I had to shake myself for the first time as an adult around the age of twenty. I was making independent life choices at that stage, and so any blame for my mistakes was squarely on me. I moved to Sydney on a gap year between high school and college (a common thing for UK teenagers to do). I met a boy the second night after I arrived, and as you’re now aware, we got married eight months later, on that beautiful Australian beach. Wise, right? Get married at nineteen, kids!
I hadn’t been looking to get married at that age, but we wanted to stay together in one country, and marriage seemed like the only way to make it happen. It felt oddly practical. He was twenty-three and I was nineteen. I’d found a kind, caring, good-looking man, and that was positive, right? I thought I knew everything because I felt I had years of suffering already in the can. I thought I’d had my full portion of hard stuff already. But in just a short period of time, I realized that I knew nothing.
A few months into the marriage, I noticed “urgent” bills coming that weren’t mine. Curiosity got the better of me, and I opened one. My husband owed thousands of dollars. I was floored. I didn’t know how that could be possible. Because of my poor background and my horror at being wasteful, I went into a state of shock. Anger pulsed through me. How could he have spent all that money?
He was a gambler, and I had no clue. I missed all the warning signs out of innocence (and frankly, convenience — it’s easy to shut out what we don’t want to see). It slowly all became clear: the times my debit card was declined at the supermarket, the relatively new car that always seemed to need expensive repairs…The dread I felt, understanding that addiction can have a lifelong hold on a person, made me desperate. I knew recovery was possible. But I wasn’t sure he wanted to pursue it.
Out of despair, I booked a meeting with a counselor. His name was Phil, and I called him Dr. Phil, like the TV host. I loved our sessions, sitting in the big comfy chair with the small hole in the armrest that I’d play with when Dr. Phil challenged my victim loop: “But I don’t have family in this country! I need to stay! I can x the issue here. He just needs my support!”
He’d say, “You came all the way to Australia on your own — you even paid for the passage yourself. You seem to have a nice career you’re creating. Don’t underestimate your competence.”
Reread this last sentence: Don’t underestimate your competence. Whatever statements you repeat to yourself, your mind will find reasons to back them up. Whatever you think repeatedly will attract more thoughts just like it. That’s how beliefs are formed. The brain is our most powerful and obedient resource. Say it out loud:
“I won’t underestimate my competence.”
Take some deep breaths.
Now we’re a little more ready to tackle our victim loops. We all have them.
A victim loop occurs when someone has the same problem over and over and takes no responsibility for it or makes no plans to change it. The solution is to be accountable for the problem and apply action to solve it, what we call an “accountability loop.”
Dr. Phil made one thing clear that I already knew but needed to remember: what I’m not changing, I’m choosing. Learning that I was stuck in a victim loop was the shake I needed to be awakened in that moment. Seeing my situation for what it was — a cycle of destructive behavior, fighting, gambling, lying, repeat — teleported me back to that night with Mo and my mom pressing a bloody towel across her shoulders. That memory, and its meaning in my life at that moment, stabbed me in the heart, the way that only truth can.
After my husband tried Gamblers Anonymous and never went back, I knew it was over. I was not going to live like any of those women I met growing up. No way, José. And so, two and a half years after getting married, I moved out. It was terrifying. I had $1,700 in the bank, and my best friend lent me $1,000 for my deposit on the cheapest rental that she could help me find — all I could afford on my salary.
I loved my teeny safe haven. There was a massive burn mark (from what, I’ll never know) on the carpet in the living room, and when you opened two of the kitchen drawers, they had no bottoms, just gaping holes. But I never complained about a thing because I was terrified the owner would try to raise the rent. The bathroom was a curious mix of dull pink and lime green. That part, weirdly, I kind of loved, too. And hey, I’d rocked far less in my life (another blessing in disguise from being a poor kid).
Most significant, it was mine. No one had keys except me. I practically felt like Carrie Bradshaw (sans the designer threads…but who needed those?). I had my own place! Some weeks, I had just Snickers, Red Bull, and some cheap prosecco in the fridge. Freeeeeeeeedoooom!
Here’s what I chose to accept, which helped me leave my victim loop for an accountability loop. Yes, my former husband’s gambling was a problem, but I clearly had maturity issues of my own. Like the choice I had made in getting married so blindly (and so early), and all the subsequent choices I’d made to ignore the problem my husband clearly had. My choices contributed just as much to the situation as his had. Take that, victim loop! It like a painful, truthful “ouch” for a second, but then the relief of “Oh, yes, I’m powerful here” came immediately after. Accountability loops make you powerful. Victim loops, not so much.
Excerpted from the book Stop Checking Your Likes. Copyright ©2020 by Susie Moore. Printed with permission from New World Library — www.newworldlibrary.com.
