Relationship Violence

• Your partner tries to controls your friends, your activities, or the way you spend money
• You feel that you cannot do anything right for your partner
• Your partner constantly needs to be in communication with you and insists on tracking your location, walking you to class, or texting
• Your partner humiliates, criticizes or yells at you, even in front of others

• Your partner ignores or belittles your opinions or accomplishments
• Your partner blames you for their own behavior
• Your partner threatens to hurt themselves if you break up with them
• Your partner forces you to engage in physical closeness or sexual activity
• Your partner threatens to “out” you for your sexual orientation or sex practices

Fiction

• Excessive jealousy, constant communication, tracking one’s location, and a partner insisting on spending all of their time together is a sign of love.
• Relationship abuse is only physical abuse such as hitting, kicking, pushing. If an abusive relationship is not physical yet, it will always become physical.
• Drugs, alcohol, stress, and unmet mental wellness needs are the causes of relationship violence.
• Someone staying with an abusive partner is a sign that the abuse is not serious or that the person experiencing the abuse is okay with being treated that way.

Fact

• Abusive partners often say they do this because they love their partner. However, these behaviors act as a way to control and isolate another person.
• Relationship abuse often escalates over time, but it does not always become physical. Abusive relationships may be primarily emotionally, psychologically, or financially abusive rather than physically abusive, and a lack of physical abuse doesn’t mean the relationship is not abusive.
• These factors can be present in an abusive partner’s life and exacerbate abuse but never cause it. The primary cause of abuse is a power and control dynamic.
• It is extremely hard to leave because abusive partners often isolate their partners from friends and family, threaten to harm themselves, refuse to accept the break up, and for many other reasons. Leaving a relationship is also the most dangerous time for a survivor of relationship abuse. Not leaving does not negate or invalidate one’s experience with abuse.