Being in a relationship should enrich our lives, but sadly so many of our romantic relationships are unhealthy or toxic. Poor relationship education means we often don't know what's right and wrong, or where our personal boundaries should lie. If you don't know the signs of emotional abuse, how will you know when you are experiencing it? Here, women who were being emotionally manipulated by partners explain how they realized.
1. "I was asking a couple of friends for advice about an issue in the relationship and they were both in shock when I explained the situation and some of the things that led to it. They helped me realize just how much the guy had warped my thinking for me to even entertain that he was in the right, let alone almost believe it." [via]
2. "When people close to him told him in front of me that he needed to treat me better." [via]
3. "I was having a lot of issues trusting people. They wouldn't even need to do anything to make me distrust them necessarily, I was constantly paranoid about getting hurt or lied to." [via]
4. "Going to therapy because I was sad and anxious all the time. Eventually my therapist pointed out that even the mention of my then-boyfriend seemed to really upset me and encouraged me think about why that was." [via]
5. "Whenever he was upset, it was a big problem we had to fix immediately. Whenever I was upset, we had to immediately understand why I was wrong to be upset." [via]
6. "I never realized until someone else told me. It's amazing what you'll put up with when you don't know your own worth." [via]
7. "Hindsight. It's a lot harder to see when you're in the middle of it, but looking back I notice how toxic his behavior was and how much I forgave what I shouldn't have." [via]
