⋅Who Are the Victims of Intimate Partner Violence? ⋅
While a whopping 85 to 95% of intimate partner-violence victims are women, intimate partner violence is not more frequent in any particular relationship status or for any particular ethnicity, religion, income, education, or sexual orientation.
However, people with certain defining characteristics do have a higher chance of becoming a victim of intimate partner violence. But these people are found evenly distributed across all ethnicities, religions, income levels, educational levels, and sexual orientations.
She could be your doctor, a room mother at a Catholic school, the reverend’s wife, the teacher-of-the-year at the local high school, your district representative, your boss, the owner of the coffee shop you frequent, the choir director, or the stay-at-home mom next door.
She could be your daughter, your sister, or you.
What do the victims of intimate partner violence often have in common?
- A poor self-image.
- Low self-esteem.
- Self-blaming. She believes the abuse is her fault.
- Economic and / or emotional dependence on the abuser.
- Lack of support from family or friends.
- Family and / or friends who shame or blame her.
- Isolation from family and friends.
- Belief that she can’t attract a better partner or doesn’t deserve a better partner.
- Belief that negative male attention like stalking, jealousy, and control prove she has value and / or is loved.
- A background in which she witnessed intimate partner violence. Statistics show that female children who witness intimate partner violence are more vulnerable to becoming victims of intimate partner violence as adults (http://www.safehorizon.org).
- A background in which she was the victim of sexual assault or other intimate partner violence.
- A background of emotional neglect or abuse from a father or father-figure.
Victims of intimate partner violence don’t necessarily possess all these characteristics, but most, if not all, possess some. Most importantly, the characteristics they do possess may be well hidden from most people who know them.
Ariel’s Story of Intimate Partner Violence
Ariel is the sister of one of our technicians, and when we began this series of blogs on intimate partner violence, our technician suggested we give her a call and ask her if she’d talk to us.
Ariel is a well-educated intellectual lady who holds a master’s degree and teaches at a small college.
She is independent, strong-willed, and very smart. She raised two children alone, lives alone, and has strong opinions about everything. She has had her share of serious relationships, and she ended almost every one of them. She doesn’t need a man to be happy.
She comes from a solid middle-class family. Her parents were well-educated, and she was exposed to classical music, art, literature, theater, and opera from an early age.
She never witnessed intimate partner violence. She never even heard her father raise his voice. Her parents were very loving and devoted to each other.
She was absolutely the last person you would guess could become a victim of intimate partner violence.
She hid the chinks in her armor well, but abusers are like blood hounds. They can sniff out those chinks that make their potential victims vulnerable to them.
“He slapped me and beat me before I even married him,” Ariel told us.
“I also knew he had beat his first wife. But I was in love. I actually believed he would change for me even though he never changed for his former wife of 15 years who was also the mother of his two kids. How stupid is that?”
We asked her why she married him knowing what she knew.
“He was a daddy to me. Ironically, even though he abused me, he made me feel safe and protected. Most abusers manipulate their victims this way, by giving them something they desperately need emotionally. And, like most victims, I used a typical survival strategy. This man offered food to a starving woman. He filled a deep need in me—one just as deep as the need for food—to be noticed, valued, loved, and protected by a man. To keep my belly filled, I had to twist the accompanying abuse into something that was my fault, something I had control over, something I could change if I tried hard enough.
After a while, I actually believed it was my fault. This is the tragic psychology of abuse.”
We now saw the well-hidden chink in her armor. We asked her about her father.
“He openly adored my mother, but he totally ignored me. I felt like I was an annoyance to him. I can remember trying so hard to win his attention and approval, but my attempts, at least in my eyes, disgusted and annoyed him. I remember being so jealous of my mother because he paid so much attention to her.
I remember trying to figure out what kind of daughter he would like to have and then trying to be her. Emotionally, I was a messed up little kid.
“A girl who has a healthy relationship with her father builds a strong emotional infrastructure of confidence, self-esteem, a sense that she is valuable enough to choose a man. Her father teaches her what the right kind of male attention is by giving her that attention. I, on the other hand, had a gaping hole where that infrastructure should have been.
I was miserable throughout my childhood and young adult years, always longing for something that I couldn’t identify.
As a young woman, I had none of the important tools to build a healthy relationship with a man. I repeated the pattern over and over again in my life of trying hard to win a man’s notice and approval, and these attempts always took the form of sex, and they were always disastrous. A terrible sidebar to this whole schema was that I would quickly reject good men who showed an interest in me because I didn’t have to go through this agonizing pattern of fighting for their attention. Subconsciously, I think I believed that any man who wanted me and who was easily available to me must not be worth much—because I didn’t see myself as worth much. I didn’t see this at all then, but the fight to win a man was central to me. It meant he was valuable, like my father, because his attention was hard to get, like my father’s. That’s all I knew in my relationship with my father.
“Enter Mark, who filled the painful emotional void: he slathered me with attention that I didn’t have to fight for—BUT he was still married to his first wife when I met him.
And best of all, she wanted him back and he faltered before choosing me. This was the fight of my life, so it must be the prize of a lifetime, the prize I could never win, no matter how hard I tried, as a little girl.
“While I blame no one for my bad decisions, I understand them now. My ability to form healthy attachments to men was molded by my father’s emotional detachment.
I was attracted to the wrong kind of male attention because I didn’t see normal behavior as ‘attentive.’ It never felt like enough for me. Strong, abusive behaviors like jealousy and stalking made me feel full and valuable.”
And today, as she approaches retirement age?
“I’ve spent most of my life trying to understand why my relationships with men were so fraught with difficulty because this difficulty spilled right over into other critical areas of my life. I’ve come to the conclusion that I am missing the critical components necessary to build a healthy romantic relationship. We are literally constructed brick by brick by our parents and our childhood environment. I totally forgive my father. He was a wonderful man who had his own demons. We pass our demons on, you know.”
She smiles and continues.
“And I totally forgive my husband, which is why I will not go into gruesome detail about the abuse. He not only witnessed unconscionable intimate partner abuse as a child but was also a victim as a child, and then he died a violent death.
We do indeed pass our demons on. But, despite my missing components, I have the power to stop passing them on, and that’s what my life is about now: fully utilizing what I have, accepting what I lack, and building the best experience that I can, from this point forward, for my children and grandchildren.”
We are Advanced Bio Treatment, and we are here for you 24 hours every day of the year. We offer emergency services and assistance filing insurance claims. Please call us at 800-295-1684.
Intimate Partner Violence Resources
Safe Horizon: Get help, access resources, join a support community or find out how you can help end Domestic and Intimate Partner Violence.
Joyful Heart Foundation: Resources to help Heal, Educate and Empower survivors of Intimate Partner Violence, Sexual Assault or Abuse, or Child Abuse.
MedlinePlus – National Institute of Health: Resources and information on various type of abuse available in English and Spanish.
Safe Place Olympia – Signs to look for in an abusive personality: Learn major indicators of an abusive personality so you can recognize it in your partner, potential partner, or in a loved one’s relationship.
Christian Broadcasting Network – 12 Traits of an Abuser: Information on abusive behaviors, patterns and traits.
National Domestic Violence Hotline – Is This Abuse?: Learn what an abusive relationship may look like and what a healthy relationship is, or get immediate help for yourself or someone you know via online chat or phone hotline at 800-799-SAFE (800-799-7233).
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