Being in a relationship means that you should be having fun, laughing and being open. If you feel that you are always having to be careful what you do and say around your partner or if you are afraid when you are with them, chances are you are in an abusive type relationship. Do you feel that your self-esteem has almost vanished? This can happen in emotionally abusive relationships.
Emotional abuse can be hard to see because sometimes the abuser does things to make their partner feel like they are crazy, or they are losing their mind. They will use different ways to control their partners behavior and make them confused at what is going on. They will do things to make their partner question their reality and make them feel that they are losing it.
Being in this type of relationship can happen fast and it can be confusing, or it can grow over time. Some people do not even realize this is happening to them.
Here are some signs that you are in an emotionally abusive relationship:
- They criticize you often.
- They humiliate you.
- You are isolated from friends and family.
- You are not able to access the money.
- They make you feel trapped.
- You are afraid.
Abuse
One thing about abuse is that it can be a cycle. When this happens, there are generally four phases that happen including:
- Tension-this is when the abuser gets upset and takes it out on their partner.
- Incident-the verbal and emotional abuse happens including blaming and intimidating.
- Reconciliation-the abuser will apologize for how they acted.
- Calm-nothing is happening, but this is the honeymoon phase of the relationship.
The abuse cycle will break down the partner on an emotional basis and this is a terrible situation to be in.
Conclusion
There are reasons why abusers and victims get together. This can be something that causes damage to the person both mentally and physically.
Issues can usually come from the abuser’s past or family relationship and can even stem from things that happened in their childhood. This can cause the abuse to have suffered years of fear or abandonment or even abuse themselves. Maybe they saw their parents abusing each other and the cycle continued with them.
No matter how people get to this situation, they can get out and learn to have good relationships. If you are in this type of relationship, you need to protect yourself. Find someone you can talk to and figure out how you can get out of the relationship.
If you are in a home where there is violence on top of the emotional abuse, find a network and call a domestic helpline. You can get help that you need. If you are afraid of your safety, call 9-1-1 immediately.
You can also call this number for the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233).