Chapter 15: The Longcut of Abuse and Co-Dependency

Chapter 15: The Longcut of Abuse and Co-Dependency

            Abuse is a longcut of missed opportunity, needless and senseless, as are all longcuts, but abuse seems, well, like the threshold or mother of longcuts, because all longcuts are different forms of abuse. All addictions are forms of abuse; debt and divorce are forms of abuse; abortion is a form of abuse; pornography is a form of abuse. All are horrible and deplorable wasters of life, and co-dependency can be a factor in all forms of abuse. As a person who cares about someone who is abusing something or someone becomes entangled and participates in allowing the abuser to continue abusing himself or others, he/she is co-dependent. The specific longcut discussed here is verbal abuse with the extension to physical and financial in familial relationships, with just one illustration of how verbal also exists in some “friendships.”

            Abuse in relationships is a common equation—one abuser plus one victim equals two destroyed lives. Too often, however, there are children in the abuse equation who are witnesses, which makes them victims as well. Even when children aren’t on the receiving end of the actual abuse, they are still wounded. In the arithmetic of abuse, one plus one can equal many, and the damage doesn’t stop with one family. The next generation can perpetuate the same abusive patterns. The damage to children in abusive relationships is lifelong. When the adults who are supposed to love, care for, and protect a child fail, the penalty should be as it says in the New Testament: “Whoso shall offend one of these little ones…, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6). We must protect our children from abuse because they are being taught how to abuse and/or how to be a victim. An example: A twelve-year-old told her mother, “Daddy says he may have to divorce you because you don’t keep the house clean enough.” A simple yet psychologically damaging statement. The father is saying to his daughter: “Your mother is a slob.” “I have power over your mother.” “I don’t have to love your mother unless she does what I want.” “The housework is your mother’s job. I don’t have to help.” “If you don’t keep the house clean enough when you are married, your husband will divorce you.” An eleven-year-old son said the same thing to his mother. This father is saying to his son: “A woman’s purpose it to serve men. Expect your mother to do things for you that she will try to make you think you should do for yourself. Treat your sisters and future wife like I treat your mother.”

            Abuse can develop into another equation. Abuser plus victim equals pain, suffering, and loss of self-worth. Abuser plus victim equals pain, suffering, and loss of self-worth. Abuser plus victim equals pain, suffering, and loss of self-worth over and over and over again. From what you know of self-worth, you know you can’t do bad and feel good. Abusers feel terrible about themselves, although their pride and self-righteousness may blind them from that truth, but that doesn’t stop them from continuing in the addicting cycle, a cycle that can only continue if the victim participates as co-dependent. When the abuser abuses and the victim overlooks, excuses, or denies that he or she is being abused, so to speak, by sweeping it under the rug, a co-dependent relationship is born. Co-dependency keeps the victim a victim and the abuser an abuser. In a co-dependent relationship, the cycle prevents both from receiving help. In co-dependency, the victim enables the abuse to continue because he/she hasn’t the courage to refuse to be a victim any more, the courage to refuse to participate in the co-dependency dance, the courage to report the abuse, or the courage to leave an abusive, immoral, or addictive relationship. The victim may actually have such a poor self-image that he/she may believe he/she deserves to be abused. As the abuse continues, feelings of self-worth continue to decay. The victim becomes more and more incapable of setting boundaries to protect him- or herself. No one should have to live with abuse. No one should have to live in fear.

            Physical abuse gets more attention than other types of abuse because bruises and broken bones are hard evidence to explain away or sweep under the rug. Verbal abuse can go unaddressed for decades or longer, but the scarring is deep and lasting, just internal rather than external. All forms of abuse can lead to anxiety, depression, and feelings of isolation. Some of these verbally abusive men and women are openly cruel and foul, others more subtle. Still others seem charming in public but are Dr. Jekylls in private. Statistically, men are more physically and verbally abusive than women.

            The abuser abuses to control, manipulate, or dominate. The abuser needs to feel in charge of the relationship. The abuser may treat the victim as a servant and expect his wishes to be obeyed immediately. The abuser often accomplishes this with threats and scare tactics that if there is resistance or disobedience, there will be unpleasant consequences. The abuser may make the victim feel inadequate. The abuser may humiliate the victim and tell the victim that no one else would want him/her. Abusers excel at excuse-making. Abusers don’t want their victims to be independent. Abusers may try to keep their victims in isolation, away from normal socialization with family and friends. Abusers make unilateral decisions from the petty—“Don’t wear that” or “You can’t go there” to “We will go on vacation and dictate when and where” to “We will live in this house in this city.” Abusers create a prison atmosphere wherein the victim has to ask permission to go anywhere or do anything. Experts on the subject show how the abuser abuses in predictable patterns or cycles of behavior and list between four and eight phases. The four-phase analysis seems adequate:                                                                                                                                                      Phase One is when communication breaks down and when tensions build in the abuser. He/she may fantasize about all the “bad” stuff the victim has supposedly done and begins watching for opportunity wherein he/she will feel justified in carrying out the abuse. The victim realizes tensions are building and becomes fearful. The victim tries to appease, smooth feelings, and stay away from any possible triggers.

            Phase Two is arguing, belittling, blaming, bullying, name calling, threatening, accusing, criticizing, or lashing out. If the anger level is high enough, verbal abuse can escalate into physical abuse.

            Phase Three is the calm after the storm, a time of reconciliation when the victim is hurt and the abuser acts contrite. The abuser apologizes, makes excuses, denies, or minimizes what happened. The abuser acts like he/she feels remorse but actually knows he/she must act sorry so the victim will not talk to others or report his/her behavior. The abuser tries to make the victim feel responsible. The abuser fears getting caught and may play on the victim’s sympathies to try to make the victim believe that he/she is the only person who can help him/her overcome his/her abusive ways.

            Phase Four is when the abuse is in remission or laying dormant. Some call it the “normal” (nothing is normal about the abuse cycle) or honeymoon phase. During this time the abuser may bring gifts, show affection, and act as though nothing has happened. The abuser’s goal is to keep the victim in the relationship. This peaceful time gives the victim hope things will be different in the future, that the abuser is honestly sorry, and that the abuse will not occur again. But it will.

            My friend had reason to believe her son-in-law, Will, was verbally, perhaps physically, abusing her daughter, Linda. From time to time, Linda dropped hints that Will demanded she wear certain clothes and that she was never allowed to go out in the evenings, even to a church activity. Linda seemed to walk on eggshells when she and Will were together, making every effort to please him. My friend made surprise visits to Linda’s home to sense the climate there. She told Linda on one of these visits that she was concerned about Will’s demanding personality. She said, “If ever you don’t feel safe, you and the children are welcome to come to stay with your father and me.” One evening Linda, her husband, and their children came to dinner at my friend’s home. Everything seemed “normal.” The grandchildren seemed happy enough and her daughter and son-in-law seemed relatively amiable. Then, as he always did, the son-in-law announced it was time to go home in an abrupt and unkind voice. Linda looked at him and said, “The children and I are staying.” As the story unraveled, Linda was being verbally, psychologically, and physically abused. 

            In an ideal scenario if physical abuse occurred, one time would get a warning and twice would get reported. If that were the standard, the victim would draw a line in the sand with something such as: “You pinch me, or slap me, or push me (whatever the physical act) again, I will report you to the police. Such a quick and decisive threat in some cases will stop the physical abuse. If the physical abuse did happen again, the warning would then be followed by action, and the victim would report it. This zero tolerance for physical abuse would rein in problems in the early stages. This doesn’t mean the relationship should end; it just means it should be brought to the attention of someone who can help.

            Verbal abuse is harder to prove because there are no physical bruises or broken bones and usually no tape recordings for evidence. One day I sat in a restaurant in an acoustically prime location and overheard a young mother answer her cell phone. As I surmised from the conversation, she was a stay-at-home mother with a couple of small children. She and a few neighbor friends had toured a famous garden and were lunching in the café overlooking the gardens. She spoke to her husband in a small, fearful voice, and thanked him over and over again for tending the children so that she could be where she was. As an aside, fathers don’t “tend” their children. Fathers and mothers care for their children, nurture their children, love their children, but they don’t “tend” their children. When one parent is unavailable the other parent takes over the nurturing. That’s their job. People who “tend” children operate day care centers or are employed as nannies or babysitters. But to continue, as she was expressing gratitude to her husband, again, for allowing her the time to go with her friends, I heard his threatening voice asked three questions: Who are you with? How much did you spend? When will you be home? Oh for a husband who would say: “The children and I are having a great time. Enjoy the gardens. See you when you get home.” After she hung up, she told her friends how wonderful her husband was. Co-dependent persons do not hold their abusers accountable. At www.helpguide.org is a list of five ways people who are being abused may act:

1.         Afraid of or too anxious to please their partner.

2.         Go along with everything their partner says and does.

3.         Check in often with their partner to report where they are and what they’re doing.

4.         Receive frequent, harassing phone calls from their partner.

5.         Talk about their partner’s temper, jealousy, or possessiveness. (http://www.helpguide.org/mental/domestic_violence_abuse_types_signs_causes_effects.htm

            As we identified in the discussion on anger, an angry person dehumanizes the object of his anger, seeing the person as an object. The same is true of all abuse. The verbal abuser manifests his/her undercurrent of uncontrolled anger using words instead of hands to inflict harm. The verbal abuser’s most common weapons include: criticism, name calling, threats, and blaming.            

            Criticism comes blatantly and subtly. One verbally abuse women told how when she got married she was five-feet-eight inches tall and weighed one-hundred and twenty-five pounds. Beginning on her wedding night, her husband criticized her about her weight and figure daily. A year or so later when she became pregnant, he brought the bathroom scale into the kitchen and made her weigh herself every morning, which he recorded. If she showed sadness or cried, he told her he was helping her to be healthy. He told her he knew how important it was for her to like her reflection in the mirror. He was doing this for her own good and happiness and for the health of their baby. Yelling, screaming, and swearing can all be part of criticizing.

            Name-calling comes blatantly and subtly. A husband who thinks well of himself said in an enduring tone to his friends in his wife’s presence: “That’s what I love about Mary, she’s so clueless.” Name-calling can take the form of comparisons. A husband suggested to his wife that she get a nose job so that she’d look more like her sister. He didn’t call her ugly, but the suggestion of a nose job had the same effect as saying, “You are ugly; your sister is beautiful.” Name calling takes the form of praising or holding others of the same sex up as ideals. After a dinner party, a husband said to the hostess, “The dessert was superb. It would be great if you could teach my wife how to be as good a cook as you are.” Again the implied name-calling. “My wife is not a good cook.” Name-calling can takes the form of shaming the victim with words such as idiot, dummy, retard, silly, ugly, pervert, fat, and others we cannot use. Name-calling occurs when the abuser demeans hobbies or interests and belittles family or friends. Name-calling can also take the form of accusing. The abuser will find supposed evidences of the victim’s faults. He/she will accuse the other of having affairs, of being secretive, of staying out too long with friends, of talking about him/her behind his/her back, of spending too much money, of being lazy, a poor house keeper, etc. Yelling, screaming, and swearing can all be part of name-calling.

            Threats come blatantly and subtly. The blatant threats are verbal intimidations that warn the victim that something very unpleasant will occur if whatever the abuser wants doesn’t happen. The abuser may threaten divorce if sex isn’t granted at the whim of the abuser. Another subtle form of threatening will surprise those who haven’t experienced it. Some abusers threaten their victim by refusing to discuss or talk about the situation. The victim may be treated as though he or she simply doesn’t exist. Some abusers form a league with their children that excludes the spouse from their inner circle. The spouse is made to feel like an outsider in his/her own family. Another subtle form of threatening comes when the victim’s feelings are dismissed as insignificant, childish, or so weird or evil that they aren’t even worth being acknowledged. The verbal abuser uses words to hurt or silence to control. Yelling, screaming, swearing, and refusing to talk can all be part of threatening.

            Blaming comes blatantly and subtly, as the abuser turns everything that happens to his/her own advantage. If something good happened, it was because of the abuser’s efforts, skills and intellect; if something bad happens, it was the victim’s fault. The abuser holds the victim responsible for everything that goes wrong, seldom if ever admitting his or her own culpability. If one of their children does something wrong, it’s the victim’s fault. If an appliance breaks, if the victim hadn’t used it improperly, it would still be working. If finances are tight, the victim spends irresponsibly. A subtle form of blaming happens when the abuser takes credit when the credit belongs somewhere else. I was in a “friendship” in my early mothering years. My friend and I had children the same ages and we both loved playing the piano, so we taught each other’s children piano lessons. It was so easy for her to blame me for the fact that her children weren’t progressing very rapidly. When we had a joint recital together, she told me how poorly I played. When I created a program and wrote little poems about each of the children who were performing, she told everyone that she had written the poems. It was obvious to me that we didn’t have a friendship. The end product of blaming is that the victim begins to second-guess his/her strengths and becomes fearful. He/she fears making decisions, fears taking risks, fears taking responsibility, fears offering a different opinion, and certainly fears communicating with the abuser on any level. These fears over time brew resentment, stress, anxiety, and sometimes even serious illnesses. When any person feels controlled, when any person feels his/her opinion doesn’t matter, when any person feels helpless, hopelessness sets in, and unhappiness is the result. Yelling, screaming, swearing, and accusing can all be part of blaming.

            One additional way abusers control their victims is with money. By controlling the finances the abuser controls the person. As the well-worn statement goes: “He who has the gold makes the rules.” Criticism, name calling, threats, and blaming can also be tools to the financial abuser. Here, again, the abuser may make it seem like he is controlling finances for the benefit of the family. Financial abusers withhold money, don’t allow credit cards to be used, make the victim account for every expenditure. One financial abusing husband withheld his wife’s prescriptions if she went over the food budget. Another financial abusing husband gave his wife Christmas money to buy presents for her family and their children on Christmas Eve. Another financial abusing husband made his wife get a job under the guise that then she would have spending money for which she wouldn’t have to account. She got a part-time job and soon learned her earnings were to be used for a carefully concocted percentage of the household expenses—food, gas, and utilities. Many financial abusers restrict the victim to an allowance and keep the finances secret. In worse-case situations, a financial abuser will interfere with the victim’s career—calling too often, going to the workplace, making the victim miss work, harassing the victim for his/her lack of a more prestigious career, and, of course, not making enough money. Financial abusers may steal money from the victim under the excuse of what’s yours in mine, but it never goes the other way.  The abuser keeps a tightwad grip; what’s mine is mine, just mine.

            Some literature on abuse in books, articles, and on the Internet suggests that any abuse is a deal breaker. I agree that when abuse continues in a predictable and continuing pattern, it is a deal breaker. Abuse is wrong on every level for all the reasons stated and especially because it violates agency. But when victims are told to be confrontational and leave the relationship without learning to set boundaries and get counseling, it seems the only attempt to repair the relationship has been to fight fire with fire, in effect, turning the victim into an abuser. One day my husband and I were working together in the yard. I wiped my feet carefully before I came back in the house. A little while later, I noticed little clumps of wet dirt on the kitchen floor. Since I had carefully wiped my feet, I knew Richard was the culprit. Then I saw the same little clumps on the carpet in another room where Richard hadn’t been. Then I saw he had left his shoes outside. I was the one bringing dirt into the house. In the same way I felt sure I was a victim of Richard’s dirt, the person who feels like the victim may also be abusive. Both need to be willing to look at the bottom of their shoes and be accountable for the dirt they are bringing to the relationship.

            I know abuse is a destructive longcut, but at the same time I believe many abusers can and will change if they are shown the benefits and beauty of an honest relationship wherein love and concern replaces control and manipulation. It’s all in the attitude of the abuser. If he/she admits the need to change and begins making improvements, patience with him/her is the prescription. It may be a mutually fulfilling relationship can be built. If he/she continues to learn how to problem-solve without anger or abuse, how to feel and show respect, how to get what he/she wants in healthy ways, how to build on the positives and work to eliminate the negatives, how to express frustrations openly and honestly, the importance of taking responsibility for any abuse quickly, and shows continuing improvement, then the baby has not been thrown out with the bath water. As both persons in the relationship see each other with clearer vision, understand each other’s heart, and learn to communicate more effectively, the relationship can become strong and healthy. If you are married to a basically good person who is willing to change, don’t bolt or chuck the relationship in the garbage without efforts to save it. (If you want more information, type “how to stop abuse,” “verbal abuse,” “physical abuse,” or even just “abuse” into your web browser.)

Agency-Preserving Principles

Never believe  you will be the exception to the laws of nature.	If you are in an abusive relationship, know that if nothing changes, you will be abused again. That’s just how abusers operate. The sooner you get help the better result you will have. Don’t allow yourself to become co-dependent.
Know you will harvest what you sow.	If we, as a society, tolerate psychological, emotional, physical, intellectual, racial, political, religious, or any other kind of abuse, we are sowing more and more abuse. Most especially, abuse against children, the handicapped, and the elderly should be met with zero tolerance and every penalty available under law.
Learn the lessons of history so you won’t repeat the mistakes.	If you are an abusive person, you are on a course leading only to self-destruction. Abusers will be caught and stopped—somehow, somewhere, sometime.
Find the power in resisting impulse, persisting, and delaying gratification.	The victim’s power comes in refusing to be part of a co-dependent lifestyle. Set boundaries the abuser must not cross. If he/she does cross the boundary, report the abuse. If you are abusive, do not be tempted to excuse your behavior. Resist and persist in changing your behavior. Your agency is severely limited whenever you abuse others. In the long run, the person you are abusing the most will turn out to be yourself.
Develop personal integrity and make moral decisions.	Going along with an abuser’s demands is not moral, wise, or smart. It’s co-dependency.
Know that others see things you don’t and welcome their perspectives.	“Many verbal abusers are delightful, charming men [or women] in public. They treat their spouse or girlfriend [or boyfriend] with such respect that people often think they ‘are the perfect couple.’ They save their abuse and cruelty for a private audience of one”  (nisaa.org.za/home/index.php?option=com_content&task).
Work, Work, Work.	If you are on either side of abuse, either as an abuser or a victim, it will take work, work, and more work to change the patterns, habits, or even addictive cycles you are in. Work to preserve and protect your agency by ridding yourself of abuse on every level.
Make goals, write them down, use failure avoidance, prioritize, avoid procrastination.	Shakespeare might have said it this way: “Neither an abuser nor a co-dependent be.” Abuse causes failed marriages and failed lives. If you are either abusive or co-dependent make up your mind now. Set your goal to conquer these behaviors. Don’t procrastinate.
Value yourself. Know you can make a difference. Do good to feel good.	Being a victim takes away your agency. Value yourself. Don’t believe an abuser’s assessment of you.
Develop a happy inner core.	When any person feels helpless, hopelessness sets in, and unhappiness is the result. An abusive person isn’t a happy person. An abused person is not a happy person.
Develop the backbone to say “NO!”	Saying “No!” to abuse is vital for your health and safety. Saying “No!” to abuse is vital for the health and safety of the next generation. Abusers don’t respect doormats. Doormats feel their job is to be stepped on. Don’t be a doormat.