At first, they don’t think they’re being abused at all, and consider their relationship to be good or loving, if volatile.
They don’t see that the other person is being controlling through their anger, their money, their willingness to escalate, sex, emotional manipulation, etc. That is because their concept of reality is off – they think they are in a relationship with someone they love – and they often go to relationship resources to try and fix it…which only makes an abuse dynamic worse because using healthy relationship tools with an unhealthy person only gives them more power and leverage over you.
Once they start to realize something is wrong, and start to look up resources, they’re trying to figure out if they are indeed in an abusive relationship.
People may have been telling them that their significant other is ‘bad’ or treating them badly, but they didn’t want to listen because they love this person and are emotionally attached to them. In this stage, as the dawning realization of the reality of the situation comes over them, they start to research abuse and (often, not always) share it with the abuser. They are unintentionally teaching the abuser how to be a better abuser, because now the abuser has more tools to use against the victim, tools the victim is in agreement with. Because the victim doesn’t understand the underlying issue with abuse (someone’s entitlement to control you and force you to think what they think, believe what they believe, act how they want you to act: they don’t intrinsically respect your autonomy) they think it is just a matter of educating the abuser. Like “Oh, I had no idea! If only I had known this was abusive, I wouldn’t have done it. I am sorry, I will stop and not do it anymore.”
When you educate the abuser on abuse, they simply switch to a different method of abuse…but the underlying pattern of not recognizing your autonomy, of trying to control you, or ‘logic you into submission’, is the same.