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| Healthy and Abusive
Relationships
Sometimes abusive relationships are easy to
identify; other times the abuse may take subtle forms. In general,
abusive relationships have a serious power imbalance, with the abuser
controlling or attempting to control most aspects of life. Healthy
relationships share responsibility and decision-making tasks and reflect
respect for all the people in the relationship, including children.
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Relationships:
Non-Threatening Behavior
- Talking and acting so that your partner
feels safe and comfortable doing and saying things.
Respect
- Listening to your partner
non-judgmentally.
- Being emotionally affirming and
understanding.
- Valuing opinions.
Trust and Support
- Supporting your partner’s goals in
life.
- Respecting your partner’s right to his
or her own feelings, friends, activities and opinions.
Honesty and Accountability
- Accepting responsibility for self.
- Acknowledging past use of violence and
or emotionally abusive behavior, changing the behavior.
- Acknowledging infidelity, changing the
behavior.
- Admitting being wrong when it is
appropriate.
- Communicating openly and truthfully,
acknowledging past abuse, seeking help for abusive relationship
patterns.
Responsible Parenting
- Sharing parental responsibilities.
- Being a positive, non-violent role model
for children.
Shared Responsibility
- Mutually agreeing on a fair distribution
of work.
- Making family decisions together.
Abusive Relationships:
Intimidation
- Making your partner afraid by using
looks, actions, gestures.
- Smashing or destroying things.
- Destroying or confiscating your
partner's property.
- Abusing pets as a display of power and
control.
- Silent or overt raging.
- Displaying weapons or threatening their
use.
- Making physical threats.
Emotional Abuse
- Putting your partner down.
- Making your partner feel bad about
himself or herself.
- Calling your partner names.
- Playing mind games.
- Interrogating your partner.
- Harassing or intimidating your partner.
- "Checking up on" your
partner's activities or whereabouts.
- Humiliating your partner, weather
through direct attacks or "jokes".
- Making your partner feel guilty.
- Shaming your partner.
Isolation
- Controlling what your partner does, who
he or she sees and talks to, what he or she reads, where he or she
goes.
- Limiting your partner’s outside
involvement.
- Demanding your partner remain home when
you are not with them.
- Cutting your partner off from prior
friends, activities, and social interaction.
- Using jealousy to justify your actions.
Minimizing, Denying and Blame Shifting
- Making light of the abuse and not taking
your partner’s concerns about it seriously.
- Saying the abuse did not happen, or
wasn't that bad.
- Shifting responsibility for your abusive
behavior to your partner. (i.e. I did it because you said or did
______.)
- Saying your partner caused it.
Using Children
- Making your partner feel guilty about
the children.
- Using the children to relay messages.
- Using visitation to harass your partner.
- Threatening to take the children away.
Using Male Privilege
- Treating your partner like a servant.
- Making all the big decisions.
- Acting like the "master of the
castle."
- Being the one to define men’s and
women’s or the relationship's roles.
Using Economic Privilege
- Preventing your partner from getting or
keeping a job.
- Making your partner ask for money.
- Giving your partner an allowance.
- Taking your partner’s money.
- Not letting your partner know about or
have access to family income.
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