guilt and accountability

[SAR]

I think I already know the answer to this question...

Is there anything, anything, anything, anything, I can do, to help my boyfriend with his guilt about everything?

He feels guilty about his abuse, even though he knows that he shouldn't, and then he feels guilty about feeling guilty. He feels guilty about what he's done to our relationship. He feels guilty about feeling too guilty to accept my forgiveness. He feels doubly guilty about having anger-- both about having it, and about not being able to express it. I could go on but I don't think I need to.

He told me last night that he still feels guilty about his abuse, in a tone of voice like he was preparing to get slapped across the face for it. Like he thought I would tell him that he wasn't allowed to feel guilty. I just told him it's okay, it's not weird to feel that way, but I wish that he didn't have to all the time.

The strangest part of all of it, for me, is that although he has so much guilt, and probably has for as long as he can remember, he's also said to me that he feels that he's never really had to be accountable for anything. That he could do what he wanted and not really have it touch him. So he slacked off in school, didn't pick up after himself (still doesn't to the point that it depresses him, until I give him a shove about it), didn't pay his bills, screwed up at work, sabotaged our relationship, and felt terrible about all of it, and yes, there were consequences when he did these things, but he just didn't experience them as consequences... like, he used to get all these speeding tickets that "weren't his fault"...he got kicked out of school because he "wanted" to be...

Is the guilt just hitting him extra hard lately because he's figuring out that for some things in his past, he has to accept some of the responsibility? Or is it more guilt about his abuse--I have a feeling he's remembered some new details in the past week or so, and not told me about them... is this going to get better?

I really really just wish he could NOT feel awful for a little while.

SAR

 

[Lloydy]

SAR

Is the guilt just hitting him extra hard lately because he's figuring out that for some things in his past, he has to accept some of the responsibility?

That makes sense to me, I certainly felt guilty about the things I "wasted" in my life, especially in the earlier days of recovery.
One thing that always stuns me is the level of intelectual discussion we get on MS, nobody here is 'stupid' and a lot are what I would say are clever guys. Maybe that could be because it requires a certain amount of grey matter to this far and make the effort ?
Whatever, my rather clumsy point is that there are so many Survivors who realise that they have hidden away the capacity to be anything they wanted to be.
My childhood dream was to be a journalist, I repair broken sewage treatment machinery - not a bad difference.

So when I started to recover I suddenly found myself using intellectual capabilities I never dreamed I had. I discovered that I wasn't the "stupid kid who gave great bj's" any more.
It wasn't only my abusers that ingrained my rock bottom self esteem into me, everyone did it.

My parents constantly compared me ( badly ) to my older brother and everyone else who was 'smarter' than me. Teachers taught by calling us "thick" instead of praising the things we did well. And this pattern continued because I expected it to.
It's the only thing I was programmed to hear.

When I started using my brain I found out that there are people out there who say good things and actually mean them, and that was a shock to the system for sure !

So although I have to accept that I could have done some things better, and there's some inevitable guilt attached to that. There is a whole lot that was programmed into me that I couldn't do anything about.
I used to feel guilty about thast too.

Now I just feel pissed off because I realise I was capable of much more, and that's different to feeling guilty.

Does that sense ? I don't feel I explained that very well

Dave

 

[theo]

sar,
don't know if this would apply to your boyfriend, but what i have found regarding my sense of guilt is that it is inconceivable to me that i could be anything but guilty for the harm i experienced and witnessed. there are a lot of things that go into this, self esteem, ego deprivation, any other tag you want to throw in, etc. the point for me is that no matter what people tell me (lady theo, my therapists, my close friends, etc) i cannot understand how i am not guilty. i was there, i could have done something, anything. right now i think it is virtually impossible for your boyfriend to see anyway he can remotely absolve himself without it sounding fake and because of that, it remains carried. i would not be surprised if when it comes time for me to begin the next journey that i will still have some doubts as to whether i was responsible after all for some of the things i witnessed throughout my life. it takes time to reach a point where one can even entertain the remote idea that innocence is real in terms of feelings of guilt. it takes time and it helps more than can be stated that someone else is there to share it with. stay honest with him as you have done, and someday he might be able to absolve himself of guilt that was never his. take care, sar.

 

[Caetel]

Dear SAR !

Your post kind of had some strong resonance in the sense that for me "feeling guilty" is first a victory in the sense of feeling for the first time and second because feeling guilty comes just before "feeling angry".
Your boyfriend might be afraid of the violence within himself. Feeling guilty is certainly much easier to controle than letting go of the anger.
These are justs thoughts that came into my head. As everything, the guilt won't last, it will be replaced by other feelings and awareness as therapy progresses.
Sorry about my English tonight. Too exhausted to make more sense ! Should write you in French really !

 

[SAR]

Hi everyone. Thank you.

Dave, Theo, what you guys say makes so much sense. My boyfriend and I both know that he could have done some things better if there had been people around to encourage him in his childhood. He's used to being underestimated--I think he feeds off of it now, uses it to his advantage. Especially at work, it's like actually being smart is his secret weapon... not the reclamation of lost potential that I'd hoped for, but better than still believing he's stupid I guess...

We talked about the OTHER guilt a little bit today:

i cannot understand how i am not guilty. i was there, i could have done something, anything.

and I told him that I wish he could see it differently... to me it seems like it's a matter of your choices... if you have been given no choice but one, how can you be guilty for making that choice? Who chooses to stay in a room with no doors?

I think that part of the reason he still carries this guilt over not making choices that weren't really accessible to him, is that if he accepts that he didn't really have the choice to tell his parents, he has to face the reality of what kind of parents they were. If he accepts that he was not emotionally equipped to get out of an abusive situation, he has to face the reality of what kind of child they raised him to be. He still wants his illusions, badly. He isn't ready to really say to himself that he didn't have a good mother, that he wasn't taught to say No.

Caetel... I hope you are right. Watching my boyfriend choking on his anger, afraid to let it go, hurts just as much as it hurts to see him guilty over what's already been forgiven. I would gladly see every tree in our yard reduced to a pile of matchsticks before I would see him choke on rage one more time.

Lately his guilt is overwhelming both of us... I can't say anything, it seems, without contributing to his guilt feelings. Even if I don't say anything. Even little things like bumping into me, not turning out the light, make his shoulders droop... throughout this whole thing I've been trying to carry on as normally as I can... suddenly and for the first time since he's started dealing with his abuse, I really am at a loss for words around him because it seems that everything makes it worse. And it's worse because he's not blowing up at me about it or giving up on anything, he's just going forward as usual, only more sadly than before.

SAR