Domestic Violence

What is Domestic Violence?

“Domestic violence” is a phrase that is familiar to just about everyone these days, although most who hear and use the phrase don’t understand what it really is.  The word domestic refers to home, family, house, marital household, etc., and the word violence means physical force, aggression, fighting, brutality, cruelty, sadism, bloodshed, viciousness, and forcefulness.

Today, domestic violence is defined as the repeated or habitual inflicting of injury by one family or household member on another.  The injury inflicted can be physical, mental, or emotional, which includes threats, intimidation, and harassment as well as actual hands-on violence.

You don’t have to have been married to the perpetrator, nor do they have to live in your household; it can be someone you have dated, had an intimate relationship with, had a child with, or a relative such as your parent, sibling, or child.  The key elements are that the perpetrator is someone you had or have a familial or other special type of relationship with, who has been abusive to you, and with whom there is a threat of continued abuse. 

Emotional Abuse

Emotional abuse is a series of actions taken that make the victim feel bad about one's life situation in general. This can consist of yelling at the victim, calling names, humiliation, degradation, being ignored or isolated, or trying to make the victim feel worthless or less than others.  These are acts geared toward controlling and dominating the abused individual through emotions.

Following are some examples of emotional abuse:

1.  Verbal abuse.  Verbally degrading an individual is a behavior that abusive partners use to control their significant others, often in an attempt to deal with their own inadequacies or sense of worthlessness.  They may call the victim insulting names, cuss, belittle, or yell as if the other was stupid.

2.  Isolation.  Isolating a person, or not letting them socialize with friends or family members, forcing them to stay at home or not letting them leave the house without the them, keeping the person away from support systems such as friends or family members.

3.  Exhaustion.  Creating debilitating exhaustion may be accomplished by keeping an individual up all night during a fight, waking the partner up to argue, and demanding sex when the other is trying to sleep.  It also includes making the other partner do all the work at home, and creating a quasi-servant relationship that is demeaning and exhausting.

4.   Jealousy.  Acting jealous over non-threatening or trivial matters, social acquaintances or friends and family members may get the abused victim to a point where they almost give up trying to interact with others for fear of inciting additional jealous reactions.

5.  Drug abuse.  Administering drugs or alcohol is common in many battering relationships. There are some male batterers who encourage their partners to use alcohol or drugs, and several battered women do end up drinking or taking drugs as a means of coping with their depression or anxiety about the situation.

6.  Emotional manipulation.  Trying to convince their partner that they are crazy or are hearing or seeing things that did not happen, or that they can’t live without the other.

7.  Economic power.  Using economic power against a partner such as preventing the individual from getting or keeping a job, being forced to ask/beg for money, giving an allowance, taking/hiding money and not granting access to (or being kept in the dark about) family income or savings.  Controlling finances so that one cannot leave the other.

8.  King of the Hill.  Forcing a self-perceived male privilege to make all the big decisions, act like the master of the castle, be the one to define men’s and women's roles.

9.  Children as weapons.  Using the children to make the other partner feel guilty about their situation, or using them to relay messages, using visitation periods to harass the spouse, or threatening to take the children away permanently.

10.  No personal responsibility.  Minimizing, denying, blaming or making light of the abuse and not taking concerns about it seriously. Saying the abuse didn't happen, shifting responsibility for abusive behavior, or saying the other person caused it.

Psychological Abuse

Psychological abuse is the willful infliction of mental or emotional anguish by threat, humiliation, intimidation or other verbal or nonverbal conduct.  It can take the form of physical intimidation, scare tactics or oppression, and is often seen in situations where a power imbalance exists, such as an abusive relationship between partners, workplace abuse between employer and employee, and parent to child abuse.  It carries an implied threat of violence.

Any situation in which the impact of the perpetrator’s conduct negatively affects a person's emotional and rational thinking in such a way as to adversely impact their lives is psychological abuse.

Psychological abuse occurs when a partner does the following:

• Threatens you with physical harm or injury
• Threatens you with blackmail, prosecution, or abandonment
• Behaves in threatening ways, displays weapons, threatens animals or other people
• Uses intimidation, smashes things, destroys your property, hits walls, throws food
• Verbally abuses the children and pets in your household
• Gets within inches of your face while in a rage
• Humiliates you in private or in public
• Keeps you from working, controls the money, makes all decisions
• Uses intimidating facial expressions and/or body posture, raises a hand or fist
• Tries to prevent you from seeing your friends and family members
• Manipulates you with lies and gets mad or violent if questioned
• Accuses you of being unfaithful
• Calls you at work incessantly or other times, demanding to know where you are
• Ridicules or insults your most valued beliefs, gender, sexuality, ability, or age
• Teases or scares you to the point that you cry
• Follows you, records your calls or mileage, goes through your phone records
• Threatens to kill themself, or you, or others, including the children
• Refuses to obey a restraining order if you get one against them

  

A psychological abuser is more dangerous than an emotional abuser. Psychological abusers always leave the possibility of escalating violence on the table, and it is believable either because they have been violent before or because they are threatening violence or showing escalating signs of violence and rage. Living with a psychological abuser takes a lot out of a person. They have to be vigilant at all times, always trying to keep things calm so the partner won’t get mad, which is an impossible feat because they always find something to be mad about.
           
Here are some signs that one is trapped in a psychologically abusive relationship:

• You find yourself less and less free to express your opinions
• You spend a lot of time watching out for your partner’s bad moods
• You are becoming more and more isolated from friends and family
• You find yourself being careful and hyper-vigilant in their presence
• You have to ask your partner's permission to spend money, take classes, or socialize with friends
• You have lost confidence in your abilities, are becoming increasingly depressed, or feel trapped and powerless
• You find your child is being negatively impacted by the abuse
• You can’t relax and find yourself becoming nervous and irritable
• You start to dread the sound of your partner coming home

Physical Abuse

Physical abuse is bodily force that someone applies to you without your consent.  It can range from a single slap across the face, to the infliction of serious injury, or even death.  It can be something that lasts for a few seconds or something that lasts for a few torturous minutes, or hours, or more.  It can be something that was inspired by an instantaneous and uncontrollable moment of rage or something that was thought-out, methodical, and that may have involved repeated assaults and batteries within a short period of time.  Sometimes it can be a continued beating that lasts over several hours, or even days; or maybe every time he “thinks about it” again.  Worse, it can sometimes involve a use of a weapon, which immediately puts the abuse into a category of what should be mandatory imprisonment and immediate divorce.

• Slapping or backhanding you in the face or on the head
• Choking you with hands or an object across your throat
• Kicking at any part of your body
• Pinching you or grabbing you and squeezing tightly
• Pulling your hair or holding you by your hair
• Forcing sex with you or forcing you to perform sexual acts
• Punching you in the face or on the body or legs
• Twisting your arm or dragging you
• Pushing you down or tripping you
• Hitting you with an object like a belt or a stick or a cane
• Throwing something at you

REMEMBER:  Abuse is not generally a constant everyday activity, but it is continual and ongoing.  If it were constant, it would be over quickly because no one could live for long being constantly abused.  It’s the continual infliction of abuse that is damaging because no matter how hard you try, it will never be entirely eliminated from your life; and because it is interspersed with good times and kind actions on the part of the abuser, it is much harder to break away from.