People wonder: “Why don’t victims report sooner? Why don’t victims just get over it? Why don’t victims take steps to protect their children better from their own abuser?” and on the questions go.
Well, it’s really hard to navigate the world when over and over, your abuser can manage to control the story, and ensure that others side with him and against you.
Even after you think you have left the situation long in the past, the abuser manages to muck about in your life.
The latest trick my abuser has tried is manipulating and turning close relatives against me because he doesn’t like the safe boundaries I’ve established. He has them convinced that he “feels terrible and just has no idea what to do to make things better!”
Yet I gave him clear directions for a path forward–he could get professional counseling, and then contact my husband to set up a time to talk. He’s never once reached out to my husband.
The relatives whose heads he has turned, did not live through the years of abuse, nor experience his treatment of me afterwards. Yet they think they are qualified to make judgements and to side with the abuser.
And, so here I am again–being isolated from those who should be able to be a support, because the abuser has pulled his wicked tricks again.
It is a comfort to know–God is seeing and knows all of this. He isn’t fooled or manipulated into siding with the abuser against the victim.
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[…] about the abuse again. And even if abusers were caught and brought to trial, time and time again, they received support from the community while the victim got little support—or was even excommunicated for reporting the […]