Why You Didn't Know It Was Abuse While You Were In It

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Now it's obvious, right?

[00:00:01]You can see it clearly.

[00:00:02]You can name it.

[00:00:03]This was an abusive relationship.

[00:00:05]But there's probably part of you sitting here thinking, how the hell did I not see this sooner?

[00:00:11]Listen, I'm going to walk you through the actual reasons that it's so hard to see it when you're in it, and the last one is the one that keeps women stuck the longest.

[00:00:20]My name is Lisa Sonni, I'm a certified relationship coach.

[00:00:23]I've written five books, and I'm an expert in helping women exit these abusive and toxic relationships and rebuilding themselves after they've left.

[00:00:31]If this is the kind of content you need, hit subscribe so you don't miss videos like this.

[00:00:36]So let's go through these reasons, okay?

[00:00:38]The first reason might seem obvious, but it didn't start as abuse.

[00:00:42]These relationships start with connection that feels real.

[00:00:45]He's attentive. In the beginning.

[00:00:47]You feel so connected.

[00:00:49]You feel chosen, seen, heard, and that experience that you have on in these relationships matters so much.

[00:00:57]People act like, well, then you saw it was abuse, right?

[00:01:00]That's not where this goes.

[00:01:01]That's not how these relationships actually happen.

[00:01:04]You didn't meet him at his worst, right?

[00:01:06]You met him at his best when he was wooing you.

[00:01:09]And it seemed like you met someone who understood you and you understood him.

[00:01:14]And you hold on to that.

[00:01:16]These relationships start with love bombing and trust and dependency and kindness.

[00:01:21]That's what's going on in the beginning.

[00:01:23]And so that keeps you in the relationship, and it keeps you not realizing what's happening next.

[00:01:29]So even when things get bad, we're comparing it back to this beginning.

[00:01:33]Now, the second reason is that this builds slowly.

[00:01:36]a lot of people seem to think that they go from nice to abusive and then you should leave.

[00:01:41]But that's not reality.

[00:01:43]It doesn't all come at once.

[00:01:45]It was small.

[00:01:46]Right?

[00:01:46]A comment here, a little reaction there.

[00:01:49]Getting a little too upset about something that wasn't totally in line proportionately with what actually happened, but it feels a little off, but not enough off.

[00:01:59]And then you explain it, or he explains it, and then you move past it.

[00:02:03]And that's just, you know, rinse and repeat.

[00:02:05]It happens again.

[00:02:06]Sure, but a little bit differently, a little bit more.

[00:02:10]It just builds over time.

[00:02:12]And you would just along the way just a little bit here and there.

[00:02:15]So you never actually stop and label it because it's oscillating between kindness and cruelty.

[00:02:22]And it's never the same problem.

[00:02:24]It always feels just a little bit different, just a little bit worse, or just a little bit better.

[00:02:29]Not like last time, a different reason.

[00:02:31]And all of this, you just keep going.

[00:02:34]Now let's talk about conditioning because reason number three is that you got used to it. Right.

[00:02:39]What felt strange in the beginning started to feel familiar.

[00:02:43]So you stopped reacting the same way.

[00:02:45]And maybe you brushed things off differently.

[00:02:47]Or you tell yourself it's not a big deal, or he tells you it's not a big deal because, you know, gaslighting, right?

[00:02:53]So all of this means you're changing your shifting.

[00:02:57]You're tolerating things that you would never normally tolerate, things you would never have tolerated early in the relationship.

[00:03:04]And it's gradual.

[00:03:05]And so you don't notice the shift happening, but you are adapting to So as you're adapting, you're not making the connection to what's actually happening.

[00:03:14]You're missing the pattern because you're already living inside of it.

[00:03:18]And that matters.

[00:03:19]You can't see it when you're on the inside of it.

[00:03:22]There's a really ridiculous example that I want to give to people.

[00:03:25]Writers maybe get this right when you write your own essay for school, or if you write something professionally, it's really hard to edit your own work.

[00:03:34]This is the same in a relationship like this. You're in it.

[00:03:37]You're so close that you can't see it.

[00:03:39]Everything feels like there's a reason everything feels justified.

[00:03:43]So you need people on the outside to look in and help you.

[00:03:47]But then the relationship advice is all don't tell your friends, don't tell anybody what's going on.

[00:03:52]Or worse, talk to a therapist as if therapists have any sweet clue for the most part, about abusive relationships.

[00:03:59]If you can't identify it as abusive, you're not going to go into a therapist's office and start talking about your relationship and have them tell you it's abuse.

[00:04:07]That's incredibly rare.

[00:04:09]Telling people what's going on in your relationship, the people who are closest to you.

[00:04:14]It actually does help.

[00:04:15]Now tons of people say, oh my God, that's terrible advice.

[00:04:19]No, that's terrible advice.

[00:04:20]If you can't tell your friends how you're being treated in your relationship, that is a massive red flag.

[00:04:27]But let's move on to number four.

[00:04:29]You tried to make it make sense.

[00:04:32]Now you and he are both trying to make it make sense, right?

[00:04:35]We give it context instead of actually calling it what it was.

[00:04:39]We say it's stress or work or trauma or his childhood, or his mom or his ex or you, whatever.

[00:04:46]We're looking for reasons.

[00:04:47]And our brains kind of, I would say, even unconsciously, try to fill in these gaps.

[00:04:52]You want to understand him and be fair.

[00:04:55]So you kind of unconsciously softened what you were actually seeing.

[00:05:00]Because the truth is, this is where cognitive dissonance comes in.

[00:05:03]And in fact, traumatic cognitive dissonance.

[00:05:06]This is someone showing you these two sides of themselves, and you're living in this crazy making dual reality of he is good and bad, the pain and the comfort, the knife and the bandaid.

[00:05:18]And it is confusing as hell.

[00:05:20]So our brains naturally just gravitate towards an easier answer.

[00:05:24]Like he's traumatized.

[00:05:26]He doesn't know how much this hurts me.

[00:05:27]Instead of he's abusive because if it's he's abusive, you're in an abusive relationship.

[00:05:33]You need to leave.

[00:05:34]You need to flip your whole life upside down. You were wrong.

[00:05:37]You are stupid, right?

[00:05:39]This are the things that our brains are telling us.

[00:05:41]So we instead unconsciously explain it away to something softer, something a little bit more palatable.

[00:05:47]But it keeps you in the loop.

[00:05:49]So number five is that we are holding on to these two different versions, and we try to reconcile them.

[00:05:56]We hold on to some of the best moments.

[00:05:59]We look at the good moments and we're waiting for them to come back.

[00:06:02]Right.

[00:06:02]So we use the good moments to kind of balance everything else.

[00:06:07]So he's not all bad.

[00:06:08]And you know, 80% of the time he's really good and he mostly treats me okay.

[00:06:13]But and then you start explaining the abuse.

[00:06:16]But we don't want to let go of the good guy that we met in the beginning.

[00:06:20]We don't want to let go of that version of him because it feels real to you.

[00:06:25]And I hate to say it feels real, like it isn't real.

[00:06:28]But he's playing a role and you're here thinking that it's real.

[00:06:32]It's real for you.

[00:06:34]But the relationship isn't real because it's not actual love.

[00:06:39]Abusive men don't love you because abuse isn't love.

[00:06:42]So all of these feelings, it keeps you in the relationship.

[00:06:46]It keeps you incredibly stuck.

[00:06:47]Now, number six is that you're already invested in a relationship like this.

[00:06:52]When we get attached early on.

[00:06:53]And because these relationships move so quickly, we do get really attached.

[00:06:57]You know, we have feelings and history and we've invested our time in this.

[00:07:03]And I've made content even on the sunken cost fallacy.

[00:07:06]Right.

[00:07:06]Like I can't give up now.

[00:07:07]He's almost the man I need him to be.

[00:07:10]He's almost back to the version of him that I first met.

[00:07:13]But we're so invested.

[00:07:15]You might have a house with him, kids with him, be married, shared finances, you know, a million things.

[00:07:20]But these lives that we build with them, it's not like little pieces.

[00:07:24]It's this one big thing.

[00:07:25]So you can't just walk away from it.

[00:07:27]That seems crazy.

[00:07:29]Especially when they make you feel like you're always on the cusp of them being better.

[00:07:33]So you can't leave now because he's almost that guy again.

[00:07:36]So staying feels practical in all honesty.

[00:07:40]So people say you should just leave.

[00:07:42]It's easier said than done, right?

[00:07:44]And I know it's hard, and even some people acknowledge that it's hard.

[00:07:48]But I swear if you've not been in it, you have no idea how hard.

[00:07:51]But Now we're almost at the hardest one, but number seven is that we turn it on ourselves.

[00:07:57]And this is a really interesting one because we're here questioning our own reactions, wondering if we're too sensitive or push too hard, or shouldn't have said what we said or shouldn't have brought it up when we did.

[00:08:07]Or, you know, we're talking about trauma when it's something else, or maybe it's alcoholism, maybe it's some other substance abuse.

[00:08:14]Instead of looking at those things, we start going, maybe it's me.

[00:08:18]Maybe I have triggered him.

[00:08:20]Maybe I brought this up wrong.

[00:08:22]Maybe you misunderstood, And so we correct ourselves.

[00:08:25]We take responsibility for the dynamic he has created.

[00:08:29]And they do this to us through creating chaos and creating problems, and then being upset at your reaction to the problems.

[00:08:37]And then the focus becomes you.

[00:08:39]So he's focused on you.

[00:08:41]You're focused on you.

[00:08:42]And these men say a lot of things, right?

[00:08:45]Like, I was never like this with anyone except you.

[00:08:48]That's how I know you're the problem.

[00:08:49]Or you're always picking at me, or you always want to fight.

[00:08:53]You're always bringing up old shhhh.

[00:08:55][...] You are the problem here. It's not me.

[00:08:57]You're causing this. You're ruining the family.

[00:09:00]They put it all on you, and we're so happy to take that on.

[00:09:03]You know, women actually do take a lot more accountability and responsibility than men, which is proven in studies.

[00:09:09]Now, don't get caught up in what all those red pill mid loser men are saying about women.

[00:09:14]Never take accountability.

[00:09:15]Studies actually prove that men are less likely to take accountability.

[00:09:19]Men externalize blame and women internalize blame.

[00:09:23]And this is a perfect example of it.

[00:09:25]It's very easy for women to take this on in an abusive relationship.

[00:09:29]He's happy to make you think that it's you, and he might even genuinely see himself as the victim, even though he's being abusive.

[00:09:36]But you're not the problem when you are being victimized in a relationship, you're not causing the person to abuse you.

[00:09:43]But I know he absolutely wants you to feel that way. Now.

[00:09:46]The hardest one to see while you're in it is that you are being conditioned in real time.

[00:09:52]So an example might be that your responses started kind of changing without you even noticing.

[00:09:58]You know, your standards were definitely moving because he conditions you slowly to accept more and more you are tolerating things that you never would have thought you would tolerate.

[00:10:07]And sometimes things get better, meaning less abusive, less awful.

[00:10:12]And you think, well, I can't leave now because he used to be worse.

[00:10:15]So it feels like improvement.

[00:10:17]But this is all part of the conditioning because you are adapting to what's happening.

[00:10:22]You're here trying to understand it, and you don't actually step out of the relationship and look in and be able to see the patterns.

[00:10:30]So instead you respond to his behavior instead of leave it, you adjust to it.

[00:10:36]you survive what he's doing to you and it all just feels tolerable.

[00:10:42]This conditioning is the most brutal part of the whole thing, because you're not going to get clear when you're on the inside.

[00:10:49]That's not where clarity comes from.

[00:10:50]It often comes when you step back.

[00:10:52]But what a catch 22.

[00:10:54]Because how do you step back if you don't if you don't see it?

[00:10:58]That's the hard part.

[00:10:59]It's so confusing.

[00:11:00]But being able to just take a deep breath and step back, it's really important to at least try to do that.

[00:11:06]So if you've ever really just thought like, oh my God, I should have known better, just sit with everything that you just heard.

[00:11:12]How could you have known?

[00:11:14]You know things now, but when you look back, you're holding yourself to the standard of everything you know now you've learned.

[00:11:21]You didn't know then what you know now.

[00:11:24]So don't hold yourself accountable.

[00:11:26]Our brains do that to us, and I wish that it didn't.

[00:11:28]But that's kind of just how our brains work.

[00:11:31]Now, after what this all turns into is you question your judgment.

[00:11:36]You don't trust yourself.

[00:11:37]You second guess all of your instincts, and you try to figure out like, what the hell did I miss?

[00:11:42]So that it's never happens to me again?

[00:11:44]Which there are some behaviors that we can talk about.

[00:11:46]But the truth is, what you missed was your own internal body cues.

[00:11:51]So some of the work that I do with women is actually bringing that more to awareness.

[00:11:54]Like when was the first time you felt discomfort and what did you say and what did you feel and how quickly was it?

[00:12:01]Explain away, because that's a very common thing.

[00:12:03]But you may not trust your own reactions anymore, but you can rebuild self trust.

[00:12:08]You can absolutely do that, I promise you.

[00:12:11]This is not really about what you didn't know.

[00:12:14]This is about what made it so hard to see what was he doing that made it so hard for you to see?

[00:12:20]Subscribe if you're not already, and if you are ready to do actual deeper work, you can work with me in one on one sessions.

[00:12:27]Sign up for my group coaching programs, enroll inside my self-paced, affordable Trauma Bond Recovery course or inside my online community called She Rises Collective.

[00:12:37]Thanks for watching and I'll catch you in the next