Physical & Emotional Abuse Support Group
Abuse is a general term for the treatment of someone that causes some kind of harm (to the abused person, to the abusers themselves, or to someone else) that is unlawful or wrongful. No one deserves abuse, period. Abuse can be emotional, physical, or sexual.
I wanted to start a new thread because this is important, and the other was so long, the info would be over looked.
Can't74 you have been talking about how the abuser takes away your autonomy. He does not love you. You said:
" He does not CARE about who you are, what your values are, he is willing to take that away from you if that means you will become available to serve his needs."
So, you have answered the other half of a question from my past. I was in long term one on one counseling and in a support group for having been molested by my father, (not my biological, but the one who raised me) and my uncle. My councilor had waited till he thought I could handle the question, it was really hard for me to accept. The question: "Did my father love me?" My answer: Yes. Councilor: "Do people do that to someone they love?" After some thought, me: " He can't really love, but he loved me the best that he could." Councilor: Can you do that to someone you love?"
In support group, when they felt we were able, we could attend the child molest offenders meeting and confront them. I asked to attend one, I had a question for them.
Did you love your victim. Many said yes they did. Offenders are usually family members or someone close to the family. But there was one man. He had been in the group a long time and was about to graduate.
He told me he had molested his step daughter. She had been molested before. She was a troubled kid and lied allot. He said sometimes he would start to get a feeling of love for her, but then when it hit, he would feel so bad about what he was doing to her, and feel so guilty that he would pull back and start stating all the reasons why he was not hurting her, she was damaged already, she was a bad kid, she lied and was troubled. To be clear, he said, if I ever felt love for her I could not continue. The only way to continue was to NOT feel love for her.
That was hard to take. I realized that if he didn't love me, then I had never been loved, and that was devastating. But I knew that he did not.
But there was still a question for me. I was very important to my father. He molested me from age 6 to 19, when his adult daughter from a previous family helped me escape. When I left, he fell apart. He still tried to get at me. My sister made sure he could not get to me knowing he had huge power over me. If he did not love me, why was I so important to him?
" He does not CARE about who you are, what your values are, he is willing to take that away from you if that means you will become available to serve his needs."
That is the answer, "to be available to serve his needs." A prized lap top.
Can't74 you have been talking about how the abuser takes away your autonomy. He does not love you. You said:
" He does not CARE about who you are, what your values are, he is willing to take that away from you if that means you will become available to serve his needs."
So, you have answered the other half of a question from my past. I was in long term one on one counseling and in a support group for having been molested by my father, (not my biological, but the one who raised me) and my uncle. My councilor had waited till he thought I could handle the question, it was really hard for me to accept. The question: "Did my father love me?" My answer: Yes. Councilor: "Do people do that to someone they love?" After some thought, me: " He can't really love, but he loved me the best that he could." Councilor: Can you do that to someone you love?"
In support group, when they felt we were able, we could attend the child molest offenders meeting and confront them. I asked to attend one, I had a question for them.
Did you love your victim. Many said yes they did. Offenders are usually family members or someone close to the family. But there was one man. He had been in the group a long time and was about to graduate.
He told me he had molested his step daughter. She had been molested before. She was a troubled kid and lied allot. He said sometimes he would start to get a feeling of love for her, but then when it hit, he would feel so bad about what he was doing to her, and feel so guilty that he would pull back and start stating all the reasons why he was not hurting her, she was damaged already, she was a bad kid, she lied and was troubled. To be clear, he said, if I ever felt love for her I could not continue. The only way to continue was to NOT feel love for her.
That was hard to take. I realized that if he didn't love me, then I had never been loved, and that was devastating. But I knew that he did not.
But there was still a question for me. I was very important to my father. He molested me from age 6 to 19, when his adult daughter from a previous family helped me escape. When I left, he fell apart. He still tried to get at me. My sister made sure he could not get to me knowing he had huge power over me. If he did not love me, why was I so important to him?
" He does not CARE about who you are, what your values are, he is willing to take that away from you if that means you will become available to serve his needs."
That is the answer, "to be available to serve his needs." A prized lap top.
Yes, they can prize us, value us even, but not love us. And the value we have for them is in what we can do for them - whether it be sexual, ego stroking, housework, just being in existence so they aren't alone, whatever it is they need, for so long as we provide it, we are useful and valued. But just like a laptop, they want us to just do whatever they want when they want it - press a button to turn us on, press another to turn us off. They don't want annoying popups or for us to run programs they didn't load. Unless they do, in which case we should have known to load those programs automatically. Except for the one time they didn't want it loaded automatically ... and so on.
Yes, the analogy is well made. Prized possessions we may be, but we're not loved as people, we've no inherent worth beyond our usefulness. And that's why so many of us found ourselves so easily discarded for a newer model. Just like a prized laptop that has started to crash sometimes or just doesn't do all the things we think the latest model will do. The "love" is transferred easily, the old laptop isn't really missed, because the new one is filling the same purpose. And they neither know nor care that the reason we crash sometimes is because they never bothered to take care of us - quite the opposite.
I can completely understand how devastating that is for you when it's your father. I wasn't molested, but I have had to face the reality that my father never loved me either - because he's not capable of it. And that's the liberating part, that's the up side. The understanding that our abusers actually NEVER loved us, because they are incapable of it, means it's not us and never was. There was nothing any of us could have been or done that would have made the difference. It wasn't because we weren't smart enough, or pretty enough, or thin enough, or rich enough, or a good enough housekeeper, or a well-behaved/well-adjusted enough child. It was never about us. Just like everything else - it was always, always, always ALL about them.
Abusers do not love us. My ex husband did not love me. He never even knew me at all. Who I was didn't matter, as a matter of fact, my autonomy was an inconvenience to him, something to be obliterated. He felt something he CALLED love, but what he loved were opportunities to abuse me, to make himself feel powerful, and objectifying me fed his sense of entitlement to do what he pleased and allowed him to justify what he did. He hid away his empathy. Empathy was a barrier to abusing me, and being abusive to me was my value to him. He could not allow himself to see me as an individual because then he couldn't have done the things he'd done. I was useful to him not only to have his completely selfish needs met, but because having power over another person felt good to him. He LIKED that. Someone who dehumanizes us by taking away our autonomy-does not love us. Those two things just don't go together, that kind of love is like a love of our favorite pair of jeans, or flavor of ice cream, or a state of the art laptop. It really is quite despicable.
I remember telling my SO one time, "you don't love me. You want to own me. You want to control what I do, what I say & what I think. That's not love."
But I think for him it is the only way he can love. When I don't follow his programming, he uses whatever means he can to "fix" me.
Love is free. You love someone truly, u let them be, anything else isn't love.
Love is enjoying someone's company but being able to live without them.
Love is simply accepting someone as a whole and never about moulding someone into something for yourself, that's like appreciating a percentage of them but not the whole, and what percentage do they appreciate? The part that's moulded into what they need, which effectively, when u think about it, isn't even you. So what part of YOU did he love? He loved the IDEA of you that he created in his mind, but never gave you the freedom to get to know you at all, so how could he love YOU?
People think that if you love someone, u sacrifice for them. But what do u sacrifice? You had to sacrifice you for him and he had u do that, is that what we call love?
My point about that is this...let's say we are in a relationship, is it right that I ask you to put me before your own happiness? That's what he did. He put his needs, desires, wants, attachments and adoration before your own happiness. Would it be right of me to ask you "hey, put me before your happiness!" Or for you to demand "hey, kazb, I should come before your happiness!"
If one persona happiness doesn't infringe upon another persons freedom for happiness then real love can exist between them!
For the very longest time I only dwelled on the first part, but as the years have gone by, and as he has not been successful to do better then me, although he tried to leave things open in case the opportunity came up, I realized that the second part was the important part and that he truly meant it. He may think I'm below his standards, but he really doesn't think he can do better, or want to do the things it would take to do better.