Oh dear, I get angry just thinking of the title. We’ve previously discussed about that phenomenon popularly known as “love bomb” in which a person, at the beginning of a relationship, is extremely caring and has several gestures towards their partner. This is only used to make the other person fall hopelessly for them, and once they’re already hooked, they bring out their true colors. They become abusive, indifferent, rude, among many other lovely attitudes. However, the worst part is that their partner seems to be blind towards this terrible behavior or chooses to endure it because they have made them believe that they’re the best they will ever find. The key to being shamed in a relationship is that they manipulate you into feeling insecure about yourself. When you’re not confident or think poorly about yourself, there’s no way you can move forward in the relationship.
One of the worst things about being shamed in a relationship is that you don’t really see how serious it is until, after some time, you manage to end the relationship and understand how terribly you were abused. This might sound like an extreme case, but even the slightest form of disrespect is a major fault in my opinion. What is important to consider is that being ashamed means you feel you’re the problem. It’s not something you did, but something about you, your essence, that makes you feel at fault. And generally, in order to shame you, your partner selects the things they know will make you feel that way.
Now, in the title, we asked whether your partner is shaming you or just being honest about what they think about you. While there’s a chance they might be actually expressing something that bothers them about you, I do think that there is a tone and specific way of doing so that won’t shatter you. At the end of the day, if they really want to be with you, they wouldn’t be mean when talking about or to you. Absolutely, under no circumstance, is anyone entitled to make you feel bad. So I wouldn’t be so sure about calling these behaviors pure signs of honesty.
Recently, I wrote an article on what to do when your best friend is dating a jerk. One of the most important things I wanted to clarify is that acting on this must follow a strategy and a plan because if you just voice your concerns to them the most probable scenario is that you’ll end up fighting and distancing. As I mentioned at the beginning, this happens because most jerks want to control you and have you there for whatever they want. After they’ve convinced you that you’re the love of their life and they know you’re not going anywhere, they’ll put all their effort to isolate you from your loved ones. It all starts with simple things like, “don’t go out with your friends, I want to spend time with you” and evolve to more direct comments like, “I don’t want you to spend time with them. They just want to put you against me.” The list could go on and on, and since you don’t want to have any problem with them, you end up accepting their emotional blackmail.
Once they have you all unshielded and at their own disposition, their shaming becomes more recurrent and even more public. If I could get paid for every time I see one of my friends on Facebook being openly shamed by their partners, I could go on a very nice vacation trip. But the thing is that as long as the person being shamed doesn’t really see what’s going on, all the advice is useless. If there’s a slight comment your partner does that makes you feel uncomfortable, express it and don’t let it pass, since that’s the path towards abusive relationships.
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Images by @mfcorridan
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