Families grow and change as time passes. You’d hope your family will stay close forever. Even if you grow up and move away, you can still come back and reconnect. In the meantime, you might communicate via email, text messages, and phone calls.
If someone in your family has a violent temper, though, that can change your family’s entire future. The severity of domestic violence cannot be overstated. We’ll talk about how it changes families now.
You Might Cut Off Contact
Say you grow up in a family and have a violent parent. Maybe they consume alcohol and hit you or other family members. Perhaps they don’t drink or use drugs, but this person still has anger issues they cannot control.
If so, you might leave home quickly. When you turn eighteen, you may leave the house and move to a different city or state.
When your family says you should come to visit as an adult, you won’t do it. You’ll remember the bad times and violent incidents. You won’t ever return, and you’ll seldom make contact with those who stayed behind. You must do this for your mental health.
You Might Not Respect Your Violent Family Member Anymore
If you have a violent family member, you might accept that because you grow up with it. You may think it’s normal. When you get a little older, though, you’ll realize that other families don’t live like you do, fearing the next violent incident. You may feel shame and embarrassment.
If the violent family member continues acting that way and doesn’t seek help for their temper, you won’t respect them anymore. You might realize they’re a weak, cruel, or irrational person.
You probably won’t like them anymore, and you may reject them. Perhaps you’ll still contact your other family members, but you won’t like visiting, because then you must see the individual who acted so egregiously during your youth.
Violence Might Shatter the Family
If someone has violent tendencies, those usually get worse rather than better. Violence perpetuates itself, and it’s habit-forming.
If you have one family member who uses physical violence for problem-solving and not their words, other family members might behave that way as well. They’ll learn it’s normal. That means you’ll have even more violent incidents within the family.
That might continue till one family member hurts or even kills another one. That can break up the family entirely. You may also have a situation where the police arrest the violent family member and put them in jail. Perhaps you get a restraining order against this person even if they escape jail time.
These situations cause family strife that seldom ends. The remaining family members might rarely or never see each other. Violence has broken the family apart, and there’s no coming back together.
Violence never ends well, and if you have a violent family member, contact the police or take whatever other action you feel you must.
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