Why Teen Girls Seek Abuse

by Marc H. Rudov

The Acorn

Periodically, I see an article about teen girls “surviving” after terminating their relationships with abusive boyfriends. A good example is one that appeared on 12.12.07 in the San Jose Mercury News. Not one word about why the girl entered the bad relationship, why she found her boyfriend’s abusive behavior attractive, and why she went back to him after breaking it off. No, the only message is: boys are controlling villains; girls are passive victims. And, that’s why teen girls learn nothing from such articles -- namely, why they seek abuse in the first place.

Laying the blame for women’s ills at the doorstep of men is a familiar, counterproductive tool of feminism. Quite simply, a girl who is attracted to a controlling boyfriend is looking for something: control. She wants to be controlled. She is weak and insecure. The kind of boy attracted to her passivity and diffidence is also weak; that’s why he wants to control her. They are matching puzzle pieces. The need to control another person, or to be controlled by another person, is born from insecurity -- the acorn that produces the oak of abuse.

Three strong factors contribute to a girl’s attitude about the role of men in her life: societal messages about males, her father’s power in the family, and her definition of self-worth. Interestingly, a girl who concludes, based on these three factors, that men are weak servants, will either repeat her mother’s domineering pattern of pairing up with a weak man or hunger for a controlling one -- polar-opposite reactions, neither healthy, that we see all the time.

Empowerment

Society blasts girls with messages of misandry. One from a Sony TV commercial shows the father as a horse’s ass. Another from the Washington Post, in a comic strip, depicts the father as a buffoon. How about Littlewood’s, a British retailer, running a TV commercial that promises physical harm to any man who buys a woman the wrong Christmas gift? These messages of hatred affect how girls, in childhood and adolescence, perceive men and boys. If no forces exist at home or in school to counter such misandry, girls will accept it as reality. And, they do. They really do.

In a girl’s family, if her father is weak or noncustodial, or both, she will see her mother in total, albeit dysfunctional, control -- giving her a distorted view of female power. It is common for that mother to badmouth the weak father -- whether he is custodial or not. But, just because a girl views her father with contempt as a diminshed figure does not negate her need or desire for a strong man. It is natural for a girl to need a strong father. If her father is weak or not present, she will find his substitute somewhere. Alas, she doesn’t understand the real definition of strong. How could she? To her, controlling is strong.

In “If Women Were Happy,” I wrote that many girls are raised to believe that happiness is a goal, derived from externalities like clothing, jewelry, plastic surgery, money, and male attention. Parents who impart such disempowering messages to their daughters are ruining them. Happiness is not a goal; it’s a byproduct of personal achievement. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a woman exclaim: “I need you to buy me dinner, to hold doors for me, to treat me like a lady -- because it makes me feel special and feminine.” How pathetic. If she doesn’t already feel special and feminine, there’s nothing I can do for her. A woman who has never treated a man to a night on the town, at her expense, at her insistence, doesn’t understand the meaning of giving, of empowerment. Insecure women, who define their femininity by how much they receive, are the ones most attracted to domineering men.

The NoNonsense Bottom Line

A girl is totally responsible for the boys she attracts and the boys with whom she becomes involved. We have seen that exposing a girl to society’s negative messages about men, a weak father, and the lie of self-actualization through male attention is akin to implanting in her the acorn of insecurity, which easily can grow into the oak of abuse. If a girl pairs up with a controlling boy, it’s because she wants to be controlled. It’s that simple.

On the other hand, teaching a girl to be a strong, independent, empowered, financially reciprocating admirer of boys and men will help her attract, and be attracted to, boys and men who are likewise strong, independent, empowered, financially reciprocating admirers of girls and women. Nobody can be strong and a victim simultaneously.

The typical “victimhood” articles never discuss the root cause of why teen girls seek abuse in the first place. These articles are doing girls a giant disservice by not teaching them to take personal responsibility for their choices. Teen girls seek -- and find -- abuse because they’re weak and insecure, not because boys are bad. So, to give speeches and write articles about bad male behavior is disingenuous and unhelpful. It’s time for girls, parents, and the media to get it right.

Karen Salmansohn is the author of 29 books including HOW TO BE HAPPY, DAMMIT and HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT A PENIS. Her daily satellite radio show, the BE HAPPY DAMMIT HOUR can be heard on SIRIUS Channel 114, Monday - Friday from 8-9 a.m. - a show which merges the best of Oprah with Jon Stewart with NPR.

This morning my boyfriend asked me what I was reading. It was a book called THE 5 SECRETS YOU MUST DISCOVER BEFORE YOU DIE -- which after reading I became aware of how non-secretive I should be about the info within.

Not only does the author, Dr. John Izzo, include important concepts we should all be thinking about -- but interesting conversations we can all benefit from sharing with our paramours, friends and family.

Dr. Izzo interviewed several thousand people, asking them each to identify the "wisest" people they knew -- someone who had lived a long, happy life. He then identified 235 "wise elders" - from ages 60 to 105, including a town barber, real esttae tycoon, Holocaust survivor, native chief, CEO, etc etc... He then distilled all their wisest insights, finding 5 common patterns. Additionally, he developed some questions we should all ask ourselves and those we love on a consistent basis.

Voila... Dr. Izzo's cliff notes...

BE TRUE TO YOURSELF. Follow your heart and dreams - not the dreams of others. This may mean making a radical change, or small adjustments. QUESTIONS TO ASK: Did this day/week feel like "your" kind of day/week? What might make tomorrow/next week feel more true to you?

LEAVE NO REGRETS. Dr. Izzo found people didnt regret risks they failed at - but rather ones they did not take. QUESTIONS TO ASK: Did you act on your convictions today/this week? How are you responding to setbacks? Are you stepping forward or retreating?

BECOME LOVE. The more you focus on acting with love - the more you'll find happiness. This begins with choosing to love yourself - and breaking away from thoughts that are self-defeating/self-critical. You must also be making love relationships a top priority. QUESTIONS TO ASK: Did you make room for your paramour, friends, family today/this week? Did you spread love/kindness in the world at each interaction?

LIVE THE MOMENT. This means living in the now...rather than simply planning. QUESTIONS TO ASK: Did you fully enjoy what you were doing today/this week? What are you grateful for?

GIVE MORE THAN YOU TAKE. Each day you have the power to give without limit. Giving connects you to other people and feeling like you are part of something larger than yourself -- whether it's a supreme being or the entire human journey. QUESTIONS TO ASK: Did you make the world a better place today/this week in some small way? Were you kind, generous, empathic? How could you be more so tomorrow/next week?

Experiences Beat Possessions: Why Materialism Causes Unhappiness

Materialism is a dirty word. It also gets a bad rap in psychology. Studies consistently show that people who agree with statements like "You will buy things just because you want them," tend to be:

• Less satisfied with life,
• Less happy,
• More likely to be depressed,
• More likely to be paranoid,
• More likely to be narcissistic.

Not a pretty picture, right? But, just like studies examining the connection between success and happiness, many of the findings are correlational. As a result we can't say for sure that materialism causes all these things, only that they're associated. So, for better evidence, cue the experiment.

Experiential versus material purchases

Leaf Van Boven from the University of Colorado and Thomas Gilovich from Cornell University carried out an intriguing experiment that gets at this question of whether materialism results in less happiness (Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003).

They randomly divided students into two groups and gave each group slightly different instructions:

1. This group was asked to write a description of a material purchase that had made them happy. Material purchases include things like clothing, gadgets, computers and so on. This could be either something they had bought themselves or that had been bought for them.
2. The task this group had was only slightly different. They were asked to write a description of an experiential purchase that had given them pleasure. Examples of experiential purchases are meals out, admission tickets to concerts and travel.

To see how they were feeling in the moment, participants were given surreptitious measures both before and after writing these short descriptions. Then, after about a week, the same participants were given back their own descriptions of their purchases and asked to reflect on it. Again, they were asked to report on their feelings in the moment.

Comparing these two groups provided a way of comparing how participants felt about two different types of purchases. The results showed that participants felt better when they were contemplating their experiential purchases than their material purchases.

Thinking about experience

As a result of this experiment, Van Boven & Gilovich predicted that people spend more time overall contemplating their experiential rather than material purchases. To test this out they asked participants to think about experiential and material purchases they were particularly happy with. Then they were asked which they thought about more often. The results clearly showed it was the experiential purchases people thought about more often (83%).

Why do experiences fare better than possessions?

It seems, then, that at some level we understand that our experiential purchases give us more pleasure than our material purchases. But why is that? Van Boven (2005) suggests three reasons:

1. Experiences improve with time (possessions don't).
The reason why experiences improve with time may be because it is possible to think about experiences in a more abstract manner than possessions. For example if you think back to a fantastic summer from your youth, you might easily remember an abstract sense of warm sunshine and exuberance, but you're less likely to remember exactly what you did day-by-day. On a moment-by-moment basis you might have been quite bored, although you'll tend not to remember that.

Material possessions are harder to think about in an abstract sense. The car you bought is still a car, that great new jacket you picked up cheap is still just a jacket. It's more likely the experience of that summer has taken on a symbolic meaning that can live longer in your memory than a possession.

2. Experiences are resistant to unfavourable comparisons
It's well established that social comparisons can have a huge effect on how we view what might seem like positive events. One striking example is the finding that people prefer to earn $50,000 a year while everyone else earns $25,000, instead of earning $100,000 themselves and having other people earn $200,000 (Solnick & Hemenway, 1998).

In other words it's not about how much we earn, it's about how much we earn in comparison to other people. It's the social comparison, then, not the actual amount of money, that affects how we feel about our earnings.

A similar effect is seen for possessions. When there's so many flatscreen HD TVs to choose from, it's easy to make unfavourable comparisons between our choice and the others available (check out Barry Schwartz on why too much choice is bad for us).

Experience, however, seems to be more resistant to these sorts of unfavourable comparisons. To explain this phenomenon, Van Boven puts forward the idea that it is because of the unique nature of experience. It's more difficult to make an unfavourable comparison when there is nothing directly comparable. After all, each of our youthful summers is different (even if only a little).

I also think it's hard to really compare our own experiences with those of other people. Comparing possessions, however, is generally easy.

3. Experiences have more social value
There are two reasons experiences have more social value than possessions. First, experiences tend to encourage social relationships and increased social relationships are good for our happiness. Second, it is more socially acceptable to discuss our experiences with others. People who bang on about their possessions are considered much less likeable than those who talk about their holiday adventures.

Limitations

Of course, it has to be acknowledged that this type of research is at an early stage. Van Boven points to a couple of potential problems yet to be investigated:

1. The experiments examined here looked at short-term emotions - will these short-term emotions add up to long-term happiness?
2. Highly materialistic people might actually get more pleasure out of material purchases than experiences.

Materialist dilemmas

Despite these limitations, it seems that along with experimental evidence, there are also some good psychological reasons why experiences are more likely to make us happy than material possessions. On top of this, at some level we do seem to understand that experiences probably beat possessions in terms of happiness.

Set against this is the fact that we clearly live in a society awash with materialism, where objects are valued way beyond their possible contribution to our happiness. So how can this conflict possibly be resolved?

One answer to this question is that while we're likely to think that other people are materialist, we defend our own purchases as necessary and at worst, indulgent. After all, materialism is a dirty word. A dirty word that's on everyone's minds.

Being Happy: Enjoyable Activities Beat Improved Life Circumstances

Being happy and staying happy is all about our day-to-day activities according to this theory of sustainable happiness. Research suggests that the contributions to our happiness are 50% genetic, 10% from our life circumstances and fully 40% determined by our day-to-day activities. But what evidence is there for this theory?

One prediction from this theory is that engaging in new activities should increase our happiness more than an improvement in our circumstances. This is exactly what Sheldon and Lyubomirsky (2006) tested in three related studies.

New activities vs. new circumstances

Two different signs were put up around a university campus asking for participants. One asked for participants who had recently seen an improvement in their circumstances while another asked for those who had recently taken up a new activity.

The study also tested how much these changes had been affected by hedonic adaptation (see sustainable happiness post) and variety. This was to make the comparison fair, so that both groups had not yet adapted to their new circumstances or activity and it was still providing variety - both factors thought important in sustainable happiness.

The results showed that those who had recently engaged in a new activity felt happier than those whose circumstances had improved. This provides some preliminary evidence but data collected over a period of time (longitudinal) is more convincing, so that is what Sheldon and Lyubomirsky (2006) did in their second study.

Here they recruited participants in the same way but this time measured their happiness at three time-points. The results again supported the theory with the effects of improved circumstances increasing happiness, but the boost from a new activity being more lasting. Finally a third study along the same lines also found similar results.

The power of randomisation

A problem with both these studies is that participants in both groups were self-selected. This creates problems for the interpretation of the results. For example, perhaps the type of people who take up new activities are also prone to stay happier for longer periods. If that is the case the results aren't really showing the benefits of activities over circumstances.

This is exactly why experiments using random allocation to groups are so useful for psychologists. Once people have been randomly allocated to groups, the counter-argument about self-selection is ruled out.

Sheldon and Lyubomirsky are, therefore, currently carrying out a study with random allocation which will soon be published (Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2007). Early indications bode well for their theory as the results support their previous studies. So, it looks like their previous results are not the result of self-selection.

Activities win

These studies emphasise that new, enjoyable activities have more potential for making us happy than improvements in our circumstances. Indeed activities may have as much as four times more power to make us happy.

In the next post I'll be looking at which specific activities have received empirical support for increasing happiness.