W IS FOR WRONG SONG

Yeah, you really have to watch the video.  I know it might not be your cuppa tea in terms of music style.  However, I also know you can suck it up for a few minutes.  If you don't watch it, the rest of this blog won't make sense.  This one is about Life Lessons.  Actually one of the Most Important things I have written in this entire challenge.  This is not a fluff piece on euchre, umbrellas, movies, a TV show, or even a great book I  read.  So, did you watch it?

Anyone who has ever been in an abusive relationship will actually look back and see a pattern of abuse.  That last abusive relationship is probably just the WORST relationship.  Or maybe just the most recent.  This song will ring like a Battle Cry for every person who has ever survived an abusive relationship.  Until the next time.

Did you get the part about patterns? 

Until you figure out the pattern, you have NO HOPE of stopping the pattern.  Until you understand that you are attracted to abusive personalities, you have no hope of stopping the pattern.  Until you understand what it is about that abusive personality that you are attracted to, you have no hope of changing anything.  You will stick with that person until you scream, "No more."  Then, there will be some Down Time until another Abusive Person steps into your life and the entire Scene rolls again. 

You will never change the Abusive Person.  Obviously.  The person who needs changing here is YOU.  If you are attracted to Abusive People, YOU need to figure out what is going on so that you can break this pattern. 

I knew that after several abusive relationships that I was in a Pattern.  I knew that I had to figure it out.  It wasn't a coincidence that every long-term relationship I'd ever had was Not Good.  There was some sort of emotional or verbal abuse in all of them.  The last boyfriend introduced the" joys" of being with a liar, cheater, and someone who would steal from you (on top of all of the other qualities I had already experienced).  I was already laden with a chronic migraine, so I knew that the stress of that relationship Was Not Helping.  It still took me YEARS to untangle myself from that Nightmare. 

I dated a Pretty Nice Guy after him.  There was zero chemistry there.  It is only now, with my current therapist, that I understand that he was not messed up enough for me.  Had he been a Hot Mess (and I don't mean this in a good way), I would have jumped back in.  He had potential.  He was rather aloof and emotionally not a "sharer."  However, that was not enough to hook me.  I needed someone who needed major rescuing or was constantly in and out.  Meaning he really loved me one day, but was then not into me at all.  You know... someone who could really wreck me emotionally.   This guy was simply pleasant.  My mom liked him a lot.

Now I understand that the dynamics in my family were not good. ::understatement::   My grandfather was a verbal and emotional abuser.  My dad tended to withhold affection from my mom, but never from my brother or I.  My dad's extended family were big believers in divorce and didn't take any junk from anyone.  All of the women just divorced their  husbands if they were liars, cheaters, abusers, or unpleasant people.  My great-grandmother divorced 5 times.  My grandmother divorced 5 times.  My aunt divorced 3 times.  Then she started living with men and kicking them to the curb.  Now, let's swing over to my mom's side of the family where it is a totally different story.  My mom's side of the family was filled with tales of abuse all the way around.  Every woman on my grandma's side was being verbally or physically abused by their husbands, and possibly their grown sons. However, No One Left.  It was a major dichotomy that I couldn't wrap my brain around. 

This is important; my parents each married someone just as screwed up as they were.   (In other words, both of my parents were the products of an abusive/dysfunctional household.)  However, they picked someone from the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of the "crazy."  My dad vehemently didn't believe in divorce and remarriage (after watching his side of the family), but this also caused him to be emotionally withdrawn.  My mother simply didn't want to marry a verbal abuser like her father.  She went to the other end and got someone so far out that he couldn't give her anything.   With these role models,  I involved myself with men like my grandfather, trying to resolve that relationship, or withholders of love, like my dad to mom, every single time.  Or possibly a combo of the two. 

People who are in abusive relationships are almost always trying to fix another relationship with a family member that is Unfixable.  The relationship with my Grandfather: Unfixable.  He passed away a long time ago, but even if he were still living, I could not make him suddenly become not emotionally or verbally abusive.  He was that way his entire life.  The relationship between my mom and dad: Unfixable.  I could not make my father become more emotionally available to my mother.   So, my pattern has been to get involved with people just like my grandfather, and father, to heal things that can never be healed.  It is the hamster on the wheel scenario.  The healthy person figures this out and decides to get off.  The unhealthy person never figures this out and relives this pattern the entirety of their life.

I am now on a quest to get me right.  I will know when I am there.  I will actually be attracted to the Right Guy from the start.  The one with all of the issues will no longer be the one who draws me like a Magnet.  So, I won't have to sing Wrong Song like a Battle Cry every few years into my relationship.  I will start choosing better because I will have taken the time to fix ME.

Rating: Life Lesson(s)

Have you ever been in an abusive relationship?  More than one?  Have you ever stopped to reflect on the pattern?  Has this post made you think about changing you so that you change the kind of person to whom you are attracted?  If you have never been in an abusive relationship, do you know anyone who has, and does this information help you understand abuse at all?