What is the cause of mistreatment in a relationship? Do you think it’s possible you are the reason someone is hurting you or trying to change you?
If so, please continue reading because it’s time to break that belief if that’s what you think.
Am I The Cause Of Their Hurtful Behaviors?
I’ll answer this question immediately and directly: almost never – even if you’re mean or hurtful to them. The only reason you may be at cause for their mistreatment of you is if you physically hit them. In that case, you may actually get hit back.
That’s cause and effect. The cause of a physical attack often results in the effect of a physical attack back.
But what about yelling at someone or calling them an awful name? They could respond in kind, sure. And while that might seem like cause and effect, too, the other person still has a choice, just as you do.
If you’re hurting someone and they hurt you back, you both have choices. You’re both individuals with free will to make your own decisions.
When you choose to hurt someone, they have a choice in how they respond. Even if you’re doing something that triggers them or activates them, you’re still not the cause of their behavior. They are responsible for their own actions because the cause begins with their choice.
Now, some people have behaviors that feel out of control to them. They might be triggered by something you do or say, leading to a hurtful reaction. But it’s still not your fault. It comes down to their inability to cope in a healthy way and regulate their emotions.
Let me give you an example. If a stranger approached me on the street saying, “You’re such a jerk, I hate you, and I hope you die,” – let’s just say they said that. First, I’d think they were crazy since I don’t know them. But imagine they’re calling me names, making fun of my wife, saying all kinds of awful things. I have a choice in how to respond. I might get angry. I might say, “Shut up.” I might want to punch them in the face, but it’s still my choice.
Let’s say I got angry enough to take a swing because they were relentless – picking at me and the people I love. Maybe I became physical or aggressive, or even just started yelling back, calling them names, trying to hurt them while defending myself and those I love.
If that happened – if I reacted and it came out of nowhere, pure fight or flight – if I got intensely angry and lashed out, that’s still my responsibility. No matter what that person said to me, it’s still my responsibility. I am still at fault.
If you took this scenario to court and showed a video of someone yelling at me for ten minutes before I finally punched them, I would still be at fault. Why? Because they never laid a hand on me – I’m the one who had that reaction, whether it was fight-or-flight or a conscious choice.
It doesn’t matter if the behavior was a deliberate choice or an unconscious response triggered by fight, flight, or freeze. What matters is that the behavior came from the person doing it, and that person is either in control of themselves or not.
I often get questions like:
Is it possible that I’m causing these behaviors?
Should I look at myself?
Is my codependency or people-pleasing causing them to be angry, hurt me, manipulate me, or try to control me?
Do I need to fix something in myself so they’ll stop doing these things?”
Let me clear this up, just in case you’re not sure:
You can be the stimulus for somebody’s bad behavior, but you are not the cause of it.
The cause lies within them and their actions. Often, the root cause stems from something they never learned in childhood – how to cope appropriately and deal with challenges in a healthy way.
If someone started yelling at me and making fun of my mom and wife, the appropriate reaction would be to say, “You have your opinion,” and walk away.
Though honestly, I probably couldn’t do that – I’d likely say, “What the hell’s wrong with you?” But that’s exactly what I’m talking about – I have a choice in how to respond.
Even if I had a knee-jerk response, even if I was emotionally triggered and it just came out of me, the key question becomes: Am I going to be that way again?
This is crucial, especially for anyone dealing with someone who’s emotionally (or hopefully not physically) abusive – someone who makes you feel bad or tries to control or manipulate you. Once they do the behavior the first time, do they do it again another time? I think that’s the big difference between an abusive person and one who, say, lost their temper.
Any of us can have an emotionally triggered response. But after things calm down, we have an opportunity to reflect on how we responded or reacted. I’ve had these opportunities myself – times when I’ve had reactions I regretted and thought, “Wow, I need to work on that because I was just so cold and heartless to that person. And that’s not me.”
I don’t like being that way, so I commit to working on it. Then, the next time, if something similar happens, I can choose to respond differently.
What I like to do is visualize how I’ll respond in the future when similar situations arise. For example, I had an incident with someone knocking on my door who apparently ignored the “no soliciting” sign.
I wasn’t happy because I knew it was a solicitor. I opened the door, and they briefly mentioned who they were with, but before they could talk anymore, I asked them, “Did you see the no soliciting sign?” They said, “Oh, sorry, no.” So I responded harshly, “Well, it’s there, and there’s no soliciting here.” Then, I promptly shut the door on him.
Afterward, I felt terrible, shutting the door in someone’s face like that. It felt wrong inside. Sure, they should have followed the no soliciting sign, but if this person genuinely didn’t see it and was just doing their job… what I did just felt heartless.
I was right to have those feelings, too, because that harsh response wasn’t who I am. Even though I don’t like being bothered at home, that’s not who I want to be. So I reflected on that incident and asked myself, “What am I going to do the next time this happens?” Because I know people will knock on my door in the future, whether they see the sign or not. Maybe some will even purposely disregard the sign. Or maybe they don’t think they’re soliciting, or whatever.
No matter what, I knew I needed a better response. So, I visualized it happening again and thought about how I would respond the next time it happened. I now feel I’ve developed a much better approach. I now feel more prepared. I can also feel good knowing I can look at someone and talk to them like another human being and say, “I’m sorry, I’m not interested,” then politely ask them to respect the sign next time.
Like I was saying before, there’s a difference between a regularly abusive person and one who lost their temper – like a one-off incident. You might call being in a relationship with a regularly abusive person “systemic abuse” versus the one-off incident of someone who is not normally hurtful but lost their temper at one time.
While I’m not saying my behavior with the solicitor wasn’t abusive (I’m sure some people might see it that way), no matter what, I knew I had to reflect on what I did and how I felt and do something different next time. I didn’t like how I felt when I shut the door on him. And I wouldn’t want to be treated that way myself. I knew I had to look inward at my reaction.
Systemic abuse happens when a person doesn’t look at what they did to hurt someone as a problem, so don’t feel the need to reflect or change anything. There are some people who continue their hurtful behaviors even after they learn they’re causing you pain. When someone hurts you even after they learn they are hurting you (yes, it does happen. Some people don’t realize they’re hurting you until you tell them), they have a lot of work to do because they’re “programmed” to believe that’s how you’re supposed to treat others in a relationship.
For the longest time, I had “programming” that I needed to work on in myself. Programming in the sense of learning healthier coping mechanisms and dealing with my fears and insecurities carried over from childhood.
I ruined many good relationships because of my programming and my choice not to reflect on how I was hurting others. It took several breakups and finally a failed marriage – which I caused – for me to finally look inward and realize that I was the common denominator of all my relationship issues. The common characteristic of all my relationship failures was Me. That was a wake-up call.
There were other issues in my marriage and previous relationships, but I caused their failures. I take full responsibility for that. I made myself accountable. And because I finally took responsibility, it means I could now reflect on how I behaved and the damage I had done. This allowed me to finally move forward with my healing, helping me learn much healthier reactions and responses to others. Taking responsibility for my actions and admitting to myself that I needed to change and heal was transformative for me.
In fact, after my marriage ended, I realized if I didn’t choose to heal before I got into another relationship, I could be bringing the same problems into the next one, and even the next after that!
That’s why I made a conscious decision to stay single until I could figure myself out. And that’s when things really changed for me. It was that decision to stay single that allowed me to figure out who I was without another person in my life. I didn’t know who I was (as an individual) without another person in my life. I always got into the next relationship before I figured that out.
But I did know that if I didn’t work on why I did the behaviors I did, I’d mess up every relationship I got into. I believe anyone who exhibits hurtful behavior needs to reflect on their actions and ask themselves: Why did I do that? What caused me to do it? And even, ‘Yes, they made me angry, but why am I angry about that?’
Usually, what happens instead is that a hurtful person might maintain their stance, thinking, “Well, I’m right. I don’t care what happened or why it happened – I know I’m right.”
But if they don’t let go of that righteousness, that feeling of entitlement, that belief they know better and should show up controlling or hurtful just to maintain power over you, you likely won’t see any healing from them.
If an abusive person doesn’t choose to reflect on their specific hurtful behaviors toward you, they’re not going to change, unfortunately. If that’s how they’re treating you, that’s who they are being right now. It doesn’t mean they’ll stay that way forever, but they must choose to reflect on their actions if they’re ever going to heal.
Even when the emotionally abusive person believes they have no choice but to react a certain way, they can still choose to reflect on their actions and then choose to heal, work on it, get therapy, or whatever it takes. But the crucial part is reflection.
I’m pretty sure you, who are reading this right now, reflect on everything. Most people reading this have been or currently are the victim of someone else’s hurtful behaviors. And people like that, like you, probably reflect on everything you say and do. You probably wonder, ‘What exactly did I do to trigger them? How did I cause this to happen? What did I do wrong? And the reason I wrote this article: What did I do to make them hurt me?
Again, let me be very clear: You didn’t do anything wrong. You are you, and they are them. You have your own responses and reactions – sometimes healthy, sometimes unhealthy, sometimes productive, sometimes unproductive. You’re human.
You shouldn’t be punished for being imperfect.
And let’s not forget about reactive abuse. Sometimes, we’re pushed to the point where we feel we have to abuse back because they’re not listening to anything we say or do.
If someone completely dismisses your opinions and thoughts, believing they know everything and relentlessly letting you know how you can’t do anything right, you might get pushed to your limit and become reactively abusive.
Reactive abuse is real. When you can’t take anymore, you might feel the need to lash back and become abusive like them, just to get your point across because it seems like that’s the only language they’ll understand.
And unfortunately, sometimes it does work. Sometimes, reactive abuse might actually be the only language an abusive person understands, causing you to believe you have to be manipulative and controlling just to get your message across to them. Then you’ll find yourself feeling bad for being that way, thinking, “That’s not me. I don’t like having to be that way. I don’t want to have to do that just to make them listen to me.”
And, of course, I don’t recommend you react this way. But you might get pushed to your limit and feel so frustrated that when you react in an abusive way, you’ll probably immediately feel awful you did it. Then, later, when they’re hurtful to you, you might start to blame yourself, thinking you are the cause of their behaviors.
When you’re in an abusive relationship long enough, things start getting messy and confused in your head.
The long-term exposure to something I might call “relationship radiation,” which are the toxic effects of an abusive relationship, can cause you to become confused about when or who started the difficulties in the relationship. Most difficult relationships start off wonderfully, then things gradually go downhill with perhaps little pokes and jabs here and there, then perhaps less subtle controlling or manipulative behaviors – until suddenly you’re caught in a challenging relationship dynamic you can’t understand.
When the difficulties set in, you might start wondering who’s at fault, thinking maybe it’s you because, according to them, at least, you seem to be doing everything wrong. That’s the feeling that takes over. You feel like you must be doing everything wrong because they’re clearly not happy.
But here’s the thing – you don’t have to take that blame. I’m letting you off the hook. You do not have to take responsibility for someone else’s bad behaviors. They are responsible for their behaviors, even if they don’t realize they’re behaving badly. Once they know, they still have opportunities to reflect on what they’ve done.
For example, in my relationship – which is great – sometimes I’ll say or do something, and she’ll respond with, “Well, that wasn’t very nice.” Or she’ll react in a way that makes me realize she took something the wrong way, or maybe I said it the wrong way. Or maybe I was being passive-aggressive.
When she points something like that out, it becomes my opportunity to reflect on what I did or said. I’ll even ask myself, “What did I just say? And what was I trying to say?”
Then I tell her, “Oh wait, this is what I meant. How did you take it?” And the conversation might go back and forth from there. She might reply, “No, this is what you meant,” and I’ll respond, “No, that’s not what I meant, this is what I meant.” And we’ll continue going back and forth until either she understands my true intention or I understand how what I said could be hurtful.
Conversations like that give us both an opportunity to reflect. This is what happens in healthy relationships: Both people reflect, not just one, think about their interactions, and ask themselves, “How can I show up better? What can I do differently?”
But if only one person is doing this work, it’s not really a relationship – it’s one-sided. And when one side is always winning, always right, and never wrong, the other side feels lost, confused, hurt, and like a loser.
When you’re on that losing side of the equation and the other person doesn’t care – well, that’s not right. I care deeply about my wife so if she ever feels like a loser, that’s on me! That means I need to help make her feel like not-a-loser at a minimum because I never want her to feel that way. I always want to lift her up and support her happiness. That’s how I show my love.
And whenever anyone in my life – my family, the people I love – is unhappy, I don’t want them to feel that way. So, I will do my best to help if I can.
I know that some people don’t need or want help. They may be going through their own process, and sometimes, what they need is just someone to listen. I can be that ear for them.
But I struggle seeing people unhappy, especially those I love. And that highlights another crucial difference between systemic abuse and one-off behavior: The people in our lives who have been hurtful often seem completely unempathetic; they actually seem to want us to feel bad. Some people do not (or cannot) access empathy and, therefore, have no problem when they see someone they are supposed to care about hurt or down.
That makes no sense because when you truly love someone, you want them to feel good.
Someone who loves you wants you to be happy and comfortable in your own skin.
I love the simple principle of “happy wife, happy life” – it really applies to any relationship. When someone you care about is unhappy, you will often become unhappy too, either eventually or very soon. The reason is one’s unhappiness in that relationship affects the whole relationship dynamic, making life less enjoyable, peaceful, or comfortable.
That’s why people who genuinely care about each other should want happiness for one another. In fact, one of the key concepts I teach in the Healed Being program is that people often hurt others to avoid their own pain.
The people who join that program have been emotionally abusive, controlling, and manipulative, but they want to change – which is highly commendable – but they soon learn through the lessons how to recognize that they cause others to suffer so that they can avoid their own suffering.
This behavior is fundamentally selfish and self-serving, revealing where their true priorities lie. I can speak to this personally because I used to be this way. I did these selfish things because I didn’t want to deal with my own issues. I didn’t want to face changing my life, changing my ways, or reflecting on my feelings.
In my past relationships, I believed it was easier to guilt the person I was with, making them feel bad and pressuring them to change for me.
That’s textbook emotional abuse. I was abusing their emotional state, taking advantage of them through manipulation and control tactics I’d developed in my youth. Turning that around meant stopping my own selfishness. Instead of looking at someone I care about and thinking, “I don’t like what they’re doing or how they’re showing up so I’m going to try to control them,” I had to learn to either accept them as they are and decide what to do with that, or acknowledge that maybe I couldn’t be with someone like that.
It came down to making decisions for myself rather than trying to control others. Unfortunately, many people who are emotionally abusive don’t want to reflect or heal. They don’t want to have to change themselves. They don’t want to have to accept people as they are. They’d rather try to change the other person so they don’t have to address anything within themselves.
This pattern plays out far too often in relationships. Most people join my program when their partner has reached what I call their “threshold” and can’t take any more abuse, so they present an ultimatum: “Get help or I’m gone.”
I’ve seen this with over 95% of the members of the program. The other 5% might be those who come to me after their relationship ended, wanting to learn how to show up better for themselves and the other person in their next relationship.
When working with people who do emotionally abusive behavior, one of the first challenges is helping them break free from their selfish mindset. And it is quite a profound moment when someone can truly see another person’s suffering and realize that they, themselves, are the cause of that person’s anguish. This realization forces them to look inward and reflect, asking themselves: “What am I doing to cause this suffering?”
Then we get to the deeper question for those doing the behaviors: “Why am I doing this? Why do I want to see them hurt?”
Emotionally abusive behavior almost always traces back to some unresolved internal fear, desperation, or insecurity.
Many emotionally abusive people find it extremely difficult to acknowledge these vulnerabilities within themselves. They don’t think in terms of their own insecurities, fears, or desperate needs. That’s why when you don’t see someone changing or reflecting, it’s often because they don’t believe these issues exist within them.
Instead, they’re convinced they’re right. They firmly believe you’re the one who needs to change, to either stop or start certain behaviors.
Moving them from a place of self-righteousness and selfishness to a place of selflessness and sacrifice is an enormous leap. This explains why some emotionally abusive people have a lot of difficulty changing. The leap can be huge from where they are to where they need to go. That doesn’t mean they can’t make it. I have, and many others in my program have as well.
But the process does involve extensive learning – or rather, unlearning and dismantling everything they believe about themselves and about relationships. Then, after they get to a certain point, they have to rebuild some of their personality and replace their toxic components with healthier behaviors based on an entirely different foundation.
This transformation requires two essential elements:
- They must acknowledge their hurtful behavior and,
- They must genuinely want to change.
The bottom line is simple but crucial: Change doesn’t happen unless they want to change.
So, I’m Not The Cause Of Someone Else’s Hurtful Behaviors?
Just in case you’re still wondering, the answer is still No. Most definitely not. You are you, with your own reactions and responses. And they are them, with their own reactions and responses. And you can choose to be hurtful or not, just like they can.
Sure, it’s possible to be unconsciously triggered and have a knee-jerk, fight-flight-or-freeze reaction, but if you ever did that and hurt someone, I’m willing to bet you would reflect on what you did and said at the time and likely choose a different response in the future unless you feel okay about what you did. That could be the case. But if you didn’t feel okay about it, you would very likely reflect and learn from what happened.
This is also a choice for anyone else in your life. They can choose to reflect on their past behaviors and then choose to behave differently in the future. We all have this choice. And when someone hurts you and doesn’t choose to reflect on why they hurt you and make a different choice in the future, that’s on them.
Even if they believe you need to change because they don’t like your behavior – what you’re saying, what you’re doing, how you’re showing up – that’s still not on you. That’s on them. They can either choose to do something constructive with the feelings they have about you, or they can hurt you.
You don’t deserve to be hurt. When someone genuinely has an issue with how you’re showing up in the world, and they believe you’re the cause for all their woes, the healthy, loving thing to do is approach you in a productive way and say something along the lines of, “When you do that, it’s really hurtful to me, and I want to talk about that.”
That’s how healthy relationships work, through open conversations about what’s happening. But it’s important to recognize systemic abusive behaviors so that you understand if relationship problems are going to continue or if they are just one-off issues.
A good way to figure this out is to ask yourself: When someone hurts me or makes me feel guilty or responsible for all the relationship problems, is it a recurring pattern? Or did it happen once, followed by genuine reflection and a sincere apology with a commitment not to repeat the behavior?
That will give you a clue as to whether the isolated incidents need to be addressed or if the behavior is systemic and needs more attention, perhaps with the help of a professional.
The easiest way to tell systemic behavior from one-offs is that systemic behavior repeats itself – it’s ingrained in the person’s behavioral patterns; when it’s persistent and a part of the “system” or the relationship as a whole.
Think of it like having a lisp – a true lisp is something that happens almost every time the person talks. It’s present in every conversation. Having a lisp, whether they like it or not, is part of who they are. They might work on changing it. Or they might not. But they accept it as part of themselves.
The healthy approach is accepting who you are and knowing that if others have a problem with who you are, that’s their issue to work through, not yours.
If I have a problem with something you say or do, that’s my problem to address, not yours.
Why? Because I’m the one having the problem! I have come to accept this as one of my primary principles in relationships:
If I have a problem with my partner, that’s my problem, not hers.
There are many directions we could go with this topic, but I hope the core message I shared today came through: you do not create this chaos of emotionally abusive behaviors.
Yes, you’re definitely involved in an unpleasant dynamic when you are in such a relationship, at its mercy as a victim, but in that situation, you’re dealing with someone else’s choice to reflect or not on their behavior. People can hurt you, feel bad for doing it, then choose not to hurt you again.
Wouldn’t that be amazing?
But when they hurt you and continue doing so without reflection or empathy, this kind of pattern typically never, ever ends. And this is crucial to understand because when hurtful behavior happens repeatedly, it doesn’t just stop on its own. It usually doesn’t go away until you either put a stop to it, leave, or they have some sort of epiphany and finally understand (and actually care) that they are hurting you.
Once you understand that you may be in a systemic abusive relationship, you can often better predict what to expect (unless there’s intense gaslighting. When that happens, they are trying to make and keep you confused), and because of that, it can prepare you for some of the challenges that come with a relationship like that.
In any emotionally abusive relationship, a significant shift is necessary for healing to take place. This shift may come in the form of you making a choice for your own well-being—whether that’s speaking up (if it’s safe), leaving, or considering another option—or it will depend on the other person deciding to reflect, heal, and make changes within themselves.
Just remember that you deserve respect and kindness, always.
