In this episode I talk a bit about some of my own experiences with abuse, how much I loved the great uncle who first abused me and how abuse can look a lot like love. I mention my diagnoses of Dissociative Identity Disorder (which I never meant to do) and ask what we do with the love we feel for our abuser… love doesn’t just end when we begin to process the abuse.

**Content Warning: Sexual Violence, CSA** Take care of YOU! Switch off and step away if you need to.

TRANSCRIPT

We need to have a conversation about the men in our lives. Those who have harmed us. 

Being an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse is a complex tangle of emotion. What we learned as children was that, at worst, love is equated with abuse and at best, love co-exists with abuse.

We need to talk about what that abuse looked like, and we need to dispel the myth that abuse is always violent. It is ALWAYS a violation; but it can look gentle, it can look caring, and it can look a lot like love…

This is what’s so confusing, and why so many women forge adult relationships that involve abuse. 

Yes, there are many many children who are neglected, abandoned and beaten. Who endure horrific circumstances and violence. But there are others who, as I spoke about last time, are ordinary. They live seemingly ordinary lives, except for the fact that daddy, or granddad or big brother or uncle Fred is coming into their room at night to ‘play’.

What do you do when you love your abuser? 

As a child it’s impossible to process what’s happening. My abuse began before the age of three. I hadn’t really known anything different. I knew it was a secret, I knew something was not right and that my mom would be really angry with me if she knew - she was often disapproving of me. I knew that I was bad, that there was something wrong with me, but I didn’t connect it to my great uncle and our ‘games’. 

I loved him. Oh, how I loved him. He was larger than life. A big, bear of a man, and he made me laugh. He made me feel as though I was the most special being on the planet and that the world revolved around me. I can picture him, still, all these years later, sitting on the sofa in my grandmother’s living room, the window behind him, me, perched on his knee as I sang to him. 

Singing was my thing. It was the thing that made me special, at least in my child mind. I guess that identity carried over because years later, after a hysterectomy and hormonal problems, my voice broke, like a teenage boy’s and I was devastated to find that I had lost a sense of myself. Again. But that’s a story for another day.

He doted on me, and I on him. Now, years later, I am able to see the two of us through the eyes of the family, and understand how they called it a beautiful bond. 

As an adult, processing the reality, what do we do with those feelings of love? How do we cleave the love from the abuse when it’s all an impossible tangle.

These are the things that no one talks about in public. The double edged sword of childhood abuse. This is one of the reasons why speaking out is so fucking hard. 

The men who harm us, are also ordinary. They’re sons and fathers and uncles and husbands and cousins and brothers. They are the men that we love. 

Often, they are not creepy people who behave lecherously and are overtly inappropriate. Of course there are many like that too. As a pre-teen and teenager, I encountered my fair share of these. Haven’t we all? There was the family friend who would stick his tongue in my mouth whenever I was unable to avoid kissing him in greeting - a really stupid thing that family members insisted on in the 60’s and 70’s; and a number of others over the years, including bosses, colleagues and the husbands of women I knew.

These are the men we learn to avoid. We dodge the greetings by hiding out in the bathroom, or make sure that we don’t pass too closely to their chairs for fear of a surreptitious hand reaching out to squeeze or pinch or grope. 

But it’s the ordinary ones, those who are a part of the fabric of our lives, that don’t stand out in any particular way, that no one suspects, who are causing the real damage. These beloved, trusted pillars of our lives, are the real monsters. And yes, oftentimes we love them. 

When that first violation of trust occurred, I was far too young to understand, only a baby at almost three. 

I had no sense that there was something wrong, I believed that I was special and this was love. It was formative to me, a part of how I evolved my identity. It fractured me in a very tangible way. In adulthood I was diagnosed by three different mental health professionals with Dissociative Identity Disorder. I may or may not speak more about this in the future.

It took me a complete breakdown and many, many years in therapy to get to where I am now. Sitting here, talking to you.

Love isn’t something that stops overnight. Love is an emotional connection and it’s complex.

I’m speaking here from my personal perspective of childhood sexual abuse. But there are many women in abusive relationships who love their partners. It’s too easy for people to negate those feelings as attachment issues. That’s far too glib. It is possible to love someone and, at the same time, understand that they aren’t a safe or healthy person to be around.

When dealing with abusive situations, love can be a coping mechanism too. We detach from the pain and the harm by subconsciously looking at things from the abusers perspective. In many cases, gaslighting solidifies this perspective. 

We learn to appease the abusive person, Appeasement is a survival response along with Fight Flight and Freeze . Today’s colloquial term is fawn. Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn - Fight, Flight, Freeze, Appease.

Survival is a strong instinct and it’s just that, instinct. The job of your nervous system is to keep you safe, in whatever way it can.

When we are out of the abusive situation, we don’t just turn off our love. 

I want you to know that it’s okay. It’s okay to love the man who hurt you. It doesn’t make you complicit, it doesn’t make you responsible, it doesn’t make you hypocritical, or a liar, it doesn’t mean you’re overreacting to the abuse. It doesn’t not make what happened to you “not so bad”. It doesn’t negate your experience in any way. 

Loving the men who hurt us, is perfectly understandable.

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