WHY DO MEN BATTER

Why would a man use the person he loves as a punching bag? It’s a cliche that there’s a fine line between love and hate and that "you always hurt the one you love."

Intimate relationships cause some people to feel vulnerable and dependent. If one person loves or seems to love more than the other, those feelings will be exaggerated in the one who loves us the most and will contribute to his or her giving the partner power over us.

For men, who aren’t supposed to be either dependent or powerless, love sometimes produces feelings of resentment, even rage, especially when the loved one who holds that power is "merely" a female, a person who’s supposed to be inferior.

It can be experienced as intolerable humiliation, though it may seldom be expressed or recognized as such.

The more vulnerable the man feels, and the more important invulnerability is to his idea of masculinity, the more he may hate the one he also loves.