Hello, I’m Xuemin.

Welcome to Episode 1 of Abnormal Relationships. Today we discuss abusive love, perhaps the most universal and difficult relationship in this program to escape.

 

The term may evoke anguished romantic stories.

Examples include the complex triangle in Chiung Yao’s Romance in the Rain; the half-lifetime separation of Manzhen and Shijun in Eileen Chang’s Eighteen Springs, caused by patriarchy, family background, and his avoidance and indecision; and Han Ding’s unrequited love for Luo Jingjing in What Can I Do to Save You, My Love?

They vividly illustrate abusive love:a relationship mingling love and pain, hope and disappointment, possession and loss.Such relationships exist not only in fiction but throughout daily life.

Psychologically, what are they? Begin with feeling.

If a relationship increasingly brings sadness, grievance, frustration, anger, anxiety, despair, insecurity, panic, and self-doubt; damages mind and body through insomnia, discomfort, or poor concentration; disrupts life and work; cannot be ended; and repeatedly cycles, it is probably abusive love. In other words,it need not involve extreme violence or betrayal. Subjective suffering and depletion already demand serious examination.

The abuse may look obvious while participants, especially victims, fail to recognize emotional mistreatment. Clients often arrive for instability, inability to manage work and life, or a doctor’s recommendation rather than the relationship. They defend partners: “They did not mean it,” “Their family or past wounded them, so I should love and tolerate more,” “I misunderstood; I am too sensitive,” or “They truly promise to change.” Thusabusive love causes pain while people remain unaware, pretend not to know, or cannot acknowledge depletion.

The introduction said abnormal relationships center on concentrated elements mistaken for love. What are they here, and what can awareness enable? Today we begin awareness, experiment, and action.

 

I identify three representative elements: rationalizing or romanticizing harm, suppressing the self, and fantasizing about the future.

We struggle to face a partner’s harm because admitting it means accepting they may not love or know how to love, that our time and feeling were wasted and betrayed, past love false and the future uncertain—a recognition that can cause psychological collapse.

For defense, we instinctively rationalize and excuse.We say they are stressed, or that family and past trauma explain behavior done from love.

Rationalization can reduce conflict and foster understanding, but only if the person reflects and changes after harm.Without reflection and adjustment, repeated excuses intensify harm and cost both people chances to change.Conflict and pain accumulate.

Rationalization makes harm tolerable through explanation; romanticization makes it meaningful through sublimation.Culture contributes greatly, especially romantic narratives. Even recent idol dramas romanticize harm, as in Our Generation.

After family tragedy, Jiang Qiaoxi vanishes from Lin Qile’s life without explanation or reply. When they later meet, he says he will eat at her home then takes a taxi away and disappears again, turning her joy into anguish and waiting. The series excuses him through circumstances and further romanticizes his harm by insisting they truly love each other.

Both excusing and beautifying harm necessarily suppress the self, our second element.

An extreme classic example is Stockholm syndrome.

The term arose from a failed 1973 Stockholm bank robbery in which two criminals held four employees for 130 hours. The hostages later felt grateful for care, refused to testify, raised defense funds, and opposed police. One woman even loved and became engaged to a robber during his imprisonment.

Why? Largely self-suppression, especially of emotion.

A counterexample clarifies.

The series The Confidence also depicts victim and criminal. After Ke Ying becomes an enemy of a criminal who returns as executive Feng Xiaosheng and takes revenge, he gradually falls for her, but she never loves him.

She never suppresses feeling or excuses him through suffering or inability to love. She recognizes harm and her pain, fear, and hatred. Though temporarily powerless, she believes action can create change. Refusing suppression keeps boundaries clear and prevents abusive entanglement.

That is,attachment to a perpetrator is psychological defense, not rational choice. When real feeling is repeatedly suppressed, the mind seeks substitute safety; at extremes this produces attachment, as in Stockholm syndrome.In everyday relationships it appears more secretly through self-blame, rationalization, and romanticization.

We covered the latter two; how does self-blame appear?

We say “I am too sensitive” while sad, “I should be satisfied” while angry, or “I am too clingy” while hurt. Such speech silences feeling and trades self-deception for illusory safety. Eventually we lose space and capacity to feel and express. Emotion does not vanish, but sadness, anger, and grievance transform into insomnia, headaches, palpitations, and bodily symptoms.

Worse, suppression may wear virtue’s clothing.We learn sayings praising forbearance and retreat. Beneath their gentleness lies one message: emotion is wrong, dissatisfaction dangerous, endurance praiseworthy.

Once harm is excused and self suppressed, present reality cannot satisfy and emotion remains buried. Hope moves into fantasy to support a collapsing self and relationship.

Seductive fantasies include: a child will make an unreliable partner responsible; time will prove my love and make them love me; money will solve unhappiness.They bring comfort and make suffering meaningful because an imagined future will compensate or reward today’s pain, making abusive love harder to leave.

Why is fantasy so powerful? The Zeigarnik effect, our second psychological concept after Stockholm syndrome, helps explain.

The obsession also involves deep neural mechanisms.

Upon choosing a goal or relationship, the brain prepares for the future: prefrontal planning, dopamine for action, hippocampal memory, and other systems create tension that focuses effort.

Smooth progress releases tension and brings ease and satisfaction.Repeated interruption and struggle leave it suspended and constantly tugging.Reality’s pain is suppressed while unfinished expectation expands through the Zeigarnik effect, making departure harder.

In abusive love it is usually the latter, since expectations lack realistic grounds.Why would someone unwilling to change today awaken tomorrow? These are fantasies, not expectations. They briefly make pain bearable but repeatedly delay facing reality and deciding, producing the cycle:repeated hope and disappointment until disappointment becomes despair and erases hope.

Together, rationalizing harm hides reality; suppressing self drains resistance; fantasizing supplies excuses to persist. Interlocking like gears, they trap us in pain.

 

These are not isolated accidents. Beneath them lies a deeper, more stubborn root: attachment trauma.

Psychological trauma is not limited to disaster or violence; it is experience exceeding one’s capacity to bear.It is highly subjective. One person may regulate, return to reality, integrate, and grow; another bears enormous bodily and mental impact.

Attachment theory is one useful tool. As introduced earlier, childhood interaction with caregivers shapes attachment and how we perceive self and others, our emotions and beliefs about inner world, relationships, and environment, and our automatic responses.

I see attachment theory not as a theory of loving and being loved but of trauma: it reveals how interaction with a stronger party affects the development of someone physically and psychologically powerless.Theory, practice, and counseling show that unstable, neglectful, or invasive early attachment is a major source.

Consider two representative patterns: anxious and avoidant attachment. They offer a new understanding of abusive love.

Anxious trauma comes from inconsistent caregiver response. Unpredictability creates “hyperactivation”: only stronger emotion and demands win brief attention.

Avoidant trauma comes from reliably distant response or intrusive control. Caregivers may meet survival needs but ignore emotion or impose their will, disregarding the child’s feeling. The child despairs that emotional needs bring neglect or harm and adopts “deactivation”: suppressing needs and avoiding dependence.

Anxious and avoidant people often attract and harm each other.Most abusive couples bear traces of both patterns.Recall abusive stories and ask whether this interaction appears.

Why attraction and harm? Their respective trauma:the anxious fear abandonment; the avoidant fear neglect or engulfment.

Initially, false complementarity offers hope. Anxious warmth, focus, restraint, and observation seem to the avoidant like gentle acceptance with ideal warmth and space. Avoidant independence, calm, initial passion, and careful response seem to the anxious like stable, enduring love. Thuseach sees what was once desired but denied, easing loneliness and creating temporary harmony.

As intimacy deepens, trauma and defenses activate, forming the classic pursue-withdraw cycle.Anxious signals such as frequent contact and expressed needs change from warmth to control in avoidant eyes, activating childhood engulfment; the avoidant withdraws coldly. Withdrawal strikes anxious abandonment, producing stronger pursuit.Pursuit and withdrawal repeatedly deepen both wounds.

Paradoxically, the cycle also produces illusory satisfaction.At peak conflict, the anxious often yields first from fear, suppressing needs and pleading gently. This gives the avoidant distance and control, making the partner seem safe and love hopeful. The avoidant’s apology or small kindness then relieves abandonment, making love feel recovered.

This painful entanglement that consumes both yet cannot be left is abusive love’s distinctive feature.

 

After identifying elements and early trauma, can we escape, and how?

I offer four actions also used in counseling.

First remove filters of rationalization and romanticization and face both distortion and harm.

I ask clients what a reaction once gained. Appeasing may bring attention; yielding, praise; silence, brief peace and autonomy. Seeing this ends shame and condemnation, becausethough imperfect, it may have been the safest feasible choice then.Self-understanding and release from blame awaken empathy and place us on our own side.

With empathy, reawaken bodily perception.

The body is more honest and sensitive than consciousness, directly sensing pain, tension, fatigue, comfort, pleasure, and relaxation. It is harm’s alarm.Trauma often disconnects people from it.They normalize discomfort or distract through consumption, entertainment, and work until the body’s voice and alarm weaken.

Thereforebegin in a quiet, safe place and attend to the body.

Close your eyes, feel heartbeat and breath, and scan from head to toes. Notice shallow rapid breathing, a tight brow, or curled fingers and toes. Deliberately release them and breathe slowly and deeply. Repetition teaches the difference between tension and openness, helping you recognize fatigue and seek relaxation.

Practice and journal daily, anchoring genuine calm, comfort, ease, joy, and happiness in memory.Gradually distinguish bodily signals from habitual numbness, avoidance, or overexcitement.

In counseling I guide body scans and relaxation repeatedly because bodily trauma memory is deep and stubborn, habitually producing numbness or tension rather than ease.

If illness has appeared, also review its course and what everyone did during treatment. Worsening rather than recovery may show that a harmful relationship continues and the partner ignores or threatens health and even life. This is hidden physical abuse. Recognizing it often activates survival instinct and acknowledgment of harm.

Next,extend attention from bodily feeling to cognition: identify distorted beliefs and build reasonable ones.

I ask clients to narrate events and compare subjective feeling, understanding, and explanation with objective language, behavior, and result. “They have reasons” or “they love me” may conflict with observed cold words and selfish acts, signaling distortion.

People long suppressed or avoidant may struggle to speak; drawing and sand trays allow nonverbal expression. Claiming happiness while creating dark colors and sharp lines offers another clue.

Once distortions become clear, systematically review every life domain: what happened to body, career, relationships, money, time, energy, and emotion?

When work overwhelmed me, did my partner support me or play games while forcing more chores upon me? How often, and how many sleep-deprived days did I endure both jobs?

When seeing others’ peace, do I ask whether I am bad, flawed, or insufficient? How often? How long since joy and calm appeared, and how frequently do pain, grievance, anxiety, and doubt consume me?

What did the partner do to and for me, and how much of what I reject did they cause?

After facing harm, reconnect with suppressed and denied feelings, especially anger.

For a once-small, isolated, helpless child, anger meant risky, unwinnable conflict and worse harm. Not becoming angry was protection.

Now grown, with more resources and energy, we can and must cultivate the ability to face and use anger.Express it so a partner encounters real feeling. When harmed, seek outside support from friends, counseling, or law.

Cultures praising harmony treat anger as destructive, butanger can protect, motivate defense of rights, and improve the chance of peace and happiness.Moving from avoidance to facing and using anger is crucial.

Leave future fantasy and refuse a terrible today for an imaginary tomorrow.

When clients describe recurring harm, I ask: “If every day of your life repeated today’s interaction, but a button could stop it now, would you press it?” Almost all say yes.

In reality, the button may be a boundary-setting negotiation, temporary separation, or decision to leave.Answers differ, but it must be concrete and feasible.

Then I ask whether the button has appeared and whether either person acted. Usually the answer is silence or no.

Clients gradually see they delay not because the relationship is unclear but because they fantasize that suffering will end and happiness arrive, although close observation shows no change occurring.

To leave fantasy, I suggest a simple exercise:observe and record every harm, including time, context, interaction, and effects on mind and body.

Finally, find or build a secure base.

A healthy relationship or professional counseling can support exploration and hold us when tired or hurt. More broadly, social security and a friendly culture provide stable psychological background and external support, giving courage within uncertainty.

Supportive intimacy and humane environments are long projects requiring time, energy, setbacks, and correction; later episodes expand them.

 

Finally, a summary.

We discussed three common elements: rationalizing or romanticizing harm, suppressing self and emotion, and fantasizing about the future. We traced them to attachment trauma and used attachment theory to explain repeated abusive relationships.

To leave, remove external filters; face harm with self-empathy; awaken bodily perception; recognize distortion; reconnect with suppressed emotion, especially anger; use observation and records to break fantasies; and seek or build a secure base. This last, vital and lengthy task unfolds throughout the program.

That concludes today. Thank you; see you next time.