Love Shouldn't Hurt!
Loving behavior doesn't grind you down, keep you off balance, or create feelings of self-hatred. Love doesn't hurt, it feels good. Loving behavior nourishes your emotional well-being. When someone is being loving to you, you feel accepted, cared for, valued, and respected. Genuine love creates feelings of warmth, pleasure, safety, stability, and inner peace.
~By Susan Forward
Excerpt from Toxic Parents: Overcoming their hurtful legacy and reclaiming your life
Remember that Love doesn't hurt.
Love does not leave you bloodied and bruised.
Love doesn't take away your self-esteem.
Love isn't good sex.
Love isn't "I'm sorry, I'll never do it again"
Love isn't living in fear.
Love isn't hearing your children sob in fright.
If you are being abused, you are not being Loved.
Love involves more than just feelings. It is also a way of behaving. When Sandy said, "My parents don't know how to love me," she was saying that they don't know how to behave in loving ways. If you were to ask Sandy's parents, or almost any other toxic parents, if they love their children, most of them would answer emphatically that they do. Yet, sadly, most of their children have always felt unloved. What toxic parents call "love" rarely translates into nourishing, comforting behavior.
Most adult children of toxic parents grow up feeling tremendous confusion about what love means and how it's supposed to feel. Their parents did extremely unloving things to them in the name of love. They came to understand love as something chaotic, dramatic, confusing, and often painful--something they had to give up their own dreams and desires for. Obviously, that's not what love is all about.
Once you understand what love is, you may come to the realization that your parents couldn't or didn't know how to be loving. This is one of the saddest truths you will ever have to accept. But when you clearly define and acknowledge your parents' limitations, and the losses you suffered because of them, you open a door in your life for people who will love you the way you deserve to be loved--the real way.
~By Susan Forward
Toxic Parents
If you are in a violent relationship, and you have children, then consider this;
Every time your mate abuses you, either physically or verbally, you are teaching your children to be either abusers or victims. Children learn how to be adults by watching the adults that are around them. If a child is raised in fear and chaos, then fear and chaos is what they will know best. It is what they will look for in their lives as adults. It is what they will manifest in their lives. If you love your children, if you want them to be successful adults, you will get out, NOW.
"As long as we believe that we have to have the other in our life to be happy, we are really just an addict trying to protect our supply - using another person as our drug of choice. That is not True Love - nor is it Loving."
"As long as we believe that someone else has the power to make us happy then we are setting ourselves up to be victims"
~Codependence / The Dance of Wounded Souls
Links to helpful sites:
Domestic Abuse:
Dr. Irene (about verbal abuse)
Feminist.org (lots of resources)
Incest/Molestation:
Please go HERE
Toxic Parents & Relationships:
Relationship Truths An excellent article!
Trans4mind a checklist
Joy2meU A good article
"Forgive a wife-slammer if you can.
But you don't have to live with him.
Forgive a husband who is abusing your children if you can.
But only after you kick him out of the house.
And if you can't get him out, get help. It's available.
In the meantime, don't let him near the kids, and don't let anyone
tell you that if you forgive him it means you have to stay with him."
-- Lewis B. Smedes The Art of Forgiving
Recommended books:
Ditch That Jerk by Pamela Jayne
Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay by Marcia Kirchenbaum
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