When someone tells you they love you but continues to hurt you, something fundamental breaks down in the relationship. You start questioning everything. You wonder if love is supposed to feel this confusing, this painful, this exhausting.
The truth is, love shouldn’t require you to constantly defend yourself or explain why certain behaviors aren’t okay.
I receive a lot of difficult stories from listeners of my show, but some hit harder than others. One person wrote to me about being in an emotionally abusive relationship for over a year and a half. She told me she started seeing a therapist and asked her ex for clarity on his behaviors and what she could do better.
She said she made mistakes too. She owned them, took accountability, and actively worked on changing her behavior. But what kept happening was that he would be affectionate with her, then use any mistakes she made against her forever.
She paid for quite a few things for him. He contributed some but didn’t finish contributing, leaving her to cover the rest. He even made significantly more money than she did. The imbalance was very obvious.
And when the relationship “broke,” he didn’t want to repair it. Instead, he requested they randomly see each other when he wanted to. For obvious reasons, she felt used and abused.
She said she wished she had known all this before entering the dating scene. She doubted she’d have any legal recourse with the finances. And while she didn’t ask me a specific question, she shared her story, hoping for some insight.
The first thing that stands out to me with this message is that when someone uses your mistakes against you forever and never lets up, that tells you everything you need to know. If you can’t make a mistake, own it, apologize for it, and then either get forgiven or move on past it, you’re stuck in a loop that never ends.
I don’t believe you always have to forgive. You could just move on past it and be okay with it. But if somebody can’t let you go and let you be after you’ve owned a mistake and apologized, they shouldn’t be in your life anymore.
That might sound harsh. I’m not telling this person she should kick him out of her life. I’m saying he should not have you in his life. Meaning, if he can’t accept you as you are and if he can’t come to a place where he forgives you or wants to move on and learn to trust you again, then that’s what to expect for the rest of the relationship. Permanently. Forever.
No one deserves to be with someone who will not let them live something down. If he will not let you live something down that you’ve owned and apologized for, and you’re doing everything you can to become a better, healthier person, then it’s on him to choose to have you in his life or not.
I don’t believe in someone constantly putting someone down and making them feel bad, and never letting them get past a mistake or many mistakes they made. What kind of relationship is that?
If I couldn’t trust my wife after she made a mistake or betrayed me, some big mistake that could definitely be a marriage killer, and I decided to allow this, let it slide, and let it be in the past, one major thing would have to change: Our communication.
We would have to be very transparent with each other after that. If any feelings of distrust or a lack of love or a disconnect came up, we would have to talk about it before it ever grew into something else.
When somebody makes a mistake or does something intentionally and then realizes it was a mistake, there needs to be a rebuilding of trust and feeling good about the other person.
But to bring it up over and over again isn’t a relationship anymore. It’s hanging something over your head. And if they’re the type of person who does that, that is something they will likely do until the end of time.
The person who wrote said he would be affectionate with her and then use any mistakes against her forever. I think “affectionate” means they would have sex, and then afterward, he would go back to being upset with her about whatever she did in the past, which probably guilts her into the next act of sex, or whatever his game is.
She mentioned she felt used and abused. That tells me everything I need to know. It tells me it feels less like a relationship and more like a hookup. He does not want to repair the relationship, but randomly wants to see her? There are very few ways to interpret that.
She feels she’s just there to give him what he wants, but he’s not giving her what she wants. That’s not a relationship, not a healthy one, at least. If he holds these things over her head and all he wants from her is physical intimacy, she is being used.
We all make mistakes. We all do things we regret. And it sounds like there were a lot of hurtful things on his side, and maybe that’s what led to her mistake. I’m not saying that’s an excuse. I’m just saying that could be the reason. Some people drive us to do things that we probably wouldn’t have done if they didn’t drive us to do them.
When Someone Pushes You to the Edge
I can understand how one person can push someone away into another person’s arms just by being who they are. That’s not an excuse for someone to cheat, but it does highlight how it might happen.
Imagine being jealous of your partner. And no matter what they say, you don’t believe them. They tell you they weren’t attracted to that person and were only talking to them: “We’re only friends!”
They ask why you don’t believe them. Yet you don’t let up. So you keep saying you know they’re attracted to that person. No matter what they say, it doesn’t matter. You’ve made up your mind.
The problem with that, when the accusations are false, is that the other person will eventually be so afraid to share things with the person who’s supposed to love and trust them, that they might feel led to be in the company of someone else!
When you push someone away with continuous false accusations, they might just seek someone else who doesn’t accuse them all the time and someone who trusts them and allows them to be themselves.
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t accuse if you believe something is true. But it’s better to gather evidence first before going in that direction, just in case. Sometimes our insecurities can cause us to harm the relationship simply because we fear something might happen.
If one person is very difficult to be around all the time, the other person won’t feel safe. They won’t feel trusted. They won’t feel loved or supported.
Of course, both people in a relationship want to feel those things. And if you’ve tried to feel them with someone who makes it difficult for you to be close to them, someone will eventually come along and make you feel that way – and it won’t be your partner. And you may be enticed.
I’m all for telling the other person how you feel before you do anything. I’m all for transparency, even the hard conversations. The kind of conversations where you say you wish they would trust you, you wish you could be attracted to them, but they keep putting you down and insulting you and hurting you so you’re not attracted to them.
Being around someone like that would make them look less and less attractive every day. And when the person who’s supposed to love you is repelling you, and you can’t find any love and connection and a feeling of security and a feeling of being trusted and supported, what do you do? Do you just sit there being miserable?
I can understand why someone might push their partner so far to the edge that their partner has no choice but to fall off, jump, or find another way to survive.
To the person who wrote, yes, I understand. You definitely feel used and abused, and I can see why. And if he’s not being affectionate with you in a real way and he’s not letting this go, then he will never let it go. You will always be in this space with him because he shows no sign of changing.
That’s terrible news, I know. But if you’re looking for something from him, it might be time to accept that he’s incapable of giving it. You can stop beating yourself up. You can stop feeling guilty because the guilt was when you realized you did something bad, a mistake, whatever. That’s when the guilt comes.
And guilt is supposed to push you into doing better and never making that same mistake again, and being the healthiest person and partner you can possibly be. And from what you’ve said, you’re taking all those steps.
As long as you’re taking those steps, you’re doing all the right things. There’s nothing more you need to do. Either he accepts you the way you are and who you are today, or he can’t stop looking in the rearview mirror and is going to hold it against you for the rest of your lives together, so he can stay in control, keep his power over you, or keep you as somebody he can hook up with on the side.
You don’t deserve to be in that space. You deserve so much more. You’ve already done your time. You’ve already done the work on yourself, and you continue doing the work. Somebody who can’t see that doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to see all the good in you. He just wants you to feel bad so that he keeps his power over you, so he can do anything he wants with you, probably guilting you into seeing him over and over again.
Don’t beat yourself up over this anymore. You made a mistake. We all do. It’s all about who you become after that mistake. You have become the person who doesn’t make those mistakes anymore. You’ve learned your lesson. You can move on from this.
But there’s another side to this story that’s worth exploring. What happens when the situation isn’t quite as clear-cut? What happens when someone is trying to change but still exhibiting behaviors that make you question everything?
When a Difficult Partner Changes… But Not Enough
Another person wrote to me about being in the same relationship for almost 10 years. In the first several years, he was very verbally abusive. Name-calling, fat-shaming, and most of the time, when he was drinking.
He stopped drinking and became much less verbally abusive, but instead became very controlling. Going through her phone, not allowing her to go out, and constantly interrogating her.
She moved out. But only a couple of months later, they decided to work things out. She never fully committed to the relationship when she returned because she kept waiting for the other shoe to drop again.
They started counseling after that, and she said he seemed like he was genuinely trying to change. But she didn’t like the way he treated her daughter, and he doesn’t like her having male friends, saying he doesn’t believe in male-female friendships.
She sees changes in him, but still fears many parts of going back to what was, even though they do have many good memories.
Here’s what I think is his perspective:
My standards are valid. Yours are not.
My rules are valid. Yours are not.
My insecurities override the way you want to live your life.
How I want to raise your daughter is my choice, not yours.
I refuse to let you live your life and let you raise your daughter your way.
I’m not saying I believe he’s saying these things in his head. I think they are just intrinsic – Things he just believes. For instance, ‘I raise your daughter my way, not yours.’ I think that’s the biggest one, honestly.
But all of these are major problems. She said she does see changes in him, but he’s not doing the one thing a loving, supporting partner is supposed to do: Accept her as she is.
This person is not accepting her as she is, including her boundaries, her values, how she wants to raise her daughter, and how she wants to protect her daughter from what I might call emotional venom.
And finally, he’s not accepting that she gets to choose her own friends. This is not someone who loves her in a healthy way. It’s someone who expects her to show up how he wants, regardless of what she wants for herself.
People like this are incapable of loving in a healthy way until they deal with what they have going on inside of them. He drank, then he stopped drinking, then he became controlling because he still has issues inside of him that he needs to deal with. Something he can’t cope with.
For him, whenever a challenge comes up, he can’t cope with it, so perhaps he drinks instead. And his strict values sound like they perhaps came from a parent with strict values, like the way his dad spoke to him when he was younger. i.e., “Men and women can’t be friends.”
That’s ridiculous! Does he actually believe that? I think he says it as a way to control because it’s silly to think that you will not be able to be friends with half the planet.
He could be projecting because maybe he feels attracted to other people. And because he feels attracted to other people, he thinks she’s going to feel attracted to other people.
So what if she is? Attraction is not the same as sex. Attraction doesn’t mean you’re going to hook up with someone. It can, but if there’s no trust in a relationship and you believe that your partner is going to hook up with somebody, then it’s not about attraction. It’s about something else, like jealousy and insecurity and all that stuff that comes up in fearful people.
He sounds like a very fearful person, and he needs to work on his coping mechanisms because he hasn’t learned how to deal with challenges he can’t control or handle:
“I can’t handle seeing you with another man. Therefore, I’m going to restrict you from seeing other men, talking to them, or working with them. I’m going to restrict that because I haven’t learned how to handle it in myself.”
Somebody who is highly insecure will make up silly rules and standards for others to follow so that they don’t have to deal with their own insecurities.
Yes, she’s seeing changes in him, which is great. But is it enough? Even if he’s changing in many ways, until everything I just talked about stops, she will always be waiting for the other shoe to drop.
If everything I talked about is never resolved, if he can’t get on board with any of that, she will always be waiting for that other shoe to drop, walking on eggshells all the time.
The Kind of Relationship You Deserve
To simplify this as much as possible, here’s a philosophy worth adopting:
Either you accept me as I am, including how I raise my daughter, and accept that I will have friendships you may not like, or you don’t. But I don’t have to change for you. You can either adapt and accept who I am and how I show up, or find someone else to control.
That’s the philosophy. Her “partner” has to accept that or not. But she doesn’t have to change for anyone. Accepting means he has to learn to deal with his insecurities or process and heal them, which would be even better.
I would never tell my wife how to raise her son, at least when he was a teenager. Now I help because he’s in his twenties and he’s facing things that I had to face. But I still don’t override her.
When they’re children, and they’re still learning, and they’re imprinting, and they’re figuring things out on their own, a stepparent doesn’t walk in and say, ‘This is how it’s going to be done.’ It just doesn’t normally work that way unless the relationship has already been established and there’s some sort of mutual agreement between the parent and the stepparent about how the child should be raised.
I have my own personal biases here because I am the stepparent in my relationship. These are my opinions on how a stepparent should be involved in the child-raising process. That doesn’t mean I’m right. It just means this is what I’ve learned and how I believe things should go. I could be wrong! And since I never raised my own child, I’m wide open to being wrong about how I raise children, especially other people’s children.
That also means that the woman who wrote to me knows better than he and I. She knows exactly what she needs to do to bring her daughter up, raise her right, and make her feel better.
When someone says they love you but they hurt you anyway, you have to look at what’s actually happening, not just what they’re saying. Words are easy. Behavior is truth.
If someone claims to love you but constantly makes you feel bad about yourself, controls who you can be friends with, uses your past mistakes as weapons, or refuses to let you be yourself, that’s not love. That’s control wearing a love mask.
Don’t settle for someone who makes you feel unsafe, like you’re constantly walking on eggshells waiting for the next explosion, criticism, or guilt trip. You deserve more than that.
If you’ve done the work on yourself, if you’ve owned your mistakes and changed your behavior, you’ve done your part.
If the other person can’t move forward, that’s on them. You can’t force someone to trust you or accept you or treat you with respect. All you can do is be the healthiest version of yourself and decide if you’re willing to accept how they’re choosing to show up.
 | Paul Colaianni Paul Colaianni is an Emotional Abuse Expert and Behavior and Relationship Specialist who has been analyzing complex relationship dynamics since 2010. As the creator of the Healed Being program and host of the top-rated Love and Abuse and The Overwhelmed Brain podcasts, with over 21 million downloads worldwide, he specializes in helping people recognize hidden manipulation, navigate emotionally abusive relationships, and empower themselves to make informed decisions. |
