When we’re in love, sometimes it’s easy to ignore the discomfort we feel in the relationship. We convince ourselves that we’re being overly sensitive, overreacting, or that the issues are temporary and will resolve on their own. This denial traps us in a cycle of arguments and apologies. Because we care deeply, we want to believe the apologies are genuine, the problems are solved, and happiness will return.
But that happy resolution never seems to arrive. Instead, the cycle continues, and worsens. Each fight feels more intense than the last. What starts as disagreements grows into shouting matches, more frequent, more aggressive, and more damaging. Before we realize it, we’ve crossed into dangerous territory: violence in the relationship has started to escalate, and we fail to see that it cannot truly stop as long as we remain in the relationship.
Violence in relationships often follows a pattern of escalation, where each act of aggression opens the door to more severe abuse until the situation becomes unbearable and dangerous to your life. A global study carried out in 2018 found that up to 492 million women aged 15–49 had experienced physical or sexual violence, or both, from an intimate partner[1]. In Canada, 44% of women who have been in an intimate partner relationship reported experiencing some form of psychological, physical, or sexual abuse in the context of an intimate relationship in their lifetime since the age of 15[2]. That’s almost half of the population of women. It is a harsh reality that shows how pervasive Intimate Partner Violence is in our society, and a call to raise awareness to start taking all forms of violence against women seriously.
Many of us imagine the word violence as something extreme that does not resemble our relationships, but take a moment with this activity; Think of a thermometer, which indicates whether you have a fever. If left unchecked, the fever can worsen. Below is a list of behaviors commonly identified as abusive or violent. They are not ranked in order of severity, but it can help us recognize if we’ve been in an abusive relationship and whether the behavior is escalating. As a fever, if these patterns are not addressed, they can, in the worst cases, escalate to life-threatening situations. Every relationship is unique, and each person’s experience is different, but all forms of abuse are significant and deserve attention.
Read the list and see if this may apply to you, or to a relationship of someone else you may know.
Ask yourself: Has my partner ever done any of these?
How often has this behavior occurred?
How many of these behaviors have you experienced?
What type of aggression does each behavior represent, is it verbal, psychological, financial, physical?
Has the behavior escalated over time? Did it start with subtle criticism and progress to more serious aggression?
How did it make you feel? Did you feel fear, discomfort, pain?
Does your partner use language or actions that make you feel small, like your opinions and feelings don’t matter?
Have you ever felt physical fear for your safety?
If you found yourself answering to any of the questions above, or you identified any behaviors from the list in your own relationship, or the relationship of someone else you may know, it may be a sign of Intimate Partner Violence.
Continue to part 3.
[1] Global, regional, and national prevalence estimates of physical or sexual, or both, intimate partner violence against women in 2018. Sardinha, Lynnmarie et al. The Lancet, Volume 399, Issue 10327, 803 - 813
[2] Fact sheet: Intimate partner violence. Canada.ca. Canada, W. a. G. E. (2024, July 31). https://www.canada.ca/en/women-gender-equality/gender-based-violence/intimate-partner-violence.html
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