Signs your relationship has turned abusive

Source: Signs your relationship has turned abusive
How to differentiate between a bad mood and abusive behaviour
Text: Karen Khng

If there's one thing to take away from Rihanna's explosive interview with Oprah, where she admits to still caring for Chris Brown, it's that intense love can be addictive, scary and stupid. It can also blind us to behaviour that compromises our better judgement, vaporises our self-esteem and causes harm. Pathetic behaviour may be excused in the name of sacrificial love but we're actually denying ourselves of the basic love, respect and happiness that's fundamental.

Starts like this
Abuse is common in relationships. It's often undetected because our love masks the unhealthy relationship it's become. While abuse includes physical battering, it conventionally starts from a cycle of mental, verbal and emotional abuse that hides behind a range of demented behaviours - being highly derogatory, short fused, explosive, permanently unhappy and unilaterally stating all bad days are your fault. You're anxious, depressed, frustrated, feel alone and helpless. No one deserves veiled torture like this.
Clueless comments like these signal darker days to come: "I love her to death but she's curt and always puts me down,""He's accuses me of flirting with other guys but I don't," "Nothing I do is right," and "Getting stuck in traffic is my fault."

Anyone can be abusive
Abuse is gender neutral but it scars permanently. Therapists say abusers practice emotional distance from love and trusting people because they dislike feeling vulnerable. Betrayal by former partners, cynicism about life, relationships and a deep fear of being hurt again keep them on high alert against opening up. Many survived abuse, some played witness to relationships where one-sided control and inflexibility reigned and the other got sidelined. Their game console includes mind games (silent treatment, hot and cold behavior, mental cruelty), exhibition of anger, resentment and violence, withholding sex and emotional contact. An abusive person is hard to eye pick from the masses and a skilled one knows exactly how to give you dirty daily doses of living hell with a smirk on their face.

When it starts to become an issue
When bad behavior becomes a pattern, it's time to panic. If your partner has an imperfect personality but is dead bent on becoming a better person, be magnanimous, throw them a life line. But when your partner constantly berates you, the red flags should start to flap.

Contrary to popular belief, abuse is not about a lack of control, it's about a power imbalance weighted in their favor. Abuse can cause unintentional harm and accidental death but knowledge of where to draw the line is real power and could save your life.

1. He or she handpicks victims
Abusers don't insult, threaten, or assault every Tom, Dick or Harry. The abuse is saved for the people closest to them, the ones they claim they love. There's complete control when they're in public scrutiny but things become hellish when you are alone. They know instinctively when it's advantageous to stop (colleagues or boss calls) and when to put it on tap again.

2. He blames and manipulates
They accept little or no responsibility for their 'bad luck' and less-than-ideal circumstances. Therapists say abusers are gifted at seducing people they want to date and are almost never abusive to work peers. But nothing is their fault - that speeding ticket, the project he lost, the promotion that eluded him or if he had a role in office politics. If he's rude, dismissive or throws a tantrum, you've provoked it. If you complain, he'll skillfully transform the conversation into a detailed, colorful affidavit outlining all your wrongdoings since Day 1. He says that you're crazy, ditzy or unstable so you're deemed unreliable and fraught with fault.

The abuser has textbook mood swings - charming then bullet rounds of unfounded anger the next. They're master manipulators, moody, like to sulk, enjoy threatening to leave you and make you feel guilty when you speak up. At times they appear sorry when they've pushed you to wits end, even display crocodile tears and spout proclamations to change. But the remorse never lasts and when they're secure about you again, the abuse resets itself.

3. Constant resentment
Abusers like to lament about life's unfairness and wear a cloak of oblivion to their own unfair treatment of others. Their inability to get the help, resources, consideration, praise, reward or affection they think they deserve is like a low decibel drilling sound that irks them beyond relief. There's an undercurrent of self-righteousness about their rights that don't go away. You're unfairly marginalized and you no longer feel like a priority. 

4. Feels a strong sense of entitlement
Abusers believe they deserve special consideration and treatment and often feel disappointed and offended when it doesn't happen. They drive recklessly, exhibit extreme road rage, curse people and say mean things as a rite of passage. They think their 'natural superiority' should open up uncontested opportunities for them. Where it comes to their love life, once the infatuation fades, these folks waste no time in rationalizing why their mission, feelings and life are more important than yours. If you beg for quality time together, they start to belittle and ostracize you, leaving you confused and hurt.

5. They act like sergeants
They are the center of the universe. Everyone is dumber than they are. Through a mastery of body language and skilled communications, they demonstrate why they're superior beings. Their inflated ego feeds on self flattery and a typical conversation with them is peppered with examples of how much smarter, talented and faster their brains work.

The abuser cruises through life expecting emperor treatment and dishes out less honorable behavior to all others (unless he stands to gain from the alliance). Your conversations are dotted with criticisms of the way you do things, lead your life the way, the way you house clean, do the dishes, laundry, even what you eat! They feel happiest driving decisions and instructing you on how best to navigate it, on their timelines. Requests are barked out as orders with full compliance expected on your part.

Therapists say abusers are frequently insecure. They make vulgar comments and subsist on false confidence. They tend to have little respect for the fairer sex and use derogatory terms like 'cheap' and 'slut.'

6. They get upset about petty things
If she constantly blows things out of proportion, always discontent and grumpy, focuses on insignificant negative things, a relationship with her will be fraught with fights that never end. In a love relationship, her petty, put-down attitudes reduce you into an insignificant other who will never do anything right. She's easily insulted, takes everything personally and you end up feeling fearful that you'll be penalized for the smallest wrongs, real or imagined. 

7. She's unnecessarily sarcastic and mean
Her sarcasm spews from a bottomless pit. Initially, you sympathize with her poor social skills - saying the worst things at the wrong time. It seems innocently insensitive but soon it's obvious it's done with ill intentions. A selfish and abusive person utilizes sarcasm to take cheap stabs at your self confidence for a temporary ego trip or to overtly hurt you.

8. They show unbridled jealousy
Being jealous is a typical emotion abusers feel. But it's not about others fancying you. It's more about false accusations of you flirting with other people, what others have and they insult your dreams, aspirations and breeding. Wanting to know who you're with, talking to and demanding access to your passwords are all part of the control game. 

9. You're afraid of your partner
When you're afraid of the one you love, that's a big red flag. You miss him but reconnecting frightens you because he's unpredictable. His anger has nothing to do with you but you can't keep the peace because he's always able to manufacture some new fault and to kick start the cycle again - ignores you, lies, stands you up, disappear for hours and days. You're afraid to break up. You self talk saying he'll come around, cry and obsess about pleasing him. But at the end, you come to the sad realization that he alone defines the name of the game and his royal highness reserves the right to change the rules with no notice.

10. He humiliates, threatens and intimidates
Abusers may threaten to hurt you and the people you love. They may have unfair expectations of children and tease them mercilessly. They may also threaten suicide, destroy your reputation and file false charges to make you feel bad, worthless and defective. Their artillery of abusive weapons is carefully designed to erode your self-esteem, cloaking it under the 'just-joking umbrella.'
But it's no joke. They mean to damage you and keep you in line. The abuser often says you need to lighten up and get your act together. They don't listen to your opinion and aren't interested in your interests. Their problem is with your reality, not theirs, and they have an uncannily natural way of appearing rational and making you out to be the loony one. They may give threatening looks, smash things in front of you, destroy property and know how to creatively convert any household item into an assault weapon.

How to leave an unhealthy relationship
Trust your instincts. It should be easy to leave someone who's a loser, but it isn't. The deep feelings and time invested often makes a clean break a hard thing to do. But when there's no end to the criticism and humiliation, it's time to rethink the relationship.

Relationships built on distrust, control, a lack of respect and emotional closeness, a cycle of endless worry that wrong moves spell disaster, where love is held hostage, aren't healthy and don't usually last. No matter how much you yearn for love and companionship, don't fall under an abuser's love spell. Don't romanticize pain. Learn to 'un love' an abusive person. They can cause scars that last a lifetime.

Karen Khng is Managing Director of Love Script International. Find Love Script at www.love-script.com or info@love-script.com