I think you’re wrong here. I think a person can be emotionally abusive without intending to be abusive. They might continually seek to block or inhibit the victim’s response, but they might not think of it as such.

My mother used to harangue me for hours at a time when I was a child. It was a textbook case of emotional abuse. Her intention was to protect herself from me, to raise me to be a good person by pointing out to me when I was being harmful to her. The trouble was, her perception of all this was off. I would hang out with my friends and she would take it as me not loving her, and then I’d be in for hours of her crying and talking to me in this horrible tone and her just laying out everything I’d ever done wrong, and she would be breathless and just keep going.

She wasn’t trying to hurt me. She was trying to protect herself. But she was hurting me.

She was one of the kindest, most generous people I’ve ever met. She was also deeply wounded, and miscalibrated in terms of her sense of proportion.