I am really happy that people are willing to consider how toxic that aggression is. It’s so engrained in our culture that it’s considered normal when a father threatens to have his gun out when first meeting his daughter’s partner. Nobody really thinks about the effects of this normalized violence.
Porphyria’s Lover by Robert Browning just rolled around in my head for day after I first read it. It’s really dark but feels so completely human at the same time.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46313/porphyrias-lover