These Things Could Indicate an Abusive Partner
Being in an abusive relationship is an incredibly confusing experience. The details of your life usually don’t seem to line up or make sense. You feel off-balance and are trying to survive day-to-day life. For this reason, it is often hard to notice the changes in yourself that could indicate abuse. Many people look for obvious signs of abuse, such as physical injuries or overtly dangerous behavior from the abuser. Certainly, the abuser will exhibit unhealthy behaviors, but they are not always as obvious as one might think. Psychological and emotional abuse can be carried out in very calculated and hard to recognize ways. Heavy gaslighting and manipulation can make anyone question their own reality and perception.
Today I want to share three lesser-known signs that you are in an abusive relationship. These three signs are not about what your partner is doing. They are about things you can recognize in yourself as you try to cope and live in an abusive atmosphere day in and day out. The presence of these things does not necessarily indicate you are experiencing abuse, but if you have a hunch that your relationship is abusive, these clues may further validate your concerns.
1. You feel distant from other people in your life or constantly feel like people don’t like you. Feeling distant from others is a common thing for abuse victims. Sometimes this occurs because the abuser intentionally and overtly alienates the victim from other relationships. Maybe he requires her to cut off communication with her family or prevents her from ever going out with friends. Sometimes he even takes her car keys or her phone. This type of isolating is a little more obvious. However, even if you are not experiencing overt isolation from your people, you may feel distant and disconnected. Why is this? Someone who is living in an abusive environment but doesn’t realize it (or does realize it and doesn’t want others to know) will often protect their abuser from people knowing what they are doing. In a sense, you find yourself living a cover-up. Your partner screams at you all the way to church, but you walk in as a family and pretend that everything is fine. Your partner refuses to go to Christmas dinner with your family so you tell them that he had to work even though it is a lie or an extreme stretching of the truth. Maybe he worked for 30 minutes and spent the rest of the day watching football. Your friends ask you to go out to dinner. You know he will be upset if you go, so you tell them you just have too much going on with the kids. Afterall, you don’t want anyone to dislike your partner. If your family and friends hate your partner it is not good for you or your children. You are tied to him. So you live a life of protecting his image. This causes a feeling of distance from people you love because you are rarely able to be truly genuine - you have to pretend. Even if they are in your life, they don’t truly know what is going on in your life. It is extremely emotionally isolating and is a loneliness that cannot be overstated.
You may also feel that people don’t like you. You don’t really know why you feel this way. No one has actually said that. But you just feel uneasy. Your partner is slowly demolishing your sense of self. If the person who is supposed to love you more than anyone in the world doesn’t like you and treats you like trash, it is hard to believe that other people would like you. You feel isolated and unlovable - a most terrible combination. This lack of self-love and self-confidence takes a toll on all the relationships in your life. It is difficult to function healthily in relationships when you are constantly dealing with this internal turmoil and with the environmental turmoil in your home.
2. You have become really scatterbrained.
Maybe you are a person who has always had it together (or at least had it somewhat together), and now you feel like you can’t keep anything together. You lose your keys. You leave the car running. You forget the doctor's appt. You have to wash the clothes three times because you can’t remember to put them in the dryer. Maybe you think it is because you are just busy or because you have young kids. But if you are in an abusive relationship this is very likely a symptom of the constant mental and emotional turmoil you are living with. In abuse, your brain is constantly trying to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense. One day your life is good. The next day it is an absolute nightmare. And you never know which day it is going to be, nor can you do anything to control it. The same person tells you they love you and tells you they hate you (or at least acts like it) possibly within the same hour. It is a mental and emotional roller coaster that would take an immense toll on anyone's brain and functioning. If you find yourself struggling mentally to stay afloat and function day-to-day, you may be the victim of abuse.
3. You are having unexplainable physical illnesses or ailments.
Many people view physical abuse as the only true form of abuse. This is simply untrue. And the reality is that other types of abuse result in real physical problems. So those types of abuse are physical abuse as well. Victims of emotional abuse often find themselves facing health issues that they never struggled with before. Many are diagnosed with autoimmune disease as their over-activated bodies and nervous systems struggle to withstand their chaotic environments. Many will experience chronic pain or panic attacks. The immune system itself weakens, so you may find yourself with frequent minor illnesses as well. If you were in good health before the relationship, and your health has declined or your body just feels bad, you might be in an abusive relationship. The body can only take so much before it starts to show signs of stress and trauma. It is so important to pay attention to the things the body tries to communicate.
Here is the kicker with all three of these symptoms of abuse - the abuser can use them all to further his abuse. If you feel isolated from others, the abuse has more power over you because no one wants to be alone in the world and you are missing outside perspectives. If you feel like no one likes you, the abuser can use that to remind you how lucky you are that he is willing to put up with you. If you are scatterbrained and struggling to manage your days, the abuser can use that to further denigrate your sense of self and remind you how much you need him because you are hopeless on your own. If you are having physical health problems, the abuser can use that to point out how weak you are or to hold finances and having someone to help take care of you over your head. They might even use it to further create the narrative that you are crazy by insisting that you aren’t really sick. The disgusting nature of abuse is that the changes inflicted upon victims are intended to keep them further trapped and confused and too tired to escape. If you feel that you are caught in this matrix, please reach out to someone safe for help. This someone should be trauma-informed and validating of your experience. There is life on the other side of this type of abuse.
(Sidenote: I realize that sometimes men are the victims of this type of abuse. I used the example of the woman here because it is statistically much more common, and I work primarily with women in these situations. However, if you are a man in an abusive relationship you may notice the same symptoms in yourself, and you deserve the same help and freedom.)
