Tag Archives: abusive relationships

Emotionally Abusive Relationships and Healing: In My Own Words

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The following post comes to us via Ava Budavari-Glenn, a political communications major and a nonprofit communications minor who is entering her sophomore year at Emerson College. She is a writer whose work focuses mainly on advocacy, and a community organizer who has worked for nonprofit organizations and political campaigns. She is a media and communications intern at Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona.

Part I: Signs of an Abusive Relationship

I’m not ready to tell my story yet. I don’t know when or if I ever will be. But I am writing for my younger self, who was in the middle of a toxic situation and didn’t have the language to understand what was happening to her. I have not studied this academically — I am just talking about my own experience. And sometimes that’s what people need to listen to. I know I did and still do.

Emotional abuse is an attempt to control another person through behavior that causes psychological trauma or distress. Continue reading to identify the warning signs of an emotionally abusive relationship.

They body shame you. It may be in a sarcastic tone or disguised as a joke, just ways for them to tease you because they “like you.” It may also be covert; they might not directly call you fat or ugly, but find other ways to degrade your body. Tell you you’re too slow. You don’t run fast enough. You’re not strong enough. They may make fun of your athletic ability, call you names even if you’re just playing a game for fun.

Their mood is unreliable. Everyone has good days and bad days, but the kind of day anyone is having should not determine how they treat people. They’re happy to see you one minute and completely ignoring you the next. They are flirting with you one minute and glaring at you 15 minutes later. You haven’t changed your behavior or what you have said. Whether you can have a nice conversation is totally dependent on their behavior, giving them complete control of the situation. They make you feel like everything is your fault. You find yourself asking questions like, “What am I doing wrong to make this person so upset?” That is a power imbalance, which is one way they trap you: It makes you think that “they have good moments too, they are not always bad” — because if they were always horrible it would make it easier for you to leave. This back-and-forth unpredictability is a way to control you. Continue reading →

Kaity’s Story Leads to the Formation of P.E.A.C.E.

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The following guest post comes to us from Bobbi Sudberry, mother to Kaitlyn Marie Sudberry and founder of Kaity’s Way, a Phoenix-based nonprofit with the mission to advocate for healthy teen relationships by providing education, skills, and tools to youth and their allies.

Kaitlyn Marie Sudberry was a beautiful, vivacious, artistically talented young lady. Her ambition was to make the world a better place; however, her goal was cut short when she became the victim of an ex-boyfriend’s rage. She was not alone. While February is National Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month, teen dating violence, like domestic violence, happens every day of the year. It is a global issue. And you can help! Did you know that 81 percent of parents admit they had no idea their teen was experiencing dating violence? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Psychological Association acknowledge intimate partner violence among teens is very prevalent and should not be ignored. The Sudberrys and Kaity’s Way strive to help prevent others from experiencing a similar loss through P.E.A.C.E. — Patience, Empathy, Acceptance, Caring, Equality.

Kaity’s Story

On Monday, January 28, 2008, our lives were shattered, literally obliterated. What we knew as normal no longer existed after we heard the devastating news that afternoon. One of our children, our 17-year-old daughter, Kaitlyn “Kaity” Marie Sudberry, had been murdered by her ex-boyfriend not more than 100 feet from our front door. That morning when we exchanged I love yous, how was I to know that it would be the last time I would hear those words from her?

Our children want and need education on teen dating violence.

Kaity was a sweet, fun-loving girl who had her whole life ahead of her. She was a high-school senior, and she had been accepted to Northern Arizona University to study wildlife sciences. She loved nature, animals, gardening, vacationing, family time, sports, music, art — and she loved trying new things. She was my shopping, football, and gardening buddy. Why is she not here doing those things with me today?

She was 16 years old when she met Daniel Byrd at school. They became friends, and then started dating. She brought him home to meet my husband and me. He was very polite and mannerly and held a good conversation with us. He said he liked Moon Valley High School and was on target to graduate. He told us a little bit about his family. He seemed like a very nice young man. He appeared to treat Kaity very well. They did the usual things that teens do when dating. They went to the movies, walked to and from school together, hung out with friends. It appeared to be a normal, healthy teenage dating relationship. Continue reading →

April Is National Sexual Assault Awareness Month

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A Planned Parenthood Arizona supporter shared her story of sexual assault with us in observance of National Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

I had never had a boyfriend before and it was flattering to have someone dote on me and give me all of his attention. And he was a wonderful friend. We could talk to one another for hours, especially about music and art. Was I attracted to him? Not really, but did I need to be? He was someone to hang around with; a kindred spirit. College was my first priority. But, after a couple of months of friendship, he was insistent on more. I held him off for a few weeks, but he was not leaving the topic alone.

“I love you. Don’t you love me? If you love me, then sex is the next step. It is the ultimate connection.” Continue reading →

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

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  • ribbonsThe imbeciles in the state of Kentucky are trying to say that a ban on gay marriage isn’t discriminatory because it bars both gay and straight people from same-sex unions. To me, this is akin to saying you’re going to ban breastfeeding in public places, but you’re going to ban both men and women from breastfeeding, and thus, it’s not discrimination against women! See, magical thinking! No logic necessary!! (ABC News)
  • Arizona Republicans are such big fans of lying that they’ve passed a law that requires doctors to lie to women about abortions being reversible. (The Guardian)
  • Tampons may one day help detect endometrial cancer. (Smithsonian Mag)
  • Why settle for No. 3 when you can strive for No. 1? Apparently, Texas isn’t satisfied having *only* the third highest HIV infection rate in the country, so they’ve cut funding for HIV screenings in favor of abstinence education. Makes all the sense in the world, doesn’t it? #CompassionateConservatism (RH Reality Check)
  • Looks like the fate of Texas will soon be very similar to that of Scott County, Indiana. Planned Parenthood was the county’s sole provider of HIV testing, but the state cut funding and several clinics were forced to close. They’re now suffering an HIV outbreak that its governor has called “an epidemic.” (HuffPo)
  • Speaking of Indiana, their ”religious freedom” bill caused a huge ruckus this week. But instead of just repealing the stupid thing, they’ve “revised it” to ban businesses from denying services to people on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. (IndyStar)
  • Wow, so Indiana just keeps on delivering the worst of the worst, don’t they? Purvi Patel has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for feticide and “neglect of a dependent” for having a miscarriage that may have been caused by an abortion pill. She’s not the first woman to face such charges, and these predatory, intrusive laws pretty much guarantee she won’t be the last. (MSNBC)
  • We often hear about what miscarriages cost women emotionally, but what about the financial cost? It’s pretty steep. One woman’s miscarriage cost her tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills. (Slate)
  • Maryland has opened an abortion clinic that’s being compared to a “spa.” Naturally, women being able to receive kindness and comfort while undergoing a completely legal medical procedure has some people outraged. (WaPo)
  • The Navajo Nation is being referred to as a “condom desert.” (Al Jazeera America)
  • Hard to express how heartbreaking a read this last piece is — women in abusive relationships suffer in ways many people just can’t fully grasp. They are more likely to contract HIV and less likely to use birth control. And when they do use birth control, it often has to be done via “secret” methods. (Jezebel)

The Family Revolution and the Egalitarian Tradition in Black History

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Sadie T. Alexander

In the interview with Stephanie Coontz featured earlier this month, we discussed the many changes in American households that have occurred in the 50 years since Betty Friedan published her landmark book, The Feminine Mystique. Friedan’s book was a literary catalyst that helped usher in a family revolution, in which the norm of one-earner households was replaced by the norm of the two-earner households we know today; a change that gave many women more equality in their marriages.

A strong egalitarian tradition has long been a part of black history.

What might surprise some readers is that we could have also discussed the many changes that had occurred already, even as Friedan was still writing her manuscript. Among black Americans, much of what Friedan wrote was not prescient, but dated. As Coontz wrote in A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s, “Long before Betty Friedan insisted that meaningful work would not only fulfill women as individuals but also strengthen their marriages, many African-American women shared the views of Sadie T. Alexander, an influential political leader in Philadelphia, who argued in 1930 that working for wages gave women the ‘peace and happiness’ essential to a good home life.”

While sorting out the book’s legacy, Coontz wanted to explain what The Feminine Mystique had gotten right and wrong about American families and women’s domestic roles in the 1960s. A particular problem Coontz addressed was how The Feminine Mystique ignored the experiences of black and other minority women — an omission cited by many critics since the book’s publication. A book Coontz found invaluable in addressing that omission was Bart Landry’s Black Working Wives: Pioneers of the American Family Revolution (University of California Press, 2002). Landry did not write his book as a critique of The Feminine Mystique. Rather, it was while looking at historical statistics on wives’ employment that he decided to write in greater detail about an intriguing difference he noticed between black and white wives: “the employment rates of black wives were about ten years ahead of those of white wives.” Continue reading →