Emotionally Abusive... could this be you?

Emotional abuse is much more complex, subtle and insidious than physical abuse, so it is not always straightforward to decide whether you are being emotionally abusive to your partner. The main feature of emotionally abusive relationships is a consistent pattern of behaviors and attitudes that are controlling, degrading, and damaging to your partner's confidence. If you have ever been accused of being emotionally abusive (or have simply wondered about whether you are truly fair to your partner), read on to learn about the main attitudes and behaviors exhibited by emotionally abusive people.

1) You believe that you should be allowed to make most major decisions:

Decisions in healthy relationships involve two people coming together to weigh the relevant pros and cons. If you have a tendency towards emotional abuse, you might find you have the conviction that you should be the one making the important decisions. This need not be because you think that your needs matter more; you might instead think that your partner is just not as competent or as rational as you, making it the case that things will go better for you as a couple if you are the one who makes most of the major decisions in the relationship. If you think that you have the right to make the main decisions for the two of you for any reason, then you can fall into some damaging behavioral patterns. You might often find yourself insisting that your partner do as you say, and you may have sole control of the finances in the relationship (deciding how much money your partner is allowed to spend, and what they are allowed to buy). This is treating your partner like an infant, which will leave them feeling powerless and humiliated.

2) You loathe or disrespect your partner for their weak or incompetent behavior:

You may only privately dislike your partner for what you perceive as their weaknesses and profound character flaws, but it will be difficult to stop this perception from bleeding through into the way that you speak to your partner. You might tell them that have a sloppy way of dressing and are lucky to have ended up with someone as good looking as you are, or you might constantly remind them of your qualifications as a way to let your partner know they are intellectually inferior.

3) You think your partner is 'just too sensitive':

When you say or do things that make your partner feel hurt or demeaned, you might try to explain this as a result of your partner's over-sensitivity and their inability to understand humor. You might be the sort of person who makes cuttingly sarcastic remarks and then says 'I was only joking!' if your partner protests or looks upset. You may tell yourself that your partner has always been bad at accepting teasing, or that they are unable to laugh at themselves. However, if you reflect on it, you might realise that what you have been saying or doing is not genuinely funny in reality, and that you would not find it at all funny if the roles were reversed.

4) When you don't get your way, you threaten to walk out:

When things don't go the way you want with your partner, you might threaten to simply walk out of the house, or you might actually threaten to end the relationship. If you are in the latter group, you should consider this to be a strong warning sign that something is amiss in your attitude towards the relationship. This sort of behavior tends to frighten partners into unreflectively apologising and begging for a chance to make things better, making it the case that you will never have to apologize for your part in the argument. It is also important to think about exactly what sorts of things make you threaten to walk out. You should be concerned if the reasons why you threaten to leave involve such things as not being allowed to constantly dictate how you and your partner schedule your shared life or time.

5) When you don't get your way, you withhold things from your partner:

In an ideal relationship, there is symmetry between the weight afforded to your needs and the weight afforded to the needs of your partner. When you are not happy with the way something has worked out with your partner, it is important to talk about it (and, in less important cases, it can sometimes even be beneficial to simply accept the inconvenience of how things have turned out). Unfortunately, you might find that you sometimes punish your partner when you don't get your own way. Perhaps you become moody, cold, withdrawn or uncommunicative. All of these behaviors will leave your partner feeling isolated and starved of affection. While this will often lead to your partner letting you get your own way after all (in order to stop you from denying them affection), this is a hurtful and damaging way to get what you want.

6) One of the reasons you chose your partner is that you knew they would allow you to be dominant:

It may be that you particularly want a partner who will share all of your opinions, including ones about matters of taste (such as what music sounds good, which food tastes nice, and so on). Whatever your reason, you should be concerned about the fact that you are attracted to those who will clearly allow you to get your own way most of the time, and who will endorse all of your preferences. In a good relationship, respectful and lively debate is one of the ways in which the two people can help each other grow.

7) You sometimes deny things that you have said or done:

If you find yourself claiming not to have said or done things that you secretly know you have, this is a very serious sign that you are emotionally abusing your partner. Your repeated refusal to admit to having said or done certain things will most likely lead your partner to question their very sanity. This type of denial usually goes hand in hand with having a changeable personality, as when your mood changes you might no longer endorse what you previously said but find yourself unable to apologize or admit to wrongdoing. This can all be very scary and confusing for your partner, as they will not know whether to trust their own mind and will also never know which 'side' of your personality might emerge from day to day.

8) You have encouraged your partner to drop outside activities:

Although it may not have been conscious, when you think about it you may realise that you have slowly isolated your partner from their former hobbies, as well as their friends and family. Different people have different reasons for doing this. It might be out of jealousy, or out of paranoia that your partner might leave you for someone else. It might be because you rely on your partner's presence so much that you feel lost without them, or because you don't see your partner as truly loving unless they always put you and your needs first in life. Regardless, isolation like this will make your partner dangerously dependent on you, which means they will be more likely to put up with things they do not like about the relationship (instead of speaking up and asking for change).

9) You view yourself as being superior and deserving of special treatment:

In an ideal scenario, you will view your partner as an equal. However, if you have a tendency towards emotional abuse then you may instead see yourself as superior to your partner (as well as to most other people), and believe that you have a right to be treated with more consideration. This world-view can manifest in a lot of behaviors that will make your partner feel worthless. You will be likely to belittle their achievements, their ambitions and the ideas, and to regularly remind them of your superiority.

10) You think your partner should be maximally sexually available:

You may believe that your partner should be interested in sex whenever you are, or feel that your partner should be willing to try anything that turns on you even if it is not something that personally interests them (or, worse, even if it is something that makes them feel uncomfortable or degraded). When you think this, it is easy to start trying to persuade and pressure your partner into sex even when they claim to not be in the mood, as you might see them as 'refusing' to satisfy you. In extreme circumstances, you might find yourself reminding your partner that you could always go and find someone else who would be willing to have sex more often or be willing to perform the sex acts that you desire.

11) You blame your problems on your partner:

If you have problems taking responsibility for your own failings and faults, you might find yourself justifying these failings and faults by finding ways to blame them on your partner. When you have mood swings, you might think or say that these are only a response to things your partner is doing or saying. You might also exclaim that your partner 'made' you lose our temper, that your partner is the one who 'drives' you to overindulge in alcohol, or that you haven't achieved your goals because your partner has 'stopped' you.

12) You treat your partner with self-righteous suspicion:

If your partner has never cheated on you and is clearly committed to you then you should see them as deserving of trust. You are not being appropriately trusting if you constantly question your partner about where they have been, trying to find inconsistencies in their stories and acting as though they are hiding things from you. The same concern applies if you find yourself trying to listen in on their phone calls or trying to read their email correspondences. Perhaps you are also guilty of outright accusing your partner of cheating or inappropriate flirting, even if there is no hard evidence. If this sort of issue is particularly problematic for you, you might even find that you want to accuse your partner of dressing or acting misleadingly sexually available, or find that you sometimes try to limit their interactions with any member of the opposite sex.

If at least a third of these signs seem familiar to you, then the fact of the matter is that you are probably guilty of emotionally abusing your partner. If you break things, threaten to damage your partner's possessions or sometimes refuse to let your partner leave a room, you may have physically abusive tendencies as well. You must be honest with yourself and try to work out whether it is possible that you will at some stage begin to hurt your partner physically as well as emotionally. If even one of all the above signs of emotional abuse sounds familiar to you, then this means that you have at least once been emotionally abusive to your partner. As a result, you must be very careful about whether this sort of behavior manifests again in the future. If you are considering that you might be abusive and you want to change, it is vital that you seek help from a counselor, and also vital that you admit to your partner that you are aware that you need to change. Being emotionally abusive is NOT the same thing as being a bad or evil person, and a counselor will be able to help you figure out why you are abusive. They will also help you to find more constructive ways to express your negative emotions.