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Background
Objectives
Method
Results
Dan's life story
Discussion
Origin of marital violence
Cessation of physical violence
Cessation of verbal/emotional abuse
Spirituality and change
Acknowledgements
References
Abstract:
The purpose of the study was to uncover: (a) reformed maritally violent men’s own accounts of how they developed through life, and (b) how and why these men stopped being maritally violent. A life story was collected in telephone interviews from reformed maritally violent men. The interviews were audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed. In this session, Dan’s (pseudonym) life-story will be discussed in depth. Dan is an American with aboriginal background. His story will reveal the major turning points in his life, and how they transformed him from a chemically dependent, aggressive man to a devoted counsellor.
Author:
Yuriko Riesen is a PhD student in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education at UBC.
Background
How do boys grow up to be maritally violent? How do maritally violent men reform themselves and become violence-free? Little is known. As far as the roots of marital violence go, evidence indicates that there is a link between childhood variables (e.g., witnessing inter-parental violence) and adulthood manifestation of marital violence (Whitefield, Anda, Dube, & Felitti, 2003). Currently available research is predominantly correlational. Such research informs one of what childhood factors are related to marital violence; however, it cannot reveal how and why these factors contribute to marital violence. Likewise, most studies that examined men’s cessation of marital violence were quantitative. In general, these studies measured violence at pre- and post-treatment to evaluate success of a particular intervention. In other words, they aimed to examine what would work to change men. Reviews of these studies (Riesen, 2003; Rosenfeld, 1992) indicate, however, that there exist serious methodological shortcomings: large attrition rates, low response rate at follow-ups. Thus, the majority of currently available research cannot adequately inform one of which particular intervention works, to say the least of how and why. In order for this field of research to advance, questions of how and why need to be examined. Reviews of intervention studies with maritally violent men (Riesen; Rosenfeld) suggest that a study using a developmental perspective and qualitative methodology appears to be promising in order to examine the roots and cessation of marital violence. Information from this study has the potential to impact on the development of intervention programs for maritally violent men. In addition, the study will contribute to the field of research on life-course development of men in the context of marital violence.
Objectives
The purpose of the study was to uncover: (a) reformed maritally violent men’s own accounts of how they developed through life, and (b) how and why these men stopped being maritally violent.
Method
A life story was collected in telephone and face-to-face interviews from six reformed maritally violent men. These men were recruited in Canada and the U.S. through media advertisements and referrals from practitioners (e.g., psychologists, counsellors, social workers, community advocates, probation officers) who worked with maritally violent men. The men: (a) were aged approximately 30 to 60 years, (b) had been physically abusive toward their female intimate partners more than once a year for a total of at least two years, and (c) have not been physically abusive to female partners for the last two years. The interviews were audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed. The interview questions were derived from the protocol developed by McAdams (1988, 1993).
Results
Presented below is Dan’s (pseudonym) life-story. Dan was an American with aboriginal background. His story revealed the major turning points in his life, and how they transformed him from a chemically dependent, aggressive man to a devoted family counsellor. In the following summary of Dan’s life-story, his actual words were used and linked together by the author of this article.
Dan’s life-story
Early Years
I was born in the States in the mid 1950's. I am half Polynesian and half Caucasian-Native American. I was adopted when I was three years old. My adopted father was Native American, and my adopted mother was Caucasian. My father was always a good provider, but had a drinking problem. To my mother he sometimes became verbally abusive. A couple of times, he was also physically abusive to her. To me and my two siblings, he was emotionally distant. My mother was very loving and dearly attached to us. I got along with my teachers all right, but not with my peers. They bullied me and I knew why that was. It was because of my colour.
Early Teenage Years
But it all changed, believe me, once my body started to grow bigger in Grade 4. All the neighbourhood kids were now smaller than me. They didn’t pick on me any more because I just started to beat them up. At the same time, I started to hang around with some Mexican kids who were as big as I was. We were smoking and playing with prescription drugs and what-not.
Dark Years
During my teenage years, I was getting more and more attracted to the tough guy images, and that got me in a lot of trouble. My parents were separated when I was 16. Shortly afterwards, I ended up moving in with this old man. Everything went worse from then on. That was my turning point, a massively negative one for sure. This man was 40 years old; a pretty tough guy, a gangster type, and a heroin user. At that time, I thought I was a grown man and knew what I was doing. I was introduced to heroin and got addicted. In order to support my addiction, I engaged in criminal activities and got arrested. For the next 20 years, I was in and out of prison. Whenever I got out of prison, I hung around with those men and women who were also using and drinking. Those men I was with didn’t treat their women with respect; They became physically and emotionally abusive toward their women in order to have their own ways I treated my girlfriends in the same way; I was verbally abusive. I thought that that was normal. As far as my physical violence went, I was twice physically violent to Sheila (pseudonym), my then girlfriend. I was about 20. The second time when I hurt her, I really made up my mind never to physically hurt a woman again. Never! When I finally realized how much physical damage I could do to her, something did change in me. Since then, I was never physically violent to women, even when women became physically aggressive and verbally nasty to me, and even when I was drunk.
The biggest turning point in my life came to me like this. That was when I was doing my fifth prison term. Just to break the monotony, I participated in a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. At this meeting, there were two men that came in. I knew them, especially one of them very well. We used to shoot up heroin together and do a lot of criminal activities together. But now he wore clean clothes and was clean-shaven and he had this look in his eyes, like, I don’t know what it was, but I wanted it. I wanted it badly. It was very attractive. I talked to him after the meeting and he said to me, “You know what, Dan, you don’t have to live this way no more, if you don’t want to.” At that time I didn’t have any clue what he was talking about. But after a few more years, when I was still doing the same old stuff I was doing, those words came to me so clear. I started to ask myself, “Why am I doing this?” I came to realize that I was getting really tired of doing my prison time and that I was not living my life, so to speak. The main problem was my using and drinking. So, I started to reach out to do something different. During my last prison term, I got involved with a drug recovery program.
New Life
While in prison, I started to participate in the purification ceremonies in the sweat lodge. I went to a ceremony once a week throughout the months. During the ceremonies, it became clear to me what I really wanted in life. I wanted to live a life that is free from drug usage and criminal activity. I really wanted to change! I wanted to become a better human being. I came to believe that that’s what the Creator wants me to do. Through the ceremonies the Creator showed me my healing path. I became aware of what I really was. Those were the most significant times of my life.
I got out of prison in 1992, and continued thinking deeply of a life of recovery. I stayed involved with the drug recovery program, and kept going to the ceremonies. I also started to work in construction. I met Jody (pseudonym), my current partner, and we started to live together.
Around 1995, my counsellor suggested that I should apply for a job as a co-ordinator of a domestic violence prevention program. It resulted in one of the first Native Americans’ domestic violence program in the States, which I'm very proud of.
Because I was doing this work and also because I hadn't been physically violent to women for a long time, I thought I was OK. But the most profound learning experience as a man, advocate, and counsellor came from Jody, my partner. One day after a year and a half since I started my work, she sat me down and talked about how I would become loud and intimidating to her when we argued over something. To tell the truth, I had never realized that I was verbally abusive to her during those moments. I never knew what I was doing. From that day on, I really started to look at myself and make a real conscious effort to change my behaviour. I came to realize that I had been still violent, though not in a physical way. Nowadays, when Jody and I have a heated discussion, I am very aware of my emotional state; how my voice is and how my body language is. I never go there now; I stop before I become threatening and intimidating. And I share this learning with my groups of Native men. To many men, treating women as I was treating Jody has become their second nature. But, that’s not the way it should be. I tell them that’s not how the Creator wants men to relate to women.
Becoming Violent
Looking back on my life and trying to figure out how I became violent in intimate relationships, I could see how I had learned it from men around me. My adopted father and all other men around me treated their women in the same way; without respect. It was as if they had permission to use violence on women in order to have the last word. All adult men around me believed in that.
Future
My purpose of my life is to help with ones with the similar background, who came from a dark past, to show them that we are capable of change. I came into this world to help men and women turn from using and drinking, and change their lives. I know there are hundreds and hundreds of people that need it. I now know that that’s what the Creator wants me to do. My dream? When I look back and see myself sitting in a prison cell 20 years ago, now is the dream. My dream of those dark days came true and now I am living in it. When I say to others, “Peace be with you,” I really mean it. I really mean it because I know how it is not to live without peace in oneself. I was living without peace for so many years.
Discussion
Although Dan’s life-story explored several important developmental themes, such as (a) developmental continuities (e.g., growing up as a coloured man), (b) turning points, (c) the effects of a certain time and place on developing individuals (e.g., growing up in a time of easily available drugs), and (d) interpersonal relationships with significant others (e.g., parents, siblings, peers, teachers, girlfriends), the remaining section of this article will discuss mainly the origin and cessation of his marital violence. The analysis and discussion of his whole life-story, as well as those of the rest of the five participants, can be found elsewhere (Riesen, 2005).
Origin of marital violence
According to Dan, he learned to be violent in intimate relationships as the result of witnessing interparental violence and interacting with those “tough” men who were around him during the first 30 years of his life. This result is consistent with: a) Bandura’s (1971) social learning theory, and b) previous correlational studies that showed that those boys who witnessed interparental violence were more likely to grow up to become abusive husbands compared to their counterparts who did not witness such violence (Bevan & Higgins, 2002; Kalmuss, 1984; Markowitz, 2001; McBurnett et al., 2001; Murphy, Meyer, & O’Leary, 1993; Rosenbaum & O’Leary, 1981; Whitefield et al., 2003). According to Dan, his verbal abusiveness to intimate partners became so natural to him that it was almost his second nature.
Cessation of physical violence
Dan’s decision to stop being physically violent to an intimate partner was made in a split second. The realization that he had physical force strong enough to kill a person came to him as if he was hit by thunder. Since then, he has never been physically violent to women. Natural change such as this has not been documented in the literature. The reason for this may be that previous intervention studies of cessation of marital violence have focused exclusively on men’s change facilitated by extrinsic factors such as counselling or legal sanctions including arrest.
Cessation of verbal/emotional abuse
Although the present study’s focus was on cessation of physical violence, Dan shared his experiences of cessation of verbal abuse to his intimate partner. According to Dan, he was counselled by his partner whom he described as courageous. As one practitioner in the field commented (J. Robson, personal communication, November 6, 2004), it is not common for abusive men to listen to their partners and change their abusive behaviours as a result of input from them. Dan himself explained the reason for his total acceptance of his partner’s words as follows: a) he anticipated that she would leave him unless he changed, and b) his desire to become a good counsellor/co-ordinator in the family violence prevention program was so strong that he was willing to acknowledge his abusiveness and take it as a chance to improve himself.
Spirituality and change
Dan’s spiritual connection to his Creator was the source of his reformation. The contribution of spirituality to men’s change has been largely ignored in the literature of marital violence, with a few exceptions (e.g., Tello, 1998). Dan’s story was in accordance with Tello’s thesis that spirituality is a critical element in the healing processes of men, particularly, men of colour.
Acknowledgements
This study could not have been completed without the support from the participating men and Ms. Alayne Hamilton of the Victoria Family Violence Prevention Society of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
References
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