Are you in a relationship and not feeling happy? Or maybe you find yourself in constant anxiety being related to your partner and relationship? Do you constantly try to please your partner but somehow it does not seem like you are doing a good job?
Here are some examples of different kinds of abuse:
Verbal abuse. This includes belittling, bullying, accusing, blaming, shaming, demanding, ordering, threatening, criticizing, and putting you down. Note that you want to consider the behavior's context, malice, and frequency before labeling it narcissistic abuse.
Manipulation. Generally, manipulation is an indirect influence on someone to behave in a way that furthers the goals of the manipulator. Often, it expresses covert aggression. The best example of that is if they try to make you feel ok with what they are doing even though they will not be ok if it was you that is doing the same.
Emotional blackmail. Emotional blackmail may include threats, anger, warnings, intimidation, or punishment. It’s a form of manipulation that provokes doubt in you. You feel fear, obligation, and or guilt. They might ignore you, not look at you when you try to talk to them, and overall do what they can in order to make you feel alone.
Gaslighting. Intentionally making you distrust your perceptions of reality or believe that you’re mentally incompetent. Calling you crazy over and over, saying you imagine things that are not happening, and denying what they said.
Negative contrasting. Unnecessarily making comparisons to negatively contrast you with the narcissist or other people.
Lying. Persistent deception to avoid responsibility or to achieve the narcissist’s own ends.
Withholding. Withholding such things as money, sex, communication, or affection from you.
Financial abuse. Financial abuse might include controlling you through economic domination or draining your finances through extortion. They might put you down claiming you are not making enough money so you are not allowed to spend money. Requiring you to ask them for permission to spend money.
Isolation. Isolating you from friends, family, or access to outside services and support through control, manipulation, verbal abuse, character assassination, or other means of abuse.
Narcissism and the severity of abuse exist on a continuum. It may range from ignoring your feelings to violent aggression. Typically, narcissists can ask for another chance or forgiveness many times but they do not take responsibility for their behavior and shift the blame to you or others.
It is definitely not easy to realize that you are in an abusive relationship. We do not want to believe that our partner, the most important person in our lives, might be a narcissist, a very big word, I agree. Yet, it is important to recognize such behavior early on and address that.
Narcissists base your character on the way you react to their abuse. If you fight back then you are abusive. If you do what they did to you, you are vindictive. If you show them the way they have been treating you, then you are petty and childish. The only reaction a narcissist wants is blind acceptance. They could say and do whatever they want, and you have to let them without any opposition. If you do not react the way they want, then you are the cause of their behavior.
In an abusive relationship, you often find yourself afraid to talk about the things that bother you because you know they will blame you for creating a fight or for being the one who is always looking for things to fight about.
One of the most important keys to a healthy relationship is the ability to express your needs, fears, and the things that make you feel uncomfortable. Open communication will create a level of intimacy that is required in a long-term, healthy relationship.