Some of my readers know that for the last two years, my marriage was falling apart and I am currently in a very messy divorce. I won’t go into details except to say that the situation has all the messy factors except for physical violence (and that almost happened, too). Life is better now.
If you know me, you know I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about why marriages fail, and why some of them go so bad, after so long. (Mine lasted 20 years.) I know a number of women in similar divorce situations, and it always seems the marriage fails over issues of power and control.
What do I mean by power and control? In many social situations, one person tends to be dominant, with more power, or with control. Often this is accepted and obvious, such as a teacher in a classroom or a boss at work. Other times, the person in control isn’t labeled as such, but is accepted by the others — think of a group of kids with one designated leader.
Power and control are at work in marriages, too. In a healthy marriage, the power and control are traded off: one partner is in charge of some things, the other is in charge of others. A husband may run the kitchen, a wife might be dominant in the bedroom. If this is accepted by the couple, it’s healthy. But there is also unhealthy power and control. I know one couple where he is constantly making put-downs about his wife, little insults when she is present. This would drive me up a wall, but she doesn’t mind — she actually has quite a lot of power in other areas of their marriage. They are both very happy and deeply in love.
Unhealthy power and control rarely has a happy ending though. In many cases, the control issues morph into abuse, where one spouse is controlling the other for deeply personal reasons. If this goes on long enough, it becomes the classic bully-victim abusive relationship. Sometimes it’s hard to see the abuse. Not all abuse is physical, or of the insulting, swearing name calling we think of as verbal abuse. One group, the Domestic Abuse Intervention Program, came up with a Power and Control Wheel, a graphic way of looking at different unhealthy ways men exert power and control over women.
The original wheel assumes the abuser is always male, and the victim, female. This was deliberate, and I’m not the only one who is bothered by this. There are other wheels showing similar concepts, with different agendas.
Below is my contribution. This wheel focuses on power and control issues leading up to and during divorce. It is fairly gender neutral, and intended to show people how power and control issues might be affecting their lives, before, during and after divorce.
Many people will see a couple of things on this wheel that they have done. This doesn’t mean they are abusers — only if there’s a consistent pattern of actions in several segments of the wheel can we say a person is abusive.
(c) 2012 Liz Cademy Please ask before distributing
This is happening to me. Currently I’m going through a divorce and this is exactly what he did and is stil doing to me. What do I do? How do I prove this in court. I need someone’s help.
Miranda, the most important thing is to talk to people who understand. It wasn’t until I shared with a friend, who happened to be a domestic violence peer counselor, that I began to realize what was happening.
I then talked to a woman in my town’s Social Service office, and the Family Officer at our town police station. Both could see the abuse in my situation, and made suggestions on what I should do. The Court system in the place I live was quite understanding as well.
Understand that your soon to be ex is not doing this to you. He has his own reasons for playing power games, reasons that have nothing to do with who you are. You can either play his game and be Victim, or refuse and be Miranda.
Best of luck, and Be Strong.