I asked how she responded. "I don't any more. I'm used to it."
Did you catch that? This lovely kind capable woman was called a "fucking idiot" by her husband she's "used to it."
I asked her when that sort of behaviour was ever acceptable. Talking to a child? No, of course not. Talking to an employee? Nope. Talking to a neighbour? A friend? It's absolutely not okay (not even on Twitter!!) to call anyone a "fucking idiot" to their face. It's cruel. It's demeaning. It's dehumanizing.
But...she's used to it.
As anyone on this site (and off it) knows, I'm absolutely a cheerleader for women who want to rebuild their marriages after infidelity. I don't subscribe to "once a cheater, always a cheater". I don't believe that the only response to infidelity is to "lose a cheater, gain a life". In fact, I think our culture's knee-jerk response to infidelity keeps a lot of women unnecessarily silent and feeling trapped. I think we would all benefit from a far more open discussion of infidelity, its ubiquity and the myriad responses to it – all worthy of respect.
However, I never advocate anyone staying in a relationship when there's any kind of abuse. (And yes, I know, some people insist that infidelity is abuse. I'm not one of them.) And though my friend's marriage isn't marked by infidelity, it is rife with verbal abuse.
And yet, she's "used to it."
Part of the problem with abuse, of course, is that is often happens slowly. By the time someone is screaming "fucking idiot" at us, we're silently agreeing. We've likely listened for months if not years as our faults were routinely catalogued: we screw up, we forget things, we get in the way. No matter that every single person on the planet is guilty of the same – we're human, after all – we're treated as annoyances. We're people to be endured, not enjoyed. To be barely tolerated, not valued.
And we begin to gaslight ourselves.
Gaslighting, of course, is when we begin to doubt our own perception. We see it play out almost daily with "Fake News" (things that are true being called untrue) has become the rallying cry of a the extreme members of an entire American political party. When we're told up is down and black is white, we begin to wonder if we're crazy. Many of us experience a level of gaslighting while our partners cheat. If we ask our partners, we're often told that we're imagining things, that we're acting jealous, that we're being insulting by even implying that they might cheat. (And, okay, here's where I would agree that infidelity can be abusive. Gaslighting is abuse.) We begin to wonder if WE are the crazy ones because what we think we see and what we're told we see are two very different things.
But when we begin to gaslight ourselves, to insist that what's happening isn't – can't be! – happening, we're onto a level of self-harm.
And that scares me more.
Because it means we've normalized the lies. We've internalized them. We agree with them.
Which breaks my heart.
My friend is the farthest thing from a "fucking idiot." But she resists the idea that someone screaming that in her face is abuse. Her father had a "temper", which you can bet looked and sounded something like this. Her son's father threw her around. Her husband criticizes her so frequently that she's "used to it."
So I'm asking you: What behaviour are you tolerating that, if you were hiking through the snowy woods with a trusted friend, you'd be afraid to disclose? Maybe it's casual insults. It might be the occasional push. Do you get told you "can't take a joke", that you "don't have a sense of humour" when your husband "teases"? Does he threaten to leave or "give up" when you try to set boundaries? Does he accuse you of what you think he's doing? Does he use divorce as a trump card any time you demand accountability from him?
We can push back against gaslighting. We can take our perceptions and ask trusted friends, "what do you make of this?" We can talk to a therapist who can tell us, clearly, if what we're experiencing is abuse. We can try to imagine the advice we'd give a friend if she confided the same behaviour from her husband.
And we can begin to find the small still voice deep inside that has almost gone silent. We can begin to listen to it. The one that tells us we don't deserve any of this. The one that holds our own divine spark. That knows we're worthy of being loved. That one that would never ever call us a "fucking idiot". Because it's not true.
