RESISTUNG THE INEVITABLE

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-14-2005
RESISTUNG THE INEVITABLE
4
Fri, 01-14-2005 - 6:07am
I have been separated from my emotionally abusive husband for 2 years. I have continued a relationship of seeing him every weekend as will live in different counties. It was my hope that we would reunite after my son's high school graduation and entrance into college this year. However, the past 2 years have been an endless series of disappointments.His abusive style has changed from yelling, throwing objects, threats,and name calling to periods of not speaking,coldness, and distance. I have not heard from him since New Year's Day resulting from my expression of anger when he did not keep a promise. We have a 5 year old daughter together with special needs and she asks for him constantly!!!!! This is breaking my heart. I wrote him a letter since he refuses to accept my calls, imploring him to contact our daughter. He has not responded. Why does he punish his daughter? I feel depressed most of the time and still hope that we can work this out together. Please offer any advice that you may have. I feel that my I am sinking.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2004
Fri, 01-14-2005 - 9:04am
I'm confused. You say you know he's abusive, but you're shocked at his behavior and actually want him back. I think you should read up on emotional abuse and/or see a therapist yourself. Why is he doing this? Because to an abuser, no one but him is real. He's the star of his life, he's supremely selfish, and he's incapable of empathy. Most of his seemingly caring behavior in the past is him playing a role of good dad or good husband to feel good about himself, not because he genuinely cares about the feelings of those around him. He's not "being this way," he IS this way, and always will be. Unless he's been in therapy for years, he will only cause you and your children further pain, you can't smooth this over. I think it's time to accept the inevitable.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2004
Fri, 01-14-2005 - 11:45am

I wanted to add a bit more to this - I'm a lawyer who does pro bono work for victims of domestic violence, I grew up in an abusive home myself, and I'm currently training a new dog (there's a connection, bear with me). The most profoundly compelling psychological influence on people and animals is intermittent reward. The lure of intermittent reward is generally at work when we find ourselves staying in relationships that outsiders see as abusive.

Anyone familiar with psychology (or who has ever trained a dog) may be familiar with this concept. Take a rat in a maze. Place a lever that dispenses cheese when pushed. At first, the rat is amazed to find cheeze in his maze. Over time, the rat learns to take what appear to be two different events (I'm walking in my maze, cheese appears), to associate them (I push a lever in my maze and cheese appears in my maze), and then to understand the causality (cheese appears BECAUSE I press a lever in my maze). Once that association is made, the rat (or dog, or person) gets it - whenever I push the lever, I get the cheese. Now, the rat stops pressing the lever every time. The rat now has control - if he's hungry, or bored, he'll go press the lever and get the cheese. But the whole lever-cheese trick has lost its interest for him.

Introduce the concept of intermittent reward. One day, the rat is hungry, goes to press the lever, and no cheese. He presses it twice more, still no cheese. On the fourth try, suddenly there's cheese again. The lever has become a compelling puzzle again. The lever is now endlessly fascinating - sometimes there's cheese, sometimes not. Now the rat always presses the lever to see what will happen. The same thing with training dogs - you treat them all the time as they learn to associate the behavior with a reward, then begin to treat intermittently, to get them to keep doing the trick because YOU want them to, not because they've chosen to because they're hungry for another treat. Making the reward intermittent makes this whole trick thing interesting again.

Casinos make a fortune on this concept - win a $50 jackpot from a slot machine once in your life, and you'll probably pull a slot handle whenever you're in a casino forever. Intermittent reward is endlessly fascinating and challenging. For any animal, it's a puzzle and a challenge. It stimulates you to think back to what you used to do when the "treats" were being regularly disbursed, and to strive to duplicate that behavior. It also reinforces the value of the "treat," because you have to work for it, because you may not understand that the treat dispenser is random, and will naturally believe that the treat is dispensed for perfect performance.

Abusive relationships are based on intermittent reward. They are compelling and addictive, because they play to a very basic aspect of psychological functioning. I counsel abused women, and I grew up in an abusive household. As I child, I found that the very same behavior, like getting a B+ on a report card, resulted in varying responses. Sometimes it was ignored, sometimes it was punished (it should have been an A), and sometimes there was exstatic praise. We all crave praise, love, and acceptance, particularly from parents and intimate partners, and that intermittent praise, love, and acceptance keeps us always striving for more of the same, "working harder" to "earn" it, puzzling over why it isn't always forthcoming, and blaming ourselves for some failure to earn the reward.

Intermittent reward is the mechanism of an abusive relationship. "In the beginning," it was all love and affection, your partner was charismatic, charming, affectionate, and you felt dazzled and suffused with joy over the attention and affection you received. You always got the cheese for pressing the lever. Then, the love and affection seemed to taper off, to become more random and cyclic, to be less frequent. The opposite of love and affection may have begun to appear, as well, apathy, the silent treatment, hostility, even outright violence. Because they were less frequent, the eventual displays of love and affection seemed so welcome in contrast to what had come before, so incredibly valuable. Because you'd "worked so hard" to "earn" the love and affection by endlessly analyzing your own perceived "deficient" behavior and working to earn your partner's love, you feel a great sense of accomplishment when that love and affection is dished out. Because it's so random, and so puzzling, it seems more intense, more dramatic, more interesting than love that is continuously dispensed. In studies, rats prefer the lever that dispenses intermittent treats over a lever that always dispenses a treat, or even a plate full of cheese. The intermittent reward is more challenging and more compelling.

People who don't understand how abused women can stay with their abusers don't understand how powerful intermittent reward can be. As with dog training, it can shape behavior for a lifetime. Once introduced, as through childhood abuse or a prior abusive relationship, it seems normal and exciting and challenging, and relationships that regularly and predictably dispense love and affection seem less interesting in comparison. Moreover, people with low self-esteem and/or a history of abuse may believe, subconsciously, that they don't deserve love and affection. They disdain a person who dispenses it freely - that person must be indiscriminate with the affection, or must be too blind or desperate not to see that the recipient of their affection is not worthy. Having to "work" to "earn" affection seems right to a person with low self-esteem, and feeling, more often than not, like you're not getting love and affection because you've done something wrong seems to match your sense that you aren't good enough to be loved.

It's not clear to what extent emotional abusive people understand that they're using intermittent reward to manipulate their partners. It is obvious that most recipients of this treatment do not even realize it is being used to manipulate them (count me among that group, despite my awareness of the tactic). As I've described elsewhere on this board, this is the essence of abuse. Abuse isn't primarily about screaming at you, hitting you, or demeaning you. It's about manipulating you to give the abuser some self-serving satisfaction(total and unquestioning love and loyalty from you, control, etc.). And it comes not through the administration of slaps or slurs, it comes from the periodic administration of love and affection. That's what keeps you around. And that's what psychologically manipulates you. Not "why does he hit me?", but "how do I make him loving again?" Abused women experience intense attention, affection, sex, and what appears to be love from their abusers, and their life with them becomes an endless cycle of trying to make those moments happen again, enduring unpleasantness in the sure and certain knowledge that he will turn loving again, and in the mistaken belief that her perfect loving behavior is the key to turning the reward from intermittent to continuous.

Back to your post, mizquik. You say you know your spouse is emotionally abusive. Do you really know, now, why you've hung on for decades of marriage and 2 years of separation, despite his coldness and abusive behavior? It's not as simple as just accepting that he's gone. You need counselling yourself to help treat you. You've been the victim of complex psychological warfare for decades. Step one is to understand that your husband is probably incapable of loving you or your children, that he has such profound self-hate that he engages in very specific and cold-hearted strategies to manipulate your behavior and your affections. Step two, though, is to get counselling to help you repair the damage this relationship has done to you, and to help you truly move forward.

You also need to understand how devastating emotional abuse can be on the family dynamic. My own mother, so enraptured with her intermittent reward relationship with my father, was not that interested in us as children, other than as means to obtain my father's affection. Maybe being a "good mother" and raising his children well would earn her a reward. Or maybe not, so why bother? Observing, for decades, a supremely selfish abuser who is incapable of empathy tends to corrupt you, as well, particularly when you believe you love that person and want him/her to be happy. So, your empathy as wife and mother is with your husband the abuser, not with your children. If he is cold, distant, insulting, or violent toward the children, you not only identify more strongly with your emotionally manipulative husband (with whom you have this compelling intermittent reward relationship), you may begin to emulate his lack of empathy for other people. An abuser is incapable of empathy. Even to the extent he apologizes for hurting you, it's not because he genuinely appreciates your feelings or cares about you, it's because he knows he needs to dispense a reward of love and affection to keep you around, that too much abuse or neglect will cause you to leave. You may need to consider whether decades of living with this man has compromised your relationship with your children, as well.

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-14-2005
Fri, 01-14-2005 - 6:48pm

Thank you for your post. I had not considered the intermittent reward concept, although I was a psychology major in college. Just an added note, my current husband is my second. I have been married to him for 5 years.I could never have survived decades of his level of abuse. Two of those years have been in separation. Your remarks have brought clarity to endless questions that always begin with "why".

Many thanks.

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-30-2004
Fri, 01-14-2005 - 11:20pm
I just don't understand why you want to be with someone who emotionally abuses you.
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