- Destructive criticism and verbal abuse: shouting, mocking, accusing, name calling, verbally threatening.
- Pressure tactics: sulking, threatening to withhold money, disconnect the telephone, take the car away, commit suicide, take the children away, report you to welfare agencies unless you comply with their demands regarding bringing up the children, lying to your friends and family about you, telling you that you have no choice in any decisions.
- Disrespect: persistently putting you down in front of other people, not listening or responding when you talk, interrupting your telephone calls, taking money without asking, refusing to help with childcare or housework.
- Breaking trust: lying to you, withholding information from you, being jealous, having other relationships, breaking promises and shared agreements.
- Isolation: monitoring or blocking your telephone calls, telling you where you can and cannot go, preventing you from seeing friends and relatives.
- Harassment: following you, checking up on you, opening your mail, repeatedly dialling 1471 to see who has telephoned you, embarrassing you in public.
- Threats: making angry gestures, using physical gestures to intimidate, shouting you down, destroying your possessions, breaking things, punching walls, wielding a knife or a gun.
- Sexual violence: using force, threats or intimidation to make you perform sexual acts; having sex with you when you don't want to have sex; any degrading treatment based on your sexual orientation.
- Physical violence: punching, slapping, hitting, biting, pinching, kicking, pulling hair out, pushing, shoving, burning, strangling, raping.
- Denial: saying the abuse doesn’t happen, saying you caused the abusive behaviour, being publicly gentle and patient, crying and begging for forgiveness, saying it will never happen again.
If after reading this you think that you are, or might be, in an abusive relationship, there's a lot of information on the rest of this site that will help you to think through your options.
This article was last reviewed by Catherine Orr Deas in December 2005.
First published in February 2003.
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