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Hidden Like a Vein: Describing Emotional Abuse
There’s nothing like a romantic relationship to make a person fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy — a concept more commonly expressed as “in for a penny, in for a pound.” Another person’s love will often allow you to see your possession of it as a zero sum game: either it’s entirely there or it’s completely gone. A decent partner will ameliorate this feeling in the other. A manipulator will use it to their advantage.
Here’s the good news: you’re not the type of person who falls prey to head games. Now for the bad: that doesn’t matter. Despots and con artists learned a long time ago that it isn’t necessary to manipulate someone if you can get them to start playing tricks on themselves. It doesn’t matter what you would do or what you would think if “you” turn into someone else. And that’s the ultimate goal of emotional abuse: to transform your values and desires into those of a person that you no longer recognize.
Things aren’t supposed to go this well this quickly. That’s the first of your instincts that you ignore for their sake, and you’re happy to do so. Things can’t get serious quickly enough, as far as you’re concerned. You hadn’t gone on that first date with any expectations of rapture, and even at the end of your first wonderful night together you told yourself that if it all stopped there and you never heard from them again you…
