Survive, Transform, Soar! – Issue #6

Survival Is Not Enough

Article by: Dr George Simon, Ph.D., in SurviveTransformSoar.com | Friday, April 14, 2017

It seems that more and more people are having the unfortunate experience of getting into and then barely surviving a toxic, abusive relationship. Those who have had such an experience know how difficult it can be to restore their emotional sanity, pick up the pieces and move on. Often, the damage resulting from such relationships is multi-dimensional, so it can take a fair amount of time to fully “recover.” Because the recovery process is ongoing, finding the right kind of support is crucial and even that can be a challenge.

In writing about toxic relationship survival and recovery, I find that real-life examples (identifying information altered to preserve anonymity) can help illustrate how to go about reclaiming your life and empowering yourself in the aftermath, as well as how to minimize the likelihood of repeating the experience. The frameworks and principles I advance in my books can be validating and illuminating, but there’s no substitute for the real-life illustrations of those principles that only actual survivors such as the two below can provide.

Most of you know what it’s like to be deceived on the front end of a relationship about the character of a partner, to endure various kinds of subtle and not so subtle abuse, to struggle with finding the proper support resources and to deal with the doubt, anger, shaken sense of self and myriad other issues that accompany involvement with any of the disturbed and disordered characters in our culture.

In the aftermath of a toxic relationship, you have likely found yourself scratching your head and asking: “How did I get here?; How could all these things have happened?; Why did I not see this coming?”

Don’t ‘Step In’ for Your Former Partner

You might be tempted to blame yourself, wondering how you could have ended up in this position. While it can certainly help to understand both the nature of your ordeal and the possible reasons for it (some of which may very well have to do with various ”vulnerabilities” in your makeup), it’s potentially as damaging as the toxic relationship itself to berate yourself.

When it comes to the most skilled and conniving of disturbed characters, even the healthiest among us can be duped. Manipulators (i.e. covert-aggressors) can be quite adept at veiling their true nature, a nature that sadly becomes evident only after they’ve succeeded in exploiting and/or abusing their targets.

It is valuable to sort through your own vulnerabilities in a mindful, honest, yet self-respecting way. Most of us have emotional and personality vulnerabilities that disturbed characters are prone to exploit, so a mindful introspection devoid of unnecessary self-blame can be a vital aspect of avoiding future jeopardy.

Your disordered partner likely tried to blame you for everything imaginable and you may carry in yourself both acceptance of this blame and resistance to it. Therefore, it may be best to postpone this introspection to the later stages of recovery and allow it to unfold naturally. Yet ultimately, perhaps nothing is more empowering than really knowing, accepting and taking ownership of yourself, in part because of the increased ability you will gain to better appraise the character of others.

Knowledge Is Power

It is also helpful to have a framework for understanding character issues in general and a greater awareness of the signs of character disturbance, manipulation tactics, etc. Knowing yourself, knowing what disordered characters are all about and how they operate, and acquiring the skills to deal more effectively with their tactics are the keys to personal empowerment.

Some personalities are extremely adept at the arts of seduction, manipulation, image projection and other forms of manipulation and impression management. Even the healthiest of us can be taken in. Moreover, sometimes it’s the most decent things about us – things that would behoove us never to change – that make us vulnerable to the most character-impaired among us. Emma’s experience illustrates this (identifying information altered).

Emma’s Story

If you had to describe Emma in only one word, it would probably be “conscientious.” She learned whatever she needed to complete her assigned tasks well and was responsible; you could count on Emma and trust her implicitly.

David appeared to really appreciate Emma and see who she was, which made her feel good in a real and practical sense. He was a man of high ambition and drive who wanted only the best in life, including a partner he could unreservedly trust, depend upon and display as the envy of other guys. He recognized Emma’s qualities and talents immediately and set out to “woo the socks off her.”

In the early days, Emma enjoyed David’s attention; she felt special and appreciated. He was moving up in the world (as he’d always promised) and she was moving right along with him. Whether David said it, she knew in her heart that her support – especially the way she took care of everything – was a big part of their success.

But slowly and barely perceptibly at first, Emma began to feel less important and less genuinely appreciated. As David acquired more and more of what he wanted, he seemed to have less and less interest in her. Ultimately, she realized how poorly she really was regarded and how badly she’d been used.

Who Does That?

David was serially unfaithful. He had used and abused many others and sloughed them off as meaning “nothing,” but that didn’t ease the pain. He had lied about their money and stashed away a small fortune. She mistook his practical appreciation of her virtues and desire to possess her as evidence that he cared about her and her wellbeing.

Emma had to learn that David was not capable of caring on any meaningful level. When he had finished using her, he easily discarded her. When it became clear how shallow and devoid of empathy he was, Emma was heartbroken and began questioning herself, often obsessively. “Why didn’t I see things for what they really were? Why did I ignore the early red flags? How could I have so misjudged his capacity to really love?” And she blamed herself.

In more severely impaired characters, sentiments rarely get beyond the purely superficial level–superficial charm, superficial appreciation, superficial interest—it’s mostly about appearances and image. Emma realized this eventually, but not until she’d been fully used and exploited.

It’s Not Your Fault

Emma would eventually gain some understanding about what aspects of her own personality might have contributed to her vulnerability, but without destructive and unnecessary self-blame. She had to learn that her best attributes – her conscientiousness and depth of caring – were truly character strengths and not weakness.

Just because someone of grossly impaired character took advantage of those qualities shouldn’t make her think less of herself. Someone’s willingness to exploit such characteristics says much more about their character.

Emma needed to improve her odds of avoiding victimization again by accepting that there really are people who lack empathy and the ability to love. She also needed to learn how to better scrutinize the depth and genuineness of someone’s apparent concern. She had fair instincts, but her “charm alarm” didn’t go off because she didn’t see David as superficially glib. She mistook his value of her usefulness for caring. She will not make that mistake again.

Recovering from involvement with a disturbed or disordered character is almost always a substantially unpleasant experience, but much good can come from the ordeal if one is both self-forgiving and open to learning.

It’s not uncommon for people who have wrested themselves from a toxic relationship to have many mixed feelings, including personal defeat, obsessive self-questioning, doubt, anger, mistrust and even some paranoia. Sorting through these feelings can itself be an excruciating ordeal. But with self-acceptance, the courage to face the hard realities of what happened and the likely reasons why, there are valuable take-aways that can make the difference between remaining vulnerable to falling into a similar trap again and emerging a stronger, more aware, more confident individual. Susan’s story illustrates this point.

Susan’s Freedom

Susan could tell you the very day she was finally done – really done – with Kevin. It wasn’t just after she’d left him. She was certainly fed-up at that point. But she wasn’t really through with the relationship on an emotional level for many reasons, including the incessant manipulations, control and games of get-back that Kevin escalated after she dared to finally break free. As she had come to realize over many months of honest self-reflection, there were other reasons too, some that were connected to her own fears about genuinely and permanently letting go.

Susan had always had someone in her life. She couldn’t remember a time longer than a few weeks or months between relationships before she was involved again. She recently realized that part of the reason was a dread about being alone in the world, as she had been emotionally abandoned when young. In her relative lack of self-confidence and fear of being alone, she inevitably gravitated toward those who seemed strong, confident and capable. If they seemed kind enough, were attractive enough and were interested in her, that was the ultimate aphrodisiac!

Her recent insight was that being on her own didn’t have to mean being alone in life. She could be truly independent, especially on an emotional level, and still be intimately connected to others. In coming to know both her own strength and her true worth, she more clearly saw the emotional abuse she endured so many times. She finally understood she didn’t really need to have a romantic partner, although she might want the right kind of person again someday. Not only was she confident she could make it on her own (her recent business success had finally demonstrated that in spades!), she also had no fear of being “unattached” and was ready to be far more choosy than in the past.

Susan also really enjoyed her new-found freedom. She decided that her next relationship – if there were to be one – would be an equal partnership between two people who wanted to walk through life together. While a small part of her lamented what it took to get her here, she understood that for her, there was probably no other way. Knowing and accepting that gave her peace.

Hope

If you are recovering from a toxic relationship, please understand that there is hope. Recovery is a process, but it is possible to have a better life than you have been living and relationships that are much more satisfying than the toxic partners in your past. Summon your courage and, as Dawn says, ultimately you will soar. I send my prayers.