Month: February 2009

Continuous Improvement

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As a general principle, abused women are far more effective in insisting on good behaviour from pets and children, than they are from an abusive partner. For most women, including me, the only rule was: “whatever he says, goes, and I’ll either like it, put up with it, or complain about it ineffectually.” So we limp through our abusive relationship, living by the “put up and shut up” rule (or more correctly, the “stay and get hurt” rule as Gary Chapman defines it in his book “Desperate Marriages”) with our eyes fixed on the ever receding mirage of His Potential.

“Why Do I Feel Guilty Because He Is Suffering Now?”

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You have been trained into believing that anything that goes wrong in your abusive relationship is solely your fault. And you have been trained out of feeling joy.It is terribly hard to let go of something in which you have invested so much for so long. Because you think that your investment and your life have been wasted. Not so!

Do Angels Watch Over You?

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A lot of abused women live in a hostile world, in which bad things happen, almost exclusively. There are no angels. Or more correctly, there are no angels watching over abused women. Although they can see that things seemed to go rather better for other people.
Working with clients this week, I was reminded of those thoughts. My clients were with women who had resigned themselves to the abusive compromise. They were prepared to make a trade-off with their abusive partner. Abused women will accept a lot of bad behaviours they find hurtful and damaging, in order to get a scrap of the love and affection they desire.

“Broken Wing”

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In just one short verse McBride encapsulates the life of every abused woman and the behaviour of every abusive man. First, you have to understand that the treatment you have received has been deliberate. It really was designed to ‘break your spirit down’, break your wings, and make you emotionally dependent on your captor. Abused women learn that men are dangerous, that intimacy is destructive. They still have a ‘map of the world’ in which all relationships are bound to be the same as an abusive relationship. Some women shy away from relationships, others rush into physical intimacy. Both tendencies are attempts to avoid the risk of exposing their spirit to the vulnerability of intimacy.  

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