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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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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What Do You Say to a Willing Victim?

There is a woman on a mothering site I frequent who is being stalked and abused by her boyfriend's father. She lived with this man alone with her baby while her boyfriend was away at school. Then boyfriend dropped out or changed schools, anyway he came home. She has been posting about her experiences with this man since February/March of this year, and in this time the abuse has escalated. When it started to get dire her boyfriend told her he would end the relationship if she moved out, but then even he had enough.

It's affecting me so much because she is the same age I was (19) when the abusive situation I was in started to get bad. Well it was bad from the get but that was when I 'woke up' to how bad it was. This young woman even says some of the same things I did! So I strongly identify with what she is going through and I know it's just going to get worse. How bad has it got for her right now? She and boyfriend have at long last moved out of the father's home, but now

- Her boyfriend's father is stalking her by phone
- He made her drop out of college
- He is bipolar and according to her, off his meds
- He has threatened them
- He has implied/threatened to rape her
- and worse yet, she posted that they let him watch the baby (why???)and when he returned her to them she, the baby, had semen on her leg. WTF?? WHAT!? I told her unless she was lying then she should call the police, and another woman questioned if she was even a real person or just a troll making stuff up. She is steadfast in her feeling not to get the police involved about the sexual abuse or even to get a restraining order. She seems so helpless and unwilling to help herself. What do you say to someone who is a willing victim, and who lets their child be victimized unpunished? This is a horrible and tragic thing to have happened to this baby.

I think she needed to see that we took this seriously and know that it's a very bad and sick thing to have occurred. The shame is not on her or her baby, the shame is on this perverted, sick man.

I can understand why someone would think this was a troll because it just seems so unbelievable that anyone would have their baby returned to them with semen on their leg and not do anything about it. I would rather believe this was a troll who just wanted to see how far our credulity would stretch, but sadly I know it's possible because when I volunteered at a women's shelter years after leaving my abusive situation there were women there who never reported the sexual abuse of their children by their partners, from fondling to rubbing their penises on and ejaculating on, to vaginal and anal rape. You don't want to believe a mother would ignore or let something like this slide, but it happens. Unfortunately.

She also has a myriad of excuses for not calling the police, for not changing her phone number, for not moving to a secure location paid for by her stepfather. What do you say to someone who refuses to do what they can to be free from someone like this? Who seems stuck in crisis mode and fixated on being a victim? Who is so paralyzed by fear that they can't think straight?

There is nothing to say that will break through to this woman. I know how she feels, I have been there. I have decided to no longer post to anymore of her crisis threads about this man because I can't support someone sabotaging their life and seeming like a willing victim and not only offering up their child to be abused but being unwilling to protect or defend their own baby. They shouldn't have to think twice about calling the police or moving to safety now that their baby has been abused. But I do remember how terribly confusing this was. And now on top of his abuse of her, she has the pain of knowing her child was sexually abused. She and her boyfriend are in a mental fog because of all this... I know, it's so hard to know what to do. Then someone like me telling you what you should do seems like just another person trying to control you. I get it, I remember that feeling now. There is nothing I can say or do that will help her. I just wish there was some way to stop the even worse traumatic events that are likely to unfold.

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