http://www.helpguide.org/mental/domestic_violence_abuse_types_signs_causes_effects.htm
I found a website about domestic abuse and what you are to look for if you are in a domestic abuse situation. Sometimes it is hard to notice that you are in an abuse situation, because you love that person and you make up excuses for their behavior. Everyone else in your life will notice that they are treating you bad or belittling you, but you will not notice. This website shows the signs of all the different kinds of abuse and the different ways that your significant other is treating you. There is also a hotline to call if you or someone you know is being abused.
There are many differnt types of domestic abuse, and most of them, such as emotional and psychological abuse, are hard to recognize. There are so many cases that go unresolved and so many people do not report the abuse.
You don't have to live in fear:
Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-787-3224
In my family class last semester domestic abuse was a focus of one of our units. It was extremely sad to see people who are blinded to the obvious fact that they are being abused. If is definitely easier from someone looking in on a relationship to see this than those who are actually in the relationship. There are many reasons for why a person would defend their partner who is abusing them. One reason is the fact that they care for the person. But, another interesting reason is that the abuse tends to convince the person being abused that it is their fault and they deserve the treatment they are getting. Most times it is harder to recognize physical abuse versus psychological abuse.
I found the site you posted very interesting. I know there is a lot of awareness about domestic abuse, but I think it is still greatly over looked.
In my Oral Comm. Class one of the girls is a runaway from an abusive man. The day she ran was the day he got arrested. She packed up her two small children and left. She's been hiding out ever since. When she talks about it you can tell she is scared but she is so brave and strong. One of her statements was, "If i don't talk about it, then nobody knows, and if nobody knows, who can help?" When she said that you could feel how powerful she was- it was amazing. She went through the circle of abuse which can also be found at the original sight listed and how accurate it all was. Her biggest concern was for her small children whom were boys and she knew that if she let them live in a situation they would possibly turn out no better than their worthless father, and she didn't want that, no mother does. I feel stories like hers give others strength to leave and escape, or at least give an option to those who are abused. Abuse is not good by any means, but if no body talks about it, then who knows how to help?
This post hit really close to home for me. I used to be in an abusive relationship with my oldest son's father and the scenario that was posted on the site about the cycle and how the man rationalized his abuse by saying if the woman wasn't such a "worthless whore" he wouldn't do that felt like it was ripped out of the pages of my memory (calling me a "worthless whore" was a typical insult in that relationship).
Even though I've been out of that relationship for almost 6 years, I still find it awkward to open up and talk about it. There was just so much humiliation and torment that I fear people may think I'm just looking for some attention when I talk about it. But like the woman from the previous comment, I feel compelled to tell my story to give people more of an insight into the world of abusive relationships.
Before the relationship, I always had thought of myself as an intelligent, strong woman who would never allow a man to treat me that way. Ironically, I had heard a lot about abusive relationships so I thought I would be prepared to spot the signs of abuse early on. How naive and wrong I truly was. The fact is, I didn't realize that it was an abusive relationship until 2 years later when my son was a few months old. It sounds so bizarre but it's true.
In the beginning, my ex was Mister Wonderful. He was funny, and fun to be around. We would spend hours talking at night about our lives and I felt a very strong connection to him. The first time that he abused me was several months later. We were out at a local club in the Quad Cities (where we were living at the time) with his sister (who was one of my good friends at the time) and some other people. My ex became severely intoxicated and started picking a fight with the bouncer which ultimately got him kicked out. As we were leaving, he kept shouting and egging the bouncer to fight but I was pulling him to the car because I was terrified that this was going to escalate into a situation that would end very badly. Once in the car, he unleashed a verbal assault on me that I had never experienced before. The gist of his assault was that I was a "worthless whore" and that I had humiliated him in front everybody because I stopped him from being a man (I stopped him from getting his butt handed to him by a group of bouncers is what I did). Shaking in my seat as I drove us home, the verbal assault continued for hours. I was devastated because I had not meant him for him to feel humiliated. I was only protecting him. The rest of the events that happened that night are just too humiliating and hard for me to tell to everybody at this time but the next morning, I was ready to dump him because I had never felt more disgusted and angry with myself for allowing myself to put in the situation that had happened after we returned home that evening. Of course, he was incredibly sorry and begged me not to leave him. He blamed his actions on the alcohol and I ignorantly bought it, hook, line, and sinker.
Things went smoothly for a while. He had promised to get help with his alcoholism but that didn't happen...it never happened. It wasn't long after that I had become pregnant. He was extremely angry with about it. He even blamed me for purposely getting pregnant to trap him in this relationship. His sister overheard the argument and rushed to my defense. He quickly calmed down and started changing his tone about the whole thing (even showing some signs of excitement to become a parent).
Things got progressively worse from there. He started to convince me that his sister was causing issues between he and I because she was jealous that he took a friend away from her (the friend being me). This led to us moving out of her house and into our home. Soon, he began to exert financial dominance over me. I was earning a meager paycheck from McDonald's but I had to use the entire check to pay all the bills. His paychecks from his job as a truck driver was used to buy food for both of us but the majority of it was used by him to buy movies, alcohol, and occasionally drugs for himself.
Around this time, he started to limit my contact with my own family and I was not allowed to have friends. I was alone with no support but I didn't realize it because I was still allowed to talk with his sister (who I was still friends with).
When I was a few months pregnant, things began to become physical. A few of the fights, he would push me down or spit on me. Then when I was 6 months pregnant, he grabbed me by my throat and threw me against a wall. I tried to call the police but he ripped the phone out of the wall and threw it on the floor (shattering it into pieces). That night was hell and I was terrified for my life. The next day, I quit my job and prepared to move back home. I went over to his mother's house to stay while I mustered up the courage to call my parents to transfer me some money so that I could get gas to come home. At first, his mother was extremely sympathetic and couldn't believe her son was capable of so much violence. After she spoke with her son though, her tone changed. It was my fault and I invoked the violence. That day, I never called my parents and I returned back to my ex with my head lowered. In hindsight, I can see this is the point where I had become completely beaten down. I had no money and no way of escaping. I even had his own family placing the blame on me which only further legitimized his claims that it was my fault.
Fast forwarding to 3 months after my son was born, my ex and I had another blow up (through out our entire relationship, we had numerous arguments that resulted in verbal abuse but I'm only mentioning the ones that prominently stick out in my mind). This time, not only did he break the phone again but he also slashed my car tires so I could not leave. It was December and I couldn't run to the gas station because it was too cold to go outside with my baby boy in the dead of night. Before he busted the phone, I had dialed 911 and I had heard it ring so I thought the cops would be able to trace the call. Thinking the cops were coming, my ex repeatedly punched himself in the face and told me that he was going to tell the cops I did that to him and I would be the one arrested. No cops showed up that night. A week later, we had another blow out, this time the cops did show up. They didn't arrest him and he even tried to have me arrested by claiming that I had given him the black eye that he had given himself the week before. The cops simply had his grandmother come and get him. The next day, my parents came and got me because my tires were still slashed.
The insanity didn't stop there. A few days later, my ex's mother and grandmother drove the 2 hours to my parent's house to bring me back to Illinois. They sat in my parent's living and threatened to take my baby away from me (their exact words were that they were prepared to "lie, cheat, steal, whatever they had to do to take him away" from me). They also said I needed to stop calling the cops on my ex because I was going to get him in trouble. Defeated and feeling hopeless, I returned back to Illinois. My mother later told me that she was in shock that I went with them and that she couldn't figure out why I would do that. Truth is, even today I can't really explain it.
That Christmas, my mother gave me a cell phone (that she was paying for) for Christmas. It was so I could call for help when I needed it.
I didn't finally leave my ex until the following March. I guess I truly believed that it was entirely the alcohol that made him treat me that way. But the day I left, he wasn't drunk. In fact, he was completely sober when he told me that he was going to kill me if I wasn't gone by the time he got home from work and that if he ever found out that I had another man helping me raise my son that he would hunt us both down and beat us to death with a bat. It was that day, I fully realized, I had to get out of there and never return because I didn't want to raise my son in that sort of environment and let him think that it was okay to treat women that way.
Once home, I immediately started counseling. I was still conflicted about what had happened to me and as crazy as it sounds, I was still battling with myself to not return.
Like a page out of the Domestic Abuse Manual, my ex filed for full custody of my son. We went through a horrible court battle which ended in me receiving full custody but he was awarded visitation once a month for 5 days, unsupervised. Today, we are still battling in court and have been off and on since our initial court appearance. This time however, I'm asking for his rights to be terminated due to new circumstances that have arised. Since our relationship, he married and then divorced a woman who filed for an Order of Protection because he abused her as well.
In hindsight (and in writing), it's easy to see the onset of the abuse and to form an opinion about how stupid someone is for letting that happen to them. Being in it at the time, however, is a completely different story. It's virtually impossible to articulate it in words what was going through my mind but at the time, my reasoning made sense to me.
It's been 6 years now since that relationship and I'm proud to say that I'm not afraid of that man anymore. In fact, I take great pride and satisfaction that he no longer has control over my life. Because of our custody arrangement, I was forced to continue to face him with each visitation. Rather than allowing him to continue to instill fear and control my life, I took it back. Every time he tried to instigate an argument with me, I became aware of his manipulative tactics immediately (they were almost text book) and refused to give in. This only infuriated him more because he realized he no longer could control me. Even just writing that makes me smile because I know that I have the power over my own life and he can't ever take it away from me again. I'd be lying if I were to say that that relationship did not affect me at all. I still struggle with self-esteem issues and trying to maintain a healthy relationship. But it's been 6 years and I'm now married to a wonderful man who treats my son as if he were his own and tries very hard to be aware of my traumatic past when we have our own disagreements. My ex still has yet to make do on his promise to show up with a baseball bat.