Every time I write a post about someone feeling loved by their abuser, I inevitably get comments saying, “But if they abused you, it can't be love.”
And I understand the desire to believe that. If that narrative helps you process what happened to you, that's completely okay. But I do think we can run into problems when we push that narrative onto everyone else.
For one thing, it can make survivors question whether what they experienced was actually abuse.
But they really loved me. If they loved me, it couldn't have been abuse... right?
We tend to talk about abusers in very black-and-white terms. They're evil. They're monsters. They never cared about the people they hurt. And please don't put words in my mouth here. I am not saying abusers are good people, that abuse should be excused, or that they shouldn't face consequences for what they've done.
I'm saying that when we paint abusers as clear-cut villains who couldn't possibly love someone, we can make real-life abuse harder to recognize. Real people are more complicated than that.
Abuse is not an act of love. But I don't believe abusing someone necessarily means a person is incapable of loving them.
An abuser may genuinely believe they love the person they're hurting. They may care about them. They may have good moments with them. None of that makes their behaviour less abusive.
And I think this distinction can matter for people who are engaging in harmful behaviour, too.
Some abusive behaviours are learned. Some people grow up seeing unhealthy or abusive relationship dynamics and repeat them. That does not make the behaviour okay. It doesn't mean the people they hurt have to forgive them, stay with them, or wait around for them to change. Once again, explanation is not excuse. It is still that person's responsibility to recognize their behaviour, take accountability for the harm they've caused, and change it.
But sometimes, “If you loved them, you wouldn't do this” isn't what gets through to someone. They believe they love them. Instead, they may need to hear, “Loving someone doesn't make the way you're treating them okay.”
I have BPD. If you follow my @borderlinereminders blog, you already know that.
Part of what BPD meant for me was that I used to manipulate people. It wasn't malicious. I wasn't sitting there plotting how to control someone. It was a coping mechanism I had developed to reassure myself that people cared about me and weren't going to leave.
And it still wasn't okay.
I had to learn that why I was doing something didn't erase what it was doing to someone else. My intentions mattered for understanding my behaviour, but they didn't erase its impact. I could genuinely love someone and still behave in ways that hurt them. Recognizing that didn't mean accepting that I was secretly an awful person who had never cared about anyone. It meant accepting that loving someone does not automatically mean you're treating them well.
I think we need room for that nuance when we talk about abuse.
You can believe someone loved you and still call what they did abuse. You can believe there were genuine feelings between you and still leave. You can recognize someone's humanity without excusing the harm they caused.
Someone's feelings for you don't make their behaviour okay. Their intentions don't erase their impact. And you don't have to prove that they never loved you in order to acknowledge that they hurt you.
You are allowed to say, “I believe they loved me, and what they did to me was still abuse.”
