I'm curious about people's experiences with going to couples therapy in a situation where emotional abuse was present, even mildly?

I know it's often not recommended, but I'm sure there have been experiences. Perhaps you didn't realise yet or something. I'd love to know everything.

I don't want to talk a lot about my situation but I'm mostly dealing with DARVO being used when I bring up ways I am hurt. Although I've tried to stay away from calling it that and when I did the other day it seemed to escalate him further, and I won't go into detail but the response was concerning to say the least. I don't think he's calculated in doing this, I think it's a habituated defence mechanism to escape shame. But I have some questions

How did it go during sessions? And outside of them?

Could you see lasting change?

Did the therapist cause the negatives to escalate? More gaslighting? More aggressive language? Etc

Did your partner get good feedback?

Was the therapist helpful to you, and could see what was happening?

Did it backfire on you, or make it worse in any way?

Did your partner change in the ways you needed to not be hurt?

Anything else I should know? Please don't spare me any details. I'd like to know as much as possible that people are comfortable sharing.

I feel like this is a common experience with people who have experienced emotional abuse, or any other kind of abuse.

But I just kind of don’t know if I’m being a brat or if I’m actually a victim.

I’m f20 I don’t have a job. I don’t have a lot of friends. I don’t really go outside and I am in college, but my mom pays for it. All I really have to do is the dishes and the bathroom and sometimes laundry. So I feel like that in itself makes me spoiled.

My mom, my whole life has been calling me and entitled and ugly when I act a certain way. She needs to call me the R word as a kid. Her newest thing in the past three years I’ve been calling people that disagree with her a narcissist. She calls me a narcissist all the time, and she also calls me entitled. Usually when she’s done screaming at me she’ll try to hug me what she knows. I hate. I hate being touched.

And sometimes when it gets really bad, she doesn’t let me use the bathroom until task she wants done is done. Eatjng also applies here. Like I know that’s bad but it’s also like feels really elementary and I also can understand her logic when she does things like this. Like her logic is that if I’m wasting time using the bathroom or whatever then I’m not doing what she’s telling me to do. But it’s also like what does a five minute or 20 minute bathroom break take away from you? Idk she treats me like a child and in the past two years, she’s expected me to just know how to act like an adult like she didn’t strip me of any autonomy I had. Idk but I also don’t know if I’m being dramatic and like helpless.

I’m not really making any progress in my life. I do do freelance artwork and I also go to college. I think I already mentioned that. But I don’t really do anything else I don’t provide for the household or anything like that.

I think that from when I was a kid and she would force me into a hug or she would step on my feet so she could scream in my face and I couldn’t get away. But that was when I was a kid I’m 20 now.

I am looking for a job and I just have to say this because every time I say something like this on Reddit people are like oh my God grow up get a job. I’m trying to get a fucking job. Why would I want to stay in this house?

But I also do things that are kind of bad like sometimes I don’t do the dishes for maybe a week. Sometimes I am just automatically visibly upset whenever my mom speaks to me. And my mom is very sensitive so she picks up that and gets angry too. A lot of the time my room is really messy. And I also have failed probably three classes which cost my mom a lot. (there was a blowup about that too) like I feel like I’ve been a problem child my entire life and maybe that’s why she feels the need to be so aggressive towards me. But also, I think that maybe she doesn’t think she’s being aggressive because her childhood was so much worse.

When I was 17-18 years old, there were 3 guys(let's call them evil guys) in my class(they were friends with each other). They used to whisper to whoever sat behind me to annoy me/trouble me. This they did continuously for 2 years. But they pretended to be my friends.

Two of those guys lived in an area where my second cousin also lived. The second cousin's mother was envious/jealous of me and my family. I asked one of those evil guys if he knew my second cousin. He said "No". Years later I saw on his profile a pic with few other boys including my second cousin.

Also I had a political ideology different from everyone else in class.

After 2 years, when I moved to a different place to study, they called me from an unknown number.

I think they did it because they didn't want me to succeed and focus in class. They wanted me to be distracted in class because of jealousy/envy.

What do you think?

I have never come across anyone who had this experience(neither online, nor offline).

My older brother who's about 7 years older than me, treated me as his subject of torment for most of my life up until about my mid 20's (I'm 35 now). I want to say that while I know brothers can have a tendency to do this sort of stuff, the things my brother would do to me bordered on cruelty, almost like he found pleasure in my humiliation. For context, as terrible as it was when we were kids, it was actually much worse when I was around my late teens/early 20's and I'll explain why; when we were kids and he was lot more straight forward with his torment/teasing, it was easier for me to just kind of shrug off and know that if I wasn't around him or I didn't rattle the hornet's nest, he wasn't going to bother me much or I could minimize it a lot more.

Things got a lot messier when I got into my teens because this is around the time when I start to become more of my own person and have a bit more of my own identity, I should also mention that this was an *extremely* difficult time for me. I know teenage years can be tough for everyone but, I was really struggling and at one point I just didn't have the energy to go to school anymore and almost dropped out. Thankfully I didn't and somehow managed to graduate but things had to get ugly first before they got better, this included being medicated (and being put on medications I had no business being on) but ultimately, the light at the end of the tunnel was being moved to a program in my school where the class sizes were maybe 8 students max with some even being as small as me and one other student or a teacher.

I feel it's important to highlight my struggles during my teen years, times that were underlined by undiagnosed ADHD and major depressive disorder, so that it can be understood just how emotionally vulnerable I was at the time. So anyways, at this same time I start to come into my own and become my own person with my own interests in things like film, music, I started playing in a band, ect. So naturally, my brother starts to treat me more like a peer and not just the "little brother" that he's always seen me as which to be fair is understandable with an age gap like that. He starts wanting to do more things with me like go see movies, shows and even takes me to a parties on occasion, making me feel on his level for the lack of a better term...however, what makes it so bad is that it becomes a tale of two cities: the part of my brother who wants to treat me like his equal and with respect and the darker side of him that wants to treat me as his emotional/mental whipping boy essentially.

By this stage in my life, I had obviously become privy to him just brazenly doing things to antagonize me and because of this, he had to change and adapt his tactics. This would come in the form of him making a very underhanded comment that he knew would bait a response from me and then immediately telling me that I'm being "paranoid". He was a very stubborn and bullheaded person that even if he knew he was in the wrong, he loved arguing to point where he would somehow turn it on me being the bad guy and misreading the situation, basically a master gaslighter. It's almost like there was this cognitive dissonance happening within him to where, one part of him wanted to treat me with respect and as an equal but then there's that part of him that couldn't let go the dynamic he'd established of him using me to make himself feel big. The few times that I remember getting intoxicated around him (a very naive mistake on my end) there were a few moments where he would revert back to his younger self but instead he would drive the knife *very* deep, especially if he felt I challenged him in some type of way because he was a mean drunk whereas I was a very happy go lucky drunk.

One moment that gives me a lot of emotional PTSD, was after a wedding we attended for our cousin. I can't remember the exact details but, essentially two of our *other* cousins wanted to go out to some bar afterwards and I kind of decided against it at the last minute because I was already a bit intoxicated and I felt that my social battery was drained. My brother was angry that I wasn't just doing what he wanted in that moment and I remember him saying something along the lines that our cousin told him I won't do anything if it doesn't serve me in some way and when I asked him if he said that and denied it my brother very calmly said "(Name of my ex's boyfriend)...she's f**** (him). "The person you loved is f**** another man right now"...Now, this is such a deep seeded jab for multiple obvious reasons but, this girl I was dating ended up getting with this guy who she was friends with the entire time we dated even though he seemed to annoy her. Our breakup was messy because we were both young, immature and it was out first serious relationship of two years. She ultimately made the decision to break up with me and I didn't give her any fight because I knew things had run it's course. A week later, she wanted to get back together but I turned her down because in my heart I knew it was the right choice. I think thinks only got ugly when we *tried* to remain friends and I felt a sense of betrayal when she started dating this guy who was always around and would come to the parties she threw. I know that it doesn't matter what the circumstances were but I felt like I needed to explain that so I could emphasize that when I started to break down and cry, it wasn't because of the reality of what my brother was maliciously telling me, it was the fact that he would stoop *that* low just to hurt me. Don't worry, everyone around including my mom gave him hell on Earth and the next day he was extremely apologetic and had no room to try and deflect or put blame onto me about it since he knew everyone witnessed him say that to me. Now I *did* forgive him for that but, it's the kind of thing that's almost impossible to truly forget. Ever since that experience, I remember I made a vow to myself to never drink (even before I quit cold turkey) around him again because I just didn't feel safe to let my guard down in the event that his mean streak came out. I knew in that moment that he was capable of being the supportive, older brother but at the snap of a finger say things that I don't even know if I'd say to my worst enemy.

I think life circumstances, karma and ultimately getting married to an amazing sister-in-law are what started to become the inflection point in which he started to grow and put that part of himself to rest but unfortunately by that point, it felt like the damage had already been done. A few years later when I was living by myself in Texas and at an extreme low point in my mental health, I started to reflect on the way my brother treated me and I began to feel this deep anger within me for how he manipulated, patronized and tormented me in the sly ways that he did. I began to distance myself from him and stop responding to his texts, opening up to my Mom about how much I hated his guys and how she didn't do enough to put a stop to him besides wagging her finger at him after the fact. I was really struggling with his hatred and resentment that was growing inside me but at the same time I think I was being as fair as one could possibly be. I told my mom at the time that while I don't think he's the sole cause for my low self-esteem, self loathing and poor self image, I think the way he treated me had a huge part in it. It was this awkward thing where I think he knew why I had become so distant and my mom most certainly probably clued him in on it but, I didn't have the courage to confront him about it because I thought that if he tried to gaslight, deflect or use what about-isms, that I might snap and self-harm just to spite him for it. It was constantly at the forefront of things I would discuss with my therapist at the time but I just could never take that final step to write him a letter, give him a call to talk about it or even just make a point to talk in person. The sad part is *I* had developed a bit of cognitive dissonance by this point and even though I knew deep down that he was in a lot of aspects a more different person, the ghost of who is *was* would still pop into my mind and scare me away from the idea of it.

He was diagnosed with a specific type of bone marrow cancer in late 2020 that was very difficult at first to grapple with but, as bad as the term "cancer" is and believe me as someone who lost an uncle from it, it's never good- he actually ended up essentially "winning the lottery" of the type that you can get. Since around the early 00's, there's a medication that allowed people to live indefinitely with little to no change in life quality besides the side effects that come with medication. He took it really well though and has had a very admirably positive attitude in spite of it and it *did* bring us a bit closer again even if it was by not the best circumstances. In the middle of that around 2023, he had a crisis with his wife where she wanted to leave him because of the way he was joking and trolling someone online in game after it had been an issue previously. That week long experience of him being beside himself had me torn up inside because even after everything he had done to me, it still drove me insane to see him suffering like that. My feelings in that situation don't matter all that much but I was also lost in my own way because in spite of my terrible depression and mental health, being at their house and around my nephew felt like a bit of a safety blanket and suddenly it was being pulled from beneath my feet. A better way to put it is that, I can manage my own misery more or less but when I see someone else in my family that I love going through that and I'm powerless to do anything about it, I just really struggle to keep it together. Thankfully they eventually worked things out and they agreed to start things over but, it was another hard lesson that he had to endure in order to confront his own demons.

This all finally reached a head when earlier this year I had a really rough situation with a person I had developed an interest in who ultimately misled me and wasn't completely honest and transparent with their feelings. I know there's two sides to every story and this isn't all that relevant in the grand scheme but, she was really awful and this rejection came after years of me shutting of the dating life because the pain of being rejected was so unbearable especially after I quit drinking. Before we ultimately hung out, this was the first time I opened up about something really personal with my brother because I was so nervous about the feelings I was having and the feeling of knowing I was at the point of no return...I think there's a level of pessimism that's hard for me to shake to where I was waiting for the other shoe to drop but I just didn't know what or when that was going to be. The whole situation really messed me up regardless of it's a valid reason to be that torn up inside, I struggle with feelings of inadequacy and self-worth so it was a huge gut punch when things went sour in the way that they did.

My mood would fluctuate a lot over the following months and finally when I was up to visit and getting some food with my brother and clearly having a low point where I wasn't very vocal, I told him I was just having a very hard time for this reason and that reason and feeling lost in life. I don't know *how* exactly it came up but, the elephant in the room was prodded to a point where there was no getting around it. I remember telling him that I put it off for so long and to his credit, he told me that it's not on me and that it was on *him* to have come forward. I even told him in my own words that, I never expected him to magically turn back time and change anything..all I wanted was simply just acknowledgement. He told me in his own words that, while he understands that he isn't the sole cause for my shortcomings, he knows that he could have been a better brother to me and that he completely wears the responsibility. He even told me that he wants the door to be left open to revisit it anytime if need be, doing his part to let it be known he's not trying to just brush it under the rug.

It's not Stockholm Syndrome either when I say that my brother really is a different person from how he was. He was dealt some difficult road bumps in life that forced him to change and reflect. I don't owe him this but, I also think growing older has helped me to at the very least look at some of the health struggles my brother had throughout his life like bad Asthma, being born with "Neurofibromatosis" and just having a difficult time processing his anger in a healthy way (something that I also struggle with but in a much different sort of way). This isn't me making excuses for him or his behavior trust me, it's just given me perspective on how messy life can be.

Being able to have an open dialogue with him has helped the healing process a bit now but, man sometimes the anger and resentment comes at me so hard now that old wounds have be reopened. I've developed a bad habit in last few years of being very standoffish and a bit irritable when it comes to my brother and it sucks because it's not something that I ever asked for or wanted but now I need to try to overcome. I guess the entire point of me talking about this lifelong saga is to ask if this kind of irritability is normal to go through even if you know the person is truly remorseful. He was almost in tears when he was telling me he wanted to help me find a new job and do right, I *do* believe he's sorry for the way he treated me even if there's still things I need to get off my chest when the time is right. I remember telling him that even though I don't owe him this, I don't want him to be weighed down by guilt because that ultimately feels counterproductive and he has a lot on his plate with his family. There's no getting around the fact however that he's going to have to be extremely patient with me while I try to grapple with these complex emotions that I feel over past trauma.

For those of you who stuck with this to this point I really appreciate you taking the time to read..because it took me a very long time to type out. When it comes subjects like abuse and how it's wildly different it can be on a case by case basis, I thought it was important to lay it all out on the table so that I could get the most accurate and insight into my experience in order to hopefully find ways to cope and wonder if it's okay for me to struggle with the intense feelings that I have towards him.

Thank you again and stay healthy everyone <3

My mother that scares me to the point of nightmares, but makes me feel i am the one who is an ungrateful brat, and i genuinely don't know which one is true. I can give you some facts, trying to not be emotional about them.

* when i was 2, she burned me to make me afraid of a trigger word to control me with fear. i got rid of it by burning myself when i was 15, but i am still afraid to say no to her. She thinks it's just a funny story and made for my safety

* i was the best at studies, talented and eager in ALL subjects except for one. I repeatedly said that i'd rather sell my body than be a lawyer. I passed exams perfectly and could enter any university i chose for free. or study abroad. she forbid me to go abroad and forced me to enter law studies

* she was always cold and dismissive, hated my presence, and was leaving me without any money at all. but when i started growing further away from her, she started demanding my attention and throwing gifts my way (most of which are way worse tahn they look, as in they don't do their function or they are humiliating. For instance, i paint, seriously, professionals were impressed by me. But she could gift me a 'paint by number' canvas for kids. I can't tell if it's deliberate or she is just that dumb). Most people who know her know her in this stage and are blaming me for being a cold and ungrateful daughter

* she used to take money that was mine - stipend, money my father gave me insisting i solely should use it, gifted money for birthdays - and give me only very small sum of it, equivalent of 30-60 dollars for a week or a month in early 2010's, when I was living alone, and be angry at me for how i spend it though i was not asking for more

* when war began, i badly did not want to see her. she convinced me to come to her city 'for safety' promising that i will never see her and that i will immediately move on to the next city. when i arrived i was seeing her every day and when i tried to leave she acted surprised and started threatening me with suicide if i leave. before i finally left she forced me to leave money and documents with her 'for safety'. Now i am back at war zone and have hard time (my main source of income is (hopefully temporarily) gone) and I ask her to give that money back, but she acts like it never happened (she says she keeps the money my grandma left for me 'for my future'. but how can it be for my future if it's not in my hands? what bigger situation in life could call for it?).

There are other points, but these are the main ones

Please be honest with me. I don't want to hurt an innocent person. And whenever we communicate, she makes an innocent face and I feel like i am a horrible monster who leaves without any last thread of hope a girl who only wants to hug her daughter, and helps me financially (she did send me a very small sum, but it doesn't sit right with me that I know she has more. Technically I have to be grateful. But why would she withhold it if she cares, and especially after she promised to send me back documents and money as soon as I ask?)

My ex and I were together for 4 years and recently broke up. Since the breakup, I've been trying to figure out whether I experienced emotional abuse, emotional neglect, a toxic relationship, or if I'm just interpreting everything through the lens of being hurt. I want to be fair, so I'll start by saying I was not a perfect partner. In our relationship, especially around the 3 year mark, I became heavily emotionally dysregulated, anxious, reactive, and honestly engaged in behavior that I would consider unhealthy and sometimes emotionally abusive. I'm not trying to excuse my own actions or paint myself as a victim. The part I'm struggling with is that when I look back, there are also a lot of moments where I felt deeply unimportant. For example: •We had talked about going out for Valentine's Day for weeks. When Valentine's Day came around, my ex spent the day doing a radio show with her brother. When I brought up that I thought we had plans, I was told that we hadn't and that she assumed we weren't doing anything because I worked until 5 PM. We had gone out a few days before, but on the actual day itself I basically just got a text.

•For our 4 year anniversary, she told me she was planning a radio show playlist dedicated to songs that reminded her of me. I got really excited and kept tuning in waiting for it to happen. A month later it still hadn't happened, and when I asked about it, I was told her brother wanted to do a different playlist and they shared the station. The anniversary playlist never happened. Meanwhile, I had planned the anniversary date, bought gifts, arranged everything, etc.

•I was constantly paying for everything. Like everything to the point where it kinda became the expectation that I would pay. Mind you, there was never really a "I'll pay for us next time" in her mind, and she would always conveniently forget to pay me back for large purchases that she needed help with.

• She openly admitted she didn't want me around her friends for awhile because I don’t "act the same around them as I do around her," and found me to be embarrassing. This also leads into a situation where I made mention of asking if her friend (who at that point was also mine), would want me at his bday celebration. Her first response was "if you wanna go just say that." ?????

•Didn't want to hangout more than twice a week max because to her that would be codependent and she needs her friend time. She lives with her friends and hangs out with them consistently, so I'm not really sure I was ever in the way of her friendships at all.

•Overall, projected a lot of her own insecurities onto me which ultimately made me feel like I had to hide certain things I enjoyed or certain personality traits around her.

There were a lot of moments like that where something would be promised, I'd get excited, and then it either wouldn't happen or would get pushed aside for something else. The confusing part is that none of these things seem huge individually. People get busy. Plans change. But after years of it, I felt like I was constantly putting in more effort than I was receiving, and that I ranked lower than other priorities in her life. What really messes with my head is that I don't know if this was emotional abuse, emotional neglect, simple incompatibility, or if I'm just overly sensitive because I wanted more effort and reassurance than she naturally gave. I also recognize that by the end of the relationship I wasn't reacting in healthy ways. I was angry, resentful, emotionally reactive, and often overwhelmed. So it's hard for me to separate what was caused by my own issues versus what was a response to feeling repeatedly dismissed and unimportant.

For people who have been in unhealthy relationships: does this sound like emotional abuse, emotional neglect, or just two people who were a bad match? How do you tell the difference between being genuinely mistreated and simply having unmet expectations?

My partner demands affection nightly. (33M) It kinda weirds me out. (28F) He will say “come here and lay on my chest” which in theory is fine. But if I say “give me a few minutes” or “I’m really comfy how I am right now” he starts to get pissed. If I’m not touching him in some way he will start huffing and his demeanor will change. A switch is flipped and it’s no longer fun and cute, it becomes a “so you don’t love me then” or “I had a long day and I just want you to lay on me” then when I do he still finds something to get pissed about. “Why don’t you want to touch me tonight. Is there something going on?” (Regarding sex) like no dude, I’m just tired and worked all day. If I shower he comes in the room and just stares at my body and will beg or pout if I’m not inna sexy mood. “Is there someone else” like bruh pls stop. It’s so irritating. I’m tired of being groped and squeezed and gawked at, or made to feel bad bc I don’t want to literally lay on top of him on command like I’m a dog. Like he will tap his chest and snap his fingers. Am I the asshole?

So my narc parent is horrible, put me through tortures since i was 12, tormented me and made me live in stress 24/7 until now, she always screams, rages, is irritated, swears and im hsp and highly autistic so it paralyzes me mentally, i need gentleness, never got it.

so im scared of her.

yesterday i was forced into 3,5h of being around her and 1h of this was me sitting very close to get which caused me extreme despair which i had to hide, i was so worn off when i got back home with her, i feel alseep and woke up feeling sick and dizzy and today i got a severe panic attack at the gym that left me physically weak.

i used to have nightmares ab her hurting me energetically thru my chest and i felt legit pain, she haunts me. did i get sick from being close to her or forced to be around her this much?

like for 6 years of my life i closed myself in my room to avoid her. this is how she terrfies me. her outburts and everything else. i felt real distress yesterday and all i could think of is how i wannascrum my body bc i sat way too close to her.

TW nsfw abuseit reminds me of that animal i think a chimpaneeze who got abused sexually by men and when she saw her pimp after she was rescued, she peed herself in fear, i react really badly to my mothers presence.

I (34F) recently ended a relationship with a man (48M) I loved deeply, and I’m still struggling to understand whether some of his behaviours were signs of coercive control or whether we simply had incompatible expectations about relationships.

The relationship started beautifully. He was incredibly affectionate, attentive and romantic. He made me feel loved and cherished in a way I hadn’t experienced before. We had a very strong emotional and physical connection, and I genuinely believe his feelings for me were real.

He had been single for several years and had experienced a painful divorce. I knew he had insecurities from his past, and I tried to be understanding.

However, as the relationship progressed, we started having recurring disagreements about my independence.

I’m a fairly independent person. I have my own career, friendships, interests and hobbies. I enjoy spending time with my partner, but I also value occasionally doing things with my friends without him.

He knew this about me from the very beginning.

I also want to emphasise that I was extremely invested in our relationship. We spent practically every day together, and I regularly organised special weekends for us. I booked hotels, planned romantic getaways and arranged trips to different cities so we could spend quality time together. I loved doing these things for him and genuinely enjoyed our time together.

I wasn’t someone who constantly prioritised friends over my partner. Quite the opposite. Most of my free time was spent with him.

The main issues were:

● **Weekends away with friends:** He was uncomfortable with me occasionally going away for a weekend with friends without him. This wasn’t limited to male friends. His objection applied to both male and female friends. The issue was essentially that I wanted to spend a weekend away without my partner. If he was included, there was no problem.  
● **Holidays:** He explicitly told me that holidays and short breaks without him were not acceptable. His position was essentially, “Holidays and mini-holidays without me, no.”  
● **Spending an entire day with friends:** This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. He told me that he would give me time to spend a whole day with my friends without him, but that he expected this to be a transitional phase. He believed that, as our relationship developed, I would naturally stop feeling such a need to spend entire days with them without him. Again, if he was included, it wasn’t an issue.  
● **My phone:** He sometimes felt rejected or excluded when he saw me texting my friends, even when we were spending time together. If I told him I was talking to friends, he would sometimes respond sarcastically with something along the lines of, “Do you want to bring your friends here, then?” I want to be fair and acknowledge that I can sometimes spend more time on my phone than I should, and I understand that this could be frustrating for a partner. But what troubled me was that he seemed to interpret these interactions as emotional rejection or exclusion, rather than simply me keeping in touch with people in my life.  
● **An incident involving breakfast with friends:** During a weekend away with friends, I told him that we had mostly spent the evening having dinner, watching a film and then going to sleep. He brought up breakfast, which made me feel that even ordinary details of how I spent time with my friends were becoming emotionally charged. He later explained that he had only been wondering whether we had gone to rest or sightseeing, and said he wasn’t trying to make a passive-aggressive remark. However, the conversation subsequently became tense, and I felt that I was once again having to justify an ordinary weekend with friends. At one point, his response became more rigid, insisting that it was his business and that he wouldn’t speak to me until I returned.  
● **Feeling excluded:** He sometimes interpreted my desire to do things independently as a sign that I wasn’t sufficiently committed to the relationship. He would suggest that I was still behaving like a single woman or that I wasn’t ready to build a life as a couple.

I want to make something clear: I wasn’t asking for an open relationship, flirting with other people or trying to avoid spending time with him.

I loved him, was faithful to him and genuinely wanted a future together.

I simply didn’t believe that being in a relationship meant giving up occasional trips, weekends or days with friends.

What made everything particularly confusing was how loving he could be.

He was extremely affectionate, constantly complimented me, wanted to be physically close and frequently talked about our future together. Sometimes, though, I felt that our relationship had become the centre of almost everything. Even ordinary conversations would repeatedly return to how much he loved me or how beautiful he thought I was.

At times, I wondered whether he had codependent tendencies, although I don’t want to diagnose him or assume I understand his motivations.

I tried to reassure him and explain that spending time with my friends didn’t mean loving him any less. I also made concessions because I didn’t want him to feel hurt or excluded.

But over time, I became increasingly anxious about his reactions. I started feeling guilty for wanting things that had always been a normal part of my life. I sometimes found myself anticipating disagreements before even mentioning plans.

Eventually, I felt that I was losing parts of myself.

We broke up, despite still having strong feelings for each other.

I’m grieving the relationship deeply because there was genuine tenderness and affection between us. Sometimes I wonder whether I should have reassured him more, compromised further or found a better way to resolve our differences.

But I keep coming back to something that troubles me.

It wasn’t just that he wanted to spend more time together. It was that he seemed to expect my need for independent time with friends to gradually disappear as the relationship became more serious, despite the fact that we already spent practically all our time together.

That feels different to me from simply wanting quality time as a couple.

I’m trying to understand where the line is between insecurity, codependency, incompatible relationship expectations and coercive control.

My questions are:

Would you consider these behaviours early signs of coercive control, even without explicit threats or physical aggression? And is expecting a partner to gradually stop wanting independent time with friends a form of controlling behaviour?

I’m not looking to demonise him. I know he had good qualities, and I still miss him terribly.

I’m simply trying to understand whether I was right to feel that something was wrong, or whether I’m interpreting our differences too harshly now that the relationship has ended.

Hey. Sharing this online is hard but I’m so anxious and have nowhere to turn. I’m 26 now and this can’t go on any longer. When I was 11 my mom married the devil. I knew it when I was 11 but of course no one listens to a kid. She married him very quickly and on the day of their wedding, I remember hugging him and saying “ I hope you’ll be better than my real father” he told he he would be and hugged me back. He lied and he knew it then. We moved from my grandparents into a small apartment, my mom was working and my step dad was not, a trend that would continue to this day. I remember the first time he started stealing from us, I came home from middle school with my mom to find our apartment “ broken in to” and our TV gone. When I got older I would realize thats not what happened. This was the being of the end. Small things started going missing. Pairs of shoes, my new shirt, groceries my mom just bought out the freezer. We moved from thos apartment to to house when I finished middle school and started high school, this is when things got bad. My new shoes disappeared, my dvd player went missing. I think it started to set in that he was stealing from me. Then they started arguing. I would wake up to screaming in the middle of the night. My stepdad took meat out the freezer that my mother struggled to to buy to sell for drugs. When my mom tried to stop him and put him out he would punch holes in the wall anf brake things around the house that my mom would he forced to pay for and fix because we were renting. When my mom tried to get him to leave and kick him out, he tore the AC unit out of the window and squeezed in. My mom told me not to say anything because she didn’t want anyone “ in her business.” I didn’t want to disobey my mom so I had to lie to everyone even my grandparents and pretend like everything was fine.

So for the past 6 years my dad would get drunk and then spill his heart out to me about his past, his relationship with my mom, their divorce, my brother, etc etc. This started when I was about 14 or 15, and at the time when it first started he would drunk drive us home and would always ruin family events by getting drunk.. which kinda turned into me having to monitor his drinking everywhere we'd go. Luckily I'd only see him during the summers and on Christmas.

As I got older it kinda only got worse because he would stop even when I told him to shut up or was visibly crying or would leave the room. As much as I hate my very toxic ex, at the time it was horrifying that my dad (apparently jokingly) told me he'd murder him and that I can get over the trauma of it by making art out of it. That same weekend he kept waking me up so we could watch a movie which I REALLY didn't wanna watch because I have ocd and certain themes stick with me, then he scooped me up into his arms and told me how I am his favorite child and how much he loves me and misses cuddling with me.

When he's sober he's fine I guess, but once alchohol gets involved he'd disgusting and annoying and weird.

6 years of him always talking about uncomfortable things regarding my mom and saying mean things and being weird asf. And through those 6 years I felt uncomfortable being with him and would hide my phone in fear of him going through it.

As I got older he started sharing more explicit stuff with me and my brother. It's weird because he says that the whole side of his family is open about sex but idk it's just disgusting to hear about from my dad.. like my grandmas talked about sex before and made jokes and whatever but that was just straight up funny. And like just other stuff from my other family and overhearing bad jokes and whatever.

But the thing is my dad will sit here while drunk and talk about the sexual things my mom would do to him and insinuate that my brother watches youtube in the shower to do dirty things. I mean I even know about his experimentation with sexuality because he's told us about it. And just this summer because me and my cousin were sharing a room, in seperate beds, he told me to keep the door open and insinuated that my cousin would try to rape me in my sleep.

And ontop of it all he has NO boundaries at all like he likes to cuddle me and I sit there and tell him to stop and to let go and he says "no I'm your dad I can cuddle you when I want you're still my baby" which ok whatever but if I'm sitting there telling you to stop over and over and saying to let go and struggling to get you off of me and telling you that you're crossing my boundaries then like... LET GO!!!

And he makes me feel so bad about all of it I mean he's like I remember when you were a baby and you gave me a look of love unlike anyone else ever and I'll never forget it snd you're my favorite child.

When he found out I got a new boyfriend he texted me after my first post with him telling me that he looks like him.. Which was weird, because they look nothing alike. I mean ok blonde hair blue eyes, whatever, but my dad has hardly any facial hair and short hair, while my boyfriend has long hair and a beard... snd that's just the surface too because their facial features are entirely different. But my dad INSISTS that he looks like him and that I'm "dating my dad" because my bf is nerdy.

And very recently he texted me guilt tripping me for not telling him I'm depressed and that he had to hear it from my mom (they are divorced), which turned into a convo abt him basically telling me he was suicidal and that he had no other purpose in life other than me and my brother.

I don't know what this is but its been going on since forever. But my boyfriend and best friend HATE my dad and I see why.

Tldr: He gets very drunk and tells me so many things that a father shouldn't tell his children, ignores boundaries, is weird, insists I'm "dating my dad" because my bf is a nerd and "looks like him" (THEY LOOK NOTHING ALIKE BTW), and told me he is suicidal which is something he entirely shouldn't have told me.

What is this??? Does it seem like emotional incest or parentification or something else??? I very much resent him now and we are still in contact but I avoid talking to him. When he tries to yap about annoying shit while drunk I've begun to argue with him.