Have you experienced ongoing uncertainty in your relationship? Has your partner ever threatened you with dire consequences to your sense of wellbeing? Perhaps the amount of upset you are experiencing, alongside all the lovely memories, makes you question everything?
If you have ever found yourself pondering questions like these, bravo! You are turning the spotlight onto your authentic experiences, rightly questioning the inconsistencies of your reality lived side by side someone who isn't who they say they are. If you are repeatedly questioning your partners intentions, it is for a (good) reason, I can assure you of that. Oftentimes, when we are looking for answers, it is because questions have been left unanswered. And it isn't always down to our attachment style, or us lacking in communication skills and confidence...
Toxic relationships are like the fire: They can be mesmerising and incredibly cosy at the start, but being drawn too far in for too long can badly burn you. Enduring pain over months, or years, can warp your identity and values beyond recognition, leaving your former self in ashes.
The trademark of toxicity is inconsistency. Toxic people look very attractive one minute, only to shock you with ugliness that comes out of their mouth the next. They are the masters at confusing you by saying one thing and delivering another. Be it a compliment or a threat, one isn't quite clear on where they are standing because of the blurred lines between affection and punishment. A toxic partner has a knack for loving you and hating you in one breath.
Because of the ongoing uncertainty of what tomorrow brings, being in a love-hate relationships feels nauseating. You can never settle your nerves due to the ongoing confusion, leading to your anxiety, and later on depression. Practically, on the outside and to the untrained eye, you function brilliantly. But on the inside you are stuck in melancholy. You may be married for years, with your outer and inner experiences divorced. You feel frustrated and confused, thinking 'Is that all there is to life? Is this how is marriage supposed to look/feel like? Is this how love truly feels?'
Manipulators love to keep you on your toes. Nothing is ever straightforward. Do you know why? To prevent you from working them out and keep the spotlight on you: Your mistakes, your shortcomings, your struggles.
If you have ever been manipulated behind your back you will be driven to finding answers. You will thrive on having clarity, because confusion triggers your past traumatic memories of being deceived by someone you trusted with your life. I am still making sense of my own past, with years passing since I left my abuser. He was particularly smooth in blurring the lines between love and pain, between where I ended and he started, and between what's right and wrong. Interactions with him always felt like I was doomed to lose either way. If I went along with what he wanted it was my fault, and if I put up a resistance there was something wrong with me for not participating.
How do abusers blur the lines?
They mix love with pain physically by rough handling you.
This can be either during play fights, with seemingly affectionate slapping, or pinching/prodding various parts of your body till they provoke a natural, self-protective reaction in you. They will (knowingly!) cause you pain under the disguise of 'having fun together', only to condemn you in the end. When you engage in returning the 'favour' things quickly escalate: If they seriously hurt you it’s your fault for participating. If you disengage they will burn you with contemptual looks, saying stuff like 'God, you are so boring! I guess I will have to find fun somewhere else...'. They will use implied threats to insinuate that your emotions aren't worth their concern and that your views are unworthy of their time.
Abusers like to bait their victims into reacting to their abuse. It is how they draw the victim into a conflict. Her totally natural emotional or physical reaction is then used as a proof of her badness, or as a clear sign of her abusiveness towards him. Particularly cunning and devious abusers love to torture their victims emotionally, without ever laying their finger on them physically, to provoke escalation to the point of the victim entirely losing control and physically attacking the abuser in self-defence. Some abusers may use passionate 'reconciliation' as fast track to regaining power by forcing her to be vulnerable with him - it is blurring the lines between love and pain at its finest.
They get mad one day, for you to find them quite content the next without a clear explanation.
Keen to instigate a fight at any time of the day, after some time they act like nothing happened, or happilly joke about it. You may even get an apology of little meaning you know all too well. Seeing them switch, you get the message not to burden them with yesterday's drama, which forces you to 'forget about it and move on'. Besides being relieved things returned to being well, not having a closure is bound get you trapped in ruminating. By mulling over what happened, your propensity for self-reflection (a quality you have been particularly sourced for and rigorously tested) becomes the self-gaslighting voice excusing their behaviour and condemning yours. Subconsciously fearing issues returning makes you live in a permanent state of survival, tiptoeing around and fussing about your abusers likes. Their unpredicatability, emotional incongruency and volatility, makes you naturally afraid, hence less likely to bring up your current and future grievances. You quickly learn you can never predict how things will go. He has a real talent for making you feel wrong so that he can be right. With the number of arguments you grow to think there is something the matter with you, that you are deficient [read unloveable], therefore lucky to have him. Your inability to oppose your abuser for fear of things getting out of hand is how he, in time, gains more power and how you lose it.
A relationship with an abuser is defined by inequality of power, which is stolen from you with the growing number of incongruences and confusing incidents. Confusion itself creates a thick fog which obscures the picture of who you are truly dealing with. The unpredictable, double sided persona serves also as a tool to remind you that he can be nice sometimes if you are 'nice enough' to him. Which completely detracts from the idea that he is, indeed, bad to you and that there is something (very) wrong with him.
They are incessantly critical of you, while entrusting you with running everything from behind the scenes.
Being put in charge of running things for the abuser may feel to you like a privilege. It, however comes with a heavy price tag of sacrificing your aspirations and dreams. Being in charge of the practicallities of your family life so efficiently also provides you with an illusion of power, which is then entirely removed behind closed doors. Although you are encouraged to be independent and graceful on your outing, at home the abuser demands your total devotion and obedience. They despise others having spontaneous fun. Being the very jealous creatures, they source optimistic, positive, generally happy partners. Unlike their victims, toxic partners need people who can balance them out and fill their cup, who can soothe them emotionally and bring stability into the havoc they keep creating. They are quite happy for you to shine your light onto them, to warm them up with your love, but your generosity is not to be vasted on others. Loving your children will make them feel unattended to and small. Their perceived smallness is then, in their narrow mind, a very valid reason to belittle you, to demean you, or to mock you, in order to get you back where you belong: To serve THEM.
You are probably very familiar with the saying 'Behind every successful man is a successful woman'.
Abusive partners tend to be high earners. They thrive on their ego being fed daily, overseeing their perceived advantages. But when life isn't exciting enough, or (God forbid) things go wrong at work, guess who will take the brunt of it behind closed doors? After all, you are kept not only as their priced posession or a free work force, but also as their emotional punch bag. Why would they otherwise invest in you at all if they couldn't use you? They own you with everything they have ever bought you, so you owe them big time! Your resources are only to be poured into making their dreams come true, giving you the message that your ideas don't matter. Unless, of course, it is to also benefit them. You can be outspoken only to protect your family and their image. Just don't ever dare to expose them for the mean, petty, tight, grudging, and spiteful folk they are. It is a secret only you and your children are privi to. You may be running everything with honours, but an abuser will make sure you feel like a disgrace to never lose all that you've brought into the relationship. Particularly your unwavering loyalty to never question their intentions...
There is so much incongruence and disharmony in relationships with abusive, controlling partner, the word mindf@ck cannot cut it as their betrayals have no end.
Although, constantly living on the edge can feel exciting on the surface, it will reliably hollow you out on the inside. After all, you are only their supply. When you are consistendly gaslit, when your boudaries get constanty squashed, you can shrink into nothingness and end up thinking it is all your fault. Shady partners will consistently blend the reality into the shade of their choosing for you to never see things as they are. To discern the truth you must learn your basic rights. May these be your guiding lights on a foggy runway for you to land home safely the day you decide to leave.
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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