You're Not Stuck
From rom-com author to women empowerment advocate, Kat Addams guides women on the enlightened path to becoming unstuck. As a domestic abuse survivor, she tackles the nitty-gritty of what it takes to liberate yourself and embark on a journey to freedom from miserable situations. Kat’s no bull-shit approach to self-transformation includes shameless insights, progressive practices, and spiritual growth with a heavy dose of humor and f-bombs. If you’re looking for a sign to leave, this is it. You’re not stuck. Join the journey and start taking charge of your life by listening now. New episodes drop every Monday to start your week off strong. Also, Mondays suck. Kat's here to make it better.
You're Not Stuck
Understanding His Toxic Behavior: Part 4
Ready for more hard truth bombs? Today, we're continuing to discuss the realities of why your toxic partner treats you like crap. If you're looking for red flags, and a better understanding of why you feel so confused on the rollercoaster you call a relationship, here's your sign.
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It's time to wake up witches. I'm your host, cat Adams, and I'm here to remind you that, no matter where you're at in life, you're not stuck. And we're back and it is a beautiful sunny day outside and it's gonna be like 72 degrees and it's already 11 o'clock in the morning because I've been lazy, is a lazy Sunday and I'm like Just enjoying it. So I'm gonna get started here and cut out the riffraff, because nothing new to report, nothing new, just it's a beautiful day and I am going to go enjoy it and I hope you do too. But first you have to Listen in and educate yourself, because we're continuing on with the series from it's like a book study series from Matt Lundy's book called why does he do that inside the minds of angry and controlling men and no, I hate talking about abusive men. I much prefer talking about victims of abuse and surviving it and and offering them the knowledge I have and the support and the empowerment, because I never want my work to be about the abusers, because they already make everything about them anyways. But I do think it's important to know, if you're in a toxic relationship, what's going on so you can realize like, yeah, there's no hope there. I just have to move on and get out, which is true and I know a lot of people are like don't want to hear that, but it is what it is. So, yeah, my podcast and my books and my work love to focus it on Women, empowerment, the woo-woo juju, the full moon, living within the seasons, at y'all. I love that stuff so much.
Speaker 1:Actually, yeah, I do have something to report. I went and got a, a. I got some magic Woo-woo juju stuff yesterday and I don't know what's going on with me, but I saw a painting of a peacock a Few months ago when I was redoing my office and I was like this just looks like it belongs in my office and my office is burgundy, but I just had to have it and so I got that. And then I was at home goods and I saw, oh my gosh, there's like this peacock table. It's just like a mini side table. It matches the painting. I gotta get that.
Speaker 1:I Don't know anything about peacocks. They just been calling to me lately and you know, usually I'm all about like zebra stripes still am, but the peacocks have been calling to me. So we went to a Magic shop yesterday when we had our little. It's just like explore Memphis and eat all the foods tour. And they had like this fan, like one of those like feather fans that you use to like spread sage. Like when you're burning sage, just mud your house and stuff and just like spread it around or whatever. I don't know, but they have like a. They had one is it's like a bunch of feathers put together and it's peacock feathers and it's got like crystals on it and all within the peacock colors and I'm like, well, gonna get that. So I got that. And then I got some also. I got some like chime candles and Stuff because I'm trying to get back to the Sorry if that got loud I'm moving around here.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to get back to a more balanced Spiritual place because I've not. I have not been in that place and quite some time and I miss it. I miss. I need like a line my chakras or something, get some Reiki. I don't know, but I've been Not as in tune with that side of me as I want to be and I know it's because work, like it's because I have to wear a Different hat these days and I have trouble separating that hat from the hat I want to wear, you know, and the stuff I want to do, and it's kind of got me upset. You know, like I was telling my husband if I could do anything, anything, anything, anything, anything.
Speaker 1:It'd be writing again, and not even like nonfiction writing, although I love that. But I'm kind of like it's what I'm doing on this podcast, right, the nonfiction empowerment stuff, but like the writing where I get to create characters, make them fall in love or, you know, have them go through some tragedy. I like it, that's me. I'm a writer. I miss it. I haven't done it in forever because I just got too much shit going on. And he's like, why are you still doing the podcast every week? Why can't you just some weekends you spend writing and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, yeah, I need to do that, I need to force myself to do it. I really do because I've been putting it off. But anyways, all that to say, you know I've said it before, maybe I'm going to move to an every two weeks thing.
Speaker 1:I just haven't made that leap yet. Maybe some of this woo juju stuff can give me clarity and I really want to get back into just being in my feels and being more grounded. I haven't been meditating. I don't know that sounds like oh my gosh, so millennial, but you know what it's freaking life changing. If you can get into a meditation schedule and like do that every day, oh my gosh, it's life changing. But I've been too busy to meditate and I know that sounds ridiculous because there's some quote out there who's like I don't know if it's gone to your someone's like if you're too busy to do a five minute meditation, then you need to be doing like five, five minute meditation Basically and I feel it. But yeah, I guess that was a little bit of an update, but I'm not going to bore you any longer with where I'm at. I want to talk to you about abusive jerks Now.
Speaker 1:When I talk about toxic partners, they come in a wide variety of scales. They can be like just a jerk who likes to take jobs at you every now and then as in kind of cut you down or make you feel stupid and make him feel like he's. He thinks he's superior. You know, in your inferior, or you know we'll just take a shot at your family, or just something to make you feel bad. To the more dangerous toxic partners who will literally take a job at you with like a knife. So there is a wide, wide, wide variety of abusive behavior and I don't want people to tune this out who think, oh my gosh, well, my man's not hitting me, I'm not getting black eyes, so I'm not going to listen.
Speaker 1:Look, I know so many married couples who are miserable and they don't want to admit that most of their misery is coming from their husband being abusive in a way that they don't want to admit is abusive. Right, it's more like emotional, it's more quiet, it's more like those silent or not so silent. But the smaller jabs, the everyday jabs, it's the controlling things they do that you might not think are controlling, because maybe you've, you know, lived this way your whole life, like maybe it's religious abuse and you've grown up your whole life in the church and you know you have no idea that that's not normal for him to say, you know you can't wear a skirt or something. I know that's an extreme example, but I'm just trying to say I know plenty of women who think they're in, like I'm not going to say, happy marriage, they're in a miserable marriage, but they don't understand, like, what their husband's doing is abusive and some of the stuff they do is pretty abusive too.
Speaker 1:There's a wide range in when we talk about toxic behavior and abusiveness, and that's why I tend to say toxicity and toxic behavior instead of abusiveness. I don't want to scare people off who are like, yeah, well, I'm not being hit. You know, there's no domestic violence. Which is because there's not domestic violence doesn't mean there's not domestic abuse, and I think that's a lot more prevalent than domestic violence, because that is a hard number to measure how many people are being emotionally abused and so we don't have accurate numbers on that. But the statistics I saw last time was guessing is like oh, or 50% of relationships, which is scary, and it works both ways. But yeah, so let's continue where we left off last time, and we were talking about the realities of his controlling behavior, because remember, when we went through the mystery, we were through the mist and then the last one, we're going through reality since a long chapter. So I'm having to break it up. Let's continue on the reality.
Speaker 1:Number four in your relationship, if you're with an abuser, is hard truth. Here he disrespects his partner and considers himself superior to her. All right, so this is what Matt says about that. The abuser tends to see his partner as less intelligent, less competent, less logical and even less sensitive than he is. He will tell me, for example, that she isn't the compassionate person he is. He often has difficulty conceiving her as a human being.
Speaker 1:This tendency in abusers is known as objectification or depersonalization. Most abusers verbally attack their partners in degrading, revolting ways. They reach for the words that they know are most disturbing to women, such as bitch, whore and kind, often preceded by the word fact. These words assault her humanity, reducing her to an animal, a nonliving object or a degraded sexual body part. The partners in my clients tell me that these disgusting words carry a force and an ugliness that feel like violence, though that through these carefully chosen epithets I hate that word, I don't know how to pronounce it and my clients sometimes admit that their abusers make them feel both debased and unsafe.
Speaker 1:Abuse is a critical reason why an abuser tends to get worse over time. Listen in here, because this is super important. Okay, this is exactly what I was talking about there as a scale. So he may start with the name calling, but it gets worse. It always gets worse. So I'm going to repeat that sentence and move on.
Speaker 1:Objectification is a critical reason why an abuser tends to get worse over time as his conscious, as his conscience, adapts to one level of cruelty or violence, he builds to the next. By depersonalizing his partner, the abuser protects himself from the natural human emotions of guilt and empathy so that he can sleep at night with a clear conscience. He distanced himself so far from her humanity that her feelings no longer count or simply cease to exist. These walls tend to grow over time, so that after a few years in a relationship, my clients can reach a point where they feel no more guilt over degrading or threatening their partners than you or I would feel after angrily kicking a stone in the driveway. And that's how it all starts. And that's why I don't want to scare anyone away when I'm talking about domestic abuse and you're like oh well, he doesn't abuse me, he doesn't hit me, but he will, or he will build up. He will build up in his head the justification that he can because he feels superior to you. And this is like hard truth, right? This isn't the myth. We're not talking about this anymore. This is reality of how they think. Abuse and respect are diametric opposites. You do not respect someone whom you abuse and you do not abuse someone whom you respect. So if you are experiencing this, he doesn't respect you, and my job and my hope is for you to learn how to respect yourself so you can say bye bitch and live a much happier life on what I like to call the other side.
Speaker 1:Moving on to the next reality is a little bit of a hot topic for me, coming from the romance industry book romance industry, right. The author Romcom, writer here. I have talked about this on Blue in the Face. One of the reasons why I stepped back from romance was it was making me feel icky because it was glorifying abuse and I got so much hate for that and I still do. But I don't give two shits because it's the truth. I'm not going to glorify abuse and say, oh well, you know, it's okay because in the end the dude changes and he loves her or he's just mean to everybody but her because he's possessive and that's sexy. It's not sexy, there's nothing sexy about it. There's nothing in reality about it because we know the majority of these men do not change. So I think it's selling women a lie and it's really doing a disservice for women, especially the teenage girls who are picking up these books and learning from them. So that's my soapbox. But let me tell you Matt's soapbox on this.
Speaker 1:All right Reality, number five he confuses love and abuse. All right here, comments my clients commonly make to me. The reason I abuse her is because I have such strong feelings for her. You hurt the ones you love the most. No one can get me as upset as she can. Yeah, I told her she'd be, she'd be, she'd better not ever try to leave me. You have no idea how much I love this girl. I was sick of watching her running her life. I care too much to sit back and do nothing about it.
Speaker 1:An abusive man often tries to convince his partner that his mistreatment of her is proof of how deeply he cares. But the reality is that abuse is the opposite of love. Hello Romance writers, the more a man abuses you, the more he is demonstrating that he cares only about himself. He may feel a powerful desire to receive your love and caretaking, but he only wants to give love when it's convenient. So is he lying when he says he loves you? No, usually not. Most of my clients do feel a powerful sensation inside that they call love. For many of them, it's the only kind of feeling toward a female partner that they have ever had, so they have no way of knowing that it isn't love. When abusive man feels the powerful stirring inside that other people call love, he is possibly largely feeling one, the desire to have you devote your life to keeping him happy, with no outside interference. Two, the desire to have sexual access. Three, the desire to impress others by having you be his partner. And four, the desire to possess and control you, and we're going to talk more about that in a little bit. These desires are important aspects of what romantic love means to him. He may well be capable of feeling genuine love for you, but first he will have to dramatically reorient his outlook in order to separate abusiveness and possessive desires from true caring and become able to really see you.
Speaker 1:The confusion of love with abuse is what allows abusers who kill their partners to make the absurd claim that they were driven by the depths of their love feelings, their loving feelings and we've heard that before right, an active passion. Out of an active passion he killed her. Bull shit. The news media regrettably often accepts the aggressor's view of these acts, describing them as crimes of passion. I should write a book like this. But what more could. But what could more thoroughly prove that a man did not love his partner? If a mother were to kill one of her children, would we ever accept the claim that she did it because she was overwhelmed by how much she cared? Not for an instant bitch. Nor should we. Genuine love means respecting the humanity of the other person, wanting what is best for him or her and supporting the other person's self-esteem and independence. This kind of love is incompatible with abuse and coercion.
Speaker 1:Moving on to reality, number six, as he is manipulative and Matt says, few abusive men rely entirely on verbal abuse or intimidation to control their partners. Being a nonstop bully is too much work and it makes the man look bad. If he is abusive all the time, his partner starts to recognize that she's being abused and that man may feel too guilty about his behavior. The abuser therefore tends to switch frequently to manipulating his partner to get what he wants. He may also sometimes use these tactics to just just to get her upset or confused. Remember the mystery.
Speaker 1:There are some signs of manipulation by abusers that you can watch for, one changing his moods abruptly and frequently so that you find it difficult to tell who he is or how he feels keeping you constantly off balance. His feelings toward you are especially changeable. Two denying the obvious about what he is doing or feeling. He'll speak to you with his voice trembling with anger, or he'll blame a difficulty on you, or he'll suck for two hours and then deny it to your face. You know what he did, and so does he, but he refuses to admit it, which can drive you crazy with frustration. Then he may call you irrational for getting so upset by his denial. Man that sounds so true. I've been there and done that. Three convincing you that what he wants you to do is what is best for you. This way, the abuser can make his selfishness look like generosity, which is a neat trick. A long time may pass before you realize what his real motives were. And then the next one is getting you to feel sorry for him, so that you will be reluctant to push forward with your complaints about what he does.
Speaker 1:Getting you to blame yourself or blame other people for what he does, using confusion tactics and arguments, lying or misleading you about his actions, his desires or his reasons for doing certain things, and getting you and other people you care about turned against each other. He does this by betraying confidences, being rude to your friends, telling people lies about you, what you supposedly said about them, charming your friends and then telling them bad things about you and many other divisive tactics. In some ways manipulation is worse than overt abuse, especially when the two are mixed together. When a woman gets caught a bitch or gets shoved or slapped, she at least knows what her partner did to her. But after a manipulative interaction she may have little idea of what went wrong. She just knows that she feels terrible or crazy and that somehow it seems to be her own fault. And I'm going back here to what I was saying at the beginning. I don't want to turn people off by talking about like the violent. You know the violent aspect of like. Oh well, my husband doesn't shove me against the law, so I'm okay. But he might be doing these things and it's still just as bad, if not worse. Hey, yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:Reality number seven is he strives to have a good public image. Oh boy, I've got some stories here. There's a question here. It says how come everyone else thinks he's wonderful? So most abusive men put on a charming face for their communities? Oh my gosh, my dog's talking. I ain't in it. Y'all is beautiful outside and I'm trying to get out there. So you're going to have to listen to Bailey give her opinion on this. So let's start again.
Speaker 1:Most abusive men put on a charming face for their communities, creating a sharp split between their public image and their private treatment of women and children. He may be enraged at home, but calm and smiling outside. Selfish and self centered with you, but generous and supportive with others. Domineering at home but willing to negotiate and compromise outside. Highly negative about females while on his own turf, but a vocal supporter of equality when anyone else is listening. Ooh, I know a lot of those assaults have toward his partner. Children, but nonviolent and non threatening with everyone else. Entitled at home, but critical of other men who disrespect or assault women. The pain of this contrast can eat away at women.
Speaker 1:In the morning Her partner cuts her to the quick by calling her brainless fat cow, but a few hours later she sees him laughing with the people next door and helping them fix their car. Later the neighbor says to her your partner is so nice, you're so lucky to be with him. A lot of men wouldn't do what he does. She responds with a mumbled yeah, feeling confused and tongue tied back at home. She asked herself over and over again why, me Boy, did I live this life? Yes, I, freaking did.
Speaker 1:My ex was Mr Charming to everyone. I even had neighbors tell me, just like on here, like, oh, he's such a good dad, he seems like such a good husband and I just want to be like nah bitch, like he fooled you too. No, and I'm pretty sure after I got divorced everyone thought it was because of me. Like I started dating really quick, really quick. After my divorce. Y'all know I met the D like the night that I think it was after our mediation or negotiation or whatever and he was supposed to sign the papers I got on Tinder. I'm like I'm ready because I needed, I needed some Passion. Let's just put it that way. I'm at the D in the rest of history. I love that man. He totally changed my life.
Speaker 1:But going back to after the divorce, when he moved out and I started dating pretty quickly, I had another truck parked in my driveway and I had a neighbor to make comments to me and try to pry, thinking that I, the questions they were asking were alluding to the fact that we got divorced because I was cheating, because they see this truck in my driveway. So I must have been cheating and he divorced me and I just want to give them big. If you're listening to this, neighbors, fuck you Because, first of all, none of that, any of their business. Second of all, are you kidding me? Ah, the shit. I went through and all my neighbors want to like, kiss my ex's ass and blame me as like the bad guy here, when they know nothing. They just assumed because, mr you know, ex douchebag charmer is just, I guess I don't know, he fooled them, he fooled them, but Naji, no, that ain't even how it went down. And they do that.
Speaker 1:These type do that Like, and a lot of them are in powerful positions. Hello, your elected officials, hello people that are running this country, and you can totally freaking tell by their behavior. You know mostly like I don't want to go back to politics, but the Covena stuff, oh my God, that dude's so fucking guilty you can tell their demeanor, you can tell these people, if you know this, if you've learned this and you're enlightened and you understand how abuse works, you can usually spot the red flags and you know that this Mr charmer is just being a Dr Jekyll, mr Hyde, and we're going to talk about that right now. The moving on it says do abusive men have split personalities? Oh yeah, everybody's outside riding bikes. Oh, I'm going to wrap this up. So do abusive men have split personalities? Not really. They're drawn to power and control, and part of how they get it is by looking good in public.
Speaker 1:An abusive man's charm makes his partner reluctant to reach out for support or assistance because she feels that people will find her revelations hard to believe or will blame her. Hmm, if friends overhear him, say something abusive or police arrest him for an assault, his previous people pleasing lays the groundwork to get him off the hook. The observer thinks he's such a nice guy. He's just not the type to be abusive. She must have really hurt him. Oh God, this is so true it's. I laugh because I don't want to cry, because one of the most important challenges facing a counselor of abusive men is to resist being drawn in by the men's charming persona. This is why, if you were going to therapy and you were married, do not go with your abuser. A lot of counselors are not trained like Matt Lundy's, trained in understanding how this manipulation works from an abuser. They are very capable of twisting stuff around and making you look like the abuser. If you try marriage counseling, please do not go to marriage counseling. It's not going to work in the way you think it's going to work. You need to go to counseling alone and for yourself.
Speaker 1:Moving on to reality, number eight is, he feels, justified. Abusers externalize responsibility for their actions, believing that their partners make them behave in abusive ways. Each of my clients, predict, predictably, uses some variation of the following lines she knows how to push my buttons. Oh, y'all want me to do the redneck voice again. She knows how to push my buttons. She wanted me to go off and she knows how to make it happen. She pushed me too far. There's only so much a man can take. You expect me to just let her walk all over me? What would you do? So? Those are some of the things that he notices. They say to justify abusive men or masters of excuse making.
Speaker 1:Abusers do have a conscience about their behavior outside of the family. All right, so if someone's watching, if the neighbors are watching, then they can control their behavior. So they can control the narrative outside of the family. But behind closed doors has a different story. They may be willing to be answerable for their actions at work, at the club or on the street. At home, however, their sense of entitlement takes over.
Speaker 1:The abusive man commonly believes he can blame his partner for anything that goes wrong, not just his abusiveness. Did he just suffer a disappointment? She calls it. Is he embarrassed by a mistake he made? She should have prevented it. As one of the children in a difficult period, she's a bad mother. Everything is someone else's fault, and someone else is usually her man. That hits hard, because I still get attacks from ex-Dushidoosh the stupidest things. I don't know. He can have diarrhea and somehow blame it on me, like I don't know. Maybe I did some Loo-Woo-Joo-Joo and sent him to the toilet. I don't know, I didn't. I ain't messing with that stuff. That's karma. I don't want that to threefold. Whatever Bite me in the ass literally and make me send me to the potty.
Speaker 1:But reality number nine abusers deny and minimize their abuse. All right, we know this. So this one says where am I going? If he were ready to accept responsibility for his actions and relationships, he wouldn't be abusive. All right, so they're gonna deny it. That's a pretty easy one. He goes into detail. But we're not going into detail because I mean that's we know. We know and I'm gonna get outside Denial and minimization are part of most destructive behavior patterns, whether they be alcohol abuse, gambling or child abuse. Partner abuse is no exception. So that's what I'll say about that.
Speaker 1:Reality number 10, abusers are possessive bitch Y'all. This is not sexy, this is not romantic. I'm going back on my soapbox here about this bullshit romance spicy book, tiktok, whatever it is, where women are like, ooh, I wanna be kidnapped. Yeah, I want him to stuff me in the back of a truck and force me blah, blah, blah blah. And I have a lot of theories on this and I've looked into it. There's one place I wanna say it's probably Sweden or something, probably one of those Scandinavian places where those types of books are not popular at all. I'll have to find the study. I don't know where it is, but I remember reading that's not popular because women are actually like that's disgusting and that's abusive behavior over there, whereas here I'm gonna say, especially in the South and this is gonna be like kind of conspiracy sounding women are shamed for sexuality, especially if you're religious, shamed for sexuality and we can't like, we have to be good girls and yada, yada, yada. So if someone's forcing us to have pleasure, then we can find pleasure in it, but only if we're being forced. I don't know, that was some theory out there. But I could go on about that and I'm not going to. I just wanna say a little bit more about this from Matt's words.
Speaker 1:The sense of ownership is one reason why abuse tends to get worse as relationships get more serious. The more history and commitment that develop in the couple, the more the abuser comes to think of his partner as a prized object. Possessiveness is at the core of the abuser's mindset, the spring from which all of their streams spout. On some level he feels that he owns you and therefore has the right to treat you as he sees fit. Again, I don't know what the fuck happened where along the line, people women started thinking this is hot but it's not. So why is he insanely jealous? For many abusers, possessiveness takes the form of sexual jealousy. This style of man monitors his partner's associations carefully, expects her to account for her whereabouts at all times and periodically rips into her with jealous accusations. It says in chapter one we met Marshall, who did not believe his hysterical accusations of infidelity against his wife. So what was driving his behavior and again, pick up this book if you want the full details of what this bitch Marshall was doing.
Speaker 1:An abusive man who isolates his partner does so primarily for two reasons he wants her life to be focused entirely on his needs. He feels that other social contacts will allow her less time for him and he doesn't accept that she has the right to do that. And he doesn't want her to develop sources of strength that could contribute to her independence. Although it is often largely unconscious, abusive men are aware on some level that a woman's social contacts can bring her strength and support that could ultimately enable her to escape his control. An abusive man commonly attempts to keep his partner completely dependent on him to increase his power. Remember that's why he's isolating y'all.
Speaker 1:Because of this mindset, an abusive man tends to perceive any relationship that his partner develops, whether with females or males, as threats to him. You may try to manage this problem by giving him lots of reassurance that you still love him and you're not gonna cheat on him, but you will find that his efforts to isolate you don't lessen, because his fears that you might sleep with another man are actually only a small part of why he's trying to isolate you At the same time. Jealous accusations and isolations are only one form that ownership can take. They're abusive men who do not try to control their partner's associations, but their underlying attitude of your mind do with, I see as fit reveals itself in other ways. If your partner's sister criticizes him for bullying you, he may tell her what I'll do with my girl, there's none of your business. If you have children, he may start to treat all family members as his belongings. His anger may escalate dangerously when you attempt to break away from him. Keep the word ownership in mind and you may begin to notice that many of your partner's behaviors are rooted in believing that you belong to him.
Speaker 1:Abusive men come in every personality type. Going back to what I said at the first of this podcast, they arise from good childhoods and bad ones. They're macho man or gentle liberated men. No psychologist tests can distinguish an abusive man from a respectful one. Abusiveness is not a product of a man's emotional injuries or deficits in his skills. In reality, abuse springs from a man's early cultural training, his key male role models and his peer influences. In other words, abuse is a problem of values, not of psychology. When someone challenges an abuser's attitudes and beliefs he tends to reveal the contemptuous and insulting personalities that normally stays hidden, reserved for private attacks on his partner, and abuser tries to keep everybody his partner, his therapist, his friends and relatives focused on how he feels, so that they won't focus on how he thinks. Perhaps because on some level he is aware that if you grasp the true nature of his problem, you will begin to escape his domination. Ooh, we, max said it y'all. Please keep that in mind. It's not he's gonna focus on how he feels. You need to focus on how he thinks, but better yet, you need to focus on your ass and how you're gonna get out of there. So key points to remember. On them, we're done with this chapter.
Speaker 1:Abuse grows from attitudes and values, not feelings. The roots are ownership, the trunk is entitlement and the branches are control. Abuse and respect are opposites. Abusers cannot change unless they overcome their core of disrespect toward their partners. Abuse, and they ain't gonna do that. Abusers are far more conscious of what they are doing than they appear to be. However, even their less conscious behaviors are driven by their core attitudes. Abusers are unwilling to be non abusive, not unable. They do not want to give up power and control. Again, I'm gonna repeat it Abusers are unwilling to be non abusive, not unable. You are not crazy. You are not crazy. Trust your perceptions of how your abusive partner treats you and thinks about you. And that's where we're going to end it.
Speaker 1:And the next chapters we're gonna talk about the types of abusive men Because, remember, there's a range, there's a scale here and it all funnels into the same line of thinking. They're all using the same playbook, but if you know this playbook, then you can know what's coming and prepare for what's coming and stay way safer, which is the goal. And happy Y'all. I want that for y'all. I know what it's like. Been there, done that, lived this for 15 years. I'm still living in a little bit because this motherfuck keeps texting me, but I'm so much happier being liberated and free and actually having a partner in my life who is none of this shit. There was a point in my life where I was like all men are like this and I truly believed it. But they're not. Now my experience are most men like this, maybe, but there's some good ones out there, but I'm not saying that to say, oh, go, find you a partner Maybe. Most of us need time alone after we've experienced this stuff and most of us want to switch teams because I think women are just way better, but that's a whole other conversation. So stay safe.
Speaker 1:I hope you have got some kind of enlightenment out of some of these words so far that we've been learning from Matt. He lays it all out, he is an expert in the subject, but remember again, he said we don't need an expert, we need a support system, and that's what I'm here for. So I'm going to go outside and enjoy this beautiful weather. I hope you have beautiful weather where you're at, and I hope for you that you get some woo-woo-joo-joo in your life too. That's going to spur you on to greater things. I am going to light some candles for you today and do my peacock fanning for good vibes sent your way. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1:If you love the show, please leave a rating, a review, and if you know anyone who also might love the show or who could benefit from this information, please be sure to share it and subscribe. The more we get this out to people, the more people we can help, and I truly believe there's so many women who need to hear these words, because so many women are feeling stuck. Also, if you're looking for me, you can usually find me on the ground at author Cat Adams, and be sure to head over to my website and that's catatomsadamswitha-double-d'scom. Subscribe to my newsletter for the latest information. Also, when you subscribe, you're going to get free novella. And just be forewarned, my Oronti romcom is as dirty as my mouth. If that's your thing, go for it. It's super hilarious. But thank you again for tuning in. Until next time, please stay safe and I'll see you on the other side.
