This is a good question. We often forget that in abusive relationships between adults there’s never only a sadist. There’s always also a masochist. Some relationships bring out the best in people but others bring out the worst. Abuse is a result of the dynamic that exists between two people, and for both of them it fulfills a necessary function.
In long-term abusive relationships between adults, the masochist will go out of her way to provoke the sadist into beating her. She’ll press every button to collapse his efforts at self-control methodically and doggedly.
This does not excuse the abuser. Nothing excuses a person who beats another outside of the situations of physical self-defense. But these abusive situations can’t be resolved from one side. Two people engineer, maintain, and enjoy them. These are usually relationships where you can’t pry the participants apart under any circumstances. They fulfill each other’s neurotic need, and that binds them together like Krazy Glue.
The problem is that there’s a big taboo on what I’m saying right now. We have painted ourselves into a corner by imagining this S&M dynamic as an interaction between an angelic victim (who of course is always desperate to leave the abuser but doesn’t because she fears for her life) and a demonic abuser. People literally freak out if one tries to talk about this in a more nuanced way. It’s the same as “rape is not about sex but about power” which has now acquired the status of religious dogma in spite of being utterly dumb.
We won’t solve anything until we learn to live with the ambiguity. Unfortunately, this necessitates brains that are capable of more complex operations and are not dumbed down by staring at screens and catering to one’s worst instincts.
Love, as I keep saying, is only true if it tolerates ambiguity. If you only care about the victim if she’s a perfect angel but not if she’s a complicated, messed-up, often very annoying human, you don’t care at all.
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