How would you know if you were suffering emotional abuse? Although we don’t always realise it, one of the most common forms of abuse is emotional although a lot of people don’t realise until it’s almost too late that they’re being affected by this. Maybe this is because it builds up over time and the victim often becomes desensitised to it. Even if it’s not intentional, insults, threats, humiliation are all parts of abuse and are often used to control another person.

Another aspect of such abuse is that it’s often minimised and although most of us learnt in childhood that “sticks and stones my break my bones, but names will never hurt me”, this isn’t true. This abuse gets right to the core of another person and attacks their sense of self.

It may include a pattern of one or more of the following abuses: insults, criticisms, aggressive demands or expectations, threats, rejection, neglect, blame, emotional manipulation and control, isolation, punishment, terrorizing, ignoring, or teasing.

Harassment, physical and sexual abuse, and witnessing abuse of others are also forms of emotional abuse, as is coercion.

Emotional abuse can take place anywhere: at home, at school, in relationships, and in the workplace. Contrary to popular beliefs that bullies are only found in the school yard, many bullies also exist in the workplace and in the home. People who appear happy and shiny on the outside can be very different on the inside. First of all, there’s –

• The passive-aggressive colleague or partner – this is someone who passively expresses anger. This can be by repeatedly keeping you waiting or by constantly changing arrangements. The underlying message is that their life is more important than yours but there can also be a denial of feelings, back-handed compliments or sarcasm. If you live with someone like that, it’s easy to imagine that you’ve done something to upset your partner or colleague but, if questioned, they’ll say that they’re fine or “I’m not annoyed in any way”. You can spend many hours mulling this over, trying to work out what the other person is thinking or feeling. If a person can’t communicate in a straightforward way or uses sarcasm a lot, you                    might be dealing with someone who’s passive-aggressive.
• The critic – criticism isn’t the same as advice and when you feel judged, no matter what you say or do, it usually has a big impact on your personal or working life. Someone who’s very critical often criticises the person rather than their actions. Although they may not call you names, they often insult your values and opinions, making disparaging remarks about what you say and feel, often because they want to have some control. The person may criticise your every move – for instance, by saying “Why don’t you ever…..?” or “Are you really going to wear that….?”. Does this ring a bell?
•  The refuser – this is someone who refuses to communicate, engage in conversation or discuss feelings. They often refuse to admit that there’s a problem. This leads to negative feelings and it can seem as if there’s a barrier between you but it also often leads to you feeling guilt and maybe resentment. If the other person refuses to be honest and open with you, you may wonder why you’re in the relationship at all as it’s easy to become angry and frustrated.
•  The narcissist – this is the person who behaves as if they know everything, is best at everything and usually tells you just how good they are. You can never measure up to this person as they put themselves above others and often lack insight and empathy. They might turn this around to you, saying that you ‘overthink’ things but who can make that judgement about you? They can easily jeopardise special occasions which include any anniversary or special day for you and if they feel hurt or rejected, they are capable of destroying everything around them.

 So, how can you handle this sort of abuse? One helpful thing can be to step back from the situation and trust your instincts and feelings about people. This is very hard if the person behaving like this is your partner because you’ve built up a life with them. However, it’s easy to minimise emotional abuse and think that the other person will change. They won’t – you will have to be the one to change as they won’t see the need to do so.

If you feel that there’s a chance for the relationship/friendship, try writing down what you feel and what they’ve said and give them one last opportunity to address it. If they still refuse to accept that there’s a problem, it may be time to step away for good.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading this blog and that if you’re struggling to find happiness or have other issues that are difficult to cope with, that you will come to see that there is usually a way out if we can find the strength to follow a new path.

So just why do we hang onto difficult relationships?

Sometimes it seems as if we’re programmed keeps to desire love – for a lot of people, it’s almost as important to them as food and water. Is that why, even if we know that we’re with the wrong person, we blind ourselves to seeing that? Even when every part of us tells us that someone is wrong for us, we stay.

So why is that? What keeps us in a relationship, or friendship, even when it seems so difficult?

Maybe you’ve already experienced this with a prospective partner – you meet, you like each other, you meet for drinks or coffee, share a meal and before you know where you are, you’re a couple. You meet each other’s families, you know each other’s friends and to everyone else you seem like a perfect couple.

But underneath, it’s different – you don’t feel it’s at all perfect. They always have their phone with them but never reply to your texts, you make plans but they’re not followed through, you never know where they are and although they refer to you as their girl/boyfriend it doesn’t seem like that. They’re physical, you’re emotional; you like talking, they stay silent. If you challenge them, they say things like “well, I’m not really a texter. I prefer face-to-face conversations”. Although there’s nothing wrong with that, you can sense the dishonesty lurking there.

They only talk about themselves and aren’t interested in you most of the time…..and so it goes on with you always making the effort to be there for them but it rarely being reciprocated.

You tell yourself that you deserve better but do you really believe it? It takes courage to break off this sort of relationship that you may have become dependent upon in some ways and it may be that you’re not ready for that step yet. It could be one of the following as well:

• Change is difficult and means doing things differently. If you break up, it will mean not having someone special in your life; there will be no phone calls, no-one to wake up next to and no-one to share the rent. These things can seem very daunting.
• Most of us are quite emotional creatures – we’re complex and can often feel love and hate at the same time. This can happen when someone breaks your heart – you hate what they’ve done but you still love them and they will always have a special place in your heart.
• We hate the idea of failure – we don’t want to give up on something that seemed so important and want to stick it out so that we don’t have to say that the relationship failed. Somehow, that seems to indicate that we made a poor choice of partner/friend in the first place and that’s hard to face up to.
• Some people thrive on the drama of it – the yelling and screaming or the day-long sulking. There’s also something to complain about to friends – toxic relationships provide a lot to talk/complain about.
• We think that we can somehow fix it, or fix the other person, but in reality it’s hard to ‘rescue’ someone, especially if they don’t want to be rescued. In reality, it’s often easier to be with someone who isn’t quite so complicated and who wants a more equal relationship.

So, it seems that we stay for a lot of reasons that are difficult to understand but some of those reasons are bound up with our lack of self-esteem, not wanting to be alone or the desire to feel needed by someone.

If you feel that some of the reasons you put up with less than you really want, it’s time to look at your own feelings of self-worth and discover how you can feel better about yourself. Once you’ve achieved that, you’ll be able to look at your relationship in a different light and judge whether you get enough out of it to stay.

Remember – “Relationships are like glass. Sometimes it’s better to leave them broken than hurt yourself trying to put it back together”. Anon.

How hard is it to find a new partner, especially if you’ve just come out of a long-term relationship?

If this is what you want (and maybe you don’t at the moment, having decided that it’s fine to be on your own for a while), then you’ll soon notice that things have changed. A lot!

First of all, you need to decide what sort of person you’re looking for. Create a list and be honest. If you don’t want to get together with someone who has children of their own, admit it to yourself from the start. However, if you’re over thirty-five, this will severely decrease the number of people who will come into your sphere.

That brings me onto the need to be flexible which is in contradiction to the previous point but I want you to think about it. If you can be flexible in this and other ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’, you may find that your life opens up no end. If you hate camping, it’s probably better to say so straight away but if caravanning doesn’t produce an anxiety attack, maybe there’s a compromise. The same goes for music and other interests.

You have a choice now whether to register online with a free dating site, pay for a more specialised service or hope that you’ll meet someone through your work or friends. Money will play a big part in this – if you can’t afford a monthly online site, you’ll need to choose one of the other ways. How did people meet one another years ago before computers and the internet? Usually at work or through friends/mutual interests. It worked then and sometimes it still works now.

If you go with the dating online site, you need to become quite savvy – it’s no use being really modest by putting things like “I’m just not used to this and not very good at it” – it’s putting yourself down and sounds really insecure.

However, boasting isn’t very attractive either – “I’m have a high-flying job and a Porsche” sounds pretty arrogant but confidence is fine so you could say “I cook a really good lasagne and am good for a laugh”.

Specific information can be good too – “I like looking at rainbows and one of the best I saw was when I visited Northumberland” gives a clue to the fact that you like travelling around a bit and is more interesting than “I like hanging out with friends”.

Don’t talk about any exes in your profile – it’s a real turn-off. Most people who are looking at your profile will realise that you have a past, as we all do; there’s time to talk about it when you meet face-to-face and preferably not at the first meeting.

Always put a photo on your profile – bite the bullet and make it a recent one as so many people have been disappointed at the first meeting to find the other person uploaded a photo taken twenty years ago!

Remember that playing hard to get doesn’t work any longer – waiting three days to reply may well mean that the other person has found someone else during that time.

If none of the above appeals, you can try the old-fashioned way of finding someone new through a shared interest, preferably where you can see them in the company of other people first. It will show whether they have any social skills, how they interact with people and generally whether they’re fairly likeable. You could find someone in the workplace or connected to your work in some way – there are lots of different scenarios but the old adage of finding love when you least expect it is as true as ever!

Most of us like to think that we’re loyal to our family and friends – it almost goes without question. However, what people think of as ‘loyalty’ can differ greatly from one person to the next.

Some families pride themselves on being loyal to one another, no matter what the circumstances. This can sometimes result in an exclusiveness or ‘inner circle’ into which no-one else can intrude partly because they don’t know what the ‘rules’ of that circle are and because family members are so loyal to one another that it makes them tight-lipped about ongoing issues that might otherwise be resolved.

Loyalty is often thought of as an honourable character trait and implies that you have the ability to put others before yourself and to stick with them no matter what happens. There are some ground rules about this though and where friendship is concerned, and I am detailing a few of them below. Further on I will look at how loyalty, or lack of it affects your partner and your relationship. Here are some of the ground rules regarding friends:

• Taking time to look at your friends’ needs – this is about being generous with your time, making sure that you listen to them when things are hard and helping them out by being an extra pair of hands. It’s also being there to laugh and cry with.
• Being supportive, no matter what – this means supporting/being loyal to a friend, not because you want something back from them but because you want them to be happy.
• Not talking behind their backs – if you’re having a problem with a friend, don’t stab them in the back by starting a rumour or by talking to other people about them. Instead, talk to them and learn to share your feelings with them as this will usually keep the friendship strong and healthy.
• Give them your honest opinion – don’t just say what they want to hear but at the same time, be tactful when you’re doing so. Sometimes it’s hard to give your opinion but if you can back up your opinion with solid reasons, it will be easier for them to hear.
• Balance your loyalty to one friend with loyalty to another – sometimes you will find yourself in a tight spot because being loyal to one friend might mean being disloyal to another. Don’t pick sides and try to be fair – explain to both friends where you’re coming from and hopefully they’ll recognise that you respect both of them and their opinions. If they hold that against you then maybe they weren’t the friend you thought they were.
• Finally, balance your loyalties to friends with your own day-to-day needs. Being loyal to a social organisation or volunteer group at the expense of your family and friends may well result in feelings of loss and suffering regarding your relationships. If it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t right.

Where your partner is concerned, thinking about the following can be helpful where loyalty is concerned:

• Loyalty is something that usually builds up over time – it’s like trust that needs to be increased on the basis of evidence but it doesn’t mean that you don’t have boundaries for yourself or others.
• Don’t put yourself in situations where your loyalty could slip – we’ve all been in those situations. Maybe your girl/boyfriend is going out or is away and another friend you’ve been a bit flirty with, suggests meeting for a drink. If you’re honest, you know it spells trouble so be loyal to your partner, even if you’re not entirely sure of them.
• If you’ve crossed that line and done something to lose the trust of your partner, it’s going to take time to regain their trust. Stay loyal from now on, spend time doing something they love and make an effort to get on with their family and friends, hard though that may be sometimes.
• If you need a little help being loyal – think about what you’ve got to gain. Your loyalty will usually inspire their own loyalty and the reward is feeling secure, happy and trusting.
• It really hurts when our loyalty leaves us open to vulnerability – but that’s not a reason to distrust your partner automatically.
• Behave in a way that you’d like your partner to behave – that is, with integrity and principles.

If you’re struggling to be loyal to someone close to you or you feel that someone has betrayed you and not shown loyalty, counselling could be a way of helping you to come to terms with what’s happened.