Imagine you see two people going out somewhere together. One is in hysterics while the other one is perfectly calm. The calm one is explaining to others that his/her companion is just crazy, but he/she loves him/her anyway. In such a scenario, some of us may be inclined to believe that the calm one of the two is just a very patient person who is somehow “tolerating” the hysterical one. In reality, this scenario is a red flag for a possible abusive situation.
Abusers will often create a discrepancy between appearance and reality. Certainly if bystanders saw the reality of the abusive relationship, they would be more likely to intervene, and the abuser would be less likely to evade accountability. Abusers like to create an appearance of a happy relationship, or make it look like the victim is the aggressor.
The movie Case 39 presents a good illustration of the large discrepancy between how a relationship appears on the outside and how it actually is behind closed doors. In this video clip from the movie, a case worker from child protective services meets a young girl and her parents. We see a sweet young girl with these parents who look like angry nut jobs. We, as the audience, are inclined to empathize with the case worker who wants to get the girl out of this bad family situation and give her the loving home that she deserves.
What we find out later in the movie is that the girl’s parents were a perfectly nice couple, and it was the girl who is evil and drove her parents crazy. She is not even a child, but rather a demon. In this video clip, we see the girl reveal her true colors; and the case worker, who was so keen on giving this poor girl the loving home that she deserves, now is smashing the TV onto the ground and yelling at the girl. Then we see, for a split second, the girl’s face become the face of a demon. Indeed, the girl’s parents were not the problem. The girl was the problem the entire time, but this girl, who is actually a demon, is very good at making herself look like the innocent victim while her victims look like the aggressors.
The Case 39 movie is completely fictional. We are not going to see in our lifetimes a demon disguised as a young girl; but the same principle still applies. All over the world there are abusers who emotionally, and sometimes physically, abuse their victims until their victims reach a breaking point. When these victims have undergone emotional trauma, sometimes seemingly little things can set them off. They can appear as high-strung to outside observers. Sometimes the outside observers may even wonder how the other person is able to tolerate this “nut job.” What the outside observers do not know is that this nut job is a nut job because of abuse by the other person who seems to be the more emotionally stable one of the two.
A real-life example of an evildoer and a nut job is in the story of Brian Laundrie and Gabby Petito. The couple were on a road trip together when they got into a bad argument one morning. They got pulled over by the police and each one was interviewed separately. In this video clip, we see that Gabby is very upset while Brian is nice and calm. Later in this video clip, we see that if anything, police officers are suspicious that Gabby is the aggressor because of scratch marks on Brian’s skin; but Brian says he does not want to press charges because she is his fiance and “he loves her.” We see that Brian is good at creating the illusion that Gabby is the nut job and he is the calm and tolerant one. See the full video of their encounter with the police here. Meanwhile, a 9-1-1 caller had earlier told a dispatcher that he/she saw Brian slapping her.
Not only was Gabby not the aggressor, but also evidence showed that Gabby was strangled to death, most likely by Brian. Gabby was reported missing, about one month later, by her family after they noticed that she had not returned any phone calls or posted on social media for several days. Her body was found outside somewhere in Grand Teton National Park where it was thought that it had been there for 3-4 weeks before it was found. The autopsy evidence showed that Gabby was manually strangled to death. Meanwhile, Brian was out on the run. The FBI tried to search for him for over a month. Eventually his skeletal remains were found in Florida, with evidence that he committed suicide by a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. Prior to his suicide, he had already been charged with unauthorized use of a debit card, on which he spent about $1000 during his road trip with Gabby. He obviously was not a good honest person.
Complaints have surfaced on social media about how the police officers had ignored the signs of domestic abuse, and thought that Gabby was the aggressor. Julie Cantrell — a multiple award-winning, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author, editor, story coach, TEDx speaker, and ghostwriter — lists 30 lessons we can learn from the story of Brian and Gabby. One of the lessons that she listed:
A typical abuser would be skilled at convincing people that he’s innocent, while in fact he’s been acting very differently behind closed doors, pushing his target to this point intentionally and feeding on her emotional break. Many abusers LOVE to see evidence that they’ve hurt their target. They LOVE to see their target in pain. For this reason, “breaking” the target is usually the goal from the start. In cases of abuse, it may take an abuser hours, weeks, months, or even years to break the target, but he won’t stop until he gets that reaction, and then he’ll point the finger and say, “See? She’s crazy. I’m just trying to keep her calm.” And then he’ll do it again. And again. And again.
Another blogger, Chump Lady, discusses how angry she was that the police gave Brian a hotel room while Gabby had to sleep in the car. In numerous comments to this blog post from Chump Lady, women relay their personal experiences with the same kinds of abusive partners who tried to convince themselves and others that the woman is the aggressor.
In one of the comments, the woman’s husband found out that she knew about his adulterous affair, so he explains to her that he was avoiding her because he was “afraid that she would try to kill him.” Such a statement is offensive and accusatory. Furthermore, women are less prone to physical violence, and when they do get physically violent, they do not cause as much damage as a man would. While both men and women are equally prone to doing wrong, when the man does wrong, the consequences are more devastating because generally men are larger and can physically overpower women. Therefore, a woman has more reason to fear for her safety when the man is the aggressor than the man does when the woman is the aggressor.
Many people do not think there is enough awareness of domestic abuse, but there is even less awareness of domestic abuse towards women of color. Some have complained that Gabby’s story was only told because she is white and blond and pretty. If she were a woman of color, her story would be less likely to be told. This article states that in the state of Wyoming, “only 30% of Indigenous homicide victims had newspaper media coverage, compared with 51% of white homicide victims.”
Toxic people can bring out the worst in others
I have met people who have presented to me a negative picture of this other person that they were in a relationship with. The other person was often described as bitchy, angry and abusive. In a subtle way, I was being congratulated for not being like him/her. I would later find that the person I was talking to was exhibiting behaviors that would make a normal person get angry.
For example, there was one guy I met who described his X-wife as bitchy and abusive. However, he also admitted that at one point in their marriage, he went out and bought a car without talking to her about it. Considering that he made much less money than she did, he was using more her money to buy the car than his own money. His actions gave her a good reason to get angry. It makes one wonder if his X-wife really was the bad guy.
The point is that when you are told that another person, whom you have never met, is easily angered and/or bitchy and/or crazy, you may be deceived. The bad guy may be the one standing right in front of you, and if you go into a relationship with this bad guy, then you may become his/her next easily angered nut job that he/she will be telling others about.
What about the screaming child in the grocery store?
If you see the usual screaming child in the store with the calm adult, it does not mean there is abuse. Children are known for throwing tantrums in public even when they have loving caring parents.
If you see two adults, and one is very upset while the other is calm and is exclaiming that the upset one is just crazy, then I would get suspicious. Nonetheless, finding out what is really going on can be tricky because even the victim can be brainwashed into believing that he/she is the problem. I am no psychologist or domestic violence expert myself, so I wouldn’t consider myself to be qualified to evaluate the situation. Just be aware that these abusive relationships happen, and to an outside observer, the perpetrator and victim can appear as the “calm one” and the “nut job.”