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I’ve posted here before, about my abusive and controlling relationship which has been over for some time now. Still I think about ‘him’, and find myself sometimes musing over ‘the good things’, thinking how much ‘in love’ I was, that I’ll never find that again, etc, etc… Then, I remember, what it REALLY was. In a way I think it was useful that I kept all the emails (whenever he was angry, which was most of the time, it would all come out in an email – fortunately we didn’t live together). I can look back and read them sometimes, and remind myself of how vile and nasty he was, and then I think, “W*F was I thinking???” 😀 As time goes by, I ‘feel’ less and less. I used to keep in touch with one mutual friend of ours, just to find out ‘how we was’, if he was OK, ‘poor damaged little man’ that I believed he was, incapable of understanding his own messed up head. Even though he was disgusting to me I would still worry. Now, I don’t even care anymore.
Interesting how I think a lot of women who have been through hell with a man, once they make the break, will still harbour feelings, some sort of feelings, but it’s just their own confused minds talking, while they remember the ‘amazing sex’, the passion, all the doting they received from their controller, the gifts, the treats, the pampering, which felt amazing, but of course it was all part of the deception to keep you under their influence. No matter how clever or saavy or experienced you are, their adeptness is super-human!
I don’t know if anyone watched the Louis Theroux doc on last night, on BBC I think, where he was interviewing prostitutes about their relationships with their pimps. I thought there was something really psychologically relevant about it. They were all intelligent and eloquent women, but what they all shared was low self esteem, brought on by a history of poverty and abusive families. So they enter these relationships with their pimps, who beat them, totally control everything they do, take all their money, and sleep with them and even engage with them on an emotional level (“I really love you, baby!”). The men are powerful, controlling, you hear one of the pimps speak in prison. He is definitely from ‘the wrong side of the tracks’, but he is powerful. A prostitute was saying how out of all the pimps she had, the one she was (and still is) most attracted to was the nastiest and most violent one. She actually enjoyed the beatings – they sexually aroused her, although she admits that she hated the abuse as well. “It’s complicated,” she says. They give their pimps all the money, do as their told, because the p**p becomes everything in their minds, their father, their lover, their ‘soulmate’, and they want to please them by giving them money, to prove to them how much the p**p should ‘value’ them. It’s just all complete and utter mind control, and it works especially well on the minds of damaged women. A very sordid programme of course, and far more extreme than that of a woman being controlled in a ‘conventional relationship’, but I thought it was so relevant. Sometimes you have to look at situations as extreme as this, to clearly see the psychology of the whole abuser/abusee relationship.
Perhaps many women won’t identify with this at all, as it’s very extreme, and many of us see ourselves as very emotionally and psychologically stable, but we just had the great misfortune of encountering such a demon. All that ‘black eyes’ stuff. But I can say that I personally had a questionable childhood, although NOTHING as harrowing as some of these prostitutes were describing. It makes you more vulnerable to being controlled and abused, and you find it so hard to leave! My therapist suggested to me, there can be a sort of ‘co-dependency’ going on in these types of relationships. We feel validated and loved somehow by these men, because of our own somewhat skewed inner workings and histories of not being loved in a healthy way. Some of us are even sitting ducks, and abusive men are EXPERT at perceiving that vulnerability, just before they pounce!
I just find it more useful to try and understand the psychological complexities of such relationships, rather than just dismiss these men as ‘pure evil’. Besides, I don’t believe in ‘evil’ – it’s a word with supernatural connotations. Thinking about it that simplistically doesn’t help me, as it leaves so many questions unanswered, thereby making it harder to completely let go in your head and move on, fully repaired!
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Great post Caterina, I didn’t see that programme but it sounds interesting if a little disturbing. It sounds heartbreakingly sad how these women are being treated and how their self esteem is so low from poverty and abuse that they don’t think they deserve any better.
I have been wondering the same thing about myself a lot lately, why I seem to attract these sorts of men, and have also read in many sources that it is usually to do with childhood and not getting the healthy, unconditional love that all children need. I too had a questionable childhood, nothing extreme from what I can remember but a lot of questions in my mind that I am planning on discussing with a therapist.
Like you and the other sources said, if you grew up lacking the love you needed, and an abuser comes along all charming and doting, putting all of his attention on you, it feels like heaven on earth. It feels like we are finally getting seen heard, loved the way we have always craved. Sort of like a drug dealer offering drugs for free to someone before getting them hooked. The abuser has ways of picking up on the lack of self love and the vulnerability and knows who to target.
Sometimes I wonder, why do these abusers exist? Why are there so many of them? It annoys me how the focus is often on what the woman need to do, ie. leave him, go no contact, do self care etc but what is society doing about these men to change this pattern? Why are so many boys growing up thinking it’s acceptable to treat women like this?
For us the only way seems to be to heal those inner wounds and give ourselves the love we lacked through self care, self love and counselling to understand patterns etc. I wish there was an easier way because I feel tired of trying to figure it all out whilst still attracting predators. The awareness of the problem is at least the first step.
I too think about my ex daily, I think it’s normal after an abusive relationship. They did something to our brain and traumatised us. I am hoping with healing, counselling etc the memories will fade and I’ll have more inner peace without him in my head.
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Interesting post, Caterina.
I heard a song on the radio today by Tina Turner. Though I’m not a diehard fan, the lyrics were very poignant: “Once I’ve got over the heartbreak, I won’t miss you at all.”
It’s true. I think the trauma and upset we feel following an abusive relationship is mostly due to mourning our loss of self- rather than mourning them. We might blame ourselves initially or even ongoing at different times, but the truth- that they are despicable human beings – does dawn on us ( then we are angry at ourselves for not having seen it! ).
The hardest thing for me post-abuse has been to learn to respect and care about myself again. He made me feel that caring for myself was wrong. I think I lived a life of modern-day servitude. Yes, the door wasn’t locked- but the fear of going kept me there.
I totally sympathise with the ladies who have become prostitutes. It’s easy for people to judge them, but their psychology is complex. They have experienced damage to their self which has propelled them towards that way of life. Maybe part of them feels that they are cheap and deserve rough treatment or being objectified; maybe some of them are searching for some kind of validation.
Learning to believe that I matter has been the toughest part. But maybe it’s what I needed to learn. It’s not complete yet. All I know is, I couldn’t bear living one more day with a man who loved and adored himself whilst obviously not caring about, and abusing, his family members. His arrogance made me nauseous. Any old ‘rescuer’ feelings- that he was lost, mixed up, a child underneath- had dissolved, replaced by a healthy anger.
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Yes what worked for me personally, was informing myself, reading about abusive men, what motivates them, talking about it in therapy… I had to break the pattern of thinking that it was somehow something I deserved, and even worse, something that the abuser had no control over. That’s their whole MO! They need to make you feel responsible for all the discord, all their bad behaviour, they have to convince you that you evoked it all, by being such a horrible cow. Reminding you of all the wonderful things they do for you, and that you’ll never find anyone else that treats you so well, and you just don’t appreciate their selfless efforts! Then, there’s also that very difficult bit to deal with, where there is something about that complete domination that seduces you. Kind of like, the adolescent situation where you really enjoy a boyfriend being terribly jealous and possessive and thumping other boys that show you attention, because it makes your dumb teenage mind think, “Oh, he must really love me!” When I was a kid I used to think that the ‘nice boys’ were really dull – I always liked the bad lads. A powerful and controlling man can, to some, on some level, be extremely seductive. That horrible p**p in the prison… he was despicable and loathsome and had zero respect for women, but there was also something powerful and even seductive about him at the same time.
That’s a perfect analogy, about the drug dealer offering free drugs to hook you. In your unclear mind it’s someone being ‘generous’, and giving you something that makes you feel so amazing, on a very visceral level. And if you are in any way vulnerable, all the better for them.
Why do they exist? Good question! And that there seems to be so many men that behave like this to varying extents. I don’t think I have one female friend who hasn’t been through something similar at some point, to some degree. I think it’s a combination of the pressures on men historically to be ‘masterful, powerful, dominant’, some of which is perhaps hard-wired, hormonal, and some of which is just sociological history. The further back you go in time, the more normal it was seen for a man to totally dominate a woman, and add to that the lack of equality women had, which just reinforced those mindsets. Men could beat their wives at one point, and it wasn’t even illegal! Like that poor prostitute said, “It’s complicated.” Women often probably thought, better to have attention, whatever sort of attention, then to be ignored.
But thankfully most men don’t behave like that and have moved on from caveman days, so you have to also look at their personal history and childhoods. The way their own parents got it wrong. (detail removed by moderator)
I think the (detail removed by moderator) aspect is quite accurate, in that all those times you had this amazing sex and passion and idolisation, in a way what those men were really looking at during those times, were positive and idolised reflections of themselves. I often think of the film ‘Manhunter’ (based on the Thomas Harris Hannibal Lector novels), where the murdering psychopath would place shards of mirror in the eyes of his expired victims, so he could see his reflection in their eyes when he later was intimate with them. Gruesome I know, sorry! Only fiction! But, I think at the core of all abusive men is a strong element of this sort of (detail removed by moderator). Again I’m talking extremes here, but as I said I think you need to look at extremes to try and begin to understand the mind of an abusive and controlling partner. For me, it’s knowledge that sets you free! And also knowledge of yourself and your own mind, with regard to why you are ever drawn to men who behave like this. That’s where the right therapist can help enormously! Mine was a godsend.
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Serenity, that’s great that you have moved on from it all. It does take time.
The ‘trauma of our loss of self’… yes that’s so true, although it can take a bit of time to get to that. At first, after being with someone who so utterly convinces you of how awful you are, you probably (or at least I did) spend a lot of time thinking that you didn’t ‘lose’ anything, but rather that you were always pretty awful. You just didn’t realise it until they came along and enlightened you about how horrible you really are! To get to that point where you can feel a sense of self loss is, in itself, a huge step forward. Because you’re starting to value yourself again. Getting on with trying to regain self respect can be quite a slog. I lost count of the number of times I asked everyone I know, “Do you think I’m really an awful person?” They would say “No, of course not!” But I would think, “Yeah, you WOULD say that, you’re my friend, or, you clearly haven’t seen the real me, like he did!” Takes a while to start believing it. But I also think it’s important to look at the whole picture, and what it was about you that fell into the trap. I just think it’s too easy to tell yourself, “He’s just evil, black eyes, bad person…” I think if one looks for the easy answers, one hasn’t really completely put it to bed and moved on in their minds. But that’s just my opinion, everyone has their own way of coping and repairing themselves.
Yes, men who behave like this – they’re so clever at disguising their self adoration by manipulating the one thing you have that they don’t, which is empathy. You are simply a host to them to elevate their own self view. Totally parasitic.
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I get you, Caterina. And I still get days when I question my worth as a human being.
But overall, I have moved on leaps and bounds. You will too.
It’s not always a steady progress. It’s pretty undulating- some days good, some days bad. But overall, it’s progress.
I’m not quite sure if it’s rebirth- or returning to who you were meant to be – and maybe we’re at some point- all along.
It’s a return to your authentic self.
I didn’t rediscover my ‘self’ in terms of thinking favourably about myself for about three years after he’d gone. Yes, I was feeling angry, but I didn’t really feel ‘at home’
with myself. Now I do. It will happen- I promise x -
That’s great you’ve moved on so much Serenity. It’s amazing how damaging a relationship like that can be. Relationships end for all sorts of reasons, and can often cause heartbreak that at the time you can never imagine getting over, but not too long after you are dating again and happily getting on with your life. However I’ve found it’s quite extraordinary how much longer it can take, in the case of a relationship with someone abusive. Returning to your ‘authentic self’ can be difficult, as for a time you will be convinced that your authentic self is something awful. Bad self perception or loathing can be so all-consuming and difficult to break after you’ve had your thoughts rewired by someone selfish and controlling. Even when friends tell you that you’re fab, you think they don’t know the real truth like your ‘most intimate’ ex did! It’s just something you have to eventually figure out for yourself.
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