If you feel trapped in a maze of emotional manipulation, hoping for a change that never comes, you might realize you’ve signed up for something you didn’t expect and certainly don’t want.
There’s a history lesson here that may give you all you need to know about what the future holds for your relationship.
Before recording the episode for this article, I had a thought that made me uncomfortable. It was one of those realizations that hits you hard because once you see it, you can’t unsee it. I started thinking about how some abusive relationships function, and I couldn’t help but notice the disturbing similarities between them and indentured servitude.
I know that sounds harsh. It might even sound unfair to some people. But stay with me here, because understanding these parallels might help you see what’s really happening in your relationship, or help you understand what someone you care about is going through.
Indentured servitude was a legal system where someone signed a contract to work without wages for a specific number of years. In exchange, they got passage to a new country or payment of a debt. While it gave poor Europeans a path to the New World, it was a rigorous and often exploitative system that existed somewhere between free labor and slavery.
The contract specified the length of service, typically four to seven years. Servants weren’t paid a salary. Instead, they received room and board during their service, and upon completion, they were often granted “freedom dues,” which might include land, tools, clothing, or food to help them start their own lives.
Unlike enslaved people, indentured servants were legally considered human beings with some limited rights. However, they were still property in a functional sense. Their contracts could be bought, sold, or inherited. The work was grueling, often involving tobacco farming or domestic labor. Many servants didn’t survive their term of service due to disease, malnutrition, or harsh treatment by masters.
Now, I’m not saying emotional abuse is a direct comparison to indentured servitude. But there are similarities in how both systems use power, isolation, and the promise of a future reward to maintain control. And understanding these patterns can help you recognize what you might be experiencing.
The Future Reward Trap
Think about how often you endure difficult treatment because you’re waiting for things to get better. The indentured servant worked through years of grueling labor for the promise of freedom dues at the end.
In an abusive relationship, you often endure emotional or even physical pain for the promise of a return to the honeymoon phase, or the hope that your partner will finally change and become the person they were at the start.
How often do you think about what will change? What do you hope will change? What good will come when the bad is over, when the abusive behavior stops, when the criticisms stop, when the manipulation and control finally end?
If you’re going day to day, enduring this treatment, there’s something you believe is worth waiting for. You’re looking for that future reward. So you continue turning corners in this maze, hoping that the reward will be around the next one. You stick around because you believe there’s something in it that makes the wait worthwhile.
The challenge is that sometimes the future reward does show up. Sometimes it’s a good day. Sometimes they treat you great. And this actually makes it harder because now you see evidence of it. You know it’s possible. So you stick around and get back into that maze, turning corners again day after day until that future reward comes again.
As opposed to the indentured servant who only gets rewards at the end of the line, you get occasional rewards along the way. But both of you are looking for that future payoff. Both of you are enduring something difficult because you believe something better is coming.
The problem is the drip-feed effect. Anyone can have a one-time event in a relationship. Any relationship can have a once-a-year blowup or a once-every-five-years crisis.
But when it becomes a daily or multiple-times-a-week, very high-frequency event, that’s different. That’s a drip feed that continues to inject poison into your spirit and soul as you move forward. You’re slowly digesting what you’re experiencing in a negative way, and it compounds until it wears you down and wears you out and disintegrates you from the inside out.
Isolation and Control
Control is most effective when the individual has nowhere else to go. The indentured servant was often in a new country, far away from family, with a legal status tied entirely to their master. Running away was a crime that often resulted in a doubled sentence.
In an abusive relationship, abusers frequently use isolation as a tool. They cut you off from your friends, your family, and even financial resources. This creates a functional contract where you feel like you cannot leave without losing everything. You feel stuck in this space where you are under full control, full isolation. You can feel very much alone.
Running away not only feels impossible, but you might feel like you’ll suffer for it. If you go, what are they going to do next? What will the consequences be?
In both scenarios, the individual’s needs are secondary to the utility they provide to the person in power. The indentured servant, although legally human, had their labor treated as a commodity that could be bought, sold, or traded. Their physical well-being was only relevant as far as it allowed them to work.
In an abusive relationship, the abuser often views their partner as an extension of themselves or an object to be controlled. Your autonomy is seen as a threat to the abuser’s ownership of the relationship dynamic. The abuser wants to control the relationship, and they view you as an extension of themselves.
If you are an extension of another person, they own you. If they want to move their arm, all they have to do is move their arm. If they want you to do something, all they have to do is get you to do something. You become their property, their ownership.
Not every emotionally abusive person thinks this way. There are people doing emotionally abusive behaviors who aren’t considering you their property. They don’t think they own you. They might even honor your autonomy in some ways, but they still do the behavior. So these are more extreme examples, and some people experience these extreme examples, while others experience much less.
But it’s helpful to understand where you are on that spectrum. When you know where you are, then you know what you have to deal with and what you have to heal through.
The Loss of Power and Self
You could probably assess what level you’re at by asking yourself if you feel like you can’t do anything without their permission. Do you feel like they are in full control of whatever you do, whatever you say, even whatever you think? Do you feel like they are in control of who you spend time with, how much money you spend, what you watch, what you listen to, what you eat, and what you read?
The more you feel like somebody else has control of your life, the more severe your situation. And that feels dehumanizing. That does feel like you’re somebody’s property. The worse that is, the more severe that is, the more control somebody has over you, the more power they have over you.
When somebody has power over you, that means you’re powerless. The more power they have, the less power you have.
When you feel like you have no power, you feel like you can’t make decisions for yourself. If somebody is drip-feeding you terrible behaviors, treating you like you’re a child that needs discipline, that they can boss around and tell what to do and what to think, then you will feel like you have very little power.
This is often called the “power-over” dynamic. When you have a relationship where somebody has power over you, they control the relationship dynamic. They control everything that happens in the relationship. Whatever you do has to serve them.
Over time, both systems can break down a person’s sense of self-worth. For the indentured servant, years of subservience and harsh living conditions often left individuals broken or unable to integrate into society once they were free.
In an abusive relationship, the constant criticism and gaslighting can lead to a shattered self where you lose trust in your own perceptions and actually feel like you deserve the treatment you get. That’s the scariest part of all this. Who you were disappears and becomes who they want you to be.
What’s interesting is that’s not even what happens. A lot of abusive people actually want you to love them, believe it or not. But they do behaviors that push you away. The irony is that the behaviors they do that push you away are the very behaviors they believe will get you to stay and love them.
The same behaviors they use to get you to love them are the same behaviors that are repelling, hurtful, and dehumanizing. Because if you feel like you’re losing yourself, your identity, that is dehumanizing you.
Understanding Where You Are
If you think there are problems in the relationship and are just now discovering them, like verbal abuse, psychological abuse, financial abuse, legal abuse, or religious abuse, or maybe you’re experiencing certain levels of control that you don’t like, or insults, belittling, invalidating, or gaslighting. If any of these are present in the relationship, know that these are abusive behaviors.
I’ve heard from too many people who just don’t know if what they’re experiencing is abusive. Sometimes you’ll be in a relationship for a long time and not realize that what you’re experiencing might just be abusive.
If you feel like you are losing your ability to decide things for yourself, to live the way you want to live with an equal partner, then you’re in a situation that requires you to look at very closely.
If you feel like the equality is not there and you can’t be yourself, if you feel like the person you are is slowly disappearing, slowly disintegrating from within, and you can resonate with anything I’ve talked about, then something needs to change.
I’m not going to tell you that you’re in an abusive relationship or that they’re an abuser. That is something that, unfortunately, the person inside the relationship has to discover and figure out. I’m giving you this information so that you can do something with it and empower yourself. I want you to regain what you’ve lost so that you can see things more clearly and make the right decision for you.
There is a level of severity that you may or may not know you’re in that is important to know. There is an intensity level of relationships that experience abusive behaviors. It could be minor or major. But when you know where you are, then you know what you have to deal with. And you know what you have to heal through.
Sometimes you can heal through it together. But sometimes it requires separation so that they can work on themselves, and you can work on yourself. It just depends on the severity level.
If you are the person doing emotionally abusive behaviors and you’re reading this, take what I’m talking about to heart. If someone you claim to care about is feeling like they’re an indentured servant or they feel powerless, and you are only putting them down instead of lifting them up, then you’re pushing them away.
That is not how you show love.
That is not how you connect.
That is not how you show someone that they are important to you.
My plea to an emotionally abusive person: Do whatever you can to stop.
The first step is admitting that everything you believe you’re right about, you might not be. You may not be right about just about everything you believe you’re right about.
That was my first step into healing. As soon as I did that, changes started happening because when new information would come along, I wouldn’t automatically dismiss it. I would say that’s probably something I need to look at.
During my healing, when my partner said something that I absolutely believed was false, I humbly told myself I may not be right about that. I decided to look into what they said about me and reflect on it. I knew I had a lot of work to do in myself.
If you are doing behaviors that push somebody you care about away, there is a path forward and out of that. But if you are one of those people who believe one hundred percent that you’re right and everyone else is wrong, it’s just not going to work. I’ve been where you are. I’ve done this for too long and know the outcome of not changing.
I’ve had people reach out to me and say that I’m convincing their partner to leave and that I’m the jerk. They say I should stay out of their relationship. I can tell from their language and how they present themselves that they’re probably a very difficult person to get along with, but they are so self-righteous and truly believe that what they’re doing is not only okay, but necessary.
That’s what emotionally abusive people do. They believe their behaviors are necessary. They believe they’re right. And many can’t seem to get out of that mindset.
If you are hurtful, controlling, and manipulative, start by telling yourself you may not be right about everything. Just start by saying that. That way, it humbles you a little bit.
Then test it. Test your humility with somebody that you say you care about.
To the person experiencing emotionally abusive behaviors, remember this:
You deserve to live a life that isn’t defined by someone else’s control.
You deserve to make decisions for yourself.
You deserve to feel like an equal partner in your relationship.
You deserve to be yourself without fear of criticism or punishment.
If you recognize yourself in these patterns, know that understanding them is the first step. You’re not crazy for feeling trapped. You’re not weak for staying. You’re not imagining the control.
These patterns are real, and they have real effects on your sense of self, your mental health, and your ability to live freely.
The question isn’t whether you signed up for a life of indentured servitude. It’s whether you’re willing to recognize it for what it is so that you can make a decision about what you want to do about it.
 | 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. |
