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Domestic violence: Why Gender Matters

by Clare Murphy PhD on June 17 2013

I wrote the following blog on why gender matters for the Home & Family Counselling Blog. I’ve changed just a handful of words.

It is true that both women and men perpetrate intimate partner violence — in heterosexual and same-sex relationships. 

However, this blog post is about heterosexual relationships, but I have put links here to services that resource and support male victims in heterosexual and homosexual relationships.

Research shows that men and women hit each other at similar rates.

Understanding the role that gender plays in domestic violence in heterosexual relationships is important because there are differences in perpetrators’ motivation and intention, differences in severity of abuse, differences in one-off isolated acts of abuse compared with repeated ongoing patterns of abuse. There are differences in the types of violence and abuse, differences in social messages that condone abuse, and there are differences in outcomes as a result of intimate partner abuse.(1)

Research shows that 90% of victims are female.(2) Men are usually the predominant perpetrator and women are usually the predominant victim.

Domestic violence is the main cause of death for women aged 15-44.(3)

Men’s violence is more severe with more women than men being hospitalised as a result of domestic violence. Other outcomes are more severe for women such as being more likely to become homeless, to lose their financial footing and live in poverty. Women experience longer-term mental health problems such as chronic pain, inflammatory diseases, or physical disabilities as a consequence of partner abuse. Many women become pregnant due to their partner raping them, or because of his refusal to use contraceptives.(4)

Women are more likely to experience rape and other forms of intimate partner sexual abuse and to live in fear for their safety, the safety of their children, other family members and the safety of their new partner. Thirty-three to fifty percent of battered women are raped by their male partner.(5)

There are different types of domestic violence.

One form of domestic violence called Situational Couple violence.(6) This form generally results from a particular situation, conflict or argument. Generally there’s no fear, no ongoing power and control, and any violence tends not to be very severe (although it can be). Generally, this form of domestic violence does not result in murder.

Another type of domestic violence is called Coercive Control.(7) Coercive control can involve physical violence, but not always. Situational couple violence is far more prevalent than coercive control. However, because men’s violence tends to be more severe when there’s a pattern of coercive control, this is the type of abuse that human service agencies most often deal with. Men’s history of controlling behaviour is strongly linked to murder of a female partner if she threatens to leave, or does leave her controlling partner.

Services for male victims

There are services for male victims and male survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse. I have listed some places in Australia, USA, Canada, New Zealand and the UK that provide resources and support to men. See the link here. If anyone knows of a credible service for heterosexual, gay, transgender, intersexual, bi-sexual, or queer men who have experienced intimate partner abuse or other forms of interpersonal abuse I’d really appreciate hearing from you.

Men’s and women’s use of violence entail different dynamics

To provide effective support it’s important to separate out women’s use of violence from men’s use of violence. For example, women are more likely to use violence as a form of self-defence, whereas men are more likely to use violence as a desire to have power and control and to send a clear message that he is in charge. Whereas women’s violence tends to be motivated by a desire to stop ongoing repetitive relentless coercive control. And yes some women are the predominant aggressor, however, the percentage is very low compared with women who use violence in self-defence.(8)

Men are more likely to use violence as part of coercive control. Coercive control can carry on after a relationship ends (especially when children are involved).

Men’s violence and coercive control is linked to wider social norms

Men’s violence and coercive control is linked to wider social norms and messages that support men’s control over their female partner. There are social norms that continue to grant male entitlement, that grant men control over female behaviour, masculinity is linked to legitimate use of violence, there are social perceptions that men have ‘ownership’ of women and there continues to be social tolerance of physical punishment of women and children.(9)

On the other hand, there are no social messages that grant women control over men (however there are messages that grant mothers control over children). There are no social messages that link femininity with violence. However, it is true that girls’ violence is on the rise.(10) There are no social perceptions that women have ‘ownership’ of men and there are no social messages that tolerate women’s physical punishment of men, however, there are messages that tolerate women’s punishment of children.(9)

Domestic violence is complex. But as can be seen from these social messages, any form of abuse whether it be intimate partner abuse, workplace bullying or schoolyard bullying always entails a power imbalance. At the moment much of men’s violence and coercive control against female partners has social supports for it and is based on men asserting power and control with the aim of maintaining higher status than women. Such hierarchical behaviours occur in same-sex relationships, institutions such as schools, religious establishments and the workplace. Gender does not always play a role in some of these situations, but it plays a major role in intimate partner abuse.

Homicide

When women are killed, they are killed by a husband, boyfriend, or ex-husband or ex-boyfriend significantly more often than by a stranger.(11)

Men who use an ongoing pattern of coercive control are more likely to murder their female partner than are men who do not have a history of controlling behaviour, but might use one-off isolated incidents of violence.

Of all people who are murdered by their intimate partner, 70% are female victims.(4)

Women and men are more likely to be killed by men.(4)

No one deserves abuse — regardless of gender or sexuality.

Ultimately, both men and women do use violence in intimate partner relationships. The response to victims, regardless of gender, should always be safety first. To effectively support survivors of abuse and find effective prevention and long-term strategies for change, it is vital that the specific complexities for men and complexities for women are fully considered and understood.

References:

  1. Braaf R, Meyering IB. The gender debate in domestic violence: The role of data. Australian Domestic & Family Violence Clearinghouse: Issues Paper 25, 2013.  http://www.adfvc.unsw.edu.au/PDF files/IssuesPaper_25.pdf
  2. European Institute for Gender Equality. Review of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action in the EU member States: Violence against women – Victim Support. Luxembourg: European Union, 2012.  http://eige.europa.eu/sites/default/files/Violence-against-Women-Victim-Support-Report.pdf.
  3. Amnesty International Australia. Setting the standard: International good practice to inform an Australian national plan of action to eliminate violence against women. 2008.  http://www.amnesty.org.au/images/uploads/svaw/NPOA_report_-_Master_13June_opt_rfs.pdf
  4. Kimmel MS. “Gender symmetry” in domestic violence: A substantive and methodological research review. Violence Against Women. 2002; 8:1332-63. http://www.vawnet.org/DomesticViolence/Research/OtherPubs/GenderSymmetry.pdf
  5. Bergen RK, Bukovec P. Men and intimate partner rape: Characteristics of men who sexually abuse their partner. Journal of Interpersonal Violence. 2006; 21:1375-84.
  6. Kelly J, Johnson MP. Differentiation among types of intimate partner violence: Research update and implications for interventions. Family Court Review. 2008;46:476-99.
  7. Stark E. Coercive control: How men entrap women in personal life. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2007.
  8. Mackenzie D. Arrested female offenders in Auckland City: April–September 2008. Auckland: Safer Homes In New Zealand Everyday (SHINE), 2009.  http://www.nzfvc.org.nz/sites/default/files/Female Offenders report FINAL.pdf
  9. Krug EG, Dahlberg LL, Mercy JA, Zwi AB, Lozano R. World report on violence and health. 2002.  http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/world_report/en/full_en.pdf
  10. Carrington K. Girls’ violence on the rise. Brisbane, Australia: Queensland University of Technology, 2009.  http://www.news.qut.edu.au/cgi-bin/WebObjects/News.woa/wa/goNewsPage?newsEventID=30070
  11. Lewandowski LA, McFarlane J, Campbell JC, Gary F, Barenski C. “He killed my mommy!” Murder or attempted murder of a child’s mother. Journal of Family Violence. 2004; 19:211-20.

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Tactic #13 — Intimate Partner Sexual abuse

by Clare Murphy PhD on May 20 2013

This is the thirteenth of 16 blogs discussing the patterns of tactics from my power and control wheel — Intimate Partner Sexual Abuse.

Power & control wheel #13 Clare Murphy PhD

Sexual abuse equates to unwanted sexualised contact. Sexual abuse pertains to the perpetrator not seeking consent and to the target not giving consent.

Men’s intimate partner sexual abuse involves expecting or demanding sex when she doesn’t desire it, then ignoring her wishes, ignoring her protests, telling her that ‘no’ really means ‘yes’. Sexual abuse entails manipulation, coercion, verbal demands or physical force.

Rodney Vlais from No to Violence Male Family Violence Prevention Association in Melbourne, Australia, states that:

“Sexual violence may serve as an expression of men’s unearned gender-based privilege, based on a belief that they are entitled to sexual gratification and are being ‘victimised’ when women ‘withhold’ sex from them.” (Vlais, 2011)

This socially driven sense of male entitlement leads some men to insist their partner give him sex how he wants, any time he wants, as often as he wants and any style he wants.

During the interviews I conducted with men for my PhD research, I asked: “If there was an unwritten marriage contract what would it say?”  Sam responded by saying, that he believed that back when he got married, women “had to be a slave.” He said that now he believes, “No woman is a slave, I know the morals there. But when I got married I was in that demon. The good side knew, but the bad side didn’t want to hear it. It’s hard to describe. I knew from the way I was raised by my mum, my grandmother, all my lovely aunties, the soft side knew that women aren’t to be treated like pieces of meat and sex objects and shit like that. But, then the old demon’s like:

. . . . . ‘stuff it, it’s my missus I’ll do whatever I bloody like. If I want sex she’s going to give it to me whenever.’ And that’s what a lot of males think. ‘You got my ring. You’ll give me sex when I want. If you don’t I’ll get it from somewhere else’.”

Sam went on to say that marriage meant the man owns the woman. He said:

“Yup, it’s like a new car. Like once I’ve done enough payments, it’s mine. I own this. And that’s how it’s going to be. That’s how a lot of males think.”

In discussion with men I interviewed I asked, “what expectations don’t get met for them in marriage?” The most common answer was — sex!

Anthony’s answer was: “Sex, sex and sex! The old joke is ‘how do you stop women from having sex?’ Give them a wedding cake. It’s really all the old bad clichés. That’s one thing men always talk about, how we’re not getting it, how we want more of it, why isn’t that pink skirt over there coming over to say hello for more sex. That has been an old joke that I’ve heard for years.”

Similarly, Bob said, “Sex every night for me! That is really part of the culture I suppose. Yeah, I guess you sort of do kinda think sex is gonna be there whenever I want. Even though that’s not reality.”

And Chris too said, “I think we have an expectation, most guys you’re aware of anyway — ‘how many times a month or how many times a week’ — you hear that all the time. I suppose that’s an unwritten expectation in marriage. I think the sexual expectation doesn’t get met. Coz the guys expect x amount, x amount, x amount and you always hear men BRAG about how many times. I think that’s an expectation that we assume should be met. But definitely can’t be met. That was something I used to always bring up in arguments. I think men do get controlling on sex, because we sit there and whinge and whinge and whinge that we’re not getting it. Looking back now, you know how bad that’d make the girls feel, but that’s one thing we do do. I know I have done it, I was doing it. It is sexual abuse in a form. It is sexual abuse. It is sexual abuse by controlling your wife. If she doesn’t want it bad luck — ‘you’re a bad person for not giving it to me’.”

Much of these expectations stem from social messages about how to be a man. Bill said, “There’s nothing out there that tells you how to have a respectful relationship there’s plenty out there that tells you how to treat women like they’re sexual beings.”

Coercive sexual abuse tactics

Some men who coercively control their partner, give her drugs or alcohol to make her intoxicated or unconscious, so he can perform sexual acts without her consent or knowledge. Some insist she engage in bondage and discipline or sadomasochism against her will, or engage in coerced or attempted rape.

Men who coercively control their partner sexually draw on a sense of male entitlement by telling her that the marriage law means it is her duty to provide him with sex, they help themselves to sex while she is sleeping, beg her to strip when she doesn’t want to, insist she dress in a more sexual way than she wants. Some women talk about having enjoyable sex after a fight, however, for some women ‘make-up’ sex after being badly abused feels bad and occurs against her will.

Raewyn, a woman I interviewed for my Masters research said, “If Brian wanted sex, well he just got his way. It was like I didn’t even think about what my rights were. I think sex just happened.” Raewyn said she never put up a fight and said ‘no’, “until probably the month before I left. And it was scary when I did that, very scary. But that’s because he knew I wanted to leave so the situation was pretty bad, yeah, really bad actually.”

Likewise for Donna: “Well you didn’t have any sexual rights in my marriage with Frank. Sex if he wanted sex. That was that.”

When I asked Pauline about her sexual rights she said, “Oh no, that was completely up to Chris. He initiated it. I was so bloody green and naïve (laugh). He was the initiator, he, far more than me (laugh), yeah, he was the boss.”

Elsie didn’t think she ever contemplated her sexual rights before marrying Leon. But she said that during their marriage, “I didn’t really have any rights. I had none. I wasn’t allowed to say ‘no’. They just wear you down. Sex just had to be the way he wanted it and that was all there was to it.”

Sexual Degradation

Many male partners who use power and control tactics, sexually degrade and insult their partner, they make demeaning remarks about women generally and tell anti-women jokes. They make fun of her body, humiliate and criticise her body, call her frigid, a whore, prostitute, gigolo, or mail order bride. Others make sexual ‘jokes’ about her in front of the children and other people.

Men who sexually abuse their partner ignore her needs and wishes

They will not do what excites her sexually, they minimise the importance of her feelings about sex and withhold affection. They randomly grab or touch her breasts, buttocks or genitals without her consent.

Sally, said that Dylan “would never touch me in an affectionate way without it turning into sex.  Every time I asked to be touched affectionately — which he was really good at, and mind you, that is one reason I stayed in there for seven years because he was so affectionate — but he’d always turn it into sex.”

Sally also said, Dylan would “have to grab at my boobs when I was in the kitchen, he’d grab at my boobs when I was in the lounge. To try to make him understand how I felt I would yell at him, I asked him not to, I’d be reasonable and explain how I didn’t like it.  I’d grab at his penis to show him how degrading and how awful it was and when I did that all he would do was tell me in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t to do that again and of course, I didn’t, unlike him, he would still continue to grab me.”

When I asked Elizabeth if she believed she had any rights sexually, she said, “No, just duties. If he wanted sex then I had to have sex. I didn’t feel like I had any say about that at all. He used to like nice underwear and I had all this beautiful underwear. I remember thinking on a Saturday morning, David’s going to want sex tonight, I am really going to try hard today, I will try really hard, cook a nice dinner. He’d get a bottle of wine and say ‘Is it going to be worth my while? Was I going to give him good sex that night?’ Then getting to the bedroom that night and pulling open the underwear draw and feeling sick, ‘I don’t want to do this’, but going through it anyway to be a good wife to live up to whatever a good wife is supposed to be in my head. I would count the days and think, ‘oh a couple of days it might be all right tonight’, but on the third day it was like ‘oh no I’ve got to have sex with him tonight’. I didn’t used to enjoy that very much. Sex wasn’t much fun.

According to Raewyn, “Brian would do his own thing all the time, his tramping, hunting, building, so really there was very little attention given to me, very little. The only time was when he wanted sex, then he’d be a little bit nice to me, have sex and then that would be it and he wouldn’t be nice to me again until he wanted sex.” After separating from Brian, Raewyn became privy to Brian voicing his attitudes about women. Raewyn said her sons, “were out camping with their dad and his ex-girlfriend, and she was talking to the boys about how women like to be treated by men. Brian then said, ‘Oh, all we want is to have sex first.’ And she was saying, ‘Women like to be nurtured rather than merely jump into bed.’ And Brian was saying, ‘Oh men, we just want to jump into bed.’ I found that a bit derogatory.”

Victoria said, “Our sexual relationship was pretty stuffed. Sex with Graham wasn’t about intimacy, it was about getting his rocks off. It was only ever about him. There were some things I just wasn’t willing to do. And a lot of it was about ‘if I just want to keep the peace then do it’. Just lie back and think of England. And just get on with it because it’s just not worth the hassle sometimes.”

It is also common for men who coercively control their partner to openly, or secretly, watch porn for hours on the internet. Many of these men compare their partner negatively to pornographic images, they make her watch or read pornography and then force her to engage in those pornographic activities.

Other men attempt to, or do involve, third parties in sexual activities against the woman’s will. Some men have affairs with other people after agreeing to a monogamous relationship, some try to seduce her friends and family, others make her perform degrading sexual acts in public, or force her to have sex with others while he watches, or force her to watch or listen to others having sex.

Karen said she and Felix, “had gone on a holiday programme with our work up the valley at this camp. We were in this room sleeping with two other staff members and he decided he wanted to have sex. ‘No I don’t want to have sex with other people here in the room. I can’t do this.’ He got his way. There was no way he was going to take ‘no’ for an answer. But I remember lying there thinking ‘how the hell did I get into this situation? I do not want this to be happening. But if I start kicking and screaming now (laughter) there’s going to be hell to pay’.”

Some men accuse their partner of flirting, or having an affair, or having sex with other men, or trying to attract other men’s attention by wearing particular clothes or make-up. He makes such accusations to manipulate her into having sex, or he tells her he’ll go elsewhere for sex if she doesn’t have sex with him.

Bill believed that because men expect sex from their partner as their right, then “If you don’t get it at home you go next door, in the sexual side of it.”

Donna said, “I wasn’t allowed to go out because Frank was scared I’d have sex with someone, which never happened, so I wouldn’t be allowed to have the car.”

Karen said, “I remember when Felix wouldn’t trust me sexually. He’d stop me from talking to people when I’d gone out. I’d feel I was radiating, it was something that being young, sexy and vibrant was all about, but when he placed the limits on that it was like there was this invisible wall all around me.”

A New Zealand research project found that some men use sexual abuse tactics that involve animals. For example those men made their partner watch him have sex with animals, forced her to engage in sexual activities with animals and made her watch animal-related pornography. (Roguski, 2012)

Some men use blackmail to engage their partner in sexual activities. They may force her to have sex so she may then be allowed to do things she wants, for example, so she may see her family or keep her job. Or he makes her pose for pornographic photographs in exchange for something she needs or wants.

The issue of consent to engage in sexual activties in an intimate relationship is complex.

At one time she may want sex, consent to it and enjoy it — at another time she may feel sexually violated, even though he may not have used any physical force.

Claiming and asserting boundaries can be confusing and difficult in a relationship with a man who uses guilt as a coercive tool. For example, he makes her feel guilty as a way of manipulating her to have sex, or makes her feel guilty and wrong, by telling her that other couples have more sex than they do.

Patrick would use sulking as a way of making Teresa feel guilty. Teresa said, “I thought I didn’t have any sexual rights. I thought I was obliged. I thought I was there to make him happy.”

Teresa’s health deteriorated throughout her relationship. She said, “In the last six months of the relationship I was sick a lot of the time and had a lot of neck problems. I partly at the time related this to sex because I had got to the point where I didn’t want him to touch me and he was really insistent that he was going to. Being sick was a legitimate way of getting out of sex. If you’re demonstrably sick then that’s good.” I asked Teresa if being sick worked. She said, “Some of the time it did, not all the time. I mean sometimes I’d just submit, otherwise he’d sulk for three days and be nasty. So it was the lesser of two evils. If he wouldn’t take bronchitis or whatever as a reason, then it was easier to grit your teeth and think of mother England and be done with it.”

Elizabeth said David, “used to come very quickly. I never got a chance to get into it anyway but then it was always my fault that he would come quickly. One way or another, it is because I was too attractive, or he had to wait too long. It was always my fault. I just took that on board. Underneath I was getting angry and resentful, and I thought ‘I have just got to do it’ and I was always thinking ‘what’s wrong with me?’ When I first went to see a psychiatrist, the question that I went there with was ‘why don’t I want to have sex with my husband, what is wrong with me?’ (laughter)” During the two years of seeing the psychiatrist Elizabeth, came to realise she did not want sex with her husband because “He treated me really badly! Why would I want to have sex with someone that treats me really badly! But that only came to me a long time after I started going to the psychiatrist. Because what I got from going to the counselling was a belief in myself. The sex thing was just a side issue.”

Sally’s and Elizabeth’s husbands compared them unfavourably to previous lovers, for example telling them that other women do things that she does not do.

Elizabeth said, “David had a girlfriend before we got together. And he always let me know how wonderful she was in bed and that I just didn’t measure up and that I must have some big problem, that there was something wrong with me. He used to do that a lot, and it certainly didn’t make me feel very good.”

Some men use coercive control by refusing to use contraception, or by not allowing her to protect herself from becoming pregnant.

Karen maintained that “contraception was a real issue. I kept getting pregnant. Felix wouldn’t use a condom, I couldn’t take the pill, I’d bleed for three weeks, five days off, bleed another three weeks, so that wasn’t on for me. He wouldn’t consider a vasectomy.  I couldn’t use a diaphragm either because we were having sex too much. That was a huge issue and he wouldn’t deal with it. He’d say, ‘it just isn’t part of my culture, you have babies, that’s what sex is for’.”

Some men treat their partner as a sex object in ways that heartlessly ignore her physical wellbeing. For example, they trick, force, pressure, or coerce her to have unsafe sex, or pressure her to have sex when she’s sick, or kiss and touch her in ways that make her feel uncomfortable and some men continue sexual activities despite knowing he is hurting her.

When Sally was sick Dylan, “insisted on having sex with me. Saying ‘no’ was a waste of time — coz he’d say, in so many different ways, that I was the problem, so part of me believed him.”

For Susan, “There were times, especially after our first child, I didn’t want sex coz if we had sex I’d get pregnant and I’d had such a really bad delivery with the baby being six weeks early. The first thing Anthony did was jump on me when I came home from hospital. I certainly didn’t want that. I didn’t want this because there’s no protection, and of course my stomach had been cut open. Well — he hadn’t had sex for about ten days! I did say ‘no’, but to Anthony ‘no’ means ‘yes’ and, ‘I’ll have it’. I mean he did that for years and years.”

Some women are particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse by their partners.

Those men who have partners who are disabled, sick or otherwise vulnerable deny their partner appropriate reproductive health care, they arrange suppression of her menstruation or force her into sterilisation, or termination of a pregnancy. They violate her trust and sense of safety by coercing, demanding or expecting sexual activities in return for providing care, food or money. Or they engage in unwarranted, or excessive, ‘care’ to her breasts, genitals or anus, or they leave her naked or sexually exposed.

Some men manipulate their partner into having sex in return for a gift or a back rub.

Sally had a lot of physical pain during her seven year marriage to Dylan, so she would “Sometimes ask for a massage, but he would never ever give me a massage without insisting that I had to trade sex for a massage. Because I needed to be touched I would trade and I would hate every moment of the sex, but I would lie there and just enjoy the massage. I felt raped and I felt that it was a woman’s place to give a man sex.”

Other men overwhelm their partner by continually pestering her for sex.

As far as rights were concerned  for Sally, she “realised, especially sexually, that I was trapped because Dylan was a sex addict. He wanted to have sex 24 hours a day, seven days a week if he could.  It was every morning, throughout the day, every night, he was at me, at me, at me.  I couldn’t stand it, I felt so trapped.  I felt like my rights as a wife were to service him sexually and I realised that I never ever ever wanted to get married again to anybody. That would be one of the major reasons that I wanted to leave him because I just felt absolutely used, raped, coerced into sex, doing things I didn’t like, anal sex.”

Karen said, “I just felt like I was being trampled on like it didn’t really matter what I felt at all. It was just consistent with the rest of the situation. I mean why would he respect you sexually if he didn’t respect you in any other way? (laughter) and it was one very particularly powerful tool he had over me because he was so good at sex. And it was used as a tool. I mean there was lots of love and stuff with it too, but there was always those same sort of power struggles that would go along with it and I learned not to approach him. He’d be the one to dictate how it went. I also learnt that it was not worth trying to say ‘no’ because he would keep going subtly, subtly for a couple of hours.  Do it there and then, and then try and get some sleep (laughter).”

Wanting sex or wanting power and control?

In a sense, wanting sex, sex and more sex is not the exact issue for many men who exert dominance over their partner. Instead, as Karen and Sally found when they initiated sex, their partners’ negative responses indicated to these women that in fact the men actually wanted to have power and control more than they wanted sex.

Karen said Felix was a “very very unpredictable person. I tried to figure it out. I was confused about how I should behave. If I tried to initiate sex he would turn stone cold, turn over shrug me off and say, ‘Leave me alone’. I think it only took 6 or 7 times for me to initiate and it would be like that so I never tried ever again for the rest of the relationship. Then he would start and say, ‘Why has it always got to be me?’ Then there’d be a row. He’d say, ‘I feel like you’re taking advantage of me, I want you to put in some work.’ My response would be, ‘Ok, sure cool.’ But you do it once, it goes well, next time stone cold, rolls over. I’d come to the conclusion that it was just something else to bitch about.”

According to Sally, Dylan “would insist that part of the problem we had sexually was that I didn’t initiate.  So occasionally I would initiate sex, only because he told me I had to, not because I wanted to. I’d do it every now and then, anytime of the day, it didn’t really matter because I knew he wanted sex all day, everyday. But every time I initiated sex he would become this person who just wasn’t himself, he just became kind of angry, kind of a hatred on his face like a real bastard. I don’t remember his words, but they were something like ‘how dare you initiate sex at this time, I am busy, I’m working’.  I was so confused. I did this only about 3 or 4 times, and one day it dawned on me.  I thought he doesn’t want me to initiate sex, that’s not the issue.  He just wants to be in full control, no matter what.”

Asking for consent to engage in sex with an intimate partner, and genuinely being granted consent, shows respect for both participants.

Our body is our own, no-one is entitled to possess someone else’s body.

Alan Berkowitz, a highly regarded psychologist who works with men to prevent violence and abuse against women, provides four guidelines for consent in intimate relationships:

  1. Both participants are fully conscious
  2. Both participants are equally free to act
  3. Both parties have clearly communicated their willingness/permission
  4. Both parties are positive and sincere in their desires

When you are in a relationship with an intimate partner you should feel free of coercive control. Both people should feel they have the freedom to be fully themselves — with the proviso that you both care for and respect each other, that both people feel safe, and that both people are honest and trust each other.

Watch out for blogs on the following control tactics:

One-Sided power games
Mind games
Inappropriate restrictions
Isolation
Over-protection & ‘caring’
Emotional unkindness & violation of trust
Degradation & Suppression of Potential
Separation Abuse
Using social institutions & social prejudices
Denial, Minimising, Blaming
Using Children
Economic abuse
Symbolic aggression
Domestic slavery
Physical violence

References:

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Tactic #12 — Economic Abuse

by Clare Murphy PhD on May 9 2013

This is the twelfth of 16 blogs discussing the patterns of tactics from my power and control wheel — Economic Abuse.

Power & control wheel #12 Clare Murphy PhD

Economic abuse is one of the most common forms of intimate partner abuse. Children’s needs and standard of living are negatively impacted by their father’s economic abuse. This type of abuse leads to poverty, to having a bad credit rating and can even lead to bankruptcy. This all holds women back from succeeding economically and materially, which leads to being financially dependent on their partner — a major obstacle to leaving. Even if she tried to leave, the cost of moving house and of being able to afford accommodation becomes out of reach. And many women who do leave their controlling partner end up experiencing further economic abuse by him.

Here’s some examples of the wide range of ways that men who coercively control their partners do so by devastating women’s financial and material wellbeing. . . .

Uses his economic status

Attitudes about roles relating to paid and unpaid work are often shaped by stereotypes. For example, Brendan, a man I interviewed for my PhD research, said that women should allow “the man to have the final financial decision and the final direction for the family.” Other men said as Chris did that, “Guys think they earn the money, they keep the money”, and similarly David said, “Blokes like to control money, their money.”

Similarly, women are socialised to believe as Elizabeth did that: “I didn’t really feel that I had any rights over money, part of me did, but it was only a little tiny part and it wasn’t enough to be assertive about anything to do with the money.”

Pauline also felt this way. She said, “I always felt guilty that I didn’t contribute with work. It was the whole of our marriage that I felt like that. Although on one hand it was ‘a good wife and mother stays home and cooks and cleans’ I wanted to contribute even if it was $20 a week. It’s like I would really like to have something to be able to earn a little bit of money coz I used to hate buying him Christmas or birthday presents out of his money.”

Many coercively controlling men who have economic status, or status as the provider, believe they are entitled to determine his and her relationship roles. Others give her everything she wants, but constantly remind her she couldn’t have such a lifestyle without him.

Our society has given credibility, legitimacy and worth to those who earn money and has not given equal credibility, legitimacy and worth to those who do unpaid voluntary work.

The male breadwinner role

Prior to the industrial revolution most members of the family contributed to generating an income. Whereas after the industrial revolution the breadwinner role became primarily the man’s role — especially in the middle and upper classes where there was less necessity for all family members to work. The idea of sharing economic responsibilities morphed into the man taking on the role as financial provider and the woman as stay-at-home mother. (Kimmel & Aronson, 2003)

This role was granted decision-making power over the income and economic authority over the family. For some men, if they fail at the provider role, or their female partners take on the provider role or earn more than he does, this can be perceived as their failure as a man. As you will see throughout this blog post, whether the man who uses coercive control fulfils the breadwinner role or not, he draws from his status as a man to back up his demands.

He makes all the financial decisions and holds all the financial information.

Some men misuse their provider role, and its accompanying social standing, by withholding, or refusing her access to information about their financial situation and level of family income. Some men lie about financial assets and lie about debts. They exclude their partner from important financial decisions.

Elizabeth was married to a high-earning professional man. She was quite bothered by the fact that she didn’t have any control over any of the financial decisions. She said that “After having the two boys we decided to do some major renovations on the house and at the same time he bought a new car, went on a trip to South Africa because one of his friends over there was getting married. Up to that point I had tried to keep track of what and where the money was going, but at that stage I was then having my third child and I just couldn’t handle it any more, tracking where the money went was just way out of what I could manage because I felt it was slipping away from me. It was like I had no control over it all. He bought this $47,000 car and I thought, ‘what do we need that for? we don’t need that.’ I just felt like I had no say about the money.”

Interferes with her education and employment


Some men control women by preventing her from working and earning money. Alternatively, if she is working, he may harass her in ways that jeopardise her ability to stay in her job, for example ill-treating her co-workers, hiding the car keys, leaving no petrol in the car, or preventing access to money for public transport so she can get to work. Some men more forcefully just tell her she is not allowed to have a job — end of discussion! Or he may tell her that she has to quit her job so she can do what he expects of women, that is care for him, the children, the cooking and the housework.

Also, some men prevent their partner from getting education or they may sabotage any attempts at up-skilling, by for example not babysitting after promising to do so, or by destroying her school books or written assignments.

Karen wanted to go to university, but Felix was emotionally abusive when she began university. She said “I did not feel safe because I wouldn’t know whether Felix would take all my money and blow it.”

Controls what she does with money and possessions

Some men force their partner to hand over receipts to show how she spends money. Then if  she cannot prove what the money was spent on he punishes her in some way. He controls her purchase of necessities such as clothes, food, or sanitary products by allocating a specific amount of money (or no money at all). He makes her ask permission to have, or spend money and monitors how much and what she spends money on.

Sally said Dylan “wouldn’t earn any money, so we lived on income I’d received that was supposed to care for my health because I had been sick, but he wouldn’t really let me use it for that.”

Controls access to economic resources


Some women are forbidden to handle money. He denies her access to all financial resources including bank accounts, credit or debit cards and cheque books (joint, or her own personal ones). He takes away her property, her money, her credit cards and only provides a small amount of money. Or he withholds, or minimally provides her basic necessities such as food and vital medications. Other men force her to beg for money or always ask permission for access to it.

Raewyn said, “we didn’t have a joint account so he’d be earning and I would have to go and ask Brian for the cheque every week, to pay for bills. He had superiority over me because I had to ask for that cheque it was always a big deal. I used to ask him just as he was leaving so that he wouldn’t have time to blow me up saying, ‘Oh you spend too much money,’ or, ‘Again, I have to give you a cheque?’ He hated me asking him just as he was leaving, but I knew I did it to protect myself because he couldn’t take time to think ‘does she deserve this or not?’ or ‘damn I can’t get stuck into her’, or whatever.” Raewyn tried for some time to get a joint account. She got it eventually, but even then Brian would say, ‘You are spending too much money.’ Which I didn’t!”

Pauline describes the slippery slope of Chris making it more and more difficult for her to access money for basic needs: “In those early days it wasn’t like ‘no you’re not going to town,’ but Chris would get out the cheque book, just as I was getting ready to go, and pay off all the bills, even though they wouldn’t be due for a few weeks. Then he would hand me the cheque book and at first it was just a joke and I used to laugh and say, ‘You tight ass’ . . . . .

And then as the years went on it wasn’t a joke. Near the end of our marriage he used to hand me the book in overdraft so it was giving me the message of, ‘You’re not going shopping’ . . . . .

Then at the very end of our marriage he started taking the cheque book to work. He worked just out of town so I’d have to bundle the kids up in the car if we ran out of milk or whatever, and I really just wanted to pop down to the supermarket for a couple of things I’d have to take the kids all the way out to his work, which was not a place you want to take children to, or ring him up and ask him to pick something up on the way home. I never realised at the time what he was actually doing until I looked back.”

Prevents acquisition of economic resources

Coercive control can entail keeping her name off any joint assets such as property titles or car ownership papers. It can include preventing her from receiving other income such as child support or government benefits — and also preventing her from bringing in her own income. The exploitation and degradation of women’s economic resources is one of the most common reasons it is difficult to leave a controlling partner.

Prevents use of her own resources

Many women have their own income and economic savings and other resources when they enter relationship. But, for many of those women, their controlling partner prevents her from using her own resources. He takes money out of her wallet or steals her possessions and sells them. Or he confiscates her financial and property assets, or forces her to hand them over. It is extremely common for him to claim that her money is actually ‘his’ money. Some men force their partner to make him power-of-attorney so he has the ability to sign legal documents. Other men force their partner to work in the family business for little or no pay.

Elizabeth said she was pretty reasonable with any financial expenditure. “It wouldn’t occur to me to go out and buy a stereo, or buy new furniture, or buy something expensive because that was what he did. He would do it without talking to me about it, but I would never do it without talking to him about it because it was ‘his’ money. Even though I had this thing that really it was our money because he was doing his part of the bargain and I was doing mine — he was doing the working and I was doing the running of the household and looking after the children. So part of me felt I had a right to this money, but really it was his money. Okay yes I ran the household and it was in our joint names, but really it was his house, it was his car, I got to drive it but it was really ‘his’ car.”

Sally said, “Even though I contributed a hell of a lot of labouring to the house renovations he always said that I didn’t and that it was all ‘his’ money.”

Donna said that, “once we sold my property and used my money to buy our property the rules changed. It changed to . . . . . it was now Frank’s house, Frank’s everything and Frank was in control of everything.” So now Donna felt torn: “I couldn’t do all my jobs at home. I never even touched the cheque book, I had no money whatsoever and no access to any money.” Donna added:

“The bit that hurt the most was the years and years and years I’d contributed to the family and my contribution had then became worth nothing.”

Victoria said when she entered her relationship with Graham, “any money I had diminished, all the resources started to disappear. It no longer was my property, it became our property that he would spend. He would have the most amazing tantrums if I didn’t buy him what he wanted.”

Elsie said Leon “took over my car more or less as soon as I met him. He pushed and pushed until he’d spent all my money. He just took everything really…. He definitely used taking my financial independence away as a tool to keep me in place.”

Refuses to contribute

Many coercively controlling men refuse to meet their financial obligations, by for example refusing to contribute to economic costs including the mortgage or rent, household expenses, shared bills, raising the children, and paying off debts he has incurred. He refuses to work to earn income or withholds his earnings if he does work.

Karen said, “Felix didn’t mind so much if I spent my money, but if I got any money out of his coffers it was a completely different story. I was paying all the power bills, the rent, the phone, so I didn’t have much left so he was doing us a ‘favour’ when he put money into the car.”

Makes her be in charge of the money — but he spends the money and blows the budget

He makes her work because he is unwilling to work and he takes away her ability to have control over the money she earns. He does this by manipulatively or forcefully demanding that she hand over her income. He makes her responsible for running the accounts, then demands she give him money for anything he wants, when he wants, over and above the budget . . . . . Then he blames her if there is not enough money.

Nicola Sharp (2008) undertook research in the UK to find out women’s experience of economic abuse. She found that, of those women who had a paid job while they were in the relationship, just under half of the women reported not having access to their wages.

Susan, Pauline and Victoria’s husbands all spent money on unnecessary cars. This type of expenditure, for men, is linked to proving their masculinity, hence one of the reasons for this type of economic abuse.

Victoria said, “I was made to be in charge of the money, but he spent the money, so it was never his problem. It was always my problem. I always had to find the money if he wanted something. One of our near-the-end arguments was about a car that he wanted. We were just in debt forever. He spotted a car on the weekend that he wanted to buy. He’d been offered a promotion as an animal stock manager for the next season, but he said he ‘couldn’t possibly take that job with the car we had’. He said he’d have to decline the job — knowing that that would upset me because it was all about more money and lack of security. ‘No I can’t take the job if I don’t have this particular car so you’ll just have to find the money to buy that car.’ When I got up in the morning he was looking in the phone book at finance companies to borrow more money.”

Before Susan lived with Anthony, she saved $25 a week. However, once they started living together she said, “that money just went. We each had a car. He sold both cars and bought a different car. He always wanted the newest. So we always upgraded, but of course that meant that money had to come from somewhere. He was always going to the pub so that meant I was the person who had to go and work and get the money in.”

Sally said, “I was in charge of the finances because he wouldn’t take any responsibility for them. I would be really strict about a budget so there was always money to pay the bills and so any savings that were there ready for the bills to come up he would use and I would feel nauseous in my stomach and we’d have discussions about the fact that that money was to pay bills. But somehow he’d always twist it around so that I gave in and I was always so stressed that we were never having enough money and he would spend the money on something for himself.”

Sally said Dylan “consistently said ‘I already know how to run my own finances, I’ve done it for years as a single man.  It’s not as if I can’t do it.’  So then I would say, ‘Well, do it then.’  So occasionally, I would let him take full responsibility for the finances, but as usual he did not pay the bills, he didn’t do anything about earning money, he didn’t do anything about making a budget to pay the bills. I couldn’t stand being in debt, so I would take over the finances again.”

Generates economic costs

Some men who coercively control their partner purposefully generate economic costs, which results in the woman having to pick up the pieces and leads to depleting her economic resources, and sometimes bankruptcy.  They inappropriately use family funds, force her to bail him out of self-inflicted financial difficulties and refuse to work, creating extreme financial hardship. Some men break women’s favourite or sentimental possessions such as heirloom crockery or gifts. Whilst others damage or destroy her clothes, household appliances, or car. Yet other men coerce her into taking out loans or overdrafts so he can use the money in any way he pleases.

Susan said “Anthony decided we were going to buy a house, but I’m the person who did all the work towards getting a house. I approached my dad for the money for the deposit. I had to do all the running around and he just sat there. When we bought the house we were on the dole, and I can’t handle that, so I went out and got a job. He didn’t mind that at all because he still didn’t have to work and stayed at home. He wouldn’t look after our first daughter so I had to pay for a babysitter. We had no money and he’d still go out and book things up.”

Susan said “We were really really short of money. We had no groceries. Instead of saving money, we were paying the bills that had accumulated because Anthony had bought a new car when I was pregnant. We got $500 for our old car, the new car was $9,000. I was saying, ‘Far out, now we’ve got to pay for this!!’ We didn’t have cash to buy the car but Anthony just would lie, lie, lie and I had to sit there with a straight face when the man delivered the car. I just felt sick, absolutely sick.” Susan didn’t feel she could speak up and say ‘take the car back’, because it was in Anthony’s name.”

Some men generate debts in her name by, for instance, stealing or by buying something then putting her name on the bill. He sells off her property or their shared property, gets her to sign away her possessions for example, lying about why he needs her signature on a particular document. Some men give away, pawn, or sell her possessions. Some men use her money without permission, or overuse her credit cards, or outright steal money, credit cards or cheques from her or her family.  Other men refuse to pay or contribute towards any bills. He racks up debts without her knowledge then makes her pay for his habits, such as alcohol, drugs, gambling or unnecessary exorbitant expenditure on things like cars. Or he makes her solely responsible for household and family debts such as water, electricity, plumbing, and house maintenance bills.

Of the women who responded to Nicola Sharp’s (2008) research in the UK, those who had debts when they were in their relationship, 80% of them said those debts were a consequence of the economic abuse perpetrated by their partner.

Susan’s husband squandered all the money that was required for running the house and caring for the children. She was constantly finding practical ways to deal with financial problems that Anthony created. She “rang the finance company for the Nissan Bluebird. We sold all of our furniture out of the lounge, kitchen, dining room, everything we could to get $250, which is half the payment for the month for the car. The car got repossessed anyway.”

As a result of carrying the responsibility, while Anthony frittered the money away, Susan was getting really tired. She “had to handle all the money. He would still go out and buy things. When I said I want to give up work, he’d buy something else so that I couldn’t give up work. In the end I got really sick.”

Victoria said that “financially, and in terms of possessions, he just wanted everything, but it was never for the benefit of the family unit. So I could never trust his judgement and I thought about handing over the money sometimes. I’d panic at the mere thought of what he’d do with it, because I couldn’t trust his decisions to be about what was best for us. It was only ever what was best for him. He kept us so financially in debt I would work my ass off to try and make sure we didn’t get into too much more trouble. I think he knew right up until the last that I wouldn’t do anything to rock the boat so it gave him that power, because the fear of what was going to happen next was really frightening and he knew I didn’t believe in divorce, so that was a really strong point for him.”

Victoria said, “I was always the one that had to say ‘no’ and of course when I said ‘no’ then Graham would have a tantrum and the whole bloody circle would go around again. So I was forever trying to find money to borrow because I knew he’d want something else. And money would burn a hole in his pocket. It was like a kid putting his fingers in his ears going, ‘Aaaah I can’t hear you I can’t hear you!’ And I’m trying to say, ‘Look at the book!’ I used to keep an accounting book so he could see where the money was going, but he refused to even look at the book. I’m saying, ‘there’s no money.’ He’d say, ‘well find it, I want that car.’ So only when it came down to the crunch I would have a decision in saying, we just can’t do this!”

Karen said she, “did a lot of trying, I did far too much of trying to get him to pull his socks up and get it together. I became like his mother. ‘Hey you just spent $600 on an unnecessary weekend, we needed that money for the kids, what are you doing?’ He would lie down on the couch on his side with his face pointing to the wall and then get a blanket and pull it right up over his head and hum. I felt absolute blind fury. ‘Come on, the power’s going to be cut off, you’ve spent all that money what’s going on and we’ve got to do something about this!’ Every now and then he’d grunt or say something that was enough to hook me back in. He did not contribute money to the household regularly so I did not feel safe and secure with my finances.”

Victoria also “saved Graham again and again and again. We moved towns for his job and then he wanted to buy a stock car. We had no bloody money to buy a stock car, so he disappeared for three days, so of course, he lost his job. I didn’t know where he was. When he was away I packed the house and then he came back and then we moved to another town. And then something else happened there and he disappeared for three days. I’d pack up the house because when he’d come back we’d move again and this was the pattern. This was one of the most disruptive things he’d do if he didn’t get his own way. He would throw away his responsibilities, he just wouldn’t turn up to work, I would try and save the situation and try and help him keep his job if I could, but that was usually impossible.”

Victoria said Graham’s irresponsibility with finances “was his biggest tool, because he knew I was always worried about money because we were so incredibly in debt. How we even managed to breathe I have no idea. But he would still want — ‘I want this, I want that, I want this.’ But I would say ‘we can’t afford it’ and because I was always left in charge of the money, even when I tried to give it to him he didn’t want responsibility for the money because he knew he’d have to take blame for it and be accountable. It wasn’t open to discussion, he wasn’t open to change.”

Incriminates her or causes her to commit benefit or tax fraud

All too often, coercively controlling men accuse her of, say, stealing or damaging property to get her into trouble, or some men’s chronic irresponsibility and abuse forces women to commit social security or tax fraud.

Karen said, “Felix was never into building a financially secure situation for us. Instead I ended up basically prostituting myself by getting myself into fraud shit with the social welfare, which was a big thing for me. Felix diminished my safety in my home, because I was on a government benefit because he wouldn’t pay me money. That made me officially a criminal for having him in my home. I was really really paranoid and insecure because I didn’t want to get busted. I kept on asking him not to come, ‘you either be part of this family, commit yourself, or stay away. I can’t have half of you like this. You stagger in the door at night so exhausted you can’t even look or talk to me and then fall asleep on my couch and I’m at risk of having you here’.”

Susan was also accused of benefit fraud. She said, “After one of the times we separated, before I had the car, Anthony used to take me to do the groceries. My sewing machine was no good. He took it into town and he came home and said, ‘It’s not worth fixing, but they’ll give you so much for a trade-in if you want to buy a new one’. So I said, ‘Oh yeah, ok.’ I mean this is how naïve and trusting I was. He brought me home a new sewing machine. It was in his name. He put me down as being his spouse. He put my address as being his address. When he got his cell phone he did the same thing. He put me down as being his spouse. Unfortunately for me, the government agency that was paying my single parent benefit contacted me saying, ‘You know you’ve been living with Anthony while you’ve been on the benefit.’ They had all this evidence that said I was with him because he’d put me down as being his spouse. I said ‘I wasn’t with him’. But they said, ‘He used to take you to town. You used to drive his car.’ ‘Yeah, but that doesn’t mean that we’re together.’ Anyway, I didn’t know the sewing machine was in his name until the last time we split up and I got done for fraud by the government department. Anthony was telling everybody that we were a couple. That really hurts. I thought I’d got out from him, but he’s still doing these things. I hated him. I hated the things he’d done to us, to the low level that he’d brought us down to.”

Economic abuse post-separation

Economic abuse does not stop if she leaves. Some men attempt to exploit her economic base by pursuing legal matters without sufficient grounds, or they use the children as pawns aimed at manipulating her to back down from pursuit of her property and financial rights.

Some men threaten to give no financial support to her if she leaves. Whilst other men intimidate their partner by destroying household property, and claiming they have the right to do that because they, and they alone, own that property. Brendan, a man I interviewed for my PhD research, said that one time when his partner was telling him to leave: “I just threw the display cabinet on the ground and said ‘stuff this’, I’m going…. I broke my own property”.

Teresa said that once the relationship ended, “Patrick tried to diminish my financial resources, but he didn’t try to do that in the course of the relationship because he had a financial interest in maintaining them. I had a pretty pathetic response really. He still had a lot of control over me once the relationship had ended and I still would take what he said to heart and think that I was useless and didn’t deserve money. I believed the things that he’d been telling me.” Teresa continued:

“There was a lot of abuse after the relationship ended. I went into the relationship with some money saved but I came out with nothing, including what I put into the house when I was living there. Once I left the relationship there were some things that I never got back again in terms of possessions, that he made it difficult for me to get and it was just easier to walk away from it and cut my losses.”

When Elizabeth divorced David she said she, “ended up with this little piddly sum of money” and that David “drove around in a car that was worth more than the money that I ended up with in my hand. He got the house and the business and all the stuff in the house. I took a few things out of it that were like spares, or the old towels, old extra stuff that I’d think ‘he won’t miss this’. I wanted to keep things intact for him, God knows why now. I just didn’t look at the practical aspects of it at all and then two years down the track I was swearing and cursing because he’s got the vacuum cleaner, he’s got the iron, he’s got all the gardening tools, he’s got all that stuff, and the abuse was still continuing!”

Elizabeth said, “I didn’t go on the single parent benefit for the first couple of years that I was separated. I just thought the benefit wasn’t for people like me, like I had been married to a professional person. He was still, I thought, financially responsible for his children. I was at that stage responsible for myself, so I didn’t see that I was somebody that was entitled to the benefit. So that first couple of years I just worked my guts out, just to survive financially.”

Elsie said “When I left Leon, by then I had no bank account, my dad gave me $5 to start an account and that’s what I left with $5 and my baby’s things.”

After separation, coercively controlling men often refuse to comply with orders to pay child support

Elizabeth said that at one point after leaving she would “have the kids delivered to my house at eight o’clock in the morning. I would have them until six o’clock at night. He wouldn’t allow them to bring their change of clothes because I might keep it — this is a three year old who is into three sets of clothes a day. At that stage, because I was entitled to child support, it was through the solicitor that he agreed that he would give me $50 to $100 a fortnight towards just food and stuff. But he wouldn’t pay me. He’d say, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll give it to you.’ And of course he wouldn’t. At one stage I was desperate because I had no money I went up to his business and walked in. I had rung, but he used to hang up on me. I just stormed in, I said, ‘Hey I want the money I need to buy some food’. He called the police and set up a trespass thing so I couldn’t go into his work.”

Elizabeth had been on the single parent benefit, then did some training at a polytechnic then she got a job. She said that, “within a couple of weeks I get a phone call from David coz we don’t have contact, ‘I hear you’ve got a job. Now that you have got a job I want to stop paying child support.’ He said, ‘I get really angry and frustrated when I hear that you’re using my money to redecorate your house.’ This is probably a good five years since we separated and I’ve spent two hundred dollars on some paint sorting out my kitchen. He said, ‘I don’t want to be subsidising and paying for your lifestyle.”

Men who coercively control their female partner believe they are top dog and that women and children are possessions. So it is not surprising that James, one of the men I interviewed, said:

“many men who refuse to pay child support believe “they’re controlled by a government agency over the kids that maybe they feel they own themselves and that it’s a loss of control thing, their own personal property.”

Max said that while he was married he used to have pride in being a provider, but now that he had separated from the woman he had abused, he had no masculine pride in paying child support. And Brendan was angry because he believed his self-appointed role as decision maker for his child was removed from him by the government agency. Max said the difference between providing for the children while living with his partner, as opposed to no longer living with her, was that, “someone else is taking control of my finances, they’re presuming how much that child needs.”

Henry said many men “don’t see it as paying money for their children, they see it as paying money for her.”

Economic exploitation, in its many forms, is a debilitating power and control tactic that often creates poverty and homelessness for women and children. It is one of the most common reasons that women find it difficult to leave a controlling partner. And economic abuse often continues or increases if she does leave.

Watch out for blogs on the following control tactics:

One-Sided power games
Mind games
Inappropriate restrictions
Isolation
Over-protection & ‘caring’
Emotional unkindness & violation of trust
Degradation & Suppression of Potential
Separation Abuse
Using social institutions & social prejudices
Denial, Minimising, Blaming
Using Children
Sexual abuse
Symbolic aggression
Domestic slavery
Physical violence

References:

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Children’s exposure to intimate partner abuse

by Clare Murphy PhD on April 24 2013

I recently co-wrote two issues papers that address children’s exposure to intimate partner abuse. They’re available here and here.

The first paper is titled Understanding connections and relationships: Child maltreatment, intimate partner violence and parenting and it explores:

  • The links between child maltreatment and intimate partner violence
  • The detrimental effects of children’s exposure to intimate partner violence
  • The disruption to mother-child relationships due to intimate partner violence
  • The poor fathering that can accompany perpetration of intimate partner violence

The second paper is titled Policy and practice implications: Child maltreatment, intimate partner violence and parenting and it explores:

The responses required by systems such as the family court, child protection services, to support children. Five of the guiding principles for protecting children and adults who are exposed to child maltreatment and intimate partner violence include:

  • Provide holistic support for children
  • Support the non-abusing parent
  • Support the mother-child relationship
  • Hold the perpetrator accountable
  • Be culturally responsive

Other key messages in the second paper include:

Children’s safety and wellbeing is highly dependent on the quality of their bond with their non-abusive parent (most often the mother). Programmes to support mothers and children need to include a focus on supporting them to strengthen or re-establish their relationship, which may have been damaged by exposure to violence.

Parenting programmes for fathers who have used violence need to emphasise the need to end violence against their children’s mothers (they cannot be “a lousy partner but a good dad”).

There needs to be adequately resourced services to support children, adult victim/survivors and perpetrators. These services need to work in co-ordinated and collaborative ways, as part of multi-agency response systems, and work from a sophisticated understanding of intimate partner violence.

The United States Centers for Disease Control have identified safe, stable, and nurturing relationships as fundamental in supporting children to thrive. Exposure to intimate partner violence and the impact of violence on the parenting children receive need to become key areas of work in responding to ‘vulnerable children’.

You can download both papers at the following links:

Murphy, Clare., Paton, Nicola., Gulliver, Pauline., Fanslow, Janet. (2013). Understanding connections and relationships: Child maltreatment, intimate partner violence and parenting. Auckland, New Zealand: New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse, The University of Auckland. http://www.nzfvc.org.nz/issues-papers-3

Murphy, Clare., Paton, Nicola., Gulliver, Pauline., Fanslow, Janet. (2013). Policy and practice implications: Child maltreatment, intimate partner violence and parenting. Auckland, New Zealand: New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse, The University of Auckland. http://www.nzfvc.org.nz/issues-papers-4

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Tactic #11 — Using the Children

by Clare Murphy PhD on April 11 2013

This is the eleventh of 16 blogs discussing the patterns of tactics from my power and control wheel — Using the Children.Power & control wheel #11 Clare Murphy PhDWays men use the children to maintain power and control or to punish their partner or ex-partner include demanding that she do all the childcare, making her feel guilty about the children, telling her he wouldn’t lose his temper if she kept the children quieter. Some men undermine her relationship with the children, for example when she sets clear boundaries he will then tell the children they’re allowed to do the thing their mother had said ‘no’ to. Some men also undermine her parenting by telling her she’s a bad parent and by purposefully belittling her in front of the children.

Some men use the children by threatening to take them away or kidnap them if his partner leaves him, or they threaten to have the children taken into care of child protection services or they threaten to harm the children, or actually do harm the children.

Women with children are more likely to be abused by their partner than are women without children.1 When men do abuse their partner this increases the likelihood he will abuse the children — physically, sexually, psychologically. And the more frequent the abuse towards their partner, the higher the chance the children will be abused too.2

Many men who coercively control their partner use children as weapons to get at her, control her, and keep her in her place.

Quite soon after starting her relationship with Luke, Heather did not want to be with him because he was abusing her. She wanted to leave and do her teaching degree, however she got pregnant, but did not want to share a child with Luke, so she told him she was going to have an abortion. However, fitting with his possessive attitude, he did not want her to have an abortion so he served High Court papers on her to prevent her from having an abortion. However, as Heather said, “He actually dropped the court case. I just got to read the papers recently through the hospital because he tried to sue the hospital as well. I thought he was so powerful and I just couldn’t mess with him. Even when I had our son he said in one of the affidavits that ‘she’s going back to work, that she obviously doesn’t want our son, so I’ll have him those times’. So if I went back to any work of any sort of description where he thought I was neglecting our son he would be on me. I never went out because he’d say, ‘you’re not going out leaving our son with your parents’. Yet he would never offer to look after him while I went out.”

Despite Luke seeming to want to have a child, this was not his actual motivation for trying to prevent the abortion. Many men with possessive attitudes use the children to maintain power and control over their partner. Heather discusses Luke’s attitude after they separated: “He made comments like ‘I wish you loved me like you love our son’. If I went to town he would grab the pram and say, ‘I know that when I’ve got our son you won’t go far away.’ He’d say, ‘If I had our son you’d come and live with me because you wouldn’t be away from him.’ I went and said to the counsellor, ‘I don’t want to be with Luke’. I said I want it so we have smooth running, we’ve got this child now, I want to get on with my life and Luke to get on with his and sort out some sort of arrangement until our son’s older, whether he comes and visits him at my place, or we meet on a Sunday afternoon until he’s old enough to be taken on his own. I want to remain friends so it’s easier for our son. But then Luke had me on his own and said ‘there’s no way we can be friends. I’m not going to be friends with you if you’re not going to live with me’.”

Pauline describes how Chris used the children to manipulate and maintain control over her, claiming that he could not spend time with his children because he’d rather spend time elsewhere. Pauline said Chris wouldn’t agree to an access order for the children, so when they were in the Court, “he said, ‘No court or judge is telling me what to do.’ So we had it on agreement and he walked out of court and he turned around and said, ‘Stick your fucking agreement.’ He said, ‘I can’t have the kids, I want to go to Rotary gatherings.’ Contact with the children has been very much to his timetable.”

Many men use the children in an attempt to punish their partner. And the children are negatively impacted as a result.

Raewyn also discussed how her husband Brian would use the children as a tool to prevent her from getting her needs met. Raewyn said, “Once I’d left he would play games about having the children because he knew I wanted a break and he would almost bribe me and say ‘Raewyn let’s talk about marriage and why this has happened and then I’ll see if I want to have the children’. He’s still doing it now. He’s using the children to get at me and they suffer. I suffer because I don’t get my break, but they suffer the most because if he’s not happy with me he doesn’t have them. It’s not so bad but he doesn’t have them very regularly. He could go a whole school-term and not see them. I know he does this because he told a mutual friend of ours because she asked him ‘why don’t you have the children regularly every second weekend?’ He said, ‘No way I don’t want to make it easy for her, so she can have a nice weekend with her lover.’

Susan said, “I had applied for a protection order, but my lawyer was so slow and didn’t think there was anything to worry about. But Anthony had left a suicide note and he left it to the kids. I read it before the kids saw it. I was a nervous wreck. Imagine if the kids had seen this and what it would have done to them. Anthony doesn’t give up. I ended up going to a women’s refuge because I didn’t feel safe at all. I spent five days at women’s refuge. I had to take a week off work. The kids were so confused about things. They weren’t happy being there. I said to him I can’t go on, I’ve found myself a house to rent.” But Susan lived in a rural area and had no transport, so the new house was close which meant Anthony could see it. Susan said, “it was the only empty house there and I had that thing that I had to have the kids close to him because he’d say, ‘My kids have to be with me or else I’ll fight you for custody’.

Men who use coercive control against their partner, know the woman’s vulnerabilities. The love and protection that many women have for their children is one area that those men use after separation to continue coercive control.

After Raewyn left Brian, “He actually went away, overseas, for quite a while, ten months, so it was all pretty quiet. I didn’t realise how blissful that was.” However, when he returned, Brian would use conversations about the children as opportunities to abuse Raewyn.  Raewyn said, “if I rang him up to see if he wanted to have the children, he’d always have a go at me, every time. A lot of the time I was crying at the end of the phone conversations, or I’d get so mad at him. I don’t know how he does it, he just makes you feel bad. I just can’t stand him, and then it would happen the next time and the next time, because he would never say, ‘yes I want to have the children and I want to be a father’. No, no, it would be ‘Oh, you’re just using me for a babysitter.’ So the abuse was just as bad as when we were married. It was revolting. The children are still something he can get at me about, although I’m trying to not get sucked into that one.”

Some men who engage in abusive, controlling, or violent behaviours towards their partner also directly maltreat their children.

Raewyn said that although her husband never really had that much respect for her, the abuse and coercive control got worse once they had children. Raewyn said, “When the eldest boy Paul was two years old, suddenly I felt something different, I thought what’s happened? He’d stopped bugging me and he was abusing Paul. I got scared. I thought at that time, ‘I’ve got to go, I’ve got to go.’ He was really horrible. That’s probably the most scaredest and the most I ever wanted to leave was at that point. When my son Paul was about five or six, I said to my sister, she was visiting, I said, ‘I’ve got to leave him for Paul’s sake’. She even agreed with me there, for Paul’s sake you’ve got to leave him Raewyn. And again it was like I was locked into it I couldn’t go, I just didn’t know if I had it in me to go.”

Other men who abuse their wives, may also control the children.

Raewyn gives an example of how her husband favoured one child over the other. For some children, this can create rivalries between them. Raewyn said that after she and Brian separated, “he went back to picking on me and he was also picking on Paul. And his abuse went a little bit further, because he would dote on the youngest boy, which would make it even worse for Paul. I would just be crying inside for Paul because it was so obvious. That was horrible. I think what he was doing with the children really pushed me most to get out. The way he was treating Paul, he would know that it affected me badly. I got to the point where I used to say ‘stop picking on him’, and he knew it affected me. I think it made him do it more.”

Women with children are at higher risk than childless women, of being abused after separating from a man with a history of controlling behaviours.

When Adriana and Steve separated he threatened to kill her and he used their daughter as a pawn to control Adriana. As a result of the threat to kill her, Adriana worried how that threat would affect her daughter. She believed her daughter may be at some level of danger when she was in his care.

Adriana said her ex-husband tries to get their daughter to make a choice between them. She said it must be very very hard for her daughter to cope with his slurring at her and the family. Adriana said, “I have no control over it. There’s no way I can do anything about it, except, again be the rock, be the person who does things the right way. Being the rock means supporting her in what she wants to do, being consistent with my parenting, to be consistent with her, living ongoing in a predictable way, loving her — for me all the normal parenting things. Not saying negative things about him in front of her.”

Adriana said her ex-husband, “was a great father when we were married, but after the divorce he fails to be a father or role model to our child. He fails to be consistent about seeing her. He doesn’t support her on any level I can detect because he doesn’t support all her interests, he jeopardises all her interests. He doesn’t support her financially in any way. He uses her for his own purposes which I think is the lowest of the lowest. For example he uses her as a negotiator between us, he buys her presents and does not let her bring them home or use them.”

Many coercively controlling men (especially if they have money) use children to battle for contact or day-to-day care in the family court.

Research shows that many of those men are able to put on a charming façade when outsiders observe their fathering. Adriana said, “The court system is quite steadfast on any access. The court believes any relationship with the father is better than no relationship — even if it hurts the child. Not necessarily physically because he hasn’t been physically violent. We had a couple of psychologist’s reports and the psychologist looked at the way he behaves towards her for an hour and made an assessment of that. The report showed nothing like the reality. It didn’t show things like the fact he calls her up and asks whether she’s slim or not. But again I had no control over that because he is her parent, he is a guardian so he has amazing power not only over her, but over me and it is given to him by the legal system and by the structure. There’s the hard bit because there’s no way as an individual that I can fight it. He’s got the right to make decisions for her, which obviously influences my life.”

Elizabeth said that, David “took out custody proceedings yet there was no way he could look after the kids” because as Elizabeth said, she had “looked after them all the time that we’d had them. They were little children.”

Using the children in this way to maintain control over Elizabeth was despairing for her. She said that David “had these people he called nannies, they were just girls that he had picked up wherever he picked them up that he called nannies. I remember one holiday I dropped the girls around there so that he could pay a teenager to look after them while I went out cleaning. The whole thing was just so back to front. I would say, ‘I’ll look after the kids. I’ll have the kids.’ ‘Oh no no.’ There was no way he was going to let that happen. We went to mediation, we went through the whole legal process, and to mediation for custody of the kids, and the kids had lawyers and the kids had psychological reports and that whole business — which was very hair raising. And he has this wonderfully charming persona, he is very proper and very charming and of course he’s got his professional life and his lovely home and here I am scraping to stay alive.”

Many men who abuse their partners, show a lack of responsibility as fathers.

These fathers lack interest and involvement and do not fulfill the huge range of parenting tasks required. Instead, the mother often has to take up the slack and do all the things for the children that the father neglects to do, such as organising school camp, all the equipment and logistical arrangements that go along with that, organising school uniforms, medical appointments, ensuring medication is administered on schedule, ensuring children have a balanced healthy diet, and so forth. Many men who control their partners just want the public kudos of being a father, but not all the hard work that committed healthy parenting requires.

Elizabeth said, “When I left, I stayed at my girlfriend’s. The children were living in the house where he was living. I used to come in at seven o’clock in the morning to seven at night to look after them, as we had four children at that stage and the youngest was three. He used to leave me lists of things to do, I had to do this and I had to do that. If I went to the supermarket to buy food he wanted to see the receipt to make sure that I hadn’t bought anything for myself. I couldn’t get onto a benefit because even though I was looking after the kids 12 hours a day, because they were sleeping at his house, I couldn’t claim a benefit, because technically they were in his care. Not that I was really into looking at benefits at that stage, because I never saw myself as someone who should be going on a benefit. I couldn’t claim child support because again they were in his custody, that is where they spent the night is the thing that counts.”

Children are impacted in a variety of ways when their father uses them as a tool to control their mother.

How children are impacted depends on their age, the kind of control and manipulation they experience, the strength of bond they have with their father, mother and siblings and the degree to which their father undermines those bonds. Children’s needs for psychological and physical safety may be diminished, their ability to focus and enjoy school may be impeded and some children may develop physical illnesses. Children may try to stop the abuse, while others may feel powerless to change anything. Some children become confused, anxious or depressed. Yet other children may be very resilient — especially if they have good stable supports and they are able to talk to trusted family, friends or people in the wider community about what they are experiencing.

Watch out for blogs on the following control tactics:

One-Sided power games
Mind games
Inappropriate restrictions
Isolation
Over-protection & ‘caring’
Emotional unkindness & violation of trust
Degradation & Suppression of Potential
Separation Abuse
Using social institutions & social prejudices
Denial, Minimising, Blaming
Economic abuse
Sexual abuse
Symbolic aggression
Domestic slavery
Physical violence

References:

  1. Humphreys C. Domestic violence and child protection: Challenging directions for practice. Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse: Issues Paper 13. 2007.
    http://www.austdvclearinghouse.unsw.edu.au/documents/IssuesPaper_13.pdf.
  2. Baker LL, Cunningham AJ. Helping children thrive: Supporting woman abuse survivors as mothers. London, ON, Canada: Centre for Children & Families in the Justice System, London Family Court Clinic, Inc., 2004.
    http://www.lfcc.on.ca/HCT_SWASM.pdf.

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Tactic #10 — Denial, Minimising, Blaming

by Clare Murphy PhD on February 28 2013

This is the tenth of 16 blogs discussing the patterns of tactics from my power and control wheel — Denial, Minimising, Blaming.

Power & control wheel #10 Clare Murphy PhD

We are all responsible for the choices we make in life. We’re personally responsible for our own thoughts, beliefs, assumptions and interpretations of situations. Our thoughts lead to our feelings and in turn our thoughts and feelings influence our behaviours. When we’re in a “healthy” relationship and one of us causes harm to the other, the one who causes harm will acknowledge and own what they did — take responsibility for it — and take steps to never do that again, to change their behaviours with the aim of developing greater levels of love, care, empathy and respect for the other person. They do what it takes to try to hear, understand and empathise with the other, and in turn express themselves in helpful ways to help the other person understand them. Self-Responsibility requires giving up blaming others.

However, in a relationship where one person is motivated to be right and get their way at all costs, and to maintain power and control over the other, they relinquish personal responsibility for their harmful words and actions — they deny they’ve done wrong, they minimise their abusive and controlling behaviours — they blame the target of their abuse.

Men who use coercive control against their female partner deny their behaviours outright. Or he’ll admit to causing harm but minimise it saying the abuse was not that bad, or he’ll tell her their relationship is the best she can hope for. Men who use coercive control use rationality and reasoning, by for example reminding her of times he was right and she was wrong. When she gives him feedback about his behaviours he’ll divert attention away from himself and pick her personality apart. He’ll blame his abuse on his stress, drugs, alcohol, or anything or anyone outside of himself. He’ll blame her for his behaviours by twisting things around so that it appears she is responsible. And if she wants to escape the clutches of his incessant control tactics, he’ll use intimidation and threats by doing things like warning her that if she leaves, he’ll commit suicide and that she’ll be responsible.

Denying, minimising and blaming all lead to obstructing change. . . . . No matter what the victimised person says or does in an attempt to resolve the controlling person’s behaviours and attitudes, the controlling person prevents the development of a healthy relationship.

Here are some experiences that women have when living with a male partner who denies, minimises, and blames….

Denial

Denial entails acting as if he has not been abusive, not been controlling, not caused any harm. Therefore he believes there is nothing to be responsible and accountable for.

Elsie said her husband Leon “was a real control freak, but he never acknowledged it to himself. He would quite often say to people how nice he was. I don’t think he ever knew what he was ever like. I’d say nothing (laughter). He was so nasty if you crossed him, it just wasn’t worth it.”

It is common for some men to use counselling as an arena to continue denying their controlling behaviours and to try to get the counsellor to take his side.

For example, Elizabeth said her husband David “thought counselling was about telling me that I was wrong, so he came along to agree with the counsellor that I was wrong. Even in later years when I went to counselling over the whole sexual abuse thing and so on it was always about, ‘there was something wrong with me’. There was never any acknowledgement that anything he might be doing could be contributing to what was happening in our relationship.”

Minimising

Minimising entails acknowledging he may have done something harmful, but he refuses to take responsibility for the level of abusive behaviour and the level of harm caused — saying things like, “It wasn’t that bad, get over it.”

Karen said she “would feel guilty and self‑indulgent for arguing because he’d say, ‘What are you making all this fuss about? Settle down, calm down, live your life peacefully.’ So I started making these decisions to close myself down. You do begin to doubt how right you are if you’re just living this life in one continual power struggle and everything’s being constantly bitched over, everything. Everything (sigh of exhaustion). You just get exasperated and exhausted and you don’t know which battles to pick and which one’s important.”

Victoria said her partner Graham would minimise his behaviours mainly by saying, “things aren’t that bad”. She said that it wasn’t an overt, “this is what I think and you’ll damn well think that way, but if you don’t agree with what I’m saying then I’m going to make you doubt yourself, so I will manipulate you to believe the way I believe, but I won’t overtly tell you that you have to believe that way, but I’ll just make sure you feel so unsure about what you believe that you’ll take on what I believe anyway.”

As a response to Graham’s subtle ways of minimising his controlling behaviours and their effects, Victoria “started to believe that he was right and that maybe I really did misinterpret a lot of things, that I really wasn’t made for this marriage thing and that was my fault, that I was too pushy, that I wanted to change him and that was a wrong thing to do, and that I should accept him for who he was, and that I wasn’t a very nice person for doing that, and I must stop that immediately, and that that’s another bad aspect of my personality that must be fixed.”

When Victoria had an emotional response to something, Graham would say things to minimise what he’d done and to shut down the conversation and therefore obstruct change. He would tell her she was, “overreacting…. misinterpreting and … you just don’t understand… everything’s such a bloody big deal to you, just get over it… what are you on about, for God’s sake do we have to go through this again?”

Over time Victoria “learnt not to trust my own judgements. I always thought if I was upset about something, I was overreacting. There wasn’t a degree of upset before I decided that I was overreacting, any minute hint of being upset I was overreacting. Get over it and move on and accept that there is nothing you can do about it. So just put up and shut up. Get on with it.”

Because Susan’s husband Anthony would deny, minimise and blame, and therefore close all doors to the possibility of resolving issues and developing a healthy relationship, Susan said, “I was the only person who ever said sorry. He’d be late home from the pub and I’d say, ‘I’m sorry, but I really missed you, that’s why I’m really angry that you’re not here.’ Whereas he’d say, ‘It’s only the pub, what’s your problem?’ I suppose that’s when it becomes my fault and I fully believed it was my fault for being so impatient, for being so controlling over his space.”

Rationalisation

Similar to minimising, people who use power and control to get their way will use reasoning and rationalisation. They’ll rationalise by saying things like, “I only did it one time” yet in actual fact they use controlling tactics daily, weekly … in an ongoing way over a long period of time. They rationalise by saying that one behaviour they did a moment ago was a one-off – and therefore minimise the incessant ongoing pattern of control across time.

Teresa said “It’s very clever because there’s a logic to what they say. At the time there isn’t an argument against it, it makes sense, it’s not till you go away afterwards and think about it and think ‘no that’s not right’.”

The controlling partner will rationalise by reminding her of all the times she did something wrong and he did something right. He’ll also compare his behaviours with other men’s saying that his were nowhere near as bad and that she has it good with him. Such comparisons especially happen when the man never uses physical violence. There is so little mention of coercive control in the news media — which means the victim has very little back-up from society to support her interpretation of his behaviours.

Justification

When a controlling person justifies their behaviours, they usually turn the attention onto the victim — saying that they would not have behaved that way if she had done what he expected of her, such as keep the children quiet, have the dinner on the table on time, not challenge a decision he made.

As Donna said, “Everything in Frank’s world was…he was justifiably right in everything.”

Blaming

Blaming entails admitting that he has used abusive, controlling behaviours, admitting she may feel harmed, BUT he takes absolutely no ownership or responsibility for his actions and their effects.

It’s common for men who use controlling behaviours to say to their partner “it’s all your fault you’ve done this.”

Elsie said Leon would “blame my dog for things and it obviously wasn’t. I remember his dog one day (laughter) had shat on the floor in the lounge, he’d been shut in or something. I was really cross about it and he blamed me for that. If he blamed me I would just agree and say I was sorry. I suppose I did that quite a bit and accept it was my fault just for peace, but internally I didn’t believe it.”

Being continually blamed for someone else’s behaviour can be crazymaking. However when I question deeply, the women who come to me for counselling, they will have been like Elsie — that is, even though many women start to outwardly behave as if they are “letting the abuse happen” or as if “they are putting up with his controlling behaviours” . . . .  In reality, somewhere deep inside them they will have quietly held onto their own voice as they learned it was not beneficial to continue to push for him to take personal-responsibility. 

The effect of being constantly blamed for her husband David’s behaviours would lead Elizabeth to “bend over backwards. I would say to him well, ‘How do you want me to be?’ I wanted him to tell me what I needed to do to be okay, to be the wife he wanted, to be the person he wanted.”

Teresa said her partner Patrick “blamed me for lots of things. The drinking was the thing he blamed me for most. He was a secret drinker. When I would confront him about being drunk or about drinking, it would be my fault because I’d upset him by telling somebody something, or I’d spent too much time with my friends, so what was he supposed to do. That sort of thing felt like a consequence of breaking the rules.”

Teresa said Patrick “tried to make me drink and said that the reason he drank was my fault because I had such an odd puritanical attitude about alcohol which is totally untrue. That he had to hide it from me because it would upset me and that if I would sit down and have 12 beers a night with him, then it would be fine.”

As many women do in response to incessantly being blamed, they do as Teresa did: “I apologised, said I wouldn’t do it again.”

Teresa said Patrick “blamed me for his marriage breaking up as well. The blaming me for the drinking is a thing I recall most vividly, because in retrospect it’s so absolutely bizarre (laughter). How could it be my fault that he got pissed every night and hid the cans under the floor and in the ceiling and in the filing cabinet, it’s not my fault. But I really thought it was, that I had some serious problem with alcohol that I couldn’t see that this was normal behaviour (laughter).

Women usually seek to engage their partner in conversation seeking to understand why he abuses and controls them. During such conversations with Patrick, Teresa said he’d respond by saying, “Because I made him. Every behaviour of his I didn’t like, he did because I made him, because of my attitudes and my behaviour. He was doing it in response to me and a lot of the time he was doing it so he didn’t upset me, like hiding his drinking. It was my fault that I was upset about it because if I hadn’t snooped I would never have found out about it so what could I expect?”

Sally said throughout her seven year marriage to Dylan, she would never back down from trying to get him to take responsibility for his behaviours, but, “He never ever would work out any problems that we had. He always blamed me every single time, without fail. He would just never take responsibility for any of his actions.  I left him because he just would not meet me half way.” She said he blamed her all the time and like many women who are consistently made to feel responsible for their partner’s behaviours, she ended up believing it was true, so she “always tried hard to fix myself and I think that is why, in the end, I went on Prozac because I was exhausted from trying to fix myself when I actually wasn’t the problem.”

Raewyn said it might only be little things, but that Brian would often “blame me (laugh). If something went missing he would blame me, whereas really it had been him who put the thing somewhere, whatever it is, a book, or some tool, or whatever.”

Donna said her husband “wouldn’t acknowledge that there was anything wrong. To this day Frank will tell you that our whole marriage break up was my fault.”

Victoria said Graham would blame her for “everything! His actions, problems in the marriage. Everything was my fault. Everything, absolutely everything. Our first real fight once we got married, we’d been married about 20 minutes, and we got to the reception and his family threw rice at us sitting in the back of the car and it went down his shirt — That was my fault. So he stormed off and wouldn’t talk to me, and my sister’s husband had to go and get him into the reception. And then we went into the room after we got married that night he wanted to watch a video. We didn’t have the video cord adaptor thing, so I rung down to reception and asked them about it and they’re like, ‘aren’t you the newly weds?’ and I’m like, ‘don’t even go there’. They said, ‘we didn’t think you’d need the adaptor so we lent it to another room’. So that was my fault somehow, I should have been aware of the adaptor problem.”

Karen said her husband Felix “had this new age philosophy that we all construct our own lives, our own existence and he would say, ‘if you have got this problem Karen, then this is entirely your fault and your decision, and you are the only one who can do anything about it, it’s got nothing to do with me. You own your situation, it is yours not mine.’ Which is fine to an extent, I’m ok with this. But I do believe that we need to take responsibility for the way that we behave with each other and how our actions impose on other people. He’s got this philosophy if you’re sitting down watching tele at night on the couch and a piece of fuselage falls off a plane falls through your ceiling and kills you, then you obviously created that, you asked for it, it’s your fault. Everything he did was my creation.”

In response to Felix avoiding taking responsibility for his controlling behaviours, and twisting the concept of personal-responsibility around as a way of blaming Karen for his abusive and controlling behaviours, Karen “argued with it. I hated it. I still hate it. But I resisted it, I argued about it every time, and I’d say, ‘well how come it’s that way that everything in your life is my fault?’”

Denial, minimising and blaming are destructive tactics of power and control

The perpetrator’s belief that he has to be right — at all costs — every time . . . . . leads to a downward spiral over months and years, as the victim of control becomes more and more debilitated.

Ironically, as the victim loses her confidence, self-esteem, and dignity, many men end up not liking the result! That is, not liking the person she has become. And because the perpetrator of coercive control denies, minimises and blames throughout the course of the relationship — he is oblivious to the fact he is the one who — by using one control tactic at a time, over years, chipped away at her — as if chipping away at a slab of marble slowly shaping her into a shadow of her former self.

When a man constantly denies, minimises, rationalises, justifies and blames — over time — and seldom, if ever, takes personal responsibility — and does not show he is holding himself to account by actually changing his behaviours — then these control tactics are the hallmark of a relationship that will never ever become the loving, caring, healthy relationship the woman is hoping for.

Watch out for blogs on the following control tactics:

One-Sided power games
Mind games
Inappropriate restrictions
Isolation
Over-protection & ‘caring’
Emotional unkindness & violation of trust
Degradation & Suppression of Potential
Separation Abuse
Using social institutions & social prejudices
Using the children
Economic abuse
Sexual abuse
Symbolic aggression
Domestic slavery
Physical violence

References:

  • Anderson, Kristin L., & Umberson, Debra. (2001). Gendering violence: Masculinity and power in men’s accounts of domestic violence. Gender & Society, 15, 358-380.
  • Cavanagh, Kate, Dobash, R. Emerson, Dobash, Russell P., & Lewis, Ruth. (2001). ‘Remedial work’: Men’s strategic responses to their violence against intimate female partners. Sociology, 35(3), 695-714.
  • Coleman, Karen H. (1980). Conjugal violence: What 33 men report. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 6, 207-213.
  • Eisikovits, Zvi C., & Buchbinder, Eli. (1997). Talking violent: A phenomenological study of metaphors battering men use. Violence Against Women, 3, 482-498.
  • Goodrum, Sarah, Umberson, Debra, & Anderson, Kristin L. (2001). The batterer’s view of the self and others in domestic violence. Sociological Inquiry, 71, 221-240.
  • Hearn, Jeff. (1998). The Violences of Men: How Men Talk About and How Agencies Respond to Men’s Violence to Women. London: Sage
  • Mullaney, Jamie L. (2007). Telling it like a man. Men and Masculinities, 10, 222-247.
  • Stamp, Glen H., & Sabourin, Teresa Chandler. (1995). Accounting for violence: An analysis of male spousal abuse narratives. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 23, 288-302.
  • Wood, Julia T. (2004). Monsters and victims: Male felons’ accounts of intimate partner violence. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 21, 555-576.

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Tactic #9 — Using Social Institutions & Social Prejudices

by Clare Murphy PhD on February 15 2013

This is the ninth of 16 blogs discussing the patterns of tactics from my power and control wheel – Using Social Institutions & Social Prejudices.

Power & control wheel #9 Clare Murphy PhD

Many perpetrators of psychological abuse use social, health, legal and other institutions such as child protection services as arenas to further their coercive control over their intimate partner.

They use the legal system endlessly to stop their partners from leaving, or to stop them from moving town or country, they do dodgy things to implicate their partner so she will get a criminal record, and perpetrators with financial resources engage women in drawn-out, frequent court battles over property, or over day-to-day care and contact with children. They also use loopholes in the government agency system to avoid paying child support and many use religious ideologies as a tool to keep women and children in line.

Perpetrators who use coercive control also use male privilege and entitlement believing that they “own” their partner, that she must obey and serve them. The good news is that some perpetrators seek help to stop abusing their partner by attending stopping violence programmes. The bad news is that many men then use that programme to further control women. I’ll explain what is meant by all of this below.

Of all the women I interviewed for my Masters research, Adriana had experienced the least amount of psychological abuse. However, it was a different matter after she divorced her husband — he threatened to kill her and began to use social institutions as a vehicle to establish power and control over her. Adriana said, “I think what pisses him off is that I was always in control of my life. The only thing he can get at me with is through our daughter, using the system he can control me.”

How is it possible for perpetrators of psychological abuse to use social institutions to further their coercive control when there may actually be good quality legislations and dedicated well-trained professionals who work hard to protect victims of abuse? Well — there are flaws in the systems — which means some policies, legislations and professional practices can lead to colluding with perpetrators by not holding them accountable for their actions, and can lead to blaming the victims. One of the flaws in the system is a lack of staff training in the dynamics of coercive control in the context of intimate partner abuse. Women I interviewed for my Masters research and men I interviewed for my PhD research tell their stories below….

Using the Legal System to stop women from moving town or country

Adriana regretted moving from  the UK to New Zealand with her partner Steven. His controlling behaviours increased when they arrived back into his home territory. After their separation Steven became abusive in the extreme — he threatened to kill her. For hers, and her daughter’s safety, Adriana wanted to take her daughter back to the UK. However, she could not leave “because he doesn’t want our daughter to leave the country, therefore I can’t leave with her. I wouldn’t leave without her, so I have to be here. I’m quite happy and settled here and doing what I’m doing, but my freedom is totally cut down. I don’t have the freedom to even move towns because he would prevent me. I would have to go to court. It would probably take a year before I could move. He wouldn’t allow me to. It’s the court who would possibly allow me to.”

Heather became pregnant when she was in the process of applying for university. She knew she wanted to leave Luke and pursue an education, so was going to have an abortion. But Luke had High Court papers served on her and the hospital to prevent the abortion. This institutional response fueled Luke’s fire, which enabled him to become even more controlling. Heather wanted to take out a protection order, so that if he breached it, the police would have rights to intervene and arrest him. However, the lawyer insisted she take out an “undertaking” instead. This is one way that the legal system fails to protect victims of intimate partner abuse. An “undertaking” is only a promise — it does not give the police legal rights to arrest a perpetrator of abuse when he breaches his undertaking. The legal system enabled Luke to breach the undertaking. He did this by approaching Heather in the street and also when she dropped her son off at the agency who provided supervised contact. Each time Luke approached Heather he begged her for more contact with their son, he cried and swore at her. Heather had been wanting to move towns with her son to pursue a new life away from the abuse, but Luke used the legal system to prevent her from doing so.

Using the Legal System to fight for custody of children, with the underlying aim of maintaining power and control over the children’s mother

Elizabeth and David attended a mediation conference where an arrangement was made for Elizabeth to have the children three or four days a week and David would have them for the other three or four days. Such shared care is very disruptive and destabilising for children. Elizabeth said no-one was enjoying it. So Elizabeth “tried to talk to David about ‘What can we do about this? Can we try this, can we try that?’ He wasn’t interested. In the end the kids were really unhappy and she just said, ‘I am just not going to do this any more’ and of course it forced all the legal eagles to get together and deal with it.” David was a wealthy professional so had the financial resources to use the legal system to continue to coercively control his ex-wife.

Elizabeth said, “The judge made the decision which was a much more viable arrangement, which David was really angry about. He still wanted to go to court for custody and of course I am on legal aid. I’ve paid altogether over $25,000 on legal fees, $13,000 I still owe. We worked our guts out to try and get some negotiation before we went to court about custody. He would not respond, he would not negotiate. As far as he was concerned he was going to get what he wanted and he was really pissed off when he didn’t. He said, ‘I paid all this money to get what I wanted and I still haven’t got it.’ He was really angry about that. But I think part of him continuing to push for doing everything legally was because it would cost me a lot of money — money that I don’t have.”

Coercive tactics that lead to the victim getting a criminal record

Elizabeth said David took “up this trespass order when the property settlement came through. A few weeks later I was caught up with my car, and I was going to be late, and he was going to be picking the kids up from my place. I tried to get him at work and tried to get him at home quickly but couldn’t get hold of him. So I rang my neighbour to say, ‘If he turns up can you let him know that I will drop the kids at his place.’ I did what I could to get the message to him. He was absolutely furious. So I dropped my kids there and then rang up a bit later to say, ‘I am really sorry about what happened I tried to get hold of you.’ He hung up on me. At that stage I was really angry, because I thought it was important that he and I have some communication because of the children, so I went around to apologise and say, ‘We need to sort something out here, like there are going to be times when one or either of us is not going to be able to meet a time. What are we going to do in that situation? This isn’t going to work.’ But, he called the cops, had me arrested for trespassing. The kids see the cops take me out of what was our home, off in a police car. Anyway I explained the situation to the cops. They said, ‘Don’t worry about it, we’ll go and get your car, we’ll have a word with the guy, I’m sure he doesn’t really want to press charges.’ They came back — ‘Yes he does want to press charges. Don’t worry about it we’ll get diversion, first offence.’ But for diversion the complainant has to agree. He wouldn’t agree to me having a diversion coz he wanted me to have a criminal record. I had about three court appearances, and my lawyer eventually got it to the point where, I think he knew David years ago, and he rang off the record and said, ‘Hey listen mate I wouldn’t do this if I were you.’ Eventually got him to change his mind and I got diversion. But he was prepared to take it to the absolute limit.”

Anthony engaged in tactics that wrongfully led Susan to be investigated and prosecuted for fraud. After Susan separated from Anthony she did not have a car so he would take her to get the groceries. Her overlocker was not working so Anthony took it into town. Susan said that when he came home he said, “It’s not worth fixing, but they’ll give you so much for a trade-in if you want to buy a new one”. So Susan agreed. Susan told me: “This is how naïve and trusting I was. He brought me home a new overlocker. It was in his name. He put me down as being his spouse. He put my address as being his address. When he got his cell phone he did the same thing. He put me down as being his spouse.”

Unfortunately for Susan the government department that provides financial support to single parents contacted her saying, “’You know you’ve been living with Anthony while you’ve been on the single parent benefit.’ She said they had all this evidence that said I was with him because he’d put me down as being his spouse. I said ‘I wasn’t with him’, but they said, ‘He used to take you to town. You used to drive his car’. I said ‘Yeah, but that doesn’t mean that we’re together.’ Anyway, I didn’t know the overlocker was in his name until the last time we split up and I got done for fraud. I said we weren’t a couple. Anthony was telling everybody that we were a couple. That really hurts. I thought I’d got out from him, but he’s still doing these things to make it look good. I hated him. I hated the things he’d done to us, to the low level that he’d brought us down to.”

Using the Government Agency that provides financial benefits to single parents

After she was divorced, Elizabeth spent some time on the single parent benefit whilst caring for her children. During that time she was having a casual relationship with a man. When parenting of children is shared, it is inevitable that children chat to the other parent about what happens at the other house. However, many perpetrators of coercive control use children to find out information that they then use as ammunition to continue controlling their ex-partner. Elizabeth said one time when her son came to her place to stay he asked her, “How many nights a week does Stewart stay mum?” Elizabeth said, “Next thing there’s an investigation by the fraud squad of [the government agency that provides the benefit].” The fraud squad asked, “We believe you have a partner now, what’s his name, when does he stay here, is it a relationship?” Elizabeth was angry, saying this government agency “would rather that you were f***ing a different guy every night than seeing one person who was giving you a bit of moral support or having sex once every three months.”

Elizabeth said David’s accusations to the department that provided the benefit meant that “To stay on the single parent benefit was a challenge, it’s happened twice. In fact the first time was when I was doing some odd jobs from time to time, helping a friend with her business. Anyway the next thing I’ve got the fraud investigation people. Pretty much all of the work that I was doing I was declaring, and the next thing I’ve got them on my case, ‘Did you do work at this place, did you sell this, do that, dah, dah dah dah dah?’ If I did cleaning jobs the kids used to come with me. They told David and David collated all the information that the kids got and gave to him and sent it to the government agency.”

Using the Government Agency that manages child support payments by separated parents

After couples separate, perpetrators of coercive control often find loopholes in the system and use that gap to pay minimal money towards supporting their children, or they may pay nothing at all. Men I interviewed for my PhD said not all men have a problem with paying child support, but some men do. Some controlling intimate partners do not have the best interests of the children at heart. As James said, many men believe “they’re controlled by a government agency over the kids that maybe they feel they own themselves… It’s a loss of control thing, their own personal property.” Lazarus knew the loopholes in the system. He said, “as soon as they start taking money out of my wages, I quit and change jobs … probably every eight months.” This, meant the system’s policy did not oblige him to pay for a period of time. Children involved in such a climate of control are negatively impacted in various ways, for example, not being able to afford to attend school camps and so miss out on healthy social bonding, physical challenges and may develop anxiety, depression or delinquent behaviour problems.

Some perpetrators of coercive control threaten their ex-partners by telling her that if she pursues child support payments from him, he will use the legal system to push for shared custody of the children which would then mean he would not be obliged to pay child support. This is frightening for women victims of coercive control because most women will do what ever it takes to keep their children safe. In their book, The Batterer as Parent: Addressing the Impact of Domestic Violence on Family Dynamics (SAGE Series on Violence against Women) Lundy Bancroft and Jay Silverman draw from their clinical work with men that shows many perpetrators of intimate partner abuse do not engage in healthy fathering practices and many push for custody or contact with children partly as a tactic of maintaining control over the woman, not because they want to develop a warm relationship with their children.

Using Child Protection Services to coercively threaten the children’s mother

Susan said that, “One time Anthony rang and said that a child protection social worker rang and wanted him to go in. When he came back he said someone’s reported that our daughter’s been sexually molested. He said, ‘It’s your father.’ I found that really odd that they didn’t contact me, that he had to just go in without having a set appointment time and that he could take our son with him. Anyway I said, ‘So you don’t want dad looking after our daughter?’ He said, ‘No that’s alright, but they’re going to contact the kindy’. I was absolutely distraught because my dad has a lot to do with my kids. I fully believed Anthony knew what he was bloody saying. I went to the kindy and asked if they’d been contacted by the child protection service social workers. They said, ‘No’ and would let me know if they were. When I did talk to the social worker she said, ‘We had an anonymous person whose given the names and ages of the children.’ The ages weren’t right. She said it was a man. She said, ‘We don’t follow up on these ones they’re very low priority’. It pretty much was Anthony that was doing this, because if there’s an investigation saying that my father’s molesting our daughter, then what happens, the kids get taken away. Of course he fully denies that he’d done it.”

Luckily, in Susan’s case, the child protection services did not remove Susan’s daughter. However, many perpetrators of coercive control threaten their partners saying they will inform child protection services that they are an unfit parent. Unfortunately sometimes the child protection system colludes with perpetrators and engages in mother blaming, partly because of a lack of staff training and understanding of the dynamics of coercive control.

Using Religion to establish and maintain power and control

Some men use religious ideologies to justify controlling their partners, by for example telling her she has to obey him because the Bible says so. They may use religion to stop their partner from leaving by saying that God does not allow divorce. Eva Lundgren (1995) interviewed fundamentalist Christian couples in Scandinavia. One man believed that keeping his wife in line was very important because it meant keeping the “pattern of nature” and meant he was following God’s plan. Part of the men’s aim for using the Bible as a guide was to enforce rigid gender roles for women, so that the more feminine they perceived their partners to be the more masculine this made them feel — a feeling which makes some men feel more strong, secure and superior.

Using Social Prejudices as weapons to degrade and control women

Some perpetrators of psychological abuse use social prejudices to reinforce their power. They may do this by drawing on a range of social hierarchies. Social hierarchies only exist because people decide who is superior and who is inferior. Here’s what I mean….

He may draw on the gender hierarchy that men are more superior than women and tell their partner she deserves abuse because she’s ‘just’ a woman.

He may draw on the race hierarchy that ranks white people as ‘better than’ and tell her she’s ‘just’ a Mäori, or ‘just’ a Black woman, or ‘just’ an Indian/Aborigine/Hispanic, and so forth.

He may draw on the hierarchy that classifies some age groups as having more rights and privileges, saying she’s ‘just’ a kid.

He can find many social messages that place him at the top of any hierarchy related to work and finances.  He may be a breadwinner, earn more money than his partner, have wealth in his extended family, work as a lawyer, etc. — such positions are accompanied with kudos, status, respect and a sense of entitlement. She may engage in activities classified low on the hierarchy such as be a ‘stay at home mum’, do volunteer work, or work in paid employment as a cleaner — such positions tend to afford less respect and can be viewed as inferior…. In these circumstances, some men use their socially superior position to degrade, use and control their partners. They may do this by saying to their partners: “you don’t have any right to make decisions because you don’t have a ‘real’ job”, “you’re ‘only’ a mother”, “you have no money so you’ll get nowhere without me”. Then if a woman is dependent on her partner financially and she leaves him, he may further abuse her by engaging her in repeated and lengthy child custody and property battles, or may refuse to assist her and the children financially. Such unjust degradation can make women vulnerable to ongoing coercive control partly because what their partner tells them makes commonsense, because so many people have not learned to critique socially constructed concepts such as social hierarchies. The idea of equality between spouses flies out the window.

Other social prejudices perpetrators draw from include hierarchies relating to physical and psychological abilities — they may say to a disabled wife: “you will never amount to anything, you can’t even walk out the door”. Or they may use body image as a source of degradation by calling their partner “a fat slob”, and they may call a partner who does not have high level of education “a dumb bitch”. As Victoria points out below, all of these comments reinforce messages that surround all of us all the time.

Whenever Graham made snide remarks about Victoria’s size, he’d trivialise the negative impact on Victoria by saying, “Oh but it’s only a term of endearment”. Victoria said “I knew I was big, so it destroyed me a little bit more”. To cope with the abuse Victoria said, “I didn’t try to change my size because my weight is about safety. If I am overweight, I am fat, if I’m fat I’m ugly, if I’m ugly I’m safe, so I eat to keep safe. If you stop eating, you lose weight, people say ‘oh you’re looking good’, then you get abused. I ate because I was hurting. To get over the pain I eat.”

Some women learn that if they challenged their husband’s controlling behaviours, this would cause him to find more and more ways to maintain control by degrading them.

Using Social Prejudices that stigmatise mental illness

In our society, being healthy and well is considered worthy of praise, while having a mental illness and taking medication such as antidepressants is often stigmatised. Some people use these unjust social ideas as weapons to abuse and control others — by attempting to sway how the victim perceives themselves. Perpetrators who are hell-bent on diminishing their partner’s wellbeing may attempt to convince her that she needs a psychiatrist, or threaten to have her hospitalised for a mental illness. During the course of her seven year relationship with Dylan, Sally became  depressed as a consequence of his incessant controlling behaviours. When she started taking antidepressants he said to her that her depression was the crux of their relationship problems. An effect of intimate partner coercive control can lead to the victim feeling as if they are going crazy — feeling as if they’re going insane or have indeed gone mad.

Using Women’s Immigrant Status as a weapon of power and control

Immigrants are vulnerable to abuse by their partner because they may not yet have a work permit, they may lack language skills in a foreign country, they may not know what services are available to them or how the systems work. Many women are sponsored into the country by their partner, which increases her dependence on him. There are various loopholes in the immigration systems that leave women who are victims of domestic violence very vulnerable and powerless.

Perpetrators use women’s immigration status as a weapon of control. They may constantly threaten to cancel their sponsorship of her, they may refuse to help her fill in the forms to get an extension to her work permit, some men threaten to have her deported and they use the legal system to get a court order preventing the removal of the children from the country. Thus children are left in the care of the abusing parent and grieve the loss of bond with the non-abusing parent who has been deported. Some perpetrators cancel their sponsorship, so that the woman’s application to reside in the country cannot go ahead. One Chinese woman, in a New Zealand study of women’s experience of Protection Orders, said her husband repeatedly told her, “I’ve been in this country for so long I know how things work. ‘I am telling you …’” Whenever she contradicted him he would yell: “You stupid Chinese. I’m going to call the immigration service right now and you’ll be out of here!” (Robertson and colleagues 2007:191) Some men will say to their partner ‘what do you know, you weren’t born here’, or ‘you can’t even speak English properly’. Such statements may not sound degrading to an outsider, but in the context of ongoing power and control they are statements that punch hard at immigrant women’s emotional wellbeing.

Using Male Privilege and Entitlement

Men I interviewed for my PhD talked about the kinds of privilege, entitlement and accompanying beliefs that drove their controlling behaviour towards their partners. These beliefs included the idea that men ‘own’ women, and that women are possessions who should serve and obey men. For example, Bill said:

“I can do what I want but you gotta do what I tell you to. That’s the way I’d see 90 percent of marriages, from a man’s point of view.”

Many couples have their money, house and car in both spouses’ names. Regardless of this, as Elizabeth and Sally said, their husbands used to repeatedly say the money, house and car belonged to them and not the woman.

Elsie said, “I was just something that he owned in every facet, whether it be sex or when friends are there, or if I was cooking, or doing some work, or whatever, it was nothing. Nothing I did was ever valued.”

When Pauline and Chris married, he chose the marriage vows — that led to Pauline promising to obey Chris. In line with the belief that women should obey men, Chris had sexist attitudes towards all women. Pauline said that when Miss World was on TV Chris would sit under the TV and look up. She said he had the attitude that all women are “tits and bums”.

Max said women should:

“Do as the man says. We can be very domineering. We want it our way. Our way or the highway, girl.… A lot of men do want to rule the roost, like, ‘I went to work, I paid for f***ing this, I’ve been working all week, get home to this shit’!”

Research with men who abuse women finds that those men justify their abuse by blaming women for failing to serve them as men. Geni, a man I interviewed said, “I would think the majority of men would think the wife is like the doting little servant, slave, there to do everything. But a lot of men come home from work in his suit and drops the briefcase and he expects the beer there and the meal on the table.”

Using Stopping Violence Programmes and Anger Management Programmes to further control women

Thankfully there are perpetrators of intimate partner abuse who seek help to change. Unfortunately though, research shows that many men use stopping abuse programmes and anger management programmes as yet another avenue to control their current or ex-partner. The ways men do this include telling her how lucky she is because his behaviours are “nothing” compared with other men’s, or by misinterpreting the training and twisting the definition of what constitutes coercive control by telling her that her behaviours are controlling, or by learning how to use a wider range of control tactics. Men who learn to take “time out” as an anger management strategy, can misuse this by not returning to resolve issues, or they may put the woman in charge of ensuring he takes time out. Many women get confused when their coercively controlling partner accuses them of being controlling. Yes everyone uses controlling behaviours in some form at some time — BUT…. There’s a big difference between destructive and constructive use of controlling behaviours. I write about this in the blog on Denial, Minimising, Blaming, and in my blog on the difference between “healthy” relationships and relationships where there’s “one-sided” power and control.

References:

Watch out for blogs on the following control tactics:

One-Sided power games
Mind games
Inappropriate restrictions
Isolation
Over-protection & ‘caring’
Emotional unkindness & violation of trust
Degradation & Suppression of Potential
Separation Abuse
Denial, Minimising, Blaming
Using the children
Economic abuse
Sexual abuse
Symbolic aggression
Domestic slavery
Physical violence

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Tactic #8 — Separation Abuse

by Clare Murphy PhD on July 30 2012

This is the eighth of 16 blogs discussing the patterns of tactics from my power and control wheel – Separation Abuse.

It’s commonly assumed women should just leave their abusive partner, that she’s stupid for staying, and that if she left him, all her problems would be over. But this is far from the reality for many women. Often when women decide to leave, their partner promises to change.

Controlling men are guided by a belief system – that women are possessions, the man is the boss, that women should serve men’s needs, that what he says goes and his sense of entitlement means he is the one who is right. Based on this belief system, men respond to women’s challenges for him to change, by denying wrongdoing, minimising harm done, and deflecting responsibility by blaming the woman. Therefore, the act of apologising is often used as a manipulative strategy to stop women from leaving. Some men block her ability to leave by holding her captive, whilst others emotionally blackmail their partner by threatening suicide saying “you either take me back or I’ll kill myself” (1).

Some men threaten to kill their partner, the children and her family. Women are most at risk of murder when they decide to leave or actually do leave. The main reason given by men who murder their wives is, not that she provoked him, but because they felt they had lost power and control over her (2). Such men believe they own their wife and children.

This blog describes what many men do to women after they leave. Women are more at risk of post-separation abuse if they have children to the controlling man. So it also describes some ways men use children to maintain control over women.

Post-separation abuse is not something that only begins at separation – it is part of an ongoing campaign of power and control.

Many men escalate their tactics post-separation by engaging in stalking campaigns. Sometimes men’s stalking behaviours look like acts of love from an outsider’s viewpoint. For example some men leave notes on her car windshield, perform favours, leave flowers and other gifts and make phone calls. BUT . . . when all of these actions are adamantly not wanted by the woman, and when favours are done without her permission, women feel violated, trapped and scared.

Other tactics include endless legal hearings aimed at diminishing her financial and emotional resources, using visits with the children as opportunities to harass the woman further. Using social institutions to emotionally blackmail women. This tactic is achieved by threatening to go for custody of the children, or by negotiating for custody and property by creating a climate of fear. It’s also achieved by falsely accusing women of fraudulently receiving single parent government benefits, or of neglecting the children and reporting them to statutory agencies for investigation.

When women experience psychological abuse and continually feel controlled, but never experience physical violence, most find their experience extremely difficult to label. Elizabeth said, “When I was in the relationship I never would have labelled it as abuse, I just thought that was the way it was.” So she, like many women, was shocked and petrified when her ex-partner began stalking. Usually, women expect as Adriana did that “after divorce things settle, or we don’t have to deal with each other.” But she said, “It’s not like that at all for me.”

Post-separation abuse tactics designed to get her back

The abuse Karen experienced throughout her relationship with Felix diminished when she first left. However, she said, “that was a deliberate attempt to get me back. Once that wasn’t working, it got very nasty. He can be Prince Charming with all the bells on and a very caring, supportive person and then he lost it completely and started smashing up cars on the motorway with his bullbars and it got very dangerous. Then I came home one day and the house was smashed up. But me leaving initially, everything toned down, and about a year after it got really bad.”

Men who wish to win back control, try a range of tactics to achieve this

Adriana said Steven “goes against my needs and wishes. Everything’s about getting what he wants. Very overtly – ‘This is what I want, this is what I want, that way or no way’. And what he wants keeps changing mainly to go against what the norm is, what we agreed, or what the court told us we were going to do.” Steven’s abuse escalated over time with “Phone calls getting worse and worse. Affidavits got crazier and crazier. His abuse went from me and then it went to friends and family. The circle of who he abused got bigger and bigger.”

Harasses her

Susan said that after she and Anthony split up, “He really did harass. He used to ring and ring and ring. In the end I’d take the phone off the hook coz I was so sick of it. Then he’d come knocking on the door.”

Uses the legal system to maintain control

Donna said, “There’s been many court hearings. We’d got to court and the judge would rule, ‘right the property has to be sold’. And then Frank would do the, ‘Give me three months and I’ll pay you’. So my lawyer goes, ‘Well you want your money so give him three months.’ Then I’d get a letter two weeks later saying ‘go to hell, you’re getting nothing, go away’. But then I’d have to wait for another year for a court date to come up.”

Threatens to kill her

Adriana said her husband Steven “threatened to kill me. The moment that happened I called the police, I called the lawyers. I was concerned that he would try. It’s been ongoing court battles concerning access and custody. He believed that he was having access that weekend and I already told him prior to this conversation on the telephone that it wasn’t his weekend. He left a message on my answerphone saying that he was going to come and pick our daughter up. I called him back because I didn’t want him to make a fool of himself and travel and get stupid again. So I gave him a call and said, ‘No, it’s not your weekend’. Then he just threatened to get me killed. It was really bizarre. It was shit. It wasn’t good.”

Susan said her lawyer who did the protection order for her said, “‘it takes seven years to get out of a relationship’ and it was seven years of trying backwards and forwards. That really surprised me because you think get out of a relationship and it’s over, but it’s definitely not over when you’ve got children.”

Anne McMurray interviewed men and women about the experience of separating parents who did not gain custody of their children. One of the men described a common motivator that drives some men to abuse and control their female partner after she leaves: “You spend a year ‘score levelling,’ having conquests, not relationships. You inwardly cheer when an estranged wife is shot – like a victory – a chalk that one up.” (3)

Elizabeth said David’s responses to her leaving were, ‘anger, anger, anger lots of anger, lots of put downs, lots of undermining. He used to threaten me about having affairs, ‘If you try anything like that I’d give you the lead treatment.’ I wasn’t scared he’d shoot me but I was scared he could hurt me. He didn’t have a gun.”

Elsie said that, “Every duck shooting I get scared. Leon shoots where I live, so I always get scared that I’ll bump into him, so I usually hide for the duck shooting months. When I left him he said he’d get me. At the same time I don’t think he would. I think he’s too much of a coward.”

Misuses the custody order

Elizabeth said that one of the things in her custody order was that David provide clothes for the children when they were at his place. She said that David, “decided he wasn’t going to do that anymore and they had to bring clothes from my place and they didn’t want to do that coz it means packing their bags and toing and froing. So one of the girls decided that she didn’t want to go to dad’s any more so she stayed at my place. The other one decided she still wanted to go to dad’s, but she didn’t want to take clothes. She went there one weekend, didn’t take clothes, he dumped her back. So neither of them went for a while. My oldest son is now living with me coz he got kicked out of his dad’s coz he started to speak up for himself just the way I did and of course they didn’t agree with each other so he got kicked out. It was meant to be punishment ‘go and live at your mother’s’. Now my son’s decided he is not going back there so there is a whole lot of drama going on there now. Now it’s, ‘you’ve got custody, I pay you to look after these children.’ It’s like, ‘We haven’t got a court order, if it doesn’t suit me I don’t have to have them.’ So the orders suit him when they suit him and they don’t when they don’t.”

Inflexible over child sharing arrangements

Elizabeth talked further about ways David used the custody order to maintain control over her. She said that his attitude had been to “always totally stick to the order, no flexibility. At one stage I had to go into hospital for a few days during the school holidays, and of course we split the holidays it was in the order. I suggested we just swap the weeks over so that while I was in the hospital the children were with him and that I would have them the following week. ‘No, no, no, no you need to make your own arrangements we’re sticking to the order.’ The order was God. Then one day he decides ‘oh no I don’t really want that any more’. The good thing about the inflexibility was at least he was incredibly reliable, I could count on him to stick to it.”

Uses the children to maintain power and control over her

After Susan and Anthony split up, Anthony “threatened to take the children away. He threatened to get custody of them. I guess he figured with that he’d have control over me with the children. He’s done that a few times. He rung up one day and said ‘I’ve put something in the letterbox for the kids’. I sent the oldest out to the letterbox. She brings in this something. I opened it up and it was a vibrator. I quickly wrapped it up again and put it in the rubbish. The thing that got me was that he used the kids to pass it on to me.”

Eight years after leaving her husband, Elizabeth said “there is still stuff going on with the kids. He was going to have the kids for the first week of the holidays. And Thursday night, ‘Oh no it’s not convenient.’ I’d arranged to have a holiday, then suddenly, ‘hello here are the kids to look after’. So it’s like he still does this stuff.”

Alienates the children from the mother

Elizabeth said, “When I finally got into a place of my own David wasn’t going to let me have the kids at all because I was the one that walked out. He would tell the kids, ‘Your mother doesn’t love you, why would she have left if she loved you, if she loved you she would still be here.’ Then the few things that I did take to put into my new place it was like, ‘Your mother stole those things from you.’ They’d come round and they would say, ‘What are you doing with that? You stole that from dad.’ He wouldn’t let me take any of their toys, their clothes, none of their bedding, nothing. I wasn’t allowed any of it. So they’d come around from this well setup house to my house I was renting, but they weren’t allowed any of their stuff. I had no money to buy them anything so they were there with paper and crayons.”

Some men attempt to alienate the children from the mother by making accusations to statutory agencies that she has harmed the children, so whilst investigations proceed she is only allowed to see the children under supervised access. Many men tell their new wives that their ex-wife was abusive, is an unfit mother and some men recruit their extended family and friends into siding with him. I’ve counselled many women who have had such experiences and when they talk to the man’s previous wife or wives, they discover all the women have experienced the same forms of abuse and control.

Uses the children as spies to gather information to use against her

Elizabeth had a new boyfriend, but did not live with him and she also had lazer surgery to her eyes. She was able to afford this because when she was still with David she had medical insurance, which she maintained after leaving him. But she said David said to the, “Is your mother a prostitute, how could she afford to get that done, is she sleeping with the guy?” Then David approached WINZ (the Work & Income government department who was paying her a single parent benefit). Elizabeth said, “WINZ then investigated me for trying to just jolly well get a few extra dollars here and there occasionally to try and keep the kids fed and clothed.”

Elizabeth lamented that David was “there on his $200,000 a year salary begrudgingly paying child support, but I wasn’t seeing anything of it because you don’t when you’re on the benefit. And hauling me over the coals, because of meeting some guy who is prepared to come and give me a bit of help with this and that and the other and possibly get into a relationship with. And sending my own kids into the house to spy, to find out how many nights a week he stays, so it can be reported back to WINZ.”

Elizabeth found David’s treatment of her, and mis-use of the children “Intolerable. I have just despaired about it. I’ve never wanted to say to the kids, ‘don’t tell daddy this or don’t tell daddy that’, because I believe the kids should be able to speak freely and that whatever information either of us get about the other, we just put into a place and disregard it. He wouldn’t let the kids talk about me when they were at his place. Don’t talk about her at all I don’t want to hear about her. So the kids would have to start censoring what they were allowed to talk about, or if things would happen over there, ‘Don’t tell your mother.’ So I never wanted to get into that with my kids, because I didn’t think it was right. But then I am like, ‘well what do I do here?’ because yes I am seeing this guy, but I don’t want to say to them don’t tell daddy. So it’s like your values are constantly being undermined and compromised. Here’s someone coming into the inner sanctum of your bedroom as to who you spend time with and how often you might be sleeping with somebody, having that reported across town and through government agencies. Something that is absolutely and totally private and none of their bloody business.”

Economic abuse

Teresa said Patrick abused her economically. He did this “by what he did with the house and by living in it for six or eight months without me and me still paying half his mortgage.”

After Donna moved away from Frank she said she had “the threat the whole time of, ‘If you make this happen I will make you bankrupt.’ But see I’ve told the truth and the whole truth and I truly believed the justice system would see me right but it hasn’t. He’s lied. Not once in his whole time has he ever had to prove anything he’s said. It’s just been accepted which blows my brains. And he’s said some horrific things about me.”

For Donna, the negative consequences of leaving Frank went on for years. For example, after Donna left the relationship, Frank went into debt. She said that, “Because he has now borrowed so much money and gone into so much debt, if I force the sale of the farm, by the time the debt’s paid there will be no money for me. Because the place is now a dump – and it was beautiful – now he’s telling the judge that it’s an absolute dump and the only thing left is for it to be bulldozed. I’ve had no access to any money where he has used my tax number in the business and now I owe the tax department $7,000. I owe the legal aid $7,500 and the Social Welfare $14,000, so yeah I come out of it not getting my money. The agreement was that he’ll pay me $10,000 and the legal fees, the legal aid will be tagged onto the property, but I still have to pay the tax department. So every direction you look I’ve lost. Lost, lost, lost, lost, lost.”

Elizabeth said, “there was an insurance policy that David had continued to pay that he decided was a mistake and he wanted me to pay back all this life insurance money. It took eighteen months to go through the whole legal process and ended up in the disputes tribunal and he didn’t get what he wanted. So, the very next day he is into the Inland Revenue Department with an administrative review for paying child support. It’s been this constant ‘what’s coming next, what’s he going to do this time?’”

During the first few months after leaving her husband, Elizabeth said David “was wanting to settle the matrimonial property, so I said, ‘what would it take to get you to stop this terrible violence that was going on’ – verbal, not physical. He said, ‘Just agree to my proposal, sign the matrimonial property agreement and everything will be fine.’ Of course I just really wanted to believe that, so I said, ‘Okay’. And my lawyer said, ‘Well I still think we should…’ I said, ‘Look he said this thing will end if I sign this I don’t care about the money, I am going to sign it.’ He stayed in the house, my boys were pretty much living there, and I was out of the house. I had this access thing where I could go and see the boys after school. He broke his promise. The day the matrimonial property agreement was signed he drives around in a new car and hands me a trespass notice, which effectively cut off my access to my boys. I know I was totally naïve, but I was devastated coz I thought ‘hang on a minute that’s not how it was meant to be.’

Stalking aimed at driving her crazy

Teresa elaborated on stalking tactics that Patrick used: “After I moved out he would watch me from his car. He’d park round the corner and spy on me. He would ring me up, leave 12 messages on my phone in a day. When he moved my stuff he got a key cut for my new house and I’d come home and there’d be stuff inside. He would have come in and done the dishes, or put flowers on the table, or folded the washing. I had a 30th birthday party and he wasn’t invited and he wanted to come and he asked if he could come and I said ‘No’, which was very selfish. He parked around the corner to watch to see who was coming and stayed there to see what time people left. He was a constant presence. When we were together we’d been on a weekend away one time and there was a sex shop there and we’d bought a vibrator. He came around to my house and took it because he didn’t want me to have any kind of pleasure if he wasn’t there to give it to me. He’d do was listen to my messages coz I’d kept the same pin number on the call minder and I’d ring up and I would have gone to work with zero messages and I’d come home and there’d be four saved messages.

In response to Patrick’s stalking campaign, Teresa said, “I changed the pin number and I changed the lock and he was really pissed off. It was just awful, it was absolutely awful. I felt really powerless against it, I didn’t know what I could do about it and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings or be mean. I’d come home and pull all my curtains in the middle of the day so he couldn’t see me. In the kitchen there was a dishwasher space under the bench without a dishwasher in it and I had this huge urge for about two months that all I wanted to do was just crawl into that and just be in there because he wouldn’t be able to get me. I slept as well, my sleeping grew even more once I’d moved out coz he couldn’t get me when I was asleep, and I was doing something he didn’t know about.”

Stalking campaigns aimed at undermining her sense of security

Heather said Luke was obsessed and infatuated with her. “He’d say, ‘I know where you’ve been today’. I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. I thought, ‘he knows I work these hours, he could easily wait up the road and watch where I go after work’. I found it quite strange and then some little things he’d say I started to think ‘maybe he does’. I started looking around the house thinking he might have little cameras there watching me. He’d say to me, ‘I could just about tell you when you had your last dump.’ I thought, ‘my God what a thing to say, maybe he’s got this place screened somehow and I didn’t know’. I thought ‘maybe he’s tapped the phone’. I started to get all these funny thoughts going through my head.”

Heather thought, “‘I am having a baby with him, I’ve got to really think about that, we’ve got to remain friends’. Then he’d turn up at my door, ‘You can’t leave me standing out here, look your neighbours are looking.’ He’d put his foot in the door and say, ‘Let me in, I’ll just stand in here, let me just talk to you for a minute.’ I had 13 missed calls in an hour on my mobile. He was the only one that had my phone number. I’d just got it as a present from mum and dad for Christmas. I don’t know whether they knew something and wanted me to have it for an emergency. I actually got quite scared. He’d say, ‘I’ve been thinking about you all day. I’ve been moping around here all day hoping that you’d ring me.’ I thought ‘this isn’t healthy’.

Some women leave their partner, whilst others stay in their home and arrange for the man to leave. In the latter case, many men believe they still have the right to access that house whenever they want. Pauline said Chris “would come into my house, and one day I came out of the shower with a towel around me, and came up the hallway and he was in my lounge and I just went ballistic. I said, ‘Don’t come into my house like that.’ It felt weird after being married and with him for so long to suddenly feel creepy that he had seen me in a towel that he could have seen me partially naked it felt so creepy.”

Invades her privacy

Susan said that after she left Anthony, “he took away my space by following me everywhere. I’m pretty sure that he tapped my phones, I know that he was under my house, I know that he was listening and watching outside the windows. There were lots of things he did when I was with him, but I didn’t think they were a problem until I left and it got worse. He drilled holes in my bathroom floor so he could spy and holes in my bedroom floor, big four inch square holes. He made those right where you get undressed. The last time that we split up my biggest fear was that he would rape me . . . I think if you cut holes in people’s floor and underneath the bathroom there was a glass and a stethoscope.”

Susan did a lot of the crying over Anthony’s stalking behaviours. “When we had split up the last time and he was doing these things, I had my friends’ support. I locked myself in the house. I got a confidential number. I wouldn’t go anywhere alone. When I went up town I would find that he was usually across the road, or behind me, or in the shop. And the thing that’s really scary was, how did he know where I was going and what I was doing?”

Although some stalkers stalk women who are strangers, extensive research in USA highlights that most stalkers are women’s ex-partners. It is ex-intimate partners who are more persistent pursuers than are stalkers who are strangers (4).

Using the tactic of divide and conquer

Teresa said, “Patrick said a lot of things about me to other people and he was careful about who he said it to. He didn’t say anything to my closest friends because they wouldn’t have listened. But to the people at work he did and he told a lot of lies to people. I couldn’t ever negate any of it, because I didn’t know it had happened until later.” Teresa had to work with Patrick for the next eight to 12 months. His abuse entailed ongoing “nastiness, always when other people weren’t around, and the charm when they were. So I’d think I was imagining it. It’s amazing what you think you imagine. When I look back now I think ‘how could I have thought that?’ but I did.”

Separation abuse is extended to abuse against her supporters

Adriana said Steven “repeatedly called me a fascist and a bitch. Repeatedly. He intimidated a good friend in person. He came and destroyed bits around the house. He wrote affidavits, which were extremely damaging, not just to me but to the family, to his mother, brother. It started out I was a bad person, I was the one who was the bitch, but it went to all the people who supported my daughter and me as well. It was very hard because I cope much better with myself being the focus of the attacks and the intimidation, but when it generalised across to people I love and care for, that made it harder because I love them and I know how difficult it is for them to cope with that. They tried as much as they could to support me and help me and assist me, but now they have to keep themselves safe as well as try to help me.”

What does it mean for women who leave a partner after months or years of being controlled by him? Some women become free of the abuse, but many women do not. Separation from such men does not always lead to a better life. If women share children with the abusive man, they may never fully be able to escape the grips of his possessive control, even when children become adults, the abuse can continue around shared family gatherings.

These men are often very dependent on the woman they control. They believe that making her fearful will make her dependent. Men stalk, degrade, manipulate, harass, attempt to have their ex-partner criminalised, attempt to deplete her of her emotional and financial resources and attempt to block her ability to flourish, or enter a new relationship – because they want to limit her autonomy and independence. Attempting to make his ex-partner dependent on him is a strategic ploy aimed at getting her back. Other men want to punish her for humiliating him. When women leave, many men conclude that they have lost control over their possession and this humiliates them – as men – men who are socialised to be in control of “their” woman.

For any woman who has lived with a man who has been consistently controlling over time, the act of deciding to leave, or actually leaving should not be taken lightly by onlookers or the woman herself. Of course not all of these men go on to maintain a stranglehold over their ex-partners – but many do – so it’s important for women to follow their gut instincts and tell the truth to themselves about such a possibility and make arrangements that take the reality of separation abuse into account.

 References:

  1. Hearn, Jeff. (1998). The Violences of Men: How Men Talk About and How Agencies Respond to Men’s Violence to Women. London: Sage
  2. Mahoney, Martha R. (1991). Legal images of battered women: Redefining the issue of separation. Michigan Law Review, 90(1), 1-94.
  3. McMurray, Anne M. (1997). Violence against ex-wives: Anger and advocacy. Health Care for Women International, 18(6), 543-556.
  4. Craven, Zoe. (2001). Book Review: Stalkers and their Victims: Newsletter No. 6 – Australian Domestic & Family Violence Clearinghouse.

Watch out for blogs on the following control tactics:

One-Sided power games
Mind games
Inappropriate restrictions
Isolation
Over-protection & ‘caring’
Emotional unkindness & violation of trust
Degradation & Suppression of Potential
Using social institutions & social prejudices
Denial, minimising, blaming
Using the children
Economic abuse
Sexual abuse
Symbolic aggression
Domestic slavery
Physical violence

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Tactic #7 — Degradation & Suppression of Potential

by Clare Murphy PhD on July 19 2012

This is the seventh of 16 blogs discussing the patterns of tactics from my power and control wheel – Degradation & Suppression of Potential.

Men who degrade their female partner do this by calling her derogatory names like slut or whore, using abusive language, correcting things the woman says or does, by depriving her of sleep, food or health care, by humiliating and embarrassing her in public, by putting down or making fun of her cultural traditions, spiritual beliefs, interests, ideas and desires. Degradation can also entail threatening women with a wide array of reasons why she could never leave such as incessant jibes that no one else would ever want her. All these forms of degradation, and other tactics that women discuss below, all lead to a suppression of women’s potential.

It is our human birthright to grow, to flourish, to live in a nourishing environment that feeds us. Women usually enter a relationship with a man believing they will grow together. Ironically, this is what many men believe too. But when the man is uncritically steeped in gaining emotional and social kudos for controlling “his” woman by putting her down to make himself look like “the man” in the eyes of others – then a lack of growth is inevitable – in fact a slow slow slow psychological and spiritual decay occurs – for the woman – and for the man.

Women I interviewed cried when they discussed some of the ways the man they loved and once trusted chipped away at their soul. Here are their stories . . .

Puts her down

Luke diminished Heather’s intelligence saying that their son was going to be like Luke when he gets older, that he’s going to be bright, not like Heather.

Elizabeth said David “certainly didn’t encourage my self-esteem. He was very derogatory, he used to put me down a lot.”

Elsie said Leon “was always putting me down, always, always was. He would tell me I was fat and stupid, a million things really. Nothing that I did was good enough whether it was around the house or in the garden, or something that was on the news, or whatever, I never gave my opinions. It just wasn’t worth it. In the end I gave up having my own opinions. I didn’t really believe his, but I’d just agree with him.”

One time when Susan was pregnant, Anthony wouldn’t talk to her about the pregnancy. Instead, he put her down by saying, “Are you going to call the baby after the last place you lived in or all the people you slept with?”. Yet Susan said she didn’t sleep around. Many women experience such degrading comments by men who engage in possessive jealousy.

Karen told me that her mum used to despair watching the way Felix treated Karen.  Karen said this was, “because I’d be bouncing around, apparently as a child I used to skip everywhere singing, and I bounced when I came into a room and he’d watch me and then he’d just find the most cutting thing that he could say and I’d fold over, go and sit in the corner. My mother told me it would wrench her heart. She told me this after we split. She was the one who pointed it out to me that if I said it was ‘blue’, he’d say it was ‘green’. She pointed that out about four or five years into the relationship. I thought it was good that she told me this because I thought at that stage that it was me that was wrong.”

Raewyn said if she “had an idea, it would be like Brian would almost ignore me. He would never listen to me and then somebody else who he respected, usually a male, would have an idea that had been the same as my idea, and he would be all ears and say, ‘Yeah that’s great, that’s great.’ So in some ways, although the same idea would crop up and he would believe it, but initially it would make me feel like I was useless.” Despite Brian’s dismissiveness, Raewyn said she “still gave opinions but I held back a lot of things because I used to get to the stage where I just felt I couldn’t be bothered with him.”

Teresa worked in the same place as her partner, but after she left him, she ended up having to work with him because her co-worker had left. She said “it was awful having to sit there and face Patrick for four hours every morning. He was absolutely foul to me the whole time, really nasty. I’d had two lumps taken out of my breast and I’d had something done to my knee so I’d had three surgical procedures, and he said to me one morning, really conversationally and in a friendly way, ‘How many anaesthetics have you had in the last year?’ And I said, ‘Three’ and he said, ‘That explains why you’re so fucked in the head.’ He’d introduce something in a really conversational way, but he’d have planned the barb to come at the end of it. I cried, I was really upset. I gradually started to get angrier and walk out of the room, and in the end I’d only go in there to do my set job and I’d leave the room again straight after. I wasn’t very good at being angry directly to him and saying ‘piss off you wanker’, or anything like that.”

Compares her unfavourably to other people

Teresa said Patrick compared her to his ex-wife sometimes and unfavourably so. “He’d say – ‘Well Sandra was always happy when I did this, she didn’t mind if I did that’.”  Teresa responded to these comparisons, “By changing what I did so that it was more like what she had done”.

Dylan constantly put down how Sally looked. She said, “He put down my breasts, he was always comparing them to other lovers that he had in the past and how mine were not as big, not as firm, not as pert not as upright. I was not allowed to not wear a bra because that meant that over time they would hang down too low and they would be ugly and he would want to leave me.  I wasn’t allowed to have children because it would effect how my breasts looked because lovers he had in the past who were mothers had ugly breasts and if I had ugly breasts he would leave me.”

Victoria said Graham compared her to her sister. “I think he quite fancied my sister. ‘Diana’s so good, Diana does this, and Diana does that’. I already thought my sister was better than me anyway, so it just confirmed it. And it made me feel that really everybody was right, that I was lucky to be married, so just don’t rock the boat.”

Exploiting women’s vulnerabilities is a method many men use to establish one-upmanship, which is also a tactic used by school bullies. Many women are very astute at recognising that among men’s motivation to control them is often a need to maintain a certain masculine image.

For example, Victoria said, “I didn’t make many achievements after we were married, because again it would threaten his masculinity, so it’s best not to do that. I learned that really quickly if I wanted to keep the peace. He very much discredited me as a female. That just reinforced everything I believed to be true about myself anyway. I think he destroyed my identity (laughter). I didn’t have one. One part of me was like, ‘I don’t deserve this, I deserve better than that’, and the other part of me was like, ‘just put up with it, you get what you deserve’. There was an element of self-fulfilling prophecy that nobody wants you and you’re not good enough and you’re not of any worth, you’re going to a marriage that supports that anyway. But deep down I kind of knew I was better than that.

The incessant and often subtle clawing away at degrading women and suppressing women’s potential one facet at a time, day in and day out, is draining and debilitating as each woman slides into decline.

Victoria describes the erosive impact here . . .

“It wasn’t an overt degradation, it was just – what I had to offer wasn’t what he needed to meet his needs, so it just kind of had to go really. I felt great sadness and disappointment and regret and longing. Throughout all of this, throughout the whole marriage, I really wished that it was normal, I really longed for a proper marriage. This had been something I’d waited for a long time and the result was just unbelievable. I deserved better than that.”

Denies her of her individual tastes, or downgrades them 

Pauline’s husband Chris would say things to downgrade her personal tastes. She said, “we were trying to decorate the home and any suggestion that I would come up with I just wasn’t allowed it. I would say what I thought and my taste and everything, but he would come back with a comment that would wipe it.” Pauline said that silently on the inside she wouldn’t accept that, rather she would think, “You bugger”. But on the outside she said she make it appear as if she just accepted his perspective.

Uses emotional blackmail to make her feel selfish or guilty for pursuing her own interests

Calling women selfish eats at the heart of the way most women are socialised to behave – sacrifice yourself for your husband – being selfish is considered a big no no for women. But the social messages for men are the opposite, so men who believe they are entitled to have everything their way use this as a manipulative control tactic.

When I asked Teresa if Patrick ever called her selfish, she replied, “Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, I was very selfish. That’s what my mother had always said as well, so it was just reinforcing that. I absolutely believed I was selfish and would redouble my efforts to be not selfish.”

Teresa experienced guilt and fear for pursuing her relationships with family and friends. She said, “I thought it was really selfish and that I should be thinking of him. I’d feel guilty when I’d do things without telling him I’d done them, I’d feel really guilty, like if I’d gone and had afternoon tea with a friend while he was at work. Sometimes I’d lie about where I’d been. He’d say ‘what have you been doing?’ and I’d say ‘nothing’ and Patrick would say ‘well I rang and you weren’t here’, I’d say ‘oh, I just went for a walk’. But I felt really guilty about it, coz you’re not supposed to have lies in a relationship (laughter), you’re supposed to have honesty.”

Criticises and diminishes her strengths and achievements

When the women told me about being degraded, they said a lot of the tactics were incredibly subtle. For instance Karen said Felix dagraded her “all the time, just subtle little comments like ‘Oh yes that’s very nice but what about the bit you missed over here?’” Karen went on to say that Felix “criticised my strength, well tried to negate it. Intelligence, organisational skills, artistic ability, creativity, he’d bring it all down. I’ve always been a very resourceful crafty person making stuff. He’d find a hole in it. In response I could either turn around and bitch back at him and have a fight, or I could try and just ignore it. Either way was part of me resisting it, tossing it off, ‘that’s just a load of bullshit, you know that’s not right’. Equally the flip side of that was me believing I had made a mistake and I had done something wrong, that it was something about me. There was a subtle erosion.”

Teresa said, “During the course of the relationship and after it as well, Patrick tried to diminish my professional achievements in quite insidious ways where I didn’t realise what he was doing, because it didn’t occur to me that somebody would do that to somebody that they supposedly loved. You expect people to be supportive and kind and proud of you, but, because we worked in the same field, I think that was very much to do with his own self-esteem. By diminishing me and my achievements, he’d build up his own.

Teresa’s feeling of achievement was diminished. Her self-esteem through the relationship dropped to absolutely zero. She said, “I don’t think it diminished my intelligence in any way. He did challenge my intelligence. At the time I was studying for my Certificate in Horticulture. He was quite dismissing of that and quite patronising, like it was – ‘Your little hobby. Well if it makes you feel as if you’re achieving something, well that’s good.’ But in a way where it sounded like he was proud of it – ‘Oh it’s so great you’ve got this little thing you’re interested in’. So it was the two messages coming through. I didn’t notice this until I looked back and realised. It was really typical of the whole relationship that it was gradual and insidious and you just slid slowly down the slope.”

Teresa said Patrick “put down what I thought when we were still having the relationship. Once the relationship was over he used to put down how I looked and acted quite a lot. I’d come into work and he’d go, ‘oh, that’s an interesting look.’ It was awful because I’d just started to get some confidence back and I’d feel I looked nice, and I’d come in and it would just take it away. He seemed to know exactly where all my vulnerable points were and he’d get me every time, it was really horrible. I just wouldn’t say anything to him if he said that because I was trying to be mature and reasonable. At that point I was able to think, ‘well no!’ This was after the relationship was over. But it would knock my confidence and I would be full of doubt again about, ‘did I look horrible?’.

The whole time Teresa was with Patrick she didn’t feel as if she had strengths. Though, now she feels as if she has got a lot of strengths. She said, “I saw myself only in relation to him and that was where I existed, was in his perception of me.”

Elizabeth thought “that going to the parenting course 13 years ago would have been the beginnings of starting to look at what the hell has been going on here. She thought David saw the parenting course as just a little thing – ‘you go off and do that, it’ll keep you busy, it’ll keep you happy’. He was disrespectful and very disdainful like it was of no consequence. I had joined a sewing group and had just learned to sew and it was like he was doing the important things and I was just doing the fiddly bits around the side (laughter).”

Raewyn said she “used to keep very quiet about having a Masters degree. Brian would rubbish the work I used to do when I was working , he would say, ‘Oh God what’s the point of that?’ ‘Head tripping’ – that’s what he used to say. I would never argue and that’s when I was protecting him. Because I used to think he’s just jealous.” Everytime Brian criticised Raewyn’s strengths she, “Usually just ignored it. I just thought, ‘huh?’ I mean in some ways I had enough in me to know that he just loved to put me down. It was just him trying to put me down, although I got worn down by it.”

Uses various tactics to suppress her ideas

Elizabeth said she often used to come up with ideas about things and David hated it. She said, “he would just reject them out of hand and then a bit further down the track he would come up with exactly the same idea and it would be his idea (laughter) and I used to find that quite annoying. I would say, ‘Hang on a minute I was talking about….’, but his response was ‘Oh, no, no, no, no that was something different.’ So there was no acknowledgement at all for any contribution I might make.”

As a result Elizabeth “used to get really pissed off, but it was the way it was. David wouldn’t listen, he wasn’t interested in listening to what my ideas might be because he’d indicate they were always really stupid ideas.” Elizabeth said she “stopped voicing my ideas and self doubt has always been a really big thing, but I think over the time that I was with him my self doubt grew even more and more because everything I suggested just got put down. I guess it fed my thing about somehow the patriarchal thing too that women are inferior and men are superior.”

Elizabeth talked about how this continual silencing of her voice by David “just proved to me that these ideas that were out there were really the truth, that is the way it works, men are more superior, they do know more, they are cleverer.”

Elizabeth said . . .

“It’s taken me a long time to think – ‘hey my ideas are really valid, just as valid as anybody else’s’ – and have the confidence to speak them.”

Elizabeth then shared that the long-term negative impact of being degraded meant “I still find I can be in a room at a meeting, and I do speak up now at meetings, whereas I used to not say anything, I was too scared to say anything at all, but if I don’t start getting some feedback pretty quickly, like through body language or just noises, I’ll start to think ‘am I not making sense?’, or ‘do you not understand me, is this really dumb?’ That starts very quickly with me so I still battle with that now. My father was very ridiculing and putting down too.”

As Elizabeth was telling me about being put down she started to cry as she continued to say, “I can’t even remember anyone ever saying to me, ‘Well that was a good idea Elizabeth’. So I’m only just starting to have some faith in myself, some confidence now so it’s had a big impact really, which I hadn’t really thought about.”

The women I interviewed had been out of their relationship for more than a year, some such as Elizabeth, for about 10 years. Everyone who experiences putdowns suffers – no matter what age or what gender, and when degradation and suppression of your potential is part of a multitude of other controlling tactics, the wounding is huge and can take years to heal, and the scars may always remain.

Suppresses her potential

Victoria thought Graham “felt quite threatened by my initial independence. I was a relatively independent person, so he definitely thwarted any growth there and tried to retard that by his behaviour. For example, Victoria “got onto the teaching training programme and it just started to cause too many ructions, so I gave it up after six months. And it had been something that I’d strived for a long time to get in. I think it threatened his position of power that I was being academic, that I was achieving and moving forward. He used to talk about the fact, ‘I’m useless, I’m nothing, I can’t do anything’, and in order not to offend his ego any more I pulled out.”

As part of gender socialisation, there are many social messages that influence women to pull back on pursuing their own potential because they believe they should not offend men’s ego, in other words, not be equal to or better than their male partner.

Teresa had “thought about going back to university which Patrick wasn’t encouraging of, so that was something I didn’t pursue, but I hadn’t decided I wanted to do it, but I was thinking about it. I put everything on hold that he wanted me to put on hold.”

Many of men’s tactics described by women I interviewed were subtle. They stemmed from the man’s need to maintain a masculine status that was above the woman. This is personal for many men –– and it is deeply social –– it is how masculine the man feels he’s perceived by others.

Karen said that when she went to university, “the shit hit the fan big time. I kept going though. I discovered feminism there, which was huge. I’m crying now just thinking about that. It was a huge relief for me. It was like I’d been validated. Somebody’s out there talking about this stuff, I’m not mad. I felt really really isolated being a mother in the situation I was in. I’d been through a very rough few years in this shitty relationship, so when I got to university it was wonderful. I discovered all this stuff about reading and writing feminism. It was great, but it was a big bloody challenge to Felix. He didn’t like it much. He didn’t tell me to stop, in a lot of ways he was supportive, but in other ways not. Sometimes it’s subtle sometimes it wasn’t.”

Elizabeth said, “I didn’t really know who I was, and if any slight glimmer of it came through, it got squashed before it saw the light of day. I remember once that when I was doing part-time work for a clothes designer – oh and I loved it, I just loved that contact with the public and the beautiful clothes that I was working with and I was imagining what it would be like to have my own clothing business to be able to buy fabrics and design clothes and it was like, ‘oh wow it would be so cool’ and it was just this idea! I talked to the people that I was working with quite a bit, and where they got the stuff’ and where I could learn. I came home and I said, ‘Oh what about dah dah dah?’ And it was stomped on straight away and I felt just totally stunned, and it just wiped it away. I didn’t give it another thought, that was it.”

If Elizabeth tried to discuss or express any area of her creativity with David, he would stomp on it, squash it and push her potential back down immediately. The result was that Elizabeth “put on hold finding out who I was, getting in touch with my own purpose in life, my own spirit. I was so busy trying to be the role, that who I was didn’t even come into it.”

Elizabeth had a miscarriage and did little part time jobs, which she had quite a lot of fun doing, but David never really gave her career a lot of encouragement and support. Elizabeth, like many other women, coped with her husband’s lack of encouragement, by following social messages about how to be a woman. For example, Elizabeth said, “I know a couple of times I came up with ideas about things I’d really like to do and he was very quick to just slate them completely, ‘There’s no way you can do that, what are you talking about, you couldn’t do that, where would you get the money?’ He was very negative about it, and I guess I still had this picture in my mind that we were married, and we were going to have babies, and I would be the mum and stay at home and look after them, the way my mum did. And that he would look after me, and that would be the way it was. I didn’t have strong feelings about a career anyway, so I can’t say it was all his doing that I didn’t end up with a career.”

Tells her their relationship is the best she can hope for 

Donna said Frank reckoned that, “once he died I’d probably never be able to re-marry because I had the best, no one else could measure up.”

Teresa mentioned the other version of this control tactic, that is, Patrick would often tell her, “’No-one will ever love you as much as I do.’ Which in one way sounds like a nice thing to say, but it’s not. It’s like saying, ‘no-one else will ever love you really’.”

This is an incredibly common tactic used by men who are determined to control their partner. Elizabeth said David would often say, “’Who else would want you?’ ‘Who else would put up with this stuff?’ like I was so bad that he was doing me this big favour by putting up with me. I think at the end of the day, what I was to him was a possession.” After Elizabeth left, she thought David “was really pissed off that he lost his prize possession. He is still really angry now, and it’s nearly eight years down the track.”

Not long before Elsie left Leon, he played the “this relationship is the best you can hope for” card. Elsie said, “It was when I was pregnant. I left when my son was eight or 12 weeks old or something. I was about seven months pregnant when he said that I’d need him because when the baby came along I wouldn’t be able to live on my own. I’d find it really hard. I think he knew I was getting near snapping point. I didn’t argue with him, I didn’t say anything, but in my head I just knew that that wasn’t true, coz by then anything would have been better.”

Heather said Luke “used to say that half of Whanganui wanted him, even though I was the one that had his child, and that when I left him, I’d be the one that would regret it and I wouldn’t find a guy like him. He’d say that he’s the one that’s the most affectionate person in Whanganui and I wouldn’t find someone that hugged and kissed like he did.”

Heather explained that this was hard, “It’s still quite hard today because I haven’t met another man and I think, ‘are there other affectionate men out there, was he the only affectionate man?’ I think maybe he was, because I really enjoyed the affection, that was the thing that attracted me to him, holding hands and stuff. But then I remember seeing his face yelling and screaming and I think I don’t want that, but then I think he seems to always have one woman after another. He must have some charm that picks up women quite quickly.”

Respectful relationships require challenging rigid gender socialisation

For centuries, generally speaking, men’s roles have been given the most kudos and respect and women’s roles have been subordinated, marginalised and demeaned. Many men do not tolerate these ideas, they challenge themselves and other men to have compassion and respect for people’s differences whether they are male or female, no matter what age, race or class. But many men take gender socialisation for granted – as if it is natural to be superior to their partner. One of the social messages that influences some men is that it is weak to admit to mistakes and failings and seek support to change. The first step is challenging the status quo, naming the costs to men for degrading the women they claim to love, naming the harm to themselves, to their children, to their children’s mother. And as one man I interviewed said – men just have to change in front of other men – be a role model – and not wait for approval from other men before challenging the social norms that breed disrespect.

Watch out for blogs on the following control tactics:

One-Sided power games
Mind games
Inappropriate restrictions
Isolation
Over-protection and ‘caring’
Emotional unkindness & violation of trust
Separation abuse
Using social institutions & social prejudices
Denial, minimising, blaming
Using the children
Economic abuse
Sexual abuse
Symbolic aggression
Domestic slavery
Physical violence

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Tactic #6 — Emotional Unkindness & Violation of Trust

by Clare Murphy PhD on July 16 2012

This is the sixth of 16 blogs discussing the patterns of tactics from my power and control wheel – Emotional unkindness & violation of trust.

What is emotional unkindness?

Emotional unkindness entails DOING something unkind and the ABSENCE of, or FAILURE to do something kind.

Emotional unkindness is a failure to provide for emotional needs such as encouragement, understanding, respect and compassion. It includes ignoring you when you start a conversation, showing you none or very little attention and no empathy. It entails rejection, silent treatment and withdrawing. Emotional unkindness entails an absence of concern or care at times when you would most expect it – such as when you’re sick, in hospital, recovering from giving birth to a baby, or when you’re worn out and need a break.

Emotional unkindness also includes refusing to share responsibility for your children’s care and development, threatening to abandon you if he doesn’t get his way, making it emotionally difficult if you want to leave the house or leave the relationship, complaining whenever you ask for any kind of support, or making promises but not keeping them, saying ‘yes’ to doing something then ‘forgetting’, or it entails helping but with conditions attached.

When emotional kindness is turned on its head into an abusive manipulative tactic the result is a violation of trust.

Anyone can be emotionally unkind on occasion whether it’s done ignorantly or purposefully. There isn’t really a problem to write about if the unkind person takes responsibility for their behaviours and makes valid attempts to change. But the problem I’m addressing here is quite different – it’s about when an intimate partner withholds love, care, concern, attention and encouragement – on an ongoing regular basis.

Red flags that there’s a major problem become glaringly obvious when:

  • all your attempts at getting your partner to take responsibility for his unkind neglectful behaviours fall on deaf ears
  • he denies that he’s done anything harmful
  • he minimises your experience
  • he turns the situation about face and blames you

If this is the case, you need to listen to your gut instinct, admit to yourself that what you are experiencing is what you are experiencing! Otherwise you’re in danger of making one excuse after another for your partner’s emotional unkindness and violation of trust. You’re in danger of staying in a relationship in which his behaviours get worse and worse over time, and the long-term effects on you will get worse and worse. Stories from thousands of women show this to be true.

Here are some experiences that women shared with me during interviews I conducted for my Masters research.

Acts like she doesn’t matter

Pauline said, “I actually have a tattoo on my hand which Chris never knew I had. Not only did he really not take a good look at me, he never really acknowledged or thought, I actually had a personality and emotional side. It was just like he would look at me and see the word ‘wife’. In all those years of knowing me, he never knew me, so the true me was never shown. And because I didn’t express myself as I would today, speaking up, also he never really took the time to find out.”

Teresa’s partner, Patrick acted like she didn’t matter by showing “indifference if he was cross with me and be really cold and hard. He’d be indifferent to everything and ignore what I said and not show any sign at all that he’d heard anything I’d said or done for him. I’d increase my efforts to be nice and to do the right thing so that he’d notice me again and be nice to me, and I’d be back in his good books.”

Donna said, “I lost so much of myself, my freedom, everything, but I poured it back into the garden and even that got destroyed. I wasn’t even allowed to be upset because the pigs destroyed my gardens. That was just me being a bitch wife.” In response, Donna said she “Just quietly died inside. You didn’t respond to Frank, whatever he said happened. However he wanted it to be, that’s how it was, what I thought didn’t count.”

Donna talked about tending to her garden as her passion and solace from abuse. But when she got sick, although Frank could easily afford to hire a gardener he refused to and he also begrudged her the money to water her plants. She said, “When I got too sick to garden the whole garden turned into a jungle and so for about the last 12 months before I left, I didn’t used to go out to that part of the house anymore coz it just used to break my heart seeing all my years of beautiful work turned into a jungle and nobody cared, it didn’t matter but it mattered to me.”

Shows no empathy

Elsie said Leon, “had no empathy for my feelings, it didn’t matter at all.”

Teresa said, “I’d try and increase his level of empathy when there wasn’t any, when there was that indifference by trying to explain things in a different way, or do things differently or, to try and get a response from him but it didn’t make any difference so I just tried harder.”

On the other hand Raewyn responded to Brian’s lack of empathy by putting her focus into the children. She said, “I was just so happy with my children I didn’t need him any more. I used to just forget that he gave very little, touched very little.”

Gives then takes it away

Pauline said, “Chris did up a car with a mate and he gave it to me for Christmas. Well I didn’t have my licence. He sold it the following February (laugh). So I never got to drive my car. He did it up and it was all a big show, like, ‘I got my wife a car for Christmas’. It wasn’t until after I had my second child I got my licence. . . I look back and think things were just given and taken. Things were slowly taken away and I didn’t think a lot about it.”

Acts cruelly, then says she is too sensitive and cannot take a joke

Teresa said, “Once, I’d been out and I had stayed at a friend’s for tea and had got back later than he thought and he was cross about it and I apologised and tried to smooth things over. And it’s the nastiest thing anyone has ever done to me – he said and I thought it was okay – and he came out of the kitchen and he said ‘Would you like me to make you a cup of tea, would you like a cup of tea?’ and I said ‘That would be really nice, thank you darling.’ He went out to the kitchen and the jug boiled and he came back in with a cup and I was sitting on the couch and he got right up to me, then he went like that (acted out throwing a cup of tea in my face) and it was an empty cup and he planned it as a trick and it was just awful, it was just pre-meditated nastiness. And he was like, ‘It was just a joke, you’ve got no sense of humour, you can’t take a joke.’ But it was horrible and he used to do that sort thing.”

Makes promises but doesn’t carry them out

Teresa said Patrick would agree with something she wanted, “and then he just wouldn’t do anything. Little things, he was prepared to pay attention to, little wants, needs and wishes but big ones he’d just disregard, it was as if you hadn’t said anything at all.” I’d tried and there was nothing else I could do … sometimes I’d have one more try in saying something or doing something but it wouldn’t make any difference, so it was just the way it was.”

Susan spent most of her days crying because of the things Anthony had done. She said, “He didn’t run me down. I think it’s the things he did that didn’t bring me up. If I asked him to do something, it would never get done. If I said ‘Can we go somewhere?’ we’d never go. He didn’t do anything to build my self esteem. I thought for a long time he was easy going coz I didn’t have to cook him a good meal every night. He was quite happy with hamburgers, baked beans on toast or toasted sandwiches. I felt that’s really really nice coz there are people who won’t accept takeaways. If I didn’t clean up the house he didn’t tell me I was messy. He definitely neglected my emotional side.”

Withholds care, respect, approval, affection and support

Victoria said Graham “never really seemed to give a horse’s patoot that I may be upset about something. I tried not to think about it. I just got on with it. Life doesn’t become about trying to resolve anything, life becomes about surviving it. So you don’t try to actively do anything about anything because that just tells you there’s a problem, you don’t need to think about that right now, you just need to survive. If it’s going to cause you distress and upset the house, don’t bother, just survive it. And survive’s usually done by avoiding.”

Raewyn said, “I don’t think I ever heard Brian once say he loved me. He didn’t touch me a lot, he didn’t cuddle me a lot, in fact hardly ever. When we made up we might have had a cuddle, that was usually me initiating it. He would come home from work say and just get his book out, sit at the table and read. And that used to piss me off, because the children would be there and he’d just ignore them. There was that neglect as well where he would just do his own thing. He’d do his own thing all the time, his art, fishing, bike racing, so really there was very little attention given to me, very little. The only time was when he wanted sex then he’d be a little bit nice to me have sex and then that would be it and he wouldn’t be nice to me again until he wanted sex.” As a result, Raewyn said she, “learnt pretty quickly not have any wants, needs and wishes. I expected nothing from him pretty quickly in the marriage, oh except the money.”

Helps other people but not her

Karen said, “I couldn’t understand that if we broke a window in the house and I’d say, ‘hey could you fix the window?’ that Felix would get his back up and if he had been thinking about fixing the window that afternoon it would be completely out of the question now because I’d asked him to do it. What he would do would be he’d get his window making equipment and he’d go around the whanau (family) and ask if anybody needed any bloody windows fixing. Go and fix an entire community’s windows, and come home and look at me and say, ‘so there!’ I couldn’t understand it (laughter).”

Karen went on to say that Felix, “was so much more caring and tolerant and understanding of people other than of me. There was another solo mother and he’d say to her, ‘You’re looking tired, I’ll make you a cup of tea, have you had a break? Perhaps we can organise it so you can have a spa’. He’d be really caring to people outside of the home. I wanted him to listen to me and hear me. Saying, ‘I don’t want you to brush me off like that’, saying, ‘I’m here, I’m a person, the children are here, they’re real, there is a bond here, there is responsibility here, please be aware of it because you can’t just brush it away. I want you to offer me some support, because at the moment you’re taxing me more than you’re supporting me.’”

Donna said Frank, “would kill a beast and he’d have steak for breakfast and steak for lunch and steak for tea, give his friends steak because he was a great ‘I am’ and he was God in their world. My boys were only allowed to eat the mince and the sausages so they had to do the work on the farm and then he started ripping them off. They weren’t allowed to eat steaks.”

Ignores her need for assistance when she’s tired, overworked, or sick

Pauline said, “After my fifth baby I had a cancerous lump on my arm and I was breastfeeding her and once they found what it was, I had to go in straight away and have surgery. The operation to get this lump out was quite long so they did a big cut, and I’m all bandaged up and they said, ‘You won’t be able to use your arm for a few weeks, don’t go lifting or anything.’ I had this young baby, she was about three months old, and I thought, ‘how am I going to lift her out of her cot and feed her and change her and bath her?’ And my husband came and got me, I had the surgery and went home. All my children were at home and he went out. I sat down on the couch, he handed me my daughter and I started breastfeeding her and he said, ‘Well I’m off.’ I was like, ‘Oh my God!’ I was still under anaesthetic and we had stairs in the house. I remember not arguing but saying, ‘What? No, you can’t go out.’ But he went anyway.”

Sally said that in the last year of her relationship with Dylan when “my back was so sore and my health was so bad with these constant viruses, I felt desperate for help. I knew that Dylan wouldn’t let me. I just felt this intense rage inside of me because I was so sick, so I just phoned and made an appointment with a chiropractor. I knew Dylan wouldn’t let me spend the money on my health so I went behind his back and made the appointment and went anyway.”

Susan said, “When I was sick Anthony went off for the weekend with his family. I was so sick, I couldn’t even get out of bed. I only had our first child. I was grossly sick. I said, ‘Why don’t you please stay at home?’ ‘No, see ya.’ And he was gone. That’s what he was like and he’s always been like that. He didn’t care how I felt. Generally I cried about it.”

Susan went on to say that, “When I had our first child, I was really upset because I didn’t feel I had any security at all. It was an emergency birth. Anthony wouldn’t come to the hospital. He was out drinking with his mates. When I had her, he wouldn’t take any time off work to pick me up from hospital. My mum did it.”

Possessive jealousy used as excuse for deliberate emotional unkindness

Karen said Felix’s “jealousy started really really soon after I met him if I met somebody, gave them a peck on the cheek, all hell would break loose, there’d be two or three days of absolute hell. So I learnt not to express any affection to anybody, not to look at anybody. When my first baby was born, about the first time I went out with him after that I got a babysitter, but he made sure he told me it’s not going to be any fun for you anyway because you know that so and so …. Then he sat in the back row just glowering. I started dancing, he basically just came and got me, grabbed me by the arm, put a nice smile on his face and started to escort me away, pushed me into the car, and on the way home threw me out of the car. I had to walk well over an hour home in the middle of the night in winter wearing high-heeled shoes with a bloody baby waiting at home for me. He didn’t come back and get me. Just little things like that made me really careful not to fuck up.”

Exploits her intimate disclosures and uses them as ammunition

Karen said, “I don’t think Felix could ever really dominate. He listened to me very carefully for long periods of time to get to know me and I felt very secure in that initially and in those tender moments when he would listen and reflect back, I don’t know whether he was consciously building up ammunition, but when he felt the need he would grab those things and humiliate me with them.” Karen said she found right from the start that it was difficult sharing with Felix “because it would come back as a weapon. So I didn’t feel as if I could talk to him. He didn’t know I was sick with eating disorders, I couldn’t trust him with that. He thought everything was hunky dory.”

When Elizabeth went through a traumatic time while being counselled about sexual abuse perpetrated by her father when she was a child, David used this as an opportunity to tell her how ‘bad’ she was. Sally had a similar experience with Dylan. After nearly seven years of feeling used and never getting Dylan to take responsibility for his neglect and dismissive behaviours she went to the doctor, was put on anti-depressants. Then Dylan deflected responsibility further by arguing that her depression was the cause of the relationship issues.

Elsie said, “I trusted Leon not at all. If he ever found out anything about me, he just used it to give me a good psychological kick whenever he could as often and as much as he could. So I never ever trusted him at all.”

Dismisses her if she’s upset or asks for emotional support

Pauline said, “I had a miscarriage and while I was pregnant he wanted to abort the baby. He came home one night from work and he said, ‘I’ve decided’. He’d gone to work and he decided that I was having an abortion, and he went back downstairs to the kitchen and I was sitting in the bed reading and it was like, ‘arsehole!’ The abortion thing was huge because he actually knew I was anti-abortion. As fate would have it, that night I started bleeding. I lost the baby and he put me on the steps of Accident & Emergency (A & E) the next day and drove away. I came back very late that night, and he was just a total bastard over the whole thing.”

Subsequently, Pauline ”got really really low, very depressed and he would come home from work and he started to not even say hello and I never forgave him for how he acted when I lost the baby. I think that was a huge factor in my shift in deciding to leave him. But I’ve never been able to pinpoint exactly when I decided ‘that’s it.’ I never forgave him for it, or the way he treated me afterwards. I finally accepted whatever I was going to face in the future if I left would be better than now.”

Pauline said, “I would be in tears after the miscarriage and he would just look through me and walk off.” Pauline remembered being incredibly surprised when the nurse in A & E showed concern for her wellbeing. Pauline handed them the note from the doctor, and remembered “the nurse saying to me, ‘Are you okay, do you need anything? Come in straight away.’ I was thinking, ‘Wow, oh that’s nice. That’s nice, someone’s asking how I am’.”

Violates Trust

Pauline said she, “ended up not trusting Chris several years before we separated. I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. I started marriage absolutely trusting him with my whole life and once I had that miscarriage I didn’t ever trust him again. To cope with this loss of trust, Pauline said she, “Did a lot of self talk. He’d say something or whatever he did, and rather than say it out loud I’d think in my mind ‘Oh yeah you prick. Fuck off to bed.’ But I would never say it out loud.”

Takes no responsibility for being caring – the focus of attention has to be on him

Victoria had asthma and had a really severe asthma attack one day. She called the ambulance when Graham was at work. She said, “We had no phone, we couldn’t afford one because the debts were too high. I managed to ring at the neighbour’s house and the ambulance came and got me. Graham pulled up in the driveway and I was in the back of the ambulance being nebulised and I was scared as scared as scared. So the ambulance people said to him we’re taking her through to the hospital. So he went round to my girlfriend’s for a cup of tea and thought she might like to come up to the hospital with him. I’m in this ambulance, and he went round to her place! It was like ‘for Christ’s sake!’” Victoria went on to say that although Graham “never stopped me from getting medical treatment, he was just a little bizarre when I got it. My impression of it was that it wasn’t about him really.”

Elsie said, “Leon took no responsibility for anything, like to be caring wasn’t his responsibility, to be there at any particular time when you think a normal person would be, that wasn’t anything that he believed was his responsibility. He was only there for the things that he wanted, for the play things that he did.”

Emotional unkindess is debilitating for men and women

It is often shocking for women when their partner repeatedly neglects them emotionally. But gender socialisation is full of messages about how to be a man and how to be a woman. Unfortunately, men experience social pressure to suppress expressions of love, care and empathy – in fact many men are bullied for doing so. On the other hand women experience the opposite pressure – that it is the woman’s role to do the emotional work in relationship – and for this women are applauded. This rigid socialisation not only harms women, it harms men.

At the individual level, women who experience ongoing emotional unkindness and violation of trust by a partner who refuses to take responsibility and make changes that lead to a close, constructive, caring connection, should continue to take steps to keep safe and, if possible, seriously consider doing what it takes to empower themselves to regain any lost self-determination and self-worth and follow their personal values, which may be quite different from what rigid gender socialisation is asking of women.

At the social level, everything we do influences our social and cultural norms, therefore individuals throughout every arena of our society can challenge gender socialisation that suppresses half of our humanity and speak out loud for a just society that honours men and women for living authentically – which requires courage to challenge social norms that work against kindness and trusting relations.

Watch out for blogs on the following control tactics:

One-Sided power games
Mind games
Inappropriate restrictions
Isolation
Over-protection and ‘caring’
Degradation & suppression of potential
Separation abuse
Using social institutions & social prejudices
Denial, minimising, blaming
Using the children
Economic abuse
Sexual abuse
Symbolic aggression
Domestic slavery
Physical violence

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