Friends tell me that he’s really not doing well since we split up.

I’m worried about him.

Last time I tried to leave him he scared me half to death. Sometimes it seems like he could kill me.

I don’t want to take the children away from him; he’s their father.

He was okay with our breakup until he found out I was dating somebody.

VAN SPOKE WITH A RASPY, modulated voice that complemented his sadly expressive blue eyes. His reddish-blond hair was always wrapped in a

bandanna which, combined with his thick neck and upper arms, created a biker image. But his language did not fit the tough-guy stereotype. He

spoke of his pain, of the need to face up to oneself, of the process of denial and acceptance. He appeared to be his own harshest critic, referring frequently to his own selfishness, immaturity, and other “character flaws.” He stated openly that he was alcoholic and was attending at least one AA meeting per day. He had not had a drink in almost eight months.

Van had, by his own description, nearly killed his partner Gail in a beating nine months earlier. He would gaze at the floor and speak slowly as he recalled this assault, the picture of remorse. “It was bad,” he would say. “Real bad. I’m lucky she’s alive.” He was arrested and spent that night in

jail, before his mother and brother bailed him out the next day. “I drank nonstop for three weeks afterward, trying to blot out what I had done, and then I woke up one morning with bruises all over me from some fight I had been in, I don’t even know where, and I haven’t had a drink since. I finally accepted the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to run from myself forever, and I was going to have to deal with what I had done to Gail.” He did not join an abuser program until several months later, however, when he was required to do so by the court.

For weeks, Van was my star group member. He would challenge other men about their denial, about their efforts to blame their own behavior on their partners, about their need to take an honest and painful look at themselves. I pushed him a few times to stop using his alcoholism as an

excuse for abusiveness and to examine more seriously his history of bullying of and violence toward Gail. He would react to my challenges with momentary irritation but then would soften and say, “I know I still have a lot of work left to do.” In short, he seemed like an abusive man who was interested in doing the hard work involved in making real changes.

Van and Gail had been separated since the severe beating. They were speaking from time to time but not sleeping together. Van said he thought it would be a long time before Gail would trust him again, and he would have to give her space.

However, over a period of three or four months, Van began to realize that Gail was not taking a break from their relationship in order to rebuild her trust in him, as he had believed. She was getting herself unhooked. As it dawned on him that she was thinking seriously about closing the door permanently, he started a rapid backslide before my eyes. First, he surprised me one day by saying that Gail “should really give our relationship another chance.” I was stunned. “Why on earth should a woman stay with a partner who gave her a beating that nearly killed her? I certainly wouldn’t want to do it.”

Van said, “The pain in our relationship wasn’t all hers, you know. She hurt me a lot too.” I asked if that somehow justified battering her. “No,” he answered, “I’m not justifying it. I’m just saying it isn’t like I was all bad and she was all good.”

“And so that means she owes you another chance? How many times do you get to beat a woman up before she stops owing you?” To this, Van just muttered under his breath and lightly shook his head.

At the next session I focused more time on Van, because separation is a time when abusers can be particularly destructive. Since the previous session, he had received the definitive word from Gail that their relationship was over and that she was going to start dating, making it particularly important for us to try to influence his thought process. He plunged quickly into a homily about how hard he was working on himself in contrast to Gail, “who is going nowhere and who isn’t dealing with her issues at all.” I asked how Gail’s progress was going to be assisted by getting back together with an abusive man. “Hey,” he said, “I’m a lot better for her than those

losers she’s hanging around with now. Most of them are still drinking and acting totally immature.”

Van’s group was alarmed by his reversion, and members raced to try to get him back on track, pointing out to him that (1) he was claiming to have made great changes, but his entitled insistence that Gail owed him loyalty was evidence of an abuser who wasn’t changing; (2) he was slipping back into minimizing how destructive his abusiveness and violence had been to Gail, to an extreme where he was convincing himself that he was a more

constructive presence in her life than other people were; and(3) he was failing to accept the reality that a woman does not have to be “all good” in order to have the right to live free of abuse. I kept an additional thought to myself, which was that based on my conversation with her I was confident that Gail’s life was not “going nowhere” and that her primary goal at that point was to heal from what he had done to her. When he made disparaging references to “her issues,” he was ignoring the reality that her issues were 90 percent him. I remained silent on this point because I was concerned, given the state of mind he was in, that the better he understood her healing process, the more effectively he would take steps to sabotage it.

Van was not open to his group’s feedback the way he had been in earlier months. His heels were dug in, as we could see in the digusted shaking of

his head and the dismissive curl of his lip. The group had stumbled upon a core aspect of Van’s entitlement—as tends to happen with each client sooner or later—and we weren’t going to take it apart in a few short weeks. We hoped that we could reach him eventually though, for Van still had six months to go of the eleven the court had ordered him to spend in our program.

He never gave us the chance, unfortunately. Less than three weeks later, overwhelmed by his outraged entitlement, he approached Gail in a

restaurant in front of numerous witnesses, called her a “fucking bitch,” and walked off flashing her the finger. His verbal assault violated a restraining order barring him from approaching her, and since he was already on probation for his grave attack on her, he was jailed for a minimum of six months. Gail had little desire to see Van behind bars, but in this case his incarceration was a blessing, as it gave her an uninterrupted opportunity to move on with her life, which she did. (Later in this chapter we will look at strategies for getting away from a frightening relationship safely.)

WHAT AN ABUSER DOES IF YOU ARE LEAVING HIM

Breaking up with an abuser can be very hard to do. In fact, leaving a nonabusive partner is generally easier, contrary to what many people

believe. Few abusers readily allow themselves to be left. When they feel a partner starting to get stronger, beginning to think for herself more, slipping out from under domination, abusers move to their endgame. Some of their more common maneuvers include:

 

Abusers’ Responses to a Possible Breakup

Promising to change Entering therapy or an abuser program

Not drinking, attending AA Making apologies

Telling you that you will be lost without him Telling you that no one else will want to be with you

Threatening suicide

Saying that you are abandoning him, making you feel guilty

 

 

Threatening to kidnap or take custody of the children Threatening to leave you homeless or with

no financial resources

Turning very nice

Getting other people to pressure you into giving him another chance

Taking care of things that you have been complaining about for a long time (e.g., finally fixing a hazardous situation in the house, getting a job, agreeing that you can go out with your friends)

Behaving in self-destructive ways so that you will worry or feel sorry for him (e.g., not eating, drinking heavily, skipping work, never talking to his friends)

Spreading rumors about you, trying to ruin your friendships or reputation

Starting a new relationship/affair to make you jealous or angry

Insisting that he already has changed Spreading confidential information

about you to humiliate you

Threatening or assaulting anyone you try to start a new relationship with, or anyone who is helping you

Getting you pregnant

Stalking you

Physically or sexually assaulting you Trashing your house or car Threatening to harm you or kill you

 

Each abuser uses a different mix of the above tactics, and some let go somewhat more easily than others. Strategies of control that appear contradictory may go hand in hand. For example, he may insist adamantly one day, “You should be able to tell that I’ve changed,” and then call the next night to say, “If you don’t give this relationship another chance, you’re going to find out what I’m really capable of.” One day on the phone he may tell you that his love for you will never die, but when his poetic language doesn’t succeed in persuading you to meet him for a drink, he will abruptly switch to yelling: “I don’t give a shit about you anyhow, so just let your life continue down the stinking hole it’s in!” He doesn’t care that these pieces don’t fit together, because he is intently focused on a single desire: to get you back under his control.

He knows he used to be able to control you with charm, affection, and promises. He also remembers how well intimidation or aggression worked at other times. Now both of these tools are losing their effectiveness, so he tries to increase the voltages. He may switch erratically back and forth between the two like a doctor who cycles a patient through a range of antibiotics, trying to find the one that will get the infection under control. And the analogy is an apt one, because an abuser sees his (ex-) partner’s growing strength and independence as a sickness rather than as the harbinger of health that it actually is.

Promises that an abuser makes during this period can be persuasive, especially if they are combined with sincere-sounding apologies or if he

takes some concrete initiative such as quitting drinking, locating a therapist, or joining an abuser program. However, once he succeeds in getting you to reunite with him, he gradually plows his way back into the usual ruts, dropping counseling because he “can’t afford it,” saying he will go back to “a little” drinking because he can “handle it,” and so forth. Before long, daily life has returned to its former contours.

My clients make flip-flopping statements during breakups about who is responsible for the dissolution of the relationship, bouncing between blaming everything on themselves and casting all fault on to the woman.

Making it her fault is closer to their real thinking; the blaming of

themselves is largely a way to win sympathy from other people, including

abuse counselors, who can get drawn in by a theatrical show of pained guilt. And in an ironic twist, the more he says that the separation is his own fault, the more friends and relatives are tempted to pressure the woman to believe that he will change.

When one of my clients takes this mea culpa stance, I ask him to

describe in detail how exactly his behavior drove his partner away. Eight

times out of ten the man can give me only two or three examples, or none. In other words, he doesn’t really believe that he is abusive, and my request for extensive specifics smokes him out. If he does manage to list a few

things he did wrong, they often are far afield from the core of his destructiveness, as in comments like “I should have made her a higher priority; we didn’t do things together enough,” or they are actually backhanded remarks to get more digs in against her, such as, “I used to walk away from her because of the insane rages she goes into, but I should have realized that my leaving just made her feel even worse.”

The volatile, abusive, and sometimes dangerous reactions that abusers can have when relationships draw to a close have often been considered, especially by psychologists, to be evidence of the man’s “fear of

abandonment.” But women have fears of abandonment that are just as great as men’s, yet they rarely stalk or kill their partners after a breakup. Not only that, but many abusers are vicious to their ex-partners even when they do

not desire a reunion or when they initiated the breakup themselves. The clue to how an abuser handles separation lies in the same thinking that has been causing his controlling and abusive behavior throughout the relationship and that has driven his partner away from him.

HOW ABUSERS VIEW SEPARATION

Van’s internal process, and the destructive behavior it led him to, captures the essence of how an abusive man perceives the ending of a relationship. Let’s look at the central elements of his outlook:

“ABUSE IS NO REASON TO END A RELATIONSHIP.”

Van was unwilling to accept that his brutal mistreatment of Gail was

adequate reason for her to leave him. Why? First, he believed that the pain Gail sometimes caused him during their relationship outweighed his abuse of her. If Van can convince himself that he has an even balance sheet,

despite his severe physical assault, imagine how easily a purely psychological abuser can do so (even though the reality is that emotional abuse can do just as much damage).

Second, Van believed that it was unreasonable to expect a man to be nonabusive unless his partner never hurt his feelings or failed to cater to him. He felt that we were being unfair and unrealistic about a man’s inherent nature, as if we were asking a tiger to be vegetarian. Without

saying so directly, he revealed his attitude that a woman needs to accept the fact that a certain amount of abuse just comes with the territory of being involved with a man, unless she can be perfect.

“WHEN I PROMISE TO BE KINDER IN THE FUTURE, THAT SHOULD BE

ENOUGH.”

No matter how many times in the past Van had broken his promises to change, he still believed that this time Gail should see that he really meant it and should give him another chance. There was no limit in his mind to how many “other chances” he should get; he felt entitled to an endless series.

To make matters worse, Van felt that Gail was supposed to accept his rose-colored vision of the future even though he was simultaneously blaring loud warning signals that he hadn’t changed. My clients demand

forgiveness while continuing to insult, threaten, demand immediate responses, attend only to their own needs, and more. According to his mind- set, she should believe that his abuse has stopped when he says it has stopped, regardless of what she sees in front of her own eyes.

“THERE IS NO LIMIT TO HOW MUCH SHE SHOULD BE WILLING TO ‘WORK ON’

OUR RELATIONSHIP.”

The abuser feels entitled to end a relationship any time he feels like it, but he assigns no such privilege to his partner. Around breakup time, my clients grouse bitterly to me along the lines of:

“Nowadays, people just throw relationships in the trash as soon as it gets difficult. There’s no commitment anymore to sticking it out and making it work.”

“I guess our marriage vows didn’t mean anything to her.”

“She says she cares so much about our children, but it’s no big deal to her if they have a broken home.”

“She’s prepared to just throw away everything we had because she’s found some other guy.”

No woman in any of my cases has ever left a man the first time he behaved abusively (not that doing so would be wrong). By the time she moves to end her relationship, she has usually lived with years of verbal

abuse and control and has requested uncountable numbers of times that her partner stop cutting her down or frightening her. In most cases she has also requested that he stop drinking, or go to counseling, or talk to a clergyperson, or take some other step to get help. She has usually left him a few times, or at least started to leave, and then gotten back together with him. Don’t any of these actions on her part count as demonstrating her

commitment? Has she ever done enough, and gained the right to protect herself? In the abuser’s mind, the answer is no.

Once again, the abuser’s double standards rule the day. He doesn’t consider his chronic verbal abuse, or even violence, to constitute a failure to “love and cherish,” but her decision to move away for safety does. His

affairs automatically deserve forgiveness, whereas any affairs she may have he considers proof of her low moral character and lack of caring. And his

exposure of the children to his degrading and bullying of their mother doesn’t keep him from awarding himself the title of Children’s Protector, the one who wants to give them a “stable family life” while their “selfish” mother tries to split them apart.

“SHE IS STILL RESPONSIBLE FOR MY FEELINGS AND WELL-BEING.”

In the abusive man’s self-serving value system, the woman may be

responsible for his needs and feelings even after she declares that she isn’t his partner anymore. So if he loses his job, or his new fling doesn’t work out, or his mother gets ill, he still feels entitled to have her take care of him emotionally. In particular, he tends to make her endlessly responsible for his hurt feelings from their relationship or from their breakup.

“THE RELATIONSHIP IS OVER WHEN I SAY IT’S OVER.”

I repeatedly run into the following scenario: A new client in the abuse program is describing his most serious incident of abuse, as all participants are required to do, and he excuses his actions by saying, “It happened

because I found out she was cheating on me.” When I contact the woman, however, I find out that, although he may be right about her seeing another man, she and my client were broken up at the time. In other words, in the abuser’s mind any relationship that she has is “an affair” if it happens during a period when he still wishes they were back together, because he

feels entitled to determine when she can be free to see other people.

“SHE BELONGS TO ME.”

The abuser’s dehumanizing view of his partner as a personal possession can grow even uglier as a relationship draws to a close. I sometimes find it extraordinarily difficult to get a client to remember at this point that his partner is a human being with rights and feelings rather than an offending object to destroy. At worst, his efforts to reestablish his ownership may

include following her and monitoring her movements, scaring people who try to assist her, threatening men she is interested in dating, kidnapping the children, and physically attacking her or people close to her. For abused women separation is a time of particularly high risk of homicide or attempted homicide, which can sometimes involve murderous assaults on her new boyfriend, her children, or on other people she cares about.

Numerous studies have found that mistreatment of women by abusers tends to continue for a substantial period after separation and commonly

escalates to levels worse than those when the couple was together. Particularly common in postseparation is rape or other forms of sexual assault, which conveys a powerful message of ownership: “You continue to be mine, and I retain my rights to your body until I decide otherwise.”

If you are concerned that your partner may be capable of extreme violence—even if he has not been violent in the past—take careful safety precautions (see “Leaving an Abuser Safely,” page 225).

TRAUMATIC BONDING

One of the great tragedies of all forms of abuse is that the abused person can become emotionally dependent on the perpetrator through a process called traumatic bonding. The assaults that an abuser makes on the woman’s self-opinion, his undermining of her progress in life, the wedges

he drives between her and other people, the psychological effects left on her when he turns scary—all can combine to cause her to need him more and more. This is a bitter psychological irony. Child abuse works in the same way; in fact, children can become more strongly attached to abusive parents than to nonabusive ones. Survivors of hostage-taking situations or of torture can exhibit similar effects, attempting to protect their tormentors from legal consequences, insisting that the hostage takers actually had their best

interests at heart or even describing them as kind and caring individuals—a phenomenon known as the Stockholm syndrome. I saw these dynamics illustrated by a young boy who got a shock from touching an electric fence and was so frightened by it that he grabbed on to the fence for security— and wouldn’t let go as each successive shock increased his panic, until his sister was able to reach him and pull him off.

Almost no abuser is mean or frightening all the time. At least occasionally he is loving, gentle, and humorous and perhaps even capable of compassion and empathy. This intermittent, and usually unpredictable, kindness is critical to forming traumatic attachments. When a person, male or female, has suffered harsh, painful treatment over an extended period of time, he or she naturally feels a flood of love and gratitude toward anyone

who brings relief, like the surge of affection one might feel for the hand that offers a glass of water on a scorching day. But in situations of abuse, the

rescuer and the tormentor are the very same person. When a man stops

screaming at his partner and calling her a “useless piece of shit,” and instead offers to take her on a vacation, the typical emotional response is to feel grateful to him. When he keeps her awake badgering her for sex in the middle of the night and then finally quiets down and allows her to get some of the sleep that she so desperately craves, she feels a soothing peace from the relief of being left alone.

Your abusive partner’s cycles of moving in and out of periods of cruelty can cause you to feel very close to him during those times when he is finally kind and loving. You can end up feeling that the nightmare of his

abusiveness is an experience the two of you have shared and are escaping from together, a dangerous illusion that trauma can cause. I commonly hear an abused woman say about her partner, “He really knows me,” or “No one understands me the way he does.” This may be true, but the reason he

seems to understand you well is that he has studied ways to manipulate your emotions and control your reactions. At times he may seem to grasp how badly he has hurt you, which can make you feel close to him, but it’s another illusion; if he could really be empathic about the pain he has caused, he would stop abusing you for good.

Society has tended to label a woman “masochistic” or “joining with him in his sickness” for feeling grateful or attached to an abusive man. But, in fact, studies have shown that there is little gender difference in the

traumatic bonding process and that males become as attached to their captors as women do.

The trauma of chronic abuse can also make a woman develop fears of being alone at night, anxiety about her competence to manage her life on her own, and feelings of isolation from other people, especially if the abuser has driven her apart from her friends or family. All of these effects of abuse can make it much more difficult to separate from an abusive partner than from a nonabusive one. The pull to reunify can therefore be great.

Researchers have found that most abused women leave the abuser multiple times before finally being able to stay away for good. This prolonged

process is largely due to the abuser’s ongoing coercion and manipulation but also is caused by the trauma bonds he has engendered in his partner.

One exercise that can help you address this trap involves making a list of all the ways, including emotional ones, in which you feel dependent on your partner, then making another list of big or small steps you might take

to begin to become more independent. These lists can guide you in focusing your energy in the directions you need to go.

WHY HE DOESN’T ACCEPT YOUR REQUEST TO “TAKE A BREATHER”

Have you ever attempted to take a brief period of separation from your

partner? Perhaps you had been considering getting out of your relationship but were afraid of your partner’s reaction, so you asked for “a little time

apart” instead of breaking up outright. Or maybe you weren’t sure what you wanted to do and just craved some time away to consider where to go from here without having to deal daily with his bullying, criticism, and watching over you. You may have attempted to reassure him that the relationship wasn’t ending, that you still wanted to “work on getting back together,” but that you just needed a break. You probably requested that the two of you stay in separate places for a period of a few weeks or months and that you

see each other little or not at all. You may have made other specific requests, such as not to speak at all, even by telephone, so that you could get a complete break. You may have asked for an agreement that you could each see other people during this period, or specifically requested the opposite. The great majority of the abused women I work with try at some point to get time out of the pressure cooker.

My clients, however, rarely honor their partners’ requests. At the beginning the man presents himself as supporting the plan, saying, “I agree with her that we need some time apart to just let everything cool off, and then talk it over with level heads.” But he doesn’t think so for long. He soon starts cutting around the edges of the agreement. If she asked that he not call for a while, he sends a card. Then he calls on some pretext, perhaps a bill that has to be paid or an invitation for her from his sister, and throws in offhandedly, “So, how are you?” to try to get a conversation started. He may keep showing up “by coincidence” at places where she happens to be. He keeps chipping away at her resolve as much as he can, until she cracks and sees him. Once they are face-to-face, he pours on the sweetness and charm, reminiscent of his romantic persona in the early, glory days of the relationship, and sees if he can cajole or manipulate her into bed; he may

sense that once they’ve had sex, she’ll be hooked in again, a strategy that I have often seen my clients succeed with. One way or another, the woman

never seems to end up getting the decompression time that she knew was indispensable to her well-being.

Why doesn’t he allow the break to happen? On a conscious level he may simply miss her, but down deep he has other interests. He experiences the separation as a declaration by his partner that she is capable of surviving without him, that she is the best judge of what is good for her, that her

needs shouldn’t always take a backseat to his, that her will has force. These messages represent a powerful summary of everything that he does not want in his relationship, and he feels driven to move quickly to prove them false.

The abuser is afraid of what his partner may discover if she succeeds in getting a respite from his control. She may see how good it feels to live without put-downs and pressure. She may notice that there are other people in the world, both women and men, who respect her and treat her well, and may even observe that some of her female friends are treated as equals by their partners. She may start to think her own thoughts, without him there to monitor her reflections and channel them toward the views he wants her to have. Above all, she might discover how much better off she is without him. In short, he doesn’t tolerate the break because on some level he senses that it is too healthy and healing for the woman. He wants her to hear his

voice and see his face, because he believes he can destroy her resolve.

Does he think carefully through these concerns? Probably not entirely. He reacts largely on automatic, based on ruts in his thinking and behavior that have been deepening for years. And yet, I also keep observing how much more aware my clients are of their own strategies than you might expect; when they are upset with me, as they so often are, they often forget to keep their masks on, and they blurt out their honest thoughts and plans.

THE ABUSER WHO WANTS THE RELATIONSHIP TO END

What if your partner is the one who breaks off the relationship, or what if he’s in complete agreement that you two don’t belong together? The good

news is that, if you don’t have children with him, he may stay largely out of your hair. Perhaps he is interested in another woman or just wants to return to pursuing his fantasy of the dream girl who does everything for him and

never challenges him. Or maybe something else altogether is occupying his mind.

I regret to say that even then peace is not an entirely sure thing (although I have not often heard of physical assaults by an abuser postseparation if he accepts the breakup, except in cases of ongoing

conflicts over the children). Even the abusive man who is ready to be single again may still crave retaliation for all the ways he feels you hurt him, which in his distorted perceptual system may include all the times you defended yourself, questioned the superiority of his knowledge and judgment, or refused to simply be a carbon copy of him. So he may spread distorted stories about the history of your relationship or tell outright lies to try to turn people against you. Since he has to see himself as the more powerful one, he may declare that he broke things off while you “begged” him for another chance and that you “promised to change.” These kinds of aftershocks of abusive behavior can be painful.

An abuser who accepts the end of the relationship, or even desires it, may nonetheless continue to try to settle old scores with you through the children, a matter we explore further in Chapter 10.

There are cases, of course, where the woman genuinely wants to

continue the relationship and the abuser does not. My clients sometimes leave a woman to punish her. Women in this position can experience the abuser’s departure as one final slap in the face following a long line of

previous ones—figuratively or literally—that leaves her feeling even more humiliated and unlovable. Therefore it does not help an abused woman when people say to her: “What are you upset about? You’re lucky to be rid of him.” Anyone who wants to support an abused woman’s recovery and empowerment needs to have room for both her sadness and her outrage about being left and to understand that his exit was just one more way she was walked on.

Abusers who take off often leave other damage in their wake besides the emotional or physical injuries to the woman. Debts, destroyed

belongings, pregnancy, or traumatized children may be dumped in her lap. Communities that want to support abused women need to recognize that the abuser can create difficulties that endure long beyond his departure.

LEAVING AN ABUSER SAFELY

Attempting to determine the level of risk that a particular abuser will

become physically violent is a complex and imprecise process. If you are concerned that your partner may react destructively or violently to being left, listen carefully to your intuitions even if he has not been violent, or not extremely so, in the past. A recent study found that women’s own

predictions regarding future violence by their abusive partners were far more accurate than assessments based on any other factor.

Separation can be an especially risky time. I was close to a case recently in which a woman left a psychological abuser who became increasingly threatening and scary over the months after she left him, to the point where she went as far as making arrangements with relatives regarding who should care for her two children in the event of her death. And although he had never hit her during their relationship, he tragically did in fact kill her, hiding a block away from the courthouse to ambush her as she was leaving a hearing where she had obtained a restraining order against him, after which he committed suicide. (As a result of a brief speech I gave about this homicide death, I have come to know her heartbroken parents personally.)

Assessing the Potential Violence of an Abuser

The danger signs below can be useful whether or not you are currently thinking of leaving your partner. Some combination of these elements has been found to be present frequently—though not always—in cases where abusers have committed the most seriously violent acts. Pay attention to your own inner voice as you consider these indicators:

 

Danger Signs in Abusive Men

 

He is extremely jealous and possessive.

 

His violent behavior and threats have been escalating.

 

He follows you, monitors your whereabouts, or stalks you in other ways.

 

You are taking steps to end the relationship or have already done so.

He was violent toward you during one or more of your pregnancies.

 

He has been sexually violent toward you.

 

He has threatened to kill you or hurt you badly, has choked you, or has threatened you with a weapon.

 

He has access to weapons and is familiar with their use.

 

He seems obsessed with you.

 

He is depressed, suicidal, or shows signs of not caring what happens to him.

 

He isn’t close to anyone.

 

He has a significant criminal history.

 

He uses or threatens violence against other people.

He abuses substances heavily.

 

He has been abusive to children.

 

His past violence toward you, or toward other partners, has been frequent or severe.

 

He has killed or abused pets, or has used other terror tactics.

 

He uses pornography.

 

He exhibited extreme behaviors when you made previous attempts to leave.

 

He is familiar with your routines, the addresses of your friends and relatives, the location of your workplace, or other personal information he can use to locate you.

 

 

There is, regrettably, no science to using these indicators. It would be misleading for me to say, for example, “Three to five ‘yes’ answers reflect moderate danger, six and up mean ‘severe danger,’” or offer a similar

interpretation, because the reality is not that simple. Some guides to assessing the risk of violence from abusers have created such “low-, moderate-, and high-risk” categories and by so doing can encourage women to underestimate the danger they are in by causing them to ignore their intuition. A small number of abusers who kill or severely injure their

partners do so with few or none of the above elements known to be present, which is all the more reason to rely ultimately on your own “gut” feelings of how dangerous he is.

Safety Planning

The fact that you are even wondering how far your partner’s abuse might go suggests to me that you have already seen aspects of him that are disquietingly mysterious or frightening. I urge you to seek assistance from a program for abused women (see “Resources”) and to create a strategic

safety plan with an abuse specialist through that program. Safety plans can involve two different sets of steps, one for increasing your safety while living with your partner and another for if and when you decide to leave him. Bear in mind that the process of leaving an abusive man can be risky, so if you are preparing for a breakup put some extra thought into the kinds of precautions that you can take. Specialists who work with abused women report that those women who succeed in leaving and staying away almost always have a plan before they go.

A safety plan while you are living with your abusive partner can include the following elements, among many others:

 

Plan different escape routes from your house in case your partner becomes violent, and plan where you would go if you needed to stay away overnight.

 

Hide spare car keys and important documents (birth certificates, health cards, bank cards) in places where they are safe and where you could grab them and leave quickly.

 

Try to get out of dangerous places during arguments, such as leaving the kitchen where there are knives and other sharp objects the abuser could use to assault you.

Obtain a private post office box or some other address you can use to receive confidential mail.

 

Set code words with friends or relatives and with your children that indicate an emergency, and plan how they are to respond if you say the code word in person or over the telephone.

 

Open a secret bank account so that you will have access to funds should you need to flee.

 

Keep a working phone in a room with a door that locks so that you will be able to call for help in an emergency.

 

Carry a cell phone.

 

Obtain a firearm permit so that you can carry pepper spray.

 

Stay away from drugs or alcohol yourself to make sure that your judgment is never impaired, and seek substance-abuse treatment for yourself if necessary.

 

Call the abused women’s hotline if you are afraid, and call the police if the danger is immediate.

 

After you leave your abusive partner, there are additional items you can add to your safety plan, a few of which include:

 

Change the locks on your home.

 

Inform neighbors of the danger and give them descriptions or photographs of the abuser and his car.

 

Inform people at your workplace of the potential danger to you.

 

Tell your children not to talk to the abuser and to seek assistance immediately if they see him.

 

Advise the local police department of the risk to you, including any past threats or violence by your ex-partner, and ask what special

services or protections might be available.

 

Inform the children’s schoolteachers and administrators of the risk, and provide them with a photograph of the abuser and other

information, including a copy of your restraining order if you have one.

Teach your children how to dial 911 from home and cell phones.

Vary the routes that you and your children travel.

 

If you plan to involve the court, such as by seeking a restraining

 

order, contact a court advocate if one is available, and develop an additional safety plan with the advocate that specifically addresses how you can most safely use the court process. If you do obtain a restraining order, keep a copy on your person at all times and leave additional copies in your home, vehicles, and workplace.

These are selected examples of plans you can make, ideally with the assistance of an abuse specialist, to increase your safety and protect your children. You can call an abuse hotline and develop a safety plan without even providing your name or telephone number, ensuring your complete privacy. If you can go to the abused women’s program and meet with an advocate face-to-face, all the better. I also strongly recommend the books When Love Goes Wrong and It’s My Life Now, both listed in the

“Resources” section, for any woman who is struggling to get safe from a frightening partner.

If you are afraid of your abusive partner it is important to make a safety plan even if you do not plan to leave him at this point. If he has demonstrated that he has a capacity for violence, or you suspect that he does, there is every reason to start planning now for how you will keep yourself and your children safe should a dangerous situation arise in the future.

Some psychologically abused women feel confident that their partners would never escalate to violence or threats. However, my experience is that most abusive men—though not all—do become physically frightening sooner or later, even if they never follow through with using violence. It

makes sense for every abused woman to spend some time considering how she will respond if the unexpected happens.

If you are prepared to leave your relationship, safety planning becomes even more important. If you are afraid of your partner, don’t tell him that you are breaking up with him until you have a clear plan and feel that you

can inform him in a safe way. Then break all contact with him. Staying out of touch with an abusive ex-partner can be very difficult. The more afraid you are of him, the more tempted you may feel to check up on how he is doing, because in the past your safety may have depended on your constant awareness of his moods and readiness to respond to them. But making contact with him can be very dangerous as he may sound friendly and say that he just wants to see you for one final talk or to say good-bye, and then use that opportunity to attack you physically or sexually. I have been aware of a few cases where the man made an innocent-sounding excuse to get together “just once” and then murdered the woman for having left him. It is natural to have the hope of staying friends with an ex-partner, but this is rarely possible with an abusive man and is absolutely impossible with one who is physically dangerous to you. And if he doesn’t choose to hurt you, he may lure you into becoming reinvolved with him instead.

ABUSED WOMEN WITH CHILDREN

Ending a relationship with an abusive man can be considerably more complicated for a woman with children, especially if the abuser is the children’s legal father (biological or adoptive). The risk that the abuser will try to harm the children, turn them against you, or attempt to win custody of them through the legal system requires an additional strategic planning process. These issues are examined in detail in the next chapter.

If you do decide to flee abruptly, take your children with you if you possibly can and take their birth certificates, social security cards, and

passports. Some women are in so much danger that they are forced to leave their children behind, but the abuser then may go to court for custody, saying that she “abandoned” them.

Key Points to Remember

 

When a breakup happens against an abuser’s will, he may define his ex-partner’s decision as a provocative declaration of

independence and may go to war to prove that she belongs to him.

 

Leaving an abuser is hard to do, but with time and planning you can succeed.

 

As a relationship dissolves, and for a long while thereafter, an abused woman should be especially alert to her own safety and take steps to protect herself.

 

After breaking up with an abusive man, wait at least a few months before becoming involved with a new partner. Taking time to heal emotionally from the abuse you have endured can be critical to helping you choose a nonabusive partner next time.

 

 

Read It’s My Life Now (see “Resources”). Your life belongs to no one but you.