Bullying Between Partners: What It Is And How We Can Identify It
Bullying is a form of humiliation; a kind of physical and psychological terror. You need to induce fear in order to subdue a person. And then an aggressive prosecution starts.
In the project “Happiness in the relationships”, coaches examine themes about how to build healthy and harmonic relationships among couples. Our team is planning to make a master-class on this topic soon.
Being a couple is about the unity of two individuals, their management of emotions and future family. In certain cases when two emotionally immature people start a relationship: one is a victim and another person is an aggressor. This kind of development often happens after some psychological trauma during childhood. The aggressor finds a victim intentionally and the victim repeats their previous experiences again on an unconscious level. It gets difficult to break up a relationship, so people with psychological trauma come into this kind of relationship intentionally, feeling a codependency.
Psychologists Janae B. Weinhold and Barry K. Weinhold think codependency is a psychological disorder. The cause of it is the incompleteness of one of the development stages in early childhood — the stage of psychological autonomy identity.
1st stage — co-dependent (0–6 months)
2nd stage — counter-dependent (6–26 months)
3rd stage — independent (3–6 years)
4th stage — interdependent (6–29 years)
The psychological and personal wealth of mature personality depends on the harmonic development of these stages.
Author of emotional metaphorical therapy, professor Nikolai Dmitrievich Linde gives his own definition of codependency. Codependency is an emotional dependency; a lack of personal autonomy because of emotional reasons. A person with codependent behavior suffers from inaccessibility of another or an impossibility to change his own behavior.
How to identify dysfunctional relationships
1. If a partner subdues and forces the other to do only his/her needs and wishes, making the victim refuse their own part and personal interests. For instance, a husband-aggressor forbids his wife to work and just wants her to manage the house and their children’s education.
2. A partner faces a constant depreciation from the aggressor. Depreciation is a protective mechanism where an individual attributes exaggerated and inappropriate negative qualities to self or others. Such husband-aggressor often diminishes his wife, by telling her she is stupid, ugly, fat etc.
3. One of the partners gets furious quickly if the other doesn’t obey. It is about all spheres of social relationships between them. For instance, domestic tyrants who physically and emotionally rape their wives and children. Violence creates violence, and it is necessary to set up psychotherapeutic relationships with a psychologist in order to break up this vicious circle of violence.
How to fight it
1. It is necessary to recognize the situation when he/she humiliates, insults or hits you. Violence in relationships isn’t normal and you should not have the victim role.
2. Level up the self-worth and self-importance in your own eyes and in others. Later, your partner will feel your personal strength and he/she will find it difficult to ‘fight’ with you.
3. Learn to understand the reality of the current situation. Is it really your fault or both?
4. If he/she hits or insults you, you should pack up and leave. Find someone who you can go to for help. This is very important especially if you have children. You should know that it destroys their mental health.
5. Create independency and self-sufficiency from your partner. Dependency in relationships isn’t a good sign. Dependency is also attachment. If you suspect this in your relationships and you can’t decide by yourself and your partner doesn’t listen to you, then you need to ask for help from a specialist or someone you are close with.
Text Ekatherina Ivannikova
Edited by Law Yi Wan, Reshma Durai
