I’m reading some other threads on the whole abuser - victim dynamic, and on a personal note in talking to my daughter about what she puts up with a long distance relationship she is struggling to maintain with a dysfunctional jackass who calls her names, abuses her friends in public Facebook rants, and insists she focus on “him”… at a certain point you really have to wonder.
With a lot of victims it seems they have been warned point blank, over and over by their friends that they are being abused and manipulated, but hold onto these relationship’s like gold despite an avalanche of warnings. How sorry should a person feel for someone who has received every reasonable heads up, and still seeks out relationships with abusive people?
Some people are frightened to leave and others have emotional issues. Someone staying in an obviously abusive relationship isn’t well, at least in my opinion, and deserves some sympathy.
many of them may not have " street smarts" or be very naive or even be so brainwashed by society that they think they NEED a man no matter how crappy that man is.
An ex friend of mine was with an abusive asshole who controlled her every move, hit her and basicly abused her. Her MOM even told her to get out of the realtionship. But there was something not penitrating her wiring. I still don’t get why she just didn’t dump him.
Also some of them may be “wimps” (shy away from confrontation) or just be convinced that they’re happy or that the guy (or girl) is a good person and people just don’t see it.
I think there is some poorly understood but hard to change feature of human psychology that makes it practically impossible for some people in these situations to leave. Maybe even a set of features that also makes it practically impossible for the abusive partner to stop. I think it’s an example of the kind of thing that will get much better at some point in the future as understanding of our nature grows.
In any case, I can’t think of another description of the situation that isn’t bizarrely paradoxical.
They do deserve sympathy because unless you personally have been in that situation, you have no idea how hard it is to leave. It’s very easy on the outside to be like “doesn’t she see it? Why isn’t she leaving?” but being on the inside is soul-crushingly immobilizing.
I can see being tired of helping, tired of being sucked into it, tired of watching it, but regardless of whether or not she should leave (and leaving can be more dangerous), someone is abusing her.
As a society we really need to stop blaming the victim and start pointing it at the abuser: Why does he do it? Can we get him to stop and how? What can we do to make it easier for her to leave?
I disagree. There is no shortage of bad people out there; we will never eradicate our society of abusers. Therefore, it is incumbent upon me to make sure I don’t live with one of these people.
If I do live with an abusive person, and I make a conscious choice not to leave, then I do not deserve pity.
Is there some reason we can’t do both? Because here’s the thing…
Why does he do it?* Because he can. Because she lets him. Can we get him to stop? Probably not. But she can. She could, for instance, leave. Pressing charges would also be good.
*What can we do to make it easier for her to leave? * We’ve done plenty. There are shelters, there are programs, there are laws. Nobody expects a woman to just live with that anymore.
Staying with an abuser is being complicit in your abuse, and yeah, you bear some of the blame.
I lived with an emotional abuser for nine years. I hesitate to call myself a “victim,” because in many ways, I really did choose to remain in the situation. At least, getting out of it was a “choice,” so I suppose living with it was a choice, too.
In my case, I didn’t need or even want pity or sympathy or “poor things” or whatever. What I needed, and often didn’t get from my friends or family, was help, support, and honesty. Again, that was mostly my fault, because the abused carry a huge amount of shame about their situation around with them and are reluctant to speak out about it.
But still, I could have probably cut my time-to-out by about half if somebody I trusted would have said to me, early on, that my ex-wife’s behavior was really fucked up and unacceptable, and they could no longer support us as a couple. I probably wouldn’t have reacted well, but it would have put me on the path toward recovery a lot quicker.
It took me venting about a particularly nasty episode to a group of anonymous strangers on the Internet (thanks, SDMB!) to get me moving in the right direction.
I’m not angry at the people in my life who stood by while I lived in that situation - I fully accept that it was my responsibility to get out of it, and really, nobody knows what the right thing to do is in that situation until they’ve experienced it first hand. But still, I can’t help but wonder what would have happened had the people closest to me shown me some tough love early on rather than biting their tongues.
Never underestimate the damaging effects of being beaten into submission. Yeah, read that again. Beaten ‘into submission’. There’s a whole lot of your soul sucked out when you have been thus treated.
Slave owners learn quickly, once they’ve beaten the slave into submission, they may raise their hand to them again, beat them again, but likely not ‘into submission’ a second time. It’s like breaking a horse, once it’s broken, well, it’s broken. It may still buck, from time to time, but a strong swift hand and the will to fight is gone. Sometimes forever.
Be honest, would you take a second beating ‘into submission’ from the same combatant? Or would you realize you were out powered and submit?
As for not being able to hear wisdom when it’s being proffered, we are all guilty of that, I think. Sometimes, in life, you just can’t hear what the whole world is trying to tell you until you’re ready to hear it. Regular beatings are only going to complicate the learning curve, truly.
Now couple that physical beating with an emotional beatdown at the same time. While I’m pounding on you I’ll remind you of how you deserve it, how worthless you are, how you’re making me do this horrible thing, etc, etc. Since I cut you off from the herd, (family and friends), before I started in with the beatings, I’ll also point out that no one cares what I do to you, you have no where to go, etc, etc. Nothing adds extra ooomph to any arguing point like coupling it with a punch or a kick.
Now throw in some children, you’ll take it and like it or I’ll start in on them.
Now be sure to stir in some sobbing regrets, promises to never again, tenderness from the very hands that delivered that beating. Confused yet?
It is never as easy as just getting up and walking away. And it’s woefully naive to think it is.
Well, for one, most abusers make a point of alienating their victims from their friends and family (even those who are charming enough to win them over – then the victim gets the added bonus of hearing how lucky they are to land such a catch just as they’re having doubts about the relationship). Sometimes they force them to choose, sometimes they lie to them about what they’ve heard these people say about them, and they always count on manipulating the person’s already low self-esteem. If they’ve convinced someone that they are shit and no one else will have them, what motivation do they have to leave the relationship? They’ve been told – and they truly believe – that this is their one shot at anyone ever loving them. It’s Stockholm Syndrome. Telling them to smarten up can be a bit like telling someone who’s depressed to get happy (not that I don’t think it’s helpful to confront them about the abuse – though sometimes all you can do is point it out and tell them you can’t support it, so you’ll be out of the picture until they need your help).
There is also an element, often, of proving people wrong. If you’ve been warned by your friends and family and fought with them, explaining that they can’t know the ‘real’ person you’re in love with, only to discover that they were right, it can be embarrassing. We’d all like to think we’re smart and savvy enough to never become a victim, so we’ve got to find some weakness in the character of ‘those people’ that makes them fall prey to abusers – they’re meek, they’re uneducated, they’re bad judges of character, they have traditional values – which makes it all the harder to recognize or admit being in an abusive relationship.
It’s also worth noting that, like rapists and child molesters, most of these people don’t lurk in alleyways, snarling and kicking puppies. They are nice, they are sweet, and the lows are often paired with extreme highs. Sometimes the lows don’t come out until a kid is born. I’ve heard victims of abuse (both from partners and parents) compare themselves to addicts – they’ve been down so long, they’ll do anything to get some approval.
Plus leaving can be hard, even without kids or a mortgage. What would you do – in real life, not Hollywood – if someone told you you had to pick up and leave tomorrow. Can’t take your things, can’t keep your job, the bank account’s out of your control and, oh yeah, this is the point in your relationship where the person you once (and maybe still) loved is the most likely to take your life. Do you have friends who would take you in for a month (even after you severed communication with them or fought it out over your relationship)? How much money do you have saved up that your partner can’t access? Do you know where your closest domestic shelter is? Does your partner? Do you know what you need to get a restraining order? Do you know what the stats are like on the actual effectiveness of restraining orders against abusers, and how many are found among the possessions of murder victims?
Again, I think it’s natural to get frustrated with people in abusive relationships. Even people who work with abuse victims sometimes want to, god help them, slap them upside the head. But they don’t just have a screw loose. Most have been raised to believe that’s all they deserve, or that that is how people express love. Hell, how many people thought Justin Timberlake’s video (I forget the one, but he’s wrenching a woman’s arm in it) was sexy? Or wondered what Rihanna did to deserve getting beaten up? How long has domestic abuse been anything but a private matter or a property crime?
You’re not all saying the same things, but you’re all getting lumped in together because I’m in a bad mood.
First of all, who are you that it even matters whether you’ll deign to offer your pity? Go ahead and not feel sorry and insist the victims share the blame. Are you trying to convince other people to stop being sympathetic, or what? What does one ordinarily need to do to ‘deserve’ sympathy?
Secondly, what the christ do you really think these people are choosing, exactly? Like you think they wake up in the morning and go, well, he beat the fuck out of me again but I just don’t feel like fixing it because fixing it would be haaaaard, wah wah? I can’t even conceive of a perspective that leads to the conclusion that, you know, fuck 'em, it’s their own stupid fault. It’s quite a bit more complicated than that. The psychology involved fills tomes and has already been touched upon, and each situation has its own unique complications in terms of where to go, who to stay with, what happens financially, etc., but for a lot of people just the actual mechanics involved in getting help are a huge burden.
If you’re in a dangerous situation, you need to get help. How do you do that? Well, there’s a petition for a Protection From Abuse order that’s about 25 pages long that you can fill out. You can download it and print it at home if you have the means to do so, unless you think maybe that wouldn’t be safe, in which case come on down to the courthouse. You know what a plaintiff and a defendant are, and the abuser’s SSN and driver’s license numbers, right? So, just read the half a dozen pages of legal definitions and such, fill out the form properly, and then hand-deliver the petition in person at the courthouse. It’s all English, you know, and it’s just standard stuff:
It’ll just take a minute or two. Don’t do it wrong, now! Don’t forget that you need the original and two copies! Your choice: you can wait for the temporary order to be granted (or not) or you can come back later for it. Your call; no biggie. Maybe this seems like too much of a hassle; just use your attorney. Do you have an attorney?
Oh, and you don’t work daytime hours, do you? We’re open 8:30 to 5 and, you know, it can take a while for these things to get processed. Once we get it done, though, rest assured, the police will be able to serve the defendant with a TRO and you’re all set until the actual hearing, where we’ll start afresh. Almost there!
Those are just the practical barriers. Plenty of people manage to navigate them, and there are resources available (sometimes) to assist in the process. But if you don’t know a thing about any of it, and who does, pretty much all you’ve got is calling the police. Do you do it while you aren’t being beaten, when everything seems normal and you’d have to actually create the disruption, or do you do it at the height of the violence while you’re being attacked and trying to literally defend yourself? Do you plan your escape in advance in terms of who to contact, what to do with your stuff, where do you stay, how do you keep yourself safe, and all that, or do you just run away?
Beyond all that, jesus, they’re being abused. You require more than that before your sympathy can be risked? On behalf of the victims, some of whom don’t speak the language, don’t know a damn thing about the legal machinations involved, have young kids and don’t know pretty much anyone outside the family who can share the burden a little (and have probably been systematically isolated and prevented from getting close to anyone in any event by the person responsible for the abuse), yeah, you can just hold on to your sympathy; it isn’t worth much.
What I’m curious is how these two types of people- abuser and abusee, seem to meet in the first place. Not to try to dredge up the ‘women date jerks’ fallacy here, but I’m wondering why these types of (usually women) are dodging the nurturing, friendly, and romantic guys and seemingly throwing themselves into the arms of emotionally distant, moody and angry guys. Note that I didn’t say Nice Guys/Jerks because I’m trying to get beyond that fallacy here.
Do some [abused] women honestly believe that if they meet a guy that would never hit them, he might be too good to be true? Maybe in a masochistic kind of way they are addicted to the emotional rollercoaster, the highs and lows. I know from firsthand experience that the whole ‘making up’ after a really emotional argument/fight can be weirdly euphoric, almost like a drug. I’m wondering if some people subconsciously chase that feeling.
Part of the answer to that question is that there’s no such thing as An Abuser, you know? A woman meets a guy, maybe she falls in love with him, maybe she doesn’t, but he’s just a guy. Most victims don’t get slapped on the first date. So in the worst scenario, you’ve got a husband and wife who are married to each other because they love each other, and then you’ve got an element of abuse introduced. It is difficult to overstate the degree of confusion and the level of frustration and doubt involved when something like that happens, and it leads, obviously, to some objectively irrational behavior. But then again, the victim in that case is put in a position of trying to deal with the truth of two facts (that of love and that of abuse) which, though they seem completely contradictory, are each equally supported by the evidence.
If I put you in the shoes of a woman and sent you on a speed dating rotation or had you flip through some online dating profiles or something, you might expect to be able to isolate likely abusers from otherwise, but you’d be mistaken, unfortunately. It isn’t written on their faces. The only thing they all have in common is that they abuse.
Sadly, I think you’ve hit on something as far as the repeat element is concerned. Sometimes a woman grows to feel as though love comes with a certain degree of emotional explosiveness, such that an even-keeled kind of stable love that never blows up feels less “real.” E.g., you know, we had a disagreement about something and you seemed to just accept that we didn’t agree, and that feels like you don’t care because it doesn’t even matter to you. So there’s an element of conditioning there.
A lot of women have also been threatened, as in, “if you try to leave me, I’ll kill you.” Sometimes, they also live in fear of their children, parents, other family being hurt as well.
First of all, I’m going to get myself in trouble and just speak honestly. I believe that the reason certain women are abused lies with the fact that they are of a certain personality that makes them ‘abusable’. This is just my opinion, based on several women that I know that have been abused by everyman that they date. I don’t know if it is their docile nature, but I do know that not a single man I have ever dated in my entire life ever tried to abuse me, and I credit that to personality. It just aint gonna happen.
Of course that is just my good luck to have the kind of personality that a man knows he can’t abuse, and it is just my friend’s bad luck that she has the kind of personality that makes certain men think they can get away with abusing her. So, for that reason,* I am not blaming her at all. * It is not her fault that she lacks that certain ‘dominance’ that makes a man know not to try no shit.
I will say this though. I find it awfully flip of people to just dismiss the huge psychological effect that being abused can have on a person. I mean, really. Just leave? There is no psychological trauma, or anything stopping her? You can sit down in a lab for 5 hours, and researchers will have you zapping your best friend with taser after messing with your head with just the data they have on the first page of their clip board. So don’t presume that these women can ‘just leave’ when they have been under the freakin’ psycho-traumatic game playing of an abusive lunatic.
They often aren’t. My first husband was nurturing, funny and very charming everyone told me how lucky I was. Then after he moved me away from friends and family the beating started. I saw him kill my cat and was told he would do the same to my family then me.
His mistake was getting me a job so he wouldn’t have to work. I worked at a fast food place where I had several young men who were regular customers. They saw my bruises and offered help, when I explained my fears they told my boss I quit and took me to a safe place then went out and found Mr. Wonderful. He left the state the next day. It was a long time before I stopped looking over my shoulder in fear.
Tinkertoy, I’m sorry for what happened to you. But he killed your cat, and it never occurred to you to go to the cops? They have cops wherever it was he dragged you to, right? For that matter, did he never sleep? Because that motherfucker’s bed would have burned that night, if it had been me.
I’m glad that those boys helped you out. But what if they hadn’t? Would you still be there?
I’m not without sympathy. I know that it’s hard. But hard is not the same thing as impossible, and I can’t fathom doing nothing.
If you’d burned the cat killer’s bed that night, you would have been charged with murder. If you killed him in self defense, in the middle of a fight, you might well get off. Do you outweigh him? Do you have combat training? Alas–the abused woman* who strikes back at the abuser later, when his guard is down, doesn’t always get proper consideration in court. The jury will include some who just can’t fathom why she didn’t leave immediately.
Personally, I doubt I’d be caught in such a relationship. But I know that other people are different from me.
Yes, I know that males* can* be victims of female abusers. But physical strength & economic matters give bad men greater power over their victims. And–if abused females face contempt from some when they seek help–how much harder is it for a man to confess “weakness”?