Every day, there are countless posts asking for advice on Reddit made by women who don’t know they’re in abusive relationships, because they mistake disrespect and fighting as a normal part of a relationship. Your partner should not be criticizing you, insulting you, name calling, making mean jokes, speaking down about your personality or appearance, or fighting with you.

When you have disagreements, which is normal, he should handle them like a reasonable adult who can have a civil conversation without being rude or raising his voice. Fighting isn’t normal. Normalize respectful conversations.

You should adopt a pearl-clutching attitude in your relationships-If you’re too chill and go with the flow, acting like all behavior is normal, you will get walked over.

Your first instinct when a man calls you uptight, insecure, anything bad about your appearance, your first instinct should be “how dare he speak to me like that?” not “maybe he is right”, “am I really needy?” or “he is just frustrated”

This can be a very difficult mindset shift if you grew up in a family where you’re railroaded and criticized, but it’s crucial to be able to detect these insults and disrespectful actions as the emotional abuse they are.

Only choose a partner who knows how to communicate with class and grace. The moment you see he is the type to try to argue or fight with a woman, run. I can guarantee you he doesn’t raise his voice to his male friends.

You really don’t need to be living like that when there are humans in the world who actually know how to handle disagreements respectfully.

What kind of weak ass LVM is spending his time fighting with a woman physically smaller than he is who is trying in good faith to make a relationship work? Exactly the kind you want to avoid 🗑.

If you struggle with detecting micro disrespect, think about etiquette guidelines and codes and see if how he’s acting is in line with that, respectable and upright or low and impolite. Start scoffing at impoliteness. Do you think a man with integrity is going to follow a bunch of half naked women on Instagram? Or does he know that it’s embarrassing and classless to do so? Would a respectable man criticize you to make himself feel better about himself?