I’ve been in a relationship where emotional and verbal abuse was on the menu, and for a long time there was something I was doing that was not helping anybody.
I was doing NOTHING.
I have had both a friend and family member confide in me about similar situations they are in, and as a coach I will not tell them to leave their husbands, nor will I tell them to stay.
But I what I did do was point out their two choices:
1. To stay
2. To leave
I also suggested to both of them that if they choose to stay, they must not assume that things will get better if they continue to do nothing!
What I mean by this, is that if they do nothing, then nothing will change. They will remain in the same situation for as long as they allow it to continue.
Counseling might be what’s needed (even if she goes on her own!), or it might be that he needs to be given an ultimatum (that she is prepared to follow through with) to make him realise just how miserable he is making her by treating her that way.
Only she can decide what is the best action to take, assuming her safety is first and foremost in her mind too – verbally abusive men have been known to move onto physical abuse, so it’s important that safety is a main factor here.
Doing nothing means she will look back in 5 or 10 years time (or even longer!), will have no feelings at all left for the man who has emotionally beaten her down over all those years, and regret that she wasted so much of her life on somebody who wasn’t treating her right.
Do you really want to spend the rest of your life feeling miserable? Do you really want to give up your best years for somebody who doesn’t want you to be the happiest you can be?
Could it be that your husband/boyfriend/partner is feeling so bad about himself right now that he is clueless about how to treat you and make you happy? Many of these men do want you to be happy. They do want to be happy themselves, but they just don’t know how.
By taking some action, you’re giving him the chance to become a better person, you’re giving him a chance to have you around for life. If you do nothing, you are not giving him any chance, because one day you’re going to wake up and realise that you can do better and that you deserve so much better than you’re getting…
By putting up with my ex husband’s treatment over all of those years, I was giving him “permission” to keep treating me that way. I know he loved me and I loved him. But because I did nothing about his treatment, I lost my love for him and he lost me.
You deserve to be treated well and you deserve to be happy. But if you’re in a similar situation, then you’ve got to change it first if you want things to be this way.
Leave a Reply