An important answer to this question is, she does not remember that she has the right.
I remember feeling I only had the right to ask for changes. The result was always that I ended up apologizing for having asked. It was excruciating.
The point is that I had forgotten I had the right.
Before getting involved with that person, I expressed some reservations. I fell for an explanation I would have done well to take under advisement only.
Accepting the explanation created the space in which I forgot I had the right.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
this is very good — as a woman i’ve dealt with one form or another of this all my life…even in the work arena…
i have to lower my voice and talk like a man in my technical field, in order to be listened…and wear jeans and tee-shirts
and as i’ve grown older in relationships, i have learned to scream — which i dislike – but it seems the only way to be heard — it’s only after the scream that i am heard…
Been there. I remember when a friend said to him in front of me, “Why are you being so mean to her?” and I realized that I was apologizing to him when he was mean to me. Since that was what I saw in my house growing up, it felt familiar and natural. IBTP.
Thanks, Azg! Joanna, what is IBTP? Apologizing when someone else is mean: yes, because if they are being that mean, they must be in really horrible pain. Maybe, but it doesn’t justify their behavior or make it our fault.
I have actually learned to speak very sharply and trenchantly at work, too. I hate it and I hate being placed in a position to do it, but when people aren’t really professional, it seems to be the only thing that works.
I could go on at length on the “being heard” thing. I do not want just to “be heard,” I can listen to my own self. If I say something to someone else, it is because I also want some form of action, even if that is only serious work toward a clearer analysis of the situation.
In this relationship I talk about in the post, all my struggles for “communication” took place because I had forgotten that I had the right to leave. And it is very interesting in general how people will try to tie others to them by cutting at their dignity.
Anyway I am glad I was in this relationship since I learned from it what emotional abuse was, and I needed to know. But what I put up with still amazes me sometimes, and the person I had become from putting up with it amazes me still more.
IBTP
I blame the patriarchy.
In one of my marriages, we would probably still be married if I had not left. It is as if some husbands will ride it out if their minimum needs are being met, damn if it is a healthy relationship or not. I left when he was at work. I heard through my sister he was mostly pissed because I did not leave the iron and ironing board, thus was inconvenience in having to go buy another one late at night. He could not possibly allow his wife leaving him to interfere with the way his work clothes were to look.
Kitty – “some husbands will ride it out if their minimum needs are being met, damn if it is a healthy relationship or not.” Yes. This is key. And that is hilarious about the iron.
*
Notes almost a year later.
1. The refusal of communication is a form of abuse. It is not a just a “communication problem.”
2. I want to write a post on the common perception that “abused women always go back.” I don’t like the way people talk about abused women as “these women,” as though they were an inferior species.
I also don’t know that they go back, I strongly suspect that they are pushed back. By family, therapists, social conditioning, etc. I think all the criticism of abused women there is, is the way people have of convincing themselves that it is not happening to them and cannot happen to them.
I think all the criticism of abused women there is, is the way people have of convincing themselves that it is not happening to them and cannot happen to them.
..and this is why shamans have particular insight–actually there is no trick to it. They simply notice what is overlooked by others in their attempts to manufacture a false feeling of security for themselves. They are wired into observing the trauma and not overlooking it themselves.
Excellent on shamans. I need to – will – study this more. Did I tell you that it turns out the (shamanistic) blue egg turns out to come from the Chumash people, on whose ancestral land I grew up? !
NO you didn’t.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about shamans and drawing some pretty interesting conclusions.
Isn’t it wild – perhaps I should reconvert to Chumash. I wonder how – I am not a descendant of theirs but of their colonizers. (In this blog, of course, I am already Mayan.)
I was working on the shaman concept in the late 90s and I should go back to it. I am also considering going to see one.
I am not a descendant of theirs but of their colonizers.
Have you ever notice that those who were genuinely oppressed rarely care about whether you belong to the group of colonisers of not, but whether you are of decent character?
It is the oppressors who like to preen and pluck themselves and posture about this issue.
On your first paragraph, yes. But on the second, the Pan-American way is to say: “oh, I could not be participating in any oppressive practices now, because I am at least in part descended from….”