Does your partner shout to get feelings across? Does your partner behave passive one day and aggressive the next? Does your partner throw criticisms, make accusations or verbal threats to keep you on the edge? Does your partner withhold intimacy to punish you? Do you behave differently, diminish your integrity, to please your partner?
Most people will agree that those who answer yes to any of the above questions are in an emotionally abusive relationship with a partner who is not only miserable with their own life but who expects their partner to fix his/her problems. If your partner uses manipulating tactics to suggest that you change who you are to serve a fantasy of his/hers, you are in a loveless relationship. But perhaps because people are often not well educated about emotional abuse, they think it’s okay. After all, most people do not recognize emotional abuse because unlike physical abuse, the scars of emotional abuse are invisible.
While it's not Okay to suffer any kind of abuse, emotional abusers are skilled manipulators who know that what they are doing is wrong. But if you feed into their deceit, you only encourage them to keep pushing your buttons until you feel so lost in the relationship that you become desperate to repair it.
Look at the relationship. Does your partner refuse to face reality and accept responsibility for what happens in the relationship, and instead blames you, society, the world for his/her problems? Then, you can count on him/her never having the guts to take responsibility, because like children, they are dependent. They never lived independently, unless they are forced to because their partner ends the relationship. And if they do live independently, they live poorly. Unlike stable people who do live independently, abusers lack the ability to have an objective outlook on reality. They never learn nor understand the impact of their abuse on their partner because they are self-absorbed, simple minded frauds who thrive on playing the victim game.
When rationally minded people are in a good mood, they feel high energy and little tension. When we are in a bad mood, we feel low physical energy and high tension. It’s important to tune into your moods and keep a balance between negative moods and your sanity. But of course, most of us have the sense to talk ourselves out of a negative mood because we know that if we behave negatively, a price will be had for our behavior.
Emotional abusers are different. Because they lack the discipline and maturity to control their moods they have the tendency to overdramatize and respond recklessly to what’s happening around them. (This is a changeable personality that most psychologists call a schizophrenic personality. http://www.schizophrenia.com)
A changeable personality is a defect in the cortex part of the brain responsible for reliable and normal response or action. The job of the brain’s cortex is to stop impulsive and negative behavior. Those with a cortex defect cannot control the impulsive behavior long enough to consider the consequences of their actions so they behave in destructive ways.
Personality disorders occur as a result of severe, on-going emotional, sexual or physical abuse. Although schizophrenia and multiple personality disorders are commonly linked, maltreatment patterns, severe sexual, physical neglect or severe physical and emotional abuse showed the highest degree of personality disorder.
(www.psychologistanywhereanytime.com)
A study conducted on the potential causes of schizophrenia (read www.springerlink.com) discovered that emotional abuse had the greatest correlation between schizophrenia and dissociative symptoms, corroborating that emotional abuse and schizophrenia are linked.
Although debatable, physical abuse is not considered as prevalent when the perpetrator is female, but emotional abuse definitely is. Unfortunately, we live in a society where the abuse of men is not a mainstream concern and society refuses to recognize that female perpetrators are as abusive as males. (It is common for mothers who sexually abuse their sons to rely on emotional manipulation and control. www.kalimunro.com)
As long as you let them, they will blame you for their bad behavior and imply that they behave the way they do because you don’t love them enough. But it won't stop there. Tomorrow he/she will have another excuse for their negative behavior.
Love should make you feel good about yourself. To behave naturally and reveal yourself to another person is what we should desire to feel into our relationship. A positive partner is a luxury, not a necessity. You don’t need him/her to feel complete. You were complete long before you let him/her into your life. Knowing all this, how can you trust or believe in someone who refuses to change his/ her behavior to better the relationship? How can you feel anything but despair, especially when the time you do spend together is usually emotionally abusive? Maybe it's time to let go.
REFERENCES
www.healthzine.org/mental-health, www.springerlink.com, www.guidetopsychology.com, www.askmen.com - "Vanquish Her Emotional Abuse" by Lawrence Mitchell.
