Respectfully, I would like to say something here:
I earned my MA from a top-ranked program by studying and writing a thesis on relationship abuse, and I can tell you that "abusive" is not a psychiatric diagnosis like "depressed" or "borderline" that you must be a licensed mental health professional to talk about or to identify. Moreover, relationship abuse is a matter of public health, with consequences for the physical, mental, sexual, and financial wellbeing of the victim. Yes, it tends to be psychologically-unwell people who behave abusively, but as long as the writer is not throwing around DSM diagnoses for the ex(es) in question to smear people with those diagnoses, I think there's more harm in silencing insightful content about abuse than permitting it. Because awareness is key for a victim in recognizing that the conduct they are being subjected to is not okay, is statistically likely to become more severe and dangerous, and that they need to leave.
This is why I, for instance, sometimes write personal essays and listicles about how to recognize abusive behavior, despite not being a psychologist/psychiatrist, and why I also welcome insightful pieces from other writers who aren't mental health professionals. [But I really must emphasize that word: "insightful"! ;) ]
I do agree with you though that phrases like "bad man" are unfortunate. "Abusive" is a type of behavior, and behavior can be corrected, but "bad" is a label for someone's intrinsic nature or worth. I don't like to believe that anybody is beyond hope.
Anyhow, given that I earned my MA in research related to relationship quality, I've naturally gravitated toward reading and writing that kind of content on Medium, and I've noticed another problem further to your great essay here:
There's a lot of relationship content on Medium that doesn't even purport to be psychological in nature, and yet the viewpoints it expresses are still extremely harmful. (A recent one that made me cringe: a guy who was trying to convince readers that if a man hides his emotions from you, it means he really loves you. Ugh.) But I've written more about this and other topics elsewhere in the comments, so I won't get back on that soapbox. Again, thank you for writing about this, and I hope Medium takes some sensible steps toward quality control.
