Once abused women understand the inevitability of the damage they will suffer in an abusive relationship, the relationship loses much of its attraction. Once they understand that the dream they have for the relationship is not part of the picture, it becomes easier to walk away, physically and emotionally. The circle of violence diagram helps to explain the moods and behaviours of abusive men.
The more abusive men revert to type, the more love abusive women throw at them. We love them not as they are – let’s face it, that would take a lot of doing – but they way we want them to be. An abusive partner is just about the worst investment you will ever make in your life, in every sense. You lose months, or years of your time. Often your career suffers, your finances suffer, your health suffers and your emotional well-being suffers.
Abused women toil tirelessly to keep their relationship alive. You couldn’t possibly pay someone enough to put in the time and the trouble that abused women sacrifice, for absolutely nothing. Of course, it doesn’t work. ‘Working’ at a relationship is a guarantee of nothing but your effort. Nobody ever promised that your work would be requited. But, somehow, inside your own head, you came to believe that if you put 10,000 hours, or 20,000, or 50,000 hours, ‘hard work’ into your marriage, it would finally pay dividends. Your abusive relationship is the ultimate proof that working at it doesn’t work.
In my experience, abused women carry many old, limiting beliefs about relationships. Most commonly, they are simply not aware of them. They can long for the best in their life, but the beliefs that have been programmed into them lead them to expect… if not the worst, then something second, or third, rate. Curiously enough, love does not appear to fly out of the window when we are maltreated. Abused women have, if anything, a pathological attachment to their abusive partner. In reality, that has far more to do with fixation than love.
It’s not about you, in the sense that it is not about continuing to focus on the sadness of what you have been through, and lost. It’s not about the fear and the pain you have experienced. You have a mission. When you are a victim of abuse, you are just thinking about you. You are the only person that can live your mission, and if you don’t do your mission, it won’t get done.
The message your abusive partner gives you loud and clear is that it’s all about you and what you do wrong. Everything bad that happens in his life is somehow because of what you do wrong. It’s not surprising abused women think that ‘it’ is all about them. They hear it often enough.
But here’s the curious thing; abusive men all say much the same thing, the world over. Abusive men are still playing out the small child’s view of the world, in which they are the center of everything. If a situation pans out differently, they will throw a temper tantrum to re-establish their desired status quo.
The abusive contract that I, and every other woman there had signed up for, albeit unawares, was this: “I will tolerate whatever you dish out.” I say that because we always gave in, always ultimately went back to our abusive partner, and excused, overlooked, denied, or minimized the unacceptability of their words and deeds. Whatever we said along the way, the ultimate message our abuser received and registered was this: “This too I will accept. I may not like it, but I am still here.”
You have been trained into believing that anything that goes wrong in your abusive relationship is solely your fault. And you have been trained out of feeling joy.It is terribly hard to let go of something in which you have invested so much for so long. Because you think that your investment and your life have been wasted. Not so!
A lot of abused women live in a hostile world, in which bad things happen, almost exclusively. There are no angels. Or more correctly, there are no angels watching over abused women. Although they can see that things seemed to go rather better for other people.
Working with clients this week, I was reminded of those thoughts. My clients were with women who had resigned themselves to the abusive compromise. They were prepared to make a trade-off with their abusive partner. Abused women will accept a lot of bad behaviours they find hurtful and damaging, in order to get a scrap of the love and affection they desire.
In just one short verse McBride encapsulates the life of every abused woman and the behaviour of every abusive man. First, you have to understand that the treatment you have received has been deliberate. It really was designed to ‘break your spirit down’, break your wings, and make you emotionally dependent on your captor. Abused women learn that men are dangerous, that intimacy is destructive. They still have a ‘map of the world’ in which all relationships are bound to be the same as an abusive relationship. Some women shy away from relationships, others rush into physical intimacy. Both tendencies are attempts to avoid the risk of exposing their spirit to the vulnerability of intimacy.
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.
Want daily reassurance and inspiration? Sign up to my Instagram account. @dr_anniephd
