From a new support site (to me!) about Borderline Personality, we find excellent discussions on how BPDers abuse their partners. But the great thing is, this is one of the few sites that understand the Miracle Principle!
verbal abuse, unlike other kinds of abuse, requires a participating partner, a living human being to play the victim role. When you fill that role you're rewarding the verbal abuser's behavior; the longer you keep that up, the stronger the habit will become. Finally, you need to understand that most chronic verbal abusers aren't sadistic monsters whose goal is to cause pain -- instead, they do verbal abuse to satisfy their need for human attention. They cause pain because they've learned that pain will _get_ attention; it's not their purpose. That doesn't excuse what they do, but it's important for it to be understood.
Verbal abuse, unlike any other kind of abuse, cannot be done alone. The verbal abuser's need is to get and hold the victim's attention, along with the emotional reactions that are evidence of the power to do so. That requires the victim's participation and it means that the targets of verbal abuse aren't helpless -- there are things they can do to defend themselves. This isn't "blaming the victim," it's _empowering_ the victim. Second: You can't help alcoholics by giving them drinks, but you can help verbal abusers by giving them attention.
Go to this wonderful site and read FAQ number 5, 6, & 12 to see what I mean.
One of our sites suppoer's (who wants to remain anonymous) has sent in another terrific aritcle--Dr. Cline works with SAs and realtes how they destroy marriages, how secrets kill love and relationships, but best of all, he describes his paln for working with them and saving marriages.
[Editor's note: In this article, Dr. Cline describes strategies that he has found useful in treating sexual addicts, particularly those addicted to pornography, and that might be helpful to other professionals counseling sexual addicts. Others interested in the nature of sexual addiction may also find it informative.]
Dr. Cline writes: A frequent side effect is that their capacity to love is also dramatically reduced (e.g. it results in a marked dissociation of sex from friendship, affection, caring and other normal healthy emotions and traits which help marital relationships). This sexual side becomes, in a sense, dehumanized. Many of them develop also an "alien ego state" (or dark side), whose core is antisocial lust devoid of most values. Raw id, in a sense. In time, the "high" obtained from masturbating to pornography becomes more important than real life relationships.
