We often hear people complaining that they are the victims of their partners or even the relationship they belong to. "I endured," "I humbled myself," "I swallowed," "I let go," "I did everything to be well," and the list could go on with their tears, despair, and exhaustion.
All of this comes to a head at some point - when the couple is in a crisis. Then things start to fall apart, quarrels become more frequent and more violent, reproaches do not stop and both partners feel assaulted. Each blames the other, intrigues, hypotheses appear, each has its own scenario, which it strongly supports and which is increasingly far from reality. This scenario often refers to an alleged extramarital affair or just repeated flirtations with other people, physical or verbal aggression, or various incidents.
Thus, listening to a couple or just one of its members, a victim and an aggressor are profiled, in the sense that one of the partners presents himself as the victim of the other, of his reactions, of his behavior, etc. "It hurts what I see," "I can't stand it anymore," "He doesn't respect me," "He cheats on me," "He doesn't feel anything for me," the other in his presence or absence.
The aggressor partner tries to apologize, to justify himself, to demolish one by one the scenarios made on his account, but he does not seem to be successful. Listening to her, at one point it seems that the victim is in fact the aggressor, she talks a lot, screams, accuses, wants to be forgiven, her partner fulfills all her wishes, "changes", "does not do "," be as before ". Few of these requests can be detailed, they are repeated as a stereotype and beyond them there seems to be nothing related to the reality of the couple.
To the question: "How was it before?", The victim-partner can only say that "Before it was good, he loved me, now he doesn't love me anymore, he cheats on me, he has changed". The feeling in front of such a couple is powerless, as if there is no solution, as if this quarrel without stopping, with pretexts that always appear, with reproaches and apologies, with requests for forgiveness and scenarios is a way of functioning of the two. That's because, in reality, nothing happened to justify them.
Where does my desires, fears, fantasies, needs end, and where does my partner's reality begin?
What are his desires, pleasures, problems, and where do mine begin?
What is between us and what is outside of our couple?
What drew each of us to the other?
What displeases us in our relationship?
What, in fact, triggered this crisis, beyond external pretexts?
Here are some questions that may be helpful. This is because victimization indefinitely and justifications or accusations can last as long as they take and will only aggravate the suffering. It is important to find out what connects the two and, especially, where this pattern of the victim and the aggressor comes from.
Many times, we discover in their history other relationships that they had and that followed this pattern. At other times, it is an unresolved childish conflict that is updated and relived with intensity and despair in the couple's relationship, so that no solution from reality, arrangement or proposal of the partner is useless.
But what is very difficult is to bring to the surface, consciously, these older sufferings. Otherwise, the endless repetition of an old trauma, but with new partners, will not stop, but will take on forms that are increasingly difficult to bear, both for the partner-victim and for the partner-aggressor.
Replies:
