Do you think that people who protect their boundaries slightly stronger in abusive relationships tend to experience more physical abuse?

[Justwondering3]

If the abuse is just the tool to get the job done (power and control) do you think the above applies?

People who put their needs and feelings aside quicker experience less physical abuse? I experienced emotional and mental abuse and threats of physical because it worked and I very easily ignored myself because of my childhood experiences. I know this because he told me he was very capable of being physical.

Having to hit someone is much more telling of their bad side and motive and very hard for them to come back from I would have thought. So more of a last resort when all else fails?

It's a sliding scale

I disagree with this; or, at least, I don't think it's how an abuser sees it. I think it's how the victim might see it.

It could equally work the other way. A more yielding victim might receive more damaging abuse, because the abuser feels less likely to be reported/talked about by the victim.

You're looking for sense and patterns and logic in abusive behaviour. There is none. Abuse can't be reasoned with. An abuser will abuse in whatever way they see fit to in any given moment. One abuser might like to prefer one type of personality, another might prefer to abuse a different type of personality.

There is no puzzle to work out, here. Abuse is something that makes no sense, and the only logic we can use is to say that if we experience abuse from someone, we remove them from our lives to the best of our ability, and in any arena that they have to stay in our lives (co-parenting, for example), we avoid as much contact, and engage our time and emotions with them as little as possible.

For as long as we try to figure out abusive behaviour, we are under the spell of abuse. Walk away, in body, in mind, in your soul. Abuse is not part of your inner landscape; don't engage with its lunacy.

This.

Personally i just think women who put up with abusive men and attract them do have poor boundaries overall. I’m not going to cross over into victim blaming but I’ve heard friends say things like “it’s so insidious and the put downs start small” etc, but then I listen think “no I still wouldn’t have accepted that small, insidious and weird put down”. I don’t blame them for lacking that initial awareness but some women repeatedly do ignore red flags.

@Somanycats

100 percent. It means running for the hills, not staying.

@Watchkeys what I meant by the sliding scale was the initial tests - he has to start with buying the wrong drink, for example, because if he started with punching her in the mouth there would be no doubt in her mind that he was abusive. He has to do some work with his victim, whatever will suit that particular one, to have her committed enough to stop her listening to that first doubt she has.

Most often an abuser will start with ... being nice. That's how they reel women in. Research shows that abuse is most likely to start after a big life changing commitment eg marriage or giving birth. It's nice to think it starts with little tests and only women with poor boundaries are at risk - but you're giving yourself false reassurance. And it's victim blaming.

I think you’re trying to say that if a victim walks a very tight line and always complies and anticipates all the possible things that may influence their abusers moods, they may be able to avoid being beaten. And you’re considering how much more violence you would have been the victim of if you’d dared to answer back etc.
That’s probably true for some abusive relationships.
There are others where the abuser gets pleasure in the violence so the external factors are minimal or non-existent.

Both realities are completely miserable

Having good boundaries means never suffering abuse because you would leave at the first sign of it. What it doesn't mean is arguing back or refusing to comply but still staying in the relationship. The problem is always that people stay in it too long.

Teaching women to have good boundaries isn't about shaming victims of abuse. This thread just proves how far we still have to go to ensure the focus remains on abusers and that the blame for abuse lies firmly on the shoulders of abusers. No-one else's.

Maybe it works sometimes, it didn't for me and for a lot of the women I met. He was always physical whatever I did.
He hit me when I spoke back, and he hit me when I stayed silent.
He hit me if i looked at him and if I couldn't look in his eyes.
He hit me if i was in the house "too much" or if I was "hardly ever here"

When I had more fight in me, he would hurt me when I stood up to him or tried to defend myself or even step back from his punches. And when the fight died, he hurt me for "looking sad" "making it seem like he was doing domething wrong" or "being boring"

He hurt me while I was asleep, while I was doing the washing up, while I was hoovering. He hurt me if spurs lost whatever I did.
I was young and did the whole dutiful girlfriend if I am perfect I won't make him angry thing. It didn't work, nothing ever worked except getting away. I honestly don't think there was a thing I could have done that would have made him happy or made him stop.

There are often red flags way before they get to the point of abuse, even after big life commitments. Women either ignore them because they want too, or they are unaware and have poor boundaries. That’s not VB, that’s just an unfortunate fact.

I remember when I left my IDVA at the time said it probably would have only been a matter of time before he got physical . I didn’t at the time understand what she meant. It had been a decade with none. How could she have known that.

I see what you mean, yes. I thought you meant a scale as in mild verbal abuse > heavy physical abuse. My mistake, sorry.

what I don’t get is why mine hit previous but not me. I was wondering if this was because his other girlfriends were more outgoing then me so were harder to control. ( I knew one and they were much bigger personalities than me) I was quite happy to stay at home, it wasn’t something that took too much effort. I was raised to do as I was told and ignore my feelings.

I think it's reasonable to suppose that a violent man will be more inclined to resort to violence if his partner is trying to stop him getting his way or causing him to be angry by not being compliant.

I'm not sure why this reasoning is controversial.

Though of course, there are some twats who will be violent regardless.

@Watchkeys , no problem.

@SpiritedSneeze

@Justwondering3 how do you know he hit previous partners? If anything you are wondering about is what he told you, be aware that it could very well not be true. They are very often good liars.

To those saying about victims having poor boundaries, it can often be the case that they are unaware that some or all of what they are experiencing is abuse, even some of the physical stuff. This is often because they have been raised in abusive households so see it as the norm. It's also often the case that the abuser was raised in an abusive household.

@Watchkeys you are absolutely right. I have no idea if what he ever said was true. I didn’t think of it like that. He told me he was raised with an abusive dad. He went through the court case blaming his actions on this. But then he has a close relationship with his dad and I met his dad and he seemed nice (we all know that bad people can come across nice). He always wanted to make his dad proud, call his son after his dad, odd for a man who you say has messed you up.

I always found the mum to be quite manipulating. She never offered to pay towards anything, take us out or buy our child presents, she always asked us to buy the gift on her behalf. She wanted her son to pay off her mortgage. But she drank almost every day so wasn’t about having no money as could afford that. I was not allowed to say a bad thing about her, I did once and was punished bad

I think people with stronger boundaries may left an abusive relationship before people who bend their boundaries and adapt to their abuser commandments but I don't think anyone can predict how the abuse is going to be. We can't rationalize the irrational.

The only time I was scared for my life was the time I told him that a lot of the things he said to me didn’t match the way he was treating me. When I started to see through the emotional abuse. That was the point he kicked me out the house and told me if I didn’t go he’d do something we would both regret. I believed him so although he tried to get me back I never did.

Now I think about it, right at the beginning of the relationship but after he moved himself in and after the love bombing he told me a story that he beat his ex girlfriend and the boy he found her cheated with. I obviously accepted this story stayed with him but told him that I would never accept someone hitting me,so he knew that if he did I would go. I also knew what he was capable of and what would happen if I cheated. So cunning.

They can word their warnings and threats in such creative ways.

Seriously @Dodecaheidyin at the time I was so inexperienced I took it all in. He would also follow it with obviously you my soul mate I would never treat you like those other stupid women. But he bloody did. Always check the history of ex’s!

He also had cuts all up his arm, he told me that his ex girlfriend manipulated him and left him and he was so distraught he did that to himself, I felt so sorry. What an absolute psychopath and what an accepting and absolutely inexperienced person I was to love such a damaged person. I know now that says a lot about myself as a person, I was so kind and loving and so boundary-less! I’m now trying to remind myself that I can still be kind and loving but not to my own sacrifice. It’s a difficult thing to have to learn. For the past few years I’ve become hard and empty.

at the time I was so inexperienced I took it all in

I think it's important to realise that it's not inexperience that caused you to take it all in. It was poor boundaries. Many people are raised with good boundaries, and taught well, about how to respect and uphold them. Many people have good boundaries before they even think about what a relationship is. Many people have good boundaries when they are still children.

This is where self blame can come in, and shouldn't. It's not that you were dealing with something that you didn't have enough experience, as an adult, to deal with. That would sound a lot like your fault, a lot like you tried to do something without making sure you could be fully responsible for its outcome. What actually happened is that, as a child, you were not taught well. And that's why none of this is your fault. You've had to learn by the 'school of hard knocks' what your parents were responsible for teaching you as you grew up.

It wasn't your 'inexperience', it was that your parents didn't teach you, by lessons or by demonstration, how a person can uphold their own boundaries. We're not supposed to learn who we should and shouldn't spend our time with by getting hurt and correcting it. We're supposed to be released into the world as young adults, knowing how not to get hurt in the first place.