Warning Signs of Abusive Relationships

[imperfect_cupcake]

Originally Posted by CherylNYC

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.

[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)

[Kobi]

I have been going over the statistics Snow posted on the previous page on domestic violence in lesbian relationships. And I have been looking for supporting data trying to sort out the numbers.

If I take that fact sheet at face value, up to 90% of us could be considered abusers or having engaged in behavior that can be seen as abusive. Does that make sense? Seriously, that isn't even logical.

Hart (1986) defines lesbian domestic violence as “That pattern of violent and coercive behaviours whereby a lesbian seeks to control the thoughts, beliefs, or conduct of her intimate partner or to punish the intimate for resisting the perpetrator's control over her”.

It's a power thing. It's a pattern. It's a control issue. It is deliberate and malicious and pathological. When there is a power differential, there is the potential for abuse.

Being a staunch feminist, I am very aware of and attuned to womens issues. As a social worker, I have seen some nasty abuse stuff all across the spectrum of gender and behavior. I have also seen things that have turned out not to be what they initially appeared.

Some of it is my age and some my occupation, but with the exception of physical abuse, I am reluctant to use the words "abusive" to describe a relationship or behavior, and "abuser" to describe a person. Here's why:

1. People come into relationships with their respective baggage and issues. If your baggage and issues are complimentary, things might be smoother sailing. If your baggage and issues are not, things are likely to be conflictual and even volatile.

2. Relationships can be good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, functional or dysfunctional. What appears to be totally bizarre to me, works for some people. What works for me might look totally bizarre to someone else.

3. Some couples are just a bad fit for one another. Trying to fit a square peg into a round hole makes for a lot of misunderstandings, hurt feelings and accusations. Bad couples do not equate to bad people.

4. People change over time. If the relationship changes with them, it's a good thing. If it doesn't, problems are bound to arise.

5. People use certain words for a reason, with or without recognition that the words carry a certain impact. As TruTexan has experienced, once labeled an abuser, you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent. By then, the damage has already been done to your reputation, finances, livelihood, self esteem etc.

6. Relationships are very complex and not easy to sort out. They can be unhealthy, dysfunctional, problematic, but not necessarily abusive. People do weird shit to one another all the time because they are angry, jealous, hurt, cant get their way etc.

I take abuse and domestic violence very seriously. There are certain criteria that make for an abusive relationship. When we play with the definition, we tend to water down a very serious issue into something else.

That is just not cool.

[The_Lady_Snow]

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.

[Kobi]

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

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.

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.

[Medusa]

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.

[imperfect_cupcake]

Originally Posted by Medusa

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.

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.

[Martina]

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.

[TruTexan]

I have to admit that I"m very guilty of lashing out from anger and hurt at the same time and it hasn't been pretty, it's been painful for those to hear me tell them things that I didn't mean.I just wanted them to hurt in return as much as I was hurting and feeling angry with them. I have felt terribly bad afterwards about doing it, but I'm working on it everyday to stop it. I'm getting better at not doing it because I've gone to some therapy will continue to go; and communicating how I feel instead of outbursts when I've had enough, and with more therapy I should be able to control it better and not say things out of anger and hurt. I think there are a lot of people that get so overwhelmed when they are tired of being lied to, tired of drama, tired of abuse, and everything that goes with all of that, that they say things they don't actually mean, and it comes from a place of flat out anger and deep hurt, and the other parties find it abusive when they react they way they have. Sometimes you just lose it but it still doesn't make it right when you say things out of hurt and anger that you don't mean to. I try not to hold things like that against anyone and try to figure out if that is what it is all about so I ask them. I learned that in therapy too. I'm trying hard to learn to deal with my mom because she does that and I've learned to step away from it and tell myself, that's not my mom, that's anger and hurt talking and there's nothing I can do to fix her when she's like that, and just get in my truck and go home to my own quiet little apt where my serenity is. Mom won't go for help so I have to learn to cope with dealing with her when she's like that. I'm my mom's caretaker, so it's something I have to do to still be able to help her when she needs me. It doesn't make it right and I don't put up with it anymore, but instead of losing it on her out of anger and deep hurt myself, I just tell her I have to go home now. It works best that way. And I do get that phone call with mom crying and telling me she's sorry and I know deep down inside she is and it's not fake, it's very real, she's just a torn woman inside that knows nothing but abuse in her life and she won't seek help. I love her and she's the only mom I have so I just try to keep the peace. She's getting better at communicating with me instead of yelling and screaming at me when she's feeling overwhelmed, stressed, angry and hurt, she's begun to talk to me more about how she feels since I've learned to not engage her when she's acting like that. I think my telling her I won't tolerate it anymore has really sunk in and she's taken it to heart because things have changed between us for the better.