The language you use to describe your relationship and how you’re getting along with the other person says a lot.
If you’ve ever wondered if you are the hurtful one or they are, the words you use can reveal just what role you play in the dynamic of an emotionally abusive relationship.
When I read messages from people who reach out to me, I can often spot signs of emotional abuse, control, or manipulation in their language. There are common phrases and words that victims of hurtful behavior tend to use.
As soon as I see these words, I start to think they might be experiencing emotional abuse, especially when they ask, “Am I the abuser? Am I the one doing all this? Maybe I’m wrong and need to work on myself.”
To illustrate this, I’ve selected an email from the many I’ve received over the years and highlighted the phrases that typically indicate someone is likely experiencing emotionally abusive behavior. This might be helpful for you, too.
If you want to try this out as an exercise, consider writing a letter to your best friend or someone you trust, explaining the challenges in your relationship. You don’t have to send it. Just write it out.
When you are done, look over what you wrote. You might find that you’ve used some of the phrases I’ve mentioned below. More often than not, if you use some or many of these words when talking about your relationship, you’re probably experiencing emotionally abusive behavior from the other person in the relationship.
Here are the highlights from this email indicating the author may be experiencing emotionally abusive behavior:
“I was confused.”
“He discarded me.”
“He never said he was sorry.”
“He never owned it or took accountability.”
“I was devastated, but I wanted us to try.”
“He would justify and defend himself.”
“He told me he did it because of the way I was.”
“He kept explaining how horrible I was and how horrible our relationship was.”
“I felt betrayed and cheated on.”
“His words felt like knives in my body.”
“It was psychological terror.”
“I went into freeze mode and shut down.”
“He told me I couldn’t be angry, sad, jealous, or anxious because he couldn’t deal with that.”
“Was I abusive to him?”
“I felt forced to listen.”
“Maybe he was right, and I was the abusive one after all.”
“He was a stonewaller and extremely neglectful.”
You may have noticed words like “confused” or “confusing” three or four times. This is common in almost every message I get where someone asks, “Am I the abuser? Am I the one doing all this hurtful stuff?”
They often say they’re confused, feel crazy, or are pulling their hair out. If you’re in an abusive relationship, you might find yourself saying things like, “I don’t know what’s real,” or “I’m confused,” or “Maybe it’s me.”
These phrases are common among people experiencing hurtful, controlling, or manipulative behaviors. If you relate to these feelings, you’re probably dealing with some form of emotional abuse.
Am I the Emotionally Abusive One?
Answering this can help clear up confusion, especially if you’re finding it hard to communicate with someone you care about and you’re experiencing a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions. Taking time to sort through these feelings in your mind can be incredibly helpful.
Looking at the big picture, I see several key points when someone is dealing with emotional abuse and wonders if they might be the abuser or the victim.
Victims:
A. want to work on the relationship.
B. question their own behaviors.
C. are typically confused and can’t figure out what’s going wrong.
D. are almost always willing to apologize and take responsibility. Meanwhile, the other person often doesn’t want to take responsibility.
If you’re asking yourself if you are the abusive one, remember that an abusive person rarely asks this question of themselves. Why? Because abusers typically do not do any type of self-reflection like this. They are always focused on the victim and how they can control that person.
Abusers do not like to focus on what they need to improve in themselves. Their goal is to make you into who they want you to be.
Abusers fixate on what the other person is doing wrong, not doing right, or not doing enough of. All of their attention is on the other person, pushing them to change so that they themselves don’t have to. The goal is to maintain control and power over the other person.
There’s one more point I’d like to add about determining if you are the emotionally abusive person in the relationship or not – let’s call this point E. If you have ever said, “I want us to work. I want to try and get through this together,” it’s another indicator that you are not abusive.
When you want to work on the relationship together and figure things out as a team, that’s normally a green flag, showing that you have no intention of trying to control or change the other person. You may want them to change, but you aren’t focused on how you can manipulate or control them into changing them into who you want them to be.
Abusive people usually don’t think in terms of “us” or “we.” They’re typically not interested in ‘working things out as a team.’ However, I won’t discount the possibility that there could be some abusive people who will use “us” as a manipulation tactic, pretending they want to figure things out together. But the reality is, if they are truly abusive, they’re really saying, “You do what I want you to do, and we’ll both be happy.”
In most cases, if you’re the one saying, “Let’s figure this out,” it’s a good sign that you’re not the abusive one in the relationship. Abusive people typically don’t think or talk in a way that shows concern for the “relationship.” Instead, they often say things like, “You’re the problem” or “You need to fix your issues so we can be happy.” Their focus is solely on you, not on the relationship as a whole or on themselves. They don’t consider their own role in the situation.
If they believe they’re right and that you’re the problem, which is pretty much the abuser’s mindset, they won’t take responsibility or own up to anything. They’ll simply try to make you change to suit their needs, regardless of how you feel about it. And this is not representative of an equal partnership or a healthy relationship.
In a healthy, balanced relationship, both partners take responsibility and put effort into making things work. The formula for a healthy relationship includes both people actively working on it together.
On the other hand, an unhealthy relationship often feels one-sided. If you’re in a situation where you are the only one who wants to work on the relationship while the other person constantly points their finger at you and says, “It’s all you, not me,” you’re likely dealing with an imbalanced and potentially toxic or abusive situation.
As part two of this exercise, write another letter to your friend without sending it. But this time, write it as if you feel loved and supported as you.
If you find it difficult to write this way, that tells you a lot. In fact, the more difficult it is to write from this perspective, the more you reveal just how many aspects of your relationship need to improve or change.
