I was talking to a friend of mine who just got out of an abusive relationship about this, as it'd been an idea I'd been harboring for some time.
Abusive relationships are no fun. They put you on the defensive, they make you feel inadequate, question who you are, ache in pain, and they even make you feel challenged. Now, one of the reasons that a person might continue to stay in such a pain in the ass situation is that they may feel they won't find love anywhere else if they leave. Another reason is low self esteem, etc. -
However, I think there's another reason that some people unconsciously know, but don't really entertain the thought of.
Picture this: In school, let's say someone insults you. Not in the "your ___ looks weird" way or the "you talk funny" way, but they make a snide, intellectual insult at you like "You have an immature Holden Caulfield complex" or "You always overreact first and think later". Use your imagination, you get what I'm talking about. People have various reactions to that - they may feel hurt, angered, or they may be able to brush it off, but sometimes, there's also the desire to get revenge. That's right - to insult them back. Part of you wants to stick around and observe this person, talk to their friends, note some of their own weaknesses in secrecy while they're laughing at you to your face - and then you want to come out one day and slash them back 10 times as hard.
What I'm thinking is, maybe there's another reason we sometimes get into, or stay in, abusive relationships -
a desire to beat the person at their own game, covertly. If your boyfriend or girlfriend is sometimes passive aggressively sneering at you or making backhanded comments, you sometimes feel the need to gather some dirt on them and then challenge them with everything they've ever said to you, and then overpower them. Sometimes you want to cut them back and then revel in delight at the expressions on their faces when you've made them think they were never in control of the situation to begin with.
At least, that's definitely how it can start out. Do you agree?
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Comments (64)
thats an interesting take on abusive relationships. i like it.
I can see this being valid. I'm the type of person who might just do this. Good post!
Interesting post! I never thought of it this way.
It's a curious viewpoint, but honestly, I've never seen a two-way abusive relationship (that's just called a "bad" relationship). An abusive relationship is usually one wherein all of the animosity originates from one side, and the other is helpless to counteract. Anyone who sticks around that long for the hopes of enacting some kind of revenge isn't being much of a better person anyway.
I somewhat agree with this. However though, in my personal experience with abusive relationships, I find myself just becoming weak and powerless at the end. Even trying to get back at them, it makes things no better for either person. You're better off getting out of that relationship as soon as possible.
No. I don't agree.
I don't believe that it can start out like this - but I do think that if someone stays in an abusive relationship long enough they may become vengeful in an effort to get out/stay out etc...
Besides, abusive relationships change you. You learn to play the game so to speak or you may not survive.
It's unlikely that it could ever be a matter of staying around to enact suffering on the other - but if enacting suffering on the other was the only way out I can imagine someone doing it.
I was in an abusive relationship & I definitely wasn't staying around because of revenge. To me that's a ludicrous idea. Maybe that's how you would like to think you would react or someone else might react - but when your in the situation it's very unempowering and getting revenge is the last thing on one's mind. Just to survive is what's going on.
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I could see myself as doing this.
It probably varies person to person. I could see this being the case at times, though.
I do not believe they start out this way but they can evolve into this type of co-dependently abusive cycle over time.
I don't agree at all.
Interesting take on this.
As a sexual assault and domestic violence counselor, I would like to let you know that your theory is incorrect. Abusive relationships go on a continuum. There is the classic DV situation of one person being exclusively abused and one person being entirely helpless... and then there's the relationship where both partners are engaging in abusive behavior. Abuse is typically the result of insecurity, the desire to control and a lust for power...
no. i disagree. abuse is about control and anger. people stay usually because they believe they truly cannot live without that person, out of fear and delusion. Also, when someone is being abused, you don't simply stick around to beat them at their own game. if any "sticking around" is happening it's usually because the victim is searching for a way out and does not yet have the means to do so.
It is an interesting theory though, just not really realistic.
LMFAO! you just gave me an idea...
i think what you're talking about is a toxic relationship where one partner is a cheater, or likes to make the other jealous or something like that. then your theory is sound. if you're talking about a phyisically or emotionally abusive relationship... idk.
I don't think people should remain in abusive relations...
there are various reasons depending on the situation and I can't speak for them all but I have an example. someone in my family is in an abusive marriage. I think she stays because of financial reasons but mainly because she is hopelessly waiting for him to see how much pain she is suffering and how much she has sacrificed for him over about 2 decades of marriage, then maybe he'll wake up someday and be the man that once loved her like he used to. she stays because she seeks validation from someone, who she knows is bad for her well being, but she still has hope that he'll change because she remembers the good times they've had and is willing to wait for that day when he'll love her like she still loves him. they're still together because I think her husband is bipolar and is nice sometimes while abusive later with a short temper, so they makeup and breakup a lot. when she seeks help from others, I don't think she wants help but just wanted to vent her frustrations that she bottles up inside, because she still defends his abusive behavior. I don't think she was ever vengeful but being the naively selfless person that she is, she used her kindness to defeat him and still loved him despite the way he treated her and sometimes he'd react nicely and treat her better, so it is like being nice to the bully and destroy him with your kindness rather than retorting in anger and fueling the fire, which depends on the degree of abuse in the situation. it may be easy for some to say that you can just leave the abuser and quickly get out of the situation but the brainwashing and self esteem has already been damaged. I think another reason that she stayed is because she doesn't feel that she has a safe haven to go to due to family being long distance and having very few friends, who criticize her for being dumb for staying which from an outsiders view it is dumb and she doesn't want to admit that she failed at her judgement of character for all these years by leaving her abusive husband and moving in with them, but in her skewed and damaged esteem, she'd rather live in misery with him and hope that he'll change than be completely alone and have to face the reality that the man she loves no longer loves her and she has to start all over again, which is frightening for some people to leave their comfort zone even if it is clearly no longer comfortable but it is still familiar.
@pixie - You just proved my theory correct.
@youreMINEalways@xanga - Well, abuse can be about control and it can be about power, hence you wanting to gain the upper hand on the other person doing it when they're sneering at you. That's how it can start out.
That's not how it may always last in the long run.
@Coffee_Kaioken@xanga - i see, good point. :)
@Dreaming_under_the_water@xanga - And just because you didn't react that way doesn't mean others won't either.
You did just say that abusive relationships can change a person, make them vengeful, and instill a mindset of having to "play the game" so to speak - that's what I'm talking about. You want to screw the other person over eventually, abuse them back. Then it goes from being a one-way abusive relationship to just one where the couple's idea of love turns into constant fighting with each other.
@youreMINEalways@xanga - You do have a good point yourself about wanting to get out, once realizing that the person was hurting you, but at the same time, I'd imagine some people would be pissed upon seeing that a good deal of their time was wasted, and you wouldn't just want to let the other asshole off easy by just walking away.
That's actually a very interesting point. It seems obvious once you read it but I never thought of it that way.
@Coffee_Kaioken@xanga - No what I'm saying is that it changes a person so that they have to "play the game" in order to be able to get out or just to be able to survive. For example - I had to learn how to manipulate my ex-husband by cooking the meals he liked and wash his feet every night, learnt to read his moods so that I could try to predict times when it was safer for me and my children, and learnt the best things to say (involving plenty of ego stroking) to try to induce a happier mood in him when I was trying to just survive another day. On the day I left this last time I convinced him through pretending that I thought he was the most wonderful man alive even though he had the day before beaten the crap out of me simply because I wanted him to have no suspisions that I was going to leave that day and have him get worried and turn up during my escape - it could've killed me - so I "played the game" and did what was necessary to make him think I completely approved of his "disciplinary" measures that he thought were his right so that he wouldn't get suspicious and stop me from leaving. And to show you just how "vengeful" I felt at the time - I made his bed because I felt like such a bad wife for leaving even though he had just the day before treated me like absolute shit - how do you think someone in this enviroment and who've had their identity smashed over and over again - how do you think you would try to disable the other person so to speak just for the sake of getting you back because of what they'd done to you? At that point it is only about SURVIVAL.
Most abused women are the same in this regards - I've known a woman whose husband bashed her head in with a hammer and she still went back not because of revenge but rather because she felt sorry for him because he was indigenous and because he constantly put her down and she felt like she deserved the abuse somehow. Another woman's husband had stabbed her and she wasn't vengeful towards him - she had 7 kids to him (all under the age of 7) - and only got out because he got arrested for having stabbed her in the chest and next to her eye. Another woman's husband gave her two black eyes, a broken nose, a broken collarbone and she escaped by jumping a neighbours' high fence whilst heavily pregnant - she went back to him and lost her son to him because he had convinced her that no one would ever love her again. Another woman left her husband who regularly strangled her and went back to him four times - she's with him now - and she had to go back to him because he kept taking her back to court to try to take her kid away from her and he completely ran her into the ground financially so that the only way she could survive was by going back to him. I'm telling you from my 9 months experience in refuges (living in them) and from knowing many women who've been in DV that none of them are trying to get revenge even though it would be understandable if they were to feel that way.
The only people I've known who've been vengeful in relationships are abusive people who happen to marry/get into relationship with abusive person. Abusive men who marry abusive women.
I've been in refuges and spent alot of time with other women who have been in abusive relationships - none were what I could call vengeful - all were just trying to survive and try to work out WTF was wrong with their ownselves that those men treated them that way (they were very brainwashed many women). A lot of self-blame goes on more than blame of the other person and so it is alot harder for someone in an abusive relationship to even feel revengeful or "try to get the other person back".
There were times yes that I wanted to kill my ex-husband - but I still at the time of being with him blamed the majourity of the abuse on myself because that was what he said. In terms of revenge - the only things that I ever thought of that could be considered even close to revenge was watching the morning news and hoping he'd died in a car accident on the way to work and then feeling bad for feeling that way.
@Coffee_Kaioken@xanga - You are ignoring the affects that abuse has on someone's psyche - it flattens you and destroys all of who you are and takes away your energy so that you are unable to fight back. You take on the other person's view of yourself because you are controlled and brainwashed to the point where you think you are wrong and the other is right. You have no energy left to try to hurt the other person - but rather only hurt the other person when in an attempt to escape - such as the woman who hit her boyfriend over the head with a frypan in an attempt to knock him out so she could run away with her kid after years of being abused and trying to leave and being abused some more (and she'd gone to the police a number of times only to be told she was just being an irrational female and belonged back in the kitchen).