When you allow yourself to be degraded, you get even more degraded. It worsens and worsens as your self-respect declines and your standards erode. You wind up like the slave in the dungeon at the pawn shop in the movie Pulp Fiction. As Bruce Springsteen sang, "You get used to anything. Pretty soon it just becomes your life."
What happens in cults, is that they take advantage of your idealism and turn it against you. If you don't accept relentless criticism that is actually abuse, that's because you don't want to grow. That's what they tell you. It's your arrogance that won't accept ridiculous amounts of rebuke about impossible matters. It's your unwillingness to let go of control that prevents you from allowing some stranger to take over your life. This is what they tell you. They tell you it's your job to sleep on the floor, to go without nutrition, or to just marry anyone, no matter how crazy, and to be only gracious to that person no matter what he/she does to you. This goes on in the frum world, goes on all the time particularly to baalei teshuvah, particularly to baal teshuva men. (When I refer to BTs, I include converts for whom all of this is probably even worse.)
What to do? You can't allow yourself to be degraded on a regular basis. There are moments that it happens in life. You deal with it, but you don't invite it or stay in a place where it's regular. I saw men get so abused in dating that they wound up marrying a bad person because their sensitivities had been squashed. They were tolerating a sick situation and even wrapping themselves around it. Their avodah became indulging abuse against them. It starts when you allow yourself to be treated like garbage that first time and then that second time. Then comes a third time and a fourth. Then it becomes your life.
Even in dating, you must require that you be treated like a human being. If the only people who will treat you that way are older and marrying one of them means less children or no children, so be it. It's fanaticism to say that you'll marry a nasty person so you can have more children to serve Hashem. It's fantasy to imagine that you'll be tzadick enough to handle it. You hear these odd stories about tzadickim who handled impossible spouses. The stories are probably not accurate because probably the situations weren't quite as bad as portrayed. A nasty wife or husband in the 12th century or even in the early 20th probably still functioned like a mentch most of the time, still did his or her job, earned a living, made dinner, etc. Today, it's another matter. There are people all over the place that are completely out of control, addicted to drugs or booze, completely narcissistic and irresponsible. But that's not the only reason the stories are not useful as told. They are problematic if presented as the way you should live your life. You can apply some of it, but you can't tolerate abuse all day long, despite what the stories suggest.
One of the main rules of being a BT is to protect your basic dignity. There are people who will take it away from you and be proud of themselves for doing so. Hold on to your brain and your dignity at all times.
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