How I Recognize DARVO In Toxic Relationships

Since my ex DARVO’d me, I've learned that it's all about control.

DARVO is an acronym coined by psychologist Jennifer J. Freyd, PhD, which means to “deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender.” When we talk about DARVO, we’re talking about a very common strategy utilized by abusers in response to even the mere possibility that they might be held accountable for their abuse.

According to Freyd,

“[A]ctual abusers threaten, bully and make a nightmare for anyone who holds them accountable or asks them to change their abusive behavior. This attack, intended to chill and terrify, typically includes threats of law suits, overt and covert attacks on the whistle-blower’s credibility, and so on. The attack will often take the form of focusing on ridiculing the person who attempts to hold the offender accountable.

“[T]he offender rapidly creates the impression that the abuser is the wronged one, while the victim or concerned observer is the offender. Figure and ground are completely reversed.

“The offender is on the offense and the person attempting to hold the offender accountable is put on the defense.”

Back when I was pregnant with Sophie, I hadn’t even heard of DARVO. I didn’t have the words to express how much her dad’s treatment impacted me. All I knew was that dealing with him left me feeling as if I was losing my mind.

I was hesitant to even call this treatment abuse because I didn’t know if it “counted” because he wasn’t beating me up. Maybe I was just oversensitive. Maybe I did expect too much.

Any time that I tried to hold him accountable, any time I tried to put a stop to his cruelty, he found a way to blame me for our conflicts. I wondered if that was true. I wondered if all of our issues were my fault.

Eventually, he was calling me his abuser in dozens of vicious emails where he’d retconned our entire history. A couple of years after Sophie was born, another one of his affair partners reached out to me to say she was sorry that she had believed his lies about me. That’s how I first found out that he was telling the new women in his life that I was “an abusive, crazy baby mama who cruelly withheld his child because I wanted to punish him for ending our relationship.”

Was that really me? I wondered.

The idea of Sophie growing up without her father was extremely heartbreaking to me, and I would have done anything in those days to change the outcome. That led me to wonder if I was so delusional that I couldn’t see the truth.

Something I’ve learned over the years is that coercive abuse can completely drain your confidence and rewire your brain. My entire sense of worth went down the tubes as I second-guessed every single one of my decisions.

When I say that my relationship with Sophie’s dad nearly destroyed me, I’m not exaggerating for the sake of a story. It left immense scars.

Today I know so much more about abuse and DARVO, but for a very long time, all of his accusations against me took an enormous toll on my mental health. It was hard to keep up with all of his lies from the start of my pregnancy, and it was deeply confusing because I loved and believed the best of him for such a long time — even after he treated me like garbage.

In those days, I couldn’t look at the situation or his behavior objectively. In some ways, it was almost easier to blame myself and buy into his line of thinking than it was to admit that I was in love with an abuser and I didn’t know how to get away.

The abuse continued even after our romantic relationship ended. I didn’t know how to tell him no, and I hated myself for that. The only way I knew to put distance between us was to show other people what he was saying to me, so they knew that his words didn’t match his actions, and I had some accountability to say no to his demands.

It was a shockingly lonely time in my life. Trying to make sense of my new role as a mom, and trying to survive the aftermath of a tragically toxic relationship was exhausting. Even when I thought… this is abuse, I discovered that most people didn’t want to hear about it.

Church people told me to forgive my abuser. To not make things harder for him.

Some days, it felt like the whole world was on his side. If this is abuse, I pondered, maybe it’s happening because I deserve it.

This year when she came home from trick-or-treating with a friend, Sophie confessed that her step mom had treated her cruelly whenever she used to stay her her dad’s house.

After she told me about several instances that had hurt her, and after she explained how she’d been too afraid to talk about what was happening, I went to her dad and relayed to him everything that Sophie was saying.

I told him that I hadn’t sent our daughter over there to be mistreated. He responded that “It was years ago,” and he wouldn’t have been okay with it if he’d known.

That’s it, though. He had nothing more to say about the situation. How would you respond if your child announced that your spouse had been consistently cruel to them?

Healthy parents won’t brush that off as no big deal.

I’ve since relayed all of this information to Sophie’s teacher, to help her better understand where Sophie’s been coming from and what we’re working on at home. It’s all connected, you know? Learning how Sophie’s brain works through her recent testing, and understanding that she’s been through so much unnecessary pain as she opens up about her dad’s house.

I quit sending Sophie to see her dad in early 2020 because I had these growing concerns that he wasn’t providing a proper home for her, but I never would have sent her at all had I known how bad things were over there.

Knowing everything I do now, I feel so stupid for ever giving them the benefit of a doubt.

After I told the teacher, she echoed my own heartbreak and then she specifically called it abuse. She said that both Sophie’s dad and step mom were neglectful and emotionally abusive toward Sophie, and it’s really no wonder now that she sufferers from anxiety and gets so nervous when she thinks she’s done something wrong.

Her teacher’s reply almost took me by surprise. I read much of it to Sophie, who said it made her feel really good. Like her teacher understands her, and she’s no longer so scared to talk about these things.

The teacher is right.

I hasn’t even used the word abuse when I explained the situation, because there’s honestly still so much fear about how my words are going to be received if I actually say “that was abuse,” or “they were abusive.”

After dealing with this man for nearly a decade now, and watching the way our culture currently deals with abusers, I am very much aware of just how badly it can go for the survivors.

One of the worst things about abuse, or even talking about abuse is the way it can make you feel as if you’re losing your mind at every turn. Am I an evil person for talking about what we’ve been through? Am I a monster for discussing bad behavior than can be traced back to him?

People sometimes do tell me that I am an awful mother, and such folks frequently cite men’s rights arguments against parent alienation.

It’s been a heavy burden on my heart to try and make sense of all this confusion, because DARVO really is that confusing.

I’ve gotten so many angry, hateful emails from Sophie’s dad where he tells me that he has more than enough evidence against me to take me on in court. He’d call me bipolar and mentally unstable, suggesting that I’m not a fit mother at all, yet he’d still leave me with all of the responsibility to care for our daughter.

It’s been hard for me to grasp how a person can lie without guilt, or how they can separate abuse parent and partner abuse. In my experience, if a man is abusive to me, I cannot trust him to be good to our child.

Conversely, my ex will call me abusive and unstable, but has left our child in my care. He also called his wife’s ex-husband abusive, even though they left her young children under their father’s care.

At one point, my ex declared that it would be a good thing if I were to end up with his wife’s ex.

“But I thought he was abusive,” I asked incredulously.

“He was abusive to her,” my ex explained. “He was an abusive husband but he didn’t abuse their kids.”

That didn’t make any sense. From what I’ve seen, an abusive partner is frequently also an abusive parent because abuse is all about control.

In our case, for example, I understand that part of the reason Sophie’s dad neglects her is because he associates doing right by her as doing something too nice for me.

He may have realized that he can’t bully and push me around like he used to, but that hasn’t translated into quality care for our child. It’s almost as if he knows that he can continue to carry out his abuse by failing to meet his duties as a dad.

When he doesn’t take my concerns about Sophie’s needs seriously, he can complain that I’m utterly unreasonable, overdramatic, or even making up problems. Many abusers do this while telling themselves that they’re not hurting their children — they’re just setting boundaries with a toxic ex.

Boundaries are good, right? And toxic is bad.

Honestly, part of the problem with recognizing DARVO is the way our society has glomped upon the notion of toxic relationships. Most of us don’t even know how to recognize reactive abuse. We say, it takes two to tango. Or, they gave as good as they got.

For many abuse survivors, we didn’t even know there was a word for our heightened emotional reactions to abuse. That’s one reason why DARVO is so effective.

Think about it. It’s difficult enough to admit that you love an abuser, and that you don’t know how to leave the relationship. Many victims will question whether or not the abuse they’ve experienced is “bad enough” to count as “real abuse.”

If your abuser begins calling you the abuser while you’re still struggling to come to terms with the truth of your relationship, you might find yourself feeling especially humiliated over your reactions to their abuse. If you raise your voice or make a scene, you might wonder if that makes you an abuser.

If you know that your abuser hates to be held accountable, if you know that certain conversations will almost always anger them, it is especially easy to blame yourself.

In my case, I remember thinking how my reactions to my ex’s cruelty didn’t even feel like me. It left me locked in such a deep sense of shame. I blamed myself for being an instigator. Like I should have known when my pleas for him to do right by Sophie would turn into a huge fight.

My entire world had turned upside down through a few years of unrelenting abuse. I hated myself for getting into such an unhealthy situation to begin with, and I hated myself for reacting at all. For falling into a deep depression, for becoming increasingly anxious, and for constantly getting into the same arguments with Sophie’s dad.

I kept thinking that I could make it all stop if only I was a better, kinder, and gentler person. All of the talk about toxic relationships left me thinking that we were mutually abusive and that I could choose to enjoy a healthier relationship with her dad by simply refusing to say anything he didn’t like.

In some ways, that made life much more peaceable. We simply do not fight like we used to, and that’s a relief.

At the same time, he was never held accountable. And he continued to weave false stories about abuse at my hands.

While I have much more clarity now, I understand that he might never quit lying about me. After all, we finally quit fighting when Sophie was three years old. When I quit expecting much of anything from him, and quit telling him truths he didn’t want to hear, like that Sophie needs more and deserves better.

Five years later, he’s still smashing watermelons for “therapy,” with my name scribbled on the top.

Recently, I’ve been talking about how my daughter’s dad has started a TikTok account where he’s trying to be a sort of mental health advocate, in a “woke, leftist” vein. It’s been deeply disturbing for many reasons, including the fact that this is an abuser who’s already used social media clout in the past to lure more women into his life.

These days, I can’t even tell you how much I’d like to make my own TikTok account just to debunk my ex’s baloney. Just to post one of his abusive emails where he’s laughing at my autism and ask, “hey, this you?” on some of his neurodivergent posts.

Oh, it’s silly, I know. Don’t worry — I’m not going to waste my time like that. But I sure have a lot of empathy for other survivors who’ve been through the wringer with an abuser who’s out there telling fake sob stories to demonize their victim(s).

It’s truly hell.

I’ve been through a lot of loneliness in my lifetime, but I don’t believe there’s a more lonely or hopeless feeling than the pain you face when your abuser first begins to lie about you. As I’ve said, most people really don’t want to get involved. Often, when you react to their accusations, other people will give you the side eye or advise that you quit talking at all. Take the high road, they say.

At best, you’re seen as a sad Debbie Downer who can’t move on after their ex left. At worst, people believe your abuser because they think that yeah, you do look crazy.

Almost a decade ago, this man came into my life under the guise of being a certain type of victim, and we wound up having a child together. I fell for all of his lines, fell for the manipulation of trauma bonding. His abuse practically destroyed me in the end, and it could have destroyed our kid.

His abuse isn’t over, however, which means I still have to be mindful of the way he impacts Sophie. I have to work through all of it with her.

Now, he’s posing as another sort of victim — one who’s been damaged by undiagnosed conditions and mental illnesses, including autism, ADHD, C-PTSD, anxiety, and depression.

If he’s not just trying to repeat his old game of building popularity online to meet, use, and abuse other women, it’s been suggested that he might be trying to set himself up to provide zero financial support to Sophie.

The person who suggested that has known my ex longer than I have, and they describe him as both manipulative and entitled, which is quite fair, in my experience. They’re also not the first person to know my ex well but be completely blindsided by his sudden claims to be “autistic AF,” because he has historically done so well juggling school and work. Even in making friends or connections and constantly finding a new romantic relationship. That’s not to say he hasn’t had trouble, or that his relationships go well. But his biggest troubles are very much self-inflicted as a chronic cheater and serial user. Unsurprisingly, most people don’t react well to being lied to by someone they trusted so much.

To be fair, I don’t have a ton of successful relationships, either. I tend to retreat and feel bad about bothering people with my problems. I worry a lot about being a good friend, and struggle to understand social cues and flow.

My relationships don’t break down because I lie to people. They break down because I don’t know how to keep connections up, and if a conflict does arise, I tend to believe that talking things out should always work them out.

At 40, I finally know that isn’t how life works. Sometimes, people get mad when they feel that you should have done something differently. Sometimes, they hold grudges and there’s nothing you can do about it. Sometimes, you can ask for forgiveness and try to make amends, but they will not forgive you.

I frequently say things that upsets others, although I have no interest in hurting anyone. Unfortunately, I also have let a lot of people down, and I carry great guilt about that. I know I’m not without fault or blame.

As it’s gone for many fellow neurodivergent adults, my struggles to juggle life like a so-called normal person have been life-long battles for me. I actually didn’t make it through three semesters of college because I couldn’t keep up with the workload.

My ex used to tell me that he didn’t understand such struggles because he nearly finished graduate school while working full-time and having a wife plus three children at home. He liked to tell me how the world works. When he left me pregnant and insisted that I move out of our shared apartment, he insisted that I would be fine as a single mom if I just got another full-time office job and left Sophie in daycare.

We had enormous arguments because he accused me of being a prima donna when I simply recognized that I had to honor my strengths if I was going to juggle work with parenting.

Now my ex suggests that it’s neurodivergence that has kept him from success. Even though the big wrench that keeps coming up in his life is infidelity and sexual misconduct. He cheated on his first wife with more than a dozen women. He claims he was let go as a youth pastor from two different churches over “stupid politics” but later told me he was texting girls in the youth group and his language was “misinterpreted.” He’s complained to me that sexual addiction has led him to sleep with minors who lied about their age, or sleep with women he was not attracted to.

He is the victim in all of these stories. He never questions if he’s done something wrong. On the contrary, he offers a strange view of fate and predestination as if he can’t be held responsible for his actions and he doesn’t really have free will.

I still have copies of old emails where he’s mocking me for being autistic, berating me for writing too much or for saying the “same things over and over again.”

He had a point there. Yes, I’m an overexplainer, especially in writing. Especially when the stakes are so emotionally high.

That’s hardly unusual for women on the spectrum when we’re trying to work something out in a relationship, when it seems like the other person keeps misunderstanding us or twisting our words. It’s hardly unusual for women on the spectrum who are suffering from abuse.

How can anyone expect to see you at your best after suffering beneath the weighty shame of intimate partner abuse? Years ago when the abuse was especially intense, I remarked on social media that I was afraid I was going to “forget how to people.”

Once things finally calmed down and I was painfully trying to untangle myself from the effects of his abuse, I lamented that I felt as if I had indeed forgotten how to interact with people.

I don’t know if that’s something I’m ever really going to get back. I once had a certain naivety about just how poorly a bad relationship could go. I trusted people quickly and easily. All these years later, I’m all too aware.

It’s just so rich then to see my abuser make public posts about all of his recent self-diagnoses from questionable online tests like IDRlabs. He has time for this mess when he can’t be bothered to respond to his eight-year-old daughter’s needs.

Kids her age want to hear from their dad about the stuff they’re going through. It’s almost shocking, then, to watch him lament about all of his lost opportunities due to supposed trauma and late diagnoses. Why?

Because I’ve been on the end of his verbal and emotional abuse, and now our daughter is currently on the end of his neglect.

For a man who claims he loves his kids and misses his daughter, he has a terrible way of showing it.

So, he’s devastated that his supposed neurodivergence was ignored while he ignores his daughter’s?

At the same time, he’s begun to send child support late, and he isn’t contributing to any of her extra needs like he used to.

While I’m grateful to know more about what’s been going on, I understand it’s a mere snapshot of the full story. It’s still eerie to see your abuser create another persona on social media that utilizes some of the characteristics they once demonized about you.

This is the same dude who’s DARVO’d me and neglected our daughter for years. The dude who mocked me for not knowing how to drive/not having a license, but who also wasn’t willing to teach me when we were together. In other words, he mocked my disability and complained about my inability to drive, but he used that disability to wield power over me.

In 2013, I left everything to be with him. I did everything I could to make him happy. It’s so embarrassing to talk about now, but very early into our relationship, I asked him what pet name, if any, he liked to be called. He told me that he wanted me to call him Daddy, and yes, that set the tone for our entire relationship.

He would gush about how sweet and thoughtful I was, so I went out of my way to do everything he wanted me to do to earn his praise. It was a terribly toxic relationship from the start, considering that he was married and he told me he loved me just three days into the whole thing.

Back then, I was astonishingly gullible. I felt so deeply connected to him.

The entire experience taught me a great deal about my immaturity and failings in relationships, and it taught me a lot about abuse and DARVO.

If you’ve ever been confused about who the abuser is in a toxic relationship, keep in mind that abuse is about power and control. When an abuser uses DARVO, things quickly become confusing for anyone outside of that relationship. However, a victim’s (often erratic) behavior is not driven by a desire to control their abuser. The victim just wants the abuse to stop!

All too often, they are also dependent upon their abuser in some way, which makes it harder for them to see that they’re being abused.

That might mean a financial dependence, an emotional dependence, or a practical one. An abuser might convince their victim to leave their home, or to leave their entire life behind, and then become angry if the victim finds it hard to adjust to their new life. When Sophie and I moved back down to Tennessee, I still didn’t have a car or a driver’s license. I was dependent upon her dad just to get to the grocery store.

The deep manipulation continued for a few years after we split, and he used the fact that I wanted Sophie to have her father in her life against me. He would threaten to cut off if I didn’t obey his commands. Once he began accusing me of abuse, I felt paralyzed with shame because I feared he might be right.

I was genuinely worried that I was the abuser, but this is not something I’ve observed that many abusers do. It’s more typical that they dig in their heels and deny all abuse, or at best, claim they simply don’t remember it.

I never wanted to control my ex. What I wanted was for him to quit attacking me, to simply be civil, and to do right by Sophie.

Meanwhile, he expected me to shut up and keep his sordid secrets (often at my own expense), and to never call him a selfish or negligent father.

I was so desperate to resolve the fighting and try to have a healthy co-parenting relationship, that I actually wrote to The Dr. Phil Show for help. It’s one of the reasons he hates me to this day — the producers called each of us and asked if we were willing to appear on the show.

He wasn’t, and he argued that I was abusive because show called him. He spoke as if that was the most horrifying and traumatic experience of his life.

My responses to his emotional abuse are what “made” him hate me. He’d tell me, “you made me hate,” “you made me mean,” etc. That’s not to say that I responded like some angel who was meek and mild.

As he discarded me and I tried to make sense of his abuse, I raised my voice. I cried hysterically and I’m sure I acted crazy sometimes. I was suicidal, and I didn’t understand how I could love and miss someone who treated me (and later, Sophie) as badly as he did. For far too long, I thought I owed him my unconditional love.

All these years later, I finally understand that I wasn’t the abuser. I’m also finally comfortable calling him my abuser whereas in the past that felt like a huge betrayal on my part. For the longest time I wanted to think we could work out our “misunderstandings,” but eventually, I had to accept that they weren’t misunderstandings at all.

I’ve only been able to move forward to take care of Sophie without begging him to be involved like I used to because I finally understand how he was trying to control me.

As soon as he realized he couldn’t control me, and that I was talking to other people about his abuse, that’s when his hatred truly surfaced and he pulled the whole narcissist-like discard.

If he couldn’t coerce or control me, he was going to make sure he destroyed me. Suddenly, he was twisting our history and telling people that I abused him.

Oh my word, how I worried it was true!

I made no attempts to shut him up. Not even when I heard about the extent of his allegations against me. I only tried to get him to quit berating me and to let us focus on Sophie.

His abuse was so overwhelming and consuming that for a long time, I genuinely felt like a mean and crazy person.

I was so ashamed of myself.

Sure, I tried to get other people to see what was happening. I took screenshots that showed he was telling the world and me conflicting things. Sharing those conversations, however, left me feeling so disloyal. That’s why even after our breakup and so much prolonged abuse, he was able to demand that I tell him who was criticizing him so he could block them on social media. I felt a sick sense of loyalty to my abuser when he had never shown an ounce of loyalty to me.

Through all of it, my actions were never about controlling this man. I wasn’t even concerned about controlling my own image or narrative.

My MO was obtaining relief from his abuse because it was destroying me. And I didn’t see how I could be a healthy or effective mother as long as I felt crushed beneath the heel of my abuser.

So, yeah. DARVO.

I know what it’s like to be falsely accused because my abuser accused me of abuse any time I failed to respond positively to his selfish demands or manipulative gestures. He called me ungrateful many times for rejecting or questioning a “labeless” sexual relationship with him, and for refusing to move into a poly house with him, whoever, and our daughter.

It was all so humiliating, particularly when he accused me of “using him sexually” because he had tried to get close to me again just to manipulate me, and then he got mad when I didn’t respond by shutting up or becoming compliant.

Why should any of this be relevant for you?

If you want to better decipher an abusive relationship, you really need to look at the actual timeline of events and each person’s motivations.

Who was, or who is, trying to control the other person? Who is actually living the life they claim to be living? Who is truly out for blood?

Who becomes enraged when the other person doesn’t fall in line with their demands?

Please understand that the victim is seeking freedom from abuse. In a DARVO situation, their behavior might look very odd. They may even be begging others to believe them because it feels like the whole world believes and defends their abuser.

The true victim of DARVO is not interested in global humiliation or total annihilation, I promise you.

Even so? That doesn’t mean all victims of abuse are so gripped by fear that they’re docile.

If you repeatedly abuse dogs, or if you repeatedly abuse children, you really can’t be surprised that some victims will eventually bite you or make a scene. Some victims will lose respect for you. Some will become deeply confused because they love, fear, and maybe even loathe you as their abuser.

The same thing goes for adult victims of abuse.

By its very design, DARVO is confusing. It confuses victims and outsiders alike. DARVO flourishes and is often very effective because most people don't understand abuse or coercive control and the power dynamics of abuse.

If you can remember just one thing when you're confused about DARVO or abuse, keep in mind that an abuser is motivated by their desire to control or punish their victim, and often, to control the way other people see them.

Abuse is all about control.

I’m still crowdfunding for my ongoing lipedema treatments and next surgeries. Please share the link to help raise awareness of the disease they call fat.

If you love my work and want to support my efforts to break cycles of stigma and shame through awkward honesty, visit me on Ko-fi. From there, you can follow and support my future projects, and subscribe to my newsletter.

If you’re not already a Medium member, consider a paid membership today. Signing up through this link means a portion of your membership will directly support my writing on the platform.