I used to break shit when I was much younger. Sometimes with my friends it gets into a physical fight, but not often at all. My brother and I have fought plenty of times, and I normally end up hurting him and regret it later. I hurt my friends play fighting usually, I seem to lack the control at times necessary to avoiding hurting someone. I have choked my brother out before actually, but that was an actual fight that escalated from play fighting (he hit me first lol). Physical fights happen when someone runs out of things to win an argument and have to resort to violence to get some satisfaction. I found out a long time ago that long hair is a weapon to be used against someone, just grab their hair and pull them into a chokehold or knee them in the face. That is why most people I know that do fight, have really short hair.
When I would argue with my first girlfriend (which is fighting kinda) I would have to leave sometimes to collect myself. I never had a physical fight with her, though she has pissed me off more times than anyone in my life with the exception of family members. Our arguments were usually over trivial shit, nothing serious until the last 6 months or so of our relationship. Those got pretty heated but never escalated due to me just leaving her parents house and not talking to her for a while. I would do my best to get in a hurtful last word and then leave. She liked to playfight and was overall a playful person, but she only threw a VCR tape at me once and never tried to seriously hit me or anything (she claimed to be afraid of really pissing me off). That is funny because I have seen her hit her own mother with a phone before. She should have known I would not hit her back. Maybe it was due to her witnessing me fighting my brother and seeing how vicious I could be with a family member.
I have had my mother slap the shit out of me before and I just walk away and do nothing. She likes to dig her fingernails into my arm and scream at me since she is too stupid to really win an argument. My dad though has gotten his ass beaten severely twice due to slapping me. My father is afraid of me actually, well that is according to my brother. He is extremely uncoordinated and really has a low tolerance for pain, add in the fact that he is out of shape and you can figure why he is easy to beat the shit out of. His older brother though is a massive ape sized bully and picks on everyone in the family. Total asshole who joined the Massachusetts State Police just to beat people up supposedly. I have seen him physically hurt every male member of my family at least once to the point of embarrassment.