Are You in a Relationship with an Abusive Lesbian?

Psychological abuse in Lesbian relationships can be subtle and confusing. Political ideology and understanding of oppression can get twisted around to justify abusive behavior.

The following excerpt is taken from an article entitled ’’Lesbian Violence, Lesbian Victims: How to Identify Battering in Relationships’’ by Lee Evans and Shelley Bannister. The article appeared in Lesbian Ethics Vol. 4, No. 1, and is the first of a two-part series.

Here are some good questions to ask yourself:

• Do I withhold information from my lover about my social interactions for fear of what she may do or say?
• Do I have the feeling that it is somehow ’’bad’’ if I want to be emotionally intimate with someone other than my lover?
• Does this relationship (fail to) foster a sense of community for me with other lesbians, and does my lover encourage me to spend time with other lesbians?
When I am around my lover and friends or family, am I nervous about what she might say or do to embarrass or humiliate me?

Here are a few examples of coercive behaviors that occur in lesbian relationships:

Isolation

• Your lover is so jealous that you limit your contact with other dykes so that you won’t have to put up with her jealous remarks or rage.
• Your lover constantly criticizes your friends for being too political and radical, or insufficiently political and radical.
• Your lover decides that she wants you to go back into the closet for her career’s sake, or for her emotional well-being.
• Your lover is always in the midst of a crisis, so that you can never leave her alone.
• Your lover creates embarrassing scenes in front of your friends and family so that none of them feel comfortable visiting you anymore.

Monopolization of Perceptions

• You feel it is easier to go along with your partner than to fight for your own decisions.
• Your partner’s explanations always make more sense than yours do; her politics are always more correct, her opinions more accurate.
• You watch what you say so that it meets her approval.
• Her very presence overwhelms everything else that is happening.

Inducement of Debility and Exhaustion

• Your lover wakes you up to fight (or ’’discuss’’ something) in the middle of the night or keeps you from sleeping until she is ready to quit fighting (or end the ’’discussion’’).
• Your lover criticizes you around a disability you have, belittling it and/or denying its existence or harmful effect.
• Your lover tries to convince you that if you just changed your attitude (or something else about your lifestyle like the food you eat or the hours you sleep), you could cure yourself.
• Your lover expects you to be nurturing toward her when she knows that you are hurting.

Threats

• Your lover threatens to out you to your family or your job.
• Your lover threatens to slander you in your community.
• Your lover threatens to break or destroy things you love.
• Your lover silences you with a look or an expression while you are in public.

Demonstrations of Power

• Your lover always claims to be politically correct and to know the right way to do things.
• Your lover always claims to know what you are thinking and what you are planning.
• Your partner always seems to know more about you than you know about yourself.

Degradation

• Your lover puts you down in a way that makes you think there is something essentially wrong with you.
• Your lover talks you into doing sexual things that are embarrassing to you or make you feel bad.
• Your partner ’’jokingly’’ makes fun of you in front of others.
• Your partner interrogates you about past lovers or lovers she thinks you have currently, or that you do have currently.

Enforcing Trivial Demands

• Your lover demands detailed reports from you when you get back from shopping.
• Your partner has rigidly defined ways of doing things that you must adhere to, from the way to clean the house, to making the beds, washing the dishes, driving the car, shopping for groceries, doing the laundry, etc.
• You lover is super-critical of your ways of doing things.

’’Crazy-making’’ Behaviors

• Your lover tries to convince you that it is you and her aginst the world and that no one else can or will understand your relationship.
• Your lover lies to you and then denies lying to you; she contradicts herself in the same conversation and then denies making the contradictory statement.
• Your partner changes the rules of the relationship without warning or explanation, leaving you constantly confused about what just happened.