The Abuse “Misunderstanding”

He called it a "miscommunication." A "misunderstanding."

And the thing is, I believed it too.

The confusing thing about harmful relationships is that the name "perpetrator" is never the totality of that person.

I'm not talking about the highs and lows between violence and reconciliation—though that cycle is real and jarring. I’m talking about the human nuance when a "mostly decent" person destroys you in spurts.

It’s hard to reconcile: "This is someone who held space while I sobbed" with "This is someone who sewed that release with a new wound"

I loved that he could be insightful, caring, and empathetic.

Yet he also manipulated, used me, and thwarted my informed consent.

Abuse doesn't just happen to women who are unhealed, who lack self-love, or who haven't been doing the inner work.

It also happens to the woman who has been pouring herself into her healing journey.

Because it’s not usually a singular act of violence.

It's the lived normalization of things that don't feel good.
And when her body makes that apparent, the woman on the healing journey takes it as "part of the work."

Bringing the issue to the shared table.
Taking accountability.
Mining for the raw materials of resolution.

All to achieve relationship catharsis without true relationship transmutation.

This next part, I share in response to the way my own story has been discredited:

I am no longer willing to let gracious words undermine the difference between a "misunderstanding"—and a calculated pattern of breach.

Some forms of violation are obvious.
Others are relational, progressive, and compounding.

But they are no less real.

Because sovereignty extends beyond our physical bodies. As my awareness has expanded, so too has my sensitivity to the other ways I can be violated—mentally, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.

When these things are minimized, they become the receiver's responsibility to internalize—and remain muted enough to perpetuate.

Some call it "covert narcissism."
But I’m not calling it anything here.

Because the experience of it is what’s most alive in me right now.

And label or none, before these things have a name, they have stories.