If you’re in an abusive relationship, you’ll argue hotly that there’s nothing attractive about being abused. If you’re a bystander, watching someone you care about stay in an abusive situation, you may have asked why she doesn’t leave. Assuming the victim has financial wherewithal and no children to muddy up the waters, why does she stay? What’s the magnet that pulls her back into the situation over and over?
As many health professionals have stated, the cycle of abuse is just that: a repetitive circle. We see the violence part, hear the terrible name calling and witness the tense, building stage of anger. We underestimate, however, the lynch pin of the abusive relationship, the honeymoon. That phase when the abuser begs and pleads the victim not to leave him and tells her she’s the world to him can be tremendously seductive. Has an abuse victim ever argued with you that if she leaves her abuser, he’ll kill himself? Along with the fear of his dying goes hand-in-hand the conviction that she’s important. She’ll tell you with complete conviction that he loves her. Desperately needs her.
That’s powerful.
Of course, you’ll want to argue that love does not include black eyes nor does it call the loved one a bitch and a whore. Screaming about the length of a skirt or withdrawing with punishing coldness because a mate paid more attention to friends or family doesn’t sound very loving, either. But the victim in an abusive relationship hears something different than you do. She feels tremendously, utterly loved. She feels really IMPORTANT.
She’ll admit to you that he has rage problems and that he tends to be terribly jealous, but she’ll also tell you that even though the dark moments are really dark, she’s never felt more loved by anyone in her life.
Instant, consuming intimacy. He loves her so totally, that’s why he gets “upset” when she doesn’t tell him where she’s going. That’s why he’s “worried about” who she’s spending her time with. He loves her, she’ll insist, even though she’s also the one who has told you the scariest stories about him.
Abusive relationships are frequently characterized by the lightning speed with which an intimate level of interaction occurs. Not just sexually immediate, these relationships involve fast cohabitation and quick commitment. In truth, they share some characteristics with the Black Holes in space. They suck participants into an all-consuming, unrealistic interaction with a powerful grip. The relationship isn’t just satisfying or fulfilling, it is everything. Long held goals may lose their luster. Friendships fall by the wayside. Family members are pushed away.
There is a tendency, even among mental health professionals, to blame this isolating intensity in the relationship solely on the abuser. If we do that, however, we are truly viewing the abused individual as a person with no power. The only way to change the pattern of abuse is to recognize the victim’s power.
The cycle: escalating tension–violence–abject repentance and passionate declarations of love or “the honeymoon.”
It is the mirage of consuming, overwhelming intimacy that tempts the victim back, over and over. Immediate intimacy is an oxymoron–an illusion–but it is an attractive, powerful one. The craving for intimacy is a human reality. Connection through relationships is necessary in order to find intimacy in this world, but developing true intimacy is requires time, effort…and lots of personal work. It’s usually a painful, growing process to develop this level of connection to another human being. Big, big work. Most people struggle with the challenges involved in the process of developing true intimacy.
Not so with abusive relationships. The victim herself will tell you that she felt an immediate connection with her abuser.
This is the seduction of the abusive relationship. The illusion of intimacy with little effort. The victim of abuse is most anchored to her abuser by the honeymoon, the gloriously unrealistic moments when he tells her she is his everything. In truth, no one is anyone’s everything. Still, the victim–along with many of the rest of us–wants to believe she can inspire this kind of all-consuming devotion. After all, the abuser risks dangers to himself in his “devotion” to the victim. He could go to jail out of his devotion to her. That’s love, right?
She’s never felt more loved, she’ll tell you. And you’ll probably ask, “How is this love?”