ย By Spencer D Gear
I’ve had men say to me in counselling, “I have never committed violence against my wife. I would never, ever hit her.” But he has no qualms about screaming at her, cursing her, cutting off the money, or preventing her from seeing friends.
All of these are abusive behaviours that need to stop to build a healthy marriage or relationship.
How can men learn to change their angry and abusive ways?
One of the special ways is through a group that provides a safe environment for them to examine their abuse. Changed behaviour often starts with a change in beliefs about how men treat women.
A group encourages men to explore their abusive beliefs, challenge one another and to seek better ways of relating to women.
Groups are different from individual counselling. They give the opportunity for men who have not faced the music of their relationships to openly and honestly explore and challenge one another on their beliefs about intimate relationships.
In our Aussie male culture, this type of self-examination and self-confrontation is fairly rare. Here’s an opportunity for blokes to learn positive techniques about anger and abuse from other blokes.
It starts with changing abusive beliefs!
Copyright ยฉ 2009 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 28 January 2018
