You don’t need to think about dating, to start to upgrade the view you have of yourself. Amy Spencer provides you with some great tools to discover how fantastic you really are. Your abusive partner had a vested interest in turning you into the shadow of a person. That is what it takes for him to feel worthwhile and important. But you don’t have to go there.
Humility and selflessness are precious gifts to bring to a relationship. They are also gifts that have to be earned; gifts that are only to be bestowed on people who have proved that they are worthy of them. Your abusive partner proved, time and time again, that he was not worthy of the gifts you brought to the relationship. Yet, you continued to lavish them on him. And, in his hands, they turned to dross. (But then, most things turned to dross in his hands.)
In an abusive relationship, you disappear from your own map of the world. You only have to listen to an abused woman. You only have to listen to yourself. You have your list of priorities: your partner, your children, your pet… And then nothing… Look down far enough and you will eventually find yourself, at the very bottom of the heap: the Woman Who Believed She Didn’t Matter.
How do you identify the signs of emotional abuse? When you are in it, it’s almost impossible to do so. Because being in an emotionally abusive relationship is like being in a maze: all you can do is go up different paths, which almost always turn out to be dead ends. You lack on overview; not least because your abusive partner is intent on closing down your horizons, and creating a kind of tunnel vision in which all you see is him. So, the first sign of emotional abuse is the obsessive way that you focus on your partner. There are at least thirteen other key signs.
Abusive men are brilliant at activating the anxious, disempowered child within you. They do this to disorient and disempower the competent adult that you have become. In time, with enough input from an abusive man, it’s easy to forget that you are a competent adult. It’s easy to believe that you are the pitiful creature an abusive partner says you are; precisely because his words confirm the child’s tendency to feel hopeless and helpless.
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