That’s one of the most important questions you can ask. And the fact that you’re asking it tells me something already – there’s enough pain in your relationship that you’re wondering if what’s happening to you has a name.
Let me be honest with you about how I think about this.
First, the hard truth. The word “abusive” gets used a lot right now, and I want to be careful with you here, not to minimize what you’re experiencing, but because I think precision actually serves you better than a label does.
There are behaviors that are definitively not okay. Full stop. No systemic framing, no “well, you both play a role” conversation applies here. I’m talking about physical violence, threats of violence, being blocked from leaving, being financially controlled so you can’t function independently, being coerced into things you don’t want to do. If any of that is happening to you, that is not a relationship dynamic we work on together in couples therapy. That is a safety situation, and you need individual support first, before anything else.
That’s the clearest line I can draw for you.
Now, here’s where it gets more complicated, and I want to sit with you in this complexity for a moment.
A lot of people come to me convinced their partner is emotionally abusive, and what I find when I really listen is two people who are both in tremendous pain, both reacting in ways that hurt each other, and neither one of them has any real awareness of how they’re contributing to the cycle. That’s not abuse. That’s what I’d call a deeply painful, stuck relationship pattern. Two nervous systems locked together, each one’s reaction making the other person’s fear worse.
Here’s one way to think about it. In a painful but workable relationship, both people are suffering. Both people, if you really got underneath their behavior, are scared. One person might look like the aggressor and one might look like the victim, but when you pull back the camera, you see two wounded people missing each other badly.
In a genuinely abusive dynamic, one person is not suffering the same way. One person feels, on some level, fine about what’s happening. It works for them. There’s no mutual wound underneath the behavior, there’s power and control. And crucially, there’s no real interest in examining their own role.
So here are the questions I’d want you to sit with:
Does your partner ever, even sometimes, acknowledge that they’ve hurt you? Do they show any genuine curiosity about your pain, or is your pain always your problem, your fault, your overreaction?
Is there any moment, even a small one, where you feel like you’re on the same team?
Or does it feel like no matter what you do, you are always the one who is wrong, always the one who is too much, always the one who needs to change?
The last one is the signal I’d pay the most attention to. Because in a stuck painful cycle, both people feel like the other one is the problem. But in an abusive dynamic, it’s remarkably one-directional. Your reality is constantly being rewritten for you.
I don’t want to hand you a diagnosis of your relationship without sitting with you properly. But I also don’t want to send you back in there without saying this clearly: if you feel unsafe, if you are being controlled, if your sense of reality is constantly being undermined, please talk to someone who can help you assess that with fresh eyes. Not to confirm a story, but to help you see what’s actually there.
You deserve to know what’s real.
Where Does Your Relationship Stand?
Which pattern is running your relationship?
Take the free three minute quiz and meet the creature behind the cycle you keep getting stuck in.
Take the free Empathi Wisdom Score assessment. In 5 minutes, get a personalized snapshot of your relationship patterns and what to do about them.
Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
Read more: Emotional Safety in Relationships: What It Means and How to Build It
Explore More Topics
Keep Reading
Every couple has a pattern they cannot see. Find yours.
In love, each of you is a Relentless or a Reluctant, which makes you one of three kinds of couple: Relentless and Reluctant, two Relentless, or two Reluctant. The free quiz reveals your creatures and the cycle they fall into together. About three minutes.
No signup needed to start.
The Relentless
The Reluctant
