Have you ever experienced like you are walking on eggshells around your partner? Do you find yourself being tuned to their facial expressions and body posture to suss out their mood? Are you on high alert when they are in foul mood, frantically trying to elevated it to avoid conflict?
Being preoccupied with your partner's happiness, with their preferences, desires, achievements and dreams, is a major red flag. It means there is little space in your relationship for yours. It also means you are asked to serve your partner more than they serve you because they have managed to convince you that their aspirations are far more important. In the process of them changing how you see themselves, yourself, and your relationship with them, your view got distorted. Accommodating their life goals and hobbies became your main focus by being forced to accept their version of reality as the ONLY truth.
When disagreeing with your partner fills you with fear of triggering their wrath or disgust, you are living the anxious truth of an unsafe relating with them holding the power to veto important aspects of your life together.
Due to patriarchy, women are socialised to be agreeable, empathetic, and loyal to a fault. Discouraged from making waves to stand up for themselves, they end up being controlled by powerful men. Years of covert abuse and brainwashing goes unnoticed by these women, their friends and family members, unrecognised by law enforcement. They are invalidated by professionals at every step of the way and failed by the system.
If you feel afraid of what your man would do should you go with your own preferences, you won't dare to think what would happen if you were to leave him.
Many women are stuck in relationships where they are made to feel wrong on daily basis, unable to see how wrongly treated they are by men who proclaim to love and care for them. These women are made to feel afraid most of the time around these men who swore to keep them safe. They feel like they cannot do things right, afraid to make a simple decision, let alone one that would impact the family life in a major way. In the name of culture or religion, they are denied their basic human rights for freedom and safety. Being told they wouldn't survive without a powerful man, they believe they wouldn't have much freedom outside the relationship anyway.
These women have been brainwashed into believing they not only deserve their partner's wrath, but also that they would be worse off if they were to leave. As unpredictable as their men can be, what confuses them are the good times filled with love and laughter.
Particularly the morning after an ugly fight, or few days after being totally ignored, or whenever he feels bored and tired of making you suffer. (It isn't fun for a cat to play with a dead mouse, you know?) Suddenly things are swept under the rug and life resumes with smiles like nothing ever happened. Leaving you confused, with a terrible emotional hangover and lingering resentment you are forced to squash in order to (once again) accommodate his happiness. After all, you ought to be grateful his happy version has returned with jokes rolling. Becoming the butt of his jokes doesn't concern you. You had to grow a thick skin and him tearing you down that way is something you can deal with. If he behaved truly appalingly, if push comes to shove you may get a brief "sorry" with a "but..." as a justification for his abuse. Being so skilled in explaining away HIS suffering, and how your are being unreasonable to expect anything else but how he dealt with it, can make you feel even worse for being wrong about him...
In your eyes he is always right somehow no matter how wrong he makes you feel.
Living in fear of being wrong or making a mistake is a sign of being manipulated into thinking that your beloved and saviour must be RIGHT. Right about all the rules you must follow to a T to avoid triggering their contempt which gives them the right to treat you the way they please.
Right about you being the 'useless, careless, selfish, unwilling, difficult' partner who dares to make mistakes or disobey their dutiful master.
Right about you deserving to be punished with their disgusting looks, total ignorance, purposeful silence and the withdrawal of love and support.
Right about you being undeserving of their dignity and respect for how you serve them daily.
Right about you deserving to be abandoned for all those times you stood by their side through difficulties.
Right to punish your children or pets to make you pay even harder if you haven't yet got how powerful they are.
The inequality of power you are experiencing in a covertly controlling relationship is created, undercover, by manipulation of your perception of yourself by him being frequently critical of you.
Over time through the number of fights (he predictably instigates), you are made to invest into and live by the perpetrator’s preferences, as they become the 'rules' of your household. Experiencing abuse every time a new rule pops up, you learn the hard way not to push back. With the increased frequency and severity of abuse you are conditioned to anticipate potential conflict because you learned how badly it ends for you.
His stern looks, head shakes, frowns, widened nostrils and raised eye brows may mean hours of arguing ahead. It could mean you are unable to sleep and function for days. Because of your highly empathic, protective nature upsetting your kids in the crossfire of his volatile emotions is unthinkable. Living in a permanent state of survival you try to avert confrontation at all costs, eventually becoming the agreeable puppet on his strings...
The pedantry and nit picking has no end.
Because we are made to feel so WRONG for not doing things quite 'right', we are afraid to invest our trust (we feel deeply in our bones) into seeing there is something very wrong with them. Being blamed for everything serves to divert our attention to our 'shortcomings', in their attempt for us to miss theirs.
Being made to feel so wrong all the time makes being wrong about them unthinkable.
We have invested so much of our trust into who they are being whilst in good mood, that there is none left to believe when their mask slips. Even though the good times are way less predictable (and frequent!) than the bad ones, as the relationship progresses we still find it hard to believe when they are showing us the truth.
I am sorry to break it to you, but it is highly likely you have been betrayed and decieved into thinking he, or she, can change and has your back. You may be living in hope that what you see during conflict with him is an out of character sight triggered by the 'bad you'. It took me years to learn the 'fun him' was the out of character persona who lived purely for the excitement: For the sex, the parties and trips away, the shopping for rewards which were meant to convince me how much he loves me (but were designed to keep me hooked on poison). The thrill of convincing me I am to blame for the fights (HE instigated by being perpetually critical of me). It was so hard to wrap my head around it all as his betrayals of me had no end.
If reading the above brings anger to the surface because of your own realisations, please find a safe space to allow for its emergence. It is your truth coming to light you had to suffocate within you to allow them space to trash your boundaries. Things will keep sinking in and you WILL, eventually, see them very clearly. It took me a decade of post-separation and lots of journalling so please cut yourself some slack and keep your truth to yourself! Your partner isn't a safe space for you for many reasons. He, or she, is a profoundly damaged individual with psyche incapable of integrating authenticity.
Abusers are unwilling to see the truth because it would cause their reality to disintegrate, leaving them with much less appealing version of themselves.
No amount of logic, solid proof, or other people's expertise will change abuser's mind, unless it can be utilised for further manipulation. Unable to stop rulling, they know when to stop with domination and start to lead with their victim in order to exploit your empathy. Just how often are they remorseful, swearing things will change? Looking out for themselves, they know how showing exactly what you want to see will work like a treat. Their mind is literally unable to comprehend reality as is: That they are abusing you. That they are only looking out for themselves. That they are an unsafe partner who doesn't belong to any relationship due to their destructive propensity. If you can, move on without wasting more of your precious time on hoping you can be (one day) happy with them. They are eternally miserable people looking for an excuse to discharge their displeasure with life onto others any way possible. Believe what you see! Once you get that they are incapable of changing, unable of being happy and looking after themselves emotionally, mentally, practically and financially (which is why you do it so well!), you will get that they can never love you, or your children, the way you absolutely deserve to be loved.
Learn more in depth about how you may have been manipulated and if you are being coercively controlled. Most importantly, learn your basic rights from my free resource in order to protect youself and your children.
Thank you for reading. If my article contributed to understanding yourself, please be generous and share it with others.
Copyright © 2025 Michaela Patel
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