Ever Wonder Why Your Abusive Partner Hates You?

The abusive man hates the woman for continuing to exist outside of him. No matter how hard she may try, in her terror and in her trauma, to disappear inside of him, she simply cannot do it. (And if she gets some support in her life, she may even attempt to refuse to continue trying.) He hates her for this, for still being there, because he was taught that to disappear inside of him is her unlimited obligation and will make him whole.

When you find yourself wondering why the abuser hates you – as most abused women do at one point or another – this is why: because you continue to breathe, because you have skin, because you eat food and then move with the energy of that food, because by getting out of bed and standing up in the morning you have once again demonstrated your failure to become him.

Though he blames his hatred on your characteristics — your supposed failings, that is — these have absolutely nothing to with it. It has only to do with the fact of your continued being. He will only forgive you when he finally succeeds in cleaving you into pieces and vacuuming those pieces into his interior, which he will of course never be able to do.

So I encourage you to stop wondering if it was this thing about you or that thing about you, this thing you said or that thing you did, this thing you set off in him or that thing you brought up in him, which caused him to come to hate you. What’s going on with him has nothing to do with you at all, it’s entirely about him and about his society.

I pray that you find a way to get beyond the reach of his cleaver, beyond the sucking pull of his vacuum hose.