Strength and Power in Relationships (esp. women)

[dandylife]

Both Lighter and CB123 brought up some points in an earlier thread that caused me to stop and think about this.

Lighter made some comments regarding being sick at heart about the women in the news who end up shot, or otherwise killed by their abuser.

And CB123 commented that some women really ARE trapped in relationships. For whatever reason. And she also stated that when she tried escaping from the relationship with her N, he tried bribing her to come back.

I also experienced the bribing.

N's have this uncanny ability to zero in on our "weaknesses". Not really weaknesses, just the human drivers that drive everyone. They happen to know the ones that move us the most.

For alot of us, it's some kind of economics issue. Money, or sharing of kids, or not having ever had the opportunity to go to college, advance our skills, etc. So we feel at a disadvantage. In the world, as in our relationship with our N. Always at a one-down. That's how N's like it.

I just wanted to comment on a few sweeping things that really helped me. 1- Examples of overcoming in the world really helped me to see that it IS possible to overcome a bad relationship, a one-down relationship. What kind of examples? Actually, 9/11 helped me. This happened just before I was ready to leave my N. At first it terrified me - oh the world is in such turmoil. But as I heard about the suffering, the pain, the loss of all those people, it really made my situation seem manageable. If people can begin again from scratch, why can't I? Another enduring example - Dateline Sunday had a story about how in Germany there is a sort of crypt where they have been keeping all these records from the Holocaust. Detailed logs of each prisoner and their state of physical being upon entering the prison camp and throughout their stay. Dateline found 3 survivors, alive today, who were logged in those books. They brought them to this place in Germany and let them sit down and see the entries about themselves and their families. One man stated, "Oh, the memories that brings back. What popped into my mind." What? "There was a sort of trough that ran through the middle of the camp - a trough where the prisoners could urinate. When a prisoner got to the point of near death, the guards would drop them into the trough, and there they would die."

Inside, I am dying as I listen and I watch this poor soul, remembering, seeing in his mind's eye what he could not escape from. What he had to be RESCUED from. What he SURVIVED.

And I think - if he can make it through that, then I can certainly pick myself up and do what I want. I have no physical chains on me. I have no mental impairments. If I was dropped naked, in the middle of a bustling city, I'd have the means to survive. Myself.

Perhaps this is a super extreme example. But these events HAPPENED TO THESE PEOPLE in our lifetimes! Survivors are still living with these memories.

We have the power to make our lives different - we do.

Mentally, we may feel strapped, bound, chained. But we are only to the point that we believe our untrained, unconscious minds.

In "The Road Less Traveled" Scott Peck describes how he talks to his patients when they come in. He draws a big circle on a piece of paper. Then he draws a little circle within the circle. He describes the little circle as our conscious mind. The big circle is the unconscious, which controls much of what we do.

Here's to uncovering our unconscious, and taking control, power back of our lives.


Dandylife

[lighter]

Ummm... I already shared today with my therapist the guilt I feel over all the good things in my life, considering there are people much less fortunate and/or victimized and raising children without any resources, left to hang while the daddy enjoyes his normal life and the kids go hungry.  Terrible stuff, that. 

T said that it doesn't make the wrongs done to me, right. 

He also said he was amazed that he never noticed how women are victimized before his frustration over my situation.  He usually doesn't notice all the naked torsos found in heavily wooded areas or pregnant women killed by the baby's daddy or the men who murder their entire family, bc it's so common he's basically not moved by the stories in the news. 

This morning, he noticed.

[JanetLG]

Lighter,

I think your therapist's comments highlighted something profound - men don't HAVE to notice all the terrible things that happen to women daily because it's never going to happen to them. Women notice, and can relate, beacause we are trained to feel like victims from early childhood. We are kept back, kept down, kept indoors, kept waiting (oh, the waiting! I seem to have spent my whole life waiting!). Men don't get this social conditioning. They get the positive, life affirming, go-get-'em uplifting support, the encouragement to achieve educationally...even if they don't or can't take advantage of it, the drip, drip, drip of the reinforcement to males is what gives them the edge over women.

Women have to fight so much harder than men to be seen as equal. The criminal justice sysytem is skewed against us, there's just so much!

Knowledge is what will set women free, but we have to find it first (such as on forums like this one).

Janet

[dandylife]

Lighter,

What I'm saying doesn't diminish what you've been through, it's only to spotlight the fact that sometimes we don't recognize what power we DO have. Sometimes it takes seeing another's plight that's different and horrifying in it's own right to pluck our eyes open.

You have obviously been through alot with your N. You deserve to have those things out in the open, and to have the person responsible for doing them to you held accountable. You deserve apologies and a million things to make up for the pain you felt.

((((Lighter))))



Woman is the Nigger of the World (John Lennon and Yoko Ono)
Woman is the nigger of the world
Yes she is...think about it
Woman is the nigger of the world
Think about it...do something about it

We make her paint her face and dance
If she wont be a slave, we say that she dont love us
If shes real, we say shes trying to be a man
While putting her down, we pretend that shes above us

Woman is the nigger of the world...yes she is
If you dont believe me, take a look at the one youre with
Woman is the slave of the slaves
Ah, yeah...better scream about it

We make her bear and raise our children
And then we leave her flat for being a fat old mother hen
We tell her home is the only place she should be
Then we complain that shes too unworldly to be our friend

Woman is the nigger of the world...yes she is
If you dont believe me, take a look at the one youre with
Woman is the slave to the slaves
Yeah...alright...hit it!

We insult her every day on tv
And wonder why she has no guts or confidence
When shes young we kill her will to be free
While telling her not to be so smart we put her down for being so dumb

Woman is the nigger of the world
Yes she is...if you dont believe me, take a look at the one youre with
Woman is the slave to the slaves
Yes she is...if you believe me, you better scream about it

We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance

[WRITE]

two small studies done in the US @ 2001 revealed that the leading cause of death of a pregnant woman in the US is homicide, almost always at the hands of a partner or close family member.

Violence is caused by values- beliefs of sexism, entitlement, acting out, cruelty.

Sometimes people have to choose not to be violent and go get help if it's something they are having a problem with.

Women are especially vulnerable during pregnancy, and I don't think our societies do enough to identify and challenge the attitudes behind domestic violence and the complacency when it's still a 'private matter'.

[Lupita]

I have seen men that look for co-narcissist knowing that they are easy victims of abuse. They are emotional predators. They spot their victim.
Of course we have deep trouble leaving a relationship, leaving a job, leaving our parents. We wer programed to be abused. And unless we unlearned our learned helplessness, we will continue to be abused.
I have seen men that look for stupid women knowing that it will be easy to control. They do not know that thier children inherit the problem. IQ is fixed, and is inherited from the mother, scientifically proved. IQ comes from the mother's genes, not from father. So they help to conitnue the problem in thier ignorance and thier convenience.
It would ne rare that a narcissist marries another narcissist. They will kill each other. They have to marry a victim, or somebody that will empower them to be able to perform their narcissistic behavior.
I am so scared now, that I do not even have male friends. I know that it is not correct that I have fear of men, I will work on that. not quick, very slowly, because the last thing I need now is a man to ask me for money or to ask me for my new car or to eat my food.

[Ami]

I wanted to speak to what Dandy said about the uncovering the unconscious and having power over our lives. I started a thread on "feelings. I have been "getting" at my unconscious. My body and psyche(unconscious)   was holding a lot of pain. I tried many  modalities  to heal, but nothing worked until I got in to the unconscious, I think.
  I don't think that a person can ignore this . I think that you, first ,have to remove the garbage like a garbage collector.I think that you have to retrace the things that you could not face that made you go in to denial and face them. I am doing this and I  am healing.
   I think that if you try to 'perfume " over it, it will not work.I have tried all kinds of therapies to help my stomach  and nothing worked until I faced the core issues of my mother betraying me.
  I wrote that thread b/c I am going within again and trying to connect with my unconscious ,
   There is some saying that what we chose to ignore will end up "running " our lives. IOW, we will repeat again and again what we won't face.

   

[dandylife]

Write,
You wrote, "Violence is caused by values- beliefs of sexism, entitlement, acting out, cruelty."

I'll go you one further and say that things that go wrong in all relationships are caused by values & beliefs - erroneous somehow.

Huge piece of the puzzle.

There was a study done recently about abusers (male - who are the typical spousal abuser). Their heart rates were studied during a conflict. Surprisingly, the violent ones did not get "aroused" with a higher heart rate. At first,that was astounding but then when you think about it, it makes sense. The guy is probably an N - thinks he's God. Why should his heart rate be affected? It's like the normal state of things for him. Anyway, fascinating study.

Lupita, predators, yes. These are not the kinds of people we want in our lives. Or want our children to have in their lives. So important to educate.

Ami, the unconscious. I am studying about this now. I think it's so vital to understanding. All the filters, the inputs we had as children that structured our values and beliefs....all that. The more we understand, the more we can control it ourselves.

Thanks all.

CB123,

I am not finding your post anymore which was so moving and revealing. I hope you don't think it didn't have an impact. It did.
Thank you.

Dandylife