What to do if stuck in a fearful relationship?

Why can one be stuck in a fearful relationship? Love should be about courage not fear.

When you find yourself in a relational fog, where you cannot understand your own feelings, you need to differentiate the three possible situations you might be in.

1. Emotional abuse: your relationship is of emotional abuse such as threat of physical violence, verbal violence, gaslighting, emanational blackmail. It enlists your fear, obligation, guilt (FOG) to tie you up like a hostage so that you cannot think clearly about your plan of action.
2. Insecurity: your relationship is of one or two wounded people, as a result of childhood emotional neglect (CEN) and Adversary Childhood Experiences (ACEs) or of traumas from previous adult relationships.
3. Irreconcilable differences:  your relationship is of irreconcilable differences about values, life styles, or relationship with in-laws.

Emotional abuse is the worse situation to be involved in because you can easily get stuck and feel tied up on both hands. You find yourself cautious on every move, because you are afraid of getting hurt or of your loved ones getting hurt. Yet, you would tell yourself that it is all your fault, and if you try hard enough, the situation will be improved.

Why don’t you trust your fear and choose to run from danger and instead you choose to feel obligated to make the situation better and feel guilty when you cannot make the situation better? It is because emotional abuse is not like physical violence where you can have medical evidence for the physical harm. Emotional abuse can make you double yourself and become identifying the abuser and doubting yourself. More times, you only have energy to get through the day safe, not alone to think clearly of the way out.

Just remember, in a normal healthy relationship, you feel happy and enjoy the company of your partner. If you feel anxious, scared, self-doubting, and self-blaming, this is enough harm you need for evidence of emotional abuse.

In Chinese culture, we are often taught to examine our responsibility in a dispute, and thus we may easily identify with the abuser’s accusation. If we skip the process of seeing how the abuser was doing with our emotions, we kind of undermine the merit of Chinese culture of helping us to grow out of our mistakes.

Fear is a very import emotion which help us to run away from danger in order to survive. When you learn and face your fear, you will find the strength and wisdom to fight or keep a safe distance from the danger.

Love is about courage not fear. When you can see your relationship is of emotional abuse, you will find that to love yourself, your family, and even your abuser is to leave the relationship courageously. When you seek, you will also see the plenty social resources at your services.