Abstract: Addiction is often framed as something people experience between themselves and a substance. However, the DSM-IV-TR defined behavioral addiction formally as a disease, like substance addiction. According to research performed for the International Journal of Preventative Medicine, Behavioral addiction such as relationship addiction is like a substance addiction except, the individual is not addicted to a substance but the behavior or the feeling brought about by engaging in the behavior they are addicted to. My claim is that behavioral addiction to intimate relationships occur and that the effects of such an addiction can be particularly ruinous to men as a result of patriarchal toxic masculinity increasing men’s vulnerability to
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One can then extrapolate that depressed and otherwise downtrodden people are at much higher risk of being involved in IPV relationships. These people question their own worth and then do not stop to think if their needs are being met. Perpetrators of IPV build up the victim’s self-esteem before introducing the abuse. “They accept it as the price of intimacy.” Craig Malkin, of the Harvard Medical School corroborates my assertion that an abusive relationship functions like another behavioral addiction, gambling addiction: “The person being abused is focused on the positive and waiting for the next positive. There’s a psychological effect like gambling: the moments of tenderness and intimacy are unpredictable, but they are so intense and fulfilling that the victim winds up staying in the hopes that a moment like that will happen again.”, this kind of conditioning is well documented and the use of Skinner Box style systems to create a pattern of behavior in its victims is well documented and recognized as a large enough concern to require regulation. Slot machines, being the the key example here. However, we cannot regulate the actions of abusers as we do the placement of slot …show more content…
Kupers in his 2005 article, “Toxic Masculinity as a Barrier to Mental Health Treatment in Prison” is a pattern of socially regressive male traits that serve to proliferate the domination and devaluation of women, homophobia, and physical violence. This Toxic Masculinity demands that boys don’t cry, that men show no emotion and the very idea that the women that men are expected to be dominating would be capable of causing harm and emotional distress to men creates an issue of underreporting in cases of men as victims in intimate relationship violence. It would be emasculating to even acknowledge that abuse had occurred (Denise Hines). These expectations can prevent men from seeking help out of fear of ridicule and not being taken seriously. This lack of conceptualization of female on male abuse has lead to a skewing of the data, however when we view “slapping, pushing and emotional abuse” as serious abuse we find that the rates of Intimate Partner Violence are roughly 25-50% Men, not the infinitesimal numbers we usually see in representation of male victims of Intimate Partner Violence. (Carlotta
One can then extrapolate that depressed and otherwise downtrodden people are at much higher risk of being involved in IPV relationships. These people question their own worth and then do not stop to think if their needs are being met. Perpetrators of IPV build up the victim’s self-esteem before introducing the abuse. “They accept it as the price of intimacy.” Craig Malkin, of the Harvard Medical School corroborates my assertion that an abusive relationship functions like another behavioral addiction, gambling addiction: “The person being abused is focused on the positive and waiting for the next positive. There’s a psychological effect like gambling: the moments of tenderness and intimacy are unpredictable, but they are so intense and fulfilling that the victim winds up staying in the hopes that a moment like that will happen again.”, this kind of conditioning is well documented and the use of Skinner Box style systems to create a pattern of behavior in its victims is well documented and recognized as a large enough concern to require regulation. Slot machines, being the the key example here. However, we cannot regulate the actions of abusers as we do the placement of slot …show more content…
Kupers in his 2005 article, “Toxic Masculinity as a Barrier to Mental Health Treatment in Prison” is a pattern of socially regressive male traits that serve to proliferate the domination and devaluation of women, homophobia, and physical violence. This Toxic Masculinity demands that boys don’t cry, that men show no emotion and the very idea that the women that men are expected to be dominating would be capable of causing harm and emotional distress to men creates an issue of underreporting in cases of men as victims in intimate relationship violence. It would be emasculating to even acknowledge that abuse had occurred (Denise Hines). These expectations can prevent men from seeking help out of fear of ridicule and not being taken seriously. This lack of conceptualization of female on male abuse has lead to a skewing of the data, however when we view “slapping, pushing and emotional abuse” as serious abuse we find that the rates of Intimate Partner Violence are roughly 25-50% Men, not the infinitesimal numbers we usually see in representation of male victims of Intimate Partner Violence. (Carlotta