Survivors whose childhood conditioning happened to be composed of abuse can cycle with other people in their adulthood. Suffering and pain is normalized to them as a part of life they can't avoid.

Because these cycles are normalized to survivors, it makes it easier for abusers disguised as lovers and friends to come into their life and eventually wreak havoc. They miss the initial yellow flag that would warn them to place a boundary up.

Survivors have to train themselves to see yellow flags. They don't recognize red flags because everything was red growing up, very 0-100. It's not that survivors are stupid, naive or helpless. They were conditioned and they have so much unlearning to do.

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Ex: A daughter watching her father physically assault her mother. She watches the violence, is traumatized, then she watches her father rectify, even justify his actions. She watches them make up and stay together. Now he's a family man again.

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The daughter grows up and starts dating. She has a poor representation of what a man is, of what love is. She runs into a man and he's sweet, affectionate and genuine. She feels safe.

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Then they argue one night, he says a lot of vile things to her, but it's nothing she hasn't heard growing up. Then he loses his temper and he slaps her. She's in shock from being hit. Then he apologizes.

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She accepts it because he apologizes. No one ever taught her that accepting an apology is optional. When Daddy hit Mommy and apologized, everyone else had to forgive him because Mommy did. Mommy knew Daddy isn't like that all the time, so did she.

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So she lets it slide and the cycle slides back into the honeymoon phase, where her partner is her lover again, but not for long.

On average, a woman will get assaulted by her partner 35 times before she gets the police involved.

The imprint of abuse is psychological and subconscious in nature. What you saw and what was condoned plays a strong part in what you may experience and what you may forced to endure in adulthood. Victims can't see how they'd be a perfect victim for another person. Blindspots.

It's not their fault for not unlearning right away, and boundaries aren't built in a night. The brain isn't even fully developed until you're 25. 18-24 year olds females find themselves in abusive relationships.

In fact, younger than that, domestic abuse amongst teenagers was rising. Therapy isn't accessible to all. Manipulation will have you wrapped around an abuser's finger.

And reoccurring abusive conditioning and traumatic events have long-term effects on the brain, starting with complex post traumatic stress disorder.

What keeps people in abusive relationships is manipulation, guilt and shame. What further activates the shame is being blamed for your abuse, by either abusers or other people on the outside looking in, taking up for your abuser or questioning you, making you afraid to speak up.

On average, it takes a person seven times to leave an abusive relationship. Read the above tweet again if you don't know why.

And even if they leave, it's easier to cycle with another person who acts as if they have pure intentions for you, but keeps their cards close to their chest.

If you can rely on anything, rely on your survival instinct and your intuition to tell you something is not right. For some of us, they're one and the same.