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Abuse in Marriage: Sad and Hopeful Facts

"Abuse in Marriage: Sad and Hopeful" with man grabbing woman's shoulder

Topics like intimate partner violence, narcissism, and trauma have received much attention in recent years. Emotional issues, these! How important that we have the facts guiding our understanding. In this blog I dive into the research to ask several questions: How common is abuse in marriage? Is it always the men who perpetrate it, or both men and women? How common is emotional abuse, and who perpetrates that? This is my best attempt to give a snapshot of a complex and emotionally-wrought topic. 


Marriage is Good Until it Isn’t

When the Pharisees faulted Jesus for allowing His disciples to pick grain on the Sabbath to satisfy their hunger, He asserted a principle with a broader application than the Sabbath: “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). 


Broadened, this means that God’s ordained institutions are made for us, not us for them. He designed these secondary creations to benefit His primary creation, mankind, the way a father creates a trust fund for his child. The trust fund matters, but only because the child matters more. Once that order is reversed, the institution becomes a dead letter, like a trust fund with no beneficiary. 


This pertains to marriage. God created this institution for us, not us for it. The moment marriage becomes more important than the people in it, God’s order has been violated. 


Abuse in marriage calls us to realign with God’s order. As tenaciously as we might hold to the institution, and as much as we might want it to work, honoring God means placing our own health and well-being, and His glory, above it. 


For this issue, like most, there are two extremes to avoid. One extreme says stay married no matter what, even if one’s marriage is a hellhole of mortal danger. Another extreme leads us to handle marriage carelessly, and to encourage its abandonment without sound reasons. We must not make the institution more important than the people in it, but we must also remember that marriage was made for us. In the majority of cases, it does benefit us (More on that later.). 


Abuse in Marriage

The issue of marital abuse stirs up a lot of emotion, particularly for those who have endured it. Survivors of such abuse may be tempted to overgeneralize their experience, assuming most or all marriages resemble theirs. Others without firsthand experience may be tempted to deny or minimize the existence and evil of abuse. So, to stay on the road between these drop-offs, I present a summary of the research. The answers are interesting and a tad complex! 


Physical Abuse 

Physical violence in marriage, called intimate partner violence (IPV) is more common than we thought; but perhaps not in the way we thought. Here’s a quote from the National Institutes of Health: 


Almost 24% of all relationships had some violence, and half (49.7%) of those were reciprocally violent. In nonreciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases...Regarding injury, men were more likely to inflict injury than were women.


Let me interpret a bit. 


Shocker number one is that, in this study, nearly one-quarter of intimate partner relationships experienced some violence. What the quote means by “reciprocally violent” is that both partners hit, slap, push, etc. We’re a savage lot, humanity. 


Shocker number two is that when only one partner escalated, it was the woman about two-thirds of the time! 


A non-shocker is that when a man gets violent, he’s more likely to hurt the woman than the other way around. Popeye is unsurprisingly stronger than Olive Oil.  


Dr. John Gottman speaks on IPV. He says 80% is what he calls “situational” where the couple escalates with no clear perpetrator. He says healthy conflict management tools and therapy work in many of these cases. 


But a separate and more diabolical form of violence accounts for about 20% of IPV. Gottman calls it characterological violence, probably because it is anchored in the character of the one perpetrating it. Although this only accounts for 20% of IPV, it is the type that cannot be treated with marriage therapy. In fact, it apparently doesn’t respond well to treatment generally (Send me links if you know of something that works!). It is probably appropriate to term this kind of violence malignant narcissistic abuse. 

I couldn’t find any Gottman research on the male/female split of this kind of IPV, but here are some general stats:


More than 1 in 3 women (35.6%) and more than 1 in 4 men (28.5%) in the United States have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.


The margin isn’t as huge as I would have expected, but more women than men experience IPV. 


Emotional Abuse 

But when it comes to emotional abuse, the kind that leaves no bruises except on the heart, it seems male and female perpetrators are roughly split. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey says, “Nearly half of all women and men in the United States have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner in their lifetime (48.4% and 48.8%, respectively).” 


A publication called Violence Victim seconded this, adding that, “Younger men reported experiencing higher levels of emotional abuse, which declined with age. Older females reported experiencing less emotional abuse than older males.”


This equal split makes sense biblically, as both males and females are equally sinful, but not equally physically strong. In the emotional arena, however, women match men in strength. 


This coincides with my experience as a marriage counselor and a church leader. Most deeply troubled marriages I’ve known involve both partners behaving badly.  A few involve one partner clearly abusing the other. In the physical arena, that’s more likely to be the man. In the emotional arena, I’ve seen as many female as male abusers.  


The Boil-Down and Circle Back

The overall positive effects of marriage are well established in science. Horror stories exist, but they should not be amplified louder than the positives. Marriage, like the Sabbath, was made for man, to be a blessing and a benefit. 


“Marriage is honorable”; it was one of the first gifts of God to man, and it is one of the two institutions that, after the fall, Adam brought with him beyond the gates of Paradise. When the divine principles are recognized and obeyed in this relation, marriage is a blessing; it guards the purity and happiness of the race, it provides for man’s social needs, it elevates the physical, the intellectual, and the moral nature.

However, Satan hates every good thing from the Lord, including—and perhaps especially—marriage. He will scheme and connive to drag it into the darkness, such that the institution created for our joy becomes hell on earth. It is essential that we respond appropriately to abuse within marriage, not denying its existence, leaving those trapped in harmful relationships to fight alone. At the same time, we must continue to recognize God’s good intention in giving us this beautiful covenant. 

It’s called balance and fact-based, objective thinking. We can do this! 


References:


 
 
 

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