Is that love?

I’m sorry Whitney Houston is dead. It’s sad that someone so talented got swept up in whatever brought her down. Like Billie Holliday, a jazz diva from the 1930s, Houston had it all, and yet could not resist the temptations or handle the stress of success. It is beyond me or anyone else to know what these women endured that led to their downfall; it is enough to know that for them success was not a guarantee of happy ever after.

Christian writer Joyce Meyer, who came from an abusive background, says that women are by nature dependent. We have been brought up to believe that being loved by someone is more important than anything and that once we are loved we will be forever after taken care of. As Meyer points out, that's a dangerous road to go down. Women in abusive relationships stay in them for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is they convince themselves the man who is abusing them actually does love them. They make countless excuses for his behavior. 

“He’s stressed.”

“He’s out of work.”

“I’m too demanding.”

“The kids are too loud.”

“I was nagging.”

I’ve read that some women in abusive relationships feel protective of the very person who is slapping them around or verbally degrading them. Is that love? By their definition, it is. The passion of violence is for some an indication of passion in the bedroom, but on a much more basic level, they are more afraid of the unknown than of the situation in which they are living. For the abuser it is less about love and more about power. Abusers are often men who feel powerless in other areas of their lives and exert it in the only place they can, at home.

Whitney Houston and Billie Holliday both experienced manipulation from men who wanted to have power over them. Did that lead them to find some way to “feel good” even if the end result was self-degradation to the worst degree? What seems apparent is that they became what other people turned them into, robbing them of their talent, their sense of self, and their lives.

It happens every day to ordinary women and no one pays a bit of attention, because these women are not celebrities. Their pain goes unnoticed, or in most cases ignored. Many know it’s there, they recognize the symptoms, yet do nothing. After all, who wants to get in the middle of someone else’s family drama?

There is a television program on the air now called, “What Would You Do?” We watched a segment the other night about what observers would do if they saw a woman in a store being verbally bullied by her son. The participants were actors, but the observers were not. Of the several who watched the uncomfortable scene play out, only two of the observers tried to intervene. One was a mother with a daughter who chided the male actor (who was a tall beefy guy) for treating his mother that way. The other was an older woman who had counseled abused women. She didn’t say much to the “son”; what she did is offer the mother sanctuary.

Safety. It is perhaps the most important first step in helping women break loose from domestic violence.

Healing. Many of these women are physically and emotionally damaged. They get caught up in “feel good” methods of survival: drugs, alcohol or addictive behaviors. They need treatment and counseling.

Hope. There is a tomorrow. Many abused women feel so trapped they don’t know if tomorrow will come or whether they should care if it does.

Opportunity. To start over women who may be marginally skilled or emotionally fragile need training and jobs.

If you or someone you know is caught up in an abusive relationship, in Las Vegas, N.M. call 1- 505-425-1048, or contact the Tri-County Family Justice Center. The national domestic violence hotline number is 1-800-799-7233.