We will tell you in our today’s article what manipulations can help recognize a potential tyrant in a man and what “alarm bells” you need to pay attention to when you are at the very beginning of a relationship with such a partner. Here are signs your partner is a tyrant or a bully.
How to know if your partner is a tyrant?
Hundreds of women fail to notice that they find themselves in the position of a victim in the relationship and suffer from the so-called hidden violence. To an outside observer, such an alliance may seem idyllic. However, inside the relationship, one partner is slowly but surely “breaking” the other one.
“I don’t like your friends and family”
The desire for power and total control is one of the hallmarks of a violent personality (whether it is psychological or physical violence). Therefore, as the relationship develops, you suddenly find yourself isolated from your usual social circle and even your family.
The pretext under which this type of manipulation is exercised can be different. Your man can make you feel guilty by talking about how bored he is when you’re not around. Alternatively, he can express his negative opinion about your sister or friend in a rude and sarcastic form, insistently demanding to reduce or even stop communicating with them. He may harass you with calls and messages, suspecting you of adultery.
Each meeting with your friends or each visit to your family becomes a test of strength and a subject of heated discussions, or the reason for his bad mood. Another characteristic sign of incipient tyranny is the partner’s requirement to coordinate all your plans with him, while he himself quite calmly contacts his close circle at convenient times and places.
There is only one unconscious goal – to deprive you of your usual support, human resource, and to limit your world and life to himself. At any moment, your partner will be able to get his portion of attention and establish himself in control of the situation.
Flexible value system
Partners’ relationships, in addition to the joy of intimacy and love, include a decent set of mutual obligations.
However, the values and rules of living together, which used to be common, turn into rigid obligations for one partner and remain very flexible for the other. It suddenly turns out that, speaking about the impossibility of adultery, your man meant you, not himself.
It turns out that one evening he can come tired from work and sit back sad on the couch, while you must always be in good shape, cheerful and funny. Gradually, such a relationship turns into a kind of one-sided game.
Whatever you do, everything turns out to be small and ends with new demands and constant dissatisfaction. At the same time, your own needs seem to cease to exist.
Down with self-realization
It is important for every person to fill their life with resources that help them to rest their soul and become more resistant to the challenges of life. Someone loves to embroider, while someone needs to attend a piano concert once a month or meet an old friend. All of these resources ultimately make us more complete, stronger, and free.
The manipulator is not at all interested in such a partner, so he will try with all his might to “de-energize” you. Your favorite hobbies, as well as loved ones who share them, are gradually moved to the background, and eventually, disappear from your life. Along with them, you gradually lose yourself and everything that fills your inner battery with energy.
“Have pity for me, I am the most unfortunate man”
For some reason, the tyrant carries a huge emptiness or pain in his inner world, which he tries to compensate for with total control over his dears. Therefore, another characteristic feature of such people is constant complaints and discontent.
There is always a person guilty of the fact that things are going wrong. This does not depend on the scale of the “problem”: if there is a tap leaking at home, if there is unemployment in the country. The manipulator’s speech and statements are filled with disappointment, sadness about the opportunities missed (of course, it was not their own fault), and the deepest melancholy.
They love to complain and talk about their problems. They hardly find at least one person to whom they are sincerely grateful and joyfully tell about all the shortcomings of their former partners in life or business.
Unfortunately, there is a stereotype in many women that frogs can indeed be taken away from their swamps and turned into princes. However, this is only a fairy tale. Don’t try to save anyone but yourself. It is better to flee.
Fatigue
This is a sign that signals to you that you have stopped drawing strength from a relationship. Though becoming stronger and happier together sounds like another goal of the partnership, rooted deeply in ancient times.
The modern pace of life and the inability to cope with stress often lead to apathy and ordinary physical and emotional fatigue. Intuitively, each of us knows that relationship fatigue is a completely different phenomenon.
In a relationship that slowly poisons you from the inside, the manipulator’s goal will be achieved sooner or later. You are de-energized and exhausted, you no longer feel your worth, and you don’t trust yourself. In some strange way, your whole life is built around an attempt to satisfy the needs of another person. You are no longer sure that you want anything at all and even have the right to want, including physical intimacy with your man.
At this stage, many are trying with great effort to break out of the existing scheme, but these attempts often end with another “last chance” and the “victim-tyrant” relationship simply enters a new round.
What has to be done? If you are unhappy in love, this is a reason to think and, perhaps, find the strength in yourself to get rid of a destructive relationship. True partnership is based on love and yet involves mutual exchanges and compromises that do not destroy the integrity of either a man or a woman.
If two adults love and respect each other, they will always find a way to negotiate and solve the difficulties that arise. After all, they are united by a common desire to make their life and relationships a little better. They do not glorify themselves by depreciating the one who is nearby.
