Ouch

I think there is a type of person who goes through trauma, and then enjoys reading about people in trauma because it makes them feel more valid. "The character stuck with her shitty ex, and I know what that's like" kind of mentality.

Gonna be honest. I don't think it's healthy. Yeah, it's good not to feel alone, but so many people have had this conversation with me and most of them are still struggling to get out of those cycles. They aren't over it. And re-reading that kind of thing normalizes it; you start thinking, "well, everyone would make this choice in this scenario."

... Except not everyone does, and you probably would learn a lot more from the people who chose to leave right away. If, instead of reading about the mindset of another abuse victim, you read about the mindset of someone who gets out and never comes back. The people who are not like you are the people you can learn from. The people who are like you are just helping you justify things in your mind.

And I'm going to be very blunt. There's always choices in any long-term abuse scenario. Always. And forgiving yourself for not making better choices – dumping that ex, reporting that professor, leaving that job – is hard, and it's far easier to just insist that you didn't have a choice; you weren't able to do anything, really.

But there are always choices. The argument that you can't do anything falls apart very quickly the moment anyone brings, for example, kids into the equation. An abused woman can stay with a terrible husband, and that's her choice for herself, but if she stays and allows the children to be abused, that's messed up. I think most people would agree – she needs to leave, if not for her than for the kids – but that means acknowledging that she has the choice to leave. And if she has the choice to leave now, she had the choice to leave then.

These choices are never easy. But that is exactly why learning from those who made the difficult choices is so important. You'll never learn how to get out if you only talk to people in jail. You need to look at those who escaped.

Anyway. I have been musing on why people enjoy reading about terrible humans and terrible relationships. Sometimes it's just the amusement of a soap opera. Sometimes it's tolerating the terribleness for a good plot. Sometimes, it's just sadism and enjoying watching the suffering unfold.

But I far more often see people using it as a way to avoid forgiving themselves their choices, and instead reinforcing this learned helplessness that insists there was never a choice at all.