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Abusive Relationship? 15 Warning Signs of Abuse

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By Stephanie Lang, PhD, On May 19, 2015 

15 Warning Signs of Abuse

I am going to do something different here, and rather than writing about the earliest warning signs that abuse will likely be oncoming in a relationship, I’ll write about the warning signs that you are already in an abusive relationship. I will offer you—what I have learned through talking to many, many victims of abuse over-the-years—are internal warning signs that you are being abused.

  1. You find yourself making excuses, justifying, or taking responsibility for your partner’s negative behavior (e.g., “he didn’t mean it,” “she had good intentions,” “I made him do it.”) You also find yourself angry at and blaming your partner, and then flipping back and forth between blaming your partner and blaming yourself. The upshot is that you often feel confused and ambivalent.
  2. You feel afraid to ask your partner for help, or to ask a knowledge question, or to talk to your partner about things. You fear being ridiculed, or being talked to with a disgusted tone in your partner’s voice.
  3. You find yourself mentally working hard searching for reasons for your own negative feelings (e.g., one client who was in therapy for many years during the abuse attributed her unhappy feelings to her bad childhood, rather than to the way her partner was currently treating her).
  4. You’ve thought about leaving your partner.
  5. You find yourself looking for signs that your partner is improving in his or her behavior and attitude toward you.
  6. If you saw your child or best friend in a relationship where they were being treated the way your partner has treated you, you’d advise them to get out.
  7. You’ve stopped doing a certain activity with your partner because of how your partner treats you during it. Even though you may have downplayed it, such as rationalized that you stopped doing that actively because you just don’t get along doing that, etc.
  8. You get good at buying at discount. This is because while you may or may not have lots of money and have access to the bank account and pay the bills, you are under monetary control. You find yourself having to ask permission, or prove why you need to buy something.
  9. You find yourself discounting the way you would normally react to a situation in order to downplay your partner’s behavior. For examples, you find yourself discounting through rationalizing, “Well, maybe she knows better than me, I’m comparatively naïve after all.” Or you find yourself justifying: “Well, he was really sick that day, maybe if I had been that sick I would have acted the same way.”
  10. There is gradually less and less freedom to be you.
  11. You find yourself feeling guilty a lot, and second-guessing yourself.
  12. You find yourself questioning what you thought had been your values and gradually changing those. For example, you don’t believe in the way your partner disciplines your children, but slowly you find yourself accepting it, because your partner insists that it’s the right way.
  13. You find yourself explaining yourself a lot, or apologizing a lot.
  14. You ask your partner’s permission. Calling and asking permission to stay out with your friends a few hours longer is not healthy. Healthy would be calling and telling your partner that you are going to be out longer. And the healthy response to that would be, “Thanks for letting me know honey, I’ll see you when you get here.” Checking in with an equal is about letting your partner know what’s going on so that your partner won’t be worried; it’s not about asking permission. If you’ve been in an abusive relationship for any length of time, the idea of not asking permission may seem weird (not normal) to you, and you may feel that you have little concept of what is healthy and normal for a good relationship.
  15. You may also be feeling bad about yourself in the sense of shameful that while you know something is wrong, you aren’t doing anything about it. Or you feel bad about yourself because you don’t know how to make it better.

I hope this article has helped you know whether or not what you are experiencing in your relationship is abuse. Contact me today if I might be of help to you. Know that Healthy love feels good. It does not hurt.

 



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