Get back to the basics

Singing a New Song

began as a vehicle used to speak out against spiritual abuse/domestic abuse in the christian marriage. 

Religion has been and remains the most commonly used vehicle for abuse. 

Abuse is insidious. As a christian, I strongly believed that "a christian man would NEVER abuse his wife". While I still believe this to be partly true, I also have experienced how the concepts we believe and the religious dogma we embrace can set us up as victims of religious abuse. 

I was a very active christian many years before I met my son's father. I had been very involved in serving in the church in worship leading, teaching, prayer, conference planning and program developing and coordinating. I love people and had found a wonderful niche for my creative and musical outlets. I had a wonderful life serving the Lord and enjoying my "family". 

When we are "in church" (christian church that is) we tend to assume that most everyone there is a christian. They have come to worship God with us and we have much more in common than we may have dividing or distinguishing us from each other. Looking back on it, I see this assumption as part of our need to BELONG. We all feel a deep need to "belong somewhere" or "to someone". Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs shows a pyramid of needs that places BELONGING just about physiological and safety needs: including within it: friendship, family and sexual intimacy. These are very BASIC needs.

I didn't understand my needs at the time and how religion has fulfilled the bottom three level on this Needs scale but I realized that it has played a significant supporting role in the next level of needs: ESTEEM.

As much as I had trusted God, I now realize that I had trusted man too much and my ability to discern intent of others and interpret behavior within marriage too little. I was in the worship team the day my ex husband and his daughter walked into the church that I had so joyfully served. Only a few brief months of courtship and 19 months later, confusion nd frustration began filling our home when my then christian husband seemed to be "unhappy" with me while I was pregnant with our now 13 year old son. He became critical, unloving, biting, harsh in his speech and manner and even so demanding that I "behave as a christian woman should" that I was reluctant to share my feelings and thoughts of my difficulty in the pregnancy. He said "you have changed, I am still the same". He later called me "contentious" and "disobedient" and even said in later years..."when you disobey ME, you disobey God". 

Now, as I look upon this, I can see that this is just abusive, manipulative behavior. NOT christian at all. But I had believed and continued to want to believe that he was truly a very good christian but yet experienced deeply disturbing cognitive dissonance over this. HOW can a christian man be so callous, unloving, demanding and even abusive??? I studied the Bible more, scouring it for wisdom and understanding on how I should view my new christian husband's behavior in light of feeling abused. I then found a few books on abuse by christian authors: (Jan Silvious's book: Fool Proofing your life and Leslie Vernick's book "The Emotionally Destructive Relationship") and I realized that "not all that glitters, is not gold" or "just because he says he is a christian, appears to act like a christian, seems to believe as a christian believes, doesn't mean that he is not or cannot be an abuser". 

This was a VERY harsh reality for me to accept. I didn't want to believe that what I had held as principles and concepts of virtue that I had held dearly would be so twisted in attempts to control, manipulate, discredit, demean, discount and disrespect me...after all, he was a christian. A christian man would not abuse. THIS WAS A FALSE PREMISE, a VERY untrue assumption that kept me in an abusive marriage for may years 8 years beyond my initial revelation that I was being abused by my christian husband.

Patricia Evan's books; mainly "Verbal Abuse Survivors Speak out" and "Contolling People" where too books; disdainfully shun and severely criticized by my then "christian husband" as being "not of God" and I was not only "admonished" to not read them but to "only read the Bible" and "listen and obey" him. He was "my head". I was just a woman. At one time, I "misplaced" the book, "Controlling People" twice...I had to buy new copies. I believe that he had thrown them away in attempts to dissuade me from reading them and awakening to HIS ABUSE OF ME in this "christian marriage". 

I found the book, "The Gaslight Effect" by Dr. Robin Stern. It was another "forbidden" book but by that time, I had separated from him, taking our then 8 year old son to live apart from him and his daughter. 

I share all of this to caution all those who hold onto a belief system and seek to find others who believe as you do to form the security of friendship, family and sexual intimacy that there are "wolves wearing sheep's clothing" among those who call themselves christians...and they CAN and DO use religion to ABUSE and control their victims.

Acceptance is not denial

I truly believe that we CAN 

make the best of what we have 

but we should NOT 

DENY WHAT IT IS NOT 

if "what it is NOT" 

is what we really want.  

I married my first christian husband after the horrid separation from my first love. I tried hard to see how our relationship "was" and I KNEW what "he was not". Even being "on the rebound" I did not try to compare him with my first love. I had already woefully knew that he was NOTHING like my first love. 

Upon the eve of our wedding, I "had a talk" to myself. I "spoke it aloud" in my mind that "I know he is a "good man", a friend, we have a lot in common, we both love music BUT I KNOW that he will NEVER be able to intellectually stimulate me as my first love had." With a sigh, I turned to his mother who had heard my sigh and asked her "WHY am I marrying your son?" and she replied "Because you LOOOOOOVE him". Even this comment brought questions to my mind. I had accepted him for what he WAS NOT but my heart STILL LOVED my first love for all that HE was and I could not have. 

In my second marriage to another "christian man", so I deeply belioeved that my happiness would require another christian marriage...Of course HOW could I be happy with an husband who did not believe as I did about God and the Universe? I was IN DENIAL that anyone who called themselves a christian could be abusive!!! I was SO WRONG in believing and trusting that just because I was "taught" to trust a christian, that a christian could NEVER abuse or disrespect me. My second husband did that and more. In many ways, he behaved as what most might expect a "heathen", Agnostic or Atheist to behave toward a woman...

I was NOT seeing "what was" 

but "what I wanted to see

and THAT 

is what perpetuated the abuse in my life.

I have shared my journey with you with the hope that it will ENCOURAGE you to more easily ACCEPT what you have allowed in your life; CALL ABUSE WHAT IT IS...ABUSE and "find yourself, heal from abuse and learn to dream again"...I DID and I really hope that you will also.

Sending LOVE and healing thoughts your way,

D

The hump of healing; getting past DENIAL

Have you ever refused to admit that a situation was as really as bad as it seemed? Haven't you "made excuses" for others behavior that bordered abuse? In the midst of trying to understand and make allowances in order to "get along" with personality disordered person (may also be an abuser) I have been the one who has been accused of "side arm psychology". I chose to try to see the underlying reasons for abuse.

"I didn't understand that I didn't understand,
UNTIL I understood"

I have actually been meditating, thinking, analyzing and hoping to find our I made progress through the process of healing from abuse. The first thing that I realized was needed, ONCE I HAD THE EPIPHANY, was that I HAD BEEN IN DENIAL. It is my "I didn't understand that I didn't understand, UNTIL I understood". When we are DEEP in denial, a defense mechanism that is used to help us survive actually can turn into the weapon used against us in our healing from the abuse that initiated it. I DENIED that what I was experiencing could have been abuse. I was "not being abuse". I had a "difficult or needy partner" but I was "not being abused". I would "not allow others to be treat me that way". All of this self-talk was DENIAL. I would not admit to myself that I was married to an ABUSIVE MAN who called himself a christian. I was not married to a christian man with "abuse problems". I had told him time and time again to STOP and he totally denied the possibility of ever being abusive toward me; even unintentionally. He was also a liar and turned into a bigamist. I was not the only one he had lied to. I also was in denial and under the belief that I had "no right" to leave him that since I was a christian, nor could I leave the abuse.

What's love got to do with it? An abuser's view of marriage. A TRUE story.

 
Imagine this scene:  A "christian" couple have been separated due to domestic abuse; the wife/mother has left the household eight months prior with their child living separately; totally supporting both she and their son with HER income alone (also paying for the husband's medical insurance as in the past 12 years out of her income). There have been NO sincere attempts by the husband at reconciliation or resolve of "issues" in the marriage; the wife has documented the hurtful words and behavior that he clearly exhibited for many years to only be disregarded and discounted. This meeting was really set up to confirm what the wife feels she has "yet to do".

She invites the husband and her Pastor and his wife (also a Pastor) to her apartment for a home cooked meal. Conversation is light and leads them into the living room for some more discussion. While the Pastor is talking about his marriage to his wife; the topic turns to his "role" as being a Christian man and the inappropriateness of "demanding" of  submission by a husband.  The husband pulls out his Bible and says to him "I don't want to hear anything that does not come out of this; I will not take any of YOUR counsel".

The Pastor quickly senses that this man is not one to "take anyone's word for it" and obliges him by taking his Bible which was pushed toward him and opens it to 1 Corinthians 13. The Love chapter. The Pastor persuasively reads the entire chapter aloud while remaining to stand and then hands the Bible back to the husband. With total disgust in his voice and obvious air of superiority at having been "read the Word", he so eloquently states (in question form but obviously rhetorical)  

"WHAT does THAT have to do with ME and MY MARRIAGE???"

That makes me think of Tina Turner's song "What's love go to do with it?" and according to this abusive husband LOVE has NOTHING to do with HIM or HIS MARRIAGE. His own words stand to testify of "his faith" and lack of love for his wife. Of course, to end our story, the Pastor proceeded to state his intention that he would  "not cast pearl before swine" by continuing the conversation and that it was "over" and thanked me for the dinner and headed toward the door.

Another choice response by the husband was,  

"Are you calling me a PIG?"

 On a more positive note:  LOVE does have EVERYTHING to do with a good and healthy marriage; whether you are married to "a person who claims to be of a certain faith who obviously does NOT practice what he preaches" or married to a wonderful person who has come to learn that there is NO excuse for abuse. Don't be fooled by a PIG in sheep's clothing. 

****For the record; I hope that you found this amusing. It truly happened JUST as it is recorded. The irony and humor was somewhat diminished at the time by the true shock that ANYONE would even make such comments. Looking back at this as "a pig in sheep's clothing" gives me a chuckle. Abuse is not funny but the stupidity of the abusive behaviour can truly be comical. To add to it; I have eaten "Kosher" for over 18 years. This IS a true story.

Abuse in "christian" marriage?

I can only imagine the images that the term "abusive marriage" may conger up
in your mind but I would have to encourage you to look deeper and see that the intricate parts of relationship, marriage mainly, between a man and woman, abuse is MUCH LESS obvious than what you might first anticipate.

Let's DEFINE the term "abuse"...(Merriam-Webster)

1: a corrupt practice or custom

2: improper or excessive use or treatment : misuse 

3  obsolete : a deceitful act : deception

4: language that condemns or vilifies usually unjustly, intemperately, and angrily

5: physical maltreatment 

Verbal abuse (also known as reviling or bullying) is best described as
an ongoing emotional environment organized by the abuser for the purposes
of control. The underlying factor in the dynamic of verbal abuse is the abuser’s low regard for him or herself. As a result, the abuser attempts to place their victim in a position to believe similar things about him or herself, a form of warped projection.

Verbal abuse may occur to a person of any gender, race, culture, sexual orientation, age, or size. Typically, verbal abuse increases in intensity over time and often escalates into physical abuse as well. During intense verbal abuse, the victim will generally suffer from low self-esteem and low self-worth. As a result, victims may fall into clinical depression and/ or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Despite being the most common form of abuse, verbal abuse is generally not taken as seriously as other types of abuse, because there is no visible proof. In reality, however, verbal abuse can be more detrimental to a person's health than physical abuse.

If started at a young age, verbal abuse contributes to codependency, borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and other psychological disorders that often plague many people into adulthood.

People who feel they are being attacked by a verbal abuser on a regular basis should seek professional counsel and remove themselves from the negative environment whenever possible. Staying with a verbal abuser is damaging for a person's overall well-being; and all steps to change the situation should be pursued.

"Verbal abuse includes the following: withholding, bullying, defaming, defining, trivializing, harassing, interrogating, accusing, blaming, blocking, insulting, countering, diverting, lying, berating, taunting, putting down, discounting, threatening, name-calling, yelling, and raging."^[1]

Verbal Abuse and its Devastating Impact
By Patricia Evans (Verbalabuse.com)

Verbal Abuse is insidious.
Verbal Abuse is endemic.
Verbal Abuse impacts millions of people.
Verbal Abuse and its denial are crazy-making
Verbal Abuse usually occurs in secret.

If you've heard, "You're Too Sensitive" you've heard verbal abuse.

Although many people have heard sticks and stones may break our bones but words will never hurt us, those who have suffered from verbal abuse know that words do hurt and can be as damaging as physical blows are to the body. The scars from verbal assaults can last for years. They are psychological scars that leave people unsure of themselves, unable to recognize their true value, their talents and sometimes unable to adapt to life’s many challenges.

Except for name-calling many people don't recognize verbal abuse—especially when it comes from a person they believe loves them or from a person they perceive as an authority figure; or when it comes from a person who is in a position of power, for example, one's boss, a family provider, one's parent, or even an older sibling that one has learned to look up to in childhood.

Unfortunately, when people don’t recognize verbal abuse for what it is, they may try to get the person who is putting them down, giving them orders, or “correcting,” denouncing, yelling at or ignoring them to understand them. Or, they may try to stop them by giving it back in kind. In other words, they may act out their anger.

The circumstances under which verbal abuse takes place make a real difference in how to respond to it. In the workplace, for instance, an appropriate response to a very abusive boss might be to prepare a resume or to read the want ads. On the other hand, a child can’t very well escape from an abusive parent and so we, the observers and relatives of the child must be alert and ready to speak up for him or her. Keeping a record and letting others know what is going on are often good first steps.

Since, in the majority of cases, people who indulge in verbal abuse are selective about whom they abuse, many people are surprised to hear that someone is experiencing on-going and periodic abuse from someone they know and have always seen as nice and friendly. “Nice and Friendly” is the persona of many an abuser. Although many folks are as nice and friendly as they seem, some are not. 

****
Abuse is insidious, deceptive and STILL abuse. If you or someone you know, seems to have a friend or family member that behaves in the above ways, you are very likely experiencing abuse. Being a christian or believing that the "abusive party" is "christian" does NOT stop abuse from happening. As with divorce, abuse in Christian marriage is just as prevalent, if not more so, than in marriages of other or "no" faith. God does not want you to be abused.