What makes you submissive?

[gemmy]

...As a kid I was abused to the point where I found it necessary to run away from home, (at 16) to prevent anybody getting killed. Either me or my father. I would have run away earlier if I had anywhere to go. If abuse makes us submissive I should be submissive right?

My father was very dominant. My mother was very submissive. I later in life found out the my father had had a virtually identical relationship with his father which led to him, just as me, running away from home when he was 18. The only difference is that his father, (my grandfather) died quite soon after my fathers disappearance.

In my early relationships I was just as dominant and just as abusive as my father had been. So here we have it. Three generations with bad communication skills who without knowing anything about the generation before copied their behavior in detail. The correlations are uncanny...

and you relate none of your dominance to this then? patterned abuse leading and breading a cycle of the same?

just a question Tom, i'm not at all doubting your thoughts on this topic as you lent much for everyone to think and process - it just sort of jumped out at me when you said it happened to your father and his father before him