Why “Seeing Both Sides” Is a Manipulation Tactic, Not Wisdom
How False Balance Silences Survivors and Shields Abusers
Note from April:
Last week, one of our wonderful subscribers sent this to me. At first, I was a bit skeptical with the title. My stance is that children are never at fault. Ever. There is absolutely nothing that a child can do to be responsible for the torment and abuse they suffered. As I read the article, I understood. Especially for adults in abusive relationships or for adults finally telling the truth about what happened to them as a child. Perpetrators twist things around to try to make the victim at fault.
This is an excellent article from Vera Hart MD PhD about how “friends, family, therapists, lawyers, sometimes even strangers on the internet” who are in denial or just plain stupid utter the phrase, “Well… every story has two sides.”
With abuse and torture, there isn’t two sides. The perpetrators are at fault. Thank you Vera Hart, MD PhD for explaining this with such elegance:
There is a phrase survivors hear constantly, especially after they begin to speak the truth about what happened to them. It comes from friends, family, therapists, lawyers, sometimes even strangers on the internet. The phrase is always the same, always delivered in that soft, knowing tone: “Well… every story has two sides.” Or some version of it: “There are always two perspectives,” “It takes two to tango,” “No one’s perfect,” or “It’s never just one person’s fault.”
At first glance, this sounds like common sense. It’s packaged as fairness, wisdom, maturity. After all, who wouldn’t want to be balanced? Who wouldn’t want to take accountability for their part?
But survivors of abuse know exactly what happens next. This phrase doesn’t bring balance. It doesn’t bring clarity. It brings distortion and confusion. It reduces obvious cruelty into a “difference of opinion,” reframes manipulation as a “communication issue,” and reframes your trauma as a “two-way dysfunction.” Suddenly, what happened to you is no longer about what was done to you, it’s about how you supposedly contributed, how you failed to respond the right way, or how you were just as much to blame for the “dynamic.”
And this is where so many survivors end up trapped. Not just in the trauma itself, but in the aftermath, where every attempt to tell the truth is met with a cultural script designed to silence them.
PART I: WHEN “SEEING BOTH SIDES” BECOMES A WEAPON
In a perfect world, the idea of listening to both sides might represent fairness. But in the context of abuse, it becomes something else entirely: a weapon that protects the abuser while forcing the survivor into endless self-defense.
This happens everywhere. You finally leave a relationship after years of manipulation and cruelty. You open up … maybe to a friend, a family member, a professional, and explain the patterns of gaslighting, the emotional destruction, the fear you lived with every day. And instead of hearing, “That sounds awful, I’m so glad you got out,” you hear something else. Something much colder, much more common: “Well… you know no relationship is perfect. I’m sure both of you made mistakes.” In that moment, your experience is reduced to an equal blame scenario. Your courage becomes another case of “he said, she said.” And you are pushed back into the same confusion you just fought your way out of.
It happens in families too. You tell your siblings or parents about the silent treatments, the public shaming, the years of walking on eggshells. And they answer, “Yes, but you’ve always been a little too sensitive.” Or worse, “I mean… you can be difficult too.” The result is always the same. The focus shifts away from what was done to you, and onto what’s supposedly wrong with you.
This isn’t balance. This is erasure. This is the quiet conditioning of a culture that cannot tolerate naming abuse directly, so it wraps it in the language of “two sides,” “relationship issues,” and “miscommunication.”
In reality, this tactic serves three purposes. It keeps the listener comfortable by avoiding the raw truth of cruelty. It protects the abuser by framing their behavior as part of some mutual dysfunction. And it silences you… by making you feel like telling the truth is being “unfair,” “biased,” or “not taking responsibility.”
Survivors don’t get retraumatized by just the abuse itself. They get re-traumatized every time they are pressured to make their story “more balanced,” when balance was never part of the equation.
PART II: WHY ABUSE IS NOT A CONFLICT BETWEEN TWO EQUAL PARTIES
The most damaging consequence of the “see both sides” narrative is how it reframes abuse as a disagreement between equals. It takes what is fundamentally an abuse of power and repackages it as a communication issue or a mutual shortcoming. But abuse is never a mutual problem. It is not a failure to compromise, it is not two people misunderstanding each other, and it is certainly not a clash of personality styles. Abuse is a deliberate pattern of behavior where one person manipulates, dehumanizes, or controls another…
PART III: HOW “SEEING BOTH SIDES” BECOMES A SHIELD FOR ABUSERS AND A TRAP FOR VICTIMS
One of the most predictable patterns I see, both in real life and across every survivor community, is how easily the language of “balance” becomes a shield for the abuser. But it doesn’t stop there. It also becomes a psychological trap for survivors who are still in the relationship, still hoping for change, or still convinced that love can fix the damage.
PART IV: CLARITY, NOT BALANCE, IS WHAT SETS SURVIVORS FREE
After abuse, survivors are conditioned to think that
YOUR CLARITY IS NOT CRUELTY
Every survivor comes to a moment where they realize they’ve spent years making themselves smaller… softer in their words, quieter in their truth, more “reasonable” for the comfort of people who were never on their side to begin with.
Written by Vera Hart, MD, PhD.
This piece is part of my Healing from Within Series exploring trauma, nervous system truth, and the neuroscience of power. If it resonates, please feel free to restack with credit, share with someone who needs it, or follow me here on Substack. You can also find daily survivor insights and trauma neuroscience on Instagram @verahartmdphd.