If you’ve been with an abusive partner for any length of time, you will have been subjected to a lot of ultimatums. Abusive men LOVE them – and they know just how much you hate them.
So, let’s look, for a moment, at the language of ultimatums; why abusive men use them so much, and what […]
How many bad Valentine’s Days have you had?
I can rank mine into 3 separate categories:
Teenage angst, waiting to receive the first Valentine – and wondering whether I would ever get one.
My married years, when the wasband would pointedly buy a card, engineer a fight, and leave the card in its bag, because “under the circumstances, […]
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…
Fairytale-itis is something most little girls contract in childhood. It lies dormant until they kiss their first frog, or Beast, or handsome prince. Then it triggers all kinds of madness including:
Not seeing the person in front of your eyes
Putting him at the very centre of your world – and yourself on the periphery
Disregarding your own needs and wants
Doing more back-flips than Andre the seal for a few lousy scraps of affection
Everything Susie said was self-critical. She should have jumped by now. She should have left her abusive husband. Susie wasn’t prepared to cut herself any slack at all. Intellectually, she knew everything I – or anyone else – could tell her. But, still, there she was, paralyzed… (Because it’s not what you know with your head that matters; what matters is getting your heart to the point of letting go of a relationship that does NOT work.)
Susie’s knowledge hadn’t percolated through to heart level, yet.
Falling-In-Love, as far as I can see, is about leaping without looking. Falling-In-Love lays you open to the whole unsavory pack of jerks, abusers, and narcissists. I asked my client whether she would take a job without first finding out about the pay and terms of employment. She sounded surprised. She answered, briskly: “Of course not.” Then she saw the connection. You don’t have to fall in love on Day 1, Day 2, or Day 20. Falling-In-Love is optional, not obligatory – although it is a neat way of silencing the little voice in your head that says: “Er… I don’t think so. This one is NOT for me!”
Your husband tells you that you are selfish, self-centred, and you have ruined your his life. What a poor hard done by victim he is! But, also, what a negative, critical, fault-finding, punitive, blaming partner he is. If he’s that unhappy, why hasn’t he left you long ago? Unless, the reason he stays with you is because, actually, he enjoys blaming you for ‘ruining his life’… I’m guessing your husband gets a real high out of telling you how awful you are. Now, in my book, that is selfish, and destructive. It is the hallmark of an abusive man.
You’ve spent your time being nice to – that is doing back flips to please – a man who treats you badly –and, all the while, treating yourself badly, when you could get to treat yourself well. It’s never about changing away from being nice. It’s all about loving yourself first, and not casting pearls before swine…
It’s not unusual for clients to tell me what they should do, or what they need to do. And we’re not just talking about goal setting here. Abused women often tell me that they have to stop waiting for an abusive partner to change. Or they should take better care of themselves. Or they need to believe they deserve a better life. What they don’t know is that they’ve been brainwashed by the “Misery Trilogy”!
How do I determine my part to his actions? He can’t have an argument by himself. So, what I have done in my actions that may have set the course for some of the abuse. There are always two sides to the story. Or does he just get blamed for everything?
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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