I like to think I’m a kind and tolerant person who doesn’t readily judge the behaviour of other people because I’m by no means perfect and I don’t expect anyone else to be perfect either. When faced with behaviour from another person which hurts me I always try my best to look at where it came from. Was it motivated by stress, childhood trauma, pain, exhaustion or frustration for example? Have I unconsciously done something to hurt the other person who is simply retaliating?

But empathy and understanding have to have a boundary and for me that is reached when the behaviour is either threatening or abusive. There is no justification for physical violence or threats thereof, for cruelty or for seriously affecting another person’s emotional and/or mental well being. Abuse is always a choice.

Onlookers and those who know that mental, emotional or physical harm is taking place and do nothing are, in my opinion, just as culpable. By not stepping in to aid or defend the person being abused they are enabling the abuser, who often feels emboldened by their silence and the abuse escalates. When do onlookers decide it’s “their business”? After the victim has ended up in hospital with a broken bone, suffered a mental or emotional breakdown or, worse, been killed? The decision not to act becomes unconscionable, to me, when the victim is vulnerable in some way, for example due to age (either very young or very old), ill health or is already under huge stress mentally or emotionally.

Though I am, by nature, very forgiving I have standards of behaviour which I expect from those close to me and abuse, or the sanctioning of it, breaks those standards. Safety is paramount and those who seek to destroy my physical, mental or emotional health cannot be allowed to remain in my life. Their bridge to me has been well and truly burned.