Love Is All You Need
Love, Love, Love…Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time (love)
It's easy – John Lennon and Paul McCartney
We love this song, yet we know it’s not easy to leave an abusive relationship and learn how to be you. Early in my first marriage my family asked, “Why don’t you leave?” This, in response to my endless tears, despair, and hopelessness.
As I wrote in Divorce, Chapter 6, Our Silent Voice: Break the Silence, the advice I got was to talk to our Presbyterian Minister as well as the Priest in my grandmother’s diocese. In those generous meetings and phone conversations, the message was the same…
‘It’s your responsibility, as a wife, to keep the family unit together. Your bruises will heal dear. Pray every day for the wisdom to heal.’
My parents could have rescued us but they felt it was up to me and Dad said, in al seriousness, “You’ve made your bed and you have to sleep in it.” They weren’t mean, they were trained by generations of principled religious people.
It was my job to keep the family stable.
I did what I could to maintain a stable family. I held my temper, evened my voice, listened carefully, was available, and didn’t react… and I prayed every day and night for the strength to do my wife-job.
Research shows that leaving is the most dangerous time in any abusive relationship. At that point, tensions run high. Anger can escalate without warning. All the preparations and plans suddenly seem way to risky and we stay, adjusting the strategy.
We who are in this situation stay for economic reasons or for fear of losing custody or dignity or housing. It’s messy, it’s complicated.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline has an article that rings true to me. Why People Stay https://www.thehotline.org/support-others/why-people-stay-in-an-abusive-relationship/
“Abusive relationships are extremely complex situations, and it takes a lot of courage to leave. Abuse is about power and control.”
Leaving is the most dangerous/fearful time in a relationship.
There may be fear of violence and/or not being able to live independently, free of the abuser.
Abuse can be normalized. Growing up in a home where abusive behavior is normalized, it’s hard to distinguish a partner’s actions as anything but normal.
The silencing shame of being in the situation in the first place, as if “it’s my fault.”
Threat and intimidation of losing the children, or outing a secret, or spreading lies – do we need to dramatize “You will never see the girls again!”
Low self-esteem comes from blame and thinking we are at fault. As I write this, I remember what my first husband threatened me with and it’s still chilling.
Add a lack of resources, a disability, tricky immigration status, or your cultural contexts. https://www.thehotline.org/identify-abuse/abuse-in-specific-communities/
The list in the article ends with Love. I remember deeply loving the father of our children. The man, when he was kind, was the ‘real’ man I fell in love with. Maybe if I did what he asked and behaved like the woman he wanted, he would love me and not hurt me.
We left and started a new life. Yet I went back, time after time – the siren song of family anticizing my logic and good sense. Forgiveness seemed like the right thing to do, complicated by his love and argument that no marriage is easy. No, it isn’t easy but that is not a good enough reason to stay in a destructive relationship.
Now we have resources. You can gain strength in friends, chat groups, and online counseling. At Our Silent Voice, www.oursilentvoice.com, we say writing your story is a powerful start to building a foundation of strength to end the silence. We know that abusive relationships are complex and keep us silent. Perhaps just starting the process of writing can cut through the fog of indecision.
In our book Our Silent Voice: End the Silence our writer’s scream.
They’ve gained strength in truth and combining their voices is freeing.
Our 2023 book Our Silent Voice: Break the Silence is for you. https://www.oursilentvoice.com/books
Submit your story for editing: https://www.oursilentvoice.com/submit
Here is a resource that may help you start.
How to Get Out of an Abusive Relationship https://www.helpguide.org/home-pages/domestic-abuse.htm