The truth about pedestals is, generally, far less glorious than the fantasy. A pedestal is a piece of furniture that is used to display something – or someone – to best advantage. There is, habitually, one pedestal per relationship. An abusive man carts his around with him as a vital part of his seduction kit. That way he’s ready when he meets a woman whom he thinks might be appropriate to park on it for a while.
If he can change now- and change without outside help, why couldn’t he do so before? What’s changed – apart from the fact that you have moved out? Of course he will tell you that he now understands how much he loves and needs you. And where, precisely, does he put the ‘line’ that he now understands that he crossed? What does he feel is acceptable and unacceptable? What will he do if he feels you have done something wrong? Unless he has a very clear and specific game-plan as to how he will manage his reactions to safeguard you – which I doubt – assume he is not capable of delivering.
In my working life I hear so many women make misguided claims for abusive men who can behave nicely on occasion. And, yes, confusing the odd loving behaviour or statement with a loving temperament is a kind of ‘sleight of mind’. It’s called persuading yourself that second best really isn’t second best. In the end, that bad decision always comes back to haunt you.
I can’t believe something like this could happen to me. I thought I was so strong. I still feel myself daily questioning whether I deserved it or not. I feel like maybe I was wrong all along… that I did deserve this… otherwise how could he be so happy now without me in his life? Isn’t the abusive one the one who is tormented afterward because his object of control is gone? Maybe I was the one who was abusive? Maybe all of the horrible things he said about me are true.
My husband has been verbally abusive since we got married 10 years ago. His abuse is getting harder to bear and I am beginning to hate him for the abuse. What should I do?
I had become aware that the fear and shame that grew out of my abusive relationship were still ‘drivers’ in my life. And I wanted to clear them.
It is only when we take responsibility for our own situation that we can claim the power to change it. For as long as ‘things’ happen to us, we can only react. We are at the mercy of the world outside ourselves. Saying that you must have been mad is a first step out of ‘victimhood’.
The stages of healing from an abusive relationship follow no particular time scale and some of them may well overlap. Expect to regress from time to time at each step along the way. That is normal, even predictable. It is also unimportant as regards the final outcome. Each stage will take you further on your journey back to health and wholeness.
An abused woman will always tell you how hopeless and helpless and meaningless she is without her partner. She will tell you that she is nothing. In fact, she will be so convinced that she is a complete zero that she won’t even see and hear the reality.
Blame is a great way that abusive men avoid dialogue. They avoid it because they could lose. They won’t tell you about their innermost feelings, only the hurt that you’ve caused and the faults you’ve committed. Normally when an adult woman talks about being silly, whether or not she knows it, she is using that playground language to minimize her profound feelings of distress. The kind of silliness that abused women reproach themselves for is about ‘messing up’ and feeling needy and stupid and pathetic. That kind of silliness reduces you to a powerless child trying desperately to curry favour with a cross, punitive adult.
Over the next 5 days, I'll send you some lessons and tips that I've found have really helped women to heal from narcissistic abuse. Starting with the basics.
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