Intimate Partner Violence: Men's Explanations of their Marital Experience

Men’s intimate violence (MIV) is a global phenomenon. A survey conducted in Israel found that it might be found in all cultures and socioeconomic statuses. Two prevalent intervention frameworks have been designed to reduce MIV. The first, ‘Duluth’, considers the patriarchal beliefs of violent men critical for the prevention and elimination of their violence, and consequently adopts a psychoeducational approach of transforming men’s gendered values and attitude. This framework is informed by the feminist conceptualization of social order that recognizes the role of individual patriarchal authority in mobilizing violence to enforce the hegemonic social order in romantic relationships.

The second framework is cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). Within a CBT framework, MIV is characterized by intense emotional arousal and anger. CBT intervention regards MIV as a flawed tactic to resolve intimate conflicts resulting from anger. Several models attempt to conceptualize MIV as resulting from anger. Attachment theory identifies unstable formations of primary bonds between an infant and the main caregivers, which later in life result in constant separation anxiety. and transforms into the abusive personality trait that involves distortion in attachment behaviors and a pathological predisposition to anger and aggression. The second model postulates that via social learning processes within the family of origin, violence is conveyed across the generations, and thus men internalize parental aggressive attitudes and behaviors and use them to resolve intimate conflicts. A more contemporary model posits that traumatic events in men's lives covary with distortions in the capacity to interpret interpersonal events, which are then translated into cognitions of intimidations, threats and rejections, manifested in aggressive behaviors.

A different approach explores the experiences of men in violent relationships. Studies have highlighted the experiences of threat), loss of self, and loss of control. A narrative study of violent men’s emotional worlds found that their need for coherence dictates violent behaviors when women match an idealized internalized model of intimate relationships, and the violence protect the men from experiencing loss of control. However, men’s marital experience has not been studied systematically and the roots of the men’s experience remain unclear. Therefore, the current study explores men’s experiences in violent relationships to learn the origins of their experiences, and the relation between them and their violence.

To understand men’s experience, the current study is based on the view that experience is a product of socialization. Accordingly, it relies on a model that explains the gap between men and women’s experiences via gender role socialization. Socialization to masculinity dictates men values such as emotional detachment and independence, along with values that rejects femininity. Although the relation between masculine socialization and violence has been studied thoroughly, men’s experience has not. Therefore, the main research questions are how men describe their experiences in violent relationships, how they explain the origins of their experiences, and how they understand the relation between their experiences and their violence.

Given its experiential focus, the method used in the study was qualitative, allowing for the understanding of a phenomenon from the point of view of those experiencing it. Twenty-five men aged 27-60 participated in the study. Eighteen were recruited from domestic violence centers, four from social services, one from online social networks, one from ads posted at a university, and one from a network of private clinicians. The sampling aspired to achieve as diverse a cultural and socioeconomic status as possible.

The data were analyzed in the descriptive phenomenology approach, emphasizing subjective meanings attached to the lived experience. The analysis revealed four themes. The first, “chronicle of a violence foretold”, captures the dynamics of violence from the men’s point of view. The first subtheme, “you are not making any sense”, refers to the men’s difficulty to bear the women’s irrational emotionality. The subtheme “dynamics of silencing” illustrates the way women’s emotions are “contagious” and threatening to the men, who feel a need to suppress the women’s emotionality. The third subtheme, “chaos”, relates to a chaotic sense of relationship with the potential for violence to emerge anytime. The subtheme “control games” illustrates the men’s chronic struggle for the final word. The fifth subtheme, “I lost it”, illustrates the men’s understanding that violence is their explosive way of putting an end to situations they cannot bear. Finally, theme “forget everything for the next fight” illustrates men’s understanding that violence is a recurring cycle.

The second theme, “what is love”, captures men’s experience of intimacy. The subtheme “actions speak” illustrates men’s nonverbal emotional expressions. The second subtheme, “support”, illustrates men’s emotions in relationships. The subtheme “armor” refers to their detachment from feelings in relationships, which is related to the “dynamics of silencing” subtheme under the first theme. The fourth subtheme, “the disease of criticism”, illustrates men’s experience of the women’s negativity

The third and the fourth themes present the men’s explanations of the origins of their experiences. The third theme, “toughen up”, illustrates men’s experience of their father as a rough, fierce and abusive man, who is both “present and absent” and “a man of few words”. The fourth theme, “good enough mother”, illustrates men’s experiences of their mothers: “always containing”, “volatile and self-absorbed, “macho-mom”, and “absent”.

The men’s explanation of intimate violence emerges from the findings. It emphasizes how they were raised detached from their emotional world with the exception of anger and fear. The interaction between men who are detached from feelings and emotional women and the gap between masculine detachment and feminine emotionality construct an incomprehensible experience that they cannot bear. The more this experience grows, the men feel threatened by losing their place and masculine essence. To put an end to this unbearable interaction they turn to aggression, and since the source of the situation is the women’s emotionality, their aggression is directed at her. In other words, this is how men explain their violence in relationships: a detached man meets an emotional woman, when he lives with her emotions he feels flooded, and therefore, to suppress the emotional overflow, he needs his wife to be shut down. 

The findings emphasize that due to their emotional detachment men associate the dyadic sphere with senselessness and regard the women’s emotionality and irrationality as flawed. The difficulty of understand them is tied to conflicts. Thus, these findings support the view that lack of empathic capacity increases the probability of marital conflicts.

Another important finding highlights the mother’s role in men’s emotional development. Violent men’s experiences of their mothers and fathers are complementary: the father’s violence and the mother’s emotional volatility, the father’s roughness and the mother’s warmth, and the father’s absence and mother’s omnipotence and sometimes violence. Since the mechanism of internalizing parental representations is wide ranging, it is suggested that not only violence is transferred for generation to generation, but also the entire fabric of family relationships, violence included. Furthermore, while the father’s violence is almost axiomatic, the findings highlight the men’s diverse relations with their mothers, expanding the overall picture and offering a ground for a more nuanced developmental course.

The men’s explanation of their violence is consistent with the various models conceptualizing MIV. Since the current findings match each model separately, this begs for a theoretical synthesis. Yet such theoretical synthesis is possible given agreement across models, which is currently prevented due an ontological dispute. According to feminist theory intimate violence is a gender-based phenomenon, while other models attribute aggression to men and women alike. A theoretical synthesis, which is justified by the current finding, can be achieved with a more updated poststructural feminist theory, which is currently replacing the classical feminist model.

The current study’s contribution lies therefore in establishing the possibility for theoretical synthesis between models explaining men’s intimate violence. The findings also emphasize the importance of the men’s relationship with their mothers against the background of paternal violence, producing a course of emotional growth that may lead to violence, but not necessarily so.

The current study has some limitations. First, most of the interviewees, if not all, are heterosexual. The findings therefore cannot be generalized to same-sex couples. In addition, most interviewees come from domestic violence centers and have criminal records, which may indicate the intensity and severity of violence, which in turn may indicate particularly severe conditions at childhood. Thus, more research is required among a more diverse population and particularly among men whose violence is not criminal. Another recommendation is that to enable theoretical synthesis, caution is suggested when seeking paradigmatic interpretation of MIV, which may better be captured by a more flexible interpretation emphasizing the need for a more nuanced diagnosis as a basis for affective intervention.