Art Imitates Low Life

Today’s Day by Day strip got me thinking. You don’t have to click on the link; I installed Chris’s new robo-banner to your left. Mouse over it, and you get the current strip.

The subject is women in abusive relationships. This is a topic that is close to my heart. Abusive relationships are extremely frustrating for people who care about the victims. Not just because the victims suffer, but because abused women invite, prolong, and revive the abuse. Getting a woman to drop an abuser and cut him out of her life completely–which are the only appropriate things to do–is about as easy as getting someone off crack.

Here are some thing women should know.

1. If you have to walk on eggs around your partner, you are in an abusive relationship.

2. If you think it’s your fault when your partner blows up, you are in an abusive relationship.

3. If you feel like you accomplished something when you come to the end of a day during which your partner has not mistreated you–if a day when you are treated with ordinary kindness and respect seems special–you are in an abusive relationship.

4. If you push friends and relatives away because they complain about the way your partner treats you, you are in an abusive relationship, and you are doing exactly what the abuser wants, and before long, he will be your only social contact.

5. Your abusive partner is not going to change, barring divine intervention in response to a sincere religious conversion on the part of the abuser. You can bet your life that won’t happen.

6. The longer you stay with or even communicate with your abusive partner, the harder it will be to get away.

7. When an abuser begs for forgiveness and swears he’ll change, it’s just his way of getting you back into a situation where he can continue abusing you.

8. If you continue to communicate with the abuser, even as a friend, the abusive relationship is still alive, and you are not completely safe. Removing an abuser from your life is like removing a cancer; you have to get it all out.

Here’s another fact. A partner doesn’t have to touch you to be abusive. If you live with someone who runs you down in order to control you, it’s abuse. And women abuse, too.

If you’re with someone who systematically insults your appearance, your intelligence, your accomplishments, your character, or your lovemaking, you’re in an abusive relationship. It may be more subtle than dragging you around by your hair or choking you, but it’s a different way of achieving the same end.

Here’s something else you need to know. If you persist in “trying to make it work,” the people who care about you will eventually leave you alone and let you descend into hell. That’s what people do with addicts…like you. They withdraw until the addicts get so desperate they sincerely try to help themselves.

You can make little changes in a partner. You may be able to make a husband pick up his socks. You may be able to persuade a woman to stop leaving her makeup all over the bathroom. But you can’t make an abusive partner kind and supportive. You may think your relationship is special, and that other people don’t understand, but it isn’t, and they do. You’re the one who doesn’t understand.

If you want to see a great portrait of abuse, rent What’s Love Got to Do With It. It’s a hundred percent accurate. An abuser punishes his wife when he has problems in business. He will punish his wife for anything that resembles criticism. And he will never believe the relationship is over, because as far as he’s concerned, you’re like part of his body. Like property. He’s just like you; he thinks your relationship is special.

I kind of wish Chris would go back to making fun of Nancy Pelosi.