I have to say that I really admire all the survivors here who are living, loving and functioning after leaving abusive long term, committed relationships. I know what it took for me to come back from my long term emotionally abusive relationship many years ago. I simply wouldn't be the person I am today if my next partner had not made it her business to heal and support me. Sharon was everything that my former partner could never be, and she was the single healthy romantic relationship I've had in my life. By the time she died four years later, I knew what it meant to be well loved.

Fast forward to my recent dating experience with an emotional abuser. It's flipping HARD to recover from this! It's been months since I told her to never contact me again, yet I'm still randomly furious, and I'm still replaying those damaging events in my head and thinking about what I could have/should have done/said differently. She managed to undermine me in some pretty fundamental ways in the short time we dated, and I'm still telling her to go f**k herself in my head. I can't imagine how much harder this would be for me if I had stayed longer.

Brava/bravo to all of you who have come back strong from this sort of thing. It's really, REALLY hard.

I have to say another warning sign might be asking for money. Now, mind you, if you're in a committed relationship and you're together for a while, sharing finances and supporting each other is typical. However, if you're only just met someone or have only interacted with them online and they start talking about major hardships where they need money, something is amiss. Nobody (except perhaps those with social learning disabilities) would ask what would basically be a virtual stranger for financial help. It just crosses a line.

People who are kind, loving, and trusting are rare in this world. Honestly, we are not the problem. We need more of that in this world. It's the people who see our goodness and exploit it for their own gain who are the ones who really have the problem. I think that the key is to find a balance of maintaining your good heart and protecting yourself from those who would wish to take advantage of you. I'm learning that now. It's a process. You're not alone.

I haven't read every post so I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet but one red flag would be (for me) when someone resorts to blaming every bad word/action/whatever on physical or mental health issues (either real or imagined). I haven't experienced this personally but someone very dear to me has done and it really did a number of them. (I know from my own experience with my daughter (special needs) that it's definitely a slippery slope when you start excusing negative behaviour that can be controlled but isn't.) I'm not saying (of course) that I wouldn't be supportive of a partner who had genuine health issues, but what I wouldn't do is allow them to use those issues as an excuse for treating me poorly.

Words

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Blackmail-People-Obligation-Manipulate/dp/0060928972"]Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You: Susan Forward, Donna Frazier: 9780060928971: Amazon.com: Books[/ame]

This book really helped me after my brief relationship with the narcissist. It was given to me my her ex. After we broke I had people very quietly come up to me and tell me "my ex saw her just before you..." And tell me stories as well as other femmes in my community come up and have a very quiet word.

I need to re read it from my last person. I was having an affair with her, something I thought I'd never ever do again after 10 years previously learning my lesson about being the other woman. But I was in such a place of emotional wreckage and frightened and she was my only good friend, I was completely alone in that city, trying to find a way out. Tbh I don't think I would have done anything differently because I was so unstable and alone.

She wasn't a monster. She had incredibly good qualities along with the abusive traits. That's why I don't like calling People abusers unless they are like that narcissist I was seeing. Rather they have abuseive behaviours. I don't like reducing people to roles. It makes me feel icky.

But some of her behaviours I feel the same as you... I am still fantasizing and getting angry about. It's finally starting to fade and I'm finally occasionally starting to hope that now that she's getting married and moving, to a place more stable and to a woman who is kind and doesn't drink, perhaps she'll get back on the wagon and her behaviour will change. And I wish her well.

But I do still get angry with how she treated *me* and I get so angry that I actually became so desirous of her praise that I did horrible things for her to try to show people she wasn't a bad person. That she was just misunderstood. That she was just hurting from being treated so poorly (she was but it wasn't one sided - and she always owned up to treated her ex wife poorly).

The girl she was seeing used to call me and cry and talk to me, as I was "just an ex" and I'd listen and you know I used to feel relief that it wasn't just me, that she treated other people just as insanely, and that I wasn't imagining things or nuts (because past partners made me feel that way about their abuseive behaviour)

I have a beauty and the beast problem. I know this.
It's why I don't trust myself.
And why I do not trust words. At all. I've been called names like ice queen cause I have no use for romantic words now.
Show me. Show me how you feel with how you behave and how you help me with my life, I have no use for romantic flower talk. None. If someone wants to express how much they care about me, then observe my life and see how you can offer to enriched it through your actions. Words are cheap ( and I'm a writer, I should know lol)

Thank you for bringing this up. I also believe that there's a flip side to this. If your partner is aware that you have a type of mental or developmental disability and they continue to use that against you, it's a type of abuse. I've waited until now to bring this up because I didn't want to derail the discussion but I have Asperger's syndrome.

I'm self-diagnosed but from years of research and talking with people who have it, I more than qualify. When I first told my partner this, I explained the literal way that I think and that I need a great deal of clarification in order to understand any social wrong-doing or misunderstanding. Without it, "the obvious" goes right over my head. With other people I had dated, I didn't know this about myself and relationships failed before they even began.

With my last ex, I understood what to explain and what I needed and thought this would be very helpful. After all, once you explain to someone that you absolutely cannot help not understanding something, they couldn't possibly continue to get angry with you for not getting it without speaking to them in a way they understand, right? I mean, it would be like getting angry with someone in a wheelchair for not being able to walk.

Well, instead of this information being helpful, my ex used it to further confuse me. She would try to "educate" me on a appropriate social behavior and since I had no foundation for this in the context of a romantic partnership, she was able to use me as a puppet.

I said and did things and acted in ways I was instructed were appropriate and then realized later I was only being manipulated. I would act the way she said she wanted me to act and would make her feel loved in the relationship and then be treated like I was completely insane when I did what I was told was expected of me.

A lot of this also had to do with cultural expectations as she was from the South and I from the North. It was quite easy for the combination of my Asperger's and the fact I lived in a completely different environment to be an easy way to manipulate, control, confuse, and punish me.

For most neurotypical (non-autistic people) this is not a concern even in emotionally-abusive relationships. After all, NT people have a firm social foundation and can usually tell when they're being asked to behave in a way that doesn't make sense for them. Not so us Aspies. We are like like hollow social sponges. Mimicking and following the examples of others in our environment is the only way we can survive socially. It's the way we learn.

I think people with Asperger's and other forms of social developmental issues may be at a great deal of increased risk for being targeted by someone with abusive tendencies. We are always looking for direction even if we aren't aware of it.

Like honeybarbara, I don't trust myself. This is why I need and want those I truly know love and care about me to get to know potential partners from now on. Most of my friends and family behave in a healthy, normal ways and I need to compare and contrast and "run them by" NT people so I'm certain that what I'm feeling (I partner by emotional vibration alone) doesn't ever put me in danger again. I also have clear-cut set rules for romantic encounters now so I don't even up ever again following my heart off of a cliff.

When you don't know you have a blind spot and a massive one, I do believe it takes legions of angels to protect you (if you believe in such things) until you are able to clearly see and understand what some people are capable of.

Kobi, I believe that most of the female bodied people have experienced one form of abuse or another, be it from a family member, lover, friend, partner, husband, wife, uncles. There are some forms of abuse that a lot of us do not discuss or that are not reported.

When I discuss abuse I am not speaking of the everyday misbehaviors between people, and even then some of those ickie behaviours that continue and become repetative such as what you numbered then it is abuse and it becomes a vicious cycle over over and over and over.

I think Kobi makes a salient point about being careful with definitions.

I'd also like to say that there is a wide gap between a person who is an "abuser" and a person who is displaying abusive behavior.

Absolutely, and thank you for pointing it out. (I'm bi polar so I totally relate to what you're saying.)

Words

That's why I think the I book that I posted is actually incredibly useful. If anyone wishes to read the introduction, it's quite helpful to see things described as behaviour, rather than an identity. And to also understand that much emotionally abusive behaviour, is done from a place of complete anxiety in a person.

I have been emotionally abusive without understanding what I was doing. I have hurt people. When I grasped on to how dysfunctional I was behaving, I felt fucking awful. But also unable to stop because of the dysfunctional dynamic between me and her. I went to therapy immediately. I tried to get her to go. She refused and said therapy was pointless.

And drank more.

Often two people display emotionally abusive behaviour in a relationship, not just one.

I am no angle. I am no victim. I don't feel like one with those that I have been with. When I was younger and very naive, ok. But not after all the stuff I know and experienced. That wasn't all someone else.

I am not talking about anyone else but me, let me be clear.

I have done shitty, SHITTY things because I wanted to please someone and get their praise. I went against my own ethics. And I can't say " Oh she manipulated me into them because I was in such a bad place" yeah, I was in a bad place. Yeah, she was manipulative. But I did them. I'm completely 100% responsible for what I did. I also knew better. I was working from a point of emotional weakness and fear. And my old needs to please and get praise. It's these flaws in myself that if I don't keep in check and monitor and rein in, just as much as someone else's alcoholism, it hurts others. But thing is I get to claim I was used. When knowing full well I was indulging in self destructive behaviour.

This is why i am saying I have been with quite a few people with abusive behaviour, but only three abusers - the people who were abusers were systematic, self-aware (ish. They were very good at subconsciously compartmentalizing their morals so could feel very wounded about being called a liar and feel genuine hurt and dismay while ignoring they were actually lying), and continual with little remorse.

That book shows how to deal with behaviours. And one can take stock of ones own responsibilities and also decide if it's abusive behaviour and thus is it something you want to salvage or not; or this an abuser.

The intro is free to read and very informative.

Snow, I agree that most females have experienced abuse by the traditional definition of the concept at the hands of other people at some point in their lives.

What I was referring to was this:


About 17-45% of lesbians report having been the victim of a least one act of physical violence perpetrated by a lesbian partner (1,5,6,13). Types of physical abuse named by more than 10% of participants in one study included:

Disrupting other’s eating or sleeping habits

Pushing or shoving, driving recklessly to punish, and slapping, kicking, hitting, or biting (11).

Sexual abuse by a woman partner has been reported by up to 50% of lesbians (12).

Psychological abuse has been reported as occurring at least one time by 24% to 90% of lesbians (1,5,6,11,14).


These are stats for lesbian-lesbian relationships. Not for women in general. At least one incident of psychological abuse in a relationship by 24-90% of lesbians? Sexual abuse 50% of the time?

This is when I feel like I am living in a parallel universe.

Yeah, I haven't posted because I haven't been with anybody who was a serial abuser.

I have been very lucky in my closest relationships. I was in a D/s relationship -- non-sexual -- years ago with someone I barely knew. I was physically assaulted, deprived of sleep and worked seven days a week. It goes on. I stayed for a few weeks after the assault because I did not want to fail. Strangely that experience left few scars. I think because it wasn't intimate emotionally or sexually. The person's therapist called me after I left -- I don't even know how she got my number -- and told me she was going to contact me to tell me to get out, but that I left before she could. She validated my experience, and that helped me let it go.

I had a friend type situation that involved threats of violence. This scared me more and left me with more anger. I think that was because we had been friends, although looking back on it, I see she wasn't really capable of that. Her own needs -- of various types -- were driving her so hard that everyone was just an object to her. Everything was about whether someone or some interaction could make her feel better for a second or not. Even angry ones, and she had a lot of those. I don't know. But I don't think of her as an abuser although narcissistic fits -- at least at that point in her life. She was mentally ill. Probably in the process of falling apart. I don't know. But she did me some genuine damage. Scared me. It took me two years to get past that in one way or another.

I have also done some shitty things to people. People who deserved understanding but I gave them judgement. I wish I had done better.