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People who are mentally strong and have zero self-esteem issues fall prey to abusers all the time. Self-esteem can definitely play a role, but it's not always the initial issue with the victim of an abuser.

Abusers are master manipulators and you are a just a mouse to play with at their will.

 

Well, from your experience isn't really cutting it - because you cant comprehend it. So I don;t think you should try to explain it when you honestly don't know anything about it.

Like I said - pick up some books about the psychology behind it. It pretty fascinating actually. That someone (the abuser) subconsciously can do the same thing that is done consciously as a method by educated people on the matter to break down people.

 

I understand that Bookie, they do have to be enforced. But they are effective in some situations. If someone wants you dead bad enough, they'll usually try to find a way, but I would think getting out and filing a restraining order would be preferable to just staying and waiting to be beaten to death?

I simply do not have it in me to remain in that type of situation for any reason, nor am I capable of trying to put on rose colored glasses and see it for something it's not, nor of wishing it would go away. I'm decisive and I act. In my experience, the problems you try to ignore or put on the back burner tend to be the ones that multiply and explode.

I'm not trying to minimize what you, or Pixie, or DB went through. I think anyone who abuses someone should be dealt with harshly. Truthfully it's really difficult for me to imagine anything that would keep me in that type of relationship, as I'd just find a way out. But I also have family to fall back on in an emergency. It would have to be a dire emergency for me to ask any of my family for help, but if I needed it they would handle whatever was necessary to ensure my safety and that of my children. I guess that's priceless.

 

I don't accept that. I wont accept that. I know we can't always be in control but its not in me to let someone make me their mouse. Not say I couldn't be hurt or even manipulated in the short term but I can't fathom that being my life.

 

I have read up on abuse (more accurately child abuse. To deal with the shit at home) and it all seems like playground bully behavior. Someone who can't manage their own pain who has to inflict in others. And like parasites they latch on to a willing host for as long as they can.

Like I said I just want to be happy and anyone who threatens that can't be apart of my life. The minute that start to be critical of me or. The things I love they have no place in my life. Manipulator or not. I do appreciate the insight you guys are giving me though.

 

i think someone here is missing the point...abuse is not just physical...someone that witnessed a parent abusing a spouse might say that they will never do that...then the arguing begins...the abuser never gives in or conceeds his fight...never admits he might be wrong...he just keeps harping and harping and harping...he feels the need to be right...then he gets a few jabs in about her personal appearance...gained a little weight honey since we got married...the next argument he yells a little louder...calls her a few more names...a few more insults...he gets in her face but he vows never to hit her because his father hit his mother...the arguments happen more frequently...the reason for the arguments get less important...it becomes about control...after every fight he feels remorse and says he is sorry...she doesn't have any bruises and no broken bones...but she is a broken woman...

newsflash: this is also an abuser

 

The vast majority of victims are not "willing" hosts.

And being an abused child myself, I can tell you that it's nothing like bullying, nothing. I'm not going into detail - but my step dad put me in the hospital 4 times, he tipped a book case over me, he threw a knife after me, chased me w broken bottles, set the dog on me in the middle of the night while I was sleeping,a nd ran me out of the house in -20 degrees in the middle of the night, I can go on and on, he would apologize but later justify what he did. I was a child and had nowhere to go, I told school, I told my dad, I even cut school to go to social services - NOONE intervened, they didn't take me seriously. I was certainly not a willing victim - except for the times where I purposefully diverted his temper and anger from my mom to me, which happened frequently. But that is because I was STRONG, my mother wasn't.
I left when I was 15 and had I not done so, either him, or me would end up dead, and that is a fact.

Far from bullying
This is the mentality of many abusers, its like a mental disease and there is no rationale and they usually don't even know why they do what they do. Its directed to anyone that happen to be in the way and if you live with them, sooner or later you will be in the way.

He never managed to break me, ever, in fact, it made me stronger.. and I saw straight thought that shit and was very well aware of what to look for. When I did 6 mo into a relationship found the guy having abusive tendencies, I did leave, but it was such a close call because he was a master manipulator. I know someone is going to say that I went that way because I was raised in abuse - that is not the case, it was despite of it.

Having all that said, as a way to try to fix myself and my complete lack of trust of everybody and my anger issues (both long gone btw), I read a lot about abuse and how women slowly end up stuck..
I was angry at my mother for not doing anything - anyone that knows her, knows she is one of the strongest people you will ever met - and yet she ended up an abuse victim.. it was part of my way to understand what happened to her and forgiving her....

Ok, this is WAY out of my comfort zone, WAY, somehow it just had to be said.. no y'all know more about me than 99% of my friends. Ouch.

 

I think you just described someone on this very forum.

 

Unless the abuse was *of* the kids, you won't get supervised visitation, and you'll still have to make visitation arrangements even if you do, so you'll still have to have contact. Restraining orders mean *nothing.* When I moved one town over, mine was then null and void anyway - I'd have to refile in the new location. They don't protect you, and they don't protect your kids. An angry abusive ex can kill you long before you can get to a phone and call the police.

I agree it's much better for kids *not* to be in an abusive household, but in many cases the abused spouse fears for their safety if she leaves - and far too often, if you read the papers, she's right.

Abusers are not right in the head. They are control freaks, they are often sociopaths - but those things are not enough to lock them up until they do something illegal - and even then they get released. I don't think a week passes that we don't hear about some guy losing it and killing his ex spouse or ex girlfriend and/or kids to punish her for leaving. It's really, truly frightening to have to deal with people like that - terror is not too strong a word when you fear your kids may be killed. And so some stay, hoping against hope that they can protect the kids if they are there all the time, hoping they won't do anything to set the abuser off the next time, that if they just don't do anything "wrong" it'll be ok - and certainly less scary than turning your kids over for a weekend visit with someone who has threatened to murder you or them - or who has told you repeatedly they'll take off with your children and you'll never see them again. Most of them are smart enough not to say that in front of witnesses, so if you go into court and tell the judge that he's threatened to kidnap your kids, you get accused of "Parental Alienation Syndrome" and can lose custody entirely.

In circumstances like that, even without dealing with the effects of physical abuse, it's really hard to figure out in the heat of it what the *right* answer is. All the answers seem to be really risky, and it can be pretty paralyzing.

 

It is. Another piece of the very complex puzzle is pride. It's really hard, especially for a bright, independent person to go to their family and say "I fucked up so badly. I married an abuser and I'm being abused." One of the reasons that's so hard to do is because of statements and questions about how could one *possibly* stay in that situation. How did you allow yourself to be manipulated that way??

In my case, and again, I stress it wasn't mostly a physical thing, it helped that when I put my son in therapy so he'd have a neutral adult to talk to during the divorce process, his therapist identified my ex as a sociopath (he'd met him and spent several sessions with him). I had all those same questions - how could I have let this happen? What red flags did I miss? How could someone like *me* have ended up this way??

He told me that my ex was a sociopath, and they are masterful at what they do. He said that there *were* no red flags I missed, that there was no way for me to know what my ex was until he chose to show it to me. I had a really hard time coming to terms with that, and it took some time.

Sociopaths are NOT identifiable up front. That's their stock in trade. In fact, they are charming as all hell.

 

Never meet a sociopath. Truly, that's about the only way to guarantee it, Drae.

 

There was a story on the radio a few weeks ago about a woman that called the police on her estranged husband, who she had a restraining order on - She said he just left her house and had threatened to come back and kill her - "if they will not come, my husband will kill me".... They never sent a dispatch, she was one hour later found DEAD in her car. She apparently decided to go after her husband after the police never showed up. Bad move yes, but still.

They played the tape and she didn't sound scared, she was seething. The police said they didnt dispatch because of that, she didn't sound like she was in imminent danger.. and yet, they had cars patrolling in the neighborhood it turns out.
When I heard the 911 tape, I KNEW her anger... not all abuse victims are scared and crying. The police should have enough education on this to have sent out a car anyhow - she did have a restraining order and there were several arrests on the husband and that should have been looked into.

 

I'm sorry you got pulled out of your comfort zone, but I thank you for sharing your experiences with us. I assumed you were speaking from a place of knowledge from your posts, and you were. I'm sorry you went through that, FG

 

I'm sorry to tell you this, Andrae, but I have been in several abusive situations, so I'm both fortunate and not to know firsthand what it's like to be abused by family and by someone who claims to love me. I had to figure out where that came from, and why, and I stand by what I said to you in my previous post.

 

This is another reason that sometimes rape charges don't get filed by the DA. The woman isn't acting "victim-like" enough, as though every single person being raped or everyone being abused is going to react the same way.

No one in my entire life has EVER made me as angry as my ex husband, or come remotely close. When I tell you I tossed him out because I realized one of us was going to end up dead, and that my son didn't need a mother in jail, I'm not really making a joke. I realized I could have gleefully disemboweled him with a dull grapefruit knife and a satisfied smile on my face. THAT scared the hell out of me much more than he ever did.

My ex boyfriend I mentioned said the same thing to me today about his gf. Funny, in all the years we were together, he tried, but he never really understood what I was talking about regarding my ex husband. He gets it now, sadly.

 

http://www.ncadv.org/files/DomesticViolenceFactSheet(National).pdf

A story about restraining orders failing: http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/res...nce-victims-call-enforcement/story?id=9999086

A report by the Equal Justice Foundations entitled "Protection Orders Do Not Protect" http://www.dvmen.org/dv-14.htm

 

I do know that feeling you mentioned, that is why I left when I was 15.

I am sorry as well for what you went thought but I am sure you agree w me when I say that it feels it happened to someone else. I have let my past go a very long time ago. I do feel sorry for that kid I was that never felt safe or could trust or never had a childhood - but not me.. if that makes sense.


I am very worry for your x having to experience this. Women can be just as abusive as men.

 

The other think I feel I have to mention is that people that are subject to violent abuse exhibit the exact same tendencies as civilians in wars. That has been proven again and again.

You actually feel safer when shit is going down, its far more unsettling to wait for it to happen, knowing it will. This may explain some of the behavior you see in some victims, such as not leaving.. even if you leave, you may not be able to get away.. some abusers don't even give a shit about their own safety etc, they only want to get to their victim... so living in it as an abuse victim may even feel safer than to constantly wait for shit to blow, not knowing when. This has been extensively studied. As society don't really support the victims, they have tried to get away..and nothing is done, they give up, as they cant get away, being tracked all over the country - this is not unusual.

Others go on a revenge tirade as it is safer than to wait to be killed. There is psychologically a lot more to the subject than many make it out to be.
To say, not allowing yourself to be a victim is extremely naive as that many times is not your choice, you can not get away - unless someone gives you a new identity.

Not all victims express what we deem victim mentality - it may be because of your original state of mind or how we are conditioned to react to threat or where you are in the wear-down of you psyche and emotional state, people are different - but everyone can be subject to this, it just may take different type of "wear-down"" if you will. .

Nobody is excluded from becoming, everybody has their breaking point. Only a few can not be broken and they usually have professional training to not succumb.

It is all in that initial subtle manipulation to make someone a victim and once you realize that, its too late. Even discussing the blame in the victim is offensive to me.. of course you play a role, but more often than not, its unknowingly and unwittingly, once you realize that.. well.. as I said, its too late. More people get away before its going too bad, but why is that? Is it really that the victim was too strong or was it because the abuser was not "good" enough?

Of course some people are easy victims but that is not by far the "one-fix-all"answer to the problem as abuse victims come from all walks of life.. it probably have more to do with the abuser.... its all a concoction of many circumstances that all fall together make a "lethal" combo and you'r done for...
Never think you can't end up there, I think that is a danger in itself.
As I said, extremely few are not subject to the potential to become a victim of recurrent abuse and they are usually trained professionals. It just ks the right combination.

Its even worse for abused men, as they have an even bigger stigma and blame and misunderstanding than abused women to deal with.

 

you've had some major crapola dished to you in your life wifey, and every time i hear a little more about your life, a greater & deeper appreciation for you grows, as well as love. i admire you and all that you have overcome and achieved and faced and battled, and am so grateful for the love, support and friendship you have shown me. i love you wifey xxx

 

it is unfortunate but true that the person i describe is more likely to become an abuser than to be abused...they may not even realize that their behavior is abusive...it will be explained away as the other person is bat shit crazy and drove me to do it...this person has a hard time looking in the mirror to see who they really are...they have idealistic view of themselves that does not emulate their actions...