“It Felt Like Love. It Was Control.” Understanding Emotional Abuse

You meet someone who makes you feel seen in a way you've never experienced before.

They listen when you talk. They remember the small things. They text goodnight every evening and good morning before you've even opened your eyes. Within weeks, maybe days, you feel like you've known them forever. Like they understand you in a way no one else ever has.

Your friends say it's moving fast. Your family seems cautious. But you're falling, and it feels like the best kind of falling—like finally landing somewhere safe.

And then, slowly, so slowly you don't notice it happening, the ground beneath you starts to shift.

You become smaller. Your world becomes narrower. Your sense of self becomes harder to recognise. And when you try to name what's wrong, the words won't come—because it still looks like love. It still feels like care. There’s no violence. No obvious cruelty. So how can this be abuse?

This is the question that keeps so many people trapped: “If it's not violent, does it even count?”

Here’s what you need to hear: emotional abuse is real abuse. And it's one of the most disorienting forms of harm precisely because it hides in the language of love.

Emotional Abuse: A Slow, Insidious Beginnning

The Beginning: When Intensity Feels Like Connection

Emotional abuse doesn't announce itself. It doesn't start with control or criticism or cruelty. It starts with attention. With intensity. With someone who seems completely captivated by you.

They text constantly. They want to spend all their time with you. They talk about the future, your future together, within the first few weeks. They say things like, "I've never felt this way before" and "You're different from everyone else."

And it feels incredible. Because you are different. You are special. And finally, someone recognises that.

What you don't realise is that this intensity isn't intimacy. It's the beginning of enmeshment, the kind of closeness that feels like being chosen but is actually the first stage of being consumed.

In those early weeks, your world starts to reorganise itself around them. Not because they demand it, but because they make everything else feel less important. Your friends seem immature by comparison. Your hobbies feel like distractions. Time apart feels like wasted time.

This is the setup. And it works because it genuinely feels like love.

If you’d like to read more about how chaos and intensity can create powerful attachment, you might find Understanding Trauma Bonding: Why You Miss Someone Who Hurt You helpful.

When Care Becomes Control

The shift happens gradually. So gradually that each moment seems reasonable, even thoughtful.

They don't like your friends. Not in a controlling way, they just think they're a bad influence. They drink too much. They're flaky. They don't really understand you the way this person does. So you start declining invitations. Not because they told you to, but because it feels easier. Because when you do go out, they text constantly, checking in, asking when you'll be home. And it's exhausting trying to have fun while managing their anxiety.

They have opinions about what you wear. Not in a mean way, they're just trying to help. That outfit is a bit much, isn't it? Those clothes don't suit you. They buy you things they think look better, and you wear them because they picked them out with care. Because they're thinking about you.

They comment on what you eat. Again, not cruelly. They're just concerned about your health. You've put on a little weight, haven't you? Maybe you should skip that. They suggest exercise routines you don't want to do, frame it as something you'll do together. When you're tired and want to stop, they encourage you to push through. For your own good.

They monitor your schedule. Check that you're getting enough sleep. Call if you're not home by a certain time because they “worry”. Ask who you've been talking to, not because they're jealous, but because they care.

Each of these moments, taken alone, could be explained as a concern. As love. As someone who's invested in your wellbeing.

But together, they're something else entirely.

They're control. And by the time you realise it, you're already caught.

If this feels familiar, you might also resonate with Recognising Emotional Abuse: Signs and Impact, which goes deeper into how these patterns show up in everyday life.

The First Crack: When You Assert Independence

Six months in, something happens that requires outside help. Maybe it's a car repair, a work crisis, a family emergency. Someone close to you—a parent, a sibling, a friend—steps in to support you.

You mention it to your partner, expecting support. Maybe even relief that it's handled.

Instead, you get something else entirely.

"You should have come to me," they say. Their voice is calm, but there's an edge underneath. "Not them. I would have taken care of it."

You try to explain that it wasn't a big deal, that you didn't think they'd mind. But somehow, the conversation turns. Suddenly, you're the one apologising. You're the one who did something wrong. You undermined them. You made them feel inadequate. You prioritised others over your relationship.

The guilt you feel is enormous. Disproportionate. But it works.

You promise you'll come to them first next time. You start pulling back from the people who've always had your back, not because they explicitly tell you to, but because avoiding conflict feels safer than risking their disappointment.

This is how isolation begins. Not with a demand, but with a feeling—a feeling that choosing anyone other than them is a betrayal.

The Pattern: How You Learn to Disappear

Over time, the pattern solidifies. Every time you try to assert yourself, every time you express a need or a boundary or a preference that differs from theirs, the script flips.

You say: "I'd like to spend time with my family this weekend."
They hear: "You don't want to be with me."

You say: "I need some space to focus on work."
They hear: "You're pushing me away."

You say: "That comment hurt my feelings."
They hear: "You're too sensitive. You always overreact."

Somehow, in every conversation, you end up being the problem. You're the one who's difficult. You're the one who doesn't communicate well. You're the one who's making things harder than they need to be.

And so you stop. You stop asking for space. You stop defending your feelings. You stop voicing preferences that might cause friction. You learn to read their moods, to adjust yourself pre-emptively, to become whatever version of yourself keeps things calm.

This is the invisible work of emotional abuse: the constant self-monitoring, the endless adaptation, the slow erasure of everything that makes you, you.

Your friends notice you've changed. Your family asks if you're okay. But you defend them. Because there's no violence. Because they say they love you. Because the good moments, when they come, feel so good that they justify all the rest.

And because by now, you've started to believe that maybe the problem really is you.

What Emotional Abuse Actually Is

Emotional abuse is a pattern of behaviour designed to erode your autonomy, identity, confidence, and sense of reality—without requiring physical violence.

Some common elements include:

• Control disguised as care
  Monitoring your food, your schedule, your friendships, your finances—always under the guise of concern or helpfulness.

• Criticism framed as improvement
  Constant commentary on how you look, what you eat, how you speak, what you believe, presented as being “for your own good”.

• Gaslighting that distorts your reality
  Denying things that happened, rewriting conversations, telling you you're remembering wrong, making you question your own perceptions until you don't trust yourself anymore. (I explore this more in How to Recover from Gaslighting in a Toxic Relationship.

• Isolation dressed up as intimacy
  “They don't really care about you like I do.” “They're jealous of us.” “They're a bad influence.” Little by little, your support system fades, and they become your only mirror.

• Emotional volatility that keeps you on edge
  You’re constantly scanning for mood shifts, adjusting your behaviour to avoid conflict, walking on eggshells in a relationship that's supposed to feel safe.

• Kindness used as a reset button
  After conflict, they become gentle, attentive, apologetic. This intermittent warmth is one of the most powerful mechanisms behind trauma bonding. It keeps you hoping that this version—the kind version—is the real one. For a deeper dive into this dynamic, see When Love Hurts: Understanding Trauma Bonding.

The abuse isn't defined by what they call it. It's defined by how it lands in your body.

If you constantly feel confused, anxious, guilty, or like you're walking on eggshells, that's data. That's your nervous system signalling that something is deeply wrong.

Why Leaving Is So Hard

You didn't stay because you were weak. You stayed because the relationship was designed to be hard to leave.

Emotional abuse creates shame:

“I should be able to make this work.”
“I'm too sensitive.”
“I'm the problem.”

It creates confusion:

“Maybe I misinterpreted it.”
“Maybe I'm overreacting.”
“It wasn't that bad.”

It creates hope:

“They weren't always like this.”
“They can change.”
“The good moments are worth it.”

It creates fear:

“What if I'm wrong?”
“What if no one else will ever understand me?”
“What if I can't manage on my own?”

These aren't character flaws. These are trauma-bond dynamics, the psychological and physiological effects of intermittent reinforcement, isolation, and chronic invalidation.

Your nervous system becomes wired to the relationship, even when the relationship is harmful. You crave the good moments because they're the only relief from the bad ones. You stay not because you're foolish, but because leaving someone who has become your entire world can feel like losing yourself entirely.

If you’ve noticed that healthy partners feel “boring” or uncomfortable after this kind of relationship, you may also resonate with Why Healthy Love Feels Uncomfortable After Abuse.

What Healing Actually Looks Like

Leaving is not the end of the story. It's the beginning of recovery.

In the weeks and months after leaving, many people doubt everything, every decision, every feeling, every perception. It's common to question whether you were too harsh, too unforgiving, too quick to give up.

This is what emotional abuse does. It doesn't just hurt you while it's happening. It changes how you relate to yourself long after it's over.

Recovery isn't linear. It doesn't follow a timeline or a checklist. But slowly, with support, you can start to come back to yourself.

Here are some key parts of that process:

1. Name What Happened

Language gives shape to things that felt chaotic. Saying, “I was in an emotionally abusive relationship” creates a frame that helps your nervous system make sense of what happened.

You weren't difficult. You were responding to harm.

2. Reconnect With Safe People

Shame and secrecy reinforce abuse long after it ends. Letting safe people in—friends, family, a therapist, a support group—can be transformative.

You don't have to tell everyone everything. You might start with one person who feels steady and trustworthy. Connection is the antidote to isolation. You can't heal alone from something that happened in a relationship.

3. Understand Your Nervous System

Emotional abuse creates chronic dysregulation. Your nervous system gets stuck in survival mode: hypervigilant, shut down, or swinging between the two.

Healing isn't about simply “thinking differently”. It's about helping your body recognise that the threat is over. Practices that can help include:

• Grounding (feeling your feet on the floor, naming what you can see and touch)

• Gentle breathwork

• Movement (walking, stretching, shaking out tension)

• Noticing “glimmers”—small moments of safety or ease

If you’d like to understand more about this, Why You React Differently on Different Days: Your Window of Tolerance Explained explores how stress and trauma shape your emotional bandwidth.

4. Rebuild Self-Trust

Your intuition didn't break. It was overridden.

For a long time, you were told that what you felt wasn't real, that what you remembered didn’t happen, that what hurt you was actually love. Healing means learning to listen to yourself again.

That might sound like:

“This feels off.”
“I feel lighter without them.”
“My body tightens when they contact me.”

These are glimmers of truth returning. They're quiet at first, easy to dismiss. But over time, as you honour them, they grow stronger.

5. Seek Trauma-Informed Support

Therapy isn't about rehashing every detail. It's about untangling the beliefs you internalised—that you were too much, that you were the problem, that you couldn't trust yourself.

A trauma-informed therapist can help you:

• Separate your truth from their narrative

• Understand how trauma has affected your attachment patterns

• Learn to set boundaries without drowning in shame

• Restore your relationship with yourself

A Message for Anyone Still Healing

If you recognised yourself in this article, please know: you're not dramatic. You're not overreacting. You're not broken for having stayed.

You adapted to an environment that slowly stripped away your sense of reality. And now, you're learning to return to yourself.

Healing may not be fast. There will be days when the doubt creeps back in. That's normal. That's what happens when your sense of reality has been systematically undermined.

But your clarity will return. Your voice will return. Your self-worth will return.

You deserve relationships where you don't have to shrink in order to feel loved. Where your needs are met with respect, not resentment. Where closeness doesn't require you to lose yourself.

That kind of relationship is possible. And you're worth it.

Support for You

At Safe Space Counselling Services, I support people healing from emotional abuse, coercive control, trauma bonds, and the lasting effects of relational trauma.

If you'd like a space to untangle what’s been happening and reconnect with your own inner compass, you're welcome to reach out.

📧 kat@safespacecounsellingservices.com.au
📞 0452 285 526