Abusive relationships, although they differ in detail from each other, reflect a very specific trend, perfectly described in the literature as a “cycle of violence”.
The cycle of violence has three phases:
Phase of growth of tension
In this phase the man begins to change his attitude, to be grumpy, more nervous, oppositional. his anger serves to establish control and power within the dynamics of the couple, to limit his partner based on what is allowed and what is not allowed to do (such as clothing, who to date, the attitude to keep .. .) and increases hand in hand with the fear of women. Very often the attitudes are not made explicit, they translate into manipulations or silences that serve to punish the woman for having done something she shouldn’t have. The victim thus tries to change his attitude, to respond to expectations, to avoid escalation or devaluations.
Stage of the attack.
This is the stage where the abusive behavior takes place. It should be specified that a physically violent act does not always correspond to this phase. In fact, there are many abusive relationships within which physical violence is never perpetrated, but other forms of abuse can be found in them and the typical phases of the cycle of violence can be identified.
In this phase the violence is agitated to restore control over the relationship, the motivations can be the most disparate and although the abuser always tends to attribute the responsibility for the violent act outside himself, the partner is mainly blamed or the cause is however attributed to external factors, it is good to specify that violence is always an exclusive choice of the perpetrator.
It is man who chooses to use force, prevarication, to impose his control and his will, regardless of other variables.
Phase of the “honeymoon”
After the acute phase of violence, it is possible that the frightened and destabilized victim makes attempts to separate from his own abuser, tries to verbalize his will to interrupt the relationship, to denounce … in the face of these manifestations usually the abuser, for bringing the woman back into the relationship proves to be extremely sweet, caring, attentive. He returns to being the man the woman had fallen in love with.
It is in this period (which can have a variable duration) that the man apologizes, promises he will never do it again, cries, despairs, asks for help from the woman, the same woman he had previously mocked, devalued, humiliated or beaten .
In some cases, the abuser even threatens to commit suicide. Sometimes it is not a real honeymoon but rather a respite.
These phases of the cycle of violence are repeated, precisely cyclically, with increasingly reduced time intervals between one phase and another. This is the typical trend of an abusive relationship with a continuous alternation of phases characterized by aggression and violence with “loving” phases. It is precisely this alternation that destabilizes the victim, making him particularly vulnerable and confused, setting him in a real trap.