Even though emotional abuse doesn’t leave physical marks, it is said to be the hardest type of abuse to understand and escape. Emotional abuse can occur in the many relationships and for those impacted, stick and stones may break their bones, but words will never hurt them. Here are 15 signs that your relationship is emotionally abusive.

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He puts you down.

Us women love compliments, that’s a fact. If your guy talks down to you and makes you feel like less than who you really are, it’s time to reconsider. No man is worth losing your self-esteem or self-confidence over.

VH1.com

Considering how mentally and emotionally unstable Jackie Christie is frequently depicted on VH1′s reality show, Basketball Wives LA, many often wondered what kind of person she was capable of being to her family. Monday night’s episode, however, only seemed to confirm the suspicions most viewers had all along. Crazy is crazy all day long and it seems that her manipulative antics aren’t just limited to friends and acquaintances according to her 19-year-old daughter, Chantel.

In the episode, Chantel opened up to Laura Govan (of all people) and provided viewers with some insight as to what life was like growing up with Jackie Christie for a mo. She shared that Jackie frequently mistreated her older sister because she had darker skin and was heavier than Jackie would have liked her to be and because of that she was treated like an outcast and not allowed to appear in family portraits. Chantel revealed that Jackie even went as far as pitting the two against each other, referring to her as “the light skinny one” and her sister as “the dark overweight one”, which ultimately put a rift between the siblings and resulted in the sisters not speaking to one another for years.

Although Jackie is certainly the villain in this situation, fans seem to have had a response that was a bit unexpected. Instead of going after Jackie for her emotionally abusive and manipulating ways, they went after Chantel, calling her disloyal for airing out family business on national television, and to Laura no less. Laura also caught her share of the heat. Many felt that she had taken her shady antics way too far.

Chantel eventually took to Twitter to address the entire situation and to make amends with her mom.

Not that I owe you viewers any explanation. But I will address this for once and for all. Quote me, right it down, take a picture – I don’t give a f-ck.

I was in a bad place in MY life. Was it right? No. Was it “all lies”? No. Was it 4 “publicity”? No. Did I kno where Laura was coming from? NO. Do I regret it? I regret airing my personal life out 2 sm1 who, I now feel, had malicious intent. I regret addressing it publicly, at all. You all can believe WHATEVER you would like to.

I know MY truth. I wake up everyday and I have to live MY life. None of y’all do it for me. Show me a person that has never done something they shouldn’t have. And I’ll show you an angel. I will not call it a mistake because in THAT moment, it was exactly what I wanted to do. Looking back, it NEVER should’ve happened.

And I am woman enough to admit that publicly. But to be ridiculed, disrespected, threatened and bashed… Y’all don’t know me!! Walk a mile in my shoes, and I guarantee you’ll take em off! When all this “reality” Isht is over. When the camera cuts, and production wraps… That is still my Mother. And we have, and will continue to, mend our relationship BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, not for a million ppl to watch, dissect and judge.

@JackieChristie, I love you. & I’m not sure how, but as a FAMILY, I’m sure we’ll get through this. If you’re ready, I’m willing. And to those that have said evil, malicious things to me… I’m praying for you. Not even mad at cha. You can only speak on what you see.

We hope that this family is able to work through their differences. Check out the clip from Chantel’s heart-to-heart with Laura. Do you think she was wrong?

Jazmine Denise is a news writer for madamenoire.com. Follow her on Twitter @jazminedenise

There few things more annoying and hindering than being in a controlling relationship. The funny thing about these relationships is that some women will spot out a controlling man immediately and call him on his mess. Others don’t notice until someone points it out to them or something extreme happens. Then there are others who don’t realize they’re in a controlling relationship until the relationship is over. If you happen to fall into the latter three categories, check out some of these signs that may indicate your man is trying to control you. Alone they may not mean much, but collectively, they mean a whole lot: you’ve found yourself in quite a mess.

He obsessively checks your cellphone 

Whether or not a couple decides to check each other’s cell phones is completely up to them. Many feel that this is a sign that they do not trust one another, but hey, to each it’s own. Do what works for you. What seems a bit off though, is when one party becomes obsessive with it and tries to make a daily routine out of it. If plundering through your text messages and call history is a daily task on his to-do list, it may be a sign that he doesn’t trust you and is trying to control you.

I once wrote about an emotionally abusive relationship I was in a few years ago.  As hard as it was to discuss it to a bunch of people I don’t know (you amazing Madame Noire readers), it was even harder discussing it with people that I did know well.  My friends, though they might not have understood why I stayed, or what my mindset was while I was going through it, were very understanding of me.  However, my family… well, that was a different story.

I was raised in a two-parent household.  My father, being the head of a family of four daughters and a wife, always tried to tell us about how a man should treat a woman.  He would tell us us how we shouldn’t take certain things, and reminded us that no matter what, we are beautiful and deserve to be treated with respect in all aspects of our lives. My mother told us the same things, and reminded us to place high value on ourselves.  So when I revealed to my family what happened in my past relationship, it was as if I could feel the heaviness on my father’s heart and I could see in his eyes a feeling of failure. My sisters and mother couldn’t understand either, and they would engage me in conversations, trying to figure out why I committed to staying with him all that time:  ”Okay… so WHY didn’t you leave???”

Really?

Things got even stickier when I decided to see a counselor at my college.  I remember telling my father and having him yell, “That’s weak!  You’re not weak!  You’re a Koger!  You’re better than that!”  I have to be honest, it was hard feeling like I’d disappointed my family based on the choices I’d made, because we all know that feeling like you disappointed anyone at all is hard to handle sometimes.

But, let’s examine this frustrating concept of disappointment.  Typically, disappointment happens when someone falls under expectations. You sit there and try to examine why they behaved the way that they did.  Thoughts begin to pop into your head like, “I don’t understand why he/she/they would act that way!”  However, a lot of times, people are not seeing people individually, but they are seeing them through what I like to think is a personalized version of  the “reflection principle.”

Though there is a “reflection principle” in the complex mathematics theory universe, I’m discussing the principle with people (and if this principle pops off, remember where you heard it first, folks!).  It’s when a person places their own strengths and weaknesses on another person.  I feel as though voluntary friendships are based on this principle.  When you meet someone, to create a better mental bond with them, you begin to find similarities with that person and you begin to see yourself in them.

However, when a person begins to waiver and becomes more like who they really are, doesn’t it seem like sometimes we might take it harder than that person?  It’s because we’re suffering from the reflection principle.  We’re looking at their situation and we’re trying to understand why they would behave the way that they did, because you would have never behaved that way; and that’s what you need to realize.  They are not YOU.

Disappointment happens because we place ourselves in the situations and see how we would behave and don’t see how people couldn’t fathom doing the opposite (because if nothing else, you’re just a chasm of common sense at all times, right?).  However, things are always different when you’re personally in that situation.  Instead of chastising a person for their poor mistakes, try to stop seeing them for how you want them to be and see them for who they truly are: flawed individuals, the same as you are.

As for my family, my father never did understand how and why I let myself be in an emotionally abusive relationship, nor did he understand or fully agree with my decision to go to counseling, but I did it and I loved it (and honestly, I’ll be the first person to suggest it to people).  My family might not fully understand why I do certain things, the same way I have those head tilt moments trying to figure out why they behave the way they do, but it’s all about seeing people for how they are.  And when you do, true relationships can be built and grow from knowing the nooks and crannies of a person’s true being.

What are you reflecting on others?  Let’s discuss @kkoger.

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When I was in college I spent over a year in an abusive relationship.  Why would I stay if it was abusive?  Honestly, I didn’t realize that it was.  So many times when people talk about couple’s abuse it’s very black and white.  The criteria that most people know to indicate these types of relationships is if your mate is putting his/her hands on you, or verbally abusing you.  In my relationship my boyfriend never laid a finger on me, and he never called me out of my name.  However, when I had to go to therapy to help me rebuild the self-damage that he inflicted on me, I realized then that the relationship was very abusive.  So to you, dear readers, even though I don’t know you, know that I love you enough to not want you to go through what I did.  It took many years for me to even be able to look myself in the mirror and like what I saw, not have a panic attack whenever I walked past a reflective surface, or get angry at a guy because he liked me (“How can he like me?  Is it a trick?  Doesn’t he see me?  Is this some type of joke?”).

To give a little bit of background, I’ve always been a very commitment phobic person.  I don’t have a problem with making friends, but I’ve always been very cautious of romantic relationships.  Before I met my husband I had been in three previous relationships. My third relationship was the abusive one, and it took me three years to get over that before I actually started dating again.  So when that third relationship started to get abusive, since I was so inexperienced with relationships, I didn’t know that it was wrong.  I didn’t have any knowledge to go on and my boyfriend was so secretive, he didn’t want me to talk about the relationship to anyone.  So when I wanted to ask my family and friends if this relationship was normal, because I was loyal to him, I didn’t ask and I continued to be in the dark to what a crazy situation I was in.  When I would ask my boyfriend if this stuff was the familiar he would always say:  ”Of course it is.  You haven’t been in a lot of relationships so you don’t know.”

However, there are signs that things are out of whack in your union, and even if your beau is telling you it’s normal.  Please know that it’s not.

He cuts off communication you have with others.  At the time we were dating I didn’t have a cell phone, only a landline in my dorm.  Whenever he was in the room with me he wouldn’t let me answer my phone.  The way I didn’t see it as abusive was that whenever the phone rang he would pull me into him lovingly and say things like:  ”No, be here with me right now.”  Then, he would also want to take all of my time.  Having someone being possessive of you might sound very endearing, but when that person systematically becomes what your life revolves around (with a very small margin of wiggle room for friends, and family), then it’s not a healthy union.

He/She wants to hide the relationship.  Now, there’s nothing wrong with trying to keep the intimate parts of your relationship (either physically intimate or emotionally intimate) between the two of you, but when the person doesn’t want to claim you, then that’s a problem.  My boyfriend’s excuse was that he had gotten out of a very tumultuous relationship that lead rumors to be spread about him.  He wanted to stay under the radar when it came to relationships.  Well, that was fine to me when it came to being on campus, but when he didn’t even want to tell his family about me, and they were steady trying to set him up on dates and he would accept… yeah… something’s not right.  Which leads me to my next thing…

He doesn’t respect you.  During the time that his family was setting him up on dates, they would ask him to take a picture of himself, and send it to them in a text message so they could show his potential suitors.  Why did he ask me to take the pictures for him?  On top of that, WHY DID I TAKE THE PICTURES?!?!  But, to use another less pathetic example, he asked to borrow some money from me.  When he came to pay me back, instead of handing me my money in my outstretched hand, he actually THREW IT AT ME, and sang Fat Joe’s “Make it Rain” while smiling in my face.

Now, no disrespect to any woman who has spent time on a pole, but I’ve never been one, and I certainly wasn’t on one when he threw my money at me.  Someone who doesn’t respect you is someone who doesn’t deserve to be with you.

You’re not allowed to be yourself.  Before we started dating, we were actually friends for like a year.  I had gained the sophomore 30 (I was always an overachiever) and he was helping me to lose weight.  After I lost 40 pounds, he began to put his input on other things that I should change about myself.  Like, throwing away outfits of mine that he hated.  Or not liking how wide my smile was and making me practice my smile in the mirror for twenty minutes a day… as he watched…. Or making me take pictures down on my Facebook of my friends and I making silly faces.  He told me how disproportionate I was for having a small middle and a large bottom, and he would force me to do hundreds of squats… while he watched.  When we would get take out, only  he could eat, and those burgers that I loved so much would become his and I couldn’t even eat the fries.

The things that I began to love about myself all seemed wrong.  I began to hate my smile, my body, and myself for being “not right.”  One day he wanted me to look in the mirror and I started crying because I didn’t want to see myself, he apologized for being so harsh, but the damage had been done.

To this day, I still wonder if he was cognitive of what he was doing.  He swears that he didn’t know, and he was only trying to help me, but it doesn’t change the fact that the relationship definitely fell in that gray area of abuse that no one talks about.  It took three years to finally like myself again, and to trust a relationship.  After having my daughter it’s still very hard sometimes to look at my transitioning body as I try to lose the baby weight I gained and not hear his voice chastising me, but once you move out of the gray, it’s nothing but blue skies from there.

Kendra Koger is finally loving herself for her.  Love yourself too, and love yourself at her twitter, kkoger.  Don’t really love yourself there, but… you know what I mean!!

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Source: Freddy O

I swear whenever you make a comeback, somebody always tries to break you back down. Jaleel White’s ex-girlfriend and mother of his 2-year-old daughter, Bridget Hardy, has come out with some pretty harsh allegations against the child actor that I find to be a little suspect. I’m not saying they’re not true because I’m still clinging to Jaleel’s image as Urkel on “Family Matters,” but for one, she gave her “exclusive” story to Star magazine of all publications, and two, why are you suddenly breaking this news now? Oh, I know, because he’s on “Dancing with the Stars.”

Bridget told Star Jaleel was abusive, saying once when she confronted him about evidence she found of him cheating on his phone, like naked pictures and suggestive texts, “He hit me across the chest area.” In another incident, the fight was much more intense.

“He pushed me into the toilet, and it broke,” she said. “Water went everywhere, through the walls and even to the kitchen downstairs.”

Jaleel has strongly denied any wrongdoing and he hasn’t been given any domestic abuse charges but that hasn’t stopped Bridget from making more allegations about his emotional abuse and his infidelity.

“He told me I’m not working; I have no money; I’m white trash. None of it was true,” she said, before claiming he tried to bribe her into getting out of his life so he could “maintain his playboy image.”

“He texted me and offered me $200,000 to leave our daughter with him and have me go and start my own family. He basically tried to pay me off. I went home screaming and said, ‘We’re done.’”

Jaleel apparently took her words literally because Bridget said when she returned home with her daughter from a planned trip to Seattle she was locked out of the house she shared with him and all her belongings were in storage.

As for the million dollar question of why she’s speaking up now, Bridget said this:

“I was always protecting him and keeping quiet for him. I know he felt bad.”

I can pretty much guarantee he feels worse now. Who do you think is telling the truth in this situation?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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hellobeautiful.com

You know when it happens. You get that feeling in your gut that says, “There’s no going back from this” but then, out of fear, you do go back. But there is no denying it after reading this list. You might want to rethink your relationship status if any of this happens:

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A “break”

Why do people go on “a break”? Because something really tough comes up in life and the couple decides they should separate until the storm blows over. Guess what? LIFE is full of storms. If your relationship gets instantly shaken by little surprises, chances are, it just won’t last. Not after a break. Not ever. Besides, who knows how people are truly acting and what they’re really up to when they go on break mode. This could possibly just be an excuse to have your cake and eat it too.