What’s the difference between a healthy and abusive relationship? Reddit can help.

Posts from Reddit’s many relationship forums have become so ubiquitous that it’s not uncommon to see people using their format as a meme on places other than Reddit: someone in conflict with another person in their life lists their age, the other person’s age, then asks for advice.

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It’s a simple format that’s had a ripple effect on the internet. Popular Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok accounts have popped up, using screenshots or reading posts aloud for followers to pick apart. Sharing stories on platforms other than Reddit has become such an issue, some people will now write at the top of their posts, “Please don’t post this anywhere else.”

Some of the most popular relationship-oriented subreddits, r/AmItheAsshole and r/relationships, each have 3.1 million members on Reddit, though r/relationship_advice has a whopping 5.7 million. These subreddits see several posts a day and are fiercely monitored by other Redditors and various bots that mark spam and call out posters for being verifiably dishonest, naked trolling, or whatever other rules the moderators have set. This is the internet and there’s no one verifying that all the stories are true, but they’re always treated seriously. Because of this and the careful moderation, most of the comments on these relationship stories are thoughtful, considered, and sincere — and they seem to be genuinely helping young people struggling to learn about healthy relationships or identify abusive behavior.

The trend can be seen in posts where young people in relationships have a fight, or find that their partner’s parents cross boundaries, or that their SO’s behavior has changed after they moved in together. Quickly, commenters jump in to tell them, “That’s not normal.”

Normal is relative, but abuse often looks the same.

A 21-year-old Redditor posted that her boyfriend Nate didn’t like it when she baked and hates her loud music. One day he told her he’d be gone for the weekend, then surprised her at home with a visit from his “conservative mom” and found her enjoying baking in lingerie and blasting tunes; mother and son teamed up to shame her. She received over 5,000 comments telling her that none of her hobbies were embarrassing or wrong. And two weeks later, she updated her story to say she broke up with him.

“After reading what everyone wrote I quickly realised that what Nate did was so so wrong,” she wrote. “A lot of great moms in the comments also helped me understand the fact that even conservative moms (like Nate’s) wouldn’t react so rudely. It hit me like a wave when I realised what my life had come to.”

Shal and Kastilya (who asked to use pseudonyms because they want to preserve some privacy online) are the curators of the Redditships account on Twitter, pulling their favorite stories from Reddit’s relationship subreddits. They’ve been surprised by how popular their account has become, with almost 450,000 followers. At times, their posts become Twitter’s trending topic of the day as people debate the relationship stories shared. Shal says they’ve found the advice shared on Twitter more helpful, because they think it’s easier to find context for who the advice is coming from by looking at a Twitter profile, for example if they’re queer or a person of color.

“Most people on Reddit are coming from a western, industrialized, generally white perspective,” they explained, giving as an example the way Redditors often advise people to cut out their families after every conflict. Both Shal and Kastilya are people of color, and they feel this advice is asking people to cut off heritage and connection on a profound level.

“I think on Reddit the advice generally does pretty well,” Shal adds. “I think it really stumbles when it comes to issues of race or culture.”

But both curators have noticed how Reddit makes many people reconsider their relationships. Shal particularly remembered the story of the Plant Lady, a young woman who posted that her boyfriend who had just moved in with her wanted her to get rid of her plants and was acting petulantly when she refused. Many commenters told her this was an early warning sign of someone trying to control her enjoyment and test how much she’d give up for him.

“That’s one of the things the relationship subreddits provide is a place for these people to go and say, ‘There is no consensus now, I don’t know what to do,’ and sometimes the community helps.”

Kastilya has noticed that the forums for relationship advice seem to be most helpful when people get into their twenties and begin to grow up (much like the Plant Lady) and they don’t yet have the network of support a more established adult might. She says their issues get more specific as they develop their interests and personalities. Since they’re no longer in high school, they don’t have the same easy access to a group of people with similar problems.

“They don’t have this community they can immediately turn to, like ‘All my friends say this,’” Kastilya explains. “That’s one of the things the relationship subreddits provide is a place for these people to go and say, ‘There is no consensus now, I don’t know what to do,’ and sometimes the community helps.”

“Consensus” was a word that clinical social worker Rosalie Knecht used as well when discussing the Reddit forums for relationships, saying that a large group debating what is or isn’t healthy in a relationship can improve how everyone relates overall. Everyone can see the differences of opinion, and most would choose to be treated better if they understand that’s an option.

“The internet allows for some consensus,” says Knecht, who worked for a number of years in foster care before moving to private practice. “Though consensus is always something of an illusion — there are billions of people on the planet! But it allows people to discuss standards for a relationship, and I think those standards have improved through that discussion.”

Relationship standards can be very difficult for people to create on their own without support. Alexandra Young, a licensed mental health counselor and psychotherapist who has been working with teens and college students since 2012, wrote in an email to Mashable that discovering what a healthy relationship is can elude anyone. If they’re missing good examples in real life, a person of any age might not know the signs of a bad relationship.

Knecht noted that in a way, r/AmItheAsshole is almost doing what a therapist might do with an abuse victim in early treatment, because that particular sub focuses on judging conflicts. The forum is where people go to ask if they were behaving badly or the other person was, for example in this story about a young girl who was being sexually harassed by her step-brother and, with Reddit’s encouragement, told her mother who then intervened. This is slightly different from r/relationships or r/relationship_advice, which tend to be where people ask what to do about issues in their interpersonal connections.

“The first step with crisis DV [domestic violence] is to explain to people that what they’re doing is not wrong, because their abuser has made them think if they just ‘act right’ none of the abuse would happen,” says Knecht. “And that’s what AITA often does for people as a first step.”

She continued, “Ideally, you would have a grounded peer or a trusted adult to turn to, but in lieu of that, crowdsourcing parenting from the internet is a great option. Especially for someone who feels the situation they’re in is embarrassing or complicated — they can share all that info and have commenters say immediately, ‘This is what’s wrong with that, that’s not normal.’”

Young also thinks that ideally someone in an abusive relationship should be able to turn to a therapist or a real figure in their life, because they’re trained to work with people over time and provide necessary resources anonymous commenters can’t. But the act of sharing a story itself can be therapeutic, she writes.

“These posts are kind of like a virtual group therapy, which I’ve always admired about Reddit because I think it (posting/responding) shows us how curious and empathic we actually are as human beings. We just need to keep in mind that any response is just another person’s reaction to their story/their experience: They aren’t a clinician.”

Of course, sharing a story publicly is very different from writing in a personal journal. Reddit allows private messages, which means folks with negative opinions that don’t coincide with the majority of commenters can message the posters. A viral post can attract hostile or negative attention. If you’re not prepared for that, it can be an overwhelming experience. Make sure to check your privacy settings before posting anywhere (you can block unknown users from messaging you), and make a temporary or throwaway account if you have one with identifying information that you usually use.

Both Young and Knecht shared that the first signs of unhealthy conflict are usually about control. Is the issue in the conflict about communication, or about one person asserting control over another?

Young explains that a sign of controlling person is if they get angry whenever you explore your independence, which can lead to an unhealthy relationship. “Healthy conflict is essential in relationships because it is how we understand our resiliency as a couple, and it can function as a tremendous practice in patience, empathy and curiosity when we approach conflict from a place of wanting to understand, versus wanting to blame/shame/attack.”

“It’s good that people can get advice from people who have healthy relationships and I think that is the value of posting your relationship on Reddit.”

For those who are unsure of whether their relationship is headed in that direction, Reddit offers access to a wide swathe of people of all ages and experience levels. Shal says they prefer that to what young Reddit posters might find on “4Chan or Incel YouTube,” or other platforms that have very little moderation or promote misogynistic content. While Reddit has a reputation for racist and sexist content on some of its subreddits, a number of the most notorious ones were banned in 2015 and then again in 2020, Variety reports, in response to the rise of pro-Trump subs filled with racist, misogynistic, anti-Islam, and anti-Semitic content. And on the relationship subreddits, a list of rules demands people “be civil” and moderators delete comments that violate their terms. Reddit is not a perfect place, but it is a forum filled with people who have experience to share.

“They’re getting advice from people who know how to be nice people in a relationship,” says Shal. “They’re getting advice from people that in an ideal world they would be getting from their parents or another elder in their community, but they might not have that trust or that relationship or have that info accessible. It’s good that people can get advice from people who have healthy relationships and I think that is the value of posting your relationship on Reddit.”

If you’ve experienced domestic or intimate partner violence, you can call the National Domestic Violence hotline at 1-800-799-7233. Additional resources are available on its website.

If you have experienced sexual abuse, call the free, confidential National Sexual Assault hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673), or access the 24-7 help online by visiting online.rainn.org.