Do You Live With An Emotional Bully?

The human brain, due to its evolutionary history, has the capacity to function as prey or predator. Throughout the course of human development, we have been both and at least in marriage, we continue to perpetuate patterns of prey and predator. They regularly marry each other.

Marriage, fundamentally an emotional entity, often couples an emotional predator with an emotional prey. You would think we would have evolved with our civilization to the point where we would do neither and simply function in marriage as adults taking good care of ourselves in the presence of our beloved.

Although we all can act out prey or predator, partners in an emotionally bullying relationship will specialize in being either a great predator or an expert prey. This sets up the perfect situation for emotional abuse (and at times, physical abuse) to flourish.

When I ask the question, "Do you live with an emotional bully?" the other implied question is, "Are you living as an emotional prey?" We have a tendency to focus on the bully as if he or she carries more responsibility for the damage than does the prey. But in a marriage between consenting adults, if the prey agrees to perpetuate participation in a relationship in which they are emotionally abused, they are as much responsible for the violence as is the emotional bully.

The earmarks of emotional bullying are dominance, manipulation and subjugation of one marital partner over the other. One partner over-powers and the other one submits. The devices by which emotional bullying is done are almost infinite. Some of the predominant techniques or tools of emotional abuse that the bully uses are:

focus entirely on the prey (or "you" if you are the prey) inability to admit their part in the conflict and abuse a perpetual attitude of "you are never good enough" refusal to validate you, the prey in any way regular criticism of you blaming you for all their problems and displeasure my-way-or-the-highway attitude, i.e. using distance or cold shoulders to manipulate and get their way with you a belief by the bully that he or she knows what's best for you, the abused, but they have no ears for what you may have to say about them

Under the best of circumstances, couples in a relationship will occasionally bruise each other emotionally. Healthy couples then get out the repair kit, talk about it, say, "I sorry," as needed, heal and move on. Not so with the emotional bully. The abusive patterns continue on a regular basis, over time and there is little concern about repair by the bully.

As the preyed upon partner, your part is to go along with all this and not rock the boat. Prey partners become experts at adapting and finding reasons to put up with the emotional abuse and even justify it.

It is not necessary for you to use a checklist to decide if you live with an emotional bully. All you have to do is ask yourself: "Do I feel emotionally safe around this person? Am I free to come and go, act and express myself and do what is good for me without worry or fear of the response of my partner?" If the answer to these questions is "No" that's all you need to worry about. You're living with an emotional bully.

Correction. There is one other thing to worry about. What are you going to do about your lifestyle as prey? If you wait for your bully partner to see it your way or heed your reasoning, you're setting yourself up for more emotional abuse. Hopefully, you have not been bullied and belittled to the point where you have lost the ability to act on your own.

Your emotional bully partner is not the key to your salvation out of the cycle of emotional violence. You are. You will have to act without their approval, without their permission and on your own, at least within the context of the marriage. However, you're not alone. My guess is once you admit to living as a prey you will have friends and family validate and support you.

The first thing to do is re-vision yourself as a person of worth who does not deserve to live in emotional deprivation and depletion. "You are smart. You are kind. You are important," to quote my favorite line from the movie "The Help."

Next, you can get a counselor to coach you out of this vicious cycle and show you how to restore yourself to healthy emotional living. You can read and learn about emotional bullying and how it affects families You were not born to live in fear. Understand and recognize the powerful emotional forces at work in families and intimate relationships.

If the "you" in these matters happens to be the bully and by some miracle you been able to get a glimpse of yourself as predator and you want to change that, again counseling and knowledge can help.