coercivecontrolrecovery

[coercivecontrolrecovery]

What I do, How & Why I do it

TW: Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Coercive Control

I'm indebted to the resources of women who have extensively researched how to protect each other and help each other escape situations like the one my wife is in with me. They are discounted, misrepresented, belittled, abused in return and they continue to put in this work that men will not. None of this is original thought. This is all me placing myself amongst the work of others - especially Kate Amber MSc. and her work here -https://endcoercivecontrolusa.com/blog

Here's how I perpetrate: I am an abuser who does not have a personality disorder, though I may share some traits (lack of empathy, explosive reactions). I suspect I largely operate from a societally engrained beliefe about my dominance as being right and correct (fuck the patriarchy). There is internalised sexism at play. My abuse is to keep my partner in a state of confusion, which keeps them in line. For example, I will say one thing then do another and say they didn't give me the right instruction. I will not act abusively around other people, just my intimate partner. Perhaps this has come from living inside an abusive family system - truthfully I've never seen a healthy relationship and I've never learned respectful ways to treat people. For years I thought this expunged me, because I didn't necessarily understand why I was doing was wrong. BUT my wife has told me repeatedly to stop, and I don't. And I accept that this is intentional because I'm not behaving any differently to someone who is knowingly abusive. My behavior is on purpose becuse I am selfishly benefitting from hurting my wife. If I wasn't benefitting, I would have stopped by now. And I am a very good liar - that includes convincing my wife that I don't mean to hurt her. Which as just covered, if I'm willfully ignorant that's not helpful or true. I will exploit claims about my mental illness/prior victimisation and convince my wife or therapists that I am in some sort of denial. I am very effective at this. And my wife is empathetic, patient and conscientious. This makes it easier for me to gain the upper hand.

Healthy and compassionate human beings give other people the benefit of the doubt because they don’t like to feel like they are being cruel or critical of others. This plays into my advantage. All I need to do is to convince my wife that I am being judged to harshly by her, and then she will back down and blame herself. If she ever reads this - DON’T FALL FOR THIS, AND DEMAND I GET HELP. I have spent so long not putting in the effort to keep her safe. I am 100% responsible for her harm when I'm hurting her, whether I intend to or not. She deserves to live with love, freedom, joy and respect. I can stop absuing her to work on this as well - if I don't do that then I'm lying to myself (and holding myself accountable to this.

There's a lot more to go into specifics here. This is where I'm at currently in my learning. Follow the link above, look through the amazing work done by professionals in the space and accept what they say. Resisting it is only lying to yourself and keeping you from moving forward.

[coercivecontrolrecovery]

What sort of things are you in denial of?

TW: Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Coercive Control We all have things we believe are involuntary about ourselves. "I just react this way", or "I am who I am" can sound like pleas for people to understand our shortcomings and not especially problematic on the surface. Saying these things though can be insensitive, and often shift accountability. They are not harmless, and I'll tell you why... I am an abuser. I was in denial that I am abusing my wife. I would say things like "Because I'm not violent..." or "I'm only doing X because you did Y..." or literally sit there as if I was in deep thought while they were breaking down and make the whole thing about my thought process. Specifically, I perpetrate emotional coercive control, and I'm a narcissist.

And you'd never know it. Because I'm so good at lying, hiding it, avoiding responsibility and making my wife feel as though everything is her fault. But the truth is that I have cultivated a world where she exists without any self esteem, with a grip on reality I can shift in one sentence, where my lies and the truth are blurred. I have smothered her love of life, and recently she stopped playing into my tactics. So I got mad. I tried everything and she stood firm. So I went away one night and started to research, started to identify what was going on, what I was doing. And then I saw her the next morning and abused her again. My go to tactics that destabilise her are to turn a small issue she raises into a big one, to make my feelings bigger than hers, to play the victim, or change a small thing about something she's asked from me. I also react before sentences are finished, withold affection, say things that aren't true, say I'll do something I have no intention of doing, say things that are confusing or unclear to cause confusion and I also blow up. I get angry whenever she raises things that she's been begging that I do for 6 years as if she should just get over it. As if it's not her suffering? And then when she's destroyed, I soften, and I get her back with kindness, then I do it again. She has asked me repeatedly stop, and I don't. I don't feel as though I should care because she's my partner and this is her duty (fuck the patriarchy, hey). The thing about a lot of this I'm an aware person, learned and believe in feminism, equality, in women's rights, that abusers should be behind bars and victims should be believed. But this doesn't stop me from being a perpatrator. So between 2-6am on 22/2 after a particularly bad arguement about nothing really (most of them are just about destabilising things which I benefit from because it means she doesn't get to do what she wants to do) the work began. I'm writing this because I haven't found a single resource for abusers. Frankly we don't deserve them, we take up enough space in the world of the people we abuse. But in the case of someone like me, looking to break the cycle and not of means, I wanted to document what I was doing. One particular expert has stated that it's unlikely that abusers ever really change. When I look into the eyes of my wife, as much of a hypocrite as this makes me to say based on my actions, I want to stop. I want nothing more than to stop, live happily with her if she'll ever have me again, and not perpetuate or pass on this toxic, entitled bullshit that I've learned in my 36 years on this earth.