The roadmap to understanding abuse

To keep all post together, I better give you a roadmap on where we are going and how things are connected.
The common denominator is: behavior.

Consequences vs reasons

"The consequences do not disappear just because you have a reason."
/Morre

"I know..." - the two most misused words in language

In an earlier post I talked about the use of a reason to avoid feeling guilt.

In a way reasons are used pro-actively. Try to follow me here, even though I wobble a bit.

You all know the scenario:
- I wish I was a little more fit!
- You should start exercising.
- I know...

What the person actually is saying: I know that I should do that, but I will not.
Why? Well if you ask, he/she will have loads of reasons.

If you continue the discussion after the "I know..." you will likely either find the person gets silent or say something like "I got it!". Hey! Are we not back to the 4 ways of avoiding feeling guilt here? :-)

4 + 1 options to avoid guilt & "Mirror" [Definitions]

Before getting into the discussion about gains and losses I would like to list the options you are using to avoid guilt when confronted with things you done thing against your morals or in any other case your ego is threatened:

1.  Attack (in presence)
2.  Silence (in presence)
3.  Avoid (alone)
4.  Reality warping (in presence or alone) 

Mirror: A person that works as a undistorted mirror that let you see your and other peoples actions in the way they are. Usually a brave friend.

You sit down with a friend for coffee. After some sips of coffee he ask you:
 - How are things with your boyfriend?
Both him and you know he is a douchebag, but you do not want to admit it. Here you can choose option 1 or 2.

How to use number 1: 
-He is kind! He is good! Why don't you get it?
You have to raise your voice and speak louder so that the Mirror feel the cost. Throw as much negative energy as you dare towards him. By that, he is more likely to drop the subject.

(Sadly, this is normally done automatically and the Mirror, know he/she is onto something since your answer will come faster, with a higher pitch and with more energy than normally. Sometimes a question is used like: What do you mean!?, often with a little body twitch.)

Divert the attention toward the Mirror and try to inflict guilt. That is why it is good to use that kind of a  question at the end.

How to use number 2:
-........................
Just put your head down and be quiet. That shows the Mirror that the subject comes with a cost - a cost of the potential loss of friendship. And that leads us to

Number 3:
When you know that you have a Mirror around you, the easiest way to avoid an ego cost - just avoid him or her! The problem might lay in your morals - you think it is wrong to turn your back on a friend so combine number 3 with

Number 4:
Convince yourself that you so much to do that there is no time to meet the Mirror.

Other ways to warp reality are:

Make a fact into something you can argue about.
- Lisa told me you where with her husband yesterday, alone in their house.
- That's her opinion!
This is not really warping reality but a funny way of diverting attention from the real subject.
A lot of times we like to argue about facts.
"I did not know gravity was there!"

Reshape memory
-No, that is not really what we said!

But if everything else fail, you can always, always, always trust the overall champion in how to avoid guilt:

0. Having a reason (winner!)

If you have a reason, the things you did, did not really happen and they will absolutely not have any consequences, right?

If you ask a guy:
-What would make you travel along the downhill slope towards being unfaithful to your wife?
his answer will most likely be
- I cannot see myself doing that!

Why?
Well, he took a look at his morals, the way he perceives himself as a man of good ethical behavior (ethics = actually do things according to your moral) and answer a truthful answer according to his view of being a human being.

But if you ask the same guy after he kissed one of your models -  my god does he have detailed reasons!
-I was drunk! She flirted with me! I missed my wife! I have not had sex for a long time!

"Pink curtain"

"It is not my job to hold some pink little curtains in front of someones eyes."
/Morre

The downhill slope – part I

Welcome aboard Ego Airlines! 

We will be traveling on a downhill slope towards your final destination of Empty Life and our arrival time is scheduled to sooner-than-you-wish. We have plenty of emergency exits and warning signs - all of which you will ignore.  Since all passengers will be unhappy on arrival, we have for you, free of charge, our Pity-Me complaint form that will be handed out shortly. These will help you get attention from friends, especially combine with self-loathing and tears. Please do not take more than 2 or 3 per friend since they will be worn out by too many complaints and your lack of actions. Soon after take-off, drinks will be served - a perfect help to deny reality and responsibility, and still feel good! 

Thank you!

When you are down the pit, locked-up by isolation, brain-washed, full of fear and guilt and a mangled brain not thinking straight, it is tough to make the right decisions and take action. 

The actions to make if you are down the pit are simple: get away for the environment (the guy), interact with good people and wait until you feel the fog disappear in your brain. So the down-in-the-pit part is not that interesting. (Well, it is interesting that most women do not take actions but I leave that for now.)

I am more interested in the beginning and the travel down to the pit.

As being a pilot, one is responsible for other people’s lives – in the airplane and on the ground.  But larger passenger jets of today can take off, fly and land automatically, so why do feel safer with a human being up front?  The answer is: We trust the pilot make good decisions and take action if something goes wrong. 

When shits hit the fan in the cockpit one will notice, but sometimes the problems come in small dozes and starting to add up. Sneaky but deadly! Us pilots get training to recognize this, something we sometime refer to as "The downhill slope".

En route, you notice that one engine have lost some power. Options available: alert ground, turn around, divert to a nearby airport or just go on. You decide to add some power and everything is OK again. Or is it? Later you get an overheat warning from the same engine and you have to shut it down. Things get more hectic now. Options available: Divert to on airport, sadly behind a mountain and you will loose altitude due to the loss of one engine or continue ahead. 

I think you get the picture. In the beginning of the slope you have loads of options, at the end of the slope you can just choose among bad options. 

The same goes for bad relationships. The warning signs are there but can be ignored. You sell out your freedom in small pieces. And I think you know...

One proof can be the fact that an overwhelmingly majority of women who got out from an abusive relationship get into yet another one! That is recycled stupidity! You have to utterly sell out your knowledge and intelligence to follow the same downhill slope again. 

- Captain! The warning sign that was the beginning of the last crash went off again! 

- Let’s continue! I cannot see any reasons it will go bad again.

Why does women choose to ignore warning signs? Or do they choose? Maybe it is instinct? Maybe they add the rational bit afterwords. 

To make the following discussions easier, I will paint out the game field with some definitions, axioms and illustrations. 

We start with a view of actions according to gain and losses, and see what that leads us. 

Abusive men are simple. Abused women lie.

The answer to the question “Why do men hit and abuse women?” is simple: “It works!”. They want to gain control over a woman, and all stories show us that using violence and abuse is a working method. Maybe the good guys should learn from it…

People with lack of empathy are boring. They are predictable and simple, since the lack of feelings keep them on the same place. OK, they use emotions to gain things and abusing a woman is just about that. Gain control and violence works! Hopefully not on all women, but probably on you too, darling! The real danger is to think that you are different and it will not work on you. I hope you do not learn your lesson the hard way…

So for me the abuser’s side of an relationship is boring, while the other side is more intricate: why are so many women draw into a relationship like that and why do they not leave? How does the Downhill Slope look like? What Black Box makes the abuser’s tool work?

But let me first start by killing a holy cow:  It is not hard to leave an abuser! Saying that it is just one of those examples of how we humans lie to ourselves by words. You do not have to study for four years on a university to learn how to pack a bag, open a door and walk out. Becoming a doctor is hard! Understanding quantum mechanics is hard! So do not insult the people that spent years learning sh*t much more complicated than leaving a guy. 

Another one of these lies is: “I can’t just leave him!”, often said in an aggravated voice. 

Darling! Unless you are duct taped to the power plug of his life support machine or his only means of getting food and water, you can leave! There is no one holding a gun to your head stopping you! The can-not-lie is common word lie among us. I simple occasion is while driving: “You cannot drive there!” when turning into a one way street. The correct saying is: “You are not allowed to drive there!” 

The lies above are used to divert guilt. If you “cannot” do a thing, you cannot be blamed for your inactions, right? And if something is “hard”, people will understand why you do not do it, won’t they? So use these “cannot” and “hard” whenever you need a perfect invalid way of avoiding guilt for being stupid. Remaking the reality is one preferred way of avoiding guilt when the reality is a threat to your ego or morals. The other ones are Attack, Avoidance, Having a reason and Silence, but these are for later posts. 

There are risks leaving a violent man. The highest risk of being killed is actually when trying to leave or shortly thereafter. I read in one research that 75% of the women killed by an abuser are during the leaving period. Another sad statistic is 90% are prone to return to the abuser… (Citation needed)

Leaving someone might be a tough decision to make. Some decision are hard to make, but easy to live with. Sadly, when being abused, the female brain many times starts to become buggy. It gets destroyed (I will describe and exemplify this in future posts.), making it harder for the abused t think straight. So they stay. Hey! Wait a second here! Doesn’t this sound a lot like brainwash? Yes! And does this brain wash have some funky effect on women! I will get into that in later posts!

It will be consequences walking out the door, especially if you bring your mutual child with you. But there are consequences staying as well! Just do not lie to yourself by saying “since I do not take any action – I am free of consequences”. 

There might be problems to solve when leaving. Where can you stay? How do I get/save enough money to buy food?

So why is it so hard to talk about risks, brain washing, consequences and problems, when talking with an abuses woman? Well, then she actually have to admit that the risks etc are there, and admitting that will most likely inflict internal pain since she does live up to her own morals and perception of herself. The easy way out is to attack the one talking or just use the lie: I cannot leave! 

A lot of times I am thankful for not having any hair on my head, because the verbal attacks from someone having her perception of herself threatened are intense. Sensitive egos are more dangerous than big egos. You will get more sh*t from the sensitive ones if you, like me, like to talk about how things are for real. 

Why Women and Creeps?

Nothing can kill the words ”Don’t worry!” as effectively as learning she was raped lather that night. She tried to convince me that there were no risks staying in the same house as him, but I guess he had another opinion and had to prove a point when he understood there was someone who cared. 

I have been interested in people on the empathy disorder scale, egoists, narcissists and psychopaths, for a quite some time. When becoming a photographer I noticed these empathy disordered creeps being overrepresented as boyfriends to models compared to any other group of ladies I know. No, it is not that models are more stupid, it is about the social benefits you get by having a beautiful girlfriend. (How empathy disordered people hunt and benefits of the society will be covered later.)

I consider the best pictures are the ones where the subject has dropped most of the mask we all wear. Mask-free pictures are more beautiful, more honest and a lot of times, more sexy. There is so much beauty within – one just has to find it, get it to the surface and capture it. My way of getting through is by asking questions, listen and observe. I am curious! Who are they?  Sometimes, the answers are chillingly honest: 

- Why did you move here?

‑ When my former boyfriend started to kick my pregnant stomach, I fled to my parents living here.

This blog will be about the things I have experienced, heard and understood over the years regarding women and abusive men. It will cover questions like:

Why do abuses women stay? What makes an intelligent woman sell out friends, morals and opportunities for an unintelligent abusive douchebag? What powers do the dark sides have making a newly freed woman go back to beating and enforced prostitution? (She has her own window now. I hope my friend will share his story here.)

Let’s get this puppy started!

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If you have a story to tell and/or thoughts about the subject, please feel free to send me an email to: womenandcreeps@morre.se