Can someone I really know, and love hurt me? Yes, it happens more frequently than it is talked about.
It can start with something small as making insults towards to even physical sexual violence. Sometimes we want to see the best in those we love, so we wear these eye blinders. The problem with these blinders is that it completely hides what is taking place. Let’s take off those blinders and look at fives examples of what intimate partner violence looks like according to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey with the CDC.
Sexual violence includes rape, being made to penetrate someone else, sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and non-contact unwanted sexual experiences. Contact sexual violence (SV) is a combined measure that includes rape, being made to penetrate someone else, sexual coercion, and/or unwanted sexual contact.
Stalking victimization involves a pattern of harassing or threatening tactics used by a perpetrator that is both unwanted and causes fear or safety concerns in the victim.
Physical violence includes a range of behaviors from slapping, pushing, or shoving to severe acts that include hit with a fist or something hard, kicked, hurt by pulling hair, slammed against something, tried to hurt by choking or suffocating, beaten, burned on purpose, used a knife or gun.
Psychological aggression includes expressive aggression (such as name calling, insulting, or humiliating an intimate partner) and coercive control, which includes behaviors that are intended to monitor and control or threaten an intimate partner.
Control of reproductive or sexual health includes the refusal by an intimate partner to use a condom. For a woman, it also includes times when a partner tried to get her pregnant when she did not want to become pregnant. For a man, it also includes times when a partner tried to get pregnant when the man did not want her to become pregnant.
In NISVS, an intimate partner is described as a romantic or sexual partner and includes spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, people with whom they dated, were seeing, or “hooked up.”
All these examples are real life situations that so many people find themselves in and sometimes they don’t even know how they got to that place. But you are not alone in this. Our team at Family Crisis Services is ready to help you through this extremely difficult time. We also offer a 24/7 crisis hotline that you are welcome to call and speak to at 719-275-2429. No one deserves to be abused and not a single person should go through this alone either. We are ready to walk beside you through this. You are not what has been done to you.
If you think you may be the victim of abuse, please seek help from a Domestic Violence Advocate. If you are local (Fremont of Custer Counties) call us at 719-275-2429. Or you can call your local Crisis Center or the National Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.