Accepting lack of justice/ social inequality?

[TruthSeeker]

I live too far for them to stalk physically. I have suffered doxxing and stuff anyway. One says I made a false accusation the other says I was covering for an affair. ( this is complicated.... I was seeing one of them, but not cheating, my husband knew and was not sexually involved, but friends and we’d have meals together and stuff). My family were threatened with exposure of personal details of that complicated private life and other stuff that wasn’t true etc, with emails that police couldn’t track ?. My husband and I were FINE with the truth being known.

I’m not at physical risk, but I gotthe other stuff without the benefits and a lot of retraumatisation. So yeah, i’d Take it again for the validation of justice and feeling that others were safer from that sort of thing in the future. :(

I want to be the change I want to see. I guess I don’t know how to do that. I try very hard to do the right thing. I get it wrong, but I apologise. I get in moral conundrums a lot.

@Mee I try hard to follow a simple moral standards....Golden rule: Would I like this done to me? It's a walk your talk check and saves me lots of time apologizing for screwing up, so just do the "shoe on the other foot check"....and I find it helps keep me more honest with me....some might call it authenticity......other's respectufl follow-through.....but it is the how of follow-through that's important I think...not just making the effort and doing something so you can say you tried. Way....easier to remember then the 10 Commandments-my old standby set of morals (I used to know them-memory loss in the way)

 

[Mee]

The golden rule?

Treat others like you would want to be treated ... but if you were them , not you!

Yes. But I don’t think it’s simple.
I do think that it’s made a lot harder by societal cognitive dissonances and incredible rationalisations.

 

[TruthSeeker]

The golden rule?

Treat others like you would want to be treated ... but if you were them , not you!

Yes. But I don’t think it’s simple.
I do think that it’s made a lot harder by societal cognitive dissonances and incredible rationalisations.

This is simple....and you dissected the golden rule????...... made it more complicated than I ever imagined....like you needed to shoot a hole in it "because others won't behave in a predictable manner....therefore, it is not valid?" While nothing is fullproof, some ways of doing things have a greater likelihood of turning out more positively than others.....using the golden rule is one of those things, in my opinion.....

Will there always be people who get away with things? Will there always be bad guys? Yep.....can we do anything about it....sometimes...if we want to stop it.....and sometimes not. How do you get over this? Change your perception.......that's all you got control over. I could dwell on my shitty husbands and how they abused me and got away with it, my father who stayed drunk and put me in harms way, or I can just try to be better than my past negative family members who were screwed up themselves. Try focusing on you-improving who you are instead of the other guy not getting his punishment....and try to do better than the other guy (hence the golden rule)....treat others the way you'd like to be treated. I get no where dwelling on the shoulda's and coulda's.

 

[Sideways]

I went to the cops. Not with any expectation of getting anywhere with the justice system, just because I needed to treat my experience as a valid criminal issue. Like I was worthy of that.

Having been in contact (so briefly) with 2 other of his victims, and knowing what it took to get me to report him, together with the lack of physical evidence? Got sfa chance of getting ‘justice’. Not from the justice system anyway.

It’d be nice to see him convicted and incarcerated. I think that would feel incredibly validating. But I can’t afford to hang my recovery based on whether there is ever any consequences in this lifetime for him, for what he’s done. Can’t afford to, because it likely won’t happen.

For some people, their spirituality fills that void. Whether if be karma or hell or being reincarnated as an catfish or whatever. I don’t have that either (and accept that maybe there’s a gaping hole in my ‘healing journey’ to the extent that it lacks a component of spirituality).

Some people get really angry, and head towards revenge stuff. I don’t see that as particularly ‘healing’ for me, at least, it’s not a type of healing that I embrace. That’s because my healing is all focused on who I want to become, and that doesn’t include a becoming a person who harms others deliberately and with malicious intent.

Where that has left me? Is that ‘justice’ isn’t tied to my recovery at all. It isn’t a relevant part of what it’s going to take to heal my wounds, it’s not a part of who I aspire to be.

To the contrary, one of my biggest challenges in relation to my abuser? Is just letting him go. Letting him become something that exists only in my past. My recovery, and my future, needs to be about me. It needs to not include him anymore.

If I needed ‘justice’? That would be an impossible dream. There isn’t anything that can be done to him that would replicate what he did to me. And there isn’t anything that can be done to him that can heal me.

Being angry about what he did to me? That’s incredibly important to my healing. That’s something I need to experience. Being angry that I was treated that way, and understanding that I deserved better. But beyond that? I try and keep focus on my abuser out of my recovery process as much as possible. Because as long as I keep my focus on him, I’m still not focusing on me. Which is far more important IMO. And not an easy thing to pull off.

Personally I have found some help from the radical acceptance therapy that I’ve done as part of ACT as helpful with overcoming roadblocks like that. Radical acceptance and helping others where I can.

 

[Mee]

This is simple....and you dissected the golden rule????...... made it more complicated than I ever imagined....like you needed to shoot a hole in it "because others won't behave in a predictable manner....therefore, it is not valid?" While nothing is fullproof, some ways of doing things have a greater likelihood of turning out more positively than others.....using the golden rule is one of those things, in my opinion.....

Will there always be people who get away with things? Will there always be bad guys? Yep.....can we do anything about it....sometimes...if we want to stop it.....and sometimes not. How do you get over this? Change your perception.......that's all you got control over. I could dwell on my shitty husbands and how they abused me and got away with it, my father who stayed drunk and put me in harms way, or I can just try to be better than my past negative family members who were screwed up themselves. Try focusing on you-improving who you are instead of the other guy not getting his punishment....and try to do better than the other guy (hence the golden rule)....treat others the way you'd like to be treated. I get no where dwelling on the shoulda's and coulda's.

Hang on! I am here for constructive criticism and help but a lot of that is not what what I said!

The that it’s not simple is what I said. And I hold that.

I Don want to treat people like I want to be treated but like THEY want to be treated, like I would want to be treated were I them.

With empathy. Empathy is not simple always! Our responses here are an example :)


As for your points about working on myself: where and when is it suggested that’s mutually exclusive or not the primary priority? This is very much part of that for me.

 

[Mee]

@Sideways, Helping others is definitely part of it for me. My therapist raises that this is infact holding me back, my want to be involved in more activism.

Conviction is confusing for me. It would have helped; but I think how I feel about it is caught up in wang for reform and activism. Less direct ?

Anger : yeah. Your stuff here helps. Thanks.

 

[Hooper]

I had huge issues with this. Especially with sexual assault because so few are convicted. Injustice infuriated me (I have anger issues). I completely understand the desire for revenge but there are a number of problems with it. Although sexual assaults are seldom prosecuted physical assaults have a very high conviction rate. They are much easier to prove. After years of dealing with a rape that didn't even happen to me I came to some simple conclusions first and foremost being what I truly wanted which was that the event never took place. That is obviously impossible and even if there were justice it wouldn't change that fact. Injustice is part of the human experience that no amount of anger or frustration can cure however hard that may be to accept. It abounds in my every day life. For example I filled my car up today with a mixture of 2 things (gasonline and ethanol/corn). I don't know who came up with the policy but we took the worlds staple food crop and decided to convert it into fuel. Their intentions may have been good but the effect since it was made mandatory in the US is it has raised the price to feed every human on the planet. I can get as bent out of shape about it all I want but it will not change. All this has me living as simply as I can. God did not grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change but it is getting easier with time.

 

[Mee]

@Hooper. Thank you. I am grateful for so much of this share. I have wondered a lot of my difficulty letting go of resentment of the failure of the justice system was because of my difficulties in getting angry with the perpetrators initially. To hear from someone who has that route of anger in place, if you say overly so, helps me feel less of a failure, less self hate . Thank you ??. Maybe knowing that with having to Find anger I have difficulty might help you too?

Revenge plans for me was a deliberate therapeutic tool to try and key into anger and self worth. My therapist thinks it’s notable that my pretend revenge plan was ‘sweet’ not ‘harmful’. I just wonder if it’s somehow cowardly?. It did have a Machiavellian use of glitter because that never really cleans up, so there would always be a little glistening remnant on of days reminding them ‘don’t hurt people again’ .


And yes: the bio fuel stuff is all totally understandable to me too. Ripple effect and unintended consequences; Responsibilities we have. My justice would have hurt a family, would that have created damage in the children ? Or are more sexual predators being raised, that in seeing fair justice might have be protected .

I don’t know, and can’t, the full ripple of everything.

 

[Hooper]

@Mee. That's interesting we're opposites with similar desires so to speak. My wife's rapist was pretty much a child at 15 but even so I knew it was wrong when I was that age. It took a long time to get where I am now. There were several things that helped me some of which you mention. Once I found his identity I looked him up on facebook and saw his children and wife who he may have raped as well. I couldn't hurt him without hurting them. I couldn't let him know why what I wished to take place was taking place. It would be akin to beating my 5 year old dog for the wallet he chewed up as puppy with the exception that I love my dog. I had no idea the person he had become. According to my wife she is not sure if he even considers what he did to be rape. Then there were bigger issues. What would I become? When I say simplify my life I mean I have to go to bed at night with a clear conscience. For years I had trouble doing that knowing nothing ever happened to him. I do think something should happen to him but I don't think I am the one to do it. What I do know is this. Events occurred in mine and my wife's life that led us together today. I know for a fact if this had not happened to her she would not have graduated high school ahead of schedule or gone to college where she did which is where we met. I have a friend who went through something similar except his wife's x was abusive. He's of the opinion it worked out great because they are together now. I really don't question it much now. Those sleepless nights seem so long ago now. It just took me longer than most I guess. Later

 

[Mee]

Yes. I think your idea that it came before good stuff IS useful.

That helped me in younger life with CSA and stuff. I’m more recent events, I think that I have ‘nothing to move forward to’, that the safety and joy I had created in life is ‘broken’ and I have ‘nowhere to go’ from it is very difficult.

I’m married and was. If I could leave my parter ( we don’t want to ) and make a new life it would give a psychological ‘clean start’ . But it would also destroy the good stuff left?. Of which there is lots.

Thank you again for sharing , it’s very much appreciated ?

 

[unbrokenn]

My therapist told me that I basically had to accept an apology that would never be real. My abusers were psychopaths with no ability to actually apologize. So I just accepted an apology without even being given one. Which was so hard to even picture at first. But let me help you picture it. First, think of what they did. Think of how you’d forgive them. ‘I know this happened. I forgive you not for you, but so I can move on and not carry this burden for the rest of my life. You’ve already taken so much away from me, I’m done letting you do even more.’

 

[TruthSeeker]

@unbroken Did it work for you or does it still revisit with intrusions or flashbacks? In other words, were you able to finally table it in your head, and move on, after you accepted an apology that never happened. The only way I could move on from being raped by my X-husband was to craft it under he had a horrible MH issue, and he came from trauma. While there was no apology either.....seeing other people as incapacitated as I have been, and consider the worst I have done in retaliation......seems to help but sadly, my life, like many others has been shaped to some degree, by trauma.