The number one reason why people feel abused in a relationship (as opposed to actually being in an abusive relationship) is the fact that people interpret and express emotions in very different ways. In addition, there are people who, instead of realizing that “you’ve got a problem (ie. we are incompatible), I can’t fix that, I’ll leave you” figure that “OK, you have an incurable psychological disorder, but that’s alright, I can fix it, not knowing anything about psychology.”

A lot of personality psychology is being abused by people who believe that by knowing your personality, they can take that information and change you to the person they expect you to be. This is not, exactly, a malicious intent, but simply incapacity of understanding differences in thinking, ie. Immaturity on their part. To even a slightly more mature person, “We don’t understand each other” is a sufficient enough reason to break up if there is no real wish to try and learn to understand each other, but to someone to whom preserving a relationship at all cost seems to be the end-all-be-all in terms of their self-respect, no amount of fighting seems to be enough to convince them that the relationship shouldn’t be.

Here is the general rule of thumb: If a person doesn’t want to be in a relationship with you, they shouldn’t be. NEVER EVER ARGUE ABOUT A BREAKUP, that is for your own safety. If your child wants to stay in their bedroom alone, let them. If your grown child wants to leave you (even during a zombie outbreak), let them. If your spouse wants to leave you, let them, and particularly, if your boyfriend of two weeks doesn’t want to continue a relationship with you, let him go. If they didn’t mean it, they’ll come back, don’t worry. (People who leave you and come back, leave you and come back, probably want you to put an end to their leaving plans the next time around. People who want to leave you, unless blood-related, will not come back again.)

On the other hand: If you are in a, what could be called an abusive relationship with someone who really wants to make it work with you, and who you want to make it work with, keep working on it. Do whatever it takes. If you BOTH want the relationship to be pure and complete, I don’t care how much trouble you go through to make that work, for as long as you are both in it because you both love each other more than anything else, despite all problems and misunderstandings there may be. Do not ASSUME the other person wants it, and do not assume they mean they do if they say they don’t, this is NOT a permission to keep pestering someone who doesn’t want you, let’s be clear about that – this goes for you women, too.

If you don’t know how the other person feels about this situation, try and find out, and I know sometimes people test your wish to stay by telling you to go away, but the safest possible option is to go away if they tell you to… If you think they might be testing you, let them know that you are going away only because they ask you to and that they are welcome to follow whenever they like.

Wanting to break up with you is not a sign of abuse (or a psychological problem)

So this is how people go from having a normal relationship into having an abusive relationship: They tried to break up with you, but you wouldn’t have it. You thought they were trying to force you into becoming what they wanted of you “so bad” that they “threatened to leave you”. In reality, they wanted to break up, but you just didn’t take them seriously, because YOU were so much in love with them that you didn’t understand what more could they possibly want out of a relationship. Now, in your mind, they are trying to control you from leaving, because TO YOU, the fear of them leaving is too much to take.

Now, to show them that you are not a doormat, you try to win an argument against this person, often over nothing. You start arguing with them, and often this means deliberately picking on things that you don’t understand in order to make him or her lose an argument with you – and to then, respect you as a result. You may feel that they bait you to lose your cool, because, for instance, they talk about things you don’t understand – you think they are doing this deliberately or to humiliate you, when, in fact, that’s just the way they think or talk.

Now, if at that stage you have googled things and realized “you are in a narcissistic relationship” your first instinct should be to end it. If you stay, you misunderstood the need for that evaluation in the first place. It is not a diagnosis you use in order to force someone behave better or to lock them into a relationship further. Also, if you spend years of your life trying to figure out how to get back at this person for having been so mean to you, aka. how to win that one argument against him/her, you have issues with letting go.  If the focus is on how did you wind up in a relationship like that to begin with, that is a healthy goal and worth doing.

To a person who tends to feel abused in a relationship, arguing tends to be an important aspect of it, arguing and figuring out which one of you is the boss, or trying to find equality through fighting and arguing. When the other person is reluctant to fight with you, you feel they are “being superior” or “dismissive”, when, in fact, they are simply not interested in causing bad blood over nothing. You feel even that sentence is an insult because they are so “haughty towards you”, just as is the instruction of “let go”, that, to you sounds “give up, submit, you’re not worthy”. Sometimes people feel that others “take it so seriously” when they fight a little, and that “they don’t have any sense of humor about it” and accuse the person for not liking to be attacked – that sounds like a little bit of abuse, too. However, it isn’t. It is just another way of bonding, and these two people rarely find a common tone, because to the other, a relationship without a bit of fire is not sexy, and to the other, picking a fight over nothing is really nothing but annoying behavior that needs to stop. (If your partner “takes you too seriously” tell him that the expectation is that he shuts you up in a sexy way – if that’s the intent – and if you don’t wish to teach him, leave him.)

Now, so far, which one of these people sounds abusive to you? The person who cannot let go of another person simply because they need to prove their own worth or the person who feels trapped in a toxic relationship with an aggressive partner who constantly accuses them for being something that they do not like or for “making them angry”?

The inability to allow a person to leave them is currently more common in women than men – maybe it always was. You do not say no to a woman who wants to stay with you, right? Her claws are on you, and you’re supposed to just be a man to her. Take care of her, feed her, and if it comes to it, take a bullet for her, because, hell, she wants you and there’s a price for that kind of a privilege.

It is also common for an abusive partner to accuse the other for “having a commitment phobia” or “fear of intimacy” or “being incapable of social interaction” or other picks from pop psychology. These are not real conditions. They simply do not want a commitment with THIS PERSON, they do not want intimacy WITH THIS PERSON, or they do not wish to be social with THIS PERSON. If they manage to break up, after all these accusations of fear of intimacy or commitment and what not, they are seen around the town with another person, their ex will easily think the new partner is simply another form of “gaslighting”: “so NOW YOU ARE READY FOR A RELATIONSHIP?!” They may have been ready for a relationship the whole time, they just didn’t want this particular person as their life-long partner, as difficult as it maybe for some people to understand that they are not a freaking Aphrodite, and that, heaven forbid, not every man would fall madly in love with them at the mere sight of them, or, how could this be possible… They might actually have standards this person doesn’t reach?!

The impossible standards argument

“You have such impossible standards, that NOBODY will be able to please you!” No. Not correct. They may be picky, but they have a reason for being so. Their standards are THEIR choice, their “problem”, not yours. If they are not happy with you, if you fall below their standards, that’s all there is to it. YOU are NOT enough for this person. It is not your place to tell them that they should settle for less, or that, the only way they might find satisfaction is polyamory – if that’s how they want to play it. The bottom line is that they are not happy with you and that is all the reasons a person needs to not stay in a relationship – it is SUPPOSED TO MAKE YOU HAPPY, and if it doesn’t, then, often, single life is the better option.

A person has the right to be romantic enough to want to find their true love(s). They have no responsibility of giving up on the wish to truly fall in love, just to make your life a little bit more pleasant. Life is hard, you will get hurt, and they hurt their own way, and, you won’t  make his or her hurt go away by just being SOMEONE in their lives, you simply block the way from their true love to walk in. You are the reason why they will REMAIN unhappy, and you have no right to say that they owe this to you, no matter who you are to them.

If you are truly meant to be, and if you are truly in love, it doesn’t matter if they marry someone else. If they marry someone else, they will end it for the person they love eventually… At least at the first sight of hope to get together with the person they truly love. Also, you could be the someone else they wind up marrying even though they are in love with someone else… If they are in love with someone else, or if they still haven’t met the person who they truly wanted… Do you think your marriage will last? They want someone else. They want someone else. They are in love with someone else. They are looking for something you cannot give them. That is what you need to accept if your partner is trying to get away from you with everything they’ve got. It doesn’t matter how much you think you love someone, if they don’t love you back, there is no relationship. And “loving you back” is a feeling, not an action. You cannot make them love you back, you can force them to go through the motions of it, play a part like an empty robot, but that doesn’t make them in love with you – that simply makes you the abuser.

And yes. I know what a True Emotion Mirror is.

“You make impossible rules”

One of the common complaints in an abusive relationship is that the “abused” accuses their partner for making confusing rules for the relationship, only to see her fail so he has a reason to be upset.

This is going to be difficult to describe, but… There are people of different intelligence levels. I have noticed, that when a highly intelligent person describes what they need in a relationship – and I agree, I understand those needs being rather smart myself, so these are not made up at all – they use a lot of nuances, they describe emotions that are very specific, needs that are highly evolved, complex, and vary according to situations and are often different to different people. These are things that they really do need in order to feel a connection with someone, but when expressed to a person of lesser intellect, the words bear  no meaning and simply seem confusing and frustrating. Highly intelligent people tend not to understand what is so difficult in seeing these needs, because to them they are completely normal things, but a person of lesser intelligence has no idea what is being said. It is like the difference between these two color swatches:

You may see black and green, some gray area or several separate, clear shades of green, or you may see a continual flow of color that goes from black to white to green, or, if you are as sharp-eyed as the computer screen, you see each dot on the left as a separate color (unlikely)… Now, we all should see these colors fairly similarly, because we have highly developed eyes, but what is the difference is that people have a different level ability to feel, identify, and NAME nuances in emotion linked to situations. The difficulty here is to know which is which. Are you seeing each dot as a separate color, or are you just seeing black, gray and green…? Which one is the smart one? I, personally, don’t really care, the point is that the way you see things is so different that it is unlikely you will start seeing things the same way in the future when the other one is completely closed to the idea of being taught to see the world your way.

It is common for a highly emotionally intelligent person to get locked into situations and relationships that do make them seem like “a thug” or “a delinquent” or someone who is “maladjusted”. The reason is that they see more alternatives to life than submission to expectation, but they may find it difficult to navigate the over-simplified landscape the less-evolved people are laying out to them. They find life equally incomprehensible, when emotionally linked rules are being over-simplified into a gray mass that simply seems inherently wrong to them, and they do not understand WHY they should obey, what is the meaning of it because the whole world seems to have gone mad! They see nuances, they feel the danger where the emotionally non-evolved see none, and the danger is stopping them from going where they are being told to go: and the biggest danger often is a state of unhappiness, boredom, servitude or depression that they cannot come back from. Often, the best alternative is to simply not play along – remain unemployed when possible or dodge bullets by avoiding permanent employment or relationships to people they do not feel enough of a connection with.

Similarly, the people who feel a lot of nuance in emotions will find it impossible to function as if the color was clean green when it is slightly off green. “I function on the green setting only when the pointer is pointing at a green!” “It’s close enough.” “Fuck no it isn’t.” And this is usually when people get argumentative. “You are just being difficult” “you are making things so black and white!” “You are using a very large brush here!” “It is not at all the same thing!”

The safe bet is that these people will never see the nuances the same way and the best thing for both is to split up – but this is a HARD HIT on the lesser intelligent person’s ego, because they cannot understand WHY they are not enough. The trouble also is that the less aware has a high tendency of believing the other person feels exactly the same as they do, with no consideration that they might not. The other person’s reasons are, to them, illogical, cruel, unreasonable or… Just plain incomprehensible, and the worst part is, the intelligent are often forced to dumb down the message to make a part of it sink in: “There’s just not enough sex.” (When the real reason is not enough emotional connection, not enough f a mind-twisting amazing melting wildness…) “We can do more.” “*Fuck.*” And what is being said after the relationship is over: “He dumped me because I don’t put out enough!”

*face-palm*

Exaggerating unhappiness usually works

The emotionally aware rarely let people see their emotions too clearly – they have a tendency of hiding it because they don’t want to be like a walking signpost of emotional turmoil, so they can come off as stoic or unemotional as a result, and their emotional state can often only be picked up by people of a similar bend… Albeit they have trouble trusting their own instincts sometimes. However, that’s beside the point.

But, when the less aware partner cannot tell that the aware one is unhappy, it can help for the aware person to decide to be visibly unhappy. Sigh, drag feet, and be wistful. This works, of course, unless it’s taken as a deliberate attempt to humiliate him or her, again. Be visibly depressed and uninspired, arguing doesn’t work because, that, to them, maybe a sign of sexual interest and a power struggle; excitement and all of that, and an attempt to get onto the same page. If you refuse to fight by simply walking away from an argument with a sad, depressed, bored air, or let them scream while you wistfully stare out the window, your partner may tweak to the fact that you are not happy. If you take this route, don’t get provoked into fighting and if you can’t fake things too well – don’t worry, they are not exactly perceptive, are they? Keep this up until they approach you and ask what is wrong… Then, tell them that you feel unfulfilled and miss your single life and that you really wanted to do this or that or what not, and now you can’t because you’re together. Point out everything you cannot do, because your fate is with him or her, try not to sound like it’s an accusation or that leaving has even crossed your mind (lately) but that it’s just a sad state of affairs that you will have to give up on all of this because this relationship thing just happened to you and now  you are locked into this, innocent victims of fate’s cruel prank… You may even take the approach of describing the kind of love relationship that you wanted, but how life interfered and this is all that you both have, and how it’s just a matter of fate and all… That should prompt them to point out the obvious: “We don’t HAVE TO stay together if that’s how you feel!” Try then not act too pleased, but keep asking for reassurance if that could be possible for you to do, still, rather than if they would let you do that – keep them out of your focus, simply keep talking about things you cannot do while with them, wish you could do, until they make the hard decision for you and let you off the hook like a hero.

When they simply aren’t submitting to the fate their partner has their heart set on

The police should be well aware of this the next time they are being called to a domestic violence situation. Sometimes it is HIM who needs your protection, even if it is her who is physically bleeding.

Women, in this cultural situation, have an opportunity and an unwritten right to lock a man into a relationship if they want him. When they believe wanting to break up is a form of “gaslighting” or him telling her that “he is not in love with her” is emotional abuse, or she claims “he is cheating on her” while he figures they’ve broken up months ago, you know who has an issue. She is not getting it. She is simply refusing to leave his house or him alone, she will keep coming back no matter what he does, and she is refusing to see the obvious: She is not loved nor wanted. To some women, this is a truth that does not penetrate at all.

HE needs help getting her out of his life. Issuing HIM with a restraining order won’t stop her from approaching and getting beat up as a result; and why wouldn’t he, he is essentially defending himself from rape, abuse, and loss of personal freedom. A woman would be considered justified killing a man in the same circumstances. And when a man applies for a restraining order and when she tells you that he’s just trying to torture her, that is most likely a confused woman on a rant. In repeated domestic violence situations, it might be a good idea for the officials to issue a restraining order to both of them against each other. There should be a way for the authorities to say they will no longer waste police resources on people who simply use the police as a safety net for their own incapacity of handling social situations with a person who is known to be volatile with them.

(One way for the reluctant partner to get out of this situation is to marry the person, and then file for a divorce a couple months later. That USUALLY sinks in better than “you’re not my girlfriend”.)

Summary

We all have our reasons to lose our temper and argue. Emotions do not happen in a vacuum, and there is always an explanation to a behavior, and it is always logical from the perspective of the person who reacts a certain way. People are rarely bad people, and EVERY SINGLE INDIVIDUAL in this world can turn violent if provoked long enough. People bond differently, and their tolerance levels to physical or emotional abuse are different, and so are their interpretations of things. Current psychology is WOEFULLY LACKING in its ability to diffuse and explain these misunderstandings and it depends completely on the councilors own emotional abilities (they are not always masters, some study psychology simply because they have no natural ability for it) on which partner they consider to be “abusive”, and whether or  not they have the ability to see both sides equally. When the society constantly sends the message that a value of a relationship is measured with “loyalty” and “permanence”, and that a sign of a good person is the ability to maintain a PERMANENT relationship regardless of it’s true quality, people are set up to accept poor relationships and even abuse for far longer than what is healthy.

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*) Term changed after this post was originally written. Fractions of old terms may exist elsewhere in the post. Read about term updates.
**) Narcissists are Young Souls left alone to survive and they're doing their best. Their emotional age ranges from 3 to 17 -year old. The younger, the more severe the narcissism.

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