LOVE and VIOLENCE: From passion to pain

The Introduction

Boy meets girl; They get attracted to each other, they get closer, feel passionately in love; they are happy… they become part of the domestic violence (DV) or what is nowadays called intimate partner violence (IPV), scary statistics.

What comes to mind when you hear violence mentioned in the context of love? I have wanted to explore this topic for a while actually because I’ve been observing an increase in IPV around me. I wonder if it’s the result of increased awareness and sensitization or increased frequency. I just cannot escape it nowadays. What baffles me is that, it’s between and among the youth. I used to think it was an uncouth thing, still do, practiced by the older generation, you know. Nope. They are very educated, ‘respectable’ young men and women living in urban towns, and I’ve been hearing more and more of the horrific tales; from stories of a celebrity murder to stories by and of people I know. My eyes have seen pictures, my ears have witnessed neighbours and strangers fight. What in world in going on? I can’t help but ask myself. So, this is me trying to figure it out.
Please pardon me in case you have experienced or are experiencing violence in your relationship; if or when I portray indifference; forgive me as I try to be as objective as I can. But, I hate it and it disturbs me truly.

Before going any further, as always, let’s define the terms.
LOVE: I particularly love🤭 Rabbi Manni’s definition. He defines love as an emotion; “Love is when I take my kindness and make it personal…I’m kind to you because you are you and not because of my natural generosity.” I have to now define kindness: It’s the feeling that everyone should get everything nice i.e., without discrimination/judgement. He explains further that, “it’s when something about ‘you’ appeals to ‘me’. ‘I’ want more of ‘you’ in my life. (The desire for more closeness.) Whatever ‘I’ like about ‘you’, ‘I’ want more and ideally will never have enough.” Hence love is the pursuit of this closeness. Essentially, it’s about ‘you’ and not ‘me’.
VIOLENCE: The act of physical force that causes or is intended to cause harm to someone or something; is the common definition and the one we’ll use; in the context of romantic love. Examples of violent behaviour include physical assault (pushing, blows, grabbing); r😢pe; and murder.

At this point the contrast between love and violence is clear. I don’t see how these two can co-exist. Maybe I’m missing something. Can they?

I don’t think we need to ask where love comes from, do we? If you’re a Christian or Theist, the answer is God is the author of love. If not, it’s simply a complex biochemical reaction involving dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. The two explanations aren’t contradictory and they complement each other, I think. Anyway, love is a magical thing: It leads to better health, wealth, resilience, faster recovery from illness, longevity, and more successful children…Who doesn’t want this? So, why can’t people just love each other without all the violence? Where does all the violence come from?

Let’s get technical for a bit. According to SFU researchers, there are several explanations for the source of violence in general: I’ll describe three.
1. Biological– where certain types of personalities can be predisposed to violence e.g., psychopathy, and with mental illnesses like schizophrenia, people have a higher risk of behaving violently. Indicator risk factors are parental characteristics, emotional dysregulation etc.
2. Social learning– when someone is rewarded after acting violent e.g., getting what they want so they learn violence is the answer. Learning from parents, peers etc. Indicators maybe overly harsh parents, anti-social peers, criminal parents etc.
3. Social bonding/control– Where people are concerned by reactions of other people’s behaviour like being unemployed, unmarried etc.

Using risk factors such as major mental illness, previous violent behaviour, substance use among others; psychologists can predict violence and hence we can then prevent and reduce it. On the other hand, we have the science of love! John Gottman and partner worked out mathematical love equations that can be used to precisely predict behaviour, and carry out thought experiments/simulations in love relationships. Scientists are weird, but it works. Check out their very interesting and intelligent work. Some of us are messed up by no fault of our own while some are 100% culpable,. But, there’s hope for the human race🥳!
That’s the technical part, right?

Excluding psychopaths’ involvement, we understand it more like there was a conflict, negative emotions arose (anger, fear, jealousy etc.) and then the act of violence. However, there are all sorts of things going on in the background.

Up to this point, I’ve painted violence as a wrong. Is violence absolutely wrong though? Anyone who has had to defend/protect themselves or loved ones will tell you, NO. In the right context, violence is justified, helpful, and the human being is wired for it, especially for men. So don’t go pacifist on me. By the way, there are people (both men and women), today who believe that it is helpful to discipline women via beating. I know this because I was involved in a study in Kenya that showed this; other studies show this too. What do you make of that?

The problem is using violence in the wrong context. Emotional hurt from people talking crazy at you is not a justified reason, neither is cheating on you, nor talking about you etc. Some of us seriously need to literally take a breath to calm down and think, a laugh, a massage, a hug, others, a run. Some men may need to listen to ‘aggressive’ music or break down their muscles. I say this with all seriousness because we may just have high levels of stress, or have accumulated too much of it (trauma) and so we’re always hyper-aroused hence our primitive brain is almost always at attack/defend mode. We are not ‘animals’, we have a cortex to think and remember! Some of us need the help of professional talk-through sessions while others need to be arrested😬.

I hope the information presented will increase awareness and understanding of the subject as well as encourage us to be more empathetic towards each other, perpetrator and victim alike. Violence has adverse effects to the perpetrator, victim, family and society as a whole and that’s a topic for another day. Yes, it’s possible to love and love in peace and yes, it’s an ideal but so is perfect arithmetic, yet we still strive for it.

Calm, Trust and Commitment makes the magic of love

– John Gottman