How Your Good Intentions Are Actually Enabling Abuse

I often see well-intentioned people creating an environment where uncomfortable conversations about abuse or unhealthy behaviors are shut down. They aren’t trying to create space for abuse or various forms of toxicity, but that is exactly what happens if we don’t have uncomfortable conversations.

When people voice concerns about potential abuse or unhealthy relationship dynamics, it often turns into an attack on someone’s judgment instead of looking at a situation with an open mind. This looks like telling someone they are wrong simply because you disagree, not because you’ve taken the time to listen or learn about why they came to that conclusion.

Examples of this include:

“They are nice to me.”

“They wouldn’t do that.”

“That wouldn’t bother me.”

“That isn’t as big of a deal as you are making it.”

“You’re overreacting/overthinking.”

Just because they treat you well does not mean they treat everyone well.

Something may not make you uncomfortable, but that doesn’t mean it is appropriate or that someone else should be okay with it.

You may not be vulnerable or concerned, but someone else is. And you might not be right, so it is important to genuinely listen to other people and understand why they’ve come to a conclusion or have concerns.

I literally encourage everyone to look into the dynamics of manipulation and the common response people have when they’ve experienced abuse. Most responses you see are not unreasonable, uncommon, or “dramatic.”

Someone’s response may not look like what you think it should, and you can pick apart how they voice a concern or try to get help, but VERY FEW people respond well to abuse or something they have a lot of emotion about.

You and me included.

Additionally, it is unfair to ask someone who is struggling or emotional to respond like someone who isn’t. We are all human.

Shutting down isn’t any better of a response than speaking up in a “not acceptable” way. But it is socially more acceptable to be quiet and it makes other people more comfortable. This is because silence means others don’t have to consider anything uncomfortable. It means others don’t have to consider something they would be morally obligated to intervene in or something that would cause them to question their beliefs.

It allows the status quo to stay in place.

A willingness to see and seek to understand someone’s experience and face our own biases is important. It is also important to seek more information or maybe even training before having an uneducated or unfounded opinion, especially on anything related to manipulation or abuse.

Because if you don’t know, you don’t know.

Even if you think you know.

Abuse and manipulation are not areas you can help in if you don’t understand them. You will most likely end up being manipulated and causing more harm than good.

We are all guilty of having opinions we can’t back up, but it is especially dangerous and harmful if we have an opinion about relationship dynamics without first having an understanding (or at least a willingness to understand) of how abuse and manipulation happen.

Let’s be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to form an opinion.