At first, everything with your new guy is wonderful and loving, just like every healthy relationship should be. But eventually, he starts getting annoyed by tiny little things you do, so you modify your behavior just slightly to pacify him. Of course, that only makes things worse. Eventually, you start to feel lonely, excluded, embarrassed, and self-conscious, but there are no physical marks, no scars to tell your story.
Emotionally abusive relationships can destroy a person slowly but steadily. Here are 13 signs that you might be in one. If you relate, it’s time to get rid of those excuses, seek help, and leave that loser.
- He publicly humiliates or embarrasses you. When you drink too much, laugh too loud, or when you feel too tired, your partner has a tendency to publicly humiliate or embarrass you. This causes you to attempt to modify your behavior, which only makes you more self-conscious and leaves you feeling like crap.
- He’s critical of everything you do. The way you wash your hands, the way you sneeze, the way you walk… it’s all open for criticism, and all it does is eat away at your confidence.
- He puts you down all the time. You’re never good enough, no matter what you do. The harder you try, the more he makes you feel like you’re just not good enough.
- He ignores you. When he wants something from you, or if he’s not happy with you in some way, he’ll use the silent treatment and out and out ignore you. It doesn’t matter if you’re unaware of what it is you did wrong (or the fact you didn’t actually do anything) — he’s not going to give you a second of his time.
- He’s unreasonably jealous. A waiter smiles at you for too long? You got a lift home from college from a guy friend? A barista puts a heart in your coffee? All reasons for jealousy, according to this loser.
- He purposely excludes you. In addition to constantly berating you in big and small ways, he also purposely leaves you out from his life in big ways as a form of punishment for your not being good enough.
- He tries to make you jealous. He gets off on flirting with other women so that you get upset, and then he tells you that you’re being too sensitive.
- He’ll often be sarcastic or patronizing with you. He occasionally talks to you like you’re a child or an idiot (or both), no matter what you’re talking about and the fact that you may know more than him about the given topic.
- He’s capricious to the extreme. Changing mood from one to the next within the matter of minutes. He’ll be happy when you walk in the door, but before you know it, he has reason to be furious yet again.
- He makes jokes at your expense. Especially when there’s other people around to hear about it. He tries to play it off like he’s just kidding around, but it makes everyone uncomfortable more than anything.
- His love is conditional. “I love you, but…” is a common saying in your house.
- Everything is somehow your fault. And he’ll twist the facts to such an extent that you’ll often leave the argument believing it.
- He threatens to hurt himself if you leave him. And the worst part is, that after you finally get up the courage to leave him, he’ll emotionally manipulate you one last time – by threatening to hurt himself. This is not your problem, nor your responsibility. Get out while you can.
