In a world that has become increasingly aggressive, it can sometimes lead us to a guessing game as to what constitutes ’emotional abuse’.  For me, I had a hard time in the beginning of my past marriage and in a subsequent relationship to reconcile the difference between my partner being difficult and it crossing over into emotional abuse.  There is a fine line. Not fully understanding where that line was led me to staying and accepting the behavior much longer than I should have. The unfortunate side of that is that once the behavior starts and is tolerated, it only escalates. It’s that pull to the water and the splashes in the face that lead to being submerged and held under.

As outlined on the National Domestic Violence Hotline’s website (https://www.thehotline.org/is-this-abuse/abuse-defined/) these are some warning signs that you might be in an emotionally/verbally abusive relationship:

• Calling you names, insulting you or continually criticizing you
• Refusing to trust you and acting jealous or possessive
• Trying to isolate you from family or friends
• Monitoring where you go, who you call and who you spend time with
• Demanding to know where you are every minute
• Trapping you in your home or preventing you from leaving
• Using weapons to threaten to hurt you
• Punishing you by withholding affection
• Threatening to hurt you, the children, your family or your pets
• Damaging your property when they’re angry (throwing objects, punching walls, kicking doors, etc.)
• Humiliating you in any way
• Blaming you for the abuse
• Gaslighting
• Accusing you of cheating and being often jealous of your outside relationships
• Serially cheating on you and then blaming you for his or her behavior
• Cheating on you intentionally to hurt you and then threatening to cheat again
• Cheating to prove that they are more desired, worthy, etc. than you are
• Attempting to control your appearance: what you wear, how much/little makeup you wear, etc.
• Telling you that you will never find anyone better, or that you are lucky to be with a person like them

A person’s situation may involve one or many of these.  I experienced the majority of these.  However, not all at one time. They happened in waves, one of them here or there, and always with the excuse that I was to blame for what was happening. The manipulation that I was at fault for it led to shame, self-correction and internalizing. It wasn’t until I had escaped the deep water that I was able to reflect on what had happened and how it spiraled in the span of 18 years.

I thought I had all figured out and knew all of these signs. As a single mom determined to make better choices for my children, I was committed to learning why I had ended up in the deep water. I went over and over what had happened and how to avoid it. Joe had been hostile and aggressive in his abuse and that was what I was focused on. What I had yet to learn was that a more passive aggressive approach to control was still abuse and incredibly damaging. After talking with many other women and my fantastic therapist, I had to expand my knowledge of what constitutes abuse. I think this is an area that many survivors with children can find themselves in. These aren’t as typical in public descriptions of abuse. While the article talks about “jealous of your outside relationships,” I never could have imagined that that could be about my own children. Besides a couple of the listed warning signs, isolation from my children was something I hadn’t experienced in my marriage, but came to learn about in that next relationship.

Isolation from my children became a hallmark and is abuse. I had a hard time balancing this in my head because I was protective of my children after what they had been through. We had not had anything of a typical life together thus far. I had taken the time to build a firm layer of trust and bonding between my kids and myself. When my next relationship started he was very supportive of that and complementary. That became intermittent as complaints of how attached to me they were. I struggled. I knew that I saw more typical family situations where the children were even more clingy and dependent. Due to the fact the my parenting had been a constant criticism in my marriage, I was already in the habit of questioning myself.

What started out as simple as being annoyed when my children would interrupt a phone conversation, led to being annoyed and showing great disdain anytime the younger two needed me. Chastising the decisions I was making for my children became regular. Jealousy seemed to be at the forefront, not even wanting my daughter to sit beside me. With my oldest son it came to fueling his teenage angst with me, as his parent,  against me. The bond that I had created with my kids was quickly feeling like I had done that all wrong. He wanted to be first and for my kids to be minimal in my life. Luckily, my love for them drew me back to the beach at a quicker pace this time. Once again, I thought it was the other person being difficult. I came to learn that this was a form of emotional abuse and isolation.  Coupled with many other instances of control, I realized that I needed to explore further what abuse was and my own tolerance of them.

There were many things that were eerily similar between these two relationships, but handled differently. The one similarity that is the most alarming, is the fact that with both I ended up thinking, “I wish he would just hit me.” The pain that emotional abuse causes and the undermining manner in which it operates, made me feel invalidated.  I thought that the emotional pain was not enough to constitute a departure from that relationship. To feel that kind of torment emotionally and to have that thought was my biggest warning sign. No one deserves to be held under the water and made to feel like they deserve it.

Wether it be aggressive in nature or more passive aggressive, both are damaging to the psyche.  If you are in a situation where you are questioning or doubtful of what is happening, I encourage you to reach out and explore. It is much better to walk away with a splash of water than to be struggling to survive after being completely submerged.

To someone who has never experienced an abusive relationship, I’m sure it seems like common sense to be aware that a relationship is abusive. For me, that wasn’t the case. Despite fading bruises and healed fractures, four years ago I could not have said that I was in an abusive relationship.

From the very beginning of our relationship Joe had an edge to him.  I had this thing I would say to myself (and sometimes to others) that I could take the 10% jerk because 90% of the time he was fantastic.  By the end of our marriage, those numbers had completely flipped.  The most drastic flip was in my own mindset.  I remember in the second year of my marriage, before any of my children were born, I had a constant thought, “I wish he would just hit me, then it would be an outward sign and I could leave.” What Joe was putting me through psychologically and emotionally was intense, but I wasn’t sure it was a valid reason to break my marriage vows.  The ups and downs of approval and disdain were hard to manage.  I fell into believing that his unhappiness was solely my fault, which was exactly what he told me day in and day out. I thought I was worthy of the treatment that I was getting and I was always working and trying to become what he demanded. I was losing myself to his whims and in an internal battle that I had been dealing with my entire life, that I needed to be more and do more to be worthy of love.

It would be 10 years after wishing he would hit me, so that I would have visible evidence to leave, before he did.  By that time, my emotional state and my self-confidence were completely depleted. I was barely treading water anymore. I didn’t see it. I was ashamed that he would “have to” resort to that to correct me.  It took me a couple of months after he was removed from our home to be able to articulate that he had been physically abusive. At that time, I had only been aware that our relationship was abusive for six months.

At Joe’s request, I entered beauty school.  He said that I needed to work and he thought that would be good for me.  However, it came under the stipulation that he and the kids always took complete priority to it and that I was not to work on any male clients. I looked at it as an opportunity to turn a hobby into something that I could have for myself, so I enrolled.  I relished my time there.  It was a group of amazingly unique, accepting, and loving individuals.  I started to gain a little bit of myself back. As part of our curriculum, the local women’s shelter came and talked with us about domestic abuse.  Not only was there a chance of someone sitting in our chair and opening up about abuse, but people in our profession have a high chance of being in one ourselves.  Before the talk began, they took all of our cell phones away so that we wouldn’t be distracted.  They started discussing personal stories of abuse and certain scenarios that are labeled as abusive. My heart was pouring out to my fellow students who were being overcome with emotion as they listened and thought back to their own experiences. Then, I had my own moment of awakening.  The speaker started discussing harassment and abuse through texting.  She asked, “if you get a call from your significant other and you don’t respond immediately, how is that handled? Do they begin to text repeatedly, do they become angry that you aren’t responding….” There was a list of things.  I sat there and thought to the many times that I didn’t answer a phone call or a text at the very moment it was happening.  I thought back to my time working for the county recorder’s office when Joe had called when I was helping a customer and became irate when I told him I would need to call him back.  He was always the priority, I should be grateful that he wanted to talk to me.  I’m not sure what the next 30 minutes of discussion was because my mind was starting to scramble.  Then it happened.  Joe texted.  I did not have my phone, but I could see on my watch what he was texting.  It was not anything that I could reply to on my watch.  He was asking a question.  A minute later he sent another text repeating the question.  My heart felt like it stopped.  I was panicking that I couldn’t get to my phone, which quickly switched over to, “Wait, this is me.  The woman at the front of the room is talking about women in my situation.  This isn’t right….” I began to hyperventilate and ran up the stairs and out of the school.  From that moment, I realized that maybe it wasn’t  just my lack of being good enough, maybe Joe was abusing me.  It was 6 more months of scrambling, trying to figure out how to survive and what to do in this new state of awareness, before Joe was taken from our home.

My marriage lasted 6,519 days.  It took me 6,337 days to realize that Joe was drowning me in the deep water. It took an additional 182 days for me to gather the courage to make my way to the beach.   Getting out of an abusive relationship is incredibly difficult. The first hurdle is to realize that you are in one.

“I have a loved one that I fear is stuck in this situation, what can I do, how can I help?” That is a tough position and I will do my best to answer it from my own experience in the matter, as a survivor. While there are striking similarities in abusers’ patterns, each situation is markedly unique.

For loved ones, the most frustrating part can be that no one can simply drag a person out of the deep water. Even if you see signs of abuse, you are literally looking at a tiny fraction of what is happening. Physical and verbal abuse are generally the most prominent outward signs. (I will also note that physical abuse, especially in the case of children, should be addressed immediately with protective services.) However, the emotional abuse is mostly silent to the public and where the most complicated facets come into play.

When I was in my period of drowning from the abuse, I had one certainty.  As strange as it may seem, the instability of finding the next foothold to get my head above water, was also a sense of security.  I didn’t fully understand the situation that I was in.  It wouldn’t be until my 18th year of marriage that my eyes started to open to the fact that this wasn’t “normal” in a relationship and that it was abusive.  My security came from the fact that, even though I was drowning, Joe was a constant.  He was there, right beside me.  Over the years I had come to believe that it was my fault for my precarious situation: I wasn’t a good enough wife, a good enough mom, I couldn’t clean correctly, I couldn’t interact with others correctly, I wasn’t intelligent, the list goes on.  Furthermore, he made me believe that he was keeping me in this deep water out of love for me.  He “put up” with my complete lack of worthiness and I would never be accepted or loved by anyone else. He even went as far as to twist real events with family and friends to show how little I was cared for.  It was the most isolating time in my life.  I couldn’t see a beach anywhere. I had friends, family and had people I interacted with, but I hid most of my life. I hid it in shame.  I didn’t want anyone to know how awful of a human I had come to believe I was.   There were a couple of fears in that.  The first being my own insecurities.  The second being that Joe was still pulling me out of the water from time to time, giving me glimpses of respite when I was meeting his criteria. If anyone knew and could get past how I was, it could either make Joe leave me or increase his disdain for how I was.  I wasn’t there. I fully believed I needed him, that I needed the methods of correction to be the wife and mom that I’d always dreamed of.

This leads to the question, what could anyone do to help me?  Directly, not much.  I was firmly planted in my reality of the deep water, struggling to figure out how to alter myself to become worthy of not drowning. What I needed was support, love and acceptance. As I withdrew to focus on not drowning, I isolated more and more.  My family of five did EVERYTHING together.  It was priority, control, and survival.  What I really needed is what eventually happened; to find some self-worth.  What others could have done is to quietly support me.  Not leave me to swirl in the water.  I needed someone to look past the survival skills that I was building and help me find myself. I needed to not feel alone.  By speaking poorly of Joe, that drove me further into isolation. I couldn’t risk the one source of security that I had.  Getting someone out of an abusive situation is a lot like fishing.  You have to cast your line (support) and wait patiently. Sometimes you need to refresh your bait, check your line and recast, but you have to keep casting it out. It makes a difference.

If someone you love is drowning in an abusive cycle, the number one thing is to not give up on them.  Please, do not take away your support.  It might be frustrating and may seem so obvious to you as to how it should be handled, but the situation is incredibly complex.  Be patient, keep reaching out just to offer simple support.  Try not to judge because you cannot fully understand the reasons as to why they are in the deep water.  Let them know they are not alone. If they start to tell you some of what is happening, listen.  For as much as they tell you, it is most likely a drop of water compared to the ocean that is really there. That one small drop could be a test to see if they can open up even more. Try not to force solutions. Be empathetic.  Above all, let them know they are worthy and they are loved without any disclaimers. The real battle is within themselves to accept it. The key factor to getting out of the deep end of the water is for the person being abused to have enough self-worth to know that they deserve better; that there is better waiting for them.  When they start to ask for resources, provide them, but still give them time.  That first swim towards the beach takes a lot of courage and strength.

Joe and I had a week of getting to know each other and start our relationship before he returned to his army base. It was a fun week of long conversations, movies, and lots of laughter. It was a week of wading in the water and basking in the newly found sunshine. I was smitten. As the next cloud rolled in, I was not at all worried. I enjoyed it. It was one of those clouds that you look up at and try to see a shape in it, watch it form and move peacefully through the sky. It wasn’t until this last year, after seeing a similar cloud form in a different relationship,  that I could see the form that it would actually take.

This next piece can be seen as part of the human existence. We all have a story and most of us have one that is littered with tragedy and pain. In getting to know Joe, he told me about his past. He had an unhealthy relationship with his parents, volatile relationship with his only brother and never really was accepted or “heard” by anyone. In me he was finding someone that was accepting and that he could trust.  He could tell that I would be different. I would be the one to make him happy. In having a difficult personal history myself, I had evolved into a person that was a care taker. I never wanted anyone to feel lost or unloved. Emotionally, this had put me at a handicap. I felt like I could be the one to redeem his life for him. What felt like a buoy, holding me above the water, would actually become an anchor. Dragging me deeper and keeping me in the water.

Is this part of abuse? No. Not at all. It’s looking for that person that you can relate to to help you on your journey. Where it became an issue is when I put it on myself that I could not let him down. I became responsible for his emotions and well being. I saw no problem in that at the time. Even two years ago as I started a new relationship with the same cloud, I missed my own fault in it.  Once this cycle started, Joe would put little guilt trips in here and there to let me know I was failing him.  Whether it be that I wasn’t available for a call or that I wasn’t writing him letters everyday, I wasn’t doing enough. He would question if I would end up being like everyone else. The broken part of my heart had no intention of hurting him or making him feel pain.  That led me to try harder. I made myself available at almost every whim. I was entrenched in proving my worth and proving to him that he was lovable. In trying to help him, I started to lose myself. My own desires and opinions became secondary to his and how he was feeling.

This entire mindset is unhealthy.  After going through it a second time, I finally realize that each person has to be responsible for their own happiness. Someone can add to it, but no one person can be an overall fix. No one has that kind of power nor should have that kind of responsibility.  In every survivor that I’ve discussed this with, there is a similar dynamic. Generally an abuser will find a care giver and latch onto that energy and compassion. This completely encompasses the survivor in taking care of them and ‘fixing’ past hurts.  It could be family, relationships, addictions, or work.  The hook, line and sinker is not the problems, but the responsibility given to and taken by the survivor.  I don’t believe this to be a purposeful act of abuse, but rather a broken part that has a need and later manifests into abusive behaviors.

For me, the water was getting deeper.  I was blissfully unaware. I felt needed and wanted. I thought my fairytale was about to start. I forgot that, for most of my life, I had been scared of the deep water.

Before I continue to take you through my journey, it is important to note how imperative the gift of hindsight is in my being able to articulate what happened.  By themselves, the clouds that arose could be seen as harmless.  Wanting someone not to smoke is in itself harmless and a preference.  What makes it a warning cloud is the immediate flip from acceptance to demand.  Not only that, but also in the manner it was demanded instead of requested.  It was a power play.  That being said, even demanded could be seen as harmless and simply a strong opinion.  However, when you look at is as the first cloud at the start of a storm, it becomes more ominous.  In having the opportunity to talk with survivors and current victims alike, almost all can recall seemingly small instances such as this at the start of their journey.  Abusers rarely start you in the deep water. If they did, many more would leave earlier. To ensure that you stay, they have to ease you in, with little tests along the way to see how compliant you will be.  They need to tear you down mentally and emotionally to make you depend on them.  I was someone that said I would never be in a relationship like that.  As strong willed as I am, the shock was all the more for those closest to me when I finally admitted how I had been living.  It was when I was sitting in my lawyer’s office as a shell of a human, waterlogged and gasping for breath, that I was able to start the process of looking back.  Even I was bewildered as to how I ended up there.  I was not yet out of the undertow, but I was closer to the edge of it.  The more I processed and worked through what had happened, the more I could see the beach.  It was impossibly far away, but I was catching glimpses of it.  I reached a place that I no longer had interest in the deep water.  I was heading to that beach. My processing and desperation to survive for my children and myself  became my life vest.