Share this with someone who might benefit.

Do you think you are the person causing the problems in your relationship? Is your partner or family right about what they said about you?

If you think you are the manipulative one in the relationship, I’ll share with you why you might be and why you might not. 

I wanted to quickly share with you some thought processes that some people have when they’re in a manipulative or emotionally abusive relationship. They think, “Am I the manipulative one? Am I the one who’s being emotionally abusive?”

I get this letter maybe once or twice a month, and it’s usually from someone who’s been quite victimized from an emotionally abusive standpoint. So if they’ve been victimized in the sense where emotional abuse was taking place in the relationship often, the partner who is experiencing emotional abuse will feel like “maybe I was the emotional abuser, maybe I was the manipulator, maybe I was really doing these things to my partner, and they were right about me.”

Because what often happens is that the emotionally abusive, manipulative, controlling person will make you feel like you’re doing the things they’re doing. They will even say the things that they’re doing. You’re doing. I mean, they won’t admit that they’re doing these things. They will push those things onto you and say, “You’re the one doing these things to me.”

Let me give you one gauge, one guide, one question that you can ask yourself to figure out if you’re the one who’s being manipulative, or you have these tendencies, or you’re emotionally abusive. The question is:

Were you like this before this relationship? 

Were you like this in any other relationship? Were you often told, “Hey, why are you doing these things to me? You’re doing these things and you’re the problem. You’re the cause.”

If you get a “Well, no, not really. That wasn’t me before this relationship, but maybe I developed it, or maybe I started this behavior for whatever reason,” I’m going to tell you with 99% certainty that you are not the person that caused these issues.

I say that because often what happens is when you get into a relationship with a controlling, manipulative person, even if they don’t mean to — when I say it’s a controlling, manipulative person, some people do it very subconsciously, some people do it because of how they grew up in their dysfunctional environment— it’s still controlling and manipulative because they want to control you so that you can conform to the way they want you to be so that they’re comfortable so that they feel safe.

If you are in a relationship with someone who wants you to conform to their standards, to their perfect version of who someone should be, whether it’s a romantic partner, family, or friend, you will often come out of that relationship feeling guilty, that perhaps you did cause some or most of the problems.

This is the emotional abuse formula. If you go into a relationship not being this way, then you start to develop behavior that might be considered emotionally abusive, controlling, or manipulative, you very likely had to develop these behaviors to get your needs met.

You probably had to become someone that you weren’t and don’t like being just to get your needs met and also feel loved and supported — just to feel like this person actually cares about you.

So what you had to do was alter your behavior to fit into their behavior. This is what I mean when I say that I’m 99% sure that if you came into this relationship not doing these behaviors that may be controlling or emotionally abusive, you aren’t that person. You just had to develop behaviors so that you could get your needs met and get through the relationship in a way that made you feel somewhat normal, special, cared for, or cared about.

What often happens is that the victim of emotional abuse and manipulation will feel so guilty; they’ll feel like they did something wrong. But that is the formula. The formula of emotional abuse is that you feel like you did something wrong. You feel like you’re the problem. You feel like you’re at fault – like you could do better.

That’s what is what the emotionally abusive person continuously drills into you: “You could do better, but you don’t. You could try harder, but you don’t!”

For several years, I’ve been working with people who are in emotionally abusive relationships. In my experience, the partner of an emotional abuser will get into a state of self-blame and even seek counseling for their “own bad behavior.”

Really think about that question: “Was I this way before?”

If your answer is, “I don’t know, I’m pretty young and haven’t had many relationships, so I don’t know if I was this way before,” then let me ask you this:

If your partner, or friend, or family members showed up in a different way like this person showed up in your life, would you still act the way you do? Would you still lie? Would you still deceive? Would you still do any of the behaviors that you think might not be healthy for a relationship?

Would you do all those things, or would you not feel the need to do that? Because if the need is not in there, whether you’re conscious of it or not, you’re probably not that person.

Over and over again, I see victims of emotional abuse and control come out of a relationship feeling guilty, as if they caused it. This is just to remind you that when you get into a relationship with someone who doesn’t want to take responsibility for any problems in the relationship, one who doesn’t want to feel any emotional pain, one who doesn’t want to admit any wrongdoing, they’re usually pushing it all on you so that you’ll take the brunt of it.

If you take the brunt of it, they don’t have to deal with it, and they can push it all off on someone else and then they can make that person feel like they actually are responsible. They can make you feel responsible for everything that happens.

Of course, when you feel responsible and you feel guilty and you can’t figure out why or what you did, then you feel more alone, you feel more isolated, you feel like perhaps you’re not lovable, you’re not worthy. All of these wonderful things about you, love, worth, importance, significance and you’re amazingness… all of these things are stripped away slowly over time. They’re chipped away by the other person, getting you into a more and more insecure state within yourself.

You become fearful of your own decision-making because they keep reminding you of how bad of a decision-maker you are. When you once believed you were intelligent, after being in a relationship with someone like this for a while, you think that you’re dumb. You think that you are a bad decision-maker, and you’re just not that smart.

When you were once generous and kind, suddenly, you’re selfish and uncaring. These are all qualities that get twisted around inside you. Not that you’re changing but you’re made to believe that you’ve changed.

If you ever come up with the question, “Am I the manipulative one? Am I the one causing these problems? Maybe they’re right about me,” ask yourself the question, “Was I this way before?”

If you are in a relationship for your life, like you grew up in a family and they’ve convinced you that you are always this way, ask yourself the question, “If that person wasn’t in my life, who would I be then?”

Because the emotional abusers, the controllers, the manipulators, they’re going to be who they are with anyone. That’s who they are. Though, they usually show up as more kind, more caring, and more sensitive to strangers or at least people that aren’t in their inner circle of intimate connections. They’re going to show up more kind for your friends, for anyone else that looks from the outside in, and they want to be seen in a good light.

Like my girlfriend once said, “You can always tell how they’re going to treat you by the way they treat the waiter” by the way, they treat what I might call inconsequential people to their life.

You get to know someone by the way they treat people that they don’t know, and that serve them. That’s kind of a good analogy that doesn’t always work for every situation. Someone might fool you by being nice to someone else and you are impressed by that.

When you’re with someone for a while, their personality starts to show when you see them interact with people that serve them in some way.

For example, the hotel bellhop, the waiter, the customer service person in a department store, all of these people that show up in our lives that we may never meet again, but we need something from them. Or they are serving us in some way.

Usually, you’ll see them do behavior toward them that will be very important for you to know because when the honeymoon period dies down (usually in a new romantic relationship or a friendship), you start to see behavior come out of them toward others that will eventually come out toward you.

When the honeymoon period is over, how they treat the waiter or the convenience store clerk will usually be the way they treat you. 

This is so vital to understand when you get into any type of new relationship. Behaviors that they have toward others will eventually come out toward you because it’s in them. If it’s in them, it comes out in the relationship, especially because they become more and more comfortable being their true selves or behaving in ways that they’ve learned to behave most of their lives. So, you can add that to the list of red flags.

But this is a reminder that you may not be doing any of the manipulating. You may have had to develop that behavior in order to get your needs met but think about who you are outside this relationship. You may have some behaviors that you’ve developed even before the relationship. You may be carrying those with you. But if you’re listening to the show, you’re probably willing to change those things and willing to look inward.

It’s very unlikely that people who really want to control you, people who really don’t care enough about your happiness and about what you want in your life, probably don’t listen to shows like this. And if they do, maybe they’re starting to get a glimmer of light that something needs to change in them.

It happened to me. The glimmer came when I was married. That glimmer of light, that glimmer of thought that came to me that said, “Something needs to change about you. You’re losing these relationships. Your marriage is falling apart and something needs to change. Why don’t you take that opportunity to look inward instead of looking outward at everyone else and trying to make them change for you?”

That thought grounded me. That thought brought me back and made me realize that perhaps I needed to do some inner work. And I did. I did a lot of inner work. It saved me and my relationships.

I hope that anyone listening to this can see that glimmer of thought, or it can come to them in some way so that they can perhaps look inward and think, “Maybe I need to change something about myself.”

Remember, if you weren’t this way and you are only this way in the relationship, and you are sensing that something is wrong with the relationship but you can’t quite figure out what it is, it’s probably not you.


Share this with someone who might benefit.

Paul Colaianni

Paul Colaianni is a Behavior and Relationship Coach, and the host of The Overwhelmed Brain and Love and Abuse podcasts.

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Jerri Ingram

Hi! I have been listening to the Overwhelmed Brain podcast, which has been absolutely amazing and spot-on for everything I’m dealing with right now when it comes to relationships. I got the MEAN Workbook, and I finally understand what emotional abuse is for the first time in my life. All the other forms of abuse I get, but I just couldn’t tell if any of what I’ve been through related to emotional abuse. It turns out that I am definitely directly experiencing this with my sister, so I’m just eating up all the info like it’s candy.

So, I put on this 4th episode of the love and abuse podcasts, and there’s a problem. This is playing the 3rd episode. I’m hoping that this can get corrected soon, because these podcasts have all been so helpful!

Thank you so much, and I’m looking forward to hearing back.

Jerri I.

Paul Colaianni

You were so right about that episode! Turned out to be quite the technical glitch. It has been fixed – thank you so much for letting me know. You should be able to listen to it now.

Also, I am so grateful that you shared your experience here. Dealing with emotional abuse can be very difficult, especially when you aren’t sure exactly what’s happening in the relationship. I’m glad the workbook was able to highlight the behaviors you needed to know about so that you could figure out what was happening in your situation. I hope you are able to work through the challenges. I know it’s difficult.

Thank you again. I appreciate you!

Maria Bustos

When I first saw him, i fell in love. A month later, i texted him asking to have sex (the way to a man’s heart, my 20yo self thought) and he said yes. Then asked “can i get a name first?” Not knowing who it was. For the next 2 years, I was a body to him – i was better than nothing. We lived together, did everything together, i cooked him dinner, took care of him, he loved to cuddle and be little spoon, we raised a cat together. He liked this, but he didn’t like me. So many times I would so delicately ask if we are exclusive, if it’s okay to call him my bf, if i can please kiss him, and that would make him angry and would turn into a week+ long argument of him ignoring me, watching porn, and drinking heavily to blame the alcohol on me because I keep “expecting things he doesn’t want to give me, holding him hostage/prisoner, being manipulative and abusive”. In this state, he bullies me by name calling or “yes master”. I cry and cry and wish to die and bang my head on the wall because I feel so excruciatingly ugly and unlovable. He’s told me many times that I’m not cool, not funny, boring, i will always be sad and unlikable, he is usually open minded when he says ‘never’ but when he says he will ‘never love me’ that is the one thing he’s certain about. We met at work, he was the one who hired me. He told me he hired me because i didn’t pose a threat to his job because he didn’t find me physically attractive at all. He said if he worked with a tall hot girl with a big ass, he’d touch her. He hates my personality and he hates everything about my looks and body unless he’s using it as an alternative to his hand to masturbate in. I do feel like the manipulative one for not listening to him and still always thinking i deserve his love, expecting it. When we reach peaks that feel like the end, i tell him i would die for him if it made him happy. I want to die for him to be happy.

Amy Dayries

Paul:
Your podcast is amazing and touches a lot of deep parts within myself as I am healing and becoming aware of what emotional abuse is in relationships. Thank you. -Amy

Paul Colaianni

Thank you so much for sharing this Amy. I wish you much strength as you heal and grow through your journey. I appreciate you! Thank you for your words.

Jerri Ingram

Hi! I have been listening to the Overwhelmed Brain podcast, which has been absolutely amazing and spot-on for everything I’m dealing with right now when it comes to relationships. I got the MEAN Workbook, and I finally understand what emotional abuse is for the first time in my life. All the other forms of abuse I get, but I just couldn’t tell if any of what I’ve been through related to emotional abuse. It turns out that I am definitely directly experiencing this with my sister, so I’m just eating up all the info like it’s candy.

So, I put on this 4th episode of the love and abuse podcasts, and there’s a problem. This is playing the 3rd episode. I’m hoping that this can get corrected soon, because these podcasts have all been so helpful!

Thank you so much, and I’m looking forward to hearing back.

Jerri I.

Paul Colaianni

You were so right about that episode! Turned out to be quite the technical glitch. It has been fixed – thank you so much for letting me know. You should be able to listen to it now.

Also, I am so grateful that you shared your experience here. Dealing with emotional abuse can be very difficult, especially when you aren’t sure exactly what’s happening in the relationship. I’m glad the workbook was able to highlight the behaviors you needed to know about so that you could figure out what was happening in your situation. I hope you are able to work through the challenges. I know it’s difficult.

Thank you again. I appreciate you!

Jiten Chavda

I now have realised how abuse i have been to my wife and my previously relationships. My wife was the one that stood up for herself and she has been trying so hard to let me know how abuse i have been and i just didn’t get it. Any only recently my wife said that we should separate (after 20 years of marriage and 3 kids) and something hit me and it took that for me to realise what i had been doing to my wife. She still wants us to move apart. But she is understanding that i know what i have put her through and am willing to change. The process has already started. I have talked to friends who have said that i try to be abuse with them. As friends they just ignore me. I can think of many moments when i have put my wife down and let her know that she is not very good at things. I can’t believe i was doing that. Always putting her down. I know i have long way to go, but i am getting there. I feel good in one way that i can long last admit my faults. Sad that it might be too late to save my marriage..

Paul Colaianni

Thanks for sharing this here. I think this is what needs to happen sometimes. Someone has to put their foot down and say no more or else. Sorry you are going through this, but at the same time, this is an amazing opportunity to finally heal what is causing you to behave in hurtful ways. I don’t know if you signed up for Healed Being yet, but that is a healing program for emotionally abusive people that want to change. Whether you sign up or not, it sounds like you’ve taken the right steps and you are willing to be humble and vulnerable through the process – two very important components to healing and making the changes you need so that all your relationships improve, even the one you have with yourself.

If there’s still love in her heart, there’s a chance. If she has closed you out permanently, she may have moved on. The goal is to focus on you and your own healing. When she notices your changes, and if she feels love for you, there’s a good chance she may put her toe in the water and make sure it’s not too cold. But even with reconciliation, you must continue to work on yourself.

Focus on your healing, not on saving the relationship. A relationship will survive when the love is there and you are truly healing. If it isn’t, there’s nothing you can do anyway. And if you don’t do the healing and you still reconcile, what happened before is likely to happen again.

Stay strong. You’ve got work to do, but you already have a strong start by admitting.

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