The link between intimate partner violence and the holiday season
Let’s all enjoy the holidays this year! Let there be love, companionship, joy, and sharing. Let us feel free to gather with family and friends, to enjoy a meal, a walk in the snow, ice-skating, or tobogganing. Let the exchange of gifts be meaningful. Let the kids have fun. Let’s all be safe!
Unfortunately, this last wish for the holiday season is not possible for everyone. There is a well-known link between increases in domestic violence and the holidays.
Before we start to discuss that though, let’s remember what abuse is. It is about control and power. It is about the abuser’s desire to make sure that things go their way. It comes in many forms – from physical violence to psychological coercion to emotional manipulation to financial control. It is never the abused person’s fault.
If you need help you can call our crisis line (613 476 2787)
or the Assaulted Women’s Helpline (1 866 863 0511).
There are many reasons why abuse increases over the holidays.
- Abusers are home from work, so they have more opportunities to exert their control.
- Alcohol and other substances are often consumed in excess.
- The holidays increase stress in households. Finances are stretched. Emotions are heightened. The kids are excited. You’re dreading seeing a family member. The fun aunt bought your kids really noisy toys. You want to pull off the perfect event. You name your own source of stress.
These explanations can often get tangled together causing even more risk for women and children in the home.
They are also often used by abusers to excuse their behaviour. Abusers gaslight their partner, claiming that they can’t help being abusive because of stress or because they weren’t sober. It’s important to remember that these excuses are not valid.
Abusers have chosen how to abuse, who to abuse, and when to abuse. They might engage in abusive behaviours with other people over the holidays, but they don’t enact an ongoing pattern of abuse over a period of weeks, months and years. Bad behaviour is one thing. Abuse is another.
One more reason
There is one more stress, and one more explanation, for increased intimate partner violence over the holidays. This stress is a deep stressor on abusers. It is the stress of losing control.
Many abusers isolate their partners, but over the holidays maintaining this isolation runs counter to the narrative they want the world to believe. They want others to think that the relationship is a good one, a strong one, a loving one. So, abusers must allow their partners to participate in social situations, or risk drawing attention to the isolation they impose. And when they do so they no longer have complete control of the situation.
What is added stress for the abuser is added risk for the person being abused. This can mean that they spend their holidays being extra vigilant, attentive to their abuser or at least his mood and behaviour. What should be a joyful time, instead becomes a period of increased watchfulness and fear.
Women often stay in these situations over the season because they want to keep up appearances. They want to ensure everyone knows that everything is fine.
They also love their kids and want them to have the best Christmas ever. The efforts that they make to shield their children can intensify. They may also put a lot of effort into maintaining or repairing the relationship between their kids and their kids’ fathers.
What next?
Calls to police will often increase over the holidays, while calls to shelters and other supports will sometimes fall. This might seem like a contradiction. But there is a kind of sense to it. Remember that calls to police are actions that can take place in public. Often, making them in public is part of the point, a way to try to get the abuser to reduce the abuse.
And this tactic can work. Abusers will sometimes moderate their behaviour just because someone has said that they are calling the police. And if police do arrive, abusers will usually be on their best behaviour. They want the police to believe they are the rational caring ones, and that the woman they have been abusing (and anyone else who might have called the police) is irrational and overreacting.
However, calls to shelters are lower over the holidays. This is because a call to a shelter is something that a woman wants to do privately. Some of the first questions shelters ask women is “are you safe right now?”, and “Is it safe to talk?” Women can’t find that private place and private time over the holiday season because people are coming and going. There are so many activities to attend. There is no safe time or place to try to make a call.
When the season ends, women are relatively safer. They have, relatively speaking, more private time, and safer places, like when they are at work. It is then that women can think about making a call to shelters. Hence the rise in calls after the holidays are over.
Another explanation for why calls to shelters rise after the holidays is that women love their kids. They stay through the holidays, hoping to make them special for their kids. But when the holidays are over, they see that instead of giving their kids a great Christmas, they gave them a holiday season full of fear, abuse, and violence. They start to leave after the holidays because they see how bad things really are.
No one right way
If you are experiencing violence and abuse right now, please remember that there is no right way to spend the holidays. There are many many reasons to stay. There are many many reasons to leave. Only you can know what’s the right decision for you.
Regardless of the decision you make, remember that there are resources for you. You don’t have to be leaving a difficult situation to access resources. You can access them to learn more about the resources, and to have support while you are in the difficult situation.
Learn about your local shelters through mulberry gender violence based services information resource at www.mulberryfinder.ca.
And if you live in PEC you can call us any time. Our crisis line is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The number is 613 476 2787.