How do you face another year when you are in an abusive relationship?

What do you have to look forward to?

I can still remember the build up to the New Year in my own abusive marriage.  It went like this:

• Anxiety in the run up to Christmas that this year we could get through it without any fighting
• The walking on eggshells
• The Christmas day fight, or Silence.
• Obsessively asking myself would we get through New Year’s Eve as a couple
• Trying to stifle the sinking feeling that the coming year would be more of the same…

If you’re in an abusive relationship, what do you want for 2011?

And how will you go about getting it?

If you’re anything like I was, you’ll be thinking along these lines:

1)     Sell yourself even shorter.  That means trying harder, biting your tongue more, settling for even less, telling yourself that a few crumbs really are good enough  – and feeling even more hollow

2)     Trying to persuade him to change.  That is always the proverbial lead balloon.

Abusive men may make the right noises, once in a while, but there is no way that they are going to jump through any hoops trying to please you, for more than about 10 minutes.

The bottom line is that no abusive man will ever change to make you happy.  (But he will offer some pathetic justifications for not changing.)

Abusers are perfectly happy making you unhappy.

Another year can easily slip by very much like the last, only worse.

For me, too many years slipped by going from bad to worse; because I didn’t take action.  I sat there wishing and hoping, and feeling powerless.

Every year I had a load of hopes for my marriage.  And every year they failed to materialize.

That is the immutable law of an abusive marriage.

So, let me ask you again, what will you do in 2011?

How will you be feeling a year from now?  Will you still be “Wishing and Hoping”?

I’m not going to wish you all the things you wish yourself for 2011 because that is not good enough for you.

I’ve had too much experience of working with abused women to fall for that one.

Being in an abusive relationship means you dream small and hope small – if you still dream and hope, at all.

If you’re wishing for anything, you’ll be wishing to be “loved, and treated right, respected, and happy”, and a number of other things that all sound perfectly reasonable until…

Someone like me comes along and asks:

“And how will that play out in your life?”

At which point you start to look blank because you just don’t know.

You cannot actually envision how good it will feel to be happy, safe, loved, and respected.

You know the words, but you don’t know how it truly relates to you.

So, here are some of the things I want for you in 2011:

·         By the end of 2011, I want for you to really know that you are more than good enough just as you are.  So, you can stop trying to be perfect.  Instead, you can make mistakes, be silly, and mess up without any negative voices going off in your head like sirens, telling you how stupid and worthless you are.

·         By the end of 2011, I want for you to love yourself – which means giving yourself a break, feeling at ease inside your skin, and if you must tell yourself a story, that story always starting with: “The thing that’s great about me is…”

·         By the end of this 2011, I want for you to feel safe because you know you have the resources inside you to deal with whatever life throws at you.  So, no more relying on the wrong people doing the right thing  by you – they don’t, you already know that.  Instead, you feel happy and confident doing right by yourself… at least 75% of the time.

·         By the end of 2011, I want for you to have a loving connection with the people you allow the privilege of being around you.  And when I say “a loving connection”, I mean a 2-way connection, so the love, respect and consideration that you show others are all reflected straight back to you.

·         By the end of 2011, I want for you to trust in yourself and know you can create a wonderful future for yourself.  What will make it wonderful?  YOU will.  And you will know you have all the gifts, talents and resources you need.

·         By the end of 2011, I want for you to stop telling yourself that old abuse story (and, yes, I do appreciate it has been incredibly hard for you).  Your life starts to get better when you start to tell yourself a much, much better story: the story of the future you can have, the story of the limitless possibilities that lie ahead for you to explore joyfully.

That’s what I want for you in 2011, and I’m more than happy to do my part in helping you achieve that.

I had to duck out for a couple of hours, to go into Central London, to renew my passport.  I was amazed how quick and easy it was.

I’d been expecting hassles, queues, stress.  It was a really pleasant experience.  And it leaves me free to explore new horizons in 2011 and beyond.

If you would like a passport to new horizons, new experiences, and new happiness in 2011, check out this page.