I understand now why, if you are in an emotionally abusive relationship, how difficult it can feel to speak up or escape it [...] Part of the abuse is that it removes your layers of self-confidence until you are so co-dependent that you don’t think you can exist without the other person. Often the other person is telling you things like "You'll never find anyone who loves you like I do." I’ve had that said to me in that relationship.

the non-drinking person in a relationship with an alcoholic got just as out of control, was in just as much pain, and needed just as much healing as the alcoholic. Al-Anon

But they are experts at using their victim's need for attention and affection to manipulate them. It's important to understand that, while abusers are incapable of loving others, they're incapable of loving themselves, also. Abusers need to feel superior. They will obsessively find fault, teach, correct and criticize.

There is a lot of emotional attachment here. It's like a really painful divorce. It does feel like I'm in an abusive relationship at the moment, where I'm with somebody that I really shouldn't be with. It’s not healthy for me to be there any more with the Conservative party.

Sparrow: Oh my God. I'm a trained professional. I can't believe I didn't see it sooner! The mind games... the use of isolation... the accusations about being unfaithful... the obsessive keeping track... preventing the other person from getting a job... Stuart, we're in an abusive relationship with the Bush administration!

Going through an abusive situation just creates another need. And if we can stretch far, we can say even the person who's caused abuse has some unmet need, and they think it can be met through harm and domination and manipulation and gaslighting. And they think that's going to meet some need in them, but the need is not met. The abuse continues. They just find new people to take it. But mutual aid suggests those needs can be met. Maybe they need a different therapist, maybe they need a different kind of healer or a group of healers, maybe they need to see that people who were structured and shaped to be abusive found another path.

I have been in an abusive marriage. Violence can come from love, from a very intimate person. Violence can come from all sorts of crazy situations. What are you going to do? You have to deal with it when it strikes.

Most men and women born in the fifties or earlier were socialized to believe that marriages and/or committed romantic bonds of any kind should take precedence over all other relationships. Had I been evaluating my relationships from a standpoint that emphasized growth rather than duty and obligation, I would have understood that abuse irreparably undermines bonds. All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm's way.... Women who would no more tolerate a friendship in which they were emotionally and physically abused stay in romantic relationships where these violations occur regularly. Had they brought to these bonds the same standards they bring to friendship they would not accept victimization.

Walking away from an abusive relationship is a sign of strength. It shows the world that you know your worth and your rights and that you will not allow anyone to walk all over you.

Substance abuse is a very real trap. Drugs and alcohol are very much like an abusive lover who treats you well at first and then beats you up, apologizes, gives you nice treatment for a while, and then beats you up again. The trap is in trying to hang in there for the good while trying to overlook the bad. Wrong. This can never work.

because you didn't give him any cookies. All abusers want you to believe that you can stop the abuse by changing yourself.

The issue is we don't trust each other, especially as women. But the trick is, the first thing that really helps us get out of abusive situations and stay out, is to talk about it

I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when to die.

You have to be determined to get out but that's also hard, because the abuse kills your willpower and sometimes you don't want to fight any more. It took me forever to get to a place where I could trust a man enough to date him because of everything I went through