1. Characterized by improper or wrongful use
2. Using or containing insulting or coarse language
3. Causing physical injury to another
4. Characterized by maltreatment
Those are the definitions of 'Abusive'. I didn't realize how broad the definitions were until someone pointed it out to me recently. I've always known I have some experience with physically abusive relationships; my surrogate grandmother had a daughter (whom I've always considered an aunt) who often dated men who knocked both her and her kids around and my aunt was once in an abusive marriage. It's funny how people handle things differently though. My aunt married a man who could be a little brash at some times and they had a son together. After that he'd make little comments she didn't care for but she let it go and three years later they had a daughter. One night he'd been drinking and he came home and raised hell about something minor and she took the bait and barked back at him. Then he slapped her across the face. She got up off the floor, kicked him right where it counts and grabbed the kids and went to her mom's house. The next day she filed for divorce and no one's seen or heard from him since. She was able to pull herself out of a horrible situation before it got out of hand. Yet my other aunt is still prone to bad relationships with men and it's already a pattern that her two daughters are repeating. I don't know if she doesn't want to get out of it or if she's just become comfortable with it all because she doesn't know anything different.
I've never been in a physically abusive relationship but I realize now that I've been in emotionally abusive ones. Even worse is that I think that was one of my patterns back in the day and I didn't even know it. My first girlfriend and I ran on pure passion from the start. Passion breeds both love and hate and passion plus youth equaled some pretty loud arguments. She had her own issues, primarily stuff with her father and his death, and she would frequently take out her frustrations on me. There were two sides to her and one of them said some nasty stuff whenever she was hurt or depressed. I ended the dating part of it because I got tired of putting up with her crap. Eventually she worked out her issues and we got back together and everything was fine, we were able to put it all behind us. This should've been something I learned from (hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it?). I was still a teenager then but I recognized that I was not being treated well and that I had the power to change the way I was being treated.
I was 23 when I started dating the mother of my child the first time. She was in the midst of a divorce and I was still mourning the loss of my first love, so we really had no business pursuing a serious relationship. I noticed very early on that even though she was gorgeous and smart and funny, her years of dating bad dudes had taken a toll on her self-esteem. She had been the victim of cheaters on numerous occasions and her divorce was the result of a physical altercation she'd had with her soon-to-be ex-husband. It was almost like she expected me to cheat on her at some point and she had resigned herself to it already. That drove me up the wall. We didn't fight much the first time we dated but when we did it was loud and she would say things that really just hurt me to my core. But since it was so infrequent, I let it go. When we started dating the second time, she'd had plenty of years to figure herself out and deal with her own stuff and I noticed she was much happier and didn't lack self-esteem at all. What I didn't notice until later on was that she also had no problem saying exactly how she felt when something pissed her off. But she didn't say it in a constructive way, there was always some little dig at me; something I loved or something about my personality. I know I can be overly sensitive at times and about certain things so I didn't say anything about it. But she started to realize that I wouldn't fight back and this gave her more of the power in the relationship at the time. I should've spoken up right away and not allowed her to treat me like that but I chalked it up to my sensitivities and our incompatibility and let the relationship continue. Somehow I was stupider in this relationship than I was in the first one.
I've never been one to take out my frustrations on other people. and I think that's why I don't understand those who do. I guess I just don't see any point to it really. I tend to internalize and then write and that's how I work through things. People can only treat you as bad (or as good) as you let them. And I think staying in a relationship that borders on abusive has a lot to do with one's self-esteem. I've never had like super low self-esteem but I guess I did have some issues if I let things continue like that. It's funny how you can't see some stuff until you get way past it and then you're like, 'What the hell was I thinking?'. I wonder if witnessing abusive relationships as a youngster has any connection to my being in them as an adult. Relationship patterns are such a pain in the ass to deal with and change. Especially when you didn't even know you fell into some of them.
