This is the fourth of 16 blogs discussing the patterns of tactics from my power and control wheel – Isolation.

Isolation is a powerful tactic used by controlling partners

Isolation is a pivotal tactic that controlling partners use in order to weaken their victims, prevent them from hearing others’ perspectives, and to bring them into line with his own beliefs and requirements. Often possessiveness and jealousy play a part in some men’s motivation to isolate women from social contact with friends and family. Some tactics aimed at isolating the victim include telling her that she cares more for her friends, family and pets than for him, telling her he’s the only one who understands her and loves her, controlling incoming information including what she reads, calling her names if she spends time with friends and family, purposefully moving towns or countries, and there are a whole lot more tactics that women describe below in interviews from my Masters research.

Isolation is a debilitating consequence of abuse and control

Anyone who lives with an ongoing experience of being abused by a family or household member can become isolated as a result.  For instance, the victim may withdraw from friends and family to save face or because they feel misunderstood, judged, stigmatised, or not supported. Particular tactics aimed at isolating the victim can lead women to become extremely dependent on their controlling partner.

He controls the money to prevent her use of the car

Elsie said her husband had the money for the petrol, “so I could only go and see my parents if he gave me petrol money. So I’d only go sometimes. I still saw them. As Leon’s control over me got higher and stronger over me he would let me go more often. Near the end of our marriage, friends would come and he would open the door this much (indicates two inches) and say I wasn’t home. That way I never ended up with anybody to counteract what he said. It did start to wear me down.”

He turns off electricity to prevent her exiting through the electronic gate

A couple of friends of Heather’s said, “’I don’t know how you live here with these gates around you all the time. It’s a fully fenced section with these gates.’ They said they’d feel a bit trapped, it’s like Fort Knox in there. I started to think, yeah, I’d gone to go a couple of times and Luke stopped me coz he switched the power off and I couldn’t get in to turn it back on. There were just a few things like that that started to scare me. That’s when I started to panic and thought I’ve got to get out of here and have some time on my own to see what’s happening.”

He manufactures situations aimed at isolating her

Heather would tell Luke, for instance, that she “was going out with a friend on Saturday and he’d say, ‘Oh didn’t I tell you, I was planning on going away, ring and tell them you can’t, I’ve already planned it.’ Sometimes now I think he really hadn’t planned it, he’d just ring at the last minute, so any time I went to go to an outside activity, ‘Oh didn’t I tell you mum wants to come over’. There was always something stopping me getting contact with the outside world. He’d say, ‘Let’s go fishing, it’s too nice a day you can’t go shopping today, I’ll go and pack and we’ll go to the lake fishing.’ So I’d ring my friend and say, ‘Can we go shopping on a wet day, it’s such a nice day Luke is off to go fishing’. In the end I was realising that I was spending all my time with him. Then when he was doing that with the phone calls I started to get a bit scared. I was scared more than anything.

Says what she does makes him jealous so insists she not do it

Karen said her partner Felix “was a very jealous person, he was afraid that I’d be running around screwing everyone. I learned how to shut myself down. I stopped seeing my friends as much. Once the baby came there was utter isolation, poverty, and loss of trust.”

Attempts to isolate him and her as a couple from the rest of the world

Teresa said her partner “didn’t want the world encroaching or shining its bright light on anything in the relationship, that it had to be exclusive and separate from the rest of the world. I thought it was quite nice. It meant that you were really special (laughter). Somebody loved you that much.”

Heather’s partner attempted to isolate her from family and friends “mainly because my parents didn’t really like him that much and my friends didn’t like him that much he’d say, ‘Oh if just you and me went to live in Australia it would be amazing. We wouldn’t have your family and everyone against us. They’re all against us here. If we moved away it would be just us. We would be so much happier. We wouldn’t have the interference.’ I didn’t want to move away. I liked having my family. But I must admit there was one stage he’d say, ‘They’re just against us because we’re so happy’. I started to believe maybe my aunty and uncle aren’t very happy, and maybe my grandparents haven’t got anything else to do but think that their granddaughter should have something better, I’d start going through all that. But I couldn’t make that move to Australia.”

Demands loyalty to him, not to others

Elsie said she really adored her stepson, Jeremy, but if ever her husband “saw us get close he’d really get stuck into me, and to Jeremy too, coz that was like disloyalty to Leon. It would really hurt because I really did adore my stepson. He was just adorable. He wouldn’t let Jeremy ever come near me, it would be like total disloyalty.”

Tells her she is not allowed to see certain people

Sally said, “I was not allowed to keep in touch with my male friends. I made the assumption he was jealous but he’d never admit to it – he had no comprehension that my friendship with these men did not mean I loved him any less or that they’d get more attention in anyway whatsoever – it was so immature and pathetic of him and ignorant that he refused to even meet these people.”

Dismissive of invites to participate with her friends and family  

Teresa said her partner Patrick “very strongly tried to prevent me from continuing and developing relationships with other people. I did what he wanted. Again it was quite subtle. It wasn’t, ‘I don’t want you to have any friends, I don’t want you to talk to your family’. It was – he’d refuse to come and visit my family for weekends or Christmas. The first Christmas I stayed, I didn’t want to stay, I’d much rather have gone to visit my family, but I felt sorry for him being left all alone, even though it was his choice to be left all alone. So I told my family I had to work because I didn’t want them to know that he was the kind of prick (laughter) who didn’t want to come and be with the family. Then with friends, he didn’t like it when they came round and he’d go and shut himself in the study and be quite dismissive to them. I was especially confused for a long time about the friends thing because my idea of living with someone was that you could have friends around for dinner and drinks and lunch, and that wasn’t the right thing to do. It took me a long time to figure it out.”

He puts limits on her visits with friends and family

Susan’s sister lived three quarters of an hour away. “But Anthony didn’t like me going over there and spending the day with her because I wouldn’t be home doing things. We were allowed to visit my cousin who was 15 minutes drive away. Anthony would go off and do a job. When he got home I thought he’d been working the whole time, but he hadn’t, he’d been visiting. I didn’t know this for a long long time, but I know he used to call into various people’s places whenever he was going past, but he used to put a time limit on my outings. I used to argue with him and he used to just look at me like I was an idiot and said, ‘well I’m not talking to you’. And he didn’t. He’d stop talking to me completely.” However Susan would still visit but would “only visit if I had to go and do something such as grocery shopping, because otherwise you have nothing if you don’t have friends.”

Teresa “narrowed the range to what was acceptable to her partner.” She used to go away for a weekend with girlfriends every four or five months “and drink lots of Lindauer and eat chocolate and cheese and crackers and I didn’t do that at all when I was with him because he was really threatened by it and didn’t like it.” She said that, “At work he didn’t like it if I spent too much time with other people, or did things when he didn’t know what I was doing. He had to know what I was doing all the time. He used to ring up every hour when I was at home and say, ‘What are you doing?’”

Tells her that her friends or family don’t care about her

Heather said Luke “was starting to set me against my parents, saying, ‘They’re just being mean, they don’t like me, they just want you to go back to your ex-husband and they’re not giving us a chance’.”

He attempts to divide and conquer by provoking jealousies and rivalries

Teresa said that her partner Patrick would tell her, “That people at work had said things about me, that they had said that I was this, that I was that, horrible things, which I believed and I don’t know whether they had said them or not. I think that he probably twisted a lot of things like that and I believed him, so that would change my judgement.” This led Teresa to reduce her interactions with other people, “and my job which I previously really enjoyed, I’d just go to work and do my job and go away as quickly as I could so I wasn’t around people. And I wouldn’t phone people or do things with people at all.”

He’s rude, critical or dismissive of her visitors

When Sally’s “best friend travelled from the North Island to visit her and Dylan in Nelson, Dylan, who was not usually very active when it came to renovating the house, suddenly appeared ‘busy’ renovating the house. He didn’t want to go out, and spent most of his time making my friends wrong or visiting with his alcohol drinking marijuana smoking buddy. My best friend told me I had become a clone of Dylan’s, which I had not realised. He did not want me to keep in touch with her after that and whenever I wanted to get in touch he disapproved.”

Sally also said that “one year, my sister did not tell Dylan she was coming up to surprise me for my birthday coz she knew he wouldn’t let her stay. And another time one of my friends rang to use our shower because her electricity had gone out and he said ‘no’.”

Teresa said Patrick “came down to my parent’s place once and that was the only time he would, and he was rude and I was really embarrassed by it.”

Elsie said, “If I had a friend that was my friend and not somebody that Leon had introduced me to, he’d run them down, he’d say they’re not like you, they’re a bitch and stuff like that, to get rid of them, put them off. It would work because it was so unpleasant to listen to all the time and he’d embarrass me if they ever visited, so I wouldn’t encourage people to come and see me. Friends would ask me to go out or something. I just kept saying, ‘Oh no, no.’ There was one young girl, she was such a nice girl, we really got on well, and she said when I was leaving work – we’d worked together – she said, ‘I’ll come round and see you, we’ll still see each other eh?’ And I said, ‘No we won’t.’ And she was really hurt I know, but I never explained why. I think she just thought I was a nasty (laughter) person.”

Karen said “Felix accepted my involvement with my family more than with my friends, but he was very critical, especially of my mum, which is understandable. And it used to drive me nuts that I couldn’t have my brother there coz I sort of brought up my little brother and I felt very closely bound to him. He would let me have him, but there would always be a bloody hassle, there would always be a row when my brother was there, always. I felt terrible about that because I wanted to give him support and love.”

Elizabeth “would go to groups or do personal growth type things and I’d meet people and I’d maybe have them over, and David would say to me things like, ‘Why are you making friends with her she’s separated, why don’t you make friends with married people?’ He would be quite cold to them when they came to the house. I would be quite reticent about having them back, or I wouldn’t go to things that he couldn’t come to. If I got invited to something on my own I wouldn’t go unless it was a couple invitation. So I only really did couple things.”

Friends and family decide to stay away because of his abusiveness

Elsie said “I was isolated in the sense that Leon would have a guise of being nice to my parents, but then he would be rude sometimes, enough for them not to like him and they wouldn’t want to come round and see me. He was unwelcoming and unfriendly to anybody who knew me, so people just started to stay away.”

Victoria’s “sister came to stay once, my sister and I aren’t particularly close, it was getting close to the end of the marriage and Graham did one of his ‘behaviours’ and it was the first time that my family had actually seen him in action. And it wasn’t nothing, it was like, ‘you think this is a problem, you should see him on a good day!’ My sister said, ‘I’ll never come and stay with you again because I couldn’t believe the way he acted.’ So it wasn’t about, ‘Oh my God let me support you and help you’. It was about, ‘I’m never coming back, I’m not going to associate with you guys because this is stuffed’. So through the dysfunctions we were having people pulled back, and I didn’t want people to see that. So it was best to pull away and not engage in too many behaviours with others. I didn’t want to admit that this was my lot. If they saw it I’d have to admit it to myself and I wasn’t ready to admit it to myself.”

He makes her feel bad for pursuing friends of her own choosing

Elizabeth said, “I used to try and do any socialising that I wanted to do during the day when David was at work, but in the hours that were acceptable to him. I didn’t do separate things in the evenings although I did join a quilting group and I remember getting a real sense of belonging because it was all women.”

He requires relationship issues be kept secret

Teresa said, “Whenever I’d talk to people on the phone Patrick would make it really clear with body language and non-verbal behaviours that he didn’t like it and he’d sulk afterwards. He’d say things like, ‘What happens between you and I is just between you and I and it’s nobody else’s business. I don’t think you should ever tell people what’s between you and I. It’s special, it’s just ours.’ I did still talk to my friends a little bit, but I really cut myself off from people to keep him happy.”

Elsie “made the mistake of saying something to mum one day. It was something really harmless about something in the house and Leon waited until we were out of earshot and then let loose. So no I never talked to anyone about it, and my parents to this day don’t know. They still don’t know what it was like. I’ve never talked to anyone.”

Pauline’s husband came from parents who thought very highly of themselves and had to keep up appearances. “So his parents believed that if anything went wrong, ‘God you should not tell people because if they think badly of you, you’d go down the ladder!’ Yeah so I had to come to terms with not telling anybody if bad things happened. When we were finally separated, my family just went into total shock because they thought it was an absolute perfect marriage and they were just stunned.”

However Pauline did share some traumatic experiences with her friend. “My friend went ballistic at him when she found out about the miscarriage and he was like, ‘Oops I feel a bit awful someone has found out I can get rather nasty and everyone thinks I’m Mr Wonderful’.”

Pauline “was so confused and I thought I was going quite crazy because he acted like nothing’s wrong. So I’d think well maybe it’s me, it’s all my thinking, my perception.” However she finally experienced validation for her perception when her friend, who lived miles away and had not visited for a long time, arrived for a visit and her husband was home on shift. Until that visit her friend had “thought my husband was an absolute angel, she went to school with him.” But at this visit her friend told Pauline, “All these months you talked to me on the phone about what he’s been like, I didn’t think you were lying, but I couldn’t see that’s how he would be, because that’s not him.” But she said, “Now I’m here today, I can see this is for real, it’s happening.”

She chooses to isolate herself to save face

Teresa said, “I didn’t really want to talk about it to friends or family because I felt that they would see me as a failure and that I’d buggered it up. And I guess also that they would want me to do something that I wasn’t ready to do, like you have to leave. Whereas my feeling was that if you’re in a relationship, then you have to do everything you can to make it work and you can’t just get up and walk out, because you’ve made a commitment.”

Victoria said she and Graham “were very quite secluded and isolated as a couple, so the opportunities to talk weren’t greatly there. I never spoke to Graham’s family about the relationship because they were in their own dysfunctional homes. My family wasn’t particularly close and I certainly wasn’t going to tell them that I was in trouble. Secrecy was more about my perception of saving face than it was about an overt ‘You mustn’t tell’.”

She becomes isolated due to fear of consequences

Raewyn said “I didn’t go and see my family as much because Brian really used to get pissed off with me travelling up there. He’d say, ‘Oh it costs so much money.’ That’s probably one thing I did restrict myself in because he was so anti it.”

Victoria said she and Graham “reduced social activities. The only ones we did were involving his family, what Graham wanted to do. And that’s also because I didn’t want anybody to see us function, or dysfunction is probably more appropriate, as a couple. So I’d go to his family because they were all dysfunctional anyway, and he’d have a tantrum if we didn’t go to his family. His tantrums had to be seen to be believed.”

Susan said, “I was scared that when I got home Anthony was going to get angry and not talk to me. He’s always sulked. If he didn’t like something I did he wouldn’t talk to me. But usually it was for a day. The two weeks he ignored me was far out, it was unbelievable. He still would sleep with me. We wouldn’t have sex, but would sleep in the same bed. I’d talk to him and he’d just turn his head and walk away.”

Karen said she would sometimes “stop and have a jug of beer with people after uni and I knew there would be hell to pay, I knew there would be a problem. I was fearful, dreading, just the dread. I couldn’t enjoy spontaneity. I couldn’t enjoy social things because of the fear and the guilt, so I would withdraw and just choose not to do it, it would be too much bother.”

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, New Zealand. Available here.

Watch out for blogs on the following control tactics:

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

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 . . .

1. Things your partner thinks, says and does
2. Things you think, say and do in response to his attitudes, words and behaviours
3. Things other people observe and tell you about that they see going on – or that other people don’t see it or get it
4. Your feelings
5. 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.

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

Watch out for blogs on the following control tactics:

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

Finally, after years of silence, Jane speaks out about the shame and degradation of living with psychological abuse

A major aspect of Psychological Abuse is secrecy – it’s an essential ingredient in the abuser’s arsenal. Countless female victims are held hostage within the four walls of their own homes unable to speak out to friends or even to those closest to them, or if they do speak out, are unable to have the plea heard. Outwardly he is charming and believable, while she seems erratic, irritable and stressed. Friendships disintegrate. Families, also, can’t see the depth and breadth of the problem and often side with the abuser.

Jane is a client of mine and I respect all matters between us as confidential. Jane has written a brochure, which you can download here. The words in the brochure are Jane’s – they’re her inspiration and her bold decision alone to publish. It is not easy for victims to write their stories as eloquently as Jane has. As the convenor of this blog “SpeakOutLoud about psychological abuse” I could not refuse to provide the forum for this heartfelt “story from the inside”.

Here’s a quote from Jane’s brochure:

Psychological abuse makes me feel sad and hopeless. I can’t seem to find my future or joy. It robs me of energy and dampens my passion and excitement about life. I’ve never cried so much on the inside. I’m sorry that abuse puts my friendships under strain and that my ways of coping have caused friends to walk away. I want you to know these ways of coping are an attempt to actively resist abuse—even backing down and putting up with it. I’m not weak, a pushover or a doormat.

And here is Jane….

My name is Jane McWilliams.  I work as a counsellor/psychotherapist at Oaks of Mamre Counselling Centre in Auckland, New Zealand. I compiled this downloadable brochure on psychological abuse for several reasons.  I want to help women, and others who support them, to understand what living in psychological abuse feels like.  I was inspired by the work of Jody Earle when I saw how impacting writing from the actual experience of the woman is.

For twenty years I have felt much of what is written in this brochure.  I have also drawn from other women’s experiences in writing it.  The crazy-making effects of psychological abuse are exhausting, erosive and soul-destroying.  My hope is that this brochure will help those of you out there, who are experiencing the same things, to recognise what’s happening to you.  I want to help you gain awareness because recognising what was happening to me was the beginning of my journey to freedom.

With Clare’s help I am currently working through the part I’ve had to play in keeping silent about, and perpetuating, abuse.  She is helping me to heal.  My hope is that you would also find your voice and join in the stand against this injustice.

Clare Murphy writes about fear and shame being, “…the lifeblood that keeps power and control alive”.  Society’s message that “counsellors should have it all together” has been a major contributor to me staying silent about my experience of psychological abuse.  The problem is, staying silent about what we are living in exacerbates the domestic violence epidemic.  As Brené Brown writes in I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t): Telling the Truth About Perfectionism, Inadequacy, and Power, “Our silence has actually forced shame underground, where it now permeates our personal and public lives in destructive and insidious ways” (2007:xix).  Fear and shame, for me, have been a reason for self-protection.  I no longer want to hide behind defences.  I want to be free and live authentically.

My husband, Brett, is currently attending a men’s stopping abuse programme.  In asking him how he would feel if I put this brochure out publically he replied, “It will help others to become aware and begin owning their abusive behaviour.  It is helping me to identify with the impact my abuse has had on you and the children”.  He said the list of tactics outlined by Clare were the starting point, of him beginning to become aware of what he was doing and, of his journey, to walk out of abusive behaviour.

So, this brochure is for women and men.  It is an invitation for those of you living in psychological abuse: the victims and the perpetrators, to come out of hiding, to face your vulnerabilities and shame, and to speak out loud so that others will hear, and violence might one day end.

I (Jane) will leave you with a quote from my brochure:

I know I’m healing from psychological abuse because I am no longer willing to live under someone else’s power and control. I am gaining back control of my own life. I’m starting to feel my hopelessness subside. More and more I’m learning to stand. I’m learning better ways of coping. I’m now convinced I’m not crazy, I’m not to blame and I’m not a victim.

I believe I will find hope again—in God, and in others who are safe. I’m learning to listen to my body, to be assertive not aggressive, to be a carer not a rescuer and to live from my authentic self. I’m discovering real spirituality.

To download Jane’s brochure click here.

This is the second of 16 blogs discussing the patterns of tactics from my power and control wheel – Mind Games.

Mind Games are deliberate attempts to psychologically manipulate someone. They are covert, coercive, manipulative intentions masked by innocent sounding communication. Mind Game language is designed to confuse and keep the victim from guessing the perpetrator’s true aim.

Some of the Mind Games men use to psychologically confuse female partners include blocking her from clarifying his mixed messages, questioning all her judgments, and manipulating her by responding with lies. Mind Games are an attempt to indoctrinate someone into believing they are the guilty party and their viewpoints are irrelevant or pathetic, and need to be realigned to the viewpoint of the perpetrator.

Mind Games are especially powerful when the victim totally trusts the perpetrator and believes both their roles in the relationship are well defined and socially ‘normal’.

Mind Games entail brainwashing – a notion that we usually associate with cults or terrorist hostage tactics. But, the truth is, brainwashing is happening in your neighbourhood right now. Ordinary men brainwash their partners when they say one thing and do another. For example when a man lectures her about his life philosophy of caring for others, but only enacts such caring towards others outside the family – not her. They brainwash their partner when they appeal to her instinct and desire to care for him by saying, “If you really love me you’d do what I want”. This gets confusing when you love and trust your partner. But he is slowly – one tactic at a time – oppressing and controlling. It’s insidious – and it can take years to see, and to realise this is a pattern.

Women’s efforts to make sense of mixed messages are often blocked by their partners which is incredibly stressful, anxiety-provoking and can lead some women to experience disrupted sleeps, and illness – physical, psychological and spiritual. Brainwashing, guilt trips and confusion lead to exhaustion, which can make women more susceptible to believing some of the denigrating and manipulative language their partners use against them. Some women are led to identify more and more with the abuser, whilst others are able to maintain morsels of a sense of themselves – of their own thoughts and beliefs.

Women I interviewed for my Masters research, and women I work with in counselling, talk about experiences of emotional blackmail, manipulation, guilt, feeling fearful and feeling mind-numbingly-crazy.

Confusion and crazy-making

Elizabeth said that because she could not “prove that stuff” that her ex-husband did and said to her that now – years later – she still has “this thing, about whether people believe me”.

Victoria said, “The Mind Games leave you in doubt as to whether or not you’re actually being abused … you’re not quite sure anymore and they really start to cloud your judgment. Whereas if somebody hits you, you know you’ve been hit. The psychological abuse has made me pessimistic, untrusting, vulnerable and very strong now I’m at the other end of it. Also I feel there’s this big hole, this big deep cavern that will always be there that I have to work my damndest to walk around and never to fall back into because I know it’s always there because the behaviours have been so well learnt over the years.”

Pauline said, “I had a friend who I used to call a lot on the phone … I was so confused and I needed to talk to somebody to hear it out loud and to get some feedback. At one point I thought I was going quite crazy because he acted innocent. Like if I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ he acted like nothing’s wrong. He wouldn’t really say anything. So I’d think well maybe it’s me, it’s all my thinking, my perception.”

“And my friend who was calling lives in another town and it’s ages later when she was next at our place. And he was home on shift, outside working so I called him for lunch. We’d be sitting down to lunch and he wouldn’t come in. My friend [had previously] thought my husband was an absolute angel, she went to school with him, and she said to me, ‘All these months you talked to me on the phone about what he’s been like, I didn’t think you were lying, but I couldn’t see that’s how he would be, because that’s not him.’ But, she said, ‘Now I’m here today, I can see this is for real, it’s happening’.”

Guilt trips

The combination of tactics some men use to control their female partners lead many women to forgo and lose interests and wants of their own. To survive in the relationship many women continue doing only those things that keep the peace.

Victoria said, “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.”

Questions all her judgments

Teresa said her partner often questioned her judgments about friends: “If I talked about something a friend was doing or had said or some problem that a friend had, if I was talking about it sympathetically he would try and turn it around so I wasn’t sympathetic and say “No, it’s probably this or probably that” and point out negative things about people that I liked to change my judgment of them and so I wouldn’t like them as much.”

Luckily, Teresa didn’t take any notice of what he said about her best friend. Instead she, “considered the things he said and then mentally dismissed them”.

But when he said things about other people Teresa, “would think Oh, I hadn’t thought of that, oh yes he’s probably right. He would also tell me that people had said things about me. People at work, that they had said that I was this, that I was that., horrible things, which I believed and I don’t know whether they had said them or not. I think that he probably twisted a lot of things like that and I believed him, so that would change my judgment.”

Manipulates with lies

Heather said her partner scared her, “how he would fabricate the truth all the time. I never knew what was truthful and what wasn’t. He told people, “I laid all those tiles,” but I’d seen with my own eyes that he hadn’t laid those tiles, I saw the tile man doing it. I said, “Look Luke you didn’t actually do those tiles.” He said, “I did.” I said, “You did a little bit over there where the man showed you coz you wanted to cut a tile. That’s lying.”

If she withdraws he punishes her, if she reaches out he rejects her

Sally said “my husband initiated sex 99% of the time.  He would insist that part of the problem we had sexually was that I didn’t initiate.  So occasionally I would initiate sex … and every time I initiated sex he just wasn’t himself, he just became kind of angry, kind of a hatred on his face … I don’t remember his words but they were something like how dare you initiate sex at this time, I am busy, I’m working, yet generally he was not busy or working.  I was so confused … one day it dawned on me.  I thought he doesn’t want me to initiate sex, but that’s not the issue.  He just wants to be in full control, no matter what.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

Victoria said she was not allowed to be independent, nor was she allowed to be dependent. If she didn’t agree with Graham, he would manipulate and twist things to make her doubt herself. She was not allowed to express feelings and, if she did, he said she was either overreacting or misinterpreting.

Behaves differently when people visit

Women share stories about ways their partners don’t carry out household, personal or parental responsibilities, but suddenly when visitors come to the house, their partner starts performing his responsibilities. Raewyn said that if she “wanted a break from the children he was either uncooperative or refused saying that she did nothing anyway. He sulked if he did not get his own way [yet] when friends came over he would suddenly start being a father.” Sally said that Dylan would often not work, but would “appear to be busy when visitors or guests came to stay”. Donna’s husband had trouble putting on his own boots, but she said that “one day Frank’s family were visiting and he bent down and put his own boots on and off in front of them.” Donna was devastated that she had been so used because she did not know he could manage himself.

Charming in public and abusive in private

Teresa said others told her she was misinterpreting things because Patrick was so charming to his colleagues. Elizabeth said her husband, David was charming in public but at home he stomped on Elizabeth’s budding creativity. Heather said that she’s still having trouble coming to grips with her own experience of abuse and control in private and his public utterance of words of love. She was further confused because of other people liking him and validating him.

Mind Games are abuse

Mind Games should not be taken lightly – they are abusive and they are controlling. Patrick attempted to impair Teresa’s judgments by hiding things and suggesting that she was going insane when she could not find them. Victoria said she had no name for her husband’s behaviours when she was in the midst of experiencing his power and control tactics. She said, “I didn’t really consider it abuse until I was deeply entrenched in the marriage. I just thought he was manipulative and I thought he was moody. But in the initial stages I didn’t know I was being abused. I thought he was playing Mind Games with me, but I never considered Mind Games to be abuse. If I had been aware that there was such a thing, then I would have seen it as abuse earlier.”

Mind Games are a warning sign that you are being abused and controlled

If you believe your partner is playing Mind Games, then seek help. If you feel you are going crazy, then you may be in a relationship with a partner who is controlling you. You have the right to seek help and to seek support and validation from people who believe in your judgment about what you are experiencing.

The compassionate view

We live in a society where the notion of being a man is written in a social script that all too often is distorted and suppresses a man’s natural humanity. Acts of dominance hide vulnerabilities and emotions, which results in some men remaining unaware of their underlying needs for love and care. In the distorted society myth it’s not regarded as manly to show feelings. Mind Games are part of this complex cover-up that hides the perpetrator’s real need and desire for human connection. Paradoxically, women often detect such insecurities in their partners whom they love, which can get in the way of women being able to name Mind Games as ABUSE. Until, and unless, the perpetrator is helped to develop empathy and a compassionate view, the victim must acknowledge there is harm being done and need to protect themselves from further harm.

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, New Zealand.

Watch out for blogs on the following control tactics:

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

This is the first of 16 blogs discussing the patterns of tactics mentioned in my power and control wheel – One-Sided Power Games.

Research with men and women reveals that men who engage in one-sided power games show more concern about gaining something for themselves than showing concern for what they are actually doing to their partners. In other words – what matters to him is not what he does, but the benefits he gains. There are multiple one-sided power games played by a person determined to maintain power and control. If one tactic does not work, he will merely change to a new tactic.

When I interviewed the men for my PhD research I asked why they’d bother committing to a monogamous relationship if they were so keen on playing the field and seeking sex from multiple partners. I was so surprised when most of the men said they wanted to build a life-long caring relationship. Several of the men said their partners were their best friends. And it was her they wanted to turn to for support when they were jailed, or punished in some way for abusing her.

I also posed the question, “If men took an unwritten contract into marriage what would it say?” All the men said things like:

The unwritten contract would say: “I can do what I want but you gotta do what I tell you to. That’s the way I’d see 90 percent of marriages, from a man’s point of view.”  (Bill)

“Most guys would like their wife or partner to be subservient to them. And be agreeable with the ideals of the husband.” (James)

The man should “have the final financial decision and the final direction for the family.” (Brendan)

And Sam said that in the past he used to believe that women “had to be a slave.”

These are examples of one-sided power games where: He makes the rules, he makes all the big decisions and he has the last word.

Ruler of the castle

Indeed these men’s views of how a marriage should operate fitted with women’s experience of being dismissed and disregarded as an equal partner. Several women I interviewed said their partner had to have the final decision about everything, and regularly ignored them if she had something to say. Susan said her partner “made the major decisions and if any were decided jointly, he did things his way in the end”. Pauline’s husband treated her in such a way that meant she had no right to have judgements or make decisions. On the other hand, Karen made the major decisions such as where to live – however, ultimately if Felix felt a decision needed to be blocked he’d block it.

His wants are most important – He does most of the receiving

Lazarus, a man I interviewed, was of the opinion that the unwritten contract that most men take into a relationship states: “Trust, honour and obey.” Then he added, “Although if I said the ‘obey’ bit, the missus would get upset [and say] ‘You’re not my boss’.”

Other men said the unwritten contract would say, “Do as the man says” and that men can be very domineering. Max said, “We want it our way. Our way or the highway girl.”

Geni said he’d “Think the majority of men would think the wife is like the doting little servant, slave, there to do everything” and that when the man comes home from work in his suit and drops the briefcase “he expects the beer there and the meal on the table.” When this expectation is not met, men say they feel disrespected as a man, that the failure of the woman to carry out her feminine role hurts a man’s pride.

From the women’s experience, Elsie said that everything she and her husband drank, ate and did, including sex, was mostly what he wanted and the way he wanted it. He made all the decisions for his own benefit and nothing else mattered. Whatever these men want takes precedence, therefore the men get most of the receiving.

Victoria said it was vital she ensure her partner’s needs always came first. It had to be his way first and then, maybe, he might think about doing something for Victoria. When the couple went to marriage guidance, Graham agreed with things the counsellor said, but when they got home he said that what the counsellor said was, “All rubbish and that he was not going to f…ing do that, she doesn’t know what she’s on about that woman”. This is a common experience women tell me in counselling. Their partners may say they love her, want the relationship to improve, so agree to go to counselling, but the role they are playing is a major way in which such men gain any sense of self-esteem. Counselling inevitably means having to face feelings these men spend a lifetime denying.

So, these men continue to ensure that all the attention centres on themselves

Elsie’s husband Leon was jealous and aggressive toward his new-born son. From then on there was a huge increase in abuse. All the attention had to be centred on him. He yelled at the baby when it was one week old telling the baby that it had to shut up and not start running the house. To gain further understanding why men engage in these one-sided power games you can read here and here.

Wearing the mask of the Master, he monopolises the woman’s time and energy

An extremely common tactic of the one-sided power game entails the man monopolising the woman’s time and energy. Most women experiencing control by their loved-one say their partners make many promises but never deliver. Susan said that her husband took no responsibility for fathering or household duties and he told people that he had a lazy wife. Yet Susan was overburdened with responsibility, which included being in charge of the finances – which he continually sabotaged.

Most women I talked to expected equal role sharing when they began living with their partners. But, as Karen said:

“Eventually it worked out that I was doing all the girly jobs and he was doing the boy jobs, but then I was doing the girly jobs and the boy jobs. I can remember that being very frustrating and having that argument a lot”.

The burden of these kinds of responsibility increases over time for most women in partnership with men who hold beliefs about male entitlement. Donna said that “When we got married my workload just got heavier and heavier and heavier and heavier and heavier. As the years went by I worked my guts out and I got less and less and less and less for it.”

He has his own selfish way at her expense

Donna said that everything was about what her partner Frank wanted. And what Frank wanted, Frank got. His pattern was to get his own way at her expense, for example, he ate steak three meals a day, gave steak to his friends, yet Donna’s sons were made to eat mince and sausages. Teresa said that if she disagreed with Patrick or said “no” to sex, he would get really angry, nasty and sulk for days. Likewise, if Susan’s partner did not get his own way he would ignore her or disappear for days or weeks at a time.

When a man believes he’s superior she is not allowed to contradict him

Raewyn said there was a great deal of pressure to act, think and be like her husband because he said his way was the only and right way, even though his behaviours were not always congruent with his philosophies. Sally said the exact same things about her husband.

He determines how, when and what things get communicated

Karen’s partner Felix would pull a blanket over his head and hum when Karen wanted to communicate. He would always say that Karen was wrong and that the opposite of what she said was true. Pauline’s husband always avoided talking about issues, he never raised his voice or got angry. Sally said that because her husband would not take responsibility for his behaviours she would get angry in an attempt to be heard and to resolve issues. But . . . then he would say the problem in the relationship was her anger. He always refused to answer the phone, which meant Sally could never get hold of him if she was away from the house. Victoria said that nothing was open to discussion unless it suited Graham’s needs. He walked away when Victoria wanted to talk or he would respond with, “I don’t know” over and over.

His previous marriage makes him right and her wrong

Teresa had a high public profile job working under her intimate partner’s management and they both earned good money. When they first met, Patrick was seemingly happily married with a baby but he pursued Teresa relentlessly, yet blamed Teresa for his marriage break up. When Teresa and Patrick separated he pursued her relentlessly again. Because Teresa had not been in a relationship before, he controlled her by insisting that she knew nothing about relationships, and that he did. Likewise, Sally’s husband claimed to be always right. He, too, had previously been married for ten years and insisted that he knew how to have a relationship, that Sally did not, and he therefore knew best.

And the result of one-sided power games?

As you can see from men’s and women’s stories, one-sided power games don’t always entail physical violence for the man to ascend to the  superior gender status and get the rewards society tells him he deserves. It doesn’t take physical violence for him to ensure she descends into a downward despairing spiral and a position of servitude.

The irony is that men are not truly getting what they really want – which is safety, trust and a caring connection.

As I wrote in 2009:

“Not everyone is safe and free. Huge numbers of people live in fear. Trapped, damaged and in pain. Isolated by perpetrators who are not free either. Masked, driven control freaks lashing out; unhappy like their victims. They emotionally abuse as a way to feel safe. But when they get real – and slip their quest for power and control – they have to admit they are not truly free or safe themselves.”

Watch out for blogs on the following control tactics:

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

I’d like to introduce you to the ‘power and control’ wheel I created after researching and interviewing women who had been psychologically abused and controlled by their male partners.

You may recognise the Duluth ‘power and control’ wheel (on the left below) … it has been hanging around noticeboards at women’s centres, doctor’s rooms, and various other crisis places where women seek answers and shelter from violence perpetrated by their partners and spouses. The wheel is a summation of violence based on women’s experiences and is a visual tool to help practitioners understand family violence, and to help effect constructive change for both men and women.

Because not all women who experience psychological abuse and control by their male partner are physically hit by him I wanted to create an additional wheel (on the right below) that captured some more of the non-physical tactics of control and highlighted the reinforcing role society plays in this problem.

Many women experience both physical violence and psychological control. But these women report that ongoing psychological abuse is experienced as more mind-twisting, more painful and damaging than physical violence. I have never met a woman, yet, who says otherwise.

A determined long-term campaign of psychological abuse is about dominance, not about conflict of interest. It is not the same as occasional outbursts of anger. It may include threats of violence, but not always.

The creation of the Duluth Power and Control wheel has positively transformed our understanding of the dynamics of domestic violence.

The centre of the wheel is labelled ‘power and control’ which is the goal, or effect, of all the abusive tactics. Patterns of tactics are depicted in each spoke of the wheel and the rim, representing physical and sexual abuse, is what gives it strength and holds it together.

The idea that physical violence and sex abuse reinforces psychological abuse suggests that physical, sexual and psychological abuse operate together to establish domination and control. It also suggests that psychological abuse is effective because of prior physical violence, or the threat of it; that psychological abuse is only a transitory, temporary stage leading to physical violence as the end result.

BUT … psychological abuse and control underpin the fabric of many men’s abuse against female partners – physically violent or not. It’s the missing equation.

One day I was chatting to an older woman in the changing room at the local swimming pool and, as she was drying her wrinkled skin, she asked what I do for a living. When I told her that family violence counselling was my specialty, she beamed joyfully, telling me how free and happy she feels because her husband had just died, freeing her from 40 years of being held hostage by his tactics of power and control. It was a lifetime of hell. Though he never physically harmed her she lived submerged in a toxic soup of his incessant, haranguing abuse and psychological imprisonment.

It’s a secret world of mind games – where physical violence is not necessary to gain control – but people are coerced, wretched and wrecked nevertheless.

After conducting my own research and reading other research papers and books about thousands of women’s crazy-making experiences of being psychologically controlled, I saw a need to expand upon the Duluth wheel.

The wheel I created captures the notion that our wider culture breeds, reinforces and supports the male imperative; the notion that men have rights over women. The testosterone effect is distorted and groomed within peer groups, on sports fields, school playgrounds, corporate boardrooms, and political institutions. The clamouring media, Hollywood and television reinforce so many of the negatives in mythical playouts that distort how it is to be a man and how to be a woman. The expectations and pressures on relationships and families are so enormous that simple love and caring run the risk of being compromised from the start.

In life, many men and women simply crave to set up a life-long caring partnership, to build a home together and to live securely, happily ever after.

Our gender myths influence men to be “real men”; to not be a wuss, but to stand up and “be a man”, to never cry, but to fight for independence; to never be shy, but to conquer women sexually and then to show off to their mates. Not all men care about, or pursue, such expectations of masculinity. But some do.

Those men who are heavily invested in climbing to the top of the ladder of masculinity have to prove they’re tough and in control. They have to avoid weakness and vulnerability at all costs. Psychological theories have argued for years that covering up, and denying painful, dark feelings leads to horrible behaviours such as addictions, violence and abuse. Social myths about how to be a man are full of messages that men must suppress most of their feelings, never talk about them, never show them – even if they want to.

It’s a cloak of bravado that leads many men to wear a mask behind which is a real human full of fears, desires to love, care and be tender. Men who control the women they love are wearing such a mask – they’re playing a role. One of the titles for this role is that of a family violence perpetrator.

For centuries the male thrust of society has been peopled from all walks of life directing men, showing them how to act out the “man” role. The main directive states that to stand up and “be a man” they must control “their” woman. Ownership!

The requirements of the role include acting like the king of the castle; being the boss, a man of superiority, who is invincible and who will not back down – no matter how much he truly wants a close caring relationship underneath. He must ‘wear the pants’. If she says or does anything that threatens his role, he must discipline her.

I’ll guide you through a series of blogs where I’ll discuss the way men carry out this role – that is by using some or many of the 16 patterns of tactics labelled in the wheel I created. These discussions will stem from international research and interviews I have conducted over the last ten years with women (as victims) and men (as perpetrators).

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

Why women and society miss the cues of psychological abuse

What have I done wrong? Am I going crazy? Is this normal?

One of the most common problems for women experiencing psychological abuse, is that they do not realise what is occurring in the early stages and are often not able to put it in context of their normal lives. When psychological abuse begins it will often creep in over time; a subtle edge of voice tone, the odd ‘put down’, a criticism here and there, seemingly uncharacteristic selfish acts.

Little behaviours at odds with the norm. And so it grows. Conquest by stealth – psychological abuse knows no bounds. It can be a soft pattern of almost unwitting abuse or a planned campaign of immense cruelty.

Instead of being able to name their partner’s behaviours as ‘power and control’ or ‘abuse’, lots of  women can only think of their partner’s actions as ‘puzzling’ in its early stages. Then ‘odd’, ‘weird’, and ‘bizarre’ as it escalates. As power and control is exerted, women become more and more confused, and self doubt causes women to blame themselves and desperately rummage through their own behaviours for clues how to please their partners and make the problem go away.

They may simply feel that what they are experiencing isn’t right, just or fair but will search for answers within themselves and their own psyches. What am I doing wrong that he is angry with me? What’s changed in our relationship that he belittles me? Why can’t I see my friends? Why can’t I use the car?

Karen, a woman I interviewed for my Masters research said, “I knew that I was angry, but I didn’t really understand what was happening”. Several women said as Teresa did: “I didn’t notice this until I looked back and realised. It was gradual and insidious and you just slid slowly down the slope”.

Psychological abuse is either hidden or is considered less important than physical violence. This could be because of the imminent life-threatening nature of physical violence and the visible bruises and broken bones that some women experience. The media sensationalises physical violence and it’s extremely rare to read of a critical analysis of the perpetrator’s use of non-physical control tactics.

When the man is not using physical violence the woman usually thinks like Teresa, that psychological abuse “was something I knew absolutely nothing about. I thought abuse was hitting”. Most men and women think that physical violence is the only legitimate reason to leave a relationship. Most women respond as Elsie did:

“If he’d hit me I would have left, it would have been a really justifiable reason to leave. I did not think psychological abuse was a legitimate reason to leave because you explain it away, you rationalise it and it’s not as accepted the way physical abuse is by society. You’re just supposed to lump that, you’re supposed to put up with it.”

All the women I interviewed believed that psychological abuse is trivialised, misunderstood, or dismissed by friends, family and society in general. The psychological abuser relies on this, so feeds off the confusion, doubt, disbelief and the trust of his partner. To deal with a lack of support from others, Victoria said she just told people that her experience with her partner “wasn’t particularly pleasant. I could justify it if he beat me. It would give me more credibility”.

Raewyn never sought help for 12 years of psychological abuse, but sought help immediately when her partner hit her – because physical violence is seen as a credible form of abuse.

Elizabeth said, “If I had been hit, we all know that being hit is not okay, so if I had been hit it would have called my attention to something being wrong sooner. There is more press about it”.

Violence not only means physical abuse and sexual abuse, it also means psychological abuse.

The New Zealand Domestic Violence Act states that psychological abuse includes, but is not limited to, intimidation, harassment, damage to property and threats of physical abuse, sexual abuse, or psychological abuse.

The Act also states that when a tactic appears “minor or trivial when viewed in isolation or appears unlikely to recur, the court must nevertheless consider whether the behaviour forms part of a pattern of behaviour”.

Psychological abuse may, or may not, be written into civil and criminal laws in the country where you live. Either way psychological abuse is a form of intimidation that is not readily understood and continues to avoid the spotlight. Victoria said, “We see ads all the time about women’s refuge and the women on the ads have black eyes, but what about the women who’ve just been worn down day in and day out, do they get to go to women’s refuge? What happens to them?”

Women are able to see that there’s “something wrong” because of the impact they’re experiencing. Heather said, “You think that every relationship has to have some problems, it can’t all be smooth”.

Some women find it difficult to distinguish between the constraints of motherhood and the constraints put upon them by their partner’s power and control tactics. For instance, Karen said:  “It’s difficult to know whether the responsibilities of motherhood isolated me more than he did. I could fight against it while I was still me, but when I was me plus one and me plus two you are a lot more vulnerable and the opportunities are lessened.”

The lack of awareness about psychological abuse causes women to assume they are experiencing “normal” relationship problems. This makes women extremely vulnerable to developing mental or physical illnesses and to experiencing more and more abuse. This is because women often have no knowledge of how the pattern of power and control forms over time.

To address this knowledge gap, I’m going to post several blogs to elaborate on the following patterns of psychological abuse which are outlined in my power and control wheel discussed here. I’ll link to each one here as and when I post each blog:

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

NOTE: Perpetrators of abusive power and control can be of either gender. This article is based on my research on women victims and male perpetrators.

Good clean fun? Just a bloke thing? Innocuous?

Recently, when the New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key, responded to a sports radio show host’s question about which female celebrities he would have on his “wishlist”, John Key said Liz Hurley was “hot” and that Jessica Alba “looked pretty hot”.

So what? Many people would ask – some would even say, “good on him”. But one British newspaper argued that such comments were sexist. And when some of our local commentators expressed disapproval, our Prime Minister defended his comments. He said, “My concern is to make sure that I represent the views I want to represent on those shows.”

It’s election year in New Zealand national politics. One journalist, Derek Cheng, stated that “Mr Key continues to ride the wave of popularity, and part of his appeal is considered to be his informal, regular-guy approach.”

But unfettered objectification of females by men lets loose a set of attitudes and behaviours full of sexual innuendo that represents women as possessions, playthings to be used to achieve macho status. Ordinarily it’s not mutual.  Nor desired. Talking about or treating women as objects narrowly stereotypes them into nothing more than a hollow cardboard replica that disregards all that is deep, interesting and complex about women. Objectification mocks and demeans the multiple talents and capabilities of half the human race.

However, men who objectify women are applauded within our society – they’re popular. Such men are considered to be real men, expressing a successful idea of masculinity.

Harmless compliments, or violation and harassment?

I like to bike a lot. A few years ago when I was biking to and from work, men working on the side of the road would call out “nice legs”. Car loads of males would call out sexualized language, some would swoop in close and drive me into the gutter. During this same time in my life I was walking along the river, a place where many people walk. But this particular afternoon I was the only one walking. A man biked past me back and forward twice, then the third time he screeched on his brakes, threw down his bike and grabbed my backside. A surreal slow motion several moments passed and I screamed in his face and he took off. It was 3 o’clock broad daylight, yet when I told a male friend what had happened he said, “You shouldn’t go walking alone at night”.

There are several assumptions in what my friend said. 1. Men will do what they want to do to women as of right. 2. Men have power over women, it’s inevitable and it will always be that way. 3. Women are to blame if they put themselves into vulnerable times and places. 4. They shouldn’t walk alone – to do so invites danger on themselves. 5. It is up to the female victims to change.

In this case, for my safety, I did change. In one bound my personal freedom was curtailed. I stopped walking on the river, I threw my skirt away and only wore trousers and I had my long hair cut to within one inch of my skull. Men stopped staring, glaring and calling out to me after that. I felt relieved and free from harassment. This is just one cost of objectification. The man who grabbed me did so because he felt entitled to, as a man he thought he had every right to do that to an anonymous woman. Just a piece of arse.

Other women might welcome the attention. “Nice legs” or “she’s hot” – but there’s a fine line between harmless objectifying of one individual woman who welcomes it and objectifying women en masse.

Objectification is not about sex appeal, it’s about treating women as playthings, possessions, pieces of meat and slaves

And what about women who do not fit these flawless standards? Do men call them “hot” too? No – some men objectify women who do not fit the stereotype – simply because they do not fit the stereotype. Here’s what I mean …

When I interviewed men for my PhD research – who had been abusive and controlling over their female partner – I asked questions about their school days including which behaviours made boys popular and what the benefits were for being high on the hierarchy of masculinities and the costs of being low on the hierarchy. One man said that boys at the bottom of the hierarchy would miss out on games played by popular boys. One such game, called “pig lotto” occurred at school dances.

He said, “There’d be bets on … with the popular crowd, who was gonna get what girl … and they were serious bets… Who could get the ugliest girl got the bag of money.” He said this game had been going on for years at his school. The game was a means of riding a wave of popularity amongst regular guys to gain approval ratings. (There’s those words again – popularity and regular guy.)

Many women are heavily dependent on gaining approval, power and respect for the attractiveness of their physical appearance. Such strivings are in part due to the abuse and denigration experienced because they don’t fit. Failure, to fit the standards is often inevitable because the advertising, media and corporate-driven standard view of women is airbrushed beyond reach.

Of course there are women who do fit contemporary western ideals of physical beauty, but, sadly, are often not taken seriously for their creative, professional and multiple other talents.

For example, I asked men I interviewed what they and other men thought about working for a female boss. The man who said the following reflected what most men told me:

“99.9 percent of men wouldn’t like [having a female boss] at all… It’s a power thing, the man gotta be … this strong, dominant, the man’s the boss… I wouldn’t have a problem if the female was intelligent and knew more than me. But (laugh) if I had some bimbo that was trying to order me around, I couldn’t handle it.”

Some men believe they possess female partners

One man I interviewed reflected what several men said, that entering marriage was like owning “a new car. Once I’ve done enough payments, it’s mine. I own this.” Men interviewed by other researchers say they beat their partner because she does not maintain her physical appearances well enough. Other men attempt to control their partner’s physical appearance by, for example, in the words of one woman I know, telling her that if she got pregnant she must have an abortion because he did not want her breasts to droop.

And some men use female partners as slaves

Several men I interviewed said that men are the masters and women are the slaves. In the words of one man this meant treating female partners, “Like pieces of meat and sex objects. ‘Stuff it, it’s my missus I’ll do whatever I bloody like.… ‘You got my ring. You’ll give me sex when I want. If you don’t I’ll get it from somewhere else’.” Another man said, “I can do what I want but you gotta do what I tell you to. That’s the way I’d see 90 percent of marriages, from a man’s point of view.”

Why we should all care about a Prime Minister calling some women celebrities “hot”

There’s a long history of inequality in our society. We continue to live in a world steeped in power structures – where certain groups are accorded higher status and greater levels of entitlement, prestige, recognition and respect than others. Many people with such prestige use their entitlement for the betterment of others. Many people low on social hierarchies look upward for role models – whether that’s towards a professional footballer, rap musician, a father, teacher, coach, corporate leader or Prime Minister.

However, many people with high status attempt to gain their approval ratings by objectifying women – they get away with this because for centuries it’s been seen as the right way to be a powerful man. Many men don’t stop at calling women “hot” they go on to use, abuse, rape, control and even kill women – in the name of male entitlement to demanding servitude.

Objectifying women is not a joke, it’s not about sex appeal – it’s about entrenched attitudes that lead to harm – attitudes that have to be discussed and challenged – starting when children are young. Innocuous attitudes that lead to even so-called ordinary men to be tempted to the dark side aided and abetted on all sides by a society, and its leaders, that grants men great power over women. Objectification of women is an unhealthy shadowland in which many men lurk and is a major support for the hierarchical notion that men are superior to women.

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.

1. Threats of homicide or suicide
2. Fantasies of homicide or suicide
3. Access to weapons, previous use of weapons and/or threats to use weapons
4. “Ownership” of the battered partner
5. Centrality of the partner
6. Separation violence
7. Depression
8. Access to the battered woman and/or to family members
9. Repeated involvement with the justice system
10. Increase in personal risk taking
11. 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).

1. The offender is obsessed with, dependent upon, or is stalking the victim.
2. Recent separation, issue of a court order, or divorce and responding in a dangerous manner.
3. The victim believes the offender could injure or kill her/him.
4. The offender has strangled or attempted to strangle the victim.
5. There is a history of family violence and it is getting more severe or increasing in frequency.
6. The offender has threatened / attempted to commit suicide, or to kill the victim, children or other family members.
7. The offender has access to weapons, particularly firearms and has used, or threatened to use them. They may have convictions involving weapons (knives, firearms).
8. The offender has easy access to the victim, children or other family members.
9. Children are in the home when the violence occurred or have been hurt or threatened in family violence situations.
10. Incidents of animal abuse by the offender.
11. The offender has a history of alcohol or drug problems.
12. 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.
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