The way someone talks about their relationship reveals a lot. Abuse victims and perpetrators each have their own language patterns. Knowing these language patterns will help you understand which side of the fence you’re on.

Hurtful, manipulative, controlling, and emotionally abusive people explain their problem with you differently than you explain your problem with them.

If you’ve been listening to my show for a while, you’ve heard me talk about people who write to me asking, “I don’t know if I’m the abusive one.” I usually give the same response to most people:

If you are trying to change for someone else – to accommodate them, to please them, to make the relationship better – and you’re questioning who is the abusive one in the relationship, that reveals everything to me.

I get this question a lot. “I don’t know if I’m the toxic one, but they (a partner, a family member, etc.) say I am. If I point something out that they’re doing, they say that I’m the one doing that to them!”

I got a message from someone in an emotionally abusive relationship who finally couldn’t take it anymore and started becoming “reactively abusive.” They began exhibiting abusive behaviors just to get their needs met, to be heard and understood, to make the abuse stop.

Most abusive people only speak one language – their own – which is why reactive abuse can start and linger in a relationship.

When an abusive person pushes their victim to the edge, to the point where that victim doesn’t know what to do or how to get the abuse to stop, they might resort to behaviors that would definitely appear abusive in any normal, healthy relationship. But it’s in response to the abuse they’re receiving.

Sometimes, when this happens, when the victim of abuse does reactive abuse in return, the original abuse actually stops. The reason is because now they’re head-to-head, on even ground.

The abuse tends to stop temporarily, at least, because the abuser now faces an assertiveness or aggression they’re not used to, so they may stop their hurtful behaviors that the victim originally wanted them to stop

This doesn’t mean the abuser will not do those behaviors again, but when their abuse meets resistance, they can tell they’ve pushed the victim (the person they want to keep power over) over the edge. And they don’t want the victim of their behaviors to have power. “Power” in the sense I’m talking about is the ability and freedom to make decisions that are right for you.

When you are powerless, you feel as if you aren’t able to make healthy decisions or be yourself. So you feel as if you have no choice but to do as others expect you to do.

Reactive abuse can present a deterrent for abuse, but I’m not suggesting it is a solution to stop abusive behaviors. I’m simply explaining why an abusive person might stop certain behaviors when the person they’re abusing suddenly becomes resistant or assertive.

Abusers Want You To Feel Powerless

Most abusive people have deep insecurities, which is why they’re abusive in the first place. Revealing these insecurities feels too scary and painful, so they project their fears onto others through abusive behavior.

When a victim finally says, “I’ve had enough,” they don’t literally say they’re going to “abuse back,” but some can exhibit behaviors that seem highly assertive or aggressive for them.

Some abusers will experience reactive abuse and realize their own power will be taken away if they don’t back off, so they might give in a bit and stop their own hurtful and controlling behaviors.

This scenario will play out differently in various relationships, but that’s generally how reactive abuse works – it scares the abuser enough that they temporarily stop the specific behavior.

When the victim reacts with their own aggressive behaviors in return, the abuser might consider backing down, but they don’t want to stay down, so they’ll likely start up again soon. Some abusers may also believe that the reactive abuse will pass and that they’ll just wear the victim down until they’re powerless again. That way, they can keep their control and continue the relationship their way.

Reactive abuse might temporarily stop the abusive behavior (and that’s a big “might”), but it rarely works long-term. Abusive people don’t want the tables turned. They want the spotlight to stay on you and keep draining you of your power. When you become assertive or aggressive, they experience what it feels like, don’t like it, and typically back off – but they’ll return, sometimes worse than before.

This is why I never recommend reactive abuse as a solution. I’d rather you say, “I don’t want this in my life, so I’ll either get them to stop by asking them to stop, or I’ll leave.”

That’s not easy – I’m not suggesting it’s simple – but I’d rather you adopt that mindset than change who you are to make someone stop mistreating you.

I want you to strengthen how you feel about yourself so you can honor and protect yourself. When anyone violates your boundaries or makes you feel worthless, you can say, “That’s not for me. That’s not who I want in my life, or at least not the behavior I want in my life. Either it stops, or I’m removing myself from the situation.”

Again, I know it’s not easy. Relationships are complicated, especially with children, homes, and businesses involved. But I’d rather you have the mindset of self-protection than thinking, “I need to be abusive to make this stop.” Because that means changing who you are, and you’ll grow resentful unless you genuinely want to change.

It’s rare to meet someone who says, “I want you to change into this so I’ll be happier,” and you think, “Great idea! I’ll change so you’ll be happier, which will make me happier too.”

I don’t think I’ve ever heard those words in an abusive relationship where someone wants to control you. So thinking, “If I change into what they want, maybe I’ll have a better life,” usually doesn’t work.

The Language of The Abuser and The Victim

By the time you’re in an adult relationship, you know yourself pretty well. Yes, you may still be learning and healing from your past, but that doesn’t mean changing your core self for someone else. Healthy relationships involve mutual compromises where both people accommodate each other in balance.

One way to identify what’s happening in your relationship is to listen to how people talk about their problems. The language reveals who’s being victimized.

A victim typically sounds like:

I don’t like when they say these things about me.
It hurts when they do those things.
They want me to call as soon as I arrive somewhere and when I’m leaving.
They track where I am, and I can’t talk to anyone without reporting what was discussed.
My life feels monitored – every move and word is criticized or questioned.
They’re always probing for information, trying to get me to say something they can use against me, so they can blame me or tell me how to do things ‘right.’

That’s the language of a victim. The language of an abuser typically sounds like:

All I want is for them to change.
I just want them to do things differently, like call me when they arrive somewhere and call me when they leave.
I get upset when they don’t do what I tell them to do.
They don’t act in ways that work for me.

The difference in language is revealing. Imagine a friend describing their relationship to you. Listen carefully to the patterns in their words to hear what’s really happening beneath the surface.

Abuser: They want to change the other person.
Victim: They want to change themselves to please the person who wants them to change.

It’s not so subtle when you look for language that fits into one of those criteria.

When you are describing your relationship, if you say things like, “I just don’t know what to do to make them happy. When I do ‘this’, they get angry. When I eat certain foods, they criticize me. If I don’t exercise, they criticize me. They’re always wanting me to do something, but I don’t know how to make them happy. I’m doing my best, but nothing I do is ever enough” – that sounds like a victim’s perspective.

An abuser, on the other hand, will say things like, “They just won’t do what I want them to do. They won’t change. They won’t stop doing ‘this’. I tell them to stop, but they don’t, so I get angry. I tell them if they don’t stop, I’ll do X, Y, Z.”

For the abuser, the question is “How can I change them?”
For the victim, it’s “What can I do to change myself?”

Of course, there are gray areas. Sometimes, both people are hurtful or abusive. It can happen where one person is initially abusive, and then the other person develops reactive abuse patterns, resulting in two people exhibiting abusive behaviors. But there’s usually an origin to the abuse cycle.

When I work with couples where abuse is present, I ask: When did the abuse start? How? What did it look like?

Almost always, they’ll identify one person who began the pattern. The victim might say, “I couldn’t take it anymore, so I started behaving badly too.” Months or years later, they’re both exhibiting problematic behaviors, and it becomes hard to tell who started it.

Knowing the origin is important – not for blame, but for understanding. If you’re engaging in reactive abuse, it likely began because you were being abused first.

Another gray area occurs when abusers use the language of victims. They’ll say similar things to what actual victims say, positioning themselves as victims because the other person isn’t doing what they want. They assign themselves victim status.

It’s like saying, “If you don’t light yourself on fire, I’ll be angry, and it’ll be your fault I’m angry.” This makes no sense, but it’s a manipulation tactic – coercing someone to do something that serves the manipulator’s needs by making them feel bad if they don’t comply.

The language pattern that reveals the truth is that the abuser consistently wants the other person to change. They cannot accept them as-is.

Look for the daily “drip feeding” of this pattern. It happens throughout each day. If you don’t do what they want, you’ll feel it. You’ll feel bad, guilty, and responsible for everything they want you to do, but you’re not doing “right.”

Emotional abuse is essentially this drip feeding of bad behavior designed to control you, change you, and make you feel bad about yourself. This keeps you powerless, so they maintain control.

When you feel powerless, who do you turn to for any sense of worth or love? Usually, it’s the very person who’s abusing you! The reason is because they’ve conditioned you to believe you need them despite the hurt they cause. They create a dynamic where the person you turn to for love and support is the same person who continues to hurt you.

That’s the dynamic of abuse. And it’s important that you recognize these patterns and language clues to ensure you don’t lose any more of your personal power. When you’re empowered, you can make decisions that are right for you. When you’re disempowered, you believe you can’t make good decisions for yourself and need to follow someone else’s direction to maintain peace and have a “good” relationship. That is powerlessness.

In my marriage, my wife has the power to say anything to me, do anything, even divorce me and leave. And I have the same power. This makes us equal partners who trust each other, want each other’s happiness, and support each other. We both care deeply about not hurting one another. That’s what a balanced, healthy relationship looks like, where both people can say, “I want you to be happy. And if I’m causing you pain, that makes me feel bad, so I’ll stop doing it.”

When both people approach a relationship this way, you create something strong because you want each other to succeed emotionally. You want each other to feel powerful. As I share in my Healed Being program, if you want to stop being emotionally abusive, make your partner feel powerful. That’s it. That one small step will stop emotional abuse.

The problem is that emotionally abusive people typically have a lifelong history of poor coping mechanisms and controlling behaviors. They believe it’s better to control and change others than to face their own deficits, dysfunctions, and toxic behaviors. Because of this, many never heal.

I can tell people who do emotionally abusive behaviors to “just make your partner feel powerful” all day long. But what usually happens is they might do that once, twice, or more, but they eventually revert to their old behaviors when they get emotionally triggered. And because they haven’t dealt with or healed their triggers or poor coping mechanisms yet, they return to being abusive.

In conclusion, understanding your own language is crucial. How you describe your relationship, what words you use, can help you understand if you are in an abusive relationship and if you are being victimized or doing the abuse yourself.

In my experience, only those who try to do better while also feeling like nothing they do is ever good enough are the victims of hurtful and controlling behavior.

The abusive person, by contrast, comes from a place of wanting to change another person. And when they can’t accomplish that, they make that person feel terrible, wrong, and bad.

If you recognize yourself doing behaviors that aren’t supportive of your partner or other people, and you don’t mind seeing those people in pain, that’s likely an abuser’s perspective! Most kind, caring, supportive people hurt when they hurt others.

But if you’re the type of person who is genuinely concerned about other people’s suffering and is willing to make changes to make other people feel better, you are more likely to be a victim. Abusers don’t typically share that kind of perspective when another person is hurting. Instead, they think, “It’s their fault they’re suffering. If they’d just do what I say, we’d both be happy.”

I hope this helps you gain clarity in a relationship challenge you may be experiencing.