Early Warning Signs (cont'd)
Attempts to make you dependent:
- he takes control of the money
- he doesn't want you to work
- he doesn't want you to have your own bank account
- he tells you that you don't have skills and couldn't make it on your own
- tells you "no one else will love you"
- tells you that you are stupid
- he doesn't want you to learn to drive
- may encourage you to quit school
Attempts to isolate you by:
- telling you lies about what your friends have said about you
- not wanting you to go out with your friends or without him
- being rude to your friends so that they will stop visiting you
- starting an argument with you right before you leave to go out with a friend
- telling you lies about what your friends have said about you
- doesn't want you to go out with friends without him
- belittling your friends
- tells you not to see your family
- doesn't want you to meet his friends
- wants you to choose between him and your friends
- holding messages back from you
The man who becomes physically abusive might also:
- not respect your sexual boundaries
- have attitudes about women (i.e. that they are inferior to men)
- be chauvinistic
- condone violence against women and pornography
- threaten to get sex elsewhere
- be addicted to alcohol, drugs or work
- use aggressive gestures (e.g. smacking hand on furniture, clenching fist)
- make threats of violence
- be violent towards pets
- damage property in anger
- intimidate others
- eventually uses physical force against you (slaps, kicks, pushes, punches, holds you down, blocks doorways, throws things, prevents you from using phone, drives fast to intimidate you, etc...)
Victoria
Family Violence Prevention Society
info@familyviolence.ca