Julie* fell in love with Scott* at first sight. It happened at the bus stop when she was 16 on her way back from her first day at college. She’d sprained her ankle and a friend was half-supporting, half-carrying her. Despite the pain she couldn’t help but notice the good looking guy waiting at the bus stop. Scott looked at her and his first words to her were that she was ‘a drunken c**t’. Julie thought that was hilarious.
By the time she got off the bus they had exchanged phone numbers. They started dating and within weeks had decided they were each other’s perfect partner. They soon got engaged. The relationship was passionate, tempestuous with tremendous highs and lows.
5 years on, Julie and Scott are still together and Julie’s confidence is shot to pieces. Scott still tells her he loves her, occasionally, but spends a lot more time telling her how stupid, lazy, ugly and fat she is. (These days he doesn’t limit himself to harsh words.)
Of course, he also tells her how lucky she is to have someone like him, because nobody else would want her. The sad thing is, she believes him totally. She’s been so brainwashed by him for so long….
We live in a society that is preoccupied with political correctness on the one hand, and preoccupied with minimizing or denying domestic abuse and violence on the other. Especially in the absence of recorded physical violence.
“If it doesn’t leave a physical mark it doesn’t count as violence”, seems to be the crude criterion. This is of course a nonsense.
Then there is the tendency to categorize non-physical violence as ‘emotional abuse’, ‘mental abuse’ and ‘verbal abuse’ as if there were any significant difference; and as if any of them were negligeable.
Verbal abuse is, correctly speaking, verbal violence. Words, if spoken by someone whose opinion of you, you care about, can shatter you into a thousand pieces.
Had Hitler not used words so effectively in the first place he would never have won support and never have come to power. Hitler was a past-master of verbal violence. All too often, verbal violence escalates into physical violence.
Emotional abuse, correctly speaking, is emotional violence. The difference between verbal and emotional abuse or violence is illusory. Maybe verbal abuse sounds less destructive, but it still works through emotional brainwashing and brutality. Telling someone who loves you that they disgust you, repeatedly, will devastate them psychologically.
Mental abuse, correctly speaking is mental violence. All verbal, emotional and physical violence is also mental abuse, given its psychological impact on us. Mental abuse occurs whenever one person in a relationship attempts to gain unconditional power and control over the other person.
Nobody should lose years, or even months, of their life in the misery, humiliation and fear of an abusive relationship. If often starts when someone says mean things about you and won’t stop, even when you ask them not to, because it’s upsetting you. That is abusive. That person is giving you a clear sign that they don’t care about your feelings – no matter what excuse they make later.
An abuser acts as if he/she has a licence to hurt the other person. Each time you accept it and give him/her, or the relationship, another chance, you are endorsing his/her right to hurt you. You cannot help another person to change. You cannot change them by offering them the love they never had. You can only tear yourself into bite-sized chunks of raw flesh that they will devour whenever they feel hungry.
It pays to listen very carefully, right from the start, to the words that the other person speaks. Maybe, like Scott they are dismissive of you; maybe they put you on a pedestal and run down almost everyone else they know. If you’re feeling bad about yourself, a pedestal has its attractions. But a pedestal offers no guarantees and no protection at all.
Predators always revert to type. They feed on raw meat. Abusers are predators, whether the violence they use is verbal, emotional, mental or physical.
*not their real names
-By Annie Kaszina
Joyfulcoaching.com
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