BEHAVIORS INDICATING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE FOR POWER AND CONTROL

Domestic violence is not just about physical threats, it is about the manipulation and cohesion applied in a relationship in order to gain or maintain control of the partner. Why a partner in a relationship would need to control the relationship through coercion, threats of violence, terror or the withdrawal of love and support in order to maintain dominance is a complex question. It is easy to say that such a person sees the world with a level of insecurity, fear, or animosity and cannot allow another to have self-will to choose freely from their own healthy self-interest. Instead, they must keep the partner subjugated to their will at all times. To allow the partner to leave or to have choice in their actions is to lose control with the possibility of loss of power or sense of self-efficacy. They cannot allow themselves to feel that they are in some way less than or not in charge. They must be in charge of the relationship in order to feel some sense of personal power no matter what the consequences.

Below is a list of behaviors indicative of the narcissistic partner’s strategies to dominate, manipulate or coerce in order to stay in control of the partner. In the end, the narcissistic partner can only hope to control the other’s body. In the end, the other must allow their own golden kernel of self-efficacy to take control, even in the face of threat, to take on their own sense of self.

Using Coercion and Threats

• Instilling or attempting to instill fear
• Making and/or carrying out threats to do something to hurt her
• Grabbing, pinching, shoving, slapping, hitting, hair-pulling, biting, arm-twisting, kicking, punching, hitting with blunt object, stabbing, shooting
• Threatening to leave her to commit suicide, to report her to welfare
• Making her drop charges
• Making her do illegal things
• Forcing alcohol or other drug use

.Using Economic Abuse

• Preventing her from getting or keeping a job
• Making her ask for money, giving her an allowance
• Taking her money
• Not letting her know about or have access to family income
• Making or attempting to make the victim financially dependent
• Maintaining total control over financial resources including victim’s earned income or resources received through public assistance or social security
• Withholding money and/or access to money
• Forbidding attendance at school
• Forbidding employment, on-the-job harassment
• Requiring accountability and justification for all money spent
• Forced welfare fraud
• Withholding information about family finances
• Running up bills for which the victim is responsible for payment

Using Intimidation

• Making her afraid by using looks, actions, gestures
• Smashing things
• Destroying her property
• Displaying weapons
• Destruction of pets and property
• Withholding access to resources necessary to maintain health
• Withholding medication, medical care, wheelchair, food or fluids, sleep, hygienic assistance

Using Emotional Abuse

• Undermining or attempting to undermine victim’s sense of self-worth
• Putting her down
• Making her feel bad about herself
• Calling her names
• Making her think she’s crazy
• Playing mind games
• Humiliating her
• Constant criticism
• Belittling victim’s abilities and competency
• Silent treatment
• Manipulating victim’s feelings and emotions to induce guilt
• Subverting partner’s relationship with the children
• Repeatedly making and breaking promises

Using Isolation

• Isolating or attempting to isolate victim from friends, family, school and/or work
• Controlling what she does, who she sees and talks to, what she reads, where she goes
• Limiting her outside involvement
• Using jealousy to justify actions
• Withholding access to phone and/or transportation
• Undermining victim’s personal relationships
• Harassing others, constant “checking up”
• Constant accompaniment
• Use of unfounded accusations
• Forced imprisonment

Using Male Privilege

• Treating her like a servant
• Making all the big decisions
• Acting like the “master of the castle”
• Being the one to define men’s and women’s roles

Sexual Coercion

• Coercing or attempting to coerce any sexual contact without consent
• Marital rape
• Acquaintance rape
• Forced sex after physical beating
• Attacks on the sexual parts of the body
• Bestiality
• Forced prostitution
• Unprotected sex
• Fondling, sodomy
• Sex with other
• Use of pornography

Children Using

• Making her feel guilty about the children
• Using the children to relay messages
• Using visitation to harass her
• Threatening to harm and/or kidnap children
• Threatening to take the children away

Minimizing, Denying and Blaming

• Making light of the abuse and not taking her concerns about it seriously
• Saying the abuse didn’t happen
• Shifting responsibility for abusive behavior
• Saying she caused it