Can't Keep My Mouth Shut - 10 Early Red Flags of Abusive Partners

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

I can only hope and pray that nobody else has experienced any of this, but I sadly know that's not the case. With all my love on this one, Nixalina. I'd like to thank the sponsor of today's episode - The Meat Club. For more awesome content to read including beauty, fashion or dating & love features, please do head over to my digital platform www.nixalina.com. Don't be shy, come say hai! Head over to my Instagram or Tiktok @nixalina to slide into my DMs

This podcast contains strong language and discussions about relationships, sex and love. It may not be suitable for younger listeners. This is the Can't Keep My Mouth Shut podcast and I am Nick Salina. Hi, it's Nick Salina and welcome back to tonight's episode. You can sense my tone isn't as jovial as normal and that's because of the topic and subject matter. of tonight's episode. It is called 10 Early Red Flags of Abusive Partners. I have a lot to say. I will also be interspersing, sadly, a lot of my personal experience with this. So it's going to be a two-parter because I'm probably going to talk a lot. You're like,

you talk a lot every week and also fair. Love that for me. So before I delve into the 10 in early red flags and this is early and I think that's really important to remember because lots of people have this like it's obvious when someone's abusive like and then you just leave and no no it's not and actually the abusive partners are usually very different at the beginning so what I would point out before we delve in is basically I think we all need to understand that abuse is gradual and emotional abuse and physical violence like doesn't start right away and this is why also victims stay because a lot of people still have the oh my god why did you not leave and I get it even now when I regale some of the stuff that I'll talk

about in these episodes that I've lived through people like why didn't you just leave then why didn't you just leave then what because it wasn't like that at the beginning and not only that 95% of the time with an abuser is actually really good. Like it might just be 5%. It might just be 30%, which is the terrifying abusive part. But what you believe as a victim is the rest of it kind of outweighs the abuse. You also often as a victim don't realize it's abusive because it's insidious and it basically trickles into the relationship you start to tolerate more and more as time goes on it's like the frog in the boiling water analogy which hurts my heart but yeah you put a frog in cold water it won't jump out and you put a try and put a frog into

boiling hot water immediately it will try and jump out but if you put it in the cold and then you just slowly heat it up, heat it up, heat it up. The frog won't try and leave because it's acclimatizing to the heat. And basically, you'll end up boiling him to death, poor little froggy, because it didn't start off with the boiling hot to begin with. And that's basically how abuse works. What abusers often do as well is they tie you in very quickly and very early on with things like a shared home, living together, kids, shared pets, finances, joint bank accounts, you know, you might even have tied your business together. So they kind of hook you in where you feel that you can't leave once the abuse does start to become apparent to you. But also on top of all

of this, you realize down the line that they've slowly managed to diminish your self-esteem. so you actually don't think you will get better and often time they'll tell you that too your confidence is knocked you feel unattractive you feel worthless blah blah blah and this was all what they designed to do which is really sad I will also finish by saying it does take most victims seven attempts to leave their abuser which is akin to relapses in substance abuse because it is very similar to a drug addiction what happens is your trauma bonded to the abuser and you end up craving their love comfort care and attention to soothe the pain that they themselves caused you how fucked up is that like okay you just grab me by the neck but i need a

cuddle and a kiss off you and you just tell me it's okay and then I'm okay. Like what? You think it sounds fucking fucked up? It's more common than you think. I should know. So with that, we're going to dive in. We're going to do points one to five today and next week we'll finish off with six to ten plus a bonus 11 point that I want to talk about strangulation. Please stay tuned for that it's very very important um so without further ado we're jumping with point one love bombing you're like what yeah yeah what love bombing sounds great oh it is it's the highest of highs that you will ever feel it's also early signs of an abuser love bombing is an unrealistic uh too fast too soon space between you and this new person it's at the very beginning of a

relationship and it's designed to get you hooked so they will um ask to be exclusive very early on i know my ex did um and i'll be clear i've had a fair few exes in my life um that haven't been very nice and so I do have a lot of examples as we go through these that I've personally experienced um but one of them one of my exes yes after a couple weeks he wanted to be exclusive we didn't know each other we'd met like five times I'm like and I say like I can't like it's too soon um but he was very adamant and and charmingly adamant as well and love bombing is the best feeling in the world and what happens is is it doesn't take long for you to fall into it thinking you found the one especially if you are single and you're looking for a relationship if you're

happily single and you're like I just want to date and do my thing you're probably less susceptible but if you believe in like you know the romance the love and that's what you really want oh god you are the perfect victim for these types and what they do with the love bombing is they set it so high that what happens is once the abuse starts your brain goes back to like I just want the good old days to come back it's almost like they they give you the memories so that you think I can get back there when they start revealing who they really are and what happens is once they realize that you are emotionally invested once they do understand okay she's in love with me okay I've moved in with her or okay like I can tell she's into me or he is into her like this

works for both genders people um once that happens they drop the mask the facade and the mask which is what that love bombing version of themselves were and they don't need to make you feel like a princess or a prince anymore because they've got you leads me on to point two which is criticism and backhanded compliments basically once the love bombing phase ends usually the devaluation stage starts and you are slowly designed over time to get used to tolerating more disrespectful language from them and also they belittle you on purpose but they might do it as jokes and you'll realize that it starts increasing. My personal example, I was this guy's like dream girl for the first three months like dream dream girl um like my face he would text me like your face

is everything like god's given me my perfect woman your body your style I mean like obsessed and I felt so special and so seen and you know I was super into him as well and I just I loved it I felt amazing. And then suddenly he would start to pick apart how I look. He used to say really horrible shit about my lady parts for no reason whatsoever. And he'd make them jokes out of them and it'd be out of the blue. We wouldn't be having an argument or anything. I'd be getting ready. We're about to go on a nice holiday together. And he would make these random comments about my naked body. He would make comments about my face. He started to say like, you know, oh yeah, if I didn't like a photo of myself, I'm like, oh, I should really do that photo

again. It was for a client. I don't really like it. He'll be like, well, yeah, it was a horrible outfit. I'm like, oh, was it? And he wouldn't say it at the time, but there's things like that. And it really started to increase, you know, he played on as well, like my age um like I was older and he knew that that would be something that I'm that might be insecure about and he would stick the knife in as and when he fancied it and it was I couldn't tell you what would cause the criticism like I said like we wouldn't we'd be having a nice morning together and he would just come out with stuff or I'd bend down to kiss him and he would talk about my face sagging and I'm like what it's scary and it is deeply traumatic and it is something you

take a really long time to process through people don't realize how much these subtle criticisms especially about how you look and especially about things that they loved at the beginning it really destroys your self-esteem and even me like logically I could sit there and go hang on a minute he I was his dream girl three months ago and now suddenly my face is sagging like no one ages that quickly this can't be true either he always thought my face was sagging in which case why is he with me or or I am the dream girl but he's saying stuff like this to bring me down but why why would you want to bring down someone that you love you know it fucks with your head hi allow me to pop right in here for a quick break and introduce you to today's sponsor which

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Moving on to point three is double standards, especially with the male-female gender dynamic. The double standards would be they can go out and drink, but you can't. They can go and flirt, but you can't. They can go to whorehouses, but you can't even go anywhere where there's men. They can Google women or search on social media for women, but you can't even be looking at other people's profiles. um it's just double standards across the board this basically is like hey i'm above you i control you and you are mine and i do what the fuck i want but don't you dare question me but also i will be telling you exactly what you can and cannot do and don't you step out of line sadly i also had this um my ex would love to go out all the time i caused many arguments because i was

trying to curate a healthier lifestyle where or we were more at home or eating healthier going to the gym like I love to go out don't get me wrong but I felt it was extremely excessive and it was getting to the point where it was just taking the piss like whenever he was at home he was hung over just wanted me to cook for him and then didn't really give a fuck about me and um but I had to basically I never won I never won that argument he was out whenever he wanted you to say I'm still going out. I'm still going out, right? And then it would come, say, a Sunday where I want to go out with my girlfriend to celebrate something. And he's like, I will pay you $200 not to go out. I'm like, what? What? I want to go out. You went out Friday. You went out Wednesday. You went out

Tuesday. I haven't been out. I want to go and celebrate and have some beers. Like, I'll be out gone for three hours. No, no. He turned up. He went, well, he went with his friend and was basically like coming with me because I couldn't have my girlfriend time just by myself. He didn't like it. But oh, when he wants to go out after work, I don't even know where he fucking is. And that's fine. And if I question it, then I'm insecure. I'm nagging.

I'm not fun anymore. Hashtag double standards. Point four, extreme jealousy and possessiveness. Oh, I hate this. This is basically where the jealousy and possessiveness is like a scary controlling level. It's not a healthy and endearing level. So let's not get this twisted. Jealousy in relationships is actually healthy. There's a healthy element because it shows your emotional connection to each other. And it's something usually we can't really like starve way but you deal with it in a in a healthy pattern or you got you sit with it and you go okay I was

a bit jealous that girl kept looking at him but then he's mine and I'll take it as flattery instead that's different to extreme jealousy and possessiveness and control so this is where it starts off with like oh you look so pretty everyone's gonna try it on with you oh you look so pretty oh no I don't like like you look so gorgeous I don't really want you out like that that that's sort of okay to then like you can't wear that out you can't go clubbing without me and you I got all this right so if I wore a dress where I didn't need a bra with him he'd go yeah you can only wear that dress with me and I think okay fine I do respect like there are some things that is you know that's okay I don't mind at all then I'd get you can't go clubbing unless

with me I think what I love but I love clubbing yeah we go clubbing together I'm like but you don't love clubbing so I can never go clubbing I get um you look too pretty men are going to try on with you every time I stepped out the door um my my ex was so jealous and possessive he he read all of my old journals that I used as a healing space for past traumas he said he just wanted to know me better. He sat and read all of that. He would go through my phone. He would read like Google documents. He asked me to share my Google calendar with him. But of course, he never shared his with me. Hashtag double standards. I laugh, but trust me, none of this is funny um he started to um yeah basically controlled my every movement and I felt accused

of cheating before I just couldn't leave the house without being accused of cheating if I stayed at work for a few hours and I didn't tell him I stay outside this is true it's Nara as well I was sitting with my bosses one day we had a couple of hours of drinking together catching up and I didn't tell him and I went to meet him afterwards and he just blew up that night because I hadn't specifically told him exactly where I was um yeah it's it's draining you can hear I'm drained trying to get through these points because I'm also regurgitating in my brain some of these extremely painful memories for me um with the extreme jealousy and possessiveness what starts off as small and slow really does then evolve into full restrictions there will be a point where he would be like

start telling me actually what to wear we never got there because it wasn't a long relationship think fuck but I could see it going that way and I it became I wasn't uh pretty oh my god you're so pretty you're so gorgeous it was yeah you can't wear that guys are gonna be all over you like it I lost even all of the compliment side of it and he couldn't yeah couldn't bear me having any privacy which we'll get to later um the jealousy and possessiveness translated to like always wanting to know where I am who I'm with what I'm wearing um reading through everything I own um literally everything my my phone was basically his phone at points and um yeah awful just awful and the jealousy and possessiveness was in a very uh negative way very scary and

cruel to me as well because I got basically told I was cheating from the get-go and I I hadn't the entire relationship and months and months and months after did I even look at another man because I really loved this guy so yeah make that make fucking sense and point five which is the final one for part one is intimidating and threatening behavior this includes hidden objects puffing out the chest, hovering over you, putting fingers in your face, saying things like, I hate you, saying things like, I want to kill you. And they basically do everything but hit you or worst case, they actually do just put their hands on you. I also lived through this with an I'll take one example he wanted to go to a whorehouse with his mate because he likes it

it's fun but he's made it very clear he has a repeat history of actually engaging with sex workers in these establishments so I was like no and his point of view is I just want to go and have fun and yeah my mate's single and I need to take him and I'm like absolutely fucking not like I've told you this is a deal breaker of mine you're not like I can't like you're going to the place you you've actively engaged with these sex workers and you do it quite a lot bro you're now in a relationship things have to change this is my one hard pass and I like I love going out meet new people and socializing I didn't have any kind of insane restriction on that it was just you don't go to a fucking whorehouse I had many triggers and traumas in the past and that's my

one boundary and of course that's what the one thing he also really wanted to do so we get to dinner we walk into dinner and he says this and i'm like losing my shit i'm like fucking no what part of no do you not understand how would you like it if i went somewhere because the guy was obviously very possessive of me i'm like how would you like if i went somewhere all these men are standing around waiting to fuck me for cash how would you like that because i wouldn't even be able to step foot in the door of somewhere like that and he's laughing about it wanting to go so we sit at the dinner table he's pissed off because I fought back on it and I'm at the dinner table like trying to get him to understand you know what he does he leans across he puts his

finger in my face and says listen you stupid bitch at the dinner table in a full restaurant and I couldn't believe he'd spoke to me like that and I just sort of sat in silence like gobsmacked it was the one of the worst dinners I wanted to just get the fuck out of there and get home and that was the start of many scenarios like that so um oh god it's really difficult um he would there was one time he was pushing my cat in a way I didn't like and I was trying to feed her at the time and I'm like don't touch my cat like that he wasn't just be very clear he wasn't doing anything wrong to her he was just holding her down with force that was unnecessary and she's you know she's not a young bubba she's 10 plus bless her at the time and I was with him

so he's holding her down I get annoyed I said like pull this hand away like don't touch my cat like that he gets very angry at me and grabs me by the back of the neck and shoves me forward as he was standing behind me at the time and I then went and into the bedroom shut the door and cried myself to sleep it was daytime wasn't drunk wasn't wasn't drunk wasn't out very sober like you know weekend morning and then I had two hours of napping just to kind of because I cried a lot and then I come out and he stonewalled me and got annoyed that I went into the bedroom and shut the door not not annoyed that he grabbed me by the neck no another time towards the end we were had in a big fight because I dared to stay at work longer than I had told him and I purposely

hadn't told him I was there an extra couple of hours and he got really annoyed with a big argument then he stonewalled me got on his phone I flipped the phone out of his hand and I did I'll admit that to get him to talk to me because he likes to start arguments and then just shut down so I'm all fired up I've been told off I've been this that and the other and I'm like what why can't and I sat on the sofa and I'm like talk to me let's resolve this before we go to bed talk to me what what the fuck did I do wrong tonight I was at fucking work with my bosses what have I done wrong you go out to 1am I don't know where the fuck you are and I'm just go to bed and I'm all right with it but he just sit shut down silence on his phone so I tapped the phone out of his hand

and the next thing you know his hand is around my throat and he pushes me off the sofa and then he walks out packs a bag and leaves the house and you know what the next day he was more annoyed uh when he'd come back so he comes back um and I'm on the phone to a friend and I'm talking and I didn't tell anyone about the hand around my throat I was talking about like trying to reason what this relationship was like working towards now because I just couldn't understand any of it and he was more annoyed that I'd been on the phone than he had about putting his hands around my throat and I text him the next day and I'm like that fucking hurt you are so much bigger than me you're so much stronger than me and you can't like you can't do that and I cannot fathom looking back

right in hindsight looking back now thinking I'm trying to tell a grown man how much you are physically stronger than me so you can't put your hands around my throat like that and he squeezed and he pushed and I kind of fell backwards. Luckily, I didn't fall, but I fell backwards. And that's when he then packed a bag. So, but he didn't seem bothered about that. It was annoyed that I called someone and started, and I didn't even tell them about that physical abuse. I was talking about something else. And that's what pissed him off. The phone call. And that's all we could give a shit about the next day. It was like the violence didn't even register in his head so circle back intimidating and threatening behavior I mean

I've just listed off a fair few there's so much more that I could go into like even not allowing me to use the bathroom with the door closed I'll be on the balcony having a cigarette and I open the balcony door and he's standing there the whole time and he's watching me if I go off any time on my own. And then I'd open it. He's there. If I have a shower and I'll close my eyes shampooing my hair, I open my eyes. He's standing there. It was all physical intimidation. But I couldn't put my finger on it being intimidation. I just thought because of my anxiety, I was sort of a flustered mess. And one time he did it and I was cleaning my teeth and he like creeped up on me and I just like jumped out my skin and started crying and then I was like you can't do this like

you can't do this my anxiety I have anxiety I can't live like this or he'd throw me onto the sofa aggressively but playful and I just burst into tears and I'm like you can't you can't do that but I always thought I always put it down to like my anxiety not being able to handle how rough he is um no no it was intimidating and threatening behavior and I also didn't look looking back realize even things like putting his finger in my face the way he did that and he done that a lot that was intimidation um like he even did it when I was trying to beg him to go out less and I was like you're out three or four times a week I don't fucking see you when you are home you're hungover I cook for you we don't have sex anymore you're not interested in having sex with

me and you go to bed I was like this is not what I signed up for and he stands up points his finger down so I'm sitting down he stands over me points his finger down into my face and says if you want me to go out only two nights a week you fucking ask for it and I thought haven't I been asking for it the whole time is that exact I'm literally asking for it right now that's what I'm doing but he might as well have said beg for it because that was what he's saying he's standing up towering over me and saying you fucking make me beg for me beg for me to do that for you and i'll do it that was the whole demeanor it was terrifying so that's the end of point one to five um i hope none of you have been lived have lived for any of

this and if you have i'm sorry and i get it because i have experienced every single one i will be coming back next week with the final uh six to ten pointers let's just take a breather here it's been a lot to get through also please bear in mind all of these are red flags don't think because it's called early warning signs of red flags that these are these are amber at best no every single one of them is a red flag and every single one is enough to leave you don't need to conquer all fucking 10 points just one of these living with them is a sign of an abusive person and you need to get out okay and breathe god you can tell this one got to me right and breathe and breathe and this is the end of this episode and i kind of look forward but not

look forward to seeing you all next week i hope if um this doesn't resonate with you you know don't tap in next week you just this is for the people that have gone through it actually no that's that's bullshit because everyone should be aware of this because even if you haven't gone through it you never know when you're going to meet an abusive partner so yeah in fact y'all should listen and with that I will see you all next week and take care of yourselves thanks for listening to the can't keep my mouth shut podcast produced and hosted by me nick selena i'm recorded in the splice car studios in singapore i'm available to listen to on spotify apple podcasts google and all major podcast listening apps do subscribe to enjoy a new

episode every monday evening please do give me a five-star review it helps other people also find my podcast for more content and features to read you can check out my website nixalina.com that's nixalina.com i'm also on social media simply search at nixalina n-i-x-a-l-i-m-a to find me don't be shy come say hi