This blog is to just to share a
few thoughts to be able to identify an abusive relationship with your partner
or spouse and when you are in one how to recognize and console your emotional
self.
What is an abusive relationship?
If you feel extensively controlled, exploited and the aspect of care or live is
not unconditional but for a price of you fulfilling something and the
relationship is often driven by fear or discomfort that you always give up your
freedom to maintain harmony, most likely you are in an abusive relationship. As we go along, this blog will elaborate more
on abusive relationship, help you self-assess if you are in one and give some
insights on what to expect from such relationship.
But, before you read this blog,
just take a moment to think how your relationship with your spouse/partner is? If you are in a mediocre relationship, please
stop reading from here-on to avoid confusing your mind trying to relate your
real life experiences to this one and developing suspicion in your mind which
will eventually lead to a strain to your relationship.
If you have already identified
yourself to be in an abusive relationship, my personal advice is to end that
relationship and move-on. However, it is
easier said than done. You may be
forcing yourself to stay due to family reasons, financial reasons and/or
emotional reasons. So if you choose to
stay on in an abusive relationship, keep in mind, you always have the right to
change your mind even if you are not currently in a situation to quit. Always, take your time to decide but one word
of wisdom here. Should you decide to
stay in an abusive relationship do not stay in it believing that your partner
will change. Change is unlikely, because an abuser is just a normal human being
just like you. He/she chooses to be abusive
in the relationship with you but as an individual he/she is not an abnormal
personality or inhuman. If he/she is
aggressive with you but justifies that you provoked or that they are short
tempered, it is an invalid argument. Anger
and aggression are voluntary behavior and are controllable if they choose to.
To think more wisely on this, let
us first talk some basics to assessing your relationship. Signs of a healthy relationship is best
defined by the freedom enjoyed in the company of the partner and whether such
feeling is mutual. The basic premise of
a healthy relation lies on giving up ego mutually and the compromise done
mutually. It is all about making constant
effort to keep the relationship strongly bonded by unconditional love and
trust. Never let ego or suspension takeover
and cause damage to your relationship. Words
misused and actions that caused physical or emotional harm have lasting effect
and makes the relationship struggle in blame games. Keep in mind, prolonged discomfort or abuse
has a lasting effect and extremely negative consequences to self and others
around.
It is often very complex to
decide if a relationship is abusive. In
my view, if you feel extremely comfortable and have freedom of thought, action
and mind and you are not treated like a child by your partner, then you are probably
not in an abusive relationship. And the
health barometer to assess the relation is based on the experience that life
and time had given you and your opinion on how the individual had reacted to
situations that involves you. Does the
accumulated experience over time give you an overall satisfaction about being
in that relationship and do you feel loved and cared?
You are the best judge and do not
let the current phase of life or state of mind prejudice your judgement. Take time to think through your life and
analyse your experiences as an independent person. It is hard but not impossible. Try to answer some questions to help you
through your assessment,
·
Are you always blamed for everything that goes
wrong?
·
Are you the one who apologies or lets go and
when it’s the turn for your partner, he/she just ignores the aspect and over
the period of time things fall into the day-to-day routine?
·
Are you often accused of provoking your partner
but you are the one who ends up in the crying zone while your partner gets back
to his/her normal state of mind and things get back into daily routines as if
nothing really happened?
·
Are you often made to feel that all that you do
is never enough and some fault is found and complained about that you reach a
stage where you start doubting your own capabilities?
·
Are you made to feel guilty to situations as if
you are only one responsible and as if it has caused misery in life for your
partner that he/she doesn’t deserve, so you deserve misery?
·
Are you called by names or bad and abusive
language and is that justified on the grounds that you provoked the anger in
your partner or that your partner has short temper and it’s a uncontrollable
disease that you need to accommodate?
·
Have you been physically harmed? Physical harm needn’t necessarily mean that
you are beaten up or slapped. It could
also be in the form of pinching you, unknowingly tripping you while you can
sense that it was intentional. It can
also be like, doing things in such a way that leaves a feeling of low
self-esteem about yourself. For example,
throwing a pen or any other thing you asked for instead of giving in your hand
and frequent instance were the gestures and/or body language leaves a feeling
of ill-treatment and a sense of negative impact on your self-esteem.
·
Have you often tried to justify to yourself that
there is nothing wrong in your relationship?
·
Have you
often tried to look at others in similar relationship and their issues
to try and convince yourself that your relationships is normal simply because
of what others tell you and simply because the situations are comparable to
that of others? While, drawing references from others experiences be it friends or
relative is certainly a good way of being able to understand and deal with
ongoing relationship, however, it doesn’t apply to an abusive relationship.
If you can relate to most of the
above, it is highly likely that you are in an abusive relationship. And if you
have been in an abusive relationship for a prolonged period of time, you would
have come across many occasions of breakage in the past and you can well
recollect that attempts to reconnect only ended up in abusing you more. There could have been occasions were the
abusive partner claims that they love you, they need you and they cannot lead
life without you. Just because of the
nature of relationship, you may have had to trust it. However it may happens
that such claims were only to get you back in the relationship and once
convinced of regaining control over you, they will again start their abusive
behavior. This way, every time you
choose to end the relationship, they will find a way of getting you back into
it and the demand will always put you in a helpless situation.
The basic trait of an abuser can
be best explained as, the one who will never accept his/her abuse. This is largely because they do not see it as
an abuse. They believe, you are born for
them and get so possessive about you. They
force and control you intentionally although they will not be explicit about it
and they will make the situations circumstantial so that you do not blame them
of force or control. They will always
justify their act and it will look normal to the rest of the world and you may suddenly
feel if something has gone wrong with your mind and you may feel helpless while
it is your one voice that is challenging a crowd. You are not alone if you feel this way and
remember, it is you who feel abused and others have not experienced your pain
to understand it. So it will always be
well beyond their capacity to think. They
will always try to convince you to stay in a relationship because nobody likes
breakage. They forget that, just like
them you would not generally like breakage.
After all if someone known to you is in a similar situation, despite
your state, you may still try to justify him/her to stay in their relationship
by confronting that the situations are not similar and that the person should
think twice before breaking a relationship.
Keep in mind, it is you who know
what you have gone through and what you want and there is no need to justify
your actions to everyone. If you have
already realized that you are in an abusive relationship but you are working
hard to change it, a word of caution here, you may not be successful in
bringing a change. An abuser is a normal
human being and he/she has chosen to be abusive in the relationship with
you. It implies, he/she will be normal
to the rest of the world and most often the rest of the world will not even
know that he/she is abusing you. If you choose
to discuss your personal life with others, your status will be generalized with
their day-to-day life to say that such challenges happens in everyone’s life.
You are the best judge of your state and your relationship.
React before it is too late. The longer you stay in an abusive
relationship the consequences can be extremely damaging. The consequences could extend to your family,
children and beyond.
If you have reached a situation where
you have decided to exit the relationship, bear in mind, it may not be easy. Actually, the time you decide to exit, the abuser
will be more abusive on you. But he/she
would not agree to quit the relationship.
Most often they would build justification over why they do not want to
break the relationship while none of such justifications would sound reasonable
and they would never own up their abusive behavior.
Such abusers shift the blame of
failure on people and situations and say that both partners should mend their
ways to make the relationship work. While
the intent of mutual efforts to keep a relationship is true in general, it
doesn’t apply to an abusive relationship and you are the best judge to assess
if you are being abused or not.
Keeping generic readers in mind,
a word of caution here. When you trust
the words of your partner, do not get suspicious and trust wholeheartedly. However, you have every right
to change your mind when you come across situations that contradicts this
trust. You have every right to reconnect
or withdraw after reconnecting. No one
likes to end a relationship so quickly. They well know that most often such
ending impacts families and has a lasting effect on individuals and children,
if there are any. However, when you
reach a situation in life to make such a decision, do not regret the time you
spent together. Remember that the
experience has prepared you for the future.
