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Hi ladies. Just something I thought of today that I wanted to share. When I was with my abusive ex I thought that being nice to him would stop the abuse. I thought that if I could just phrase things the “right way”, or use the right tone, or not raise my voice (even though he raised his voice all the time), or find the right time of day to have a conversation, or make him laugh, then maybe he would stop being abusive. I thought that if I could figure out how to not upset him and figure out his triggers then he would be able to have a disagreement without cursing me out, calling me names, gaslighting me or hitting me. The reality is there is nothing I could have ever done to stop the abuse besides leaving him. He wasn’t abusing me because I wasn’t nice enough to him, in fact at one point the nicer I was, the more abusive he became. He was abusing me because he is an abuser and he enjoyed it.
I feel like sometimes we torture ourselves trying to figure out how we can use niceness to stop the abuse. The abuse isn’t happening because of anything you did or didn’t do. Being nice to an abuser won’t stop the abuse. I hope this helps. Love you ladies 💜
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Thank you for posting this – SO true! I hope you are doing well. Just to add my IDVA called this safety planning when she said that it a lightbulb moment for me 💕
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I do this all the time. Stay calm and quiet not say wheni disagree or just be nice regardless to what he is saying to me because i dont want confruntation i dont want him to get angry.
I feel thats a reason why we lose ourselves as we often dont get the chance to speak to do what we want as we just want them to be happy.
Thanks for posting makes you think doesnt it? X*x-
I can relate! I think what also makes it hard is that sometimes when we’re nice it does stop the abuse temporarily. When that would happen to me it would just reinforce the idea that if I could just say or do the right thing then I could stop him from becoming so angry with me. It can all be so confusing. Ultimately though nothing I said ever made him permanently stop abusing me. For me it didn’t get a lot better until I left & I had distance from him.
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Yeah you are right here too. I am in month 2 of a calm quiet spell not perfwct but no big blow ups and i think that because im not doing anything he doesnt agree with apart from work im just quiet so he is calm but its not a happy life is it? Those eggs shells are still there and i have to watch what i say all the time. Tough this isnt it xxxxx
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That’s definitely true and something I needed reminding of!
That feeling of walking on eggshells and trying to appease can be so draining, and then if you trigger him you start analysing all the ways that you could have said things differently, and then that wouldn’t have happened. But if it’s someone that just respects you, they won’t be abusive like that.
Thanks for this post! -
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Great thread, encapsulates so much of what our struggles are, why we are sent slowly round the bend. Because we carefully plan how to be nice, how not to upset (we walk on eggshells), and when that doesn’t work we try to figure out what will. Why that wasn’t enough. It’s extraordinary – even though we know, from experience, that it won’t make a difference, we keep trying. And we keep believing that we can make a difference, if only we can figure out the way to do it. But nothing works, and it drives us slowly round the bend because we keep trying.
I tried to speak calmly to him once when he was yelling at me and he accused me of being patronising, speaking to him like a child.
However straightforward it is, though, the value of these lightbulb moments is monumental. They provide us with sorely needed clarity.
Love to all x*x
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