Today I want to answer a question that I know you might be asking yourself, which is . . .
“With everything going on in my life – can I really win this war?”
Without knowing your situation, my answer is still, “Yes”.
I say this because winning here means reclaiming your sense of self worth and determination while knowing that even if your partner is operating from ego, you are not.
Reclaiming your spirit
You must remember when I say this that I have no idea what situation you may be in. When considering the extremes, there are people kept in slavery by verbal and physical abuse and/or drug addiction, with no one to help and no way to leave.
Slavery is as big a problem on our planet today as it ever was. When I say a person can win, I am not underestimating the plight of those so oppressed.
Reclaiming our spirit is an individual and internal process.
There is a play which was made into a movie many years ago (with a very strange title) called “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds“.
Without giving away the plot; towards the end the young girl, who is subjected to a horrible family life with her alcoholic mother, declares while talking to herself (and the night sky), “Mama you can’t make me hate the world.”
Most of us dealing with abuse have more hope of righting the power imbalance in our lives than the child of a single alcoholic mother or a physically abused or drug addicted slave. The victory we can hope to achieve will hopefully be brighter and not so basic to our spirit’s survival as the statement above.
But still her statement stands as a guidepost to us all. Because until we can access that same inner determination not to allow an oppressor to crush our spirit, our spirit will always be subject to the uncertainties of fate.
Waking Up
Once I did not believe I could possibly stand up for myself, but once I learned to couldn’t believe how easy it became. Eventually I saw it was me who had kept myself in the role of victim by not rising above my own fears.
I was scared Steve was sleeping with other women and would let this thought torment me.
I would think I needed him to believe in me before I could believe in myself.
I would live to please him and be shattered when my efforts proved to have been fruitless.
I thought I needed him to be trustworthy instead of being able to trust myself.
I am not sure at what point I woke up from this codependent spell – but wake up I did.
Don’t Let their Immaturity bring Out the Child in You
I remember the day I stopped letting my 4 year old son get the better of me. I was all fired up and irrational with anger at something he had done when I finally stopped and asked myself, “Am I really going to let a 4 year old get the better of me like this? Kim what are you doing! You are much smarter and older than him!”
It was this exactly same realisation that I came to with Steve. The part of him that wanted to challenge me and wrestle for his independence, like a teenager might wrestle with his mother, was still acting like a teenager. When he was behaving this way I realised in terms of maturity, he was only about 14.
This helped a lot, because seeing what I was truly up against helped me know that of course I could win! The only trick would be me making sure that no matter how childish he became that I stayed an adult all of the time.
This is embarrassing, but embarrassing or not it needs to be said. You see back when Steve would act like a snotty irresponsible teenager, I would become a big crying BABY in response!
Once I saw this, I decided everything needed to change. When my fears would tell me, “Maybe he is with another woman.” I would say to myself, “Who cares? If he is, she is as low as he is and I am not letting two adult brats drag me down to their level!” In this way I learned ‘magic scissors’ and not giving my power away to my fears and his bad behaviour.
The exercise for bringing your happiness back in part 1 of this series is vital for this. I learned not to push down the hurt and fear and to rise above it instead.
I made a deep and serious commitment to myself that I was not going to let the brat in him keep me from my goals and responsibilities. That what I thought of myself was much more important than what he was doing or what he thought of me.
Your Inner Authority Figure
What also helped was the image I had in my mind of a very cheerful, confident but strong and kind nurse. Can you get a picture in your mind of what she looks like? The type that will not let you get away with saying you don’t want to take your medicine or avoid getting the injection you are scared of. She is very organised and efficient, very good at her job and very authoritative and grown up.
I started becoming this nurse when I needed to take charge.
Because after all, if your spouse is verbally abusive, there will usually be an enormous amount at stake in your life.
– Was I going to let the bratty teenager in him destroy all of our security and peace?
– Was I going to continue letting him tear down my self esteem?
– Was I going to let that part of him hurt our kids lives as well?
No way. I was going to do whatever I must to bring the immature part of him into line!
This is why I am forever suggesting the Super Nanny as a great source of inspiration. I love the techniques she uses but not as much as I love her complete determination. You can see it written all over her face that . . .
- She might get annoyed but she is NOT going to let immaturity get the better of her.
- She is NEVER going to resort to playing the victim; no matter how hopeless it looks; she is in charge and knows full well that her will is stronger and in the end she is going to win.
Whose will is stronger in your situation? You are fighting for your right to live your life in peace and be loved for who you are. But what is your partner fighting for? Their fear of growing up? Their right to be selfish and irresponsible? Their false pride?
And what really is at stake? If it is not worth fighting for; play smart, don’t fight and let your partner decide to leave (there is more on this in Back From The Looking Glass). But if it is worth fighting for . . . you need to decide from the start that you are going to claim the higher ground and you are going to win.
Get a Clear View of the Enemy
I always separated the immature brat in Steve from his true self. I made it clear that the selfish, nasty and arrogant character was not welcome in my life and was my sworn enemy. At the same time I reassured him that if he dropped the act and “got off his high horse” his real (and vulnerable) self was 100% welcome and 100% safe with me.
When times were really bad; like once when I was literally walking the streets in the worst part of town looking for Steve because he had disappeared for 2 days, I would think, “It has been this bad before but we still got through it. I may feel like hell now but this too will pass.” It ended up he was not where I feared he was but had flown home to his parents without telling me.
And it did pass.
Now I have to pack Steve and the kids away on holidays sometimes to get any work done because otherwise I would never get any peace!
In my last article I mentioned playing a figurative game of chess to take down your partner’s false pride. and in regard to this, the next question I will try and answer is one about what false pride looks like.
But first . . .
Verbal Abuse is Not Just Things You Don’t Want to Hear
If someone doesn’t like you and doesn’t want to be with you, this is not abuse or false pride. As much as it hurts, this may simply be the truth about how they feel. Accepting this and letting them talk about it without you trying to convince them to stay or letting your own hurt make you hurtful in response may end up being the start of something rather than the end. They may want to leave, but bracing yourself and letting them talk, without you saying too much, arguing or trying to convince them to change their mind may allow those feelings to change.
That is not always easy to pick however as Steve would tell me he hated me all the time and didn’t want to be with me. Even when deep down I knew he really did. Letting him talk about it as described above would help, but a lot of the time he didn’t want to talk, he just wanted to be allowed to take his anger at life out on me.
Likewise, someone may not like you when you are drunk, on drugs, agitated, anxious or in defense. But still they may like being with you at other times, and this may be something you need to accept. If you are family and forced to spend a lot of time together, you may need to be considerate of their needs and more aware of your own moods and anti social habits.
I used to play a sad and tiring game with Steve where I involved myself in trying to cheer up his bad moods and then would be upset if he did not give my emotions the same amount of time in return.
That was my problem and not his.
Now I let him solve his own problems and do my best to solve mine.
If we need each others help we ask each other and most of the time the only problems we talk to each other about are problems we share.
Okay so back to false pride . . .
False Pride
This usually occurs when a person’s performance is below par or they have behaved badly and are ashamed of themselves but can’t admit it and so blame everyone else (and put everyone else down). This is what was really going on when Steve acted as if he had the right to be angry and pretend he wanted to leave all the time, but didn’t, while also showing no real concern for me or responsibility towards his family.
Does this sound familiar?
This kind of defense is something people can get stuck in for years. They stay in this pattern because they may believe no one will forgive them if they admit they are wrong. Or perhaps they can’t handle how embarrassed they would feel if they admitted they have been proud and hurtful and all of the mistakes they have made.
Some people feel that they will die if they admit they are wrong, and end up destroying their whole lives with false pride because of it.
It can unfortunately be tempting to rub this person’s face in their mistakes to try and make them feel bad, so their apology will really mean something. This doesn’t work and of course will just cause resentment and usually even more blame.
So what can we do about false pride?
Poor Steve, he always gets to be the example here but hey he is a good sport, so let’s break this down . . .
False pride is always built on a lie.
That is why it is so hard to admit to. Because it’s a lie, it’s much bigger than just having made a mistake. Overcoming false pride means admitting we don’t know how to do something we previously pretended we were good at. Or perhaps admitting we are not something we pretended we were.
Coming down off the pedestal of our false pride means admitting vulnerability, and people will not usually do that if they feel threatened or in fear of ridicule.
Steve’s lie was that he was a more capable parent than me. That he was a better cook, was better organised and had better common sense and more friends.
This was not true, but when I let his false pride dominate me, I let those things become true.
I would hide in my room at breakfast time because I couldn’t handle the way he talked to all of us like some kind of overzealous army officer. I stopped cooking, because I was so hurt by him bossing me around in the kitchen and always putting my cooking down.
Then after years of letting this rip me apart and constantly playing the victim, I decided that waiting for him to admit to the lie would never happen.instead I would expose the lies and show myself and my family that he was wrong, whether he admitted it or not.
Instead I exposed it myself while putting zero blame or pressure on him. I did not wait for apologies or try and rub his face in it. Instead I took charge in the areas of our life I knew I was really better at than him.
I said, “We have all become overweight with you cooking, I am taking charge of the shopping and kitchen and I don’t want you in here unless I ask.”
and if he ignored that and tried to tell me what to do I said firmly and just like I would to the children . . .
“Get out of my kitchen. Dinner will be ready soon.”
and
“I can’t handle how you yell at the kids, if you want to be the boss, go do a parenting course but until then I am in charge in the mornings.”
I would then go ahead (with my best impression of the confident, cheerful and capable nurse I had in my mind) and prove I could do it better. Not to him, but to myself 🙂
By exposing the lie in this way a number of very positive things happened for Steve and myself;
a. There was nothing to discuss or fight about because I just did it and refused to let him interfere.
b. He didn’t have to keep up the act of pretending to be good at things he wasn’t.
c. As long as I didn’t look for his praise or approval, my self esteem improved.
So really as I got good at this Steve actually loved it and instead of behaving like a wilful teenager he slowly started becoming a useful and trustworthy adult.
At the same time I also gave him credit for things he was good at and said things like . . .
“You are so talented with numbers, instead of cooking, I want to see you get caught up with our taxes. I will keep the kids away from you and make sure you have enough time. Let’s see how fast you can get it all out of the way?”
Of course it took time for me to find this confidence and sometimes I still fell down (and let him put me down) but in the long run it did pay off immensely. Before I was hurt by Steve’s back-seat-driving while I cooked, but now instead and with total authority I would tell him to get out of the kitchen and go find something useful to do.
Make Sure You Have a Safety Net in Place Before You Begin
But please remember before this could happen I had put some other very solid limits and boundaries in place!
Because whenever you challenge someone’s authority in this way you need to be very careful and really think out your plan of action first. For this I strongly recommend you read our ebooks. Unless you take this step by step and build boundaries and trust, and unless your confidence is real, attempting to take charge too soon can cause some very serious power struggles.
So now start to think about it. What is the lie? In your case it will probably be different. Maybe your partner is not really cut out for the job they do. Or maybe they pretend they are more popular than you, when really that isn’t the truth. What I know for sure is that if they are stuck in false pride, somewhere in their life there is a lie.
Moving on now . . .
- What about your partner punishing you with the silent treatment or sulking?
- Or wanting to keep you up all night talking about your relationship?
- Or saying nothing is wrong, but acting fake and with their heart switched off?
- That chin stuck in the air while they gaze over your head with glazed and arrogant eyes?
Just like false pride, these are all defense styles that people use when they are scared. Being around someone in defense is very unpleasant, but we can learn better ways to deal with this.
Dealing with these other defenses will be the subject of part 3. There is no one magic bullet in the information to come, however, so first really think about working on your confidence, and if it is worth the fight, stop leaving your self esteem in your partner’s hands. Rather than playing the victim isn’t it time you decide to be victorious instead?
Comments (0)