How We Hurt the Ones We Love

I have a friend whose mother was in an physically, mentally and verbally abusive relationship for years. Once the relationship was over, she started to display signs of being verbally abusive towards her children. Now, all of the kids are adults and my friend is the only one that halfway tolerates his mother. His older brother wants nothing to do with her and his younger sister literally lives somewhere else. Yet, my friend is still helping out his mother and tolerates her verbal abuse whenever she is not on her medication or when she's just mad in general. When he is told by his older brother not to take it, he believes that he is doing the right thing by not standing up for himself and telling his mother how he really feels.

So, who's at fault? Is it the mother, who knows what it feels like to be abused only to do the same thing to her children? Is it the children, who are not perfect and could be showing habits of their father, who was the one who had abused their mother? Or is it the father, who forever changed everyone's life with his abuse of the children's mother? If you were to ask me, I think that the father is at fault.

Abuse comes in many ways. According to online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, physical abuse is where one person inflicts physical violence or pain on another. Verbal abuse is when a person uses profanity or says things that threaten or make a person feel scared. Emotional or psychological abuse is where one person uses psychological or emotional coercion to compel another to do something they do not want or is not in their best interests or commits psychological aggression using non-violent methods to inflict mental or emotional violence or pain on another. When a person uses this (or these) type(s) of abuse on his/her wife or husband, it's called domestic or spousal abuse. When a person uses this/these type(s) of abuse on a child, it's considered child abuse. But, it's shocking how much abuse is going on in this world these days.