Abuse and Couple Therapy

We all know what domestic abuse looks like, correct? We’ve seen it on the movies and on TV. It is a wife cowering in the corner as a violent husband stands over her.  And while unfortunately this scenario is depressingly familiar, abuse can have many faces. Just because you don’t have a black eye doesn’t mean it’s not destructive. Just because it’s destructive does not mean it’s abusive. It can be a blurred line between abuse and toxic, co-dependant or just unhealthy relationships.  Also abuse is an equal opportunity player, and while male on female abuse is publically recognised, female on male abuse is still a topic that faces considerable societal and cultural denial. Man or woman, young or old, rich or poor, if you are being abused, the only way forward is to get out and this article aims to offer some clarity and outlines some strategies to help you do so.

• Defining Abuse
• Escaping Abuse
• Therapy for Abuse

Defining Abuse

Typically, domestic abuse definitions centre around power and control or they focus on volition, free will. If, for example, you are able to leave then you can’t be abused. The problem is both these definitions struggle the closer you look. Issues of power of control affect many if not most couples, so then we’re back into who defines what is reasonable and what is unreasonable.  There are many ways individuals can be trapped into relationships and a locked door is only one of them. What we believe we want is often tied very tightly to what we believe we can get and what we believe we deserve.

Other definitions argue that abuse is a subjective experience: if you feel you are being abused you are being abused. But this can open the door to classifying all sorts of behaviour as abusive. Domestic abuse is both a devastating set of actions and a serious criminal act. It is more than one party being a bit critical or one side shaping their partner’s friendship group.  Equally self-identification of abuse can play both ways: individuals who aren’t abused believe they are and the clearly abused can resolutely deny such categorisation. Beyond definition, if we look at mechanisms, we may start to gain some clarity. Two key strategies in the abusive playbook involve isolation and manipulation.

1. Separate the individual from those that can help.
2. Distort reality to reframe the abuse as a figment of their imagination, normal behaviour, justifiable actions or even expressions of love.

The following list outlines the sort of behaviours that are typical in abuse:

• Restricting or discouraging access to friends and family either through action or the threat of action
• Insulting, demeaning, or shaming, especially in front of others
• Preventing you from making your own decisions, including about working or studies
• Controlling finances in the household without discussion
• Intimidating you through threatening physical and psychological attacks
• Threatening to harm or take away your children
• Destroying your belongings or your home

Some of these traits may overlap with toxic or co-dependent relationships, however what differentiates abuse from other unhealthy connections is the one-sidedness, their unprovoked nature. In these other dynamics both parties tend to give as good as they get, even if their weapons are different. With domestic abuse one side is terrorising, the other just trying to survive.

 

Escaping Abuse

If the first question is whether you are being abused, the second question is how to get out it. And another way of asking how you get out, is what keeps you locked in? There are often no easy answers here, however in my experience, the forces that block the exit door tend to be a mixture of practical and psychological.

Practical

The basic mechanics of cohabitation are considerable. Moving house is a big deal. Moving house to escape from an abusive partner is a big deal squared.  The practical obstacles are as obvious as often their solutions are difficult, and typically revolve around:

• Money
• Childcare
• Accommodation

In such cases it may help to have a plan for your next step. It can be difficult to think logically when exhausted and in crisis mode and having an idea of where you are going or who you are going to ring can help.  The danger though is planning becomes synonymous with prevarication. You spend months if not years waiting for that right moment that never comes. Sometimes if the opportunity arises, it might be your only chance to get out.  In a broader sense it doesn’t matter if you plan or not; it’s not about the step you take, it's getting to the destination. Of course, getting out is one thing, staying out is something else. And to answer that question we have to look at the psychology behind this pattern.

Psychological

 Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused
Sweet Dreams, Eurythmics

What draws people to such relationships? Is it just deceit? Is it just that everything starts off lovely, it is only after you’re in that the temperature starts to rise? Or that once you start to notice the prison walls it’s already too late? Or is an abusive relationship something fundamentally different from other relationships, there is no shift or transition or tipping point? The signs are all there at the start, you just pretend otherwise.

Perhaps you feel the whole conversation that some people feel they deserve to be abused, that some people are drawn to being the victim, irresponsible or even offensive?  Yet if we don’t understand the underlying mechanism, we fail to appreciate how or what we need to disentangle. If we simply deny the darker motivations that draw individuals to abusive relationship, how do we possibly get out and stay out?

As explored more fully in Pattern 10: Unhappily Ever After, this can be a range of drives, from low self-esteem, fear of abandonment, dread of being alone, dependency, damaged template of what a normal relationship looks like to a misplaced sense of loyalty or even love.

This is what gets people into this mess, and even though there may be an element of denial at the start, once in, the challenges to extricate can be of a different order. Once you get embedded in sustained patterns of isolation and manipulation, once you start to believe the abuser is the abused, the perpetrator is the victim, black is white, it can be very difficult to remember what is normal and even what is real.

Useful parallels can be made with both addiction, Stockholm syndrome and the institutionalism of prisoners. Many spouses will defend and excuse what is basically inexcusable behaviour. They will twist and turn to justify and legitimise violent and brutal actions. They will convince themselves they deserved hours of abuse, destruction of property or physical damage because of something they did or didn't say, a look they gave or didn’t gave, because they didn’t put enough sugar in the coffee or forgot to switch a light off.

Yet what was learned can become unlearned. Once we begin to look, begin to think and analyse, begin to distinguish between the distortion and reality, it gives us our best chance to take control of the game. Online articles can educate you about the playbook of abusers, the things they say and do that tightens and maintains the control, the techniques of manipulation.

 

Therapy for Abuse

Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.
Red, The Shawshank Redemption

Of course, if you can access or afford it, you may try or be offered therapy. This can be either individual or couple therapy, but the questions are the same. Is this advisable or are you just dragging out the process? Can you negotiate your way out? Can you turn an abusive relationship around or is it really some form of sympathy for the devil?

Couple

Let’s start with couple therapy. In two words: forget it.

Either one or both parties will insist it is not abuse but mutually abusive, describing it as toxic or volatile or something else. There may even be incredibly strong emotions from both sides, deep remorse and shame. Unfortunately, to be brutally honest, such swings are characteristic of abuse, they are not indicators that things have changed.  That eternal hope, the unforgettable fire that it might get better, that it can transition from dysfunctional to function, does not offer a way out, it just ends up sustaining the abuse for many more years.

Engaging in couple therapy is a minefield for all parties. Couple therapists work by being able to see both sides, by exploring the role each party plays, but in these situations, at best it confuses, at worse endorses or legitimises what is a serious criminal act. That is not to say that individuals who abuse cannot change nor even that relationships that were once abusive cannot become non-abusive, but this has to be a solo journey taken by the abuser, and even then, it is a perilous path. The biggest danger is therapy is just used by the abuser to buy time or as a chess move to regain control.

Individual

Individual therapy is the opposite: it is almost invariably positive and indeed without some sort of external input it can be virtually impossible to break-free of the mind control that is often part and parcel of abuse. Abusive relationships normalise the abnormal. They operate on physical and psychological control and manipulation, so we have to dismantle the reality that has been constructed. Indeed, the first step is often to counter the confusion about whether the relationship is actually abusive.

Shame plays a large part of the picture with abuse and that can be difficult to reconcile solo. Furthermore, there is a cathartic element to therapy which needs another listening, compassionate human being. The good news is that catharsis can come from multiple sources. It can be either formal psychotherapy, or speaking with another professional, such as a religious figure, social worker, doctor, nurse, or even a friend or family member. It doesn’t matter who you speak to, you just want someone who is able to listen, can be confidential, doesn’t rush in with advice and doesn’t judge.

The only down-side to individual therapy is for some, paradoxically, it gives the strength not to end the relationship but to endure the abuse. It can be the same with all support networks: people arrive at rock bottom, not believing they can stay another day and thus take action. They organise themselves, regroup, get a bit better and then go straight back. All therapists will recall the sadness, frustration and powerless as a client who has broken free from an abusive partner slowly circles back into this destructive orbit.

 

See the Rainbow, Touch the Rainbow

The brutal reality is that some victims leave it too late and lose their lives. The statistics on hospitalisation and murder of wives at the hands of a violent husband are both shocking and shockingly familiar. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Away from the more obvious cases of assault and physical damage, there are the unseen victims, the tragedy of lives blighted by fear, the lives wasted in the shadows for both male and female victims.

Yet the danger is we slip into despair, give in to hopelessness. To see failure to act in the past as proof you are able to act in the future. My view is that all behaviour is learned behaviour. What can be learned can be unlearned. Nothing is fixed, when it comes to Homo sapiens. All around us are the stories of people who drastically changed their lives, often over-night.  And that can be you.

Even if there is a propensity towards seeing yourself as a victim, a history of low self-esteem and people pleasing, that does not mean you cannot turn things around. Escaping abuse can be like escaping addiction, sometimes it takes a number of goes.  And maybe reading this chapter is just the first step. Maybe you will read it and act immediately or maybe this provides a key that is kept, hidden, safe until you are ready to unlock the door.

 

This is an edited extract from 15 Reasons Why It’s Not Working: A Pattern Based Approach to Resolving Conflict.

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