The following scenarios are all signs of psychologically abusive relationships at play; some are more obvious than others. All the conversations are from real-life sources and are plucked from long term (lasting at least 3 years) relationships. None of the relationships involves physical abuse.
There are two questions to think about as you read them:
- What aspects of the different conversations stand out?
- What could the person being 'abused' have done to avoid the treatment?
I'll reveal some more information about these scenarios further down the post.
Scenario 1:
"I've noticed that over the past two years you've not stuck to any of the agreements we've made - as far as I know I've stuck to what we agreed. Would you say that's the truth? (nods agreement) Are you behaving like this deliberately?"
"Yes".
"Can you tell me why?"
"I'm teaching you a lesson".
The issue here is you have one person in the relationship who is too concerned with power. I've known people to stay in jobs they hate because there are others at the workplace who want them to leave. They're determined not to back down.
While one person may be working for a 'common cause' the other person's 'cause' is something completely different. The person trying to make the relationship work will find after a while that they're having to act 'super-passive' in a bid to get the other person to be less 'power-mad' and more willing to co-operate. It doesn't work in the long-term - such relationships tend to end explosively.
Scenario 2:
"I don't agree with the way you speak to me - I find it really offensive. Since you started at Uni I don't see you now for six months at a time and then when I do see you it's only because you want me to do something for you; because I'm 'useful'. I feel like we're becoming strangers; but the biggest concern I have is the verbal abuse. It's just not acceptable to me".
"I don't give a **** what you find acceptable or not - I'll talk to you just how I ******* want and there's nothing you can ******* do about it".
This was a conversation between a 25 year old daughter and her father. The conversation re-occurred several times over a couple of years and the father ended the relationship as the daughter continued to assert she had the right to speak to him abusively. What struck him most was the cool, reasoning manner in which she told him this.
Scenario 3:
"You're reliable - if I give you a job I know it'll get done. You're very thorough. My only concern is that you're slow. The people in London are fast - but then I have to keep checking up on them because they never do the work properly. Look, I want you to move to London and then you can teach them how to be more effective and they can teach you how to work faster."
This working relationship between a manager and a Personal Assistant eventually ended when a fellow colleague of the PA made a complaint about bullying to a Chief Executive and the manager had their contract terminated. The PA themselves knew they were being 'picked on' and belittled but believed their manager had trouble dealing with the stresses of their job and rationalised the behaviour. The PA reported that because this was their first job in a new career after two years of not working the manager often pointed out how they had given them 'their big break' and had persuarded the PA to do unpaid work at the weekends as a 'useful experience'.
The PA also said that no matter how successful they and their manager were on a particular day the manager had to finish the day off by taking the PA in a room and giving them a mini 'telling-off'. The Assistant had come to regard this as an amusing quirk of the manager's personality. When it had first started the PA felt the need to discuss and argue their case but had got so used to it by the end of the relationship they'd just sit and let the manager rant while they thought about the work they had to get back to.
Scenario 4:
"I'm surprised by how well you're taking what I'm saying to you".
"Actually I feel relieved - you're starting to tell me the truth and it tallies with what I've been feeling for years. I thought I was going mad. I thought it was all in my head. It's taken two years of me gradually getting you to a point where you're telling me how you honestly see us without you exploding".
"I did tell you 13 years ago but you weren't listening".
"But you'd just caught for our first baby - it didn't seem right to 'listen' then. I was hoping you'd change your mind. Isn't it wrong to walk out on your child when there's still a chance? Where do you want the relationship go from here? Do you want it to end?"
"You can stay for the sake of the kids, but I don't want to relate to you as a partner any more. I want you to go and find yourself another woman for that. But you can stay for the sake of the kids".
"I just wish you had told me this years ago - I've asked you plenty of times in the past how you felt about us and if anything was wrong. I would have stopped having more children with you if you'd told me you didn't actually love me".
"I was concerned about you - I didn't think you'd cope".
Here the participants were involved in the last few weeks of a 13 year marriage. This couple had married in their late teens and the wife had dumped her husband about 6 times before the birth of their first child which had caused him to develop a number of anxiety disorders. Over the 13 years the husband was made to feel continually 'not quite good enough' and when he received the 'go see other women' instruction what he heard intuitively was 'I want to see other men'. His wife was avoidant when asked directly how she felt and it had taken the husband two years of careful discussion to get her to be honest with him. At the end she admitted she regarded him as nothing more than a 'sperm donor' and useful to have around, but she didn't love him. It took the husband 5 years of counselling to recover from the relationship breakdown and his then ex-wife continued with her agreement-breaking behaviour in regard to the management of the children for years after he left. He eventually abandoned the family completely.
In Post 3 I'll be exploring some common factors in abusive relationships.
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