“I am not the one with the issues, you women are.”

Words of a repeat abuser that has and is still abusing women in relationships. And the sorry fact of this is; that he believes this to be true. He cannot see anything wrong with himself or his actions. Most probably never will.

The warning in this statement right at the beginning of the article is a profound one to women living with daily abuse. It hopefully hits home that no matter what you as the victim may or may not do; it is not in your power to change your abuser’s outlook or behaviour in any way.

A person can only begin to change when they firstly admit that there is something wrong with them and that it cannot always be others that are in the wrong. This is a conclusion that one can only come to on your own. Nobody can convince anyone to do something about a problem when the one with the problem, does not acknowledge that he has a problem in the first place.

An abuser has absolutely no conscience which alerts him or her to abnormal behaviour. These words are a warning to women that are considering getting involved with a man that has a history of abuse thinking that he has changed. Very few abusers are rehabilitated completely if at all. They will at first come across as being the answer to all your prayers; being kind, loving and wanting to do everything they can to make you happy. Another myth ladies, no person on earth can make you happy; it comes from within and another being can only enhance it!

A short, explosive temper followed by some verbal abuse and profuse apologies afterwards normally follow when they cannot control you anymore. Needless to say , so do empty promises of it never happening again. The victim in the relationship replays
to the start of the relationship when he was oh so lovely and dismisses the actions as random and takes him or her back. So starts the cycle of abuse. An abuser never hits you on the first date; he breaks you down emotionally first and then gets physical later in the relationship; some just reach this point faster than others.

In a situation where the victim stays and the man sees other women too – this is also abuse – he eventually abuses these women too. It is his pattern, not yours. There is nothing you are doing that can make him stop; he is the only one that can stop if he wants to. In most cases abusers do not want to stop as they are actually pathetic beings who cannot be anything in the real world but if they can play with someone else’s life; they are filled with a false sense of personal power.

This is not a conventional article on a specific topic, but a story of so many women I have seen over the years who repeatedly walk the cycle of abuse because they think that they can change their abuser with more love, more understanding and many more things which will not work. Taking your own life to spite him does not have any affect on him, he simply moves on to someone new and mostly uses your death to open the door to someone new. Isn’t that scary? Abusers do not care about their victims in any way; the only time they “care” is when a victim seeks help and leaves them. It is not because they love them; it is because they cannot control them anymore. That is the only reason.

So, please think realistically about all the excuses you make up for an abuser to justify his behaviour towards you and realize that only you can step out of the abuse. You will never change him if he does not want to.

A