Emotional abuse is so slept on. Emotional abusers start a cycle of covert abuse and cover it up with constant invalidation, deflection and projection.

One day, they like you, the next hour, they hate you.

But they've always hated you.

I refuse to cycle, fuck that.

Breaking your trust through gossiping, lying, invading your privacy. Bullying and disrespect to break your self-esteem, often in front of others. Excessive judgement to the point where you feel like you're no longer safe to be yourself and like the things you like out of shame.

Emotional abuse often escalates in the form of arguments. Eventually, the victim of the abuse is pushed to emotionally reacting, which is what the abuser wants. Angry outbursts to intimidate and distress. Then invalidation and deflection and blame.

You're the problem.

"It was a joke."

"You're overreacting."

"You're too sensitive."

"This is why nobody likes you/will ever love you."

"You're crazy."

It adds insult to injury. It says a lot about a person that will do this to a person day in and day out.

The above examples also fall under gaslighting. These retorts will make you feel like you can't trust your judgement because they're lying and projecting onto you viciously. Gaslighting is cruel and it's a way to silence you so that they can abuse you more.

Emotional abuse de-escalates often without apologies which honestly starts the abuse again. Emotional abusers love pretending like they did and said nothing wrong and so the abuser starts acting nice again to gain your favor back.

This act is not an apology.

It's being fake.

In the case your emotional abuser does apologize, somewhere within that apology, there's some bullshit.

"I'm sorry if YOU feel like I hurt your feelings."

vs

"I'm apologizing because it was cruel what I did/said to you. I understand if you don't want to accept it."

Emotional abuse is more complex than what I covered here, but it is NOT limited to a romantic partner.

You can be emotionally abused by parents, other family, "friends," co-workers, ex lovers.

People know what they do.

Protect your energy and love yourself more.