A few years ago a fellow creator told me that they wanted to illustrate how people can "evolve".
I had to explain to them that, in reality, and if they were trying to stay as true to life as possible, that abusers don't "evolve" most of the time. They make only minor, superficial adjustments to sway the PUBLIC eye that they've turned over a new leaf but the abuse usually continues in some way (if not worse, in some cases).
In anything written by fujoshi (and I am going to make the distinction, because to say that all LGBT comics and prose is like this is false), I noted that this kind of abusive relationship is turned way up and, for some reason, people fawn all over it and praise it as good writing when, those of us who were/are in abusive relationships find ourselves cringing at what we're reading/seeing. For some reason, the abuse is immediately identified when we're talking about hetero male on female abuse but not the other way around and not in fujoshi-written content.
Now: don't lie to your audience.
Abuse happens and abusive relationships are apart of life (as shitty as that sounds) but what you are showing the audience is the lessons learned from that abuse and illustrating justice, no matter how subtle.
Also: This is NOT to be confused with the "Belligerent sexual tension" trope where people don't get along with each other at first and parts of the story are dedicated to watching their relationship grow/they discover the potential/they discover they have feelings for each other.
Just because someone is MEAN doesn't necessarily mean they are abusive, per say.
