What's "Love" Got to Do with it?

The one immediate thing that is missing in a dysfunctional relationship is real love.

It's the mystery and confusion over love that has had writers, poets musing for centuries. But no where is it more confused than in an abusive relationship

Today we have a watered down view of love for the most part, relegating it to purely an emotion - a feeling that comes and goes with the wind, and even for some a foolish emotion, a complete waste of time.

But love still permiates our existance, it's in everything and everyone. Think about it, about 90% of our music is "love songs", albiet many written from a codependent standpoint, "I can't live without you"....."you are the wind beneath my wings"....."I'll die without you", which only further clouds our ideas of love.

One place that real love doesn't exist is in an abusive relationship. In fact the words are mutually exclusive. One cannot love someone and abuse them at the same time, but that's just what many partners of abusers think.

You can tell this by the excuses for the abuser made by victims that goes something along the lines of , "He/she is just tired, working hard, they don't mean it."

The point is that it doesn't matter if they mean it or not and in the case of narcissism, they do mean it, in fact they feist on it.

Whenever I hear from victims that they are really in love with the abuser, because he/she is really trying to do better, and after all we're in this for the long haul, I ask, "The long haul for what?" "The hospital, bankruptsy, the graveyard?"

Faced with a future, which in the case of the narcissist or abuser that will never change, what exactly would one be holding on to?

This is why I explained in The Codepdency Maze, that the majority - I believe all - of victims of abusive relationships are codependent in so way or form. Otherwise they wouldn't remain in such a relationship for five seconds. It's hard of a codepedent to call it quits, even if it's on an abuser. They are so emotionally invested in that person - for all the wrong reasons - that it's akin to cutting out their heart and stomping on it for them to say, "Enough!".

But one of the things I noticed, and it worked for me was to come to the realization of what love and relationship really mean. Again, it's not hitting, swatting, name-calling, blame-gaming, gas-lighting, silencing, or anything of the kind. That's NOT love, it's pathological hate and who really wishes to be in a realationship with someone who hates them that much?

Not me, and I'll be not you either, but the problem comes with the nature of codependecy and the damage that occurs in an abusive relationship.

Real love is a mutual support system, a sacrifical - but not overly sacrificial to the point of one's feelings - act of the will. Real love CHOOSES to love and reject the hate. It invokes emotions but isn't just an emotion. Love is the root, the rest is the fruit, and as it's been said, "You will know them by their fruit."

So when an abuser says, "I love you", but produces nothing but thorns and weeds, you know that love is a lie. The soon you recognize it, the sooner you begin to come to grips that perhaps your idea of love isn't right, and what you've experienced with an abuser up to this point is anything but love.
The minute you make this realization, however small, is the moment you begin to take control and change your life. From of of "victim" to one of "survivor".

Remember, real love doesn't harm another, real love honors one another. Big difference.


TPmcatamney


Excepted from, My Waffles are Cold - A Man's Guide to Abusive Women