Some emotionally abusive people do heal. And once they do, they might feel the relationship will be great from that point on.
What they don’t consider is that the victim of their abusive behavior is only starting their healing process.
I talk to emotionally abusive people almost daily in my Healed Being program. What’s interesting is they say they really do love the people they’re hurting.
That may sound hard to believe, but many emotionally abusive people are on autopilot and continue to do hurtful behaviors until something jolts them out of their patterns. That jolt is usually the victim of their abuse walking out on them. It’s at that point where some do “wake up” and realize just how awful they’ve been.
That’s not an excuse. They are still fully responsible for the harm they’ve caused and the sometimes lasting damage they’ve done. But I share that because after many have “seen the light,” so to speak, it’s usually too late because the person they say they love no longer loves them.
Emotionally abusive people have learned how to cope with challenges in an unhealthy way. Most of them learned poor coping skills in childhood. Then, when they grew up and got into adult relationships, they brought those unhealthy coping mechanisms with them.
Coping skills are how you deal with challenges. If you faced challenges as a child and weren’t taught how to deal with them, you may have figured out how to survive on your own. And as a child with few resources, your child-brain learned to survive by figuring out what to do or say to get through the difficult moments.
Some abusers, when they were children, were either neglected, or they witnessed some bad behaviors from their parents or caregivers, or they just had difficulties with the events that life kept throwing at them.
Unfortunately, some people learn to cope with challenges in a way that is hurtful to others. They might not even realize it at first. They might think this is just how relationships work. But eventually, if they’re willing to look at themselves honestly, they can start to see the damage they’ve caused (that’s the wake-up call they need. But not all of them “wake up”).
I received a message from someone who was the emotional abuser in their relationship. They wrote about how they finally realized what they were doing and decided to change. They stopped the hurtful behaviors and manipulation, and also stopped making their partner feel small and worthless. But after that, they expected everything to go back to normal immediately.
This is where a lot of people who have been hurtful get stuck. They think that just stopping the bad behaviors is enough. They think that because they’ve stopped being mean or controlling or manipulative, their partner should just forgive them and move on. They might even wonder why their partner isn’t showing praise and gratitude that they’re not being hurt anymore.
But that’s not how it works.
“I’ve Changed. I No Longer Hurt You. Why Can’t You Move On?”
When someone who has been emotionally abusive stops their hurtful behavior, they often want to have a conversation about it. Sometimes it’s not a conversation. Sometimes it’s a monologue, meaning they talk at their partner instead of with them, explaining all the work they’ve done on themselves, listing all the ways they’ve changed, and pointing out every instance where they could have been hurtful but weren’t.
Then they wait for the applause.
This monologue usually goes something like this:
“I’ve been working on myself and going to therapy. I’ve stopped doing all those things that hurt you – I’m not yelling anymore, not calling you names, not making you feel guilty. I’ve changed so much. Can’t you see how hard I’m trying? Don’t you appreciate what I’m doing? Things should be better now. We should be able to move forward. We should be able to be intimate again.”
The problem with this monologue is that it’s still all about them. It’s still focused on what they’ve done, what they’ve accomplished, and what they deserve for their efforts. It completely misses what their partner has been through. It ignores the damage they caused. And especially, it skips over the healing that may not even have started in the person they’ve hurt.
Stopping the hurtful behavior is not the finish line. That marks the beginning. It’s the bare minimum. It’s what the emotional abuser should have been doing all along. They don’t get a medal for not being abusive anymore. They don’t get rewarded for treating someone with basic human decency. That’s the baseline.
I’ve seen this pattern over and over again. Someone realizes they’ve been hurtful. Then they stop the hurtful behavior and expect their partner to immediately trust them again, to immediately feel safe with them again, and to immediately want to be close to them again.
And when that doesn’t happen, they get frustrated. They get angry. Sometimes they even go back to being hurtful because they feel like their efforts aren’t being appreciated.
But here’s what they’re missing: their partner has been living in a war zone.
The partner of an emotionally abusive person has been walking on eggshells, sometimes for years, trying to avoid triggering outbursts, keep the peace, and survive. A partner in this situation has been hurt repeatedly. This person has learned not to trust the person hurting them and has built walls to protect themselves.
And now, just because the bombs have stopped falling, the walls cannot be torn down immediately. It’s not realistic or fair to think this is what should happen. That’s not how healing works.
Emotional Damage Lingers
I want to address the emotionally abusive person directly, now.
Some emotionally abusive people read these articles and listen to my podcast. If that’s you, please know that when I speak about this behavior, it’s not to paint you as a horrible and unhealable person. In fact, I know you can heal. You wouldn’t be here reading this now if you didn’t have that ability. The words you are reading right now are written by a healed and former emotionally abusive person. If I can learn to love in a healthy way, so can you.
When you’ve been emotionally abusive to someone, you’ve done more than hurt someone’s feelings in the moment. You’ve changed how they see themselves. You’ve changed how they see you. You’ve changed how they see the relationship. You’ve even changed their sense of safety in the world.
If you’ve called them names, they might believe those names are true.
If you’ve told them they’re worthless, they might feel worthless.
If you’ve made them feel like they can’t do anything right, they might doubt their own abilities.
If you’ve made them feel like they’re crazy for having feelings, they might not trust their own perceptions anymore.
This damage doesn’t disappear the moment you stop being hurtful. It takes time to heal. It takes consistent, patient, compassionate effort. And it takes understanding that your partner might never fully trust you again or feel completely safe with you again. They might never want to be intimate with you again. And they may not be able to love you the way they used to.
The hardest part? You have to accept the path they want to take for themselves.
You have to be okay with the possibility that the damage you’ve done might have permanently altered or ended the relationship. You need to accept that stopping the hurtful behavior doesn’t erase what happened. And you must understand your partner needs time, space, and maybe even distance to heal.
If you’re only stopping the hurtful behavior because you want something in return, you’re not really changing. You’re just using a different tactic to get what you want. That’s still being manipulative. It’s still being selfish. And it’s still making it all about you.
Real change means stopping the hurtful behavior because it’s the right thing to do, regardless of what you get out of it. Real change means understanding that your partner doesn’t owe you anything just because you’ve stopped hurting them. It also means accepting that the consequences of your actions might last longer than you’d like.
What Your Partner Actually Needs
When you’ve been emotionally abusive, and you’ve stopped, your partner doesn’t need you to point out every time you could have been hurtful but weren’t. What they need is space to heal and time to process what happened to them. They need to rebuild their sense of self and figure out if they even want to stay in the relationship.
They especially need you to respect whatever they decide. Remember: Accept the path they choose.
If they decide they need distance, you need to give them distance.
If they decide they’re not ready to be intimate, you need to accept that.
If they decide they want to leave the relationship entirely, you need to let them go.
This is where a lot of people who have been hurtful struggle. They want their partner to heal on their timeline. They want their partner to forgive them when they’re ready to be forgiven, and they want them to move forward when they’re ready to progress.
But healing doesn’t work that way. Your partner’s healing is not about you. It’s about them. And the best thing you can do is get out of the way and let them heal at their own pace.
This doesn’t mean you can’t be supportive. It doesn’t mean you can’t be present. But it does mean you need to follow their lead. If they want to talk about what happened, you listen. If they don’t want to talk about it, you respect that. If they want you to do something specific to help them feel safe, you do it. If they want you to leave them alone, you leave them alone.
And you do all of this without expecting anything in return.
You don’t get to say, “I’ve been giving you space for three months now. Isn’t that enough? When are you going to be ready to move forward?”
You don’t get to put a timeline on their healing. You don’t get to decide when they should be over it.
The truth is, they might never be over it and may need to move on. The victim of emotional abuse does carry emotional wounds, but they can heal. They can move on. But they may need to do so on their own.
And if you truly care about them, if you truly love them, you’ll accept that. You’ll understand this is the consequence of your actions and take responsibility for the damage you’ve caused.
I know I’m being hard on you, especially if you feel bad for what you’ve done. But part of your healing journey is feeling the guilt and shame that comes with the realizations of your behaviors. When you feel guilt and shame, you are on the path to healing and empathy.
Empathy is vital if you really want to change. And it’s especially important if you want a chance at saving the relationship.
Healing Work That Actually Matters
If you’ve been emotionally abusive and you want to change, stopping the hurtful behavior is just the beginning. The real work is much deeper than that.
The real work is figuring out why you were hurtful in the first place. You need to understand what you were getting out of it, what needs you were trying to meet, what fears you were trying to avoid, and what pain you were trying to escape.
For most people who are emotionally abusive, the hurtful behavior is a way to feel in control. When you feel powerless in your own life, making someone else feel small can make you feel big. When you feel insecure about yourself, putting someone else down can make you feel superior. When you feel afraid of being abandoned, controlling someone can make you feel like they can’t leave.
But none of these strategies actually work. They don’t make you feel better in any lasting way. They don’t meet your real needs. They don’t solve your real problems. They just create more pain for everyone involved.
The real work is learning healthier ways to meet your needs. It’s learning to sit with your uncomfortable feelings instead of trying to escape them by hurting someone else. It’s learning to communicate what you need instead of trying to manipulate someone into giving it to you. It’s also learning to be vulnerable instead of trying to protect yourself by making someone else feel vulnerable.
This work is hard. It’s uncomfortable. It requires you to face parts of yourself that you might not want to face. It requires you to admit that you’ve been wrong, that you’ve caused harm, that you’ve been the problem.
And it requires you to do this work whether or not your partner stays with you or whether or not they forgive you. Doing the work means you do it whether or not you ever get what you want from the relationship, because the point of the work is not to get your partner back. The point of it is to become a better person.
Healing from being emotionally abusive means making sure you are never abusive again.
The point of the work is to heal yourself so you can show up in a healthy way in all your relationships, not just the one you’re in or the one you may be trying to save.
Again, if you’re only doing the work to get your partner back, you’re going to fail. Because your partner can sense when you’re being genuine versus when you’re just going through the motions, they can tell when you’re truly changing and when you’re just trying to manipulate them into giving you another chance.
And even if you fool them for a while, even if you convince them that you’ve changed when you really haven’t, the truth will come out eventually. The hurtful behaviors will come back. The manipulation will resurface. The cycle will start all over again.
The only way to truly change is to do the work for yourself, not for anyone else. You do the work because you don’t want to be that person anymore. You do whatever you can to heal and change because you want to be someone you can be proud of.
And if your partner decides to give you another chance, that’s a gift. It’s not something you’ve earned. It’s not something you necessarily deserve. It’s a choice they’re making to trust you again, even though you’ve given them every reason not to.
And if they don’t give you another chance, that’s their right. They don’t owe you forgiveness, another opportunity to hurt them, or anything else.
All you can do is respect their decision, continue doing your own work, and make sure you never treat anyone this way again because that’s what real change looks like. It’s not a monologue about how much you’ve improved. It’s not a list of all the ways you’re different now, and it’s not an expectation that stopping hurtful behavior should be rewarded.
Real change is quiet, consistent, patient, and humble. It’s understanding that you don’t get credit for doing what you should have been doing all along. It’s accepting that the consequences of your actions might last longer than you’d like. And it’s respecting your partner’s healing process, even when it’s inconvenient for you.
When you are no longer hurtful to others, and you accept them as they are, and you support what makes them happy, those are the changes that matter most. And those are the changes that last. Those kinds of changes not only give you the best chance at reconciliation, but also the best chance at having a happy, healthy relationship now or in the future, whether with this partner or someone else.
Remember, if you’ve stopped being hurtful and you’re expecting your partner to immediately trust you, feel safe with you, and want to be intimate with you again, you’re missing the point. That would be making things about you, not about them. They need to heal on their own time. They need to figure out what they want going forward.
The question is not “When will they be ready to move forward?”
The question is, “Am I willing to do the work regardless of whether they ever want to be with me again?”
If the answer is yes, you might actually be ready to change. If the answer is no, you’ve got more work to do.
And if you have been the victim of someone’s emotionally abusive behavior, I hope this article has been insightful regarding what the perpetrator needs to do to start healing. It can be helpful to know their process, even though there is so much more involved. But every process has a first step.
Stay strong.
