me, looking at the current state of the world, crying:I wish none of this had happened…
Gandalf, materialising in my conscience, smiling kindly: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, besides the will of evil.
Reminder that someone can love you and be abusive to you.
Someone can be nice to you sometimes or a lot of the time and still be abusive to you.
Someone can not mean to be abusive to you, and be abusive to you.
It still counts. Your experiences are real and your feelings are valid.
Wth is this? Are you for real?
Yes
See this?
This is the generally accepted cycle of abuse in discourse about abuse. Notice how only one of these stages include explicit outbursts/violence/etc, the stuff that you’d probably consider “real” abuse.
One of the stages even includes the abuser apologizing or acknowledging their behavior. Abuse is rarely cut and dry violence 100% of the time. Thats one of the things that makes it so hard for victims to deal.
Theres this whole thing of acting “nice” and pretending nothing happened (or minimizing what did happen), wether consciously or not, so the abuser can convince themself and/or their victim that they arent abusive.
You know what else?! Most abuse occurs between people who are in contact with each other often. I.e. loved ones. So YES the overwhelming majority of abusers love their victims. Abuse and love are in no way mutually exclusive. Implying that is harmful to survivors because they can think the abuse is “ok” because the person loves them.
This is a psa. Abuse often is very sneaky. So please don’t come on my posts with some shit like this again.
No matter what an abuser feels (or says they feel) toward you, it doesn’t give them the right to control and hurt you. It doesn’t make the relationship a good one.
JainaSolo1994 