Photo courtesy of Sneha
About ten years ago, I was staying with a university friend and her family. During my stay, I noticed the way my friend’s husband spoke to her: it was often belittling and demeaning and seemed to be intended to provoke her in front of me. He would decry her competence to do things in the house, told her how hopeless she was at doing anything effectively, refused to help her out one evening when she was required at her parents’ home by ordering pizza for their children so she would not have to cook and criticised her when she had forgotten to turn the bread making machine on the night before so he could have fresh bread for his breakfast.
On one very bad night, she was on the computer emailing a former teacher of hers who had suffered the tragic loss of a child when her husband stormed in and ordered her off the computer and told her to go and give their children their evening bath. She tried to protest but he said he didn’t care what she was doing, their children should be her first priority.
It was awful to witness, especially staying with them as a guest, not wanting to say anything to upset the children. After I had left, I emailed her expressing my views about what I had witnessed and how unseemly and unacceptable it was for her to be continually disrespected in this way by her husband. I asked her if she was safe, physically safe, because the level of aggression he expressed towards her seemed very disturbing. He was furious at my detailing his conduct in the email and she had to write to me to say she could no longer communicate with me. Apparently, according to her, “He was worse because you were here. He isn’t usually this bad.”
I did not know then that what I had been seeing was narcissistic partner abuse in action: a man insecure in his status and masculinity, exhibiting the compulsive need to control and berate his partner, show her what her “place” should be and demarcate her duties in the household. She was under siege in their home and spent a lot of time concealing her inflamed feelings under a smooth surface out of personal shame and loyalty to him even though he treated her so badly.
When I saw the interview that the beauty entrepreneur Rosh Kumarasinghe did with Aritha Wickremasinghe on Pulse, her descriptions of her own experience of marital violence reminded me of what I had witnessed in my friend’s situation: not the physical violence but the emotional and verbal abuse. The escalation of conflict to the point of ruining any source of personal pleasure or joy for their partner. The way every occasion for celebration becomes a competition for the spotlight and an ordeal inflicted by the perpetrator.
On a profound level, the experience of domestic abuse and intimate partner violence are deeply disempowering for a woman. To her surprise and growing horror, she realises she has given access to herself to a person who seems committed to breaking her down. To build a successful business and a productive life from that experience is a great achievement. But it starts with a mindset.
Many survivors of intimate partner violence are not only physically beaten and hurt but emotionally weakened to the point that they want to withdraw from life and not be seen in public. In the insta-obsessed world we live in with its focus on appearances, addressing a woman’s wish not to hide in humiliation but to be whole and healed and out in society, connecting productively with her community instead of isolated and shamed, is an important aspect of what the BARE project is aiming to do. It is appropriate that the project is being funded by the business Rosh founded, Beauty By Rosh.
The cultural stigma attached to Gender-Based Violence (GBV) and Domestic Violence (DV) have, until very recently, allocated blame to the survivor of violence rather than the perpetrators. With the courage women have shown to speak out about the shameful way they have been treated by their partners, the hidden abuse is now being brought into public forums and mainstream media and the victimization status that women were given is now being transformed into storytelling which is worthy of respect and which opens people’s eyes to what has been going on behind the closed doors of domestic life in every socio-economic sphere from villages to ancestral homes to luxury townhouses and apartments.
Another friend shared with me the texts sent to her by her violently abusive husband, who she is in process of divorcing.
Rosh had mentioned in the Pulse interview that, when she first became internationally recognized for her business in 2020, her then partner had felt demeaned by her success and threatened by it. He had felt the need to start verbally abusing her competence and her appearance, targeting her sources of self worth and the basis of her brand image. As her success grew his abuse increased in direct correlation.
The verbal degradation she endured included being called a bitch and other demeaning names, the contempt becoming amplified in impact and even more terrible in the context of an intimate and domestic relationship. The man clearly felt emasculated in the context of their domestic life, as did my friend’s husband, since in both cases the couple was living in a house owned by the woman’s parents. His idea of “being a man” and “calling the shots” in his household was disrupted by the parental support his partner enjoyed, and in Rosh’s case, her own business success. The characteristic response of a narcissist to fears of losing control over his partner is to try to erode any support or affirmation his partner has from her friends, to isolate her and try to erode her independence and autonomy.
One would hope for support and respect and encouragement and belief from a partner in life if the purpose of the partnership is to enable growth and fulfillment for both parties. Instead, the woman in DV situations is often subjected to a form of domestic terrorism and at the same time expected to show a happy and smiling face in public so that her partner’s “anger issues” are not exposed. And behind the scenes, she is blamed for everything that does not go the way he wishes; her status falls from that of a princess to a punching bag in a matter of a few months or years.
In my third friend’s case, her angry ex directed a stream of accusatory texts at her, calling her a “bitch”, a “slut” and a “whore”. All three women are beautiful, admired for their beauty and grace as girls and women and yet all three of them were physically insulted by their partners. This man mocked his ex partner, mother of his children, saying “You think you’re so hot, with your fat ass full of cellulitis and your saggy tits, lol, you fucking dumb bitch”. He told her he had photographed her without her clothes on while she was asleep and would send the photos to all her relatives, telling them what an immoral woman she was because “Once a whore, always a whore”. He described her professional activities and business enterprises as a ‘joke… Any retard could do that’. He said “Fucking bitch, I will be praying for you to die in some accident”.
Both Rosh and my friend were harassed for years after their relationships ended, long after they were no longer in physical proximity to their abusers, whenever these men felt the need to feel “big” again by belittling their former partner. It is the same mentality that leads some men to trap women in basements or lock them in rooms making them prisoners to ensure their constant availability and accessibility and so they do not lose control of them. Such individuals clearly do not believe that the women would stay willingly if they were not coerced. They do not want to allow them to be in a position to withhold consent.
We live in a world today where many of the rights women have fought for are being taken away and called into question in what seems to be a global backlash against feminism and the #MeToo movement. Women are being offered the TradWife models of happiness and variations of subjugation instead of selfhood.
Seeking personal fulfillment, starry eyed with dreams of romantic love, many find themselves stripped bare of dignity as well as financial and emotional resources. Their sense of personal identity and self worth are essential aspects of human life they have been culturally trained to outsource to men who will look after them and anyone whose approval they need, professionally and socially, in order to survive.
But for a man to be able to really care for his partner, he must have self respect and a sense of worth that goes beyond his self presentation and his social status: he must not be an emasculated man, compulsively covering his inadequacies and averting his gaze from his own challenges. By measuring himself as a provider only in economic terms, a man limits his idea of every woman he connects with to that of a person looking to exchange herself, her love and support in a material transaction. It is relatively easy, then, to view her as a “whore”.
Even the pernicious language used by incels and their female apologists outlining digital conduct books and how to guidelines on how to be a “high value” man or woman shows us how far consumerism and materialistic culture have encroached into any ideals of psychological or spiritual development. Empathy, emotional resilience, self awareness and openness in communication are needed in intimate relationships, particularly in the stressful world in which we live. That requires respect from each partner to the other. What begins with verbal abuse often escalates into physical violence.
Women in Sri Lanka, in contrast to those in the so called First World, are now increasing their awareness and their understanding of the importance of the rights they have and the responsibilities they have to themselves to seek – and know they deserve – only the best standard of treatment and conduct from others.
A home should be a place of safety and solace for all those who live in it, not a war zone or contested territory. Many women today are finding that they need to exit situations in which they are continually undermined and disrespected and start with finding a sense of home and safety first in themselves before inviting or accepting a partner into their life to share it with them.