We live in an emotionally abusive society. Emotional abuse takes place in everyday living situations, intimate partnerships, family dynamics, friendships, acquaintances, and workplace and project collaborations. Living in a society in which we are isolated and feel insignificant, we are forced to cultivate coping skills and tools to protect our own vulnerability. However, the same tools we develop for survival can inadvertently be used to abuse ourselves, as well as others.

Cycles of Abuse and Survival

We live in an emotionally abusive society. Emotional abuse takes place in everyday living situations, intimate partnerships, family dynamics, friendships, acquaintances, and workplace and project collaborations. Living in a society in which we are isolated and feel insignificant, we are forced to cultivate coping skills and tools to protect our own vulnerability. However, the same tools we develop for survival can inadvertently be used to abuse ourselves, as well as others.

Because of an intimate partnership going awry, I began to evaluate my relationships, past and present. The dynamics within this partnership often left me feeling confused and even crazy. I found myself questioning my reality, feeling I was inept at understanding her needs, and making excuses to myself for why some—no, many—of our interactions left me feeling hurt and angry. I learned I was caught up in a cycle of abuse.

I originally entered this relationship with a lot of compassion because I sensed I was becoming involved with someone who had been hurt deeply and had fears of intimacy. Over the time we spent together I learned very few details of where these fears originated from because trust was a difficult issue for her as well. My main focus in our relationship was to stand by her at all costs so that eventually she might feel she could trust me. However, the more I tried to stand by her and make myself available for her needs, the more distance I felt.

It began with loud and aggressively vocalized boundaries spoken with enough force that they felt like laws instead of collaborative agreements. I was never asked how I felt about these boundaries or what my needs were. They were just demands necessary in order for her to feel safe. Some boundaries seemed reasonable, especially with the few short explanations that came with them; some seemed isolating and confusing. I would agree with these boundaries while thinking to myself, “She needs time, space. Be patient until she feels safe.” The boundaries started small. “No public displays of affection, no interruptions while I’m working, no cuddling while sleeping—be sure to stay on your side of the bed.” Essentially, give me space, give me space, give me space. Over time I began feeling more and more alienated. It came to a point where I would rarely see her at all during the day, and if I did it was for a short time and obviously at great effort on her part. I would wait throughout the day for an opportunity to see her. And then, when she was ready for bed she would come to find me. I sensed true vulnerability on her part when she would ask if I wanted to sleep in her bed each night, and over time, more desperate for affection and validation, I would never say no.

In the attempts I would make at opening discussion about my feelings, my feelings were minimized. I always left feeling I was to blame for our relationship not working. I would try to bring up contradictions between her actions and words and attempt to explain my confusion. I would be told those words were never spoken. I almost always left confused, frightened, and emotionally drained. On a couple of occasions I became so overwhelmed by my feelings of not being heard or my emotions not being acknowledged, and I lost control and began yelling. At this point, she would say, “I can’t be here with you if you’re yelling,” and she would leave—rightly so.

I sound like I’m describing a monster, but am I?

Fuck no. Not even close.

There’s a question that keeps coming back to me over and over again. If she were writing this herself from her perspective, what would her perception be? Would I sound like a monster? Maybe.

She left town for a couple of months before our relationship as lovers ended. By this time I was sincerely questioning my sanity, my intentions, and what kind of baggage I was bringing to the relationship. The only thing I was hearing from her at this time was that she was feeling confined, trapped, overwhelmed, and guilty. I wanted this relationship to work. I felt as if I were to blame, and I decided to spend the time she was away going back to places in myself that earlier in my life, I had decided were too painful to acknowledge.

I grew up in a home of domestic violence. It was here, as a child, that I learned to suppress my feelings and disassociate myself from my emotions until eventually I became almost numb to any emotion at all. I learned to avoid chaos and pain by assessing every person in a room before entering it. By taking in my father’s posture and stance, his facial expressions and his silence or way of speaking, I would figure out whether I could relax and climb into his lap, or if I should sit and remain still. I learned if it was safer to retreat quietly to my room or run as far and fast as I could. This is also where I learned that women were “stupid” and the only value of a woman was her beauty. My father’s constant compliments of my beauty became another form of abuse amidst the violence, and beauty eventually became my only source of validation. This lasted for thirteen years before my mother and I were able to escape. By this time my tools for survival were deeply ingrained in my being. My desires never to look back and never to lose my freedom were so strong that I was unable to foresee the ways I would bring these tools to every relationship from that point forward.

In general, my relationships—whether as friends, lovers, co-workers, or family—were short-lived and distant. I moved from place to place and job to job, never allowing anyone too close or allowing myself to feel too much. From having grown up in a situation where boundaries were not allowed, it never occurred to me that I could establish safe and open communication about my needs. Instead, I either had no physical boundaries at all or an emotional brick wall that was impassable to others, and whether there was the wall or no boundary at all depended upon my perception of who was in power. Speak of my beauty, and the wall would move, allowing one access to my physical space even if it wasn’t what I wanted. With beauty as my only validation, my father’s abuse continued on through me.

After spending days on end allowing memories to surface, allowing myself to feel the emotions I never let myself have when I was younger, and bringing myself to a place of acceptance, I began to form a passion for analyzing power and control dynamics. I began doing research and speaking to others about domestic violence, trying desperately to find a way to make sense of it all. Through of my research, I came across a power wheel showing the different kinds of interactions that form an abusive situation. Reflecting on this, and reading personal accounts and examples of abuse, power, and control, I was forced to look at another relationship that I had left behind as well: my marriage.

My marriage lasted for seven years. Looking back at myself, I had to admit that I had been abusive to my partner during this time. Throughout this marriage I lived with the intense fear of intimacy that I had carried with me since I was a child. When I agreed to marriage, I no longer felt I could make excuses for why my relationship wasn’t working and leave it behind. I had to try and stick it out because I had made the commitment. I also wasn’t in a place to address the fears I carried with me, so my fears became my control. They controlled me, and I controlled my partner.

We had a child together, which increased my feelings of entrapment. I told him that I feared we wouldn’t be able to feed and house her because he was irresponsible with his money. By the time the seven years was over, I had full control over his money and mine; he had an allowance and handed all of his paychecks over to me. I had used our child’s presence as a way to control my partner. I used his desire for a place of his own for writing as a way to isolate him from my space, which was the rest of the house—all six rooms. He and all of his things lived in a separate room in the house. He never had much time to write, though, because as soon as he came in the door I needed my space. If he was at home, he was responsible for watching our daughter. I used his privilege against him to make him feel guilty about being welleducated and having more opportunities than I did.

He wanted to go to school, but he couldn’t because I said we couldn’t afford it and we couldn’t take on another loan. He wanted to play music with his friends, but he couldn’t because I needed time for myself since I was with our daughter all day. I also refused to pay for childcare or apply for monetary help with childcare so we could both have free time.

When he tried to talk to me about his loss of freedom and his lack of input into our lives, I would minimize his efforts and blame his irresponsibility and selfishness. The majority of the time my body language—the way I sighed in frustration over the house being a mess and stomped around in anger while I was cleaning things up—prevented him from ever feeling as if he could approach me to talk. This was a form of intimidation I used to avoid conversations I knew I didn’t want to have. In the few times he was actually able to get close enough to confront me with his feelings of entrapment, especially if he began to say something that made sense to me about my controlling behavior, the fear of having to face myself became so intense that the quickest way to stop the thoughts and to shut him up was to throw whatever object was closest to me in his direction. At this point, everything would stop. He would leave, feeling defeated. I would walk away, blaming him for not listening to me. Eventually, he resorted to lying and manipulation to find a little personal freedom. I continually confronted him about his lying, but I had no understanding at the time that he didn’t feel safe enough to tell me the truth.

I sound like a monster here, but I know I’m not. I genuinely did feel as if he were the one in control. That’s the most terrifying thought of all. My ideas about the construction of gender distorted my perspective, and I truly did not see the power I held over him. I thought that because he was a man and I was a woman, I was not capable of abusing him. I never made the connection that I was continually abusing myself by telling myself all the same things my father had said to me when I was younger. I never made the connection that I was re-enacting the same methods of control that my father had used on my mother and me. I have always been, and still am, the frightened little girl that physically left home, but still I act as I would to avoid the chaos of that home. The only difference is that now I can see it. Now I can make the connections.

Not everyone grew up in a violent household. Not everyone’s experiences are like mine. But now that I’m aware, I see daily amongst friends, family, and community so many fears and so few ways to cope with them. I see rooms full of people turn quiet and still or get up and leave because one person is carrying their bad day in their body posture, huffing around the room. I see people having intense conversations and one person talking incessantly, desperately trying NOT to hear a conversation that’s hitting too close to emotional home. I see people who say they had healthy, happy childhoods evading, isolating, intimidating, and alienating in ways that are as damaging as violence to themselves and others, even though the methods are subtle and less aggressive. It seems there’s something, somewhere, in everyone I meet.

There’s a multitude of ways to be affected by societal abuses, even if they aren’t recognized as such because they aren’t blatantly violent or verbally aggressive. It seems everyone around me is constantly in survival mode, including me, but I have learned that I can’t call my observations out on any one individual. I myself wouldn’t have heard and didn’t hear when someone would call me out. I made excuses and justified my abusive behaviors, because I wasn’t ready or willing to explore that part of myself yet. I just wasn’t in a place safe enough to do so. Also, I have learned that I can’t prove my trustworthiness to anyone in order to be there for that person. Doing so, I will only set myself up to accept abusive behavior. The only thing I can do for anyone else is to take responsibility for the things that are mine. I can only walk away from an abusive situation, not turn it around and try to fix it. I can only take care of myself, challenge my own internalized abusive behavior, and figure out ways to stop abusing myself.

Using Emotional Abuse: Putting someone down or making them feel bad about themselves, calling them names, making them think they’re crazy, humiliating them and making them feel guilty.

Using Isolation: Controlling what someone does, who they see and talk to, what they read, where they go, limiting their outside involvement, using jealousy to justify actions.

Using Intimidation: Making someone afraid by using looks, gestures, or loud voice, destroying their property, abusing pets, displaying weapons.

Using Children: Making someone feel guilty about the children, using children to give messages, using visitation to harass someone, threatening to take the children away.

Minimizing, Denying, Blaming: Making light of abuse and not taking concerns about it seriously, saying abuse didn’t happen, shifting responsibility for abusive behavior, saying they caused it.

Sexual Abuse: Making someone do sexual things against their will, physically attacking the sexual parts of the body, treating them like a sex object.

Using Privilege: Treating someone like a servant, making all the “big” decisions in a relationship, being the one to define gender roles.

Using Economic Abuse: Preventing someone from getting or keeping a job, making them ask for money, giving them an allowance, taking their money, not letting them know about or have access to family income.

Using Coercion & Threats: Making and/or carrying out threats to do something to hurt a partner, threatening to leave, threatening suicide.

Negotiation and Fairness: Seeking mutually satisfying resolutions to conflict, accepting change, being willing to compromise.

Non-Threatening Behavior: Talking and acting so that others feel safe and comfortable expresssing themselves and doing things.

Respect: Listening to others nonjudgmentally, being emotionally affirming and understanding, valuing opinions.

Trust and Support: Supporting others’ goals in their lives, respecting their right to their own feelings, friends, activities and opinions.

Honesty and Accountability: Accepting responsibility for self, acknowledging past use of violence, admitting being wrong, communicating openly and truthfully.

Responsible Parenting: Sharing parental responsibilities, being a positive non-violent role model for the children.

Shared Responsibility: Mutually agreeing on a fair distribution of work, making family decisions together.

Economic Partnership: Making money decisions together, making sure both partners benefit from financial agreements.