Breaking the Abuse Cycle

I was thinking that if I told my whole life story, one of poverty and abuse and if it were to enlighten someone, it would have made this whole ACON experience worth it.  Maybe.  But why would God permit us to have to go through this?  I can't kid myself and think that I'll ever totally recover from all this. Maybe.  But if I were to live in reality, I would realize that it would take a lifetime.  That's why we put these things up.  To help us, and maybe someone else can take a lesson from it.

I can tell you lots of things.  I can tell you that if you have little money, which bills you need to pay and which bills will wait a long time, till they are at your door and you can hand them $20 and that will buy you some time.  Depends on what country you live in, so that information might not be very helpful.

I believe I escaped the abusive relationship trap.  Not that there will not be any problems, but I don't have to live where there are always going to be problems and that I have to be constantly abused.

Mother's world was a dark dismal place, and I lived in that world with her.  I remember a long time ago, I showed her my engagement ring and she told me how ugly it was.  And laughed.  It was her way.  I know flying monkeys turn their heads at this stuff and don't say anything, but I remember feeling very hurt.  That wasn't a good marriage.  I was abused by him even before I got married.  But I would never tell anyone that fact, there was no one to tell.  Someone would always blame me for it.

I remember telling someone that my husband quit his job, and others would pipe in and ask why.  I would defend him and say that he was just looking for something better.  Then someone would say that, "A half a loaf of bread is better than none."  Telling that to me, was giving me advice.  You see, I know that he shouldn't have quit his job, it did no good to tell me that.  I had no power over the situation.  They were so not being present with me that it wasn't even funny anymore.

I remember when my husband and I didn't have a car.  My mother would call him a "bum", a "sponge".  He used my brother's razor once when we had a sleepover and mother continued her rampage about him being a bum and a sponge.  All directly pointed at me, and I could do nothing.  If my daughter's husband did that, I could never hurt her with such words.  And all it did was hurt me. They never told him that, they didn't care to.  In a way, I guess they were trying to be "helpful" in trying to get me to realize these things.  But maybe not.  The end result was that it screwed up my head and made me believe I was stupid.

Now, a normal woman in a loving family would never stay with an abusive man.  Maybe there are some exceptions, but overall, hit her in the face and she would be gone.  No, these types of women finds the high value men.  The man who would take her by the hand to cross the street.  These same high value men that treat women like me with disdain.  So how do they get them?  I was clueless.

All those men with the good jobs were far from my reach.  I was actually impressed by my last ex.  He was jovial and fun, and everyone liked him, but he would never take the children on his back for a piggyback or he would tell them to "shut up" when he watched tv, which was all the time.  He walked far from me on the street.  But he was loveable to everyone he saw.  He didn't work, but everyone thought he was the best I could get, and were proud of me for getting him.  He has so many friends on facebook that it is hard to comprehend how abusive he is.  But he is.

I tried to get a high value man but they would practically run from me.  I was so sure I was the problem.  I guess I was.  Yes, that is a hit I had to take.  All that stuff about authenticity, no approval seeking, all works to find that high value man.  But it is a mindset.  My mindset was set on being needy.  Now, I'm not talking about the needy that is needing a spouse to take care of you, that is different and very special and very good.  I'm talking about taking his emotional resources.

You see, men don't have a lot of emotional resources to give out.  If he is high value he reaches out for the mission and the next mission, always trying to get something accomplished.  At a time when I was being ignored (for he never wanted to ignore me) he was just busy with his mission.  I had no emotional resources on my own and would try to take from him.  This is the low value (no emotional resources of my own) woman.  Men are driven to seek out high value in women, whether he can articulate that or not.  He just feels it.  So off he is on a new mission, that is to find a good emotionally stable women.

Men live a rather dry existence.  They can't be bubbly all the time.  He needs to go and do what he needs to do.  An emotionally stable woman totally knows this.  She doesn't make him wrong.  She makes him right.

Enter the abusive man.  His mission, (well I don't think I need to say this) but his mission is to be mean and cruel and spiteful.  He might be narcissistic or not, but for now I'll just focus on his personal attributes.  He needs to drive someone into the ground to feel big and powerful.  The high value man needs to feel big and powerful too, but he has the emotional resources to get there without hurting anyone.  These emotional resources he won't just hand over to a woman.  No way.  He won't give his freedom away, not ever.  That's why in my relationship site it is taught that the woman needs to understand that if she is trying to control a man, it will never happen.  Some women do manage that, however, but I'll leave narcissism aside, for now, so I can delve deeper.

Ok.  So I have established that men don't want to hand over these emotional resources.  They don't want to be bossed around, ie. hand over their freedom over to me.  And quite honestly, no high value woman wants that either.  She wants him to accomplish his missions and his goals, for it all affects her too.

That's why good men don't just throw themselves to the wolves.  Now, I'm going to tell you something, and this is very controversial, but I have seen it happen in my own life, so I have experience this thing to be true.  If I want to experience the love I deserve in my relationship with a man, I need to acknowledge that I must have the resources within myself to give love first. When you come from a place of giving in your relationship a man feels your presence in the relationship differently.  When you are authentically just radiating love, you completely break his state.  He won't be so closed off anymore.  You will have entered where you need to be.

Now I know you say, "That I am giving, I am loving, so what is wrong?"

So many others have approached this topic, and that an ACON is the most loving person you can find.  So then we should have it all, right?  Everything, right down to having all the resources the world has to offer and then some.

But it doesn't happen.

I am speaking directly now into the abused state of mind.

Please dont' think that I'm trying to be controversial here, but I have this need to try to help someone who is like me.  Right now, in their state, they feel like they are slated for extinction, destined to die. For they don't have any of the answers, and I am about to share this now.  This is stuff I had to learn. The hard way.

We have truly believed we gave too much when we had a narcissistic partner.  I remember what this was like.  I'd give and give and give, and he would want more and more and more.  He'd cut me down and I held in all my feelings about that and all the while I called it giving.

Unfortunately, the truth is I gave nothing at all.  Yes, you believe you give, and you give and you give, but what was actually happening is that you were trying to take and take and take, from someone who took advantage of your neediness and kept the carrot just far enough away from you so that you couldn't have it.  You have lost yourself doing this type of "giving".  I know it sounds demeaning to feel like we have been trying to take, but this is not wrong, this is the way it is for us, so it was not our fault.  I'm about to tell you of a big secret.

I would like for you to take all those things about what you were doing previously and get rid of them.  As far away as possible.  Everything.  All those "safe" methods that felt good at the time, the "giving" the stuff we used to do and remove them as far away from you as possible.  Forget about them.  Do not ever do any of them ever again.  They not only caused narcissistic men to be attracted to you , they also repelled the good, honest decent men.  When I try to act like I'm needy, he will run away not knowing why.  He just needs to, it is in his hardwiring.

I know this is hard.  I can't get it all myself.  I thought I was giving.  You want to know what giving is?  What it truly is?  You will not need to be taught it.  It is available within you at all times, but it was stomped on and abused by your narcissistic parent.  This is the part of you that they hated.  They hate your light, your love, all that wonderful stuff you were born with.  They tried to destroy it.

Thats it right there.  Those esteem substances, that pride that happy, happy state.  I know I have to work very hard, daily to even be in a good relationship.  The things I do tends to make a man need to get away.  If I forget for one moment what I'm trying to accomplish then it all goes back to the needy state. It is like my default state.

I know some people might not like what I had to say here, but I speak directly the truth, things I know, have experienced here.  The real raw truth isn't always so pretty or easy to understand.  Maybe you might be saying that it is wrong.  That's ok.  I believe the woman who wants to stop having abusive relationships will swallow up this information.  I wish I could help guide them along, but I'm only learning myself.  I have to go to my room and look in the mirror and replenish my emotional resources steadily.

Growing up under a narcissist wasn't easy.  You can't have pride, dignity, you were born with.  Even when you fought back it was terribly ripped away from you regardless.  I know what this is like.  You think sex is wrong, and you might make a man feel wrong for wanting sex, or love, or affection.  The penetration feels so wrong.  What would mother say?  These things were "eaten" from you.  Or you give sex as a way of getting approval.  You are never into it for real.  You never feel the openness that you actually and authentically crave.  You crave his affection but you don't know how to show that you crave it, it all comes out in a backwards way and we can be very hurtful to them.  We think that he is keeping his love away from us, but he is not. The whole thing is backwards. You never treat him like there is no substitute for him in your life, and that he makes you feel alive.  Any sexual energy he needs to feel from you will come from a bad place.  A dirty bad place.  Doesn't matter if you tell him you love him, doesn't matter what you say, your words are meaningless when there is no driving force of feeling.

A good man can't commit to you, and we don't feel like we can get them anyway.  A good man can't commit to just your body parts, that give sex and needs to get it over with.  For our minds are tainted, and we can't feel the love within ourselves and know that we are just as worthy as they are.  We don't need to take from him, we have to have it within ourselves and want and need to give out love.

His male sex organs might be "dirty" to you.  You might not tell him that, but he can feel it, and that feeling takes his pride away.  That is an emotional resource we take.  Or to cuddle up close feels so scary.  Oh my, this is too mushy.

Or to be vulnerable is very horrible.  We can't trust, for to trust you need to be vulnerable. Vulnerability would have sentenced us to death so we trained ourselves to never be vulnerable.  Yes, he can hurt you, but what would trust be if they can never hurt us?  If we are impermeable to get hurt and never get hurt again?  But to trust someone that when they hurt you and you have the emotionally resources to get through, that is priceless and worth so much more than money.  To express hurt, pain, suffering is next to impossible.

Nowadays, when I think of the word "invulnerable", I think sterile, boiled, smooth with no rough edges.  To be human, we have to have rough edges.  Some bad parts, some good parts, some parts that we have to accept anyway.  I have discovered I have this girly side to me that I had to accept.  In doing so it is accepted.  And I can be loved for it regardless if it is deemed silly or not.

So I believe that if all we had was the vulnerability then all would be ok.  If you are an ACON with all the symptoms and be ok with that.  Make it ok.  That is what high value is.  Make it ok.  I believe if you can do that then you will have that wonderful guy that holds your hand while you walk across the road.  He will love you and worship the ground you walk on.  Have your issues, have your problems, and you will have a guy that will love you for it.  I'm still working on getting these things. It seems like I tend to make too much wrong about myself.  And I think that is a turn off for him.  So I resort back to "needy".  Men love sex, and that need that they have for it is foreign to me.  I don't understand it.  I can go without, but he wants this, so I will use it as a way to keep him?  I know that I didn't want to believe that I was doing that.  I hate that I knew nothing else.

And what did I know about sex?  Not much.  I heard the grunts of a pig coming from my mothers bedroom, not the delightful thing I think it ought to be.  All the things that mother said about sex was to turn me off further.  This would never bring me total and loving devotion from the best man there is.  Only casual flings, even in marriage, I was a casual fling.  Something dirty, no good.  

Can there be any forgiveness for this?  I don't think so.  Can you say truly in your heart that you are now ready to put all the pain and suffering you had to go through and just understand the narcissist and forgive them?  Because for me, it is a reality that I had to choose, that awful shit they did was wrong.  It was wrong.  To make it ok then I have to establish in my heart that the things they did was no big deal and I am ok with it.  I am not ok with it, are you?