I volunteered to help with a few “Healthy Relationship” workshops for CARE at UCD this year. And after setting up for and sitting in on multiple informational workshops on intimate partner abuse, abusive behaviors, bystander intervention, etc., I thought I had become pretty informed on the issue.
Then, a couple weeks ago, I was extremely upset by a conversation I had with a friend. While I won’t go into detail about her personal situation, I will say that I was pretty distraught by then end of our chat. Initially, I seemed to be getting through to her on how controlling and toxic her partner is, but the whole discussion took a turn when she started defending her abusive partner. It was a textbook example of what the workshops described as a ‘cycle’ of abuse.
The first difficulty of handling abusive relationships? It’s hard to even recognize abuse. We often think of abusers as evil, violent and physical batterers. And while this kind of severe and horrific abuse certainly exists, intimate partner abuse can more broadly be described as a pattern of controlling behaviors in which one partner subtly (but effectively) asserts power over the other in psychological, social and even financial spheres. Some of this behavior may include constantly putting down a partner, isolating him/her from friends and family, guilt-tripping, interfering with birth control, etc.
Abusers aren’t always easily identifiable because they may seem charming or friendly at times; the relationship doesn’t always seem terrible. There’s often a cycle with a ‘honeymoon phase’ followed by tension leading up to some sort of outburst or conflict. The abuser might convince his/her partner to stay by apologizing, swear it will never happen again, use more coercive means like threatening self-harm or suicide if the victimized partner tries to leave, or ‘gaslight’ them by insisting the abuse is only in their minds.
Besides feeling scared and angry for my friend, I felt like a failure. I’d participated in those workshops on abusive relationships, but when I was actually confronted with one, my first instinct was to start screaming at my friend to leave the bastard—which was exactly what the workshops warned not to do. The sad reality is, it’s often more complicated than that. It’s easy to ask, “Well, why didn’t they just leave?” Sometimes, it can be hard to even realize an abusive relationship. They might convince themselves that the abuse isn’t even so bad, that every relationship has problems. The first step in stopping abuse is to recognize it as such. Controlling, coercive behaviors are not normal or healthy, and they are not love.