The topic of this post is timeless.
It has been talked about a lot over the years, but it needs to be reminded again and again.
The more openly these topics are discussed, the more society as a whole begins to condemn such behavior. People who have been hurt, abused, or mistreated in one way or another start to realize that they are not alone, and they find the courage to stand up for themselves or leave an environment that is dangerous for them. That is exactly why it is so important to keep speaking about these topics consistently.

In Estonia, we have a proverb: “Pigem õudne lõpp, kui lõputu õudus”, which in English means: “Better a horrible end than endless horror.”
And that is exactly what this post is about: domestic violence.

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This post is based on my personal thoughts on Krapsakas blog.
This is not a scientific or evidence-based article, and can be a very strong trigger for people who have experienced domestic violence or who are in a relationship where there is violence!
Take what resonates, and leave everything that doesn’t.

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If you are Estonian, you have probably already heard of Ettevaatust.ee, a website created by one of Estonia’s most well-known influencers, Mallukas, together with her husband, Tomas.

For foreigners or those who have not heard of this page, it is a website listing convicted criminals sentenced by the Estonian court system. These are people found guilty of domestic violence or sexual offences, including violence against women, men, or children.

In other words, because until now there had not really been a place in Estonia where an ordinary person could, with just a few clicks and without leaving a digital trace of searching for someone, access information about such violent individuals, Mallu and Tomas created this page.

As far as media coverage has shown, the website is also legally accepted on a state level. The page contains a person’s name together with publicly accessible court rulings taken from Estonia’s national database.

Besides this website, lately even in my own life, indirectly but still clearly, I have seen quite a lot of violence. Violence between two people.
As someone who has personally been in a violent relationship, and whose home environment in the past was also violent for a long time, I wanted to write down a few thoughts in this post.

Actually, I have wanted to write posts about this topic earlier as well, from different angles. But because this subject is once again so current, it pushed my fingers to move on the keyboard. So here is one post about it.

These are not (justified) excuses for violence

/ “You provoked it yourself! I had no other choice but to defend myself and hit you!”

/ “Look how stupid you are! You cannot even handle anything! Nobody wants to be your friend, let alone be with you!”

/ “You practically asked for it yourself with your behavior – hitting / emotional abuse -“

Let us make one thing absolutely clear: violence never solves a problem. Never.
There are very, very rare exceptions.
But when we are talking about two adults, or a parent-child relationship, violence is not a solution.
From no point of view is it okay that one adult cannot calm themselves down or cannot handle their own emotions, and then their hands or feet are directed toward another person.
In the same way, screaming at someone at the top of your lungs, or throwing very ugly words and accusations at them, is not an acceptable solution either.

Signs we do not want to see

As mentioned, having gone through this myself, I now know very well what precedes it all.
It usually starts with very small micro things.
The examples are primarily drawn from unequal power dynamics between two adults.

It becomes him, not you

They start canceling you as a person. When someone calls or asks something, it’s -“He does it.” It’s not “We go” or “We did it,” but “He did” or “He goes.”

It’s such a tiny, trivial thing. Yet it slowly erases your personality. A brilliant method to make sure that, at some point, when things are really bad, you no longer see yourself as a separate person– you are HIM.

And you can’t exactly say anything bad to him, right? How can you protect yourself or walk away? You’d be hurting HIM!? How dare you!

If you are currently with someone like this and these sentences feel familiar, please understand that my last 4 sentences were pure sarcasm and you have the RIGHT to stand up for yourself! You have the RIGHT to leave! YOU are an individual! It’s not his rights, it’s YOUR rights!

Failing to do things casually or ignoring agreements

Again, this is a quietly starting thing. Sometimes it shows up right at the start of communication or a relationship.
Let’s say it’s about small agreements, like who will cook dinner. He promised to do it, but something suddenly came up.
And it happens once, then twice, then three times. Three becomes ten.
And suddenly the whole kitchen workload is on your shoulders.
This can be compounded by special demands about food or constant complaining that this or that isn’t good. Meanwhile, he doesn’t come to help or cook for himself.

The same behavior can appear with putting away clothes, doing laundry, folding and storing clean laundry, and so on. General house cleaning.

I want to emphasize: if two people haven’t clearly and mutually agreed on one doing less than the other, the other person has NO right to force you to do more.
You are never your partner’s servant or maid.
It doesn’t matter who earns more or whether one person stays home.
If you haven’t agreed on something clearly, there are no “unwritten rules.”
You are equals.

“He only raised his voice once”

Classic micro‑abuses.
Bought him the wrong thing at the shop by accident? Maybe he wanted light‑blue Red Bull but you got dark‑blue? And he raises his voice.
This is NOT okay and it never will be.
It’s just a small example of what could be waiting for you in the future.

An adult can express disappointment calmly.
Yes, sometimes we’re stressed for ten different reasons and may be more emotional. But if this becomes repetitive, or there’s no reason for tension yet you’re yelled at, darling, no matter how in love you are- please leave.
The sooner you get off a train going the wrong way, the sooner you get home safely.

“You’re imagining it!”

He learns who you are. He listens. And then one day, he starts using your own words against you. Or your own behavior against you- gaslighting.

Gaslighting– It means a situation where one person makes another person doubt their own perception, memory, feelings, or sense of reality.

For example:
/ “You are imagining things.”
/ “I never said that.”
/ “You are overreacting.”
/ “You are being dramatic again.”
/ “That did not happen like that.”

The goal is often to make the other person eventually start thinking:
/ maybe I am too sensitive.
/ maybe I am the problem.
/ maybe I understood it wrong.

That is exactly why gaslighting is so dangerous, because it slowly erodes a person’s inner sense of reality.

If you try to explain yourself, then you become “problematic” for him.
You ask for too much and you do not understand him. Things nobody has ever criticized you for before are suddenly criticized now.

All of this slowly leads to a point where you begin to feel completely insignificant. You feel that you are not allowed to defend yourself, not allowed to explain yourself.
Day by day you become smaller and smaller, until there is almost nothing left of you, because all you want is peace, not conflict.

And for the sake of that “peace”, you are willing to make yourself smaller, forget your own preferences, your own opinions, and your own rights. As long as there is peace. As long as nobody raises their voice, mocks you, or insults you. Yet during all of this, you are regularly called crazy.
This may also come with sentences like:
“None of my previous women were as psycho as you are.”
At the same time, in the beginning, he may have spoken badly about his former partners too.

Dear, all of this is manipulation designed to make you submit.

I will bring an example from my own life.
A few years ago, when I still used Snapchat, I received a friend request from a completely unknown person.
Because I was bored that day, I thought: “Why not accept it?”. Usually I do not accept such requests.
At first we communicated through messages, and later that evening he suggested calling through Snapchat. I agreed.

That call lasted around two to two and a half hours. By the end of that call, I was deeply shaken.
I had been accused of many different things. For example, that I listen to another person but do not talk enough about myself. That I was supposedly manipulative.
Today I do not even remember all the accusations.
But the main thing was this: I genuinely felt like the worst person in the world after that call.

Afterwards I called someone close to me. I told the whole story and asked:
“Am I really such a bad person?”
And that person answered: “Agnes, that stranger pressed the right buttons and brought out your worst sides. You are not like that.”

What I want to say with this story is that all of us can be painted as “crazy” or “unstable” if someone knows exactly where to press.
That does not mean the person is actually crazy or malicious.

If you are not being heard, not being respected, and every possibility to express yourself is taken away from you, then yes, that creates a situation where a person may start looking hysterical or unstable, because they are being pushed so hard into a corner.

Deliberately manipulating another person until they appear “hysterical” is NOT okay!

“That was just one pinch, he usually doesn’t do that”

The classic “innocent” pinch.
Did you know that tickling someone without stopping when they ask is actually violence?
Sounds strange, right?

I never recognized this danger sign either.
It’s just tickling! One person is laughing!
Because the sensation of being tickled is often the body reacting to perceived danger.

I want to emphasize that not all tickling is a sign of abuse. But it becomes a sign of violence if one person asks or begs for it to stop and the other ignores it and continues.

Here’s a similar example from my life.
I was regularly pinched on the thigh. For example, we’d sit on the couch and “in passing” my partner would pinch my thigh. At first gently, then harder. It hurt a lot.
I asked him to stop, clearly expressing that it hurt and please don’t do it. But he didn’t stop.
I often even had bruises.
At some point it became regular. For example, he’d walk by, give a kiss, and pinch my thigh hard at the same time. Honestly, at the time I didn’t even think this was violence.

If someone is physically hurting you, laughing at it, and continues to cause you pain even though you show it hurts. This is NOT okay.

“I like seeing you angry, it’s sexy”

Another thing from my past that I never even thought about while in the relationship.

Years later, hearing it randomly on a podcast that some men (and women too) actually get turned on when their partner is angry was quite shocking.

I had also been with a partner who would deliberately make me angry because I was supposed to be extra fiery and tempting.
This person would intentionally upset me, ignore agreed‑upon things, and even hurt me physically because it aroused him.

Again, this is NOT okay.

“You can pay me in kind”

The older I get and the more I talk to different women, the more I hear that some men (and let’s not underestimate certain jerk women) find it funny or arousing when someone pays for something and later expects a physical return “favor”.

For example, covering the bill at a restaurant or even paying the grocery store bill while in a relationship.
This is usually followed by the line “You can pay me in kind,” often with a smirk or laugh.
I’ve even heard that this is supposedly popular nowadays on first dates, which is shocking and NOT okay.

At first, it might seem like harmless fun- a “joke” between two adults.
But everything has a limit. When this line is used repeatedly, it distorts the relationship dynamic.
It’s even worse if one person has less money than the other. Then it can become a reality for the wealthier partner that compensation is expected in kind.

For those unfamiliar, “paying in kind” means being expected to repay something sexually.
This is NOT okay. You never have to pay with your body for anything.
Remember this- No matter the pressure, you do NOT have to do it.
No one has the right to demand this or pressure you into anything you don’t voluntarily want to do.

In summary of this post

This post covers only a tiny fragment of the manipulations and abuse that exist.
These were the first examples that came to mind from my own experiences or from what I’ve heard from other women and men.
If more examples come to me, I will likely make another post like this.

With this post, I want to make it clear to everyone, both women and men: no form of abuse is okay.
If you feel that you are doing something you don’t actually want to do while with someone else- leave.
It doesn’t matter how many shared things you have together. A house you built, a family, a business, or anything else.
If YOU feel unsafe, if you feel the relationship dynamic is off, if you realize what is being done to you is wrong- THAT IS WRONG. No matter how much someone tries to convince you otherwise, it is not okay. Your intuition does not lie!

And darling, I know how hard it is to leave a relationship where you feel trapped.
Where it seems there is no way out. Whether it’s financial, the result of manipulation, or because you feel like you are nobody today.
“Who would believe me? Who wants to be my friend? What am I even worth?”

Darling, that is complete nonsense. Someone has manipulated your subconscious and mind for so long that you started to believe it, but it is false.

You are worthy of joy, a good life, genuine laughter, and a life free from pain.
Do not give up!
You will find solutions. You will get out. You will say “no” and rebuild yourself and your life. You can do this, even when the journey feels endless. Even when you want to give up, you still move forward. Step by step. Day by day. You can do it!
I believe in you!
Seek help. Look for help. And dare to accept it.
No matter how you have been manipulated. No matter how you have been threatened.
Believe me, one terrible ending is a thousand times better than endless horror.
You have the strength and power within you to step out of that horror!

With love,
Krapsakas Agnes

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📞 Support and Helplines (Estonia & Europe)

Always call these first if you are in immediate physical danger.
If you are in immediate danger
• 112 – Emergency number in most European countries.
• 911 – Emergency number in the United States.
• +372 6000  112 – For calling from abroad to Estonia. If there is an urgent incident in Estonia, call this number to connect with the Emergency Response Centre.

I recommend saving these numbers in your phone. Hopefully you’ll never need them, but in a stressful situation it’s better to have them ready.

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Note: If calling from abroad (e.g., from Finland to Estonia), you may need to dial the country code first: +372 116 111.

Victim Support Europe – 116 006
Free, confidential support, guidance on rights, referrals, and next steps for victims of crime, including domestic violence.

Victim Support Estonia – Ohvriabi – 116 006
Confidential assistance and emotional support for anyone who has suffered physical, psychological, economic, or sexual violence.

Women’s Helpline 1492 (Estonia)
Nationwide 24/7 hotline for women who have experienced abuse of any kind.

Child Helpline (Estonia) – 116 111
For children and young people needing advice or support (chat & phone). You can also leave anonymous reports, which local child protection services will check.

I once left an anonymous tip about neighbors experiencing months of psychological abuse and constant yelling. Later local child protection services intervened, and the parents’ behavior toward their children improved.