October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and recently our team completed domestic violence training with the Dr. Carol B. Berz Family Justice Center, a local organization we work closely with when families we serve are navigating unsafe relationships.
This year, we have encountered more domestic violence situations than I can remember. I honestly don’t know whether that means violence itself has increased or whether we’ve simply become better at recognizing it.
Either way, the training left me wondering: Do most of us really know what domestic violence looks like before it becomes obvious?
Because sometimes, at first, it can look a lot like love.
I dated a boy in high school who wanted to be with me constantly. He became extremely jealous when I spent time with friends and discouraged some of those friendships altogether. Once, he showed up outside a friend’s house and watched for me.
At first, some of it felt almost flattering.
He really wanted to be with me. He cared where I was. He missed me when I wasn’t around.
Until it became suffocating.
When I tried to end the relationship, he threatened to end his life. Suddenly, I felt responsible for keeping him safe, which meant I didn’t feel free to leave. It wasn’t until I moved away to college that I had enough distance to realize how unhealthy the relationship had become.
I’ve heard he’s healthy now and has experienced healing of his own, and I sincerely hope that’s true. This isn’t about defining who someone is today by who they were as a teenager.
It’s about recognizing that several behaviors I once interpreted as intense young love are also behaviors professionals tell us to pay attention to.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines intimate partner violence as more than physical assault. It can include sexual violence, stalking and psychological aggression, including behaviors intended to emotionally harm or exert control over a partner.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline identifies extreme jealousy, discouraging relationships with friends or family, controlling someone’s time or actions, constant monitoring and threatening suicide during arguments as potential warning signs of emotional abuse.
That doesn’t mean every jealous moment, disagreement or request for more time together is abuse. Healthy people can behave badly. Couples can fall into unhealthy patterns that need work.
The bigger question is whether there is a pattern of power and control.
Can you disagree without fearing what happens next? Can you maintain friendships and family relationships? Can you spend time apart without being punished, interrogated or guilted? Can you have privacy? Can you say no?
Can you leave?
Healthy relationships create connection without requiring captivity.
And that’s where domestic violence prevention begins to overlap with something our organization talks about all the time: teaching people how to identify healthy, safe relationships and healthy, safe people.
A safe partner respects boundaries. They don’t require access to every password, text message or minute of your day. They don’t make you prove your love by abandoning other relationships. They can tolerate disappointment without intimidation. They want closeness while still respecting your autonomy.
Those things matter even when no physical violence occurs.
A systematic review and meta-analysis published in Trauma, Violence, & Abuse found that coercive control was moderately associated with symptoms of PTSD and depression. Researchers found those associations were comparable to those seen with broader psychological intimate partner violence.
In other words, harm doesn’t have to leave a bruise to matter.
Maybe one of the most important things we can teach ourselves, and our children before they begin dating, is that love should make room for freedom.
You should be able to remain fully yourself inside a relationship. Connected, yes. Committed, absolutely. But still free to have friends, boundaries, opinions, privacy and a voice.
And if a relationship slowly begins taking those things away, we should know enough to notice.
If you recognize some of these patterns in your own relationship, you don’t have to decide whether your experience officially “counts” as domestic violence before asking for help. Locally, the Family Justice Center provides free, confidential services including safety planning, counseling and legal assistance. Partnership for Families, Children and Adults also operates a confidential 24/7 domestic violence and sexual assault hotline at 423-755-2700.
Sometimes prevention starts long before anyone uses the word abuse.
It starts when we understand what love is allowed to ask of us and what it should never require us to give up.
Lauren Hall is president and CEO of family advocacy nonprofit First Things First. Email her at lauren@firstthings.org.