Cyclical abuse

At first, we remain in a bad relationship because we truly believe in the sincerity of the claims of our partner to want to improve, or to overcome what they’re struggling with.

After some time, if we’re not careful, our inability to get them to follow through will convince us that we’re not a good enough reason for them to be better.

When that continues for long enough, we begin to doubt our ability to be enough for anyone else, and thus find ourselves trapped in a cycle that we’re unintentionally sustaining.

Some may claim that they stay because it’s their way of expressing unconditional love.

Unconditional love, if it ever exists, is the sacrifice of one in favour of another. When you sacrifice yourself to compensate for the bad behaviour of someone else, that’s not love, that’s self loathing.

If you don’t love yourself, loving another becomes a cry for significance or acceptance, and love has nothing to do with it.

More importantly though, the choice of how to respond to bad or abusive behaviour is not binary. It’s not just about staying or leaving.

Between those two choices lies a number of ways to potentially break cycles of abuse, all of which requires a better understanding of why the abusive behaviour is the way in which the other person is trying to feel significant, or to rage at an injustice done to them in the past.

By understanding what drives their behaviour, we allow ourselves to see the human struggle behind the behaviour, rather than to judge the entirety of the human by their behaviour.

But this is only possible when we don’t feel inadequate about who we are in that situation.

A healthy self-esteem is therefore at the heart of truly breaking cycles of abuse, otherwise we may exit that situation, but we’re likely to be attracted to yet another cycle of abuse in our search for significance.

It always starts with you.

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