You may be living with emotional bullying and not even know it. Bad things in life can treat us like the frog in the pan. If the water in the pan is heated at a slow rate, the frog doesn’t get it until it’s too late to jump out. Often physical, sexual, verbal and emotional abuse all like to live together in the same house. Find one, odds are you’ll find the others.
Domestic violence can be a trap: you keep thinking it will stop or it doesn’t happen all the time or your abuser has good excuses for the bad behavior. Then, a point comes when you have to admit it is a lifestyle of abuse and you are in it.
The human brain, due to its evolutionary history, has the capacity to function as prey or predator. Throughout the course of human development, we continue to perpetuate patterns of prey and predator. They regularly marry each other.
Marriage, which is fundamentally an emotional entity, often unites an emotional predator with an emotional prey. You’d think we would have evolved with our civilization to the point where we would do neither and simply function in marriage as adults taking good care of ourselves in the presence of our beloved.
Although we all can act as prey or predator, partners in an emotionally bullying relationship will specialize in being either a great predator or an expert prey. This sets up the perfect situation for emotional abuse (and at times, other forms of abuse) to flourish.
When I ask the question, “Do you live with emotional bullying?” the implied question is, “Are you living as an emotional prey?”
We have a tendency to focus on the bully as if he or she carries more responsibility for the damage than does the prey. But in a marriage between consenting adults, if the prey agrees to perpetuate participation in a relationship in which they are emotionally abused, they have a part in the emotional bullying. Again, you can get some help to stop your part in the emotional bullying drama. Get a counselor who understands this stuff and is not afraid of your bully.
The earmarks of an emotional bullying are dominance, manipulation and subjugation of one marital partner over the other.
One partner over-powers and the other one submits. The devices by which emotion
al bullying is done are almost infinite. Some of the predominant signs and tools of emotional abuse that the bully uses are:
- A focus entirely on the prey (or “you” if you are the prey)
- inability to admit their part in the conflict and abuse
- a perpetual attitude of “you are never-good-enough”
- refusal to validate you, the prey in any way
- regular criticism of you
- blaming you for all their problems and displeasure
- my-way-or-the-highway attitude, i.e. using distance or cold shoulders to manipulate and get their way with you
- a belief by the bully that he or she knows what’s best for you, the abused, but they have no ears for what you may have to say about them
Under the best of circumstances, couples in a relationship will occasionally bruise each other emotionally. That’s when healthy couples get out the repair kit, talk about it, say, “I sorry,” as needed, learn and heal, then move on. Not so with the emotional bully. The abusive patterns continue on a regular basis, over time and there is little concern about repair by the bully.
As the preyed upon partner, your part is to go along with all this and not rock the boat. Prey partners become experts at adapting and finding reasons to put up with the emotional abuse and even justify it.
Do You Live With An Emotional Bully? Key Sign: It’s All About Who Controls Who.
It is not necessary for you to use a long checklist of signs to decide if you live with an emotional bully. All you have to do is ask yourself 3 questions:
- Do I feel emotionally safe around this person?
- Am I free to come and go, act and express myself and do what is good for me without worry or fear of the response of my partner?”
- Do I walk on egg-shells around this person because he/she has convinced me that I am the one responsible for their mood and behavior?
Correction. There is one other thing to worry about. What are you going to do about your lifestyle as prey? If you wait for your bully partner to see it your way or heed your reasoning, you’re setting yourself up for more emotional abuse. Hopefully, you have not been bullied and belittled to the point where you have lost the ability to act on your own well being.
Your emotional bully partner is not the key to your deliverance out of the cycle of emotional violence. You are.
You will have to act without their approval, without their permission and on your own, at least within the context of the marriage. However, you’re not alone. My guess is once you admit to living as a prey you will have friends and family validate and support you.
The first thing to do is re-vision yourself as a person of worth who does not deserve to live in emotional deprivation and depletion. “You are smart. You are kind. You are important,” to quote my favorite line from the movie “The Help.”
Next, you can get a counselor to coach you out of this vicious cycle and show you how to restore yourself to healthy emotional living. You can read and learn about emotional bulling and how it affects families. You were not born to live in fear. Understand and recognize the powerful emotional forces at work in families and intimate relationships.
Call Paul W Anderson, PhD (913-522-6271) and get a more objective perspective on your situation. That can help you look at options and decide what to do to take better care of yourself
The emotional bully is just one one of the “Dirty Details of Domestic Violence.”
If the “you” in these matters happens to be the predator and by some miracle you’ve been able to get a glimpse of yourself in emotional bullying and you want to change that, get some help from counseling and knowledge.