If you’ve ever known someone who’s suffered from emotional abuse, you may have noticed their penchant for apologizing. A lot. Even for things that cannot conceivably be their fault. The urge then might be strong to tell them to stop apologizing, but this will almost always breed another apology. Don’t do it. Just save everyone the trouble and don’t do it.

Using various methods, abusers and manipulators usually end up doing the same thing: blame-shifting. Maybe through malicious intent, but more often than not through a sense of projection and a kind of need to take out their frustrations on someone. The abused are often simply the scapegoats. No matter what they do, their culpability is based on the other’s mood. It’s a precarious, fragile way to live, always anxious, always on a precipice, ready to tip either one way or the other, and never in control of which way it might go. Hell, the very fact that they're anticipating trouble is often the cause of trouble. It’s “Why aren’t you having a good time? I spent a lot of time and effort planning this, the least you could to is appreciate it.” Even more, it’s “Why do you have to act like you’re scared of me? God, our friends all must think I beat you bloody!”

The next (il)logical step is to blame the abused for their hesitant behavior. “Not everything’s about you — what a narcissist.” And, “This has nothing to do with you! Why can’t I just be upset without it starting a fight?”

The lesson here is that you cannot inflate someone’s self-importance, insinuate that they’re tied to everything in the universe, and then become disbelieving when they start thinking everything’s their fault. The tightrope these people walk is incredible. It turns into this system of obsession, where everything has to be perfect, calculated, and all perfected and calculated in secret, lest they blow their cover, reveal themselves as paranoid ingrates. Then, of course, there’s a looming issue of trust, and this lasts far beyond the end of the relationship.

I remember when friends used to tell me I could (had to) pick where we were going to eat, I went through a covert panic. They always told me to stop overthinking, to learn how to make decisions, they were just helping me out, it wasn’t like they were going to bite me, didn’t I trust them?

Not when they put it like that, no.

And they were picky eaters, some of them, sometimes. And that was enough to make this a torturous process for me. If I picked a place they didn’t particularly like, they would go and eat, but complain about the how poor the food was, or the mood of the group would perceptively drop, and I would know it was my fault.

The reaches of this insecurity go further, too. If something goes wrong in a group, I’m always there to assume the blame. Of course, it was my fault, how could I do that? To everyone? What an awful person!

And, of course, everyone loves a scapegoat. That would be me, already offering to serve my head on a platter if it helps. (It never does.)

This knee-jerk reaction, however, is sometimes short-lived. I can reason through it, eventually, and understand that it’s not my fault. What I can’t understand is why everyone would let me believe it was anyway.

Everyone loves their scapegoat. Everyone loves to point at Tony Stark, the Merchant of Death, and how his ignorance translated to murder because someone else was dealing weapons under the table. Everyone loves to blame Iron Man for Ultron, the thing that was supposed to get rid of all his limitations and do away with his ignorance. Everyone loves to point at Tony Stark, how could he let the Accords happen? In accepting the blame for Ultron, he accepts the Accords, but that’s not right either. They place the blame largely on Iron Man’s shoulders but tell him he can’t fix it. They'll do it each and every time. And he'll bear it.

These things are easy to see from this side of a screen, but so hard to identify when you're living through them for some reason. If any of this strikes a chord, I would dare you to go rewatch the movies, or maybe pick up a comic.