Scorning the Sub-Male - Your Ex-Boyfriend Will Hate This (2015)

Your Ex-Boyfriend Will Hate This (2015)

Chapter Eleven

Scorning the Sub-Male

The US Department of Justice compiled a survey of sixteen thousand Americans to discover just how pervasive abuse is. They asked men and women to report whether they had ever been the target of physical abuse by a spouse, a boyfriend or girlfriend, a living partner, or a date. Of the women, 22.1 percent said yes.[xxvi]

The numbers for emotional abuse are, obviously, more difficult to calculate. As we noted in the last chapter, determining a percentage of something that cannot be measured tangibly is nearly impossible. We can’t recover all the things an abuser takes, and we certainly can’t get back all the time he wastes in women’s lives that might otherwise be happy and productive.

If you think of life as a galaxy of time and space for your exploration, the abusers are the black holes. They don’t operate according to the same laws as the rest of your universe. They absorb anything that passes nearby into themselves. They let no light emerge. And, last but not least, they suck.

If that seems to be a glib turn of phrase, know that my intention is never to make light of abuse. I’d like to take the starch out of the abuser himself: that selfish, weak, pathetic, bullying coward pretending to be a man.

People often refer to the best or most dominant man in any group as the “alpha male” (alpha being the first letter in the Greek alphabet). His opposite is the lowest member of any social hierarchy, “the omega male” (named after the last letter in the Greek alphabet). Framed this way, the abuser isn’t even an “omega male.” He meets not even the basic minimum requirements for manhood. He is “sub-male.” He deserves to be treated with scorn and contempt. To that end, let us take him apart, piece-by-piece, by laying bare who he is and what he does.

1) His charm is temporary.

A common misconception about the abuser (aka the “sub-male”) among those of you with limited experience of him is that he a lumbering Neanderthal with no innate charisma or ability to “relate” to women. On the contrary, he does a pretty good impression of both charm and the ability to “relate” to you. Yet, like a dog that learns to walk on its hind legs, the sub-male can’t keep it up for long, since what he does isn’t natural to him. It’s a trick he learned over time to get what he wants. His “treat” isn’t a dog biscuit, of course. The rewards for mimicking this behavior are, first, your trust and affection, and then later, his control over you.

The sub-male is also reminiscent of the “fun” drunks we’ve all known at one time or another. Remember those guys or girls you knew, the ones who always got intoxicated well before you and the rest of your friends? Initially, their inebriation was amusing. They did or said things they wouldn’t normally do or say, and it was entertaining, at least at first. They were what people normally termed “happy” drunks.

The problem emerged, as it always will, when they kept drinking. Slowly but surely, your happy, entertaining friends became morose, sour, obnoxious, and even belligerent. Alcohol revealed not just people who loved a good time, but people with a real problem whose temporary revelry only masked inner demons. They weren’t “fun” anymore. They seemed sad, a little desperate and, to be honest, more than a little pathetic.

The sub-male is just like the “fun” drunk, except that time reveals him, rather than alcohol. Observe his “charm” long enough and you’ll see that it’s not real. It’s a poorly stitched knockoff of the genuine article that falls apart when any pressure is put on it. This pressure manifests as soon as you deviate from what the sub-male wants, because he values control above all else. Try to take even a little of it for yourself and his “charm” falls apart at the seams.

2) His idea of “commitment” isn’t the same as yours.

In the same way that the sub-male “charm” isn’t real, his dedication to “commitment” isn’t either, at least not in any sense you understand. Healthy people (both male and female) view commitment in a relationship as a shared desire for mutual happiness, fulfillment, and love. This guy doesn’t believe in sharing anything except slavish attention to his own wishes.

His idea of “commitment” is similar to his idea of “respect”: complete and utter bullshit.

In her book, Lundy Bancroft lists several tell-tale signs that a man may be an abuser. One of the primary clues is an unnaturally quick move toward “commitment.” It is no secret that most men in this day and age are reluctant to commit. The Rutgers survey of single men confirms this. So it seems refreshing to meet a man who not only doesn’t run from commitment but practically insists upon it.

But Bancroft says to be wary if it happens really quickly. “Watch out if he jumps too soon into planning your future together without taking enough time to get to know you and grow close. It could easily mean that he’s trying to wrap you up tightly into a package that he can own.”[xxvii]

This doesn’t mean every person who wants to jump into a relationship with you is an abuser. However, this is good advice that boils down into two simple words: slow down.

There are few things in life which benefit from hastiness. Is your house on fire? Is your car being stolen? Is a hurricane or tornado approaching? Are you and/or a loved one facing an imminent bear attack? If so, then by all means make haste. Most things, especially potential new relationships, don’t profit from this kind of wild urgency. Life isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon. So choose whom you run with carefully, because how well you choose has a direct effect on how well you’ll finish.

The sub-male wants to hurry you into a relationship for a reason. In addition to wanting control, he knows as well as we do that time isn’t his ally. He knows that no woman in her right mind would want the real him. He can only accomplish his selfish goals by diverting your attention from reality as early and often as possible, which leads us neatly to our next point.

3) He’s the world’s worst magician.

The sub-male thrives in the same way as a magician—through constant misdirection. As convincing as Criss Angel or David Copperfield may be in a performance, they aren’t conjuring magic. Like all other magicians, most of what they do is simple bait-and-switch. They lead your attention in one direction, while they transform something in the other. The term for this kind of “magical” dexterity is “sleight-of-hand,” sleight meaning “deception.”

Sleight-of-hand is a type of “magic” generally employed at close quarters. Seen from a distance, it’s not difficult to notice that, when the magician feigns putting the quarter in one hand, he’s dropping it into his pocket with the other. Only up close can you be fooled into thinking he made it disappear.

The abuser operates in the same way. None of his “tricks” are innovative or even terribly complicated. Seen from a distance, everything he does is obvious. But seen from the tight proximity of a relationship, it’s not hard to be fooled. As we discussed, his “charm” is essentially all an elaborate “trick,” a con game he has performed so many times that he’s good enough to give it the illusion of reality. His screwed-up ideas about “respect,” “love,” and “commitment” operate in the same way. You enter with certain sensible, common ideas about the meaning of these words, but after receiving a steady stream of the sub-male’s lies, misdirection, emotional manipulation, and intimidation, his carefully constructed mistruths begin to look real.

4) He wants you to be isolated and dependent.

Maybe you’ve been fortunate to avoid the sub-male thus far in your dating life. If so, congratulations. You’re one of the lucky ones. Surely, however, you know a friend or family member who has dated one. I bet that, over the length of her relationship, you saw your friend less and less. Perhaps you and everyone else you know found the guy to be such an obnoxious creep that you avoided him like a nasty virus.

Though you’re pretty sure that being an asshole isn’t contagious, you didn’t want to risk catching it from him, either.

You shouldn’t feel guilty for growing apart from your friend or loved one because of her terrible boyfriend. If you hadn’t drifted away, the sub-male would’ve gladly pushed you. Isolation is one of his favorite and best-used tools. The last thing he wants while he’s systematically breaking down and then controlling his latest victim is a witness, especially one with the objectivity to see clearly everything that he’s doing.

Once the sub-male has his girl isolated, it’s a cinch to convince her that she can’t live without him. With no pesky friends or family around to interfere, he happily becomes her surrogate for these lost relationships, all the while telling her that he’s the one who actually cares about her.

“It’s your (mother/father/brother/sister/friend) who abandoned you”, says the sub-male. “I’m still here. I’m the one who really loves you.”

The lesson here is to beware the man who hates all your friends. Even if he’s not an abuser, he’s eventually going to force a stand-off, and no one should have to choose between the people she loves. People who truly love you welcome your friends and family (including those who secretly get on their nerves a little). They respect your feelings for these people and the roles they have played in making you who you are.

5) He doesn’t care about your orgasm.

This doesn’t mean the sub-male can’t get you off. On the contrary, for women who like an authority figure in public and/or the bedroom, this guy can be just what they need, albeit temporarily. I mean that your orgasm is incidental to him. Either he uses it as a tool to gain control over you, or he pays no attention to it whatsoever.

The sub-male may seem very attentive to your needs in the beginning, but his intentions are purely selfish. Few people are more narcissistic than the sub-male, so making you climax feeds his inflated sense of self-worth and adds to his deluded feelings of entitlement. While you’re marveling at what a caring and considerate lover he is, the sub-male is quietly filling a ledger of what you “owe” him, a list that also includes your orgasms.

His care in the bedroom is just another trick and, unfortunately for you, he’ll cease to bother performing it once he feels he has you under his thumb. From that point forward, the focus will overtly become what it has secretly always been—him and his pleasure. Not only will he cease to be attentive, but he’ll become more and more demanding. He may even use emotional and physical intimidation to force you into sex, or shame you when you aren’t in the mood.

6) He is an absolute hypocrite.

The sub-male really reveals his rotten core by constantly punishing you for the very behaviors that he unabashedly engages in. You don’t “respect” him around your friends? He mocks and belittles you in front of them, which in the end makes him look as petty as he actually is and causes you great embarrassment. He decides that you “flirted” with some random guy at a business function you attended together? He cheats on you and tells you that you “deserved it.” You don’t keep a clean enough house (the sub-male is often proudly chauvinistic) for him? He smashes a plate of food all over the kitchen floor, and you get the pleasure of cleaning it up—typically after he has walked through the mess.

Do you see a pattern here?

It comes down to this. There is only one set of rules for acceptable behavior in a good relationship. They’re mutually established and agreed upon, and both parties adhere to them equally. None of this “do as I say, not as I do” nonsense. If he doesn’t want to live by those rules, but expects you to follow them without exception, show him the door.

In the next chapter, we will discuss just how and when these “rules” are set and what they should always include.