Family Violence in America: Part 6
Verbal and Emotional Violence
Scholars discuss forms of violence in the family other than physical assault with less emphasis in the literature. Witt, for example, does not specify on different kinds of violence in his conflict theory of family violence and only describes violence as anger between family members and as an “intrafamily conflict” which does not differentiate between different forms of violence (297). Multiple other authors, such as Markowitz and Teichmann and Teichmann focus primarily on physical violence as well. One reason might be that other forms are harder to categorize or simply because they are not considered as violence in the same way as slapping and beating are. State domestic violence statues have defined violence as “an individual act, usually a physical assault or threat of physical harm intended to cause physical harm” (Buzawa and Buzawa 63). The authors argue that the laws that govern societal interruption of domestic violence differ from reality (63). This paper makes a case for this as well for all three interviewees talk more about what they describe as emotional, verbal and psychological abuse and what effect it had on them than the physical abuse they have experienced. Interviewee 1 talks about her father’s alcohol abuse and his verbal abuse when asked about her first memory of violence. As the previous chapter already discusses, her father verbally assaulted her mother when the food she cooked did not taste good to him. She experienced her father’s alcoholism as violence because of unbearable situations that arose from it. She describes that he mostly drank at night and her mother would make her and her siblings wait for their drunk father to come and eat dinner together. He then was unable to participate in the family dinner, she describes him as being sleepy and unable to function which also made her feel scared as a child. She was afraid that he might not be able to control his body and die when he fell down at times. As a reaction to that she and her siblings wrote a letter to their father asking him not to drink anymore and left it at the kitchen counter one night. The next day, the letter was gone and none of their parents talked to them about it. Eventually, they gave up on trying to change their father’s behavior as they realized, despite their efforts, there were no conversations about it whatsoever. She also mentions that these experiences had long time effects on her personality:
[C]hildren of alcoholics […] may tend to be anxious people 'cause they don't know what’s gonna happen. They don't know, you know, if their evening is gonna go smoothly or if dad's gonna be drunk or like what the situations is. So that just instilled a lot of anxiousness in me and I am a very anxious person.
She describes her experience with her father’s alcoholism and her mother’s reaction to it – exposing the children to their drunk father and not reacting to their efforts to change the situation – as emotional violence and causing her to choose a certain kind of boyfriend in her adult life.
"The attention grew. And it grew so much that I couldn't literally use my cell phone and I couldn't go anywhere without kinda like reporting to him what I was doing, who I was with.”
All three interviewees describe emotional and verbal abuse in their relationships with men and all three of them connect these experiences to the abuse in their childhood. Interviewee 1 mentions that during the first few relationships she had, men would not give her much attention as they would quickly be bored with her. Her new boyfriend, who would become her abuser, gave her “this different kind of attention” which felt right to her. After a while, “the attention grew. And it grew so much that I couldn't literally use my cell phone and I couldn't go anywhere without kinda like reporting to him what I was doing, who I was with.” When he was working out of town, he called her up to seven times a day and also “made [her] believe it was healthy for him to have a password for [her] e-mail.” She excused this behavior at the time because she was in love and thought he was just taking care of her but in retrospect calls it “controlling behavior” and reflects in the interview that it was not how a normal person would act. Her answer to the question whether, back then, she felt that this was crossing a line in any kind of way is that a lot from what happened at the time is “blocked out in [her] brain.” This might be the case because she describes herself as a completely different person during that relationship. She describes a situation when he took control over what she was wearing. They both planned to go on a trip and she bought new, fashionable boots for the occasion. He did not agree with these boots, told her: “that just makes you look like a slut,” and threatened to go on the trip by himself if she did not return them. She returned the boots even though she wished to keep them. What she calls “psychological abuse” includes her, after a while, believing that she dressed slutty and that she needed to change. He made her feel as though she was “out of control, crazy” and the problem in their relationship. She compares his behavior to her father’s, being completely in control of the situation and making his threats come true.
They both planned to go on a trip and she bought new, fashionable boots for the occasion. He did not agree with these boots, told her: “that just makes you look like a slut,” and threatened to go on the trip by himself if she did not return them. She returned the boots even though she wished to keep them.
Interviewee 3’s experiences with her former boyfriend are quite similar to Interviewee 1, especially in terms of this controlling behavior. He boyfriend was “financially abusive” and manipulated her into signing for a car loan which she is still paying off today. She remembers not wanting to sign for it but being “really scared” he might rape her again as a form of punishment. He also had access to her private documents such as her social security number which he used to sign up for credit cards in her name. She describes her boyfriend’s jealousy towards all males she had contact with and which he would always play off when she confronted him with it. While she was out of town for work during the end of the relationship, she received a birthday card in the mail from a male friend she knows from college. Her boyfriend found it in the mail and told her: “What the fuck I thought I told you to never talk to this guy again.” She assured him again and again that there was no reason to be jealous and that she was being faithful to him. While she was on that work trip, he was “harassing [her] with phone call after phone call” and threatening to leave her until it got to the point when she was afraid of putting her career at risk and decided to leave him when she came back home. She secretly planned to move out the second day after her arrival but did not talk to her boyfriend about it. He threatened her over and over that this had been her last chance and if she ever “fuck[s] up again” he would leave her. The interviewee describes how that made her feel scared and she realized she could do much better in terms of men. Her friends helped her to move out and when her boyfriend suddenly appeared on the scene on the day she moved out, he verbally assaulted her friends, especially the male ones, claiming that she had been sleeping with all of them. Whenever they were together with his friends though, he would never behave in such a way, which raised no suspicion for his friends to the abuse. The verbal abuse was only directed at her when they were alone or when they were spending time with her friends. It seems to the interviewee as though her boyfriend tried to hold up a certain impression in front of his friends which seemed to work out. His friends kept telling them what a wonderful couple they were and that they could not wait for them to get married. She describes her emotional reaction to these kinds of situations as follows: “I remember also feeling kinda sad because I was like (.) they don't see everything else. Subconsciously I knew I wasn't happy but at the same time we live in a society where every girl's end goal is to get married, right?” On the one hand, she was unhappy in the relationship because of the abuse, which was mostly happening behind closed doors, but on the other hand, her surroundings validated this relationship which could lead to marriage.
It seems to the interviewee as though her boyfriend tried to hold up a certain impression in front of his friends, which seemed to work out. His friends kept telling them what a wonderful couple they were and that they could not wait for them to get married.
Interviewee 2’s father verbally and emotionally abused the other family members on a daily basis when she was a teenager, as she describes, adding to the daily physical abuse. This includes “name calling,” especially towards her and one of her sisters, such as dumb, stupid, fat, idiotic, slut and whore. She says she finds it ironic that her mother would not allow certain curse words but she would also verbally assault her in a similar way as her father. Her father verbally abused the interviewee in front of people outside the family, for example a school friend of hers. She describes one incident when her father called her “stupid” while one of her friends was present in the house. She had had a flat tire and had to call her brother in law to help her while her friend was helping her father on the farm. After her father called her stupid, she felt embarrassed and said to him “I hate you,” which was followed by her father physically attacking her; she describes: he came “charging at me across the kitchen and he grabbed me by my hair and just started punching me in my face and then I blacked out.” The word “hate” was used in many occasions between her and her father, she states that he never told her that he loved her, he only expressed love towards her mother. In many instances verbal violence was followed by physical violence in her family. This pattern did not end when she was an adult. When she was in her 20s and going through a divorce, her father assaulted her, saying it was her fault because she was “a slut and a whore just like everyone else,” and added “I hate you so much.” When she told him that she hated him too, he raised his hand as though he wanted to punch her, but she threatened to call the police which resulted in him putting his fist down and walking away. The interviewee states that this was the end to the physical violence.
He came “charging at me across the kitchen and he grabbed me by my hair and just started punching me in my face and then I blacked out.”
All three interviewees describe situations where they experienced verbal and emotional abuse at length during the interviews which had occurred over a long period of time. Two of them describe that they have become manipulated by their boyfriends and unable or too afraid to express their own will and feelings. All three describe long term effects of this emotional violence and feelings of guilt, for example that they were not able to protect their siblings from this kind of violence. They all needed outside help to realize that what they experienced was a form of violence. Physical violence often was the result of ongoing emotional and verbal violence and marked and endpoint to the relationships. The interviewees endured and excused emotional and verbal violence more than physical violence.