Abusive people never stop putting down their ‘victim’. They do it in many different ways and never seem to miss an opportunity to do so. With verbal/emotional abuse, sometimes they are subtle and other times they are outrightly blunt. Both of the following examples occured during the same evening:Scenario #1I had been learning to speak French. It was a life long dream which I had been persuing for several years. While lying in bed watching TV in the evening, I mentioned to him how some of the characters in a particular movie are able to speak several languages fluently, in real life.His response: ‘Oh I can speak every language. French (he does a long, loud gutteral burp) German (he says something stupid with a German accent) Russian (he says something stupid with a Russian accent) Polish (he says something stupid with some kind of accent) Scottish (he says something really lovely and pleasant and nice with a Scots accent because his heritage is Scots) Swedish (he says something stupid with a Swedish accent)’ and so on through several more languages.I didn’t find any of it funny, especially the French language put down, so I didn’t laugh. After he is finished his supposedly comedic routine with no big ‘Ha ha!’ coming from me he says: ‘What’s the matter with you? You used to have a sense of humour. I can’t even make a joke anymore.’Scenario #2I have always had an interest in UFOs and I had seen some drawings of the little grey alien’s apparent physical appearence. So I was saying to him how they do not appear to have their head attached to their neck in the same manner that we do. I said, ‘It’s like they have this great big pumpkin head sitting on top of a skinny little neck that looks like a stick.”Like yours?’ he said.When I didn’t laugh he said, ‘Oh come on! That was just a joke!! &%*@! I can’t say anything to you.’To someone who has not been abused, these statements may not seem so bad. However, if you put them into the life context in that these are only two examples of what happened every single day… 24/7/365… suddenly they are not so innocuous.They are not funny because they weren’t meant to be funny. The abuser has purposefully said them to be spiteful, then tried to make it sound like a joke. He then adds insult to injury by complaining that there is something wrong with recipient of his ‘joke’ because they didn’t laugh.