The father who takes off his leather belt and starts beating his child.
The mom who makes her perfectly normal 12 year old get on the scale and go on a restrictive diet until she loses weight.
The older brother who locks his younger sibling in the closet for hours when the parents leave the house.
The priest who inappropriately touches the young boy.
These examples are fairly visible and fairly obvious (to most of us) scenarios where we can point a finger and say, ah yes, there is abusive behavior.
What’s often less visible and less acknowledged is the role collusion may play in these scenarios, how it also counts as abuse, and what the very particular and detrimental impacts of it can be.
Because collusion plays such an enormous role in dysfunctional family relationships (not to mention national politics), I thought it was worth talking about today.
What does it mean to collude with abuse?
Before we can dive into the meat of today’s essay, we have to define collusion.
What is collusion?
Collusion is a word derived from the Latin word “colludere,” a combination of col- meaning “together,” and ludere- meaning “to play.”
In other words, col-ludere, to play together, to conspire, to act in unison or agreement towards some secret purpose.
To collude.
Stockbrokers and companies might collude to cash out on IPOs.
Friends might collude to plan a surprise party for another bestie.
And dysfunctional family systems might have collusion abuse to keep equilibrium, to keep the peace, to maintain homeostasis, often by explicitly or implicitly permissing or perpetuating bad behavior from one or more abusive figures.
For example:
“Oh, he didn’t really mean to hit you. He was just playing and you got in the way. Don’t be so dramatic!”
“Dad’s just being dad. Why do you have to be so angry and upset all the time?”
“Mom only wants the best for you. She wants you to have a better high school experience than she did. That’s why she’s taking you to Weight Watchers.”
“The Church teaches that we must forgive our parents no matter what. I’m sure he’s sorry but you have to forgive him.”
“I don’t want to hear what he did. That’s between you and him.”
Hear me out: collusion isn’t necessarily conscious and the intent isn’t necessarily to wound or abuse.
Meaning, family members often do this without deliberate awareness because, at some level, it’s what they’ve been trained and taught to know to do and/or the stakes feel too high to make other choices, even if they’re aware of those other choices.
