Why do men treat their partners like emotional punching bags?

Superannuated_punk · 2025-06-20T05:24:45+00:00

Poor emotional regulation and limited emotional intelligence.

A lot of guys get brought up in an environment where “happy” and “angry” are the only two permissible emotions, so all others get lumped into one of those two buckets.

That said - if you’ve dated 5 guys with this issue, I feel like it’s you who’d benefit from therapy as much as they would.

AsturaeConiecto · 2025-06-20T09:13:58+00:00

Men don't overally treat their partners like emotional punching bags. Men in general do act more sensitively around women.

Since I noticed a trend (dated 5 guys with this issue)

The trend might be coming from your partner selection.

DoinIt989 · 2025-06-20T06:37:40+00:00

Never been in this situation. Usually the opposite - my partner gets stressed out about dumb shit or screams over something minor, and I have to keep my cool. I would ask why women do this based on my experience.

Schleudergang1400 · 2025-06-20T08:16:32+00:00

this is more like the guy is hangry and screams at his girlfriend over something minor

How is that a gendered thing? Some people do that when they are hangry.

I’ve noticed in my past relationships men are really on edge.

THat's the men you pick, or maybe it even has something to do with you.

I wanted to ask the men in this sub if you were this guy

Nope, i am calm as fuck.

Learning to regulate your emotions, might be a first step. Screen for that.

Cultural-Ad-8486 · 2025-06-20T07:27:59+00:00

This is not my experience and not what I have seen.

In one of my native languages there is even a separate trope that it is the wife who does what you described with her husband.

"Жена пилит мужа" - wife nags her husband, although it sounds almost like she's "sawing" her husband like a tree.

So I can answer that if the husband does this, then he is a bad husband, although you can answer as psychologists say in cases when the wife does this - "you (the husband) just don't spend time with your wife!"

Key-Faithlessness-29 · 2025-06-20T04:51:23+00:00

From what I've seen it's mostly women who do that. And they justify it too saying a real man should take it

2025-06-20T05:15:41+00:00

This isn't anywhere close to normal or accepted. Please be careful.

I would always leave these relationships.

Good. I am wondering how you ever got into them to begin with. Whatever those 5 men had in common, avoid those things like the plague and be careful with what you find yourself drawn to.

I wanted to ask the men in this sub if you were this guy (or had a friend like this) why do they attack their partners? Is it a therpay problem? How they were raised? I noticed too that after I would end things with these men they would ironically beg me back

I am not, nor do I know any man-children. Especially none this volatile.

Personally, I wouldn't be comfortable around men that can't control their emotions. But ironically, I think men like this take it out on women because they'd never do the same with a man. Cause a man might break his jaw for talking/yelling to/at him like that.

These are emotionally unstable people. I don't know what male-patterned BPD looks like in person, but you might want to look into borderline personality disorder and see how much lines up.

You might want to take a break from dating if this is something you consistently run into. It's dangerous for your health to be around this.

coiled-serpent · 2025-06-20T08:02:41+00:00

If you're genuinely being screamed at by every guy you date, have you ever considered that maybe you are the problem? Perhaps you're exaggerating? Or you are drawn to abusive men?

In my experience, often when something like this occurs, the woman is completely misconstruing the guy's emotional state. Then she invents a false memory where she was "attacked" or mistreated in some way. For example, women saying "are you mad at me? why are you mad at me?" when the guy's just being quiet.

If a guy did that to a woman, the woman would accuse him of "gaslighting" her. Women treat men as emotional punching bags all the time... Men just complain about it less.

Whiskeymyers75 · 2025-06-20T05:18:14+00:00

This sub is always the same thing. Men bad. The trend just might be your type of men.

KamuiObito · 2025-06-20T16:53:30+00:00

You just date shitty men. Which is very common. I don’t really ever express too much emotion especially anger. I’ve never did any of that.

Artistic_Speech_1965 · 2025-06-20T21:33:39+00:00

Yep, men and women don't have the same social capital. Men only learn to regulate their emotions through shutting them down because they should act as men. Of course this strategy don't work and they end up yelling at their close ones. This act is also gender neutral since it can also happend to relations like parent-child or in mobing

jay303x · 2025-06-20T05:04:41+00:00

Choose better lol

DumbWordsmith · 2025-06-20T12:47:10+00:00

I used to do stuff like this. In my case, it was due to holding in my frustration for too long.

Basically, I was a pathetic coward, and she was ungrateful (and I resented her for it).

I should've just left long before the relationship ended, but because of the sacrifices I made, I didn't want to acknowledge the sunk costs. No matter how many times I told her to take care of basic tasks, she continued to be careless.

It would come out in short bursts, and I don't blame her for resenting me for it. I blame myself for not leaving after she made it clear through her actions, not her words, that she didn't really value me.

Four years of practicing CBT techniques and Stoicism have made it much easier for me to stop the anger spiral as quickly as possible.

Nowadays, I'd just leave. I definitely wouldn't put myself in a situation where I feel obligated to make something work no matter what. My emotional investment in the relationship would be minimal, and I'd have enough balls (and respect for both of us) to cut the cord when necessary.

AutoModerator · 2025-06-20T04:33:08+00:00

Attention!

You can post off topic/jokes/puns as a comment to this Automoderator message.
For "Debate" and "Question for X" Threads: Parent comments that aren't from the target group will be removed, along with their child replies.
If you want to agree with OP instead of challenging their view or if the question is not targeted at you, post it as an answer to this comment.
OP you can choose your own flair according to these guidelines., just press Flair under your post!

Thanks for your cooperation and enjoy the discussion!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

Independent-Mail-227 · 2025-06-20T11:35:26+00:00

So you have any evidence of this being a common occurrence?

Melodic_Structure928 · 2025-06-20T22:26:06+00:00

Isn’t really a gendered thing, if I had to guess the guy probably has little to no places for emotional outlets, and let’s it out of the person who has to be their. probably would need more context on this one, but if it happened 5 atleast 5 times with 5 different men then I’m guessing you A.) are very unlikely or B.) might have a thing for the bad boy emotionally unstable type.

Men are usually typically more emotional reserved around there partners If anything.

kvakerok_v2 · 2025-06-29T03:21:31+00:00

My exes would take out their frustration (hungry, traffic, bad day at work) on me.

All your exes? That says more about you than about them. I was married for over a decade and haven't done that a single time in my life, and I'm sure there is plenty of other men that haven't. You should ask yourself why are you attracted to men who end up verbally abusing you. And please, don't confuse this with victim blaming. I'm saying that it's very likely some bad shit happened to you that made you this way - absentee parent, child abuse, something.

Comfortable-Dare-307 · 2025-07-16T20:27:01+00:00

From my experience it's women that do this. I've been in three serious relationships with women who yell, and are emotionally abusive. And my mother was the same way with my dad and step dad.

So can we agree that personal experience isn't a good indicator of how all men or all women are?

PSXSnack09 · 2025-06-20T05:47:09+00:00

what you want us to even say about this? this is just circular logic, treating your girlfriend as an emotional punching bag isnt an inherent trait in men.

wtknight · 2025-06-20T15:38:28+00:00

Men just have a lot of anger, likely due testosterone. They insult each other a lot too, as anyone who plays online games knows.

Women berate their partners a lot, too, especially after marriage. So it’s not just a men thing. It just comes out louder from men due to testosterone.

NoFilterMPLS · 2025-06-22T00:09:25+00:00

[permanently deleted]

giveuporfindaway · 2025-06-20T05:15:46+00:00

Sometimes it's just fun to throw a verbal grenade at someone and see what happens. Guys do it to each other all the time. It's basically lack of love if your guy friends don't do it to each other. When you do it to a woman however it produces unpredictable results since their instinct to mistakenly to think you're going to use your overwhelming physical force to kill them. To put it another way it's like yelling at a little puppy.

Title	Why do men treat their partners like emotional punching bags?
Author	KickKathleeenKennedy
Upvotes	0
Comments	69
Date	June 20, 2025 4:33 AM UTC (1 year ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/1lfv4n7/why_do_men_treat_their_partners_like_emotional/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/why-do-men-treat-their-partners-like-emotional.1555043 https://theredarchive.com/post/1555043

Comments