and we all sat there looking like a band of war refugees or something, some of us in denial about our own responsibility in choosing to be with these people…we all struggled to understand how it went from ‘just’ a slap or punch to such horror. To understand that by in choosing to accept the slap, to overlook the slap, to go back to the slap, we were choosing everything that followed. It was painful to realize that about myself but I feel that the facilitator of the group was truly an angel for challenging us to accept responsibility because she made me realize that if I did not understand my part; my choices, I would, most likely, go back to him or just find another abusive man to batter me.

maybe someone close to Rihanna can drive this point home to her, or give her some information about this or at least suggest it and maybe she will really, really consider it. I highly doubt it, because if this report is true he and she are in the ‘honeymoon’ phase, and this is…such an emotionally powerful ‘good’ time. It is intoxicating. It is overwhelming. It is addictive. oh! you have no idea unless you have been there. He and she are now in a ricochet of passion and interdependence and pain. It’s high drama worse than any Shakespeare play. but this girl is playing with fire, because this is not a play, it’s her life.

nobody can rescue her. I hope she wakes up and rescues herself.

this is the best/easiest time to leave an abusive relationship, because if ‘all’ they’ve done is smack you around and bruise you up a bit, it hasn’t got to the point where they will feel compelled to kill you if you leave. usually.

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He is 100% responsible for his actions and choices.
She is 100% responsible for her actions and choices.

If he hits her again, it is his responsibility and his fault. But – it is her responsibility and her fault for choosing to put herself in this situation now. Before presumably she did not know he was physically abusive (although I am sure he has long been verbally abusive because abusers typically do not start out hitting you. first they tear you down verbally, and then when they see you’ll willingly take that, the physical abuse starts) but now she knows. So it is her responsibility for choosing to go back to him.

I don’t think it is doing this young lady any favors to put her in the victim role and suggest that she is powerless here or that she does not have culpability for what happens to her now. If this report is true, she has chosen to be with a man who hits her.

I also don’t know why this beautiful, talented, shining star feels so bad about herself she would tolerate this. But I was also a beautiful, talented, shining star at 19 who had little to no self esteem and who willingly went back to an abuser. After the first shove. After the first slap. After the first punch. After the first kick. After after after. so much pain and misery and feeling that I was a powerless victim. It took me some time to realize I chose to be there, I chose to participate in a sick, very sick and sordid relationship. Was I responsible or in control of his hitting me? No, but I was responsible and in control of allowing myself to be hit. so…I was just as disturbed as he was. you see?

That is what people mean. Rihanna is choosing this, so next time he hits her, many many people will say Well she must have asked for it or she must like or she must want this else why did she go back. No one can really ‘help’ her now, she has got to choose to want different, to even understand what she is choosing here.

my god she has no idea.

I do believe in rehabilitation and that he can unlearn, he can figure out why he is an abuser and choose to do different but I don’t think this can be done in 3 weeks. They both need intensive individual therapy. and they need to be apart from each other for now, for as long as it takes.

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I am truly grieved that this woman decided to reject the help offered to her and return to the abusive man, but that does not make her helpless. It makes her stuck in crisis mode. She is a full-grown adult and as such I’m going to respect her adult rights. Unless she wants her name on my website, it’s not going to be on here. Period.

This blog entry written by Trula. Thanks for visiting Seed & Flame!

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The isolation intensified after he got physically violent. Then the violence intensified the more and more isolated from other people I got. If he could not or would not go anywhere with me, I wasn’t allowed to go. At the end the only place I was allowed to go by myself was to my part-time job, and that was only because he took my pay so it was like free money for him. One time my mother was in the hospital and he refused to let me go by myself. First he didn’t believe she was really in the hospital, then he didn’t believe I would go to the hospital; I’d sneak off somewhere else to be with some other man. Then he believed if I did go I would start talking to some man at the hospital. He had a great fear of me talking to men, even a doctor in a hospital about my mother’s condition. Because he saw me as a thing he owned, because he could do whatever he wanted to me without any repercussions, because he saw I had no control at all in my ‘relationship’ with him, he felt I had no control of myself period, with anybody. He would say that often; that any man could come up to me and say anything and I’d go off and have sex with them. He had no trust or belief in me whatsoever and would say the most terrible things about me, over and over.

I really think the job I had at the time helped save my sanity, because it was the only place I had to go where he could not come in and run me down. I would go to work and pretend like I had a normal life. I could talk to other people who didn’t seem to think I was this ugly, disgusting, horrible, nasty, slutty creature. This animal who deserved to be spit on and beaten and locked away. Then I’d go home to him and hear this and worse, for hours sometimes.

If you are going through this you know exactly what I mean…probably nothing I can say will help you see that what he says is not true. You will have to break free of the isolation you have allowed someone else to put you in. You can set yourself free. I did, and have not looked back.

This blog entry written by Trula. Thanks for visiting Seed & Flame!

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persons with thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that lead to the destruction or confinement of body tissue cannot stand awareness because they do not distinguish between feeling and the likelihood of behaving in unacceptable ways.

Anyone who has been abused in a relationship knows exactly what this means. It means the abuser cannot or will not tell the difference between whatever bad thing he thinks will happen and what is actually happening or happened. When I was in such a relationship, the man who abused me would often hit me for merely glancing at another male, let alone speaking to one. He would say it was because I was either flirting with them or secretly having an affair with them. Both were things he feared would happen. He feared it so much it became reality in his head. Very crazy!

But what about me, why would I stay with such a crazy person, how is my craziness explained? Here’s how:

It looks as though there is a higher number of persons who continue to operate, even as grown-ups, with the belief, however illusory, that there is a way for them to bask in a paradise run by a Father or Mother figure. They seek to abdicate from the responsibility of sorting the welter of mutually contradictory attitudes and feelings in themselves and others. There remain the unappeased yearnings to “escape from freedom” as described by Fromm in his book by this name. When such persons are offered the opportunity to be led into a haven of relief from anxiety this looks like an offer they can’t refuse. At last: no more conflict or concern about one’s inability to make difficult decisions.

I think this is very true of my emotional and mental state at the time. I still remember the almost palpable sense of relief I felt at handing over all responsibility for myself to this man. I was a deeply disturbed young woman. You may think, how on earth is living with someone who beats you up a ‘haven’? Like I’ve said before, it didn’t start out that way. But when it got bad, another reason I stayed was because I so enmeshed in it, I was actually more afraid to leave. I felt like being out in the world without him, I would be in even more danger from other people. Is this addressed in the paper? Yes it is:

The sad thing is that once such a system is established, it feeds on itself and diminishes even the physical ability of oppressed members to move out and evaluate themselves or their community from the outside. Boundaries become more and more rigidly set and impermeable. Outside influence or intervention is feared even by those who suffer under the system, because it is the system that defines their reality and chaos looks like the only alternative.

I’ve also talked about how growing up in abuse and craziness had such a negative effect on me and possibly triggered my seeking out an abusive relationship. In her paper English discusses this also:

In childhood these people feel forsaken or overpowered in attempts to experience themselves as freestanding creatures and therefore substitute illusions and fantasies for disappointment.

It is a compelling read. If you are being abused and have been in an abusive relationship reading it may help you understand why you chose to be involved in such a relationship. It is a choice, and you can choose otherwise.

This blog entry written by Trula. Thanks for visiting Seed & Flame!

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