I am kind of asking this question via proxy of my wife. This is a question my wife is trying to answer. She had a session with our therapist today, and she posed this question to her. I have read much here on NoFap... sometimes it is obvious and easy what emotional abuse looks like. Gaslighting and manipulating and making your SO feel like shit. I am sure that many of you can tell story after story about how you were emotionally abused over the years. One of the problems with this sort of question is you can always find another story where the emotional abuse was a lot worse. So what defines emotional abuse? My wife is really trying to figure this out. She talked about it over the weekend. It has been on her mind all week I believe. I think she scheduled today's ad hoc therapy session primarily to ask the therapist this question. My wife did not get a satisfactory answer. The one example my wife asked about: if I tried to initiate intimacy/sex and my wife rebuffed, I would be in a bad mood for a couple days--kind of crabby/pouty mood until we made love or whatever. My wife explicitly asked our therapist today if that was emotional abuse. The therapist told my wife, pretty directly I think, no it is not. Manipulative? Yes. But not emotional abuse. I think my wife is liking this therapist less and less everyday. This Sunday, and the full disclosure meeting, is going to be interesting. .. So what do you think emotional abuse is and is not?
I've used a website called Out of the Fog in getting clarity with people in my life who, I suspect, have personality disorders. To be clear, I'm pretty sure that my partner does not have an actual personality disorder. I've read that addicts can act a lot like the personality disordered if they are not in recovery because addiction kills empathy. This is a pretty comprehensive list of emotionally abusive behaviors: http://outofthefog.website/top-100-trait-blog/2015/11/4/emotional-abuse The big ones that I've dealt with in my husband's PA are: Dependency: Making me responsible for his bad feelings. Gaslighting: Making me doubt evidence I've seen of his addiction. Telling me that all men look at porn, and I was prudish for disapproving. Blaming my aversion to porn on my childhood sexual abuse. (This one really, really hurts.) Double-binds/no-win scenarios: When I would fulfill his sexual fantasies, he would enjoy it, but then be grumpy with me afterwards because he felt guilty or shameful.
I cant count the number of times I have been accused of being emotionally abusive. In fact, the number of times he has searched for emotional abuse (once I got ahold of his history) was alarming. I get that I can be manipulative. Not once have I had an admission from him about doing the same. Yet I am the abuser. yes yes and yes. I have been shunned for trying to openly talk to him about whatever he was hiding. I was made to feel crazy. And the Gaslighting. . . this is a newish term I am learning but growing up as a jehovah's witness this was also taught to him at such a young age that 99% of the time I dont he realizes hes doing it. I have had some private conversations with people recently in this group on this subject. Trying to figure out where I was wrong and where I can let go due to the addiction.
