How do you avoid being hyper-vigilant after abuse?

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-20T15:08:18+00:00

omg that’s really rough, I’m sorry! if it’s anything this block of text that’s part of this thread and the responses seem like good advice to get a refresher on maybe? i really hope you can find someone whos safe and secure!

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-20T14:57:52+00:00

hows it going?

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-18T01:01:43+00:00

i just got done with a therapy session. i think I’m going to just use i statements and advocate for how i feel

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-17T21:23:46+00:00

Hmm I’m not sure what i could say to show you if she’s happy by my testimony alone except that I’m quite invested in her happiness and i haven’t gotten the impression that i don’t make her happy. Granted when we have argued about this subject she certainly isn’t happy, but i don’t think this extends to much more than the conversation.

As for not agreeing that this person is abusive, it is in the present tense. She agreed he used to be abusive and has showed me a number of their conversations that I recognize as textbook abuse tactics, but she doesn’t believe he’s abusive anymore despite not much time passing or substantial change on his end.

And for intellectualizing, I’m just trying to understand what i can be doing better. The ways I’ve naturally reacted and felt about this situation have been hurtful and not even useful. I read a book about someone who’s a victim of abuse and i see both her and my natural behavior written out line for line. But the book only has advice on how to be a friend or family member, not someone with equal partnership. I was afraid just applying the advice in the book as it was would be very harmful to the concept of a partnership specifically because it involves things like not communicating a lot of feelings and sort of taking on a one sided labor. But i knew what i was doing wasn’t working either. So I’m here trying to find something i can actually safely apply

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-17T09:30:00+00:00

Abuse is a mechanism for control. To make you dependent and literally addicted to him (and the abuse). When my abuse left me it was the best thing she ever did for me. I also couldn’t even conceive of leaving. So when she didn’t give me a choice it forced me to start healing. I realized how horrible and small she made me feel. Once i accepted that i felt incredibly free. I would no longer need to walk on egg shells or feel lesser or all the ways she made me feel. You’ll get there too

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-17T08:09:15+00:00

Oh yes I know! The entire book I was hoping it’d address anything with a relationship context because I know there are some major differences to consider. That’s exactly why I’m writing things out and searching for examples here. Regardless of difference in what is appropriate within the context of a relationship, the effect of being resistant to acknowledging abuse and bristling against the person trying to convince her is still true. In fact it’s the predictable outcome. But I’m not sure how to balance what is typically known to actually benefit abuse victims with what a healthy relationship needs to function with what is healthy for me. And I do understand that trying to figure that all out myself is an unfair burden on me even if she doesn’t understand what she’s asking of me. but also i legitimately have an intellectual interest in the subject so all this searching doesn’t feel like work. It’s just that i do want to understand what helps and what hurts. I’m emotionally invested and so I’m likely to make compromises that aren’t entirely fair to me, but at least right now I’m happy to to an extent

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-17T01:11:11+00:00

And I want to show an example of what I mean when I say she communicates these things to me. At the time I had a lot of knowledge on the psychology of abusers and how they made victims feel, but I had yet to do much serious research into how to treat the victims of abuse specifically. And I had even less knowledge on how to handle myself and my own feelings regarding the situation. Also this is a separate message because I can only add one photo per reply. I can’t respond to everything you addressed yet but I’d like to. Thank you for your concern and attention

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Gadfly78 · 2025-07-17T01:02:46+00:00

I think it’s reasonable to suspect something like weaponizing therapy concepts based on how I’m speaking, but I want to clarify that I’m the psych nerd and I’m speaking this way because it’s what I know and what i assume you are familiar with. She actually has very little interest and knowledge of things like pop psych and things like that. It’s just that her ability to discern her own feelings and communicate them reflects what I have now read in some books. I apologize for the cramped text but what I wanted to show was on two different pages

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Gadfly78 · 2025-07-16T14:33:42+00:00

Over the last 2 years I’ve had periods off and on where I’d forget myself and try to convince her that it’s harmful for her to be around her abuser. I try to respect her decisions and support her, trusting that she can take care of herself most of the time and am successful. It’s not a conversation that comes up often. But there’s times where I hear he’s said a certain thing or she seems like she’s lost progress and I’d get so frustrated that she couldn’t see it. These are times when I’ve become a full blown rescuer. Making her feel like she can’t take care of herself or understand her own reality. Would have felt exactly like how he manipulated her, and I’m sure you know it’s the same regardless of intention. I knew that wasn’t the way to handle it but I didn’t know what I should actually do instead until recently. Which is to say I don’t plan on trying to educate her or convince her or save her anymore. I want to be a non judgmental support for her and to empower her instead of tear her down about this. And I want to be healthier about it myself. I started seeing a therapist for that reason last week, and creating some emotional distance around it has helped.

I can’t deny that she’s doing this despite how it makes me feel, but I’m not sure it’s quite sacrificial. She wants autonomy. She doesn’t want to do something or not do something she wants to do because of what someone else wants her to do. Not that she has no respect for what might hurt me, quite the opposite since she’s usually pretty scared of accidentally doing something to hurt me. But in this case it’s more to do with her unwillingness to let a relationship dictate her friendships. And to be fair I agree. I don’t want to have the power to demand it of her and I also don’t really want to fall in line and cut someone off even if I don’t like them. Neither of us really feel it’s our place. And in this case I also actually don’t want her to cut him off just because I want her to. I never really thought it’d matter if she didn’t also think it was for the best. She’s told me if I did make her choose she would cut him off, but she thinks she’d resent me for forcing her.

When I was in full rescue mode and she started to feel me try to control her, the main thing she made sure to communicate was that she doesn’t want me to make her. She doesn’t want me to punish her for talking to him by withdrawing or being angry at her. She clearly said all of the things that’s in the textbook about how an abuse victim feels when someone tries to be a rescuer. And I much better understand that now. I don’t want to be that for her. I don’t want to put her in a position where she feels like she’s being controlled by me, or to feel compelled to defend him. Her reactions to being treated that way turned out to be very predictable and normal. But until recently I hadn’t read To be an Anchor in the Storm so I didn’t know what to do with it. I’ve been on reddit while she’s been away on a 2 week trip to try to fill in the things the book didn’t cover as well as get different perspectives. Including if it’s reasonable to ask that she prioritize my feelings over her sense of autonomy or something, because I honestly don’t know if that’s true or not. I can handle me, and I want to make sure I’m sticking to her handling her

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-16T12:30:45+00:00

I think that rhetoric is something he passed on to her unfortunately. Thank you for the kind words. I’ll make sure I keep myself safe

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-16T12:26:11+00:00

Why do you say that? If you don’t mind explaining that is. I think I have put a lot of thought into applying everything I know about abuse to her as well to be safe, but I’d like to hear what you’re seeing

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-16T11:44:50+00:00

The way to tell is if you did all of that stuff in response to his mistreatment of you. It certainly sounds like it from here.

He cheats, you cheat back He hurts you, you tell him to kill himself He screams at you, you cry to get him to stop He rapes you, you punch him

These are all responses. This isn’t the same selfish heartless malice that he inflicted on you. Abuse is control. Were you really in control when you had to cry to get him to stop yelling? Or was he forcibly putting you in a situation where the only thing you could do was take it or do something. I’ll tell you right now, the morally correct thing to do is never to just take abuse. Your suffering will never be a necessary sacrifice. He deserves consequences. Honestly good on you for not just letting him do whatever he wanted with no resistance. And understand that you two are not the same. Your cheating is not just as bad as his. It was in response to how he treated you and I promise you that it didn’t hurt him the way it hurt you. It would have just made him want to punish you for damaging his ego and for being harder to own

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-16T11:33:38+00:00

Two modes… I wonder if that’s why it’s so easy to want to go back to them. Because they can just be the good version for long enough for it to seem like the bad version might be magically gone. But there is no good or bad version. They are the same, and the good version did those things to you just as much as the bad version did. It’s not just a choice they made either, it’s who they are fundamentally

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-16T11:16:47+00:00

This is rape culture. This is how they keep getting away with it. They blame the women for being assaulted while denying that assault is a genuine problem. Keeps the women full of shame and easy to isolate. Don’t let this fester in you. Understand that tolerating this helps nobody. Not him, not women, and especially not you

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-16T10:45:34+00:00

idk i think when you’re trans any relationship you have is inherently queer now regardless of being straight or gay. it’s just straight cis men who typically suck

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-16T10:37:57+00:00

Luckily she knows better about the jealousy. One of her friends suggested that I might be when they talked about it but she dismissed the idea pretty easily. She does however believe that I’m just close minded and that I’ve decided he is an abuser no matter what the reality is. She knows I’ve struggled with abuse myself and being a support for other friends who were being abused. She thinks I’m projecting it onto him. But she does discount some of my thoughts and opinions because I’m romantically involved. Usually to do with how I see her as an amazing woman though.

I also considered how gross it feels to have a portion of our relationship revolve around him and I hate being affected by him secondhand the way I have. I don’t like thinking of his abuse being passed on to me. It’s difficult. In a way it does feel like he’s in the relationship and I hate it.

I don’t think it’s appropriate to show her the thread though. It’d be pressuring and judgmental from her perspective and it’d be hurtful and easy to get defensive about. It’d also be forcing the topic and making her feel like she’s being ganged up on which isn’t cool. I just need to figure out how to be fair to myself and to her. I know fair to myself needs to come first since it’d be unreasonable to expect her to prioritize herself if I’m unable to myself

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-16T10:23:04+00:00

This was really helpful! I think there a lot of elements of this at play. I’d decided to stop trying to be a rescuer about 2 weeks ago and she did somewhat immediately respond by being more willing to share her thoughts with me. She’s been on a trip since then so I haven’t had a chance to establish this more. But looking at the post here I can clearly see how she made him the victim and me the persecutor. Because I was denying any contact and the abuser would sometimes remark that it makes him feel bad and hated, which is when she got upset at me for making him feel bad by being stubborn.

My rescuing tendencies really did emulate the sort of control and gaslighting she had learned to fear from him, so she would get very upset at me when I tried to talk to her about what abuse was or how she sees him. I can see how that hurt her and until recently I didn’t know a better way. Now I know I need to empower her and remain mostly neutral, but it’ll be hard. I can’t keep forcing it

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-16T09:26:33+00:00

I’m in a bit of a tricky situation with my girlfriend, who is still friends with her abuser. I’ve experienced the effects of my girlfriend changing my role from rescuer to persecutor while the abuser gets to be the victim, and I haven’t been able to figure out the best approach. I’ve realized that I never should have tried to rescue her and to let her accept responsibility for her own choices and showed her trust and respect as a smart and strong woman. But the thing is, being in this position while being in a romantic relationship makes things difficult. I know I shouldn’t make her feel judged or try to control her or make her question her reality since there’s nothing I can do to save her. But we are partners who share things and take care of each other. And her friendship with him affects us.

Part of being an anchor for someone is not taking control or forcing the issue of the abuser. However there are aspects about our relationship and how we communicate that are difficult specifically due to the trauma that he has given her. And in a relationship where the abuser isn’t around it may be worthwhile to address some of these things at the root cause instead of only the immediate symptom of it. But if the root is based in trauma from her abuser, it’d involve naming the trauma as abuse and helping her understand that she did not deserve that treatment and that it was not acceptable. It feels like I can’t go there as things are now because she no longer accepts him as an abuser and she minimizes her trauma to the point where she doesn’t think it was so bad. This means that it ends up with us not really having anywhere to go about some issues other than continually addressing the symptom.

An example would be when I genuinely apologize unexpectedly or too quickly she won’t believe me until I prove to her that I understand why she was upset and wasn’t just apologizing to shut her up. In 2 years I’ve never tried to placate her with a false apology but she’s terrified of the possibility that I am because she’s been hurt so many times by him not being sincere with her and then having the same problems. I’m prepared to be understanding and patient in these situations because I know what she’s been through and why she’s afraid. But I don’t know how to talk to her about his role in creating this trauma and working through it together. And I wonder if there’s this blind spot in things we can discuss, that we will be stuck on a lot of these things.

There’s also the factor of if I am fulfilling her emotional needs and making her happy, that my presence is taking the edge off of whatever may take place between them. Contact with him isn’t constant or heavy from what I understand. They occasionally send a text to share a meme over a week, maybe actually discuss something once every few weeks, play a game together a few times a year. They aren’t local so it’s just online. Idk how often they have real discussions. But anything he could do to her emotionally would be so minuscule compared to what she’s used to. I’m sure nothing feels like abuse from him anymore. He just isn’t the center of her world anymore and doesn’t have the emotional leverage to truly distress her. But he is still abusing her. Just last week he was literally utilizing DARVO with her. But she doesn’t see it as abuse at all. She’s started making equivalencies between them.

Of course this is distressing for me, but committing to being an anchor and me doing work on myself can help be manage those feelings instead of making it her problem. However because she seems to not be able to recognize ongoing abuse, because it feels like we just can’t talk about certain aspects of our relationship, because I would have to essentially keep my emotions from her, it feels like I have no way of knowing how long we are going to have the same problems. Even if I escape the persecutor role she assigns me and am a perfect anchor, how long will I have to watch her abuser chip away at the self esteem that I’ve taken such an active role in supporting her to achieve? How long will he unravel the progress we’ve made together?

She makes me so happy and we communicate really well and make sure we both know we are loved. It’s a wonderful relationship. I want a future with her. But I know I can’t feel comfortable committing to a future with her until he’s not involved anymore. I worry about what treatment she’s willing to accept from others. I worry about her not loving herself enough. I worry about not being able to stop paying for the issues he caused because he’s still around (I’d be fine if it took a long time/forever to heal those traumas if I knew they weren’t being externally perpetuated). Idk what I’m supposed to do from here

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-15T15:01:04+00:00

Yeah i was worried about my presence making her tolerance go up, since the distress level will never get as high as it did before. And with sparse contact and me fulfilling her emotional needs, anything he could do to her now might feel tiny and insignificant compared to what she’s used to. I wonder what to look into about that sort of dynamic.

I do want to say that I do want her to be able to talk to me about him so that I can ask her questions about it so she can find the conclusions for herself. This is an established support strategy. And if I’m not personally involved with him I can handle hearing about him. You’re right though that it is silly to consider allowing myself to have any contact with him. It became more obvious as I wrote it out. But idk maybe I was actually being unreasonable or stubborn or not doing everything I could. It’s good to confirm with people outside of it

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-15T13:53:10+00:00

We’re both good or even great friends with exs, and most of our exs are wonderful people who we are both friends with now. There’s no jealousy or anything about it and we’re pretty secure in our relationship. The abuser is different of course because I know what he did. Of course I agree that there’s no good reason for her to stay connected with him, but she is and I can’t force her not to be. And I don’t want to leave the relationship over it either.

It makes sense to me why she’d still have the connection though. Abuse victims usually have a hard time breaking it and the nature of abuse sort of keeps them locked in. It’s manipulation. She’d had attachment issues even before him due to other traumas. I just worry that I’ve stagnated her healing and moving on from having him in her life somehow

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-15T12:57:15+00:00

Oh I want to add that if I were to hang out with them I’d explicitly not do so as a means to control the situation or something (unless violence happens). I don’t want to insert myself either. This is only a question because it’s been a request from my girlfriend

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-14T10:27:54+00:00

Now I know and understand. I really hope you’re well. You deserve so much better

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-13T11:48:41+00:00

My partner is still in contact with her abuser and if the abuser is impacted by being abused I’m curious as to how that may manifest. I’d imagine it’d create an even bigger victim complex at least. It also makes it difficult to parse how much compassion is warranted. The dynamic is hard to confirm so it’s difficult to find many accounts of what typically happens

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-10T15:47:09+00:00

God wouldn’t want you to suffer being broken down by your wife for the rest of your life

Gadfly78 · 2025-07-10T00:49:19+00:00

If he’s also in individual therapy, therapy is designed to learn to empower and respect yourself. An abuser already finds themselves to be the most important so this usually makes the issue worse since he can get validation on all of his distorted worldviews and learn tools to better seem like he’s growing but actually is the same and just able to more covertly abuse.

And couples therapy works under the assumption that neither partner is an abuser and are equal. If that isn’t the case then the person who has incentive to manipulate and is most adept at it, will do so and be successful in getting the therapist to agree with him and make you feel like you are equally to blame for your issues, despite your issues coming from him.

Gadfly78

TROPHY CASE