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Idk why so many of you are hellbent on redefining every shitty or even outright cruel thing people do-- lying, cheating, ghosting-- as abusive. Is it that you feel your hurt is only legitimate if you were abused? Because that's not true!
The worst pain anyone's every caused me wasn't physical or sexual assault or abuse. It wasn't even emotional abuse. It was a man I trusted completely and rearranged my life for ending my relationship with him and then his daughter I helped raise, with no warning or explanation
That's shitty, that's cruel, but that's not abuse. It is not a pattern of seeking control through violence. It's not even violence! And yet it has still left me with a profound sense of loss and an inability to trust. My pain can be valid without my ex being a violent abuser.
We need terms like 'gaslight' (which is NOT the same thing as authoritarian propaganda, i.e. Donald Trump cannot gaslight you unless you're in an intimate relationship with him) and 'abuse' because we have to be able to define problems in order to solve them.
I don't think we can solve all of human cruelty, but if we're going to try we need to be precise about behaviors and motivations and you calling everything abuse is stopping us from doing that.
Harm (e.g. lying, ghosting, cheating), violence (which would include sexual consent violations), and abuse (patterns of violence) all have different meanings. This would be easier if I could draw it out but:
-We all cause harm.
-Some harm is violence.
-Some violence is abuse.
-We all cause harm.
-Some harm is violence.
-Some violence is abuse.
All of these things are bad and should be addressed but need to be addressed differently, because the psychology and power dynamics of someone who causes harm is different from someone who abuses, and that's why we need to keep the definitions separate.
An example: we very often cause harm unintentionally through misunderstandings that escalate. Mediation can be super useful here because it helps restore mutual understanding and get around communication blocks. Mediation processes will be manipulated by abusers.
Another example: many people in abusive relationships eventually use violence in self-defense against their abusers. They are then often punished by the state, which usually fails to take power dynamics and the psychology of abuse into account, and will treat a woman who...
...shot her abusive husband while he was sleeping because this was the only 'out' she could find, the same as an abusive husband who shoots his sleeping wife. Even though only the latter is a continued risk to the community.
If you're someone who lies to a woman and emotionally manipulates her to get her to have sex with you, you're doing something shitty and it needs to be addressed, but it's going to be addressed differently than someone who uses force, fraud, or coercion to get sex, i.e. a rapist.
And if you were hurt, whether it be through harm, violence, or abuse, your pain, anger, grief are all valid and you deserve the support of your friends, family, community and (if you want!) a therapist in order to find healing. But again, those supports may look different.
Someone may even have trauma from experiencing harm that wasn't abuse. If a mom gets distracted while driving and gets into an accident with a kid in the backseat, the kid may very well have trauma related to the accident. But how we treat both the kid and mom...
...is going to be different than an accident with the same physical effects caused by Mom choosing to drive drunk (neglect) or Mom deciding to punish the entire family by swerving into a ditch (abuse).
I don't want to get too far off in the weeds about psychological trauma but the most severe trauma is usually correlated with intentional interpersonal violence (whether that be war or child abuse) rather than extent of injury...
...which tells us that it often has more to do with our sense of trust in others than our sense of physical safety. So intent does matter for healing, but it's only one of many factors.
Forcing myself to sign off but I'm a women's studies BA in my last year of an MSW taking several classes on violence against women and am also a survivor of multiple forms of gendered harm, violence, and abuse from individuals + the state so follow for more fun trauma takes.
Oh P.S. I'm also a sex worker so SWERFs don't follow 
Addendum now that this is starting to go viral: this thread was in response to the below tweet. I can't control where this thread winds up but if I catch anyone on here trying to minimize or invalidate abuse (ง •̀_•́)ง
FTR I just had to go back and delete my original response to the thread because so many whorephobes and MRAs started harassing me saying that I am indeed a rapist. When the MRAs agree with your redefinition of sexual violence, you need to reassess.
I think this is my first viral thread, and while I'm thrilled so many people are finding it useful, my mentions are pretty unnavigable now so I am muting this. Wishing you all safety and healing 
Checked in on replies and quote tweets and a lot of folks are objecting to say that lying, cheating and ghosting can be part of a pattern of abuse and yes, that's true. Lots of crappy things can be part of a pattern of abuse that are not *by themselves* abuse. I hope that's clear
