agonyaunt | Dear Prudence: What Counts as Domestic Violence

Q. What constitutes domestic violence?: I’m a guy and I got into a heated argument with my boyfriend a few days ago. I became silent and nonresponsive, and out of frustration he flung his coffee mug in my general direction, though quite far away from me. This is the first time something like this has happened, and we generally communicate well with each other. He regretted it instantly and was profusely apologetic afterward.

We resolved the issue in the moment, but I have since felt angry about his violent act. He still regrets his action but says it’s unfair of me to call it “physically abusive.” I’m finding it difficult to get over this because abuse is something I find unacceptable in a relationship. He says it wasn’t physically abusive because it could not have hurt me—which is true. He denies that his casualness has anything to do with our gender—I still think it does. I have never felt unsafe in my relationship, but should I accept his “I’m really sorry for what I did but it wasn’t abusive” apology?

A: Your boyfriend’s primary concern right now seems to be not “Why was my response to seeing my partner get quiet to throw a coffee cup in his direction in order to frighten and possible hurt him into giving me another reaction?” but “How can I make sure my partner agrees that throwing a mug toward him is not abusive, and by extension that I am incapable of committing abuse?” That worries me. He may not have aimed it directly at your head, but he certainly didn’t throw that coffee cup to reassure and peacefully engage you—it was an act designed to startle and threaten you into talking to him. He found it unacceptable that you weren’t speaking, and he was willing to resort to the threat of violence to make you start. The message of the thrown coffee cup was “I’m willing to throw things to get what I want,” and the implication is that next time he might aim more directly for you.

This happened only a few days ago, and already he’s trying to minimize what he did. I don’t think this is much of an apology, and it certainly doesn’t give me hope that he’s likely to change in the future. Your anger makes a great deal of sense to me, and I think you should talk to your friends, and potentially a therapist, about how you’re feeling, why you find yourself unable to “get over this,” and what support you might need in ending this relationship. Just because you’ve never felt unsafe with him before doesn’t mean you owe him another chance, especially when his initial apology was immediately followed by backtracks, minimization, and justification. This is a line that no relationship has to cross.

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I have been in a room with someone angry enough to throw things. The person wasn't even angry at me, threw the thing in the completely opposite direction, and it was still scary and stomach-churning, and I still (later in a moment of calm) made it clear that this kind of behavior was a deal-breaker. To have had someone throw something in anything resembling my general direction when I was the actual target of the anger...yeah, that's a line.

“How can I make sure my partner agrees that throwing a mug toward him is not abusive, and by extension that I am incapable of committing abuse?” That worries me.

WELL SAID.

There is so much more that could be going on in this scene than can be captured by an advice letter.

First off, throwing the mug was, no question, physically abusive. It was an act of physical violence, and it had emotional charge. Admit that, get it out of the way, and we can start to dig behind the scenes (it's saying something that the boyfriend is not willing to admit that).

I'm gonna come clean here. I've done some physically abusive things. I kicked a wall in an argument once. I've slammed a door a couple of times. That does not make me a physically abusive person any more than having a gut racist reaction makes me a racist. They are individual acts, and, fortunately, not a part of my larger pattern of behavior. They are also things I regret - even in the moment (a, my foot hurt, and b, J was freaked - and rightly so, and c, it didn't resolve the argument). There's something about a physically violent act that is so powerful and so quick - when you're really, really, really angry the adrenaline fucks with you, and in that half second it can make it seem like throwing something is a good idea, and you do, and as it leaves your fingertips that feeling evaporates and you're nothing more than a pillar of shame. There are ways to deal with it - try not to get into that state in the first place, try to develop the self control to stop yourself before the impulse takes over, or at least the self knowledge to say, "hey, I need to go outside and throw rocks into the pond for a little bit, and I want to make sure it's not directed at you."

And yeah, it really is a gendered thing. What's the standard societal image of a guy getting mad? Tensing up, fists balling up, arms flexing, face grimacing. It's plastered everywhere. It takes a lot to undo that cultural programming, and I'm not going to say it's quick or easy.

So, back to what else may be going on in the letter. Is he emotionally manipulative at all? Is throwing the mug in any way part of a pattern? You say you've never felt unsafe, which is good - work from there to have him understand that throwing the mug was physically abusive but that that doesn't make him an abuser. That's what he's scared of - being seen, by you or anyone else, as an abuser. He's probably that pillar of shame for that right now and trying to avoid that stigma in the most obvious way - "I'm not an abuser because that wasn't abusive" rather than the more subtle "I'm not an abuser but nevertheless that was an abusive act." If he can get around that shame, he can then start to look for ways to channel his anger/adrenaline response that are less problematic. You can forgive him (which might take a lot of weight off his mind) or not - that's entirely your call - but don't offer it until you feel he's on the path towards some growth. I don't know that I've ever been forgiven for kicking the wall, but that frankly doesn't matter anymore, as it's not something I'm likely to repeat. But that growth has to come from him, and it has to start with him recognizing just how bad that throw was - and while you can certainly help him in many places on that path, you're not obligated to.

I had a real anger management problem in my twenties, and I did many things in the workplace which would have been recognizably abusive if I'd been male: rushing people while I yelled at them, getting so mad I stood on a table while I shouted, hurling whatever was in my hand at a wall (never at a person). Though my anger is under control these days, when I'm really pissed I still tend to start slamming around a room and sometimes smashing things. This means (a) I go far out of my way to avoid situations where I'll get that pissed off, and (b) I'm really careful to leave rooms with other people in them if I'm that angry.

The thing is, while these might have had the effect of abusing, they really were almost certainly more terrifying to me than to the people I was yelling at. Because I'm a (white) woman, my violent rages were less likely to provoke someone calling the police on me or even see me as a real threat, but also was more harmful to me in the workplace and socially than if I'd been a guy. (At least, anecdotally this was true.) But because I'm a woman, I also found a socially acceptable way of dealing with my rages which was to get super-apologetic and sometimes frightened in rage-inducing situations. This also hasn't helped me professionally, but has been much better socially.

My point is, if the boyfriend threw a cup, the boyfriend might be enacting behaviors that are abusive, not out of a desire to control, but because of a lack of control that should be scary to boyfriend. That should be addressed differently.

LW should also look at themselves: becoming silent and nonresponsive in a heated argument might also be a form of psychological abuse, depending on their patterns. I'm not saying it is, but I've seen it used that way. At me, specifically.

My point is, if the boyfriend threw a cup, the boyfriend might be enacting behaviors that are abusive, not out of a desire to control, but because of a lack of control that should be scary to boyfriend. That should be addressed differently.

I think that's the nugget of what I was saying, too. It's a subtle difference, especially when viewed from the outside, but it's an important one.

And, good point about becoming silent and nonresponsive. I'm reminded of the Girls' Leadership training the fanlet and I went to this spring where one of the lessons in dealing with conflict was that in most conflicts both sides have contributed something, and acknowledging that contribution is important to resolving the conflict.

This conversation made me think of a great interview with Utah Phillips that’s really helped me, where he compares being a pacifist to being a recovering alcoholic.

He said you got to look at it like alcohol. Alcohol will kill an alcoholic, unless he has the courage to sit in a circle of people like that, and say, "My name's Utah and I am an alcoholic." Then you can accept it, you can own it, have it defined for you by people whose lives have been ruined by it, and it's never going to go away. You're not going to sit in that circle sober for twenty years and have it not affect you. He said, "You have to look at your capacity for violence the same way. You are going to have to learn to confess it, and learn how to deal with it in every situation every day, for the rest of your life, because it is not going to go away.

The whole interview here is great: https://southerncrossreview.org/29/utah.htm and that particular quote shows up on one of the amazing albums Ani DiFranco made putting music to some of Phillips’s recorded speeches and anecdotes.

Wow, I think I might need to take that one into my own personal growth lessons.

You can go so many places with this, too. Like I said, I've coped with my capacity for rage and for generally being a complete dick by over compensating and by self-loathing, which actually isn't sustainable, long term. But owning it, coping with it, moving forward with that... maybe that can lead to a sustainable long term place.

Thanks for this.

In an awesomely serendipitous Captain Awkward post yesterday, I see this excerpt:

Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) and narcissism (as a set of behaviors) are two different things. People with NPD get diagnosed because they are suffering and seeking treatment, and that designation should be about helping them feel better and lead happier lives. People who get called narcissists on message boards (or with checklists like the one I used in the book) are being labeled in absentia by people who are trying to understand or heal from the damage they do. Not even close to all conflict is abuse, not all abuse is narcissism, and not all narcissism is abuse.

Which is exactly what we were both just saying.

Dear Prudence: What Counts as Domestic Violence

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