Why did you stay in a abusive relationship?

Now that I think about abusive relationships, it always seems like the red flags are ignored or overlooked repeatedly. We seem to be quick to open our hearts &share our deepest pain with someone who slides into the appropriate place in our lives. We are so use to opening up & sharing who we are that we will tell a virtual strange, our most painful secrets not realizing that they themselves have not opened up & shared anything about their abuse. All this even after we have already been abused. Everyone who responded to your post including myself needs to protect themself from harm. How do we know there is not a troll here? Please be considerate & show some good faith so we can feel safe.

I don't understand that statement! I certainly was not being inconsiderate.

No Sabrina I was not directing that statement to you. No offense to anyone here that has shared their story.

was this aimed at me?

i work full time, i'm a single parent, i do not get much time to log on, but ive tried to get to on thank people for sharing, i was touched when i saw your post offering to listen, wanting me to share, then as i moved down i see ive been judged even before ive started, ive never told anyone about what has happened to me, i dont know why this has upset me so much, i became a member a year ago, mainly for help for a different reason, but my abuse problem has always been there, but ive never wanted to face it, but its ended up effecting so much, when i first posted in this forum a couple of weeks ago, it was the first time i could bring myself to go into the abuse forum, i was scared at what i would find, & kept putting off posting, but i did it, i dont know what you think i am, i felt scared at sharing, frightened, that no one would understand, would judge me, i'm sorry if i have upset anyone, sharing isnt that easy, i didnt realise i should have done that by now, i just wanted to feel that i wasnt alone, that im not some freak that deserved to be beaten, i'm sorry

((((laura2))))

Thank you for posting. For me I felt that that was love and I deserved it. As a child love meant hurt and I was always told I was bad. Also being with someone for me was better than being all alone even if it was not good. Sometimes we felt the presence of someone might keep us safe, even if the truth is it is not.

Also, I never wanted to be like my mother who was married 5 times and so I determined in my heart that when and if I got married I would not leave. I also did not want my children to go through that. And to the outside world everything looked normal. No one knew except just a few.

We also were involved in the church and it was not right to leave. So no matter what you did not go. We were taught that the wife was to be submissive to her husband and that she was to do what he said. So I guess I never questioned anything. And stemming back to childhood, I just felt I must deserve what I got.

Sometimes the hope that things may change if I just hold on a little longer, if I just do what I am suppose to do, if I was just a good girl, and a better wife----you just sometimes hope that something will change.

When you feel you deserve nothing but that because that is all you have ever known, then you hold on. When things are even a little better than before you hold on.

Thank you for posting. Sending gentle hugs and lovingthoughts.

dps

Laura2, I am so sorry for your pain. Thank you for your previous, warm posts and thanks on this thread. I hope that you can once again find this forum to be a source of support and compassion.

Imho, one shares if and when one feels ready. I don't think that you "should have done that by now". I think that sharing is an intensely personal decision, often quite painful. I, for one, want to listen only if and when you are ready to speak--whenever that may be.

Thanks Laura. Was in another forum and a question was posed a lot like yours, next thing we know, the person hacked into everyone responded's email address book and decided to email our responses to everyone's respective email address book. This person was also new and had not shared their situation. So thank you for sharing and clarifying that for me. Just super cautious. When we went to court they called it covert trolling. Apologies to you, just being super cautious.

Laura, I am glad you told us more. I wasn't all the way through the thread, but had started composing a response, and then started to get paranoid, because I was telling personal stuff in a thread begun by someone I wasn't familiar with, had relatively few posts, had begun their thread with not much more than several questions posed to the forum, and who hadn't followed up with more info. (Yes, none of these things is a "wrong", but taken together, they resulted in my starting to have little doubts.) I hate to have those niggling doubts creep in, but some past experiences here can make one paranoid. There have been a number of times in the last couple of years on PC when someone posted something, said little about their own situation, and then used people's responses to write public articles, use as research material, etc. The next thing you know, you are the topic of a blog and your words are being quoted. Of course, there is always that danger on the Internet, but I felt reassured when you posted more. I have valued and appreciated reading people's experiences in this thread. Laura, I hope you will keep posting--it was very brave, and I don't think any cautious comments here were meant to be personal criticisms of you, just a expression of wariness.

Yes, I stayed. I didn't really recognize that it was abusive or wrong. It bore some similarity to my childhood, and so it felt familiar, almost "right", like the way things are supposed to be. I think if I had had a different childhood, the adult relationship wouldn't have felt so "acceptable."

I was also scared of the consequences and making him angry. I also lost all confidence and just became so cowed. Like others, I thought everything was my fault. I kept thinking if I did everything "right", he would treat me differently. And I kept scrambling to do what I thought he wanted, but he always seemed to change that. I could never get it right. So whenever he treated me badly, I thought I had done something wrong and if I could only change that.... It was a horrible cycle. Also, with two kids and having fallen off of my career track, I was scared I couldn't support my kids on my own or find a decent job, etc. Plus, I didn't want to be a "bad" mom by breaking up the family. There were so many reasons I stayed, many of them unspoken or even unthought.

I began working with my current therapist 3 years ago, and he tried to tell me I was in an abusive relationship. I would not accept this. Don't use that word ("abuse"), I told him. But he kept using it. I kept changing the topic. "I don't want to talk about this," I said. "Stop minimizing this," he said. One day he said there was a book he wanted me to read. It was the same one mentioned by Sharon123, The Verbally Abusive Relationship, by Patricia Evans. I got this book and read it in a week. There was my life, there was my relationship, and yes, it was abusive. Somehow reading this book helped me accept this better than I had been able to from my therapist. I came back to therapy the following week, and that was all we talked about. I remember on one page of this book it listed reasons you might want to stay in the relationship and work to make it better, signs that it was not totally hopeless. There was like 10 things, and I couldn't answer "yes" to any of them, and that helped me realize how far gone my relationship was. It made me feel kind of embarrassed I had let the relationship go on so long until it was this bad. I guess I just needed to be hit over the head with this book. It was really a breakthrough in therapy for me. We had a lot of further work to do to get me to the point where I could end the marriage, but I am divorced now, and much happier and mentally healthier than I was a few years ago.

In the sense, that I will never allow myself to be in a relationship like that again, yes, it does still affect me. Coming to the realization I did and leaving the relationship was a very powerful life change for me, and I expect this change to affect me forever. Getting out was a major life accomplishment for me, and it helps me think sometimes (without undue grandiosity, I hope), "if I could do that, I can do anything."

Wishing you well, with your journey, Laura. Facing the problem is really hard. Keep going. It is worth it.

I've been in a sexual, physical and mental abusive relationship.
I stayed there for i got pregnant by him and wanted my son to have a father.
After three years off abuse and neclect i was beaten up so badly i had to ses a physician and my husband had to pack his stuff and make sure he was gone the next day.
Then we divorced and i haven't seen him for about half a year untill i was stable enough to enure his presents...we had counseling afterwards and he got into therapy for his behaviouristic problems.

The abusive relationship with my ex-husband still effects me in this way that i will always have to look at my sons face knowing his presence is caused by rape, but i don't hold any crudge against my son.
He is worth to be loved as well as any other child is.
HE can't do anything about his presence tot his earth for I made that choice...and besides...how could i have killed him knowing it when i was actually pregnant?!?

M.A.P. is something different in my opinion, for the eggcell and spermcell may or may not be melted together, but the melting into the womb isn't yet there.

I never knew how to be submissive....good thing; I left after 36 years of abuse.

i appreciate your posts, sunrise i understand now, thankyou for explaining, even though this is obviously anonymous, its still hard to write stuff on here, i admire all your strength to be honest & to share.
even though i joined a year ago, i still find it strange & much of this is alien to me, i stumbled over the site when i started to see a T for PTSD, i went as i had heard about EMDR & had been struggling for a couple of years since i saw my friend get killed, it didnt work out, i struggled with everything, he did the procedure once but wouldnt do it again, said i wasnt suitable, & i dissociated too much, we would have to take a different approach, & started going into my childhood/history, i didnt like it, tried to keep with it, but the last straw came when he missed an appointment, that's how important i was, he forgot about me.

i didnt go back, but things got worse, went back on pills to try & compensate, first few months just felt knocked out, i kept increasing the dose, i know this is wrong, but i think my system just got used to them, i thought things would be straight forward, but it was like a can of worms, other stuff from my past just kept rising up to haunt me, i cant get rid of it, i assume he sensed something thats why he was digging, but ive been struggling more since i stopped going, so have spent the last few months trying to get myself to go back, i dont feel right, like im lost, i'm not connected to anything, that i'm in a different time to everyone else, i get confused with what is real, i dont want to be like this, i seem to have developed this unbearable feeling of other people, i cant bear to look at people or people to look at me, dont go out unless its work, i see danger everywhere, T before said this was hypervigilance, it seems to have spun out of control, i know i cant change until i at least understand, & i dont understand anything.

I have had abuse in the past, that i cant seem to get away from, i was trying to build myself up to talking to T about it when i posted my original thread, felt scared he wouldnt understand, he would judge me, when i was little i was stuck in situations i couldnt do anything about, that takes alot of the blame from me?, but what makes someone stay with someone like this again when your older, when you have a choice, why would you put up with this for years?, i feel pathetic, shame, guilt, worthless, i must be worth nothing to be treated like that, i hate myself for it, that's why i needed your thoughts, i related so much with everyone, i am not alone, this gave me strength to bring up with T, after reading what you had all written surely there was nothing that i would say to him that he hadnt heard from someone else, so i tried but it was a disaster, my legs where shaking so much i couldnt speak properly, i felt so stupid, i ended up getting up & leaving, i cant bear myself at the moment, i couldnt even sit down & speak like a normal human being, i dont know where i'm going from here.

i'm sorry for making some of you feel uneasy, i hope this goes a bit of a way to explain.

Laura2, I'm sorry that you are feeling so worthless now, so incapable.

Perhaps it would help you to know that a friend of mine had a very similar experience when she first tried to speak to her T about childhood sexual abuse. She told me specifically about her legs shaking, her inability to speak, how it took weeks to actually say something in session even after she had made up her mind to tell.

On the internet it is easy to open up and share, at least for me. You do not know me, I do not know you. That is why I am here, because it is the easiest place to open up and share, everybody needs to let things out. In real life I am not open about my past or my present struggles. I am the girl who is always smiling, I appear to have evreything under control, a person strong enough to handle anything. I do not ignore red flags,in fact I may even see them when they are not reallythere. I do not trust anyone with my pain or my shame. I am aware that there are trolls everywhere. This world is filled with vultures, waiting to devour, all they need is a little sign of weakness. I allow no onw to slide into my life, everyone is held at an arms length away, to keep myself protected. Sharing is not about the other person sharing also, I share because I need to, for my own sanity. I feel confident that no one here has any interest in knowing me in real life. My inbox confirms that!

Laura.,

Please know that you can share your story with us without judgment. It's what we are here for on PC, it's not an easy thing to open up about. We are thinking of you.

that's really kind, it means alot, i was not sure how to take a couple of these posts, ive never even heard of a troll, i admire those that can open up on here, even though you dont know me i feel just as exposed, its re-assuring to know i'm not alone, paranoia doesn't help, if you feel worthless its easy to believe no one would ever even want to hear your story, why would they, thankyou to those that have put their trust in me, who have made me feel welcome to this forum, & who have been patient with me.

(((((((( laura )))))))))

In my case it was fear of never being loved again and being a crack addict and knowing my ex was a great source of crack.