What "Counts" as Domestic Violence?
Myths. Stereotypes. Misconceptions. Underestimation.
These are the words that first come to mind to describe what most people know about domestic violence. With so many misconceptions, stereotypes, and myths around intimate partner violence, it often leaves people wondering what “counts” as domestic violence and if they or a loved one are experiencing abuse.
Domestic violence (DV) has several synonymous terms, including intimate partner violence (IPV), dating violence, teen dating violence (TDV), relationship or partner abuse, and family violence. We will use the term “DV”. Though most people think that the definition of DV is being physically abused by a partner, the reality is that DV is a much more complex issue with murky edges and gray areas, which makes it frequently misunderstood and challenging to identify. For example, let’s look at this widely used definition of DV. According to the DOJ, domestic violence is:
A pattern of behaviors used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner.
Did you happen to notice that the common definition of domestic violence intentionally does not include the words “physical abuse”?
Looking at this widely used definition, it makes sense that someone might question if what a partner is doing “counts” as domestic violence; what exactly constitutes a “pattern”? What “behaviors” are abusive vs. just mean or inconsiderate? How does one know if the “power and control” dynamic exists?
The myths and stereotypes about DV make it seem like it must be easy to recognize and address. However, there are many tactics abusers and society use that keep us dis/misinformed about DV, which is why it’s vital to understand these tactics and various forms of violence and deconstruct the harmful common narratives that allow abuse to thrive.
To understand what “counts” as domestic violence, let’s unpack keywords in the common definition of DV. First, let’s look at the word “pattern.”
A pattern of behaviors
Most of us have experienced the unfortunate brunt of someone else’s bad and crappy day, and perhaps someone you’ve encountered has been on the receiving end when you’ve had a bad and crappy day. Having some bad days is just part of the human experience.
However, experiencing the brunt of a partner’s bad day becomes problematic when it becomes a recurring event paired with unhealthy, toxic, and abusive behaviors (more on that below).
Perhaps you anticipate your partner coming home, likely having had a bad day. Maybe you have ruminating thoughts and are trying to make sense of something your partner did or said. Perhaps you feel like you’re walking on eggshells, choosing your words carefully while being mindful of your tone and body language. Or, perhaps you’re modifying the things you would typically do or say to avoid or prevent another conflict from happening.
These anticipations and adjustments to what you would typically do or say likely didn’t happen from a one-off, infrequent, lousy moment, which is not typical behavior from your partner. These adjustments and anticipations are likely from experiencing a pattern of behavior that became more frequent and recurrent over time.
Sometimes, it’s helpful to see what abusive patterns of behavior look like visually. Next, we will look at the cycle and behaviors of an abusive person.
Patterns and the cycle of abuse
Under the umbrella term of domestic violence are several types of violence abusers employ to gain and maintain power and control over another person. The cycle of abuse diagram is a powerful way to visualize abuse patterns in a relationship. An abusive person usually exhibits behaviors slowly, starting small – a slow drip that can be ignored or explained away rather than a gushing faucet that you know for sure is broken.
The dynamics of DV is a cycle, often with stretches of time, and occurs in four general phases: calm, tension, incident, and making-up. These phases and patterns are designed and practiced by abusers on their victims for the purpose of creating a whirlwind of emotions, confusion, and dependence on them while preventing or forbidding their victims from leaving them.
The pattern and cycle of relationship abuse
Additionally, societal and cultural norms–particularly around gender roles–influence our beliefs and perceptions of acceptable behaviors and power dynamics in a relationship. These norms ultimately lead to many harmful misconceptions and misunderstandings about DV, which are designed to silence victims, allowing abuse to thrive.
The following section offers a detailed and comprehensive list of the various types of abuse with examples that fall under the umbrella of domestic violence.
A comprehensive list of the types of domestic violence and abusive behaviors
A quick Google Image search for “domestic violence” will yield the typical tropes of DV: images of women with a black eye, menacing men yelling with balled-up fists, intimidating women and children as they tower over them.
Equating domestic violence to physical abuse is one of the biggest misconceptions, making DV and IPV challenging to recognize. In fact, many forms of physical abuse don’t involve hitting, slapping, punching, or kicking. Knowing the different types of abuse and all their forms can help make it more clear if a partner’s behaviors fall under the umbrella of DV.
Physical abuse
Physical abuse includes unwanted, aggressive, or violent behavior by one person toward another that deliberately hurts their body or takes away their control of their body.
“You don’t have to have scratches, marks, or bruises on your body for it to be physical abuse.”
Here are several examples of physical abuse:
Restraining you in any way
Pulling your hair or yanking it
Forcing you to take drugs, drink alcohol, or consume foods that will make you unwell or unable to move or think clearly
Destroying personal belongings and things that matter to you
Prohibiting you from taking prescribed medication or using needed medical devices, or giving you medication without your consent
Preventing you from seeking help or medical attention
Throwing objects, punching walls, kicking doors, etc. when angry
Abandoning you in an unfamiliar or dangerous place
Scaring you by driving recklessly
Physically harming you, such as pushing, biting, slapping, cutting, spitting, shoving, shaking, pinching, whipping, kicking, strangling, punching, or hitting you by hand or with objects
Using physical force in sexual situations
Harming your loved ones, such as your pets or children
Forcing you to leave your home or trapping you in your home to prevent you from leaving
Burning you with items such as a hot lighter, cigarette, hot water, etc.
Not allowing you to sleep (intentional sleep deprivation)
Abusing you or your children under the guise of punishment, such as forcing one to stand for hours, using excessive heat without water or air conditioning without adequate clothing
Threaten you with a weapon either explicitly (for example saying “I’m going to stab you if you do that again”) or subtle threats (like deliberately taking a gun out and cleaning it in front of you as a non-verbal treat or “warning”)
Using a weapon on you, stabbing or shooting you with items such as knives, sharp objects, firearms, pellet guns, BB guns, paintball guns, etc.
Emotional, verbal, and psychological abuse
An abuser’s goal is often to undermine another person’s feelings of self-worth and independence to gain and maintain power and control over them. Emotional, verbal, and psychological abuse occurs when a person subjects or exposes another person to behavior that negatively impacts their mental health, sense of self and well-being. Exposure to emotional, verbal, and psychological abuse may result in psychological trauma, including anxiety, chronic depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder, amongst other psychological problems.
Here are some examples of emotional, verbal, and psychological abuse:
Eroding your self-esteem and self-worth by criticizing, humiliating, shaming, insulting, belittling, yelling or screaming at you
Calling you insulting names such as “stupid,” “idiot,” “worthless,” “disgusting,” “dumb,” “ugly", “useless,” etc.
Communicating with you through patronization, disdain, disrespect, insults, manipulation, guilting, shaming, passive aggressiveness, aggression, etc.
Frequently rejecting your ideas, thoughts, and opinions by pretending not to understand what you are saying or refusing to listen to you
Threatening or exposing personal details such as immigration status, sexual orientation, etc.
Making you doubt your recollection and memory, thoughts, feelings, and sanity; pretending not to understand you or denying previous statements or promises they made (gaslighting)
Monitoring your activities (in-person or online) or who you spend time with
Blaming you for their unhealthy or abusive behavior
Avoiding conflict by creating conflict, such as changing the subject or making the conversation about you when you try to start a conversation or attempt to hold the abuser accountable
Playing the victim to evoke pity and guilt from you in order to evade responsibility, tasks, or accountability
Threatening to harm themselves, you, your pets, or loved ones in your life to prevent you from leaving
Telling you what to do or wear to control your appearance
Minimizing their behavior or minimizing something that matters to you
Isolating you from social support by preventing you from seeing friends, co-workers, family, or partaking in activities such as work, school, sports, or hobbies
Making up lies or talking negatively about you or your loved ones to create strained and severed relationships (isolation from social support)
Smear campaigning by starting rumors about you or making up lies to disparage or damage your reputation, intentionally embarrassing you in front of others, etc.
Threatening to take or have your children taken away from you
Accusing you of lying or cheating when you didn’t lie or cheat
Being jealous of your achievements (or things you’re proud of that results in putdowns), and outside relationships with friends, family, etc.
Stalking you or your loved ones
Using your community as a threat for example making you feel like you can’t call police and bring them into a Black community, or you can’t leave an LGBTQ+ partner because your community is small and you won’t be able to find new friends.
Consuming your time with them and having little to no alone time or socialization without them
Derailing your personal or professional goals
Being incongruent where their words and actions rarely align
Having double standards where their expectations of you do not apply to them
Damaging or destroying personal belongings and things that are important to you
Making excuses or blaming you to justify inappropriate behavior instead of accepting responsibility
Using power plays to regain control, such as walking out, the silent treatment, conditional “love,” always having the final say, leveraging children, making your needs or feelings seem less important than the abusers’, etc.
Refusing to acknowledge important parts of your identity such as your trying to limit your spirituality, restricting you from participating in cultural practices, refusing to call you by the name or pronouns you use, etc.
Feeling entitlement over you, your body, your boundaries, or your belongings
Exaggerating their self-image and believing you and others are inferior to them (grandiosity)
Getting angry in a way that is frightening to you
Economic and financial abuse
Economic and financial abuse involves controlling a person’s ability to access, use, acquire, or maintain financial resources or stealing economic and financial resources to gain power and control in the relationship.
“Financial abuse is often cited by victims as the main reason they stayed or returned to an abusive partner”
Examples of economic and financial abuse include:
Preventing or forbidding you to work under the guise of being financially taken care of, traditional gender roles, attending job requirements or functions, etc.
Sabotaging work, skill-training, or employment opportunities by harassing you at work, pressuring you to quit your job, criticizing your job or career choices, telling you where you can and cannot work, hiding your car keys, dismantling parts of your car, offering to watch your children and not show up, etc.
Controlling money and how it’s stored, accounted for, allocated, and spent; this includes controlling or spending money you’ve earned or saved, too
Excluding you in monetary decisions such as investment or banking decisions or hiding assets
Withholding money from basic needs like food and medicine, or by making it inaccessible, giving “an allowance,” or demanding you ask their permission to spend money
Prohibiting access to money, credit or debit cards, checks, bank accounts, and other financial accounts
Refusing to contribute financially by hiding or withholding their income, refusing to find employment, evading child support, etc.
Ruining your credit history by running up credit limits on your card(s) and not paying bills that are in your name
Forcing you to work without pay, file fraudulent tax returns, agree to power-of-attorney so they can sign legal documents, write bad checks, cash in, sign or sell your financial assets, give them your public benefit payments, etc.
Stealing your or your family’s money, assets, and resources, such as paychecks, identity, inheritance, property, or benefits (and may threaten to lie to officials that you are “misusing” benefits), etc.
Running large amounts of debt on joint accounts or accounts in your name
Having double standards where they can spend money how they choose but criticize you for similar purchases
Labor exploitation is a form of modern-day slavery, requiring you to work through force, fraud, or coercion
Technological and digital abuse
Digital abuse involves misusing technology to harass, stalk, or control you. Many abusers leverage technology to control their victims. Examples of technological and digital abuse include:
Recording or monitoring you, your online activities, and your communications by going through your phone, internet search history, phone call records, security cameras that record video or sound, motion detectors and sensors, etc.
Telling you who you can or can’t follow, talk to, or be friends with on social media or other online communities
Using GPS to track your movements and whereabouts via your car, smartwatch, fitness tracker, etc.
Spreading rumors or private information about you online
Online sextortion that coerces, tricks, manipulates, or forces you into sending private/nude images and then threatens to share your private photos publicly or to loved ones if you don’t comply with sending more pictures or money, etc.
Image-based abuse when a partner or ex-partner reveals sexually explicit images or videos of you without your consent (sometimes called “revenge porn”)
Using smart home and car technology to control you and cause you distress, such as controlling thermostats to uncomfortable levels, turning lights or appliances on and off, playing unwanted or loud music and adjusting the volume, triggering alarms, locking and unlocking doors, video surveillance, hacking into your car’s computer system to control it, etc.
Cyberstalking you by stalking, monitoring, harassing, or threatening you on the internet or by other electronic means and can include doxing, defamation, slander, libel, false accusations, identify theft, search history monitoring, threats, vandalism, blackmail, or solicitation for sex, sending you frightening, obscene or unwanted emails or texts, tracking your computer, smartwatch, or other electronic devices, etc.
Demanding your passwords to social media accounts, email accounts, or other accounts in your name
Sexual abuse
Sexual abuse is an umbrella term that includes sexual assault, molestation, incest, sexual violence, or partner and marital rape. Sexual abuse includes being forced, tricked, exposed, manipulated, or coerced into any non-consensual sexual act or behavior.
“You are not a victim for sharing your story. You are a survivor setting the world on fire with your truth.”
Examples of sexual abuse include:
Visual sexual abuse by being exposed to unwanted sexual content such as sexually explicit images/airdropping, flashing/exhibitionism, nudity, exposure to pornography, etc.
Covert sexual abuse is when some form of sexual abuse occurs without sexual contact or without your knowledge, such as being observed, photographed, watched, or followed, stalked in-person or online
Verbal sexual abuse by using spoken or written words to express, evoke, or imply sexual content that leaves you feeling violated or guilty, such as sexual “jokes,” crude sexual comments, teasing, pressuring, commenting on, disparaging, or making fun of physical characteristics about your body, criticizing your sexual performance, derogatory language and name-calling, experiencing unwanted sexual advances, etc.
Psychological sexual abuse occurs by psychologically forcing you into unwanted sexual activity, such as making threats to leave you, threatening to find sex elsewhere, accusing you of sleeping around when you aren’t, being pressured to do sexual things you don’t want to do over and over until you finally “give in,” guilt-tripping, etc.
Physical (overt) sexual abuse by being touched, fondled, groped, coerced, manipulated, restrained, kissed, cornered or trapped, licked, sexual humiliation (being urinated, spit, or defecated on), condom stealthing, having genitals cleaned excessively, intercourse or rough sex, oral sex, enemas, or foreign objects inserted in your body when you don’t want those things to happen. Being lied to about STD status or testing, your partner purposely cheating on you to punish, having sex with sex workers without your knowledge, not stopping sex when asked to, etc.
Ritualistic sexual abuse is when sexual abuse is committed and justified through spirituality or rituals as a means of worship or penance (child marriages, female genital mutilation, observers chanting during abuse, incest rituals, etc.)
Sexual exploitation through coercion, fraud, or force making you do sexual acts for the abuser to make money and profit from (Note: inducing a minor into commercial sex is considered human trafficking regardless of the presence of force, fraud or coercion)
Religious and spiritual abuse
Religious and spiritual abuse involves a partner using spiritual or religious beliefs to hurt, scare, or control a partner. Spiritual and religious abuse is often used to justify abuse or is used as a weapon to manipulate or control a partner.
“As many as one-in-five (20%) U.S. adults presently suffer from major religious and spiritual trauma symptoms.”
Examples of spiritual and religious abuse include:
Stopping or preventing you from practicing your spiritual or religious beliefs
Requiring or forcing you to participate in a specific faith or religion
Using religious texts or beliefs to justify or minimize abusive behavior
Ridiculing, shaming, or insulting your religious beliefs or faith
Coercing you into giving money or other resources you don’t want to give
Forcing children to be raised in a faith that you didn’t agree to
Using religious or spiritual leaders or teachings to force you to stay in a relationship, excuse violence and abusive behavior, blame you for abuse and violence, prevent you or your children from receiving medical or healthcare
Reproductive coercion
Reproductive coercion, also known as reproductive abuse, occurs when an abuser interferes with a partner’s reproductive autonomy in order to control their life. This type of abuse can be a single act or a pattern of behaviors.
Examples of reproductive coercion and abuse include:
Sabotaging your birth control methods, such as intentionally tearing or poking holes in condoms, taking a condom off without your knowledge (condom stealthing), tearing off contraceptive patches, removing contraceptives such as vaginal contraceptive rings, hiding or throwing away birth control, replacing, tampering with, or destroying birth control, refusing to withdraw during sex when asked to, etc.
Pressuring you to go off birth control, become pregnant when you don’t want to be, continue a pregnancy when you want an abortion, abort a pregnancy that you want to continue, etc.
Coercing you through pressure or force to have unprotected sex when you don’t want to (sexual coercion, assault, and rape), threatening to end the relationship if you don’t have sex with them, intentionally exposing you to a sexually-transmitted infection (STI), etc.
Summary
It can be very difficult to recognize a pattern of abusive behaviors emerging. It often starts as a slow drip rather than a gushing faucet. And the cycle of abuse means there are calm and “good” times in between abusive incidents, making it easier to explain these incidents away. It is vital to understand the many forms of abuse and the characteristics of abusive behavior, to notice them in your or your loved one’s relationships, and to dispel the harmful inaccuracies about domestic and intimate partner violence. EVERYONE deserves to feel safe and valued in their intimate relationships.
If you or a loved one may be experiencing abuse, myPlan is here to offer clarity to make decisions on your terms for a safe path forward. myPlan is a free, anonymous, and tailored safety planning tool backed by extensive research and developed by survivors of DV.
Learn more about myPlan and get the free app (iOS, Android, Web Browser App) today.
