I feel a little weird making a strong statement like that, that to some degree, is based on my opinion and personal experience (as opposed to being real fact).
But also, I’m gonna go ahead and declare “just put your foot down” is terrible advice for people in an abusive relationship.
It’s just not that simple.
For instance, with me and sexual assault guy, I “put my foot down.”
When he talked to me like no one should ever talk to another human being during a fight about basically nothing, I let him know I was very upset, and was not happy to spend time with him, etc.
And he laaaaaid on the charm. He took me to a sort of nice restaurant. He apologized so hard. He just kept saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He was a perfect gentleman. And do you know what happened later that week? He sexually assaulted me.
Of every abusive relationship I’ve ever known [granted, they’re usually done in quiet, so I can’t say I’ve been familiar with a ton, but of the ones I have been], very few times over the course of a pretty long time has the abused person ever felt comfortable “putting their foot down.” And each time they did, things got amazingly better for a little bit – and then they got 10x worse quickly after.
An abusive person, sure, will maybe get a little “better” to keep you [if you’re ‘lucky’, and putting your foot down doesn’t put them in a rage-filled tailspin]. But assuming they get better for a hot sec – then they get worse to re-establish dominance.
You don’t get to have power. That’s not how abusive relationships work. So, if they feel they give some power up to you, they will take it back (usually even harder than they did before). “Putting your foot down” to an abusive person is terrible advice because in most cases, it will ultimately make you less safe, more in trouble, more scared, and get you deeper in your situation.
I used to think it must be my fault that people would say things like that to me – I must not be using the correct words, trying to minimize too much and such. But after I tried to get ahold of the language, and really explain (as best I could) that this guy was abusive, and threatening, and scary and a serial sexual assaulter (among other things), etc… I still got it sometimes. “Oh, it’s just gonna take the right woman, and he’ll shape up.”
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
It should’t be any of our jobs to “fix” an abusive man. We are not responsible for our own mistreatment. We don’t hold a secret to making someone not abusive.
(And if there’s a way to stop that weird narrative sometime in my lifetime, it would be really pretty dope.)
And I’ll pick up with a related thought here tomorrow.