It's hard to see abuse, so call it early and often.

Another gem from the Captain Awkward comments.

You don’t need to be an Abuser to act in abusive ways, and you don’t have to be at the extreme end of abusive behavior to be an Abuser. I think CA’s commentariat has been immensely helpful at validating things we gloss over as “not a big deal” actually being insidious, controlling, and manipulative. But then those things become normalized and minimized which only furthers the victim’s perception that they are the ones being the problem or being unreasonable. People in abusive or toxic relationships often can’t see what is happening to them. It’s important to have people on the outside point to things and say “that is abusive.” Because we’re trained not to use that word unless it’s physical and extreme.

It took me until my mid 20’s to realize my dad was abusive. Because he “just” was controlling, manipulative, argumentative, and threw tantrums. Society told me that stuff wasn’t abuse because it wasn’t ~that bad~. Even once I recognized his behavior was abusive, it took other people naming those behaviors “abusive” out loud for me to start using that word to describe it myself. Before that he was just an asshole. People don’t like the “a” word but it needs to be said, and I’m grateful to CA’s community for being so level-headed and blunt about it.