Is Your Partner Emotionally Abusive?

Just because you aren't getting smacked around doesn't mean you aren't suffering. In fact, verbal abuse and emotional abuse in relationships is on the rise, and the psychological damage it inflicts can be crippling. To escape this insidious torment, you have to be able to spot the symptoms

Peter Yang
The Escalating Problem
It's hard to get a handle on how many women are victims of emotional abuse. (And it's worth pointing out that women can also be perpetrators. See "Are You Abusive?" on page 120.) It's included in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's statistics on intimate partner violence, which costs the U.S. almost $9.7 billion in medical care, mental health services, and lost productivity each year.

"Just about everyone knows someone who's experienced it," says Steven Stosny, Ph.D., author of Love Without Hurt: Turn Your Resentful, Angry, or Emotionally Abusive Relationship into a Compassionate, Loving One. Several studies have found that up to 35 percent of women have been in romantic relationships that were emotionally abusive, and that such abuse was the greatest risk factor for and predictor of physical abuse. One study also found that emotionally abusive partners were more likely to commit murder or murder-suicide, and their victims were more likely to be suicidal.

Worst of all, the feelings that can lead to emotional abuse are on the rise. As Stosny explains it, many people these days think they're entitled to feel happy, and when they don't, they believe their rights have been violated. This violation makes them angry and hostile. An emotionally abusive person, caught up in this cycle of resentment and powerlessness, feels like he's not being treated fairly or getting enough attention, support, and obedience. He then feels justified in punishing the person closest to him: his partner.

Blindsided by Love
When a woman finds herself involved in an emotionally abusive relationship, she is often as surprised as her friends and family are, says counselor Kelly McDaniel, author of Ready to Heal. "I repeatedly hear women say, 'The relationship didn't start out that way' or 'Most of the time, things seemed really good,' " she says. "Repetitive emotional abuse has an almost numbing effect. It becomes normal."

And it can happen quickly. Karla Hanauer of Atlanta was in an emotionally abusive relationship from ages 19 to 21. Her boyfriend was eight years older than she was, and within their first month of dating, he had talked her into sleeping with him even though she hadn't intended to have sex with anyone until marriage.

In retrospect, she thinks he was trying to claim her through sex. And once he did, he gave her a ring with his name on it. After that, he accused her of betrayal every time she spent time with anyone else, including her own mother, flying into rages when she talked with other men. Soon, "normal" for Hanauer meant isolation from friends and family, because this was easier than dealing with his harsh accusations. "He did a masterful job of separating me from my own life," she says.

The whole thing shocks her in retrospect. "I've always been a strong, tough, smart person, and one would think I'd have seen a mental case like this coming from a mile away," she says. "I was the valedictorian of my high school class, and I was on the fast track at the university. I didn't drink or do drugs or any of those things you associate with falling in love with an emotionally abusive person."

But after a while, she says, "It was like I wasn't even me anymore."

Women who are being emotionally abused often feel trapped, and they change how they behave, speak, dress, socialize, and even work in an effort to dodge the hurtful language and behavior. As a result, they gradually lose their identities.

Teresa Haward, 30, had a boyfriend who would accuse her of being promiscuous for having dated other men. He'd take food away from her and tell her he wanted her to be as skinny as his ex. He questioned her love constantly, and even called her "that"—as in, "My mother didn't raise me to be with 'that.' "When any family members or friends called her, he said they were stealing time from him, even though he and Haward were living together

Ultimately, she quit her job as a reporter because he didn't want her to work (he thought her job took up too much of her time) and became even more trapped in his tempestuous cave. Her friends hated to see it happen and stopped coming around, as did her brothers, who lived nearby. And she was too embarrassed to tell her parents what had become of her.

"I went from being happy to being incredibly depressed," she says. "I would wake up in the morning and just cry. I felt like I was such a failure and maybe everything he said to me was true. My self-esteem was the size of a pinhead."


Issue date: March 2010

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