Relationships

When an abusive partner, or other near one, tells you that you are ‘too sensitive’, it is, apparently, because they wish you could change. (The subtext is that if you could change that it would, somehow, transform the abusive relationship.) Not that they are offering you any clues as to how you might reduce that sensitivity. In reality, they don’t know how you could reduce that sensitivity; nor do they care. Much as they may criticize you for it, your sensitivity fits very nicely with their agenda.

You will receive the answers you need to the questions that, until now, have kept you stuck in ‘victim mode’ in your abusive relationship including:
· “Why does my abusive partner treat me this way?”
· “Will my abusive partner ever change?”
· “What are the chances of transforming my abusive relationship?”
· “How do I get my self-esteem back?”
· “Is my abusive marriage my fault?”
· “How do I start to rebuild my life?”
· “How do I stop myself going back to him?”
· “Can I be sure it won’t happen again?”
· “How can I create a good relationship next time?”

What did you learn in your abusive relationship?
You learned, doubtless, that: the world was not safe, you would never be good enough, or lovable enough, and your judgment would always, always, be wrong.

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. 

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.”

Abused women try desperately, excessively, hard to be lovable. We will let down boundaries, tolerate bad behaviours, ignore the writing on the wall, silence our intuition… You name it, we have all done it. And it doesn’t work. It may be less trouble in the short run, but it definitely compounds our misery in the longer term. It prolongs the relationship, and it certainly ensures that the relationship is based on conditions that are increasingly unfavourable to us.

Perhaps you are struggling to exorcise the memory of an abusive partner, or two.Perhaps you don’t even want to think about entertaining another man in your life at this point in time. Still it is worth knowing that somewhere, out there, something much, much better is available to you and, when you are sufficiently far advanced on your healing journey, it will be within your reach.

Abused women wait to be invited to the banquet of life and that invitation may never come. Certainly, it will never come soon enough. Then it struck me. Abused women wait to be invited when, in reality, it isn’t that kind of banquet. What it actually is, is a self-service banquet. Anybody and everybody has an equal right to pitch up and serve themselves.