Warning Signs of Abusive Relationships

[Nic]

Originally Posted by Soft*Silver

you asked for signs...

a remarkable sign that most people miss, or disregard, is their account of their exes. If every ex did him/her wrong (I am going to use the pronoun HE for the abuser from this point on...but as was already said, SHE can be the abuser as well), was a dog; screwed everyone; ran to someone else; didnt take care of the house, the kids; was mouthy and disrespected him in front of his family and friends; etc....if the exes were ALWAYS the problem, we have transference going on here.

There is relatively new theory of transference called AMT...Abusive Multiple Transference, where the abuser not only transfer negative feelings of their abuser to their victims, but also transfers the power and dominance of their own abuser to themselves.*

In simple-ese?
... if the abuser felt they were always shit on, they will always believe they will get shit on, and they themselves will also always shit on others....


(*I found a really good explaination of transference and projection that relates it to domestic violence! http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_tr...ection#slide72)

Been doing a lot of self education recently. Can't tell you how many times I've heard this in the last few months. Every group of survivors I meet has had to do battle with an ex who spouted the "She/he done me wrong" and "I was so misunderstood" story. There are a lot of people who tell that story but they seem to fall into a couple of predictable categories: folks who are really wounded and can't seem to move on from that pain and folks who need you to see them as worthy of sympathy in order to gain access to you.

I'm in no way blaming people for being victims of emotional or physical violence but there's another distinction that needs to be made here. A couple of others have touched on it. Just want to suss it out a bit more and say that one of the things that strikes me as insidious in the abuse/abuser/onlooker triangle is the expectation (by onlookers) that abuse victims never engage in any passive aggressive or manipulative behavior in order to be deserving of support from outside the abusive relationship. That holier than thou POV penalizes the abused person and generally works to the abuser's advantage. It's as if the victims are required to show twice as much restraint or have double the healthy, emotional outlook when compared to their abuser or anyone else for that matter. Example: it's not uncommon for folks who are being or have been abused to be passive aggressive or manipulative because they have no relationship with having their needs met any other way. Constantly being belittled and shamed somehow will make a person stop (or never start) asking for what they need in a straightforward way. If you're taught that your voice doesn't matter or your needs don't mean anything you're eventually going stop walking the healthy line from A to B and use more circuitous route to get your needs seen to. Inevitably an onlooker sees that behavior and wrongly attributes negative intention to it rather than labeling it the survival behavior that it is. Suddenly it's the abused person who's the "bad" one in the relationship and the abuser starts to benefit from that opinion, even counts on it to reinforce the idea that they're working hard and just trying their best to keep things together under the "burden" of their victim's passive aggressive behavior. You see evidence that it works in the sympathy they gain from friends and family members. Even more powerful than what they gain from others is the way they can use the victim's survivor dysfunction against them to further undermine that person's self esteem and create more self doubt. The victim gets cast in the "emotionally unstable" role making the abuser the one who's "worthy" of sympathy from onlookers and even from the victim him/herself! Of course the abuser has temper outbursts! Just look at what the poor guy/gal has to deal with! Pretty neat trick.

We participate in reinforcing the facade of abusers if we spend any time shaking our heads at victims who "dare" to choose anything but completely straightforward, healthy, well adjusted, even tempered behavior in order to get their needs met or the work of a relationship done. We add insult to injury by shaking our heads over them when we discover that they didn't leave at the very first sign of abuse. We pretty much demand that they be better than the abuser and, sometimes, better than we are ourselves. Everyone is passive aggressive or manipulative at one time or another. Difference between abusive behavior and survivor behavior is how and why manipulation is used. Tactics that undermine another person's sense of self or self respect falls into the abuse category to me.

Originally Posted by Words

Sorry, but I have a bit of an issue with this. Why use 'he'? Given that this is a queer website and that the majority of the members here identify as women, wouldn't 'she' be more appropriate (or, better still, the non-gender specific 'they')?

I appreciate that this probably wasn't your intention, but it just feels to me like men, butches, and FtMs always get a bid of a raw deal when it comes to the language we default to when discussing abuse.

Words

Fairly said. Growing up in Panama reinforced my cultural and emotional attachment to "abuser" = "male" despite knowing that there certainly are female abusers. For ease, I understand a person's decision to declare the use of a pronoun for time saving sake but in the case of such a sensitive issue maybe we need to go ahead and take the time to type out the extra pronoun. I'll keep that in mind myself.

Originally Posted by Girl_On_Fire

The more healthy platonic behavior you're exposed to, the more confidence you build up, and the more likely you are to attract this same healthiness in a romantic partnership.

To bad we don't culturally value platonic relationships the way we do partnered ones. Hardly ever see a Disney movie about friendship being given a higher position on the value scale than partnered relationships. (Thinking mostly "classics" here because I'm old. Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Lady and the Tramp, Aristocats, Aladdin, Little Mermaid, etc.) Usually the main character (usually female) must somehow be rescued by someone in order for the story to progress. Even when a strong female character is sketched out she somehow has to be saved by someone else eventually.