Abused No More

Continuous Improvement

The thing that keeps abused women emotionally hooked into an abusive relationship long after they should have left is their partner’s potential.   

Once upon a time he was loving, caring, romantic.  (Well, really and truly he probably wasn’t.  But he made enough of the right noises to convince you at the time.)  He went to the trouble of ‘ticking boxes’ that mattered to you.   

It’s so easy to deduce that, if he once did it, he can do it again; it’s just a question of getting him back ‘into the zone’ – presumably the loving relationship zone.   

We react as if we were looking at a domestic pet that has begun breaking housetraining consistently; it’s just a question of reprogramming, isn’t it?   

In reality, it is a whole lot harder to reprogram a partner for a number of reasons. CLICK HERE to find out why reprogramming a partner will never work...

"Why Do I Feel Guilty Because He Is Suffering Now?"

 

Dear Annie, 

I am now divorcing my abusive husband of the past 19 years.

 

Why do I feel guilty for letting him suffer now? Is it because he now plays the victim?

 

Why does the pain I now experience feel worse than all the tears  I've cried over the years? Is it because deep down inside I blame myself for the break-up, even though I know it is not true?

 

Thank you for the great help and example you are to me and so many other abused women

 

Marisa

 

Dear Marisa,

 

I am delighted to hear you are divorcing your abusive husband, and so will you be in due course.

 

So why do you feel guilty?

 

In part, it is habit; you have been trained to feel guilt and sadness for so long.  You have been trained into believing that anything that goes wrong in the relationship is solely your fault.  And you have been trained out of feeling joy.

 

It is terribly hard to let go of something in which you have invested so much for so long.  Because you think that your investment and your life have been wasted.

 

Not so!

 

Allow yourself to feel that sorrow.  But allow that sorrow to cleanse you, to wash away the past so you can move forward into a much, much brighter future.

 

And let me share with you a true story: when I left my abusive husband, I felt just like you do.  I joined a group for abused women.  We all felt the same.  A year later we sat in my house, having a great lunch, recounting anecdotes from our relationships and howling with laughter at our ex-spouses and ourselves.

 

It gets so much better.

 

Warm wishes,

 

Annie

 

 

Do Angels Watch Over You?

Last Saturday I nearly hit a black Ferrari.  I was coming out of a turning near my old home.  Long experience had taught me there is never traffic there, so I completely failed to look.  The Ferrari did not react well because the driver assumed – wrongly – that nobody would be so half-witted as to pull straight out into its path.  I missed hitting it entirely by luck; there was absolutely no judgement there.  The best I can say for myself is that at least my choice of target shows a certain class…

The point of this story is my reaction.  I thanked my angels for watching over me (and made a note to self to be far more careful in the future).  Once upon a time I would have been far more inclined to go into catastrophizing mode. 

Do I have angels watching over me?

Obviously, I cannot know for sure.  But it is a helpful belief.  Maybe, at the unconscious level, that belief made the difference between just hitting and just missing that Ferrari.  Maybe my belief that I was safe, helped me to react, in that split second, in a way that kept me safe.  I will never know. 

Two things I do know:

1)     the belief that I have angels watching over me enabled me to complete my long drive home safely, without repeatedly reliving the incident and programming into my brain how close I came to disaster

2)     it is a far, far cry from the way I would once have reacted.

Like a lot of abused women, I once lived a hostile world, in which bad things happened, almost exclusively. 

There were no angels.  Or more correctly, there were no angels watching over me.  Although I could see... CLICK HERE to continue reading.

"Broken Wing"

Today I had the feeling that I must have been living on the moon for the last little while. 

Why? 

Because I finally discovered Martina McBride’s “Broken Wing”. For anyone else who has been living on the moon, CLICK HERE to hear it. The lyrics left me absolutely speechless.

What a perfect way to sum up the reality of living in an abusive relationship: 

“She loved him like he was
The last man on Earth
Gave him everything she ever had
He'd break her spirit down Then come lovin' up on her
Give a little then take it back
She'd tell him 'bout her dreams
He'd just shoot 'em down
Lord he loved to make her cry…” 

In just one short verse McBride encapsulates the life of every abused woman and the behaviour of every abusive man. 

Sure, the video is a little sanitized; the big house, the glossy lifestyle (down to the ‘designer lettuce’), the violence just implied. But anyone who has been there can easily flesh out that outline!    So why is it so important to me right now?  Because of my own healing journey. Yes, that is exactly the way it was, although I could never have conveyed the essence so powerfully and economically. Like the women I work with, I’ve had to work through the various stopping places along that journey. CLICK HERE to read about the stages along that journey.