Isn’t it interesting how, when you have an abusive
partner, your world shrinks to your partner’s view of it? 

Maybe that sounds cryptic. Here’s how it works. An
abusive partner is forever telling you what you do wrong (from his view of the
world), what is wrong with the world (from his view of the world), what
‘people’ think of you (from his view of the world) etc.

 Do you get the picture? He may be the kind of person who alienates people. Or he may be charming and persuasive enough
to convince a lot of people of his view of you. Either way, his view is not the world. And, actually, his view is not your world. Your world and your headspace are your
own.

Happily, the world extends way beyond his sphere of
influence. 

Yet, habitually, he interposes his relentlessly critical
person between you and the world. His
views color your world. 

So you find yourself wanting comfort and acceptance,
reassurance, support and affection, and being unable to get it. Because he isn’t offering it. 

Well, he wouldn’t, would he? When you stop to think about it, why would he offer you something
that makes you feel good about yourself, when it’s in his best interest
to keep you feeling bad about yourself? Do turkeys vote for an Eat More Turkey campaign in the run up to
Thanksgiving? No. Precisely.

But do you have to see the world through the eyes of a
turkey? Sure, it’s happened because the
turkey gobbles away at you day in and day out and thrusts his ruffled feathers
in your face. 

The turkey may be a key player in your world. But still he’s not your world. You are. Your children are. And there are
other people and things in your world also.

Yes, they may have become marginalized thanks to the
turkey’s strutting and preening and injurious pecking. But there are other people in your
world. There are also people you may
not yet know who would be happy to play a positive part in your world. 

So, if you are in the situation that you can’t always – or
even often – get what you want, or need, from your partner, instead of
suffering and trying to make do without, know that you probably can get quite a
lot of it from other people.

What I am talking about here is getting your emotional
needs met. An abusive partner has no
interest in meeting them. Other, more
functional people will be happy to honour and meet them, at least in part. 

Everyone has friends, family and/or children who cherish
and respect them. Of course, it isn’t
the same as the turkey suddenly going down on bended knees and saying the words
you’d love to hear. But that is most
likely not going to happen.

If it were going to happen, it would have happened
already. As a general rule of thumb,
the longer you’ve been waiting for it to happen, the less likely it is that it
ever will. Equally, the worse you’ve
been treated, the less likely that the situation will ever turn around. 

But, is it worth settling for snacks from other people,
when what you want is a sit down 10 course banquet from your partner? 

Yes, it is. Those
snacks will start to satisfy your hunger. You’ll soon find that you can have as many as you want. (And you won’t even put on weight.) Different
people in your life will offer you different snacks. They’ll offer you
sustenance which, in turn, will increase your energy and transform your
expectation. You’ll stop perceiving
yourself as a hungry, needy person and start to internalize the care and
respect that people are showing you.

And then there’s the knock-on effect. Once you start to
realize that you can always get a lot of what you want – if you only ask in the
right place – you’ll begin to want more and ask for more. So your vision will expand and when your
vision expands your life will also. 

It’s
one of those laws of the universe that your resident turkey has been trying to
keep from you.