How to Recognize a Manipulative or Controlling Relationship

Knowing how to recognise a manipulative or controlling relationship can spare you much heart break and despair. Are you suffering at the hands of someone that you care about who is meant to care for you back? If your relationship is detrimental to other aspects of your life, perhaps it’s time to let go?

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Steps

1- Make sure you evaluate your relationship tt a time when you are feeling emotionally neutral, i.e. not immediately after an argument or not when you haven’t seen your partner for a few days and are starting to miss them, try to objectively evaluate whether the relationship is healthy or not. Are your interactions together predominantly negative?

2- Think carefully about whether you are being abused. Abuse may not specifically be referring to physical harm, but is your partner treating you unfairly? Are you belittled, condescended, or made to feel inferior by your lover? Do you regularly excuse and justify their behaviour to yourself or your friends? Are you fearful in their company? Does your lover threat to make you agree with them or give up something that you care about? Are they physically heavy handed with you? Do you act carefully so to not make your partner angry? Are they jealous? Do they justify their behaviour as something that you, drugs, or alcohol has made them do? Are you sexually pressured? Are the decisions made in your relationship one-sided? Do you fear your partner? If you answer yes to any of these questions then the issues need to be addressed, however if you’ve answered yes to the majority of these questions, then you should seriously consider stepping away from the relationship.

3- Review how you feel as an individual compared with how you used to feel before the relationship begun. Have you developed? Have you grown in confidence? Are you still following your aspirations? No relationship should hinder or negatively affect your emotional development.

4- Gauge how your other relationships have been affected. Are your friends and family worried about you? Are you creating distance between you and your loved ones? No relationship should drive you away from those that you care about.

5- Appreciate your friends’ and families’ opinion on your partner. It is often very difficult and awkward for friends and family to be forthcoming with serious critique of your partner, so if they have taken the time, effort, and risk to communicate something to you, then take them seriously.

6- Consciously appreciate your partner’s faults. Yes you may be ‘head over heels’ with them, and of course nobody is perfect, but be aware of their shortcomings, and if they’re causing you pain, they should be openly discussed.

7- Think about whether you are being made answerable to double standards and whether you are at a loss no matter what you do. Part of being manipulated is being made to always feel like the guilty or wrong party, don’t let yourself fall into this trap. Your partner may not even know that they are doing it, so tell them!

8- Do not beat yourself up about being attracted to this person. On the outside they may seem incredibly attractive and charming. Appreciate that this is what you fell in love with, however it simply wasn’t what you got in the end. Manipulative people often display great outward confidence, but on the inside they are insecure and feel like they need to control things. They may not be deliberately trying to hurt you, however even if they say that they will change, this may not be likely as they would first have to address some deep rooted issues.

Tips

Often these occurrences are situational. Get out as soon as you can but remember: Don’t hate the player, hate the game.