Healthy vs. Abusive Relationships

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Healthy vs. Abusive Relationships
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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.

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Healthy Relationships

• Trust and Support
• Supporting your partners goals in life.
• Respecting your partners 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.

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Healthy Relationships

• 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.

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VSAbusive Relationships
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Abusive Relationships

• Using 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.

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Abusive Relationships

• Using 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.

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Abusive Relationships

• 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 partners 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.

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Abusive Relationships

• Minimizing, Denying and Blame Shifting
• Making light of the abuse and not taking your
  partners concerns about it seriously.
• Saying the abuse did not happen, or wasn't that
  bad.
• Shifting responsibility for your abusive
  behavior to your partner. (ex I did it because
  you ______.)
• Saying your partner caused it.

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Abusive Relationships

• 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 mens and womens or
  the relationship's roles.

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What do you do?
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Fixing the Problem

• Abusive relationships do not change without
  sustained therapy specifically targeted toward
  the abusive relationship patterns.
• If the abuser is unwilling to own their behavior
  and seek help the prudent course of action is to
  remove yourself totally from the situation.

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Contacts

• http//www.verahouse.org/
• 315-425-0818 Hotline/Crisis 315-468-3260
• NYS Domestic and Sexual Violence Hotline
• 1-800-942-6906
• Dorothy Day House
• 315-476-0617 Hotline/Crisis 315-474-7011
• The Salvation Army
• 315-475-1688 Hotline/Crisis 315-479-1332

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• An abusive relationship can happen to anyone
• Read the article about Rihanna
• Read the article about Jenni-Lyn Watson
• Write a paragraph about the similarities and
  differences in their relationships.