I'm no stranger to high-conflict women. I had a girlfriend once who broke up with me because I ignored her frequent attempts to bait me into arguments about nothing. I had another that bit me hard on the shoulder at a party because I wasn't paying her enough attention for her liking. I waited patiently until she let go and told her that if she ever did it again I would punch her in the mouth. I used to hang out with a tiny Vietnamese girl that got kicked out of five bars in one night because she kept picking fights with random men and punching them in the face. If one of those guys had laid her out I would have been obliged to tell the cops that she had been asking for it all night long.
I dated one particularly unstable woman who flipped out and attacked me when I broke up with her. She was beating on my chest and I had pushed her away several times. When she swung at my face I shoved her hard and sent her sprawling across the hood of her car. I held her down with my forearm across her throat until she agreed to chill the fuck out. If I had had the power and aggression of an NFL running back at the time, there's no telling how that would have played out.
Everybody is focusing on the KO punch that Rice landed on Janay Palmer, his then-fiance. What nobody is talking about is what was caught on the surveillance video before that punch.
In the beginning of the video we see Rice leaning against a pillar near the elevator, apparently fiddling with a smartphone, when Palmer walks by and slaps him in the face. They then enter the elevator where they appear to be arguing. This indicates that we are seeing an argument that had already been in progress for a while. Rice is standing close to Palmer when she appears to strike him in the face again with her elbow. Rice immediately slaps her in the face and backs away. Palmer rushes at Rice and he knocks her out.
This course of events doesn't exonerate Rice, but Palmer had clearly physically assaulted him twice on camera before he got physical himself, which would seem to be reflected in the minor charge of aggravated third degree assault for Rice and Palmer's charge of simple assault.
The two got married shortly after this incident. I doubt that this was the first such altercation between them and I highly doubt that it will be the last. There's a good chance that Palmer is a high-conflict type that gets off on pushing buttons because she knows, just like everybody else has demonstrated, that her violent provocations will be totally ignored.
Rice is done in the NFL. It wouldn't surprise me to see Palmer file for divorce in a couple of years - while there's still money to be had - possibly provoking another beat-down to seal the deal. It wouldn't be the first time something like that happened.
Contrary to the propaganda, most DV is mutual. It's always been so. When I was an MP in the Army (a lifetime ago) a buddy of mine told me about an NCO, a 6'7" 300 lb bodybuilder, whose 90 lb Korean wife beat him to death with a cast iron skillet for cheating on her. You can talk all you want about "she can't really hurt him." Then you can google images of male domestic violence victims and shut the fuck up.
A lot of men are puffing themselves up and yammering about how real men don't hit women. That's fine if your idea of a real man is one who will stand there and be a punching bag. Yet these same men wonder why it's so hard to find women that have any respect for them.
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