My soon to be ex would have a bad reaction every time I mentioned my family, so it's definitely a problem. It's part of an isolation tactic that emo abusers use from what I've read. I'd typically say something like ''I'm calling my parents today', and it might be a few minutes later but he'd say SOMETHING negative about them such as 'Well, people like your Dad do Blah de blah' or just have no reaction at all and give me the silent treatment for the rest of the day (normal people might say something like 'oh tell them hi').

He might be isolating you or he might just be insecure in a benign way. Isolation is definitely the abuser's most powerful weapon against you. They will attempt in particular to isolate you from the people who most genuinely care about you. without a support system, you are alone and weakened. Most of all, you are isolated from any perspective but that of the abuser - which is his ideal situation. Then he can work on convincing you that his delusions are real and you'll be dependent on him for everything.

Every time one of my abusers lied, manipulated, threatened, called me names, beat, choked or tried to kill me, they made sure they did it when no one was looking. Don't believe that they don't have choices and control over what they do. They're nice as pie when the people who matter are watching.

I went through scenarios like that for years and years with my soon-to-be-ex husband. At the beginning it was about visiting my family. After a few years went by and he realized that he couldn't keep me away from them (or rather, couldn't keep them away from our children), he stopped doing it about my family, but just applied the same behavior to other things. When I wanted to stay home with our kids, he had nothing to say when I consulted him about it other than saying it was fine, but after we had arranged our lives to make that happen, he bitterly complained about having to pay the rent and bills by himself, stopped talking to me and started spending all his time with his friends. He blamed me staying home for his unhappiness. So, after he threatened to leave us for the 3rd or 4th time, I got a job. Then he bitterly complained and chastized me for working and not being a 'real mom who stays with her kids' and painted me as a materialistic work addict who only cared about her job. When it wasn't money or jobs, it was this or that friend of mine, or my cousins, or my mom, or the kind of phone I had, or the fact that the local church didn't hold mass early enough on Sunday morning, (which according to him was my fault because after living for over a year rent-free in my parents UNfinished basement with two babies, I had the gall to ask that we move into an apartment.)

I was 17 when we met. I did not understand that these were not eithin the realm of normal problems. I told myself he was just overly sensitive and a really bad planner. Not until I started asking the hard questions did I find that ALL of that was emotional abuse and psychological abuse.

My advice? Nip this in the bud now, because it will never get better, no matter what you do. Educate yourself (you can start by just searching "emotional abuse" on youtube), go to some therapy sessions by yourself. I did, and what I learned was that people who do this never change unless and until they voluntarily get help and work hard on it every day for the rest of their lives. Even then, only a small portion of those people really ever get better. The thing is, they almost never get help because in their mind, everyone else is the real problem. Its heartbreaking, but at some point you have to just cut loose and take care of yourself and your children. People don't change until they hit rock-bottom, and if he still has you, he's not there yet.

Take care of yourself. You are doing a very good thing by asking these questions early on.