Are You An Abuser?

I had a most unpleasant interaction with a man who beat up his fiancee in the comments of this post. My goal with this blog is to understand why I was a willing participant in a sick relationship that nearly took my life. Not to explain the viewpoint of someone who was willing to kill me, as I tried to stress to this man. Still, I believe that though he is still in deep denial about his responsibility in being abusive, I feel he is genuine in his asking for help. Let me make this clear: If you are an abuser, I cannot help you. You need professional help from a counselor who has training and experience in working with abusers. I do not know why you beat your wife or girlfriend. I do not know what went wrong with you or in your relationship.

The only, and I repeat, ONLY advice I have for abusers is to LEAVE the person or people you are abusing alone and immediately seek out advice and help from a professional trained to deal with your emotional problems. Understand, that is not me. I am not an authority on helping abusive men. I am not even an authority on helping abused women. I am an authority on my life and my experience within an emotionally and physically violent relationship I left in 1992. I feel women who are currently going through what I did may be helped by this blog, and that is why it is public. But ultimately this blog is a way for me to work through residual trauma and issues I have remaining from that experience. I may choose to answer a few questions, but this blog is not an advice column for abusers or abused and I will not be used that way.

Some things for you to consider:
what triggered your abusive feelings?
what did you feel the first time you hit her?
why did you continue to hit her?
how did you rationalize this to yourself?

Read this book Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You by Patrica Evans. It's linked on my blog side panel, you can get it from Amazon or check if your local library has it. In the book she explains in detail why some men become abusive.

Also read the FAQS on her site for abuse, it may shed some light on your behavior for you:

http://www.verbalabuse.com/faq.shtml

If you are an abuser I think you would do well to get some therapy for your emotional problems so that you don't repeat this behavior in a future relationship. You don't have to act out your problems on other people; you don't have to be crazy. You have a choice. Therapy really helped me to understand why I sought out abusive situations. It might really help you to understand why you seek to abuse. In the United States some cities offer support groups and free or low-cost counseling for abusers that are available on a volunteer basis. By that I mean you can voluntarily sign up; you don't have to be ordered to by a court or admit to abusing anyone in order to get these services.

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Addicted to Toxicity

When I think back on the abusive relationship I was in, I wonder at how addicted we were to the sickness that permeated out relationship. I often claimed to fear him and hate him and want to get away from him. He often claimed to hate me and want to kill me; it was like I was a roach he wanted to stomp flat. Yet and still when others suggested that we separate and leave each other alone we each responded as if they were crazy and wanted to tear us apart; we would become hysterical and melodramatic about how 'in love' we were and how we couldn't live without the other.

Why?

We were toxic together, and so emotionally ill neither of us could see it. I know I couldn't see it. I felt I had no responsibility at all for the relationship. If I thought about it at all I felt I was a helpless victim. When the violence got bad enough to break through the fog I was living in I felt so passive and helpless, it was like, What's the point of leaving? He's just going to follow me and kill me and our daughter. If I stay, I am keeping her safe. You may wonder how I could have thought I was keeping her safe given that this man did things like hold me upside down hanging outside a window from three flights up and tying me and threatening me with a hatchet in front of her. In my head he was like an act of nature; a hurricane, or flood or earthquake that would do much worse if I dared to leave.

Then there were the 'good' times of non-violence. One day he'd be knocking me down and the next we'd cook a nice meal together and laugh and joke like a normal couple. Crazy! At times like these I convinced myself that we could make it work and that he was finally done with being abusive. Sometimes during a period such as this he would be in an expansive mood and allow me to use the phone or go see my family or friends. I would call them up or go see them and wonder why all they ever wanted to talk about was me leaving him. I would tell them he had changed, everything was all right now. And at the time I sincerely believed it.

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When Someone Says They Hate You & Want to Kill You, Believe Them

I remember one time the abusive man I was involved with told me he hated me in front of one of my friends and I actually laughed it off like it was a joke. I was so surprised at how shocked she was, like doesn't every one's boyfriend say they hate them sometimes? That's how used I was to being mistreated.

In addition to telling me he hated me he also routinely told me he was going to kill me. Sometimes once a month. Sometimes once a week. Toward the end it was nearly every day. Sometimes he said it like other people say Good Morning, like just a greeting to start the day. Other times it was in response to something 'bad' I did, from ironing his shirts wrong to being a few minutes late from work. Or even looking out the window while driving in the car. Whenever I threatened to leave he would say it almost desperately, as if he would have no choice but to kill me if I left him.

It sounds bizarre I know, because it was bizarre. But somehow I convinced myself that he was just kidding around, that he didn't mean he would really kill me, for any reason. Even though he told me all the time that he hated me and wished I was dead and that he would kill me. How is that a joke, how is that in any way funny or something any sane person can excuse? Why was my self-esteem so low, that I was willing to accept this or even willing to call this love? And why was his, why did he not see that repeatedly threatening to kill someone is not normal or sane? What was wrong with us, why were we so sick in the head?

It took several assaults on my life for me to get it through my thick skull and understand that he was dead serious about hating me and wishing to kill me even while claiming to love me and want to be with me. But long before he began to assault me, he gave me warning. I chose not to believe in his craziness and hatred of me, I chose to stay involved with and participate in this violent, sick relationship and put myself and my daughter through a lot of unnecessary pain and misery.

When someone says they hate you and want to kill you, believe them and walk, no, RUN away from them.

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Domestic Violence During the Holiday Season

With Thanksgiving a little more than a week away, authorities say the holiday season brings on a sad statistic.

Law enforcement officers will see an increase in domestic violence. Families’ getting together is not always a happy occasion.

Chief Deputy Ronnie Whitworth says alcohol plays a key role in a majority of the domestic violence cases.
Read more

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Causes of Domestic Violence

When I was in abusive relationship I often discussed with him why he was so crazy. Not that I used that word of course, but I asked him many times why he felt compelled to hit me. Usually after he beat me up he'd be contrite and apologetic for a while (this is known as the honeymoon phase) and willing to talk about. He often talked about how his father abused his mother and how scared it made him, but he also said after he became grown he understood why his father hit his mother. Other times he would say it was like child-rearing: he hit me to teach me to behave better. At the time I also believed in hitting children for discipline so this kind of made sense. Or he would say if I just did exactly what he said he wouldn't have to hit me. The problem with that was I often did not know what he wanted until after he 'corrected' me. He would tell me exactly what I did wrong after the fact.

It was nuts.

I've been surfing around the web trying to find out what causes domestic violence. Check this out:

First, there is learning to abuse. Learning to resort to violence comes from three factors:
1) instruction by others to act in violent or threatening ways,
2) modeling of violent or controlling behavior, and
3) reward of controlling and threatening behavior
Read more

The last one I find especially interesting. I was stumped at first, thinking How did I reward him for controlling, threatening, and beating me? The answer, of course, is I stayed. I rewarded him by staying and participating in that sick relationship. I continued to have sex with him, I continued to take care of him, I continued to turn over my paychecks to him, I continued to behave in a loving and accepting manner towards him. Yes I said that what he was doing to me was wrong, but my actions showed otherwise. By my very actions I was telling him that I believed in and was accepting of the way he treated me.