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Verbal Abuse in Relationships

How do you live with abuse and learn to trust your intuition after distrusting yourself for so long? Why do you want to revive your intuition anyway? Here's the deal: your abuser wants you isolated from everyone and anything (such as your intuition) that could convince you to leave the relationship. You've learned how to live with abuse your partner's way. It's time to live with abuse a new way.
Wondering how to end your abusive relationship? There's one way that requires no tools, no tears and no trust given to anyone but yourself. You see, trusting your intuition is like trusting that one friend who never lets you down (imagine that friend if you haven't had one since being isolated). Your intuition guides you through life safely when you develop and use it correctly. And therein lies a problem: an abusive relationship disconnects you from your intuition. Abusers know that trusting your intuition will lead you away from their control pull, and eventually, your intuition can end your abusive relationship.
In the following video, I say to you what I needed to remember today. I am less than no one. I have value. I am chock full of potential and promise. So are you. To help me remember I am worthy, I have to remember the vocabulary of abuse. The vocabulary of abuse is the words and techniques abusers use to keep abuse victims as victims. When I was an abuse victim, I found myself confused: I knew something was wrong, but I couldn't decipher or describe what that something could be (Gaslighting: Designed to Destroy Your Sanity). Before I knew there was a vocabulary of abuse, I was destined to remain an abuse victim .
Years ago, I bore two sons into my abusive marriage. Young and naïve, I thought my husband would change into a loving man when he felt unconditional love from and for the children. I thought that real love would end his cruelty toward me, and that he and I would create a loving family. I thought wrong.
The prior post discussed the relationship between the abuser and victim, then explored what each partner thinks during the routine. This post digs into the abusive relationship feelings and behaviors of the victim and abuser during a long-term abusive relationship.
The routine merges the cycle of violence and abuse phases of the honeymoon and tension-building, and it develops over a period of time. Typically we see the routine only in long-term abusive relationships because it enables both victim and abuser to manage their diseased relationship without expending as much emotional, mental, or physical energy as they did when the relationship was new. (The routine is also covered in this post on the routine and cycle of violence and abuse.)
Have you read the story of Bluebeard? In short, Bluebeard, an abusive predator, marries a naïve girl and gives her all the keys to his castle, but tells her to never use the tiny key with the beautiful scroll top. So, of course, the girl seeks the door the key will open. She unlocks the door and sees the dead bodies of Bluebeard's former wives. In some versions, the girl escapes Bluebeard's wrath and in others she dies. Initially, I equated the story of Bluebeard's wife with myself as a formerly abused woman. After reading Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., I agree with the author that Bluebeard is the voice in our heads that traps us in abusive relationships (and many other foul situations).
The cycle of violence and abuse typically consists of three phases: tension-building, abuse, and honeymoon. The first two phases describe themselves and the honeymoon phase occurs after the abuse and gives the abuser a chance to beg the victim's forgiveness or otherwise convince the victim to stay. Over time, the tension-building and honeymoon phases tends to shorten or disappear, leaving us to wonder why abusive relationships can last so long. This routine makes staying in an abusive relationship manageable; both victim and abuser come to accept this routine as normal.
We tend to speak of the cycle of violence and abuse as if it were a constantly turbulent system, but we rarely discuss the routine that makes it easier to stay in an abusive relationship, the mind game that soothes the volatile system into manageability. The wheel of violence and abuse shows the cycle concisely, but too narrowly. The wheel shows the cycle as a rolling circle of abuse, honeymoon, tension-building, abuse, honeymoon, tension-building, abuse -- visually repeated infinite times with arrows circling around the wheel until we say to ourselves, "I get it! It's so simple." But then we feel shocked that victims of abuse don't just leave. After all, the wheel makes the cycle of violence and abuse so transparent that victims 'should be able to leave.' Despite its powerful (and necessary) message, the wheel simply cannot tell the whole story.
Description of A "Toxic Ex" A toxic ex is any co-parent who creates a loyalty conflict for your child(ren). Loyalty conflicts occur when your child believes they must choose one parent over the other. A toxic ex will do things like: Restrict or hinder communication and/or contact between you and your children. Talk badly about you to your children. Erase and Replace You (This phrase comes from Co-parenting with a Toxic Ex and means to ". . . erase you from your child's heart, mind, and memory and install someone else . . ."). Undermine you. Persuade your kids to not trust you and urge them to betray your trust (the "divide and conquer to maintain control" routine).