Domestic Violence Redefined
by Teagin Maddox
When we are talking about domestic violence, what we should be focusing on is potential for growth. Strength, possibility, and awareness are born out of adversity, without it, no growth could ever be achieved, but that is only an acceptable way to view your troubles when you are talking about troubles with a "normal" person, those who have the capacity to grow, change, and develop awareness about their behaviors, those who feel a variety of emotion and who have consciousness in the way one should. That is not always the case; not everyone has the ability to become aware. Not everyone can change, grow, or improve; the trick is to figure out who can, and who cannot! In the business of relationships, this is a critical distinction that women, in particular, must learn how to make. It is the key to knowing who you should invest your time in, and who you should leave, fast.
Where there is a consistent lack of awareness, good judgment, acknowledgment, or positive change in behavior following a problem or conflict, it is possible you are dealing with a person who has limits in their emotional spectrum. Educating yourself on personality issues can shift the situation rather quickly by developing your awareness about yourself, your own traits, and the characteristic patterns of your partner, leading you to see what is possible to accomplish within the relationship, or that nothing can be accomplished. This new knowledge, however, has an effort of follow through associated with it, and you must follow through and not ignore or filter the information to suit your comfort zone, otherwise, you stay in bad relationships out of choice. Some times, that choice is based in fear, and some times, that fear will make you deny reality, and allow you to procrastinate due to your own (characteristic) expectations or natural state of being.
When you experience something negative in a relationship, it can be used as a mechanism for change and growth in a normal, healthy relationship, that is, one with a normal, healthy person. Negative experiences, whatever they are, should bring a new awareness about yourself and your partner; in bad relationships, however, your potential is thwarted, the relationship is threatened, and often times, problems get buried by your interactions with your partner in order to smooth the surface and get back to life. It becomes difficult to see the opportunity that comes with most problems when you can't address the issue fully or learn and change accordingly. It doesn't mean the potential isn't there, it simply means it needs to be re-discovered and readdressed, assuming that we are talking about a relationship with individuals who are both able to develop awareness about their own behaviors and the impact those behaviors have on others. If you are with someone who has lacks insight, being honest with yourself about the type of man you are with is the first step to deciding if you should stay or go.
Staying with someone despite red flags, gut instinct, or evidence, only leads to increased chaos, and many times, that chaos turns into physical violence against women. The sign of what's to come is always there, as past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, especially when things turned physical, and even subtle warning signs will be there before the explosion, and before you get trapped. We can even go one step deeper than that, and you can decide if a man has destructive tendencies well before things get ugly, in fact, in many situations, you can tell if he is dangerous right from the first interaction. As you learn more about this subject, you will be amazed at how simple it can be to avoid rotten men.
We all want to know why women stay with bad guys, especially when a man has been violent towards her. We just want her to leave after she is abused, but that doesn't ever work due to the dynamics and intermingling of her characteristics with his pathology. We focus on the physical harm she endured, but there is a deeper, emotional undercurrent that is at play and that can be far more damaging and long lasting than even when you survive physical attack. Physical attacks don't always occur consistently, but there are emotional hits that do, and many of them will last forever. We must start addressing how domestic violence starts BEFORE it starts. Right now, we look at it backwards, we think of it from the physical aspect, as it is natural to think of violence as purely physical. We are all uneducated in the areas where we should be looking, which include the characteristics of each person, abuser and victim alike. Their co-mingling creates a unique dynamic that can, in many cases, turn to physical violence, and this created dynamic, along with the woman's character strengths also keeps women stuck with destructive men.
There are almost 60 million American's involved with partners who are disordered on some level, and the destruction in their lives crosses all aspects of their existence, it is not only physical devastation women suffer, in fact, that is probably far less frequent than how often women are being negatively damaged and impacted verbally, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, professionally, and financially.
We get trapped in asking why she stays once she is physically harmed, but that isn't nearly as important as what we all do before and after she is trapped with a toxic man. We need to start learning about the characteristics of women who attract and are attracted to toxic men; we need to see this as domestic violence too, and we need to see it as a crime, a choice, and a pathology, every single time it happens on every level, not just on the physical level. We need to accept that it is not something we can fix by treating the abuser or ignoring the woman's connection to the problem. Her awareness is key to the change we must create in order to save lives.
This is not about blaming the woman or re-victimizing her. This is about developing our thinking and awareness, and hers, enough to see that not expecting her to have awareness about traits is actually dis-empowering. By raising the bar and reminding her she has the ability to become aware of what got her trapped and what keeps her trapped, we liberate her forever, we set her free on her own strengths. We must treat abused women according to their ability to grow, according to their immense ability to develop awareness and to build on discoveries, rather than according to their seemingly unshakable need to hang on to tragic circumstances and toxic relationships. There are many reasons women hang on or return, and it is the responsibility of all of us who know something, anything, about how to break that barrier to help them see truth. There is not one blanket answer that works for every woman; it takes different approaches to reach different people. We currently expend lots of effort on abusive men, including through mandated treatment programs, except these men cannot sustain any growth or learning because they are conditioned by, and limited to, their pathological traits, yet we continually try to teach the unteachable at the expense of those who can develop new awareness, the women.
It simply needs to be okay to expect women to have a plan for their future, and not just a plan for their escape, but we are all a little afraid to push women in this direction, so we over-teach about the escape and forget about the future, and THAT only creates better victims who return, rather than more empowered women. At the Institute for Relational Harm Reduction and Public Pathology Education, Sandra Brown understands this and also focuses her efforts on this very idea; this article has been formed around some of the institute's methodology and perspectives, which are very powerful and effective at validating what women experience inside abusive (pathological) love relationships.
The characteristics of abused women, by nature, are unusually strong and lend themselves to personal development success, in fact, that is one of the reasons these hyper-trait women believe the abuser will change, because her capacity to change is so tremendous. Once women begin to see their traits, they can develop a clear understanding about destructive men and domestic violence and how these types of men play on these super desirable strengths the women they target have. This awareness creates an amazing transformation.
Women who attract abusive, destructive, or pathological men have many common characteristics; here is a partial list:
OVERTLY COMPASSIONATE BY NATURE
IN DEFAULT MODE, SHE WILL AUTOMATICALLY GIVE MORE CHANCES THAN ANOTHER, NATURALLY LESS, COMPASSIONATE PERSON WOULD
BUFFERS FOR OTHER PEOPLE
THEY WANT TO SHIELD OTHERS FROM FEELING PAIN OR EMBARRASSMENT (i.e.-they are ultra nurturing and sympathetic)
HIGHLY TRUSTING
THEY BELIEVE THE INTENTIONS OF OTHERS MATCH THEIR OWN INTENTIONS, AND THAT OTHERS ARE ALWAYS HONORABLE, SO THEY ARE NATURALLY OFF-GUARD WITH PEOPLE AND UNSUSPECTING
HIGHLY TOLERANT
OF CHALLENGE, INTRUSION, DIFFICULTY, AND EVEN PAIN. THIS ALLOWS THEM TO RETURN WHERE OTHERS COULD NOT TAKE IT.
HIGHLY HOPEFUL
ALSO ALLOWS THEM TO RETURN IN THE BELIEF THAT IT CAN GET BETTER OR THAT HE WILL CHANGE. HE PLAYS ON THIS KNOWINGLY.
HIGHLY FORGIVING
THEY SEE OTHERS AS HAVING EQUAL CHARACTERISTICS AS THEIR OWN, SO THEY GIVE MANY CHANCES WITHOUT JUDGMENT BECAUSE THEY SEE THIS AS FAIR, CHANGE AS POSSIBLE, AND THEY BELIEVE HE IS APPROACHING LIFE WITH THE SAME CHARACTERISTICS.
STRONG BELIEVERS IN POTENTIAL/POSSIBILITY
THEY BELIEVE EVERYONE HAS THE ABILITY TO CHANGE BECAUSE THEY HAVE SUCH A GREAT CAPACITY TO CHANGE, GROWN AND TO BE FORGIVING THEMSELVES
HAVE HIGH EXPECTATIONS
THEY EXPECT THAT EVERYONE SEES CHALLENGE THE SAME WAY THEY DO AND THAT HE HAS THE SAME POTENTIAL, SO THEY CONSISTENTLY GIVE OPPORTUNITIES, TRUST WHERE OTHERS WOULD NOT.
TELL TOO MUCH TOO SOON
DISCLOSING TOO MUCH INFORMATION TOO SOON, MAKING IT EASY FOR SOMEONE TO GET TO KNOW HER. THIS SETS HER UP IN A TRAP.
ARE HIGHLY COMPETITIVE
THEY DON'T WANT TO FAIL. THEY STAY TOO LONG TRYING TO FIX SOMETHING AND DON'T GIVE UP EASILY ON SOMETHING WHEN IT SEEMS THE FIXING IS DIFFICULT. THEY STICK IT OUT, STAY LOYAL AND DEVOTED IN THE HOPES AND BELIEF THAT IT CAN IMPROVE.
These are just some traits that some abusive, destructive, or pathological men will seek out when searching for a partner. These traits are highly desirable and sought after by most of us, as we appreciate warm and caring people around us and they aren't often easy to find. These traits in the presence of a dangerous man are a trap. Women with these traits will underestimate toxic men by believing he is normal, and like her-able to change. If she, by nature, is more hopeful than most due to her extreme characteristic traits, he gets the benefit of the doubt and she works harder and harder at a crazy and dangerous relationship, trying to fix it, often until she is so exhausted from carrying the relationship that she tries to leave. At that point, it feels impossible to break away from him as the cycle of subtle control and dominance escalates through skilled manipulation, possibly into physical threats and actual violence. The unawareness she has is clearly deadly. She can gain safety by knowing about how powerful her traits are, and how he targets her and toys with her because of these strengths. She also can learn to spot and avoid potentially dangerous guys by spotting their typical approaches and techniques.
Many are pathological, and limited emotionally. These men do not not have the capacity to understand that their behavior has a negative impact on others. If the same problems consistently show up despite all your best efforts, and you feel like you are on an unending treadmill of repeat discussions and the same arguments, it is possible that he CANNOT SUSTAIN any awareness, learning, growth, or change. Deciding a man has a personality disorder cannot be done easily, but you can figure out if he is showing signs of it by watching for where he is most consistent in his behaviors. If he is hard-wired to be destructive and possibly physically abusive, there will be many signs and symptoms, and they will often happen early on. The way to see these signs is to remove the screen, that her super-traits create, these block her from seeing him clearly, and that is accomplished by developing trait awareness.
Instead of focusing on abusers and trying to get them to change and grow when they CAN''T, we must educate women about the traits some of them may have that will lead them to dangerous men, men who are searching for women with certain qualities. Learning about these traits and the traits of pathologicals will allow us to understand what is really going on, on a deeper level. It is time we all step in and keep women from returning in the way that we would step in and stop someone from taking their own life; these women are in almost the same situation, they are in just as much danger and are putting themselves in that danger without even realizing it, because they believe wholeheartedly that these guys CAN change, when a disorder at their core dictates that they CANNOT. We know it, statistics support it, but women are not fully realizing that going back is life-threatening because they are functioning from elevated traits and unaware that he is INCAPABLE of change. This information alone can help women spot, assess, and avoid toxic men, and it can save their lives.
Teagin is available for detailed discussion on domestic violence awareness and recovery, pathological love relationship awareness and education and is interested in prevention, awareness, and post-crisis healing and discovery campaigns.
For further information, contact Teagin here.
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