A mentally abusive relationship may feel like a living death. Fortunately, there is life after mental emotional abuse. Having survived a mentally abusive relationship, means that you have the strength to heal, and a tremendous capacity, as well as hunger, for the happiness you desire. Will you take action to create that meaningful life for yourself?
There are many reasons why women stay in an abusive relationship. Mostly, they stay as long as they do because they aren’t even aware that what they are experiencing is domestic violence. They tell themselves it isn’t domestic violence because of any, or all, of the following:
All abusive relationships start with compromise. My experience of listening to the story of hundreds and hundreds of abused women suggests three levels of compromise: 1) Dislike at first sight. I’ve yet to come across one abused woman whose initial reaction to her future partner was not a resounding: “Yuck!” 2) Accepting, and overlooking distasteful and/or troubling behaviours – including leering at other women, emotional bullying, threats, addictions, etc. 3) Settling for less.
There is a fundamental flaw in every abused woman’s thinking here, and it lies in the gulf between the way she thinks she has been educating her partner, and the message that he receives. She thinks that he hears her statement – that he must not treat her that way, because it is painful to her. What he actually hears is that she is asking him, from a place of powerlessness, whether he would, please, be kind enough to change. And he wouldn’t. He will play act, to the best of his ability, for as long as he needs to. But he will do no more than that.
The bedrock of every abusive marriage, or partnership, is the premise that the abuser decides who is, and is not, ‘good enough’; and, try as they may, the abused partner will never, ever be good enough – whatever that means. Show me one abused woman who has not been programmed for shame, and anxiety, and not feeling good enough by her abusive partner; and, most probably, her family, before him.
When did you become silent to yourself? Were you a child? A teenager? A young woman? A wife?
How did you become silent to yourself? What made you stop listening to your own feelings, your own needs and wants, your soul?
Why did you become silent to yourself? I know that your abusive partner said this, that and the other, but still, why did you stop listening to yourself? And if it was a strategy intended to help you, did it?
Where did you become silent to yourself? Can you remember the place where you made that decision? And are there any areas in your life where you still do listen to yourself?
Valentine’s Day is the day for lovers. It’s the day when happy couples celebrate, and lots of couples pretend; while singles and people in bad relationships can feel pretty sorry for themselves. It can be the perfect opportunity for a “Pity Party”. Unfortunately, Pity Parties are the loneliest parties in the world. If you don’t want be a Valentine’s Day martyr, you need to know the Top 10 Things NOT to do.
The real mistakes that women make in abusive relationships have nothing to do with faults or inadequacies. They are all about being too willing to carry on believing the best of someone who is trying very hard to show you just what a jerk he is.
Someone contacted me recently to tell me how worried her family were about her. You see, they found out that she had been skipping in a car park, one evening. Her family didn’t recognize her. They wondered if she had become ‘unstable’. They had become so used to the ‘ground down’ version of her, that anything else seemed odd, worrisome. How sad is that? What took her from being depressed, downtrodden and despairing, to the kind of person who could skip spontaneously for joy,
was all the things she discovered on the Accelerated Healing Journey Program.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: when we arrive on this earth every one of us gets issued with one life. That is the one life that we are the arbiter of. In the free world, at least, nobody gets to be the arbiter of two, three, or more, lives. Bad behaviour does not earn an abusive partner the right to be the arbiter of your life.
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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