The Cycle of Abuse: How we Perpetuate Trauma by Encouraging Abusive Marriages

We perpetuate trauma and the cycle of abuse when we encourage the continued existence of abusive marriages.

Enduring an abusive marriage is not a show of grit.

There's a difference between grit and self deprecation.

If you have kids, and you are told that staying in a marriage where you are abused whether verbally, physically, emotionally, and more, is for your kids' benefit, that's a huge fraud.

Research has shown that children that grow up in abusive homes tend to have lifelong trauma. If they are male, they tend to become abusers themselves; if they are female, they tend to become receptive of abuse from their male partners. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Go read about how being raised in an abusive home can affect children's neurological and cognitive development; its mental health outcomes, physical health complications, and social and behavioural challenges. You will end up destroying the lives of the children you thought you were protecting, and perpetuating the cycle of abuse.

Observing abuse does not mean learning not to be that way. Infact, we necessarily become what we see, except one undergoes a conscious reorientation not to become that. You may think, "My son will see how I'm being treated, hate it, and will not be like his father..." Instead, you will be raising an apprentice abuser. Your daughter will grow up thinking that it's ok for a man to abuse, mistreat, and manipulate her. And the cycle continues.

📌 You are not staying for them - you are staying against them.

That we have to talk about this and keep citing research, shows how far away we are from being true to ourselves and our reality.

How can marriage be a do or die affair?

How does it even make sense, if not because of the paucity of emotionally mature and mentally fit men in the society?

And women have to pay for this paucity by being compelled, cajoled, and persuaded by every means available to endure with that, else "...the marriage institution would be destroyed."

It is not your responsibility to protect an institution; it is your responsibility to protect lives. 

What is the "marriage institution", if not the people in it?

"Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath."

The quality of any institution is in the quality of the people in it. 

If you have men and women who are groomed to be responsible, take accountability for their lives, fix their issues, and be full grown human beings, it will reflect on the institution of marriage. You'll have genuine nourishing relationships; not relationships built on trauma bond.

You cannot task women to put up with abuse, worse still, make it their responsibility to raise adult men, because there's no better way to "preserve" the marriage institution. 

That's terrible!

Where there's a need for a woman to raise an adult man into being a responsible human being who is capable of contributing real value into their relationship, and also clean up the mess he is unwilling to take responsibility for, then the said "marriage institution" has become a sham, a scam, and a shame.

The work you need to do is to stop this perpetuation of trauma and cycle of abuse, and let those who have real value have marriages. If a man does not have real value, he doesn't need to have a woman put up with his lack of it. Let him go through the gruesome process of refining himself to be a better partner; not to be enabled and patronized by prevailing upon women to put up with him. 

We keep intervening, intercepting, and interjecting; never letting these men grow up, never letting them face the full brunt of the life they have, and their lack of character.

Always coaching women on how to shape shift into different things to be able to put up with low value and character - less men.

You are not concerned for women, because you know they will thrive. You are afraid that if women left abusive, irresponsible, low value men, they will not look at one of that kind again - who, unfortunately, make up the larger population of the men we currently have. Hence, sliming down the chances these men may have. 

Many women don't know how much they will thrive outside abusive marriages/relationships. 

As a woman, you have to stop waiting to be validated, or waiting for an invisible "ban" to be lifted, for you to say, "It ends with me. I will not perpetuate the cycle of abuse. I will not aid, abet, or tolerate abusive behavior in this marriage."

The cycle of abuse has to be broken, even if it seems that it might cost you.