Warning signs of abuse

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.

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 #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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Tactic #5 — Over-Protection and ‘Caring’

by Clare Murphy PhD on April 23 2012

This is the fifth of 16 blogs discussing the patterns of tactics from my power and control wheel – Over-protection and ‘caring’.

Beliefs lead to behaviours

Many men who psychologically abuse and control their female partners do not define their behaviour as cruel or abusive. This is partly because their behaviours make perfect sense when viewed from their belief system – their socially reinforced belief system. Family violence including non-physical control tactics are motivated by beliefs based on – men’s sense of masculinity – their gender as a man – that is, the ways men have learned that they should behave in relationship. Men seeking to change by attending counselling or stopping abuse programmes describe being motivated by beliefs such as:

Men should be top dog, the boss, the one in control
Women should do as the man says
Men are entitled to correct or discipline their partner if she strays from behaviour he expects from a female partner
Men are entitled to define the rules
Women are possessions

Over-protection and ‘caring’

These kinds of beliefs lead to behaving in over-protective ways in the guise of caring. This includes begging the woman not to go out alone or she might get raped, telling her she never has to work (even though she wants to) because he wants to take care of her, taking her to and from work so her co-workers will not get ‘ideas’, or attempting to keep her at home by saying he worries when she’s away.

Women I interviewed for my Masters research gave some examples of experiencing over-protection in the guise of caring:

Sally said, “There was one group I went to for a year, a women’s group, which Dylan didn’t like me going to and he did try to stop me quite a few times and I did stop going when he tried to stop me. I would do what he said and I would be confused about that because he would say some rational thing like ‘because it’s really bad weather out there. I don’t want you driving’ and because I was nervous at driving myself, I wouldn’t drive. I wouldn’t go to this women’s group.”

Karen said, “I did have access to the car then, that’s right I claimed it (laughter). I remember for a long time Felix would say, ‘Those roads are far too dangerous, you haven’t got experience, it’s not warranted or registered, we could be in real trouble if you stuff up out there’. I’d say, ‘How about we warrant and register the car and get it insured?’ ‘Oh we don’t have enough money for that.’ It was his vehicle, he bought it, he was the one who fluffed over it. I was asking a favour of him by wanting to use it. I was really really sick. I was really depressed and I think quite mentally ill at that stage. I knew I was and I do intermittently get convoluted in my head space. That was the worst state I’d ever been in.”

Possessive jealousy in the guise of ‘caring’

When men operate from possessive jealousy, many women perceive this to be a sign of love and commitment – especially during the dating and early phases of the relationship. However this is a notion learned from places such as fairytales, romance novels and movies – it is absolutely not true. Jealousy is about the jealous person’s own beliefs. At the personal level, a jealous man’s feelings stem from beliefs about himself such as believing he’s inadequate, unworthy, or not good enough. At the social level a jealous man’s feelings stem from the belief that as a boyfriend or a husband they own their female partner.

Belief that marriage implies men’s ownership of female partners can be traced back to ancient Greek and Roman times. Manuscripts dated during the medieval period (900-1300) state that the Church, for instance, pushed for the idea that women should obey their husbands, and men were granted the authority to castigate their wives and beat and otherwise control her to correct her behaviour.

Whilst men’s sense of ownership of their wives has been played out for centuries, not everyone has always agreed with this form of relationship, and for the past 50 years there have been consistent major challenges – by men and especially by women – to dismantle such inhumane forms of relationship.

The problem is that gender socialisation in western societies continues to be steeped in subtle (and sometimes very obvious) social support for men’s ongoing ownership, control and enslavement of intimate female partners.

Some of the men I interviewed for my PhD research talked about love being linked to ownership and the socially reinforced double standards accompanying such beliefs. Alex said he used to think “love was an ownership type of thing, you love someone you’re with them 24 hours a day.” David said that a man, “loves his wife to do everything that she’s told to do, and be obedient.” James said “most guys would like their wife or partner to be subservient to them. And be agreeable with the ideals of the husband.” Sam said he used to believe that women had to be a slave. Bob said the husband was entitled to sex every night because “That is really part of the culture.” Bill said that men marry “to tie up the mini me (laughter). Get her off the market… Men want to go back to the market and the women can’t. I dare say that’s 99 percent of men.”

Obsessive possessive jealousy leads to hyper-vigilance, anger and sometimes to murder

Men’s possessive sexual jealousy is used to justify isolating women from social opportunities, as well as for monitoring women’s whereabouts and as an excuse for stalking women. Possessive sexual jealousy is often at play when a controlling man kills his wife or his ex-wife and and sometimes her new boyfriend.

Donna said, “once I started having sex with him and he was madly in love with me he started displaying his jealousy and his possessiveness.”

Heather said, “Luke was just ultra jealous about anything especially my ex-husband. I think one of his main things that he was jealous and that I was close to our son and that we were away from him having that time together.”

Harasses her about imagined affairs

Susan said, “When I was living at dad’s it was good coz I had my money every week and I had the support and then Anthony came down and accused me of playing around on him. And that wasn’t me.”

When she is out, he is extremely jealous

Heather said “Luke used to complain about the clothes I wore, said I dressed like a whore, didn’t like the way I had my hair because I attract the guys, that I wear fuck-me pants and just want to get guys after me. And if I wanted to take our son to the beach, Luke would pass a comment, ‘Oh you just want to go to the beach and flounder around in your skimpy bikini in front of guys.’ In the end anything I put on I was thinking ‘is this looking tarty?’ I got to the stage when I thought I really should change my hair colour, even though I’ve had this hair colour my whole life.”

“Even if I stopped and talked to a guy he’d say, ‘I’ll poke his fucking eyes out.’ He was really anti. We were in the supermarket and a friend of my cousin’s was there and we stopped and talked and he goes, ‘What took you so long, the supermarket’s only across the road?’ I said I was talking to Joey and he said, ‘I can see that.’ I just stepped back. I felt like a little child being told off. At the supermarket if someone asked me where the bread was Luke would say, ‘Why didn’t he fucking ask me where the bread was he’s just trying to get into your pants.’ It was constant. So I didn’t even talk to a person let alone look at them when I was in his company. And I never would tell him if I saw any guy and spoke to him.”

He frequently phones or unexpectedly goes to her work to check up on her

Teresa said a warning sign that something was not right was Patrick’s “constant wanting to know where I was and what I was doing, which started right in the early stages in the relationship, the ringing up and checking all the time, from home, from work, from everywhere. Sometimes at midnight to see if I was there, or to make sure that no-one else was there.”

Possessive sexual jealousy leads to stalking

Heather said “Luke would drive where my house was being built and say, ‘I’ve sussed out who your plumber is, he’s not that nice looking, I’ve sussed out who the builder is, he’s ok, I’ve looked at the concrete guy and I reckon he’d get his rocks off on you’.”

Accusations based on possessiveness and jealousy lead women to doubt their version of reality

Heather said, “I didn’t really know what Luke expected of me. Even now you kind of think, coz he’s built this belief into me, ‘how am I coming across, does it look like I’m flirting with this person?’ You’re analysing everything you do coz I think I don’t want to come across like that, ‘Am I coming across like that? I don’t want to talk too much to this guy, he’s married.’ Really silly things you wouldn’t have thought of before.”

Possessiveness and jealousy lead women to find ways to protect their integrity

Raewyn said “Brian was jealous of me teaching art because he would make it very difficult. He would never comfort the children when I left. He would never try and keep them happy when I left, they would be screaming at the door. When they were younger they would be crying and he would do nothing, but I would never say anything. In some ways it was more to protect myself because I didn’t want to have a big fight about it, but yeah I knew he didn’t like the fact that I was teaching art, so I didn’t make a big issue of it either because I didn’t want to make him feel even worse.”

It is important that women be honest with themselves about their gut feelings

Believing in Knight in Shining Armour stories can lead to confusion for some women when their partner tries to stop her from leaving the house for fear she will be harmed. Early in a relationship this can sound charming and be thought of as a sentiment that means he loves her. It is often only after months or years of an ongoing pattern of feeling controlled and restricted that some seemingly innocent behaviours start to become of major concern. It is important for women to trust their perceptions about their partner’s motivations. When women are continually being blamed for making their partner jealous – yet are not actually doing anything that is dishonest or untrustworthy – it is important that the woman not doubt herself – that she does what it takes to maintain a belief in her own integrity.

It is important that men be honest with themselves about their beliefs, feelings and needs

Many men’s possessive and jealous behaviours are motivated by beliefs that they have to stay on top, otherwise they believe they will fall prey to condemnation from others (often other men), many believe that they are a failure as a man if they do not appear to be ‘wearing the pants’. Some men have experienced bullying by other men aimed at shaping this kind of masculinity, so to avoid victimisation they do what it takes to show their masculine prowess for the sake of being accepted by other men. And if there are no other men to prove this to, some men have learned that controlling women and treating them as possessions is a way to feel they have succeeded.

But many men want a caring relationship. But a relationship is about team work – doing what it takes so that all team members can flourish. When one team member (in this case the man) plays by a set of rules that controls and restricts the other team member so that the man comes out the winner – that’s not only destructive for the woman – but it is also destroying the man’s sense of wellbeing and happiness. It is also destructive for any children growing up in this atmosphere. Sam, one of the men I interviewed, said that challenging peers to stop controlling, abusing and using women “does cross your mind” but what “does play on your mind more is that my mate can’t see that soft side.” And here’s the paradox – ‘real men’ are supposed to have courage and strength – yet many don’t use that courage and inner strength to stand up against social pressures to control the women they love – because doing so has been labelled “soft” and that’s not manly.

Watch out for blogs on the following control tactics:

One-Sided power games
Mind games
Inappropriate restrictions
Isolation
Emotional unkindness & violation of trust
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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Warning signs of coercive control

by Clare Murphy PhD on February 1 2012

I wrote a blog post Warning Signs of Coercive Control by Your Partner for the Home & Family Counselling organisation’s Blog to give women some pointers about warning signs of coercive control by a male partner.

Clues to warning signs that you’re in a relationship that is highly likely to continue to get worse – exist on many levels – including . . .

Things your partner thinks, says and does
Things you think, say and do in response to his attitudes, words and behaviours
Things other people observe and tell you about that they see going on – or that other people don’t see it or get it
Your feelings
Your fears

To read about the warning signs click here. If you’re isolated, or silencing yourself, or just don’t feel safe to be your authentic self – it’s totally ok to seek help from an organisation or a person who UNDERSTANDS family violence and the dynamics of power and control. If you ever seek help and the organisation or person do not understand or make you wrong or minimise your experience – it’s a very good idea to continue to seek support from a safe place that CAN and WILL support you.

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Tactic #3 — Inappropriate Restrictions

by Clare Murphy PhD on October 10 2011

This is the third of 16 blogs discussing the patterns of tactics from my power and control wheel – Inappropriate Restrictions.

In our lives we are all restricted in a host of different ways. Laws, social and cultural etiquette, physical and mental ability, the hours we work, and our need to take time out to sleep represent ways our lives are restricted and moulded. We are confined to certain regimes when we have to attend school and work. And ultimately we are limited by the fact we will die one day.

However we all have rights within these restrictions. We have the human right to be heard, encouraged, and to have our emotional, creative, leisure and working lives respected. We have the right to be taken seriously, to develop our potential, explore and express our interests and to find meaning and spiritual fulfillment in or outside of our relationships.

But some people believe that not all should be equal; that they deserve more rights and more freedom than others. This is an abuse of power. In a domestic situation it is a human rights violation when a person engages in ongoing behaviours that inappropriately restrict their partner’s lives.

The key words are “ongoing” and “inappropriate”.

Who judges what is inappropriate? How do you know when you are being inappropriately restricted? How do you know your partner is restricting and moulding your relationship to suit himself more than you? When does a questionable action of a partner become a sinister trend? How do you know that alarm bells should be ringing? It is not easy nor obvious, at first. But clues come with the suspicion that your emotional needs are not being met, that others around you are accorded more rights, respect and consideration than you are.

Some inappropriate restrictions that women experience at the hands of their male partners include making her late for appointments, demanding that she account for her time, and expecting her to ask his permission. Some women say that their partner uses anger, threats, or emotional blackmail such as sulking and silence to restrict her activities.

Eva Lundgren (1995) interviewed 40 Norwegian couples. She noted that the more unpredictable, and the greater the mix of punitive and loving behaviours that the men used, the greater the certainty that the women would narrow their range of behaviours to stereotypical “feminine” ones and the greater the certainty that the men would become more stereotypically “masculine”. Inappropriate restrictions are methods used by some men so they can muscle more space for themselves and reduce the space for women to express their potential and freedom. One man Lundgren interviewed said, “It’s very important to keep the pattern of nature” by teaching underdeveloped women that they should restrict their lives to the role of subservient partners. And some men do not let up on imposing inappropriate restrictions until the woman obeys and submits to the limits of femininity. Until this happens, some men believe they cannot be the man they are striving to be. Eva Lundgren argues that from the men’s stories, it appeared that the men’s central aim was to shape and design their idea of what constitutes an acceptable form of masculinity – an authoritative independent man who is not influenced by a female partner.

Women I interviewed for my masters research experienced inappropriate restrictions in a variety of ways. Here are some of their stories:

Deprives her of privacy

Teresa – Prevent you from small private pleasures? Things like reading a book and staying in the bath for an hour. He’d come in all the time and say, “What are you doing?” It was hyper-vigilant what I was doing. It took away the pleasure of being able to do things. I’d open my eyes and he’d be just sitting there looking at me. It makes you want to be very secretive about anything little, little things.

Discourages her from her own interests

Brian would try to stop Raewyn from doing things she was interested in. Brian would do his own thing all the time and would make it awkward for Raewyn to do hers and he called her selfish. Raewyn – He’d be a sulk basically. He didn’t like me doing a lot of stuff and he would make it hard for me to keep up some interests, or even when I had the children to go to coffee groups he would put me down for doing that sort of thing.

Teresa – I really just stuck to doing the things that he did like and stopped doing the things that he didn’t like. I read a lot and that was my escape really…

Victoria – I lost interests and wants of my own. I only did what kept the peace. I felt guilty about going onto the nursing course. I didn’t feel guilty at the beginning coz I thought it would be good. But then the more I did it, he’d start to do reactive behaviours like, he’d drop me off at work and then he’d go cruising the main street of the city we lived in. Then I felt guilty that maybe I’d pushed him too much or that I’d offended him, or that I’d damaged his ego because I was moving on and he wasn’t moving on. That was where the guilt came in, that I was making him feel less of a man and I must stop that.

Prevents her spiritual practices

Teresa – One of the things he didn’t like was me going to church which I didn’t do very often but would do at Easter and Christmas and the odd time in between and he really didn’t like that all. I had been a reader in church before we had the relationship and he hated that and I stopped doing that. And he tried to change my mind that there wasn’t a God and I suppose it’s just like having friends believing in God (laughter). I mean it’s somebody that you like to tell things to (laughter) or that might know something that’s going on. I definitely stopped going because he didn’t like it

Intrudes and interrupts her activities

Elizabeth was one more of his possessions. Whenever he wanted anything, she had to drop what she was doing and attend to his needs. For example, he refused to take the house key to work with him so Elizabeth had to always be home at 5.00 pm or at lunch time to let him into the house. If she was late his anger would be explosive.

Elizabeth – I would say, “Take the key.” “Oh no, I don’t want all that stuff jangling around in my pockets.” “Okay well let’s leave a key outside so if you get home you can let yourself in.” “Oh, no, no, no, no people can find keys if you leave it outside. You can’t leave keys outside.” I had to be home and if I was five or ten minutes late, he’d be sitting up on the deck reading the paper, fuming, because he couldn’t get into the house. Even at the time it was happening, I just thought I had to be home at 5.00 pm. It would drive me a bit crazy sometimes I’d think, if he just took a key or if we just left a key out. The logical part of me just couldn’t make sense of this, so in the end I just stopped trying and just went along with what he said.

Acts as if she can do what she wants, then becomes upset when she does

Raewyn – we shared the babysitting and once I was late back from class and he was babysitting and he was so pissed off, it was totally uncalled for, but he wanted to make a scene to make me feel bad because he had missed out on his art class and I’d got it. So even though activities were pretty much well shared it was like, you can’t get more than your share. If anybody gets more it should be me. You are meant to be here with the children because I work whatever.

Susan – when I wanted to go back to school to get Sixth Form Certificate coz I wanted to become an accountant. He said ok, but when it actually came he got really nasty. He used to say, “What a stupid idea, what do you want to go and do that for?” I guess to him he was losing all the things I used to do for him because I’d be out of the house. Response? I left him. My youngest child was one – 1997. I didn’t get the education.

Monitors her whereabouts – demands she account for her time

Susan – I used to do night classes. He’d give me a hard time. He’d say it takes 15 minutes to get there. I was allowed two hours at the class. But at 11pm he’d ask where I’d been. He’d accuse me of being with someone else and I’d just laugh and say, “Well excuse me, but mate you go out four nights a week and you’ll say you’ll be home and you’re not home so don’t start telling me you don’t believe I’ve been where I’ve said I’ve been because where else am I going to go?” I used to argue.

Elizabeth – I’d have a good excuse to cover myself, I couldn’t just say outright, well fuck you mate, I’m not going to be there… I would have to make sure that every five minutes was accounted for because he’d want to know when I got back, where I’d been, and what I’d been doing so I had to keep a check on the time, and keep a check on where I was, so that I was sure I could fit it altogether for him so that I could tell him where I’d been.

Restricts the amount of time she’s allowed out of the house

Susan – His control there was, “Be home by a certain time. You’ve got 3/4 of an hour there, 3/4 of an hour back and an hour to do your groceries”. I was at my sister’s for three hours and Anthony got absolutely mad at me when I got home. I had no respect for him because he put these time constraints on me when I did my sewing classes. The thing that used to get to me was that he’d go out to the pub and say he’d be home at 9pm, yet come home in the early hours of the morning. I resented him, totally resented him. I used to get really angry with him. I used to argue or yell. He used to walk away from me and nothing frustrates me more than someone not arguing back. At least if you’re arguing you’ve got some kind of communication. It all used to build up in me. Did that make you change? I would tend to give in if the children needed a parent, I would tend to have given in, yeah. Because that whole self-esteem, he was earning the money and I wasn’t, so I was indebted to him yeah. Did he prevent you from small private pleasures? Yes. How did you respond to that? I would go for a coffee sometimes, and I would try not to tell him because I knew he wouldn’t approve and about clothing I just wouldn’t buy anything. I used to go around in absolutely rotten clothing, yeah I just didn’t buy much I just kept the basics and get hand-me-downs.

Pressures her to be like him, denies her, her individual tastes

Raewyn – Yes especially if I said I didn’t like something, or if I said I hate that or something he never liked it if I said I hated something. So yeah in a way he did he wouldn’t really let me …. How did you respond? I used to just say nothing because to me it was like so what, so what if he doesn’t agree with what I’m saying, it was often like that. Let him disagree, there’s no point in arguing. Would you go ahead and partake of those things? Sometimes yeah. Sometimes not? I didn’t even realise that I didn’t because of what he would say. He’s very persuasive, it’s incredible, so in some ways it was hard for me to know whether I did because he said, or because I decided myself.

Attempts at restricting her potential

Karen – I don’t know whether he would have specifically wished me any ill health, but there was a very definite campaign to do with intelligence, self esteem, achievements, and education once I started university and started achieving really highly, there was lots of problems with that. He didn’t ever say specifically I don’t want you doing that but he’d go round the house screaming at me you stupid fucking bitch. I’d come home with an A+. He’d be, “You stupid fucking bitch” for the next month. There’d be reasons for it, there’s a tea bag in the sink, what’s the tea bag doing there you stupid fucking bitch. Consequences of expressing true yourself? Bouncing around. He’d say very cutting things to put me in my place to make sure I was still going to be sitting in the box that he’d made for me. …..I chose not to do things because it was too much bother because it would cause hassles, there’d be payback and I was afraid of it.

Pauline – Did he try to prevent you from growing your resources? Definitely. I wanted to go and do some study and I was met with, “You will pay for it yourself and you’ll pay for the child care.” I didn’t earn an income, so it’s like “You won’t do it.” For me to improve anything about myself, it was made impossible. So how did you respond to these things? Oh, I hated it. With regard to wanting education I just felt like there’s no way I can do it. I can’t do it. I haven’t got the money. I used to say I’d really like to go and have a little job, contribute and he just used to react with, “Well how are you going to manage that? What are you going to do with the kids?” He was a shift worker and it gave him a lot of time. I thought that on his days off I could do something. But instead he found something else, so I watched him fill his time up and earning more and doing more and getting out and meeting people. As he got further out into the outside world I felt more and more imprisoned inside the house. I got depressed.

Discourages or refuses to let her work

Heather – I’d gone for a job at a barbershop in town and Luke really flipped out. He didn’t want me to go for that job. “How dare you apply for something like that, you ring them up and tell them you’re not going.” I said I’m going this morning, I can’t just cancel like that I really would like to do the job and then it worked out one of his friends was a partner there. He said, “I’m ringing him to tell him not to give you that job.” First of all I thought he was joking. I still don’t know to this day whether he did or not. That night we went out with his friends and he was going on and on about this job. His friends said what’s wrong with that? They were going for God’s sake man you can’t keep her trapped in doors all day.

Elizabeth – He used to say he didn’t want me working because he thought being a mother was so important, but when I look at it now I think of it was more he didn’t want me working because he didn’t want any competition, he just wanted me there so he knew where I was and what I was doing and that he had control over everything.

Restricts car use

Sally – Dylan monopolised the use of the car, returned it late and empty of petrol when Sally had to keep an appointment. At one point, when they owned two cars, Sally was not allowed to use the nice looking one, rather during snow, hail and frost she had to use the car which was full of rust and which had a broken heater. Dylan refused to fix the heater.

Pauline – One time Chris did up a car and gave it to her for Christmas and proudly told his mates what he had done. Then he sold it in February without Pauline’s consent. For various reasons a car would often not be available for Pauline to drive.

Karen – Felix restricted Karen’s activities and her use of the car in the guise of protecting her from danger and obsessively monitored everything she did.

Donna - I took myself off to school to get upskilled so I could get a job. The first thing he did was take the car off me so I couldn’t go to school. I had to walk an hour into town and an hour back to go to school and this only lasted till about half past one in the afternoon, it was adult classes and that absolutely infuriated him coz while I was there I wasn’t at home waiting on him, running round after him. I wasn’t allowed to go out because he was scared I’d have sex with someone which never happened, so I wouldn’t be allowed to have the car…………he made sure the car was always empty, I couldn’t go anywhere……

Generalised restrictions

Elsie – My dad’s really fair, he’s just of his generation, they’ve got gender specific roles, but he never stopped mum from doing anything. But this guy never allowed me to have control over anything. I always felt if I wanted to do something that it was put off or just wasn’t as worthwhile as anything he wanted to do. My career, my ambitions, my desire to have a nice, happy, peaceful life and to have lots of interests I wanted to do, I could never do any of them. I basically had nothing, nothing enjoyable in my life while I was married. I was never allowed to do anything that was for me. It was only his things that he liked to do, that was all there was. It was either do them or do nothing. Just to see a friend, he was so mean about it and complaining about the money, but he spent thousands on his own recreation. I’d just put up with it. I very quickly learned because he’d kick in doors and all sorts if he felt crossed. I only really did what he wanted anyway because he had the finances and he controlled what we did and where we went.

Elizabeth – He’d want to come home at lunchtime and I’d think it doesn’t really fit with what I had planned today, but I’d make sure I was home at lunch time and then I made his lunch for him. If he came home at night he would expect me to be there to say hello. I would have to drop what I was doing to be there for him. Even at home I had to drop what I was doing. It couldn’t be “I’m just finishing this off”, or “I’ll be done in 20 minutes.” If he was coming home at lunchtime I had to drop what I was doing, be there and make his lunch and sit and have a cup of coffee with him and I just took that as that’s the way it is.

Reference:

Murphy, Clare (2002) Women Coping with Psychological Abuse: Surviving in the Secret World of Male Partner Power and Control. Unpublished Masters thesis, University of Waikato. Available here.

Watch out for blogs on the following control tactics:

One-Sided power games
Mind games
Isolation
Over-protection and ‘caring’
Emotional unkindness & violation of trust
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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Steps Toward Averting Tragedy

by Clare Murphy PhD on January 27 2011

In the family violence scenario threats of suicide are manipulative and can lead to killing others.

Threats of suicide by a man with a history of psychologically controlling his partner can be an indicator that he could seriously harm or murder family members, often before killing himself. Such threats make it vital for wider family and friends to urge and support a woman to seek frontline help from skilled professionals.

Conducting a Homicide Risk Assessment Tool helps determine level of risk and can keep family members safe – and get appropriate help for the man.

When a controlling man threatens suicide to manipulate his partner these threats are grave – not because he may kill himself necessarily – but because everyday reality in USA, UK, New Zealand, Canada and Australia show such a man can go on to kill his partner and/or his children.

A reader of my blog titled “Domestic violence is much more than physical violence” wrote a comment outlining her concern for her friend whose husband threatens to kill himself as a way of getting her to do what he wants. She states that her friend called her husband to tell him she intended taking the children to her parents for the weekend. But he “left work drove on the highway behind them called her on her cellphone and told her to pull over and come home with him or he would kill himself”. Other men who make such threats say things like, “If you ever leave me, then I’m going to kill myself”, or “I can’t live without you”, or “If I can’t have you no-one can”, or “Death before divorce”, or “You belong to me, no other”.

Not only are these statements coercive – aimed at appealing to women’s sense of responsibility – but they should never be taken lightly. Too often these threats turn to reality. Threatening to commit suicide is a pointer, a red flag of grave concern much like when someone abuses an animal. It represents a risk factor that points toward a real possibility that the person will also abuse family members, as I have discussed previously.

Homicide-suicide may be a comparatively rare problem, not everything finally gets to murder. But it can – and it does

Psychological abuse and power and control know no bounds. There are no rules of certainty about how far things may go – but there is a growing worldwide body of knowledge that cannot be ignored. It’s essential to know what to look out for in order to take precautions to keep family members safe.

So my blog is intended to give you information to help support women who may not be informed about indicators and risk factors that may lead to murder. It is not only OK to speak up and help women, it’s vital.

Remaining silent contributes to the problem – as does ignorance

I know anecdotally that a woman who was killed by her controlling ex-husband last year may have been saved if her family had fully understood the very real risks of her leaving her husband and going back to the house to collect her possessions. Tragically her family had been trying to do all they could to support her – but their lack of knowledge about the signs of abuse makes the woman’s death even sadder.

Some suicidal men may commit homicide before killing themselves

Threats to commit suicide is a red flag, an indicator that such a man could go on to seriously harm or kill his partner and those most close. Men commit most of the homicide-suicide cases. Most victims are women and children. Therefore it is imperative that women (or their supporters) learn to understand the nature and gravity of the situation and seek help by way of a risk assessment.

Find professional help to conduct a risk assessment

Staff at women’s family violence programmes or men’s stopping abuse programmes should be able to assist you in conducting a risk assessment tool. You should expect staff to conduct: “a review of the case history, risk factors, the nature of the risk, the necessity for immediate intervention, safeguarding the victim, and managing the perpetrator” (Office of the Chief Coroner Province of Ontario 2006:45).

Be aware though that not all professionals are specifically trained in the dynamics of family violence and risk factors that can lead to serious harm or murder. In their fourth annual report of the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee, the Office of the Chief Coroner Province of Ontario (2006) describe some cases in which members of the public and/or professionals did not intervene effectively. You can read the document here. The following is one case in which both the man and the woman had involvement with the mental health system at different times in their lives:

“. . . and there was some vague reference to abuse in her relationship, however this was never explored, followed up on or dealt with . . . in the years directly prior to the murder-suicide, the perpetrator had become seriously disturbed and socially isolated . . . yet there was no apparent screening, exploration of relationship issues or abuse by any mental health professional. Level of risk must be assessed and managed. The perpetrator was identified as ‘seriously depressed’ and was encouraged to retrieve his gun to be able to go hunting as form of therapy. However the gun was used in the homicide” (2006:15).

It is vital that the professionals you approach take seriously the possible danger to family members, other than the man who threatens suicide

If you are not satisfied that the professionals you contact seem to understand the problem or that they minimise or ignore it – then it’s important you keep searching for appropriate help. Professionals must “assess whether there is also homicidal ideation when individuals report suicidal ideation and vice versa” (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2009:5) and professionals must be trained in how to use a risk assessment tool.

Risk assessment tools

A risk assessment tool is based on years of research of real life situations worldwide. Risk factors can include psychological, biological, sociological and other factors that were often present for someone who murders, or attempts to murder a family member. However, not every situation is the same and risk assessments are only indicators of possibilities. To avoid missing or misinterpreting clues it is important that lay people do not try to figure this out alone. People trained in the dynamics of family violence can help you and the woman you are supporting.

Trained professionals will assist you in understanding what the list of risk factors means in any given, individual situation.

Campbell’s Intimate Partner Violence Risk Assessment

You can download Jacquelyn Campbell’s Intimate Partner Violence Risk Assessment here and take it to a trained professional who will explain exactly how the assessment works. I have discussed this risk assessment instrument in another blog post here.

Risk Factors indicated by Barbara J. Hart Esq.

Threats of homicide or suicide
Fantasies of homicide or suicide
Access to weapons, previous use of weapons and/or threats to use weapons
“Ownership” of the battered partner
Centrality of the partner
Separation violence
Depression
Access to the battered woman and/or to family members
Repeated involvement with the justice system
Increase in personal risk taking
Hostage-taking

Barbara Hart’s list of risk factors are available here.

Risk Factors compiled by the Office of the Chief Coroner Province of Ontario

The Office of the Chief Coroner Province of Ontario (2006) compiled detailed information about risk factors that might lead to murder. You can download a copy of their fourth annual report of the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee (see reference below) and read pages 30-33. You could take the report with you to a family violence trained person who will assist you in dealing with the perpetrator’s behaviours and will know the steps to take to help keep family members safe.

Risk Factors flagged by New Zealand Police

Risk factors compiled by the New Zealand Police set out below aim to alert professionals that a particular situation may indicate that someone is at risk of dying or suffering serious harm (you can see the following risk factors on page 83 in the Standards New Zealand, 2006 document here).

The offender is obsessed with, dependent upon, or is stalking the victim.
Recent separation, issue of a court order, or divorce and responding in a dangerous manner.
The victim believes the offender could injure or kill her/him.
The offender has strangled or attempted to strangle the victim.
There is a history of family violence and it is getting more severe or increasing in frequency.
The offender has threatened / attempted to commit suicide, or to kill the victim, children or other family members.
The offender has access to weapons, particularly firearms and has used, or threatened to use them. They may have convictions involving weapons (knives, firearms).
The offender has easy access to the victim, children or other family members.
Children are in the home when the violence occurred or have been hurt or threatened in family violence situations.
Incidents of animal abuse by the offender.
The offender has a history of alcohol or drug problems.
The offender has a history of violent behaviour against non-family members.

A history of physical violence is just one possible risk factor. Marie De Santis, from the Women’s Justice Center, Santa Rosa, CA, USA emphasises that many risk factors “usually don’t bleed! In fact, these high risk factors often don’t leave any visible marks at all.”

“If only …”

Speak up on women’s behalf

I urge you to speak up on behalf of women when you believe they’re at risk of serious harm or murder. Silence is not an option anymore – psychological abuse, power and control, family violence are no longer private matters. Keeping abuse private is actually yet another tactic of control and isolation. If you know any woman experiencing anything discussed in this blog, I urge you to support her. She may be isolated and unsure and not be able to help herself in some circumstances. She might not realise the gravity of what a threat of suicide can lead to, and she may not be reading this website or able to find other resources to help herself. The very nature of power and control isolates many women, creates confusion, is crazymaking and can be debilitating financially and psychologically.

You may be her sole link – and only hope

Women need support – some women might reject it – but ultimately keeping women safe from serious harm or death is everyone’s responsibility.

Ask the woman whether she believes she is safe or not

Some women are capable of assessing for themselves whether their partner is capable of killing her, but many are not (as I discussed in a previous blog post).

The Washington State Department of Health guidelines (2008:8) suggest that you could assess the woman’s immediate safety by asking:

Do you feel safe to go home today?
Are you afraid that your partner may seriously harm you?
Are there weapons in your home? What type?
Has your partner ever threatened you with homicide or suicide?
Is confidential shelter an option you are interested in seeking?
What is your plan if future violence occurs?
What is one thing, in your opinion, that could be done to support you?

However . . . in a case reported by the Office of the Chief Coroner, Province of Ontario (2006:17):

“the victim [of homicide] did not feel that her partner posed a threat of lethal violence although many warning signs were present that were consistent with a potential risk for domestic homicide. There were opportunities for friends, family and community professionals to intervene but they appeared to feel limited or stymied in these attempts because the victim believed she could handle the situation on her own. Research in this field suggests that approximately half of domestic homicide victims minimized the risks posed and saw their partner as harassing and annoying, but not dangerous. In these matters, the public and professional interveners need enhanced skills to engage the victim in a discussion on the risks that are apparent and the importance of safety planning and risk reduction strategies. These approaches have to recognize the victim’s ambivalence or guilt about separation and her misguided belief that she can manage the threats on her own without police or court intervention.”

Refer to my blog for discussing safety tips with women if they intend leaving their partner. AND seek professional help with this too. I have yet to write safety tips for women if they stay with their partner or if they’ve already left him. For help with those two scenarios I suggest googling for that help.

It is not enough to just warn the victim that she may be in danger

A description of some homicide-suicide situations from the Ontario death review is available for reading in the Office of the Chief Coroner’s 2006 document (see below for the reference). These case studies show that it was not enough to just warn the victim that she may be in danger. Often friends, family, workmates, and so forth suspected there were high levels of risk for various women, “however, with no assistance from any outside resources, were unable to intervene effectively” (2006:11).

It suggests you do not make any conclusions from the above risk assessment tools yourself. Marie De Santis from the Women’s Justice Center in California reiterates in her document on homicide risk assessment the very things I emphasise:

“The only sure way to determine the presence of these high risk factors is through careful, comprehensive victim interviews.”

Men who abuse and control their female partner need help

For my PhD research I interviewed men who admitted to abusing and controlling their female partners. All the men had sought help to change. Often men who use power and control are actually quite vulnerable and dependent on their partner – which in part contributes to their desperation to never let her leave. One man told me the following:

“Well I’d certainly recommend if anybody was in a similar position to me that they should come and attend one of these courses, it’s certainly helped me, like if I didn’t come to this course, I probably wouldn’t have changed my behaviour and I’d be a single man now. Either that, or I would’ve jumped off a bridge, I don’t know, I certainly wouldn’t be happy, I’d say that. Not that I’m big on killing myself or any of that nonsense, but yeah, my life would be over if my wife left me, I would have nothing to live for.”

However, often men refuse to admit they are abusive and refuse to get help to change.

Many men don’t believe they’re perpetrators of family violence, rather they think other men are

One man I interviewed said he had been sneakily hiding his abuse against his partner and that a neighbour had once come over for help to get a protection order against her husband. The man I interviewed said that at the time it did not occur to him that he was abusing his wife in the same way that his neighbour was abusing his.

The popular culture is full of stereotypes about what kind of man threatens suicide to control his wife and what kind of man kills his wife. But it is ordinary men, it is men you buy your groceries from, men you seek insurance advice from, men who are wonderful school teachers, men who offer you help to clear your yard on the weekend. Generally, monsters do not commit murder – it is ordinary men who can, and do monstrous things. Men’s stopping abuse programmes are there to help ordinary men to face the truth of what they do that harms others. And once they start attending – many realise they’ve also been harming themselves and many admit they don’t like harming their loved ones and they want to be challenged and want support to change.

Remember that threats can have serious implications in the end

And speaking up on behalf of others is a way to keep victims safe and a possible way to encourage help for offenders. While most men who threaten suicide or homicide are able to disengage emotionally, Johnston and Campbell (1993) state that some remain obsessed with the woman.

You never want to hear yourself saying “If only . . . .”

So please . . . . speak up, speak out loud on behalf of women. Keep the family safe.

References:

Australian Institute of Criminology (2009) Domestic-related homicide: keynote papers from the 2008 international conference on homicide. AIC Reports. Research and Public Policy Series 104. Retrieved December 2009 from: http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/C/C/3/%7BCC334155-D9E6-4635-84FB-32A81C3A3C69%7Drpp104_001.pdf
Campbell, Jacquelyn. C. (2003). Danger Assessment Instrument. Retrieved 29 October, 2009, from http://www.dangerassessment.org/WebApplication1/pages/da/DAEnglish.pdf
De Santis, Marie, Women’s Justice Center, Santa Rosa, CA, USA. Domestic Violence homicide risk assessment. Retrieved January 2011 from: http://www.justicewomen.com/dv_risk_assess.pdf
Hart, Barbara J. (1990) Assessing whether batterers will kill. Retrieved March, 2009, from http://www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/hart/hart.html
Home Office, UK (2006) Lessons Learned from the Domestic Violence Enforcement Campaigns 2006: Police and Crime Standards Directorate. Retrieved January 2011 from: http://www.broken-rainbow.org.uk/research/Domestic-Violence-10731.pdf
Johnston, Janet R., & Campbell, Linda, E.G. (1993). A clinical typology of interparental violence in disputed-custody divorces. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 63, 190-199.
Martin, Jennifer & Pritchard, Rhonda (2010). Learning from tradgedy: Homicide within families in New Zealand 2002-2006. Ministry of Social Development. Te Manatü Whakahiato Ora. Retrieved June 2010 from: http://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/research/learning-from-tragedy/index.html
Office of the Chief Coroner Province of Ontario (2006). Fourth annual report of the domestic violence death review committee. Retrieved January 2011 from: http://www.oacas.org/pubs/external/dvdrcreport07aug15.pdf
Office of the Chief Coroner Province of Ontario. (2007). Fifth annual report of the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee. Retrieved June 2009, from: http://www.crvawc.ca/documents/DVDRC%202007%20Report.pdf
Standards New Zealand (2006). New Zealand Standard: Screening, risk assessment and intervention for family violence including child abuse and neglect (Online). Retrieved June 2009 from: http://www.police.govt.nz/resources/2006/nzs-8006-2006/nzs-8006-2006.pdf
Taylor, Betty. (2008). Dying to be heard: Domestic and family violence death reviews: Discussion paper. Retrieved January 2011, from: http://www.wlsq.org.au/documents/publicat/cle/dvdrag%20%20ver%202.pdf
Washington State Department of Health (2008). Domestic Violence and Pregnancy: Guidelines for Screening and Referral: August 2008 Revision. Retrieved May 2009 from: http://www.doh.wa.gov/cfh/mch/documents/DVPgGuide82008.pdf

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Warning signs that your male partner is emotionally controlling you

by Clare Murphy PhD on August 20 2010

You’re dating or living with this good looking guy, maybe he’s charming and you feel wanted . . . but things he says or does make you feel bad about yourself – and you can’t really figure out why. You likely question yourself asking whether it’s something about you – because he doesn’t seem to think it’s about him . . . Somehow whatever negative things happen between you, you’re left feeling that it’s you with the problem.

Perhaps you got into the relationship quickly, maybe had sex much sooner than you wanted. Maybe you didn’t develop a friendship before suddenly spending most of your time with him and hardly, if ever, seeing your friends or family any more. Your life may have narrowed so that you’re no longer pursuing your own interests – life may seem to be all about being with him . . . waiting on him . . . thinking about him. If he seems jealous or possessive maybe you find that enticing because it makes you feel wanted and special.

Have you started changing?

Have you started changing for him, to keep him, to make him happy, to prove you’re lovable? If your old friends were flies on the wall, what might they notice that is different about you? Will they notice you’ve changed your appearance? That you’ve become secretive, dull, lost your sense of aliveness?

Has your mind started to go crazy after arguments – as if anything you thought was logical before meeting this man now seems confusing?

Have you started to feel guilty about all sorts of things? Yet deep down you know you have not done anything wrong. But then instead of admitting to yourself that you feel uncertain or unsafe, you start hiding things you do so you can feel the freedom you had before the relationship.

Or do you find yourself lying to him – yet that’s not something you usually do? But if you slow your thought processes down and explore your intuition, you may discover that you started lying because he has a way about him that makes you feel uneasy. Perhaps you started lying to yourself because he’s so sensitive you don’t want to hurt him – yet if you were honest with yourself, is something going on whereby it is you who is feeling hurt?

Do you think you’re not good enough?

If you ever had beliefs before that you weren’t good enough, something wrong with you, or you were stupid or ugly – have those thoughts become worse since being with this new man? If they got worse it’s highly likely you started changing yourself to seek his approval and to prove to him that you were good enough, that you are capable and good looking enough. But all your efforts are not working . . . is that true?

Can you answer ‘yes’ to these questions?

I trust this man 100%
He respects me totally without a doubt
He’s always honest and I feel completely safe to be honest with him
He definitely respects my privacy
I feel totally free to be myself round him anywhere anytime
I adamantly feel safe with him – always

Be honest with yourself

If you answered ‘no’ to these questions – it is very probable you are with a man that is engaged in a slow process of gaining more and more emotional control over you and your life. To check how real this may be I urge you to download this list of tactics that some men use to control their female partner. Go through and check if he is using any of these behaviours.

Just in case he is controlling you . . . it may not be safe to show him the list. If he is using ongoing emotional abuse, then it may be supportive for you to take the list – and discuss what’s happening to you – to a trusted friend or family member (possibly someone he has said he does not like or does not want you to see), or a counsellor. Or contact a local domestic violence agency as they are trained in helping women make sense of subtle emotional abuse and control.

Trust your gut instincts

Some aims of checking this list and seeking support outside the relationship are to empower yourself so that you have greater choice over your life and all your current and future relationships. Another aim is to do what it takes to care for yourself, and to trust your gut instincts about what’s really going on with you and your partner.

Ultimately relationships have to feel safe

Markers of a healthy relationship – whether that’s a dating partner, someone you live with, a workmate, a school friend – are when you can say to yourself, “Yes this person is honest, trustworthy, respectful, honours my privacy, is safe to be around and I feel totally free to be myself”.

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