Types of Abuse
Coercion and Threats: Making and/or carrying out threats to do something to hurt you. Threatening to leave, commit suicide, or report you to child welfare. Making you drop charges. Making you do illegal things.
Economic Abuse: Preventing you from getting or keeping a job. Making you ask for money or giving you an allowance. Taking your money. Not letting you know about or have access to family income.
Male Privilege: Treating you like a servant. Making all big decisions. Acting like the “master of the castle.” Being the one to define male versus female roles at home.
Using Children: Making you feel guilty about the children. Using the children to relay messages. Using visitations with the children to harass you. Threatening to take the children away.
Minimizing, Denying, and Blaming: Making light of the abuse and not taking your concerns about it seriously. Saying the abuse didn’t happen. Shifting responsibility for abusive behavior onto someone or something else. Saying you caused it.
Using Isolation: Controlling what you do, who you talk to, what you read, and/or where you go. Limiting your involvement with the outside world. Using jealousy to justify actions.
Emotional Abuse: Putting you down. Making you feel bad about yourself. Calling you names. Making you think you're crazy. Playing mind games. Humiliating you. Making you feel guilty.
Intimidation: Making you afraid by using looks, actions, and gestures. Smashing things. Destroying your property. Abusing pets. Displaying weapons.
Warning Signs of Domestic Violence
It’s not always easy to tell at the beginning of a relationship if it will become abusive.
In fact, many abusive partners may seem absolutely perfect in the early stages of a relationship. Possessive and controlling behaviors don’t always appear overnight, but rather emerge and intensify as the relationship grows.
Domestic violence doesn’t look the same in every relationship because every relationship is different. But one thing most abusive relationships have in common is that the abusive partner does many different kinds of things to have more power and control over their partner.
Some of the signs of an abusive relationship include a partner who:
- Tells you that you can never do anything right
- Shows extreme jealousy of your friends and time spent away
- Keeps you or discourages you from seeing friends or family members
- Insults, demeans or shames you with put-downs
- Controls every penny spent in the household
- Takes your money or refuses to give you money for necessary expenses
- Looks at you or acts in ways that scare you
- Controls who you see, where you go, or what you do
- Prevents you from making your own decisions
- Tells you that you are a bad parent or threatens to harm or take away your children
- Prevents you from working or attending school
- Destroys your property or threatens to hurt or kill your pets
- Intimidates you with guns, knives or other weapons
- Pressures you to have sex when you don’t want to or do things sexually you’re not comfortable with
- Pressures you to use drugs or alcohol