Love, Children & Divorce
I sat curled up on the leather couch with a cream blanket dressed in plaid ruffled boxers and an oversized soft gray sweatshirt eating a bag of m&ms... it was a friday night and after a long day of job hunting and house hunting I was exhausted and in need of some downtime. Outside the bank of windows to my left, lightning flashed and thunder rumbled off in the distance announcing a thunderstorm was soon approaching. It was the perfect night to watch a movie and the flat screen flashed at me from across the darkened room. The movie Sleeping With The Enemy played on the screen and watching it reminded me of how often we erroneously believe that love includes hurt.
In the movie Laura Water's played by Julia Roberts is married to a man with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, who not only exhibits OCD, but control and physical abuse toward her. She endures his abuse for three years and slowly makes plans to escape his wrath. During the course of their marriage he abuses her yet professes his love for her.... which is in complete contrast to one another.
Love doesn't include abuse….
and abuse doesn't include love.
and abuse doesn't include love.
Imagine if the story had been slightly different and the couple had had children... if she had fled with her children at some point she would have had to talk with them about why they left... how what they had lived was not healthy. In discussing the unhealthiness of what they had lived and how they had been treated she most certainly would not have followed it with "But... your dad loves you."
That would be wrong.
How can our children realize that what has been done to them, how they were treated or what they have witnessed being done to themselves or to their mother is not right and yet then as adults we then tell them "But your dad loves you"? In telling them that their dad loves them we are also telling them that love includes...
Physical Abuse
Emotional Abuse
Aggression
Sexual Abuse
Abandonment
Insidious Toxicity
Control
Infidelity
This is why I won't ever tell my children...
"Your dad loves you."
I don't want my children to grow up believing that treating someone with disrespect, with control, with arrogance, with a Narcissistic ego, emotional abuse, with betrayal, with toxicity that is so insidious no one unless they've lived it sees him for what he really is... that in all that comes love too.
Because that is a lie.
It couldn't be any further from the truth.
The truth is ~
My children will hear him say "I love you" time and time again to them over the course of many years and yet his actions will not match up. They will see for themselves in not only how they are treated but how he continues to treat me that his actions do not match his words.
And then they will see the contrast.
That those things he does.
Are not a reflection of love.
But instead everything that love isn't.
© gps-gracepowerstrength.blogspot.com ~ 2013
To My Readers:
Thank you for reading,
commenting & sharing!
