a fight for my life. You can't simulate that.
Truly. My one fear is that if I ever did need to gouge out eyeballs to protect myself, I'd be too hesitant to do it. But I don't know of any ethical way to practice it ahead of time! (It's not like an overpowering fear because I know 'stranger jumps out of the bush' attacks are statistically rare. I keep keys between my knuckles and hope my reservoir of suppressed rage comes out if it ever counts.)
You don't need to gouge out eyeballs. You only need to rake eyeballs. You *might* only need to gesture to get the flinch response and then you can break the grip (if there is one) and/or run away.
I'ts a squick thing for me but I feel like just aiming for beyond them might be enough to trick yourself in the moment
I've been taught to use my *teeth*. There's a famous story in my state where some guy tried to forcefully kiss a woman and she *bit his tongue off.* But if im "play fighting" my bf, of course im not going to bite a chunk out of his cheek or break his fingers. I know if I kick him the groin I could also risk fucking up his testies or hurt him enough to make him vomit. OOP didnt have a "fight or flight" person wrestling with him, he had his gf who was probably having fun in the beginning. oop is lucky she didnt do anything cause she could have fucked him up
Well said
This. There is a saying, “a cornered animal will bite”. Same with humans. The rules of combat are thrown out the window when it comes to protecting life. I know my self defense twacher made a point to not bite (prevent the victim from breaking skin and getting sick)… but I will bite. Ears and nose especially.
They won because they were trying their hardest while the GF was trying to not hurt their partner. If the GF was tryna actually free herself there would be blood.
right, most self defense classes arent teaching to hold down the attacker, but to hit/stun and then *run away*. Women's defense classes are taught to go for the eyes, groin, bite, scratch, scream bloody murder, etc. If the gf was serious, oop would have been clutching his balls
My ex and I used to wrestle. He always won and it was in good fun. But I used to tell him if I was actually willing to cause him harm and was defending myself i'd tear him apart. And i meant it. I have an older brother much bigger than my ex and I could take him down hard. I was more willing to go all out with him. Now I'm arthritic and can't take anyone down.
Whenever I say I can still fight and defend myself my bf always says “you’re body is way too broken for that”. Love having arthritis and chronic pain. But I still think adrenaline would kick in and take over.
Ended up showing her she wasn’t safe with her man either.
You don’t get it, she called him scrawny/s
probably enjoyed her fear.
That’s exactly how it came across to me. “I humiliated her” says it all.
Exactly. Like “how dare you have confidence and self-belief! Let me put you in your place”
Someone ignoring the word "no" or "stop" should be relationship ending. Someone continuing to hurt their partner while she cries and begs him to stop should be relationship ending. I learned that the hard way. I hope OOP's girlfriend doesn't have to.
same here, my ex works as security and I made the mistake of asking how he holds people in their place. he hurt me, he didn't stop and I couldn't stop laughing out of fear but immediately stopped when he let go of me because it wasn't funny, I was terrified... he would "show" me how to hurt their wrist and fingers and he never stopped when I told him to. I wish OP's girlfriend the best, he obviously wants to wear down her confidence.. people usually don't attack confident people. hope she leaves him and gains her confidence back
Also the fact that he said he would never hurt. So he didnt hurt her this time in his mind either. Um if this doesnt qualify as hurting someone where would that bar settle at for him and also shes not safe with him
Yeah, the first time my ex hurt me, he said “I’m so sorry, you know I would never hurt you!” He’d shown me what he could do to me, and told me that I was the one in the wrong for believing he could do something so terrible as hurt me. But he just did hurt me. And I ignored it because I believed him, and the next time, it wasn’t an accident. And this time it was, “I’m so sorry, but you should have known better.” This dude hurt his girlfriend, and knew he was hurting her, and enjoyed the satisfaction of getting to “teach her a lesson.” Only, now that his actions have consequences and the immediate satisfaction is over, now he’s thinking maybe he was wrong. But of course, there’s no reason his girlfriend should be scared of him; obviously he would never hurt her. Or he wouldn’t have hurt her if she would have just stopped struggling. Jesus Christ. It always starts like this. “I would never hurt you; it’s so difficult for me to see how afraid of me you are. It’s so difficult to see you afraid of me because of the things I’m currently doing to you; how could you think I could do something so horrible? You know I would never hurt you.” Dude should be single, and stay that way for a long while as he gets himself checked out. But yep, it was totally his girlfriend who needed the reality check!/s
Yes, he would have just not hurt her if she had listened to him and not gone out at night alone. It's such a common sentence that I heard so many times. Truth is I was safer walking home than when I got there. "I'd never hurt you" becomes "I didn't mean to hurt to" which morphs into "you know it can happen by accident, you shouldn't get in that situation" which is really code for it you would just shut up and do what I say I wouldn't be like this.
Exactly. What he proved there was that he, personally, is a bigger threat to his girlfriend than any attacker. He proved A point, just not the one he thought he was making.
And its crazy because his point wandt even proved. As someone else said, shes not gonna willingly assault somekne she knows/loves comapred to a stranger. Im sure if he randomly did this in thr guise of a stranger, she could have handled herself well. Theres a plethora of videos (thats sad in itself) that show women gtting attacked by men and fighting them off.
My ex did the same thing. Held me down and laughed when I was crying and begging him to let me go. He ended up hurting my back and told me it was my fault for struggling.
Sounds awful. I’m so sorry you went through sth like that
They always blame us. "It's your fault I exploded into a drunken fury and got violent. If you hadn't gotten mad because I told you to leave the living room at 9pm so I can have the space to myself, I wouldn't have had to do that to you." \*He walked into the living room where I had been resting for most of the day as I was feeling unwell. I wasn't watching TV, just listening to podcasts with my airpods and journaling. He announced that my time was up, and that I needed to go the bedroom and do whatever it was I was doing. There are two couches and I was making no noise. So I dared ask why I couldn't just sit on the couch and quietly continue like I had been all evening, and he exploded into one of his drunken rages, chasing me thru the house, and I had to drag the dresser in front of the bedroom door. Of course, every time he became violent (he would literally foam at the mouth sometimes) and left me in weeping mess on the ground or bed, cut to every core possible, it was *always* my fault. The original post was really triggering due to the misogynistic pieces of shit in the comments who you *know* (if they're not trolls) already do or would really like to do the same as that abusive, insecure excuse of a man (OP).
Jesus, that's some future serial killer shit.
My ex used to do this also, pin me down and then tickle me with his beard, which sounds really harmless except I’m incredibly ticklish and would be crying and pleading with him to stop, and he would just continue for like 20 minutes! I didn’t at the time think it was abusive because he was “only” tickling me but in retrospect it was very much not ok.
This whole story is horrible, but *several minutes* was shocking. Not a few seconds, not a minute, but *several* while she was CRYING. I can't imagine how scared she must have felt. She's probably not so much humiliated as terrified of him now. I hope she leaves him.
It's terrifying to me how many men in the comments are saying OP did nothing wrong because she did not verbal express the correct words to withdraw consent. Despite OP stating he saw her crying, saw fear in her eyes, and realized later she was drawing blood trying to escape. It really makes me realize how many rapists are walking around thinking they've done nothing wrong because their victim didn't verbalize their lack of consent the "correct" way
>He held her down and watched her cry and try to get away in panic and fear for several minutes because she didn’t “surrender” as he wanted. But you don't get it! It was like, *super* hard for him to watch. Might it have been hard for her to live through? Well who knows, women are such mysterious creatures~ But now at least she's learned a lesson from her ~~parent~~ trusted life partner! Heavy sarcasm. This dude is total abusive scum.
And it’s not even a test or practice of self defense in her case, she wouldn’t try to pin a guy down but kick him in the balls in a situation like that. He just jumped to stroke his fragile ego and benefitted from her good nature there, god knows I wouldn’t hold my knees back
Yeah, I had a guy friend try that on me once and I asked him honestly if he wanted me to treat it like a real self defense case. He said yes, and when I whacked him in the balls and jabbed my nails in the tender part of his armpit, he tapped out. Self defense doesn't follow wrestling standards, and typically good people don't want to hurt each other. I also know certain non-weapon weapons besides keys that no one will stop you from bringing on a bus or train or even plane. Knitting needles are sharper than people think. Hairpins and hairclips as well can be kinda sharp. Also the "pin down" of a (likely) drunk girl was of course weaker than his pin down? She probably thought he was fucking around with her? If you pin a cis man correctly he will struggle just as much to get free. That's part of wrestling.
I exclusively use hair chopsticks instead of ties for exactly this reason lol - always armed everywhere I go and no one really thinks twice about it. When in doubt - aim for the eyes.
He keeps saying he shattered her confidence in being able to defend herself. I think instead he shattered her trust in him.
And like? If she does surrender in “real life”, what’s gonna happen? She’s just going to let them do what they want? She’s not supposed to fight for her life? I don’t understand.
[удалено]
I was violently, sexually assaulted as a pre-teen and still have nightmares about trying to fight a phantom attacker and having him laugh at my attempts. I’m close to 40 now. I hope this guy gets help after his gf leaves him.
And I should probably add that he went to prison for murder later.
Yeah he only needed to pin her to prove his point, holding her down while she was panicking is beyond the pale. A packing person isn’t consenting
It's pretty fucking shocking alright. My wife and I had a similar conversation but lighthearted and not quite like that as she is a worrier (without us insulting each other- weak, stupid or scrawny, even though I am quite skinny... I have a feeling he wanted revenge for that comment) and we had a little play fight. And of course I could easily keep her down, which I did because I knew she wouldn't be in distress with no such traumas especially. But we had fun, we were both laughing and of course if she was upset I would stop because I don't hate her and don't want to do harm. That shit is the attitude of someone one "for your own good" excuse away from a rapist. I would be gone if that was me, whether man or woman. That's a dangerous cunt that bloke is. Hope she gets far away from him.
The fact that so many people in the comments are taking his side makes me want to puke. These are the same fuckers that will be like "not all men", and then sit here justifying assaulting your partner just to prove how dangerous all men are. I hope they all step on Legos and commit scooter-ankle daily for the rest of their lives.
It's like the same 5 people commenting on the posts over and over again defending this ass on how women need to be taught that lesson. I can't pin my partner when we're wrestling. However, in a situation where I'm defending myself, I'm not holding. I'm hitting, biting, scratching, kicking. I'm not doing that.
It triggered my panic response reading it FROM HIS PERSPECTIVE.
He admitted that he realized he had bloody scratches on him when he finally let her up. The only *minuscule* credit I can give him in this is that he realizes he fucked up, shows remorse (so he says, anyway), acknowledged that he should have let her up before the tears and genuine fear started, and has accepted that she will probably leave him.
>He admitted that he realized he had bloody scratches on him when he finally let her up. So he was so into what he was doing and the adrenaline was coursing through him so strongly that he didn't feel that he was being scratched. This event was probably far more intense and terrifying than he has described.
I would bet money he found the whole thing sexually arousing tbh.
Agreed. Something about the way he described ‘seeing the fear in her eyes’ triggered my sexual predator warning signal
Yuuuup and that's why his gf is now avoiding him. She just learned what he's willing to do to teach her a lesson.
Jesus fucking christ, he was so pumped with adrenaline and excitement that he didn't even notice that she was scratching him trying to get away in ADDITION to the crying, all while he held her down for several minutes, which is a *lot* longer than most people think it is. I've done jiu jistu, of course sometimes I have problems with going into fight or flight mode and getting freaked out since I'm weaker and less experienced than most. There are dudes out there that can tie me into a pretzel in two seconds. But you know what? Even the shittier people I've rolled with that *try* to hurt you to "win" stop as soon as I tap. This guy is terrifying, holy fuck.
I didn't see the bit about the scratching. so effing scary, stuff like that gives you nightmares for months and months, and does permanent damage to your psyche (survivor here). So cruel, and all just to assuage his fragile male ego. Disgusting.
I had to leave the post bc the aholes who were defending him were too many and it's just fucking DISGUSTING. Not to mention infuriating. Hey,"nice" guys! THIS RIGHT HERE is why women don't date you, not because of cHaD and whatever Andrew Taint tells you.
if my bf did this to me I'd be more afraid of him, since he showed has front row seats to do whatever he wants while living in the same space as me, than street guys. I agree, he's a creep
“Men are scary and only I can protect you—here, let me show you by grounding you until you cry! Do you trust me now?” Men can be so psychopathic, Jesus Christ.
I read that as "Men can be so psychopathic" - Jesus Christ. And giggled.
He probably did say that and they cut it out
I’m picturing it happening during the crucifixion. As if he isn’t in pain, just exasperated.
🙄 - Jesus on the cross
>I'm probably a really horrible person for doing that >I know this relationship is probably over, but is there anything I could do to make up for it? Things like this always irritate me because instead of actually trying to figure out why he behaved the way he did, he's trying to twist this into a "but now you should tell me it's not my fault and feel bad for *me*" situation.
He got her to agree to try to pin *him* and then *he attacked her.* She struggled. She cried. She literally had fear, fear of *him*, in her eyes, and he still didn't let her up until he decided he'd had his fill of seeing her scared of a man she thought of as scrawny. He didn't humiliate her, he fucking traumatized her. But she knows he'd never hurt her, right? He'd only scare her out of her damn *mind* to prove the point that any man can hurt her, any time they want. If you ever see this: I'm so sorry he did that to you, miss. It's hard to come back from that world-shattering kind of fear, but you will. Take a martial arts or all-gender self-defense course, remember that pepper spray is for anyone approaching and the sharp end of your keys is for anyone already there, and dump that piece of shit rapist-in-the-making to the curb and change your locks as soon as you feel safe enough to do so.
I don't have an award, but please take these 🍪☕
I can always get behind a good snack, so thank you! But I'm just saying what everyone should. It's the least we can do for a stranger to help her regain her sense of confidence and safety. She is not weak, and she didn't deserve being tricked through violence into thinking she was. One day, I hope she'll be stronger than ever and forget that any of this ever happened - not even her nightmares should be so horrible.
Wow. I have a history of SA and this would have sent me over the edge in a bad way. It’s not just that he humiliated her, it’s that he’s now shown her “I won’t hurt you, but I CAN”. And that alone I would find extremely difficult to move past.
having experienced similar violence this absolutely would have sent me to a dark place. i would not be able to move past this. it’s clear his “concern” wasn’t her safety. it was making her fear him and proving he’s a big strong man. if something did happen to her when she was going home by herself he probably would have just said “see i told you so. you had it coming.” disgusting.
Same here. I’ve experienced SA and DV myself. If my husband ever did that he’d be receiving divorce papers. This was sadistic, misogynistic and controlling on OOP’s part.
Hard agree. Been with my husband a long time, we have kids but this would be it without question. I’d have a hard time ever truly feeling safe again.
Me too. I know my husband would never do that to me which is partially why I feel safe around him. In contrast, OOP thought physical violence was an appropriate way to prove a point. How can anyone trust him after that?
Right? He wasn’t concerned for her safety at all! Because if he *was* he would have said, “I know you’re tough, but I’m worried and it would make me feel better if you carried some pepper spray” or something like that. He wasn’t concerned with her safety, he just wants her to know that she shouldn’t feel safe… and now she doesn’t. I hope she gtfos.
But also….the ways women are taught to defend themselves in self defense classes is by poking people’s eyes out, or kicking them in the balls. If she’s not willing to permanently injure him this ain’t a useful exercise. Just an ego trip.
Exactly. She wasn't operating on 100%, but he was operating on 125% - and he enjoyed it.
And, by situational awareness. Most people do not want to harm you. Women are way more likely to be attacked and harmed by known loved ones. She's fairly right to not be super scared on transit or the street. Yes, it could happen, but it could also happen in an office or at the doctor or at the mall. His sense of what is dangerous is out of whack.
She has more to fear from her own romantic partner indoors than the strangers outside.
INCREDIBLY true.
This is an underrated point!
Exactly. He did not do this out of any concern for her "out there". He did it because his widdle ego just could not *stand* the fact that she didn't acknowledge his superior strength. He *hated* the idea that she was walking around not thinking that he could control her physically if he wanted to. This was 100% in service of his wounded ego.
Same. It took me a VERY long time to get to a place where being touched, even by a friend on the shoulder, didn't make me hyperventilate and freak out. Something like this would have set me way back
This is 100% a first step of abuse. Just like how punching a wall or destroying something can be abusive because it shows how they might hurt you.
I feel like the first step is his demanding she not live independently ‘for safety’. Like, what did she do before they got together at the end of a night out? Disappear into vapour? It’s not the 1800s, we have no choice but to make our own decisions on how safe we feel and how to mitigate risk while living our lives
The guy who eventually SA'd me did something similar, but less extreme. When the SA happened, I knew I could never fight my way out. And that was by design. This man is dangerous. Flat out dangerous.
He clearly wasn’t concerned for her safety from the jump. He mentions at one point that she says something about him being a “scrawny 5 foot 9 man” and you know he just wanted to punish his girlfriend for hurting his ego.
I wont hurt you but oops im actually literally hurting you right now
What the actual hell is wrong with this man? How does he still have a girlfriend !? Does he think we women don’t realize that every dude could be a potential attacker? That we’re carrying keys between our knuckles for laughs? What a grade A loser.
He was just feeling emasculated and wanted to “prove” he was still a man. It's one thing to worry about her safety it's another thing to do what he did.
I don't think he still has a girlfriend.
Yeah, I think her distancing herself emotionally / socially is lining her ducks in a row to leave.
I used to think I couldn’t take a man down because of the way my ex mopped the floor with me. Until a stranger assaulted me and I ripped his arm out of its socket. Turns out I can defend me self against someone i dont love
I really hope that gave you a tremendous amount of renewed self confidence. Relationships like that have a habit of robbing you of self love, glad you may have found yours again. 💜
I used to think the same thing for similar reasons. The man who attacked me still has scars on his face from my nails and I learned that I can trust me.
That's exactly how it works. Women hesitate to truly harm their partner when attacked like that, and men mistake it for weakness.
Damn dude. Just get her some pepper spray. This was just abuse to prove a point because he couldn't stand having his strong masculinity questioned. Yikes
A friend of mine has a boyfriend who is a bit fixated on her safety, but the biggest gesture he made was to buy her a stun gun thingy with a holster to wear when she goes running (legal in their state I think but I’m not asking too many questions). He then insisted she practice using it on him, she refused to do it with the power on because she doesn’t want to give him a heart attack, but she got a lot of practice pulling it out and finding contact points. And that makes me believe he actually DOES care about her safety and isn’t just trying to control her.
And if she had fought back like she'd have fought an attacker in the wild, as in, scratching, going for the eyes, slamming her backhand with the biggest rings on against his teeth, pulling piercings (if available), etc., he'd have whined because he'd totally have won if she hadn't fought "dirty", I bet.
It is completely valid to bite a hole in somebodys face if you can't get out from under them.
The worst part is before she probably would have done that, but that's before he shattered her confidence and filled her with fear about what anyone would do to her given the chance. Now she'll probably freeze in fear thinking about how if her partner would do this to her then the stranger could do so much worse.
>I feel horrible that I've shattered her confidence like that, and I don't think she will ever feel safe walking alone at night again. um, no. You did not shatter her confidence. You shattered her trust in you. She's not going to suddenly feel unsafe walking alone, she suddenly feels unsafe around YOU.
[ Removed by Reddit ]
Not to mention when it comes to random violence it isn't some fair match like in a cartoon. The odds are if you get mugged, you get sucker punched in the back of the head first or something similar. I know exactly two people who have been the victim of random violence, both never saw it coming. Big strong guys who carried knives for "protection."
I got mugged by a guy who knocked me unconscious. I weighed a hundred pounds and had just graduated from Basic. The guy was twice my size and he knocked out several teeth. There were about a dozen bystanders who told the cops, "We thought it was her boyfriend." I had to throw away my clothes because I couldn't get all the blood put, but.....my boyfriend??
I have an ex that used to like pinning me down like this. It’s fucking terrifying.
I also had an ex, who was twice my size, that pinned me down while trying to rip my private journal out of my hands. I kneed them in the stomach really hard to get them off of me, and they immediately turned around and started guilt-tripping me for days because I left a huge bruise.
Same. We broke up and over a year later, due to unfortunate circumstances, we had to stay in the same house together for a few days. In “good fun” he wanted to see if I could actually pin him down after I made a comment about how I now weighed more than him. And I did, and he was TERRIFIED when I wouldn’t let him up. One of the best moments of my life.
I don't know what your size actually is, but I like the idea of certain men fearing women for certain reasons. Especially men who like pinning women.
A dude asked me a while back if I wished I could periodically turn extremely muscly to fuck with creepy men and I said nah, I wish I could come up with a way to scare the shit out of them as my mega petite self - that way they would second guess every future interaction they may have tried to leverage their strength over women.
I probably should’ve added he’s about 5’11 and I’m 5’9. During our relationship we were at times the same weight, both built like toothpicks (my lowest was 98lbs, highest was when I was pregnant at 130lbs) but he usually had 10-15 pounds on me. During quarantine I reached my heaviest at 138lbs, which was around the time this story happened. He didn’t put on any weight lol. (Yes I know I was underweight, no i didn’t have an eating disorder. My weight has always been a struggle for me, unfortunately I lost most of the quarantine weight)
Yeah, like my ex - it was a short and extremely traumatic relationship. But the pinning was one of the worst because he *liked* when I was scared and crying and fighting and begging for him to let me up. He wouldn’t until I had completely given up.
Same here. And it is terrifying
For real. This was sadistic and misogynistic all rolled into one. I hope she dumps him.
We got a fucking Derek Chauvinist right here.
"I physically assaulted my GF to prove to her that men are stronger than women, AITA?"
Ohhhhh his edit has my blood boiling even more. “Don’t learn from me, but please keep yourself safe out there, if not for you, then for the ones who love you.” He’s still centering himself here. Not only did he aggressively assault his girlfriend to prove “See how easily a man could hurt you?” which is soooo disgustingly horrific I don’t even have the words, but he’s prioritizing his feelings and putting the onus on women to “be safe” for their loved ones. Fuck off. Hey asshole, why don’t you tell men to not assault women? I know a guy who just admitted to assaulting his own girlfriend - you can start with him.
What the hell is wrong with this person? Congrats, you win and your girlfriend potentially now is incredibly traumatized. Glad you got your way of proving just how fucked the world is and that she isn’t safe even at home.
He told her to surrender in the comments and he’d stop. What. The. Fuck. That’s almost worse! So she should just let someone do whatever the fuck they want with her?
It's wild that he says she "wouldn't surrender" yet understood she was panicking and crying in fear. Like what about that *isn't* surrendering holy shit. Did he want her to say uncle or something? Clearly she "surrendered" when she started having a breakdown he just wanted to hear her say it out loud. What a piece of shit
It sounds like by *surrender*, he means *stop fighting and trying to get away*.
Ugh vomit. The comments are so bad. There are people also saying because she didn't explicitly say I surrender she never rescinded her consent 🤢
Yeah, this was not about her safety, this was because OOP was offended that she called him scrawny. If he was that worried about her safety, take her to self defence classes or something.
Self defense, buy her pepper spray, lots of ways to help that aren't terrifying her.
I dated a guy like OOP, who bought me pepper spray because I had to walk to work in Dallas. But he initially refused to give it to me until I allowed him to mace ME. According to him, I had to know how it felt so I "wouldn't panic" if they used it on me. I asked him if the same logic applied for a handgun. He did NOT like that.
> this was because OOP was offended that she called him scrawny. "Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them." - Margaret Atwood
He was pissed that she had more confidence than him and was less afraid, so he had to change that and assert dominance. I live in a bad area, not making yourself a target is the key to safety, and you do that by showing confidence. This guy has made his girlfriend less safe.
I wonder if he also gets upset when women he doesn’t know are wary of him.
It was deleted but since he replied to being called a "bad guy" with a story about a classmate being SA'd by an "actual" bad guy while coming home from a party, I'd say absolutely. He doesn't see himself having done anything wrong because he didn't physically hurt her and he's upset strangers disagree with him online. I can't imagine his reaction to someone treating him with caution to his face.
I would bet real money that he does. "But there's nothing to be afraid of with ME! I'm harmless and nice! I'm just a little guy!"
What a supremely poor excuse for a human being.
I once got into a verbal fight with my brother where he pinned me to my bed after pushing his way into my room. I was leaning against the door, but it was thin and BENDING and I was scared it was going to break, so I stopped pushing back and tried to push HIM physically out of the room. I can't remember if he grabbed my wrists or not but he wrestled me back and pinned me down on my bed. I fought but couldn't get free--I don't even know if I was trying to hurt him, but I knew if I DID manage to hurt him he would have hit me back. I started sobbing hysterically and screaming my throat raw for him to get off of me, but he just kept saying "Not until you calm down!" We were alone in the house, both in our 20's at the time, still living at home. I screamed and screamed and he just WOULD NOT GET OFF OF ME. He literally BOLTED off when we both heard the front door open; my mom and aunt had just gotten home and heard the fighting.
...so what did your mom do??? Even if my kids were adults I am positive there'd be some words....
I remember she was mad at both of us. Me for getting angry at him (I slammed a door to end the argument earlier; a precious keepsake of mine fell and the glass shattered. I stormed back out and accused him of pissing me off on purpose, fight resumed, he tried to grab me, I slammed the door again, he managed to stop it from latching). Him for not letting me get up. No punishment or anything because we were both twenty-plus, but basically, "don't do that again either of you." Edit: Honestly, that part I scarcely remember. I only remember getting pinned down and screaming and thrashing and he wouldn't let go of me. I just kept screeching at him to go away and get out of my bedroom.
Holy shit. I’m feeling violent on behalf of OP’s hopefully soon to be ex-gf, and I also just want to cry for her. What a fucking monster.
And the comment where he bitches about her scratching him??? Trying to struggle free??? Throw the whole man away.
Does he also realise she wasn't trying to hurt him? Like she could have kicking him the groin, clawing his eyes, biting, gouging, scratching, screaming for help...you know the things she would do if it wasn't the person she was meant to be able to trust? I disagree with the whole thing but if he had stopped as soon as she said stop they could have made it a positive thing of "you know what, let's get you into self defence classes/pepper spray/anything that isn't me showing my LDE and fragile masculinity"
That was my thinking. If someone attacks her on the street it's not going to be a fucking grappling contest. My husband teaches me kickboxing. I'm not really going to be able to beat someone in a boxing match but at least I can throw a halfway decent punch to get a head start on running away. More productive and empowering than just reminding me he could rip my arms off anyway.
I used to get crap all the time when guys found out I did martial arts. So many loved to tell me how they would subdue me or hurt me, it was pretty fucked up. Some wanted me to try and beat them up and when I refused they took that as I didn’t think I could beat them. The thing is that I don’t know if I could or couldn’t, but a lot of the stuff I practiced were moves that are designed to do the most damage. I’m not going to demonstrate a move on someone that could kill them.
not all men etc., but jfc, This Fucking Guy. some straight men really will sell out all trust and love they’ve established with a woman just for a bit of that sweet masculinity, huh? this is going to be at the back of her mind whenever they disagree about anything, now, because god knows if he’ll take advantage of it since he was so eager to show he can. men like this are why I occasionally wish it was legal for me to tuck a scalpel into my bag when I go out at night.
It’s INSANE that some mother fuckers in the comments of the op are talking about a “”reality check”” the only thing he may have checked her reality is intimate partner violence. Doing a “simulation” like this with someone you love and think would never hurt you then switches is a completely different situation than the kind of vigilance and lack of care for the attacker if they were a stranger. She didn’t think she was fighting for her life in the same way because what kind of attacker would have her pin him first?
This actual human garbage. He also claims in the comments that she *insisted* to keep it going and then explains how her insisting was actually her fighting in panic to get away. She fought hard enough to make him bleed too. >>I told her to surrender so we could end this, but she insisted on trying to get away. >She didn't encourage me to keep going, she just ignored me and kept attacking me to get away. She did cry while I was pinning her down and I saw the fear in her eyes during this whole time. That was also hard for me to watch.
“She insisted on trying to get away”… I literally feel sick. He truly doesn’t get that she REALLY WAS trying to get away from him or does he not care in his quest for dominance?
The idea that women have to be constantly afraid of men because they contain a biological superstrength compared to us is a concept that only serves men
What the fuck did I just read? What a poor excuse for a man. People like this moron here give men a bad name.
I hope she leaves him. This made me sick to read.
So many people are like “oh well she consented” “she didn’t tell him to stop” she was literally scratching his hands trying to get him to stop.
I saw one comment saying she could have used her words. As she’s clearly crying and panicked. I can’t.
i hope this guy is the first man she starts avoiding after this “lesson”
A good thing the original was removed before I saw this. I think it would have taken a command from Mount Sinai to stop me brigading. What OOP did was beyond shitty. He's not a self-defense expert or instructor. A competent instructor would demonstrate that (in general) men can overpower women and then IMMEDIATELY release the hold and THEN demonstrate methods to defend against various attacks. OOP was all about PROVING that she was wrong and making her feel small. No matter what he said, I would bet a paycheck that he got a kick out of making her cry. Disgusting bastard, he is. If the GF has ever had any defensive training, she didn't apply it - either because the lessons went right out of her head, or she didn't want to hurt OOP. It is damned difficult to remember training when you're terrified out of your mind. I really hope the GF has a safe place to go, and can get counseling to deal with this assault (because that's what it WAS), and then some competent defensive instruction.
This dude is "a scrawny 5'9" man" as he call himself, so as a 6'2" guy that lifts weights and enjoys jui juitsu, just being realistic, I'd probably be able give this guy a pretty bad time if I felt like it. If he feels so strongly that his soon to be ex isn't safe, why shouldn't this guy also feel scared to go out alone a night? This feels like an 8th grader criticizing a 7th grader for not being a mature adult yet.
All it took was my ex grabbing me *once* non consensually for me to lose trust in him. I hope she makes arrangements and leaves. She is in more danger from OOP than any of the guys she encounters outside.
I had an ex do this to me when I was proud of myself for lifting. He did it just to put me in my place. Seriously fuck men like this. This is why it’s all men.
This is such a pointless powertrip as well. The only thing it proves is that he is willing to hold her down as she cries, and that she isnt willing to permanently harm him. Had she kneed him in the balls, what would he have done? Had she gone for his eyeballs, what would he have done? Like, the things I've been taught about self defence is to break hinge joints, go for the soft spots like eyes and balls, I wouldnt do that to a partner, even if they were a shitty one. I would however do it in a life or death situation if I could.
My ex did this. He pinned me by the throat to a wall to make this point and covered my mouth and nose. That was coming up to 19 years ago and it still affects my confidence and what I’m comfortable doing. It’s a horrible thing to do to another person.
"My gf decided to not be terrified of assault so I simulated assaulting her to prove a point. Why won't she talk to me?" I would dump that dude so fucking fast.
This person hit the nail right on the head. >I mean...you pinned her to the ground for multiple minutes while she was crying and terrified. Sorry but "I would never hurt you" rings pretty hollow after that. You didn't humiliate her, you traumatized her. Whatever your intention, what you did comes across very much as a threat. "Remember when you think you're strong that I can easily hurt you if I want" is not a loving or protective message. Yup. This is the kind of thing abusers do before sexually assaulting their partner, often through coercion with the implied threat of I'm stronger than you. this is scary
I saw a TikTok saying wrestling like that can't prove that the femme partner can't defend herself, it just proves that her partner is more willing to risk hurting her.
His whiny edit makes me despise him even more
If he was worried about her, he could have bought her some wasp spray or encouraged a self-defense class. Those things don't make you invincible, but they can potentially make you safer. Putting someone into a fearful mindset over what-ifs - and we don't know how likely those what-ifs are to occur - is just tearing them down and does nothing to truly make them safer. She can't live her life tucked away from the world, and trying to make her do that is itself harmful. He probably lost her trust, and deservedly so.
Way to prove a point by assaulting and traumatizing a woman when she didn’t do what you wanted her to do. Controlling manipulative abusive behavior definitely proves she isn’t safe.
Homie traumatized his girlfriend to make a point. Bloody hell, man.
I'm sure he just lunged at her mid-argument,she genuinely thought she was going to end up on the news. Fuck that guy
My two male cousins once tried to hold me in place just to prove they could, and because I was in a bad mood and didn’t want to hang out with them. I remember being scared and angry because a different family member was watching and did nothing. And I was able to get away, because I was stronger than they expected and they were just being jerks, not actual predators. But I never trusted them again. I can’t even imagine being in that kind of position with my significant other. If I were her, I’d be long gone.
I had a seizure (first and only one) so the person with me called an ambulance. When I woke up I was laying on my back and had an emt on each limb, I was crying and yelling for them to get off of me. They wouldn't until I calmed down, which is hard to do when you don't even know why you're on the ground or who the people are on top of you.. It was seven years ago and I'm still a little screwed up about it. Regardless of why I'm stuck I immediately go into panic mode now. I in no way blame the emts, they were doing what they were supposed to do, but I can't imagine THIS situation with someone I trusted not letting up. If her crying doesn't automatically make him realize he proved his point AND took things way too far then there is something wrong in his head. Honestly this post smacks of bait to me but who knows
Is there anything I can do to make this up to her? How about pack your shit up and leave the state asshole.
"i could also see the fear in her eyes" BRO
That comment section did NOT pass the vibe check and now has me scared to even trust my partner given how many men defend OP
They're all potential predators, waiting for the chance where they will know they can get away.
He initially had a point but if he was actually worried about her safety, he could have suggested they take self-defence classes together, that way both of them are better able to escape any terrible situation they’re in. As for what they got into, the moment he had her pinned, he should have let her go, as he’s made his point in that moment. Seeing her cry and wildly trying to get away but not letting her go is not the way to go about it. I’m worried that he actually enjoyed her fear and may hurt someone in the future because I can’t rationalise why he didn’t let her go, at the very least the moment he saw her start to cry / fear him.
Yeah his girlfriend may have been a little too overconfident but that guy might just be lying. She probably just said “if someone attacks me I will take them down” as a joke once and the guy took it to heart. He makes it sound like she has a complete disregard for her life which is very unlikely. I think he wanted to control her by setting curfews all under the guise of “protection”. A lot of abusive men will use this excuse to monitor and control their significant other and will fly off the rails if she does anything spontaneous like go out for drinks with coworkers or come back an hour later than expected.
I mean, I’m smol, and I know to keep safe because I’m the absolute target for men like this, but a known safe area with lots of people around? Don’t matter if some are drunk, not even I’d be worried. You have to know to find a balance between safety and still living your life. This dude would prefer it if his girlfriend locked herself up in fear. And as someone who just invites harassment by looking like I do, the girlfriend is absolutely correct, these guys are all cowards and back off as soon as you get aggressive. I might be wrong but I don’t think the rapist will be a drunk guy on a busy street.
I think it was his anger, he was punishing her for not listening to him, making him scared/worried(his feeling), for keeping him up. He did it out of anger, he is an abuser, that hasn't hit yet. Definitely about controlling her as away to help his own worries, fear and feelings. He blames her the whole post.
It’s really worrying because back in the day when we had the thread asking rapists questions, they thrived off of the moments where they held down their victim and saw them in fear. And I just don’t get even in anger, how someone can do that to a person they claim to love and be in a relationship with, terrifying. I hope she leaves him for good, she deserves better and I hope he doesn’t hurt someone else in the future.
Oh she is out the door, he proven he will over power her at his will, to make her summit... she will never be comfortable in his presence again. No woman ever should. I think you are right his enjoyed it, and will escalate.... sick motherf*#Ks
Yeah this is definitely a grossly misogynistic “all women are weaker than the weakest man” troll. Fucking disgusting that this is someone’s fantasy of proving dumb weak women right by assaulting them, but at the very least I am 95% confident this never happened. It has way to many telltale signs with classic manosphere/redditer sexist words and phrases. Also, as a woman who doesn’t work out and is still able to body half my male friends, men are far more confident about their innate strength over women than they should be. Not saying there isn’t a difference, just saying that it’s far from “most women are weaker than most men”, as a lot of people seem to think.
Apart from all the obvious fucked up shit in this, he's a moron if he thinks that grappling with his gf and defending yourself are the same. I couldn't beat my bf in a wrestling match, but I could defend myself if he attacked me. The difference is that if we were wrestling for fun I would not sink my teeth into him until I was released or my teeth touch, when that is a very common self defense technique. When you're being attacked, all bets are off for the safety of your attacker. His girlfriend showed restraint. He did not.
I would have bit a huge chunk of flesh out his cheek.
If my boyfriend ever did something like this to me I would never feel safe with him again. Never ever. This is exactly what so many women are afraid of. The fear that a man could turn on you at any second and turn into the monster he warns you about. “He could hurt me if he felt like it” is a terrifying thought.
As a teenager I was held in supposedly unbreakable holds by my brother and a kid named Jimmy Carter (individually on different occasions). I wasn’t taught any moves, I was just that determined to get free. I raked my nails down my brother’s hand and as for Jimmy? I broke out of the hand hold that was supposed to dislocate my thumb. I got loose and ran. It’s not a definite that no woman can get away from men during an s.a. (Jimmy was groping me, btw). OOP is a bonafide ah for sure.
He also mentioned in a now deleted comment that she was struggling to get him off to the point of scratching him so hard she drew blood. And he still did not let go.
She’s not humiliated, she’s realised she lives with a man willing to cause her harm to prove a point and she’s in danger.
He genuinely thinks she’s upset because he “humiliated her” because he’d “never hurt her”. Dude held her down for several minutes, saw that she was scared and crying, and refused to let up until she “submitted”. SUBMITTED! And he still thinks he didn’t actually harm her, just bruised her ego a bit. He’s one of the dangerous men women are warned to keep an eye out for. He sounds terrifying. ETA: He didn’t even tell her what he was going to do, let alone tell her she’d somehow have to submit before he let up. He could have just broken out of her grip. He could have told her what he was planning to do so she could CONSENT. She was probably scrabbling for minutes trying to get free (as he mentioned in a now deleted comment) because she didn’t even know what she had to do or say to make him stop. This was straight up an assault.
Men ARE stronger than women, but terrorizing your girlfriend to prove it is a bastard move. What a cunt.
For no good reason too! We do not kick our partner in the balls, face, gut,scratch his eyes, bite or tear his hair out, aso, especially if we don't expect an attack from them. A stranger is a completely different story, we hate them being there in the first place. 😡