The one-off difficulties in relationships are perfectly normal for everyone. We all have them. They’re not welcome, necessarily, but normal.
But what happens when the “one-offs” become systemic? What happens when they are non-stop? That’s when changes to the relationships are inevitable.
I want to share a couple of success stories from those who have been in emotionally abusive relationships. Before I do, however, we all know that not every relationship story ends the way we hope.
Sometimes people come out stronger, even if they’re a bit bruised along the way. Sometimes they find themselves in a better place within their relationship. But most often, the messages I receive are from people dealing with partners who refuse to acknowledge their problematic behavior or make lasting changes.
If you have someone in your life, whether it’s a partner, friend, or family member, who seems perpetually unhappy with you no matter what you do or how you show up, and they’re always blaming you, making you feel bad about yourself, or making you feel guilty for all the problems, you might be experiencing emotional abuse.
If you are the one doing these things to someone else, you might immediately think, “That’s not me. I’m not emotionally abusive. They just won’t do what I want them to do.”
But when you say things like “why won’t you do what I want?” or “we wouldn’t have problems if you just did what I wanted,” to another person, what you’re really saying is that you want to control and change who they are.
We are who we are, with all our flaws and imperfections.
We do some things great and some things terribly. It’s just a truth we must all accept (but some don’t, thus why my show and articles like this exist).
When we enter relationships, we bring our whole selves, and if both people could accept each other completely, there wouldn’t be these issues. Instead, what I often see is a dynamic of controlling and manipulative behaviors going back and forth between partners.
Not all relationships struggle with these issues. And some might experience them as “one-offs.” But when I talk about emotional abuse, I’m not talking about isolated incidents. I’m talking about systemic issues, behaviors that keep coming up over and over.
Every relationship will have moments where one partner might unintentionally make the other feel guilty. Even in my own marriage, which is the best relationship I’ve ever been in, this could happen. But there’s a big difference between a one-time occurrence and repeatedly chipping away at someone’s spirit and happiness day after day.
When these behaviors become a pattern, that’s abuse. You can spot these patterns if you step back and look at what’s happening from an outside perspective. I know it’s hard to do when you’re in the middle of it, but notice if you keep experiencing the same thing: they make you feel guilty again and again, or they constantly make you feel responsible for everything that goes wrong.
This cyclical, abusive behavior wears away at your emotional well-being, your mental health, everything. When someone can exploit your emotions and use them against you, they’re doing more damage than you might realize. While feeling guilty is normal when you’ve actually done something wrong, being made to feel guilty as a way to control you is something entirely different.
When you hurt someone, feeling guilty is natural – it’s your moral compass telling you that you’ve done something wrong and shouldn’t repeat it. But many emotionally abusive people don’t seem to have this compass, or if they do, they ignore it. Instead of learning from their mistakes, they continue the same harmful behaviors while expecting you to conform and submit to their wishes.
One of the most common patterns I see with emotional abuse is when someone wants their partner to change, regardless of how that person feels about it. If someone tries to control your decisions, how you find happiness, or how you seek fulfillment in life, especially if these are things that were part of who you were when you entered the relationship, they’re trying to control who you are at your core. And once that control starts, it begins to chip away at your sense of self.
This degradation of who you are is like a snowball rolling downhill, getting bigger and heavier as it goes. It becomes confusing and painful because you’re constantly trying to figure out how to exist without rocking the boat. You’re always calculating your next move, wondering how to show up in a way that won’t upset them. When you’re stuck in this state of mind, it feels like you’re losing pieces of yourself, like the person you used to be is slipping away.
But here’s what’s important to understand: you’re still in there. I know this because I watched my mom go through 40 years of physical and emotional abuse. She couldn’t get out for the longest time because of mental blocks, emotional barriers, and fears. But when she finally broke free, that person she’d always been, the real woman underneath, emerged again. All those blocks, obstacles, conflicts, and insecurities that had been holding her back finally fell away.
If you’re experiencing any type of abusive behavior from someone in your life right now, I realize it might not feel like you are “in there,” and I’m not trying to minimize what you’re going through, but I know with absolute certainty that you are still in there. The reason I know is because anyone who feels an internal conflict, where they are resisting or even hating what’s happening to themselves, clearly wants something more and better. And that desire for something more or better is proof that the real you is still there, waiting for the chance to break free.
If you long to feel better, then you are still in there wanting to break free.
Wanting something better for yourself is proof that your authentic self is still there, even if it feels buried. That part of you that wants peace and freedom is fighting to survive. Life isn’t always about being perfectly happy (we all have our ups and downs), but our daily challenges shouldn’t be as overwhelming as some relationships make them.
Take communication with a partner, for instance. It shouldn’t be a massive ordeal to bring up issues that bother you. If something as simple as how dishes are washed is bothering me, I should be able to talk to my wife about it. Sure, she might not like hearing it, and she might tell me to do them myself if I’m not happy with how she does them, but that’s fine! At least we’re having the conversation.
But in emotionally abusive relationships, these honest conversations rarely happen. Instead of working through issues together, the abusive partner focuses on changing and controlling you. They avoid real conversations because they don’t want to change themselves, they don’t want to be vulnerable, and they don’t want to appear weak or wrong.
What Needs To Exist For Emotional Abuse to Emerge?
In my many years of working with both victims and perpetrators of emotional abuse, I’ve narrowed down that emotionally abusive behaviors almost always stem from fear and desperation.
When someone who’s fearful and desperate also has a strong need to control others, that’s when abusive behavior emerges. It’s similar to how bullies operate – they intimidate others because of their own insecurities. While some might enjoy the power trip, most are trying to overcome their own feelings of powerlessness.
Think about it. Why would someone need to have power over another person unless they felt powerless themselves? This is why they seek control: to avoid feeling powerless again. There are different types of bullies in relationships. The obvious ones who are openly controlling, and the passive ones who manipulate more subtly.
The awful behavior you see on the surface usually reflects something painful inside them. They’re afraid of feeling powerless or out of control, so they try to control the people closest to them.
And why the closest people? Because you’re there. They know all your sensitive spots, and most importantly, they know you have an emotional connection to them. They understand that this emotional attachment makes it harder for you to leave, even when they’re treating you badly. They exploit your emotional state, whether it’s your compassion, your love, or your dedication to making things work.
When you’re a compassionate person, someone who emotionally abuses you will often use that compassion as a weapon against you. They might criticize your parenting, taking something small and blowing it up into proof that you “don’t care about your kids,” for example. They know exactly how to trigger your guilt and shame, especially when it comes to the things you care about most.
This manipulation isn’t always calculated or conscious. Many people who behave this way learned it through their own upbringing or past experiences. But understanding why they do it doesn’t make it any less harmful. What matters is recognizing the difference between occasional relationship conflicts (which everyone has) and systematic patterns of abuse
When you try to explain emotional abuse to someone who hasn’t experienced it, you might hear responses like “that doesn’t sound so bad” or “my partner does that too.” These dismissive comments can feel like a punch to the gut, especially when you’re living in constant fear, walking on eggshells, and feeling your soul being drained day after day.
Occasional conflicts or misunderstandings are completely different from experiencing manipulation, guilt trips, and emotional warfare 50 times a day. It’s different from feeling watched all the time, or being afraid to speak because you might trigger another silent treatment or emotional explosion.
If you can step back and look at the patterns objectively, you should be able to start noticing and labeling the behaviors. i.e., “That’s guilt-tripping. That’s deflection. Now they’re trying to make me responsible for their actions,” etc. When you see these behaviors happening over and over, hundreds or even thousands of times over the months or years, that’s not normal relationship conflict, that’s emotional abuse.
Each individual incident might seem small or dismissible to others, but it’s the relentless pattern of these behaviors that destroys your sense of self. When someone consistently makes you feel guilty, responsible for things you didn’t do, and questions your reality, while never taking responsibility for their own actions, that’s the pattern that signals emotional abuse.
You’ve probably heard the phrase “it takes two” when it comes to relationship problems. It’s a term I’m not particularly fond of at all. But, sure, while there can certainly be two people engaging in abusive behavior toward each other, what I typically see is one person starting out as the difficult, hurtful, or abusive one, while the other person learns to adjust to their controlling and manipulative behavior.
Sometimes this adjustment leads to what’s called reactive abuse, where the victim starts responding with abusive behavior just to be heard. They might finally get the other person’s attention this way, but it creates an unhealthy dynamic where both people are now engaging in harmful behavior. Even though the reactive “abuser” is trying to get their needs met, they’re still fundamentally a victim of the original abuse.
What I’ve noticed is that naturally kind and compassionate people who resort to reactive abuse can’t maintain it for long. It goes against who they really are. This internal conflict of trying to be someone you’re not creates tremendous unhappiness and emotional exhaustion. You feel resistance because you’re fighting against your authentic self.
This reminds me of an email I received from someone who had divorced their manipulative ex-spouse. Even after the divorce, they discovered their ex was still manipulating them through their co-parenting relationship. This is, unfortunately, common. Sometimes, the abusive person continues abusing, or trying to, even when the relationship ends.
For situations like this, I always recommend keeping communication in written form as much as possible – texts or emails rather than phone calls or in-person conversations. Why? Because manipulative people are skilled at using your emotions against you. They pick up on the inflection in your voice, your body language, or any sign of emotional vulnerability, and use it as ammunition.
An abusive person will use your emotions against you.
Written communication not only helps keep your emotions protected, but it also creates a paper trail of documentation. Every interaction is recorded, which can be invaluable if you ever need evidence of their behavior. While we hope it never comes to that, having everything in writing provides both protection and peace of mind.
There Are Success Stories With Emotionally Abusive Relationships, But They May Not Be What You Expect
I mentioned at the beginning of this article that I wanted to share a couple of success stories. I already started to mention the first one about the woman who emailed me above, but I wanted to provide the rest of her message here:
“Thank you. Thank you. I recently divorced my class D manipulator. What I didn’t realize until I found your podcast was that as we navigated our co-parenting after the divorce, he was still manipulating me. Now I need to learn a new way of communicating with him so that he can’t continue to abuse me with him out of my life. Thank you for your help.”
I want to say ‘Thank you’ to the person who wrote that email. I also want to say I am so sorry you had to deal with that and are still dealing with it. That is a very difficult situation. But I’m glad you are on the side with the light at the end of the tunnel. That means even though you still have ties, they are now fewer and farther between, and will continue to be so in the future.
In her message, she wrote that she recently divorced her “class D manipulator.” Let me explain that. In The M.E.A.N. Workbook, there’s a 200-point assessment that measures the level of manipulation and control you’re experiencing in your relationship. “Class D” is the highest category, indicating you’re in what I would call the danger zone.
When someone scores this high, it means they’re experiencing a lot of controlling and manipulative behaviors that create an emotionally (and sometimes physically) dangerous situation. And when you’re with someone this manipulative and controlling, you usually only have two choices: stay and be miserable, or leave and be miserable temporarily, but eventually heal and move on (that’s the light at the end of the tunnel I was referring to above).
Neither option feels good because most people in that situation know there’s a lot to process. And sometimes the decision to leave might be dangerous (which is why it’s important to plan ahead and get a support system if you plan on leaving), but at least one of those choices is finite and will get better.
And, sure, while some relationships can be worked on and healed, it’s a lot harder to do that when you’re dealing with a class D manipulator. In that situation, there are so many controlling behaviors in place that the healing process is much more challenging, if not impossible.
The other success story was from another woman who discovered my podcast while trying to become a “better partner” because her boyfriend was calling her a gaslighter and manipulator. After “listening to dozens of episodes,” she realized she was actually the one being emotionally abused and manipulated.
Once she became educated about emotional abuse, she found her voice and stood up to him in a way he couldn’t talk her out of new knowledge and realizations. She chose to leave the relationship and now lives on her own, free from the emotional roller coaster she’d been stuck on for years.
You know what I love about stories like this? They show that people really do ‘find a way.’ Just like in Jurassic Park when Jeff Goldblum says “life finds a way” – people find a way too.
When you reach that point where you can no longer tolerate what’s happening to you, something inside wakes up. That part of you that wants to break free has incredible courage and will find resources you never knew existed. You might not believe it now, but when that inner voice decides it’s time to break free, it’s nearly impossible to stop it.
You’ll know when it’s time to take a big, scary step because you won’t be able to stop yourself from doing it.
Let me share a story from when I was a teenager that really drives this point home. I once got a piece of metal in my eye while using a wire brush attachment on a drill without safety glasses (not my smartest moment). When that tiny metal shard flew into my eye, I panicked. What if I couldn’t get it out? What if it got infected and I went blind?
I was so desperate to get it out that I asked my older sister to help me in a pretty unusual way. I had her pin my arms down with her knees while I lay on the bed so I wouldn’t flinch or pull away when she tried to remove it with a Q-tip.
I’m willing to bet that nobody wants someone coming at their eye with anything, let alone a Q-tip. But I was so determined to get that metal out that I was willing to do whatever it took.
And you know what? She got it out! My relief was immediate. Sure, I could have gone to the doctor, but I wanted it out right then and there.
That’s what happens when we reach our maximum tolerance for something – we just act. We don’t sit around wondering what to do anymore. We do what needs to be done because we are so compelled, we become unstoppable.
When you hit that point where you can’t take anymore, you won’t be asking yourself, “What should I do?” Instead, you’ll find yourself saying, “This needs to stop right now.” That might mean speaking up and setting boundaries. Or it could mean quietly making an exit plan if the situation is dangerous. Either way, once you’re pushed to that limit, you will do whatever it takes to get yourself away from the dangerous situation. That’s our built-in fight-or-flight response. When it activates, we do things we might never have thought ourselves capable of.
Think about how people rush into burning buildings to save children without a second thought. In the moment, they don’t consider the danger; they just act. It’s only afterward that they think, “Wow, I could have gotten hurt doing that.”
That’s the power that lives inside you. When you reach that point where you can no longer tolerate bad behavior, you’ll find strength you didn’t know you had. That’s who you really are.
Everyone has a breaking point
