Isolation tactics
Cutting you off from friends, family, or anyone who might see the relationship from outside.
What it looks like
- A mood whenever you make plans without him, until you stop making them.
- “Your friends don’t really like you,” or “your sister is jealous of us.”
- Every weekend accounted for, with him, and no clear memory of when you last saw your people.
Why it is easy to miss
It can look like love: he wants you to himself. And it works gradually, by making each outside plan cost a little more than it is worth, so you trim them yourself and it never looks like his doing.
What it is not
A partner who is shy around your friends, or who wants more time with you and says so. Wanting you around is normal. The pattern is the shrinking: fewer people who know how you are, and consequences for reaching them.
What to do
- Make one plan with someone outside the relationship this week, and keep it regardless of the mood it creates.
- Tell that person how things have been. Let someone else have the outside view.
- Write down which plans you have dropped in the last stretch, and why.
Help that is there now
- In the US, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is free and confidential at any hour: call 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, or chat at thehotline.org. Isolation is one of the things they help with, whether or not anything else has happened.
- If he has access to your phone, keep that in mind before you write anything down, in Bondary or anywhere else.
How Bondary reads it
Isolation is a risk she names outright. Her Self-Insights look across everyone you have written about, and one thing they can show is how much of your life each person took up. She is one more place where your own version of events is kept, and the people who know you are the others.
She does not weigh this against the good weeks, and she does not tell you what to do. What happens next is yours, and it does not have to be decided tonight.
Tell her about someone.
Bondary is an AI dating coach who's on your side. She keeps the record and gives you an honest weekly read. For iPhone.
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