This is a follow-up on my previous post.

When there has been considerable physical and emotional abuse in a relationship, it is often necessary to come to terms with the cycle of abuse, recognizing it’s an ongoing cycle that doesn’t necessarily end just because the abusive person is in treatment. It takes a great deal of courage to see the truth for what it is and not what we would like it to be.

Here is a case in point. A couple marries. He has a history of ADD, using drugs, and drinking. She is an alcoholic. Both love each other a great deal. However, even before the marriage he has already hit her on the backs of her hands during a rage attack. She copes with this trauma by drinking, crying and reminiscing about past traumatic relationships she’s been in with men.

She’s been sexually abused as a child by her stepfather, as an adult she was raped at gunpoint by a Vietnam vet. She’s been married three times. One of her husbands had a gambling, alcohol, and sex addiction. When she discovered he gambled away all their money and they almost lost their house, she divorced him. She continued drinking to cope, and quickly got into another relationship with a man, also an alcoholic, she met at a bar. She married him because she thought she was in love with him but deep down she realized she needed the security of a man taking care of her and her three sons from the previous marriage. This man beat and kicked her. Fearing for her life and her children’s safety, she divorced him after three months of marriage.

Just a few months after her divorce, she married her fourth husband, a very handsome, articulate man who was a writer/poet, but this is the husband with the ADD history, drug and drinking history. This is the husband who hit her on the back of her hands before they were married.

She managed to stay married to him for fifteen stormy years of threats on her life, on being battered, and of having her children and even her elderly parents physically assaulted by him—but she rationalizes that these things only happen occasionally because he lost control. And each time he lost control, she drank more to deal with her panic of the trauma as well as the panic of being abandoned by him because she loved him so much.

Finally, after him being in jail four times for domestic violence, he entered a community mental health program for treatment. Having been diagnosed with PTSD, ADD, and alcoholism, he was put on several medications. He is also receiving SSI. Meanwhile, she had quit drinking two years ago and attends AA meetings regularly. But her life and finances have taken a big hit. At the age of 65, her only source of income is $600 from social security. He wants her to take him back. He tells her he is a changed man, but she still sees the same patterns in him, although he’s not hitting her any longer. But, of course, they don’t live together, so she doesn’t know how he would be if they actually lived together again. One final thing, he is eleven years younger than she and she sees some of the same patterns in his behavior like going on spending sprees even though he is on SSI and should be taking care of his court and legal fees first, and he still has feelings of grandiosity, thinking he is special and privileged.

Now that she is alcohol-free, she realizes how addicted she is to this man, and how he blames her for many of his problems, accusing her too of abandoning him if she doesn’t take him back.

Is she doing the right thing by not trusting him because of his past behavior? Or should she give him a chance? These are questions that she must face before reconciling with him because another cycle of abuse may get her hurt or killed and land him in jail for a long time. Sometimes love is not enough to patch things up when trauma has been repeated over years. She still feels isolated and fearful because the trauma of her life has left its imprint on her. But she thanks her higher power daily for her sobriety and attempts to deal with these complex issues one day at a time.