Verbal Abuse-- Reality 1 Vs. Realty 2, Abusers & Victims

Amara loaned me her copy of the book, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How To Recognize It & How To Respond by Patricia Evans, and I’m rather impressed. I have the 3rd Edition, but I guess the first addition came out in 1992! So it’s been around a while, and the writer has expanded and clarified over time.

I found the book immensely helpful. Like, incredibly! It opened my eyes to things I’ve missed, and I consider myself pretty well-versed on much of this between my own searches and the therapy I’ve had over the last 7 years.

It also vindicated much of what I told Amara when she was going through so much with dickhead Shaun.

Why are some people abusers, and why are some people so likely to be victims? There are a lot of myths out there…

After much research, it appears that those who abuse live in Domination Reality. This “Reality 1″ group believe that life is all about winning and losing, and they feel too scared of being the loser to withstand “caring and sharing” so they prefer to play “one-upsmanship games” and strike at people they think they can beat — preferably humiliating their target. Domination Reality is about who is up and who is down, so they don’t care about mutual aid and support. The point of everything is to Dominate with Power Over others.

Then there are those who believe in being good to other people. These Mutual Reality or “Reality 2″ types care and want to share…  mutual aid and support is what they strive for– and what most decent people want as a default. The thinking of the Reality 1 types mystifies them. They often and mistakenly think that someone from their Trustful Mutual Reality world can explain things or reach the other types to convince them to be more caring and sharing themselves– but alas! In vain!

Most people who grew up with decent parents and become Supportive Reality or Reality 2 types have high enough self-esteem that they easily rebuff the assholes in Reality 1. This is an important point. They aren’t easily victimized. They are shocked to be attacked in domination games.

However, women who grow up in Reality 1 households where they are abused at least verbally but who have found their way to being decent human beings who choose Reality 2 do NOT possess this self-esteem and are more likely to be drawn into relationships with the Domination Reality types who will NEVER be persuaded to join them in Reality 2. Assholes enjoy having a victim to pick on, so why would they change?

A huge part of this cultural dynamic revolves around Patriarchy and how men are socialized to believe brutality, whether physical or emotional, is justified towards their enemies and towards their living “possessions” like their romantic partners and their children. Women, by contrast, are socialized to “tend and befriend” and use love and forgiveness to bring brutes around to a more civilized way of existing. Both sides are lied to and made miserable by this stupid dynamic, but our society rarely addresses this head on.

There’s no question for me that much of my bashing my head against a brick wall type round-robin discussions and arguments with Gerick asking him to just treat me better make sense in this way. I chose Reality 2 and kept trying to reason with Gerick, who preferred the power of Reality 1, to join me and we’d both be much happier. It’s fucking embarrassing to think about now! You can easily go back prior to September of 2016 and find many, many examples where I wrote about such massively frustrating examples of this dynamic!

Soon, I will write about the types of verbal abuse and compare how my parents and my ex-husband chose to harass and intimidate me.