How much hurtful, controlling, and manipulative behavior is too much? Is there a breaking point where you have no choice but to make a change because they won’t?
When your boundaries are violated over and over again, eventually you will have none, and the sky will be the limit on someone else’s hurtful and controlling behaviors.
When someone crosses a line you’ve set, you have a choice: You can hold that boundary and enforce consequences, or you can let it slide.
When you let it slide, you’re not just being flexible or understanding. You’re teaching that person the line doesn’t actually exist.
I received an email from someone whose ex-partner had been physically abusive. He pushed her out of a moving car. He hit her twice. He threw a bowl at her. She described these incidents almost matter-of-factly, as if recounting a series of unfortunate events rather than a pattern of dangerous behavior.
That’s what struck me most. It wasn’t just what happened to her, but how she talked about it. There seemed to be a disconnect between the severity of the abuse and how she processed it emotionally. I could be completely wrong, of course. Perhaps she had to go through a LOT of processing and healing afterward.
But there can be a disconnect that happens in emotionally abusive relationships because those behaviors, as they are drip-fed throughout the day and every day, prepare the person in it for potential physical abuse.
In other words, by the time someone gets physically violent, the other person’s line has already been moved so many times that they don’t know where it is anymore. Or worse, they’ve erased it completely.
Physical abuse doesn’t usually start with a broken jaw or being pushed from a car. It starts with emotional abuse that chips away at your sense of what’s acceptable. Someone says something cruel, then apologizes and makes you feel loved again. They control your decisions, then shower you with affection. They make you doubt yourself, then convince you they’re the only one who truly understands you.
This cycle creates confusion. You start to believe that the bad moments are just part of the relationship, that everyone goes through this, that if you could just be better or do things differently, the abuse would stop. The line you once had, the one that said “I won’t tolerate being treated this way,” gets pushed further and further back until you can’t see it anymore.
When emotional abuse escalates to physical abuse, it’s not a sudden shift. It’s the natural progression of a relationship where boundaries have been systematically dismantled. The person who once only hurt you with words now believes they can hurt you physically without real consequences.
The woman who wrote to me said her ex’s words were horrible. She said they hurt more than the physical abuse.
That’s not uncommon. Physical pain is temporary. Emotional pain embeds itself in how you see yourself and the world. When someone tells you you’re worthless, lazy, stupid, or too sensitive, those words stay with you long after bruises fade.
The Danger of No Consequences
A sad face isn’t a consequence.
Crying isn’t a consequence.
Yelling back usually isn’t a consequence either.
These are reactions. And reactions don’t create change unless the person hurting you actually cares about your pain.
If someone sees you crying and continues the behavior that made you cry, your tears aren’t working as a deterrent. If they see you depressed and withdrawn and don’t change their actions, your emotional state isn’t motivating them to stop.
One of the few things that creates actual change in an abusive person is consequences that matter.
When there are no consequences for crossing your line in the sand, your boundary, permission is implied.
You might say “don’t do that” or “you can’t treat me this way,” but if nothing happens when they do it again, your words become meaningless. That’s when they’ve learned that your boundaries are only suggestions, not requirements.
This is why physical abuse is so dangerous, aside from the actual damage done to the person. It’s dangerous in another way because once someone crosses that line and nothing happens, they know they can do it again.
And they will.
The first time someone becomes physically abusive, they might push you.
The next time, they might slap you.
And eventually, slaps might become the new normal. And after that, it will likely escalate because if there are no consequences to their behaviors, there may never be an end to it.
The woman who wrote to me wasn’t injured when she was pushed from the car. She said her ex hit her, but “not hard.” She minimized the danger because she survived it.
But survival isn’t the measure of whether something is abuse. The measure of abuse is whether someone put you in danger at all.
My mother’s ex-husband (my stepfather) threw a hammer at her head! She felt it whiz past her ear. When she told me about it years later, she was casual, almost dismissive. I had to point out to her that “He could have killed you, Mom!”
After I said that, she paused, really thinking about it for the first time. “You’re right,” she said. “I never really thought about it. He could have killed me.”
That’s what happens when you don’t have a line. You might not see things as dangerous anymore because you’ve seen it so often, you’ve normalized it.
Someone who truly loves you should want to change when they see they’ve hurt you. Not because you demanded it or threatened to leave, but because your pain matters to them.
When my wife is unhappy, I feel it. When I’ve caused that unhappiness, it bothers me deeply. I want her to feel powerful and happy, whether I’m the one who helped her get there or not.
That’s what love looks like. It’s not about control or making someone fit your expectations. It’s about wanting them to thrive. It’s uplifting them into their power, not controlling them and taking that power away.
If someone claims to love you but continues hurting you despite seeing your pain, they don’t love you in a healthy way. They might love the version of you that serves their needs. They might love the idea of you. But they don’t love you enough to stop hurting you, and that’s a very important distinction.
In this woman’s email, she said that her partner told her that he wanted her to take responsibility for her part in the relationship’s problems. He wanted an apology. He believed that if she would just acknowledge what she had done wrong, they could be friends again.
But here’s what he was really saying: “I hurt you repeatedly, but… You also hurt me by pulling away! So we’re even.” That’s not accountability. That’s deflection.
When The Abuser Demand An Apology From You
It’s a strange but common phenomenon: Abusive people often demand apologies from the people they’ve abused. They point to the person’s reactive behaviors, moments when they finally snapped and said something cruel or did something out of character, and they say, “See? You were abusive too!”
Sometimes relationships are mutually abusive from the start. Sometimes one person’s abuse triggers reactive abuse from the other. But when someone has been physically and emotionally abusive and then demands an apology before they’ll move forward, they’re not healed. They’re still trying to control the narrative.
A truly healed person doesn’t demand anything from the person they hurt. They focus on their own behavior, their own healing, their own growth. They understand that the person they hurt doesn’t owe them anything, not even forgiveness.
The woman who wrote to me asked what she could do to help her ex heal and move on. The answer is: Nothing. It’s not her job to help him heal. He needs to do that work himself, for himself, regardless of whether they ever speak again.
It is not your job to help someone who hurt you heal their issues.
When someone who has been abusive asks for your apology or your help in their healing process, they’re doing what they’ve always done: Put the focus back on you. By doing that, they’re making their growth contingent on your participation.
That’s not healing. That’s another form of control.
If you don’t know where your line is, you need to figure it out as soon as possible. That might look like just asking yourself, ‘What behavior is unacceptable to you?’ And ‘What won’t you tolerate under any circumstances?’
For some people, their line is any abusive behavior. For example, the first time someone calls them names or tries to control their decisions, they’re done.
For others, the line is further back. They’ll tolerate some emotional manipulation but draw the line at physical violence.
The problem is that if you don’t draw the line early, it becomes harder to draw it later. Once you’ve accepted a certain level of mistreatment, the next level doesn’t seem as shocking. You’ve already normalized behavior that should have been a dealbreaker.
Physical abuse should always be a hard line.
There is no coming back from physical abuse in most cases. Once someone has shown they’re willing to hurt you physically, they’ve demonstrated that your safety matters less to them than their need to control you.
I had someone in my Healed Being program who had been both emotionally and physically abusive. He joined because he wanted to change. He didn’t want to be that person anymore.
Through a lot of work, he was able to heal and develop better coping mechanisms. He learned to recognize his triggers and regulate his emotions instead of projecting them onto his partner.
But his relationship didn’t survive. Even though he changed, the damage was done. His partner couldn’t trust him anymore, and she shouldn’t have had to anyway, as she drew her line. But he had crossed it one too many times.
That’s the reality of crossing certain lines. Some behaviors can’t be undone. Some trust can’t be rebuilt. And that’s okay. It’s not a failure to walk away from someone who has hurt you, even if they’ve changed. You don’t owe anyone who hurt you a second chance, especially when your safety was at risk. I’m not saying you should never give one, I’m just saying you don’t owe them one.
What Does A Healing Abuser Look Like?
Real healing from abusive behavior means they work on themselves regardless of the relationship outcome. It means understanding that their triggers, their insecurities, their inability to cope with discomfort are their problems to solve, not their partner’s problems to manage.
The man in the email who wanted an apology from his partner wasn’t there yet. He was still focused on what she did wrong. He was still trying to make his healing dependent on her acknowledgment of her role in the relationship’s problems.
Someone who has truly healed doesn’t need that. They recognize their own behavior, take full responsibility for it, and work on changing it, whether or not the other person ever forgives them. They don’t demand apologies. They don’t make their growth contingent on someone else’s participation.
If you’re in a relationship with someone who has been abusive and they’re now asking you to help them heal or to acknowledge your part in the problems, be very careful… That’s often a sign they haven’t actually changed and that they’re still trying to control you, just in a different way.
Your job is not to help someone who hurt you become a better person.
Your job is to protect yourself and honor your own boundaries. If someone has crossed your line, especially if they’ve done it repeatedly, you don’t owe them anything.
The author of that email said she wishes nothing more than for her ex to find happiness in a relationship. That’s generous of her. It shows she’s not holding onto anger or resentment. But she also needs to understand that his happiness isn’t her responsibility.
If he approaches her again, asking for an apology or asking her to take responsibility for her part, she should tell him to focus on himself. She can acknowledge that pulling away must have been painful for him, but she should also be clear that her pulling away was self-protection. It was the right thing to do.
A healthy response from him would be to agree. He should say, “You were right to protect yourself. I was dangerous. I’m working on that now.” If he can’t say that, if he’s still focused on what she did wrong, he hasn’t healed enough to be in her life in any capacity.
The same applies to anyone reading this who has been in a similar situation. If someone who hurt you is now demanding things from you, asking you to help them heal, or insisting you acknowledge your role in the problems, they’re not ready to be in your life. They’re still trying to control you.
Your line matters. Where you draw it matters. And enforcing it when someone crosses it matters most of all. Without consequences, without accountability, the line disappears. And when the line disappears, there’s no limit to how much someone can hurt you.
Draw your line. Know what it is. And when someone crosses it, hold it firm. Your safety, your peace, and your sense of self are worth protecting.
Personal Note:
I realize there will be people who read this article and become triggered that I didn’t say, “Run like hell and don’t look back.”
Believe me, I think about saying that all the time. That is the part of me who loves and cares for those who reach out to me. I know they are worthy and don’t deserve that kind of treatment from anyone.
The professional in me, however, knows that the most powerful decisions anyone can make are those you come to yourself, where you’ve been empowered with the knowledge and wisdom to be absolutely sure about what you want. When someone makes a decision from that place, there’s no turning back.
I’ve witnessed too many people return to abusers only to see the abuse cycle restart all over again. They often do so because they haven’t fully aligned with what’s best for them yet, causing them to make decisions from a place of hoping things will be different instead of knowing exactly how things will be.
My personal opinions come from wanting what’s best for you, but I’ve learned that until you reach that place of absolute knowing inside yourself, no one can convince you to do anything. You have to get there on your own, in your own time, with your own certainty.
And I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you have that absolute knowing so you can draw your line and make sure no one ever crosses it again.
 | 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. |
