The corrosive effects of domestic violence within relationships
Contents
A picture of domestic abuse
Why does domestic abuse happen? How will it end?
Domestic violence. The outside world does not see this
The loving couple? No sign of abuse here
A picture of domestic abuse
The battered and bruised victim cowers in the corner of the room. The attacker has just went mad and reigned a torrent of blows on the body of the terrified innocent. The attack was the culmination of an argument that started while the evening meal was being prepared. The crazed aggressor sometimes used fists, but this time a weapon, either an iron bar or a rolling pin, was used. This was not the first time that domestic violence had flared in the relationship. Always after an attack, there would be apologies and promises of improvements in the future. The promises were never kept. The really scary thing about this is that the aggressor is the female partner and the cowering victim is the man.
Why does domestic abuse happen? How will it end?
Recently in the long-running British soap, Coronation Street, there has been a very dramatic storyline, in which one of the characters, Tyrone, repeatedly gets attacked physically by his partner, Kirsty. They have been living together for about one year now and she is heavily pregnant with his first child. Kirsty is an ex-policewoman and she showed elements of obsessive jealousy since the start of the relationship. Tyrone is one of these typical “good characters” that you meet in long-running television dramas. He is everybody's friend and is well known for his generosity of heart. He had a difficult upbringing, with a mother who deserted him and now only returns, when she thinks there is an opportunity to sponge off his good nature. Kirsty comes from a different, but equally difficult, background. Her father was a policeman and he was a very controlling parent to his daughter while she was growing up. Her mother seems to be terrified of her husband and will never contradict him, or try to counter any of the lack of real love that he shows. As characters, they only appeared in the soap in one episode. All of the above opinions on their relationship were obvious then. It was even hinted that the husband might be a wife beater. The extremely angry reaction of the father, when he discovered his daughter had lost her job as a policewoman, served to highlight the fact that he was an extremely nasty character. The first attack, by Kirsty on her partner, happened on the same evening that her parents had visited.
Since then, the attacks have escalated. The latest is the one I detailed in the first paragraph. There is no certainty as to how this storyline will end up. Will he leave her? Will she kill him? The whole story is very distressing to watch. But it is all too common in relationships throughout the world.
There are some conclusions that can be drawn from watching this tragedy unfold. The first is that, children who have experienced abuse and lack of love, are more likely to grow up to be unloving abusers. The second conclusion is that, while abusers may profess remorse and undying love, the abuse rarely stops. Something else this story teaches us is, that victims too often defend or make excuses for the aggressors within relationships. Sometimes they are just too ashamed to admit that something is wrong. Love really can be blind at times. Let's hope it never degenerates to becoming blinding.