The Love and Abuse Podcast

A helpful resource for abusers and the abused

One of my most vivid childhood memories is of the staring looks my father used to give to my mother. We would be sat at the dinner table after eating a meal, something would happen to offend my father, and in response my mother would angle herself away from making eye contact with my father, while he directed a vicious prolonged stare at her. We could all sense his anger, but he would never communicate what had upset him or why he was feeling angry. This is a classic case of the ‘silent treatment’ that abusers give to their victims.

My father has been abusive towards others for as long as I can remember. I recall that as a child my sister and I would be sitting in the living room watching TV when my father returned home from work. When we heard the front door open, there was a feeling of terror and dread. He would never come and say hello to us or give us a loving hug or kiss, but instead would walk into the kitchen where my mother would be in the process of preparing a meal for him. My father’s attitude towards women has always been that they should serve him, and if there was any argument against this behaviour from my mother he would voice the expression “I am not your slave” - ironic, because in a sense he was the one enforcing slavery upon my mother.

After my father abused my mother for a period of many years, my mother became ill with cancer. She desperately wanted to have a divorce but my father guilt-tripped her with the warning that if she left she would be destroying the family. So she stayed for a long time, even when her marriage to my father was so broken that they were sleeping in separate rooms. Eventually, my mother did find the courage to leave the family home and move abroad, but by this time her health had deteriorated to the extent that she was unable to heal. She died of cancer a couple of years after leaving.

Abusive people often have ingrained patterns of behaviour that repeat. After the passing of my mother, my father found a new partner. While things were apparently going well between them at first, my father’s old pattern of controlling behaviour began to manifest and take its toll on her, and just as had happened with my mother, she became ill with cancer and eventually passed away at a relatively young age.

I am acutely aware of the connection between emotional abuse and cancer. It starts with a breakdown in communication, then the abuser begins to make the abused person feel guilt and fear for not meeting their requirements, this guilt and fear become internalised and the abused person begins to suffer in a kind of emotional prison in which they cannot express their feelings because the energy and behaviour of the abuser won’t allow it. We need to express our feelings in order to be happy and healthy; trapped emotions can eventually lead to physical illness, and this is what happened to both my mother and my father’s more recent partner.

For long periods of my life, I tried to help my father to change his behaviour. I did this by voicing my concerns about his behaviour and by suggesting that if he were to attend counselling it would benefit him a great deal. At one point, I thought he had taken my advice because he did have a session with a counsellor, but despite him remarking how insightful the session was, he failed to continue with the therapy. I wonder whether if he had continued, he might have avoided entering into another abusive relationship after my mother passed away.

Abusive people are broken people. They may be carrying around deep emotional wounds from the past, or they may have developed a controlling attitude because it serves them well in the world and enables them to feel empowered. They can be very cold-hearted and seemingly blind to the tremendous suffering they cause.

I am writing about all of these things confidently today because over the last few days I have been listening to the inspirational Love and Abuse podcast. The programme’s host, Paul Colaianni used to be an abuser himself but experienced a radical change in his behaviour after his marriage fell apart. He now runs a program to help people who are trapped in abusive relationships, as well as running the podcast.

Listening to Paul’s insights into abusive relationships helped me to understand what happened in my family and how I need to be extremely cautious with my father to avoid being abused to death in the way my mother and my father’s other partner were. I’m so grateful that the Lord directed me to the podcast, and whether you are in an abusive relationship or not, I hope you will listen to some episodes of the podcast, which are full of insight and compassion.

I love my father and hope that one day he will experience the kind of character shift that the Love and Abuse podcast presenter did. Having suffered a life plagued with mental illness myself, it would be a wonderful blessing if I am able to have a healthy relationship with my father before death takes one of us away. I know I cannot change my father’s abusive behaviour, because for abusive people to change takes a recognition that they are doing wrong and a willingness to work at being a better person. To date, my father has shown few signs that he is wishing to do this.

In a world that is governed by a God who holds infinite possibilities within His grasp, there is always hope that a transformation of character can occur. Having recently broken contact with my father indefinitely for my own protection, the best thing I can do is keep praying that the dam breaks and that one day he will see the error of his ways and embark upon a healing journey.