Five Signs You Are The Kind Of Person Abusers Target

This is not the general empath checklist. You have probably seen that already. This is something more specific. Something that might land closer to home.

I spent years asking the wrong question. Not why didn't I leave, I understand why I didn't leave. The question I could not stop asking was why me. Why did I keep ending up in the same situation? Why did I keep choosing the wrong people? Why did my kindness keep being used against me?

I was not weak. I was not naive. I was not broken. And yet it kept happening.

It was only when I started writing Built To Be Broken that I understood the answer. The people who end up in abusive relationships are not there because of weakness. They are there because of strength. Because of qualities that are genuinely beautiful in the right hands and genuinely dangerous in the wrong ones.

Here are the five signs I wish someone had shown me years earlier.

1. You feel other people's pain as if it were your own.

You cannot watch someone suffer without trying to fix it. You absorb the mood of every room you walk into. You have always been the one people come to when things fall apart because you genuinely care and they know it.

You probably always have been. Even as a child you were the one who noticed when something was wrong. Who stayed when others left. Who tried to make things better even when it was not your job to.

That is not weakness. But it is visible. And to the wrong person, it is an invitation.

2. You apologise first.

Even when you did nothing wrong. Because keeping the peace has always felt more important than being right. Because the tension in the room is unbearable to you in a way it never seems to be for the other person.

And the person across from you learned very quickly that you would always be the one to back down. That no matter what happened, you would find a way to make it your fault. That they never had to take responsibility because you would always take it for them.

You probably thought that made you the bigger person. In a healthy relationship it would. In an abusive one it becomes the mechanism that keeps you trapped.

3. You believe people can change.

You see the best in everyone. You stayed long after most people would have walked away because you genuinely believed that if you loved them well enough, something would shift. That the person you fell in love with was still in there somewhere. That the good days were the real person and the bad days were something you could help them through.

That is one of the most beautiful things about you. The capacity to hold onto hope when there is almost none left. It is also what kept you in the room long after the room became unsafe.

Abusers do not find people who give up easily. They find people who never do.

4. You take responsibility for other people's emotions.

When they are angry, you ask yourself what you did wrong. When they are cold, you work harder to warm them up. When they are unhappy, you search for the way you caused it and the way you can fix it.

You have spent so long managing someone else's feelings that you stopped noticing your own. Your emotional needs became something you felt guilty for having. You learned to make yourself smaller so there was less of you to upset them.

This is one of the most insidious signs because it looks like emotional maturity from the outside. It is only when you step back that you realise the entire dynamic was built on your willingness to carry everything.

5. You have a wound you haven't fully looked at yet.

Something from before. A relationship. A childhood dynamic. A pattern you learned so early you stopped questioning it. A way of moving through the world that made sense once, in a context that no longer exists.

Maybe you learned that love was conditional. That you had to earn it. That the way to keep people close was to be useful, agreeable, easy. Maybe you grew up around someone whose emotions filled the whole room and learned early that managing their feelings was how you stayed safe.

Abusers do not create that wound. They find it. They recognise it in ways even you may not have. And they know exactly what to do with it.

This is not your fault. But it is important. Because until you understand the wound, you cannot protect it.

If any of that landed — here is what to do next.

First, stop blaming yourself. Every single one of those five signs is a quality that in the right relationship would be cherished. The problem was never you. The problem was who was in the room with you.

Second, get curious rather than ashamed. The goal is not to become harder or more closed off. The goal is to understand why you move through the world the way you do so that you can make conscious choices rather than repeat unconscious patterns.

Third, look at the wound. This is the hardest part. But it is also the most important. Because the pattern does not break by itself. It breaks when you understand where it started.

You do not have to do this alone. There are books, therapists, communities, and resources specifically for people who have been through this. The most important thing is that you start.

Built To Be Broken was written for you.

It is the book I wish had existed when I was trying to understand why it kept happening to me. Not a clinical text. Not a generic self-help guide. A book written by someone who has been exactly where you are, who has done the work, and who wants to show you the way through.

It covers the psychology of why empaths are targeted, how abusers identify and exploit vulnerability, what trauma bonding actually is and why it makes leaving feel impossible, how to begin healing the wounds that made you a target in the first place, and how to reclaim your empathy as the gift it was always meant to be.

If you are ready to finally understand why it kept happening, and how to make sure it never happens again, this book is for you.

Get your copy here: amazon.co.uk/dp/B0GZMY9HD6

Signed and personally dedicated copies are available at jaredwhitaker.com/books

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Jared Whitaker is a bestselling author, male domestic abuse survivor, and advocate. He is the author of nine books and the founder of Leave No Man Behind. Featured on Sky TV, BBC, and Epoch TV.