Any way is okay

If you’ve been in a relationship with someone who has been abusing you, and you decide to end it, I think that any way you do it is okay. Short of physical violence that is, unless that’s your only way to escape. People who act all injured and victimized because their victim finally got the strength to walk away make me sick. If you’re being an abusive jerk then you should expect that sooner or later you’re going to lose that person one way or another.

4 Comments

Post a Comment

The problem here...

Nov 19, 2018 at 1:32pm

.... is that gullible people have been convinced that it is "abuse" to do everything from contradicting someone to raising one's voice with someone. Life is not a game of "always on" customer service. If you look at the behavior standard adopted in the last decade and change, it's basically a customer service standard, like, people are taught "yelling is abuse" because yelling at a customer might lose a sale---but is "abuse" every negative behavior, or is abuse something meatier than that?

Leaving a relationship is always a matter of both parties---this game of psyching oneself up to leave by proclaiming how "abusive" one's partner is, that's silly. People can break up without medicalizing/psychologizing/legalizing their incompatibility with another person.

@the problem here

Nov 19, 2018 at 1:48pm

YES. Thank you!!! I agree wholeheartedly.

@the problem

Nov 19, 2018 at 6:59pm

“Abuse” may be subjective. However, I don’t think most people would have a problem saying that constantly criticizing, behaving with no empathy, saying cruel things, making the other person the butt of jokes (really just more criticism disguised as humour), taking advantage, gaslighting, lying, never taking responsibility, being extremely controlling, being completely hypocritical, mean, vain, evasive, cold and callous, and just generally acting like a jerk, is anything other than abusive behaviour. It’s typical of abusive people to try to justify and excuse their behaviour by ridiculing their target; one of their favourite tactics is to accuse the other person of being “too sensitive”, “unable to take a joke”, etc. The clue is that if the person doing all the criticizing, belittling, gaslighting, denying, lying, and controlling loses their mind if the other person does any of those things to them. They can always dish it out, but they can never take it.

@@the problem

Nov 20, 2018 at 9:33am

That sounds a lot like my mother, so, obviously, I am the one who is stupid and doesn't understand how people should behave. She has always done all of those things, and her mother did all of those things too, when she was still alive.

You've described her down to a T---my older brother ended up killing himself to deal with the pain that this abuse, day in, day out, caused.

But I am still here, and I still have to deal with her, so thinking it is abuse, where is that going to get me?

So, is it that I am being abused, or that I am just not sufficiently motivated to change my situation? I'm not allowed to think that the problem is that this sort of abuse, from age 0 onward, has any negative effects, I'm supposed to think that the "abuse" is really just true commentary on my inadequacy, and on my father's inadequacy, and on my dead sibling's inadequacy, etc. Or it's just a joke or I am too sensitive. Exactly as you say.

Oh, and gaslighting, I dropped out of it when I was very young, but she managed to convince my brother he was mentally ill, mostly because he would fight if she abused him, I'd just go read a book in my room and ignore her.

So, you know, I half agree with you, I just don't think you're being realistic about people's ability to extricate themselves from every situation and how knowing that behavior is abusive actually makes my situation worse. Since I realized she was abusive, it's been much harder to provide the care she needs as she ages, and I do feel obligated to do it---partly because there is nobody else, and I wonder why that is.

But I was happier when I wasn't quite sure what was going on---now that I am quite sure I'm being abused, what does it get me?

Join the Discussion

What's your name?