Can dealing with condescending comments damage an adult's self-esteem?

That is emotional abuse, and it can damage your sister tremendously.

Yes, this is clearly an abusive situation. They might both be abusive (sounds like it, if you said your sister can say stuff like this).

All of the red flags. All of them. Guess what the next step often is? Yup, physical abuse. None of that is OK, none of it. If he can’t treat your sister with the same restraint an adult shows to someone in public who infuriates them, he is out of control.

You’ve described the classic pattern of an abuser – rage and mistreatment, followed by remorse and apologies.

We all have moments when we behave cruelly, later genuinely regretting those deeds and/or words. Each of us is only human. But, if this guy regularly and frequently treats your sister in a vile manner, with no attempts to stop, I hope she’ll be able to read the signs and see the red flags. His treatment of her won’t get better with time.

1. Yes, “dealing with condescending comments [can] damage an adult’s self-esteem” and/or have other negative effects.

2. Do you think your sister also objectively and accurately reports to you what she said and did in the situation, too?

It sounds like something that wants attention, but it’s hard to know from one person’s perspective what is really going on. Relationship counseling can help. Or if the relationship is too messed up or one person really is just not good to be with for the other person, then breaking up can be a good thing. That can be tricky to assess, either from inside or outside the relationship.

Only if the person allows it to continue after the first time. When it comes to abuse, one strike you’re out.

@Coloma That’s a classic blame-the-victim attitude. It is unhelpful.

@Hawaii_Jake No, it is not a blame the victim attitude.
Abuse may be complicated but I’m not talking about complicated, I am talking about setting firm boundaries from the get go. A matter of fact statement. Sadly, most of the time a victim needs to experience repeated abuse, sometimes for years to finally wake up and get away from the abuser, continually re-drawing the lines to deny the true extent of what they are dealing with.

If more people, women especially, were able to set a firm boundary from the get go, abusers would not be allowed to continue without consequence. THAT is what I was saying.

What you’ve described is not “condescending” speech. Annoying as that may be, condescension (and yes, I looked it up, and that is the spelling) is a whole different class of speech than insult and abuse.

That is, condescension may imply a certain amount of intellectual and maybe even moral superiority, but it doesn’t directly express outright disrespect, rudeness and insult.

@Coloma You wrote, “Sadly, most of the time a victim needs to experience repeated abuse.”

That is blaming the victim. There is no debate about it. You are blaming the victims for receiving the abuse.

@Hawaii_Jake That is your perspective not the truth of what I am saying. There is a saying, * there are no victims, only volunteers.” This holds true for abuse “victims.” I said that abuse can be complicated but when you get right down to it, the “victims” are really, just repeated, volunteers.

@Coloma I cannot begin to fathom your cruelty. Your attitudes about this matter are vile.

Again Jake, your perspective. I once left an abusive marriage and loathed to call myself a victim. I was unexperienced with abuse and wanted things to work out, but once I woke up to reality I took full responsibility for my part in the dance. I chose to make excuses and sweep the issues under the rug.

Until I no longer did, so you can quit with your hysterical accusations of “cruelty”, so-over-the-top melodramatic Jake.
I’ll add to the fact that the OP’s question sates his sister has recently gotten together with this person who is already showing his abusive colors in a short amount of time. In this case, if this girl/woman stays with this guy and makes excuses or ignores his behavior she is, absolutely, volunteering to be victimized. This is not a woman without resources, small children, financially dependent, or otherwise highly dependent on her abuser to meet her basic life needs.

I understand why women in those circumstances often stay, to their detriment, I wanted my family life to work out, but in a dating relationship you have all kinds of power to put an end to the situation in a heartbeat. Again, if you do not then you have crossed the line from being a victim to a volunteer. If one had a perfect stranger verbally or physically assault them they would file charges and take a pro-active stand against being accosted, that responsibility also applies in abusive relationships. The core issue in all abuse is that the neither the abuser or their victim takes personal responsibility.

In general I agree with @Coloma here. I was the “victim” in an abusive relationship many years ago, too. I didn’t see it for what it was, made excuses for her and rationalized her awful behavior, “well, it’s cultural”; “it’s a boy-girl thing”; “it’s because she’s afraid” ... whatever. I stayed, and I lapped it up and made allowances, made do, and put up with it.

Eventually, she was the one who left the relationship – and I grieved (!) – but got better, and realized what had been happening.

I never expected then – or now – for anyone to feel sorry for me or to debase me into even more of a victim than I already had been… but I surely had been a victim, and a willing participant.

@CWOTUS Well said, my sentiments exactly.

He doesn’t sound like a really good guy, really good guys don’t make comments like these to their girlfriends. They aren’t questionable remarks they are abusive and unacceptable and may well lead on to nastier and more physical forms of abuse. Your sister has told you this because she is concerned about it. I think it is time for her to get out of the relationship, or at least to lay down an ultimatum; your behaviour is unacceptable to me, if you cannot control it our relationship will be over.

Sounds like he may have been emotionally abused as a child. Now he has a hard time dealing with it as an adult.

@flutherother Yep.

But even if he was abused as a child he’s an adult now and he needs to grow up and take responsibility for his actions including what he says. Likewise she needs to understand that it’s not her job to keep him happy, and it also sounds like she’s verbally abusive as well, which she needs to take responsibility for. I hope they don’t end up having kids.

@snowberry Agreed, if she is, in any way, verbally abusive as well it is a double dysfunction and yeah, hopefully no kids will happen.

The OP states that his (or her) sister can be very infuriating and he implies that she has some part in what’s going on. I’m curious to know what their fights are really like, in other words, to be a fly on the wall. It’s definitely not ok that the boyfriend verbally abuses her, but maybe she also starts shit with him. Maybe the two of them are really nasty to each other and she’s only reporting one side of the story.

@jca Very possible.

Domestic abuse is a very complex phenomenon. I think it’s important to note that I have never met a professional who would agree with what @Coloma and @CWOTUS are asserting here.

Everything that humans do is complex, @Hawaii_Jake, from walking upright to breathing to feeding ourselves. But aside from that, does the complexity of domestic abuse mean that a victim cannot be complicit in her (or his) victimization? And is that the only way that a person can be the victim of domestic abuse?

In both cases I would say “surely not”. It is a complex subject, and it can happen in any number of ways, and for various “reasons”. But when it happens repeatedly, I think that it’s almost axiomatic that the victim plays a part in that. It may be unconscious and unwilling, and it may be a symptom of a deeper malaise, but unless the person has zero agency over his or her own life, then there is an element of volunteerism involved.

@CWOTUS Yep, it’s called co-dependency. The victim is as messed up as the abuser and those that don’t identify as victims take a stand.

Only if she really care about her partner’s opinion. People can call you “bitch” but if you don’t think it’s true you can easily ignore it. People have their freedom of speech and you have your freedom to ignore their comment.

That being said, she really needs to demand that he stop calling her those names for the sake of mutual respect (provided that she didn’t call him names), if he can’t that means he actually has no respect for her. And I don’t buy the story that he only does that when he’s angry as he can’t control his emotion yadda yadda. He needs to be made responsible for what he has said.

@Unofficial_Member I don’t remember any occasion when calling someone a “bitch” counts as an opinion. You are confusing opinion and personal attack. The word “bitch” already carries negative feeling in it and a desire to hurt. It goes against the kind of opinion you have in mind, which is much more emotional neutral.

And you can choose to ignore if that person is a stranger you probably won’t meet twice. But this is someone close to her, and the action has been going on for some time. It’s a different story.

And I don’t buy your last statement either. He can be abusive intentionally. Know about narcissists and sociopaths?

@Mimishu1995 Yes, both of those conditions lend themselves to a high rate of abuse.
One of the reasons I am not very tolerant of abusive people that use their mental health issues as an excuse to be abusive.

In my child welfare work, I worked with many domestic violence victims over the years. Much of what we did with the domestic violence counselor was teach the victims what domestic violence is and then strengthen them to realize that they didn’t have to put up with it. Some people leave the abusive situation, some spend a lifetime mired in it. I am betting if the OP’s sister goes for counseling, she’ll realize that her relationship has a multitude of issues, not just domestic violence (verbal abuse is on the domestic violence wheel).

http://domesticviolence.org/violence-wheel/

People generally get worse over time, if he’s being verbally abusive so early into their relationship he’s going to be a damn nightmare to deal with later.

Thanks for all the answers. For those of you wondering: My sister is unlikely to call people names, but she can be pretty unreasonable in fights. Once she pretended I was invisible for a full day after something tiny happened. I think similar things might be going on here.

So she’s vindictive too. What a catch. :(

Something like that’s what I suspected might be missing. Relationships involve two people.