An abuses woman engages in a superhuman struggle to stay in a bad relationship. She will even talk about ‘fighting to save the relationship’ or the man. The last thing she will ever truly consider doing is walking away. She experiences more sadness at the thought of leaving than she does about staying, whatever the cost to her of staying.
Let us not forget that Sheryl Gascoigne was a battered wife. This recent news suggests that she is still exhibiting the characteristics of a battered wife: the self-sacrificing love, the willingness to keep working at a relationship, the belief against all odds that there still can be a happy ending…
Abused women are more blinkered, when it comes to their strengths, qualities and resources, than any racehorse will ever be. All they ever have in their line of vision is their abusive partner pointing the finger of blame at them. Which is why we tend to gallop wearily onwards in an attempt to catch up with the abusive partner so that he will pat them and offer the odd sugar cube or carrot.
That is what you have to do for as long as you believe that it is all you can hope for.
Finally, there is a way to change that.
The richness and the magic of you lie hidden just behind your pain. Only you and your abusive partner are deaf and blind to the very best of you. Trust that your job is to get through today and tomorrow as constructively as you can; by this I mean without getting caught yet again on the old abusive hooks. That is all. Do that and a better future will start to create itself around you. Yes, it may take time but it will lead you back into the world of personal peace, happiness and self-acceptance.
An abusive partner rapidly becomes the most influential person in his partner’s life. He has the power to take an abused woman to dizzy heights of happiness (although the statistical odds of this happening decrease markedly the longer the relationship limps on). He has the power to plunge her into the depths of despair, and usually does. When he does, his partner needs to explain what has happened to herself. The problems in the relationship cannot really be his. That being the case, they must be hers, mustn’t they?
Abused women tend to be more or less incapable of ‘taking the intentional decision to survive’. Especially if, by survival, you understand ‘create a life worth celebrating’, rather than ‘drag yourself along the shoreline, more dead than alive’. Abused women have no sustaining vision of their future life. As a general principle, they see the future as a wasteland.
‘Clean pain’, is the pain of an actual event, and ‘dirty pain’, is the suffering we generate for ourselves inside our own mind. When you are at rock bottom, it is easy to transition from ‘clean’ pain to ‘dirty’ pain. ‘Dirty’ pain occurs when we start spinning a ‘story’ for ourselves around events. ‘Dirty’ pain is generally harder than ‘clean’ pain to deal with.
You are acting on this misguided notion that until you can go back and heal your past you can’t enjoy the present. You can’t heal the past as such, although you can change the meaning you place on it
By entering into an abusive relationship you signed a contract to believe all the bad things that your partner says about you. Sure, you signed that contract unwittingly. But still, by virtue of staying in the relationship you have honoured it. And I don’t have to tell you that there are absolutely no limits to the negative things that an abusive partner will say about and to you.
“My
counsellor has been telling me for months that I don’t listen to
her. But when you say something, Annie, I hear it.” Mimi P.
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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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