As a personnal thought if I felt that a pat on the back was abuse then yes it is abuse, and I can let that person know that it didnt feel good to me and not to do it again, if you FEEL abused about the relationship you was in then I think yes you was abused. Its a personnal thought your personnal thoughts on it, you felt abused, simple.

There are two types of abuse (my thoughts again) one is what society sees as criminal abuse the other is personnal abuse, a criminal abuse is easy to define look at a law book and you can see what it is. Personnal abuse is slightly more difficult there are boundaries to abuse and lines that are crossed that are very difficult to define, what one person would see as normal behaviour another would see as an abusive situation, what one needs to do is look at how much of an impact those feelings of being abused have upon your life.

If you cant go out each day and function doing the things that you want to do because of feelings of being continualy abused by others obviously those feelings have gone a little too bit far. You have got to look at that point and decide where your line is and decide yourself whether your tolerance of personnal abuse is in the right place.

When you have found that place and made your decision you need to either alter what is around you or work on your perception of abuse.