“Abusive love” usually suggests intimacy, but similar patterns can occur in friendship, family, work, and even our relationship with ourselves. They need not involve spectacular harm; often they wear the guise of love, duty, effort, growth, or passion, making people suffer while unable to leave.

This conversation grew fromEpisode 1 of Abnormal Relationships, which discussed abusive love. Diandian invited lecturer Xuemin and editor Lin Hui to unpack, through counseling, personal experience, and social culture, relationship patterns that look different but share an underlying logic.

Why do some people seek to educate partners or save relationships? Why do they remain convinced that “a little longer will make things better” as their bodies tire and creativity fades? Why do we use pain to confirm love, mistake endurance for growth, and treat sacrifice as value? What happens when this pattern spreads from romance to work, from interpersonal ties to the self, and finally through every part of life?

Like Abnormal Relationships, the discussion does not define a “normal relationship,” label relationships good or bad, or judge right and wrong. It asks how elements that move relationships away from love take shape, how to recognize them, and how to see again our needs, boundaries, and desired life.

It may not give immediate answers, but helping us recognize patterns earlier and face our feelings more honestly may already be change.

 

01:35Do people in abusive love often fail to recognize it?

05:11How do screen stories shape fantasies of love?

12:36Can abusive relationships with others begin in an abusive relationship with ourselves?

13:28What signs may warn that we are in abusive love?

18:29Can our relationship with work also be abusive love?

22:38Are people passionate about work more vulnerable to it?

27:05Why do we mistake pain for growth and hardship for effort?

47:53Why are socially disadvantaged groups more likely to enter abusive relationships?

51:13Perhaps the real danger is not suffering, but imagining that “a little longer will make it better.”

56:21Does belief in only one answer make a relationship harder to release?

58:44How can we act if we are already in an abusive relationship?

 

Cao Xuemin | Counselor with a PhD in psychology from Fudan University; author of Why We Stopped Loving and The Psychology of Breakups; lecturer for Vistopia’s Abnormal Relationshipsand When Love Ends

Diandian | Podcast producer and host; contributor to Vistopia Roundtableand 100 Professional Confessionsand other podcasts

Lin Hui (Lizi) | Vistopia editor and host of Vistopia Roundtable; planner and producer of Abnormal Relationshipsand Sexuality Begins with Meand other programs

 

Diandian

 

bd@vistopia.com.cn