Intimacy with a partner can lead to some of the happiest moments of a person’s life, but for some, their intimate relationships are painful parts of their lives and they are not aware of the problems that could have led to the abusive relationship.
According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, over 12 million men and women are victims of some form of relationship violence by an intimate partner, such as sexual assault, emotional abuse or stalking annually.
Many of the signs of an abusive relationship present themselves early in a relationship, according to MSU Safe Place Director Holly Rosen. Some of these warning signs include jealousy from a partner over hanging with others and increased hostility when the partner is drunk, Rosen said.
MSU Safe Place is a program that offers counseling and advocacy for anyone in the MSU community who is experiencing any form of relationship abuse. Safe Place also has a shelter in place for victims of relationship abuse if they need a new place to live at a moment's notice.
“MSU Safe Place is here for anybody who's not sure if they might be being abused, or if someone they care about is experiencing it,” Rosen said. “So people can contact us and we can talk it through if they're wondering, ‘Was my relationship from high school abusive,’ or ‘Is the one I'm in now,’ because sometimes people who are experiencing it don't even recognize it. They're not quite sure, because we all have myths about what a victim looks like, and what an abuser looks like, and if you're experiencing early warning signs or even abuse, you may not be sure about it.”
According to the data collected by the National Domestic Violence Hotline, 29% of women in college have been a part of an abusive intimate relationship, and 58% of college students do not know what steps to take to help someone in an abusive relationship.
The Warning Signs
According to MSU Safe Place, there are six early warning signs that could tell you that your partner may be abusive in the future.
The warning signs are acting overly jealous, changing drastically after the honeymoon phase, blaming behavior on external factors, isolating their partner from friends and family, undermining their partner’s mental health and moving the relationship forward too quickly.
For serious relationships, jealousy can be a major underlying factor of a toxic relationship and could eventually lead to abuse, Rosen said.
Jealousy is often seen as endearing early in a relationship, but can often become smothering and lead to isolation for the non-abusive partner, according to the document of warning signs from MSU Safe Place.
“One of the biggest red signs we see, probably, or early warning signs that we see with a student population is the jealousy and the increased verbal abuse when someone is drinking,” Rosen said. “So just kind of isolating them a bit, and giving them accusations about being interested in other people when they're not into that kind of thing.”
Forcing your partner to isolate themselves from close relationships is another form of relationship abuse, but it stems from jealousy.
Rosen said that abusers often try to force their partners to isolate themselves from close relationships to try and prevent their partner from cheating. However, the lack of trust can stem from a person’s own insecurities and have no basis in reality.
A relationship needs trust to survive, and someone who is too insecure to trust their partner is not ready for the relationship and will sabotage it.
Another sign that your partner could be abusive down the road is that they become a drastically different person as the relationship progresses, changing who they were that made them lovable in the first place.
According to the document from MSU Safe Place, the memories from early in the relationship can make it harder for individuals to leave the relationship, however distorted the memories may be.
The third sign of relationship violence, according to MSU Safe Place, is if your partner is not accountable for their actions and blames everything on external factors, such as drugs or alcohol or growing up with abuse in their own lives.
“Why does somebody choose to do this (be abusive)?" Rosen said. "Sometimes it's because they grew up with violence, sometimes it's because they were abused as children. But again, a lot of people who grew up with violence and were abused as children are not abusive to their partners. So this does not cause it, right. So part of it's our culture, you know, when you're looking at men abusing women, there's a lot of pressure for some men to dominate the relationship and lead the way the relationship will go. And if their female partner talks back, that's disrespectful to them as a male, as a human being, and it hits their core.”
The last two warning signs of abuse, undermining their partner’s mental health and moving quickly in a relationship, are related.
Support student media! Please consider donating to The State News and help fund the future of journalism.
Signs that someone is trying to move a relationship forward too fast are easy to spot, such as your partner saying 'I love you' early on or saying that they cannot live without you, Rosen said.
“They'll try to convince the person that they'll be in danger if they leave them or maybe that the person can't live without them,” Rosen said. “That's another warning sign is that if that person starts saying I love you, and it's really early in the relationship, or they start saying, I can't live without you, or imagine my life without you, those are huge warning signs.”
These claims from a partner can be very detrimental to a person’s mental health, making them feel trapped in the relationship.
You see the warning signs, now what?
It is easier to identify the problems in a relationship, but what do you do after that? Addressing problems can be daunting for many people.
“I understand that for a lot of people, they feel intimidated to call or reach out,” Rosen said. “And there are programs where you can email and get communications going or chats and that kind of thing. But you don't have to get support from a program like Safe Place, if you have a good support system from your friends or your family, they can help you figure some of this stuff out, too.”
It can also be hard for people to realize that they are in an abusive relationship, even if they notice the warning signs early on.
“If somebody is in a relationship, and they find themselves worried about the response that their partner might have depending on what they say or do, like worried as in worried that the person is going to blow up and get angry or get really upset, or they find themselves watching everything they say and do like they're walking on eggshells, or they're really afraid to say the wrong thing, then that shows that there's a problem in the relationship,” Rosen said.
When someone realizes that the relationship is abusive, it can be hard for that person to leave the relationship. Rosen said the most dangerous time of an abusive relationship is when someone tries to end it, because the abuser can become desperate to maintain the relationship and can resort to physical or emotional manipulation to keep the relationship afloat.
“Part of being in a relationship is compromising,” said Rosen. “But if you find that you're compromising more than your partner, or you're sacrificing your own needs and what you want, and you're watching what you're saying, and doing, then I would suggest: reach out to Safe Place or someone that you trust, and process some of that, because, love is hard and emotions are intense, but it shouldn't be that hard.”
This article is part of the Restricted Romance print issue. Read the entire issue here.
