Conversation | 07/01/2009 11:00 pm
The wOw Conversation: Why Do People Put Up With Abuse?
Margo Howard joins Joni Evans, Mary Wells and Joan Juliet Buck to dissect the mystery of abuse and the psychology of the abused.
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JONI: Margo, you recently noticed this little comeuppance that you were so gracious to put on the Web. You had made a casual remark to a woman who had once been abused –
MARGO: Yes.
JONI: – and had started up with another abuser, and you wrote something along the lines of, “How could you do this twice?”
MARGO: I said, “What a slow learner.”
MARY: What did she do? What did she say?
MARGO: I got the most marvelous letter, and I’m still in touch with that woman. She was very well spoken, well educated, had come from a fine home, i.e., a privileged home, and she wound up in the shelter system in New York, getting away from an abusive husband. At first she said, “I was highly offended by that slow learner business.” She said, “Let me educate you.” She said, “What you live through is what you know, and if you’re abused as a kid you will go on to be an abuser. And then she told me her situation – how, because there was no other option, she was absolutely thrown back into the arms of her abusive husband, from whom she finally fled. And there was a question about her daughter, because she said the system in New York was broken, and she couldn’t get any help. Nobody was coming through. And I misunderstood something. I thought she was afraid for her daughter. I said, “Let me get you a lawyer in New York.” And she wrote back and said, “No, I’m done with the court system. That’s not the problem.” But we kept going and I thought I should say something, because I’m reasonably savvy dealing with people’s problems and also being 114 years old. The fact that I did not understand, really, the crux of the abuse situation embarrassed me, and I thought, “Look, if I don’t know, there are other people who don’t really get it.” And I owe this to the people who read me for information to go further with this. And I hope that wOw makes it their cause somehow.
| There’s a lot of anger in depression, and there’s a lot of mistreatment of people, and there’s also a lot of disinterest in people who are helping. |
MARY: I read somewhere recently that close to 70 percent of the women and about 50 percent of the men in the United States have had some sort of child abuse. Not necessarily physical, but the kind of abuse that you carry around with you like a backpack all your life.
MARGO: “You’re not good. You’re worthless.” I had a letter about that. A father was verbally abusing a little boy, grinding him down into nothing, and I told the mother she just had to get out.
MARY: I think there’s a lot more awareness of it now than there used to be, just as there’s greater awareness of clinical depression, and depression in general.
MARGO: Yes, Mary’s right. The figures are astounding. I read some of the same things and I couldn’t tell you exactly where, but the numbers are enormous.
MARY: One of the big issues in this article was why people don’t leave when they start with people they can see are going to have a very long road ahead with depression. There’s a lot of anger in depression, and there’s a lot of mistreatment of people, and there’s also a lot of disinterest in people who are helping. To know you’re going to have that all your life is frightening. And then there are all the people who are physically abused, and the big issue is: Why don’t they leave?
Read more about: abuse, Bullies, Bullying, Childhood, Lifetsyle, Margo Howard, Parenting, Psychology, Relationships
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123 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment
It is amost impossible to fight for your life (and possibly that of your children) day in and day out (once rolling along in a relatiohship judge by society), and give up the fight to leave! The abused feel they can "cope" in that situation, and any move may bring greater hardships, and more abuse - and that is realisitic.
If you know of someone who’s abused, with children or not, offer to take the whole group in, and promise to provide that respite as long as safety is needed, and benefits/services can get underway - promise also that things will be better!
It does work - I set up such a program; the first in my state!
even if she does, some shelters are pretty scarey when you know you have a warm bed to sleep in. most think they could never survive out there in the big bad world and that it’s better to put up with the abuse for the childrens sake so they have a warm bed, a full stomach and a place to come home to. it can be just as scarey leaving as putting up with the abuse. some are also scared that the person will find them and kill them as they said they would. putting up with abuse is better than being dead. i’m mot justifying it. but that is how you think.
i was married to do different abusers 19yrs apart. they didn’t start out abusers. when they were first in love they seemed like normal guys. they did everything right and both of you were happy. but the curtain has to come down sometime. but it comes down slowly. like the old chinese water torture. a drop at a time wearing away the rock, til the person doesn’t even realize what has happened to them. that’s how both of my husbands worked. wearing me down little by little. sure there are some that are fine and then one day boom. but most ease into it slowly. little by little my first husband would distance me from my friends, make them hate him and not want to associate with me. erode my self confidence, you look like a two bit whore, take that makeup off, don’t wear that shirt, pants, etc. when really you look fine and not whorish at all. but it’s a slow process. then if you don’t do what they say, maybe a slap, then a second offense maybe a punch. it knocks you for a loop. i had not been raised with abuse, so i didn’t even know what it was in my first marriage. but when i went to my mother, she said you better stay with him and be thankful for what you have got. like i couldn’t get anybody else and i had better know my place b/c he is my husband. that was in 1976. i separated from him in 1982.
he was easy to deal with. once i didn’t belong to him anymore he was a pussycat. i finally totally got him out of my life in 1986 when he wanted a divorce so he could marry his new wife. the second husband was harder. he was less violent, but more abusive emotionally. also i was ashamed that i could have fallen for his trap and embarrassed to let any of my friends know i had made such a mistake. but when they told me that i had only two years to live and he was making me sick, i decided this was it and got out as soon as i could. now i just don’t date b/c i’m sick of having to even bother putting up with them. i’m happy with my kids and grandson.
so laura you are so right. sorry for writing a book. but i had a lot to say!
Abuse is both personal and cultural. That is, you can have personalities that will tend toward abusiveness in any culture, but you can also have cultures that condone or glorify abusiveness. Response to abusiveness in part has to do with the very practical issue of money, as Laura Ward indicated above. It also has to do with skills or intelligence. Tina Turner left Ike and took nothing with her, but she was a talented singer with contacts in the industry. There is a lot of to be said for the point of view that if you see it as a child it is your universe, and you expect the world to be that way. Children have to learn, sometimes repeatedly, that there are other ways to handle living.
I think abuse is also physically corrosive and eventually it—I am writing of psychological abuse as with physical abuse it is obvious—takes its toll on the body of the abused.
When the ladies of wOw discuss such a subject, it would be useful to have a member or two who came from the other side of the tracks.
I have survived childhood abuse ranging from verbal, emotional to beatings, molestation and eventually being sold for my virginity in order for my sperm donor to have whiskey money. I then made it through that rape and two others.
Yes, I married a man just like my father…it’s part of the horrid cycle of abuse, especially coming out of a childhood in the late sixties and into the seventies when there was no one to turn to since it was a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ era. It took me TEN years to free myself from the husband, then I stumbled through other relationships that were in their own way abusive. It’s hard to break those chains, stop the thoughts that say ”well, you do deserve this…right?"
It’s not a matter of not learning, it’s a matter of shutting off the voice of your first abuser telling you over and over again that you’re worthless, ugly and that you asked for it, deserved all the pin heaped upon you. When you spend your entire childhood hearing that, from the second you’re born…it becomes fact, it becomes a scar on your mind, heart and soul. It’s a demon that haunts you night and day.
So it’s not learning…it’s UNlearning that saves those of us living with those demons. We have to UNlearn what our first abuser taught us with words and fists.
>>I respectfully disagree with you. Most people who are abused never unlearn or forget their abuse, at best it is buried somewhere inside. To escape, one has to develop the positive side of oneself. Whether tactics toward the abuser(s) are fighting, evading, or walling off, the goal is to rebuild a healthier self image. When people do this mostly by themselves, as contrasted to those who have help, it is generally a much more piecemeal and slower effort. I commend you for getting out. It takes a lot of inner strength to refashion a childhood image. No child is worthless; we are all fashioned in G-d’s image.<<
Forget? Never…but unlearn the horrific lessons, yes. No one forgets abuse, nor should they, for remembering gives us the tools to help others survive their journey into hell and come out the otherside able to stand tall and realize they are not what their abusers told them they were.
Elizabeth,
You are 100% right. Been there and done that as the saying goes.
Dear Elizabeth,
Having survived most of what you went through, you have become what your abusers never wanted you to, a strong, caring woman. I recently turned 60 years old, and when someone at my birthday celebration said "I bet you never thought you would live to be 60" I replied "no, especially the night my dad held a loaded gun to my head and said he needed to kill me as my mother held my arms and told me it was all for the best". You can imagine the silence after I said that, but it needs to be said, over and over until it stops. You keep telling your story, I will keep telling mine, and maybe someday we will not need to anymore.