You know how men use ambiguity around relationship labels (let’s not label things, etc) to basically cheat since they haven’t overtly committed and therefore can claim they don’t have any hard obligations to you?

They use the same ambiguity to allow them to abuse.

To illustrate: While your man may never call you fat, ugly or crazy to your face because he’d lose you as a place holder and your free labor. What a lot of men will do is to sublimate those feelings and aggressions toward you through other people. He’ll say it to his friends when you’re not around.

Then the next time you go out his friends begin to “joke” or complain that youre fat, crazy for your expectations of him etc. He doesn’t defend you. What you don’t realize is that it is done with his tacit sanction and smiles back in his direction like “right?? right??” The only reason they feel so comfortable doing this is because he brought it to them out of your presence- isnt she nuts for not wanting me to stay out all night?? Look at this text she sent me etc. While, coward that he is, acting like it’s all gravy in front of you.

Instead of taking direct hit to your esteem in person which he knows may elicit a reaction from you if you’re a strong woman or cause you to walk out. He sublimates his aggression through his friends using them as a mouth piece. It’s indirect abuse. A case of him throwing the rock and hiding the hand.

The result is you feel like shit but can’t directly pin it on him as he didnt actively seem to do anything wrong. His only sin seems to be being a little too passive and failing to defend you, which he’ll talk his way out of- they were just joking, i was outnumbered, seems you had it under control.

You go home feeling shitty but also feeling like you don’t have enough to really blame him or pin any of it on him as his fault

This is purposeful.

A lot of cowardly men won’t insult you directly, instead they take blows to your self esteem passive aggressively purposely making the emotional abuse vague or very indirect to remove from you the right of call-out or reply. You can’t fight a ghost or something that isn’t corporeal enough. So they keep their hits to your self esteem vague, sketchy and seeming not to come directly from them

In the hopes that with this sneaky delivery an otherwise strong woman will be tricked into sitting there to take little chips from her self esteem that she otherwise would shut down if put to her directly by him

Allowing friends or family to say rude things to you without defending you because they privately agree and hold those views themselves is one main way Ive seen this play out. It’s a form of emotional abuse but they’re happy to allow it and see it cut down your self esteem because the hits don’t seem to come from them directly- even if they encourage it by agreeing with the perpetrators out of your sight

This happens a lot with very manipulative men. You have a vague feeling of being degraded but you can never quite place him at the scene of the crime. But in every instance he’s haunted the periphery or been just 1-2 people removed or you feel he had some involvement just outside your line of vision. Even though you feel like shit- you continue to allow these vague phantom shots from the void because you have nothing concrete to go on and cant really prove with hard facts negative intent or active involvement on his part, even though deep down you know there’s no way it’s NOT coming from him. No way that he could be NOT involved. Just too many coincidences

You really need sky high self esteem, faith in who YOU ARE and belief in your own perception of things to shut down these types on sight without them getting away with sneaky abuse of you

Example: His family attacks you for “dressing too scantily”. Rude remarks or little jokes may be made making you the butt of the joke both in front of you and him everytime you go to a family event. He shrugs and won’t take a side. But you get the vague impression that just outside your presence hes maybe expressed agreement with that idea to them or been the main one harping on how “slutty” you are. To your face he tries to play neutral. When pushed he becomes angry and says he isn’t involved. How you dress and his family’s response to it is all on you.

Ugly digs meant to degrade you, he continues to allow his family to take at you right in front of his face at every event. Covert emotional abuse that he hopes you’ll accept merely because he doesn’t seem to have a direct hand or be actively involved in it

This is how a lot of men get really strong women they’re somewhat afraid of to put up with abuse. They sublimate the ugly digs through other people and a ton of indirection to give it plausible deniability and very little proof that it leads back to him or involves active intent on his part, even though they’ve definitely stoked the flames by talking about you negatively behind your back. They use their bros/ friends, their family, coworkers hands to slap you so that it doesn’t seem to come from them. It’s the monkey using the cats paw to pull chestnuts out the fire. He uses these people as puppets to sublimate his true abusive feelings toward you, while maintaining distance and avoiding responsibility and then sits back and looks in your face while you take the hits, getting obvious undercover pleasure from seeing you cut down.

It’s a huge red flag if I guy allows his friends and fam to cut you down in front of him and then gets angry and disrespectful- rolls his eyes/ pushes back hard when you say he should’ve stood up for you. Making it clear it’s your fucking problem.

The most Iago among them will even try to score brownie points playing the good bf role and overemphasizing how they’re the one to comfort you after you take the abuse they set you up for from other people.

In any situation where you are starting to feel degraded and like shit you really need to draw a firm line in the sand using whatever intuition you have. Don’t wait on hard fact or ever give the man the benefit of the doubt. Because he’ll never do it in a way that is direct- he depends on your looking for concrete evidence before you leave to continue to get away with abusing. If you’re getting shitted on, don’t wait to figure out where it’s coming from before you move. It’s enough that you know it’s happening. Just move