National Domestic Violence Hotline.
Many people want to have a good partner without being willing to do the work to be a good partner.
Relationships don’t work that way.
You may treat your partner poorly, and they may put up with your bad behavior for quite awhile. Even for a lifetime. But over time, your hurtful behavior will damage the relationship and damage your partner.
Someone who is being treated poorly will not be able to be a good partner. They will lose their sense of self. And if the relationship is abusive, they may become unrecognizable when compared to the person who they once were.
You can’t give what you don’t have.
If someone has no sense of self, they cannot give themselves to the relationship.
What Does It Mean to Treat Your Partner Poorly?
People often enter relationships with preconceived ideas about how relationships should be. They have expectations for their partner that are never communicated by their partner, let alone agreed to by their partner.
These expectations may or may not be fair, as some people enter a relationship with a sense of superiority and entitlement.
They may expect their partner to do the bulk of the household chores. They may believe they should get more leisure time than their partner. They may believe they should be able to engage in more outside activities than their partner. They may believe they should be able to yell and rage at their partner, and their partner should take it and not complain. They may believe they can make unkind jokes at their partner’s expense.
If a partner voices concerns over double standards or unkind and disrespectful behavior, and that partner’s concerns are repeatedly dismissed and never addressed, the relationship contains an unequal dynamic that may be abusive.
If there is a pattern of minimization, invalidation, and dismissiveness by a partner, that is an indication of emotional abuse. And a relationship that contains emotional abuse will not be a good relationship.
A relationship does not need to be emotionally abusive to be a bad relationship. But there are many behaviors that are normalized that are abusive, and people often don’t realize they are abusive.
Due to the prevalence of misogynistic belief systems, women are abused more often than men. However, men can be victimized by abusive women. And abuse can occur in homosexual relationships as well. Abuse in romantic relationships happens much more than people realize.
In general, you are treating your partner poorly if you hold them to standards that you do not hold yourself to. You are also treating them poorly if you engage in unkind and disrespectful behaviors intended to make them feel “less than”, like name-calling or put-downs.
The Golden Rule applies. If you have a pattern of treating your partner in a way that you would not want to be treated, or applying standards to them that you would not want to be applied to you, you are treating them poorly.
You cannot expect to have a good relationship with someone who you treat this way.
What Is Abuse?
As humans, we are apt to make mistakes and do or say something that hurts our partner. An unkind behavior is not abuse if the person takes responsibility for it and genuinely attempts to not repeat the behavior.
Abuse is a pattern of behavior. Abuse typically occurs in a cycle, where the relationship is great sometimes, but the abuse always returns. Following an abusive incident, the abuser typically reverts back to being nice. They may temporarily be more helpful and caring, lavish gifts on the victim, or make empty promises of change.
This is not real change. It is manipulation. Eventually, the tension will again begin to build and another abusive incident will occur.
If your partner is treating you unkindly, even if they treat you well sometimes, your relationship is unhealthy and may be abusive.
Abuse can be overt or covert. The below definitions are taken from The Mend Project.
“Overt abuse consists of verbal assaults or concrete manipulations that are far more obvious to the victim. The assaults are intended to be one-sided, always placing the blame for the abuse on a victim who the abuser claims deserves it. Behaviors, such as concrete criticism, fault-finding, verbal abuse, blaming.”
“Covert abuse is considered one of the most destructive forms of abuse, second only to life-threatening battery. The reason for this is because covert abuse significantly harms the victim’s perceptions, memories, and thinking, and ultimately, can lead to feelings of insanity.
Covert Emotional Abuse is difficult to identify and difficult to confront because of its subtleties, the confusion and self-doubt it promotes, and the denial that is easy to come by for the abuser who manages, as part of the abuse, to make the victim feel responsible instead. Covert abuse is intended to exert control of another. Being alone as a recipient of the abuse causes a bewildering inability to sort out one’s traumatic experience.”
A list of covert behaviors, with definitions, can be found here. I’ve listed the behaviors below. If you would like clarification, please visit the link.
Denial, joking, lying, dismissing, gaslighting, power-play/power over, magical thinking, all or nothing, reductionism, pathologizing, catastrophizing, sanitization, playing the victim, creating a cloud of confusion, rationalization/excuse making, entitlement, disavowal, grandiosity, blaming and reverse blaming, withholding, refusal to take responsibility, false accusations, broken promises, undermining, retaliation, deflection, cover-ups, scapegoating, minimization, faux confusion/abusive forgetting, partial confession to distract from the real issues, crazy making behaviors.
What Do I Do If I’m Being Treated Poorly or Abused?
If someone is treating you poorly and promising to change, it is unlikely they will. It can take years for someone with abusive behavior patterns to change, and that is only if they truly want to change and are doing a significant amount of work to change.
Abusive relationships contain an element of addiction and trauma bonding, therefore it can be very difficult for someone to leave. Because of this, many people attempt to leave an abusive relationship multiple times before leaving for good.
You deserve to be treated with kindness and respect at all times. If you believe your relationship may be abusive, it is best to seek the help of a therapist or contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Couples therapy is not recommended in abusive relationships, as most therapists are not trained in the dynamics of emotionally or physically abusive relationships, and may inflict more damage onto the victim.
What If I’m the One Treating My Partner Poorly?
It is never okay to treat your partner poorly or blame your partner for your behaviors. These patterns of behaviors result from belief systems that take time and outside support to change.
If you have realized you are treating your partner poorly, it is best to seek professional help from someone who is trained in the dynamics of abusive relationships.
Final Thoughts
You should never tolerate hurtful behavior from your partner. The foundation of a healthy relationship is trust, safety, kindness, and respect. And if you want to have a happy relationship, you need to be the kind of partner you want to have.
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Previously Published on medium
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