That They’re none of those things at first, isn’t talked about enough. They, at first pretend to be your perfect partner, tailored especially to you, by bombarding you with questions, upon early interactions.

That and the very slow boil that shifting from this persona they develop to trap you, into the other (real) personality traits they are / have. It’s incremental, millimetre by millimeters.

This perfect partner persona they develop to trap you, is a drug that causes you to be addicted, by design, it’s held out like a carrot on a string, for why “you are bad” and “need to change”, so they can be that person again. Which is entirely a manipulation process of control.

They purposefully find all your weaknesses, along with their designs to build a persona trap, and those are what they first target to break you down.

My abusive ex, whom I had kids to, very very young, still tries to pry on the insecurities I had when he first targeted me, at 16yo (and he was 18, which puts him in another particular category). They don’t work now.

They become genius level at this stuff. Genius level has nothing to do with iq, it has everything to do with practice. If you practice anything, solid, for 7 years straight, you become genius level at that thing, essentially regardless of iq. They, quite typically, have the types of disorders that cause them to need to utilize these types of manipulation, in every day, just to get by and socialize. So they’re essentially practicing the skills they use against you, sometimes from mid childhood. They are hard to spot. Very hard to spot.

They don’t show the typical signs of abuse, until they have you trapped. And if you have had those traits exampled for you, in childhood, by parents, you had those behaviors normalised, and you are even less likely to spot it, because you have already been trained by abusive methods to disconnect from your own emotions and emotional (and physical and all other) needs and supplant those with others needs first.

A tool they need you to perform to be trapped. If they can gaslight you into believing their version of reality and entirely discounting your own, then they have you trapped, before even living with you, or controlling your finances.

Building skills against their attacks and attempts to control look like, Being very connected with your emotions and needs, your sense of self, building your self confidence, helping yourself to shed any people pleasing behaviours you were either socialised to have (via being assigned female at birth) or enmeshed or emotionally abused by parents, to have. Being very good at regulating your own emotions, and helping yourself build higher emotional quotient, so you don’t rely on others to sooth your emotions, as that’s a key vulnerability they try to exploit. And in general, believe in yourself, against being told otherwise, you are a glorious creature whom is a gift to this earth. And those combined create a harder shell to penetrate.

Sending love to all. Bringing this stuff up can bring up some huge emotions. Caring for those emotions is important. Take the time to sit with them, today, if you feel them knocking. The best way to sooth them is to sit with them, as you would a dear friend. If you feel safe to feel, that can help your fight or flight systems to calm and realise you are safe. (which can help you plan, calming your fight or flight systems, if you aren’t safe yet, too).

Road rage can be a red flag. Aggressive driving often equals an aggressive personality.

You can be a victim of domestic abuse and not be the abuser’s partner. It can look much different. Uneven power dynamics, covert behavior, duplicitness, inappropriate anger, ignoring your vulnerability, constantly talking about committing gun violence, admission of unrepentant sexual abuse. I’m just accepting this was domestic abuse. It happened to me in May. I was concerned with everyone else but I’ve minimized the impact on me ever since. Even when I went to a BHU I thought I just wasn’t strong enough instead of that I was reacting to victimization from someone who gave me a place to sleep.

Another thing you can do to support: do not confront the abuser yourself.

If they are still together, your friend will suffer worse at their hands.

Also cannot overstate the “let them make their own decisions/don’t tell them to just leave” part of this. They need to make that decision themself. The abuser has messed their head a lot, give them the tools to untangle it and get out. You can’t force them to and pressure will likely backfire.

Forgive them if they don’t talk to you for a while. Check in on them (like a text) if you can. Abusers like to isolate. Your friend likely didn’t want to leave you hanging, but they might have had to for their safety. Show them that you’re still there!

Extra info: Nothing the survivor/partner does is an excuse for the abuse!! Supporting the survivor can take a lot of patience as it takes a lot of attempts at leaving to finally do it and it can be a very dangerous time. Having a go bag can be helpful: important documents, IDs, some cash, etc For healthy couples taking breaks during conflicts, for about 20 minutes so the brain has time to chill is a neat strategy to communicate better and not reach the point of being mentally flooded.

thank you so much for this 💗