Abuse

[willy45]

Hi All,

So, I am struggling with the term abuse.

The first T I went to suggested that my ex was abusive. She wasn't adamant about it. But she suggested it. After a while, I decided to go see a specialist in BPD and someone who dealt with sexuality because I was really stuck on the sex part. He has been adamant that I accept that I have been abused. He says I have been extremely emotionally abused and that I should own that term.

I'm having such a hard time with that because I feel like I deserved the treatment. I wasn't fully committed to my ex. I had one foot in the door and one foot out. I feel like it is my fault for the way she treated me and that I deserved it. She never hit me. She only called me mean names on a few occasions. But she would rage at me all the time. And I am comfortable using the term rage because it seemed out of control and totally disproportionate to what was going on. Anytime I would see her, I would have to sleep on a blow-up mattress because the king sized bed that we bought together wasn't big enough for her not to be disturbed by my rolling over. And she would rage at me for the most random things. I have a list of 50 times over the past few years that she did this. And those are the one's I can remember.

What are your thoughts? What constitutes abuse? Is this just a term that is thrown around? Help.

[willy45]

Oh... .  

And I am wondering if I had just made all this stuff up because I did a lot of ___ty things too. I never was mean to her or said anything mean. I always tried to be nice. But I did lie to her a lot about how committed I was to her. I just kept thinking things would get better and that if I could spend a week with her without her raging at me, then I would commit to her. But she never did. And she always blamed my lack of commitment as the cause of her rages.

[somethingtolose]

I didn't want to accept it either. Often the person with BPD can be very convincing when excusing their behavior again and again. When you love someone that's abusing you, it's hard to admit that they are. Especially since someone with BPD often doesn't understand in the slightest what they are doing.

In fact, they continually undermine the relationship and when you react like a normal person would, they then point to your reaction as the cause of their behavior. Just because you weren't perfect doesn't mean that you should blame yourself, the truth is they would have found a different way to blame you no matter what you did. The more perfect you are, the harder they will look for the flaws. 

[dharmagems]

The word abuse is a loaded term in society.  It means that there is a perpetrator and a victim.  I used to go to domestic violence meetings and was feeling like I am a victim.  When I found out about BPD matching my exuBPDh's behavior, a sudden rush of relief came over me and I was no longer a victim.  A pwBPD has an illness where there is no intended perpetrator from the pwBPD side.  That is where I got it.  I am not a victim of abuse.  These behavors are from a mentally ill person.

Also, firm boundary setting and not taking their words personally helps to keep the nonBPD from being a victim of abuse.  I know, it is difficult to NOT take the words of a BPD personally.

The hard part is trying to tell society the behaviors of this person towards you, and society's reaction would be "how do you take that abuse?'' 

Maybe the term abuse is a lack of understanding and awareness.

[willy45]

Hmmm... .  Interesting... .  

I'm not necessarily against the term. I think that there is some power in labeling something. And I certainly don't feel like a victim. Rather, I kind of feel like I am someone who lived through something terrible.

But I guess it does help in some way to make me understand my reactions to the whole thing. I don't know. I feel like she was the greatest thing in the world on one hand and the craziest girlfriend (well, 3rd craziest... .  I had another couple of whoppers) I ever had.

But, I know one has to take the good with the bad. And the bad was really, really bad. And maybe labeling it as abuse is useful in so far as it is a way of saying that it was bad and that I had the right to get away from it and that it wasn't my fault, that I didn't cause it.

[GustheDog]

The word abuse is a loaded term in society.  It means that there is a perpetrator and a victim.  I used to go to domestic violence meetings and was feeling like I am a victim.  When I found out about BPD matching my exuBPDh's behavior, a sudden rush of relief came over me and I was no longer a victim.  A pwBPD has an illness where there is no intended perpetrator from the pwBPD side.  That is where I got it.  I am not a victim of abuse.  These behavors are from a mentally ill person.

Also, firm boundary setting and not taking their words personally helps to keep the nonBPD from being a victim of abuse.  I know, it is difficult to NOT take the words of a BPD personally.

The hard part is trying to tell society the behaviors of this person towards you, and society's reaction would be "how do you take that abuse?'' 

Maybe the term abuse is a lack of understanding and awareness.

So does your definition of "abuse" and its attendant "victim" require that the damaging behaviors be done knowingly with the express intent to cause the particular harm at issue?  If so, I'd say you just eliminated about 99% of everything I've ever considered to constitute "abuse."

In my view, intent is irrelevant.  My NPD father and my exBPDgf are mentally ill, and they both abused me, and I was the victim of each.  Healthy, sane persons do not intentionally cause emotional torment or physical pain in others; if they did, they would be neither healthy nor sane.

Alcoholism is also an illness - as are ASPD, rage disorders, and other substance addictions, among others.  These are just a few examples of illnesses that often result in abuse vis-a-vis the afflicted and their partners, and which illnesses are also characterized by unhealthy deficits in impulse-control, accurate perceptions of reality, and/or the ability to distinguish right from wrong.

I am not a victim any longer, however, because now I am armed with knowledge - of the mechanics of the illnesses, of the relational dynamics, and of myself.  If I encounter the same treatment again, I will have assumed the risk of such conduct and cannot in good conscience deem it "abuse."  But I know that I was previously abused AND victimized.  So much so that I bought into the insidious gaslighting and believed MYSELF to be the abuser.

I am a former, but not present or future, victim of abuse.

[willy45]

GusTheDog,

That was really helpful. I think that I have gone back to my ex over and over again to try to get her to acknowledge what happened and how it was abusive and how it wasn't OK. She never intentionally did it to hurt me, I don't think. Her rages and gas lighting and guilt trips never seemed like anything she did intentionally. But it still hurt and it still drove me to do things that I never would have considered doing in the past. Having her acknowledge this is something I have been waiting for. It is something that keeps me stuck and it is what I am seeking every time that I let her back into my life or respond to her. I never contact her. But when she contacts me, I keep thinking that maybe if I explain it better, she will understand. And she never will. We just end up in the argument again and again about how I caused it or there was something structural in our relationship that caused it. Sure, there was something structural in the sense that I never moved in with her and I started a relationship with someone new. But I kept going back seeking an explanation, an apology, or some validation of my own experiences. That is what makes my behavior super crazy. I keep doing it.

And maybe the term abuse is useful here. If I accept that it was abusive then I can also accept that I would never expect the person who acted abusively to understand. If they could understand, they never would have been abusive in the first place. Does that make sense?

[GustheDog]

GusTheDog,

That was really helpful. I think that I have gone back to my ex over and over again to try to get her to acknowledge what happened and how it was abusive and how it wasn't OK. She never intentionally did it to hurt me, I don't think. Her rages and gas lighting and guilt trips never seemed like anything she did intentionally. But it still hurt and it still drove me to do things that I never would have considered doing in the past. Having her acknowledge this is something I have been waiting for. It is something that keeps me stuck and it is what I am seeking every time that I let her back into my life or respond to her. I never contact her. But when she contacts me, I keep thinking that maybe if I explain it better, she will understand. And she never will. We just end up in the argument again and again about how I caused it or there was something structural in our relationship that caused it. Sure, there was something structural in the sense that I never moved in with her and I started a relationship with someone new. But I kept going back seeking an explanation, an apology, or some validation of my own experiences. That is what makes my behavior super crazy. I keep doing it.

And maybe the term abuse is useful here. If I accept that it was abusive then I can also accept that I would never expect the person who acted abusively to understand. If they could understand, they never would have been abusive in the first place. Does that make sense?

Yes, it makes sense.  Whether or not they understand that it is abusive is another question.  But, in either case, I certainly believe they have little to no control over such "abusive" behaviors.

[willy45]

Yes. But it is still abuse right?

Not sure why I am so stuck on this. I guess it is because everything that happened was done behind closed doors. And no one was there to witness it. And I doubt my own perceptions. And she was the only other person there. And she would never, ever, ever even think that was she was doing was wrong. And that was the main problem.

[Rose Tiger]

It was surprising to hear that what my ex did was abusive.  He didn't rage a lot.  His main coping mechanism was the silent treatment.  When someone refuses to talk to you for days on end, that is emotionally abusive.  It is hard not to take neglect personally.  I understand now that he is severely mentally disordered.  While it was going on, I felt that I could somehow fix it.  There was no way I could fix him.  They teach about on the staying board to not take it personally and get on with your life when a partner goes into the silent treatment.  They teach how to walk away and leave when the partner is raging.  How to be the fair leader and emotionally grounded around a disordered partner.  I did pretty much the opposite of that during the marriage.   Took it personally, was so upset most of the time.  An emotional wreck.  I wasn't a mirror, I was a sponge.

[GustheDog]

Yes. But it is still abuse right?

Unequivocally.

Not sure why I am so stuck on this. I guess it is because everything that happened was done behind closed doors. And no one was there to witness it. And I doubt my own perceptions. And she was the only other person there. And she would never, ever, ever even think that was she was doing was wrong. And that was the main problem.

You were confused and tortured enough to make your way to this forum, where you found thousands of others sharing stories that sounded disturbingly similar to your own.  Your perceptions are not the faulty ones, hers are.

[dharmagems]

The term abuse is loaded in the sense what it means to each individual.  It means the to use something to a bad effect or bad purpose.  As nonBPDs, we were clearly abused.  The pwBPD does not see it that way.  There is the conflict.   

If you can understand the pwBPD does not see it that way can you see there is the healing pathway for nonBPD?

We are on this board to acknowlege each other's pain and mistreatment from our BPDso.  Their behaviors are clearly not acceptable TO US and are hurtful.  We are giving the validation to each other, but the pwBPD can't give the validation to us because they do not see it that way. 

[GustheDog]

We are on this board to acknowlege each other's pain and mistreatment from our BPDso.  Their behaviors are clearly not acceptable TO US and are hurtful.  We are giving the validation to each other, but the pwBPD can't give the validation to us because they do not see it that way. 

I agree.

My point was simply that very, very few abusers would be able to recognize their actions as abusive or agree with having their actions characterized as such.

You stated that you were not a victim of abuse.  I interpreted your earlier post to stand for the proposition that, when a person does not act with the intent to harm or an awareness of the effects of their behavior, the target of those behaviors cannot be a victim of abuse.

[Mistified247]

Hi,

I think this is quite an interesting topic, as I know that my exBPD probably didn't mean to emotionally blackmail me it was part of her makeup.  The term abuse I think should apply, because I have suffered psychologically from being the relationship with her directly because of her actions and her words.  Just because she is ill and might not necessarily realise she was behaving irrationally inbetween the 'golden times', doesn't mean that she wasn't abusive.  I remember getting into an argument in front of all my friends, and of course I went running after her, as I always did. When I tried to resolve the argument and stand my ground back at my apartment, she shoved me by the neck against the wall and kicked me. I think this was abuse, because it altered my behaviour and made me scared to stand up for myself to her. When I finally ended it for good, all I got was a barrage of messages saying "we are better together than apart", "why are you doing this to me", "why don't you want me" etc. This was SERIOUSLY hard to ignore because it was so emotionally charged and not get dragged back in.  The term abuse is also relevant, because you are emotionally scarred afterwards, and I find myself behaving in similar ways to the exBPD. This is only something I can try to correct again. Looking back, I found that all I ever did was try to please her, and make her happy.  But the happiness never came.

[Iced]

When someone keeps repeatedly saying and doing hurtful things and you have done your part in communicating how such behaviors make you feel and you set boundaries and whatevers, it is abuse and it is abuse regardless if the person in question either will admit or is able to admit to it because in any OTHER 'normal' situation or relationship, that would be exactly what it would be.

Just because a person has BPD or has some other mental health issue doesn't mean that they are null and void of any and all possibility and responsibility in regards to the repeatedly hurtful things they say and do.

Just because they can't 'take responsibility' for themselves because it is their disease and not them doesn't mean that the responsibility of simply accepting everything and anything being thrown is on the ones they are using for punching bags.

Also, what is 'abuse' to one person may not be 'abuse' to another.

I know two friends who communicate via a lot of yelling.  They are rational and reasonable... .  but they like to yell.  A lot.  BOTH of them.

-I- may see that as unhealthy, but BOTH of them assert that that is part of 'how they communicate' and though yelling IS going on from both sides, there is still respect between them and there is clear acknowledgement of things gone wrong and a clear owning up to things.

On the other hand, I also have another friend who really NEEDS to be NEEDED.  They will do nearly anything to help another person because helping others makes them feel better about themselves.  They are soft spoken and it can take them a while before they will stand up for themselves.  However, despite them standing up for themselves, there are people who will keep on taking advantage of them nonetheless (because they know that eventually, they will give in).  Though my friend needs to set firmer boundaries and such, it doesn't deny that the behavior being shown to them is abusive.

There is a lot of assumption about what goes on in other people's minds and in the case of abuse, I think this does a great disservice to the topic as a whole.

Sure, the most positive thought would be to assume that if a person were in their right and proper frame of mind, they would never be abusive and quite possibly, that would be a good majority of people.

But at the same time, how many people who have that sort of serious trouble are getting the help that they need to reach that level of self awareness and awareness of others in order to be able to NOT be abusive?

Related to that, there ARE people out there who ARE abusive and who are PROUD to be abusive and who GAIN satisfaction from being abusive.

The idea that everyone is actually a happy-happy-joy-joy-good-good-good person 'inside' and can't be blamed for their behaviors and need to be forgiven and given 100 chances is one that has the most danger of being the most damaging to people - men, women, children - who ARE in abusive situations.

An adult - being able to reason either logically or illogically - may not call verbal abuse as abuse, but what if a child were involved - a child whose own mental processing abilities have not reached the level of that of a healthy adult?

When you think of how the child would react and when you think of the damage that would result of the child living in such conditions, would you say, "Oh no, that's not abuse at all!  The offending person didn't know better, that's all!"?

[Iced]

That said, I am stepping away from these sorts of topics because I can't talk about 'abuse' without getting upset.

I personally know of people who have been permanently damaged - horribly disfigured, brain damaged, psychologically traumatized - from abuse and though they sustain these injuries, they still want to insist that the abuse was somehow justified OR it wasn't actually 'abuse'.

Just because the damage is invisible doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Just because you lived this time doesn't mean you will live the next time.

[heartandwhole]

I have such a hard time with the word abuse, too.  I even completely blanked out once in T, when I said the word.  My r/s with pwBPD was not like many on here, he never raged at me, he was kind, loving, understanding.  And yet, he would break up with me or say he was leaving very suddenly and without warning - that was very traumatic for me.  He would "pass on" his own trauma to me whenever he could (I would feel it physically and emotionally)... .  he wanted me to help him "process it."  The end was a month long push pull nightmare which left me afraid to walk down the street, depressed and completely uninterested in living at all.

Was it an abusive r/s?  I really don't know.  He was definitely abused.  I have a friend who was sexually abused.  I remember incidences of very inappropriate sexual contact from the age of 3 or 4, but I won't call it abuse, because it didn't physically hurt.  I have memory gaps, so I don't know.  My T said that I always compare what happened to me with others who have had it much worse and then invalidate what happened to me. 

I struggle with it.  I still don't know what abuse is.  I know about the one with bruises and broken bones, which is heartbreaking just to write - I've never experienced that... .  but what about the behavior that just hurts like hell emotionally?  It's my baggage that makes it hurt, so I take it on as my responsibility.

Weird, I feel like I'm missing something.  I appreciate the opportunity to reflect on this a bit - thanks for posting the topic.  You are not alone!

[willy45]

Do you guys think this is abuse?

She would consistently rage at me in the middle of the night. It got to the point where I would have anxiety every single night because I would never know when she was going to rage at me. She would rage at me for waking her up for me rolling over. She kept telling me I moved too much when I slept. She would usually wake me up and say "Why did you wake me up?". And she would then start to rage at me. Sometimes she would get up and take her blankets to sleep on the couch and slam the door and then come back and yell at me more and then slam the door and then come back to yell at me some more.

She would rage at me whenever I had an opinion about something that she didn't like. Usually, these opinions had to do with nothing important... .  my thoughts on a movie, for example. This happened many, many times. She would rage and cry and scream at me.

She would rage at me if I expressed my fears about something that she perceived as a threat. I was supposed to move cities to be with her and when she asked me how I felt about it, I would usually say that I was excited but scared because I didn't have any friends or job there. She would then just rage at me and say things like: "You are being     ing rude".

The one time I brought up the fact that she has a lot of conflict in her family, she raged at me and then, when I was getting upset, she told me to "use my big boy voice".

She raged at me for not locking up a bike quick enough because we were late to meet her friends (we were late because of her).

She raged at me all the time for my 'tone'. I started to get really exacerbated with her behavior. And that would be expressed in a tone of voice that was frustrated. When she would start to get upset with me, I would usually say: "What are you talking about?". And my tone would be on of exacerbation. She would then start raging at me about it, about how I could ever talk to her that way.

Before I left, she started calling me an '___hole' pretty regularly. She would just launch into a rage and say that I was being a '    ing ___Hole'. The things I would do to 'deserve' that would be things like having to go to the bathroom, not sitting beside her when she asked me to.

She would always tell me that I hated her.

She once raged at me for thinking that she was just a 'crazy     ing b*tch'. This was an escalation of her thinking I hated her. I never thought that. I didn't know where that was coming from.

She would always tell me: 'Why can't you just be nice to me' or 'Are you going to be nice to me?'. I never understood what she was talking about. I'm a really nice guy and I was never 'not nice' to her. But she would always tell me that. For a year at least. And I would keep trying to tell her that when she said that it made me feel bad because it implied that I wasn't nice, which was hurtful.

She would always send me these page long emails about all the things I had done wrong.

She would rage at me for the weirdest things, for having my underwear on the floor, for not wanting to take my bike on the metro, for not being able to download a texting app properly, for petting a dog instead of hugging her in the morning.

She would rage at me for not hiring her (I had a business and she was unemployed at the time... .  well, not unemployed... .  she was working on her dissertation for 16 hours a day for 2 years and had run out of funding. She wanted me to hire her so she could finish her dissertation. I thought that would be a bad business and relationship decision).

She would rage at me if I wasn't paying attention to her.

There is other stuff. Tons of other stuff. The raging was relatively frequent. We had a long-distance relationship but I would see her every couple of weeks and spend a couple of weeks with her a month. She would rage at me at least once a trip, if not more. The guilt trips, the manipulations, the emotional blackmail, that was pretty much constant. She was always looking for more commitment and whenever I would tell her that I couldn't commit until we sorted out these rages, she would cry for hours and hour and hours.

There are a bunch of other stories. Tons of them. Too many to waste my time on here.

Ug. I guess I find it hard to consider it abuse because I stayed. And because I didn't take the steps to be with her and resolve it. I really didn't know what was going on. All I knew was that I loved this person very, very deeply but that this person would rage out of control at me and it would scare me. She would never take responsibility for it. It was always my fault. It was always because of something I had done or wasn't doing. 

Arg. I don't know... .  is this abuse? Or is it my fault? Or am I just blowing this out of proportion to justify my own behaviors (I left her for someone else). These stories are true. And I did experience them. At the time I just blew them off. I thought that 1) they would change... .  I could explain it to her and they would change or 2) that I wasn't being impacted by them... .  that I could just let them blow past me and I could benefit from all the amazing things she brought to the table (smart, beautiful, sexy, successful, funny, ambitious... .  except for the raging, she was really the perfect girl for me).

UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG... .  If someone else told you these stories, would you think that it was abusive?

[Rose Tiger]

Yep.  Check, check and check.  That is abuse.

The disorder has them making up 'facts' for feelings.  They are out of sorts upset and they look for the reason.  Well it's because johnnyorganic rolled over in his sleep.  It's because johnnyorganic didn't take his bike on the metro.  It's because johnnyorganic made us late.

They can't self reflect and take responsibility.  Their disordered minds won't let them. It's enough to drive the partner over the brink when we don't have a clue why all this is happening.  We'll take on responsibility for their angst and try to help.  There is no helping because they will just come up with more 'facts'.

[willy45]

Thanks Rose Tiger.

I guess I am having a really hard time accepting this. Accepting that it wasn't my fault. Accepting that there is nothing I could have done about.

I feel like I made a choice. I met another woman who was kind and sweet and generous and stable and a good listener. I had a choice about whether to move to another city to be with my ex or to be with this other woman. After a particularly bad 4 day rage episode, I decided that I would choose the sweet and generous and stable woman.

But, I have been in such an incredible amount of pain. I miss my ex. I miss all the things we had together. There was so much that I loved about being with her. So much.

And it is hard to accept that she was abusive towards me. That her behavior wasn't OK. Well, maybe that is easier to accept. What I have a really hard time accepting was that it wasn't my fault and that I didn't deserve it.

Maybe the guilt kept me there? Maybe the guilt kept me taking the abuse? Maybe the guilt allowed me to take the blame, accept it the reasons that she laid out, and accept that it was all my fault.

I'm 7 months out. And I still feel like it is all my fault. I'm having a really hard time seeing that this behavior of hers was abusive. I'm having a really hard time not taking the blame.

[Scott44]

johnnyorganic,

Your thinking is so similar to mine.  I'm about the same length of time "out" of a relationship with a pwBPD.  I too put a lot of blame on myself.  I also question whether or not it was abuse because my ex always said that her rages and violence were "uncontrollable".  I am beginning to believe that they WERE controllable.  I mean, when she was biting me in the upper back area and shaking her head back and forth like an angry dog, there must have been something inside her that said, "Woah, this isn't right."  When I checked out my back (she had biten me trough a light spring jacket, a sweatshirt, and a t-shirt) it was already turning purple.  That is when she became apolegetic.  But never did she admit that the abuse was anything but "uncontrollable".

[Rose Tiger]

Guilt is a useful emotion.  Guilt we can rectify, take ownership, make amends if we have wronged someone and let go, knowing we took responsibility for our actions, did all we could to let someone know we are sorry we hurt them.  Then learning to not repeat. (This not easy for a pwBPD, btw)

Shame is a whole nother ball of wax.  Ex made me feel bad for who I was, that there was something basically wrong with my person.  My family of origin were expertise at this, in their brokeness they made me feel ashamed for being me.  Healing and recovery is rejecting the lies, the critical parent in my head.  Not sure if this will make sense to you.    In other words, I recreated my family upbringing in my romantic relationships because it was all I knew.  You can't call the cops on dad when you are three, you take it, you internalize it and you blame yourself for dad's raging.

[Rose Tiger]

I was googling 'transference' since I don't really get it.  This was interesting... .  

www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transference

A specific theory of transference in cases of abuse, known as AMT (Abusive Multiple Transference) has been suggested by David W. Bernstein, in which abusers not only transfer negative feelings directed towards their former abusers to their own victims, but also transfer the power and dominance of the former abusers to themselves. An example is the serial killer Carroll Cole. While his father was away in World War II, Cole's mother engaged in several extramarital affairs, forcing Cole to watch. She later beat him to ensure that he would not alert his father. Cole would later come to murder many women whom he considered "loose", and those in general who reminded him of his mother.

YIKES!

[willy45]

I am having such a hard time with this... .  

I can't accept this. I can't. I feel like it is all my fault. Like I really made some terrible, terrible mistakes. I chose to leave her for someone else. I didn't really give her a chance. She said that if I was more committed that things would change. And I never gave her that commitment.

I am so sad about the life that I gave up. Maybe it was all just a fantasy in my head. I keep thinking of all the amazing things we would have done together. All the amazing experiences we could have had. All the amazing sex. I've made her up to be this amazing creature.

[Changed4safety]

Wow, I am currently reading "Crazy Love" and was going to start a thread about this.   Good timing!

It was hard for me to admit to being abused, because that would mean my ex was the ABUSER, and that would make what he was doing bad.  And he couldn't deal with doing anything bad.  He had so much toxic shame that any time he was able to actually see what he was doing, or had done, to me, he would become so distraught he would engage in cutting behavior or even feel suicidal.  He would get furious with ME because of what he had done to me (extreme defensivenes). 

The cheating, the screaming, the wall punching, the accusations of me lying or feeling one way when I was feeling another (calling me "snarky" when I was terrified, for instance)... .  I even overlooked the three incidents of choking. 

All three occurred when he was getting on or off medication prescribed for his bipolar, and the last one occurred on a trigger anniversary involving his ex, his birthday, and when I had prescription drugs in the house for my back pain (he had been addicted to prescription drugs.)  Things ramped up, he said "You have no idea how badly I want to take the whole bottle of your vicodin," and I said, "Then love, I'm going to flush them down the toilet right now, so they won't keep tempting you."  When I did, he grabbed my throat and said "Give them to me!  Give them to me or I'll kill you!"

Yeah... .  I'm afraid I was abused.  And I will never NOT be afraid that if we got back together, when he was stressed, if for some reason he missed a dose or something on his meds, that this will happen again.  I've only recently come to this conclusion, and it just makes me sad.  Because he's grown a lot in the last year, and because I love him. 

[willy45]

What does one do with the label of abuse?

I guess I can accept it as abuse. But I want her. At the same time, I am scared of her. I don't understand. Is this an outcome of abuse? Or is this just me and there is something horribly wrong with me?

[Rose Tiger]

   This can help you understand the dynamics a bit better... .  

The Mystery of Loving an Abuser

[willy45]

Thanks RoseTiger. Very much appreciated. I did read this many months ago but it didn't really resonate. It does way more so now. Thank you.

[Rose Tiger]

It helps understanding why is it so difficult to detach.  On facebook I'll see my women friends talking about someone in a controlling situation, they say things like, tell her to leave!  Why does she stay?  I'll IM the person to send their friend here to this site to learn about boundaries and communication.  I also suggest to them to stay their friend and not pass judgment.  It takes some time for us to understand ourselves why we stayed. Let alone trying to explain it to someone else. 

[willy45]

Yeah. It's tough for sure.

Sometimes, I can see the whole thing from a bit of distance and it makes sense. I can sort things out in my head and I feel like I can move forward in my life. Sometimes, I get stuck back in it and I idealize her and compare myself very negatively to the idealized version of her in my mind. That is when I get completely stuck and I start to beat myself up huge. This is the dangerous part. And, I'm sure partly a hold over from the 7 years she was in my life. Obviously, this is partly something else that has more to do with me. But, I guess I think I need to get rid of her out of my mind first and then deal with me. I mean, it is all me because right now she is completely out of my life so she only exists in my mind. I don't know... .  It is confusing as all h*ll when I'm in this place.