Systematic Assertiveness - Abusive Relationships - Post 4 of 5

Abusers Who Won't Be Seen As Abusers

We are all capable of being abusive but not all of us are motivated or even capable of performing long-term abuse - things such as our self-image, conscience and life-purpose tend to get in the way.

Whenever we feel compelled to behave in such a way, for whatever reason, this will usually be accompanied by a wish to leave the situation compelling us to behave that way and return to being the 'kind of person' we unconsciously see ourselves as.

'This isn't me - I'm not this kind of person' is the kind of message you get from your unconscious if you are behaving abusively and have tuned into the fact.

Genuine abusers:

• take pride in and enjoy the power provided by their position in the relationship


• believe their 'victim' to be stupid - you were stupid enough to put yourself in a position to be treated this way by them and you are stupid enough to continue to put up with it


• have the ability to justify their actions externally to others, or will put you in a position whereby you provide that justification yourself eg you act nervously and needy in their presence


• know what they are doing is 'socially wrong' but believe they must do it or lose their power over their own life - it is a fight for control - they will often do these things so the victim will not know they are being done


• when asked direct questions or to stick to non-abusive agreements abusers will avoid giving straight answers and even when they do may say the opposite of what they really intend; they will find ways to break their agreements and take pleasure in the pain this causes as the key motivation for them is keeping you off balance; denying you power in the relationship and putting themselves even further in control.

The very fact you are approaching them with a view to making the relationship work tells them they have this power over you and reinforces the motivation for continuing to treat you this way. If, when you are trying to make the relationship work for you, they say things like 'if you don't like it you know where the door is' you should perhaps take that door.

Are You the Abuser?

One of the dangers of being in a relationship with a psychologically (or physically) abusive person is that you may, in the process of defending yourself or trying to make the relationship work, become abusive yourself.  You could be trying to dominate the person into a new way of life so they will see the 'truth'.  This cannot be done and you are providing the other person with their justification for continuing their power-centred war against you.

An additional problem develops in that by remaining with them you are also training in manipulative techniques yourself and when you leave the relationship you will take any unconscious behaviours and attitudes learned with you  into future relationships.

Spending time with people who are manipulative and power-centred for extended periods of time will teach you to become manipulative and power-centred in a bid to recapture your own lost sense of power.  The emphasis needs to be on not putting ourselves in a position where this kind of abusive behavioural cycle exists in the first place.

There are people who take great pleasure in having someone struggle for years, in good faith, to make a relationship or a business work and then 'pull the rug' from under them.

Personal examples include:

• a male friend with a thriving hotel who's partner secretly spent years transferring ownership of their joint goods without his awareness and then suddenly made him penniless, businessless, homeless and left him to pay a huge tax bill


• a man who 'out of the kindness of his heart' married a woman receiving radiotherapy for what was thought to be terminal cancer - she was terrified her children would be left without a parent and he agreed to take care of them if she died - however she made a full recovery and over the next 9 months he attempted to kill her by poisoning her food - in court it was revealed he had married her just to get her home and had also been sexually assaulting her 11 year-old daughter.

Some tips on identifying and avoiding current and potentially abusive relationships:

Listen:

• to your intuition - if someone seems too charming or good to be true they may well be - listen to what they ACTUALLY say and how your gut instinct reacts to that - for example if you tell a long-term partner something like 'it's ages since you told me you love me' and they come back with 'well if I do what else will you want me to do - jump through hoops?' listen to what that says to you and make decisions accordingly - don't fill in the gaps with your own hope mechanism and imagination

• If a person often says 'but look at what I've done for you' in a bid to get something from you the relationship may be based on manipulation and material goods - you are not regarded as a human being but as a slave

• listen to what is not said - people who are in the business of playing mind games with you will either tell you what you want to hear in order to shut you up or will never give you a straight answer - if they act secretively you have a problem and if they respond with silence a lot they are either punishing you or simply do not wish to relate to you - in either case, do you want to be there?

Observe:

• When in the company of others do they remain with you for others to see or do they act as though you are an unwanted stalker?  If you go out together but continually find you are not 'together when you go out together' something is wrong in the way they see you - your company is not valued and they may feel ashamed to be seen with you - there is nothing you can do about this, this is for them to change - by complaining about it you again assume the role of the victim

• Are they there for you during your emotionally difficult or happy times eg when you start a new activity do they take an interest? When they have similarly emotional moments are you allowed to be there for them?  Do they accept your presence or are they keeping you at a distance and not communicating with you?  Psychologically abusive people find the idea of opening up to and being dependent on their targets, even for a short while, repugnant - their need to keep power and status and not hand it over to you is too strong - if you find yourself wondering 'what am I doing here?' because you feel as though you're being kept at a distance and you're missing out on the most important things supposed to be a part of a relationship do not criticise yourself for feeling too needy - you are being denied a normal human relationship

• do they regard you as a functionary and not as a complete human being - are you 'of use' to them?  Whether you're a woman being used only for sex or a man being used for money, whatever 'function' it is - once the function has been satisfied you as a person are no longer required - have you noticed they act as though they like you only at certain times - does your wife only seem to like you when you're creating your next baby?  Be wary, be very wary.

People are not here to 'serve' each other, they are here to be who they are.  If you are with someone who sees you only as a functionary you are willingly taking on the role of a slave and will find the majority of who you are is being suppressed in exchange for the relationship - this forces you into a tit-for-tat relationship model.  Do you want to suppress who they are as a result?

Keep an eye out for questions raised very early on that relate to functional performance such as:

• What kind of car do you drive? (if you say 'I don't drive' watch the lights in their eyes switch off - they wanted a taxi driver)

• I bet I can persuade you to have a baby with me (said usually by women who feel they are running out of time to have a baby and who hardly know the man they are talking to - there are many women about who see men as there to provide a child but not there to act in the role of father - men, don't make the mistake of thinking that because she wants a baby she wants you - what you want does not come into this kind of equation - you are not actually regarded as a person in this situation)

• What kind of sex are you into? (if you are a man or a woman and you receive a strong sexual approach almost immediately be aware this is not a 'relationship' starting here - you are a function and the person themselves may regard themselves as a 'functionary' you may wish to use - if you enter into such a relationship there is a strong possibility you are simply in a mutually abusive relationship).

Watch out for people who sit in judgement on others a lot - this is an avoidance technique abusers use to turn attention away from their own behaviour - they will undermine you; you need to either keep them at a distance or remove them from your life.

Listen and Observe How You Talk and Behave in Regard to Yourself

• Never tell yourself you are over-sensitive and if you are telling yourself that - stop it! You are denying who you are and what's really going on in your life - your intuition talks to you mostly through your feelings.  However, this does not mean you should go only towards situations in which you feel 'good' - feeling even worse for a while is often the price of things feeling better in the long term - for example you may have to go through a painful break-up first in order to remove your emotional attachment to an abusive partner

• Ignore your 'hope' mechanism when it comes to deciding who to spend time with and rely solely on your judgement of how you're being treated right now - today.  The hope in a relationship should be a shared hope - not a mechanism you use alone to patch up the gaps and soften the pain of what is really happening.  The reason you feel under-valued and bullied in an abusive relationship is because you are under-valued and you are being bullied, it's that simple.  How a person treats you today is how th ey will treat you tomorrow. Unless they admit to treating you poorly and agree to adjusting  their behaviour - and you can see these changes taking place - always assume how they treat you today is how they genuinely want to treat you.

• Are you continually apologising to them for upsetting them because you'll do anything to make the relationship work and don't mind 'losing face' if that's what it takes?  Well, they've got you hung, drawn and quartered my friend. You're apologising for responding negatively to their abusive tactics.  Think about that.

• Trust yourself and not your abuser - victims of psychological abuse often mistrust themselves - at some point they opened up to the 'goodness' of the other person, gave them an 'eternal glowing image' (this is sometimes known as the 'halo effect' and now they're having trouble re-adjusting the 'angelic' picture - abusers are often very good at projecting an attractive social image and we don't like to be wrong about our judgements about others and we certainly don't like to 'demonise' those we have done important life changing things with (something that habitual abusers do like to do) - allow yourself to be 'wrong' even if it means accepting you have been wrong for the past 20 years.

In the next and final post on this topic we'll look at:

• Re-establishing Control


• The Third Relationship


• using the the systems approach template in helping ourselves to give a sense of structure to the way we approach relationships in which we feel we have lost power.

Systematic Assertiveness - Abusive Relationships Post 3 of 5

Well I seem to have more to write on this subject than I originally thought and this is turning into a 5-post theme (I feel a book coming on) - in the final post I'm going to use the Systems Model to bring everything 'under control' but in this post I'm discussing the idea of how 'victims' of abuse (people who voluntarily seem to stay in relationships obviously harmful to them when they do have an option of leaving) end up in that position.

Victims Who Won't See Themselves as 'Victims'

I was speaking to a lady in her late 50's - she had left her husband six months before due to the fact he'd started beating her.  She told me she was 'stuck', she couldn't move on with her life, because she couldn't figure out how she had caused her husband to start hitting her in the first place.

Prior to the hitting he had been bringing prostitutes back to the house while she was still in it.  He'd also taken to leaving soiled condoms under her pillow for her to find and had spent a couple of years before that criticising her continuously. She told me he was a devout Catholic but had 'gone funny'.  As I listened to the history of their relationship unfolding it was obvious she felt responsible for the whole thing.

This was a lovely, gentle, highly intelligent lady who finished off by asking me to explain how she had caused him to become like this (he had moved on to another relationship at the time, so no confused state of conscience for him then - another common thing I see happen in such relationships).  She told me she needed a 'man's point of view'.

I told her 'your ex-husband's a vicious individual who may actually be insane and there's nothing you could ever have done to stop how things progressed - you've put up with years of abuse without realising it and he was the only one who could have stopped it.  The only thing you could do is what you have done which was to leave'.

My response surprised her - she told me no-one had ever said anything like that in such a straight-forward manner before (which surprised me).  This was a victim who didn't realise she was allowed to be a victim.  I left her with a bemused smile on her face.

I see this a lot.  Here's another example:

A 17 year old lady who's mother had just died became homeless as a result and went to live with her older brother who, when the weather was cold, would come into her bedroom at night, pull her nightgown off her, put it on himself and go back to his own bed - he was doing things like this to her on a regular basis and she seemed to have no privacy or rights.  When I pointed out she needed to do something to get out of the situation her response was 'oh no, we just have to put up with these things in life and we've always known there was something wrong with my brother anyway'.  How would you expect that relationship to turn out? Her overall attitude was she had a duty to look after him.  He was much older than her and I'm sure her mother, had she been alive would have had a different view.

Psychologically abusive relationships don't just happen to women, of course, I've been in a couple myself and they're difficult to escape the affects of once you're locked into the relationship cycle.  I have seen men leave jobs due to nervous breakdowns after female managers have done 'their thing' on them - so gender is no indicator of who a victim will be; we're all open to this threat.

What kind of common indicators should we look for in ourselves to ensure we don't end up turning into 'Victims Who Won't be Victims'?

Justifications

The victims of psychological abuse quite often come out with justifications as to why their being abused is OK - they rationalise it as a logical thing:

'I'm too sensitive'

(what, you mean it's OK to be belittled, humiliated, shouted at, unsupported, have who you are stifled, have your wants and needs denied - the real problem is the fact you're actually noticing those behaviours rather than the behaviour itself, is it?  Are you sure about that?)

'This is how families are'

(no, no, no - look, if we're talking about The Walton's then maybe we're being unrealistic, but when it comes to families YOU CAN HAVE WHATEVER TYPE OF FAMILY YOU CHOOSE AND IF YOU'RE BEING HURT SOME SO AND SO iS CHOOSING THAT FOR YOU - there are nice families out there; families who don't bring prostitutes home, don't steal your pension money; don't think it's OK to have an aggressive, threatening atmosphere that forces you to keep your thoughts to yourself - it might be that it would be better to live alone and get some decent friends instead - there are always alternatives)

Here are a few others:

'They couldn't live without me and they know it really' (they don't actually care)
'At least they were honest - they sat down and told me straight they sympathised with me, I was obviously needing the relationship to work at a deeper level but they needed their own space and I needed to to go make some new friends.  But we could still have sex three times a week if I wanted and I think at least we've got a platform for the relationship to start up again in the future - it's about time, really, we've been together 5 years now' (what?)

Self Criticism and Over-Responsibility


The next thing I've noticed victim's who won't be victims do is self-criticise and do the Over-Responsibility thing.

'If I were just more attractive'; 'If I weren't so demanding'; 'If I could just stop being angry about the way they treat me', 'I'm a mess, how could anyone want to be with me when I'm like this?' (er, have you considered their behaviour has caused that?).

Over-responsibility is where you're taking on responsibility for managing the whole relationship - you cannot, for example, ensure the other person meets their agreements with you.  That's their job.  If you're trying to get them to think about how they see the relationship in the future because you've noticed they're completely and deliberately ignoring you (eg 'sending you to Coventry') and you're worried about the relationship coming to an end - what are they doing about it?  (PS if they're using that as a permanent approach when you try speaking to them the relationship has already ended - the purpose of a relationship is to relate - a similar relationship avoidance technique is to go in the opposite direction and scream abuse at you when you ask if you can talk about the relationship).

Outrageous Hope; Mother Duck Complex and Moral Ties

Victims who won't be seen as victims live in Hopeland. They have a dream in their left fore-brain, possibly based on watching too many episodes of the Waltons, on what an ideal relationship should be and they're hoping that's how things will turn out.  They may have been hoping for years but find the reality emotionally unbearable.  (Question:  what's the other person hoping for?).  Hope of this nature usually develops because the other person isn't communicating - the victim who wants the relationship to work is starting to fill in the gaps with their imagination.

Mother Duck Complex - you know when the duck emerges from the egg and sees its mum and that's it - bonded!?  That happens in relationships such as first-love for people too.  Suddenly you're so admiring of the other person and they're so wonderful that when you catch them in bed with the neighbour it's so obviously your not being good enough that caused that.  Watch out for Mother Duck Complex, won't you?

Moral Ties

Got children?  We'd do anything to remain with them, right?  We'd even put up with 20 years of having the other parent continually putting us down in front of them and watching our children gradually lose all respect for us purely because we believe in the two-parent family model and nothing's going to stop you from meeting your moral responsibilities (apart from when you get home one day and find your co-parent in bed with the neighbour; but don't forget that will be your fault and your responsibility).

Boiling Frog Syndrome

This is one of the most important and difficult things to acknowledge in my view - it's a bit like brainwashing.

The principle of it is that if you put a frog in cool water and then slowly heat the water the frog will boil to death without realising it's happening - if you boil the water first and drop the frog in it will immediately jump out.  The difference being that it can tell the difference.  How true is this?  I remember one long-term relationship I was in where I'd got so used to the 'silent treatment' when I got home from work that if I felt like talking about it I thought there was something wrong with me - but then I started at college for two years and everyone there looked really happy to see me all the time.  Hold on a minute, I thought.

Get used to a minor level of poor treatment and you're more open to getting the next level, and then the next, until you're being completely emotionally and physically abused whilst thinking 'is it me?  How did I cause this?'.

Negative Interpretation of Sensitivity

'I must be too sensitive' does not mean we are too sensitive.  It means 'oh shoot I've completely ignored my intuition, which told me to get out weeks ago, but I ignored it and now my emotions are at war with each other and one part of me wants to stay because I've invested so much of myself in the relationship, and I stand to lose so much by leaving, but another part wants me to leave because I'm in so much pain and I'm confused.  I really wish I could just ignore that my feelings are tellng me to leave.  I'm so irritated by them!'.

We need to be more sensitive so we don't get our hopeful desires pushing us into this trap - if we don't learn this lesson until it's too late we risk being 'emotionally scarred' (which can be healed but takes a lot of work).

We are given our intuition for a reason and are meant to listen to it. Our intuition is in tune with who we are - when we refuse to acknowledge this we are damaging our relationship with ourselves; we end up not trusting ourselves to make any worthwhile decisions and as a result get pulled into the self-criticism cycle.

We need to be who we actually are - there's no such thing as being 'too sensitive'. I've avoided many potential relationships because my intuition said 'wait' and then seen the reasons why it told me to wait appear sometimes months afterwards.  Our gut instinct often takes better care of us than the grey stuff in our skulls - if we could just learn to trust it.

Next post: Abusers Who Won't See Themselves as Abusers

Systematic Assertiveness - Post 2 of 5

Psychologically Abusive Relationships

The following scenarios are all signs of psychologically abusive relationships at play; some are more obvious than others. All the conversations are from real-life sources and are plucked from long term (lasting at least 3 years) relationships. None of the relationships involves physical abuse.

There are two questions to think about as you read them:

• What aspects of the different conversations stand out?


• What could the person being 'abused' have done to avoid the treatment?

I'll reveal some more information about these scenarios further down the post.

Scenario 1:

"I've noticed that over the past two years you've not stuck to any of the agreements we've made - as far as I know I've stuck to what we agreed. Would you say that's the truth? (nods agreement) Are you behaving like this deliberately?"

"Yes".

"Can you tell me why?"

"I'm teaching you a lesson".

The issue here is you have one person in the relationship who is too concerned with power. I've known people to stay in jobs they hate because there are others at the workplace who want them to leave. They're determined not to back down.

While one person may be working for a 'common cause' the other person's 'cause' is something completely different. The person trying to make the relationship work will find after a while that they're having to act 'super-passive' in a bid to get the other person to be less 'power-mad' and more willing to co-operate. It doesn't work in the long-term - such relationships tend to end explosively.

Scenario 2:

"I don't agree with the way you speak to me - I find it really offensive. Since you started at Uni I don't see you now for six months at a time and then when I do see you it's only because you want me to do something for you; because I'm 'useful'. I feel like we're becoming strangers; but the biggest concern I have is the verbal abuse. It's just not acceptable to me".

"I don't give a **** what you find acceptable or not - I'll talk to you just how I ******* want and there's nothing you can ******* do about it".

This was a conversation between a 25 year old daughter and her father. The conversation re-occurred several times over a couple of years and the father ended the relationship as the daughter continued to assert she had the right to speak to him abusively. What struck him most was the cool, reasoning manner in which she told him this.


Scenario 3:

"You're reliable - if I give you a job I know it'll get done. You're very thorough. My only concern is that you're slow. The people in London are fast - but then I have to keep checking up on them because they never do the work properly. Look, I want you to move to London and then you can teach them how to be more effective and they can teach you how to work faster."

This working relationship between a manager and a Personal Assistant eventually ended when a fellow colleague of the PA made a complaint about bullying to a Chief Executive and the manager had their contract terminated. The PA themselves knew they were being 'picked on' and belittled but believed their manager had trouble dealing with the stresses of their job and rationalised the behaviour. The PA reported that because this was their first job in a new career after two years of not working the manager often pointed out how they had given them 'their big break' and had persuarded the PA to do unpaid work at the weekends as a 'useful experience'.

The PA also said that no matter how successful they and their manager were on a particular day the manager had to finish the day off by taking the PA in a room and giving them a mini 'telling-off'. The Assistant had come to regard this as an amusing quirk of the manager's personality. When it had first started the PA felt the need to discuss and argue their case but had got so used to it by the end of the relationship they'd just sit and let the manager rant while they thought about the work they had to get back to.

Scenario 4:

"I'm surprised by how well you're taking what I'm saying to you".

"Actually I feel relieved - you're starting to tell me the truth and it tallies with what I've been feeling for years. I thought I was going mad. I thought it was all in my head. It's taken two years of me gradually getting you to a point where you're telling me how you honestly see us without you exploding".

"I did tell you 13 years ago but you weren't listening".

"But you'd just caught for our first baby - it didn't seem right to 'listen' then. I was hoping you'd change your mind. Isn't it wrong to walk out on your child when there's still a chance? Where do you want the relationship go from here? Do you want it to end?"

"You can stay for the sake of the kids, but I don't want to relate to you as a partner any more. I want you to go and find yourself another woman for that. But you can stay for the sake of the kids".

"I just wish you had told me this years ago - I've asked you plenty of times in the past how you felt about us and if anything was wrong. I would have stopped having more children with you if you'd told me you didn't actually love me".

"I was concerned about you - I didn't think you'd cope".

Here the participants were involved in the last few weeks of a 13 year marriage. This couple had married in their late teens and the wife had dumped her husband about 6 times before the birth of their first child which had caused him to develop a number of anxiety disorders. Over the 13 years the husband was made to feel continually 'not quite good enough' and when he received the 'go see other women' instruction what he heard intuitively was 'I want to see other men'. His wife was avoidant when asked directly how she felt and it had taken the husband two years of careful discussion to get her to be honest with him. At the end she admitted she regarded him as nothing more than a 'sperm donor' and useful to have around, but she didn't love him. It took the husband 5 years of counselling to recover from the relationship breakdown and his then ex-wife continued with her agreement-breaking behaviour in regard to the management of the children for years after he left. He eventually abandoned the family completely.

In Post 3 I'll be exploring some common factors in abusive relationships.