10/04/2026
The 10 Faces of Domestic Abuse
Abuse does not always look like violence. Sometimes it looks like control.
One of the reasons domestic abuse can remain hidden for so long is that we still tend to picture it too narrowly.
We look for the things we can see. A bruise. An assault. A police call. A dramatic incident.
But some of the most damaging forms of abuse happen quietly, over time, as another person’s life becomes smaller.
Their choices become narrower. Their independence begins to disappear. They start calculating what they say, where they go, who they see, what they spend, what they wear, or how another person might react.
That is why I think we need to ask something beyond, “Was there violence?”
We also need to ask:
Was there freedom?
Was there meaningful choice?
Was there agency?
Domestic abuse is not only about what someone does to another person. It is also about what they take away.
During Domestic Violence Awareness Month, it is worth understanding the many different ways that can happen.
1. Physical abuse
Hitting, pushing, restraining, choking, threatening physical harm, or using physical force to create fear. Physical violence may be the most visible face of abuse, but it is only one.
2. Emotional and psychological abuse
Humiliation, intimidation, degradation, persistent criticism, threats, manipulation, or making someone question their own judgment and perception of what is happening.
3. Sexual abuse and coercion
Consent does not disappear inside a relationship. Pressure, intimidation, unwanted sexual contact, or creating consequences for saying no are forms of abuse.
4. Coercive control
This is often not one incident at all. It is a pattern of behaviour that gradually reduces another person’s autonomy. Their decisions, movements, relationships, and everyday life begin to revolve around avoiding consequences.
5. Isolation
Friends become a problem. Family creates an argument. Going somewhere becomes too difficult. Eventually, a person can become disconnected from the very people who might otherwise notice what is happening or offer support.
6. Financial and economic abuse
Controlling access to money, withholding resources, creating debt, interfering with employment, taking another person’s income, or leaving them responsible for financial damage they did not create can have consequences that last for years.
7. Stalking and harassment
Repeated unwanted contact, following someone, appearing where they are, monitoring their activities, or creating the feeling that they are constantly being watched. This can continue long after a relationship itself has ended.
8. Technology-facilitated abuse
Phones, social media, passwords, location tracking, cameras, and online accounts can all become tools of surveillance and control. Technology has created new ways for abuse to follow someone almost anywhere.
9. Reproductive coercion
Interfering with contraception, pressuring someone around pregnancy, or attempting to control decisions about another person’s reproductive health is an attack on bodily autonomy.
10. Using children as a means of control
Children can be placed in the middle of adult conflict, used to carry messages, threatened, manipulated, or used through parenting arrangements to punish, frighten, or maintain control over another parent.
These forms of abuse rarely fit neatly into separate boxes. They can overlap. They can build slowly. They can change over time.
And sometimes the person experiencing them does not immediately identify what is happening as abuse.
They simply know they are no longer living freely.
That distinction matters.
A healthy relationship does not require one person to surrender themselves in order to keep the peace. It does not require them to become smaller. And it should not require them to give up their choice, agency, or freedom in order to remain safe inside their own relationship.
If something here feels familiar in your own life, or you are concerned about someone you know, you can contact the East Prince Women’s Information Centre (EPWIC) confidentially.
You do not need to know exactly what to call what is happening before you reach out.
www.epwic.ca
Written by Nancy Beth Guptill
