Who is the perpetrator?
When you hear “abusive relationship,” what do you think of? Most of us carry in our heads an image of what an abusive relationship looks like: perhaps a married couple living together, where the man regularly beats his wife, or doesn’t allow her to leave the house. Whatever the exact details might be, most of us think about abuse in fairly simple terms, relationships where it’s easy to spot the abuser and the victim.
Drivers of abuse
It’s very common for abusers to claim to be victims, not because they’re playing or trying to manipulate, but because they truly, genuinely, sincerely believe to the bottom of their heart that they are a victim.
Abuse is about power and control. In any situation involving domestic abuse, you will see a person attempting to exert control, and a person resisting that control. Both of those people sincerely, genuinely feel abused. An abuser feels threatened or frightened, and deals with that feeling by exerting control over the victim. An abuser feels entitled to control, such that resistance to that control feels like an attack.
Image: Sivani Bandaru
Abuse is fundamentally a maladaptive response to fear, anxiety, threat, or some perceived transgression. Abusers don’t wake up one day and say “Gosh, I have an idea! I’m sick of this healthy relationship thing. I think I’ll abuse, manipulate, gaslight, and/or hit my partner today. Yeah! Yeah, that sounds like fun.”
No, an abuser genuinely and sincerely feels swamped by unpleasant emotions, blames their partner for those emotions, and genuinely believes that the way to cope with those emotions is by controlling their partner. That’s why resistance to control feels like abuse. The abuser sees a person who (a) is hurting them and (b) refuses to stop.
Even a person who engages in clearly abusive behaviors can still genuinely feel the victim. “Yes, I hit them, but...” “Yes, I was angry and smashed their stuff, but...” “Yes, I did cut them off from their friends and social circle, but...”
Abuse is about power and control. The abuser feels entitled to control, and harmed when the victim refuses that control. That’s why abusers genuinely feel abused and sincerely paint themselves as victims; from their perspective, the control they exert is just and proper, an attempt to get the victim to stop doing something that makes them feel threatened.
That’s why it’s normal for abuser and victim to point fingers at each other and say “they’re the abuser!” When that happens, that’s why it’s important to look at the dynamic in the relationship, the way those two people interact. I guarantee you will always see one person exerting control over the other, one person calling the shots, one person trying to tell the other what to do.
Untangling the Tangle
Given that, when you see a situation in which people both claim to be abused by the other person, how do you sort it out?
The arrow of control points away from the abuser. Always.
Look for the person who tried to exert control, and the person who tried to escape that control. Which of the two of them determined the relationship? Who had financial or practical control? Did one of the two people involved set the tone of the relationship, on large matters (where to live, for example) or small (what clothes the other person wore)?
This is one of the areas where abuse dynamics play out differently in polyamorous relationships than in monogamous relationships. Monogamous abusers often try to control the abuse survivor by socially isolating the survivor, cutting them off from friends and family. In polyamorous relationships, however, this tends to play out differently. Abusers may exert control over the survivor’s romantic relationships or the community at large.
So, for example, in polyamorous relationships, toxic, controlling behavior may involve:
- Isolating a person from his or her other partners: tearing down other partners, limiting time spent with them, using insidious gaslighting (they aren’t good enough for you, they don’t really love you)
- Telling a person who to date or have sex with, either directly (“if you want to have sex with me, you have to have sex with my partner too—we’re a package deal!”) or indirectly (“I don't think you should date person X, I think you should date person Y instead. Why don’t you ask out person Y?”)
- Social or community control (“If you talk to a person I don’t like, I will cut you off from the community”, “If you aren’t with me you’re against me”)
This can be subtle, or it can take some pretty extreme forms. The overarching idea is the same, though: Who is exerting control? Who is telling you how you must think, how you must act, what you are allowed to say or do, and threatening punishment for non-compliance?
Framing
Often, people who engage in coercive control will try to take control of the narrative by re-framing what they do in language that makes them sound better. This re-framing is a form of gaslighting, making unreasonable behavior seem more reasonable.
For example, abusers often control over social media; like, say, demanding access to social media, demanding to know social media passwords, and so on.
Instead of saying “I wanted control over my partner’s social media,” an abuser may say:
- “they were hiding things from me”
- “they were keeping secrets from me”
A healthy relationship allows reasonable and healthy boundaries around your partner’s access to your social media, or your phone’s passcodes, or access to your email. Refusing to share these is not “keeping secrets.”
Abusers often try to control their partners’ social circle, cutting them off from friends and family.
Instead of saying “I want control over my partner’s social circle,” an abuser may frame it as:
- “They always choose their friends over me”
- “I’m the one they’re in a relationship with, I should be the priority?”
Healthy relationships allow each person to create their own circle of friends and family, and choose who they spend time with.
This kind of re-framing is an especially insidious part of abuse dynamics. Beware absolute statements and vague language like “you always choose your friends over me.” What exactly does that mean? Is it “I feel like I don’t get enough time with you,” or is it something else?