It Ends with Us Movie Night
Breaking the cycle of domestic violence. My first solo visit to the cinema.
*This post contains SPOILER ALERTS and references to abuse*
I’ve just got home from the cinema, and am deep in my thoughts and feelings that I’d like to unravel with you. If my mascara streaked face and my belly full of cheese nachos is anything to go by, I had a good time. I’ve decided that leaving the house is the most difficult part, but once I’m out of my introvert hermit cave, I’m golden.
Drama and toxic relationships go hand in hand
I didn’t go just to experience the hype around It Ends With Us which is an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s New York Times Best Selling Book. I haven’t read the book, but the drama around the film made me want to. It was either a brilliant PR spin, or a lot of sh1t really did go down on set. I reckon it might be a bit of both.
You and I - we are not alone!
It was my first solo visit to the cinema which was made easier by noticing the other solo cinema goers who were there too. I was not alone which is also true of survivors of domestic violence and childhood abuse. Except for many of us don’t know that. Many of us believe that somehow it’s our fault and that we are to blame. That’s why it’s so important to have these difficult conversations and dissolve the shame and secrecy that keeps victims trapped and feeling alone.
As a survivor of childhood trauma and somebody who is recovering from C-PTSD (complex trauma), I was intrigued to see how the more serious issues of breaking the cycle of domestic violence would be represented in the film. Lots of you may already know that a proportion of the profits made from my Smiley Thought Cards (positive affirmations for kids) go to Your Sanctuary, a local domestic abuse shelter.
I also went to admire the brains and beauty that is Justin Baldoni. I’ve been a fan for a long time because he supports and champions causes close to my heart. He is the author of the book Man Enough which challenges men to be brave enough to be vulnerable, and strong enough to be sensitive.
Justin and his lovely wife, Emily (that’s them in the picture), are also advocates of attachment parenting which was also my approach in the decade I coached highly sensitive children and their families. Attachment parenting is gentle but powerful and seeks to break painful, dysfunctional familial patterns by prioritising the relationship between the parent and child, instead of using techniques or tools to discipline.
What’s the film about?
It Ends With Us is the story of Lily Blossom Bloom, who has had a rough childhood, and we see her leaving home to fulfil her childhood dream of opening a florist. She grew up as the Mayor’s daughter, but behind closed doors her father beats and rapes her mother. Lily then meets the rich and handsome neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid, who she falls for. As she develops feelings for Ryle, Atlas Corrigan, her first love, reappears and challenges the relationship between Lily and Ryle which triggers jealously in Ryle who becomes controlling and violent.
A bad childhood does not define you
The film shows us the contrast between Ryle and Atlas who both had traumatic upbringings, but only one of them turns out to be an abuser.
Lily is vulnerable when she first meets Ryle. We see her conflicted feelings at her father’s funeral when she is unable to write his eulogy. Afterwards, Lily finds herself on a Boston rooftop contemplating her father's death and the domestic violence that plagued her childhood. This is when she first meets Ryle and there are some glaringly obvious red flags.
Ryle appears on the rooftop raging, and he starts kicking and throwing the patio furniture around. He is not a mature man who can regulate his emotions.
Despite Lily making it clear that she doesn’t do casual relationships, Ryle pursues her, saying he can’t stop thinking about her. He won’t take no for an answer. This is called love bombing.
In response to Ryle’s love bombing, Lily abandons her values and principles as she is curious about Ryle. It isn’t just that she is taken by his good looks and charm, but also that Ryle is like her father. Her wounded inner child unconsciously wants to run that story again in the hopes that she can change the ending.
So, this sets the scene for their toxic tryst
Let it be said, that if you were raised in dysfunction that red flags feel like home because they are familiar to you. It’s not your fault - this is your blueprint for love. Don’t worry it’s not set in stone. You can change it, if you choose to. It will take work but it will be worth it.
There was a lot of negative press online about the film romanticising toxic relationships which I think was intentional. The film showed us how when you’re in an abusive relationship, you are swept away by that fairy tale until the abuse kicks in. They are like two sides of the same coin. After the abusive episode you’re gaslit by your abuser and swept back into the fantasy. It’s so confusing, and you could see this with Lily. If you want to stay in the relationship with them, you have to erase the abuse from your mind.
This cycle of nice-mean-nice-mean-nice-mean is called trauma bonding and is as addictive as crack.
‘Trauma bonding occurs when a person experiencing abuse develops an unhealthy attachment to their abuser. They may rationalise or defend the abusive actions, feel a sense of loyalty, isolate from others, and hope that the abuser’s behaviour will change.’
- Medical News Today
At this point, the chances of you being able to leave this toxic tryst are slim. Trauma bonding is a strong pull that controls the victim, who keeps trying harder to get back to the ‘nice’ person that they saw at the beginning of the relationship.
Anybody who has been in an abusive relationship knows all too well that you live in hope for the good times, which you can never really trust because at some point the other shoe will drop.
Love is never violent
You also deny the truth of your reality by putting your focus on the abusive person’s potential. Denial is a powerful coping strategy that protects us from the painful truth, and you must find the strength to live in your reality and not get caught up in the gaslighting.
Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse or manipulation in which the abuser attempts to sow self-doubt and confusion in their victim’s mind. Typically, gaslighters are seeking to gain power and control over the other person, by distorting reality and forcing them to question their own judgment and intuition.1
Examples of gaslighting behaviours are denying something the other person knows is true, spreading rumours about them, and blaming the victim. The mental health impact of gaslighting includes feelings of powerlessness, confusion, isolation, disorientation, and low self-esteem.
Breaking through the denial
In order to heal, you must stay with the truth that the person standing in front of you, the one who tells you they love you and then hurts you, is the person you’re in a relationship with. No matter how nice they are when they are not abusing you, their love comes with a side order of cruelty, and pain which will eventually crush you. Your partner (abuser) is NOT going to change, and even with help - first they have to admit that they are abusive - change is unlikely, or decades of therapy away.
The film portrayed the gaslighting with such conviction. You have to have experienced it to know that it’s impossible to describe. It’s ambient, coercive, sneaky abuse. Like carbon monoxide, it positions you slowly from the inside until you don’t trust yourself anymore.
After he pushed her down the stairs, Ryle convinced Lilly that ‘It was just an accident.’ Confused and in love, Lilly does not want to face the truth. She is in denial, just like her mother was in denial about her father.
Lilly then goes on to marry Ryle even though in the back of her mind she recognises she is playing out the relationship dynamic of her mother and father. This powerful unconscious feeling which Lily feels powerless to stop is called Compulsion Repetition.
Repetition compulsion, also known as traumatic reenactment, is a psychological concept where a person repeatedly acts out the same negative patterns, often unconsciously. They may gravitate towards familiar but harmful relationships or have recurring nightmares. The behaviours often stem from past traumatic events, although they can have non-traumatic origins.2
In one scene, Lilly asks her mum: ‘Why did you stay?’
Her Mum replies: ‘It was harder to leave and I loved him.’
Last year in the UK, 2.4 million adults were victims (1.7 million women and 699,000 men). This equates to: 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6-7 men. Women are more likely to experience repeat victimisation, be physically injured or killed and experience sexual violence. 3
The writers and film makers have done an excellent job of portraying what it’s like to be in an abusive relationship. I know this because it’s now the day after the night before, and I can’t get the movie out of my head. I want to watch it again.
What I think they did particularly well was the emotional and physical violence. Some of the physical abuse was implicit; blurry cameras and cut always with lots of crying and close ups on Lily’s terrified and desperate face. It captured the fear and confusion a victim feels when they’re being hurt by somebody they love, and who they thought they could trust.
The intense and fast moving relationship between Lily and Ryle pulled us in to the complexities and subtleties of abuse. Abuse is never black and white, and it doesn’t always have to be physically violent. The film got that and showed how over time, abuse slowly erodes your trust in yourself, your self-confidence and self-esteem.
The boiling frog metaphor
Do you know this metaphor? The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. This is what happens in toxic relationships where the victim is unable, or unwilling to be aware of subtle and sinister threats that arise gradually rather than suddenly. 4
Hiding in plain sight
The film also showed that abusers are not obvious villains. They are often in positions of power or in caring roles where they are seen by others in a positive light. They can be family members, work colleagues or friends, not just intimate partners.
Abusers don’t abuse everybody they meet
Ryle was charming, good looking, intelligent, successful, and very loving, until the switch was flipped. The film explained how abusers are often suffering from their own deeply painful childhood trauma, but this is where we must leave them. It does not excuse their behaviour as adults. It’s on them to heal from that, and no amount of love in the world will make it better. They must take full responsibility for their behaviour and will need on-going professional help.
I haven’t read Colleen Hoover’s book, but I found this quote online by Lily who narrates the book. It sums up the enormity of what cycle breakers face to heal from abusive generational family patterns :
“Cycles exist because they are excruciating to break. It takes an astronomical amount of pain and courage to disrupt a familiar pattern. Sometimes it seems easier to just keep running the same familiar circles, rather than facing the fear of jumping and possibly not landing on your feet. My mother went through it.”
So if you’re a cycle breaker reading this. I want you to know that if you made it out you’re strong, and if you didn’t, you’re still strong. Abusers are manipulative and skilled at holding you where they want you. It’s all about control, and believe me when I tell you, it’s so hard to leave. Not just because you are trauma bonded to them, but the compulsion repetition is super sneaky and will have you acting out your trauma in other relationships until you heal it.
‘It’s easy to ask, especially as men, ‘Why do women stay?’ But the real question we need to ask is, ‘Why do men harm?’
Justin Baldoni who plays Ryle, and was also the director of the film.
Did Lilly break the cycle?
After Ryle rapes Lily, she ends up in hospital and discovers that she is pregnant, and again you feel the confusion and pain of her deciding if she will choose a better life for her child than the one she experienced growing up.
In the end, Lily asks Ryle for a divorce, and he says he is going to get help, but we don’t see any evidence of him doing that.
Lily asks Ryle: ‘What if one day she came to you and said ‘my boyfriend hit me’, what would you say to her? What if she said ‘Daddy, my husband pushed me down the stairs, but he said it was an accident, so it’s fine’? What if she said her husband held her down and she begged him to stop, but he swore he’d never do it again. What would you tell her?’
Ryle replies: ‘I would beg her to leave.’
After Ryle leaves the hospital, and Lily is left cradling their daughter, she whispers to her, ‘It stops right here, with you and me. It ends with us.’
I found the ending unrealistic and misleading
As I drove home, I broke down realising the strength and courage it had taken for me to leave my family in order to break the toxic cycle, but through the tears, I was left wondering if in deed the cycle for Lily was broken. It’s never wise to confront an abuser when you’ve worked out who they are. If an abuser thinks they are losing control, (because of their own abandonment issues), their violence or manipulative ways will escalate which puts the victim in danger.
That’s why in the psychological thriller, Sleeping with the Enemy, we see Julia Roberts meticulously planning and executing her escape from her abusive husband. She secretly learns to swim and fakes her own death to escape his abuse.
Despite the negative press, and the high expectations from Colleen Hoover fans, for me personally, It Ends With Us was healing. Maybe I need to read the book and see how that lands, but for now, I’m sitting with what I’ve discovered so far. The film was powerful enough to validate something I hadn’t yet been able to reconcile from my childhood.
This is why I’m passionate about story telling and writing our stories. It’s why I wrote my book, Stuck Between Two Worlds to let my inner child have a voice, and also why I created my 3-month coaching programme Write to Heal.
Your story is what you got you here, but it does not have to define you….and it’s never too late to write your happy ending.
Until next time, take care.
Love
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What is gaslighting? Newport Institute
Bowins, B. (2010). Repetitive maladaptive behavior: Beyond repetition compulsion. The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 70(3), 282-298.
The Boiling Frog, Wikipedia
Love this Lisa! I definitely want to see this film. Thanks for explaining so many concepts.