By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)
When I read the news sometimes I just want to cry. It seems the news is filled with hate, prejudice, evil and just plain mean stuff!
The following article about a young man who was “hazed” to death in a college band and beaten so badly that his muscles were destroyed, made me just have to stop and “take a breath” before I could continue to read such a sad story.
Expert: Autopsy of Florida A&M drum major shows badly beaten muscles
An entire group of college age young adults who would inflict such punishment on a fellow band member, a person they probably called a “friend,” is beyond belief to me. This was not some group of inner city dropped out kids on drugs who were gang members; these young people were the “flower” of our society, receiving an education at college level.
I sincerely doubt that any of these young people who pummeled their friend hard enough to destroy his muscles intended for him to die, or be so severely injured that he would be crippled, yet that is exactly what they did. They killed him. The entire group on the bus participated in manslaughter.
In light of the Penn State scandal of child abuse that was “openly rumored” around campus, this school also had “open rumors” about hazing in the band that was no “big secret.” Apparently it was not seriously addressed by the band director or the administration of the school. I can only imagine what the family of this young man feels after his death, knowing that he wanted to be accepted badly enough that he was willing to participate in such a “ritual.”
I sincerely doubt that many, if any, of the young people who participated in such a ritual were what we would likely label as “psychopathic.” But for whatever reason that can be ascribed to the behavior that led to this young man’s mutilation and torture (I can’t find other words that fit), they behaved in a way that is totally unacceptable in a civilized society.
In order to stop this kind of behavior it is going to take not only the administrations of schools, coaches, and directors of programs, but it is going to take students who will stand up and say, “I will not be a part of this kind of behavior. I will not participate.”
I think about the times that I have participated in things that were painful to me, just like this young man did, because I wanted to be accepted by the people who were pummeling me with their words or their fists. I was afraid to stand up and say, “I don’t deserve to be treated like this,” or say, “People who treat me like this are NOT my friends, because friends do not hurt each other.” I felt shamed when those I loved treated me poorly, lied to me, physically or emotionally hurt me, but I’ve decided to stand up now, to face those who try to tell me that I must be abused in order to be accepted. To face those who would abuse me, and say a resounding “NO!!!! I will not be abused.”
Let us all stand up for those who are not yet strong enough to stand up and shout “NO!” and to speak out for them that abuse is NOT OKAY!
Athena
It did devastate me when I found out my husband was screwing our employee, not just the betrayal but also b/c she could sue for sexual harassment (yes, I phased her out of the job, taking over duties b/c of the economy.) and that I now have a cloud of liability over my head the rest of my life (he also did not do payroll deductions).
NOW? To remember him telling me that his sex with her was a accident?!!! Wow! His willy was longer than I remembered, accidentally falling into someone else…. LOL. I tell people he had a LOT of accidents, he was accident prone or was that he was prone while having accidents?
Dear Ox Drover,
I really needed that message!!! I did have a nice day with the baby, thank you! I hope you had a nice day, even though you are spring cleaning in the winter, LOL!
I’m going to take your words to heart. Weeding out anyone that does not add a positive spin to my life. Last month, a friend I thought was so close and such a good support sent me a ridiculously long email with all kinds of judgments and opinions caged as “feelings.” Her statements would start “I feel that” and then she would launch into a judgment of me. She apparently thought by calling it a feeling it was okay. After all, she was only expressing her feelings. Below is an excerpt with names changed, just to give you an idea.
Bad friend to Marie:
“What I was trying to say on the phone was that I feel you fight against your situation so much and that makes it so much harder for you to accept life on life’s terms. You are not in an easy situation. That’s a given. It’s no use to focus on that and feel like you’ve been cheated. SPATH wanted the baby, but I remember that you wanted a baby, too, and you were very excited when you found out that you were pregnant. I understand that you feel used and abused by SPATH because you were. But that’s in the past now. Let yourself grieve freely and allow yourself to move on. If you stay stuck in the negativity of your situation you aren’t going to be able to fully enjoy the joys of your life. Baby is a gift from God, no matter how hard it is at times. You are a very intelligent woman. Use that wonderful brain to separate the negative from the positive and then choose to focus on the positive. From: Bad Friend
The whole email is of this quality, and literally, it’s probably around 3 pages if I cut and paste it into Word doc. I was so offended and upset afterward that it forced me to have a very assertive conversation with her. In that conversation she said that I didn’t take responsibility for anything, that I was blaming SPATH for everything. I said that maybe she truly hadn’t been listening to me kick myself for several months prior. She also said that I was saying her forced me to have the baby. I never said that, I said he pressured me. And he did, from pretty much the first few weeks we were dating.
She also accused me of being obsessed with sociopaths during the phone call. I’ve been so hurt with the email and her comments during that phone call because she sat and listened and seemed to be a caring/supportive friend. And then she threw all this negative crap on me because I broke down emotionally one day and said “I feel like I’m not going to make it.” I wish I could post the whole damn email, it felt like another betrayal.
Anyway, she invited me and the baby to her house today after 2 months of not talking to us. Like nothing had happened. I think my Christmas gift to myself is going to be severing ties with her. I couldn’t do it today on Christmas, but I think tomorrow I will. She’s one of the “get over it and get on with your life, no big deal” folks. She has also attempted to dispense medical advice to me, although she does not have a medical degree, LOL! As I write this, I’m thinking, WHY have I hung onto this craptastic friend?
I’ve wasted a lot of mental energy on her and another toxic friend. I loved your statement about energy being similar to money in the bank” “Spend it wisely and spend it on the things that have to be taken care of immediately.” I’ve gotta cut these crappy people out of my life… I think it will be another step in practicing assertiveness for myself.
Finally, I want you to know that your comment about marrying a wonderful man who will love the peanut as his own so she can have a daddy of her own brought tears to my eyes. In the aftermath of having my dreams used against me, I’ve dreamed a new dream. And this is it. I’m holding out for health in myself so I can attract the happiness my daughter and I deserve. I’m lonely for companionship of another adult, but anything is NOT better than nothing, which is the condition Spathy got me under in the first place. Thank you for being a part of my healing, Ox Drover and the other special men and women on this site. I would say you could not possibly know what you all mean to me, but I think each and every one of you here knows the feeling 🙂
Joy and blessings to us all!!!
LP Marie
Me too! Me too! My post too!
Am being silly but serious as well, I wrote a post to you that this type of friend is NOT being a friend b/c a FRIEND does not invalidate you or shame you. Nor would a FRIEND write such an email if she were really concerned. She would take you out for coffee.
I had a friend who told me she was playing devils advocate to me. Well, when in the midst of an abusive husband, IN WHAT WORLD did I need my “friend” to be a devil to me?? Seemed that too many people thought they had the right to run my life but they didn’t have to live with the consequences of what they ORDERED me to do.
What I learned: to keep my button shut.
I learned to share with a therapist and here on LF, but no where else. It helped me to avoid pity, avoid interference, avoid controlling people who tried to take over my life, avoid further loss of my dignity (b/c I found people looked DOWN on abused women, as if they are defective).
One more warning, sorry Marie but some guys prey on young single moms. They think you need rescuing while in reality, they want someone vulnerable to take care of THEM. Ain’t nuthin wrong with dating a guy JUST for a companion at the movies, just be up front. When you are ready for a partnership relationship, you make sure HE’s good enough for your wee peanut and LOOK at his FAMILY VERY VERY Closely.
Dear LPMarie,
I’m glad that my advice has been helpful to you….I want to give you one more piece of advice too, which is a bit different than Katy’s and that is DO NOT DATE ANYONE YOU WOULD NOT MARRY. By that I mean if you say “well he’s okay to date, but he drinks to much I wouldn’t want to marry him” then don’t even date him, because YOU WILL MARRY SOMEONE YOU DATE.
So if you see something, anything, about a person early on, do not date them. Surround yourself and your daughter with GOOD HONEST CARING people. If you hang around with people who are not good, honest and caring, it will start to seem “normal” to you.
Being a single parent is a hard job, I admit. But at the same time, being a single parent with a BAD RELATIONSHIP is EVEN WORSE! There will be men who target you because you are vulnerable and others who will target you because they are pedophiles and want to marry a woman with kids, and there are other men like my step father who are just truly good men and who loved me as if I were his own, who made me his own with his love.
Find good, caring other young mothers to hang out with with your children and do things together…for now, I wouldn’t even consider dating or even being interested in guys, get your feet back on the ground, spend time with YOURSELF and with your peanut! When you are closer to being healed you will make better decisions and judgments, not feel so “needy” or lonely.
Spending time with MARIE is also important as well as with the peanut! Get to know that wonderful young woman that you are! ((hugs)))
((((Star))))
Gosh, what an insensitive egocentric guy you had for a date. Good riddance!
I’ve met some jerks in the pub once in a while, men I never had laid my eyes on and never ever even had a conversation with who would step up to me and act like jerks from the get go. I never dignified them much with an answer, arched my eyebrows as WTF signal and then turned my back on them.
At first I wondered whether it was something in me that attracted these guys more all of a sudden than ever before… But then I realized that they are the ones having a boundary problem and feelings of entitlement to be a jerk to a total stranger. If there is one reason I attract them more, it’s because the healthy guys can sense and feel that I’m not up for flirting or interested in anything romantic for the moment. So, they logically stay away from me. Without other guys flirting with me, and me only talking with men I’m friends with, the jerks who are socially blind to boundaries only see a woman alone without a buffer zone around her. All they see is an opprtunity where there is none, and they act like jerks, because they are.
LPMarie,
I’m sorry you got to feel put down by your ‘friend’. A lot of people have a real hard time to ‘listen’ to others, especially when it relates to going through a trauma, pain, hurt feelings, etc… One of the big reasons is that some people feel some oobligation to ‘fix’ the problem, when someone else reveals an issue they are going through. Their mind is propelled to ‘how can this problem be fixed’ mode while listening, instead of ‘I want to understand what he/she is telling me’. When we hurt, are afraid, etc… the issue if often very intricate and complicated. You don’t hurt because you fell on your knees. You don’t get it fixed by cleaning up, bandage it and then a kiss. Emotional issues are like a basket of wool threads all tangled and knotted together, so you don’t even know which is which anymore. It takes time to take the mess up and find a loose end which you start to pull free some more, but then goes to a dead end, and you need to free another thread some more, before you can untangle the first piece of thread more.
Such a mess requires a sounding board, who asks questions so they can understand much better what you mean, and by havig to clarify for them what you are feeling, you’re clarifying it for yourself. Either most people are incapabable of listening that way (and instead think ‘I must fix it for her/him’), or they don’t have the time for it.
I’m very straightforward about it, when people ask how i am or how I have been. I give them a very short version and make it sound like a conclusion. I do get blank stares, but at least the way I tell them they don’t feel obligated to fix it for me anymore. They get the reassurance that I have a clear understandig of what happened to me. The next time I meet them, I won’t even mention it anymore. Those are acquaintances though, not people I regard as close friends.
I had a run in over a month ago though with someone I considered to be a friend, who suddenly became judgemental and clearly had no listening capacity all of a sudden. I cut the conversation short as soon as possible. It was just gonna hurt us mutually if I didn’t. I’ve learned from my best friend the same week her mother had been rediagnozed with cancer and was only given a few weeks to live, and how it was clear she was grieved by it and yet unable to show it. I know her mother has had serial relationships with spaths. So, a lot of what she judged me on, was actually her projection of her feelings and judgement about her mother. Plus she blames her mother’s serial bad choices in men as the cause of her cancer. So, I kinda triggered her.
I’ve kept tags on her well being with my best mate and I’m pretty sure he would have told her that I asked after her once in a while. I know from him, she’s been asking about me too.
Luckily, her mother has been diagnozed free of cancer again (a miracle!), but her relationship with her boyfriend is going down the drains, because of his marihuana addiction.
Yesterday, she gave the first sign of life towards me, because she “liked” my christmass message. She’ll know when she’s ready to contact me again, but admittedly I don’t feel like opening up to her anymore, because I don’t trust what she does with the information in the long run.
A couple of days ago I had a very nice conversation with an acquaintance. I know him to have a short span of ‘listening’ ability. But he asked how I’ve been and I honestly told him, but prepared for his ‘get over it’ response. I didn’t tell much, but what I told him prompted him to ask me ‘how in the hell had I stayed with the spath for so long then… how come I allowed myself to be abused in that way.’ I weighed my options and decided to explain the lovebombing bond combined with the trauma bond (stockholm syndrome) in a scientific tinted way. Halfthrough my explanation he did interrupt me with, ‘Can I give you some piece of advice?’, and I told him ‘no, I don’t need advice.’ He gave it anyway, and it was the expected, ‘It’s in the past, behind you, forget him,’ answer. I completely ignored it and said very matter of fact, ‘I’m telling you this because you asked for a clarification why people stay in a abusive relationship for so long, and so you will get your clarification.’ And somehow that reply worked. He actually opened up to listen and was quite shocked to learn how such bonding works. I think he got away from the conversation with an understanding of what he had no understandig of before. And at the end we had a mutual satisfying conversation, about other stuff as well, where he opened up. We had laughs and such. We parted ways, thanking each other for the enjoyable conversation. He was also a bit surprised when I told him that he knew my ex. When I described him, he said, “Oh, him? I felt he was ‘pushy'”
Darwinsmom, he sat there trying to convince me of how wrong I was. He never shut up about it. There was no room for any kind of constructive conversation. He told me it was stupid that I got upset when he was 15 minutes late a few times. We had already had the punctuality discussion, and I explained it was important to me. I thought we had moved past it, because he’d been on time the two times after that.
He kept going on an on about how I was wrong. I couldn’t even get a word in edgewise, and he got more and more angry and judgmental as he talked. It was so dysfunctional. It reminded me of a few relationships I had in my earlier years with constant power struggles. I knew it just wasn’t what I want at this point in my life. I could have sat there and argued with him. I just prefer to have constructive conversations. He could have even just said, “Wow, we are really too different, and this probably won’t work.” That would have been preferable to the abusive condescending tone he took.
The sad thing is that Katy was probably right in that he was just protecting his heart with those comments – being defensive. I can see that now. He was probably just being insecure and trying to see where I’m at. It’s tragic that two adults (he is 45 and I am 51) cannot just be open and honest about their feelings. He could have just asked where he stood with me. This guy is so mistrustful and controlling of women, it’s unlikely he will find anyone soon, at least not someone from this culture.
It amazes me that people all want to be loved, but some just won’t give up their “position” to get the love they want. They’d rather be right and be in control than be loved. I don’t get it. I would have loved to snuggle with this guy and watch a Clint Eastwood movie than sit and argue. This is what we had on the agenda that afternoon. I didn’t have any position – I just felt hurt. I shared the hurt. I was completely vulnerable with him. He could have at least cared about my feelings, even if he didn’t feel like he was at fault. That’s all I needed and I told him so.
He could have just said he was sorry his comment hurt me and he didn’t intend it that way. It would have totally fixed the problem. But he had to be a jerk about it. So sad.
Star,
Anytime someone is “that defensive” about themselves, they are not a good bet for a relationship. I don’t think he was particularly a psychopath per se, just a JERK in spades! Lots of folks are not good relationship bets but that doesn’t mean they are psychopaths, just insensitive jerks! The thing is, while I sure dont’ want a psychopath in my life, I don’t want the insensitive jerks either.
I guess I’m getting pretty picky in my old age! LOL
Star,
I think you nailed it. He’s not a spath, not even a jerk, just really dysfunctional. And he lacks conversational skills as well as empathy for you. It’s all about him. That’s why he was asking you about why women aren’t attracted to him. But it’s a vicious circle for him. Women aren’t attracted to him because it’s all about him and he shows it.
That’s why I would have made the mistake of feeling sorry for him and taking responsibility for his inability to have a relationship. My “martyr-complex” would have knee-jerked me into taking care of him and fixing him -but he’s unfixable.
I think your gut instinct steered you correctly. Now that he’s out the door, you can analyze it to your hearts content if you like. It makes a great topic of discussion on LF. But in the end, your gut – without words – told you what you needed to know: you were slimed and you felt icky. I’m so happy for you that you have that defensive mechanism.
Marie,
most of us have had that experience, where we are asked “how long before you get over it?”
WTF?
Gee, cut my arm off and ask me how long before I get over it.
It’s not their fault. Until they wake up and see what a spath is and does, they can’t even imagine it.
I would like to tell you to forgive your friend because she doesn’t understand. But that would be hypocritical of me because I have been considering cutting off my only GOOD sister, for similar comments recently. Talking about it, looking at it, analyzing it in words…the answer seems simple: don’t let it bother you because they just don’t get it.
Unfortunately, there are no words that convey the depth of the betrayal of what the spaths did to us and each word that doesn’t validate our feelings, just feels like insult to injury. This experience goes beyond words. It can’t be understood except by experiencing it yourself.
Ironically, I would venture to say that most people who don’t understand, ARE ACTUALLY EXPERIENCING IT RIGHT NOW AND DON’T KNOW IT.
My sister is married to a dysfunctional narcissist. She can see some of it, I think, but she values being able to say that she has a successful marriage more than she values being able to say she had a successful life. I used to be the same way. I thought my loyalty to a man was more important than my loyalty to myself. We both got that ridiculous idea from our spath-mom. Furthermore, I had no compassion for people who were physically abused and stayed in the abusive relationship. I had no idea that I was being emotionally abused (as well as poisoned and sabotaged) and that I was the same as those women were.
Stepping back from our emotions, I think, is critical so we can see the big picture. But understanding only comes from stepping up close to the picture and immersing ourselves in it. It seems we can’t do both at the same time. We can either have perspective or we can experience understanding.
Anyway, I guess the only thing we can do is not try to control other peoples’ opinions. We can put the information out there for them to the best of our abilities. It’s likely that they will eventually run into a spath themselves and they will have understanding.
Thanks for the feedback, Oxy and Sky. I expect those kinds of communication patterns from young immature guys. I find it very distasteful in a 45 year-old. I am so past that kind of arguing. I have peace in my life now, and I like to keep it that way. I will admit to you guys that I felt a small pull to do anything to save the relationship so I wouldn’t be abandoned. I considered for a split second just “making nice” so we could cuddle on the couch. But it just wasn’t worth it. I was too angry and hurt. I can’t sell myself that short. Sky, if I hadn’t taken it personally and saw his insecurity, I would have felt sorry for him, too. Pity has also been an effective method to get me to fall for a guy.
Sky, I’m curious – you always talk about how you have no boundaries and how you take responsibility for these men. I have a question. When things like that have happened to you, do you get angry? Or do your defenses take over before you feel angry, and you go directly into enabling? Or does it just not bother you? See if I didn’t get hurt and angry, there would be no problem. A lot of women are not as sensitive as I am and wouldn’t react to something like that. But I am who I am, and I’m not gonna apologize for it to men anymore!
Also, while he was talking and talking, my mind was working, too. I did an assessment in my head of whether this guy was fixable. I don’t think he is. If he were to call me today and apologize and be vulnerable, I’d forgive him and listen to him. I’m all about change and growth. But he is not the type who would ever do that. That’s the problem. He’s just too macho and too invested in being in right.