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Relationships
Healthy
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:
Using
Intimidation
• Making your partner afraid by using looks, actions,
gestures.
• Smashing or destroying property or sentimental items.
• Destroying or confiscating your partner's property.
• Abusing pets as a display of power and control.
• Silence.
• Displaying weapons or threatening their use.
• Making physical threats.
Using
Emotional Abuse
• Criticizing little things - putting your partner down.
• Making your partner feel bad about himself or herself.
• Threatening to hurt your partner or children.
• Playing mind games.
• Interrogating your partner. Accusations
of unfaithfulness.
• Harassing or intimidating your partner.
• "Checking up on" your partner's activities or whereabouts.
• Humiliating your partner, whether through direct attacks or
"jokes".
• Making your partner feel guilty.
• Shaming your partner.
Using
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, working, or school.
• Demanding your partner remains home when you are not with them.
• Cutting your partner off from prior friends, family, activities, and
social interaction.
Minimizing,
Denying and Blame - Shifting
• Using jealousy to justify your actions.
(Control and jealousy are primary symptoms of abusive
relationships)
• 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 ______).
• 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 harm or 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 Abuse
•
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.
