Emotionally abused women everywhere know what it feels like to be Trinny Woodall, weeping behind her sunglasses, as she sits outside a restaurant with the man she is allegedly ‘hopelessly’ in love with: Charles Saatchi.

Yes,this week, the UK’s poster boy for emotional abuse has been at it again: Charles Saatchi, has been sitting at the same table of the same restaurant, having the same kind of angry, tearful argument with another female companion as he did with Nigella Lawson.

Only the companion has changed.

You probably wouldn’t think he’d be stupid and/or arrogant enough do the same thing again, in the same public place.

And you’d misunderstand the workings of the emotionally abusive mind.

Currently, it is Trinny he is making miserable. Trinny Of What Not To Wear who is giving women everywhere a lesson in Who Not to Date, and How Not to Date.

Trinny, bless her, is living proof that even being of mature years, rich, famous, high profile, attractive, thin, and impeccably dressed is no defence against emotional abuse. Apparently she has told friends that she and Charles Saatchi are “hopelessly in love”.  I could hardly think of a better adjective if I tried.

Hopelessly sums it up perfectly.

Their relationship is, predictably, going nowhere good. That doesn’t mean they won’t spend a number of years yet together. It doesn’t mean they won’t marry. These things may well happen.

All emotionally abusive relationships drag on for longer than they should.  The duration of an emotionally abusive relationship has no bearing on its quality.

It’s just a question of how much hurt and humiliation Trinny is up for, and how much Poster Boy Saatchi is willing to dish out.

Interestingly, Saatchi has spoken relatively honestly about himself in Eton College’s Junior Chronicle magazine, acknowledging that he is a Narcissist who women, eventually, walk away from.

Is he a true, clinical Narcissist?

Actually, that’s not important.

We know from information in the public domain that he is self-obsessed, arrogant, self-aggrandizing, quick to anger, and self-pitying.

In other words, the textbook emotional abuser.

Anyone who, like me, has ever been in an emotionally abusive relationship will recognise him. We’ve all been in a toxic relationship with him.

You’re sitting in a public place, feeling hurt and humiliated, and you’re trying to hold on to your dignity by disguising your misery, trying not to let mascara tracks run right down your face . He may have that look of fury on his face, he may be raising his voice, and gesticulating angrily towards you, but if you just pretend it’s not really that bad, it won’t be…

Yeah, right.

It is that bad. And then some.

Being with someone who – at the very least – is unconcerned by your distress is seriously bad.

Being with someone who, like Charles Saatchi, seems to get a thrill out of humiliating you is very bad indeed.

Can a relationship go on from there?

Of course it can.

It can keep on going downhill.

‘Downhill’ is a very, very long way.

Saatchi’s interview contains some very interesting insights:

• He finds his own company ‘exhilarating’ .. but not when he is alone.
• He is the archetypal quick wooer – two dates in he usually proposes
• He finds it inconvenient when his wives eventually tire of him.
• He needs to have a relationship.

What can you say?

It would be nice if Trinny would wake up, and smell the … I’d like to say roses, but we’re talking excrement, here.  It would be even nicer if she would speak out on behalf of emotionally abused women everywhere.

It’s all too easy to imagine that emotional abuse only happens to stupid, spineless, no-hoper women whose lives are geographically far removed from ours.

The reality is that emotional abuse happens to vulnerable women everywhere. Regardless of their brain-power, looks, age, status, achievements, and finances.

It will continue to happen unless those of us who have been through it are prepared to stand up and get our message out there.