LEARN · 02 / WARNING SIGNS
Warning signs.
The patterns that most often precede an escalation. If several of these describe your relationship, trust the pattern.
6 MIN READ
Signs inside the relationship.
- Your partner monitors your phone, location, email, or social media.
- You censor yourself to avoid “setting them off.”
- Small disagreements become large, fast, and usually end in you apologizing.
- Your partner isolates you from friends or family, or tells you who you can see.
- You’ve hidden injuries or excused behaviors to people who love you.
- Your partner controls money, keeps you from working, or runs up debt in your name. (See: Financial abuse.)
- There are threats aimed at your children, pets, job, or immigration status.
- Sex is coerced, even if never overtly forced.
Signs that escalation is close.
Escalation often clusters around life changes: pregnancy, a new job, a planned visit to family, a stated intent to leave. If the incidents are getting closer together, or the consequences more severe, that is the pattern. Not a phase.
Warning signs in a new relationship.
Healthy love does not look like obsession. Speed is a signal. Someone who moves very fast (declarations, keys, moving in, pressing for marriage or a baby within months) is building the structure of control before the mask slips. Be slow on purpose. A person who actually loves you can wait.
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