The Pact

Lately, I have been thinking about “the pact.” It is a bit like this: a great many people have signed up for this pact. It is invisible. It is often subconscious. It is not healthy. But, it seems to promise something to the people signing it.

What is the key affirmation of this pact?

“Should a victim come to you, seeking freedom from their abuser, send them back to their abuser.” 

This is the pact. 

It is a bit like sarlaac in Star Wars. The one who lived at the bottom of a terrible hole, and would digest its victims slowly for a thousand years. That is what it feels like to live in the tormented orbit of an abuser. Not killed, but…digested. No longer who one wishes to be, but infected and overrun by the toxicity of the other. 

And all around are spikes. Not spikes pointed up, but spikes pointed in. There is pain only for those withing to leave, not those wishing to enter.

"Come willingly, leave some of your joy, and leave as you will," says Dracula. But if one tries to leave, they will be impaled on hooks of manipulation and abuse.

And all around? Sand.

That is the pact. 

Should anyone claw their way past the digestive juices, past the vicious hooked spikes, past the roving snakelike tongue of the abuser…there is sand. When they reach a desperate hand up for help, they do not find anything to hold on to, but sand that dissolves in their fingers, and sends them sliding back.

A hard jaw. A distant look. A tentative cough. A nervous scratch of their nose. The pact is in effect here...

“Well, you know, the Bible says to submit…”

“Well, maybe try to see things from his perspective…”

"Well, you know, Jesus really suffered for you too.."

“Well, this would really hurt if you were in his shoes…”

“Well, how would you like it if your child disowned you…?”

That last one. Let’s think about that last one.

What if my children did disown me? Clearly, that is an undesirable outcome. I don’t want that.

How could I prevent them from doing that?

The good news is that children are hard-wired to trust their parents. A parent can literally abuse and neglect a child, and they will still grow up loving them and thinking the world of them. I have seen it myself. I have experienced it. How much more for parents who genuinely do their best? Who don’t just try, but seek out counselling, seek emotional health, and make life choices to sacrifice careers and ambitions for family time and again? Is there anything to fear?

Yes, there is always a reason to fear. Children are free, and some may disown their parents despite their best attempts. There is room for fear, and fear breeds desperation. How could one try to maintain a relationship with their adult children? 

Well, here is one option. If one does not want their children to disown them, they could be a decent human being, who is kind and decent to the children throughout their childhood and their adulthood. They could create free, strong, rational people who choose to accept them as adults. 

Or, they could sign the pact.

The pact is not interested in creating strong children, or strong wives. This is rather contrary to its intention. The pact is concerned with creating a strong bond: a prison, if you will. If everyone keeps it up, then no matter where they turn, the victim will be told the same message. “Return, or burn. It is your christian duty. You cannot be happy anywhere else. Go back. Go back. Go back!” 

This is what people seem to have in mind, when they say things like, “If you disown your parents, your kids will disown you.”

Why? What possible connection could there be between the two?

Because if the pact is broken, then all of the captives will escape.

But what If I was never interested in creating captives? What if I actually wanted to create free, healthy, strong, compassionate people? People who would choose to have a relationship with me? And if they chose not to for a time…I could respect that. See it as a badge of honour, even, that my own son or daughter would be so healthy and strong that they would seek to live life without me for a time?

To hell with the pact. I discard its influence on me. And I certainly won’t perpetuate it!

(see also my post, "The Church: a den of narcissism?")