How To Support A Partner Who Has Been Abused
There are a bajillion articles on what to do and what not to do if you’re in a relationship with someone who has been abused. Many were written by people who have suffered from abuse from the position of a victim. Many were written by psychologists who offer up specific phrases to use or avoid.
In going through these, none of them resonated with me. I was abused. My mother quit physically punishing my sister and me because she couldn’t handle the swelling in her hands and arms around the time I turned 4 or 5. That left it to my father, an alcoholic with an Irish temper. He would snap at the strangest things. He didn’t just leave bruises all over my back – my sister and I sometimes had to sleep on our stomachs for a week after one punishment. He whipped me with a belt if I came home five minutes late, and he once made me eat a bloody sandwich (after I lost a tooth and cut the gum, causing a small river of blood to trickle out). The punishment never seemed to fit the crime.