To Abuse Is A Deliberate Behavior

"Emotionally abusive relationships can be equally if not more severely damaging than physically abusive ones.  The dynamics of such relationships are very similar to those of physically abusive relationships.  The aim of the emotional abuser is to keep the victim in a perpetual one-down or disadvantaged position.  The emotional abuser seeks the dominant position and uses tactics of psychological intimidation and manipulation to keep the victim in line."

http://drgeorgesimon.com/drsimonsblogarchives.html

The "Money Shot"

Increasingly the majority of pornographic scenarios conclude with a kind of happy ending called the money shot.  At the moment of ejaculation the male porn actor(s) directs the stream of ejaculant onto the face of the female porn actor.  This got me thinking.  Why the face?  Has it not been enough earlier in the film that this woman's body has been likely disrespected by all manner of body punishing acts, including the most recent practise in mainstream porn called ATM, Ass to Mouth (the penis is inserted into the porn actress' mouth directly after anal insertion).

Why the face?  In film and photographs the face is literally smeared with ejaculant.  The eyes, nose and mouth are dripping with semen.  And of course, she is smiling,  She is paid to smile. She will not work again if she doesn't smile or at least look unfazed.  You can barely make out her expression from under the cover of the money shot.  So, she has no face.  Her face is obscured by the male ejaculant, the liquid embodiment of his manhood his prowess, defiling her very identity.

Wow. So I was thinking what would a woman do to a man that might be comparable? Would she throw a cup of menstral blood on his face?  Would she smear his identity with the dark red output that is the sloughing of her uterine wall?  I suppose there is a category of fringe pornography that includes this, but I'm talking about mainstream pornography.

Why is this money shot so prevalent, so expected a part of the culmination of the pornographic scene?  Why is it is part and parcel with the experience of the orgasm. It is the complete domination of the woman's body and her identity.  She no longer exists.  She is annialated through his domineering self pleasure.

Just a thought.

Killing With Words

Emotional abuse can be just as harmful as other forms of abuse. In fact, it can even be fatal. Severe emotional, mental and/or psychological abuse has been compared to the psychological torture tactics used by various military interrogators on enemy prisoners of war.

The effects of prolonged emotional abuse can have devastating physiological effects on a victim, and will almost always have lasting ill effects on the victim's mind, due to the infliction of multiple psychiatric injuries. In extreme and/or prolonged cases of emotional, mental and psychological abuse, it can eveninduce suicide.

In relationships where physical abuse is absent or minimal, many victims may think that they are not experiencing domestic violence. Unfortunately this is often not true.A lot of victims of domestic violence might never experience physical abuse, but they are not necessarily the lucky ones.

Emotional abuse can be just as harmful and even fatal. Severe emotional, mental and/or psychological abuse has been compared to the psychological torture tactics used in the interrogation of prisoners of war. In some cases, it can induce suicide.

I think that emotional abuse is the core issue in any form of abuse. Most victims would never tolerate from a stranger the abuse that they endure from a family member or significant other. That is the power of the perpetrator.

Personally, I have experienced emotional, physical, mental, sexual, financial and verbal abuse as well as social isolation, and I think that the emotional abuse is much worse than the physical violence. Blood and bruises are tangible things. They are there, you can see them. No-one can deny it. Other people can see them too, people who will support you and give you hope if you let them.

The emotional hold that the perpetrator has over their victim is invisible, both to them and everyone else, and it can be hard to wake up to it because it never happens straight away, they suck you in first and then slowly the mental manipulation creeps in and they change you.

Mental/emotional abuse is never obvious, and the injuries it inflicts can be invisible, both to the victims and to others, and can take much longer to heal than a few fractured bones. Indeed some bury so deep that they never do. Because it is so hard to recognize, emotional abuse is also very easy to deny. Words can be twisted and distorted to justify and excuse, and of course the things that are said to hurt and manipulate you are only said behind closed doors.

It can be hard to remember exactly what was said when your world feels like it is caving in, and the abuser will jump on this uncertainty to highlight your insanity and to once again shift the focus away from his own appalling behavior, which makes one feel unsure about what really happened, compounding one’s confusion and distress, and deterring one from objecting or trying to reason the next time it happens.

I'm sure you can see why many people who have experienced emotional abuse describe it as "crazy making stuff". It most certainly is!

Made Crazy or Suffering Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

In reality, the common description of emotional abuse as "crazy making" is actually quite appropriate. Long term exposure to repeated emotional and mental abuse can result inComplex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is, as the name suggests, a more complex form ofPTSD.

Both disorders are experienced as a result of a psychiatric injury (in layman's terms a type of brain damage), but where PTSD is usually the result of one major psychiatric injury, and can usually be recovered from in a relatively short period of time with the right support, Complex PTSD, is the result of many psychiatric injuries, both minor and major, that are inflicted over a long period of time. The symptoms are also more complex, and so is the treatment, so the name is really quite suitable.

The sad thing about Complex PTSD is that recovery can take on average, 5 years, and can only begin once the victim is removed from the situation that caused it, and given the right support and treatment.

http://safe-at-last.hubpages.com/hub/Signs-of-Domestic-Violence-Emotional-Abuse

Pornography Lies

Here are five things pornography teaches men about women.

by Gene McConnell , Keith Campbell

Lie: Women are less than human. The women in Playboy magazine are called "bunnies," making them cute little animals or "playmates," making them a toy. Porn often refers to women as animals, playthings, or body parts. Some pornography shows only the body and doesn’t show the face at all. The idea that women are real human beings with thoughts and emotions is played down.

Lie: Women are a "sport." Some sports magazines have a swimsuit issue. This suggests that women are just some kind of sport. Porn views sex as a game and in a game: You have to win, conquer or score.

Lie: Women are property. It's common to see pictures of the slick car with the sexy girl draped over it. The unspoken message is, "Buy one, and you get them both." Hard-core porn carries this even further. It displays women like merchandise in a catalogue, exposing them as openly as possible for the customer to look at. It's not surprising that many young men think that if they have spent some money taking a girl out, they have a right to have sex with her. Porn tells us that women can be bought.

Lie: A woman's value depends on the attractiveness of her body. Overweight or less attractive women are ridiculed in porn. They are called dogs, whales, pigs or worse, simply because they don't fit into porn's criteria of the perfect woman. In fact, if someone is attracted to a heavyset woman, porn labels that a fetish, which means sexual obsession or hang-up that isn't "natural." Porn doesn’t care about a woman's mind or personality, only her body.

Lie: Women like rape. "When she says no, she means yes" is a typical porn scenario. Women are shown being raped, fighting and kicking at first, and then starting to like it. Porn eroticizes rape and makes it arousing. Women are shown being tied up, beaten, and humiliated in hundreds of sick ways and finally begging for more. Even while being tortured, the porn actors and actresses have a smile on their face — a look of intense enjoyment. Porn teaches men to enjoy hurting and abusing women for entertainment.

http://www.focusonthefamily.com/marriage/divorce_and_infidelity/pornography_and_virtual_infidelity/pornography_lies.aspx

Porn Hurts Women, so say the partner's of users/Petra Bueskens

One of the most counter-intuitive findings of this research is that heavy porn consumption tends to diminish a couple's sex life – principally by shifting men's sexual focus away from their partners, and into a fantasy world of endless erotic possibilities. Many partners are consequently left feeling sexually and emotionally abandoned and devalued. Arndt dismisses this finding out of hand, but it has been noted by over a dozen studies, especially in relation to the partners of "heavy" users.

Another key finding is that pornography consumption is much more problematic in long-term committed relationships than in casual ones. For example, survey research conducted by Bridges, Bergner, and Hesson-McInnis (2003) found married women to be significantly more distressed by a partner's online pornography consumption than women in dating relationships. Moreover, the distress increased according to the perceived frequency of use. This research, notes Manning, "is significant because it supports the assertion that married women generally are distressed by their husbands' use of sexually explicit materialand that this may threaten the stability of the marital bond." 

The primary concern here shifts from production to consumption or, more properly, the knock-on effects of consumption on the women in relationship with users. If we accept that the overwhelming majority of long-term relationships, and perhaps all marriages, are premised on exclusivity, trust, sexual fidelity, and intimacy, then regular porn use by partnered men - specifically, evaluating, selecting and masturbating over other women - is inherently threatening to couple bonds. When this changes the baseline of expectation for what women (should) look like and do, we are in trouble as a society, not only in our individual relationships. 

Returning to Arndt and her key point that men are turning to porn because their wives wont "put out", we might ask whether men's endemic porn use is not rather a retreat from (and substitute for) real women – a shoring up of masculinity and male sex right - in a context where real women have made significant advances, including with regards their sexual autonomy. Are porn stars - and sex-workers generally - the new wives who must put out and shut-up? We might also ask, since we seem to think it is fine to question women's "low libido", why it is that men want - and in some cases expect - constant sexual access to women?

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13565&page=2

The above text was selected from an article by Petra Bueskens.  For the full text, follow the link

Forgiveness/Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Dr Wangari Maathai/Nobel Peace Prize Lauriate 2004

Thank You Tracy Chapman

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.   _{Viktor E. Frankl}

The Narcissist at Midlife: Decompensation

The following excerpt is from the very informative site,  Web Of Narcissism.  Written by the site's founder, it is a revealing account of the collision of mid life and narcissism.  I was reminded so much of my partner  and his self importance which grew more intractable as he aged.  The notion of ending a marriage after 33 years is worth an explanation.  For me, I came to terms in the last 6 or more years that my husband's character would forever remain juvenile.  He was more than stubborn about maturing, he made a lifelong commitment to never doing it!  I think this essay will help you to understand why it was not possible to "save" my marriage and how his decompensation made it impossible to proceed toward a peaceful loving last third of life.

The Narc at Midlife: Decompensationby CZBZ
What does decompensation mean?
“Worsening psychiatric condition: the deterioration of existing psychological defenses in a patient already exhibiting pathological behavior.”  

Decompensation is a removal of the props (ego defenses) sustaining an inflated self-esteem that was unable to 'compensate' for an injury of some kind. In other words, decompensation occurs when the narcissist’s grandiosity is not validated by reality; their self image is impossible to sustain. At midlife, with all the struggles human beings have, narcissists have feelings of hopelessness, inadequacy, desperation, and confusion. Feelings they cannot tolerate, nor process.  

Midlife taxes narcissistic defenses, challenging aging individuals to mature. People with 'undeveloped narcissistic traits' will suffer, perhaps even  experience a crisis. That doesn't mean they can't grow and develop. Heinz Kohut suggests maturation is a lifelong process developing immature aspects of ourselves. That's the current thinking about a 'normal' person's midlife transition. 

 The midlife narcissist is someone who cannot swallow his pride and as a result, vomits on the person closest to him or her. That would be the partner who for years, supported them through thick-and-thin, becoming increasingly weary of the narcissist’s incessant demands. It’s not that we lack empathy or become indifferent (though some do, it depends on the relationship), we are tired. Maybe there's a furrowed brow setting off the narcissist's crisis---maybe our individuation triggers their fears of abandonment or their envy. I don't know. What I do know is that partners are splattered with traits and behaviors the narcissist cannot claim as his or her own. 

I started writing about narcissism on the Midlilfe Crisis forum back in 2003, after learning about a disorder called NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder). I had hoped my partner would work through his problems losing control, losing status, becoming another ordinary cog in the wheel of life; that he would eventually realize that escaping reality was less enjoyable than embracing it. That he would wake up one morning with a strange woman in his bed and recognize how much he loved and valued his family. That even if his wife was too weird for words, his children needed him. This did not happen. If the midlife narcissist has not shown signs of taking responsibility for behavior that hurts the people who loved and supported him for years, he likely won’t. He’s likely unable to face the destruction he caused, if he even realizes it (or is capable of bearing the truth long enough to see that HE is his biggest problem. Not the role he played in the family, nor the prickly personalities of family members).
It is never easy to tolerate the Walk of Shame when a person makes a mess of their lives. It’s painful processing ‘humiliation’ into ‘humility’ no matter where you are on the narcissistic continuum. If your unstable self-esteem is threatened by your mistakes and errors,  self-deception may appear to be an easier way out. Instead of falling into supine reflection on human weakness, narcissists become  grandiose, other-blaming and arrogant. 

The ability to face disappointment and accept other people's willingness to forgive your mistakes is not something narcissists are capable of doing. Anytime we are forgiven by others, we surrender our power to BE FORGIVEN by  another person holding the power To Forgive. They will or they won't---their forgiveness is not in our control. This is an untenable situation for a narcissist who must maintain the perception of superiority, especially if he or she sees other people as inferiors. Imagine a peon forgiving The King? Instead of appreciating someone's willingness to even consider forgiveness (which may be a long term process), the narcissist projects fault and blame others and thus, exculpating himself from guilt and remorse. What's to forgive? His malicious wife intentionally bought the wrong type of lettuce for gawd's sake what else can a man do but seek comfort from the Ms. Radicchio? 

The midlife crisis with all the accompanying destruction people do to their lives when the Inner Child (or Inner Adolescent) is given free reign to act impulsively, selfishly and without consideration for others, is very hard to resolve. Depending on the degree of narcissism, the person-having-a-midlife-crisis may NOT be able to face themselves after losing ‘face’ in their community. 

It takes a strong foundation of self and self-worth to admit to having harmed people you cared about because you were behaving like an petulant child. Still, people are able to reconcile wounded relationships--both parties willing. My assumption was that everyone would do whatever they must to clean up the messes they made at midlife when our human limitations stick out like sore thumbs and mortality becomes a certainty. I was wrong.