By Abdullahi Ahmad Bamalli
First and foremost, domestic violence, also called “domestic abuse” or “intimate partner violence”, can also be a pattern of behavior in any relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner.
Such abuse can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic or psychological actions or threats of actions that influence another person. This includes any behaviors that frighten, intimidate, terrorize, manipulate, hurt, humiliate, blame, injure, or wound someone. Domestic violence can happen to anyone of any race, age, sexual orientation, religion, or gender.
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However, domestic violence can occur within a range of relationships including couples who are married, living together or dating. Domestic violence affects people of all socioeconomic backgrounds and education levels.
In this regard, anyone can be a victim of domestic violence, regardless of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, faith or class. Victims of domestic violence or abuse may also include a child or other relative, or any other household member.
Likewise, domestic violence is typically manifested as a pattern of abusive behavior toward an intimate partner in a dating or family relationship, where the abuser exerts power and control over the victim. A violence like that can be mental, physical, economic or sexual in nature. Incidents are rarely isolated, and usually escalate in frequency and severity. It may also culminate in serious physical injury or death.
Furthermore, there’s a different perception of people on the specific persons who happened to be the victims of domestic violence, most of the issues regarding domestic violence happen to men and women who are dating or married couples.
In most cases, one party would not be blamed when it comes to domestic violence, because anyone among men and women can be the abuser, perpetrator or source of the obstacle that can lead to domestic violence. Men and women are both the cause of the domestic violence they experience in their relationship or marriage from their partners.
More so, the sign of a woman beater, as well as a man beater in relationship or marriage can never be hidden but people always overlook these signs while dating or married, and rather than leave, they hope the man or woman will change and the absence of taking proper actions regarding their partner’s behavior might influence the other party to continue enjoying violating them.
The basic fact is that, some people don’t change easily, rather they only get better in hiding their nature just to unleash it when you least expect it. For instance, If a man or a woman strikes their partner once, it may pass for a crazy mistake but if it is done a second time, that is their true nature.
As a woman, you are expected to make it a duty to be loyal and respect the man in your life and if for any reason you can’t respect him then you have no business staying with him and the best thing to do is to leave the union and avoid any conflict that may lead to domestic violence, because there’s no essence for being you with him if you can not endure to be loyal and respect him. Men always want loyalty and respect from women.
In addition, some men who are saying women sometimes are the cause of domestic violence. So the latter assertion has to be balanced and objective, even though it’s quite obvious some women can be very overbearing and verbally abusive.
Any wise man should know that the weakness of women is their tongue and that is where their power lies, so any wise and responsible man must learn to ignore, walk away or ask her to leave in order to keep his sanity if she is verbally abusive, but as long you answer your name as responsible man don’t ever raise your hand to hit a woman and same applies to the women who are physically abusive towards their men.
However, there are different kinds of reasons that usually lead to the cause of domestic violence by men and women. Such reasons can be disagreement with their intimate partner, desperation when partner threatens to leave, protracted periods of unemployment, anger escalation, humiliation stemming from problems at work or other perceived failures, jealousy and envy, substance abuse like alcoholism, drug abuse, gambling addiction and depression or psychological issues, financial issues, and the likes can all lead to domestic violence on women, men and children.
Accumulattively, when it comes to married couple the reasons of domestic violence takes serious attention and some of the reasons can be because of lack of love between the couples especially when the union is joined by parents or guardians without the natural love or when the couple agreed to marry each other just for some unnecessary reasons without considering love and what marriage is all about.
So in this regard, after the marriage the couple will then realize marriage is all about a union of tolerance, patience and understanding and if they lack the latter then issues like domestic violence will supersede them.
Likewise, the moral training or upbringing of the spouse will determine how abusive he or she might be, if they are being raised by abusive parents if care is not taken they will learn from them and apply the same monstrous behavior to their partners.
Henceforth, some causes of domestic violence stems from an intersection of both environmental and individual factors. Essentially, this means that abusers learn to use abusive tactics to control others from the influence of family members, people around them, and cultural traditions as they grow from children to adults.
Sequel to that, most domestic abusers grew up witnessing domestic abuse and violence in their own homes. They learned to view physical and emotional violence as valid ways to vent anger and cope with their own internal fears and self-perception issues.
Conclusively, domestic violence must be curtailed in order to prevent it from occurring and the possible solution is that the victims of domestic violence are advised to seek refuge in cases of domestic violence to ensure that the conflict doesn’t escalate and to heal up emotionally.
Whether the decision to seek refuge from an abusive marriage will be a temporary one or a permanent one would determine on the circumstances of each individual case of abuse and on the conduct of the abuser afterwards.
Both abusers and victims of domestic violence need psychological treatment by a psychologist or by religious leaders together or individually. Religious institutions should have a viable counselling unit since in this part of the world religion plays a significant role in people’s lives.
Every society needs constant awareness and sensitization on the evils of domestic violence. Society should be made to understand that domestic violence should not be tolerated. They need to be told how to help a victim of domestic violence and what they must not do such as victim blaming and the likes.
Society needs to be made to understand that violence is never justified except it’s in self-defence when confronted with life or death. We need to know that it is better to walk away than to let the violence get to this stage.
Children should not grow up in abusive marriages, for a person who remains in an abusive marriage is exposing their children to the same influences which might make the children re-enact the same form of violence in their future families. For violence is the only form of interaction that a child witnessed between his parents, it would be hard for him to give what he does not have by way of sharing a love that he never witnessed nor received as a child.
Abused spouse should not let the children grow up in an abusive marriage so that they would not grow up damaged and live an abusive life as the norm. When an abused spouse runs from an abused marriage, they will be preserving the children from being exposed to an abnormality of the same situation they found themselves in.
Indulging from alcohol and drugs, it’s obvious alcohol could contribute to violent behaviour. Where this is the case, the abuser should reduce, or better still, stop the consumption of alcohol or drugs completely in order to prevent himself/herself from committing any act of domestic violence.
Learning appropriate forms of discipline, in this regard parents, teachers and guardians need to learn about how best to discipline a child. There is a thin line between discipline and abuse and unfortunately, this line is crossed most of the time.
Everyone who interacts with children in one way or the other, is encouraged to read books on how to properly discipline a child so that in an attempt to discipline the child, parents should not be teaching their children violence as a way of responding to disobedience. Most children watch how their parents treat relatives and house helps, they see how they violate them.
