Men's Group

There is a bit to digest here, so this may not be as in depth as I would like it to be.

"Years later she told me that several had gone into one rough contact sport or another as a form of protection from an abusive family member."

That is very true in my case, it was the reason why I joined football, or anything to get me out of the house, I'd sign up to shovel horseshit to get out of my house.


"He was aggressive in his games, but was a pacifist the rest of the time. As a result of horrendous psychological abuse during his childhood, he had developed a problem with anger arising from the deep hurt he had experienced."

That is my mindset as well, although I don't think I'm a true pacifist, but I am until someone I know, or a stranger is getting hurt then I step up and deal with the situation. I am terrified of being angry, because when I usually do get angry I have a harder time controlling myself, but with Football I had the go ahead to wreck havoc, but off the field I was just a nerd, comics, music, band(played clarinet).

In my adult life though, this has happened a few times, to which I call the small man syndrome where I got smaller men who try to shame me, and want to fight me to prove to their buddies/girlfriends what a badass they are. The times these have come up I never hit the guys, just brought them to the ground and pinned them til the bouncer/bartender got the idiot out of the bar. I do the same in all the fights I've ever been in, I have only closed fist hit one person in my life(Brother, go figure), my fights usually end very fast, with me picking them up, putting them straight into the ground, pinning them and telling them is this it, are we done yet?

None of my coaches in football taught me to play dirty, or do things that weren't allowed in the game, all of my coaches came from the church I was raised in(and how I got into football in the first place, they talked my mom into letting me play).

The other players would only acknowledge me when I was on the field, and would ignore me at school which was fine by me, I just wanted to be left alone, and I had no friends til my Junior year so when I finally got one that would accept me, not be afraid of me, or want to ridicule me I was relieved that I wasn't a freak show anymore(still friends with the guy to this day, we were each others best man's at our weddings).

With the social media they almost always cover how the sport has improved your life, and not how the psychology of it effects the players, most stories are "X came from a poor neighborhood and did great in doing Y, and is now a Z". In a way though, the sport helped me more than hurt me, if I didn't use the football route I probably would've lashed out in school in a physical way and hurt someone, and got expelled.