“The Mystery of Loving an Abuser” Comments, Page 15
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174 Responses (2 Discussion Threads) to “The Mystery of Loving an Abuser”
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Andrew
141ps. I am not much of a typist really as you can see and not a native speaker. I did not reread what I have written. I can advise to all victims that the best help they can get is from their families and humour, at least those were the factors that have helped me to finish the matter I think. My personal motto is in the matter is.
WHAT DOES NOT KILL YOU … MAKES YOU STRONGER. -
Andrew142
I reared my comment again and it is a jumbled mess of a composition. :)
Just one funny bit for those still suffering:Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it.
Woody Allen
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Nicky
143Dr Carver
Thankyou, I have just read your articles on identifying a loser & stockholm syndrome. I have been with my partner for seven years and I believe I have this syndrome and the man I am with has seventeen of the twenty characteristics of a loser. I am working on my exit plan again! I am hoping this time will be successful and I will finally be free. This hope would not be possible without the love and encouragement of my family, the abuse is never mentioned anymore nor are insistences that I should leave. They simply let me know that I am much loved, that they are proud of me and there is a spare room with my name on it. Without this support an exit plan would not be possible, so I consider myself a very fortunate woman.
Oddly enough my partner & I were friends for a year before becoming romantically involved and I believed him to be the sweetest man I’d ever met. Everyone loved & respected him, there were no signs. Everyone still loves & respects him, with the exception of my family, although they treat him in a friendly and respectful manner. He is the operations manager for a successful civil engineering company and is held in high regard. Friends find it extremely hard to believe he could be so violent so encourage us to make up, ‘you’re such a great couple’, ‘we love you guys’ ‘you seem so right together’.
It has been nearly 10 months since the last violent attack in which I really believed I would die. He strangled me three times whilst bashing my head against the wall, whilst strangling me the second time my eyes started bulging out of their sockets, he told me he knew he would go to gaol for this but he didn’t care, I then blacked out. Interestingly I didn’t fight back, my arms were by my side the whole time, like I was surrendering to my fate. When I came to, my whole body was jerking and twitching on the floor and he was standing with his back to me playing with his video camera. I stood up shaking with adrenalin, fear and idignation and asked him stridently how he felt, if he felt like a big man now, he strangled me again, this time I carfully positioned myself and kneed him in the groin, he then backed off and it was all over. I then went and had a cigarete. When I came back I helped him up off the floor where he lay crying amongst the debris of a broken chair, broken glass and damaged computer, which he destroyed before he turned on me, and put him to bed. My family do not know of this incident.
Over the next six months I became a master of control and manipulation, ( I had a good teacher, I knew his every move)I felt my life depended on it, whilst I planned my escape. Unfortunately this resulted in severe depression, I felt I had lost myself that I had become someone I no longer respected, this coupled with the high level of anxiety involved in controling another persons actions, I burned out and lost my courage.
I have since abandoned the previously stated survival tactics of manipulation and control and am no longer depressed. I also no longer take his insults, put-downs and punishments personally. My new weapons are courage and a clear mind and the love and encouragement of my family is my armour. I am alive and I am not afraid and one day I will be free.
I have tried to leave three times in the last ten months (eight times in seven years). On my second attempt I managed to get as far as one days drive of a six day journey away( my family live five and a half thousand kilometers away). I always thought it was love or desperation or the lack of finances or options which kept me coming back but I have recently discovered the concept of ‘escalation of commitment’ referring to business where managers throw more and more resources into a strategy that is inefficient & ineffective because they are unwilling to accept that they made a wrong decision. It seems as your article suggests that this is the case. This is very encouraging, ‘fore-warned is fore-armed’. I can simply acknowledge that it was the wrong decision and be a responsibe manager of my life and refuse to invest any further in a relationship or person where there is no ‘real’ hope of return. This is the new mantra, like wearing garlic to keep away vampires, I will keep this in my heart & mind and hopefully when the time comes for him to play on my heart & hope strings and urges me to give it one more try, that he finaly ‘gets it’, that we’ve come so far and invested too much to give up now, I will remember that the evidence clearly suggests that it would be wiser to invest elsewhere and more wisely ( like family, friends, not his, education and a life)and never throw good love after bad again.
So it seems there is a return for all this investment but it comes only upon leaving. The gaining of wisdom is not such a bad return after all. Wish me luck.
Thankyou again. Here’s to freedom, cheers.PS perhaps you could make this site accessable under the domestic violence search also. I only found this site because I googled stockholm syndrome. Perhaps more people could be helped and sooner if it was more accessable. This is the only online information I have found to be helpful in my situation.
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MiaFran
144I left comments last July on the Are You Dating a Loser blog. Since then, steps were taken to exit from the psychologically abusive relationship I was in, and wow.
The first thing I noticed is that I can sleep at night.
I can study for school without feeling guilty about being in school.
I get up, rested, and go to either school, or work.Before I left, I looked for people who God put in my path to guide me.
Some knew and some didn’t know, it wasn’t important for everyone to know what was happening.
All the help I could imagine, appeared. There was good counsel from my counselor, student to keep my mind on my least favorite subject, math, so I could pass with a smile on my face,Thank you and I hope we meet again! Professor who said she understood and was encouraging to me, relatives, all who helped keep my head above water.
Every one of these people cares and is respectful toward me, unlike my husband, soon to be X.And yes, I am very disappointed. When I got married, I didn’t sign up for WORSE. I signed up for”To Love and to Cherish from this day forward, to death do us part.” Hmmm. I made an OK hood ornament for him, but I had no partner. Just a manipulator.
Ahhh. Freeeeeeeeedommmmmmmmm.
I did have one PANG once, after I left and filed for divorce.
It was that, “Gee, I wonder if he’ll be ok without me…..” thing.I made a lousy “Martyr”. For me the need to be teary-eyed got boring and stupid, kind of like the other woman he was with.
I thought, how pitiful that I can’t think for myself. Who the hell does he think he is? God?Yeah well, anyway, that repugnant Baggage Handling job? It’s up for grabs. Any Takers? That other woman may yet be interested. They can be teary-eyed together, comfy and cozy.
As for me, I have the need to continue healing. I appreciate this website very much. Very helpful stuff.
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145
To MiaFran: Congrats on returning to a healthy life! You’ve shown the value of making an “Exit Plan” as I describe in my articles. As you mention, the eventual escape is the result of a combination of positive things – our faith, our supportive and caring others, new information available to us, and a change in our attitude. You’ll find that your family and friends were waiting patiently for you to return, actually fearful that you would never escape and be lost forever in relationship hell.
Dr. Mulhauser and I are happy to have contributed to your escape and your new, healthy life. Best wishes and welcome to a good nights sleep. Dr. Carver
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146
Hi All,
For those of you in the south Florida area of the United States, I’ll be presenting a workshop on “How to Identify, Avoid, or Detach from Manipulators, Controllers, and Abusers” on May 20th in West Palm Beach, Florida. The workshop will be held at the Palm Beach County Convention Center and is sponsored by Loserrx.com. Additional information and registration is available on the Loserrx.com website. I want to give special thanks to Dr. Greg Mulhauser of Counselling Resources for his support of this workshop. Thanks — Dr. Carver
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Wendy
147To Andrew:
Don’t worry about how you expressed yourself in your posts – your story came through loud and clear. I know it seems very personal and unique, but it is also very typical. It sounds as if you have really “seen through her” now, and although your instincts tell you to try to help her, your knowledge of the situation tells you you cannot. Very frustrating and sad, but lots of people go through this. Hope you have continued to separate from her, and that you are doing OK.
To Nicky:
How are things going? Have you escaped? Hope you are managing OK. I loved the concept you mentioned of “escalation of commitment”. In my situation, I realized this was happening but I didn’t have a term for it. Having invested as much as I had in a friendship I believed in, the worse it got the harder I tried! And the better I became at sidestepping his landmines. In the end, to justify his anger, he simply had to make up stories about me and accuse me with those. That’s what it took to make me finally see the light – that I could not maintain this relationship, and that his behaciour had nothing to do with my actions. Again, common themes.
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Andrew147.1
To Wendy:
Thank you for the comment, and also thank you for your concern.
I am doing fairly well on separating from my ex, I am in a new relationship now, doing ok I could say. My only concern is that these kinds of experiences are very hard to forget, even if in my case there way no formal bond between me and my ex, no children, etc. After my experience I realized, that i have become more reserved and cautious in my present relationship, and my self-esteem is in a quite sorry state but building up steadily.
So once again thank you for the concern and the comment.:)
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Josh
148Dear Dr. Carver,
My friend, a stockholm syndrome survivor, has taken a very positive turn: She is going to contest her divorce from a savagely abusive husband and her therapist is going to write a statement to support her case of stickholm syndrome as a cause for contesting their divorce. Something seemingly miraculous has begun to happen for this one victim; only God knows how far she will go in exposing her abuser and fighting him for custody of the children, financial compensation, etc., but it is evident she has had a major internal change and is now revealing the truth of her abuse to friends and family. I want to see her victorious, of course, and as healthy as she can be, and well-armed with all the support she can gather against a very shrewd and ruthless abuser, and so I ask you: Are there any S.S. specialists in the New York area who could help her with “de-programing” and also aid her in her case of exposing her abuser and contesting his absolutely crimnal divorce agreement?
Also: Are there women’s support groups (battered and sexually abused women’s support groups…again, in the N.Y. area)which you know of that have successfully testified on behalf of wives in divorce cases?
Thank you so much for having this post. You have helped so many people to understand the unexplainable. God bless you. And thanks for any and all advice and guidance.
Josh -
Kath
149Dr. Carver,
It’s wonderful to understand the problems and even the causes of stockholm syndrome. What do the families do when they are so heartbroken and can’t see and end to the pain?
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Jill
150My brother is a victim of abuse, and we are all certain he has Stockholm Syndrome. His wife, abuser, has managed to alienate all of us, three sisters and his own 81yr old mother……through much brainwashing and manipulation, he has turned on all of us.
He left her and they were seperated for 9 months. During that time, we all saw what he had been living in for 15 years. He seems a shell of a person…he could never not answer her incessant phone calls, most to just cuss him and beat him down, and of course, not letting him see his two children, having the children say mean things to him, anything that could hurt him. Anything!
She called his executive job over 40 times a day, every day.
He is now unemployed, partially because of that.
When he was separated, he still gave every penny to her..and lived off of 40.00 a week. He listens to no one about anything, but believes every thing she tells him? She has caused financial ruin, and although he made a three digit salary, they are on the brink of foreclosure and bankruptcy, not to mention homelessness. He put her through 4 years of college, but she has never worked. When they had credit, she would forge his name, constantly overdraw the bank account, etc., all this after she overextended her own credit.
She has to be spending money, even when now, they don’t have it.
He takes all the blame for everything, always….. defends her to no end, and no one can convince him that not all the problems they have are his fault.
She has forbidden him to talk to any of us at this point……
It is killing my mother, for it’s her only son, and the three of us girls know it’s always been her favorite.
We accept now that we can’t help him….but it hurts us all so much. We miss him, and we worry about him. If I weren’t seeing this with my own eyes, and knowing someone so well, before and after, then you can have never convinced me that something like this could ever happen to an intelligent human being.
How can I help my mother to cope with this?
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