How Can Someone Say They Love You And In the Next Minute To Abuse You?

Fanica Rarinca
6 min readDec 15, 2020

How many people have not been so bullied, mistreated, even though they have been told words of love? How many people haven’t asked that question?

The human being is very complex and things can’t just be black and white. There are always many shades of gray.

I mean, is it possible for someone to love and at the same time to abuse the person they love?

Yes.

It happens all the time. Parents who assault their children they love, partners who abuse their partners, and vice versa. There is both love and hate.

To this question, I found 7 answers, both from personal experience and from everything I have noticed, observed to others, and read on this topic.

There’s a pattern of anger

There is a pattern of anger that he copied from his parents, from the gang in which he ended up as a teenager misunderstood by his parents.

He grew up in a violent environment and learned that to be safe he needed to be violent.

Aggression has become a second nature of his character. It’s like learning a foreign language, which over time integrates so easily into its whole being that it’s so easy for it to express itself.

Every time he couldn’t handle properly the situation, he got angry.

At some point, he is aware that he is not doing well, he wants to get it right. But he does worse because he doesn’t know any other way to behave.

Projections

Man projects his own flaws and weaknesses on those around him.

Everyone around him is a mirror of his soul. He sees reflected in loved ones most because loved ones have common points with him, both qualities and flaws.

He’s not aware that what he’s reproaching you for and why he’s getting mad at you, is his own flaws. He just sees them and hates them. Actually, he hates himself.

The reason Golum in the film The Lord of the Rings was a detested character is because every one of us can relate to him, to his nasty behavior.

Each of us has good parts that we are proud of, but also flaws, weaknesses that we try to hide, but that makes us hate ourselves.

An aggressive man sees his weaknesses so strongly mirrored in the person next to him that it infuriates him beyond measure.

He’d like to do something, to change the situation, but he doesn’t know how. He knows no other way than to be aggressive with exactly the person he loves.

He’s bullying you because he can’t assault himself.

He’s angry about himself and would like to punish himself. But he can’t hurt himself. Because he loves and hates himself at the same time, just like Golum did.

When he feels that he’s mad with rage, when he sees red or black in front of his eyes, when he sees his own mistakes in you like being reflected in a mirror, he’d like to break the mirror so he can’t see himself again.

The concern for the safety of the one you love could generate anger

Sometimes you get angry because the people you care about, who’s safety you’re interested in, do crazy things.

Children explore everything you forbid them. They want to touch; they want to try things that are forbidden to them.

The parent thinks that the child is “intentionally doing” what he told him not to. When he sees that he gets angry and even aggressive if the child persists in his stubbornness.

But his anger is linked to concern and worry for the safety of the one he loves.

Guilt generates anger

You may have noticed that if a man has a habit of coming home drunk, he jumps first into a fight before his wife reproaches him.

As hard as it sounds, he’s aware that what he did broke some rules. He feels guilty.

In his mind, he has a whole council that reproaches them (with the voice of his mother, his wife, and even everyone he knows) that what he has done is not right.

He tries to forget, to stop hearing those voices in his mind, and drink more. And when he gets home, he gets aggressive, so his wife doesn’t get to say anything. Why is that? The attack is the best defense.

A vicious circle

At the same time, he enters a vicious circle.

The more aggressive he is, the more miserable he feels, the more guilty he feels. He accuses himself of being a worthless man, of being a monster (at least he thinks that) and he is not able to bear himself anymore.

He hates himself even more. He wants to hide this guilt, even more, becoming even more aggressive. He’s aware that it’s not right what he’s doing, but he feels he’s lost control. The guilt he feels generates a lot of anger and aggression.

Anger and aggression as a drug

The role of anger is to let you know that a limit has been crossed.

Either the other violated it, or he violated it himself.

Anger, however destructive it may be today, benefits the practitioner. He might or may not be aware of them. But as long as his subconscious feels that those benefits are strong and important, or more precisely, stronger than the pain he causes, it is not willing to give up anger.

Augusto Cury, in his book, Overcoming The Jail Of Emotions describes the effect of drugs on the human mind.

First, the pleasure and benefits the subject feels, capture the subconscious completely.

After that, every time there is a situation that stresses him out, his subconscious, who wants him to be happy, starts looking through the files of the mind when he was happy, and in control of the situation.

When he found it, he pressed a button, and the desire to use the drug was triggered to be happy.

Over time, the effects aren’t the same. He needs to increase the dose to achieve the same effect.

Perhaps the first time he expressed his anger through aggression he felt strong, or in control of the situation.

This feeling has produced some hormones of personal satisfaction and happiness. It made him feel strong.

And things got out of his hand again, and then he had to use anger again. Perhaps the second time the person was not intimidated by this angry manifestation, and the subconscious felt the need to use a double dose of anger.

Slowly the anger, like a drug, began to take control and become irrepressible. When things become even less controllable, the man eager to be in control turns to aggression.

Like a drug, the use of anger is out of the control of rationality or will. The emotional reaction, shouting more and more after the feeling of satisfaction he had the first time he used it.

At the same time, in order to achieve the same effect, it is necessary to increase the dose.

The harder things are to control, the more destructive the anger becomes.

Can anyone hurt the one they love that way?

The moment the individual is under the power of anger, he finds it very difficult to free himself, to calm down. It is only after he has expended his destructive energy that he realizes what he has done. And then the feeling of guilt overwhelms him and infuriates him worst.

Next time I will write about the solutions to this anger manifestation.

Best regards,

Fanica Rarinca

Blogger at Fanautodidact, author of Patronel and Soriela — a fantasy book with self-development for children and more; Eliberează-te de rănile trecutului și redescoperă fericirea!, Mica Stea Portocalie — a fantasy novel with emotional education for YA and adults.

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Fanica Rarinca
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I am a Romanian blogger writing about emotional trauma and other self-help subjects. I am also an author, and I published both self-help and fantasy books.