Best 66 quotes in «abusive relationships quotes» category

I overcame my fear of loneliness when you showed me how lonely I can be when you’re around.

I think maybe, when I was very young, I witnessed a chaste cheek kiss between the two when it was impossible to avoid. Christmas, birthdays. Dry lips. On their best married days, their communications were entirely transactional: 'We're out of milk again.' (I'll get some today.) 'I need this ironed properly.' (I'll do that today.) 'How hard is it to buy milk?' (Silence.) 'You forgot to call the plumber.' (Sigh.) 'Goddammit, put on your coat, right now, and go out and get some goddamn milk. Now.' These messages and orders brought to you by my father, a mid-level phonecompany manager who treated my mother at best like an incompetent employee.

It is important to note that research has shown that men who have abusive mothers do not tend to develop especially negative attitudes toward females, but men who have abusive fathers do; the disrespect that abusive men show their female partners and their daughters is often absorbed by their sons. So while a small number of abusive men do hate women, the great majority exhibit a more subtle—though often quite pervasive—sense of superiority or contempt toward females, and some don’t show any obvious signs of problems with women at all until they are in a serious relationship.

It's not rocking the boat, Dad. It's called communication. You're allowed to ask questions. Other people do it all the time. Other people don't live in fear of someone else's reactions. They don't relentlessly stress out about getting into trouble.

It’s never pretty when you leave an abusive and controlling relationship. The warden always protests when the prison gets shut-down.

Nita: I think I overdid the vulnerability stuff in this last letter. and that’s why I’m having an anxiety attack. Howard: With the vulnerability comes the possibility that you’ll be betrayed. Now that you’ve laid yourself wide open, I am the agent of this betrayal? It’s not my style. Nita: I’ve thought it wasn't other people’s style, too.

Many neglected and abused children grow up to be adults who are afraid to take risks of striking out on their own. Many will remain dependent on their abusive parents and unable to separate from them. Others leave their abusive parents only to attach themselves to a partner who is controlling.

Objectification is a critical reason why an abuser tends to get worse over time. As his conscience adapts to one level of cruelty—or violence—he builds to the next. By depersonalizing his partner, the abuser protects himself from the natural human emotions of guilt and empathy, so that he can sleep at night with a clear conscience. He distances himself so far from her humanity that her feelings no longer count, or simply cease to exist. These walls tend to grow over time, so that after a few years in a relationship my clients can reach a point where they feel no more guilt over degrading or threatening their partners than you or I would feel after angrily kicking a stone in the driveway.

no one can recover if they won’t admit the wrongdoings. i won’t recover if i pretend it was all sunshine. i have to remember his vindictive temper and realize that sheltering the house from the storm wasn’t actually going to make a difference if i still got damaged in the process. because then it’s just another broken house with no one to tell its story.

Sometimes I cry, wondering how it was possible that I could have been so goddamn weak, so f*cking spineless. Without you around, I can finally see all the ways you'd kept my heart shackled to yours.

Outside of my professional life, I have known many couples over the years who had passion and electricity between them and who treated each other well. But unfortunately there is wide acceptance in our society of the unhealthy notion that passion and aggression are interwoven and that cruel verbal exchanges and bomblike explosions are the price you pay for a relationship that is exciting, deep, and sexy. Popular romantic movies and soap operas sometimes reinforce this image.

She could not picture it. Herself riding on the subway or streetcar, caring for new horses, talking to new people, living among hordes of people every day who were not Clark. A life, a place, chosen for that specific reason––that it would not contain Clark. The strange and terrible thing coming clear to her about that world of the future, as she now pictured it, was that she would not exist there. She would only walk around, and open her mouth and speak, and do this and do that. She would not really be there. And what was strange about it was that she was doing all this, she was riding on this bus in the hope of recovering herself. As Mrs. Jamieson might say––and as she herself might with satisfaction have said––taking charge of her own life. With nobody glowering over her, nobody's mood infecting her with misery. But what would she care about? How would she know that she was alive? While she was running away from him––now––Clark still kept his place in her life. But when she was finished running away, when she just went on, what would she put in his place? What else––who else––could ever be so vivid a challenge?

She preferred to be numb. And mostly these days she was. She played dead, sleepwalking her way through her life on autopilot, hardly caring whether he hit her or kissed her - it was all the same in the end.

Somehow it felt familiar, an old story retold, the claws in my shoulder, my arms twisted behind my back, the drag down the street, Will assisting my father and thinking how much fun it was to hunt someone down. I knew it all. Each snarled command was a line from an old but faithless song. “Pipe down! I’m not going to hurt you! I just want to talk to you! This is for your own good!

Sometimes, some of you speak about god, and I mistake him for an abusive lover you're trying to escape.

Over-the-counter ‪‎drug‬ ‪‎abuse‬ or addiction was a problem that I observed at Mauna Kea

Robert reflects: I go weak at the knees when she turns against me. I forget what it's like to feel courage. I try to remind myself that the worst of it will pass, that she won't be like that forever. She's mad now, but there will come a time when she's not mad. When I was growing up, I tried all sorts of things to get me through these times. I used to think "It won't be so bad if she doesn't hit me." And then I got to noticing that whether or not she hit me didn't matter. What I was afraid of was that she was going to explode and disappear.

Shout out to everyone transcending a mindset, mentality, desire, belief, emotion, habit, behavior or vibration, that no longer serves them.

So while I was busy saving you from Hell, you were pushing me further to it; the poison murdering me well.

The abuser does not believe, however, that his level of authority over the children should be in any way connected to his actual level of effort or sacrifice on their behalf, or to how much knowledge he actually has about who they are or what is going on in their lives. He considers it his right to make the ultimate determination of what is good for them even if he doesn’t attend to their needs or even if he only contributes to those aspects of child care that he enjoys or that make him look like a great dad in public.

The abuser’s mood changes are especially perplexing. He can be a different person from day to day, or even from hour to hour. At times he is aggressive and intimidating, his tone harsh, insults spewing from his mouth, ridicule dripping from him like oil from a drum. When he’s in this mode, nothing she says seems to have any impact on him, except to make him even angrier. Her side of the argument counts for nothing in his eyes, and everything is her fault. He twists her words around so that she always ends up on the defensive. As so many partners of my clients have said to me, “I just can’t seem to do anything right.” At other moments, he sounds wounded and lost, hungering for love and for someone to take care of him. When this side of him emerges, he appears open and ready to heal. He seems to let down his guard, his hard exterior softens, and he may take on the quality of a hurt child, difficult and frustrating but lovable. Looking at him in this deflated state, his partner has trouble imagining that the abuser inside of him will ever be back. The beast that takes him over at other times looks completely unrelated to the tender person she now sees. Sooner or later, though, the shadow comes back over him, as if it had a life of its own. Weeks of peace may go by, but eventually she finds herself under assault once again. Then her head spins with the arduous effort of untangling the many threads of his character, until she begins to wonder whether she is the one whose head isn’t quite right.

•The abusive partner continually denies any responsibility for problems.

The first time he had hit her, he had been so wracked with remorse, she had actually felt sorry for him. Consumed by guilt and self-loathing, he had sobbed in her arms like a child, swearing it would never happen again and begging for her forgiveness. Her stomach turned over now at the thought of how she had comforted him, assuring him that she trusted him and promising that she would never leave. She saw now with sickening clarity that she had been setting a precedent - giving him permission to do it again; reassuring him that she would tolerate anything. If only she had walked out there and then.

The confusion of love with abuse is what allows abusers who kill their partners to make the absurd claim that they were driven by the depths of their loving feelings. The news media regrettably often accept the aggressors’ view of these acts, describing them as “crimes of passion.” But what could more thoroughly prove that a man did not love his partner? If a mother were to kill one of her children, would we ever accept the claim that she did it because she was overwhelmed by how much she cared? Not for an instant. Nor should we. Genuine love means respecting the humanity of the other person, wanting what is best for him or her, and supporting the other person’s self-esteem and independence. This kind of love is incompatible with abuse and coercion.

This is the hardest part— That boy is not made of fists. That boy learned how to braid my hair. These things do not un-truth themselves when the first door slams. I did not stop loving him all the months I was holding my breath.

The quiet but inexorable breaking down of self-esteem is much more sinister - it’s violation of the soul.

There came a time in my life when I had to admit to myself that I have some very clear narcissistic tendencies. Ironically, it occurred during the writing of my book The Emotionally Abused Woman. As I listed the symptoms of narcissism, I was amazed to find that I recognized myself in the description of the disorder. It should have been no surprise to me because I come from a long line of narcissists. My mother and several of her brothers suffered from the disorder, as did her mother. For some reason, though, I imagined that I’d escaped our family curse. I should have known that it’s not that easy to.

To make matters worse, everyone she talks to has a different opinion about the nature of his problem and what she should do about it. Her clergyperson may tell her, “Love heals all difficulties. Give him your heart fully, and he will find the spirit of God.” Her therapist speaks a different language, saying, “He triggers strong reactions in you because he reminds you of your father, and you set things off in him because of his relationship with his mother. You each need to work on not pushing each other’s buttons.” A recovering alcoholic friend tells her, “He’s a rage addict. He controls you because he is terrified of his own fears. You need to get him into a twelve-step program.” Her brother may say to her, “He’s a good guy. I know he loses his temper with you sometimes—he does have a short fuse—but you’re no prize yourself with that mouth of yours. You two need to work it out, for the good of the children.” And then, to crown her increasing confusion, she may hear from her mother, or her child’s schoolteacher, or her best friend: “He’s mean and crazy, and he’ll never change. All he wants is to hurt you. Leave him now before he does something even worse.” All of these people are trying to help, and they are all talking about the same abuser. But he looks different from each angle of view.

When my skin had gone back to its even tone I slept with another man and discovered, my hands lying awkwardly on the sheet at either side of me, that I had forgotten what to do with them. I'm responsible and an adult again, full time. What remains is that my sensation thermostat has been thrown out of whack; it's been years and sometimes I wonder whether my body will ever again register above lukewarm.

Trying to make sense of other people's responses to us is a basic human activity. Accepting a mother's [or anyone's] anger by concluding that i is justified is a way of making sense of a difficult relationship. But this acceptance comes at a great cost, for it means that we see their cruelty as our shame.

When I thought about how much time I had already put into a relationship without reciprocation from the other person and how I spent YEARS recovering and trying to recover from the damage of her verbal, emotional and physical abuse and neglect, I realized that I was the only one trying and I wasn’t the problem! That understanding changed everything!

When people conclude that anger causes abuse, they are confusing cause and effect. Ray was not abusive because he was angry; he was angry because he was abusive. Abusers carry attitudes that produce fury.

YOUR ABUSIVE PARTNER DOESN’T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH HIS ANGER; HE HAS A PROBLEM WITH YOUR ANGER. One of the basic human rights he takes away from you is the right to be angry with him. No matter how badly he treats you, he believes that your voice shouldn’t rise and your blood shouldn’t boil. The privilege of rage is reserved for him alone. When your anger does jump out of you—as will happen to any abused woman from time to time—he is likely to try to jam it back down your throat as quickly as he can. Then he uses your anger against you to prove what an irrational person you are. Abuse can make you feel straitjacketed. You may develop physical or emotional reactions to swallowing your anger, such as depression, nightmares, emotional numbing, or eating and sleeping problems, which your partner may use as an excuse to belittle you further or make you feel crazy.

Yes, indeed, I am the stuff, the prize property, the recaptured trophy he will put up on the mantelpiece, in a rage every time I move a millimeter or look less polished, less tarted up than he thinks I should look. In a rage, every time I disappoint him. Which will happen every day.

You are aggressive", says the emotional abusive.

You can have a pet zebra and put that zebra into a small cage every day and tell the zebra that you love it, but no matter how you and the zebra love each other, the fact remains, that the zebra should be let out of that cage and should belong to someone who can treat it better, the way it should be treated, someone who can make it happy.

... you may seek out a partner who psychologically resembles your mother and found that you have walked right back into a difficult relationship. Perhapse you chose to be close to someone who turns out to be as volatile as your mother and who inflicts discomfort all too familiar to you. Or perhaps gradually, over time, your partner or close friend becomes like your mother; that may be because you unconsciously behave in ways that encourage others to treat you as your mother did.

Although the typical abusive man works to maintain a positive public image, it is true that some women have abusive partners who are nasty or intimidating to everyone. How about that man? Do his problems result from mistreatment by his parents? The answer is both yes and no; it depends on which problem we’re talking about. His hostility toward the human race may sprout from cruelty in his upbringing, but he abuses women because he has an abuse problem. The two problems are related but distinct.

...you turn and grab my chin--not hard, but the way you do with a child when you want them to focus on you. It feels strange, being touched this way by you. Parental. A siren goes off in the back of my mind, but I ignore it. (Oh god, Gavin, why did I ignore it? Why couldn't I see through you?")

ABUSIVE MEN COME in every personality type, arise from good childhoods and bad ones, are macho men or gentle, “liberated” men. No psychological test can distinguish an abusive man from a respectful one. Abusiveness is not a product of a man’s emotional injuries or of deficits in his skills. In reality, abuse springs from a man’s early cultural training, his key male role models, and his peer influences. In other words, abuse is a problem of values, not of psychology. When someone challenges an abuser’s attitudes and beliefs, he tends to reveal the contemptuous and insulting personality that normally stays hidden, reserved for private attacks on his partner. An abuser tries to keep everybody—his partner, his therapist, his friends and relatives—focused on how he feels, so that they won’t focus on how he thinks, perhaps because on some level he is aware that if you grasp the true nature of his problem, you will begin to escape his domination.

Abusive relationships exist because they provide enough rations of warmth, laughter, and affection to clutch onto like a security blanket in the heap of degradation. The good times are the initial euphoria that keeps addicts draining their wallets for toxic substances to inject into their veins. Scraps of love are food for an abusive relationship.

Being a victim is supposed to set you free; it acquits you of any agency, any sense of responsibility to the person who did you harm. It's not your fault, they say. Leave him, they say. Nobody ever tells you what to do if leaving isn't an option. They just call you stupid. A dumb bitch. Sympathy is only meted out if you follow all of society's rules for how a victim is supposed to behave.

An abusive person may look innocent, but it doesn’t mean they are.

An emotionally abusive relationship, in very simplistic terms, is much like standing up in a too hot bath and sinking back in so as not to feel so dizzy.

(a quote from a survivor) Information was key. Once you begin waking up to what has been happening around you the whole time you can begin stopping the cycle which angers the Narcissist to an interesting boiling point

Bound by Blood, Marked by the Dragonfly.

Daddy," she says again, this time putting more of a needy whine into her voice. It is the thing that has swayed him, these times when he has come near to turning on her: remembering that she is his little girl. Reminding him that he has been, up to today, a good father. It is a manipulation. Something of her is warped out of true by this moment, and from now on all her acts of affection toward her father will be calculated, performative. Her childhood dies, for all intents and purposes. But that is better than all of her dying, she knows.

Have the courage to walk away, those that value you will want you back, & those that do not won't hold you back.

Do not be blind in love and try not to suffer in silence. -Alba Castillo

Each time he came he would twist my defenceless body into a different pose, as if I were his very own doll