Love, Acid, and the Art of Disappearing: The Slow Burn of Corrosive Behavior

By Leslii Stevens ERYT500, YACEP, Trauma-Informed Yoga Teacher

Corrosive behavior doesn’t leave bruises, it leaves people fading from their own lives.

It starts quiet. It always does.


The text that says “I miss you already.” The call that lingers too long. The subtle correction about what you’re wearing, “I just like you better in jeans.” The check-ins that feel like affection. The flattery that feels like oxygen.


Then, one day, it doesn’t.

What starts as care curdles into control.


Because what started as care curdles into control. What sounded like love becomes acid. And you realize you’ve been standing in something corrosive, for months, maybe years, as it slowly eats through your confidence, your friendships, your truth.


The Chemical Makeup of Emotional Corrosion


“Corrosive behavior” doesn’t sound sexy enough to headline a Netflix series, but it’s everywhere, hiding in relationships that look perfect on Instagram. It’s the slow erosion of one person’s autonomy by another’s need to dominate, manage, or reshape them.


It’s coercive control. It’s gaslighting. It’s micromanagement of the soul. It’s the violence that leaves no bruises, just an aftertaste of shame.


It sounds like this:


“Why didn’t you text me back?”


“You don’t need to work; I’ll take care of you.”


“Your best friend doesn’t really like you.”


“You’re remembering that wrong.”


“You’re overreacting.”



It’s the apology that never comes. The “I didn’t mean it like that.” The silence that stretches like barbed wire.


Dr. Evan Stark, who coined the term coercive control, calls it “a liberty crime”, not just about harm, but the theft of someone’s freedom to think, move, or exist without fear. It’s love turned into surveillance. (PMC Journal)

‘He made me feel seen, like he had X-ray vision for my heart.’ — Ella


Ella, the Check-Ins, and the Disappearing Act


When Ella met Mark, she says, “He made me feel seen, like he had X-ray vision for my heart.”


By year two, he was tracking her location. He’d text if she went quiet for more than an hour. “You okay? You didn’t answer.” The tone changed. Concern became interrogation.


“When I finally turned my phone off,” she says, “he showed up at my work. Told me he thought I’d been in an accident.”


She laughs, a soft, bitter sound. “That’s the part that messes you up. He convinced me that his control was love.”


That’s what corrosive behavior does best, it rewires you. It makes you complicit in your own captivity.

He said he did it to protect me. I thought I was safe.’ — Jason


Jason and the Bank Account


Jason’s ex-husband handled all the finances. He was the “responsible one.” He paid the bills, filed the taxes, and managed their joint account.


When Jason finally tried to access it, the password had been changed. “He said he did it to protect me,” Jason says. “Said I was too stressed. He even told my mom I had a breakdown.”


By the time Jason realized what had happened, he was broke, emotionally, financially, spiritually. “That’s what corrosion does. It empties you out until you start to believe you deserve the rust.”


The Science of Subtle Violence


According to trauma researchers, emotional abuse operates like chemical corrosion: slow, invisible, cumulative. You don’t notice the first burn. You don’t feel the damage until it’s deep.


Victims often describe a surreal sense of losing time, losing perspective. They begin to gaslight themselves: Maybe I did say it wrong. Maybe I am too sensitive.


And society, with its obsession for visible proof, tends to look away. “If there’s no bruise,” says psychologist Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, “we still struggle to call it abuse.”


But the body knows. The nervous system remembers every silence, every flinch, every manipulated apology. PTSD doesn’t care whether the weapon was a fist or a phrase.


How You Fight Back (and Stay Rock Solid)


Fighting corrosive behavior isn’t about screaming louder, it’s about reclaiming your frequency.


1. Name it. Say the words out loud. “This is control. This is gaslighting.” Naming the poison is the first antidote.



2. Record it. Write it down. Save the texts. Trust your own archive when your mind gets spun.



3. Reconnect. Isolation is their weapon. Rebuild your stage crew, friends, therapists, support lines, safe spaces.



4. Set boundaries like velvet and steel. You don’t have to shout. You just have to stop explaining yourself to someone who’s addicted to distortion.



5. Plan your exit like a tour. Logistics matter. Safety matters. You’re not weak for needing a strategy; you’re brilliant for designing one.



6. Heal loud. Therapy, art, music, community, whatever gets you out of the echo chamber of their voice.


Why We Stay, and Why We Leave


We stay because the person we love is still in there somewhere, or we think they are. Because we’re scared. Because we’re conditioned to mistake possession for passion.


But corrosion doesn’t stop on its own. It doesn’t get better with time. It spreads, like acid, like addiction, like silence.


And leaving isn’t about walking away from them, it’s about walking back toward yourself.

We don’t just recover, we alchemize. Stronger where we cracked, shining where we once dissolved.


The Rebuild: Rock and Gold


Here’s the secret: you don’t just recover from corrosive behavior, you alchemize it. You become art from the ashes.


You start to recognize your own voice again. You laugh at things you forgot you found funny. You wear the clothes you love. You roll out a yoga mat and stretch your scars into grace.


You become both steel and gold, stronger where you cracked, shining where you once dissolved.


Because here’s the truth every survivor learns:

Acid doesn’t just destroy. It reveals what was indestructible all along.

Write it down. Save the number. Help is here.


Resources


If you or someone you know is experiencing emotional or domestic abuse:


National Domestic Violence Hotline (U.S.): 1-800-799-7233 or thehotline.org 


RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network): 1-800-656-4673


Love Is Respect (for teens & young adults): 1-866-331-9474 or text “LOVEIS” to 22522