If it’s easy getting into a relationship with an exploiter, getting out isn’t always so simple. What makes the getting out so difficult?
In retrospect (if we’re lucky enough to say “in retrospect”) it seems like it should have been a no-brainer. In truth there are many reasons it can be hard to leave a destructive relationship and destructive person. I’ve addressed several of them in previous posts, and the LoveFraud community in general has addressed this theme comprehensively.
But here I’d like to consider a less-appreciated factor.
I regard it as the factor of habituation. Optimally the best time to end a relationship with an exploiter is the very first signal you get that something is amiss. The next best time to leave the relationship would the second signal that something is amiss.
When we don’t act on these early signals, increasingly we are less likely to act on subsequent ones. One of many reasons for this is the process of habituation.
Habituation is basically how, through repeated exposure to something initially uncomfortable, even highly disturbing, we adjust to it. We are built, it seems, to habituate to unsettling situations and experiences.
And the key to successful habituation is exposure. Sustained exposure to almost anything increases our tolerance of, and comfort with, it.
Consider what happens when we’re willing to endure the initial shock of cold water in a lake, or pool. Our sustained exposure (non-flight) gradually results in our bodies’ adjusting, or habituating, to the cold water, which begins to feel less cold, maybe even warm.
This is great news for someone with a social phobia. We just have to be willing to intentionally expose ourselves, repeatedly and sustainedly, to disturbing social situations, and quite likely we’ll experience a gradual reduction of anxiety.
Unfortunately the same thing can be said of abusive, exploitative relationships. The longer you expose yourself to, and repeatedly tolerate, the abuse, the more habituated you become to it.
Alarming behaviors that initially signaled our self-protective response (like flight) gradually lose their activating properties as we habituate to them. The avoidance-flight signal particularly—in the face of repeated, sustained exposure—dulls and/or we become less responsive to it.
Heeding the avoidant-flight response, in other words, can be critical to our safety and self-interest. It is great to confront and conquer avoidance when the avoidance hinders our personal growth; but it is dangerous to do so in the face of real, violating circumstances.
When I work with partners of sociopaths and other abusers, I find that habituation to the exploiter’s abuse often has occurred over time and contributes to the inertia that keeps the exploited partner in the relationship.
Of course there are often many other (and sometimes more compelling) reasons that one stays in a relationship with an exploitative partner.
But habituation to the abuse, I believe, is not only real, but sometimes helps explain why an otherwise dignified individual would tolerate behaviors that, from the outside—that is, from the unhabituated’s perspective—should be (or should have been) no-brainer deal-breakers.
When relevant I encourage clients to examine this factor in their analysis of the indignities they’ve sustained sometimes for years in relationships with disturbed, violating partners.
Paradoxically (and precisely to my point) their suffering was often highest early in the relationship before, through habituation, they grew slowly more numb and inured to—more tolerant of—the abuse, and thereby less motivated to do what was advisable at the outset—flee.
(This article is copyrighted (c) 2008 by Steve Becker, LCSW.)
To follow up on the snake comment, snakes can represent death and rebirth as you mentioned–shedding of old skin. I actually had a dream shortly after I got my first snake that I founded a center called the Death-Rebirth Institute. It was a place where people could go to feel completely safe to release all of their inner demons. They could cry, scream, or go through whatever they have to go through. And they could stay at the institute as long as they needed to. I still think it would be great to have a place like this. The closest thing we have to this in our society is a psych ward, which automatically labels people as crazy. This site is like the internet version of the institute I dreamed of.
Funny you should mention that StarG, about starting an institution for healing … cause I, as well as others think the same way, that we want to help others.
Hey, at least that’s a positive outcome of starting healing institutions … because we happened to be involved with the likes of “them” and were forced by another (not our own doing) to hit rock bottom then heal ourselves.
That’s what healing does for people.
Peace.
Wini,
I have thought about this ever since I had that experience in the mediation retreat I told you about. It was 25 years ago. I was in graduate school and was a therapist. I felt that for myself and also my clients’ healing, one hour a week of talking to someone just isn’t enough. I always dreamed of a center like this. I wish I had a farm like OxD’s to make it happen, too.
Dear Justabout healed. I think you put that extremely well. Rape is a good analogy as what we go through is I think a phsycological rape. Sometimes the forms of abuse can be quite subtle, just enough to know that something is “off”, but this can be devastating over the long haul. Our instincts know there is a fundamental glitch, but we cannot see it.
Many of the posters here found out much much later in their relationship that they were being lied to and decieived, used and abused. The P’s seem to take a sadistic pleasure out of this “game”.
They get to have it both ways. You (the victim) are busy trying to please, trying to fix, trying to help, while they secretly enjoy watching you twist in the wind of the false reality they create.
Again, ONLY NC- depriving them of you the victim can begin a process of recovery.
In the workplace this is extremely stressful and difficult to deal with, because we do not always have the luxury of “just moving on”. I personally have several friends whose solid careers were finally destroyed by these kinds of people. They “the victims” ended up looking like the unstable employee, the “couldn’t take the heat” person.
What I am seeing now is that the job market has become so geared towards the whims of the employer, the hiring process so dehumanized and digital, that plenty of people I know personally, including BTW myself, find themselves “shut out” of the job market. People whose resumes include unexplained departures from what looks like a good job, are often redlined I think.
Perhaps in the workplace it becomes a perverse hierarchy, where those that kiss the butt of the most P type superiors are rewarded, become the people doing the hiring and firing, screen new candidates, and surround themselves with either pliable victims, useful dependants, or likeminded PSN’s.
Look for instance at what has happened to “whistleblower protection” in the last several decades. What started out as a system to protect employees who reported corporate malfeasance ( which includes often, very real crimes and deceptions that cost lives and destroy lives) has been chipped away at and rendered meaningless. Institutions created to protect the public, ( government of by and for) have become the guardians of the abusers, not the victims. FDA, EPA WTO etc etc.now screen the institution from harm, from the wrath of their victims. They are sheilded from accountability from the very bodies created to regualte or watch dog them.
I am thinking here for instance of the recent bill to sheild big Pharma from liability of the harm their products cause etc.
Long winded, sorry, but what I am getting at that in the modern workplace, those without conscience rise to tthe top of the heap. There is a lot of work to be done, collectively, to reverse these trends and create a productive society that is not based on greed and exploitation.
That some of these “patterns” show up in families is not surprising. We have “habituated” our whole culture to reward and accept the most ruthless and greed based behaviors. These “masters of the universe” then become our icons, those we look up to – until they are exposed and disgraced. The vacume they leave is quickly filled it seems, by others willing to “play the game”.
Not to close on to glum a note, there are now whole towns and counties, cities and so on, choosing to fight back, to organize around more humane, envirnomental principals, to seek local autonomy and democracy and so on. To reclaim their rights to the “commons”. Quietly, under the radar, their succes has been growing, their vision succeeding.
I think, with likely difficult economic times ahead we will see more of this. More community, not less. More humanity, not less. If the greed based system has just collapsed, it is time the non P’s (96% of us) to step in and lead the way to a more rational way of organizing. To “social viability” to the triple bottom line (people planet profits in that order) and so on.
Just as many posters here feel an exhiliration of new promise in their lives after escaping the clutches of their abuser, perhaps we are on the cusp of a similar phenomenon on a larger scale as a culture. We can hope.
Well StarG: The future is at your command, you never know, it could happen … keep focusing on it… what you focus on does become a reality.
Peace. You can do whatever you want to … know that, you do hold that power.
Beverly, thanks so much for your generous, appreciative feedback. On my end, I recognize, from following the conversational threads, your (and others’) remarkable insights, sensitivity, and wisdom.
Beverly, Oxy, Henry.. LF Old Timer’s Club… just kidding!
This article was great for me too. I still find it hard to explain in words why I did what I did and why I endured what I endured. I can’t even find the word to tell myself sometimes.
I wanted to share that I have been found and contacted by Bad Man’s oldest daughter (22) and BM’s ex-wife through an article here. WHOA! Did not expect that.
I wish I could talk to you all about this. I have mixed feelings. We have exchanged only a few emails. I feel a little disturbed. (Yes.. I am SURE it’s her and not him) My first impression is that she thinks he just has an anger issue. Is there such a thing as just being a little angry without being a full on disordered person? Without writing a long winded explantion, my email with her made me start to wonder if I have somehow exaggerated all this… I am doubting my own experience.
Recently, I found some cards from Bad Man that I would describe as “nice”.. sort of. If someone were to find these and read them, they might think I made all of this up. His cards were always saying things like “it takes two” and “we bothhave our issues.” While I know I am not perfect, this kind of thing used to make me feel insane because he loved to loop me in and include me in his bad behavior. For example, if he sent me volumes of attacking emails and I finally sent one back saying, “ENOUGH! I will contact your employer and tell them what you are about unless you LEAVE ME ALONE!!!” Well, of course the focus would then become my very wrong behavior of threats toward him and that I had jeopordized his employment (which I never did call anyone.. I just wanted him to leave me alone because I felt like I was being eaten alive by a Pirahnna (sp?).
Anyway, I am on a tangent.
I believe that BM was a very extreme Borderline and Narcissist. I also believe that over time he escalated and maybe things weren’t as bad for her as they were for me… after all they were married and she was under his control at all times on their “Mission” (in other words, trapped at Sea on a boat with a crazy-ass psycho). Also, abandonment is the BIGGEST trigger for an BPD and if he is with you 24/7, no abandonment issues.
I don’t know what else to say. Help me. I rarely say that but … help. I don’t want to talk to her if it makes me start to doubt myself. Does that make sense? And those “nice” cards subtley and very cleverly implicate me in all his madness. And I have an objection to nearly EVERY line but to take them at face value.. a person might not get what was really going on.
Wouldn’t it be cool if we could have private discussion groups? The long strings of chat is distracting to me.
Nice to see you back Beverly! I haven’t seen your name here in a long time but I don’t keep up as much as I used to.
Also, I finally got an awesome job that to me officially represents a life back on track. It’s helping Children and Families… and I cry just to think about it.
That reminds me, last night there was an incident at the Group Home where I work with teen girls.. the runaway, delinquent kind. They snuck a boy in through the window. It took me about 30 minutes to an hour to discover him. Today, I felt aweful because I realize part of the reason it took me so long to figure out he was in there was because the girls were being so nice to me… I thought I was getting through. Even they know instinctively that all they have to do is act really nice to me, toss me a few bones, and they can totally manipulate me.
Sometimes I hate that job and at the same time, I am aware that I get to practice my boundaries and to work on not being manipulated every time I wam with them. Sometimes I fail miserably. All I want to do is care for and nuture them. They dont’ want it… they just want to sneak boys in the window while I am in the kitchen baking cookies.
cookies = love.
I guess that’s it.
Cookies sound good… going to the cupboard to investigate. Must be something naughty in there to have. :o)
Beverly, I absolutely agree with your posts about the “slick, evil, secretive and chaos making archetype.” That type is frequently seen in movies today.
eyeswideshut said “Rape is a good analogy, as what we go through is, I think, a psychological rape.” Has anyone else had dreams about being raped? I had a dream of being violated before I had any conscious knowledge of being “violated” in waking life.
Then after I got divorced I had a couple more dreams involving being raped while people could see us, but didn’t know a rape was occuring.
That has been a big theme for me—invisible evil and violation–both in dreams and in waking life. My x is passive aggressive, so he NEVER got overtly angry with me.
Steve, Donna, Liane-a future post on the analogy of rape would be awesome. I know several books on Emotional Rape have been published. (Sorry to get off topic of the original post.)
Aloha Traveler _ I feel so bad for you, wish I could reach out and HUG you. OK the girls at the home where you work are NICE too you – but why were they nice? They wanted something from you – they were hiding the truth through – being NICE.. Getting what they want by FOOLING you. They thought you were naive – but they didn’t know – that you know people WILL be nice and lie to your face and send you a card to keep you off balance….The card’s were lie’s – they were manipulation – gaslighting.. YOU know in your heart that he was a lie – but yes you have a big heart and you still want to give him the benifit of the doubt sometimes….My X would write little I LOVE YOU note’s with smiley faces and leave here for the truck stop’s…internet hook ups – or he would call me on my cell to say he loved me but he was actually asking where i was working at etc. too determine if he had enough time to sneak one in before I got home..lie lie lie lie lie lie everything is a lie – you know what you know sweetheart – I would suggest not haveing any correspondence at all with his X – is it now wife or x wife or what wife? Trust your judgement – I have been reading your post for 7 or 8 months now – you will be ok – and aloha my x is borderline and sociopath – my personal opinion on borderlines is that they tug at our heart’s so bad because they are such messed up people – all we want too do is help them and love them – but doing so will kill us – literally…