I would have been the last person to claim to being a victim of abuse. When I shared some of the things I was experiencing in my marriage to co-workers, they never said the word abuse. They agreed I didn’t deserve what was happening, but I don’t remember anyone saying it was abuse. If they did, my brain or more likely my heart, didn’t want to hear that word, and I have conveniently forgotten.
I always had excuses and justifications for the way Paul treated me. He was just stressed because of finances, or his schoolwork, or he didn’t like his job. I was always able to come up with a reason for his stress and thereby justify his abusive behavior to me. However, I was also stressed about finances, I had school work, or I was unhappy at my job. I never seemed to treat him the way he was treating me. And still, I didn’t call it abuse. Leslie Morgan Steiner said during her TedTalk:
“I was a very strong woman in love with a deeply troubled man and I was the only person on Earth who could help him face his demons .”
(TED, 2013, 10:46)
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Paul never really hit me. There was one time that he was “play hitting.” I repeatedly asked him to stop because it hurt and he continued until I screamed like a banshee at him. Which he then rewarded me with the title of “psychotic cunt” for losing my temper. So the physical abuse that is so prominently displayed in the media as the tell-tale sign of abuse didn’t apply to me.
I remember at times I wished he would just hit me. I didn’t realize what I was going through was abuse and I didn’t know how to prove it if I tried. What would I say? He calls me mean names? I wished with all my heart at times that he would just hit me, so I had physical proof of the distress I was feeling in my relationship. I thought I needed physical violence for it to be considered abuse. Until I came across a certain quote on Pinterest, and my perspective completely changed.
Re-Awakening
I started to wake up to the fact that my children and I were being abused by Paul around September 2017. I wasn’t allowed to be on social media. I had deleted my Facebook 6 years prior. I had Snapchat, but was only allowed to have close family and friends as contacts on that app. I was also allowed Pinterest, which we didn’t really view as social media. I just saved pins to my private boards and went on with my day. I never posted anything.
Like with most “scrolling” apps, it has an algorithm to curate your feed. If you liked a pin or saved one, you would receive more on the same or similar topics. One day I saw a pin that said:
I saved it. Soon my feed was filled with quotes on abuse.
“Have you ever experienced …. Then you might be in an abusive relationship.”
“You might be in a verbally abusive relationship if….”
“4 signs you are in an emotionally abusive relationship…”
This is when I started labeling it as abuse, and myself as a victim. But I didn’t want to be a victim, I wanted to be a survivor. So I started wrapping my head around the idea of leaving. I started to emotionally pack my bags, long before I served him the Order for Protection.
When Norah Casey spoke about her experience in a domestic violent relationship she described the phases she went through in the relationship. She referred to the third phase as the “re-awakening (TED,2018, 9:42).” The victim is waking up, their sense of self starts to re-emerge and they realize what’s going on and they have to leave. This is where I found myself at the end of 2017.
But leaving is scary. I couldn’t just pack up and go. I needed to get my ducks in a row. I had to make a game plan and then execute it. In March of 2018, I found myself in an attorney’s office, telling him my life story, looking for help to get away. I never in my wildest dreams believed I qualified for an Order for Protection. I didn’t realize how much abuse I was experiencing in my life, not until my attorney handed me a print out of the Power and Control Wheel.
I looked at each of the wedges. I could think of examples from my life for every single one. I couldn’t believe that I was a prime example of domestic abuse. I knew it was bad, but I couldn’t believe the depth of it. Yet, my attorney picked up on it right away and we stared filing an Order for Protection.
Your abuser doesn’t have to hit you for it to be considered abuse.
Last year, I watched the Netflix Original Series Maid. The main character, Alex, left her abusive boyfriend, but had no where to go with her two year old, Maddy. She went to social services for help. The social worker she spoke to asked if she was being abused, because she could go to a shelter.
Alex responded with, “I’d really hate to take a bed from someone who’s been abused for real.”
“‘Abused for real?’ What does that mean?” The social worker asked.
“Beaten up. Hurt.” Alex answered.
The social worker asked, “And what does fake abuse look like? Intimidation? Threats? Control?” She then hands the DV shelter brochure to Alex and tells her to call the number. Alex asks what she’s supposed to say to them when she calls. The social worker simply says, “help.” (Metzler &Wells, 2021, 10:32)
The first time I watched this scene, I cried. I wasn’t prepared for the crushing familiarity. Even though it had been 4 years since I had left Paul, I felt like I was back in my attorney’s office seeing the Power and Control Wheel. My abuse was “for real.”
Would you let someone else treat you like that?
Why is it that we allow the person we love the most to treat us the worst? What would you do if a stranger called you lazy, dumb, fat, slutty? Would you let that stranger take up space in your life? Live in your head rent free?
In her book Assume Nothing,Tanya Selvaratnam stated that before she had met her abuser, Eric, she would imagine what she would do if a stranger attacked her. She pictured how she would handle that situation. She said, “I would start screaming like a banshee, kick the guy in the balls yell at the top my lungs and flail my arms around as I were possessed (Selvaratnam, 2021, Pg 72).”
She had never imagined the person attacking her to be her partner. She knew what she would do if a stranger attacked, but when her partner did? She wrote, “here I was acquiescing to abuse in the home, at the hands of someone I knew (Selvaratnam, Pg 72).” This is something that I did.
A friend said to Leslie Morgan Steiner, “You wouldn’t let me hit you, would you? You wouldn’t take any abuse from a friend. So you know what? Apply those same standards to the men you get involved with (Steiner, 2009, Pg 274).”
In Rachel Louise Snyder’s book No Visible Bruises, she poses two questions. “But imagine it’s not Rocky at Paul’s front door, beating at it, kicking it, screaming for a woman inside. Imagine it’s a stranger. Who wouldn’t call the police? Who wouldn’t try to intervene to stop the violence (Snyder, 2019, Pg 23)?” Anyone would call the police if it was a stranger hurting us in the way an abuser does.
Snyder continues with, “ And yet when it comes to people we know, people we see in other contexts – as fathers, brothers, sons, cousins, mothers, whatever – we have trouble registering the violence (Snyder, 2019, Pg 23).”
Recognizing the Danger
I know I had trouble recognizing the danger I was in. I couldn’t comprehend Paul would actually harm me because I could never harm him. My heart and my head were saying different things.
My head knew I deserved better. My head knew I wasn’t bringing this abuse upon myself. My head knew the monster I was married to was not the man I fell in love with. My head ignored the “good times” and was focusing on the abuse. My head registered the danger, understood the severity and took charge into getting me out.
My heart, on the other hand, still remembered the beginning. The firefly lit walks under the moonlight. My heart remembered the plastic light-up ring Paul slipped on my finger in that dark movie theater. My heart remembered the promises that we would grow old together, watching our children grow. My heart believed he could be the man I married again. Even years later, my heart still cannot fathom that I was in real danger, that he would harm me. But he did, in so many ways.
I think, for most victims, the struggle between listening to what their head KNOWS and ignoring what their heart WANTS is the biggest battle. I am a very empathetic and understanding person. So learning to ignore my heart and listen to my head/instincts was one of my tallest mountains I had to climb. I didn’t want to, I liked following my heart.
Listening to my logical side instead of my emotional side required a lot. It involved mourning the dreams of our future together that would never be. It required learning to trust myself again. It required listening to my intuition. It required prioritizing myself again.
Toward the end of her abusive relationship, Leslie Morgan Steiner said, “But if it came to a choice between him or me, I knew I’d choose me (Steiner, 2009, Pg 247).” When it came to leaving Paul, I chose me (and my kids.) I made that choice and I never went back. I never made going back an option. My story is just one example of what abuse looks like. This is abuse.
References:
- TED. (2013, January 25). Why Domestic Violence Victims Don’t Leave | Leslie Morgan Steiner [Video]. YouTube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1yW5IsnSjo
- TED. (2018, February 6). The Courage to Leave | Norah Casey [Video]. YouTube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0hij-L5c-A
- Smith Metzler, M. (Writer) & Wells, J. (Director). (2021, October 1). Ponies. [Television series episode]. In Smith Metzler, M. (Creator). Maid. Netflix.
- Snyder, R.L. (2019) No Visible Bruises. Bloomsbury Publishing.
- Steiner, L.M. (2009) Crazy Love. St. Martin’s Press.
- Parental Narcissistic Abuse. (n.d.) Uploaded by Parental Narcissistic Abuse [Pinterest Post] Retrieved March 5, 2023, from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/433049320435649155/
- Selvaratnam, T. (2021) Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence. Harper Collins Publishers.