Abuse is never okay. You’re also not alone if you experience abuse. When you’re wondering how to fix an abusive relationship, you’re likely also questioning whether you’re experiencing abuse at all.
While this blog won’t give you answers to either of those complex questions, you will walk away understanding ten important signs that suggest you’re in an abusive relationship and that you shouldn’t try to fix it for your own safety.
Take care of yourself as you read through these signs and take breaks when you need to. Remember that you are never alone. You can find additional resources and next steps at the end of this blog.
This post is all about how to know when you can’t fix an abusive relationship.
What is physical abuse?
Physical abuse is a type of domestic violence that includes the use of physical force that results in injury or pain. This can take the form of hitting, kicking, shoving, choking, using weapons, or confinement.
Physical abuse can happen in lots of different types of relationships, from a romantic relationship to friendship to familial relationships. If you’re wondering whether you’re experiencing physical abuse, the first step is to let yourself believe it’s happening.
Abusive behavior is never okay, no matter what it looks like or who it comes from. Common signs of physical abuse include unexplained injuries or injuries that are hard to explain, frequent visits to the hospital, and changes in the behavior of the person experiencing abuse.
What is verbal abuse?
Verbal abuse is a type of emotional abuse in which the abuser manipulates, controls, and belittles another person through the words they use.
It typically centers around diminishing the victim’s self-esteem and confidence, which reinforces the cycle of abuse by ensuring the victim devalues themself enough to stay and even deny the presence of abuse in the first place.
Verbal abuse can look like insults, yelling, threats, blaming, gaslighting, criticism, and withholding information.
If you’re questioning whether you’re in an emotionally abusive relationship, you can look for signs like constant criticism, feelings of worthlessness, a fear of speaking up in your relationship, and social isolation.
SIGNS YOU CAN’T FIX AN
ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP:
1. Your partner engages in emotional manipulation
Emotional manipulation is a form of abuse. Not only that, but emotional manipulation makes it difficult to understand what is going on with your emotions.
If your partner messes with your emotions, then it makes sense that you struggle to identify what you really feel from what they make you feel. Therefore, you will likely struggle to believe you’re experiencing abuse or you will gaslight yourself into accepting the abuse.
Emotional manipulation often looks like gaslighting, love bombing, and other tactics that make you feel guilty for the natural reaction you have to their abusive behavior.
2. You struggle to identify your emotional needs
Lots of people struggle to identify their emotional needs. We’re rarely taught to ask ourselves what our emotional needs are and voice them. So, if you struggle to identify your emotional needs, that does not automatically mean you’re experiencing abuse.
Instead, you may struggle with it because you didn’t grow up learning it. However, if you find yourself struggling to identify your emotional needs because you’re afraid of your partner or preoccupied with the needs of your partner, then that’s one of the signs of abuse.
It’s also important to notice when you can identify your emotional needs but don’t want to admit that because your emotionally abusive partner is disregarding them.
3. Your partner does not respect your boundaries
Boundaries are complicated when it comes to abuse. If your partner is emotionally abusing you, you may not think about your own needs or see a reason to set boundaries.
The best way, and only way for a lot of reasons, to think about boundaries is telling the people around you how to love you better and communicating the way that you will keep them accountable.
For example, you may tell your partner that you are not okay with them yelling at you because it’s unproductive and hurtful. You may set a boundary around yelling by saying that when they start to yell, you will take a ten-minute break from being around them.
The goal is to let them know what triggers you and how you two can work together to avoid that happening.
Unfortunately, they may not respect that boundary and you may find yourself being the only person to put in work to meet your needs. This is the pattern of behavior we’re looking for here.
4. You experience feelings of shame about your relationship
If you’re in a toxic relationship, you may find yourself having to excuse your partner’s behavior a lot. You may find yourself defending your partner when you’re around a family member or friend.
The worst part about defending your partner, and the moment to look out for, is when you feel shame or loneliness as a result of defending your partner. For example, your partner may insist you close your bank account and hold one joint account.
This is not inherently financial abuse. However, this may be abuse if your partner does not take your feelings into consideration or if you feel uncomfortable with this but fear being honest about that discomfort.
In general, if you feel like there are issues in your relationship that you can’t talk to your partner about, that’s a red flag.
5. You have experienced suicidal thoughts
Talk to someone and be honest about any suicidal ideation you’re experiencing. This includes thoughts of hurting yourself and killing yourself. If you’re experiencing suicidal thoughts, the most important thing you can do is take it seriously.
Suicidal thoughts can have a lot of different causes and triggers, so you may not be experiencing psychological abuse or physical abuse. However, it’s important to consider the context surrounding your mental health issues and suicidal thoughts.
If you are in an unhealthy relationship, then you need to ask yourself if your partner makes your suicidal thoughts worse by triggering them with things that they say. Verbal abuse is powerful and it can easily cause victims of abuse to have suicidal thoughts.
6. You are not sure that mutual respect is present in your relationship
Mutual respect is a must in a healthy relationship. If your partner doesn’t respect you or you don’t respect your partner, you can still have a relationship free from abuse. However, abusive people do not respect the people they abuse.
They may have moments of regret and show remorse for the way they’ve hurt you, but they do not respect you. A partner who respects you will take accountability for their actions and stop the abuse.
Therefore, if you notice your partner refusing to take responsibility for the way they’ve hurt you and continuing to hurt you without caring about your feelings, then they do not respect you.
7. You can identify the cycle of abuse within your relationship
One reason abuse can be so difficult to identify is that, most of the time, it doesn’t look like abuse. Abuse can be subtle, in the case of emotional abuse. However, abuse can also transform into reconciliation and apologies because of the cycle of abuse.
Abusive relationships are not made up of just physical violence and verbal abuse. The majority of the time, an abusive partner can come off as loving, kind, and apologetic.
The only reason this dynamic is possible is that the cycle of abuse includes space for tension to build, abuse to happen, reconciliation to seemingly excuse or fix the abuse, and calm. Unfortunately, that calm doesn’t last for two reasons.
Victims of abuse struggle to remain calm because they’re constantly looking for the event that will cause the cycle of abuse to restart.
Plus, when your relationship reaches the reconciliation part of the abuse cycle, your partner does not respect you enough to reach true accountability and openness. Therefore, the reconciliation only serves as emotional manipulation to move past the abuse.
8. You struggle with low self-esteem
Intimate partner violence often attacks your self-esteem. Emotional manipulation is often key to someone staying in a relationship with an abusive person. So, it makes sense that the abuser would have to degrade you and make you question your sense of reality and your sense of worth.
Not only will your abuser likely gaslight you and degrade you, but they will also appeal to your desire to stay in the relationship with them.
Therefore, if you’re questioning whether you’re in an abusive relationship and you struggle with self-esteem issues, then it’s likely because your partner needs you to devalue yourself in order to stay with them and accept the abuse.
9. Your relationship does not feel like a safe place for you
Most of the signs we’ve included on this blog require context and other signs to demonstrate that someone is in an abusive situation. However, if your relationship doesn’t feel like a safe space for you, then that is all the context you need to know you can leave.
You should want to communicate with your partner and feel comfortable doing so. You deserve a relationship that makes you feel confident, independent, and stronger.
In an abusive relationship, you may be afraid to come home to your partner. Or you may be afraid to talk to your partner about abusive behavior. Your relationship should feel safe and your partner should put in hard work to make sure you feel safe.
10. You struggle with giving yourself permission to begin the healing process
If you’re reading this blog, it may be time to admit that you already know you’re in an abusive relationship that can’t be fixed. If your partner abuses you, that is not your fault and there is nothing you can do to change that.
Your partner has to do the work to take accountability and commit to real change. However, you don’t have to be a part of that process. Your partner has to find the motivation on their own, whether that means participating in individual therapy or looking into substance abuse issues.
Regardless, you have to let yourself heal and admit that it’s not your responsibility to stop your abuser from abusing you.
What You Can Do
When you read about relationship abuse, it often talks about things you have no control over. You can’t control your partner, whether that means how they hurt you or if they commit to changing. But, you can control whether or not you stay in the relationship with them.
It’s never easy to end an abusive relationship and it can often be dangerous. It’s okay to want to stay. But, the most important question to ask yourself, in this situation, is: “How do I protect myself and keep myself safe?”
To protect yourself from further abuse, you can reach out for professional help. This can look like joining local support groups with other people who understand, seeing your own therapist, or finding refuge at local shelters.
Whether or not you attend therapy, you should work on safety planning. To create a safety plan on your own, you’ll want to answer three major questions:
- What happens before an abusive incident that tells me I’m in danger?
- What activities can I do, what places can I visit, and who can I talk to keep myself safe?
- What can I do in advance to better protect myself?
These questions are not exhaustive and they do not replace the help that a mental health professional can provide you. However, if you’re feeling isolated, those questions can help you start thinking about how to protect yourself.
Additional Resources
- National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
- Love Is Respect: 1-866-331-9474
