Pretty much everyone agrees that hitting your spouse is wrong. But what about the kind of daily abuse that doesn’t leave a bruise or a red mark, that doesn’t carry the threat of broken bones?
Many people have difficulty even finding the words to define emotional abuse. Some of the obvious definitions are: name calling, putting the other person down, or even refusing to talk (the old silent treatment). Other words we could use are things like threats of harm, financial control, isolation, threats of abandonment, humiliation and criticism. Sometimes emotional abuse takes the form of deliberate scare tactics such as threatening phone calls. Other times emotional abuse can take a stalking turn: monitoring the victim’s phone usage; monitoring computer use; even trying to entrap by offering sympathy on Internet message boards, etc.
Most of the time when we discuss this type of abuse, it is perpetrated against women. There are probably dozens of instances of women verbally and emotionally abusing their husbands, but we will focus on female victims for right now.
Emotional abuse has been studied in the past only as a precursor to physical violence. Almost all physical violence started out as emotional and verbal violence first. After all, you don’t take a healthy woman with an intact self-image and hit her; not more than once anyway. No, usually there is a slow erosion of self-image; a slow distortion of reality, long before the first slap, kick or punch.
But understanding and responding to emotional abuse means realizing that for many people, the abuse never proceeds beyond the emotional and verbal type. Does that make it better or easier to deal with? Absolutely not. The insidious erosion of a woman’s self-esteem and sanity is the same. In fact, women may feel even more helpless when caught in the cycle of emotional abuse. They don’t have any bruises or red marks to show; it sounds petty to relate the name-calling, the cold silence, or the hundreds of trivial, subtle putdowns; and if the abuser is outwardly charming and friendly, as many are, the woman often feels as though no one would believe her anyway.
It is important to note that in any relationship there might be spats, fights, altercations and battles in which name-calling, put-downs, and cold silence are used as weapons. For these tactics to count as abuse requires the repeated use of these controlling, harmful ways to control a woman.
Many women, after years of this sort of repeated mental and emotional assault, alter their behaviors, feelings, even their thoughts, denying their needs and living their lives in fear. Emotional abuse definitely leaves scars.
Some psychiatrists do feel that marriages where there has been previous abuse can be saved. But usually not without the shock factor of the victim party leaving; not without a whole lot of trust; and with absolutely no slip-ups on the part of the abuser.
There is no reason to remain a victim of emotional abuse. It is easy for the abuser to make his victim feel as thought she can’t survive without him; can’t support herself without him; that other people would laugh at her if she left him; that she would be “the bad guy” if she left; or even that he would sabotage her efforts at a new life.
Help exists. Legal aid, shelters, and safe houses are there for victims of emotional abuse, too. A good rule of thumb is this: if you feel threatened on a regular basis, even if you’ve never been hit, and even if your guy is the best friend of everyone on your block……get out. Abuse rarely stops once it starts.
