There are a lot of accounts of abuse and harassment on my feed lately. For some of us these accounts trigger memories of times when we felt victimised, which can in turn set off an internal dialogue that like this:

"Was what happened to me *really* abuse?" [1/10]

This is a difficult question to answer. Abuse is hard to define; that's part of why these conversations are so contentious. Something that's clearly abusive in one context is perfectly acceptable in another. [2/10]

As someone who has spent a lot of time in the “was it really abuse?” thought spiral, I would like to put forward a re-framing I found useful, and which may be of use to others:

It doesn’t matter if it was abuse. [3/10]

I don’t mean that what happened wasn’t important, or that it wasn’t terrible, or that it didn’t have consequences for me. I mean, literally, it doesn’t matter if it was abuse. You don’t have to classify it one way or the other. [4/10]

My ex-boyfriend did a number of crappy things which had negative consequences for me, some of them long-term.

Was he abusive? I don’t know. There’s a lot of context which makes the whole situation murky.

Was he a lousy boyfriend? EMPHATICALLY YES. [5/10]

Maybe he abused me and maybe he didn’t. Regardless of that, he sucked at being in a relationship with me, and breaking up with him was an excellent decision. That remains true, whether or not the things he did were abuse. [6/10]

Having the “but was it really abuse?” process constantly running in the background doesn’t give me anything aside from a headache. It's not a question I can answer easily, and even if I could, it wouldn't necessarily make a difference. [7/10]

The ways I manage the outcomes of my ex’s crappy behaviour are the same, regardless of whether the relationship was abusive or just garden-variety bad. [8/10]

You can remove that entire question from your brain. You can acknowledge that someone treated you badly, and be sad or frustrated or angry about that treatment, without having to do the internal dance of “but was it really abuse?” [9/10]

You aren’t required to dredge up old memories and make yourself unhappy by trawling through them for some kind of proof that things were bad enough to count. [10/10]