Intimate Partner Violence: It’s More Complex Than You Think.
photo credit - Sydney Latham via unsplash
Why don’t you just leave? This is usually the first question that many who have suffered in abusive relationships have heard from loved ones or others that have not actually experienced abuse themselves. Domestic/intimate partner violence doesn’t have a specific type of victim. These individuals vary by age, race, gender, ethnicity, education, class, personality and belief system. Nor is there a specific type of abuse. However, there are two common factors in these abusive relationships; the public’s perception of the role of the victim and the importance of control to the perpetrator.
According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), 10 million people a year are physically abused by an intimate partner. Even with a staggering number of people in these situations attempting to get out, many people still view being in an abusive relationship as a personal choice by the victims… It’s not.
Abusive relationships don’t start out as abusive. They develop and evolve over time. They can have many sources, but the results are almost always the same. The victims end up believing that they are the ones to blame. That it is their fault or behavior that causes the abuse to occur.
Victim blaming – done in part by the victim themselves and outside sources – is dangerous for a few reasons. It makes the victim out to be the perpetuator rather than their abuser. It opens up the victim to a plethora of mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and self-harm. But it also ignores the fact that many deaths related to domestic/intimate partner violence occur when the victim attempts to leave or after they succeed in leaving.
A common misperception about domestic/intimate partner violence is that the abuser just has anger issues. That is not the case in most circumstances. People with anger issues may get road rage, go off on coworkers or family members, or losing it over the smallest things in general. Abuse, however, is limited to and targets a specific individual or small group of individuals (i.e. spouse, children, immediate household members) and is about control and maintaining that control over these individuals.
National Domestic Violence Hotline and National Coalition Against Domestic Violence provide emergency support, information and resources for both victims of domestic intimate partner violence and those who advocate for them.
If you need help or just need someone to talk to, reach out…