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To them, you just might be a specific character in their personal movie.

As far as they are concerned, they are I-am-the-main-character and everyone else is just supporting cast. Or you’re an NPC whose job is to give them something specific and they’ll get angry if you don’t. (Patricia Evans uses the analogy of a child with a teddy bear to describe how controlling people create ‘pretend’ relationships.)

Alternately, you might be more than a side character, you might be the antagonist.

You are the villain. They’ll simultaneously demonize and dehumanize you: you are a monster.

Or you could be both if you are interacting on the internet!

(I always laugh when people have arguments online because of how wildly inaccurate their models of each other are, especially if those models are based on what they see online or in ‘the news’.)

One of the more disturbing parts about becoming Christian was learning about worship.

Not because spiritual worship is bad, but because I realized that I recognized it.

When you worship something, you want to get close to it, and anything or anyone related to it. You want to talk about it all the time, you center your life around it. You praise it unreservedly, you acknowledge it in every part of your life, you are intensely focused on the object of your worship. What you worship directs your life course, is the most important thing to you, you would do anything to sustain your connection to what you worship.

Honestly, it’s exactly like an intense fandom.

People still go to church, but that ‘church’ is a convention or a game or concert. People high in the fandom are ‘priests’, interceding for those who want to get closer to the object of their worship, and who facilitate that worship for others: fan club presidents; discord community mods; people who put together conventions and run panels with actors; fandom artists; fan fiction writers; YouTubers who make endless content relating to the fandom; talk shows or podcasts talking about the fandom with people who used to participate in the show or sport.

(On a side note, this is why creators run into issues with fan service. Because when they start to take fans seriously about what they ‘want’, instead of focusing on their own intrinsic creative voice, creators start making worse art. Because the fandom is like a toddler that wants to watch the same movie over and over again; experience the same original exultant feeling over and over again; and their demands are relentless and unceasing, and not coming from a place of creative gestalt, but a place of chasing their original high.)

In Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) the person with BPD worships their ‘favorite person’.

Until they don’t.

People who are post-relationship from someone who has untreated BPD often report feeling a sense of emptiness. That normal relationships don’t have the same ‘intensity’. And what they don’t realize is that they were essentially on the other end of someone’s worship.

The lovebombing that occurs in that relationship dynamic is essentially something that no human being should ever really experience: it’s like the human relationship version of heroin.

Which makes it all the more devastating when the person with untreated BPD ‘splits’ on them, because they went from being worship to being reviled. From adoration, to desecration: (n.) “actively showing disrespect or contempt toward something considered sacred; actively damaging and destroying something holy”. To being elevated above all others – but for a moment – to being vilified.

Justin Bieber described once what it was like to be on stage.

He said something to the effect of that it was like the most incredible high. To have thousands of people intensely focused on you, emotionally connecting with you, singing along with and to you, your own words echoed back to you in fervent adoration. (…to be worshiped.) And he made a comment about how it made it so much harder to live the rest of his life, with that as his baseline.

And that’s ultimately want abusers want: to be treated as god.

But they’re a child god. A capricious god.

A god who demands sacrifice, but sacrifice that never ends.

Because if it ends, the illusion that they are all powerful breaks, and they have to live in a reality where they are not in fact a god. Where the only control they have is what they have stolen from another person or tricked them into giving. If it ends, they no longer receive all the benefits they were receiving.

They no longer get to live in a world where they are always right.

They no longer get to demand someone destroy themselves and call it love. Demand sacrifice as their due.

The reason the sacrifices can’t end is because the sacrifices are what is propping up their delusion

…their power. Without the sacrifices of the victim, they are nothing.

A real god actually has power, whereas a false god has to steal it.

The person an abuser steals it from is the victim.

A real god needs nothing from others, whereas a false god lives as a parasite off those who worship it.

A real god doesn’t want slaves, a real god sets people free. In Christian theology, a real god values individuality and identity so much, as so precious, that he goes out of his way to make sure that people – as inferior beings over whom he has ultimate power – have a real choice.

Because you can’t actually have love if you don’t have a real choice.

And what do abusers do? They steal our choice. They force and coerce and punish us into being who they decide we should be. They don’t respect our free will. They believe they are entitled to sacrifice us for their own benefit, at our devastating expense.

An abuser wants a slave who pretends they are not a slave

…someone who worships and also grovels at their feet, someone who endlessly sacrifices, and who supports the abuser’s false reality while believing it is the truth.

A real god wants us to be more of who we truly are, not erase who we truly are.

In the past, I’ve compared abuse dynamics to a mini-cult. But I’ve since realized that they are both modeled on the same thing: making another person their god.

Of course, these dynamics don’t start off this way, otherwise no one would ever agree to it.

This is the end-form God-tier Pokemon…whereas the stage 1 Pokemon are cuter and less powerful than their final forms.

A victim’s worship, a victim’s sacrifices, a victim’s devotion are what ‘levels up’ the Pokemon.

And the abuser tricks the victim into each step by calling it love or calling it respect, by insisting that this is what ‘real love’ is. Or claiming you’re a bad partner, a bad child, a bad friend, a bad employee.

The abuser defines everything: what’s good and bad, what’s right and wrong, and who you are.

They paint this picture and demand you see it as real. And step-by-step, the victim eventually comes to believe it. (Unless they were raised by this abuser and never knew reality to begin with.)

“I ask for so little. Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave.”

That love is no love at all.

–

Content note: slight Christian theology.

Final quote credit to “Labryinth”, which so succintly demonstrates the uno reverse abusers are actually pulling.

See also:

• Abuse as ‘black witchcraft’
• Abuse is theft
• Abusers hate your soul
• Abuse as a horror movie

People have a belief that you have to ‘opt out’ of dating someone versus ‘opting in’

…as in, you have to have a good reason to not date someone versus you having to have a good reason to date someone.

But we are not available to date anyone who decides they want to date us

…and we do not have to qualify our decisions or choices to anyone. People acting like you do believe they are above you in a hierarchy, and that you should not only do what they say but accept what they say as reality.

They have made themselves judge and jury over you and your decisions, and they often believe that you have to disqualify someone instead of qualifying them.

But it’s healthier and safer to opt people IN versus everyone being ‘in’ by default.

You don’t have to justify your preferences or decisions at all.

Being in a position of choosing to opt someone IN to being a dating prospect means that you are in a position to establish compatibility before making yourself vulnerable.

These friends or parents may attack your character by calling you “high maintenance’…which is them telling on themselves.

Even if it were true – which it isn’t – you’re entitled to be whatever level of maintenance you want. You’re an adult, you choose for you, and they are not entitled to an explanation.

Anyone who extends a ‘potential datee’ more benefit of the doubt than you, the person they actually know, is either being judgmental of you or doesn’t trust you.

You are not obligated to date someone unless you can come up with a good reason not to.

Not dating anyone unless there is a good a reason to do so makes infinitely more sense.

They either drag you down to their level or leave you, or pretend like you’re also a bad person somehow and that they believe it.

…but the abuser often convinces the victim that this is ‘to’ the abuser.

A victim will want an abuser to stop treating them badly: stop calling them names, stop hitting them, stop destroying their things, stop trying to control them. An abuser will want a victim to ‘dress respectfully’ or do a specific sex act ‘because you do things for the people you love’ or ‘not trigger them’ or to sit and listen to them for hours into the dead of night ‘because you shouldn’t go to bed angry’ or many, many other examples.

One action is done to a person, and the other is an action done by someone for another person.

There’s a reason I advocate for people being ‘wrong’…and it isn’t because they’re actually wrong.

Many unintentional abusers have rigid beliefs about the world, about what someone’s role is, what they ‘should’ do.

So many of the hours-long mental/moral assaults that abusers engage in at a victim is about ‘making them understand’ that they’re ‘wrong’.

And there are abusers in victim’s spaces ‘learning’ about abuse, and then weaponizing it against the victim. (Horrifyingly, it’s because many of them don’t realize they’re abusive.) And you can tell the difference between a victim and an abuser, because the abuser is trying to ‘make’ the victim do a thing while the victim is trying to justify being a person who gets to make decisions for themselves, or wanting the abuser to stop harming them.

You end up not only arguing reality with an abuser, but also moral frameworks and to whom they apply.

(There is a strong, caveat, however. If you have children with someone you are married to and live with, those children do not have the ability to consent or say “no” about the situation or how the abusive parent is treating them. In that situation – once carefully considered – it is not unreasonable to power-over the other parent, just be extremely careful about how you do so and over what. This framework does NOT support a spouse/co-parent who is abandoning their children with the other parent and never engaging in parenting or home duties: both are legally and morally responsible for and to the children and the home in which they live, and quite frankly it is dangerous to put it all on one person.)

So if you don’t like something the other person is doing, and you are trying to ‘make’ them be different because you are certain you’re ‘right’, tread carefully.

I’ve seen this over and over, not just in my own life but in the abuse dynamics of others. Abusers fixated on how the victim is ‘wrong’, and lecture them for hours and hours and hours, as if this isn’t a fully adult person who gets to make their own decisions.

A conversation is one thing.

And it might take an hour or two.

But it does not go on ALL NIGHT.

And both people are heard. Both people get to talk. Both people have opinions.

And everyone is respected as a human being who gets to decide shit for themselves.

ONE person is not the judge, jury, and arbiter.

If you are arguing about reality, if you’re arguing about moral frameworks, then you aren’t compatible, period.

It’s only safe to compromise in relationships if you have already vetted each other for core compatibilities. If you rush the dating stage to be in a relationship, then ‘compromising’ becomes a power issue, because you have to ‘compromise’ on reality and morality.

And only ONE person is really doing any ‘compromising’

…which is really that person submitting to the other.

I was adjacent to one of these situations this weekend.

The homeless woman I was with was berating the homeless man she is in a relationship with. About how he doesn’t meet her needs, about how she already told him that what he is doing is harming her, and how he needs to stop doing that and change. (The issue is that he will leave the tent when things escalate and he is overwhelmed – which frankly, considering it’s two people trapped in a tent, in stressful conditions, I think is actually an excellent choice.)

I think she thought I was going to be ‘on her side’.

Except, he’s a grown man. If he wants to leave the tent, he can leave the tent. And if she doesn’t like it, and she’s communicated that to him, and he is still doing it, then he is making the choice to do that. She wanted to therapize him, and convince him that he was wrong, and she wanted me to help her do it.

Meanwhile, I was having deja vu because it was almost exactly the kind of thing my abusive ex would do.

He wanted to argue me into submission about how I parent my child, how I handle my assets, how I dress, etc.

He was always convinced he was right, and that I needed to ‘accept’ that and change.

He was incapable of understanding my position, which is asinine, because you can understand someone’s position without agreeing with it. But it was almost as if ‘understanding’ where I was coming from meant that my position was reasonable…which he could not abide in any way, shape, or form.

And I would tell him, ‘if we’re not compatible, that’s okay, we don’t have to date’, which would upset him since I wasn’t ‘fighting for the relationship’.

To him, he decided to be in the relationship versus letting the relationship evolve organically.

I think this is what happens when people stop recognizing how important marriage is, they start treating being in a regular relationship the same as the choice to marry.

And, friends, they are NOT the same. Not only because of the legal aspect, but because you generally don’t get married until you have dated, then been in a relationship, then been engaged.

So my abusive ex, and this particular homeless woman, are treating being in a relationship the same as being married…and therefore you NEVER GET TO VET THEM.

Marriage is a commitment, a declaration of intention, and it is chosen: at a specific place, at a specific time, each party decides whether they want to commit to that level of bonding. And it isn’t binding, we can still unchoose marriage and get divorced!

So the fact that abusers prosecute another person over ‘commitment’ when the victim was never able to actually choose that is yet another way they use relationship concepts to bind the victim.

They trap you by calling it love, and then tell you all the ways you’re ‘wrong’ and should change.

And this is different than a victim being trapped in an abuse dynamic by an abuser who engaged in a switch-up.

The abuser who didn’t start being controlling until after marriage or having a baby. Maybe they hid it, maybe it was an entitlement shift, maybe they feel they can ‘relax’ and then take the mask off.

A victim in this situation is NOT being abusive even if they’re ‘telling the abuser to change’.

I’ve written about this here:

A victim wants the abuser to stop doing something TO them whereas an abuser wants the victim themselves to do or not do something FOR the abuser

…but the abuser often convinces the victim that this is ‘to’ the abuser.

A victim will want an abuser to stop treating them badly: stop calling them names, stop hitting them, stop destroying their things, stop trying to control them. An abuser will want a victim to ‘dress respectfully’ or do a specific sex act ‘because you do things for the people you love’ or ‘not trigger them’ or to sit and listen to them for hours into the dead of night ‘because you shouldn’t go to bed angry’ or many, many other examples.

One action is done to a person, and the other is an action done by someone for another person.

So the action – taking space – becomes this pivot point of argument, of reality, of morality.

To one person it is an emotional regulation mechanism while to the other it is emotionally abusive. (And there are absolutely cases, depending on context, where it is one or the other!)

The question is – who is using this idea to control the other person?

Because a healthy person? Healthy people are not interested in controlling others. Healthy people understand that not everyone is compatible, and that’s okay. Healthy people aren’t trying to ‘make’ another person anything. Healthy people aren’t trying to enforce a relationship like a contract.

Healthy people find it exhausting.

I’m trying to find the article I wrote on this, but basically what a lot of abusive, unhealthy, and toxic people do is that they look at the components of a healthy relationship and try to enforce this on another person.

Whereas those components are organic to the healthy relationship: they are descriptive, not prescriptive.

They are trying to do what healthy people do, but because they’re unhealthy, they do it in an unhealthy way.

So an unintentionally controlling person may not realize they’re being controlling, because they ‘right’.

And the victim gets caught up in feeling like they have to explain and justify and defend (JADE) that they aren’t wrong, when in reality, the issue is that Person A feels entitled to control another person in the first place.

This is why I tell victims, ‘you get to be wrong’

…even though they often aren’t.

Because it’s not about who’s right, it’s about who is controlling.

If there is a fundamental mismatch in values and reality, the answer is to leave not attempt to bind a person tighter.

Respecting someone’s autonomy over themselves is core to being a safe person.

–

At this point, it really is a red flag when someone feels perfectly comfortable to lecture another adult for hours or try to argue them into submission. Because that is an indicator of who has power in the relationship dynamic, especially if the other person can’t end it or walk away.

hat if we just explain enough and show up enough and care enough and try enough, that the other person will understand and then therefore shift their behavior.

But the learning process is actually based on modeling.

It’s why it’s so important to surround yourself with the people who are living and embodying what you want to incorporate into your own life. It isn’t that they are ‘mentoring’ you or explaining things, it’s that the way they live their life – that itself – is impactful.

So it is important to understand that it is kind to set boundaries.

A lot of victims of abuse hate doing this – and I’ve been there, I’m speaking from experience! – victims of abuse can feel ‘mean’ if they create consequences for non-optimal behavior.

Abusers thrive in conditions where they are prevented from experiencing the consequences of their own actions.

The are also robbed of the possibility of change when that happens. That’s why people who don’t rock the boat end up “walking on eggshells” and perpetuating abuse dynamics.

Becoming a shock absorber doesn’t eliminate the shocks.

–

…because communication is founded on the idea that someone can perspective-take for us. And then at least respect our perspective even if they disagree with it.

Unsafe and toxic people really struggle with both of these concepts.

The role of predictability in safety.

I’ve been teaching my son about traffic – walking across the street when it is safe, looking both ways, paying attention to cars and people – and we’ve had conversations about traffic in general while driving.

Driving is only safe because, through traffic laws and cultural norms, driving on a road with other people is designed to have a high level of predictability.

Predictability is crucial for assessing dangerous situations.

Many times he wants to stand at the edge of the curb, so he is ready to go right when the road is clear. However, when he does that, the driver will often stop, even if I am right there. I realized that my presence isn’t enough to ensure predictability about whether my son will dart into the road right in front of the car.

So now we stand in the middle of the median or back from the edge of the road, and I have him stand and walk right by my side.

Those drivers have a greater sense that they can predict that my child will not dart out into the road in front of them.

When people show you who they are, believe them.

Because of a general bias to believe the best in others, we often don’t accept when someone shows us who they are. Or we give them the benefit of the doubt when they tell us they are one thing but act differently.

Or we minimize the pattern of behavior/entitlement because we emotionally reject the conclusion for that pattern: deny/minimize a pattern of abusive behavior because

• the aggressor doesn’t fit our internal model of what an abuser looks like
• we don’t or can’t see ourselves as a victim
• we don’t want to label the aggressor as “bad”, as an “abuser”

Instead of feeling that you have to make a referendum on someone’s character – and so ‘weigh’ who you believe them to be, their intentions, their essential goodness – understand that you are assessing predictability.

Do you trust this person…to be themselves?

Victims are often confused by an abuser’s behavior because they haven’t accepted the abuser for who they actually are.

There is dissonance between their internal model of who the abuser is and who they believe the abuser to be. When they assess what this other person will do, they are often wrong because their internal model is based on false premises.

Perhaps the aggressor is unpredictable in their reactions. Sometimes they will explode and sometimes they will react compassionately. This person is still predictable…in their unpredictability. What is the conclusion? No relationship with them will be stable.

In assessing predictability, you look at their actions instead of attempting to suss out their intentions.

Predictability is predicated on PATTERN.

Their pattern of behavior is what allows you to determine the predictability of that behavior. This is important because you aren’t analyzing their behavior in terms of one incident, but a series of incidents.

An abuser creates a chain of isolation around each event; you never look at the events in context of a pattern of behavior unless the context of the pattern is the victim.

Emotions put us ‘in motion’.

Our facial expressions, gestures, and tones of voice tell others how we are feeling and what we plan to do next. Some emotions proclaim: “Look out! A change is my behavior is coming!” Others say: “I am going to remain as I am now.” – Thomas Henricks

How does the aggressor’s emotional state signal their behavior? How can you predict what they will do? By looking at their pattern of behavior.

This is, of course, applicable to non-abusers as well. How does our own emotional state signal our behavior? Are we attuned to our emotional state so that we can predict our behavior, choices, and actions? Are we attuned to the beliefs behind the emotion-state and actions?

Once you can accept yourself for who you are, you can reliably predict your own actions, and therefore make more optimal choices for yourself.

Boundaries also play a huge role in this process, because effective boundaries should be clear and predictable.

I don’t know if this is something that would track for everyone, but I have noticed that I have a much harder time scheduling things with people where the relationship ends up problematic.

It seems to be a first sign that we are not on the same page

…that there is an intrinsic communication issue, and that we don’t share the same reality. Also that the other person isn’t able to model someone else accurately enough. It’s been spot on every time.

If I notice that I am having trouble scheduling with someone, I now take it as an indicator that we may not be compatible.

I don’t know if this is something that would apply to anyone else, but it has been pretty reliable for me, especially since I routinely schedule things in the course of my employment and career. I have a high rate of ‘accuracy’ to compare to, so it stands out when I show up and they are, for example, in a completely different location.

A past reliable indicator has also been if I am talking to someone, and they take what I am saying in a completely ‘off’ direction.

I call it the “wait, what??” response. This has been 100% reliable. If I am speaking to someone new and I end up saying/thinking “wait, what??” during the course of our conversation because what they’ve said is so ‘off’, I move to high alert because I have learned from experience that I may not be dealing with someone stable or safe for me.

• When you are nice/kind to someone and they respond by being meaner to you? If they see that as weakness?
• Also…if someone responds by being nicer to a person who is mean to them. (Negging low-key verifies if you are someone who will accept controlling and critical behavior, and will respond by working to earn their praise. Practically speaking, it diagnoses for self-worth.)
• If they think the job of a parent is to ‘prepare their child for the real world’ by hurting their child…instead of loving and protecting them, and teaching them how to take care of themselves and know that they always have support when things get tough.
• If they think being a leader means being worshiped and if you aren’t worshiping them, you aren’t ‘respecting’ them as a leader. (Real leadership is actually about being responsible for decision-making and outcomes.)
• Someone who criticizes you and apparently thinks you are a terrible person…but never leaves or tries to leave. They are content to stay in a relationship with a person they deem to be horrible and, instead, just constantly tell the other person how horrible they are. That logically doesn’t make sense. If you think someone is a terrible person, you shouldn’t want to stay with them. (Victims of abuse literally stay with abusers and argue that someone who is objectively terrible is just misunderstood or going through a hard time or really a good person. Abusers tell you you are terrible and stay. Victims of abuse, generally, actually leave and let go once they truly realize what a terrible person the abuser is.)

These are just examples, but I’ve noticed ‘upside down’ responses consistently as a key indicator that someone is probably not a safe person in some way.

_

Several of these examples are of people working off a power paradigm: they exert power over you (that they may not be entitled to exert) and see how you react. Someone who is ’empowered’ is not going to be down with another person randomly trying to power over them.

People that experience genuine chronic victim-ness or bullying often unconsciously respond to attempts at dominance with submission, and therefore (from the other person’s perspective) give them ‘permission’ to power over them. It’s like assholes who believe you give them permission to steal from you if you leave your door unlocked, and that you deserve it.

See also:

• Random indicator for non-optimal relationships: co-scheduling
• The importance of paying attention to “WTF?” moments to help determine your safe people (and ‘WTF personality disorder)
• If you can’t reasonably predict someone’s behavior, then they are not a safe person for you
• We want to believe that we can ‘communicate’ people into being better