Living and Dying with Abuse

On emotional abuse and manipulation, dying still bound to the abuser, trauma, mental illness, neurodivergence, and the failure to escape abuse.

After a harrowing four hour train ride I finally arrived at the station to be picked up by my father, sister, and her partner. Instead of driving immediately home for me to be the last to see my mother who died had that day, my father wanted to go to Burger King which then led to a further tedious wait in the drive in.

I hadn’t been home and seen my mother for almost a month. I had stayed in my flat shortly after the pandemic started because the mere thought of being quarantined together with my father for many weeks or months was so depressing and triggering I hindered myself from going home. Though, I shouldn’t be calling him a father, he’s just an abusive man who likes the status of husband and father without filling these roles and sharing the workload, instead using abuse to keep his position and advantages. Since some time, every minute I had to spend with him was amplifying my depression and trauma, I was hypersensitive to his abuse tactics. My self-imposed isolation was just another symptom, an unhealthy coping mechanism, and mental illnesses during a pandemic were a new strange thing to navigate. Three times my mother asked me whether I’d come home and three times I declined, yet now I had to spend more time with him than before. Cruel fate.

At night or very early in the morning, she died of a sudden cardiac death in my bed. She always slept there when the abuser was home and I wasn’t, because his snoring is maddeningly loud — sometimes I felt sorry for coming home. He tells everyone they started sleeping separately when he came home from work as a precaution in the wake of coronavirus, which is certainly an additional cause, besides hiding the traces of a man’s inability to have a wife wanting to sleep beside him. I had feared for other vulnerable people’s lives but I forgot to think about my mother’s health, about many other things. Besides the coronavirus there are other forms of death, other problems, and there is still abuse.

This is what happens when the abused dies still tied to the abuser and the abuser’s mistreatment remains unacknowledged and his entitlement undisputed.

Dying Bound to the Abuser

What happens when the person the abuser primarily exploited is no longer around? The abuser will most likely cling to any status he has and anything that provides it, and fight anything that would deny him that.

When living with an abuser you lose some of your agency, in death you lose all. Whether married or as an unmarried child, if you die tied to abusers, they may likely have full (legal) control of your remains, your memory, and everything that you leave behind. The narration of your life, your reality, your perspective, your personality falls to the abuser, one’s experiences and knowledge of mistreatment and abuse (if you were the only one with it) fall into obscurity.

Constitutions congratulate themselves on having rights for (hypothetical) people that predate their birth and extend after their death. But the rights that predate birth take away from the rights of the living and the rights succeeding death might as well belong to your abuser.

Isolation and ownership postmortem

The abuser’s view of his partner as a personal possession extends after her death. Nowadays, the starkest evidence for isolation tactics is his “othering” of my mother’s family, and showing annoyance or disgust to those close to her that don’t appease him in paying him, first and foremost, attention, deference, and condolences. He gets angry at people if they don’t treat him as the owner of this position of primary griever. Other people who knew her more and better and din’t mistreat her are to be disregarded. Much can be discerned by his tone of voice and the words he uses — though probably only when put into the context of the abuser’s mind-set and abuse tactics. He is infantilizing my mother’s family in one moment, then vilifying them in another — a continuous shift of rhetorical focus.

It is the abuser’s thinking that, once you are married to him or since you are his offspring, you are an extension of him, and any other relationship or connection is supposed to fade in comparison to your required devotion to him. By law, no one but the spouse is closest, which the abuser integrates into his sense of entitlement. It’s in contrast to his disregard for (finding out and caring about) his partner’s needs, wants, interests, and tastes, and establishing actual human intimate connection. To him and this nuclear family her own relatives are outsiders, and whenever they appear to pose a threat to his control and possession he badmouths them. He externalizes his own sense of ownership in painting them as greedy controlling adversaries in the matters concerning my late mother, as if they are threatening to take something away from him, as if our ingroup is besieged. He needs a dramatised conflict over inheritance, and to portray it as such to anyone he talks. He wants to hammer the message into our heads that no one is to be trusted but him, presented as “our” interest that is actually just his at the center.

The grave of a wife close to himself and later for himself as well, and for people to see it, maintains his status and appearance. The primary person to mourn is thus he, the most hurt person is thus he, and the only opinion and right to do with her body and her possessions is thus his (yours is only what he grants you). Because possessiveness is at the core of the abuser’s mindset, with my mother’s death it’s still very much what he wants for her, and now, that she isn’t here anymore, she cannot to object. He didn’t even know that she wanted to be cremated, he would have chosen otherwise but he agreed to it. On the other hand, when he learned of her connection to her family’s grave and how everyone else knew it, as is the case when one pays attention to the needs and wants of the people one loves, he couldn’t have that because he’d be bereft of his possession. “She belongs to us” is the possessive statement. The “us” is “we” are her immediate family, but it is relative and actually means “me” because any stance that differs from his is ignored. And having her ashes transported from one country to another where she could be buried in her family grave, which would have been more meaningful than remaining in the vicinity of her abusive, condescending, disrespectful husband, was a bigger trouble during the pandemic which the abuser gladly exploited.

In the matters of a grave an abusive man continues to only care about his own wants. He constantly repeated to everyone that the grave’s look is to be decided by the children (other instances include our mother’s possessions which legally belong to him as well), but it’s just to boost his image. Whereas my sister and I kept discussing what our mother would like, he kept cutting back to what was to his taste which is without consideration or knowledge of our mother’s, and decided over our heads. He knows that we know, were we to criticize him in his manipulative behavior, he would continue with more severe emotional abuse and decide over our heads anyway. Cooperation is not in the mindset of abusers. The abuser only allows what doesn’t pass his own needs and his egocentricity.

Thus in the end, the abusive man can present the picture of the weeping husband standing foremost at the funeral of the woman he disrespected and exploited the most, and no one is aware of the abuse. He is of course grieving. An abusive man’s idea of love is possession and the loss of that can also elicit grief. Dealing with someone’s death is usually an extension of what happened when they were still alive:

“Abuse grows from attitudes and values, not feelings. The roots are ownership, the trunk is entitlement, and the branches are control.” (Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That, p. 75)

That the abuser conflates love with possession is why he never made the effort to get to know, remember, and respect what my mother wanted and only knows what fits his instinct to possess. Thus, love isn’t what the other person wants, it’s what fits his wants, what he sees to be the right thing, what can and must be done for him, what falls under his notion of ownership. The way to recognize what “love” is to an abuser is not by focusing on his feelings and the way he talks about them (or that he does in the first place) but the way he talks about and behaves towards the supposed loved ones (in private). In public they may be put on the pedestal, and sometimes at home, usually when it is something to be done for him or for them to shoulder more work. He generally doesn’t know much about them either, especially not their own feelings and issues with him:

“The abuser will typically have difficulty looking through her eyes with sympathy and detail, especially with respect to her grievances against him. The more he ridicules and trivializes her point of view, the greater reason you have to believe that the problem lies with him.” (Bancroft, p. 379)

His ownership of someone sounds through the most with the tone of “my [their position/role to him]”. Possessiveness, abuse, and humiliation are the opposite of love — but, if translated into entertaining jokes for the public, they are easy to overlook. His arrogant mockery and lecturing of my mother, teasing insults of my sister, and infantilization of me is the verbal part of control and abuse, it is to crush self-esteem and independence, and it drowns out any slogan of endearment.

Living With This Abuser

Isolation

The man a woman is married to and has children with repeatedly threatens to leave every time he is in an argument, in an approach to be held accountable for his mistakes and his disregard for her and her children’s needs. All while starting a life in a strange country, with an initial language barrier, financial troubles, and social conventions hanging in the air. It must do things to a woman I can only begin to fathom. If one expects a bond through marriage and family to begin with, abuse that confuses and occupies one’s mind might bind one even more, in the most devious sense. And what shouldn’t have happened happened: the abuser stayed.

Being an immigrant or having an immigrant background may add to private and public isolation. The abuser will abuse their partner regardless of their nationality, though public perception and stereotypes will serve in disregard, condescension, lack of help, and ultimately, isolation. It’s easier for an abuser to isolate you someplace where you don’t know the language or cannot even find a job, occupied with child rearing, maintaining the household, navigating abuse and financial issues. Regarding languages, future attempts to escape can be complicated if the abuser hinders the mother from teaching her own language to the children or if the mother herself thinks she has to integrate by neglecting it.

Living in a village with limited community services or access to resources, and meeting people usually together or in association with one’s family serves the abuser to undermine any budding independence and support. Living more secluded is ideal to the abuser, as there will possibly be less opportunities for partner and children to see healthy relationship or family dynamics and positive interactions to contrast their own family unit — but it may also add to the shame and secrecy. It’s hard to see any alternative when growing up with screaming parents all around you in your neighborhood. One thinks a destructively angry father is something to be endured and hidden.

As abuse is designed to be evasive, in a sense it isolates your thinking, separates thoughts and worries deriving from various moments of abuse. Its confusing nature hinders you to contextualize the various tactics and to see the pattern. Isolation in return creates a false merit in self-sufficiency/-reliance instead of interdependence, connection and trust. Thus, one effect of the abuse imposing isolation is that it often manipulates you into further isolating yourself by withdrawing due to emotional distress, mental illnesses, or trust issues. It is then likely to overlook the abuser’s ongoing isolation tactics. Sickened by the fact that no one else seems to recognize the abuse one can feel alone, and unprotected if words get out.

As partner abuse extends to the children, isolation tactics likely do so as well. By neglecting or hindering their need for social interactions and activities it will also be for control as well as disregard and unwillingness to engage with simple parental duties. A child without any outside connections is as isolated as the partner. Being close to anyone who isn’t close to the abuser as well is a threat and therefore a target for sabotage. You can’t talk to your neighbors because he talks to them. You can’t talk to your relatives because he talks to them.

On the other hand, the abused can affect each other as well. With children leaving the home, for work or study, and the mother remaining with the abuser the manipulation and isolation can become even more potent. In another case, when you refrain from positively influencing your mother, out of frustration for the whole situation or for the irrational fear of being a manipulative abuser yourself, she might just be even more of a mark for the abuser’s manipulations.

The interplay of public appearance, gaslighting, and manipulation is a fertile ground for isolation. The abuser wants to remain in control of the abused and their image. Various abuse tactics can be used, but, for example, a sure way to isolate one’s partner is for an abuser to gaslight them into believing the reality and the opinions the abuser presents, then turn around and present their opinions differently to anyone outside.

Gaslighting

Gaslighting is abusing someone into doubting their own experiences, opinions, memories, or beliefs, and replacing them with the abuser’s (no matter whether they are wrong or technically right or appear woke), to the point where they look to the abuser to define their reality.

“A woman can feel that she is losing her mind — or develop actual psychiatric symptoms — if the obvious realities of her life, including abuse, are denied repeatedly by her partner. The certainty and authority in his voice, with his eyes twisted up to show how baffled he is, leave her questioning herself. “Did that really happen? Maybe it didn’t. Maybe I do overreact to innocent things.” The more serious the incidents he denies, the more her grip on reality can start to slip. And if outsiders start to notice her instability, the abuser can use their observations to persuade them that her revelations of abuse by him are fantasies.” (Bancroft, p. 72)

Gaslighting creates an environment in which you suppress your urge to tell the truth or your side of the story. Every attempt to assert yourself against it likely prompts more gaslighting or other abuse tactics, so for fear of that you might start to go along with the abuser’s version of events or opinion; with time perhaps even be manipulated into believing it. Brainwashing sounds severe but decades of gaslighting, isolation, manipulation, and constant attack on one’s psyche and emotional state, and no help or reassurance in oneself will cause thr abused to believe whatever is needed to make them stay with the abuser. Everyone, adult or child, can be trapped in abuse without recognizing it as such at first.

Rewriting and denying events can be done in front of other people, too. Often the abuser will take any opportunity to be the first to narrate and influence. Whether they can still control you or not, they will also seek to control how other people see you.

The abuser’s gaslighting is also usually linked to putting someone else down and inventing or exacerbating their flaws while elevating himself. The urge to bury his own insecurities, to seek immunity from any potential consequences, the instinct to attack the abused’s psyche and self-esteem to exert control, to create moments of conflict if the abused opposes the gaslighting in order to disrupt their emotional state, to have another harm occupy their minds — one, several, or all of the above inform the abuser’s need for gaslighting. Frequent instances about minor things are microaggressions which have the same effect.

Denying reality may be prompted by someone’s direct initiation, like asking for accountability for a mistake or damage, to cover or diminish the act or impact. But gaslighting can also occur “spontaneously”, completely rewriting an entire aspect of reality or the abuser’s personality. Like that time my mother was driving, with the abuser and me as passengers. Unprompted, he started to paint a false reality of her having a worse driving style than she did (and him having a better one) by teasing her of driving recklessly, followed by an elaborate account of how he himself only did so in his youth, negating all the instances in which he did drive recklessly himself (sometimes at a curve, a lightweight person, like a child, would hit their head on the window).

A reluctance to ask for the truth is only one consequence of gaslighting. This additional unpredictability contributes to the walking-on-eggshells atmosphere, causing constant caution for manipulations or sudden disruptions of one’s peace of mind and assurance in reality.

The fact that another person’s perspective and knowledge exists prompts the need for gaslighting for the abuser to exert their preferred version of reality. But it also conveys the existence of undisclosed damages, things that come to light afterwards or never, if there is no other person to have a more sincere version of events. Two memories of witnessing the abuse of our late dog with “spoiling” him, one I could prevent, the other I couldn’t: At the last second I managed to take away the entire pastry covered in icing the abuser left our dog because he didn’t want to eat it himself anymore (the abuser went quickly outside after he left it there, not to be a witness himself); a piece of stale chocolate cake big enough for a human I couldn’t prevent, and our dog vomited. I told my mother who then confronted the abuser, but he lied and said it was only a tiny piece. I ask myself how much there was that I didn’t witness at all, when I wasn’t even home.

Mindset

The abuser enjoys and wants the authority and status of husband and father, the image and symbol of having a family and being the “provider”, this masculine aesthetic which however has responsibilities and coexistence with other real people attached to it. He maintains his entitlement to the luxury of not contributing to any of the work and responsibility it entails through abuse and control.

“The abuser reaps cooperation and catering to his physical, emotional, and sexual needs. And if the couple has children, the entire family strives to enhance his good moods and fix his bad ones, in the hope that he won’t start tearing pieces out of anyone. Consistently at the center of attention and getting his own way, the abuser can ensure that his emotional needs get met on his terms — a luxury he is loath to part with.” (Bancroft, p. 155)

Abusers have a delusional picture of what family is supposed to be to them — all fun, no work, admiring and grateful spouses and children catering to their needs. They aren’t as much part of a family as the family is a part of them, one that is convenient whenever they want and that can be discarded when another interest is more important. This abuser serves little function within a family but lives off of other people. It was my mother who was maintaining a clean and livable home, structuring family life, and doing emotional labor. With all the leisure time for himself, the inappropriate sex jokes and comments he made in our presence it’s as if he never stopped living his bachelor life, just with a personal unpaid caretaker and children as narcissistic extensions of himself that enter his sight when convenient to him. All of which had to be maintained with various control and abuse tactics.

I remember stomping, door slamming, loud knocking and threats of violence behind locked doors, being chased during my early childhood. The threat of violence is violence. Threatening violence to children while they are young is abuse, substituting it with other manipulation tactics when they are older is also abuse. This feels true when thinking about it, but it is hardly treated as such regarding its validity as evidence, or when compared with more severe cases, or in light of society’s utter indifference.

I remember my mother having shown legitimate anger towards my father’s misdoings and messes during my childhood, which he turned into loud arguments.

“The abusive man’s goal in a heated argument is in essence to get you to stop thinking for yourself and to silence you, because to him your opinions and complaints are obstacles to the imposition of his will as well as an affront to his sense of entitlement. If you watch closely, you will begin to notice how many of his controlling behaviors are aimed ultimately at discrediting and silencing you.” (Bancroft, p. 147)

His favourite deflection of any blame and responsibility was playing the victim, both indignantly and mockingly exclaiming that everything had to be his fault, with that reversing an abuser’s often held belief that “Nothing is ever his fault: He blames something or someone for anything that goes wrong. As time goes by, the target of his blame increasingly becomes you” (Bancroft, p. 118). His favourite threat was to leave us. With the fear of the run-away-father abusers shut down any criticism or resistance to their control, as it is a frightening maneuver when they have made their partner and children financially dependent on them and when it is still early in their marriage. I remember hiding my sister and myself in corner during one loud argument when we were little. The abuser had blamed our mother for frightening us, but it was his voice that was the loudest and most fear-instilling. This was part of establishing the system of double standards:

“An abusive man subtly or overtly imposes a system in which he is exempt from the rules and standards that he applies to you. (…) He may scream in arguments, but if you raise your voice, you’re “hysterical”. (…) He can point out your faults, while settling himself above criticism, so that he doesn’t have to deal with your complaints or be confronted with the effects of his selfish and destructive actions.” (Bancroft, p. 157)

Abusers want you to believe that loud and heavy arguing and the freedom from accountability for one party is normal or acceptable in marriages or families. Children, too, will start to believe that, such as the environment is that they are growing up in. Hearing your parent’s arguments as a child and seeing your abusive father’s more imposing and frightening nature could still render you useless in knowing that there was an implementation of imbalance and an attack on your mother’s rights and dignity as you couldn’t discern anything past yelling.

During our childhood, when money was already tight, I often saw my mother worry and clash with him about the various financial issues the abuser caused due to his mindless spendings for himself which never included any consideration for the family. Financial control is common in abuse:

“the abuser who dominates these kinds of decisions extorts important benefits for himself, whether the family is low income or wealthy. One of the most common tactics I hear about, for example, is that the abuser manages to finagle dealings so that his name is on his partner’s belongings — such as her house or her car — along with, or instead of, her name. (…) An abuser’s history of economic exploitation tends to put him in a much better financial position than his partner if the relationship splits up. This imbalance makes it harder for her to leave him, especially if she has to find a way to support her children.” (Bancroft, p. 156)

At some point she stopped showing her anger, instead telling him politely to do something or not saying anything at all. Both ended the same way in which she had to do it herself, as everything was met with entitled justification and no attempt to change; and his messes, inconsiderations, and lack of effort never ceased. Likewise his abuse became less overt. Yelling, denying, threatening, openly blaming my mother and playing the victim himself were replaced with “humorous” mockery, lectures, gaslighting, and manipulations (yelling and name-calling was for the children if they didn’t do what he wanted). Just because an abuser’s behavior changed doesn’t mean that the abuse is gone, its style has just shifted: Abusers “minimizing” or rather changing their abuse tactics isn’t them “getting better”, it’s to obstruct ongoing abuse. It also might be that an abuser simply received what they wanted, and that less overt abuse tactics are needed to keep it. This is easily discerned by the privileges and benefits the abuser still holds. The only one who has changed is the abused who now continues to endure, worry, and clean up in silence, complaining without naming the abuser, keeping the peace, managing feelings, providing status and emotional labor. A relationship or marriage with an abuser will not become better, just more coercive. Abusers manipulate you into believing that your life is more worthwhile, or worthwhile to begin with, with them in it.

Fits of rage to assert control and intimidation against critique and opposition, and playing the poor nagged-on man to gaslight one’s reality are still utilized when needed:

“Freedom from accountability means that the abusive man considers himself above criticism. If his partner attempts to raise her grievances, she is “nagging” or “provoking” him. He believes he should be permitted to ignore the damage his behavior is causing, and he may become retaliatory if anyone tries to get him to look at it.” (Bancroft, p. 58)

Demanding apologies is futile at best, and likely further damaging, as you’ll be labeled as a “spoilt petty bitch” for needing it, or it will yield other verbal abuses as payback. But people don’t stop seeing wrongdoings, faults, and mistakes where there are, it just becomes an environment in which you have to hide your own judgement while being subjugated to someone else’s.

Sometimes one hears him joke about going to hell, as if it is an allegorical statement of him being aware of his behavior but also simultaneously absolving himself of ever changing.

Constant mockeries and teasings (postmortem)

For the abuser mocking or teasing is a medium to send brief but frequent denigrating messages. If the content is contradictory or ever changing, it carries further confusion. The small, “insignificant”, cursory nature of these types of speech is used to deflect graver-sounding backlash.

One could say that:

“Emotionally immature people often have difficulty engaging in humor in ways that strengthen bonds with others. Instead, they push humor on others, even when others aren’t amused. They also tend to enjoy humor at someone else’s expense, using it to boost their self-esteem. For example, they may enjoy humor that involves tricking people or making them look foolish or inept. This trait is a good indicator of how they will eventually treat you.” (Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, p. 189)

But to leave it at that would be ignoring the intended goal. His mockeries serve a function: to make everyone (both within and outside the family) focus on the flaws of my mother. He wants himself to be the loudest voice in the room, the voice of judgement, and completely invisible to the perception and assessment of others.

“He is constantly focused on her faults, so he assumes everyone else is, too.
He doesn’t like having her appear in public as smart, capable, and interesting, because that collides with his deeply held belief that she is irrational, incompetent, and worthy of being ignored — a view of her that he may want others to share with him.
He is afraid on some level that if she gets enough support for her strengths, she will leave him — and he’s quite likely right.” (Bancroft, p. 141)

This also includes making her appear less competent as a parent and him more (or at all). It’s to solidify his entitled position of not contributing to domestic labor and parenting, and to keep my mother in the position of doing the bulk of the work.

He has mocked my mother for spoiling us and for not spoiling us enough (while never having committed himself to the basics of child rearing), for forgetting or misunderstanding or not knowing (while keeping the privilege of not being judged for being unknowledgeable or forgettful himself), for taking too long and being late and for wanting others to help her (while never having committed himself to organizing and managing), for indulging in her interests and for putting everyone but herself first (while maintaining the right to do with his time as he pleases without any judgement from anyone else, and not putting in any effort to share the workload). Not a day or an instance went by without mocking or belittling my mother in any way, for any small mistake she made, for any lazy, oblivious, wrong perception in his eyes, for anything that wasn’t even a mistake, for anything that wasn’t even true or hasn’t even happened.

Much can be discerned from interacting with pets, too. Every time he deigned to interact with our late dog his pet-directed speech consisted of mockingly scolding us with being “the bad guys” for not spoiling our dog enough, while not contributing to our dog’s basic needs himself (it’s daily work that needs constant consideration for another being, something this abusive man will not do, even if no one else is there to do it). When he was criticized for his incredibly repetitive demeaning manner he justified it with our dog “liking” the way he talked. Mockingly blaming the women for not catering enough to our pet showed his own unspoken sense of entitlement within the family.

The phrases that work postmortem are continued, for example: “[You’re a handful] But you didn’t get this from me”, “If you learned/received something from me then only good things”. The abuser is reiterating these statements as teasing jokes to my sister. These sound harmless but they serve a purpose: by teasing or implying that there is something unfavourable or wrong with my sister that was learned or inherited he is indirectly demeaning my mother and putting himself in a good light. “Jokes” are an effective way to make indoctrination through repetition go unnoticed. A joyful tone is used to hide the negativity and serve as deflection for criticism; a sarcastic, biting tone is there to show what to expect if one objects; a joke in a sadder tone is for acknowledging the sorrow and lighting up the mood, objecting that “kindness” will be labeled as distasteful. With repetition the subtlest of mockeries become microaggressions that constantly stab the person that is meant to be disrespected. Not finding his jokes funny or criticising them can easily be met with annoyance for being a killjoy, gaslighting one’s grievances and grinding them into wounds deep inside oneself while having to endure his jestering on the outside. These tactics serve not only the exploitation and coverup, but also the exhaustion of the abused.

Mockery and victim blaming regarding my mother’s health continues after her death. The abuser commented on her typical sacrificing nature and her habit of never putting herself first, having only ever visited the doctor until the last moment. His mournful tone didn’t contradict the fact that his abuse created the conditions that produce or worsen health issues, a disregard for one’s own needs to the benefit of the abuser’s, and a lack in self-worth, time, and energy (or: depression, anxiety) that would lead to neglecting to seek help. Victim blaming can be misconstrued if the tone of voice sounds compassionate or sorrowful, or rather infantilizing, effectively hiding the larger pattern of abuse if one doesn’t know about it. Yet to mock someone else for the consequence is just further gaslighting. Not even in death is she free of being degraded or belittled.

In addition to the disregard or belittling for her own needs (and then shaming the supposed self-disregard of those needs) to favour the abuser’s there is the potential and common risk of facing negligence in the medical sphere. “Women who seek help are less likely than men to be taken seriously when they report pain and are less likely to have their pain adequately treated” (Hoffmann and Tarzian, “The Girl Who Cried Pain”, in Kate Manne, Entitled, p. 69). An unequal, abusive home environment fails to mediate the inequalities that exist outside it: “when women are in pain, they are more likely than men to continue to perform household labor and family duties. Indeed, “an overload of responsibility for family, work, household, their pain, and their wellbeing seemed to be an obstacle for recovery for women with pain,” researchers observed recently.” (Samulowitz et. al, “‘Brave Men’ and ‘Emotional Women’”, in Kate Manne, Entitled, p. 72). In an outside world filled with abusive conditions a safe, encouraging, and soothing home is vital to one’s wellbeing.

On the verbal abuse for children:

“There are those who attack directly, openly, viciously degrading their children. They may call their children stupid, worthless, or ugly. They may say that they wish their child had never been born. They are oblivious to their child’s feelings and to the long-term effects of their constant assaults on their child’s developing self-image.
Other verbal abusers are more indirect, assailing the child with a constant barrage of teasing, sarcasm, insulting nicknames, and subtle put-downs. These parents often hide their abuse behind the facade of humor. (…)
If the child, or any other family member, complains, the abuser invariably accuses him or her of lacking a sense of humor. “She knows I’m only kidding,” he’ll say, as if the victim of his abuse were a co-conspirator.” (Susan Forward, Toxic Parents, p. 91)

Lack of environmental perception

If abusers are used to the partner doing the work of checking on other’s wellbeing, they will naturally not care to check on their partner’s. Which is why it can take 8 to 12 hours for someone lying dead to finally be perceived around high noon by another person living in the same house. To every person he meets he describes my mother’s morning routine, of her spending her morning in bed with reading and coffee (different from when I was home, though I understand the appeal, wouldn’t want to start emotional labor or cleaning up after him at the beginning of the day). But all these things create noise, and he isn’t a late riser himself.

There are moments of hurt that don’t arise from his anger, just his indifference or his indulging in having a good time for himself, your denigration to collateral damage which you yourself might not notice at the moment. These instances would only turn into anger and punishment when one complains and wants him to become aware of his impact because abusers maintain their entitlement to solely live in their own perspective. It’s a constant pick-your-battles, to not be run over by his relentless pursuit of his needs, to make sure your other family members don’t, to ensure that the right thing is done, that he knows and cares too, and it’s the most exhausting thing.

Not having to be aware of his environment the abusive man is free to lack perception, consideration, and introspection — and if he doesn’t, he still retains the right to only care about having his own needs met and not straining himself. Perceiving one’s surrounding is work which leads to more work by managing or attending it. Imperceptive abusers make pointing out that they should be more responsible or considerate of their surrounding more work for the abused. Throughout our lives the abuser always kept bragging about how good his own lungs are despite smoking for decades, while not paying one thought about the people (and their lungs) in his vicinity who have to smell and breathe it too. His boasting is showing the abuser’s lack of consideration if only others are affected negatively. All of his existence is about occupying as much space as possible. He has to fill any place with his noises. He snores abnormally loud and he leaves the bedroom door open, someone watches or listens to something and he has to interrupt it with his own thing, several conversations are going on simultaneously but the one he has has to be the loudest, you sit in comfortable silence and he still has to talk aloud to himself, whistle, murmur, hum. There can be no quiet and there can be no one else making sounds without his own.

The lack of spatial awareness or environmental perception is in stark contrast to being perceived yourself: You are an object in his presence. Many times, when my mother and I did something together at home, the abuser would intrude and disrupt or observe us. I remember the times he just stood there and watched and observed as someone else cleaned or cooked or did any other task or activity. He seemed in his observation like a dictator overlooking his subjects or a buffoon who sees something for the first time and doesn’t know what to do with himself but who will turn into a dictator once someone wants to pull him out of his leisure.

Domestic labor and his messes

“What should I do all day when I’m retired, clean the house once and you have the rest of the day.” An abusive man will say things like these, whereas his partner slaved away with domestic work, emotional labor, and childcare. He simultaneously disregards domestic labor as easy and quick work and subconsciously knows how time- and energy-consuming it is or else he wouldn’t have used abuse to keep himself free from it. The now famous saying that because of quarantine (and let’s include death here as well) a lot of men will have to realize how much work women do around the house won’t apply to abusers.

The abuser says a lot to sound good in front of others, to paint an image before anything closer to reality will be considered. In front of a funeral guest he asks me if I put clean sheets on the bed, which I already had. “Good, else I would have done it haha.” He hadn’t even put a cover on his own bed, for months. I wonder what he would have said if I hadn’t done it by then. Most likely he wouldn’t have offered himself, but told me again to do it. I never saw him clean the house, dust the shelves, clean the windows, pick the weed — an abusive man who’s never done house chores won’t do much when his wife is dead. A man unable to (regularly) care for and tend to his surrounding standing will especially not do it (regularly) on his knees. The first time I saw him vacuum a carpet was when the funeral speaker was to visit. With the possibilities of missing it by being absent in mind, the probability of never seeing a parent use the vacuum cleaner during your entire life shouldn’t be that low.

“Free labor from her; leisure and freedom for him: No abusive man does his share of the work in the relationship. He may take advantage of his partner’s hard work keeping the house, preparing the meals, caring for the children, and managing the myriad details of life. Or, if he is one of the few abusers who carries his weight in these areas, then he exploits her emotionally instead, sucking her dry of attention, nurturing, and support, and returning only a trickle. (…)
My clients don’t make the connection that someone takes care of the work; they think of it as just mysteriously getting done and refer to women as “lazy.” Yet on a deeper level the abuser seems to realize how hard his partner works, because he fights like hell not to have to share that burden. He is accustomed to his luxury and often talks exaggeratedly about his exhaustion to excuse staying on his rear end. (…)
The abuser comes and goes as he pleases, meets or ignores his responsibilities at his whim, and skips anything he finds too unpleasant. In fact, some abusers are rarely home at all, using the house only as a base for periodic refueling.” (Bancroft, pp. 154–155)

Though unattuned to both household management and child rearing, he often proclaimed the way one had to do things, especially things he never did himself. The abuser’s cognitive dissonance showed itself in many instances, both when he didn’t contribute and when he did and his entitlement to be venerated for the smallest things shone through. When my mother tilted a window he told her that opening it completely was the correct way to air a room, but he never did it himself. When my mother and I were away and he was home, he sent a picture of doing the dishes as if he wanted applause. When my mother was improving the interior of our home he would show annoyance, as if to push back against our need to have it better than the awful things he picked (he did of course benefit from my mother’s work himself). The abuser cannot abide both putting the needs of the family first and the abused knowing themselves what is good for them and the family.

An abuser’s lesser attendance at home still creates a lot of work, and makes his messes and the consequences of his abuse a burden. He may be gone the entire week for work and only home on weekends, but the partner goes to work as well and does the household afterwards and on weekends, and cleans up after him and has to give him emotional labor by serving as his therapist.

The abusive man’s mentality is that once he is in a relationship the partner has to take care of his messes. Among “The central attitudes driving the Demand Man are: It’s your job to do things for me, including taking care of my responsibilities if I drop the ball on them” (Bancroft, p. 79). While my mother was still alive I often saw her clean up after him, sometimes I helped. The messes are too manifold to keep track of all (it must have been a lot more than I witnessed and remembered), and talking about singular cases doesn’t make much sense when not viewed with the pattern of abuse in mind, but this is only to paint a picture:

When he made an improvident mistake that led to a shattered window in his car it wasn’t him who took care of it but mother with my help. Twice he shattered a glass door at home in a fit of rage, and every time my mother had to take care of getting it repaired because he was away working, despite the fact that she herself was working and doing domestic labor in its entirety. Whatever he broke she had to mend. The man, conditioned to never perceive his environment, overlooks the huge red wine stains spilled on the wall besides the microwave in which he warmed up a cup of wine. My mother refrained from waiting any minute longer for it to seep more into the wall and to have her energy even more consumed with having to deal with making him aware. He volunteers to do something for you or simply does it but it is filled with mistakes and then you have to suffer the consequences.

He does this “interesting” thing where he leaves a task of domestic labor he allegedly wants to do unattended that someone else will be more aware of the passing of time and do it themselves. Then he infantilizes them for unnecessarily straining themselves, scolds them for doing it as if something has been taken from him as he wanted to do it himself. Experiencing this constantly must make one go crazy. It’s another subtle way of gaslighting and manipulation.

Similar subtle, or rather infuriating manipulations happen about the tiniest things he is unwilling to clean up. One time at dinner he spilled oil on the table which my mother pointed out to him. Instead of cleaning it up he started joking about it, and didn’t move a muscle. I got up, picked up a sponge, and cleaned it up myself, while the entire time his jokes did not stop and kept on going even afterwards. It was ridiculous and easy to mistake for a singular bizarre, inexplicable moment if one doesn’t know of the entitled mind-set of the abuser.

Abusers will often enact bizarre behaviors which can often not be placed into context but will still make you feel violated in some sense in that moment. For children it will be especially difficult, for a long time to come at least, to try to assert themselves or gain back what they have lost, untaught as they are in dealing with abuse when living with an abuser from early on, and they may also become too desensitised to try. These moments can be as weird as having your abusive parent see you doing homework and then suddenly blast loud music. And if you make your feelings known, they will further be invalidated and remain uncomforted. It is so exhausting to be subject to instances in which you have to fight him back again and again, even if he abstains from retaliating, he just never stops, and you become more and more exhausted. It takes great effort to get past the ingrained barrier he set against the right to criticize him, and then to live with the fact that the effort was for nothing, that there will be no change.

Telling someone to do a domestic task is already an act of labor, seeing them do it poorly or leaving mistakes and having to correct or redo it is another act of labor on top. In non-abusive heterosexual relationships it can often be the case too, but in abusive ones there are deliberate psychological attacks to degrade one to caretaker and maid and to keep the privilege of remaining unaware of domestic labor and messes inside the home. Living with an abuser who constantly bites back at being asked to take responsibility, even for the things he leaves behind, will in time make one too exhausted to ask anymore and instead quietly clean up after him.

“[T]he Demand Man is likely to be furious if anything is demanded of him. Not only are you not supposed to demand any favors, you aren’t even supposed to ask him to take care of his own obligations. If you ask him to clean up a mess he’s left, he responds, “I’m not your fucking servant.”” (Bancroft, p. 79)

When he left his shaved hair all over the sink and I told him twice to clean it up, he lashed out. He told me condescendingly to clean it up myself, “always, instead of listening, he responds with what he wants anyone else to do — the classic egocentric response of emotionally immature people.” (Gibson, p. 19). (Though, someone doesn’t necessarily have to be emotionally immature to be abusive. He may very likely never act like this in public or with people not part of the family, he acts like this at home where he retains his sense of entitlement because he regards the roles of wife and children with inferiority and with the duty to cater to him.) He said to my sister, standing by, “Do you see that/Did you see what she did?”, telling her to defend his position and to not do what I did. This is an abuser conditioning one child to validate his entitlement and abuse and to subconsciously fear being the target of abuse themselves if they do something that doesn’t fit him. (This can be taken a step further with benevolent misogyny.) Being again his proxy, she concurred. He further tells me to think about how often he has cleaned after me, which couldn’t have been a lot, and which is barely the minimum of parenthood anyhow.

The abuser thinks the small things he doesn’t even manage to clean up properly are not only equivalent but wrongly demanded in comparison to what other people clean up after him, the problems he creates, the things he destroys, never having to feel the consequences of failing every moment at being a supportive healthy figure within the family. It is emotionally and psychologically distressing to see the supposed parental figure you have to live with not doing the work he’s supposed to do, for a child to tell their own parent to take this little responsibility, then to be told to do it for him, and to see your mother have to experience it herself.

The Abusive Man as Parent

How much does an abusive man know of children and parenting after he already had two and is now in his second marriage with a third baby? Not much. When I was a baby and didn’t stop crying as he held me because it felt unfamiliar due to his lack of presence, he became annoyed and threw me on the ground.

An abuser’s behavior makes you wonder why he is a father in the first place. The probably best way to describe an abusive man’s general style of “parenting” is thus:

“If the couple has children, the abusive man typically considers himself the authority on parenting, even if he contributes little to the actual work of looking after them. He sees himself as a wise and benevolent head coach who watches passively from the sidelines during the easy times but steps in with the “correct” approach when his partner isn’t handling the children properly. His arrogance about the superiority of his parenting judgment may be matched only by how little he truly understands, or pays attention to, the children’s needs. No matter how good a mother his partner is, he thinks she needs to learn from him, not the other way around.” (Bancroft, p. 53)

“The abuser does not believe that his level of authority over the children should be in any way connected to his actual level of effort or sacrifice on their behalf, or to how much knowledge he actually has about who they are or what is going on in their lives. He considers it his right to make the ultimate determination of what is good for them even if he doesn’t attend to their needs or even if he only contributes to those aspects of child care that he enjoys or that make him look like a great dad in public.” (Bancroft, p. 241)

His idea of parenting is that it is an occasional event or fun activity instead of a 24/7 commitment, an occasional decision that leaves no room for other voices. To him a daily job becomes an infrequent thing that he wants to be applauded for, and the occasional becomes a special gift, preferably publicly seen. The abuser reduces human beings to two- or one-dimensional entities, every need is negligible in comparison to the abuser’s. You are not primarily an individual, but a symbol that needs to run smoothly for his aesthetic idea of family, as if there are no culminating consequences of abuse. And your failure to deliver sets you up for more.

The abuser operates on “his usual tendency to consider his own judgment superior to his partner’s and to be selfishly focused on how any changes will affect him, rather than on what works best for the family as a whole”. “At the core of the abusive mind-set is the man’s view of his partner as a personal possession” which extends to the children who are viewed as “extensions of himself” or “extensions of her”. In order to keep the children from being outright adversaries to his abuse he tries to “hook them into the patterns and dynamics of the abuse, manipulating their perceptions and trying to win their loyalty”, and they will be used as well as, according to the abuser’s “destructive mind-set, the children are just too tempting a tool of abuse to pass up” (Bancroft, p. 240).

The superficiality that comes with his mind-set of ownership can be seen every time he makes a scene when he feels like his relation to the children is slipping. He heatedly calls his children “his” or imposes an insignificant identity onto them, like their origin or a label that overlaps with his. Irritated, my mother once shot back whether our origin relating to her didn’t matter, pointing out that we were also her children. The narcissistic abuser is not emotionally close to his children and is unwilling to care for them as individuals, so he clings to their biological tie to him or any similarity, however trivial, they have with him that supports his mentality that his children are his possession and an extension of him first and foremost, and for any tie to the mother to be secondary.

The abuser acts as if he’s living a bachelor’s life, sometimes laid-back if not detached, and only occasionally present (whether physically or emotionally) when it includes his needs or interests, ordering around, raging and intimidating when he is criticized, rejected, or his control is objected. Abusers intercept family life in confusing ways that undermine everyone else. Unexpectedly participating in instances of family life and asserting a position for themselves, to which a child has to be accountable to, will create a constant sense of unease and lack of reliability. The abuser is either detached and invasive when it is convenient to him, the inconsistency of that feels both confusing and violating.

So many things the abuser says sound like non-negotiable orders. If he deigns to commit himself to a domestic task it’s proclaimed like a command and offered like a gift one has to feel grateful for. “I’ll make dinner tonight. You relax.” But the dinner is awful and everyone is stressed and exhausted because he feels even more entitled to emotional labor, rambling about his feelings and opinions and how other people have done him wrong and how he knows what is right. Further sentences include “Do what you’re told!” or “Why didn’t you do what you were told!”, even if the things he “suggests” to you turn out to be wrong or unfavourable; in time he might realize his mistake and you’ll hear a “[She] was right after all” in the distance but apologizing is above him. Another thing that fits the duality of his controlling behavior and his jesting to buy himself leisure time is his military obsession. Abuse doesn’t require a military affiliation in any sense, but if it is there, it’s another insightful comparison. His narrations of his past consist of nostalgia and shenanigans, a telling parallel to his entitlement to fun and leisure for himself and orders, drilling, control over others. A violent, oppressive institution is in the eyes of some abusers just another opportunity for career, respect, and leisure. And marriage and family is another system that is not supposed to deny them a disproportionate amount of that.

But more sinister, the abuser undermines the mother’s authority and parenting with the double standards he sets for himself, for example: He interferes with a mother’s attempt to include the child in household chores or teach it that it did a mistake by adopting a laid-back attitude and telling her to let it go. When he is the first to notice a child’s mistake or that it has neglected a duty he lets himself explode, and when the mother tells him to be more thoughtful he tells her to back off. The first scenario is to garner sympathy and loyalty for himself, the second to intimidate the child. Overall, it’s to make the child more attuned to his opinions, feelings, attitudes, and needs than the mother’s.

The abusive man feels disdain for his partner when she shows that she is in fact the better parent or a good parent all around (in contrast to him), when she shows expertise and makes better decisions due to her greater insight and knowledge about the children, which he will never commit to. Because the abuser operates on the mindset of his superiority and authority on anything he sets his mind to or, usually, on everything. Perhaps the most irritating thing is his attitude of being an authority. He deals with any family issue, regardless whether he is invested in and knowledgeable enough about it (which he almost exclusively isn’t), as if his perspective and opinion is the only authority, whereas the reasonable thing would be for it to not be considered at all.

The abuser may deign to solve a problem, for whatever reason (to make himself look good, to boost his sense of morality and goodness, or because it’s simply to his taste and interest), but the mere nature and existence of his abuse makes him the opposite of a problem solver at large. In any aspect of any problem, however detached from his abuse, it’s another factor of his needs and interests, and tool to obscure or justify the abuse. An abuser positioning himself as a problem solver pushes his solutions which will most likely not be a solution at all, as both the problems and their so called answers usually solidify his position and justification for abuse. Problems will not only arise from the abusive man not being self-aware, or rather not aware of others and his surroundings, but also from him asserting himself as if he were a valid point of view. The abuser’s entitlement to the position is contradictory to wanting to be exempt from being answerable.

The abuser’s behavior, attitude, and existence (and their apologists) are like a study of ineffective problem solving, its underlying goal is for the problem to not be solved but swept under the rug again. Abusers need to be seen by themselves and others as good people or as people with a say. They will keep or seek the appearance or position of authority, expert, helper, adviser, of relevance, or at least put themselves out for consideration — even though they are the exact opposite: culprit or hindrance. Unfortunately, also their partner and children can be influenced by the effects of abuse in such a way that they will have trouble solving problems.

When contrasted with the parent who does the actual parenting, this abuser is often more like an additional child. The abuser always wants, at most, the same responsibility as his children. With age you finally start to see that there is an unfair divide in responsibility and labor, and to gain the courage to demand more from the abuser. What your inquiry also is, is the baggage of the past and the wish for a better presence and future. But your age is used as the counter-argument, to deflect and make you the one who needs to take on the responsibility. It is also to make you seem like a needy child, and to manipulate you into refraining from further making your needs known to him. As untreated symptoms of abuse and mental illnesses mount with age which can make you lack behind in development, your own dysfunctions and shortcomings that make you “less mature” can therefore be held against you.

In an abusive environment it is difficult to meaningfully engage with your own mistakes, for them to be addressed in the adequate moment and to be worked through. They could easily be used as a springboard to justify the abuser’s actions. Your flaws are pointed out when you bring up the courage to ask the abuser to correct their mistakes or to self-reflect on the consequences. Nothing can be addressed because nothing fits the actual moment. It creates this environment that is out of touch with the instant, with time, with cause and consequence.

Failing at parenthood

Failure, or rather unwillingness, starts early. Though, it is important to realize, an abusive father’s incompetence is by design, he doesn’t want to do the work that comes with his position, only the status.

Similarities can be drawn between how an abusive man treats his own young children and family pets when inconvenienced by them: turning physically intimidating to frighten them, with loud stomping and yelling, into obedience or into retreat. Which will be often, as young children are in constant need of having their physical and emotional needs met, and showing so (until they are traumatized into hiding them).

“Rejecting parents engage in a range of behaviors that make you wonder why they have a family in the first place. Whether their behavior is mild or severe, they don’t enjoy emotional intimacy and clearly don’t want to be bothered by children. Their tolerance for other people’s needs is practically nil, and their interactions consist of issuing commands, blowing up, or isolating themselves from family life.” (Gibson, p. 70)

The abuser’s relation to parental duties can perhaps be best discerned with their attention for a child’s most basic needs, or any needs. It’s still too common fathers don’t consider the many basic/minimum tasks and functions of parenthood and child rearing, the ones that mean constantly and daily keeping up with a child’s needs, interests, appointments, commitments, eating habits, emotional states, the things that improve or impair it, their development, their personality growth etc. But abusive fathers add to the neglect with their assertion of control through abuse, whenever a child’s needs inconvenience them and to maintain the privileges of not sharing the workload. They reject and punish you when the parenting that is needed is asked of them. Abusers both make you feel guilty for wanting your basic needs met, for wanting than that more, and then for not showing enough gratitude for what little they provide. Having an abusive parent makes you afraid to show and even have needs, especially high support needs. The abused mother may try to accommodate that, already having her hands full with domestic labor, childcare, a manchild, and other troubles.

I have selective eating habits, not by choice, my intolerance for certain tastes, smells, and textures (to the point of nausea) has to do with sensory processing disorder:

“Picky eaters usually have high levels of sensory defensiveness. A certain taste, smell, or the look of food can make these children feel as if the sensory experience is “hurting” them. The sense can be so overwhelming that they are literally repulsed, panicked, or sickened by exposure to it.” (ADDitude Mag)

My mother told me the same things I don’t eat now I didn’t as a baby. She always remembered my eating habits, whereas the abuser saw any minimum caretaking as already spoiling. The abuser would always mock and insult me for something I had no control over, calling me spoilt or a “bitch”, complaining as if I was unnecessarily annoying or needy. Again and again I was put in the situation to tell what I wouldn’t eat, but not only would he never committed anything to memory, the scolding would start again too, for over 20 years. One day I realized that it had traumatized me; when I heard him proclaim to cook that day’s dinner, my hands began to shake in response. I knew it would be specifically something I had told him numerous times before that I didn’t eat, and which I would have to do again, and then be mocked for again. The same happened each time I accommodated our home environment when I had nausea from extreme or unpleasant smells, like opening windows or closing doors — there was always backlash for the tiniest depiction of having needs of your own.

It was constant terrorization for a basic need, or part of one’s being, an additional thing neurodivergent people have to live with, a minimum of parenthood which he not only neglected but punished one for needing. His own entitlement to taste he showed when asked why he wasn’t eating any vegetables which he answered in a self-righteous tone that it simply wasn’t to his taste. Asymmetrical and shifting standards are confusing and harmful to children.

A parent failing to be knowledgeable about (undiagnosed) disorders or disabilities isn’t ideal, but through compassion and patience they can find accommodations for their children that will at least not add any harm through neglect. It is already difficult enough to exist in this world that has a lot of contempt and with diagnoses happening often way too late, but (witnessing) abuse is another layer of unnecessary harm. An abusive parent will not only dismiss but deride one for being a certain way. Abusers cannot fathom the needs of non-disabled children/people, they will especially damage children with illnesses or disabilities that need additional and compassionate considerations and accommodations for differing developmental needs, something abusers with their entitlement, control, self-centeredness, and superficiality are unwilling to think of, engage in, and are more likely to reject and punish. Abusers will mock and dismiss you for unsuccessfully navigating developmental issues or life circumstances, even when they have caused them themselves. The abuser’s ableism can be a traumatizing opposite to their idea of parenting through abstract phrases, e.g. on the importance of health. On top of that, abusers will call you the unreasonable one, they want you to take credit for being hurt and traumatized, as if you did it yourself or were “too sensitive”. An abuser’s partner can fall prey to that, too, if they have (undiagnosed) disorders or disabilities which can make them more gullible or susceptible to manipulation and abuse (and which can be genetic and passed on to the offspring).

Children are complex and still developing individuals who need help dealing with their own complex dilemmas. A good parent seeks out and respects their input when it comes to interests, activites, schedules, and relationships, and knows that having difficulty communicating their issues is a possibility that needs more careful inquiries. Abusive parents don’t see engaging with their problems and finding the right solution as worthy of their time, and will rather call them nitpicky, spoilt, or needy. However trivial or severe a problem is and whatever the age of the children, they will not deem them as worthy of their consideration. They will likely disrespect the children’s interests and violate their boundaries to settle the matter in the fastest, most comfortable way for themselves.

One of the most striking incidents for myself in which I had to realize in my childhood that the abuser didn’t see me as a complex and developing individual was when I presented him with one of my own dilemmas: I didn’t want to go to a sports session during winter because I disliked the place it was in. With no further inquiries to dissolve any misunderstanding he unsubscribed me entirely. I remember being deeply distraught, but only later did I realize how much this moment still affected me.

There were many more instances of disappointment that showed his lack in being invested, soothing, and helpful. The unfortunate part is that, children may continuously and deliberately (though unconsciously) try to give their neglectful or abusive parent attempts at being a good one, to give advice or help, to be emotionally invested. They may unconsciously know that the mother is the actual constant they can count on and still try to go to their father instead because the society is pointing him or the abusive himself is putting himself on display as the more competent or empowered one without any substance behind it (the other parent shouldn’t feel discouraged by this).

Asking an abusive man for advice or help is like asking for “wrong answers only”. It’s sad that it didn’t stop for a very long time, either out of naivety or an underlying habit, and that it takes one so long to realize that it shouldn’t be this way, that you have to do something against this. It’s unfair to children to be in their lives as a parent but not do parenting work or be bothered to build a relationship of true intimate reciprocity with them. And the message you receive is always: question the authority he thinks he has and you become his enemy — he doesn’t think like a parent, but like a dictator.

Abuse with its emotional and psychological assaults on the mind and its messes can take away attention and a needed mental capacity for better parenting. An abuser’s presence and influence within the family will be to the detriment of the connection between the family members and other related family units. An abuser’s presence is a negative force against information gathering and good parenting. When compassionate and respectful relationships between married or affiliated people are fraught due to the behavior of and wedges driven by the abuser, it is also to the detriment of information flowing between different family units that could be helpful to others’ parenting. A chance missed to know more about specific parenting or understanding is also a chance missed to impart it to others.

Interactions with an abusive father

An abusive father wants to make the children believe that the pain or exhaustion of the mother, and even their own, is more bearable than any inconvenience to him. It can be scary, and lonely, to think oneself only safe when the abuser is appeased. An abuser may then even claim to be the better parent without doing any parenting, on the sole point that the children don’t get into fights with him, something which is of course due to the fear and sense of futility he instilled in everyone to refrain from demanding accountability and participation from him.

Seeking an abusive father’s sympathy for the sake of it can be conflated with the need to feel safe through gaining an abusive father’s sympathy — mostly by appeasing him, because the lack of it would mean distress or fear. The promise for warmth and kindness within an abuse cycle is also there for children. It can make interactions and hope more difficult to drop, when one is put in the position of expecting real parenting and support through societal tellings and the abuser’s own facade. It may also take a long time to realize that your own mood has been bound to the abuser’s, which makes it difficult to be on your own path emotionally. Having trouble being aware of one’s own feelings or their causes is doubled with disorders or disabilities.

The abuser doesn’t build connections or try to be attuned to anyone’s being and needs. Sometimes he gets angry at the consequences that arise from his lack of building emotional intimacy and trust as if it is the fault of others. And if his status is challenged, he is volatile and explosive, and doesn’t hold back with yelling, shouting, and heavy threats. Lacking any emotional maturity, he will act childishly in front of his own children, humiliate and gross them out, play mind tricks or pranks on them, put them in competition with him, tease them (which can also happen in unison with mocking the mother), belittle and shame them, use sarcasm, put-downs, and mimicry, accuse them of being too sensitive and reverse their positions of perpetrator and victim, sulk, pout, stomp, and yell at them, and on top of all that patronize them.

There are the moments of fun and good will within the abuse cycle, and they can be just as or even more trauma-bonding with the abuser for children. But the tiniest parental actions can feel like bargains, like acts of kindness you are supposed to earn or feel grateful for — even if they are just basic needs, or you have to witness your mother’s mistreatment or forget your own. Every kindness feels conditional and performative, as if it is on display. Even though abusers may feel like being kind themselves, there is no merit to an abuser’s kindness as it only serves their abuse and entitlement — it only happens when the stakes are low, and it is part of the entrapping nature of abuse. The underlying intention of everything is always control.

The double bind for children is that no matter whether you hate him or know of his abuse you still have to interact with him due to your dependence or proximity, thus further validating his entitlement for the position he is in.

“In certain ways children actually have an easier time living with an abusive parent who is mean all the time — at least then they know what they are dealing with and who is at fault. But the typical abuser is constantly changing faces, leaving his children confused and ambivalent and increasing the likelihood that they will identify with him in hopes of staying on his good side.” (Bancroft, p. 243)

Being hated by an abuser can be frightening. But in a way, it is also easier than being “loved” by an abuser (though both are through the lense of ownership), easier than the anxiety of wondering what kind of person you are to be loved by an abuser or by someone who treats you and other loved ones this way. Because then, at least, the facade of “love” cannot be used to obscure the abuse.

Long did I fail to put into words why I was so averse to him being proud of me for any of my achievements or creations. Whenever he showed pride (especially publicly) it seemed as if there was something profoundly wrong. It’s due to the fact that an abuser feels entitled to a parent’s pride despite their lack in helping one arrive to those achievements or in being not much of a presence during one’s development in general. Neglect could be seen in his lack of effort and commitment in one’s journey to develop skills, in his failure to inquire, advise, or to provide material things. The prompt “Don’t hesitate to say if you need something” lacked substance when viewed within the larger context, and became a cautious and mostly disappointing step to take when one would be mocked for being “needy”. And the smallest courtesy, due to its rarity, could seem special and be used to deflect any accusation of abuse done to either the children or the mother. It feels wrong when the abuser smiles at you, it feels wrong when the abuser cries over you, it feels wrong because he does nothing but abuse, and it feels wrong because it can still be deemed valid. It feels wrong because the abuser and many other people want to tell you that you cannot want or need more or better.

It’s the same with him trying to acquire any information about oneself. He is undeserving as he never put effort into his children’s growth, getting to know about them, and respecting their needs. An abuser is further making personal information about you, especially your vulnerabilities, a tool to control or punish you, to trigger you or manipulate your needs into alignment with his, or to know what to expect and how to disregard them in favor of his. For children it will feel like he is taking advantage of it to appear like a knowledgeable and attentive “good father” in public.

One thing I am grateful to myself for is remaining unapologetic in lacking sympathy for him and his mistakes, and being averse to indulge his need for appeasement. It might be that my neurodivergence made me defy his entitlement more. I saw the unfairness in his utter lack of contribution which made him asking something of me never feel right. Abusers will be shocked if a child “mimics” and throws their own neglectful or dismissing behavior back at their face. Throwing his attempts to make me cater to him back at him branded me as a “bitch”. He made it sound as if I owed him for being my father or that I was now old enough to take on the responsibility for more tasks to be done for him. From early on it felt as if he was more like a guest who never leaves and has to be catered to by unpaid servants, occasionally he gives tips that fit his idea of generosity but his existence creates more labor, stress, and suffering for everyone else.

An abusive father to daughters or AFAB children

Psychological abuse for the partner extends to the children in similar ways, though the methods can vary. Misogynous retaliation can be just as severe for children if they diverge from the line he has set:

“Name-calling, belittling, attacking their self-confidence, humiliating them in front of other people, shaming boys with regard to their masculinity, and insulting or inappropriately complimenting — girls on the basis of their physical development and appearance are all common parenting behaviors (…). They tend to hurt their children’s feelings further by failing to show up for important events, not following through on promises to take them on outings, or by showing no interest.” (Bancroft, pp. 246–247)

Daughters are even easier targets for name-calling other hostile attacks against failing to be in the role of an attentive and devoted subordinate than wives, they are likely more afraid and shocked to fight back:

“[Abusers] reach for the words that they know are most disturbing to women, such as bitch, whore, and cunt, often preceded by the word fat. These words assault her humanity, reducing her to an animal, a nonliving object, or a degraded sexual body part” (Bancroft, p. 63).

Whenever the abuser found himself inconvenienced by my sister and myself he called us “bitch” or “slut”, especially during our formative teenage years. Any of my sister’s boyfriends he always referred to as “her seikh”, despite her being the less shy one in her relationships — or because of that, to indicate to her that she has to be the subordinate one in a heteronormative relationship. Nowadays, to derogate grown women, he uses belittling terms, like “little daughter”, “girl” or “young lady”. You also knew that your name wasn’t safe in his mouth, he could unabashedly say it with disdain. He also uses the word “Mami” instead of “your mother” a lot when talking about her. It reminds of his manchild behavior and wanting more a personal caretaker who “mothers” him than a partner.

How a mother’s body image and judgement can haunt her daughter’s body is well focused on. It may be both throughdirect verbal attacks on her child’s figure and through disparaging comments about her own body — the letter is also an unknowingly potent exposition to body image issues. Abusive fathers can also damage self-esteem and body image through mocking comments and constantly drawing attention to one’s body with his opinions. I was always the skinny one who had to eat more, my sister was always the chubby one who was jokingly mocked when she wanted more. The abuser’s focus on his children’s bodies is in stark contrast to his ignorance towards their mental and emotional wellbeing. For daughters or AFAB or TME people the body focus can become even invasive with objectification and sexualization. An abusive father may hide behind the veneer of opposing that, but, as it often becomes evident: “he doesn’t object to her sexualization, he just wants to be in control of it, and he wants it oriented toward his gratification” (Bancroft, p. 244). When I was 11 or 12 he commented on my body with the same motion Trump did about his daughter’s breasts in one of his old interviews. Similarities between abusive men’s behavior can be drawn everywhere.

In this way, abusive fathers both invite many instances of disgust or distress and attempt to desensitize one for inappropriate and perverse comments and behavior early in life. An abusive father doesn’t necessarily think of desensitisation to be taken advantage of by other people as well, it is primarily for himself and his indulgences. Other instances can include making inappropriate jokes, watching or showing inappropriate things in front of children, either because his environmental perception is so low, since he never had to develop it, or because he deliberately holds on to his entitlement to act however he wants as an adult, even in front of his own children. The outcome is the same, he will not change but continue to “slip”. He becomes even more comfortable and loud in his social circle which will not reprimand him for his behavior. Every time he is around his friends he will dial up his bachelor-behavior and his entitlement to caretaking and obedience, overtly side-lining any parental or domestic duty, as if to impress them of his luxurious lifestyle.

Abusers often set up their children to fall for other abusers. If even one parent is abusive and the other remains with them throughout a child’s development it will likely be (unwittingly) raised to accept abuse from other people, whether in relationships or friendships. Especially an abusive father’s reaction to a daughter’s hurt can range from being against her and adding to it with victim blaming, to being theoretically on her side but of no efficient help — in essence, any of his reactions perpetuate or solidify the enabling of abuse in society from which he himself benefits. His own feelings, either sympathy as if being hurt himself (the grievance is for a damage to his possession or image) or rage for an inconveniencing injustice brought to his eyes, matter little in this, despite the potential grandiosity of their display. When I was telling about someone who creeped on me, I was essentially describing this guy’s abusive, manipulative behavior, and the abusive father couldn’t muster more than conflate it with romantic behavior. Whatever abusive behavior that doesn’t reach an abuser’s limit of acceptability will be seen by them as part of romance, and in the case of parents they are unable to help their children in dealing with such problems, let alone sympathize with their struggles or take them seriously. Abusive fathers will in most cases not protect or teach about such things, at maximum they might just publicly perform an outcry to establish their moral superiority.

When the non-abusive parent dies, the one who actually parented, it feels like having become an orphan. It’s always been frightening, disappointing, exhausting, and traumatizing to live with this man, and now it’s even more.

Performance and Public Image

Shortly after my mother’s death the abuser celebrated his birthday with guests, saying one has to keep on living. An abuser always needs display, valuing reputation more than putting in actual effort into family life:

“Most abusive men put on a charming face for their communities, creating a sharp split between their public image and their private treatment of women and children. (…) They are drawn to power and control, and part of how they get it is by looking good in public. The abusive man’s charm makes his partner reluctant to reach out for support or assistance because she feels that people will find her revelations hard to believe or will blame her. (…) The abuser’s nice-guy front helps him feel good about himself. My clients say to me, “I got along fine with everyone but her. You should ask around about what I’m like; you’ll see. I’m a calm, reasonable person. People can see that she’s the one who goes off.” Meanwhile, he uses the difficulties that she is having in her relationships with people — many of which may be caused by him — as further proof that she is the one with the problem.” (Bancroft, p. 69)

He maintains his image through putting on a facade of charm and entertainment, playing the jester to everyone outside the family, and to a lesser amount, within it. This constant performance feels like a charade of lies, coverups, blaming, gaslighting, and manipulations one has to be on the lookout for all the time. Instead of meaningfully investing energy and effort into building intimacy and sharing the workload, it’s being put into appearance and mock-connection, and his theatrics exist in almost every setting. Performance has a similar effect as gaslighting, perceptions about the abuser and their personality become contradictory. It’s likely for abusers to look “different from each angle of view” (Bancroft, p. 10), both for family members and for outsiders. For children it is incredibly puzzling and isolating: “It is confusing for children to see people responding to their abusive father as if he were a charming and entertaining person” (Bancroft, p. 245).

This abusive man’s ineptitude to see people as more than roles is most evident in his constant relation to their position within their marriage or family and the use of caricatures. To him no one is more than a one-dimensional, unchangeable character with fixed duties in a family or marriage, as he himself greatly benefits from rigid gender roles. Glimpses of his treatment of his partner can be seen in his perception of other women and their duties in the position of wife. Glimpses of the privileges he ascribes for himself can be seen in how he connects to other men in the position of husband. Performance and roles with fixed duties are his interaction with and understanding of humans. The narcissistic abuser will thus never be truly attuned to anyone. Trying to connect with him has always been superficial, disappointing, exhausting, and even dangerous if it wasn’t to his convenience. If you as an offspring or partner didn’t act the way he wanted you to act, he raged and manipulated. He can only show a semblance of connection to those who are and act similar to him.

The abuser is in the role of partner and parent without filling them, rationalizing their disengagement in family life behind closed doors, but involvement in the family is performed to outsiders:

“Public status of partner and/or father without the sacrifices:
With his strong people-pleasing skills and his lively energy when under the public gaze, the abusive man is often thought of as an unusually fun and loving partner and a sweet, committed dad. He soaks up the smiles and appreciation he receives from relatives, neighbors, and people in the street who are unaware of his behavior in private.” (Bancroft, p. 156)

His ceaseless habit of endlessly talking and dominating conversations to drown out any conversation anyone else has, using whatever to reinforce the status-quo of a heterosexist environment in order to elicit a sense of safety or solidity of it in other people. His overt or casual sexism is part of his performance and the normalisation of his views in the environment he inhabits. Methods such as jokes, mockeries, and off-hand remarks are meant to not be engaged with critically, he’s the lovable misogynist everyone has to tolerate: “always performing, always putting on a show. And his overt sexism is part of that performance” which, by other people, is seen merely as entertainment. He uses intimidation tactics in private to keep his luxuries and control but likes to act all fun and games both in public and in his forever leisure time at home, which is especially in stark contrast to whenever someone else is doing the things that need to be done.

It’s alienating to those who aren’t performers — though even then, it may influence those who have to develop in such an environment to be more inclined to hide themselves behind superficiality as well, due to manufactured mistrust or the sheer lack of demonstration to learn from. Any person the abuser has ever talked to, in and without your presence, will seem untrustworthy to be convinced of the abuse. He only needs to be charming and good-humoured in public (which he will likely be as his own abuse doesn’t harm him), while you’re battling with emotional distress, damaged due to his abuse and the immense workload he puts on your shoulders, and his word will already count more than yours. It is all about external validation. If he’s charming on the outside and people outside the family validate him, he sees himself as justified, inculpable, and unimpeachable. And if he seems somewhat accountable in any setting that doesn’t have to do with family, the contrast at home may not even be believed: “Most abusers do have a conscience about their behavior outside of the family. They may be willing to be answerable for their actions at work, at the club, or on the street. At home however, their sense of entitlement takes over” (Bancroft, p. 71).

Most acts of good will, compliments and gifts, are done to achieve a positive public appearance:

“He is positive or loving toward you when he feels the need to prove to himself or to others that he is a good person, or when there is something that he is about to demand in return; in other words, it’s about him, not you. The longer you have been with him, the more his generous-seeming actions appear self-serving.” (Bancroft, pp. 78–79)

On the other hand, his habit of making himself look good is usually done through tearing down or defaming his partner, or children (he will likely only pick one at a time, lest they were to unite against him), meaning the people who most often experience his behavior and entitlement, therefore making their perception and perspective a constant threat to his (self-)image of being a good and respectable man. Breaching the abusive man’s self-perception with disloyalty or breaking contact are met with punishment.

The dissonance between the private and the public extended even to mere matter of scents. At home it was his wet, moulding cigarette smell, in public people got to smell aftershave and perfume. It was always weird when at family gatherings someone said that he “always” smelled good (a compliment directed at him while it was my mother’s invisible labor in making sure he wore it).

Feelings of moral/intellectual superiority

I ask myself how little I witnessed regarding my mother, and what kind of “conversations” there were beside the ones I overheard, if there were any worse than the “smart lecturer dumb student” ones, worse screams of entitlement, worse threats and worse smashing of things, or lesser ones which remain in oblivion.

The abuser’s lecturing conversation style is best described by the profile of “Mr. Right”:

“He seems to see the world as a huge classroom, in which he is the teacher and you are his student. He finds little of value in your thoughts or insights, so he seeks to empty out your head and fill it up with his jewels of brilliance. (…) Mr. Right has difficulty speaking to his partner — or about her — without a ring of condescension in his voice. And in a conflict his arrogance gets even worse. Mr. Right’s superiority is a convenient way for him to get what he wants. When he and his partner are arguing about their conflicting desires, he turns it into a clash between Right and Wrong or between Intelligence and Stupidity. He ridicules and discredits her perspective so that he can escape dealing with it.” (Bancroft, p. 80)

“When Mr. Right decides to take control of a conversation, he switches into his Voice of Truth, giving the definitive pronouncement on what is the correct answer or the proper outlook. Abuse counselors call this tactic defining reality. Over time, his tone of authority can cause his partner to doubt her own judgment and come to see herself as not very bright. (…) The abuser wants her to doubt her mental abilities in this way, so that he can control her better. (…) He has the answers to your conflicts at work, how you should spend your time, and how you should raise your children. He is especially knowledgeable about your faults, and he likes to inventory what is wrong with you, as if tearing you down were the way to improve you. He may seem to enjoy periodically straightening you out in front of other people to humiliate you, thereby establishing his unquestionable intellectual superiority.” (Bancroft, p. 82)

This translated into the visual image of my mother looking quietly down on her hands while the abusive man spoke and spoke as if he were a professor or supervisor. And I am guilty for having run away disgustedly rather than having saved her from it.

notes from 2019, when I started to regard his behavior as abusive and to write instances down

His arrogance, inflated sense of self and right and wrong, and the reality of his double standards transforms into his distorted supposed moral or intellectual superiority. He treats anyone who doesn’t agree with him with contempt and superiority, increasingly women, and especially the ones closest to him; men may be accommodated with a discussion or an acknowledgement of differing opinions — humane behavior is reserved only for those who he wants to impress.

Both at home and in public he may perform progressiveness or let his misogynist, or otherwise biased, nature show depending on whatever fits him or the situation. If an abusive man thinks of himself as progressive he will most likely draw the line at whatever that is to him, which will fluctuate at his whim, and deny anyone the breaching of that line or adopt it and act as if it was his first, to further garner points of “wokeness” in public. One can find themselves constantly second-guessing what would give an abuser ammunition in boosting his public image, in addition to what could be used to be abused with. True progressiveness cannot flourish and becomes a farce in the abuser’s hands.

Both sexist and lukewarm “woke” things can be stated privately and in public depending on the people involved. He would voice some 2-cent “feminist” lip service in front of my mother, my sister, and myself at home, and then crack sexist jokes with another man at a gathering while everyone was present and able to hear. He would commit misogynist acts of name-calling, slut-shaming, body-shaming, and taking away your voice and your rights in private, and in a public setting openly “complementing” women’s skills and voicing his support. I have been more wary of his “woke” statements. They are to give him a favourable, progressive image, to make him look special in front of others and especially in contrast to his wife and children. Whatever he said always operates from his abuse and his abuse would never cease, his core values never change. Like politicians giving lukewarm “woke” takes and their policies being contrary to that. He will more likely align himself with people, groups, or political models that speak to his core values of male superiority. Human rights violators often find each other.

Ultimately, the goal is not to be moral or align his inner values with morality, as that would be contrary to his legitimacy of partner abuse, but to be the one who decides what is, meaning to be the voice or authority and have control over the matter. To him, as long as he or whatever he says seems worthwhile, morally good, and justified in public, his actions don’t matter. Whatever his proclaimed sympathies are in public or occasionally even at home, they melt in the private sphere to have the usual luxury of control and catering. His mockeries, transformed into entertaining jokes, happen in public settings as well. People, or society at large, are manipulated into thinking that it is normal for a cishet man to deride his partner, perhaps to not even realize how little is thought of them.

“They do often hide their beliefs better and, by doing so, can create the impression of being more “enlightened.” But the directness of a cultural message is not the same thing as its strength. (…) my white, middle-class clients feel every bit as justified as the (one from other cultures) and have attitudes toward women that are just as superior and disrespectful. As a product of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture, I am familiar with its centuries-old tradition of hiding its abuse of women under pretty packaging. Unwrapped, it doesn’t look very different.” (Bancroft, p. 165)

Abusers tell themselves that they are important and contributing to society but they damage and withhold talent and possibility more. They don’t operate from core values of improvement, justice, and rights — they might think they do so for the world outside, but it’s the exact opposite for their partner (and children). Whatever progressive ideas/goals abusers think or want you to believe they have, they will work against them once they infringe on their territory of privileges and entitlement. If it is devotion, labor, and obedience from partner and children it may take longer for that to show but abusers will keep working around maintaining the status-quo that has fit them for so long.

They converse loudly in public with catch phrases and slogans to assert whatever moral or intellectual position they want, at home they like to give lectures coupled with gaslighting and manipulation, and in other settings they will find the right people to indulge with in demeaning jokes.

It’s distinctly absurd but also comprehensible that the abusive man with the lecturing conversation style created an environment bereft of and hostile to actual learning and improving. It is obeying and adopting his thoughts, gaslighting and brainwashing lest you learn about the abuse or gain self-esteem and independence. Learning you need to figure out yourself and have the time for — which is usually a worse circumstance for the abused mother than the children. Abusive men will justify abusing their spouse, naming her being less educated, knowledgeable, or rational as their reason. It begs the question why he maintains the marriage and married her in the first place, which is easy to answer: abusers don’t want an equal partner, it is a requirement for an abuser and his maintaining the exploitation, it fuels his entitlement to her labor and his control over her. Were she free to be independent she would have the time to focus, work, improve on herself, perform her craft, refine her talents, engage in new things, build her career etc. The ability to change may be the biggest factor that divides the abused from the abusers. The abused are usually willing to listen to criticism and respect grievances against them — though it may also be more inhibited due to trauma, RSD, etc. Abusers either knowingly see themselves above that or unconsciously refrain from changing their behavior and core value-system that justifies their abuse.

The superficiality of his moral lectures and empty phrases don’t teach one to seek actual help or knowledge, the effect of gaslighting might even be disincentivizing, and they are often in stark contrast to his own behavior. He talks only abstractly and superficially about the importance of health, which falls apart in his blatant disregard to take the actions to maintain and contribute to other people’s wellbeing, in his actions that harm someone’s health, and in letting or defending those who harm one’s wellbeing. His version of indulging someone is giving sweets instead of real food, unnecessary trinkets instead of daily contributions, saying empty words as a substitute for genuine support.

He could compare our dog’s declining health symptoms with past ones he witnessed when he was in his care but never thought of going to the vet. He can only ever compliment someone on their sacrificing time and energy to take care of someone/-thing without the thought of doing the same or helping. He compliments my mother and me on our sacrificing dedication when our dog lived his last sick days. He does so because he was there and did nothing himself. It was stressful, and even more so because the abuser was present, and an abuser’s entitlement stops for nothing, not with death or someone dying. It is staggering how misaligned all his actions are with his stated intentions, but that is always the case with abusers. Yet, you are only ever met with anger and gaslighting for pointing out his lack of contribution and his actual opposition to your needs and wellbeing.

The abuser within family environments

An abusive man having access to other families through relations and invites is further damaging. Staying with abusers, keeping them as part of your family, introducing them to other people is normalizing or mystifying abuse, emboldening other abusers, and adding confusion to the abused. Any child and adult will therefore be in contact with abusive, manipulative, misogynist behavior, either accepting it as normal, adopting it for themselves, or serving to legitimize the abuser by remaining oblivious. However, the worse alternative may be absolute isolation for the abused, but there are only lose/lose-situations with abusers.

The abuser is quite direct in conditioning or recruiting other people, he often does it in plain sight with anyone he meets, especially men of all ages. Considering the quantity, insistence, and repetitiveness of his statements he presents his mindset with, it’s clear that he wants every man he meets to adopt his abusive stance on women, marriage, and parenting, or any other view he holds, or rather, every view he holds. Putting a woman’s emotional and organisational labor on the pedestal, then lecturing her, then showing superficial generosity with self-serving gifts, then degrading her with teasing and mocking jokes. The interplay of show and tell is less contradictory than it seems.

Most evident in the way in which he seeks out any man in a public gathering, preaching his value system with jokes, charm, and entertainment as if he were a missionary or holding a small one-on-one Trump-rally. Because “one great way to keep people off of [the abused woman’s] side is to win them over to his side first. Besides, he feels that he deserves allies, because he considers himself the victim” (Bancroft, p. 275). Abusers (attempt to) groom the people around them; in this case, the men directly by inviting them to adopt his value system, and the women indirectly as they have to hear it, accept it, and further live with these other men. This is also meant to isolate the abused more. He not only wants to define reality for the abused, but also for everyone else. With the legitimacy of being part of a family or a party or any setting he has the perceived right to shape it in his image, and with that can influence various generations.

He especially wants to impart the message that “mommies do the hard, constant, responsible daily work of parenting, while daddies step in to make the key decisions and share the fun times”, but others include “the target of abuse is at fault, not the abuser”, “satisfaction in life comes through controlling and manipulating others”, “boys and men should be in control, and females should submit to that control”, “women are weak, incompetent, and illogical” (Bancroft, pp. 247–248).

He normalizes having this indifference to contribution for other husbands and fathers. What everyone certainly, albeit unknowingly, learns is that someone can simply inhabit the position and look of a partner and father without ever being one.

“As an abuser passes on his thinking to the next generation, he, in effect recruits his sons to the ranks of abusive men. He does not literally want his son to mistreat women — he doesn’t believe he does so himself, after all — but he wants his son to think as he thinks, including adopting his same excuses and justifications, so the outcome is the same. And to a lesser extent he also recruits his daughters to join the ranks of abused women.” (Bancroft, p. 249).

The abuser’s own father was similar to him. Abusive men make abusers out their sons. And this abuser almost pathologically seeks out any other man or boy to indoctrinate his value system. One wonders when such behavior and thinking finally dies out but likely not if the abusive mindset is reproduced through people and other mediums which influence both vertically and laterally.

Example statements

“If women are demanding equality from men, men should demand equality from them.”

• To him it means even more domestic and emotional labor from women, while any demand from women breaches his sense of equity. Having already gained luxuries through abuse he will seldom think he has enough.

“Our dog and I are the only males in this house and therefore in the minority.” / “As the only man in this family, I am in the minority here.” / “Aren’t men the minority here at this gathering?”

• He adopts the marginalised, oppressed position of social minorities for his entitled sense of being in the numerical minority at a certain setting. He pushes himself, and invites any other man he talks to, into the role of victim, to garner himself allies and validation in social settings and to paint a false reality of his “oppression” within the private. He does this at every available opportunity, as if to be the first to condition a situation. Claiming victim status without ever having been oppressed himself is his favourite.
• The abuser adopts the victim stance to divert any criticism and responsibility, to deflect any possible thoughts of abusiveness, and to gain immunity, sympathy and more privileges, and to make it seem as if women are at fault for his hurt feelings or anything else in his life. He also simply feels entitled to it, despite being the one who greatly benefits from his abusive behavior and the rigid gender roles within the family which he imposes.

“If gay people make jokes about us heterosexuals, then we are allowed to make jokes about them.”

• His double standards, especially regarding making offensive and demeaning “jokes”, can be seen in other biases like here.

“She’s the one with the balls in the family./She is the one wearing the pants.”

• He abandons any responsibility for domestic and parental labor. It’s also to hide his controlling, entitled behavior, and the fact that he does make non-negotiable decisions that serve his needs without a thought about the family and everyone else. All while seemingly being empowering and flattering of his spouse, painting reality as if she willingly took on the workload herself.
• Other examples involve public displays and gifts that are meant to say: “Look, my wife does everything because she is in control, she is the commander.” It’s in stark contrast to his condescending loud lecturing of her and doing whatever he wants regardless of her asking him.
• In situations of family gatherings or having guests at home the abuser will feign having a natural laid-back, leisurely attitude, entertaining everyone outside the family, presenting a picture of the comfortable nice husband and the wife who does and organizes everything, in order to hide his abuse and entitlement to having leisure for himself to the detriment of everyone else.

“I’m only going to vote for a woman.”

• He proudly proclaimed this two-cent fake “feminist” statement as if he was doing a decent thing. Compared to his abuse at home anything even resembling respecting women sounds ridiculous and is just superficial. (Voting for someone solely on what they are instead of what they do is also potentially damaging.)

“Her sacrificing devotion, her organisational and management skills are truly commendable.” / “Women are so much stronger during pregnancies and childbirth.”

• He proclaims this to hide his unwillingness to share the workload, to make this a “natural” thing women do, and to gather favourable public image points.
• He shows his “respect” to women by “complimenting” on their childbearing strength, culinary skills, their domestic and emotional labor, family management, and organisational skills.
• Abusive men may praise the abused in front of others only regarding the roles and duties they have been put into, like manager, organizer, planer, housewife, caregiver, nurturer, cleaner.

Filling your life with enablers & conditioning the acceptance of abuse

Abusers groom their character witnesses as carefully as they groom their victims. They need their friends and enablers to be content with not being abused or witnessing it themselves. And the world doesn’t lack abuse sympathizers or ignoramuses. Another reason why abusers are able to exert so much damage is because they are enabled by other family members, by their own friends, by the people who they pick to be around the family, who make excuses for them and gaslight you as well, who demand accountability from the abused but not the abuser, or who simply ignore it all because they want to keep their comfortable myth of the happy family alive.

Abusers seek allies and enablers with whom they surround the abused:

“Choosing approving peers
Their male friends tend to either abuse their own wives or girlfriends or else make comments about abuse that buy into excuse making and victim blaming. (In research terminology this is called providing informational support for abuse.) Their female friends may be mostly people who will accept their poor-me stories about being the victims of hysterical or mentally ill women.” (Bancroft)

They may also want to introduce other abusive people into your life to lower your self-esteem even more, or for you to experience as much abuse or as diverse as possible because more abuse and emotional distress means more control over you. They feel justified because:

“First, an abuser doesn’t want to have to explain his worst behavior (…). Second, he may carry some guilt or shame about his worst acts, as most abusers do; his desire to escape those feelings is part of why he looks for validation from other people, which relieves any nagging self-doubt. (…) And last, he may lie because he has convinced himself of his own distortions. The narcissistic abuser, for example, considers his fabrications real (…).” (Bancroft, p. 276)

The blame commonly falling on the abused reminds me of so many things I witnessed in my mother’s life and which I can now contextualize. A close friend of the abuser often lectured her on parenting, without being a parent himself or ever doing the same to the abuser, like reprimanding her to keep adult topics like debt and poverty out of children’s ears, which was impossible as it was a rather obvious condition in which we were living in, and would have meant gaslighting our reality and causing more confusion. She would receive the blame for not hiding her worries better, while never a word over the financial ineptitude of the abuser was lost, or any of his failings as husband and father. She was left to deal with trying to keep us afloat, in addition to parenting two children, and withstanding his abuses. The abuser’s friend didn’t deem her worthy enough to receive more than a 5€ wine bottle as a gift for the last Christmas that she had. It is likelier that people who accept accountability receive every blame than the abusers who deny and evade it.

A huge mistake is to tell your abusive father of the abusive or manipulative behavior of other people. Either he will adopt them for himself, feel assured in the widespread, normalized nature of abuse, or outright seek acquaintance with these people. You cannot confide in him who you dislike or who hurt you. One distant relative of mine showed manipulative and divisive abuse tactics, in addition to having climate science denialism and conspiracy theories. He “accidentally” invited her to the funeral and apparently loved to converse with her. When my mother did the labor of management and organization she was attuned and considerate of her children. An abusive father taking that on and failing at it may at minimum be regarded as incompetence at fatherhood or as his nature to have no ounce of parental instincts and consideration (it’s unwillingness as it would mean work, feelings of guilt, and the loss of his own needs being at the forefront), but I doubt it hardly ends there. It’s as if he has the urge to meet people who have shown abusive behavior and collect as many as possible to side with, to condone, to isolate you more, and to have an environment filled with the normalization of abuse. As strong as the allusion of peace and the urge for parental help may be, it is wise to never confide in your abusive parent.

Your abusive father will not (effectively) help you with other abusive people, whether they are your partners, relatives, friends, colleagues, or strangers. He won’t see their behavior as abusive, or he will recognize them as his own and make you tolerate them in order to obscure his own behavior. The presence, legitimisation, and mystification of abusers at home can condition one to accept and become the target of other abusers. And even though it is near impossible to never meet an abuser in your life, the abusive parent bereaves one of (effective) support, advice, protection, and the tools for realization.

Feeling entitled to the narrative

When abuse stops being evasive and mystified the abuser will of course do anything to deny, justify it, or paint themselves as the victim and the abused as abusers themselves:

“If the man is abusive, of course he is going to deny it, partly to protect himself and partly because his perceptions are distorted. If he were ready to accept responsibility for his actions in relationships, he wouldn’t be abusive” (Bancroft, pp. 71–72).

The abuser sees himself as the authority on the memory of my mother and his perspective on family life. The most infuriating thing of seeing someone die while still tied to the abuser is his entitlement to have the most say in the memory of them. His tendency to always fill the room and to dominate conversations makes me fear that his narrative will be the only one, the only one heard and believed, even the prospect of one’s own narrative being sided equally with his is maddening. When you die the abuser gets to tell whatever he wants about you, with an even lesser risk of backlash.

Whether you describe them as abusive, emotionally immature, or narcissistic, they are unwilling to refrain from putting themselves into the centre of a narrative, dictating that their perspective and emotions are not only true but relevant in the first place, making noise until it is the only thing that one hears. They plant themselves as the focal point, around which everyone else has to orbit, or the perspective you always have to keep in mind lest you want retribution:

“An abuser tries to keep everybody — his partner, his therapist, his friends and relatives — focused on how he feels, so that they won’t focus on how he thinks, perhaps because on some level he is aware that if you grasp the true nature of his problem, you will begin to escape his domination.” (Bancroft, p. 75)

The abuser sees himself justified in everything he does, and does not need more than his own feelings or views as a reason for his actions. Abusers want their mystery around their attitude, behavior, and the pattern to be obscured, their proclaimed intentions shifting to whatever shifts in a given situation, and never to be questioned. They hate that their behavior and they themselves can be named, categorized, analyzed, called out, criticized, eventually held responsible and accountable.

“Complaints against him, including drawing any attention to how his behavior had hurt other people in the family, he is quick to stifle” (Bancroft, p. 59). He will make his feelings the center point with loud and space-filling rage or depictions of his own hurt, to quench any other person’s emotions in order to acquire for himself the sole right to express them, to be the only one who’s emotions matter and have to be engaged with.

With all the mediums of this world at play, the story most likely becomes an abusive man’s story, a man’s story of their confusion, justification, vindication, retribution. People are still more inclined to believe cishet men, whatever mental backflip that requires, like marionettes on strings repeating authoritative figures in their lives that told them to be and think a certain way. The abused are putting their perspective and information out but abusers are still always sought out. And when they are, there will always be people claiming the abuser’s side.

You, on the other hand, may be running lists of advantages and analyses of human behavior through your thoughts, and suspecting any expression or kindness to be hidden manipulation or mockery. No matter if your abuser subjected you yet to experiences similar to your visions, your mind automatically starts to do it to prepare for the case it does happen. An abusive father’s constant projection when dealing with criticism (wrongful accusations in his mind) can translate into the child’s tendency to have a constant inner monologue of elaborating reasons and justifications for any of their own actions, no matter how trivial. The specter of judgement, the abuser’s judgement specifically, is always hovering above, living rent-free in your own mind, a constant reminder to be on the look-out for their judgement and only choosing actions that would not elicit anger. It is in fact not the judgement itself that is frightening but its effects, being affected by it. There is still this voice in my head gaslighting me whenever I want to expose and talk about the abuse, a wall that hinders any revelation, to forever be alone in knowledge and experience.

Aspects of An Abusive Environment

Lack of and hindrance to accountability, teaching, learning, development

• “Complaints against him, including drawing any attention to how his behavior had hurt other people in the family, he is quick to stifle.” (Bancroft, p. 59)
• Accountability comes with the willingness to be held accountable. Abusers withhold it while simultaneously feeling entitled to be in a position for which it is required.
• Abusers want the abused to be under their judgement, never themselves under the abused’s.
• The abuser simultaneously knows that his abuse damages you in a way that makes you more controllable and thinks that he isn’t mistreating you at all. Abusers gain relief for their emotions and the control they want through their behavior. They see themselves completely justified and therefore not in any wrong — to them, the one who is always in the wrong is you, their abusive behavior is to “correct” you. The question whether an abuser does anything deliberately or unwittingly is easily dissolved if you focus on the fact that he acts according to his value system and his thinking that his needs, opinions, wants, and feelings are the most important.
• Abusers don’t want an environment of reciprocal learning, that would mean involvement, labor, and attentiveness, and would nullify their gaslighting and the obedience they want. They are unable to have or maintain the habit of teaching skills without using intimidation tactics, and to be attuned to other human beings.
• One can become afraid of openly owning up to mistakes lest the abuser takes it as an opportunity to punish, shame, insult, heep his own faults onto one’s shoulder, and make use of it for further abuse.
• His snoring is ear-shattering and maddeningly loud, uncomparable to anyone else’s. Instead of taking care of it after being asked every time, he immediately resorts to snarking back with “Mami snores too”. The abuser will only take care of something if it impairs himself, not anyone else.
• “Mami [does it] too” is also a tool to deflect blame and accountability and make the children think that both parents are equally to blame in order to keep them from taking the abused mother’s side.
• He pulls a false equivalent of someone else’s lesser misdoing or neutral trait and pulls it to his level of flaws, abuse, and damage.

Lack of and hindrance to intimacy, connection, communication, honesty

• “Why does an abuser sow divisions in these ways? One reason is that his power is decreased if the family remains unified. (…) Many abusers take steps to avoid this outcome, using the principle of “divide and conquer”: If the people in the family are busy fighting with each other, attention is diverted from the man’s cruelty or control.” (Bancroft, p. 254)
• The abuser’s sowing divisions makes it hard to intuitively know what other’s standpoint is and makes one fear openly seeking clarification. The pain of abuse can twist people in different ways, and then they start grinding at each other.
• The lack of honesty among family members feeds the legitimacy of the abusive man in his behavior and his presence in the family.
• An abuser’s presence kills connection and intimacy which would be both vital and simply lovely to have.
• Honesty and intimacy needs vulnerability which is frightening and dangerous to show within an abusive environment.

Lack of and hindrance to fairness, equality

• “Abusers attach themselves tightly to their privileges and come to find the prospect of having equal rights and responsibilities, living on the same plane as their partners, almost unbearable. They resent women who require them to change and persuade themselves that they are victims of unfair treatment because they are losing their lopsided luxuries.” (Bancroft, p. 345)
• It becomes this shaky unequal environment in which everyone secretly cleans up after the other, but mostly after him. It’s an environment of fraught and frustrating coexistence, bereft of collaboration.
• A mother’s constant domestic labor at home can make girls or AFAB children fear being pushed into the same role. The abuser can also influence the children in such a way that they neglect their share of the work. This can translate into the mother taking on even more work.
• The abusive man treats his spouse as if he were both her child and her superior. This extends to his own children in that his sense of responsibility and accountability is never higher than that of his children at any age they are in. With age children may demand more responsibility from the abuser which in turn the abuser deflects with demanding more of them instead.
• The abuser is making you prove your worth when you are trying to make him see the damage he does or take on more accountability. The abuser will always demand more of you, even to the point of proving that you deserve dignity from an intimate partner or parent instead of mistreatment. It’s as if you have to bargain and argue for your perspective, your opinions, your pain, your intrinsic self.

Lack of and hindrance to comfort, stress-relief, freedom of expression

• The consistency and repetition of abuse never makes one truly recover.
• Being treated like a therapist or dumping-ground for his monologues, opinions, grievances while having your problems not be taken seriously, or rather, be a risk to be used against you for further control, the lack of having room and a framework to work through problems and stress in the open and with considerate support is making stress fester and mount.
• The divisions sowed by the abuser and personal neglect arising from emotional and mental distresses affect compassion, comfort, and dedication for the people we care about, and even the consideration of needing care yourself — which are all vital for maintaining or improving health, quality of life, life expectancy, and for providing mediation from other hardships.

Lack of and hindrance to authenticity

• Abuse feigns to be something it isn’t: love, support, connection, intimacy — but it is image, status, superficiality, control, possession, retaliation.
• “He gives apologies that sound insincere or angry, and he demands that you accept them” (Bancroft, p. 125). He apologizes like a child with a tone meant to reprehend anyone for calling him out. His sincerest apologies happen when he bumps into someone which are just immediate responses of etikett devoid of self-reflection. (Apologies may start to sound more sincere when the stakes are higher, but it is the same in that his abuse doesn’t cease afterwards.)

Contradictions and confusion

• The contradictory conditions within an abusive environment have confusion as their goal: “The abuser creates confusion because he has to. He can’t control and intimidate you, he can’t recruit people around him to take his side, he can’t keep escaping the consequences of his actions, unless he can throw everyone off the track” (Bancroft, p. 20). It occupies your time, it is hard to navigate or even to point out at first, it makes you feel isolated as you wonder what everybody else’s experiences and thoughts are, and you wonder if anybody else is also confused. As your life is filled with contradictions due to the abuse and their goal to obscure its nature, in your confusion and distress you may unwittingly create and seek out further contradictions and further confuse yourself.
• The abuser is unwilling to coexist with other people, including vulnerable people (children) who need to be focused on for nurture and accommodations for their needs. The abuser’s hostility towards contributing to the family is in stark contrast to his entitlement to having one and abusing abuse to keep control.
• Coupled with mounting symptoms, you may have contradictory and confusing feelings about owning up to your mistakes and being afraid of appearing vulnerable and open for more abuse, about compulsive lying due to trauma or rejection sensitivity, about building confidence to assert yourself and being afraid to be manipulative and abusive yourself.
• The confusion doesn’t end, no matter how much you read about abuse. You may be certain for a moment but then questioning again. It likely won’t completely end after abuse is escaped from, but it is definitely worse when the abuser is still present.

Effects of Abuse

Authentic self vs. traumatized self

An abusive environment quenches you, dampens your personality and expression, cages you within the abuser’s perception, makes you afraid to take up space and to express yourself, to err, develop, and improve. Years of living with abuse can constantly stunt and traumatize one, until CPTSD and other physical and mental health issues are developed — and other unforgiving environments that allow no rest, like school or work, will add to the stress. An abusive home is paralyzing: Walking-on-eggshells, secrecy, fear and mistrust — several decades of that within something one has to call home creates an unnatural development of the self; lost potential and missed opportunities, severed connections and lack of intimacy — partner abuse takes more from the partner but it extends to the children as well, even if merely through its effects. On top of that, this loss feels unquantifiable and indefinable, like a haze — if it is felt at all.

It’s an environment in which you cannot put out, you only put up with, only take in, only take what you receive. You are afraid to give because abusers see anything to be theirs for the taking, as they set no boundaries for themselves and only for you. You don’t want to give or create something and see it taken (not even with unearned pride) by someone who never does, you don’t want to learn and try and experiment, you don’t want to walk around freely lest you be observed and taken for granted. Whatever the abuse conditions you to be, you might even unconsciously attempt to similarly condition other people. If you feel the urge to hide yourself behind a mask, or place yourself in the background to draw as little attention as possible to yourself, or to take on the job of appeasement you might feel the need to reprimand your own family members or people close to you if they don’t hold up to that conditioning as you associate it with taboos.

Abusers within families limit or change your potential to their ideal, as adequately responding to your true self would mean forfeiting the focus on the abuser’s needs. You have to constantly shut yourself off in the presence of him, still feeling observed, as anything that you show can be used to insult and manipulate you in order to control you more. Due to the experience or the risk of your authentic self being berated, mocked, or gaslit you may hide behind anything that isn’t your true self in order to self-protect. Because then hurt wouldn’t happen for being yourself again, but hurt does happen regardless. An abuser may say they want you to fulfill your potential but they will hardly support you and likely sabotage you because developing freely would mean dismissing their entitlement and going against their abuse. If the abusive man doesn’t let your mother develop and be her own person, then he will likely be an obstacle to your growth, too, and he will be an obstacle to your mother’s help in your growth. If an abusive parent does support you (and only as long as you appease, fit the assigned role, or at least not cross a line) it definitely means that someone else is falling through, and you may be blind to the person that is hit by the abuse instead. If or because developing your true self, or rather, healthy self-development in general can only be achieved away from the abuser, it will definitely be sabotaged in favor of you remaining.

With time, this aspect of an abusive environment becomes self-enforcing. “Unfortunately, by expecting past rejection to repeat itself, these children end up stifling themselves and promoting more emotional loneliness. In this situation, people create their own emotional loneliness by hanging back instead of interacting” (Gibson, p. 20). You will not freely or healthily develop, unfold, and improve yourself in the presence of abusers. Further, abusers stifle independence as they want you to be dependent on them to a certain degree; they wouldn’t be able to get what they want from you otherwise (devotion, admiration, caretaking, domestic or emotional labor). One’s automatic reaction is to (strategically) cage oneself in the presence of abusers, yet not appear it. “Instead of just being who you are, you’ll develop a role-self, or pseudo-self (Bowen 1978), that will give you a secure place in your family system. This role-self gradually replaces the spontaneous expression of the true self” (Gibson, p. 85).

Not knowing yourself you might trap yourself in things you do not want, and the entrapment element of abusive environments fails to teach you how to escape other unfavourable environments. Rejecting vulnerability and honesty prevents you from forming meaningful connections and relationships, and recognizing trustworthy people. Abuse also makes you afraid to show love unrepressed. As everything is set in roles and appearances the abuser won’t help children develop in a healthy way. You are robbed of opportunities and development to express negative emotions and pain and to seek help. In extension, to be yourself, or rather different from what they want you to be, is a failure in their eyes but a success to your individuality.

Because abusers craft the abuse to be evasive you cannot penetrate to the core of the issue, and even if you are aware of this design, it may be futile as the abuser will diverge. So you may pick at other, sometimes trivial, things or other people out of simple rage and frustration. You might even get a need for revenge or, at the very least, to have your frustration be seen and recognized. If you’re trapped in this and still want to retain some semblance of control, you may think you could at least not give them the good time of having the control they want to achieve. Be unforgiving and unlovable to abusers, be mean, steal, kick, spit, fight back, make their abusiveness hell, make them experience consequences for their abuse. Be difficult for abusers to love, but be mindful not to sabotage yourself, and escape.

Behavior

The same behavior can count as both abusive and non-abusive, but abuse follows a pattern and recurring themes. Violent instances are easier to label as abusive than attacks on one’s mind. Emotional/psychological/financial abuse is hard to pinpoint, often far more damaging, and worse to deal with. There are more overt tactics, like insults, mockeries, screams, threats, and subtle tactics, like gaslighting and manipulation. Don’t be afraid to include an assessment on your feelings and mental state in your analysis of the abuse. If you look at the power dynamic and ask yourself who is benefitting from abuse and it isn’t you, it’s you who is being abused. If you ask yourself who is/feels entrapped and it’s you, it’s you who is being abused (not “dependent”, this can be true for either the abuser and the abused: abusers can both make themselves dependent on you or you dependent on them).

Abuse creates the follow-up reactions of either defying it or giving in to it. Both lead to more (though differing) negative effects, thus creating confusion about how to react to abuse, in addition to focusing on that in the first place. It distracts from the true reason for any negative outcome: the existence of abuse itself. Don’t beat yourself up over not always knowing the right action to take in any given moment of abuse. Your objective is to get out of the situation unscathed and your integrity intact, as the goal of the abuser is not your wellbeing. An abuser’s selfishness and lack of care that derive from their value system and entitlement may be mirrored in your selfishness and lack of care deriving from your urge for survival and not wanting to end up cleaning up after them, to be treated like a caretaker doing domestic and emotional labor. Abusers can bring out the worst in you, to cope and to survive.

Behavior caused by abuse can at times look like abusive behavior, similar or different to the abuser’s. Ignorance about the nature of abuse confuses responsive behavior (like acting out) which happens due to the abuse and trauma with abusive behavior that has control as its goal. Is a child or even an adult becoming non-verbal due to distress, fear, or confusion (without considering that this may hurt or confuse others as well) the same as an abuser sulking and giving the silent treatment? Is it the same, seeing an abuser behave one way and not knowing what to do with it and doing it yourself because you don’t know what to do? Do mothers think their child showing difficult behavior due to the abuse is similar to the abusive father? Do siblings think that of each other?

Children will be giving “difficult behavioral challenges, are having some problems focusing their attention, or are prone to withdrawal or depression” which “are all normal responses in children whose mothers are abused” and “growing up around an abusive father or stepfather is very confusing and anxiety producing for children even if he does not mistreat them directly” (Bancroft, p. 270). Children with calm and well-behaved exteriors (also possible through abuse-instilled fear and anxiety) can also have moments of acting out and impulsivity. Showcasing pain through “lashing out” or “weird” behavior can be a raw, at times delayed, reaction to abuse, just as a numb, lethargic, melancholic exterior can be.

The minds of neurodivergent children will absolutely be alienated and handicapped by witnessing and experiencing abuse. With time, they may make facades of functioning, out of fear of being seen damaged or broken, masking any turmoil underneath that an untrained eye, even a parental figure, may overlook. With untreated neurological learning disabilities, strange and yet unknown trauma coping mechanisms, and being subject to the display of abusive behavior that drowns out any positive behavioral demonstrations one can feel like a freak without any words to describe it. With endless abuse, no outside intervention, and trying to keep up, as anything contrary to that would mean typical blame and punishment for the mother, there was no time for recovery and healthy development.

Children are influenced and hurt by abuse, but they are also manipulated by it, compliant with it, they mimic it as if it were normal before realizing that it isn’t and looking for better sources, and ignore or repress it. Sometimes it takes years to contextualize their own behavior. But even once abuse is known, one doesn’t stop being affected by it, especially not if it continues or isn’t escaped from yet.

The abuser will also, along with abusing them, recruit the children to participate in his control or manipulation tactics of the mother. His reasoning may be that she is helpless, incompetent, or not knowledgeable.

“It is impossible for the abuser to keep his treatment of the mother a complete secret from the children the way he does with other people, because they are almost always around. So he chooses instead to hook them into the patterns and dynamics of the abuse, manipulating their perceptions and trying to win their loyalty.” (Bancroft, p. 240)

Children may also unwittingly mirror the abusive parent’s behavior, and to a certain degree, or as long as it isn’t used against the abuser, they may be allowed. An abusive father can then both use the children’s natural habit of mimicking their parent’s behavior, which includes his, as a tool against the mother to tell her she is the one not fitting in or as a tool to punish them when it annoys him, further confusing and intimidating them. Children may feel as if it is required to evade abuse and to survive, or desirable and useful in order to have their way. They can also absorb the negative attitudes and traits of the abuser, they may model his behavior and “hope to win their father’s approval by joining him in the abuse of their mother” (Bancroft, p. 250).

An abusive father externalizes his need to be immune and absolved. “Children are subject to traumatic bonding with the abuser, just as their mothers are, even if he does not abuse them directly” (Bancroft, p. 256). It may be a sense of obligation, and later the habit, for children to defend and justify the abusive parent, to minimize the negative impact. Or the abuser will have created an environment of distrust and disconnection between the other family members, making it seem as if everyone else is in some way complicitous. It may also be thought of as a secret to keep the family image. A child can become the abuser’s proxy in many aspects of family relations and issues. It is easy to hide behind the pretence of sharing an equal voice if enough people are manipulated to want what the abuser wants, and that any deviation from that can be disrespected and disregarded.

Children subconsciously learn that if they want to be treated better than the mother they have to adopt some behaviors of the abuser. As a daughter witnessing your mother do all the thankless domestic and emotional labor you may internalize the fear of being cast into that role and the disgust of catering to your entitled father in any way. You subconsciously push against accepting any of that vital work that feels like “duty”, unwittingly thrusting even more work onto your mother’s shoulder (or at least not sharing it in any way that would help her in this abusive environment). Thus you’re complicitous in this one-sided caretaking that is part of abuse, even though, unlike the abuser, you gain little from it yourself. You may feel averse to having the traits of your mother or to learn her skills, not because those are in themselves undesirable but for fear of being exploited or treated like her. Abusive men don’t encourage and likely hinder the knowledge and skills of the mother that fall outside her position of caretaker to be passed on. And children can unconsciously neglect to seek the mother’s knowledge and skills that fall outside the role the abusive man casts her in, as they are coded as undesirable (stupid, unimportant, dull, exploitable); and with that, neglect seeking connection.

Living in a toxic environment for so long can make one become socially withdrawn, emotionally distracted, even selfish (out of necessity to survive or to finally have your needs met), and have more constricted emotions along with the confusion and anxiety caused by the abuse, and other posttraumatic symptoms. Isolated, traumatized, or neurodivergent children may find it hard to connect with others, which keeps them even more lonesome. And once loneliness sets it, it stays, and it becomes easier to isolate oneself further.

The true extent of isolation and lowered self-esteem through abuse are often hidden and worse than one suspects. I mistook all the instances of my mother’s diminishing comments on her own body or age and her people pleasing socializing as awkward moments, but they were in actuality signs of low self-esteem. With my own ignorance I didn’t help dismantle or alleviate the workload that was caused. Underestimation is a hidden danger, especially as repression, numbness, or amnesia happen in order to cope.

Mini-me

Abusers can make carbon copies of their children. They rarely see them as anything but extensions of themselves, and they rarely want them to be anything but. A strategic move to hide the narcissistic abuse from being overt and to solidify the position within the family hierarchy. And because the abuser cannot treat any woman with a semblance of good-naturedness and respect who isn’t similar to him or what he wants them to be. They set their children up by making their judgement about them consequential and by trying to control their opinions, tastes, and independent thinking. They will try to get you to do and want exactly what they do. If it differs they, will force you to reason again and again, never accepting an answer in order for you to grow tired and give in.

Perhaps the abuser called my sister a “slut” too often or not often enough, both insulted her and lifted her spirits in his design, until it was an everlasting urge to seek his approval and attention. His insults of women not living up to his entitlement have become banter, hidden behind jokes and teasing — he creates the narrative that they are jokes to begin with and that one has to live with that. It’s enjoyable for him because he never seems to go too far in his eyes (which are the only ones that matter), but time and again, I see her overreaching in his eyes and then faltering and immediately appeasing him lest he retaliates.

Abusive men creating a mini-me out of a daughter isn’t impossible or even that uncommon. It’s easier to maintain sexism if you make the next generation of those assigned female at birth (AFAB) sexist as well. By promising the bridging of gender disparity with the same things that build it it can become fairly easy. Thus, they may as well adopt the behavior and thinking of their abusive father (and be rewarded for that), unknowingly mimicking the more desirable behavior of the “more in control” parent, or adopting it as a mix of unhealthy coping mechanisms and fear of being treated like the mother. All he has to do is create the conditions that emphasize that, in sharing similarities with the abused woman, the abuse will extend to the children (which it already does). Then, even daughters can think of leaving the mother behind to be the sole one to be exploited. All he has to do is mould a child in his image and the child won’t see him as a bad father. The abuser wants children who are or turn out “just fine” with the abuse, who don’t know or care about the abuse or who are unable to do something about it. Children critical of him and adverse to his abuse he despises. The abuser makes you fear the prospect of him not regarding you as his child anymore, whereas it is actually him that shouldn’t be regarded as part of the family, as he was never a parent in the first place — you may not feel like family to the abuser anyway, more like a hostage.

One could say he got himself what he wanted: The overt abuse tactics of screaming and threats subsided because it was working, everyone became weary and too afraid to speak out. A mini-me in one daughter, the other too depressed to be anything but passive, conditioned over a long period of time and upbringing to feel fear and futility, too unsociable to be believed and taken seriously. Children lacking the competence to help the mother whose labor he extracted, living with the luxurious lack of effort or responsibility.

Health Risks

Being subject to an abuser’s entitlement, directly or indirectly, can create the single most painful, hot and desperate rage. It feels ineffable and mystifying, unacknowledged, isolating, and it often remains unresolved. An abuser is an immense strain on the mind and body, and can be infinitely infuriating to live with, and with this rage finding no outlet it is turned inwards. Internalized anger can transform into physical and/or mental health issues: chronic pain, autoimmune diseases, cardiac issues, mental disorders, suicidal ideations etc. Unfortunately, expressing anger towards the abuser leads to attacks on one’s mind, as the abuser retains the privilege to throw tantrums whereas you are supposed to be composed at all times:

“One of the basic human rights [the abuser] takes away from you is the right to be angry with him. No matter how badly he treats you, he believes that your voice shouldn’t rise and your blood shouldn’t boil. The privilege of rage is reserved for him alone. When your anger does jump out of you — as will happen to any abused woman from time to time — he is likely to try to jam it back down your throat as quickly as he can. Then he uses your anger against you to prove what an irrational person you are. Abuse can make you feel straitjacketed. You may develop physical or emotional reactions to swallowing your anger, such as depression, nightmares, emotional numbing, or eating and sleeping problems, which your partner may use as an excuse to belittle you further or make you feel crazy. (…) on some level he senses — though not necessarily consciously — that there is power in your anger. If you have space to feel and express your rage, you will be better able to hold on to your identity and to resist his suffocation of you. He tries to take your anger away in order to snuff out your capacity to resist his will. Finally, he perceives your anger as a challenge to his authority, to which he responds by overpowering you with anger that is greater than your own. In this way he ensures that he retains the exclusive right to be the one who shows anger.” (Bancroft, p. 60)

One may live and die with this unresolved, hopeless sense of wrongness which some bear with repressing it. But feelings are intelligent, and anger is an emotional response to mistreatment and abuse, it is telling you that there is something wrong and unacceptable.

Because of their privileges through selfishness and bullying abusers can often live a very long life: “His self-esteem, his ability to sleep at night, his self-confidence, his physical health, all tend to hold just as steady as they would for a nonabusive man” (Bancroft, p. 196). Whereas the abused can have their health and lifespan diminished because of the stress and burnout. It can be incredibly depleting and exhausting, even back-breaking. Children can contribute to it unknowingly, as “children of abusers absorb his expectations of constant catering from the mother” and “experiment with imitating his behaviors to see if it will help them get their way” (Bancroft, p. 250). I fear I made her life worse, too. As the abuser demands so much from the abused mother and gives little to nothing back to her or the children, a child may feel egotistical towards her and want her all for themselves as well.

If I sought escape from the trauma-inducing abuse and entitlement by remaining in my flat where even there the stress followed me, I can imagine how much higher the stress and the exhaustion must have been for my mother at home where there is no escape from that. Some abusers are less energy-consuming than others, but my father’s behavior and messes are so incrementally stressful that I can fathom why a heart would give out.

In the wake of pandemics we should start seriously counting (living with) abusers as a risk for potential underlying medical conditions as well. What poses a danger is not just physical abuse within quarantine which greatly reduces the mobility of bodies. It’s also emotional/psychological abuse that impairs and has impaired one’s mental and physical health for a long period of time, especially because the conditioned negligence and sacrifice of one’s needs will make one likelier to be unaware or careless of one’s own health. Even if it is something that cannot be proven, it shouldn’t be overlooked.

Trauma and Mental Health

Abused and traumatized people often do not recognize their symptoms or experiences until they get their hands on resources and learn about it. Trauma and mental disorders can take years to be recognized, especially if they cannot be traced to a singular event, and the increase of severity and symptoms can at some point become exponential.

My childhood was filled with strange behavior which I can now classify under trauma. With age I unwittingly became better at hiding it behind an emotionless mask, but my depression and complex trauma responses to abuse seemed to skyrocket once I was in my 20ies, untreated, the effects culminated and became irrepressible. And it is an insufferable hell to finally see abuse tactics for what they are and continue to live with and witness them, to continue with the inability to recover because the source of it all remains in your life. Why was I so sensitive to the effects of abuse? Was it my age and being old enough at the time to remember the more blatant abuse before it became less overt, or any neurological difference that made the emotional wound more severe or added to it with its own problems? And why couldn’t I take it a bit longer?

Unlike abusers, the abused cannot treat past events as if they never happened or aren’t relevant anymore, especially if the present doesn’t look so different. The weight of all that remains. The need of the abuser, the narcissist, the emotionally immature is for anything to fade into the past and oblivion.

“They act inconsistently, as their consciousness hops from one experience to another. This is one reason why they’re often indignant when you remind them of their past behavior. For them, the past is gone and has nothing to do with the present. Likewise, if you express caution about something in the future, they’re likely to brush you off, since the future isn’t here yet. (…) with each new moment they leave their past behind, freeing them from any sense of responsibility for their actions. Therefore, when someone feels hurt by something they did in the past, they tend to accuse the person of dwelling on the past for no good reason. They don’t understand why others can’t just forgive, forget, and move on. Because of their limited sense of the continuity of time, they don’t understand that it takes time to heal from a betrayal. You can see how hard accountability would be for these people; it’s a flimsy concept for those who don’t feel a temporal connection between their actions and future consequences.” (Gibson, pp. 64–65)

The antithesis to their consecutive dismissal and gaslighting is one’s trauma or mental health problem or any other consequence lingering into the present and future. “The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort” (Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score, Chapter 6). Abusers create trauma, frustration, and stress, bind you to them, keep you isolated in dealing with them — or rather, not dealing with them, to further exploit the consequences and confusion — , and refuse accountability. They create a cycle of control and justification by producing negative impacts on the psyche of the abused which can brand them as “bad or crazy”, and with that justify abusing and controlling them further.

But prior to becoming aware of abuse there are the honeymoon-phases. “An abuser of any type can have days when he turns loving, attentive, and thoughtful. At these times, you may feel that his problem has finally gone away (…). However, abuse always comes back eventually unless the abuser has dealt with his abusiveness” (Bancroft, p. 105). Abuse casts you in a state of survival, and through isolation it is the abuser’s breadcrumbs of emotional relief that can even become the sole means of that. But those are self-serving cover-ups, grand gestures for the public, or basic kindness elevated to special gifts. They are meant to lower expectations and standards, and to buy justifications for the abuser to not be criticized, questioned, or opposed. When the abuser is kind it’s not because kindness is one of their core values, it’s just that being kind to you during these moments doesn’t contradict or interfere with their core values of control and entitlement, it is in fact serving that.

The honeymoon-phases, when meant for partners, can work on children as well. They can make you gaslight yourself, when the true amount of pain and devastation is so great and frightening one simply has to think it isn’t that bad in order to cope with the abuse. Until the effect is one day lost, either because it was time to ask questions or because the trauma became too strong; at some point the depression just lingered on, making it impossible to let yourself be gaslit into the short lived joys. If you stop falling into comfortable gratitude during the honeymoon-phases, and keep remembering, it feels like a win. You may feel restless and weary but at least steadfast in your perception of reality. Unfortunately, holding on to your trauma and depression may feel like keeping your only evidence that emotional/psychological abuse ever happened or still does happen, and in its familiarity your pathology will feel like a comfort or a part of yourself.

When my mother was still there there was some relief, and trauma and C-PTSD were easier to ignore — but now there is only that. It’s even worse that the abuser is completely and in every aspect a trigger (his voice, his abuse tactics, even having his surname and seeing any sign of his existence in my life) which has made being in the presence of him a constant battle with anxiety, anger, depression, suicidal thoughts (and it has also extended to other instances of feeling anxious and enraged).

“To people who are reliving a trauma, nothing makes sense; they are trapped in a life-or-death situation, a state of paralyzing fear or blind rage. Mind and body are constantly aroused, as if they are in imminent danger. They startle in response to the slightest noises and are frustrated by small irritations. Their sleep is chronically disturbed, and food often loses its sensual pleasures. This in turn can trigger desperate attempts to shut those feelings down by freezing and dissociation.” (van der Kolk, Chapter 6)

Especially as a developing child you have no control over how your reactions to abuse manifest. Maladaptive coping mechanisms and negative symptoms are a typical result. Whatever your traumatized mind comes up with may be by chance, or by unwittingly mirroring your abusive environment. This can lead to a developmental lack in showing emotions, empathy, compassion, reciprocity, and mutuality, because of getting used to those not being valued and taught but instead mocked or invalidated, as they do not have a function to and aren’t developed or reciprocated by the abusive parent. Keeping the peace, like avoiding confrontation and agreeing to things, is also a trauma response, with which you disrespect your own boundaries and continue to validate the abuse. The alternative is suffering retaliation. Both comes at an emotional cost within an abusive environment.

“Managing your terror all by yourself gives rise to another set of problems: dissociation, despair, addictions, a chronic sense of panic, and relationships that are marked by alienation, disconnection, and explosions.” (van der Kolk, Chapter 13)

The cycle of peace and explosion for traumatized people is often just putting tremendous effort into keeping themselves together and then failing when everything boils over. Abusers practice double standards which includes giving themselves the right to have no self control and act on their emotions as they please but expect you to control yourself and your pain, rage, and terror at all times. Abuse victims demonstrate incredible feats of self control, which doesn’t mean that suppression is infinite. Expressions of trauma don’t necessarily or commonly reveal themselves in the presence of the abuser, or in real time during one of their abusive actions, as they deny you the environment to feel your emotions during the situations they arise and afterwards to work through them. After years of entrenching in us the fear of criticizing the abuser and showing anger in front of him, I only felt free to express negative emotions in front of my mother, which means she had to bear the brunt at times.

As she was the primary target of abuse, trauma and traumatic events were often linked to her as well, and because (witnessing) the mistreatment of my mother and therefore my mother herself were tightly knit with my own trauma, the symptoms could get triggered by something she did as well, if it was reminiscent of the abuse or its effects in any way (like talking about him or silently enduring another of his abuse tactics), or rather if she didn’t act towards the ultimate solution of abuse: getting free. Even when I finally realized it and actively tried to control it there were moments in which I forgot and was too irritated to keep my trauma outbursts back. Thus, in addition to the abuse, our own disorders can further harm ourselves and others (and the existence of abuse may be known or still unrecognized at that point).

Another effect of trauma and abuse is feeling alienated from yourself and your surrounding. Alienated from your environment you may feel disconnected from moments, or they may also feel too intense and people too intruding and only looking back was it as if you were running on autopilot. Besides the abuser’s gaslighting, trauma can also create a fragmented narrative. The lack of being in touch with yourself can intensify into dissociation, excessively seeking escapism, and being spaced out, as living with an abuser for so long means you have to cut yourself off from reality to a certain degree to cope with it. Alienated from yourself you feel fragmented, feeling as if you don’t know yourself or as if you don’t have a center or core, the frames of your sense of self seemingly whimsical and shifting. You do have a singular self and you remember your past, but you feel no direct connection to your previous states of mind. It’s as if any part of that past was a completely different person with a different thought process, and at each new stage in life you have to build yourself up again as if you were new. The sinister part of my dissociation is that for decades I had no words to describe it and wasn’t even aware of its harm, it evaded my perception as it made me evade reality. It is difficult to realize that it is a trauma response, and to know its source because it feels as if it has none. Amnesia is an often forgotten side effect of trauma, depression, and anxiety (memory problems can also be a symptom of ADHD), and deprives you of your own narrative.

A possibility of trauma and mental health problems are suicidal ideations or feelings. As abuse feels caging and escape hard to obtain, suicidal feelings can derive from the powerlessness to change one’s life: “Suicidal feelings often express a powerful and overwhelming need for a different life. Suicidal feelings can mean, in a desperate and unyielding way, a demand for something new. (…) a need for change so important, so indispensable, that they would rather die than go on living without the change” (Will Hall, Time for a new Understanding of Suicidal Feelings). So even death can become a much more desirable state than living with the abuser:

“Sometimes children of emotionally immature parents repress their anger or turn it against themselves. Perhaps they’ve learned that it’s too dangerous to express anger directly, or maybe they feel too guilty about their anger to be aware of it. When anger is internalized in this way, people tend to criticize and blame themselves unrealistically. They may end up severely depressed or even have suicidal feelings — the ultimate expression of anger against the self.” (Gibson, p. 53)

Suicide is not the solution to the wider problem, just the last resort for the individual, but if abuse remains a problem to be tackled individually then suicide will remain a viable option of escape for the individual.

Obstacles to Escaping Abuse

The wisest thing is to get out of an abusive environment quickly, but one may be particularly impeded when economically bound, traumatized, depressed, anxious, fatigued, chronically ill, disabled, or with executive dysfunctions. One might simply have a shitty head start, whereas it would have been important, and perhaps otherwise not even that difficult, to have become aware of the abuse earlier.

Abuse is deliberately designed to cage you, and frustrations and disabilities in themselves can be caging. Circumstances can seem so inescapable and unchangeable and the trauma response can be to simply endure abusive moments, wait until it’s over, and try to continue with whatever was disrupted. Living with this feeling that everything is wrong but that there is nothing to right it, or not knowing what it is, is paralyzing in a way. Everything is stagnant, until it is lost. With death the option to make it right is permanently gone.

Long-term exposure to abuse, lack of education on the subject, failed attempts to separate, and emotional or material binds can create a mentality of passivity and learned helplessness; feeling familiar within an abusive environment, they become hard to combat. Entrapment within an abusive environment feels static, contrary to the overlooked mental and physical deterioration due to the abuse.

Abusers don’t want you to take a self-imposed stop and reflect, they want you to run after them. And for a while you probably will, trying to keep abreast through the mistreatment and distress, neither looking back or forward but only keeping eyes on the abuser. As abuse has to be mystified, opening up, seeking help, even naming it poses a threat to the abuser’s image and their validity in their position, and they will seek retribution for its disclosure. Abusers see emotional distress and mental health issues as innate weaknesses, which redirects any accountability away from them. They may also feel affirmed in their impact which can serve as motivation to perpetuate it. It is also fitting for them to trigger trauma reactions in a child to keep them immobile and isolated in their experience, to call them hysterical. Being in a condition that makes one in need of support can also make one be at risk of an abuser’s attempt for more control. Their partner or child showing trauma due to their abuse will not be free to recover, and the abuser will gaslight, manipulate, and isolate them lest it becomes known that it is their fault. “Saying the word abuse to an abusive person can be like lighting a tinderbox: When you name the unmentionable secret, he goes wild” (Bancroft, p. 90), he will verbally attack and gaslight you, and set out to manipulate other people to trust him more. The want and obvious need to deal with one’s pain and suffering means that abuse has to be eradicated in order to get better. For that to happen, the abuser would need to entirely change and let go of all the benefits of abuse, which is unlikely, or you would have to separate, which the abuser doesn’t want because they would lose influence, control, status, and luxuries.

The wider social context may also potentially adopt the abuser’s side which translates into the fear of being invalidated, shamed, and accused of being “crazy”. Societal and cultural stigma, stereotyping, lack of knowledge and understanding about abuse and its symptoms are not only a disservice to good parenting but to all interrelations in life, they are only a service to what-/whoever produced it in the first place. An unfortunate possibility is disbelief of one’s surroundings, or abusers making sure that the only perspective that counts is their own and the only person who cares what is said about the abuse is themselves. What will always hinder healing is the abuser pushing themselves into the victim role, into the forefront, into your life again, reinforcing the triggering effect they hold.

You’re always recovering, always re-traumatized, it’s exhausting to make progress and then burn out and have to start anew. And recovery is tied to further personal circumstances: What is available, what are the possibilities, what/who is there to return to, and what can be looked forward to? I have been more occupied with appearing functional than actually improving. There is no open healing when you are trying to keep up with the world moving around you. And recovery is impossible with an abuser present, as any unruly, weird, depressed, vulnerable, or childlike behavior is a justification for past and further abuse and control.

It is also depression’s innate characteristic to preserve itself, trapping one in it and its causes, therefore making it hard to seek help. Depression arising within an abusive environment, and at a young age, may foster more harmful ways of coping than within a non-toxic environment, or having no hope or energy for attempts to initiate change. We may become indifferent to our own pain, and death can become an escapist thought.

A big factor is the interplay of age, development, and understanding. You can be a child lacking the ability to lead in dealing with abuse, battling various consequences, and only beginning to suspect something. You can be an adolescent, still not mature enough due to various factors like fear and dysfunctions, instead hoping for a mature adult to take the lead. You can be an adult with solid walls around your low self-esteem, feelings of worthlessness, and learned helplessness after decades of abuse, needing committed intervention from the outside. Lacking behind can certainly present itself as an obstacle to many aspects in life, in addition to its stigmatisation. It can hinder getting things done at the right moment in time, and make one linger instead at the thought of lost opportunities, losing even more time. Hesitation can be a killer.

Being unattuned to one’s own emotions due to depression, autism, ADHD, or other things will take more time to become aware that there is something wrong. It takes time to realize that one is living in constant pain, and that one doesn’t have to. Oftentimes, the scope of damage can be incalculable and hard to process, and the only way to cope with the immense pain is to suppress it, which can unfortunately mean to further endure it instead of work towards change. If it has become a habit to cope with abuse by shutting yourself off and becoming numb, then there will be difficulty changing that.

With time, the mounting and overlapping symptoms turn effectively into a positive feedback and solidify the cage of abuse. Trauma and ADHD symptoms can exhibit similarities. If developmental and behavioral issues due to abuse are overlooked then other learning disabilities or disorders may so as well. Having ADHD makes one in need of an external structure and of help regulating emotions, being Autistic makes one more gullible and in need of positive sources for mimicry, and other special support. Any verbal barriers due to inhibitions, neurodivergent or otherwise, like mutism which can become extreme with immense distress and trauma, will be a problem for communication. Preexisting executive dysfunctions make it difficult to tackle the problem of abuse, without an exoskeleton helping one to deal with it.

Time blindness can simply make you forget to take action. Having a rather disconnected relationship with time, as is typical with depression and ADHD, may make one simply miss the right timing to attempt something (or think so and then become discouraged about future endeavors). Having to deal with everything else in one’s life, trying to keep up and fit into your setting, despite any learning or developmental disabilities and mental illnesses, creates a problem when dealing with abuse, as it may require a complete halt and a completely new direction in life (which can be frightening). You can lose your sense of time, and with that, lose time. I missed to consider the importance of time and I felt inept in initiating and realizing anything.

Consequence blindness can make you overlook that inaction, too, has consequences. Dissociation and escapism are a consequence of needing and seeking escape from abuse but they can entrap one further in the toxic environment. All of this makes a person take longer to develop, longer to realize, longer to work something through and out. And when one has to live with such a toxic cocktail since a very early age, without any positive coping mechanisms, it’s a constant cycle of developing and unravelling again.

As mind and body are trying to cope with everything, one may become myopic, lethargic, paralyzed, blind to its source and solutions, focused on the wrong things, set on surviving the day or the week or even just the moment until it can be cast into oblivion. Even when the honeymoon-phases of abuse did not make me forget anymore, they did make me lose my sense of urgency. It’s also easy to disengage when you’re not the primary subject of abuse. To ignore and forget may be a welcome tool to cope with the ugly truth. The increased severity of trauma, depression, anxiety, fatigue, and executive dysfunctions muddied my vision and made it difficult to know where to start. I was selfish, too, in focusing mostly about the effects it had on me, and not on others.

On the other hand, once the abuser is left you will not automatically become better. It’s a lot of work to undo the effects of abuse: A child not learning open communication, seeking help, coping with stress, being independent, and an adult having unlearned all that within an abusive environment will need to learn it again. The trauma symptoms will at first become stronger as your body is finally free to express them fully. It is a sign of recovery, which some ignorant people may regard as undesirable while preferring your caged exterior in the presence of abusers.

Departure or escape can feel strange, unnatural, even dangerous inside an abusive environment, and abuse is so energy-consuming that one can be too exhausted to make the necessary life changes. Taking action to get free of abuse takes tremendous effort, will most likely mean a lot of trouble, and take a further toll on one’s mental and emotional wellbeing. When an abuser sets up roots in your life it can be hard to escape. I understand why so many people cannot muster the strength, and decide to remain in abusive relationships. It can take long to escape when we are afraid of healing, afraid of acknowledging pain and what happened to us in the first place, afraid of showing needs, and letting ourselves be vulnerable and open for change and recovery. One may only tend to focus on small gestures and a couple nice moments for respite instead of aiming higher. But we need to take action more than to take comfort in small things.

But once abuse is recognized we should start to feel the mortal danger that it can get (irreversibly) worse at any moment. For tragedies will happen if things are left to run their course.

The course of events seem deterministic now, with causes and logical consequences, because of course this couldn’t have gone on for ever, nothing is ever stagnant, everything has an expiration date and the possibility to become worse. No one can live long with such a man, in this environment, it’s traumatizing and unhealthy. Life with an abuser is simply unsustainable. It lowers your quality of life and even your lifespan, it affects your mental health and may very well affect your physical health, too. The countless exploitations, mockeries, messes, screams, and worries are a slow death, destroying body and mind over decades. Even if it happens to be a long one, it isn’t really a life to begin with.

Resentment & Failure

Anger

Conflicting feelings hinder you from doing what you want to do. Rage may be all that you have left, the thing that gives you agency, and so you cling to it, or fail to suppress it — in a weird way it also numbs the pain. On the other hand, it may make you solely focus on your own suffering and less attuned to the pain of the other abused, whereas patience and calm are needed in supporting people in abusive relationships (which may be difficult if there is no outside support, and confusion and division within the abusive environment).

It’s the anger of children who want parents, even abused ones, to live up to the tasks of parenthood and the additional challenges that arise from living with an abuser. A mother, made to bear the stress of abuse in addition to the hard labor of childrearing and domestic labor, and taking a toll on her mental health, may fail to exhibit outstanding parenting that would be needed in the wake of abuse. Failing to recognize mental illnesses in children, an unfortunately still widespread characteristic of many cishet parents, is a source for much frustration in children and can seem double neglectful in an abusive environment. Personal flaws, mistakes, and maladaptive coping can sow further mistrust.

Alternatively, however much a mother does may not be enough to counter the effects of abuse for children, and failure to escape it may be met with much dismay as it falls back on the notion that it is a parent’s job to keep children safe from abuse. Thus, there is anger that your mother, despite all her maturity (the only one, as the entitled manchild lacks it), seems still like this straight teenage girl who believes she has to endure a disrespectful boyfriend who is openly derisive of her; that she wasn’t the one searching for answers, reading books, and naming abuse for what it is herself; that she may have become discouraged, perhaps concluded that being docile and fixing things in the background, out of the abuser’s sight, and taking on his neglected responsibility was easier, as he showed that he wouldn’t butch on his entitlement to have it easier for himself, that the alternative meant more painful abuse like shouting and threats. It’s easier for children, even then, to be angry with the mother for not trying harder and being strong enough to get out herself: “Children of abused women thus feel angry and upset with their mother for standing up to the abuser and for not standing up to him. Their reactions in this regard are entirely understandable, but the mother can find herself in an impossible bind that leads to more distance and tension between her and her children”, on the other hand, I may have been blind to “the many efforts she may have made to keep” us “safe and the many tactics the abuser may have used to interfere with her parenting” (Bancroft, p. 253).

I felt frustration and resentment because her remaining felt like a choice she made, like complicity or indifference. I was also angry and afraid that, if she didn’t notice my trauma and mental illness as a child, she wouldn’t care enough now. I’ve often found myself overthrown by those feelings. I withdrew from her more for my own painful but less frustrating physical isolation, thinking that was for the best, but in effect, I had abandoned her, I left her with the abuser, and that killed her. She might have felt the anger and thought herself the actual source; children themselves can unwittingly contribute to a mother’s reduced self-worth. The abuser “getting you and the people you care about turned against each other” (Bancroft, p. 67) takes on this more systemic characteristic which, in time, feeds itself and needs little direct input from the abuser. The long duration effects of living with an abuser can create this headspace of “everyone for themselves” and “leave the abused behind to save yourself”. At times, it seemed easier to give up on the abused mother — but that is exactly what the abuser wants.

Communication

The superficiality of my father had trickled down to all of us and all interactions. My fear of him gaining information about me was also present in the conversations with my mother. Besides the trouble communicating emotions, a devastating side-effect of the longevity of abuse and distress was that I refrained from telling my mother of problems. Even when I was confident in her respect of privacy, there was fear of my father getting to know of them eventually and the possibility of him deciding to overrule my mother’s help with his own bad parenting decisions. The possibilities of freely talking with my mother diminished as well: Returning home happened on weekends which was also the time when my father was present, talking in person was a trouble but phone calls felt too impersonal, and texting felt like posing a potential danger as my father convinced my mother first to have her mobile code known and then entirely unlocked.

It can be a muddied line between the exact effect of division sown by the abuser and the other parent’s failure regarding their personal responsibility to foster trust and honesty, coupled with miscommunication or misunderstanding.

Like that one time when I had worked out something that made it a bit more bearable by spending as little time and engaging as little as possible with the abuser. I minimized the occasions of coming home when he was present and kept myself closed off not to invite more interactions (I couldn’t have born anything more anyhow, spending any minute with him was excruciating). The emotional peace came to an end eventually one time, when my mother told me that he said that me ignoring him was hurting him and that he wondered why I looked so gloomy at home. Self-reflection is impossible for an abusive, entitled, narcissistic man, so he put the guilt on me as I threatened his self-image and status by being a detached daughter.

Abusers will see your unhappiness, comment on the display of it but will continue as ever. The acknowledgement of your discontentment or depression is just a statement, not an inquiry, about your appearance, not your being, and it becomes an unspoken assignment to refrain from showing it anymore. Because, as in matters of consent, abusers see discomfort but their own pleasure, comfort, and needs matter more. “[I]t is often a requirement upon oppressed people that we smile and be cheerful. If we comply, we signal our docility and our acquiescence in our situation” (Marilyn Frye, Oppression). I was frustrated that my mother played messenger for him, that she didn’t know of the causes herself. It seemed like compliance, as if there was this abstract, more resilient connection between her and the abuser than between her and myself. At times it just felt like she was in line with him, though she might have just tried to do damage control.

There is potential dismay when a child recognizes the abuse for what it is before the parent does, that one has to go through the pain of telling about the nature of abuse because the other person fails to discover it themselves, and resentment at the idea to tackle the whole matter yourself — it feels like taking on the role your parent should. Much could have been avoided if she had, but on the other hand, also if I had. The condition of having to get away from only one parent and the other being enmeshed and entrapped can just as well be difficult to fathom as having both parents be abusive. Generally, there didn’t seem to be any adults who cared or were competent enough to know what to do in such situations.

Yet the worst of all was the fear of disappointment and rejection. The question was how to engage with my mother’s lack of knowledge and initiative to find it. This could elicit stronger emotions than anything else at times as it was tied directly to the solution or its failure. I was afraid of the unknown difficulty, of ultimate rejection. At times, it was not the existence of abuse that hurt the most but the possibility of being rejected and of everything being played down, the refusal to solve this immense wrong in our lives — and in that pain were the decades of already having had to live with it. For some reason it was just too infuriating that she didn’t take care of the situation herself. The task needed calm and patience which I couldn’t muster, the anger rendered me inactive, I too became more volatile through my trauma responses than I should have been. I wanted her to be Daedalus, but in this the goal of escape and the role of initiator fell to Icarus. In this tale of Icarus there is still failure and demise, it is Daedalus that dies.

My mistake was to keep my thoughts to myself, the opposite hasn’t been much of a habit. You don’t learn to communicate thoughts, opinions, and pain in an abusive environment when you aren’t the abuser, instead it teaches you to suppress your impulse to point out the truth, it builds a barrier inside you that keeps you from articulating it to the outside. I just kept waiting for the moment to initiate the conversation, not realising that time was running out.

I had hoped to have some time to get my shit together, to finally address the matter with a calmer attitude, but I was also shifting into a mood of fatal hopelessness and forgetfulness. On the other hand, it was classic executive dysfunction that I wasn’t doing this relatively easy thing that could have fixed our lives, no matter how hard I tried or how much I told myself to do it, and I didn’t know why. Often we are inadvertently keeping the abuse a secret by keeping our secrets.

Additional Pain

“Countless biographies by women reveal that girl children witnessing a mother’s suffering at the hands of male tyrants — fathers, brothers, and/or husbands — are deeply, traumatically affected. Not only do we want to rescue our mothers but also we want to change our destiny so we will never suffer the way they did or do.” (bell hooks, Communion, p. 20)

A mother’s entrapment, suffering, learned helplessness, and her dealing with abuse is traumatizing in itself, perhaps the most. Witnessing a loved one abused and exploited is often more damaging than being subjected to it oneself: “Children who are exposed to the abuse of their mother have been found to exhibit virtually every symptom that appears in children who are being abused directly” (Bancroft, p. 243).

The mother wound remains, and I shift between grief and irritation. I had felt angry and hysterical every time the unspoken matter of abuse and its consequences and lack of resolve presented itself, when my mother lacked the knowledge and, instead of seeking it, continued with endurance, when her entrapment meant my entrapment. Despite all or any love, there is anger towards older generations of women who couldn’t fend off abusers themselves and have born you into this environment, into living with abusers. A daughter can both connect with a mother for being a source for emotional support and regarding the gendered issues both face, and reject her for ignoring or enforcing them. A mother having had to give up her personhood for motherhood can cause even more hurt in an abusive relationship, which may also unconsciously translate into sabotaging her daughters for her own lost potential. I often found myself thinking more about my mother’s parenting than the abuser’s lack and utter contradiction of it, as she was the constant and he was more like a recurring guest. With the existence of abuse any shortcoming could be double the hurt.

The difficulty (even the sense of impossibility) to address the topic of abuse is connected to the incredible hardship of dissolving generational trauma and your own psyche having tied the trauma of abuse to the abused themselves. A daughter can recognize her own depression in her mother’s, and if she sees the silent unresolved endurance she may see herself mirroring it (she may know and loathe it and do it regardless). Showing or talking about the distress can seem to a child like the most one can do. Modeling the endurance of your mother can be just as likely as modeling the abuser’s behavior. Masking can be difficult for a child to discern, especially if the styles of concealment differ from each other, when one does it with withdrawal and the other with cheerfulness. So much could’ve been hidden behind my mother’s facade. How could she have known what lay behind mine when I never managed to see the full extent of what was hidden to my own eyes (and behind them).

The abuser creates an environment in which negative emotions, especially those deriving from abuse, are to be suppressed and ignored. The mother’s conditioning in this environment gets passed on to the children. One can think that her endurance seems like enabling the abuse, or that she doesn’t see how the abuser’s entitlement and disrespect towards her pains the children and will likely extend to them in time as well. This typical reaction of frustration towards the mother is, indirectly but in effect, part of the division sown through abuse. It is like an extension of turning to your mother for your father’s abusive behavior because he is too scary and indifferent to be held accountable, and your mother remains the only one who can help you. Feeling resentment towards your mother is a promising outlet to one’s rage of helplessness. The question arises whether the wound would be less severe without any abuser present, or whether similar feelings would exist, with different causes, because frustrations within a particular relationship can arise from sources outside it but get muddied within an abusive environment through its element of confusion.

Women are also conditioned to show strength, mostly through repression and endurance, building up tolerance for emotional pain and minimizing one’s own needs:

“While women acknowledged the stigma of depression, they indicated that their resistance to seek help for their depression was influenced by the expectation of women’s self-reliance in the rural setting and the gendered taboo against negative thinking. Ambivalence and stigma led women to try to cope independently, resulting in further isolation.” (Mental Health Treatment Seeking Patterns and Preferences of Appalachian Women with Depression)

My mother once judged one of her sisters to seem unable to live without a man. Both live(d) with an abusive and straining man, and to both the abuse was completely obscure. It seemed more like the classic venting about bad husbands without any serious consideration of leaving them. My mother’s proclamation of being able to live without a man herself makes me wonder whether she regarded plowing through difficulty as a form of independence, or whether she was gaslit to believe this. Many who live with abusers and learned helplessness can pass on and reinforce this conformity and acceptance vertically to the next generation and laterally onto their surroundings. It becomes a habit, a condition, a mystery, and with years perhaps generational trauma which can just as well mean accepting and normalizing abuse and remaining in bad marriages.

The romanticization of resilience is making the pain invisible. Strength is misdirected into silence, while it should be put into working through or past the source of hurt and towards change. Perhaps she was one of the abused women who developed a lack of confidence in being able to live alone. Perhaps she gave up and remained for the sake of her children (believing remaining together for the children and shaming divorces is damaging). The most damning thought is that one has to live with it. Perhaps she thought it a plight she had to tolerate, that only she was being hurt, or that she could simply make it work. Perhaps I did as well, by never talking about it and instead keeping quiet. But your rationalisation to simply endure more or anything that comes your way only serves the abuser:

“Don’t keep telling yourself, “I can handle this, I can handle this.” That message may help you be strong sometimes, but right now it’s not working; in fact, it’s keeping you vulnerable to the abuser. It’s okay to need help. In fact, it’s profoundly human to give and receive assistance.” (Lundy Bancroft, Five Central Concepts in Getting Free From Abuse)

Was she at fault, too? Why is that such an attractive thought? Is it because it unconsciously holds the only parent accountable who showed accountability, in contrast to the abusive one who never does? Because it is tempting to blame women, as it is more acceptable and less frightening, both socially and within the family? Because vulnerable people in general are more approachable? And because it diverts the pain and frustration into a direction that finds its mark, in contrast to the one whose goal is to elude it? But the existence of abusers are only to be blamed on the abusers themselves.

Perhaps I misjudged as well, and didn’t see how damaged it all already was. It’s shocking how entrapment and its extent can evade one’s mind. I underestimated how much more sucked in she must have been than she appeared. Isolated as she was she would’ve lacked immediate and close support. Abused women have been grinded down, their self-esteem so low they think they have to stay, or have become too lethargic to do anything about it. The abusive man keeps his partner through various abuse tactics by his side to extract domestic and emotional labor, personal caretaking, attention, admiration, status from her, and to have for himself more control and less work, things that society tells him are his right within a (heterosexual) partnership. An abusive man can cling to you like pitch or cigarette smoke. I read accounts of women who left after decades, when they were in their 60ies, or only because of interventions. You’re so bound to the abuser and the environment through laws, duties, commitments, children, and time. Or through the process of traumatic bonding:

“One of the great tragedies of all forms of abuse is that the abused person can become emotionally dependent on the perpetrator through a process called traumatic bonding. The assaults that an abuser makes on the woman’s self-opinion, his undermining of her progress in life, the wedges he drives between her and other people, the psychological effects left on her when he turns scary — all can combine to cause her to need him more and more. This is a bitter psychological irony. Child abuse works in the same way; in fact, children can become more strongly attached to abusive parents than to nonabusive ones. (…) The trauma of chronic abuse can also make a woman develop fears of being alone at night, anxiety about her competence to manage her life on her own, and feelings of isolation from other people, especially if the abuser has driven her apart from her friends or family. All of these effects of abuse can make it much more difficult to separate from an abusive partner than from a nonabusive one. The pull to reunify can therefore be great.” (Bancroft, pp. 220–221)

And as an immigrant she might have thought that, to continue living in a country in which her children started to have their own life and commitments, she had to stay with her abusive husband. Abusers strip you of things that make you independent, and when you grow up with one you either won’t receive those tools in the first place or will be manipulated into thinking that you can’t do anything about their presence in your life. Children may end up thinking that perhaps they can gain something out of tolerating an abuser’s presence, financial security or gifts or allowances or taking care of something, comforts within the status-quo that you sometimes receive, tiny peanuts as advantages to ignore the vast detriments. If abusers want to keep themselves in your life, because they receive privileges like caretaking and masculine or heteronormative status symbols (spouse and children), they will do everything in their power to make you remain.

“One of the defining characteristics of abuse is that you can’t easily get away from it. If you could, you would. The entrapment element is always present. Intimate partners are trapped by threats, by isolation, by lack of access to money, by not wanting to get separated from their children, by brainwashing, and by a long list of other factors. (…) Women don’t get stuck in abuse because of masochism. They get stuck because the abuser — along with the society that backs that abuser up — has trapped them in a bunch of different ways, not least of which is the huge trauma he has caused.” (Bancroft, Five Central Concepts in Getting Free From Abuse)

Often, to know the context we live in is a helping hand: it’s also societal or familial conventions and conformity, the fear of financial instability or of somehow having failed, the idea that staying together is better for children, the sheer lack of knowledge and information about abuse in most people’s lives, no role models or representation, relatives or friends living and accepting the same dynamics, a society that doesn’t care to educate, and in the end, with enough time passed, perhaps even a sense of defeatism or denial. In a way they are a product of their environment, in a way they are complicitous (in the eyes of children). My mother might have done something, she might have not, she might have died regardless. There is no tangible external structure of help to escape abuse, nothing to cling to to pull one out, it’s just jumping from poison into cold water. Your life is just filled with ignorant cishets who don’t know anything about this world and you have to figure out everything yourself. And then, knowing still doesn’t make it easy, you’re still left not knowing how to proceed from there.

Resentment serves another function: The only thing that keeps the pain at bay is holding her accountable to her failure of not having given us a life without an abuser. Without it it’s the unbearable pain of having failed to use time and opportunity yourself, of something not having happened that should and could have, of absolute irreparability which the finality of death elicits.

The Sense of Futility

What happened to that girl that was once so energized and committed to change? Who went straight after learning about the disadvantages of smoking at school to her mother and asked her to stop this occasional habit of hers. What happened now that I didn’t immediately rush to my mother with the newfound knowledge about abuse? The childlike excitement to pass on something important that was learned and the assurance that they will heed it were gone. I realized why I hesitated for so long: It has been a decades-long conditioning, which culminated into tiny moments like this one, of my mother and I sitting together in our shared frustration (before I started to categorize his behavior as abusive) in which I blurted out in a murmur that the abuser is sexist and she agreed, “Yes, he is sexist”. The fact that that was it, that no change followed, that I had to live with the realization that she kept on living with him despite knowing that, that she tolerated to live with that, was enough to somehow lose hope — though, losing hope had been a habit for a while already. If this wasn’t enough then perhaps nothing else would be. It could have been a moment of connection, of aligning our frustrations and realizing together, but it wasn’t, I didn’t push forward. Sadly, it’s not out of the ordinary that abused people cannot significantly help each other or even themselves.

It was the dread that nothing would change regardless. Perhaps the real difficulty was to make someone else care that they do not have to endure abuse.

Hiding in one’s subconscious and depression thoughts, the sense of inevitability or futility is a bigger obstacle than one assumes. It showed itself in many visions of failure. It’s easy to dream of a life without the abuser, and hard to imagine it realized. Many confusing fears and trains of thought occurred that ended in procrastination: If she didn’t start to realize it herself, then where would the starting point be for explaining it to her? Everyone can end up in an abusive environment but what kind of person stays? Perhaps she wanted to stay blind due to what some people regard as preferable: the agony of remaining unaware instead of the agony of knowing. Even wanting to impart knowledge to my mother made me worry whether I would be influencing and manipulating her like another abuser. I also feared that I wouldn’t be of any help, that I wasn’t enough to justify escape or what was needed for it, and that I wouldn’t be what was required after being free of the abuse.

One’s mother appearing content in the abuser’s presence or the lifestyle, or never naming abuse for what it is can be another cause for confusion and mistrust. Though navigating through abuse is a lose/lose-situation in any case, it also impedes your instincts, judgement, and gut feelings that affect other aspects of life, and imposes the urge to be secretive. For inexplicable reasons I was also scared, for myself and for her. I thought the right thing to do was to keep my distance for a while, thinking her acceptance as an unvoiced decision and that I had to endure for her as she may have thought to endure for us — all of which can happen without openness and honesty.

With my own silence and secrecy I was inadvertently contributing. I was effectively of what I accused her to be, I was also complicitous. I couldn’t control my trauma and that kept me from doing the right thing. I deteriorated, and it scared me. At times, it seemed like letting things run their course until one meets an early end was an easier path to freedom than convincing someone to become aware of abuse and escape it. A self-imposed ending through the sense of futility. It feels as if I fashioned this outcome, and all I had to do was do nothing. My death drive had been more in control of my (in)actions than I realized. Yet, I owed my mother an explanation and apology, she didn’t deserve the consequences of my lethargic death-longing. Yet again, I cannot completely fathom my past self, my past traumatized state of mind that has led me to horrible decisions and missed opportunities and to this outcome specifically.

I shouldn’t have looked at the possible negative outcome of talking about the subject as if it were the end, because it wouldn’t have been. I should have pursued it and worked from there. It would have been a step within a process that demands further effort and attention, or at least it would have meant more certainty. Death can make the lack of answers so absolute, confusion and uncertainty can become solidified. Without any effort for change we just remain on our previous paths until they end in a pit and we fall with them. The failure to act feels like any of this has lost meaning and validity. There is a voice inside my head telling me to live and die quietly, to succeed or fail quietly. Perhaps this underlying resentment to writing about all of this is the fear of exposing pain, because an abusive environment requires one to keep it under wraps: expose the pain and you expose the cause, expose abuse, expect more. Within an abusive environment it was vital to have my mother’s trust and support in my understanding of events, especially when it came to dismantling any previously unquestioned conformity at home. It meant you had someone who gave you the benefit of the doubt, a sort of protection against gaslighting, someone whose goal was always to create a safe environment.

I keep asking myself, what did she die with? What were her worries, her sadness and pain, what did she think of them? I don’t know how much she knew, I don’t know all of her experiences and all of the abuse tactics he used. I don’t know how traumatized and love-bombed she herself was. I don’t know how much I played a part in keeping her bound. Many questions remain, and there is no closure. With loss of life there is loss of any opportunity for connection, understanding, development, escape, and recovery. If we die regardless then I shouldn’t have cared about my confused fear and frustration back then. What would have mattered was having been open and honest, better known and more helpful to each other. I’m sorry that she had to live and die with this. Abused people are robbed of their lives even while being alive.

Advice

Stories of success are usually there for that. I both hope and fear that I’m the only one with this particular experience. I both hope and fear that my telling of failure has no value in battling abuse, that only the telling of success can help. I can’t give much but I know this: Don’t be a fool like me.

Save who you can and be quick. Abuse and trauma are so sinister that it can take ages to reflect and to grow out of its effects, and before that you or the other abused may simply die. One might not even fathom the idea of abuse and an escape from it until presented with it. You most likely need to build up the abused’s self-esteem and motivation (that includes oneself) to leave the stagnant and isolated state, to teach the complexity of abuse and its effects, and to make a plan that leaves no room for rest lest it be sabotaged. Disrupt the status quo yourself and on your terms before something else does irreparably. You need to band together, help and be there for each other, get away together. I made the mistake to let myself be withdrawn and isolated, which is self-destructive in itself and especially within abusive environments where connection is vital, and I let others be alone too. It is incredibly confusing and frightening to be the only one being aware and wanting to escape abuse.

Abuse affects people differently and misunderstandings arise when everyone’s coping mechanisms are not attuned to each other. It’s important to be honest, to confide, and find out how everyone is affected and what behavior is shown to whom — the earlier the better. Communication is difficult if one suspects others to be sympathetic to the abuser. Abusing someone less than someone else or playing favourites (among children) is an instinctive strategy against unity. Escaping an abuser becomes harder with a child and with each additional child, as sowing division is easier among more offspring (children themselves feel entrapped, or simply are without knowing it).

I overlooked that I focused too much on the abuser and my own trauma and not enough on my mother who had to live the longest with this. The emotional support we had to give each other I neglected on my part. The longer the abuser was in my life and the more I knew about the abuse without any change happening, the more my trauma worsened. The more that worsened, the more severe my panic/anxiety responses to (even trivial) stressors. The worse I became, the more I neglected the emotional support and connection that is vital for people and especially for abused ones. We must be kind and love and care about each other in order to go on living, while there is still time — once one experiences loss, “cheesy” sentimentalities feel like punishment for unheeded warnings.

“Connect, connect, connect. Be there, be there, be there. Helping the abused woman overcome isolation is the most valuable contribution you can make. Work to govern your own frustration and impatience because those will keep you from being fully connected to her.” (Bancroft, Five Central Concepts in Getting Free From Abuse)

You want to escape the abuse together with your mother but aren’t sure if she genuinely cannot put a name to the abuse and its effects or if she will reject you? Plan ahead, ask anyway, and if she rejects you at least then you’ll have certainty to move on alone or to help her in any other way you can. You live with an abusive partner and refuse to leave? Stop using your children as emotional support and leave the abuser. You are still believing in the stigmata of mental illnesses, neurological learning disabilities, and developmental issues? Do your research, the widespread lack of knowledge among parents just adds to the damage of abuse; your own children might already be in need of therapy and of being free of the abuse. You feel trapped by your children beginning or trying to build a life around the abuser? Stop hoping for your children to make the first move, they are probably clinging to the hope for you to do it, for an alternative, or they aren’t aware yet themselves because they are still children. This is all provided that the mother even thinks of questioning anything (the frustration of children doesn’t end so easily, even if we know that the abused aren’t to be blamed). Alternatively, if you are starting to hope for the first move or stagnating in this mindset, you need to do it yourself. Find out what ground you are on, try to reach a common one. In your own dysfunctional ways you could be unknowingly testing each other. Sadly, “chronic mistreatment gets people to doubt themselves” (Bancroft, p. 49) and communication may be the only way out of that.

Toxic, abusive environments are a bigger force than one might recognize at first. If it’s home then it is likely the fabric one lives and develops in the most, the fabric one returns to day after day, for a very long period of time. The evasive and mystifying character of emotional and psychological abuse and manipulation makes it difficult to understand, and at times will feel like an invisible malignant force that governs one’s life. Economic factors, societal and generational constraints/stigmas/myths, lack of education on abuse, one’s own trauma and mental disorders are hindrances to escaping these environments or becoming aware of them in the first place.

What we crave, and what is vital, is to not be the only one knowing. Write your experience down, safe it for posterity, put it somewhere up or send it to trusted people. No matter whether your perspective seems common or unusual — experiences with abuse are not a monolith, someone else might find yours in particular helpful. Read and quote from books or articles or other people’s accounts that resonate, and look for context, references, literary connections.

Personal connection to other people is important to encourage and support one another. The most important thing is, in any endeavor, to not be alone, to have people who have your back, people to return to, who let you rest and build you up. The world lacks a large pool of information, and there isn’t yet a stop to abuser’s being given a platform and sympathy (or himpathy*) — it’s like they are incapable/unwilling to shut up and not seek to plant themselves in the position of “authority” or as the focus of the narrative. The lack of knowledge, awareness, and contextualizing is a real tragedy, but it extends and influences, it’s contagious in a way, and the unawareness of this spreading is just as tragic and harmful. It does not come to mind so quickly to determine one’s life, experiences, or feelings without being made familiar with the concept of abuse, one might even have trouble associating the word “abuse” with one’s own experiences. Emotional/psychological abuse is not in the least less traumatizing than physical abuse, and perhaps even more dangerous as it is harder to point out.

No one deserves to live with abuse. No one deserves to die with abuse.

* “himpathy — the disproportionate or inappropriate sympathy for
a man who behaves in misogynistic or, I would now add, entitled ways,
over his female victims” (Kate Manne, Entitled, p. 110)

How to think about abuse

Abuse is to be escaped from, anything less should be unacceptable. Accountability and mutuality can only exist and flourish without abusers. Abuse isn’t normal to a human mind. It’s always shocking, violating, confusing, even paralyzing, and that is why it is so effective (though to finally take the step to consciously un-normalize it can be painful and take time). One can know all about abuse and red flags or think so and still miss or experience something new. It’s not freeing to forget or ignore it as if it doesn’t happen or matter. That would just be stalling the pain or burying it where it just continues to rumble and erupt.

It is perhaps not less painful but sort of calming to contextualize it all, to put oneself like one anecdote of experience into a vast explanation, to say that you’re not the only one. I didn’t achieve anything, neither helped myself or loved ones, I am just a person trapped in one of the countless narratives that exist in this world, in a version that lacks a happy ending, but perhaps I have some insight to share, perhaps all the information out there is helping someone else. Abuse is abuse is abuse, whether it is known of or not, it exists regardless; if it is not contextualized by the abused (or by all abused), then it is by others, and the context exists regardless.

Partner abusers are miserable, bereft, empty creatures, lacking in profound connection and understanding with the people they pressure to keep living with them, they exploit you to your bare bone. And most won’t likely ever change, they see the privileges they (want to) gain through abuse as enough:

“Certainly the abusive man also loses a great deal through his abusiveness. He loses the potential for genuine intimacy in his relationship, for example, and his capacity for compassion and empathy. But these are often not things that he values, so he may not feel their absence. And even if he would like greater intimacy, that wish is outweighed by his attachment to the benefits of abuse.” (Bancroft, pp. 157–158)

Abusers will cheat, exploit, humiliate, and burden you, and when you stay they get an ego-boost, even if one may not think themselves as being emotionally affected by it, they will see themselves affirmed in one’s silent acceptance. There is no certain way to be in order to not attract abusers. A different set of characteristics will attract a different set of abusers. Or rather, abusers operate regardless of the other person’s traits, their abuse manifests regardless of anyone but themselves. They chose to take your human rights away from you, to dehumanize you into something to be owned and controlled, abused and manipulated.

Part of abuse is victim blaming and punishment as a reaction to being abused. They do not help or solve the problem because they are intrinsic aspects of it that keep it alive. Instead of asking why someone acted or dealt with it in a certain way and shaming them for it, direct your energy into asking and shaming the abuser for what they do. Direct your energy into purging abuse, its normalisation and creation, and the ignorance surrounding it from all aspects of life.

“Blaming an abused woman for the abuser’s behavior, or for the fact that she hasn’t left, never helps. The way out comes from supporting and empowering the target of the abuse, not by blaming or criticizing her.” (Bancroft, Five Central Concepts in Getting Free From Abuse)

If someone still prefers to focus on victim blaming, you’ll know that they themselves have an affinity for control and power imbalance, perhaps specifically to the control and power imbalance abusive relationships hold or to the larger imbalance created and upheld in society. Some people are so deep into sympathizing with abusers or authority or parental figures that they cannot accept that any reasoning or rationalisation of an abusive action is harmful, that there is no merit to abusive behavior, that it cannot be forgiven through any justification. People who sympathize with abusers instead of victims are shallow. They see the broken, traumatized, unpleasant persona of the victim and distance themselves from them, instead becoming closer with the abuser who faces no psychological repercussions for their own abusive behavior and can show a joyful, energetic, entertaining veneer. They hear the victim’s pain and experiences of abuse and decide to have nothing to do with it, instead seeking out the abuser’s promise of decency that they deny their victims. And some simply pay more attention to the hurt feelings of the abuser than the extensive damage he leaves in other people’s lives and in society at large. Unfortunately, abusers still don’t face the consequences they should, they keep existing, they keep damaging and twisting reality and standards.

Tl;dr

Don’t make the same mistakes I did, the clock is ticking, get away from the abuser as quickly as possible and work hard towards escape, confusion and division is a much bigger problem than it seems, the whole situation is more severe than you think (even for you, be aware of your repression or numbness), don’t give abusers a voice and don’t listen to them, no sympathy for abusers and their sympathizers, structurally there needs to be not only more help and education about abuse but also way less factors that advance an abuser’s control and entrapment in the first place.

[Apologies for the rather binary language, I tried to generalize at times, but this is only a fragment of how emotional (partner) abuse can look like, from an offspring’s perspective, don’t feel discouraged if the pronouns or roles don’t fit your experience. Apologies also for any weird sentence structures, I lost my last two braincells.]

Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? (2002), Berkley Books

Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents (2015), New Harbinger Publications

Kate Manne, Entitled (2020), Crown

Susan Forward with Craig Buck, Toxic Parents (2002)

Roberto Olivardia, Got a Picky Eater on Your Hands? Here’s How to Cope (2019), https://www.additudemag.com/picky-eaters-adhd-diet-children/

Marci Wheeler, Mealtime and children on the autism spectrum (2019), https://www.iidc.indiana.edu/irca/articles/mealtime-and-children-on-the-autism-spectrum-beyond-picky-fussy-and-fads.html

Popculture Detective, Donald Trump: Lovably Sitcom Misogynist, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r3FkR5rziY

Soraya Chemaly, Does Your Daughter Know It’s OK To Be Angry? (2016), http://www.rolereboot.org/culture-and-politics/details/2016-05-daughter-know-ok-angry/

Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (2014), Viking Penguin

How long term childhood abuse develops into complex trauma: https://ibb.co/SfGp8fQ

Will Hall, Time for a new Understanding of Suicidal Feelings (2013), https://www.madinamerica.com/2013/04/time-for-a-new-understanding-of-suicidal-feelings/

Venn Diagram of overlapping symptoms of ADHD, Depression, and PTSD, https://tfw-adhd.tumblr.com/post/628547371772624896/as-it-was-requested-i-made-a-diagram-showing-the?is_related_post=1

Kerry J. Heckman, medically reviewed by Lidia Zylowska, DHD and Trauma: Untangling Causes, Symptoms & Treatments (2020), https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-trauma-somatic-therapy/

Marilyn Frye, Oppression (2000), http://www.filosoficas.unam.mx/docs/327/files/Marilyn%20Frye,%20Oppression.pdf

bell hooks, Communion (2002), William Morrow

Bethany Webster, Why it’s Crucial for Women to Heal the Mother Wound (2019), https://www.bethanywebster.com/why-its-crucial-for-women-to-heal-the-mother-wound/

Claire Snell-Rood, Emily Hauenstein, Carl Leukefeld, Frances Feltner, Amber Marcum, and Nancy Schoenberg, Mental Health Treatment Seeking Patterns and Preferences of Appalachian Women with Depression (2016), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5173451/

Lundy Bancroft, Five Central Concepts in Getting Free From Abuse (2018), https://lundybancroft.com/five-central-concepts-in-getting-free-from-abuse/