They know how to exploit your guilt and insecurities, and if you keep letting them communicate with you, they will keep breaking you.
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My family is prone to addiction, and I’m often viewed as one of the lucky ones who stayed above it: I never did drugs, had no trouble quitting smoking, and always controlled how much I had to drink. I looked down on others who depended on substances. I pitied them when their lives were irreparably damaged by addiction but felt relieved to know I’d done the right thing by steering clear of the things that ruined them.
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And if you’re an addict, you always choose your abuser over your friends.
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But I’m not the exception to my family’s addictive tendencies; I’m just a different variety of addict. I don’t get addicted to substances; I get addicted to people. And just as no addictive drug is good for your health, no addictive person is either. They feel good in the moment, and when things get bad, you try to re-live that moment, completely in denial of the fact you are destroying yourself and letting another person control your life.
We seldom get addicted to good people; we get addicted to people who abuse our addictive personalities, just as drugs abuse the addictive personalities of others. Abusive people don’t offer addicts the stability we need, but they offer us the rush that we want. They’re unpredictable, worshiping you one second and threatening you the next, and you’re always terrified, but always excited, too. Everything they do is another crazy story, but they slowly become stories you can’t share with friends, because while the stories might be amusing at first, your friends eventually intervene out of genuine concern for your safety.
And if you’re an addict, you always choose your abuser over your friends.
Your abuser wants all of you, all the time. They are obsessed with you, want to do everything with you, everything for you, and everything to you. That’s love, right?
Well, no. Doing things with your partner is important, but if your partner doesn’t respect the time you need for yourself, your work, your friends, and your family, they don’t love you. Still, when they do everything possible to make you want to spend all your time with them, it’s hard not to feel loved in the moment. Then they start convincing you they are the only person who loves you, and you believe it, because you’ve never felt a rush like this. So they keep dragging you down until you hit rock bottom, convincing you that only they can help you back up.
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When an abuser compliments you, they’re usually complimenting the person they want you to be, not the person you are. You feel like you’re growing into the best possible version of yourself, but actually, another person is turning you into an automaton who only serves them, often at the expense of everyone else including yourself. In the moment, though, their obsession with “helping you grow” makes you feel safe and cared for. You feel how badly they want you (or need you) and know they will always be there. But even if you leave, they’ll still always be there, just like the drug pushers who prey on addicts trying to get clean. There’s nothing “safe” about it.
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Yeah, yeah, I’m sure if heroin could talk, it would say the same thing.
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Maybe your abuser makes you feel loved by giving you gifts, doing nice things for you, cuddling you, kissing you, and satisfying you in every way they can. All of these things are just temporary highs that are designed to control you in the long run. When you try to quit, your abuser will hold all of their “nice” actions over your head as evidence that you are selfish to leave them. “I do so much for you,” they say. “All I want in return is your loyalty.”
Yeah, yeah, I’m sure if heroin could talk, it would say the same thing.
You aren’t being “loyal” if you stay with an abuser; you’re just letting your addiction control you. Yes, you are a victim. Yes, you need help. Yes, it’s always easier to get help from others than to get it on your own, but you can’t always count on others to be there. The ones who tried to intervene just alienated you, and the ones who didn’t intervene were probably scared of alienating you, until your abuser alienated them. So ultimately, it’s your responsibility to get out on your own, hopefully reaching a point on the other side where you have healthier relationships with healthier people.
When you leave an abusive relationship, you go through withdrawals. The drug analogy still works. You remember all the times you hit bottom, you hate yourself for getting so addicted to something (or someone) so terrible for you. Then you remember the temporary high of their obsessive affection. It felt so good, and right now, you feel horrible … so you get sucked back into the abuse.
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They know how to exploit your guilt and insecurities, and if you keep letting them communicate with you, they will keep breaking you.
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It also doesn’t help that, unlike drugs, your abuser knows where you live and work, and when you try to cut them off, they harass you until you cave. In an abusive relationship, everything is your fault. Any failure to meet your partner’s unreasonable expectations is seen as “selfishness,” and this becomes even worse when you leave. Even when they show up at your job or show up at your house to yell at you, they view these socially unacceptable behaviors as your fault. As Glenn Close’s character in Fatal Attraction would say, “If you refuse to take my phone calls at the office, you leave me no choice.”
I used the drug pusher analogy earlier, but an abusive lover is much worse: they know you better than you know yourself, because they’ve molded you into what they want you to be. They know how to exploit your guilt and insecurities, and if you keep letting them communicate with you, they will keep breaking you. All you can do is go cold turkey, accept the horrors of withdrawal, and know in your heart that, once you’ve cured yourself of this addiction, something better awaits you on the other side.
Also by Giorgio Selvaggio
Photo: Getty Images
I still am unable to “Like” your articles.
I feel you’re drawing too hard a distinction between the abuser and the abused – the actor versus the one acted upon. Granted, that in many cases, especially those with large age differentials, those that involve young folks with still developing personalities etc, it fits your distinction to a tee – but in many cases, the distinction is more akin to a symbiotic relationship, where parasite and host are not so clearly identified. The identifying of the perpetrator is what we do – like to do – but it is often just a siren song.
It seems that society tries to indoctrinate shame on people who tried to do good for society; however, fails to indoctrinate shame onto bad people or actually encourages bad people to keep on doing what they are doing without feeling shame or guilty for what they are doing or have done.