Calling It Love

Real Until It Wasn’t

“People tend to talk about the ‘trauma bond’ as if some abstract entity. In reality, for the victim-survivor it was love. It doesn’t matter how you frame it, it was real to them. We need more people to address this, sit with it, acknowledge it, respect it, and the grief that comes with letting go of what they believed was ‘love’. It takes years and it’s brutal.” — Dr Elizabeth Dalgarno.

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“In reality, for the victim-survivor it was love. It doesn’t matter how you frame it, it was real to them.”

Can I get a “hell yeah” if you relate?

In my mind I absolutely loved him. As far as I could tell, I loved him as much as I’d ever loved anyone— even more than. That sense of love, the love you have for an abuser, feels particularly profound. You sacrifice so much. You forgive so much. It’s a long haul love; a roller coaster love; it’s that end-of-the-earth kind of commitment. Ride or die, as they say; many amongst us have died.

In other contexts, those who sacrifice and forgive like the victim-target-survivor are lauded. For the victim-target-survivor, she is chastised and sneered at. She is not seen for the great love she gave, but for her dupability. There is no sympathy for the ones who wake up and evade; it’s a hard dream to extricate oneself from.

After escaping, I understand better and empathize with those who have left a cult, or found they were adopted late in life, or experienced delusional psychosis. You live in one world— and the foundation flips. I recall reading that the first emotion when you wake up is confusion. Yes. Absolutely. It’s a totally bewildering thing, to discover you’ve been abused. Absolutely strange and bizarre.

Lundy Bancroft said that “the woman doesn’t leave because she doesn’t know she is being abused.” It blew my mind and it was also me. Recalling that you got a bruise on your honeymoon, the left elbow in Italy. Still, yet, you don’t know you are being abused? C’mon now.

Yes, even then I did not know it.

Surely there was some apology there. There must have been calculations done on his behalf, “he’s stressed,” “I should have…,” In photos of the time, in no time I look fine; the next day, or the next, we are caught smiling cheek-to-cheek. Back to normal.

Probably would have been too much of a ricochet for the mind to go for divorce the day after marriage. This is how is works, too. On the big, big days of life, this is where the abuser wrenches the gears. Have a blowout on the day you move in with him; have a blowout just before your family arrives for a visit. These delicate contexts, a moment of increasing intimacy, this is when he’s sure to pin you down and erode you a little more.

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She was duped; she was weak; she knew all along; she had a part in it; she could have gone. See how long she stayed.

You made your bed, lie in it. You married him. You stayed last time.

He doesn’t seem like that. He was family, too.

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You endure, endure a lot, and are ever hopeful that he will come back. That version you loved being with, your closest companion, when he was good and the air was light. He had such a terrific lust for life, that pulled me in; every day an adventure. The suspense and magic and every glance a shared message. A shared silliness that made us children; with no one else and no one since did I have such a way to be. I still see us, chasing one another round, rowdy. Why did that work, then?

My ability to anticipate and discern his anger became a refined instrument. Guarding the watch occupied me now. The list of offenses that would tilt him kept extending.

so many things to never do.

I cannot remember all the reasons I forgave him, but I’m sure there were many.

For all the forgiveness I extended him then, I have none for myself now. Even though I later learned his intentions were malicious—and that he deserved no pardon—I still find myself carrying the burden. As though the harm is my fault. As though, still, I should have known better. His old game, still working its ways through my life: he bears no responsibility, and I remain the guilty one.

How does someone develop those skills? How long did it take him to refine the ability to manipulate, to coerce, to use his hot hammer anger as a weapon?

When must it’ve started? Would he still be in the womb, or sometime in the intervening years? To turn into someone who stalks, harasses, belittles, spits, hits, hunts? This is a sad sport, which I wish I’d never joined. There is no clean exit from it.

Even today yet, he pursues me on. Both in practice and my mind. I find myself waking up and recurringly wondering, as the first thought of the day— will he find me and kill me?

Years ago when I was first circling the realization, speaking to different DV advocates, one of them asked, “Do you think he would ever kill you?” My mind caught on a sharp snag, I was shocked to discover I could not say no.

And that—that—well.

Perhaps I am still in shock. How long can it take to come to terms with the possibility that there is a man, upright and walking around, who might stalk me out and kill me.

The most ludicrous thing of all, and sheer sickness of it, was that I found once I had breath I rushed to his defense, “maybe on accident.”

How in the fuck do you kill someone on accident?