Loving someone who has suffered from abuse, whether it be rape, harassment, or an emotionally/physically abusive relationship, is difficult. It is hard to love someone who has been broken by others and, often, themselves. The hardest part of it is knowing that you will never be able to predict what will happen. You may learn our triggers and you may soothe our fears, but you will never truly know what will happen in our joined future. It is an unstable, topsy-turvy road.
The best thing you can ever do for a survivor, because that is what we are, is understand. Understand that your significant other might not tell you everything that happened in their past. Some things are too difficult to talk about, even with someone you love and trust. Understand that things you do and say might trigger us. There is no controlling a trigger; a survivor can't help being affected by certain things. Understand this and try your best to remove such language or behavior. Understand that sometimes they will be emotionally unavailable. There will be days where they will be consumed by the past. It's best if you just quietly bring us back to reality without asking us what's wrong or what we were thinking about. Oftentimes we are just hiding inside ourselves because it is a safe place where we are used to being. Understand that we will deal with our scars in different ways. If you have dated a survivor before do not expect us to all react and cope the same way. Our stories are all very different. Understand that we want to let you in but we may not be able to. We may not ever be able to.
Be patient. We want to us get better and learn to cope as much as you do. It takes time. Even if the abuse happened years ago, we may not have fully accepted it. It's hard to accept things that really, really hurt. If we flinch every time you raise your hand, try to not get exasperated and force us to realize you'd never hit us. If we constantly put up walls and block our emotions, don't take a bettering ram to them to get us to open up. If we are afraid of intimacy, don't rush us because you think it will "help" us conquer our fears. Just be patient. We are trying.
Remind us that we are loveable. Remind us that we are not worthless. Remind us that we deserve better. Show us better.
