Emotional Intelligence | Main page on emotional abuse

 

Emotional Abuse, Parents, Teenagers, Partners

 

Here is a copy of a list of questions about emotionally abusive partners. If you are a teenager living in your parent's house, look at the questions and change them to "your mother" or "your father" and see how many apply.

The original questions are from http://www.lilaclane.com/relationships/emotional-abuse/ (I changed one question which was about sex to being about hugging or being touched, and edited number 9 to include "given away")

An abusive partner will railroad discussions, so that you don't have time to think about what's right and what's wrong in their behavior.

Take a moment to consider these questions.  Your partner might have behaved as though these things were okay, even though it's obvious that they aren't okay...:

1. Do you feel that you can't discuss with your partner what is bothering you?

2. Does your partner frequently criticize you, humiliate you, or undermine your self-esteem?

3. Does your partner ridicule you for expressing yourself?

4. Does your partner isolate you from friends, family or groups?

5. Does your partner limit your access to work, money or material resources? 

6. Has your partner ever stolen from you?  Or run up debts for you to handle? 

7. Does your relationship swing back and forth between a lot of emotional distance and being very close? 

8. Have you ever felt obligated to let your partner hug you or touch you, just to avoid an argument about it?

9. Do you sometimes feel trapped in the relationship?

10. Has your partner ever thrown away (or given away) your belongings, destroyed objects or threatened pets?

11. Are you afraid of your partner?

 

It is much more common in today's society to talk about abusive partners than abusive parents. But parents will "train" a teenager to accept abuse since a teenager really is trapped in most cases. The abuse has to be extreme and usually has to include substantial and repeated physical abuse, or proven sexual abuse, for the teenager to be able to get legal help in getting away from the abusive parents. As a one teenager said, people will say "How could she be so stupid?" when a girl stays with an abusive boyfriend, but most teenagers have no choice whether or not to stay with their abusive parents.

S. Hein
January 26, 2008