Verbal Abuse Excuses I Used As Reasons to Stay

The verbal abuse excuses I used as glue to hold my marriage together were lies that kept everyone happy. But one day the verbal abuse excuses revealed themselves as lies (see Verbal Abuse Examples), and I realized that the excuses had twisted my perspective on communication, love and integrity. Soon after that, I left my abusive marriage.

People I'd known for almost two decades turned into critics and judges. They said I didn't try hard enough to keep the marriage alive. They said I didn't know how to love anyone but myself. They said I didn't know the meaning of integrity.

They were wrong.

Still, their comments hurt. After years of accepting abuse, verbal and emotional, mental and sometimes physical, I felt hurt by those people because they were his family members. Today I am grateful for the attack because it helped me solidify some ideas about the verbal abuse excuses I told myself.

I Gave Every Verbal Abuse Excuse Possible To Keep My Marriage

I almost gave my marriage all of me.

Verbal Abuse Excuses Shut Down Communication

First of all, you cannot communicate with an abuser because they are not interested in what you say unless it's what they say. Good communication isn't him telling me (or me telling him) how it is. Good communication forms a relationship. Without good, two-way communication, there is no relationship. In 17+ years, my abusive marriage never reached relationship status.

Examples of Communication Problems

When I lived with my ex, there was nothing I could say or do to stop his abuse. If I said, "Hey, that's abuse," he reacted angrily or like a fool. One foolish action he took to was mimicking me in a high-pitched voice - a grown man sounding like a mouse - saying, "That's verbal abuse! That's verbal abuse! Nee nee nee!" You should have seen the little dance he had to go along with it.

You cannot communicate with an angry person or a fool any more than you can communicate with someone who wants power over you. Talking to him until I was blue in the face did nothing more than make my face a pretty color. But still I persisted, giving the verbal abuse an excuse that I believed communication could be a reality if I just said the right thing at the right time.

I tried communication. I gave him fair warning. He didn't want anything to do with relating to me as a separate individual. If I pretended to be him, we could talk...but there's no relationship when one person must act like the one who wants the power.

Verbal Abuse Excuses Warp Spirituality & The Meaning of Love

I tried positive thinking, but positive thinking drove me deeper into the darkness of abuse. I spent years telling myself

• --"Some people have it worse than me, I should be grateful," and
• --"He hurts inside so if I can help him deal with the pain, he'll treat me better," and
• --"This is God teaching me unconditional love," and even
• --"Judge not, lest ye be judged."

None of those thoughts stopped the abuse, nor did they help me to rise above it or prove that love conquers all. In fact, repeating those ideas worsened my situation because I came to believe that the abusive marriage was a test God meant me to bear.

I felt the purpose for my life was to suffer until there came a time where the suffering would magically end because I'd completed my God-given mission. At that point, I'd understand true love and would see the point of the suffering.

Well, I was wrong about that. That verbal abuse excuse warped God's plan for me. As it turned out, God needed me to do something different before He could help. He'd given me all the signs and I'd ignored or twisted them out of fear to justify staying with a man who controlled me.

In seeking some form of control over myself and my situation, I used God wrongly. I used God as a reason why I should suffer and like the suffering to boot. Last I checked, we have free-will and God loves his children. Would you, as a parent, want your child to suffer under abuse and tyranny? No. You would want them to stand up to it, but ultimately get out from under it. I was wrong to so casually let God take responsibility for my pain.

Verbal Abuse Excuses Twist the Meaning of Integrity

I thought staying with my husband and honoring my marriage vows made me a person of integrity. I'd promised to stay with my husband forever, and that was that; too many marriages failed because the participants lacked loyalty and didn't value their promises. I took my marriage vows very seriously; they were a contract between me, my husband and God.

I forgot that God lets people out of bad contracts (Abraham sacrificing Isaac, for example) when the bad contract becomes painfully evident. But I thought my integrity made me a good person, almost a martyr, and my husband's brainwashing that loyalty was the epitome of love solidified my promise to stay. I ignored this verbal abuse excuse from the beginning. It was the first sign God gave to push me out of the marriage and get me back to being the me God created.

The proof that I'd made a bad relationship contract was in the very vows I swore to uphold: my husband had promised to love, honor, and cherish me too, but he broke the contract between himself, me, and God within weeks of our marriage. He did not respond to my pleas to be nice to me, let alone his promise love honor and cherish me. When the marriage contract is broken, it's broken. It doesn't matter who broke it first and it doesn't matter if the one who broke it agrees they broke it or not.

True integrity would have come in acknowledging I'd made a mistake, taken God up on one of His many chances to get out of the marriage, and remained myself, the person God created me to be. Instead, my integrity turned me into a puppet for my husband to command, and that is not integrity at all.

The Truth of Me and My Verbal Abuse Excuses

I am strong, competent, loyal, forgiving, and understanding of unconditional love (just like most abuse victims). But I was too proud to acknowledge my mistakes. I twisted what God wanted for me (to be the person He'd created) into martyrdom. I ended up living in that soul-killing, energy-sucking abusive marriage for almost 18 years because I believed the lies I told myself instead of listening for truth.

Now that I am out, I feel that my God-given light shines brighter. I understand that God did not want me to become stronger in my ability to withstand emotional pain. He wanted me out of the broken contract so I could be who He made me to be instead of what my husband wanted to make me into.

I learned there is nothing I can do to control another person's behavior. Nothing I endured in martyrdom, nothing I told myself, could change my ex-husband into my image of a good husband. In trying to change him, I allowed myself to be negatively changed by my abusive marriage.

I won't try to change another person so long as I live, and I won't allow them to make me into their version of good either.

You can also find Kellie Jo Holly on her website, Google+, Facebook and Twitter.

*Both women and men could be abusers or victims, so please do not take my pronoun choices or my experience as an implication that one gender abuses and the other is victimized.