Happy Tuesday everyone!
“It’ll never happen again. I promise.”
If you ask any domestic violence survivor, they’ll most likely tell you they heard this before.
They’ll tell you they heard it multiple times.
That’s the thing about domestic violence. It’s not just a one time thing. “It’ll never happen again” is an empty promise made to help maintain control over the victim and keep them from leaving.
Yes, sometimes our partners can get mad at us, yell, say something hurtful and then genuinely feel bad, say they’ll never do it again, and follow through with that promise.
That’s not domestic violence, though. That’s just being human. Domestic violence is calculated manipulation meant to help one person maintain power and control over another person.
Once a domestic violence abuser has gained the love and trust of their victim, they start to act physically or emotionally violent, then they apologize. They’ll say they didn’t mean it and that they won’t do it again. They may even downplay their actions, pretend it never happened, or say, “If you would just [insert behavior/activity here], I won’t get that angry anymore.”
Abusers follow what we call the cycle of abuse.
Cycle of abuse
The cycle of abuse is typically how we see abusive relationships play out. There’s 4 different phases in the cycle of abuse: tension build, incident, reconciliation, and calm. While you won’t hear an abuser outright say, “I’m done building tension so I’m going to lash out now,” there are distinct markers for each phases.
Tension build
The tension building phase is when you typically see the abuser start to get frustrated or irritated in certain situations. This can be due to external stressors or stressors they believe are the fault of their victim.
During the tension building phases, the victim will begin to feel anxious and may get the sense that something bad is coming.
For example, say Mark and Amanda are on their way to a friend’s house for game night. Amanda asks how Mark’s day at work went and he responds, “It was a shitty day, don’t ask about it again. I don’t even want to go to this stupid game night. I just want us to stay home.”
Amanda can feel Mark’s frustration and remains quiet the rest of the drive. Once they get to their friend’s house, someone knocks their drink over and it spills on Mark’s shoes. Amanda rushes to get a napkin and starts to clean it up. Mark snatches the napkin out of Amanda’s hand and tells her to get away from him.
Mark hasn’t acted violent toward Amanda yet, but she starts to feel anxious over the next few days as this behavior continues.
Incident
This phase is when the tension that has been building comes to a climax and the abuser lashes out toward the victim. This is usually due to do something the abuser believes is the victim’s fault.
The weekend after the game night at their friend’s house, Mark and Amanda are at home. Mark is sitting on the couch watching TV and Amanda is getting dinner ready, trying to finish up laundry, and keep their toddler from continuing to pull the dog’s tail.
While moving a load of clothes from the washer to the dryer, Amanda loses track of the chicken on the stove and it burns. Mark begins to scream at Amanda for ruining dinner and making it to where he now has to either wait for her to cook something else or go pick something up. He blames her for adding to his stressful week and grabs her by the arms and pushes her into the wall while calling her every derogatory name in the book.
Reconciliation
The third phase is reconciliation, often referred to as the honeymoon phase. This is where the abuser apologizes for their behavior, showers the victim with love and affection, and promises to never do it again.
After the dinner incident, Amanda locks herself and their child in the bedroom and says she is going to pack a bag and leave.
Mark stands outside the bedroom, saying things like, “I’m sorry baby, you know I love you,” “Please don’t leave baby, it won’t happen again,” or “I didn’t mean it.”
Amanda agrees to stay and the next day Mark comes home from work with flowers and new necklace for Amanda and stuffed animal for their daughter.
Calm
The final stage of the cycle is the calm stage. This is where things seem “normal” and it’s as if the abuse never happened.
Oftentimes in this phase, both the abuser and the victim will make excuses or justifications for the abuse. Sometimes in this phase, the victim even begins to doubt their recollection of how the incident occurred, believing it wasn’t as bad as they initially thought.
In the week after Mark pushed Amanda into the wall, he reiterates that he was stressed because of work and Amanda messing up dinner was just the tipping point. He tells her she needs to be more thoughtful from now on so it doesn’t get to that point again.
This is also the time where Amanda starts to believe that Mark didn’t really grab her that hard anyways because she doesn’t have any bruises. She thinks that maybe he didn’t even push her into the wall, that she probably tripped over the dog and just doesn’t remember it. She tells herself that next time, she needs to remember to take dinner off of the stove before going to switch laundry.
And the cycle starts over again.
Although this cycle is typically the path that abusive relationships follow over and over again, it’s important to mention that this isn’t always the case.
Sometimes abusers bounce around between phases instead of moving through them in a cyclical pattern and some skip over a phase altogether.
There’s also no set timeframe for each phase. Each phase can sometimes last a day, sometimes it lasts a few weeks. Sometimes there’s only one lashing out incident and sometimes there are several over many days.
The cycle of abuse depiction is just a general guide that tends to be the most common pattern we see in abusive relationships, but every situation is unique.
The cycle of abuse helps us have a better understanding of what abuse can look like and how we can begin to address the issue.
Until next week,
Rychelle 💜
Thank you for writing this 🙏🏼 There are people out there who really need to understand the situation they themselves are in, and also people who need help to recognize the situation a loved one may be in.
Someone extremely close to me is currently dealing with the effects of domestic violence and the continuing emotional abuse from afar.
If you’d be willing, please share her story of just how manipulative and deceptive abusers can be even after their victim is “safe.”
https://gofund.me/634b2af4