Ethel & Noble

Have you ever been in a relationship where your instincts are telling you that this person is not sincere about his mistakes? Have you ever met someone who makes you feel like they are your jailer instead of your lover? Below are the signs I noticed after being with different people through different forms of relationships.

1. Love bombing
Showering you with overwhelming attention, affection, and gifts within a short period of meeting them, to manipulate you by the time you’ve become helplessly vulnerable to them.

2. Stonewalling
Completely ignoring you. Refusal to make eye contact. Refusing to answer questions, acting busy, and tuning you out. It’s the emotional equivalent of cutting off someone’s emotional oxygen.

3. Lifeline cutting
Giving you reasons not to see friends and family anymore. Blocking your friends on your social media platforms, refusing to let you speak to your support systems.

4. Devaluation
Constantly breaking you down with insults, destructive criticisms, body shaming, public humiliation, and subtle put-downs like invalidating your dreams and telling you you’re not good enough.

5. Gaslighting
Blatantly or subtly lying to you about certain things, in a way that makes you question your memory. They could say you said something you never said, or deny your recollection about an event, making you look crazy or too sensitive.

6. Projection
Calling you what they are. The most popular one is to accuse you of cheating if they’re cheating or to say you have insecurities that they have.

7. Future faking
It’s an emotional carrot-dangling technique, where the person makes false promises just to get what they want from you. E.g. they promise to take you to certain exotic places, they raise your hopes about your dream wedding, etc.

BACK TO YOU
I hope the signs above help you to differentiate between the people who love you from the people who just want to abuse you.