Just when I think I'm healing along nicely, POW - an insightful Facebook friend raises an important question: Am I engaging in self-blame? Um...yes. Self-blame (and self-punishment) comprise a large portion of the answer to the question "Why do you stay in that abusive relationship?!" But I thought I was beyond self-blame. I can (now) laugh at my ex's nasty comments instead of wonder how I managed to cause him to say them. Isn't that a sign that I no longer blame myself for his behavior?

I can only speak for myself and my experience of leaving my abusive ex-husband. Your results may differ, but I hope my experience gives you a heads up and, in knowing it won't be easy at any point, the courage to continue your course. My ex didn't stalk, didn't beg me to come home, didn't turn on the charm to trick me into returning. He felt I betrayed him. He used my decision to report him to the law and the military as an inexcusable sin. I exposed him (falsely he says). I think that he feels he left me.

Verbal abuse is used to diminish the victim's power. It is used to paralyze the mind and maim the heart, leaving the victim to feel so small and worthless that they become dependent on only the abuser. Only the abuser's opinion matters because s/he holds the key to the victim's happiness and pain. Pleasing the abuser (avoiding pain) is priority number one. But abuse doesn't happen in a vacuum. The victim must feel as if they're doing more than avoiding pain to stay in and make sense of the abusive relationship. The victim must feel a higher purpose is at work to rationalize his or her participation in a relationship that causes them fear and sadness.

Amy, a 17 year old young woman, ran away from her parents' home months ago. From one perspective, the situation could be explained as a defiant teen who doesn't want to obey her parents' rules. From Amy's perspective, the explanation differs.  She understands that she broke a rule (or three!) and expected to be disciplined for that. Amy did not expect to find her disobedience tied to be tied to her parents' marital woes. She didn't expect for a private conversation with her mother to be shared with her father. She did not expect to be blamed for her mother's choice to confide feelings about Amy's father's repeated adultery (Amy suggested Mom leave him). Also, like many other victims of abuse, she did not expect the insults and aggressive anger as her parents worked through their emotions toward her via verbal and mental abuse.

No one can take away your education. I tell that to the cadets where I work all of the time because it is true: I know from my own hard-won education, an ICBS (I Call Bulls*&!) degree, earned via 18 years of mental, emotional and verbal abuse, featuring a well-designed syllabus acted out by my controlling, manipulating, abusive ex. That man was an excellent teacher, but I didn't truly appreciate his lessons until the last years of his course (a.k.a., our marriage). It was a long course. Four times, out of sheer frustration I'm sure, he attempted to physically knock the stupid out of me, but it took that final laying on of hands to make me see the light. I graduated from that abusive experience with the ability to sense abusive bulls*&! from a mile away. Thank you, Ex-Husband, for the education.

Telling the truth is one component of integrity, but integrity has to do with being "whole" and "complete" in what we do, believe, and say. Our behaviors, thoughts, and words must align in order to have integrity. During the course of my abusive marriage, I discovered I'd lost my integrity and that I told a whole truck load of lies to boot. I didn't like myself because I was not saying or doing what I believed to be right. Although I lied to protect myself from abuse, the abuse of my most valued characteristic, my integrity, hurt more deeply than my husband's put-downs and wrongful conclusions.

Before telling you how I became a big fat liar, I'd like to remind all victims of abuse that, to your abuser, it doesn't really matter what you say if s/he's in the mood to abuse. In the later years of my marriage, I chose to only tell the truth and there was no difference in the amount of abuse I underwent. However, having always considered myself an honest person (before realizing how many lies I actually told my husband), my lying had decimated my integrity. I wanted my integrity back.

Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines wrecking as "to reduce to a ruinous state by or as if by violence". The crime of Wrecking in the former Soviet Union is defined as deliberately giving wrong commands for the purpose of disrupting the normal operations of the state. When I heard the term on the radio today, I was struck by the similarity between wrecking and how an abuser seeks to disrupt his/her victim's "normal operations" and how disrupting normal operations evolves into reducing victims "to a ruinous state by or as if by violence".

I am suffering through a bout of codependency. I came to recognize codependency during my abusive marriage but largely forgot about it during the past months because my abuser isn't around to abuse me (as much) since our separation. However, I am discovering that my new abuser is me. I don't have a completely healthy relationship with myself yet - but I will change that. Geesh. Just when I thought I was done with "the hard stuff" codependency returns to bite me in the ankle.

I think there are three broad reasons why people remain in abusive relationships: The victim doesn't realize they're being abused. The victim knows they're being abused, but doesn't want to leave the relationship. The victim knows they're being abused, but isn't ready to leave due to finances, values, fears, or any other reason. I certainly honor each group's position. After all, I've been in each of the three groups at one time or another. This story occurred when I was unsure about leaving and making plans on how to stay married to my abusive husband.