Emotional Abuse Support Group

If I would have not forgive my abuser when he demanded...he would have left me out in the dock...and would have taken off with the girl friend onto the lake....I kinda guarantee you that......and it would have been the perfect time to break up with me....or make me feel so devastated and this time in front of another person...perfect arena for him to have found a new ali.......this would have made his day!...oh yes...this is why I hurried up and left him....he was going to use me to his advantage...sooner or later....my turn was coming.....I know this very well.....

Say for instance in the situations where i kept bringing up something he said/did that hurt me (i didn't do it to punish or hurt him or anything like that,i simply did it because i was in pain at what he said/did) and compare it to the times where after an argument (regardless of who started it)where i would be scrambling frantically via phone to resolve things and it almost felt like he had me jumping through hoops and was punishing me and this could go on for hours (more than that on a couple of occasions).Are these comparable?Does it mean that what i was doing in keep bringing up something that he had said/hurt me was similar to what he would do after the arguments that i mentioned?

Post edited by: diemcarpe, at: 05/08/2012 10:39 AM

To quote what you said: "(i didn't do it to punish or hurt him or anything like that,i simply did it because i was in pain at what he said/did)"

Explaining to your significant other how or why something hurt you is a basic part of being in a relationship. It is the only way in which we learn how to treat one another with respect. However, he didn't care about your pain, and didn't respect your wishes.

An abuser criticizes with the intention of cutting you down, make you feel bad, make you self-conscious, diminish your self-esteem making you more controllable, and to discourage you from approaching him your own demands. Was any of that your intention?

Who sounds abusive here? What do you think?

Even if i brought the same incident a few/numerous times (again only because i was hurt by it)?

Was your intention to nag and hurt him or was it to help heal your pain?

See, abuse is all about intention... you can pick apart and explain away lots of small instances, but it is the overal tone and intention that makes the difference.

Absolutely it was to heal my pain somehow.

Do you think it is abusive to attempt to heal yourself? Do you think it is wrong to prevent another from healing?

Absolutely not to the first one.And yes it most certainly is wrong to the second.

These are the kinds of questions you have to ask yourself when you start to doubt your position. Ask yourself what your honest intention was. As yourself how it made you feel. That's what matters...not what some person on the internet or anywhere else thinks is "right" or "wrong."

Imagine if it was someone else telling you your own tale, and take in all the evidence. You have the tools and the power to analyze and understand the true nature of your relationship. You already have all of the answers, even if they are difficult to hear

By the way, it makes ZERO difference what your abuser thinks the intention is. Abusers have such a skewed value system that they practically live on a different planet. For example, my father literally told me that I was "horrible" and that I was "hurting him" by expressing how hurt I was. Just because he sees it as malicious does not mean that's true. It means that in his eyes, me having hurt feelings from his behavior was a crime in and of itself. Basically, he didn't feel that I had the right to be upset with him (and this was a continuous theme). Of course he didn't say that outloud, but he said it with his actions. He said it by not allowing me to ever resolve my issues with him. He said it by never changing his behavior. He said it by never allowing me to speak when I needed to communicate a problem. He said it by continuing to behave in the way he knew would hurt me.

I often felt like it wasn't "fair" of me to cut ties with someone if they didn't understand "why". If they saw me as the b*tch, I just couldn't stand it... the guilt would eat me up inside! I had to learn to let go of it, which was a very difficult thing to do. I had to stop caring what other people thought of me which is about a million times easier said than done.

People are going to dislike me for whatever reasons they wish to fabricate. Abusers are going to assume that if you have anger towards them or you feel pain from their abuse that you're a bad person somehow. Afterall, they don't see their behavior as abusive. They think they are entitled to treat a person this way. How could you ever get through to someone with that viewpoint? Simple: You don't.