There were two men I knew that had different ways of dealings with things.
One was quietly dominant, the other used shaming language, abusive language and actual physical violence to control his wife and family.
The quiet one was tall, confident and authoritarian. When he was mad about something, or disagreed with people, he would give them a look and the behavior changed. That was how strong his frame was.
He was capable of physical violence, no one doubted it, but he never showed more power than was ever necessary. He never swore and he never drank. His vice was gambling, and he preferred the poker nights with his friends over anything else.
People respected him and when he asked for something, they did it. The women in his life went out of their way to make him happy, if he was aloof and assholeish they explained it away as his masculine attributes. They adored him, and got angry at anyone that said a bad word about him.
His sons respected him and never directly challenged him.
When he died there was a crowd the size of a high school to mourn his passing.
The other man was controlling, meanspirited, a screamer. a belittler, he beat his wife. He beat his children.
And he got away with it.
For a while.
It wasn’t the state that intervened and it wasn’t extended family.
It was his eldest son. When the boy was 14 and his father started one of his tirades, the boy snapped.
He had enough.
And he beat the living shit out of the man. He had to be pulled off his dad and he kicked the man when he was on the ground, over and over and over.
The man was broken at that point.
His power was gone, but he was still unpleasant to be around.
When this man died, the number of people there was much smaller, they weren’t there out of love, they were there out of famlily duty and they expressed it afterward. No tears were shed.
The second man was weak and he acted out of a position of weakness.
Anyone that thinks otherwise needs to read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.
