Article on Abuse

I wrote this article for posting in article directories, but I thought it had some good information, so I thought I'd post it here, too. I don't know anyone whom I suspect is in this kind of situation (okay, actually, I might...), but if you do, feel free to pass it on.

“He Doesn’t Hit Me”: The Less Obvious Forms of Abuse

It seems incredible that in this day and age, any woman would not recognize the abuse that she herself was suffering, and wouldn’t take steps to improve things. After all, we’ve heard public service announcements, watched after school specials, and reacted in horror to the stories of friends. Maybe we even told ourselves, “I would never put up with that!”

Sometimes, though, I think that it’s our very educatedness that works against us. I’ve heard women say things like, “He never hit me, so I never thought of this as abuse. I thought that it was just what marriage was like.”

There are lots of forms of abuse that don’t involve hitting or other forms of physical violence, and they can be hard to recognize, especially if you’re in the middle of one of them. But look honestly at some of the following and ask yourself if any of these things apply to your relationship. And remember, any form of abuse can be found in almost any relationship—marriage, straight relationships, gay relationships, or teen relationships. While the vast majority of abuse victims are women, men can also be on the receiving end of abuse, especially these non-physical kinds.

Some of the following categories are borrowed from HelpGuide.org, but the text is mine.

• Dominance. The abuser has to make all the decisions for you and for the whole family. His wishes are the only ones that matter. He never wants your input into decisions that affect everyone.

• Humiliation. He puts you down, especially in front of others. He metes out compliments when he wants you to do something, but seldom out of spontaneous affection.

• Isolation. He controls when you will and won’t see your support system—friends, parents, siblings—gradually decreasing your dependence on them and increasing your emotional dependence on him. Eventually you find yourself caught with nobody to turn to.

• Threats. Threats are especially effective when you have children, but they can be used against you personally as well. Sometimes these threats are only implied with a look or a tone of voice, but you understand what he means.

• Intimidation. This is using the threat of physical force against you by using physical force in front of you. He may pull out weapons, break things, hurt pets, or put a fist in your face. He never touches you, but the implied threat is that if you don’t comply, you will be next.

• Denial and Blame. Abusers never take responsibility for their own actions. Either what he did wasn’t that bad, or you should have known better than to cause him to do it. After all, you provoked him.

• Financial control. Do you have to ask him for money—even money you earned-- and account for every cent? If he makes all the financial decisions and keeps you in a state of child-like financial dependence, that’s abuse.

• Religious abuse. Abusers often try to use a religion’s teachings about the proper roles of men and women to keep women obedient. At best, this is a serious misreading of the teachings of most faiths; at worst it takes away a woman’s last refuge of comfort and strength.

• Crazy-making. This is a subtle tactic of undermining the woman’s confidence in herself and her own competence to reinforce the woman’s dependence. He might, for example, hide her keys, and when she goes to look for them, he reminds her how scatter-brained she is and how much she needs him—an assertion reinforced when he himself “finds” the keys. The woman automatically assumes that she is at fault. She feels like she is going crazy because she can’t do anything about it.

If you see yourself in any of these categories, please get help. This is NOT what intimate relationships are supposed to be like. Sure, there will be compromise and sacrifices, but those things need to come from both sides, not just one. Both partners give some things up for the health of the whole, but the point of that is that you get from the relationship more than you’re giving up as an individual. If that‘s not the case, you may be in an abusive relationship. At the very least, you and your partner need to have several long talks.

You can start by calling the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-787-3224, or going to the front of your phone book. There IS help. You may find it hard to believe right now, but you’re not alone.