Emotional abuse is NOT your fault. An abuser will always say: “If You hadn’t done X, I wouldn’t have behaved badly.”Unless you’re trying to have an intimate relationship with a – chronological toddler – that excuse doesn’t hold water. If he’s out of diapers, and he’s old enough to get himself into a relationship with you, he’s old enough to take responsibility for his actions.

 An emotionally abusive relationship is never going to get any better. Just because you fondly hope that one day he’ll turn into Prince Charming doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. When you met him, he was a nasty person on his best behavior. These days, he doesn’t feel the need to be on half-way good behavior around you any more. What you see is what he is. End of. 

He’s a skilled bad-mouther. When he says vile things about you, it may sound as if he totally believes them. For all I know, or care, he may well believe them at the time, BUT… The fact is, the vile things he comes out with are NOT true. They are simply the outpourings of a spiteful, vindictive mind. 

An emotionally abusive husband doesn’t behave badly because he had a ‘difficult childhood’. He behaves badly because he behaves badly. What’s more, he’s found that bad behavior works very nicely for him, thank you. His bad behavior keeps you in what he sees as ‘your place’. 

An emotionally abusive partner is a liar, and a crazy-maker. What’s more he lies and subverts your sense of reality quite deliberately. It’s in his interests to tell you that he ‘tells it like it is’. The truth is he will twist and distort anything and everything, with a view to keeping you isolated, humiliated, and dependent on him. 

An emotionally abusive partner isn’t interested in a happy,loving, relationship of equals. He may say that he is, but we already know that he speaks with ‘forked tongue’, What he loves is having power and control over you. That’s incompatible with equality. 

An emotionally abusive man will always tell you that you’re very lucky to have him, because he’s wonderful, and you’re not. He speaks with’forked tongue’, remember? He’s about as wonderful as gastro-enteritis is. That doesn’t mean he can’t find another partner. There’s always going to be another poor, haive, desperate woman out there who is desperate for a reationship. That doesn’t make him wonderful. It simply makes him a predator. 

There’s no point in wasting your time and energy wondering whether you’ll regret leaving him, and making the biggest mistake of your life. You won’t. Just as you’ll never hear anyone say: “I wish I still had gastro-enteritis”, or “I wish I still had ME”, nobody ever regrets leaving their emotionally abusive partner, once they have discovered how sweet Life is without him. 

An emotionally abusive partner’s predictions about what a life without him would look like are wrong, and self-serving. It’s that forked tongue thing again. He’s not going to tell you that life without him can only be a whole lot better than life with him. He probably isn’t in a rush to lose his cook/housekeeper/nanny/scapegoat-in-chief/social secretary etc. Besides, your departure could mean he loses out financially. An emotionally abusive partner is far more protective of ‘his’ money than he ever has been of you.