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Annie
The news of Gerry Rafferty’s death felt like a personal loss. Rafferty was the poet whose song “Baker Street” epitomizes hopium addiction*, and the broken dreams of an abusive relationship.
“Baker Street” was the soundtrack of my hopeless marriage. Gerry Rafferty, in case you don’t know the name, was a singer-songwriter who co-founded Stealer’s Wheel, and went on to write “Baker St”. If you haven’t heard “Baker Street” you can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHWJOUiKvRk&feature=fvst
I spent a few of those years before ‘I’d be happy’ - quite literally - walking down Baker St to see my beloved psychotherapist, with Rafferty’s song reverberating in my head. Jack knew my marriage was doomed. Still, he couldn’t explain why it was doomed, because emotional abuse wasn’t on his map of the world. So, he couldn’t help me break free of it.
Jack managed to convey his belief that I was a valuable human being, but he was not able to teach me to love myself. He couldn’t understand how an emotionally abuse relationship undermines a person.
The lines that reverberated in my head through those years were these:
“You used to think that it was so easy,
You used to say that it was so easy
But you’re tryin’, you’re tryin’ now.
Another year and then you’d be happy
Just one more year and then you’d be happy
But you’re cryin’, you’re cryin’ now.”
I invested a lot of ‘one more years’ waiting to arrive at the tipping point of happiness, believing, against all odds, that the investment would one day come good.
It never happened. Those years were an emotional desert.
Rafferty had a violent, heavy drinking father, and a mother who “stayed in the relationship for her son”. Small wonder “Baker Street” conveys all the misery of an abusive relationship so poignantly.
Small wonder, too, perhaps, that this creative, intelligent man drank himself to death.
That one more year and then he’d be happy never came, for him.
How much longer can you wait for it to come around for you?
If you’re pinning your last hopes on somebody undergoing a transformation to make that dream of happiness come true, then you’ll be crying now…
Or, worse still, you may be numb.
If you’ve had enough of “One More Year…” and you’d rather be happy NOW, let me help you. My 17 week course, starting February 7th is probably the most comprehensive course available – anywhere - to help you find the courage, the faith, and the self-love to walk away from a situation that is bleeding you dry.
Find out more here.
If you feel you’ve waited too long for happiness already, sign up now.
You DON’T have to live your life on Baker Street.
* hopium addiction – the groundless hope that a toxic relationship will one day change for the better, just because you want it to.
January 05, 2011 in Domestic abuse, Domestic Violence, Domestic Violence Recovery, Emotional Abuse Recovery, Women's emotional abuse recovery | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
“It’s like I’m standing on the diving board”, she said. “I’ve been standing there for so long now, and I still can’t find the courage to dive. Much as I want to.”
Everything Susie said was self-critical. She should have jumped by now. She should have left her abusive husband.
She wasn’t prepared to cut herself any slack at all.
Intellectually, she knew everything I - or anyone else - could tell her.
But, still, there she was, paralyzed, by the knowledge that she had to dive. (Because it’s not what you know with your head that matters; what matters is getting your heart to the point of letting go of this relationship that does NOT work.)
Susie’s knowledge hadn’t percolated through to heart level, yet.
She remained poised on that diving board, agonizing over her next move: should it be a forward dive, or a backward dive, an inward dive, or an armstand dive…”
She asked me: “How did you find the courage to leave?”
I found myself laughing as a vision popped, unbidden, into my mind.
You see, the truth is, I didn’t find the courage to leave. Not really.
I stood on that diving board, and stood on that diving board, every muscle tensed for action and…
Eventually, the time came when I fell off.
Period.
Think about it for a moment. You stand on that diving board. Either you face the water or you face the steps back down to the ground). You concentrate so hard on what you have to do, and the difficulties of what you have to do, that every muscle is quivering.
You stand there, and stand there, thinking about how you have to get the dive absolutely right. So you focus on getting yourself into the perfect position.
And because nobody’s there to fire a starting pistol for you, you can carry on standing there, focusing as hard as you can on the dive you’re going to perform, desperately straining every muscle…
After a while, your muscles go into spasm.
That’s more or less what happened to me.
One fateful day, while I was still up there focusing on how and when I was going to dive (and, BTW, I hate heights, they make my head spin) I ended up with severe cramps and, …
I just plain fell off that diving board.
It didn’t happen as the result of a conscious decision.
I have to admit that it wasn’t graceful or elegant.
But, here’s the thing, it didn’t have to be.
It wasn’t the Olympic games. There were no medals to be had for the quality of my descent. There was absolutely nobody to watch or judge me; except me.
Once I started falling, I was too busy organizing my body to worry about other people’s judgements.
And, you know what?
The landing wasn’t too bad, at all.
By the time I entered the water, all the mental preparation I’d done, made it rather easier than I’d feared it might be.
Sure I made a bit of a splash, but that was no big deal. It’s not a spectator sport.
The water was more welcoming than I’d thought.
Coming back up to the surface was easier than I’d imagined.
Staying afloat was less trouble than I’d anticipated.
And I realized, the important thing had never been making the perfect dive off that diving board.
The only important thing had been whether there was water in the pool, or not, to cushion my landing. And, of course, there was.
Whether you jump off that diving board, fall off it, or hang on up there with your muscles in spasm for that little bit longer, the fact is, you’re safe.
You will be okay.
I hope you’ll take your leave of that diving board in 2011. You’ve no need to stay up there any longer.
You’ve done your time.
Your life is waiting for you down in the pool.
When you are ready to take your leave of that diving board, I’d love to help and support you. It will make the process easier for you, and the landing softer.
My client wept down the phone as she asked herself – not for the first time: “How could he treat me like that?”
She’d met a man who led her to believe he was The One, and she’d fallen head-over-heels (or should that be head-over-Heel?) in love.
You know as well as I do what happened next. He was an abuser. He lied, deceived, hurt and humiliated her.
Months later - like all abused women - she was still asking: “How could he?”
The short answer is: he did because he could.
The long answer hinges on his inadequacies, and needing to hurt her to feel like a Big Man. But the short answer is more useful here.
Falling-In-Love stinks because…
Imagine it is the end of an unbearably hot day. You’re worn out, drained, crying out for a pool of cool water, so you can wash off the hassles of the day. And you’re a long, long way from home, travelling without a clear direction. As night falls, you come across someone who is walking in the same direction as you.
He strikes up a conversation. You talk about the day and you tell him you’re looking for a pool of cool water to bathe in. You just want to relax, let go, and feel the sense of peace and well-being that being immersed in cool, clear water gives you.
He not only seems to understand, he tells you that he knows just such a place. In fact, he’s heading there, himself.
He invites you to travel along the journey with him.
You agree.
He’s nice enough, after all.
He wants the same thing you want.
He’s sympathetic to your feelings.
You prefer having pleasant company to travelling the road, at night, all alone.
By the time you finally reach the place he told you about, you’ve discovered you have a lot in common. He thinks as you think about a lot of things. He’s made you laugh, and lifted your mood.
You’re tired of being hot, sticky, and tired out. There’s something magical about the stillness of the place, the dying heat of the day, the darkness. It’s so dark by now, that you’ve let him take your hand to guide you.
He leads you to the place – a swimming pool, he now tells you, not a natural pond, but, hey, that’s all right, it’s still cool, fresh water – and he says to you: “Dive in. I’ll join you in just a moment.”
You can’t wait to shed the troubles of the day. So you do what he says.
You dive in.
And you hit your head on the bottom.
Hard.
Why?
Because there was no water in that pool.
You hadn’t stopped to check, because you couldn’t see clearly, and you’d built up what felt like a relationship with him.
And you would never have imagined he could deliberately do something like that to you, because you would never, ever do something that nasty to another person…
And Falling-In-Love is exactly like diving into a swimming pool without taking the time to notice whether or not it is filled with water.
I have a lot of time for love. As far as I’m concerned, loving someone worthy and being well loved by that person is as good as it gets.
But that’s all about a mutually loving relationship.
It’s a far cry from Falling-In-Love.
Falling-In-Love, as far as I can see, is about leaping without looking.
Falling-In-Love lays you open to the whole unsavory pack of jerks, abusers, and narcissists.
I asked my client whether she would take a job without first finding out about the pay and terms of employment. She sounded surprised. She answered, briskly: “Of course not.”
Then she saw the connection.
You don’t have to fall in love on Day 1, Day 2, or Day 20.
Falling-In-Love is optional, not obligatory – although it is a neat way of silencing the little voice in your head that says: “Er… I don’t think so. This one is NOT for me!”
Falling-In-Love throws a thick blanket of fantasy over an unpromising reality… for a little while. It allows you not to look at your niggling doubts about the person.
Then the blanket dissolves leaving you with a very, very sore heart.
Even if you do feel yourself Falling-In-Love – it happens - there is no sense in diving into the relationship blind. First, you want to be very sure that you will not hit your head, very hard, on a concrete floor.
Abusive men often tell us they’re no good. And we don’t believe them!
Which means we fail to trust the evidence of our eyes, our ears – and our intuition.
Falling-In-Love is a wonderful, chemical ‘high’.
And it stinks.
You pay way too high a price for that high.
Because Falling-In-Love means you don’t take the time to really check out whether the man is an abusive jerk, or Mr Perfect-for-You.
So, am I saying “give up, or get a marriage broker”?
Not at all.
What I am saying is that giving your love, and trust, to another person is probably the most important investment you will ever make in your personal life.
Do it carefully.
Learn to love another person by inches – or centimetres, if you prefer.
And start to love yourself – IN SPADES – first.
There comes a point in every abusive relationship when you know you should get out.
Your abusive partner is making you miserable, you know the relationship is all wrong and, as far as you can see, your life has stopped dead…
But still you stay.
We’ve all done it.
The little voice of intuition told me my marriage was over about 6 weeks in, but that didn’t stop me staying for some 20 years.
We know we should leave, but we don’t.
Instead, we ask ourselves:
“What’s wrong with me?”
And we come up with a load of answers – all of them wrong…
But we stay, and we keep on asking the same old question: “What’s wrong with me?”
So, what is wrong with you?
What was wrong with me?
Try this one on for size:
You were brought up to be “nice”. You were brought up to be nice: your role was to please other people and delay gratification. The idea of being rewarded by pleasure now was programmed out of you.
You were taught what you had to do for others. You weren’t taught that other people had a duty to reciprocate.
Still less were you taught to select your friends, and partner, only from those people who did meet your kindness with kindness, your thoughtfulness with thoughtfulness, your selflessness with selflessness.
I’ve noticed that whenever I talk with abused women about selflessness in a partner, it raises a wry smile of disbelief.
“Could selflessness possibly be a two-way street?”
So, let’s do a quick reality check:
Because you haven’t experienced it, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Because you have experienced a load of selfish, hurtful, destructive behaviour, that doesn’t make selfish, hurtful, destructive behaviour the norm. And it certainly doesn’t make it acceptable.
It’s been normal for your abusive husband.
It may have been normal in your family of origin.
Being on the receiving end of abusive treatment has become normal for you.
It’s been programmed into you for so long that you have developed an abused persona.
That persona is not who you truly are.
It puts me in mind of the story of the lion who thought he was a sheep. If you don’t know already know that story, you can read it here:
You’re not a sheep.
You are actually a lioness.
Maybe it’s not time for you to leave the grassy valley, yet. Maybe, you don’t feel you have the strength to climb the mountain, yet.
Although, if you realized who you truly are, that mountain would draw you to it.
But one thing you can do right now:
You can find better answers to that question: “What’s wrong with me?”
Your programming is wrong – and once you make the decision to change it, you’ll be amazed to see yourself grow into your true stature.
That’s all that’s ‘wrong’ with you.
Oh, and the question is a poor one.
So, you don’t feel like heading off the mountain just now. That’s okay, Leonie <g>.
But please, please, change the question.
Ask yourself not what’s wrong with you - you already know the answer to that: your programming is out, at the moment. Normally, when that happens, you get the programming – or the software - sorted out, you don’t just give up on the hardware. Do you?
Here are a couple of questions to help you start reprogramming the software:
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