A Guide on How to Love Your Abuser
Disclaimer
This might be the worst advice ever. It’s so subjective.
Abuse is different for everyone — dependent on the type, the duration, the context.
This is from my experience.
It takes: resilience, perseverance, and divine willingness to please God.
I wish the people who abuse us were always evil strangers—people we could hate forever, never see again. Burn any memory of them from our brains. Scrape them clean from our hearts.
But more often than not, your abuser is someone close to you. A family member. Someone you can’t cut off. Someone you don’t want to cut off.
I used to believe love for your family is in your genes. It’s inherent. That’s why so many people continue to love their abusive kin, despite it all.
But it’s not in our genes. It’s not in their hands.
It’s not inherent.
It’s a choice we make continuously. We reach these junctions where we must decide: choose yourself or your loved ones.
Kinship is a holy value we strive to uphold.
If God, the Almighty, forgives the most gruesome sins… if God continues to save us no matter how many times we disobey… if God continues to bless us even when we routinely abuse His blessings—
Then who are we not to?
Who are we to give up on our loved ones so easily?
The journey sucks.
You choose to willingly go to the ends of the earth to gain an inch of their love and acceptance, chasing it feverishly through the chapters of their lives.
It doesn’t matter how long it takes, how crushing the attempts are. The overwhelming losses. How many people you let go of along the way.
The people who love you can’t understand.
They urge you to raise your white flag.
To give up on them.
You tried your absolute best for so long.
It’s time to surrender. It’s time to move on.
Everyone else is impacted by your choice to continue pursuing a relationship with someone who hurts you which in turn hurts them. Don’t they matter too?
That makes sense. Letting go is the only logical step.
But you can’t.
If you die trying, you will not stop.
You really, really, really can’t.
You question if you even want to.
But even in the times it gets so bad—your hurt is scorching—you blame yourself for enabling the abuse, for sacrificing yourself to the punishment. Masochist, you call yourself.
But even in those moments when you want to never see them again,
You can’t.
A mix of guilt and love shackles you.
Isn’t that unconditional love?
To love someone without any conditions?
So how do you love someone who abuses you?
Question if they’re capable of not abusing you. Most of the time, they aren’t. Their treatment of you is a reflection of how ill they are. How much hurt they feel. Empathize.
Look deep and wide for the remnants of who they once were. The goodness in them. You will find it. No one is 100% bad.
Step away and recharge every time it gets rough. It’s a break—a battle rest. You’ll go back in once you recover. Know when to surrender a battle, and when to fight. We’re aiming to win the war.
Understand that loving them does not take away from you. Your reservoir of love expands when you give it.
Dissociate. Dissociate from the negative sides of them, from the lashings, from their sharp tongues. It has nothing to do with you. It’s an act of masochism. It’s a projection.
Find the humor in it. Try to look for the loopholes you can turn into a giggle.
Build a community with others who are in your exact position. There are so many. Surround yourself with people who value kinship as much as you do.
Believe, wholeheartedly, that things will get better. Happy endings are real. People change. All you need is perseverance.
Nothing you do goes unseen.
The moments no one sees.
The tears you hide in your eyes.
The rage you swallow, burying deep so you don’t fuel the fights—but it brews endlessly, wearing you down.
The wetness of your pillow.
The confusion that scorches your mind, leaving little fires everywhere, burning endlessly.
The patches of wounds you hide.
God sees it all.Finally, and most importantly: Keep your eye on the prize—God’s Acceptance.
This life we’re living is fleeting.
It’s our vessel to the ever after.
You’re building and securing that life for yourself, not this one.
That’s my devastatingly honest, unpopular, divine truth.
