Hi MDP. I can almost feel your pain. It is so painful to be treated like that. And I know what that is like.

Try to remember that you ARE wonderful whatever he says.

Big hugs,

Rosie

you are WONDERFUL and the speaker was so true in his words xxxxxxxxxxx

My dad did the same thing with my mom. It was so subtle I don't think even she realized the full extent of the abuse she was suffering. I posted several her diary entries in my journal... She deserved much better than to be treated with disrespect. Through all the letters I can see how my dad never saw the "authentic" person my mom really was. He was continually living in fantasy trying to reinvent who she is, and when she didn't act how he wanted he would get angry and be abusive to her.

My husband does not see me either.

For a long time, what struck me was how he acted to me as if I was not as I am. It used to confuse me. As such invalidation does. See the links I put at the end of this, plus "How to Spot a Dangerous Man" by Sandra Brown.

Now I realise he CANNOT see me as I am. He is unable to. It is very freeing to finally realise that. He judged, criticizes, controls, forces and condemns. But it is not the real me he is doing this to. It is his fantasy of me.

Another thing that characterises my husband, and abusers generally, is that they use aversive methods, ie, punishment, a great deal. As Patricia Evans points out very well, they are not on about caring, respect, mutuality and equality. They really are little Hitlers.

See:

1. http://howtospotadangerousman.blogspot.com/


2. http://www.lilaclane.com/relationships/emotional-abuse/


3. There is so much on the web - try various Google searches

I wasn't going to comment on this but it keeps popping into my mind and it is something of personal interest to me: Should we care for others equally or more than ourselves.

Hmm, maybe I should make a new topic of this. I think I will.

Yes that is a lovely and poetic statement, but I think it's unrealistic. We must have partners who are healthy - not needy. We are, or were, already in relationships where we care for anothers happiness more than our own. But within an abusive relationship that is not true coming back to us. We need partners who understand balance and I think that is where this statement falls short. It assumes both parties are acting in the same fashion and in abusive relationships they are not.

My stbx used to call it "grooming" me, the efforts to remake me into his vision, his perfect vision, which of course I could not be, and so of course because I could not NOT be who I was, he had cause to demean and denigrate me constantly. I used to think that at some point he would realize how hard I was working at this, and would love me....

But with age came wisdom, and I now know it is he that was defective, not me. And he can live with his own ghosts......and deal with them on his own. I am so glad to be free to be me.......

Yes, for me, a key part of my growth, as I see it, has been to love myself. This can be put in different ways.

As I have spent most of my life being abused in key relationships, I came to see myself as defective. But I have some personal characteristics that worked against my accepting this, in particular a solid intelligence and an enquiring, questioning mind, hmm, and throw in some strong will (ok, maybe a lot, sigh). So I kept pulling out and looking at my belief that I was a load of sheest (as I used to say to the helping persons I approached over time, but got no help from about).

You know, it has taken me years and years and years to get over this self devaluation. And it is a devaluation. And it is not loving myself. I needed ideas, like beams of light, to bring to bear on this dreadful belief that affected so much in my lefe, including, I'd say, my acceptance of abuse.

In the end I found a route out of this morass of sheest. I did it via the fruits of my religious journey (a long saga also). Basically I came to see that God does not make junk (sheest) and I am a child of God. Also only God can judge. As Levinas, the philosopher I am using for my master's thesis, sees it, transcendence cannot be accomplished by a person's relation to him or herself or the world but only by a relation to absolute alterity (eg, God).

I can see where this statment comes from. It is true that seeing your partner happy gives us joy. But we must find our own happiness and not rely on others to make us so.

A balance between two must be the formula. We have to care about ourselves to enable us to care for others in a balanced, healthy way, surley....

When i say caring for ourselves i mean in a spiritual way. Taking care of our emotions and so on.......

xxx

Balance seems to be what we are sorely lacking in the way of relationship skills. We are so used to doing so much, feeling so much, handling so much, that without the overload we almost feel undone. We are such people-pleasers that any little bit of care that comes our way we can live on for months at a time.

Yes, Tasty, I agree. Balance is key.

So right queenvalerie. Balance is so important. I gained so much from that comment. Thanks.

Hockeymom, your post was one I could've written myself. It never ceases to amaze me how close my situation is in details to others.

Yes, balance is the key. Each person should add to the other's life--not take away or try to be the other person's whole world.

Great post gals!