About 4 or 5 years ago I shared an apartment with someone emotionally abusive. It started simple, him wanting control over details of the apartment at unreasonable levels; got worse, where controlling the heat of the apartment turned into how everything had to be his way, all communication towards other people in the apartment went through me actively manipulating me at the same time; got worse, to him actively doing whatever he could to convince me that I had no skills in things like math (I was a math major in college at the time and math is a special interest (I'm autistic)) and was absolutely completely worthless at this.

Everything was about him wanting control of every last detail in the apartment and instead of doing anything with any other person in order to control them, he manipulated them through me by manipulating me and hurting me. The others didn't notice what was going on at the time, because he was only communicating through me, acting scared of them, because he knew he had no ability to get what he wanted if he manipulated them directly. After about 8 months of this my boyfriend realized what was going on and kicked him out of the apartment and we ended up monetarily down a lot less than we could have been.

However, where I am now, is that because it was a non-romantic situation, where nothing physical or sexual happened, a lot of people treat it like this couldn't have been abusive. Every list of signs of emotional abuse, the situation matches. But people treat it like emotional abuse either doesn't matter or can't occur outside of romantic relationships.

I've done a lot of healing since then, but it has affected me and still does. I have trust issues. I have issues opening up to people. My depression developed right in response time-wise.

But...not taken seriously Just "bad situation" not "abusive", no matter how much it fits the description of emotional abuse.