Why Does He Do It? What Explanations Resonate During Counseling for Women in Understanding Their Partner’s Abuse?

Abstract

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a complex and multifaceted problem gaining increasing attention within mental health research and practice. IPV explanations focus on both individual and systemic levels; however, it is increasingly acknowledged that a single level explanation may not be sufficient. The practices of clinical disciplines may, however, still privilege an explanation at one level over another, which will influence how they work with clients. It is likely that one such clinical group, psychologists, may play a critical role in helping victim-survivors to understand and explain their experiences of IPV. However, we were unable to find any studies focusing on women’s perceptions of psychologists’ role in this. Additionally, we know little about women victim-survivors’ perceptions of why their partners use IPV. To address these gaps, the research question for this study was: What explanations resonate during counseling for women in understanding their partner’s abuse? To explore this question, 20 women who had seen psychologists after experiencing IPV participated in semi-structured interviews. The interviews were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis and three themes constructed from the data. The first two themes, narcissist description was helpful and not all bad all the time, showed that the women found it powerful in their healing processes when psychologists offered the opportunity to discuss their partners individual characteristics as explanations for their use of IPV. The third theme, structural explanations, showed that some of the women also reflected on wider structural contexts. Implications for clinical practice include the potential healing effect when practitioners can move along a continuum of explanation levels, covering both the inner and outer worlds. Implications for research into IPV perpetration are that women hold expertise and insight into individual perpetrators and could make valuable contributions to this field.

Sexual stigma, masculinity, and physical intimate partner violence perpetration among sexual minority men.

“…Not supportive of our hypothesis that conformity to masculine norms would predict perpetration, neither conformity to winning nor conformity to power over women were significantly related to physical IPV perpetration in our tested regression models as main effects. Though, again, bivariate correlations indicated that conformity to winning was significantly correlated with perpetration which is supportive of previous research (Marsden et al, 2022; Riggs & Caulfield, 1997).…”

“…A masculine norm that addresses power and dominance that may be particularly relevant to sexual minority men’s IPV perpetration is conformity to the masculine norm of “winning.” For sexual minority men who endorse winning as an important part of their masculinity, they may view their relationship as a setting to be dominant and win. Viewed from the perspective of precarious manhood theory (Vandello & Bosson, 2013), sexual minority men who perceive themselves as subordinate to their partner may perceive perpetrating interpersonal violence against their partner as gaining the status of “winner.” Supportive of this notion is a recent qualitative study with women who had experienced IPV in relationships with male partners in which participants described winning as an important motivation for their partner’s IPV perpetration (Marsden et al, 2022). Additionally, in a sample of college men, participants who reported a history of physical aggression toward their partners were more likely to report that their perpetration was likely to help them get their way or win an argument (Riggs & Caulfield, 1997).…”

“Never Learned to Love Properly”: A Qualitative Study Exploring Romantic Relationship Experiences in Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents

“…The fourth theme consisted of posts containing a wealth of positive messages in terms of a realisation that the parent was an abusive narcissist. This realisation might have important clinical implications, as understanding abuse in terms of abuser narcissism could be beneficial for recovery (Marsden et al 2021). In a similar way to the qualitative findings in , the posts evidenced resilience, recovery, and an attempt to improve romantic relationships.…”

“The end justifies the memes”: A feminist relational discourse analysis of the role of macro memes in facilitating supportive discussions for victim-survivors of narcissistic abuse

“…Narcissistic abuse can include psychological/emotional abuse, financial abuse, sexual abuse, and physical violence. Emerging studies highlight the importance for women of identifying specific traits such as narcissism exhibited by their abusive partner to make sense of their partner's characteristics and to support personal healing processes (Howard, 2022;Marsden et al, 2022). However, it remains an under-recognised phenomenon, especially in the UK (Howard, 2019).…”