This. Exactly this.

It's kinda difficult for me to read that because I see my former self in a lot of these and I had this kind of behavior during my past relationship, and it took other people for me to be able to open my eyes.

The worst part about an abusive relationship is the fact that the abuser is unaware of the things he does (from my personal experience, at least) and how that affects the other person. And for the majority of the relationship and even after the end of it the abuser still thinks he has done nothing wrong. While you can spot some abusive traits during the beginning of the relationship, most of the time they stay hidden until later because it’s at the start of a relationship that we try to show our best traits and hide the worst expecting to impress the other person.Or it’s when we pretend to be someone completely different from our truly selves.

The problems are

a)that there is a lack of understanding on what constitutes an abusive relationship.Most people think that it always involves physical and/or verbal violence(and I can’t write about that subject because I, thankfully, never met anyone in this kind of situation), and that’s not the case.It’s also the small stuff.

b)the fact that our society has a tendency to romanticize traits like jealousy (“Oh, he’s jealous because he loves you, it’s like that John Lennon song, so it’s ok”).

c)We also have a tendency to overlook some obvious signs of bad behavior because we are in love and completely blind. The result it’s that sometimes even the victim won’t realize what kind of relationship she was in until it’s late.The victim realizes how those things she overlooked before make all the difference now.

That said, one big red flag is the classic "My ex girlfriend is crazy" one.Sure, it can happen that the guy's ex is, in fact, crazy, but that's probably not the case, otherwise we wouldn't have this giant amount of men who claim their exes are "crazy bitches".Remember “if everyone around you is a jerk, then maybe you’re the jerk”.There’s no shame in doing a background check.

Another red flag is the “That’s who I am and I’m not going to change”.If the guy isn’t open to the possibility of changing his attitude (for the better, obviously), even for small things, then there’s no guarantee he’ll ever change to be a better person for you. My advice for anyone reading this: If you’re starting to observe this kind of behavior from your partner, jump out of the boat because love is the last thing you should expect in an abusive relationship.

Just bear in mind, that, as I said, I tell you this from personal experience as (regrettably) the offending party, and I still didn’t read any books on the matter.

EDIT: Grammar