When you get into an emotionally abusive relationship, you have no idea what you’re walking into.
When you figure it out, though, you might have to make some tough choices. One of those choices might lead to getting deeper into something you know is bad for you.
Before You Commit to the Next Level
When you’re already in a difficult relationship, the worst thing you can do is lock yourself in tighter. Yet that’s exactly what happens when people make the next level of commitment before addressing the problems that already exist.
Someone reached out to me after leaving a violent and abusive relationship years ago. She had tried to forget that part of her life, but one day, my podcast popped into her head, and she realized she was finally ready to acknowledge the terrible trouble she had been in.
She listened every day at work, finding a voice when she was silent, discovering that she wasn’t crazy and that the relationship was extremely unhealthy. She built up the courage to call the police, provided enough evidence that her ex-partner was convicted of felony domestic violence, and won custody of her child. According to her, while the physical pain was awful, nothing compared to the emotional abuse she endured.
This story illustrates something critical about abusive relationships. Emotional damage can sometimes last longer and cut deeper than physical violence.
But there’s another lesson here that’s equally important. This person had to escape from a situation that became increasingly dangerous, and one of the factors that made escape harder was the level of commitment she had already made.
Every new commitment you make in a troubled relationship can become another lock on the door you might need to walk through.
The Danger of Deepening Your Investment
Moving in together.
Getting married.
Having a child.
Relocating away from your support system.
Each of these commitments can seem like a natural progression in a relationship, but when you’re already dealing with abusive or controlling behavior, they become traps that make leaving exponentially harder.
I remember a couple who lived in an apartment below where my wife and I lived several years ago. One day, we heard a woman crying loudly with her door open. When I went down to check on her, I saw food on the wall, and her husband holding their child with a look that seemed like he’d just been caught hurting her.
I walked into the apartment and told the husband I wasn’t there to judge what just happened (not that I knew for sure, but to my wife and me, it was obvious), but that I was going to take his wife upstairs so she could calm down.
We brought her up to our apartment and told her she had a safe place, that we would protect her, and that we could get help if she needed it. After a while, she went back home and never came back to us to ask for help. Maybe things calmed down temporarily, but we knew it was still a dangerous situation.
This is the impossible position many people find themselves in. Even when help is available, even when there’s a way out, the fear and the complications keep them stuck.
About a month later, this couple moved out of the apartment complex. They not only moved out of the city, but they also moved away from her family and away from her support system. He was taking her somewhere else to isolate her from the world.
That’s what the next level of commitment can look like in an abusive relationship. It’s not progress, it’s increased isolation. It’s giving you fewer options. It’s being further away from people who could help you if things get worse.
The cultural element in this domestic violence situation I just described added another layer of difficulty to this situation. Their tradition and culture pressured them to stay married no matter what, strengthening the belief that leaving wasn’t an option, regardless of the abuse.
No cultural expectation should force someone to remain in an abusive relationship.
The problem is that when you make commitment after commitment in this type of relationship, and when you move further away from your support system, and when you have children together, and also when you’re financially dependent, the complexity of leaving increases dramatically.
If you’re in a relationship where there are already issues, and your next investment in the relationship is a commitment to be more isolated and away from your support system and the people who care about you, you need to pause and gather information before taking that step.
What You Need to Know Before Moving Forward
The first step when you’re in any difficult situation is information gathering. You need to educate yourself about what you’re dealing with. There are many types of abuse beyond just emotional abuse. There’s physical abuse, sexual abuse, financial abuse, and religious abuse. Some people don’t even realize they’re experiencing abuse because they don’t recognize the patterns.
Financial abuse is particularly insidious. One person controls all the money while the other person depends on them entirely. This creates a feeling of being stuck. You can’t leave because you have no money and no place to live. But that feeling of being stuck often comes from not seeing all your options.
Sometimes we tell ourselves we’re stuck when the reality is that we just don’t like the options available to us. You might not like the option of leaving someone and not having finances. You might not like the option of sleeping on someone’s couch. And you especially might not like the option of telling someone to stop their behaviors because you fear the consequences. So you feel and stay stuck.
But feeling stuck and having no options are two different things. Often, there are options. They’re just hard ones to consider. They can be very uncomfortable and scary ones to consider. But almost always, options do exist.
The person whose story opened this article felt stuck. She probably thought there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t leave because her partner was violent, and stirring things up would cause more violence. She was afraid, yet she found a way. She made an escape plan. And she mustered the courage to do it.
This doesn’t mean everyone in that type of situation should immediately leave. In fact, telling someone to leave an abusive situation, especially one involving physical violence, can be dangerous.
The most dangerous time for someone in an abusive relationship is often when they’re trying to leave.
That’s why gathering information is so important. You need to understand your specific situation, know what resources* are available, and make a plan that prioritizes your safety.
But what you absolutely should not do is commit to something deeper that will make your situation worse:
Don’t move away from your support system.
Don’t have a child with someone who’s already showing abusive behaviors.
Don’t marry someone when the relationship already has serious problems that haven’t been addressed.
I realize that many people reading this may have already committed to one or more of these things, which is why I link to the resources at the end of this article if you need them. Otherwise, no matter what your situation is, make sure to gather enough information so you know your options before making any more commitments.
Each commitment locks you in tighter to a situation you may not want to be in.
Pay Attention to the Trend
One of the most important things you can do when evaluating a relationship is look at the trend of someone’s behavior over time. If something has happened once or twice, it might be a fluke. It could have been a bad day or unusual circumstances. But if it’s happened repeatedly, if it’s a frequent occurrence, you need to accept that this is the trend and it will likely continue.
If someone has been emotionally abusive for months or years, they will probably continue to be emotionally abusive. If they’ve been controlling, they’ll likely continue to be controlling. If they’ve dismissed your feelings every time you’ve tried to express them, they’ll probably keep dismissing your feelings.
This isn’t pessimism. It’s pattern recognition. It’s using the evidence you have to make informed decisions about your future.
In a typical emotionally abusive relationship, you usually don’t have to fear physical violence, though every situation is different. What you can usually do is have a conversation. You can say something like “When you do this, it hurts me. Could you please not do that anymore?”
That doesn’t mean saying that will be effective. It doesn’t mean those are magic words that will stop everything. But it makes the person conscious of their behavior. Even if they disagree and say you’re just too sensitive or that you took it wrong, they’re now aware that what they do and say is hurtful to you.
That awareness matters because it removes their excuse. If they didn’t know before, they know now. And if they choose to continue the hurtful behavior after you’ve told them it hurts you, that tells you everything you need to know about how much they care about your feelings.
Making someone conscious of their actions is important. Though it may be hard to believe, some perpetrators of hurtful behavior aren’t always aware of the impact they’re having. But once they become aware and continue anyway, or worse, blame you for being hurt, you know you’re dealing with someone who’s more interested in maintaining their position or power over you than in caring about your well-being.
The person who wrote to me had tried to make her feelings known. She was in a dangerous situation with domestic violence that included physical abuse. She felt like she had no choice, which is what many people in abusive relationships feel. But she did have choices. They were terrifying choices, but they existed. And eventually, she made the choice to protect herself and her child.
Make Decisions Based on Reality, Not Hope
In every abusive relationship, one person has to change in order for there to be change. It would be great if both people changed, but at least one person has to in order for anything to progress.
The unfortunate reality in most abusive relationships is that the victim has to change in order for things to move forward. That doesn’t mean they need to become more passive, submissive, and accommodating; it means that the abuser is not likely to change on their own, so you may have to.
That means if what you are doing to get them to stop the hurtful or controlling behavior is not working, the next step may have to come from you. If the other person is not changing, waiting any longer will not make it happen.
That might be hard to hear, but it’s typically what happens. The abusive person has no reason to change as long as everything continues as it is. In other words, as long as you stay in the relationship and as long as you accept their behavior (and as long as there are no real consequences), why would they change? In that situation, they’re getting what they want.
Here’s where the commitment issue becomes critical. If you’ve already committed to the next investment in the relationship, like maybe you’ve moved away from your support system or had a child together or gotten married, as you know, making a change becomes exponentially harder. The barriers to leaving are higher. The consequences of setting boundaries are more complex. The fear of the unknown is more intense.
That’s why it’s so important not to lock yourself into a worse situation before addressing the problems that already exist. If there are already issues in the relationship, adding another layer of commitment won’t fix them. It will only make them harder to escape if they don’t improve.
Think about a commitment you might be considering:
Are you thinking about moving in together even though they’ve already shown controlling behaviors?
Are you considering marriage even though they’ve been emotionally abusive?
Are you thinking about having a child even though the relationship is already unstable?
Each of these commitments might feel like a natural next step, or like something you’re supposed to do, or like something that will make the relationship better. But if the foundation is already cracked, building on top of it won’t fix the cracks. It will just make the eventual collapse more devastating.
The woman who wrote to me had committed to having a child with someone she didn’t even like, someone who was a sociopath, because she thought that’s what she was supposed to do as a wife.
That decision tied her to him for years through shared custody. She had to endure countless broken promises, court battles over child support, and him turning their child against her with lies.
She loves her child and wouldn’t change having him, but she had to go through years of difficulty and challenges because of that commitment.
The bottom line is something I want to repeat because it’s that important, especially if you’re about to make a big decision in the relationship:
If there are already problems in the relationship that make you unhappy, investing more into that relationship will make things worse, not better.
Look at what has happened so far. That is the trend. That is what will be. How have they responded when you’ve tried to address problems in the past? The answer to that is your data. That’s what you should base your decisions on.
You deserve to be in a relationship where you feel respected and valued. You deserve to have your feelings acknowledged and your boundaries honored. And you deserve to make decisions about your future based on reality, not on the hope that someone will eventually become who you need them to be.
If you’re considering the next level of commitment in a relationship that’s already difficult, pause. Gather information. Look at the pattern. Ask yourself honestly whether this commitment will make your situation better or just lock you in tighter to something that’s already hurting you.
Because once you’re locked in, getting out becomes so much harder. And you deserve better than to spend years of your life trapped in a situation you could have avoided by paying attention to the warning signs that were already there.
*Domestic violence support resources:
thehotline.org:
United States only. Immediate crisis support and safety planning.
domesticshelters.org:
United States and Canada. Directory of local shelters and abuse services.
nomoredirectory.org:
International. Find trauma-informed therapists and professionals who understand abuse.
 | Paul Colaianni Paul Colaianni is a Behavior and Relationship Specialist with experience 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 the mechanics of behavioral change and the identification of hidden manipulation. |
