They also demand complete authority but make everything the victim’s responsibility.
And finally, they will continue to outline all the ways you are ‘wrong’, trying to make you change and submit, but won’t leave you (unless it’s to punish or discard you).
Whenever you are in an abuse dynamic, you and the abuser are essentially competing over whose version of reality is considered real in the relationship.
Once you start to ‘accept’ the abuser’s version of reality, you will be more and more confused because the abuser’s reality is a fantasy while reality is still real.
The better thing to do is to recognize when you and another person’s experience of reality does not overlap enough.
So many victims of abuse are arguing with the abuser over what is reality, when what is actually happening is that they cannot tolerate reality. The abuser cannot control reality but they can force or coerce you into pretending their fantasy is real: it’s The Emperor Has No Clothes.
A person who is actually caring about you cares about your feelings, your perspective, and creates space for you both in the relationship.
Abusers make you ‘pledge allegiance’ to them or to ‘love’ or something, whereas healthy people understand that we are all individuals even when we are in relationship with each other.
The key thing about this ‘subtype’ of abuser is how they weaponize the healthy relationship paradigm at you.
They aren’t working together with you, they are using relationship and abuse tools as a cover to seem like the ‘healthy’ person over you. When in reality, a healthy person – when presented with an unsafe person – would distance themselves, and a healthy person doesn’t seek to dominate others.