Verbal Abuse You Don't Fall For

 -If every/almost every time you make a smart decision for yourself, your very insecure boyfriend/girlfriend/just friend is upset, going on and on about you being selfish. Every time.

-You find that they’re carefully editing stories they tell about social interactions they’ve had when you weren’t around, playing underdog or hero in each one.



-If they tell you they think “you’re one of those girls who has no identity without" [a significant other] after years of deep discussions about each of your life goals and dreams and feminist views, there’s no denying that the other person is full of s—t.

-At one point it finally dawns on you that you’re an exception to how they treat their loved ones. You care about an individual who is more respectful of their friends [or in some situations, their other friends] than they are of you.

-You get the strong impression that if you truly were always yourself around them, they wouldn’t like it.

-One day you tell that person you’ve trusted that you met someone last night and you had such a good time, they seem like a potential new platonic pal, only to have that insecure counterpart react with a negative comment.

-You know you’re involved/friends with an oppressive person when they relentlessly attempt to change your outlook on life and your social goals. That abundance of potential in you is visible and, unfortunately, very intimidating to someone who needs a lot of therapy and/or other help to get past their obsessions over what a healthy or enviable life is.

-They repeatedly claim that you’re not capable of making certain decisions by yourself and they feel the need to make them for you.

-You might learn one day that they have imposed a condition on their relationship with you and have kept it a secret (whether or not it’s well-kept) simply because they know it’s a ridiculously unfair, self-serving rule, and once you have broken it, they take advantage of the excuse to accuse you of having been an arrogant, cold-hearted traitor all along. It is so far from easy, living that way. Trying in vain to outlive another person's insecurities and egocentric crap is sometimes too much work, mo grá. 

No matter what has happened, some of those abusers still have good character, they just...need a lot more life experience and a lot of therapy.

Anniversary time, me!