7 Key Traits Of An Abusive Relationship To Watch Out For

The traits of an abusive relationship can be very difficult to recognize for someone who is still in the relationship. This is the nature of mind control and psychological abuse and has nothing to do with the intelligence of the victim.

If you are wondering if you might be in an abusive relationship, or you think a friend or family member might be, in this article I will look at the following categories:

I will give some examples of each along with brief explanations to make it easier to spot what is going on.

 

Emotional/psychological abuse

The emotional and psychological abuse tactics are fundamental traits of an abusive relationship. Because these are present it means the victim is stuck in the relationship and is forced to tolerate the other categories of abuse.

The first of these tactics that occur in abusive relationships is often the love bombing. This is where the manipulator showers the victim with care, attention, love, gifts and time. The victim is made to feel special and unique. All these good feelings are very much associated with the manipulator.

Sure, at the start of normal healthy relationships, where each person has feelings for the other, it's normal to treat the new partner in a special way. In an abusive relationship, this 'special' treatment is actually abusive and manipulative. It's abusive because it's not genuine.

It's designed to specifically make the victim have a particular experience in relation to the abuser. It is set up so that the victim considers the abuser as kind, loving, caring and considerate. The truth is that the manipulator is none of these things.

First impressions count and the manipulators know this very well. They hide their true nature from the victim and create a reality for the victim in which the victim thinks it makes sense to go ahead and commit to the relationship. The manipulators are actively manipulating the impressions of the victim from the first moment.

Gas lighting is another tactic that is frequently used in controlling relationships. The manipulator convinces the victim that something happened when it actually did not, or convinces the victim that something that did happen did not actually occur. This has the effect of making the victim doubt themselves. Who do they turn to for reassurance? The manipulator, of course! This augments the dependency of the victim on the abuser. I know, I know, this is twisted, but this is what happens in mind control environments.

The silent treatment belongs on the list of traits of an abusive relationship. It is another tactic often used by the abusers to punish their victims. Because psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists lack emotions, engaging in this kind of behaviour does not cost them anything.

Normally when people get angry with somebody else, and they are not talking, the other person is on their mind. The situation consumes time and energy. Not so for the manipulators. They just don't care that they're causing distress to somebody else. They turn around and continue with their life as if this situation was not actually occurring.

Passive aggressive behavior is commonly engaged in by abusers but the term is often misused. Passive-aggressive behaviour is best thought of as inaction where some action is socially expected. It is often used as a way to avoid direct communication.

It shows up as procrastination, claiming to have forgotten to do something, failing to show up, purposeful inefficiency, outright sabotage, making snide remarks and staying silent when a response is expected. They are basically carefully hidden, hostile acts. Because there is a disconnect between what the manipulator says and what the manipulator does people on the receiving end of passive-aggressive behaviour often experience frustration and anxiety.

Another universal on the list of traits of an abusive relationship is that of blame shifting. The manipulator is never wrong, never makes mistakes and is never responsible for anything bad that happens. The blame is always shifted to others. The victim ends up taking responsibility even for things that they are not responsible for. The result is that the victim is frequently saying sorry for all sorts of things.

 

Traits of an abusive relationship - Verbal abuse

This takes the usual form of yelling, swearing, name calling, constant criticism about all sorts of things and so on.

Rather than talk directly about this, I want to say something about why victims end up tolerating so much of this.

Very briefly, manipulators and abusers change the personality of their victims. They change people's perceptions, behaviours, decision-making, thinking patterns and emotions. All these things add up to a personality change. You can read more about the dynamics of this in these two articles about narcissistic boyfriends and narcissistic husbands. Obviously, the same dynamics apply to narcissistic females and their male partners.

This new, but false, personality is programmed in certain ways. It is programmed to be subservient and submissive. It is programmed to put the wants and needs of the manipulator ahead of its own. It is also programmed to be dependent on the manipulator. Again, twisted, but such are the power dynamics in abusive relationships.

People often say they would never tolerate bad behaviour they would just leave the relationship. However, when this pseudo-personality is in place, the victim responds differently. The victim knows what it's like to be treated well by the abuser. Very often the start of the relationship was fantastic and amazing. Now, when the abuser is making the victim feel bad, the victim, or rather the pseudo-personality, steps up to the plate and tries harder to please the manipulator to get those nice compliments again.

This dependency is the reason that people who are abused end up staying in the relationship.

This dependency actually causes many problems. My clients report that when they get rid of this dependency, any desire to be with their ex disappears and the inner conflict about missing their ex is resolved.

 

Controlling behaviours

It's very common for abusers to isolate their victims from their support networks. They do this in a variety of ways. They may start arguments with the victim and the victim has plans to meet their family or friends. Eventually the victim feels that it is just easier not to go out in order to avoid these arguments.

The manipulators also criticize and complain about the family and friends. When the family and friends come to visit the manipulator makes life unpleasant for everybody. In order to try and keep the peace, victim, bit by bit, distances themselves from their support without actually realizing it's happening.

Is my partner insecure or controlling?

Financial control is one of the significant traits of an abusive relationship. Things such as spending the victims money first and keeping their own until later, not allowing the victim to have a bank account, giving the victim just enough cash and expecting change and receipts, counts as financial control.

This level of control, creating a lack of financial independence, also makes it very difficult for the victim to leave.

 

Manipulation tactics

Fear and guilt are the main emotions that manipulators use to control others. Governments have been doing this forever!

Manipulators will make you feel guilty about your family, your job, your thoughts, your actions, your beliefs, your hobbies and especially about who you are.

Manipulators will make you afraid of them, afraid of thinking independently, afraid of disapproval and especially afraid of losing them.

The combination of fear and guilt is a very potent motivator and the manipulators thus coerce people into thinking and behaving in very particular ways.

Another manipulative tactic that deserves a place on any list of traits of an abusive relationship is where the manipulator offers you two options and tells you to choose. To the victim, it seems like they are the one making the decision but the fact is that their options have been definitively limited. For example, ¨"Are you going to give me a loan or is this the end of the road for us?"

The manipulator offers the option that they want the victim to choose plus another highly undesirable option. The victim is expected to choose between these two and obviously, they choose that which the manipulator wants anyway.

The trick here is that it's not actually a choice but the victim believes that they have made the decision. Later, the manipulator will claim that it's the victims fault because, after all, they chose that particular option.

Manipulators keep people on an emotional rollercoaster, sometimes making them feel really good but most of the time making them feel really bad. These emotional swings make it very difficult for the victim to think rationally and logically.

 

Busy, busy, busy!

Manipulators keep people very busy so they don't actually have much time to think either. On top of all this, they will push their victims to make decisions quickly. All this means that very often the victims don't make the best decisions and certainly not decisions that are in their own best interests. They are actually very heavily manipulated to make decisions that benefit the manipulators.

Another particularly nasty manipulative tactic of the abusers is to threaten to harm themselves if the victim leaves or goes against them. Of course, nobody wants to feel that they are responsible for somebody else committing suicide. The abusers may not say the word suicide but they make vague references to not being able to continue, to giving up, to ending things. The victims themselves understand exactly what the message is and this just adds to the urgency. The abuser never actually makes good on this threat.

And even if they attempt it, careful examination will reveal that there was never actually real danger to their lives. They took a couple of paracetamol, for example, but nowhere near enough to cause any damage. Or they have some red marks on the skin on their wrist, but all the main arteries are completely intact.

This kind of thing should be considered a significant toxic relationship trait.

 

Physical abuse

Physical abuse includes the usual things of slapping, punching, pulling hair, pushing, burning, and inflicting pain with objects. It also includes punching the wall beside your head, making out they're going to hit you with something even if they don't, putting their hands around your neck, throwing things at you, whether they hit you or not, and breaking or destroying your property.

Sometimes people end up tolerating years of physical abuse, as I've mentioned above, because the psychological abuse has created a dependency of the victim on the manipulator.

 

Sexual coercion

Once a relationship moves into the sexual phase the control the manipulator has increases tremendously. This is one of the reasons that manipulators push to move into this phase as quickly as possible. This occurs in intimate relationships and also in cults where sexual abuse occurs.

Sexual abuse comes in many forms. It refers to any sexual or sexually oriented behaviour that is done to a person without their consent. Obviously, this includes being pushed into having relations against one's will, being forced to do things that one does not want to do, being pushed to have relations with multiple people, feeling that one has to have relations just because the partner wants it.

It also includes control over birth control, whether this means a person is being forced to use it or forced not to use it.

Verbal sexual abuse is where someone is forced to listen to sexual innuendo or criticism of their sexuality. Visual sexual abuse is categorised as forcing another person to witness or look at something sexual without their consent.

As well as coercing a person into having sex more often than they want to, coercing them into having sex less often than they want to is also considered excessive control over somebody's sex life. Withholding sex, up to and including forced celibacy, is also considered sexual abuse.

In toxic relationships, where there is a built-in power imbalance, and the victim does not understand the abusive tactics being used against them, a sexual relationship is always a form of abuse. That's because the victim is never giving fully informed consent.

 

Digital abuse

Tracking and spying, with or without the victims knowledge, is also, especially nowadays, another one of the common traits of an abusive relationship.

If someone has access to your passwords for your devices and accounts and you do not have theirs, this is not a good sign. Controlling people will also use tracking devices in cars, phone tracking apps, keyloggers and so on.

Toxic people have no problem recording audio and video in the home using hidden devices either. Recording sexual activity without permission is a particularly nasty example of this.

They basically have access to knowledge about your activities 24 hours a day.

 

What to do if these traits of an abusive relationship resonate with you?

If you think you see signs of abuse in your relationship, the most important thing is to verify that. Speaking to a trusted friend or family member is a good idea.

You should not discuss it with the partner you think might be abusive. It may be very tempting because of the nature of mind control but you really should resist doing this. Talking with a partner you think is potentially abusive simply gives them information about what's going on in your head. Whatever you tell them can and will be used against you!

It's best to talk to somebody outside the relationship that you trust. It's often much easier for outsiders to see things then it is for somebody who is actually in an abusive relationship. Talking to a good friend can go a long way to helping you validate what is actually happening to you.

The next thing to do is to learn. Learn about mind control, learn about manipulators, learn about the tactics that are being used against you. Understanding what is being done to you is fundamental to being able to distance yourself from the abuser, get rid of that dependency as mentioned, and to begin to think clearly and logically once more.

Work with a professional, somebody who understands manipulation, personality disorders and how to undo the damage done to you. It will save you a lot of time, suffering and distress!

If you think you may be in an abusive relationship, do not just wait-and-see. Every day you are in an abusive relationship is a day of your life that is being stolen away from you.

Nor can you afford to give your partner the benefit of the doubt. You have been programmed to do this and it just means that you end up staying in the abusive relationship longer than is necessary.

If you are ready to take the next steps in breaking free, you can contact me here.

If you want more information first, I have suggested some further reading below about signs of abusive partners and what to do about red flags in relationships.

 

Traits of an abusive relationship - more reading

You can read more here about:

• what an abusive relationship is
• what does manipulation look like?
• the stages of an abusive relationship
• how to leave an abusive relationship and
• recovering from narcissistic abuse.

Like this page?