Domestic Abuse - The Dark Side of Marriage
By Lisa Twerski, LCSW
Reprinted from Viewpoint – Fall 5762/2001
In the past several years our community's' awareness of the many social problems we face has grown tremendously. Much has been written about child abuse, substance abuse, troubled youth and domestic violence. A deeper understanding of these problems, however, still eludes many of us. It is only with that deeper insight that we as individuals as well as a community can be of help.
In discussing the occurrence of domestic violence, we must first understand what is meant by the terms "domestic violence" or "domestic abuse.” Most of us still have the image of an abused woman as bloodied and battered, a victim of physical violence; this is a misperception.
Physical violence often, but not always accompanies domestic abuse; it is merely the punctuation in the life story of the person who lives in an atmosphere of harrowing fear. The truth is that a person can be abused and controlled without ever being hit. Many women report that the damage done by emotional abuse is ever greater.
Domestic abuse has been defined as a pattern of coercive control that one partner in a relationship exercises over the other in order to dominate, or gain and maintain power and control. In the overwhelming majority of situations the victim is the woman; in our community, where marriage is the norm, we are talking about the wife.
The easiest way to understand what occurs in an abusive relationship is through graphic illustration. The Power and Control wheel was created by the Duluth Project base in Minnesota. This illustration has been used for years to help people understand what domestic abuse looks like. At the center of the wheel is the core of an abusive relationship.
The goal in that relationship is for the abuser to gain and maintain power and control over the victim. As the Wheel illustrates, this is done through the use of various tactics, which are illustrated by the various pieces of the pie. As mentioned above, abuse need not be physical to inflict severe harm. I can be, and often is, emotional, psychological, economic and sexual. Below, we will examine types of abuse and the tactics used.
Intimidation has been described as “the use of actions, words and looks that are meant to frighten, scare or bully." Examples of intimidation are yelling and screaming, destroying the spouse's prized possessions, throwing things, punching walls, driving recklessly while one's spouse is in the car or by blocking her exit from a room. The abusive spouse may give his wife a look that implies "You'll be sorry" or may generally make her 'feel like she has to "walk on eggshells" to avoid his rage.
Emotional abuse "any attempt to, make one's spouse feel bad about herself or any attack on her self-esteem." Some examples are name-calling, put-downs, humiliating or degrading her, whether in private, or even worse, in front of family or friends. Some abusers will blame their wives for their own bad behavior or hold their wives accountable for actions they cannot possibly control. The abuser might to make his wife doubt her own sanity.
Isolation is not a behavior, but rather the end result of many kinds of abusive treatment. Isolating one's spouse involves any attempt to control who she associates with, what she does, what she wants for herself or what she thinks or feels and subtly creating negative repercussions for her when she disobeys. A husband may start a fight, call her friends or family names or make life generally difficult for his wife when she associates with someone he disapproves of. In other cases, he may require her to account for her time, listen in on phone conversations, monitor her activities or accuse her of imagined affairs or flirtations. As a result of her desire to avoid confrontation, she acquiesces to his demands 'and thus becomes more and more isolated (and more vulnerable).
Minimization, denial and blame: "Minimization consists of discounting the effects of an assault or 'abusive behavior’. It may be characterized by statements such as, "I didn't really hurt her;" 'She just scares easily;" or "She bruises easily."
Denial is refuting the truth of what actually happened. Examples are-statements such as, "I didn't realize she was standing there when I opened the door,” or "She doesn't mind when I joke around with her like that.” Blame is "shifting responsibility for an abusive behavior onto something or someone else," Statements like, "She pushed my buttons," "She just should stop when she knows it's going to push me too far," or "I was drunk" all serve to relieve the abuser of responsibility for his own actions. The use of the above three tactics can serve to make the victim start to doubt herself and her perception of the abusive situation.
Economic abuse is "using control of the family income or limiting a spouse's access to money to keep her dependent or to get one's own way." Examples might be sabotaging her job and getting her fired, not allowing her to work, taking away credit cards, cutting off money as a "punishment" or denying her access to money in some other way. Exerting male privilege in our communities is characterized by the husband using his superior knowledge of halacha to treat his wife inappropriately and then employing his misrepresented view of halacha to support his view or action. Often a man will act as his own posek, rather than choosing a rabbi that the couple can go to with sheilahs, leaving the wife isolated from true halachic values and decisions and at the mercy of his interpretations.
Manipulating the children "is any attempt to control your partner by threatening to damage her relationship with her children." Examples of this are threatening to take the children and never allow her to see them, undermining her authority or relationship with the children by blaming her for his problems, telling her she is an unfit mother, telling lies or reporting negative things to the children about their mother.
Threats and coercion are defined as "saying or doing something to make one's spouse afraid that something bad will happen to her if she doesn't do what she's told." He may threaten, "If you leave, I’ll kill myself! Kill you! Kill the kids! Kill your parents"; "If you 'ever tell anyone about this I’ll make you pay.” He may coerce her into doing something she doesn't want to do or force her to sign papers she is not permitted to read; he may intimidate her into participating in intimate acts that make her uncomfortable or force her to give up friends or family.
It is important, when reviewing this list that, to understand that there are many more tactics that may he used against a spouse, and the isolated use of one of these tactics does not constitute an abusive relationship.
In order to define a marriage as abusive - rather than dysfunctional - there must be a definite attempt of abuse in a relationship that is characterized by an uneven balance of power.
Another important point to keep in mind is that even in the most abusive relationships there are "good" times and even tender moments. These relationships are so confusing and indeed bewildering to women precisely because they are not completely bad.
These good periods have been conceptualized in different ways, The behaviors that follow abusive episodes, which may include apologies, cards, gift-giving and trips are often not real regret for the abuse, but a way of keeping the abused person exactly where she is and where he wants her to be - in the relationship. False apologies are simply another tactic to maintain the status quo and "can be differentiated from true regret when the same behaviors keep recurring in the common escalating the cycle of abuse apology - abuse, When apologies are sincere, abuse does not •continue.
The emotional devastation suffered by victims of these wearying and terrifying ups and downs is enormous. Even when times are good and women become hopeful that things will (or have) changed for the better, there is always a pervasive sense of foreboding, a fear that this calm interlude will end coupled with an underlying feeling of being controlled. What women tell us is that even while they hope for change, their experience tells them things will remain the same. The most common question asked about abusive relationships is "Why does she stand for it?" People cannot understand why the woman "allows" the name-calling, the intimidation, the financial control and the blaming. For one answer we can refer back to the Power and Control Wheel and look at the black ring that literally holds all the tactics together. It is the current, past, or future threat of violence that makes women feel powerless to resist these various tactics.
It is the fear that her abuser will retaliate in some way that convinces the woman that she has no choice but to "accept" the abusive treatment.
That retaliation might be physical violence (and there are many instances in our own communities of extreme violence), but for some women, who have never been physically abused, there is a fear of other, equally frightening punishments.
There are other emotional dynamics that combine to make women feel helpless in the face of the various tactics of abuse used against them. These are more common and far more insidious, making them difficult for victims and outsiders alike to see for what they truly are. Sometimes an abuser will coerce the victim to compromise her moral or ethical standards. When this is done, either overtly or more subtly, it has the similar effect of making women doubt and question if they deserve better.
In the world at large, a man may force the woman to steal or commit other illegal acts. She is coerced into committing these acts because she is afraid or because she hopes that by so doing she will improve her situation. In our circles, it is more likely to find that a woman has compromised her religious observance, her ethics or morals, in an effort to make things better. The insidious nature of this type of abuse revealed when the woman, who would never have committed the act of her own volition, begins to feel responsible for it. In fact, she feels so badly about herself that she loses the conviction that she is worthy or deserving of better; she begins to believe that she is getting just what she deserves. Although she may have acted only after endless hounding, or because she may gain a measure of safety or get her spouse to change, the woman still feels guilty for the act. Her self-esteem is so damaged that she no longer feels entitled to that her husband change. She looks at herself and says, "What about what I've done?"
The abuser will then make use of the situation he has created, accusing his victim of wrong doing, echoing her own guilt feelings. One example of this is the woman who was committed to covering her hair and did so for many years. After years of her husband’s disrespect, of his telling her how hideous she looked, how repulsed he was by her appearance and how different things would be (in the relationship) if she uncovered her hair, she finally acquiesced. Afterward she was engulfed by guilt and felt unworthy. Now when she complained about her husband’s behavior, he would comment, “What, do you think you're so great? You’re not-exactly 'Miss eiyshes-ehayil' yourself!" something she was thinking as well.
This brings us to the related issue of sexual abuse. Some examples might be forcing intimacy, forcing the woman to engage in intimate acts that make her uncomfortable, withholding intimacy as punishment or shaming her. In the Orthodox world a most painful and sinister form of abuse is coercing a woman to compromise her religious values or observance, even to the point of forcing intimacy during niddah. When a woman is coerced in ways that so compromise her fundamental morals, she may feel that she is an unworthy' human being and thus is undeserving of help. This belief is, of course, completely unfounded, since she was forced, whether physically or more often emotionally, into committing these acts.
In addition to examining what goes on in the home to these feelings of unworthiness, we must also look at the messages that are given, however unwittingly, by our communities that often keep women from feeling entitled to better treatment.
Certainly, the community never condones abuse, but we must examine how we put forth the concept of Shalom Bayis. Much is written and taught about how to develop and maintain Shalom Bayis. What is not generally understood, especially by women seeking answers, is that living in an abusive, controlling and sometimes violent situation, is not the same as being in a marriage that is troubled, difficult or even dysfunctional. The atmosphere of fear and the imbalance of power that characterize the abusive relationship change everything and so, the rules of what works change as well.
We, as a community, need to understand that when there is abuse we can no longer refer to the same "shalom bayis manual,” because one partner in a relationship cannot make shalom while the other is actively making milchama. Women in these types of situations need to understand that it is not a deficiency in them that makes their spouse abuse and "Control them. To abuse is a choice made by the abuser. Addressing the recipient or the abuse and suggesting ways of getting things to change is fruitless, since at the core of the relationship is the fact that she has been totally divested of power by her spouse. This is the reason why so many are confused and, in fact, try to apply the same guidelines to an abusive relationship as they would to a difficult marriage. It is important to note that this confusion exists among professionals as well as lay people. The confusion is due to a lack of understanding of the nature of an abusive relationship, and specifically of the spouse who would abuse. This abusive spouse is one who feels he is entitled, in the context of his relationship, to be in control. He shows little concern for his wife, and little compunction about the methods and tactics he will use to gain and maintain his power. What so clouds the issue is the fact that while abuse is going on in the home, on the outside, the abuser is perceived as a "great guy".
And so, the majority of women we speak to will tell us, "Nobody will believe my husband could do this." The husband is so well-liked or respected; he is a talmid chacham or prestigious doctor; or just an average man in the community, who is popular among his peers. It is this charm and likeability that the person exudes with everyone except his wife that fools even the best clinicians and shalom bayis lay counselors who lack expertise in the specific area of abuse. It is devastating for women to consult a counselor who doesn't understand the difference between domestic violence and dysfunction, because that would-be helper is inclined to use couples counseling skills or the traditional shalom bayis "manual" and thereby totally misjudge the situation. By missing the essence of the woman's life-situation, the counselor will invalidate the woman's experience and more likely than not, set her up for continued suffering.
Domestic violence is a complex and intricate problem. To begin solving this painful situation that is destroying generations of lives we must continue to educate our community and promote awareness. The problem must be understood and recognized for what it is and the stigma must be lifted from the innocent victims. Only then will the victims of abuse feel safe enough and entitled to come forward and access the help they need, help that must be administered by professionals specifically trained to deal with complexities of the problem.
Lisa G. Twerski, LCSW, is a graduate of New York University's School of Social Work and has advanced certification in pre-marital counseling and education. She maintains a private practice in Brooklyn, NY, lectures locally and nationally and is the Director of Training and Special Projects for Shalom Task Force.
(For more information, contact the hotline at 1-888-883-8383 or the administrative offices at 1-212-742-1478 or visit their website at www.shalomtaskforce.org.)