Looking back on her experience with “Frank” more than 10 years ago, Carolyn Cole said in retrospect, there were early warning signs of abuse in their relationship. But not being familiar with domestic violence then, she didn’t know what to look for.
“I actually asked people about him when I met him,” Carolyn said. “And no one said anything. He really appeared to be a nice guy. But after about eight months, he started telling me how much he loved me, and I couldn’t go to the bathroom or anywhere without him following me around.”
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said, saying ‘I love you,’ wanting to move in together or getting very serious early in the relationship, is a tell-tale sign of an aggressive intimate partner.
“What we try to say to women is that there is a fine line between separating normal behavior from dysfunctional behavior,” said Martha Crawford, an advocate for domestic violence. “Is he coming on too fast? Is he spending too much money too fast? Ask him about past relationships and listen to see if everything was ‘her fault.’ How does he speak to his mother and what does he say to her? Is he quick to blame other women for what’s wrong in his life? These are things a woman needs to ask herself when getting into a new relationship.”
Because women are natural nurturers, Crawford said that a woman will quickly give her heart to a man, including those with aggressive tendencies, without him fully “earning her trust.”
“When women talk about this great new man, they talk about how polite he is, how he gives her things, how he spends money on her, he tells her anything she wants – she can have, and he‘s so jealous,” Crawford said. “And because the relationship is new, to her, it comes off that ‘he loves me that much’. But what she ends up doing is sharing everything she is with this man – her disappointments, her feelings and whether or not she feels loved in her family. But what she doesn’t understand is that the aggressor is filling his arsenal with these weapons to use against her later.”
Crawford, who for more than 20 years was the Executive Director for the Domestic Violence Center in Oxford, said many of the signs women are taught to interpret as caring, attentive and romantic can really be early warning signs for future abuse.
Some examples include: Intrusion: Constantly asks where you are going, who you are with or where you’ve been. Isolation: Insists that you spend all or most of your time together, cutting you off from friends and family. Possession and Jealousy: Accuses you of flirting/having sexual relationships with others; monitors your clothing/make-up. Need for control: Displays extreme anger when things do not go his way; attempts to make all of your decisions. Unknown pasts/No respect for women: Secretive about past relationships; refers to women with negative remarks.
“We, as women, don’t step back and let a person prove themselves to us,” said Crawford. “The next thing we know we’re caught up in love and we share who we are and then we share our bodies. While we’re making love, he’s having sex, and it’s genuine for us. But the aggressor continues to build his arsenal. He‘ll even use that against her saying to her later, ‘I knew you were a slut because you slept with me so early.’”
In her experience in caring for victims of domestic violence, Crawford said Isolation is an early phase of abuse. The man wants the woman to spend all of her time with him demanding that she ‘come straight home after work’ or school, masking his obsession as concern for her safety or saying that he “just misses her.” An aggressive partner may also begin to find fault with the woman’s friends or family members to further isolate the victim from her past environment.
“’Your dad doesn’t like me,’ ’Let’s not go over to your parents for the holidays.’ ‘Let’s stay home and build our own traditions, I didn’t have that as a child.’ ‘Let’s have children and build traditions with them,’” Crawford relates. “We may think that he’s so wonderful because he’s talking about kids and the white picket fence, but he’s already roping us into that cycle of abuse. Pretty soon, the woman is rushing to get home on time and apologizing for being late, and she’s not visiting her friends and family anymore.”
A Montgomery County official, who will be referred to as “Joyce“, said years ago, she experienced several elements of domestic violence, including Intrusion and Isolation. And it was experience that nearly resulted in her death.
“This guy and I dated in high school,” Joyce said. “And from the very beginning he was very possessive. We didn’t hang out with other people, it was always just me and him. He would get upset when I wouldn’t go certain places with him and when I graduated and went to college, he would call me all the time and hang up to see if I was really at the dorm. He always wanted to know when I was coming home from school and he accused me of seeing other people when I wasn’t.”
Joyce said when her boyfriend started showing up on her college campus, she became more weary of their relationship.
“I would always see him from a distance and when I got over to where he was, he wasn’t there,” Joyce said. “Well, one Friday night, I went to a game with a male friend, and he brought me back to the dorm and my boyfriend found out about it. That Sunday, I went over to my sister’s house and he blocked the road with his car and he beat the hell out of me.”
Joyce said she knew her boyfriend kept a gun in his car, and she fought with him to keep him from retrieving it.
“I knew he carried a gun,” Joyce said. “And when he stopped me on the road he was going on and on about what an ungrateful b-tch I was and he kept saying, ‘I’ll fix you.’ And he was trying to get to his gun, but I wasn’t going to let that happen.”
Joyce said her younger sister was in her car while they fought, and witnessed the entire altercation. Fortunately for Joyce, her boyfriend had told his friends that he had planned to kill her, and they followed him to the scene and pulled him off of her.
“My little sister was scared as all get out,” said Joyce. “And at first, his friends didn’t really think he was going to do what he said. But they left with him and I went home, and then he showed up at my house with the gun. But my parents were there and his mother eventually came and told him to give her the gun.”
After the incident, Joyce required serious medical attention and she spent two years in psychological therapy. Today, she still lives with the emotional effects of that assault.
“He would have killed me,” Joyce said. “He was just that angry. And from the words that he was saying, I knew that would have been the end of me. And that’s one of the reasons I don’t give too many men the time of day now, because I don’t trust them. If I do go out, I go in my vehicle and we go to a place I’m familiar with.”
Crawford, who continues to work closely with domestic violence victims, said until the victim deals with the effects of the abuse, negative emotions will continue to surface within them.
“As women look back, they have to realize that what they’re dealing with is not just the abuse,” Crawford said. “Women often say ‘they should have known better’ or ‘they feel stupid,’ and their self-esteem is shot. But they want the man to feel what they’re feeling, but he is never going to feel what it is they feel.”
Crawford said once a woman decides to leave an abusive relationship, one of the first steps of healing is to forgive herself.
“You made a mistake,” Crawford said. “You trusted someone who did not earn you and what happens is the woman ends up with a different person. But that person has the same personality as the abuser. They’re violent or they’re a substance abuser. So, it’s a different man, but essentially it’s the same man. Here at the shelter, we try to get women to fix their heart and how they view things and the price they put on themselves. The woman needs to fix her without blaming herself for what happened.”
Those were steps that Joyce tried to make, and her abuser eventually started dating an acquaintance of hers. Joyce tried to warn the woman of her ex-boyfriend’s violent tendencies, but the woman refused to believe her and accused Joyce of wanting him back. Joyce said the woman married him, only to be beaten by him on numerous occasions. Joyce’s friend finally escaped his abuse only to be killed by an intimate partner in another abusive relationship.
The Domestic Violence Project in Oxford is one of 12 shelters in Mississippi for victims of domestic violence, like Joyce and Carolyn. Many of those 24-hour shelters provide a crisis line, transportation, referrals, assistance for attorneys, divorces and child custody issues, structured children’s programs and support and advocacy groups.
“I am the victim’s advocate,” Crawford said. “I work with the community. I work in education and training and I go to court. I also spend a lot of time holding their hand and doing what I call ‘Baby, Sweetheart, Honey, Sugar.’ And they need that because some of these women have never had anyone to call them that without something behind it.”
Crawford said domestic violence shelters and hotlines often see an increase in victims around the holiday season or “times of expectation.”
“I think it’s a matter of lots of people together and tension,” she said. “You have one person wanting to do one thing and someone else wanting to do another. Birthdays, Christmas, the Super Bowl are all peak times of domestic violence. We also see an increase when the weather is really hot or if it’s really cold because it becomes a time to stay inside.”
In the final segment of this series, Crawford gives more advice to victims of domestic violence and their friends and family members.
Signs your intimate partner may be abusive
Top Five
INTRUSION: Constantly asks you where you are going, who you are with, etc.
ISOLATION: Insists that you spend all or most of your time together, cutting you off from friends and family.
POSSESSION AND JEALOUSY: Accuses you of flirting/having sexual relationships with others; monitors your clothing/make-up.
NEED FOR CONTROL: Displays extreme anger when things do not go his way; attempts to make all of your decisions.
UNKNOWN PASTS / NO RESPECT FOR WOMEN: Secretive about past relationships; refers to women with negative remarks, etc.
Additional signs or characteristics of an aggressor
• Was or is abused by a parent.
• Grew up in a home where an adult was abused by another adult.
• Gets very serious with boyfriends/girlfriends very quickly – saying “I love you” very early in the relationship, wanting to move in together or get engaged after only a few months, or pressuring partner for a serious commitment.
• Comes on very strong, is extremely charming and an overly smooth talker.
• Is extremely jealous.
• Isolates partner from support systems – wants partner all to themselves, and tries to keep partner from friends, family or outside activities.
• Attempts to control what partner wears, what she/he does or who she/he sees.
• Is abusive toward other people, especially mother or sisters if he is a male.
• Blames others for one’s own misbehavior or failures.
• Has unrealistic expectations, like expecting partner to meet all of one’s needs and be the ‘perfect’ partner.
• Is overly sensitive – acts ‘hurt’ when not getting one’s way, takes offense when others disagree with an opinion, gets very upset at small inconveniences that are just a normal part of life.
• Has ever been cruel to animals.
• Has ever abused children.
• Has ever hit a boyfriend or girlfriend in the past.
• Has ever threatened violence, even if it wasn’t a serious threat.
• Calls partner names, puts him/her down or curses at him/her.
• Is extremely moody, and switches quickly from being very nice to exploding in anger.
• If a male, believes women are inferior to men and should obey them.
• Is intimidating, for example using threatening body language, punching walls or breaking objects.
• Holds partner against his/her will to keep him/her from walking away or leaving the room.
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