Recognizing Domestic Violence

Relationships Are Complicated.

Every relationship you have exists on a health spectrum. If you’re not sure what that means or where your relationships are on that spectrum, it’s okay!

Every person has green, yellow, or red flags. These flags can help you tell whether your partnership is in the healthy, unhealthy, or abusive zone.

What Do You See?

    • One partner isolating the other from friends and family.

    • Insults, belittlement, and degradation.

    • Violations of physical and sexual boundaries. Any kind of physical or sexual violence.

    • One partner blames the other or makes excuses for their toxic behavior and/or minimizes their harmful actions.

    • Complete lack of equity and equality. One partner controls all the decision making for both parties.

    • Lack of investment in other relationships. Little to no interest in friends or family.

    • Inconsiderate or dishonest behavior.

    • Feeling pressure to compromise your desires and boundaries for your partner's happiness.

    • Ignores your feelings and/or refuses to communicate.

    • Overly jealous of others and/or tries to control how often you see other people.

    • Clearly defined and communicated expectations.

    • Being able to openly disagree, while respecting each other's views.

    • Being able to admit mistakes and apologize when in the wrong.

    • Supports your goals and ambition.

    • A mutual understanding that the relationship is a part of your lives, not what dictates your lives.

How to

Identify Abuse

*Trigger Warning*

Below, will be definitions and examples of abuse in all it’s forms. Some of this content may be triggering to survivors so please proceed with caution.

Physical Abuse

Physical abuse is the most commonly identified amongst abusive patterns. It includes threats of and follow through of physical violence.

    • Hitting

    • Punching

    • Scratching

    • Slapping

    • Kicking

    • Pushing

    • Biting

    • Strangulation or smothering

    • Using a weapon or weaponizing an object against a survivor to bring them physical harm or threatening a person with weapons

    • A partner restraining a survivor against their will

    • “Destruction of property”: Punching holes in walls, slashing tires, throwing, smashing, burning, or otherwise destroying belongings

    • “Reckless endangerment: i.e. driving recklessly to intimidate or scare a survivor, abandoning a survivor in an unfamiliar place

    • A partner preventing a survivor from meeting their basic needs such as sleeping, eating, showering, or having access to shelter

    • A partner harming or threatening to harm a survivor’s loved ones or belongings

    • A partner preventing a survivor from leaving the home or the relationship

    • A partner preventing a person from seeking help in their support system, seeking medical treatment, or taking prescribed medications

    • “Stalking”: Examples include:

      • Showing up unannounced and/or uninvited to your home, workplace, or present location.

      • Sending consistent unwanted texts, messages, letters, emails, voicemails , or explicit content.

      • Lying about having a relationship or involvement with a person.

      • Sending or leaving unwanted items such as gifts, flowers, or personalized trinkets

      • Calling and hanging up repeatedly, making unwanted phone calls to a person, their employer, their professor, or a loved one.

      • Using social media or tracking devices to monitor a person’s whereabouts, conversations, call records, and search history.

      • Manipulating people into spying or snooping on another person. Using someone else’s social media accounts to look at a person’s profile or adding somebody’s friends in order to gain access them.

      • Waiting for someone in places they are likely to be.

      • Hiring a private investigator to follow or find information on a person.

Sexual Abuse

Sexual abuse is an extension of physical violence, although it can include elements of non-physical violence. Essentially, sexual violence happens when one partner has complete control over when and how sexual and physical intimacy occurs in a relationship. It is inclusive of non-consensual and forced sexual activity.

    • Controlling how a person dresses; making them dress in ways that are uncomfortable to them

    • Withholding sex as a means to punish or manipulate

    • Insulting a person in a sexual way; using sexual expletives to degrade someone.

    • Forcing, coercing, pressuring, or manipulating a person into having sex or performing sexual acts.

    • Strangling or restraining a person during sex without their consent.

    • Using weapons or objects to harm or threaten someone before and during sex.

    • Inviting other people to engage in sexual acts with a person against their will.

    • Ignoring a person’s sexual boundaries or feelings around sex.

    • Forcing a person to watch or make pornography.

    • Intentionally not disclosing having an STD to a sexual partner; attempting to give a partner a sexually transmitted infection.

    • “Stealthing”: agreeing to use sexual protection like a condom or birth control and then removing that protection or secretly not using that protection during or in relation to sex

    • “Coercion”: A subtle form of sexual abuse that often involves gaslighting and manipulating a survivor so they are unable to recognize what took place as abuse. Examples include:

      • Using relationship status to peer pressure a partner. Claiming someone does not love or want their partner if they do not give them sex, threatening to cheat or leave if they cannot get sex, implying sex or sexual acts are “owed” due to the fact that they are in a relationship

      • Not accepting no as an answer. Intimidating a person with threats of physical harm, cheating, or beginning a fight if sex is not granted

      • Using drugs or alcohol to take away a person’s decision making, ability to say no, or resist

      • Gaslighting : Responding to hesitation or a no with sadness, anger, or resentment. Attempting to make someone feel guilty for not indulging another person’s sexual demands by saying they “need” it.

Digital Abuse

Digital abuse is the use of technology and the Internet to bully, harass, stalk, intimidate, or control a partner. This behavior is often a form of verbal or emotional abuse conducted online. 

    • A partner controlling who a survivor follows, blocks, or is friends with on social media

    • “Online harassment”: Being berated with degrading, insulting, or threatening messages or posts

    • “Online stalking”:

      • Using social media to track where a person is, who they’re with, or what they’re doing

      • Using social media or websites to gather information on where a person lives, where they work, how to contact them, etc.

      • Using tracking apps or tracking devices to keep constant tabs on a person’s whereabouts and private phone activity

    • Sending unwanted explicit content. Demanding, requesting, pressuring, threatening, or blackmailing a person into sending explicit content.

    • Distributing or threatening to distribute explicit content of a person against their will. Using explicit content of a person to blackmail them

    • A partner demanding login access and passwords to a survivor’s devices and accounts

    • A partner demanding to be in constant communication with a survivor. An aggressor getting angry or carrying out punishment on a survivor if they are not constantly texting, messaging, calling, or otherwise in direct contact with their partner.

    • A partner looking through a survivor’s phone, reading their private messages, going through their photos, search history, or call records

    • A partner using home technology to track a survivor’s activity in the house. Using smart speakers and security cameras to monitor communications and activities

    • A partner creating fake accounts impersonating a survivor. Using a survivor’s phone, social media accounts, email, etc. to send messages impersonating them or speaking for them, as a way to embarrass or isolate them.

Emotional Abuse

Emotional abuse is the broadest and most inconspicuous branch of abuse. It encompasses psychological, verbal, and mental assaults. This type of violence happens when one partner works to dissolve the other’s mental health and make them doubt their own sanity. The goal of this is often to make the survivor codependent on the person who harms or to chip away at the survivor’s ability to trust their judgement and self-assurance, so they will be too self-doubting to leave.

    • Name calling, belittling, insulting

    • Intense jealousy. Possessiveness; refusal to trust their partner without good cause or reason

    • Dictating what their partner is and is not allowed to wear.

    • Demanding to know where their partner goes, who they’re with, who they speak to, and what they are doing at all times.

    • Isolating a partner from their support system (i.e. family, friends, coworkers, therapists, medical professionals, community support, etc).

    • “Neglect”: Dismissing and weaponizing a survivor’s needs to make them doubt themselves (i.e. the silent treatment, refusing to communicate, telling a survivor they are “needy” or “clingy” for having basic desires)

    • Public and private humiliation

    • Verbally threatening a partner or their loved ones

    • A partner telling a survivor they won’t be able to find anything better than their current relationship.

    • A survivor being blamed by the aggressor for the abuse in the relationship.

    • A survivor being accused of cheating by the aggressor with no evidence or cause for accusations. Additionally, a survivor being cheated on and blamed for the infidelity on the aggressor’s behalf.

    • A survivor being cheated on by an aggressor in an attempt to hurt and degrade the survivor. Additionally, an aggressor threatening to cheat again with the intent of breaking down the survivor’s sense of value and self-worth

    • “Gaslighting”: pretending not to understand or refusing to listen to their partner; accusing their partner of misremembering the facts, events, or sources, manipulating their partner into feeling like they are overreacting, making their partner feel that their needs and/or feelings are unreasonable, or denying any previously made statements or promises.

    • A partner threatening to report a person’s citizenship status or deportation

Financial Abuse

Also known as economic abuse, this happens when a person who harms takes extensive control over shared and/or individual financial decisions.

    • A partner restricting a survivor’s financial access to a controlled allowance

    • Double standards around spending in a relationship (i.e. harsher restrictions or criticisms around a survivor’s spending habits than there are for the perpetrator’s)

    • A partner monitoring how a survivor spends their money (i.e. checking bank accounts, accessing banking apps, demanding receipts)

    • A partner preventing a survivor from seeing or accessing bank accounts, banking apps, and bank statements

    • A partner manually depositing or direct depositing a survivor’s paycheck into an account they cannot access

    • A partner maxing out credit cards in the survivor’s name, not paying credit card bills under joint names or survivor’s name, making reckless purchases under survivor’s name, or otherwise collecting debt under the survivor’s name

    • A partner preventing a survivor from seeking employment, limiting the hours a survivor is allowed to work, restricting what types of job a survivor can take, or doing something that results in the survivor’s termination from a job

    • A partner stealing money from the survivor or their loved ones

    • Partners withdrawing money from their children’s savings accounts without joint consent or permission.

    • A partner refusing to work or contribute to a household or shared needs (i.e. food, clothing, child support, transportation, medical care, or medicine)

    • A partner confiscating joint or single tax returns.

    • A partner threatening to report the survivor to public assistance agencies

    • A partner pressuring a survivor to pay for their debt(s)

    • A partner coercing the other into paying for their services (anger management, therapy, medical resources)