They Don't Care If They Hurt You

The old adage says everybody deserves a second chance.

The idea behind the maxim is a good one. We ought to be people who are patient. We ought to be willing to look beyond the surface of people's behavior, to see what motivated them, to see if perhaps they made a mistake, or in a moment of weakness exercised poor judgment. We should not be eager to write people off the first time they stumble.

All this is good. 

What’s not good is giving others a second chance for the 100th time. People predisposed to be drawn into abusive situations make this mistake. Giving an abuser a second chance, becomes giving the abuser a third chance, a fourth chance, a 100th chance, a 1,000th chance, a millionth chance.

We do this because we think a little time, patience and love from us will change the abuser. 

None of these will change him. 

People who repeatedly hurt us, especially when we have communicated our hurt to them, don’t do so from ignorance or by accident  They know their choices and behavior hurt us that’s why they do what they do. Chronic abusers enjoy the feeling of power they get from watching their partners hurt.

The fact that we have communicated our hurt to them and yet their behavior continues tells us all we need to know. I use the word “communicate” here in the widest sense. I don't mean that we must straight out say to them, “this hurts”, because sometimes it can be dangerous to say that to an abusive person. But in every instance, an abuser knows his target does not want his behavior to continue.

We may communicate through trying to avoid  our abuser. Whether it's through tears, whether it's through anger, whether it is simply through the pained and disgusted expression on our faces, we have told the abuser we want him to stop. He knows his behavior hurts.

Some pain inside him is soothed by hurting others, and so paining us feels good to him. When we are enmeshed with an abusive person, this reality becomes obscured. We have a very hard time believing that the abuser enjoys hurting others because we don't operate that way.

In truth, no number of second chances is will induce him to surrender the pleasure his cruelty gives him because his life is built around it. It is the crutch that props him up as he limps through life. And so, one more chance is not going to change him. Saying things in exactly the right way will not change him. Being forever pleasant and sweet will not change him. Nothing will change him because he does not want to change. His relationships are systems that reward him for his behavior. So long as the rewards keep flowing, he has no incentive to change.

People in active abuse situations must accept that the abuser abuses because he likes it, and that no change on our part is going to cause a change on his part. Those two realities can finally help us see that the relationship is futile. It will only ever result in more damage to us. 

And then, with a right understanding, we can begin to make right choices. In abuse situations, those right choices always involve boundaries, and those boundaries signal that we are changing and change we must because we are the only ones who can.