h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I read your post in the Atelier, asking how could your sister mistake being hit for love.

You and your parents need to be really careful here hon.

I have only ever been in one abusive relationship, and it made me understand that they are a fundamentally different territory. You really aren't in Kansas any more.

What I find interesting is that the one question my friend S never ever asks of her daughter who is in a relationship with a man who hits her, is "why are you still with him?" because S knows the answer to that. S stayed with her daughter's father for years.

Providing love and support to someone in an abusive relationship is more like providing love and support to someone with an illness or an addiction than anything else.

It looks like a fairly straight-forward moral issue. "He hits you - that is bad". "Alcohol is destroying your liver - that is bad". "Being stoned is affecting your work - that is bad". But like most addictions it is far more complicated than that. Let me say here and now that your sister is NOT addicted to being hit, but she probably IS addicted to that particular relationship.



Back to the nature of abusive relationships.

How much do you know about brainwashing? It is not actually very difficult to be brainwashed, particularly if there is a physical or emotional attraction linking you to a person. All it takes is Mr Nice and Mr Nasty in the same person, and your own congnitive dissonance will do the rest to you.

The Mr Nasty inside doesn't need to be overtly nasty. He can be concerned for how you appear to other people, and therefore constantly seeking improvements in your dress or your behaviour. He can love everything about you physically except your stomach, which he is ashamed of being grossed out by. He can be saddened that you don't put the coffee jar back in the cupboard when you make him a coffee, it lets the side down.

Mr Nasty is constantly, subtly, letting you know that you are less than perfect: dumb maybe, or ugly, whatever your particular button is, that will be the one he presses.

Mr Nice on the other hand adores you. He tells you how wonderful you are. How much he likes being with you. How bright and funny and clever and sexy you are. Oddly enough, what he likes in you the most is what Mr Nasty then undermines the most, but you cannot have everything.

The point is that it is *your* fault. He is tender and kind and patient, *despite* you being so horribly less than perfect. He loves you, but he would love you that bit more if you dressed better, or didn't have a belly, or put the coffee jar away. Love is conditional on your being more perfect than you are now. Right at the moment, if he judges you, he finds you lacking.

Do you have ANY idea how this behaviour deconstructs a person's sense of self, bit by bit, piece by piece, till there are no boundaries left?

You don't. You haven't been there.



Sea, hon. I am independent. I am intelligent. I had a stable and supportive childhood surrounded by people who loved me. I am well-educated. I am confident.

I *still* ended up in an abusive relationship.

Circumstances were such that it ended very quickly, and I'll tell you about them later. If it had not ended when it did, I truly believe it could have gone on for years. I doubt very much I would still be in it now, this is over 21 years later, but if I'd had kids with him - who knows. My feeling is that it would have gone on for three, five, maybe seven years. I thank the goddess regularly that I got myself out of it when I did.

But it had to be me who did it. It had to be my realisation that this guy was f*****g with my mind, and that I deserved better than that.

I do not think it would have been possible, and I really am not sure that it would have helped, for someone else to force me out of the relationship. It would be the difference between removing a tick head and all, and removing the tick's body and leaving the head inside.



You say you cannot imagine what it is like to be in an abusive relationship.

Let me tell you what it feels like.

You are confused all the time. Your body, your emotions and your mind are in constant turmoil. Your thoughts chase their own tails around your head; you are batted around emotionally like a leaf in the wind; you are physically exhausted simply because of the effort it takes to sustain that amount of emotional and mental activity day after day, week after week, month after month. If the abuse is physical, then you have the physical and emotional shock of being hit, and the healing from that to do to.

My main memory of that time is exhaustion and confusion. In that order.

But then he turns the sunshine on.

He says something nice, he likes what you are wearing, he approves of you. You realise that it could be like this all the time, if only you weren't such a failure. And the sunshine is wonderful. He is a lovely bloke, and he deserves the best. It is amazing that such a nice and special guy chooses you. You really do need to change so that he has the partner he deserves.



Do you know what I found to be the most scary thing about the whole experience?

I developed two personas. I had my normal, clear-thinking, high self-esteem, kick-ass persona.

And I had oen which was infinitely more tender and sensitive. She was raw emotion, with thoughts chasing each other like dogs with their tails tied together trapped in a box. She listened a lot - hoping for clarity. She cried a bit - because she was exhausted. She was commited to the relationship, enjoying the attention and the intellectual challenge and the sex. The sex was good, considering that we were 20, and the intellectual challenge was there - we were three months off graduating.

There was a very subtle undermining of who and what I am. He thought my laughter was too loud - too raucus. He thought my political opinions naive - not properly thought through. Oh, heavens hon, it is 21 years ago - I cannot remember it all. But the point is that he was a patient and kind chap, putting up with my flakiness. I was the one with the problems.



Hopefully you are getting the point by now. The main point being that if your sister's BF is abusing her physically, then there will also be mental and emotional abuse of the kind I have outlined going on too.

How much do you think it helps her - how much do you think it damages her - to have you and your parents giving her the same messages that he is?

How much do you think it helps her - how much do you think it damages her when you tell her that she is dumb for being with him? I bet he tells her she is dumb for something else.

How much do you think it helps her - how much do you think it damages her - when you tell her that she is flaky for thinking he loves her? I bet he tells her she is flaky in other ways to.

How much do you think it helps her - how much do you think it damages her - when you tell her that she should do this and shouldn't do the other? Guess what? I bet he tells her what she should and shouldn't do too.



There are ways of supporting women in abusive relationships, and ways of driving them further into those relationships.

You and your parents are playing a very very risky game, my dear. It is a game that feels good. You feel like the good guys. You feel like the cavalry. But it is horribly horribly dangerous.

Please be careful.

B

While I am very sorry for what happened to you, it seems to me that your situation and that of my sister are rather different. You were an adult who was responsible for your own actions. She is a CHILD, and technically, their relationship is statutory rape. And somehow I get the feeling that your ex didn't go quite so far as to try to break down your front door and threaten to murder your parents.

When she's 18, she can make her own decisions. But she leeches off of my parents for all of her needs, dropped out of high school, and doesn't have a job... You know, I really dont think she deserves that luxury. When her stupid relationship with some wannabe gangster starts putting my parents in danger, she doesn't get to decide whether or not to end it. Things are out of control. She's out of control.

Should we wait until someone gets killed before we take action?

>> You were an adult who was responsible for your own actions.

I was 20.


>> your ex didn't go quite so far as to try to break down your front door and threaten to murder your parents.

That is a criminal offence - deal with it through the criminal courts.


>> it seems to me that your situation and that of my sister are rather different.

How you and your parents act is 100% up to you. I merely offered my story on the basis that it might provide some insights and help you arrive at wiser decisions.

I have no idea what would constitute a wiser decision in your situation, and you are of course free to reject the insights into what happens to a woman in an abusive relationship which I have offered you here.

However, the mind-f**ker I went out with gave me self-esteem issues, brainwashed me, made me incapable of thinking for myself. And I was older and - you imply - more robust than your sister.

How much more vulnerable is she to the effects? and how much more of an impact will they have had on her?

The last thing she needs right now is anger and contempt from you and your parents. I have a real sympathy for your dilemmas - I have a major issue with free-loaders for example.

However it is likely that she has dropped out of college and won't get a job *because* of what he did to her. If you and your parents pour scorn and contempt onto her, then that will compound her self-esteem problems and her other problems and make the situation worse.

I told you my story because I thought it might give you some insight into how your sister got into the situation she is in, and how to help her out of it.

If it doesn't, then it doesn't, but I have done the best that I could.

Ben

*deep breath*

Look... Your first post came on a bit strong, and I tried to be polite when replying, but I don't think I quite managed it. I sincerely apologize if I was rude, and I know that your intentions were good and you only meant to help.

It's high school she's dropped out of, and now that I think about it, someone is dead. Her unborn child she aborted. *sigh* And I stand by what I said. 17 and dropped out after 2 years of high school is very different from 20 and away at college. It's a world of difference between day one of Freshman year and day one of Sophomore year. Dropping out of college will hurt her future, true, but dropping out of high school pretty much precludes her from any employment other than cleaning houses. She has the option of a GED now, but good luck getting into college with *that*. She's departed down a long, difficult road if she wants to fix the mistakes she's made.

Please do not think that because I rant and rave and call my sister stupid on h2g2 means that I rant and rave and call my sister stupid to her face. In fact, I hardly even speak to my sister anymore because no matter what I say, she always takes offense (she seems to have a complex about my being "perfect", so it seems the less I say the better). So I say nothing, and just give her a hug whenever I get a chance.

We are dealing with the boyfriend in the courts. THe first time he tried to break in, we let sis deal with it, and he just smacked her around and did it again. So she no longer gets to deal with him herself. My parents filed a restraining order and they're taking her to counseling.

We're doing the best we can.

I am really sorry that my first post came on a bit strong.

It upsets me immensely when women remain in abusive relationships, but it upsets me far far more when people assume that they are stupid for doing so. I needed to explain to you that if she has been in this kind of relationship, then her ability to think these things through for herself has gone. It will come back, but it has gone for now.

>> Please do not think that because I rant and rave and call my sister stupid on h2g2 means that I rant and rave and call my sister stupid to her face.

I guess I was mislead by that.

When you stress how young she is, you are pointing out that she is too young to make decisions for herself, and I accept that. But one of the things that I hear at the same time is just how vulnerable she is to the mindf**k of an abusive relationship. I was - as I said - pretty together at the time, and it is still the single most dangerous and disturbing experience of my life.

I didn't tell you how come I got out of it.

We were, as I said, at college. We went out in the second term of our final year there. I had the wierd experience of knowing that there was something profoundly wrong with the relationship whenever I slept at my own place and got the chance to think for myself, but of being swept straight back into my commitment (even though I knew I was incredibly unhappy) while he was with me to direct my thinking.

I would not have got out of the relationship at all if it wasn't for the fact that we were apart over the Easter vacation. I got the time to think for myself, and I used it to break off the relationship. I only just managed to do so in time. I rang him a couple of days before he came back to college.

This story cuts both ways - and I don't know which way applies to your sister's situation.

It may be that by separating her from her boyfriend, she will get the chance to form her own opinions, as I did. I really do hope so.

But what I have wanted to show you is her vulnerablity, and the fact that if she has been in an abusive relationship not only is she not thinking straight, she is not thinking for herself at all. That is a scary place to be, and a difficult thing to deal with.

You are in an immensely difficult situation, and I really do feel for all of you. And "the best you can" is all that any of us can do, and more than most ever manage.

There probably isn't much else to say here. I did explain what it feels like from the inside as best I could, because I really hope that helps. It is not a relationship I talk about often. I am pretty much talked out on the subject now.

to all of you and

Ben

I appreciate the perspective on the situation. Again, I am sorry for what happened to you, and for bringing up all the bad memories.

It seems like a bit of distance helped you out, and hopefully it will help out my sister as well. If it doesn't, well, I don't know that there is anything that we can do for her unless she decides she wants help. And we'll have to learn to let her go. But that's how life works. She's always been the type that needs to make mistakes, but what worries me is that I really don't think she learns from then once they're made. I don't know how much further she can sink...

Ah well. We are holding on to hope. She's a smart kid, even if she doesn't think so. She'll work things out eventually. I think she just needs a push in the right direction sometimes.