Purple isn’t just one of our favorite fall lip colors. It’s also the color associated with domestic violence awareness month. While there’s no shade to breast cancer awareness, which is an extremely important issue, domestic violence awareness also falls in the month of October and can sometimes be overshadowed.
With the temperature finally dropping and cuffing season in full swing, it’s important for both men and women to be aware of the red flags of abuse. While being infatuated with someone can make you let different things slide, it’s important to know that no type of abuse is ok.
Here are the five types of abuse that can happen in a relationship, with a description of actions to be aware of in between your Netflix and chill sessions.
1. Emotional Abuse
When you hear domestic violence you often think of black and blue bruises, but many times the damage isn’t as obvious. Any time a partner tries to undermine your self-esteem they are engaging in emotional abuse. Some examples of this are constant criticism, belittling the partner’s abilities and competency, name-calling, insults, put-downs, silent treatment, manipulating victim’s feelings and emotions to induce guilt, repeatedly making and breaking promises.
2. Psychologically Abuse
Much like emotional abuse, psychological abuse leaves no physical scars and can be hard to notice. Psychological abuse occurs when a partner uses intimidation, threatens physical harm to self, victim, and/or others, blackmail, harassment, mind games and even stalking. Psychological abuse has the potential leave the victim with paranoia and even change their daily habits.
3. Physical Abuse
Physical abuse is the most noticeable abuse, since it leaves physical scars on the victim’s body. Some types of physical abuse are aggressive grabbing, pinching, shoving, slapping, hitting, biting, arm-twisting, kicking, punching and hitting with blunt objects. If your partner ever gets violent with you it’s important to immediately leave and vocalize how it’s wrong.
4. Sexual Abuse
We all know what “Netflix and chill” means but that doesn’t mean someone is entitled to your body while your binge watching the last season of House of Cards. Sexual abuse can manifest as acquaintance rape, forced sex after physical beating, attacks on the sexual parts of the body and fondling. Setting boundaries in the beginning of the relationship that “no means no” and “yes means yes,” can be one way to avoid this kind of abuse.
5. Economic Abuse
The last type of abuse that can occur is economic abuse. This can manifest in several ways such as maintaining total control over financial resources including withholding money and/or access to money, forbidding attendance at school and forbidding employment.
No matter how much potential bae showed during draft season, realize that you’re worth so much more, and know you don’t deserve a partner who can’t treat you with respect. Equally as important as being educated on the topic of domestic abuse is being supportive to someone in an abusive relationship. If you or someone you know is in an abusive relationship, please contact 1-800-799-7233 or visit www.thehotline.org for help.