SAFETY ALERT: If you are in danger, please call 911, your local hotline, or (in the U.S.) the National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 or TTY 1-800-787-3224. Please review these safety tips.

What is Domestic Violence?

Domestic violence is a pattern of coercive and assaultive behaviors that one former or current intimate partner uses against the other. Often the abuse begins subtly and progresses over time. The aim is to gain power and control and trap the partner in the relationship.

Forms of Abuse

Physical Abuse

Physical abuse is a powerful way that an abusive person gets and keeps their partner under control and it instills an environment of constant fear.  Physical violence may include: hitting, punching, kicking, slapping, strangling, smothering, using or threatening to use weapons, shoving, interrupting your sleep, throwing things, destroying property, hurting or killing pets, and denying medical treatment.

Sexual Abuse

Sexual abuse may include: physically forcing sex, making you feel fearful about saying no to sex, forcing sex with other partners, forcing you to participate in demeaning or degrading sexual acts, violence or name calling during sex, and denying contraception or protection from sexually transmitted diseases.

Emotional Abuse

Emotional abuse can include: constant put downs or criticisms, name calling, “crazy making”, acting superior, minimizing the abuse or blaming you for their behavior, threatening and making you feel fearful, isolating you from family and friends, excessive jealously, accusing you of having affairs, and watching where you go and who you talk to.

Financial Abuse

Some forms of financial abuse include: giving you an allowance, not letting you have your own money, hiding family assets, running up debt, interfering with your job, and ruining your credit. It is so powerful that many victims of abuse describe it as the main reason that they stayed in an abusive relationship or went back to one.

How to know if you are in a financially abusive relationship

Does your partner:

• Keep you from having money of your own?

• Put you on an “allowance” that is not enough to pay for basic needs like food, clothing and shelter?

• Hide money and information about the bank accounts?

• Forbid you from working?

• Sabotage you at work by making frequent telephone calls, text messages or stalking you at the job site?

• Overuse your credit cards or refuse to pay the bills?

• Force you to write bad checks?

• Prevent you from obtaining or having access to credit cards?

• Force you to work in a family business for little or no pay?

• Refuse to work to help support the family?

• Force you to turn over your benefit payments or threaten to report you for “cheating” on your benefits?

• Force you to cash in, sell or sign over any financial assets, property or inheritance?

This list is by no means exhaustive; economic abuse may include other forms of controlling behavior. 

What to Do if You Are Experiencing Domestic Violence

Through the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-SAFE [7233] or TTY 1-800-787-3224), help is available to callers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Hotline advocates are available for victims and anyone calling on their behalf to provide crisis intervention, safety planning, information and referrals to agencies in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Assistance is available in English and Spanish with access to more than 170 languages through interpreter services. If you or someone you know is frightened about something in your relationship, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

The National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline (www.loveisrespect.org, 1-866-331-9474, or TTY 1-866-331-8453) provides help and resources, including confidential online support, for teens who are concerned about what is going on in their relationships.

To learn about nearby domestic violence shelters, victim advocacy programs, or other services for victims, contact your state's domestic violence coalition. A complete list of up-to-date contact information for all domestic and sexual violence coalitions across the United States and its Territories can be found at www.VAWnet.org. Here are additional helpful resources:

• Safety Planning by the National Domestic Violence Hotline
• Calling the Police by the Safe Space
• Know Your Rights by the Safe Space

Sources for this fact sheet:

National Network to End Domestic Violence. “Forms of Abuse.” About Domestic Violence. http://www.nnedv.org/resources/stats/gethelp/formsofabuse.html. Last accessed: October 25, 2010.

Postmus, Judy L. (October 2010). “Economic Empowerment of Domestic Violence Survivors.” Applied Research Forum: National Online Resource Center on Violence Against Women.