We Don’t Take Emotional Abuse Seriously Enough
Trigger Warning: Abusive relationships, particularly emotional abuse.
I have known this for a while. I knew it before this past week, when Jonah Hill’s text messages created discourse about boundaries and control. But the discourse is certainly highlighting the fact that people are quicker to side with victims with bruises than victims with emotional scars. Don’t get me wrong, though: a victim of any kind of abuse is subject to scrutiny and blaming when they come forward. But there is something about emotional abuse that seems so trivial to many people. I have witnessed people downplay, minimize, and excuse emotional abuse time and time again. Until everyone learns to recognize it and realizes how unacceptable it truly is, abusers will continue to get away with it.
The downplaying of emotional abuse is likely due to how normalized it is. We learn about relationships from our parents, our peers, and the media. Through the media, we are essentially bombarded with characters who have relationships we may describe as "unhealthy" or "toxic." A lot of the time, these words are actually serving as euphemisms for emotionally abusive. So many relationships on television and in movies contain elements of emotional abuse. We have started to see more critiques of these portrayals - for example, rom-coms have gotten a lot of criticism for certain tropes they use that are actually just portraying abuse and misogyny. However, we still have a long way to go before emotional abuse on screen becomes less popular. The entertainment industry loves emotionally abusive characters because they bring "drama."
I think it's okay to have an emotionally abusive character every now and then if you want to show the very real experience of a character surviving emotional abuse and coping with the aftermath. However, a lot of the time, the drama and chaos seems to be the only point behind these stories. And I know most people are probably looking at these characters and thinking their behavior is awful and not something they want to emulate. But I still think they reinforce the idea that even if it's not healthy behavior, it is still normal behavior that exists in many relationships and therefore maybe not really a big deal.
Some people are saying Jonah Hill was just "communicating boundaries" with his ex. They don’t see anything wrong with those text messages or consider them emotionally abusive. While this is not surprising, as I know people have a tendency to downplay emotional abuse, it’s still concerning. I get that some people are obsessed with therapy speak and will fall for celebrity men using it, but we’re talking about a man telling his partner she has to delete pictures of herself surfing as a requirement for dating him, or trying to control her contact with other men and isolate her from her friends. The way she complies by deleting some photos is characteristic of someone who is being emotionally abused, and the way he still tells her to delete more is characteristic of an abuser who craves control. People asking why she is coming forward after at least a year has passed do not understand what it takes to process emotional abuse.
This is important to me because I'm a survivor of emotional abuse. I was in an abusive relationship for a year, my senior of high school, a formative time in anyone's development. A lot of the emotional abuse I experienced reminds me of what Jonah Hill's ex experienced. I was constantly made to feel inadequate, like I needed to change myself for him. His biggest issues were things I actually could not change about myself and I remember wondering why he was dating me in the first place, why didn't he just find someone he didn't have to change? But I know now that abusers crave control and will find something "wrong" with any partner so they can try to control them. I wasn't the problem, he was.
I noticed other similarities with my experience and the Jonah Hill situation. When I mentioned wanting to wear a skirt to school - one that almost came down to my knees - he told me I couldn't wear skirts to school. When I questioned this, he made it like he was just trying to protect me from creepy guys. I complied because I didn't want more arguments about it. I think that's one way abusers get control a lot of the time - arguing with them is so exhausting that victims give up and comply. Another similarity is control of my social media presence - similar to Jonah telling his ex which photos to delete on Instagram, my ex told me I had to unlike some pages on Facebook that he didn't approve of. When I complied, he told me to delete a few more. That's always how it is in abusive relationships. Even when their victims comply, it's never enough. Because it's not about what they're asking them to do, it's about control.
Talking about emotional abuse you've been through is hard. There are aspects of that relationship that I won't discuss with most people because it's just too personal and I feel too vulnerable discussing those things. People really do not understand how hard it is opening up about abuse you've suffered. I cannot begin to imagine how much harder it is when you were abused by a celebrity or another person with significant power. I think the more people hear survivors come forward, the easier they assume it is. But it's never easy. That of course does not mean survivors shouldn't still come forward if they wish to, but everyone else has a responsibility to make it easier for them by supporting them rather than doubting, blaming, or even harassing them.
And people should take emotional abuse as seriously as any other form of abuse. Like all other forms of abuse, it can have a lasting impact. There is pain, trauma, and even symptoms of PTSD that the survivor often lives with for years. The amount of dehumanization one feels after having a partner constantly berate, criticize, and attempt to control them is a lot to try to recover from. Emotional abuse should not be treated as trivial just because physical abuse was not involved. When survivors of emotional abuse come forward, they need support. Without it, their healing process will be complicated by the isolation they feel.