By: Kai-Tierra Anderson
Dating in college is a new experience. You are allowed more freedom from your parents and as this can be grounds for a strong, mature relationship between you and your partner… this can also be breeding grounds for abuse within your relationship, if you are not aware of what that may encompass.
Here are 10 signs you are in an abusive relationship:
Humiliation
Verbal assaults
Physical violence
Controlling behavior
Unpredictable mood swings
Picking at faults
Alienating you from your friends and family
Placement of blame
Manipulation
Calculated outbreaks
First and foremost, abuse can happen at any stage in a relationship. You do not have to be dating someone for an extended amount of time for them to start abusive behaviors, and it can be hard to identify if you are in an abusive relationship or not. All abuse is not physical, it can be emotional or mental.
You often do not see abuse as such. Your partner could start humiliating you, making subtle comments in private and then slowly moving to humilating you in front of your peers. This form of abuse is used to make one party in the relationship feel submissive and/or controlled. Because the abuser gets angry quite easily you are quick to not want to upset them. Arguments happen in relationships, it is when your partner begins to degrade your looks, intelligence and self worth that it turns from an argument to verbal assaults. An obvious sign of abuse is physical. If your partner puts their hands on you in any way that is out of rage or to be purposely hurtful, that is physical abuse, and it is never excusable. Ever.
Abuse can also not be physical at all, it could be your partner trying to control you. The abuser wants you to be completely dependant on them, so that you don’t have a choice in anything in your life. If your partner has unpredictable mood swings, your night can go from pleasant to total rage in minutes. It is used as another control tactic on submissive partners, with the abuser knowing that they won’t be challenged. If your partner constantly points out your faults, or things you cannot control that is them breaking down your self-worth so that you do not have enough confidence to leave them, because you think no one else will want you with those faults, which is just not true.
If you partner begins to make it a big deal for you to hang out with your friends and family and you feel like you have to beg to see them, this is a sign. The abuser wants you to only have one person in your life, and that is them. Another sign could be the placement of blame. If everything is always your fault, every time, even when it is clear that the blame is not for you to carry, this could be a telling sign. If you feel like your partner is manipulative, that is an extreme sign. If they try to make you feel bad about anything you do or try and convince you to do things that you do not want to do in the first place, this is manipulative behavior and should be confronted. And the last sign would be calculated outbreaks. If your partner seems like they always have something that makes them extremely angry even if your day together is going great, this could very well be a planned control tactic.
Dating is fun, and should be. But if you are being abused in a relationship, even if it is not easy to spot in the beginning or is not physical, that does not mean it is not abuse. Go to your friends, family, and outside help if you need it. There are counselling services in Miege 112, go on espire to set up an appointment. Spires, know your worth.
Kai-Tierra Anderson is a Freshman at the University of Saint Mary studying Communications and Broadcast Journalism.
Information for this article was found on: https://reachoutrecovery.com/recovery-topics/abuse/10-signs-of-an-abusive-relationship/
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