Domestic Violence Dynamics

Domestic Violence Dynamics:  A Therapist’s Perspective.  Mark F. Graham, Ed.D. LPC, LMFT.

Let’s begin with an episode:

A husband and wife are separated because of potential violence and hateful feelings.  Daughter, who is with Mom and Brother, calls Dad, who is in an apartment, and tells him that Brother has left a tool out in the yard.  Dad rages and, against Mom’s advice, charges over to the house and, in his own words [later] “acts like an idiot” – in other words, he rages out of control and terrifies the whole family.

Later, in therapy, Husband complains accusingly:  “She’s keeping the kids from me.  She won’t let my daughter call me anytime she wants to.”  His overall attitude in this communication is: “You see what a bitch she is?  You see what I have to put up with?  You see why I am justified in my anger?”

It is very difficult to get him to see that his wife’s reluctance to let their daughter call him is a direct result of his major mishandling of the information that the daughter shared with him on the previous occasion.  He does not see his wife’s fear – he sees only maliciousness on her part.  [“She’s keeping the kids from me.”]  She is simply acting in response to his out-of-control behavior.  He chalks it up to another one of her many irrational and unfair or punitive actions against him; feeding future episodes of rage.

There is a particularly powerful tendency for the abuser to see himself as a victim.  There is frequently [maybe always] a deep and profound hurt that is usually denied and avoided, but opens and pours forth especially after abusive episodes in the “makeup” phase.  The spouse feels a need to nurture when the abuser is in this phase, and there are usually good feelings for both of them at this time.  There is a sense of hope for the victim since the abuser seems [and indeed may be] truly remorseful.  These feelings rarely lead to genuine growth or behavior change, however.  They are feelings of contrition, but they do not necessarily lead to repentance [behavior change].  Getting out of this cycle requires relatively long-term therapy work, moving toward the deep and consistent acceptance of responsibility, and an even deeper healing of the root of the hurt that is feeding the bitterness, transference and projection – [the blindness to self and blame of the victim.] 

Another characteristic of the abusive personality is an unwillingness to accept boundaries set by the spouse.  Any “no” on her part – any refusal to go along with the way he sees things about virtually anything – is a threat to his security that derives from his ability to have complete access to her will.  There may be a connection between this security-need and the deep hurt that comes up in him when she is out of his control.  There also are manipulative aspects of this hurt, since she tends to move back toward him when he is feeling it – and that is precisely what he desperately needs.  If he can control with his anger, he avoids the profoundly toxic feelings of fear and hurt.

But there is more to this rage than protection from hurt.  It has a vengeful, punitive quality.  One suspects that he is punishing her for his past hurts.  He feels like a victim [and maybe in his family of origin, he has been victimized] and is transferring these dynamics into his marriage.  He may be punishing her for the sins of his parents.  This is “transference.”

His victim-mindedness is deeply rooted and tenacious.  He rather adamantly refuses to see himself as a perpetrator, and he tends to dismiss the best-rendered confrontations to that end.  A possibility is, as already implied, that he has been victimized  [abused] in his family of origin.  One pattern is an abusive father and an over-protective “bleeding heart’ mother who feels that her son is a victim, and who, unwittingly inculcates that perception of him into him.  He introjects {a psychological term describing our tendency to take into ourselves personality traits or perceptions of others] an abusive father image, and from his mother he introjects a self-perception of victim.  He lives out both of these roles in his marriage.

There is a seething hatred [frequently murderous] that is alternately denied and sorrowfully confessed.  But, as already stated, these confessions don’t seem to lead to behavior changes.  There is a tremendous spiritual battle here, between taking responsibility, on the one hand, or reverting back to blaming her and justifying the hatred, on the other.

Anyone who listens to the abuser may indeed feel that he has been abused and misunderstood, and he may be a master at evoking sympathy and justification for offenses, which he almost always minimizes.  He deeply needs to see her as evil, cunning, manipulative and controlling.  And he can go for hours with stories that validate this perception; even to the point that she begins to believe them herself.  If she tries to correct him on any point – to demonstrate that her motives were not “evil” [as he contends]  – he will likely accuse her of “lying’ or twisting the truth or minimizing.  I have seen one man threaten to walk out of the counseling session because his wife was trying to simply clarify one of his accusations.  This type of powerful reaction to even the slightest disagreements with his way of seeing things tends to shut her down.  She suppresses her perception of the truth to avoid conflict, which enables him to carry forth his distorted perceptions of her unencumbered by her corrective input.  Her failure to disagree with him is then frequently understood by him to mean that she agrees with his very distorted and negative perceptions of her.  Many of these dynamics, as this one, result in a self-generating downward spiral for the couple – one that is extremely difficult to reverse.  The core or center of the pathology is in the abuser – a truth that is sensed by almost everyone except him, his immediate family, and his misogynist [woman-hating] friends; all of whom have a tendency to retard the needed therapy by enabling his distorted view.  This makes healing very difficult since she is frequently the only one who seeks help outside the system.  Even if she gets out of the marriage, he still has access to the children, and will frequently continue to abuse through them and through the legal system, which is rightly compelled to honor his fatherhood.

The legal system walks a very thin line here between protecting the children and honoring the family – specifically the father’s rights to the children.  I have all-to-often seen these fathers using their children as pawns in a very sinister game of capturing the “queen” – to punish her.  The legal system bears a major responsibility to educate itself in the dark and murky dynamics of misogyny and abuse and control; because it takes a certain exposure of time and depth to see what is really happening.  I had the very unfortunate experience of walking one abused client through the court system, only to witness the extremely disappointing outcome of a judge who basically said: “You two stop this nonsense and get along for the children’s sake.”  The judge’s perception was that the woman was taking advantage of her pro bono legal services [she could not afford legal services since she was paying him child support while also bearing most of the expenses of parenting that he was relegating to her.]  She was fulfilling all her court-mandated responsibilities while he was sliding by on most of his – totally overlooked by the judge.  Everyone who was associated with this case – many of whom had walked through the ordeal with the victim for two years – was sickened and disappointed by the shallow and ineffective response of the court.  And I am sure this is not an isolated case.

What is needed is court-mandated exposure of the entire family to one therapist [trained or experienced in the area of domestic violence] over a long enough period of time for the true dynamics to emerge.  This therapist would have access to the children, husband and wife – though not at the same time.  Care would be taken to provide safety for the children to express themselves honestly – some abusers have been known to threaten or punish children for revealing damaging information.  The judge would lean heavily on the therapist’s information.  In fairness to the judge, he does not have the time or venue [other than the therapist] to gain this information.

Recent laws requiring anger-management for every D.V. 911 call are a great breakthrough.  Most abusers will never submit themselves to the scrutiny of therapy unless required to.  Even then there are a certain percentage who will not reform, and they must eventually be sent to jail.  But to pull the woman out of the relationship only saves her and her children [a very important accomplishment]; not the next woman that the abuser hooks up with.  The core of the problem is to either reform or jail the abuser.  Otherwise he starts the cycle over again with the next victim.  Probating perpetrators into therapy is a great light in this darkness.  But we must continue to work to make the system work well.  The therapy must be long enough and deep enough to be effective.  It must create “second-order” growth – not just superficial and temporary compliance until the pressure is off.  There must be on-going accountability and on-going contact with the spouse to insure against relapse.  Both partners need therapy, but not conjointly.  The therapy is different for the victim and perpetrator – and it is not marital therapy. 

For him it focuses on issues of responsibility, denial, self-control, self-awareness, ability to be introspective, acknowledging and expressing feelings appropriately, discernment of love vs. need/control/desire, healing of inner family of origin wounds.  This is most effectively done in group therapy characterized by compassionate confrontation.

 For her it involves boundary-setting, rebuilding of self-esteem, responsibility-training [i.e., what she is and is not responsible for], security and safety, vocational training [toward independence], help with her children and community support.

For the children this therapy involves clarifying their distorted views of marriage, manhood and womanhood.  For boys – teaching them to respect their mothers and women in general.  For girls – teaching them to be re-sensitized to disrespect and abuse so that they can recognize and disallow it in future relations.

There are many gaps in our ministry to the people caught up in this destructive and pathological system.  Children are coming out of these systems with gaping wounds in their souls, and with distorted ideas of family roles.  It will be very difficult for them to overcome and become good citizens and happy people.  We have important work to do.

Domestic violence / Gender hatred

Men who hate women hate them for the same reason that Cain hated [and killed] Abel:  because Abel’s righteousness exceeded his own [1 Jn 3:12].  On a deep level, men sense that woman is a nobler, more evolved creature.  She is human, and not without faults of course; but think of all the evil done in the world by men vs. that done by women.  And much of the evil done by women is in response to or in alliance with a man.  Her desire to be loved by a man makes her vulnerable to his spiritual immaturity; perhaps the primary “weakness” referred to in 1Pet. 3:7, which man is admonished to protect her from by “honoring” her. To the degree of man’s immaturity, he hates woman’s excessive beauty and goodness, and tries to make her believe that she is an inferior creature; exaggerates her faults and blames her for his own.  At the root of this hatred is a sense of inferiority, envy, and insecurity [because he does not want to lose her—a phenomenon that profoundly confuses her: “Why does he want me if he hates me so much?”].  If and when a man matures, he begins to see the magnificent gift of womanhood; how God has created her uniquely [even with her faults] to help him become what he was created to become—more responsible, compassionate, wise and good.  He is able to learn much from her about himself, and about the softer, nurturing aspects of love, and to appreciate the wonderful gifts of femininity.  He is able to grow in humility because of his faults that inevitably are exposed in the intimacy of his life with her.  His love for her sets her free to become more of what God created her to become; and though the man may never surpass her in spiritual maturity [ability to love unselfishly, practice non-competitive kindness and compassion from the unspotlighted sidelines] because of her maturity and the efforts she sees man making, she overlooks his faults—she extends grace to him, and is even able to [miracle of miracles] love him.  Without realizing or making anything of it, she becomes a manifestation of God’s love to him—one that he can only realize as and to the degree that he allows the Holy Spirit to transform and mature him.