A Recipe for Leaving an Abusive Relationship Read online


for Leaving an Abusive Relationship

  Katherine Dashiell Rouse

  Copyright 2011 Katherine Dashiell Rouse

  If you need to save your children and yourself and keep the man you love, or once loved, from killing you and and/or your kids, and if it’s not too late and you still have a few months, this recipe is for you.

  First we need to talk:

  You can't stay for the children.

  You think you are protecting them by keeping your family together.

  The children are hurt even if you take all the blows and escape to beautiful parks and playgrounds where there is joy and laughter.

  You keep going home and the fun is over.

  You live in a house of fear.

  Your children are suffering, so don't stay for them if a house of fear is where you live.

  Try as you might with all your fingers and toes in the dike, you can't protect your children from seeing, and hearing, and feeling all the sickening, nauseating, terrifying terror of violence in the home.

  Your beautiful babies may grow up and repeat the horrors they endured in an attempt to make sense of the senseless.

  And right now, your beautiful babies are sick with fear, bewildered, and angry at their own helplessness, blaming themselves. All children do.

  Tell them none of this is their fault and explain why.

  Because children blame themselves, and you are or soon will be a single-mother, the traditional rules for childrearing are different than in a two family home.

  Your children will need to be kept more informed than children in a functional two parent home. In a two-parent home, it is rightfully taboo to conspire with your children.

  The rules have to change for a mother escaping violence with her children.

  If you are buying time, you must conspire with the children to be out of sight and ready to leave quickly if their father gets home in "one of those moods." Have a codeword and a plan of action if you need to leave home quickly "to give Daddy some time to unwind."

  Have a plan for where to go and don't make it grim or focus on the scary. Once on the road, you can high five a speedy exit and go have some fun.

  There are many fun places to go if daddy only needs a few hours, like the park, the library, the nature trail, the public pool. If it is something like a drunken binge that lasts longer, visit Aunt Sarah, or Grandma Suzy or someone you've picked out and checked with ahead of time.

  Your child's environment doesn't have to be grim even if grim things are happening. You, as their mother, create your children’s environment, and as a mother it is up to you to reach beyond protecting them to give them inspiration and wondrous things to experience. It is up to you to provide bounteous roses for your children to smell. You can fall apart later, but not now. Now you wear your head of logic and run through fields picking posies.

  Keep food, clothes and entertainment for the children hidden in the car

  Let Mr. Spock or your inner Robot keep you from infusing your language with bitterness against your children’s father. You have every right too feel the way you do, but it hurts your children to speak badly of their father. They carry half his genes, and you do not want them to feel cursed or ashamed by their heritage. When they are teenagers, your children will turn on you if you fill their childhood with slurs against the abusive parent. You will push them to find reasons to defend him and his behavior, and this is not the outcome you desire.

  So whatever you do, do not say bad things now or in the future. Point out his good attributes when you can, and explain that their father is "sick sometimes" or how "sometimes people say things they don't mean when they are angry."

  Vent to other adults when your children are not there to overhear. The fruit of this decision takes many years before it is evident, but if you refuse to say negative things about your abuser, your children’s father, it will be worth it when they are grown. I am sure time will prove me right.

  Children do not thrive in this environment, nor do they have much hope of future happiness.

  Your love has kept you there; Use the depth of your love to leave.

  You are beaten down. You are heartsick over the man who can be so loving until his eyes grow black and he beats you like a stranger.

  You are disappointed because your love couldn't soothe and calm his sometimes savage soul; when the world could finally see him as you do.

  You are exhausted from the cycle where you tiptoe not to set him off, and what sets him off changes so it happens again, and he's sorry and you make another mental note of what not to do, and what not to do. You do this over and over until you don't even know who you are, how to be, how to feel, or where to stand any more.

  Maybe deep down, maybe on the surface, you think he must be right. You are stupid and worthless, no one else will ever want you, you can't do anything right, you are subhuman: not worthy of kissing the underside of his shoe, much less keeping a decent house and raising his children.

  You are embarrassed because it is embarrassing, and maybe people warned you and you didn't listen.

  Maybe you've never worked outside the home before and are terrified of how to make money.

  You might not understand it yet because you are still a victim, but to raise your children vigilantly, you can't stay a victim for too long.

  At first, every day is like a support group. What you have endured is never far from your mind or your conversation. You freeze at the sound of broken glass and raised voices, and even the new cashier at Walgreens knows bits of your story.

  Unfortunately, as an adult, you have played an active part in your abuse, supporting your abuser while you struggle with unresolved issues of self-worth and childhood violence lurking in your past. You fit a stereo-type. You were born for the part you've played and if your escape is to be successful, you must face this issue or it will happen again and again, if not with the father of your children, then with some other man, and if that doesn't work, another man.

  You will never have any kind of healthy relationship and you will fail at your prime objective to protect and nurture your children in the long term if you do not recognise your part in domestic violence, identify and challenge the causes, and fight for your life.

  You are a participant called an enabler and somehow, I don't know how they know, somehow abusers always find us. So after your bruises have faded and your bones healed, you must learn to stop thinking like a victim. Victims are helpless and to lead your children to a new land, you must be strong.

  Your abuser is not a monster. He has or did have many charming, loveable traits, but now he has a problem with anger that you cannot fix. The same unresolved issues of self-worth resound within him, also probably due to childhood trauma, and being male, he has probably not been encouraged to share his feelings or express his emotions other than anger. The abuser has the added burden of being reviled by society, making it more likely that he will defend his behavior rather than seek treatment for anger management.

  His issues cannot be your focus now. You are not the one who can convince him he needs help. You cannot help him. You are the target for his anger, and you and your children are in danger. If he is angry enough, he is capable of hurting your children to hurt you even if he's never done so before.

  Operation Empower Thyself Begins.

  So. somehow, now, you are expected to deliver yourself and your children from danger, make enough money to sustain everyone, and be steadfast in your vow to keep your children from harm, and deliver them safely and happily to successful adulthood, while you address the issues within yourself to prevent repeating the whole, dreadful mess.


  I can think of dozens of circumstances where this recipe would be useless.

  All I can do is tell you what worked for me, and also identify where my recipe could be improved in hindsight, maybe saving you some time.

  Who I Didn't Go to for Help:

  (Ignore if you are in immediate danger.)

  Police: Involving police makes your life harder.

  It makes him angrier, then more contrite, and then angrier still, and as if that's not enough, now you have to be humiliated and demeaned in a heartless courtroom full of the other poor and downtrodden and the judge will have the power to make you and your abuser dance like puppets with things that don't help a bit, and then charge you exorbitant fees for the privilege. And in the end, you are no safer, you have less money and he has something more to be angry about. Plenty of women have died with protection papers in their purse.

  The Prime Objective

  The Prime Objective is and forever will be your children’s safety and well-being, including their long-range happiness and success as an adult. Remembering this like a mantra will serve as a guide in the choices you make now and in the future for you and your children.

  Ask yourself when you wonder if you should or not, and be honest: Is this in my children’s best interest?

  You will find out, if not now, soon, that what is best for your children is also best for you, the mother of your children, who needs to be treated with kindness and compassion, as she keeps a cool head