Where There is Abuse – There isn’t Love

And so it hit me. Like a cold wet slap in the face – He never loved me. Neither of them ever loved me.

My father, and my ex-husband. Neither of them ever loved me.

After all the years of work and thousands of pounds spent on getting to where I am. I am still making progress and finding new layers that need healing.

I recently had another great leap in my journey. It wasn’t through some expensive therapist, but from a book. Mel Robbins ‘Take Control of your life’

I read and listen to a lot of books, I have found some I connect with and some I don’t. This book is Mel doing 1 to 1 sessions with people and breaking down what steps they need to take next in ‘take aways’ at the end of each session. (I listened to this one on audible which I recommend as the sessions are the person talking and you can hear the pain and anguish or the relief in their voices as they work through things with Mel)

There was one that the take away hit a nerve. It struck me so much that I screen shot the time so I could re-listen to it when I wasn’t multitasking and really take it in.

“Stop justifying the behaviour of people that abuse you – stop calling it love. It is not love.” Mels voice echoed through my head while I finished cooking tea. “Some people are not capable of giving love or being in love”

It was such a wake up call that my mind was flooded with example after example of how I had been treated by my father and then I had married a man who treated me the same. Why – because I was a victim and I used the abusive relationship with my father as an example of love.

He wasn’t physically abusive. He was emotionally and mentally abusive. A narcissist, a broken man incapable of loving me.

I married a man who was the same.

She goes on – “Love is treating people with respect, with dignity and with kindness”. None of these things I ever had from these men.

​We feel that we need to tell our children that their parents love them – but if that is not the truth then they need to know so they can understand what love is.

I needed to know that my father didn’t love me and that he was too broken to love me. At least then I would not have had the questions of ‘What did I do wrong’, ‘why wasn’t I enough’ and ‘how could I have earned his love’.

The pressure of earning their love wouldn’t have been on me. It wasn’t my responsibility to make them love me. I didn’t need to ‘correct’ my behaviour in order to deserve their love. No matter who I tried to be or what I did I was never going to make them love me because they were both incapable of love.

That’s years of guilt and beliefs of ‘I’m not enough’ that could have been spared.

I do not blame them for treating me the way they did, I can forgive them. Because they both had their own traumas, their own wounds that made them who they were. Being too broken to love me wasn’t their fault. True, they chose to be the men they were – and they could have resolved their traumas. But I honestly don’t believe that they realised the impact their actions had on me.

I forgive them both. And I release myself from all the years of believing that I am ‘impossible to love’.

I know I am lovable, because I love me. That means I treat myself with respect, dignity and kindness.

Find strength to love yourself and give yourself these things too – you deserve it.

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