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There are abusive men who don’t need to tell you what to do every minute of the day because they’ve figured out something much more efficient: they can make you feel like everything needs to happen right now. You need to answer now, decide now, leave now, come home now, find the thing now, stop what you’re doing now. If you don’t move quickly enough, somehow this becomes a character flaw. You’re selfish, inconsiderate, difficult, or wasting his time.
Eventually, you stop asking whether something is actually urgent. You just start moving faster.
I think this deserves to be recognized as its own abuse tactic because the point isn’t always the thing he’s asking you to do. The point can be finding out whether urgency makes you abandon your boundaries. If you say, ‘Give me ten minutes’, what happens? If you say, ‘I’m busy right now’, what happens? If you ask, ‘Why does this need to happen immediately?’ what happens? His reaction to those perfectly reasonable responses can tell you much more than the original request.
Urgency is a boundary test
A partner occasionally saying “Can you hurry? We’re going to be late?” isn’t abuse. Sometimes you’re late. Sometimes something genuinely needs to happen quickly. Nobody needs to conduct a forensic investigation every time their boyfriend tells them to put their shoes on.
The pattern I’m talking about is different. The urgency is disproportionate, repetitive, strategically timed, or mysteriously disappears the moment you comply. More importantly, your refusal to treat his urgency as your emergency becomes the problem.
That’s where urgency starts functioning as a boundary test. Will you drop what you’re doing because he says so? Will you make a decision before you’re ready? Will you stop asking questions because he’s getting irritated? Will you prioritize his timetable over your own? Will you tolerate being frightened, rushed or harried rather than risk his reaction?
An abuser doesn’t necessarily need to win every argument. He just needs to learn what kind of pressure makes you give up.
And urgency is excellent pressure. Here’s how it works, how to tell if it’s happening to you and how to react for better peace of mind. ...
