Psychological abuse in a relationship can lead to psychological trauma. The most common cause of such violence is anxiety and depression.
Psychological abuse is not always immediately visible. Most often, such violence is disguised as attempts to improve a partner, to teach him to live correctly. You can distinguish a normal desire to help your significant other from psychological abuse, to understand that you are in a dangerous psychological situation, by simple signs.
Sign one: your partner is constantly monitoring you
Your significant other constantly monitors you and prohibits making any decisions on their own. The partner tries to control absolutely your whole life:
- The sphere of finance - you are forced to report on every purchase, present all receipts, even if you only bought a roll of toilet paper for 20 rubles. Spent an extra penny in secret? You are guaranteed a reprimand - and this is at best, most often the partner makes a scandal.
- Personal sphere - the partner prohibits wearing those things that you like, forces you to read those books that he considers necessary or not to read anything at all, and so on.
- Social sphere - the partner controls your circle of contacts, decides with whom you should communicate and with whom not. If you break the prohibitions, you get a scandal about it. Control also applies to your job, for example, a partner often persuades you to change jobs to one that he thinks will suit you better. In this case, your personal desires, as a rule, are not taken into account.
Constant control in all spheres of life and frequent scandals lead to the fact that you gradually begin to abandon your needs in favor of the desires of your partner in order to once again avoid a quarrel.
Sign Two: Your partner is trying to isolate you from others
Your partner prohibits you from communicating with girlfriends and friends, and in the future - even with your relatives. Most often, the partner makes the following arguments:
- Friends and girlfriends are bad for you.
- Spending time with family and friends is bad for your relationship with your partner.
- Your partner doesn't like that you spend some of your personal time with friends and family and not with him.
- He considers rare meetings with colleagues outside of working hours to be wrong, because your personal time should belong only to him in order to strengthen the relationship.
- You should not communicate with anyone at all, as this will necessarily negatively affect you and your relationship with your partner. If the ban is violated, you are threatened with parting.
If you follow the lead of your partner and stop communicating with friends, colleagues and family, you will not have any support at the right time.
Looking for support from your partner? It is hardly possible to get it from a person who thinks only of himself and does not take into account your opinion, trying to control everything. Most often, such people are the first to disappear at the moment when they need help or at least moral support.
Sign three: your partner ignores your feelings and needs
The partner openly demonstrates to you that he does not care about your feelings, feelings and needs. Most often from his lips you can hear such arguments as:
- you can live without feelings;
- your partner thinks that you want too much from him;
- expressing feelings in a relationship is optional.
If you agree with your partner, then after a while you will lose interest in life, since you will no longer have any desires, feelings and needs because of the constant ignoring them earlier. This can lead to discouragement and apathy.
At the same time, your life before the relationship was rich and interesting, you had desires and aspirations that you tried to achieve, you often went to the movies and met your friends. And having been in a relationship for a while, you have become a boring couch potato who has no goals and desires, and also rarely shows emotions and feelings, because the partner considers this to be things that do not make sense.
Sign Four: You Feel Constant Feelings of Guilt
Healthy feelings of guilt are most common in situations where you accidentally hurt someone or break an agreement. In a relationship where psychological abuse is present, guilt can persist, especially if your partner blames you for all of his failures, even minor ones. So, for example, you may feel guilty that:
- your partner has problems at work;
- you constantly feel that you said or did something wrong;
- the partner has a bad mood;
- you feel like you don't look the way your partner wants you to.
Sign five: your partner constantly devalues you
Your partner believes that you do not have any talents and abilities, you do not have any knowledge, you do not understand anything and did nothing for him. And even if you have three higher educations and an academic degree, according to your partner, you still remain a stupid and uneducated person.
Do you have two jobs? Are you raising three children? Taking care of your partner? No, that doesn't count! It doesn't matter how, what, how much and how long you do something for your family or partner - your significant other will still think that you have not done anything.
What happens if you don't fight for your dignity and trust your partner's words? You will stop believing in yourself, you will have low self-esteem, you will lose your individuality and it will be difficult for you to make any decisions on your own.
Sign six: gaslighting
Does your partner offend you, and then says that he did not do it and it seemed to you? Does he often criticize you for any reason? The partner negatively evaluates your appearance, and when you are offended, does he pretend that he does not understand the reasons, because he did nothing and everything that happened is just a figment of your imagination? This is how gaslighting manifests itself in relationships, which is one of the most severe forms of psychological abuse.
If such things happen extremely rarely, for example, once a year or two, then you don't have to worry about your psychological state. But if such situations occur several times a month, or even a week, then you should think about solving this problem. A person who undergoes gaslighting loses a sense of their own adequacy.
You will lose confidence not only in yourself, but also in the correctness of the things you do every day. You will begin to ponder every step of your actions and constantly doubt everything. This type of psychological abuse often leads to depression and anxiety disorders.
Sign Seven: Your partner is trying to get you to obey in any way
For a partner, it does not matter what you want, he is only interested in his desires and needs. Do you wear your favorite red T-shirt all the time and your partner doesn't like it? He will force her to throw it out in any way. You don't want to go fishing with your partner and his friends? You will definitely be forced to do it. Are you used to going to the theater or cinema with your friend every Sunday? Forget about it if your meeting with your friend suddenly ceases to suit your partner.
Insults, threats, in some cases even physical violence will be used - whatever, as long as you do as your partner wants. Over time, you will begin to obey your partner in order to avoid unnecessary aggression on his part and keep the relationship.
If you recognize your relationship with your partner in any of the listed signs, you should not endure psychological violence and delay solving problems. Think about yourself and change your life for the better.
