Characteristics of Unhealthy Relationships
| Jealousy |
When someone resents you for spending time with other people. |
| Clinginess |
When someone wants to be with you all the time and does not let you have any personal space. |
| Excessive Arguing |
When two people are constantly fighting. |
| Disregarding Feelings |
When someone doesn’t consider your feelings and doesn’t seem to care when you are upset. |
| Threats |
When someone intimidates and controls you to try to get you to do something that you do not want to do. |
| Persistence |
When someone won’t take “NO” for an answer and keeps trying to get you get to do something. |
| Guilt |
When someone makes you feel badly for saying “NO” or not agreeing to something. |
In an unhealthy relationship, one person—the abuser—controls the other person through various forms of abuse.
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Physical abuse
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A person hits, pushes, punches, slaps, grabs, bites, scratches, strangles, kicks, and/ or uses weapons on the other person. |
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Emotional abuse
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This takes many forms and can be very subtle. It is harder to see evidence of emotional abuse because a person has no bruises, cuts, broken bones, or scars.
- The abuser yells at the other person, calls them names, or makes fun of them.
“You’re so stupid and ugly! No one else will love you!”
- The abuser threatens to hurt the other person, their loved ones, or themselves.
“If you leave me, I’m going to hurt myself!”
“If you don’t do as I say, I’m going to tell everyone all your secrets!”
- The abuser stops the other person from seeing friends and family, tells them what to wear, follows them, calls them all the time, doesn’t allow them to have time alone.
“If you love me, you’ll stop seeing your friends and family. I’m the only one you need.”
“Who are you trying to impress with that dress? Go put on something else!”
- The abuser is overly jealous or does things to make the other person jealous.
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Financial abuse
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A person makes sure the other person doesn’t have any direct access to money; especially not enough money to leave a relationship.
- The abuser controls the bank account, takes away the other person’s pay cheque, and misuses money—gambles, does not pay bills.
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Digital abuse
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Facebook, Instagram, and texting make it easy to connect with friends and family. They also make it easy to use technology to abuse people. Someone invades the other person’s privacy—checks their phone and social media.
- “Who’s Manny? Why is he always liking your FB pictures?”
- “Give me your phone password.” “Why?” “Why not? Do you have something to hide?”
- “My partner just sent me this naked picture. I’m going to send it to all my friends!” “Does he/she know?” “Ha ha of course not!”
Sharing intimate photos with others is a crime if the photo involves a minor. It is also a crime if the sender does not have consent from the person in the photo. |
