Is My Relationship Unhealthy or Abusive? | Through Psychology

Not sure whether your relationship is unhealthy, controlling or abusive? Explore signs of coercive control, self-doubt and how a relationship may be affecting you.

Is my relationship unhealthy or abusive?

For when something doesn’t feel right, but you’re not sure what to call it.

Sometimes people arrive at the word abuse only after a relationship has ended.

Before that, the questions can sound very different:

Am I overreacting?Are all relationships this difficult?Maybe I’m just too sensitive.They’ve never actually hit me.We have good times too.What if I’m the difficult one?

If you recognise some of those thoughts, you do not need to decide today whether your relationship is abusive.

A more useful place to begin can be simply asking:

What is this relationship doing to me?

Domestic abuse is not only physical

One reason domestic abuse can be difficult to recognise is that many of us have been given a very narrow picture of what it looks like.

In England and Wales, the legal definition of domestic abuse includes not only physical and sexual abuse, but also threatening behaviour, coercive or controlling behaviour, economic abuse and psychological or emotional abuse.

So a relationship does not need to involve physical violence to have a serious psychological impact.

Coercive control can involve behaviours such as monitoring where someone goes, controlling money, restricting relationships with other people, dictating everyday choices or using intimidation and threats. Importantly, official UK guidance emphasises looking at the cumulative pattern of behaviour rather than viewing each incident in isolation.

That distinction matters.

One event may seem small when you describe it to somebody else.

Twenty small events that gradually change how freely you can live your life may tell a very different story.

Unhealthy and abusive are not necessarily the same thing

All relationships can contain arguments, hurt feelings, poor communication and periods where neither person handles things particularly well.

Two people can become stuck in unhelpful patterns. Both might become defensive. Both might say things they regret. A relationship can be unhappy or unhealthy without necessarily involving abuse.

The question becomes different when there is an ongoing pattern of fear, control, intimidation, punishment or restriction of one person's autonomy.

Research distinguishes ordinary or situational relationship conflict from coercive control, which involves a more enduring pattern of domination, intimidation, isolation and control.

So rather than asking only:

“Do we argue?”

it can be more useful to ask:

“What am I allowed to do, say and feel inside this relationship — and what happens when I don’t comply?”

Notice how much of your life is organised around their reactions

This is something I think is particularly important.

You might still technically be able to see your friends, wear what you want, spend your own money or disagree with your partner.

But what happens afterwards?

Perhaps you have learnt that seeing a particular friend results in hours of accusations.

Perhaps saying no leads to sulking, threats, withdrawal or rage.

Perhaps spending money requires an explanation.

Perhaps you carefully choose the right moment to raise something because you know what might happen otherwise.

Over time, you may stop doing certain things without anybody explicitly forbidding them.

From the outside, it can look like choice.

From the inside, your choices may have become organised around avoiding consequences.

That is one reason coercive control can be so difficult to recognise while you are living within it.

Some questions may be more useful than a checklist

No internet checklist can tell you definitively what your relationship is.

But these questions may help you notice its effect on you:

Can I disagree without being frightened of what will happen afterwards?

Can I say no without being punished, pressured or made to feel guilty?

Do I have privacy?

Can I maintain friendships, family relationships, interests and parts of my life that are separate from my partner?

Can I make ordinary decisions without anticipating their reaction first?

Do I feel able to spend or access money without unreasonable monitoring or restriction?

Do I find myself changing what I say, wear, do or believe in order to keep the peace?

When something hurts me, can we talk about it — or does the conversation somehow end with me apologising?

Do I feel more like myself in this relationship, or progressively less like myself?

And perhaps one of the most important:

Do I feel free?

You do not need to answer these questions in any particular way for your experience to matter.

They are prompts for curiosity, not a test.

“But there are good times too”

There often are.

A relationship does not have to be awful every minute to be harmful.

Someone can be affectionate, funny, generous or deeply important to you and also behave in ways that frighten, control or diminish you.

Those realities can exist at the same time.

That is part of what can make these relationships so psychologically confusing.

Recognising harmful behaviour does not require you to erase everything good you have ever experienced with that person.

And caring about somebody does not mean that their behaviour cannot be harming you.

Why am I questioning myself so much?

Persistent self-doubt can itself be part of the psychological impact of abuse.

A recent review of subtle and covert forms of abuse found recurring experiences of confusion, self-blame, reduced confidence and difficulty trusting one's own judgement.

Research specifically examining coercive control has also found meaningful associations with symptoms of PTSD and depression. A systematic review and meta-analysis involving 68 studies found moderate associations between exposure to coercive control and both PTSD and depression symptoms.

That does not mean everybody who experiences an unhealthy or abusive relationship will develop a mental health diagnosis.

It does mean that constantly monitoring another person's reactions, having your reality challenged, living with fear or losing control over everyday decisions can have real psychological consequences.

If you find yourself thinking:

I used to be decisive.I don't know why I can't trust myself anymore.I need somebody else to tell me whether I'm being unreasonable.

that deserves curiosity rather than criticism.

You do not have to be ready to leave

Therapy is not somewhere you should be told what decision to make about your relationship.

You might be considering leaving.

You might desperately want the relationship to work.

You might have no intention of leaving.

You might not even know yet whether anything you have experienced belongs under the heading of domestic abuse.

That uncertainty is allowed.

There can be value in having somewhere separate from the relationship where you can begin to understand what is happening, notice patterns and hear your own thoughts more clearly.

You do not have to arrive having already reached the conclusion.

And you don't have to prove that it was “bad enough”

People often compare their experiences with something they imagine would constitute real abuse.

They've never hit me.

Other people have it much worse.

Maybe I'm being dramatic.

But support does not have to be earned by reaching some threshold of suffering.

The question does not need to be:

“Was this bad enough to count?”

Sometimes a more useful question is:

“How am I having to live in order to make this relationship work?”

If the answer involves becoming quieter, smaller, more frightened, more isolated or less certain of yourself, that is worth paying attention to.

If you're still not sure

You don't need to be.

Sometimes “I don't know, but something feels wrong” is enough of a starting point.

At Through Psychology, you can come to therapy while you are still in the relationship, after you have left, or years later when you begin to recognise how much an earlier relationship still affects you.

I won't decide what your relationship is for you.

We can look carefully at what has happened, how it has affected you, what patterns you are noticing and what you want from here.

You don't need the right label before you are allowed to start making sense of your experience.

If you need support now

Through Psychology is not an emergency or crisis service. If you are in immediate danger, call 999. If you need specialist domestic-abuse or urgent mental-health support, please use the Urgent & Specialist Support section of this website rather than waiting for a therapy enquiry to be answered.