Defining emotional abuse....

[Tangerina]

I saw a lot of topic on here with people wondering about whether or not their own situations counted as abuse and I guess I am in the same boat... I am 20 and I recently got out of a 3 year relationship (he left me) and now I am in another relationship with someone who treats me extremely well and I am starting to think back and wonder if some of the things that my ex did were emotionally abusive. I am really hesitant to say that they were, since every one has problems and all couples have fights and you can't cry emotional abuse every time something is going wrong, but I have just been thinking about how cranky and controlling he was and how it made me feel. Like, often if we were cooking together he would get mad if I didn't do everything the way he wanted, like our most common argument was him getting mad at me for not chopping vegetables to the "right size..." We actually had this fight hundreds of times cuz he couldn't let it alone if I didn't do it the way he wanted... Or sometimes when I was talking with someone and he thought I was running off at the mouth a bit (which I tend to do, I love to talk) he would say "Shhhhh...." in front of people! I'd say "don't Shush me!" really loud so people would know he was a jerk and to try to make it seem a bit humorous, but it really hurt me.... or sometimes he wouldn't do it in front of people but take me aside later and tell me what I should have said or that "they probably didn't want to hear what you had to say about that" or whatever.... He is a ballet dancer and one time I was trying to decide if I should take a ballet class at college or not and he told me he would be dissappointed with me if I didn't... same thing happened when we were biking once, I decided to walk up a really steep hill and he got mad and dissappointed in me... Or one time we were having sex and it took me a long time to "get there" and I asked him to do some special things for me and he did but afterwards he wouldn't talk to me because he felt "used" and I was so mad because what about all of the nights I satisfied him without asking for anything in return.... The list goes on and on, sorry to rant, it just kind of all flooded out.... When we broke up he wrote me a letter admitting that he was always jealous of my life and wanted to put me down and hold me back so I couldn't be better than him, which was really the biggest problem in our relationship....

So I guess what I am wondering though is whether this sort of thing is emotional abuse, because he did put me down and hold me back and try to control me, whether it was dumb things like the veggie chopping or being cold and jealous towards me when I got accepted into the college I had been dreaming of...., or is this just stuff that happens in crappy relationships.... where do you draw the line?

 

I think I started to notice the big difference when I went running with my new boyfriend (I am training to be a distance runner) and he tells me "Good job, baby, you are so hardcore!" as opposed to coming up with a list of 15 training tips that I need to follow.....