Emotional Abuse
“A Different way of looking at it”
(Note: I am using he and she. Depending on your sex, you may have to switch them for the sake of being able to relate to this story.)
Life is Sun and Surf
Imagine this scene. You and your spouse are out in the water in the ocean. You are enjoying yourself just standing there and she is nearby splashing around too. You are up to your shoulders, but comfortable and standing easily.
Then, for no apparent reason, she starts clawing at your arm, giving you scratches, swinging her arms around, hitting you in the head. She even pushed your head under the water on a couple of occasions, all the while shouting at you. Shouting, you’re not quite sure what.
Is this abusive? Sure could be!
Does this feel like abuse? Absolutely!
So, what’s going on?
Well, keep imagining the scene. Unbeknownst to you, all this time you’ve been standing there on the edge of a little shelf under the water, surrounded by really deep water. Meanwhile, she has been standing on a couple of rocks which just fell away. And, she can’t swim.
So, let’s look at that scenario again. A drowning person is not going to be very gentle in how they reach out to you. I remember learning this in Life Guard training. The safest thing to do is reach out with a pole or something, or you risk getting beat up and drowned yourself. And, don’t expect any rational calm description of the situation. She doesn’t even really know what just happened either. And now is not the time to calmly explain the situation to her, and how she should rationally work through this little issue we have.
She never knew it was just some rocks she was on or that you were standing on a stable shelf.
The way the relationship was set up was perfectly fine for you. It started out OK for her too. Less comfortable than you had it, less secure, but OK. She never knew that something better was even possible.
I was talking to two friends last week who used to term emotional abuse. I’ve been hearing this more often recently (Stay tuned for how this relates to COVID in a future blog.)
Recommendations for getting out of this scenario
Give her what she needs! Even if that means giving her the shirt off your back, so you can reach her and safely bring her back, so be it. It’s worth a ripped t-shirt, isn’t it? I suggest that this is the time to be generous. Think of it as saving a lot of money in a long term investment. The two of you have invested years in this relationship, so what wouldn’t be worth it?
If she finds it too hard to explain it to you, either your friends or her friends could probably translate for you. If you aren’t feeling strong enough right now to pull her in by yourself, or even if you are, get some happily married men to support and pull with you. If you haven’t gotten that support around you yet, you can always pay for a board-certified one. (I’ll deal with that in the next blog.)
Give her what she needs! So, what could that be? Not knowing your wife, or husband, let me give you the exhaustive list of possibilities.
According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, these are the requirements for any of us to have a healthy happy life, and not feel like we are about to drown. In general, of course, if you are starving, you aren’t going to be too concerned about how much people respect you. But you could be missing some of the items in the lower levels and need to go back and re-establish that level.
At the bottom of the hierarchy in Maslow’s theory, are basic physiological needs, which include air, health, food and water, sleep, clothing and shelter. Unless she actually is drowning, air shouldn’t be the problem. It should be fairly straight forward to rule out the other things in this category as well.
Next, is the need to feel safe in your environment. Safety needs include not only the physical, but our emotional, and financial security. This may be a more involved discussion. And, be prepared to get some water splashed in your face, and just take it. Remember, this is a fact-finding mission. If you yell back, the facts will just disappear.
We all need to have somewhere we feel that we belong and are loved by having friendships, intimacy, and family. Past traumas like, neglect, severe illness, abuse, or ostracism can adversely affect someone’s ability to form and maintain emotionally significant relationships later in life.
I’m sure you’ve heard of self-esteem. Everyone has an innate desire for getting esteem, recognition, status, and respect from others, and also have self-respect.
What a man can be, he must be.
Self-actualization — this level of need may be somewhat less obvious and refers to the desire for the realization of our full potential. This covers marrying, parenting, developing talents and pursuing goals. What can I do to help my marriage be fulfilling and help my spouse to achieve the goals that she has now, which may well be different than the goals you heard about before you got married.
Mazlow saw transcendence as the ultimate in the hierarchy, as an end in itself. As humans, we can at least attain a certain level of transcendence. This is going beyond the physical realm into the level of spirituality, where she finds the fullest realization in giving herself to something beyond us — God.
“The way we were” — Memories
So, where does that leave us? Are both of you feeling really fulfilled in your life now? Have deep discussions about what may be lacking in your lives. What you experience as abuse is a symptom. Seek out the cause.
The point is that the more she is getting her basic human needs met (food, water, shelter, sleep, security, intimate relationships, creative outlet, sense of accomplishment, purpose in life), the less a person will be triggered and lash out as if she was drowning. This trigger may cause a person’s brain to revert to her old comfortable dysfunctional childhood-learned behaviour patterns.
Once her brain recognizes that all of the lower levels of human needs are being satisfied, she can have energy to seek help and work out the issues. Whatever the causes are, they may be obvious things to fix, or may require a counsellor to figure out. But, of course, it has to be done keeping your safety in mind.
You may discover one big thing that she needs is for you to quit a habit you have. It may even be something that you think is of little consequence, but triggers those responses to bad childhood memories in her. Find out!
Tell your spouse this story! If you think you may be seeing the first signs of abuse, look to your friends for a rope to toss her / him. Next blog — how to avoid getting into this scenario in the first place.
