The other day I was speaking with a woman in the final throes of divorcing her abusive husband.  Unsurprisingly, she was feeling sad about all the wasted hopes, dreams and ‘potential’.   

After a couple of prior bad relationships, she had thought she was making an informed, and inspired, choice in her husband.  She had chosen a man who presented differently to his predecessors.  He did not appear to have their obvious faults.  And yet he turned out to be more of the same.   
As we talked it was clear that she had made the best possible decision she could with the information that was available to her at the time.

The sad thing was that that information was sorely inadequate.

Some of the things she didn’t know included: 
   

• The way abusive men behave
• The things they say
• How they woo
• How to establish boundaries
• How to manage a relationship 
• How to love herself
• That ‘love’ is NOT all you need
• That she was a ‘relationship liability’ who needed the support and guidance of trustworthy friends and family
• The more you compromise in a relationship, the more you will be ill treated
• Being ‘nice’ guarantees you nothing but a bellyful of misery

Small wonder that she got it wrong. 

Small wonder that we all have at some point.

Happily, that has changed for her and for you.  The fact that you are reading this now shows that you have started to think carefully about the nature of abusive relationships and have access to the information that you need to recognise and avoid them.

What this  means is that you no longer have to be at the mercy of fantasy and half-baked relationship mythology.   
Armed with this knowledge, you cannot jump into another destructive relationship, and the past relationship that sucked you in will, inevitably, lose its lustre.