You women need to learn to submit

How do you react when you're out of control?

So I'm listening to a radio broadcast and a guy calls into the show while having an argument with his wife.

He's heard yelling at her saying "That's what's wrong with you women now! They're talking about it on the radio! You women need to learn to submit! The man is the head of the house! You need to listen and do what I say!"

I was listening to the program on a gospel station. It brought me to tears. Yelling does that to me period. I hate raised voices. Hearing yelling causes me a lot of anxiety.

Anyway. The host of the show asked the man if he were okay. The yeller laughed it off and said yeah. The host told the yeller he wasn't okay, then asks the yeller if he'd ever hit his wife. The yeller said he had and he was ready to do it again. Yeller says "I'm ready to slap her in the face. I know it isn't right to do, but it is the best thing to do right now."

Here's the thing, this man was clearly in an out of control situation. And God only knows what he would have done to his wife had he not called into the show. He said he was backed against a wall and didn't know what to do...that he needed his wife to know that he was doing his best as a man. He wanted her to understand that he was doing all he could and it just didn't seem to be enough for her, so he lashed out..

I don't know the part, if any, she played in the situation. But there are always thirty million sides to one story, so I'm not quick to jump on either side...most times.

Now...who knows what the truth is. Maybe he was doing his best, maybe he was not. Hitting her wasn't going to resolve the issue, nor was the yelling. What I do know too is, he probably felt defeated. That's how a lot of people react when they feel defeated. They resort to what makes them feel in control.

The yeller said he felt the "best" thing for him to do was to slap her at that moment. I don't know if the host asked him why he felt that was the "best" thing. They ended up speaking off the air. I don't know if he went into asking the guy what he felt being a "man" meant. I understood from his initial conversation that he felt "submission" meant he called all the shots and his wife fell in line with what he said. I don't know where people get these notions from. But to me it is a bastardized version of that passage in the Bible, that begins "submit yourselves one to another..."

What messed me up about the situation was not only his yelling and the pain he was inflicting, but the way he couldn't control himself and figure out his own pain. This is how and why people end up dead. I've spoken about it before, I've lost friends and family to domestic violence. It has stayed with me and I wonder if it will ever leave me.

I speak out against it, give legal discussions on it, and try to encourage the awareness of how it begins in both men and women. My desire is for it to end.

I don't understand yelling at someone you're supposed to care for, even though I have been in one relationship where my then boyfriend and I yelled at each other. So I understand how people can erupt when they don't know what else to do. That happened once and only once, and the relationship ended. It was not a situation I wanted to be in, and to be quite honest, it scared me.

I had never yelled at or been yelled at by a boyfriend ever in life before that one time. Nor have I since then. But this particular guy had been in, what I consider, volatile relationships before me. So he was used to it. It was normal to him. People yell, fuss, fight and kiss and make up. Well some people do. Not I. Ain't nobody got time for that! *In my Sweet Brown voice* 

We can disagree...but there is no room for violence, either spoken or physical. I just feel there is a better way.

What do you think? Is yelling normal? Is fighting not so bad in relationships? What's the best thing to do when things are heading toward the danger zone?