Posted: Oct 25, 2006, 3:02 PM CST
In response to:
You have to understand the dynamics of a relationship with an alcoholic/abuser. In the beginning if you are young and naive, you tell yourself 'he will change because he loves me'. As time goes on, you buy a house together, have children together, invest in a business together..........you then tell yourself 'he will change because we have a family now and he has more responsibilities'. You also feel a strong responsibility to your children to give them the benefit of being raised by both parents. In the meanwhile, you have gone from a young vibrant woman who is self assured and ambitious to a co-dependant enabler who is too ashamed to admit what really goes on behind those closed doors and now believes what she has been told for a number of years......that she is worthless, stupid, and unable to make it on her own. You make one excuse after another. So you stay......even when your close friends and family (if you haven't already deliberately alienated yourself from them) begin to question the bruises, why you rarely see them anymore and why you always seem so down in the dumps.
I take full responsibility for those choices I made before I finally divorced him 12 years ago after 14 years of marriage. I also take responsibility for the damage it caused to my children. But like their mother, they are all very strong willed and even though now in their adult lives it sometimes tries to creep back up on them, they fight it and find ways to not allow themselves to be the victims of their childhood.
Right or wrong, it happens a lot more than people realize. My only advice to women who are going through this kind of terror right now is to find someone......your minister, a close friend or relative, there are tons of organizations and counseling willing to help you to break the cycle and find within yourself the courage to make a change for yourself as well as your children. Alanon was a life saver for me and my children. Until then...my prayers are with all of you.
I know only too well the dynamics of it. My father was one. My mother FINALLY got us out of there. It took a while, but she did what she had to do. She started over from scratch, getting a job at 40 years of age, and moved five of the six of us (my oldest sister was getting married) 2,000 miles away from the alcoholic, abusive so of a bitch so that we wouldn't have to endure his shit anymore. She raised five of us by herself and, at 78 years of age, still holds a full-time administrative position at a university hospital here.
My dad wasn't so much physically abusive as he was emotionally so, but we got our share of "the belt," too. But I do know that if I was with a physically abusive man, it wouldn't take but ONE time for me to get myself and my kids the hell outta there.
If nothing else, the experience I went through as a child was a good thing. It taught me that under no circumstances would I EVER take any crap off a man.
My advice would be to tell women to do whatever you have to do to get out. To me, a woman who stays is not "asking for it," but she's more in fear of the unknown than she is of the abuse. It almost becomes a "comfort zone," for lack of a better phrase. I am not really "soft" when it comes to matters such as this ...not when someone's very life or, even more importantly, the lives of their kids, possibly, depends on her getting the hell away from the bastard. You do what you have to do in order to survive. That is the most important thing.
