Living with an emotionally abusive partner is a dangerous and damaging thing to do. Unfortunately, getting him out of your bed, isn’t enough to get his toxicity out of your system. Here are the Top 10 After-Effects most emotionally abused women are left with.

1. Endlessly rehashing your emotionally abusive relationship. Why? You lived it. You did the best you possibly could with a hopeless situation. You can spend as long as you like reviewing, re-interpreting, and letting your mind play tricks on you. It won’t do you any good. Your pain is as much proof as you’ll ever need that the situation was awful.
2. Trying to understand an emotionally abusive husband. You already do understand him. He’s a nasty, hurtful, controlling jerk of a man – at least where his intimate partner i.e. you are concerned. He can ‘do’ Nice, on occasion. But he is NOT nice. Would you waste your time trying to understand a feral cat? Where relationships are concerned, we’re talking feral man, here.
3. Worrying how people will judge you. Did you know that what you’re doing is, actually, thinking bad things about yourself, projecting them onto these Other People, and then feeling humiliated by what you think they think. Maybe some of them do think that. So what? You can’t control what goes on inside their skulls. Give me one good reason why you should care?
4. Feeling guilty. Don’t tell me, you’re feeling guilty because you couldn’t be the perfect wife and mother when he was playing Husband – and Father – from Hell. Only one person benefits from your guilt feelings: him. You love your children as much as you possibly can. You do the best you can for them in imperfect circumstances. Your guilt doesn’t help you – or them.
5. Constantly apologising.  An emotionally abusive partner teaches you to apologise for everything, to everyone – even inanimate objects: if you stub your toe, you’ll probably apologise to the piece of furniture.  Most things are not your fault.  The more you stick with the old habit of apologising, the less you make other people accountable for their short-comings.  Holding them accountable for what they do is a necessary, game-changing step forward; for you, and them.
6. You still feel the same kind of Chemistry for jerks. You may be attractive to – and attracted by – the same kind of jerk. Or you may focus on the opposite of Mr Toxic. Either way, you’re at risk of making bad choices. Because you’re not able to make informed choices.
7. Your happiness on the back burner. You’re not with him any longer which means your life is less awful. But you don’t believe you deserve happiness, or know how to do happiness. You still feel you should be punished.
8. You beat yourself up. Telling yourself you are worthless – or worth less – than other people, is NOT an acceptable way to live the rest of your life. Your life proper begins when you can embrace your own worth. That doesn’t mean feeling slightly less awful than you did before: it means really EXPERIENCING your own worth.
9. You live in a world of Lack. He’s taught you to have a vision of the world in which you never have enough love, money, skills, or appreciation. That’s a mind-set issue. Any emotionally abusive partner will do his best to make sure you remain financially and emotionally penniless for the rest of your life. When you ditch that mind-set, you’ll start to see – and seize – the opportunities for abundance in EVERY area of your life.
10. You feel unsafe. No surprise there. Your emotionally abusive husband programmed you to feel unsafe. Unsafe means paralysed. You can’t take action because you live in an unsafe world, therefore it must be safer to exist below the radar, mustn’t it? The trouble with doing nothing, and trying to keep safe by clinging to crumbs is that you’re letting good things pass you by unnoticed.