Summary
Joe Hudson shares how a therapist helped him and his wife Taran recognize that their fighting patterns constituted emotional abuse — not because of physical violence, but because they were using emotions to control each other. The therapist’s definition: emotional abuse is using your emotion to try to control somebody.
Joe explains that while society primarily recognizes anger as the abusive emotion, guilt, sadness, and fear can be equally weaponized. Any time you direct emotion at someone to bend them to your will — whether through rage, guilt-tripping, performative sadness, or helplessness — it becomes abuse. He draws an analogy from venture capital: the energy required to force a deal into place is the energy needed to maintain it. Similarly, controlling someone through emotional pressure requires constant maintenance and never produces a happy relationship.
Key Concepts
- Emotional abuse is using emotions to control someone
- The force required to close a deal equals the force needed to maintain it
Key Quotes
“Emotional abuse is when you are using your emotion to try to control somebody.”
“It’s just as true using guilt to try to control somebody as emotional abuse, or using your sadness — look how hurt I am, see how bad you are — or using your fear.”
“Anytime when you’re putting the emotion at the person and you want to control them and try to have them take care of you or do what you want, bend them to your will through your emotions — that’s abuse.”
“The amount of energy it took to make the deal is the amount of energy you have to use to maintain it.”
“Finding what their truth is, finding where they want to move and finding how that aligns with you — that’s a much easier way to get to a place where you’re together and at peace.”
Transcript
so I think Taran and I hadn’t quite gotten married yet I remember going over to her parents house and it was like a crazy ass yell Fest it was like out of control I was like oh she like apparently her family is like mine it was just yelling a lot when Taran and I got married we just followed the pattern and we had this great therapist who I forever thankful for one of I would say one of my greatest teachers and she said you know she’s like you’re you’re emotionally abusing each other both T and I were like no we’re not we’re just yelling you know it’s just yelling I remember it’s like no we’re not like uhuh like no that’s not that’s not abuse like abuse is something like when you’re whacking somebody on the head with a like a cast iron skillet or something and she’s like no I want you to read this stuff and you know she talk to us but her definition which is stuck with me forever is emotional abuse is when you are using your emotion to try to control somebody now the one that our society says is the worst is anger right yelling at me so that I do the thing so that like you know and the abusive person who’s yelling or Screaming or even hitting like that aggressive thing that’s what we say is bad but it’s just as true using guilt to try to control somebody as emotional abuse or using your sadness look how how hurt I am see how bad you are or using your fear like they like take care of me take all my fear for me anytime when you’re putting the emotion at the person and you want to control them and try to have them take care of you or do what you want bend them to your will through your emotions that’s that’s abuse and so that’s one of the things that in a fight you absolutely can’t do in a way that makes the fight productive now you can do it you can go out of the room and you can yell and you can scream and you can get sad and guilty and it doesn’t matter like you can get angry and and sad and scared in a fight too that’s all fine just can’t be at the other person it can’t be trying to control them and it can’t make them feel unsafe and if it doesn’t do any of that fine great all the emotions are fine we love emotions but if you’re using it to control somebody or if they feel controlled by the emotion then it becomes incredibly unproductive because it’s abuse it’s like yelling at one another or it’s like guilting one another it’s basically saying I going to control you I’m going to oppress you with this emotion now people have different ways of doing it and like one of my favorite that is like very like not seen almost at all is the person who’s like the weak person who’s like oh you said something critical to me and now I’m broken down and I’m sad and I’m not going to get up for two weeks and I can’t love you anymore and I’m being a I’m being big about it but this can happen in very small ways that’s just as much emotional abuse as someone yelling at someone as a way to scare them to get them to change so it’s really important that in a fight when you’re having a fight with somebody that you’re not using your emotions to control them in fact that you’re not trying to control them in any way that you’re trying to see them that you are trying to understand where they are you’re trying to allow yourself to be seen when they’re ready to see you that you are finding a way that both of you can come together and have a solution that works for both of you not control because the thing is like if you control somebody to do something eventually that breaks there’s this um way that we talked about Venture Capital which I always loved which is you have to make a lot of deals in Venture Capital big deals in small deals and we would say the amount of energy it took to make the deal is the amount of energy you have to use to maintain it so if a deal kind of happened like gently and like it all happened and fell into place those deals usually went really really well if it was a deal where it was like there was big struggles and you had to negotiate this thing and then you didn’t quite see eye to eye and everything was a little you’re shoving it into place you have to maintain that to make that deal successful and it’s it wasn’t 100% true but it was true a lot similarly if you have to control andol and like push somebody into doing something so that you can be happy you’re going to have to maintain that pressure to keep them in that spot it doesn’t freaking work finding what their truth is finding where they want to move and finding how that aligns with you that’s a much easier way to to get to a place where you’re together and at peace and so it doesn’t even work to try to control anybody for any kind of length of time and it’s why you see relationships where somebody dominates through control those aren’t happy relationships whether it’s controlling through big emotion sadness or big emotion anger or by withholding love all of that none of it leads to a happy relationship and just never works