A truth about life is that you can only treat people the way you have been taught to. If you
have been treated with compassion when you were growing up, it is more likely that you will
be compassionate towards others. However, if you are abused, you are certainly qualified to
give abuse. Although we are naturally selfish, we are not naturally violent. Therefore we need
to be conditioned to do so before we will hurt others. An extreme example is the child
soldiers in Africa. When they are asked to kill another human being, they won’t. That
changes when a family member is threatened or their own need for self-preservation becomes
kill or be killed, then hesitantly, they will shoot. Over time, they will shoot innocent people
without a second thought.
People with victim mentalities are generally selfish, although in saying that, we are born
selfish, but because their development is traumatised, victims generally stay selfish. Even
though there are always exceptions to the rule, I find unless there is some kind of
intervention, their selfish attitude will remain. It is what I have learnt to call, the 'why me'
syndrome. Our natural existence has given us tools to use to help us develop, which is why
we should always have brothers and sisters. Family teaches us to negotiate, compromise,
resolve conflict and generally, how to get on with others.
Marriage, in its true form, is also a great teacher, as it teaches us to be other-people centred.
To be caring is something we learn and marriage is the best place to practice this gift.
Marriage has a lot of give and take, compromise and selflessness, and above all the reward of
companionship. We all know men and women are different and it is these differences that
stop us becoming complacent. When both parties are working together, even if one member
is subservient to a leader, you will have a great relationship when that leader considers all the
people within their family before themselves. However, if one person in the marriage is
subservient to a selfish bully, then the marriage will never work as it was intended.
Generally, and again I say that there are exceptions to the rule, but generally it is the women
who are givers and the men who are the takers, however, if one participant in the marriage is
constantly giving without getting anything in return, there will be a consequence. Usually the
giver will burn out if they don’t get what they need, such as romance, so both parties need to
be givers from time to time of their partner’s needs.
Therefore, if we have a man and a woman who are both victims, both selfish and both trying
to get what they want from their marriage, it is doomed to self-destruct and expected to go
horribly wrong.
Men, generally want sex from their wives while women want romance, ‘generally’. If the
wife gets romance, she then enjoys sex and is willing to partake. The opposite can be said if a
woman is not getting romance, she usually doesn’t enjoy sex, preferring not to participate.
In the case of my parents, when dad wanted sex, and according to my mother, since he was so
bad at it, he used whatever means he could to get it. Romance was a foreign concept to my
father and because he was selfish, he was not about to learn it. As for my mother, she was
naïve. She didn’t even know what she wanted since her introduction to sex was non-
consentual and her education of sex was something the boys at school only joked about. Even
if she did know, my mum’s passive attribute meant she was too afraid to ask for what she
needed in the bedroom. My dad is what we call, ‘a two minute man’ and consequently mum
was not interested in sex. But my older brother tells me of a time when he was held for
ransom. If mum didn’t agree to sex, dad would harm the boy, using physical violence to
manipulate my mother. The time had come when my mother’s naïvety and ignorance were
now becoming problematic. At least two of my brothers have told me their ransom stories;
what I now tell my mum is these are sure warning signs that there is a problem.
I can understand mums plight to some degree. In my second marriage, I stayed married to a
woman who was violent towards me, hence the reason why we didn’t have any children. I
think it’s true that love covers a multitude of sins, [2] but I also believed our conflict could be
fixed over time. With my belief that our love was stronger than the problem, plus I ‘wanted’
to believe it could be fixed, I put up with the abuse, hoping that someday she would change.
It didn’t work.
2 [Proverbs 10:12]
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