Whats the Difference Between Violence and Abuse?

Key Takeaways:

1. Violence is often physical and can occur between strangers or acquaintances, while abuse involves a pattern of power and control—often without physical violence—within close relationships.
2. Abuse can take many non-violent forms, including emotional, financial, technological and spiritual tactics that cause deep psychological harm.
3. Understanding the difference between violence and abuse helps survivors validate their experiences, recognize harmful patterns and make informed decisions about safety and healing.

As a domestic violence survivor or someone supporting a survivor, you may wonder what the difference is between the terms “violence” and “abuse.” Understanding these labels and what they mean in your situation can help you make plans that may move you toward safety. Here’s what to know.

Physical and Non-Physical Violence

Violence is typically thought of as a physical act. With physical violence, someone intentionally uses force or acts aggressively in such a way that they hurt a person or damage something. Physical violence shows up in many places in our culture. It could be committed by one person or by multiple people, and it could target one person or multiple people: 

Examples of physical violence include:

• Hitting or punching
• Kicking
• Spitting
• Sexual assault
• Using a weapon
• Physically preventing someone from moving or leaving

Physical violence may look like any of the following scenarios:

• A person striking another in a fight, not necessarily in a relationship context.
• A mass shooter acting alone to injure or kill several people.
• A gang targeting a single person for a violent punishment.
• A group of soldiers attacking a group of enemy soldiers. 

But violence isn’t only physical. Nonphysical violence can be any act that attempts to cause pain, which can include emotional and  psychological pain. Examples of non-physical violence include:

• A child bullying a classmate.
• An employee repeatedly harassing a colleague.
• Threatening to burn down someone’s house in retaliation.
• Isolating a partner from their family and friends.
• Making racist remarks toward someone else.
• Threatening to release personal information about someone to force them to do something.

Legal Definitions

Assault involves a threat or attempt to cause harmful or offensive contact with another person, while battery refers to the actual harmful or offensive contact itself. Assault does not necessarily include physical contact, only the reasonable fear of imminent harm, whereas battery does include contact. 

Relationships and Violence

Abusers may commit violence within a relationship, but that violence may not qualify as abuse. A person could be violent toward a partner, sibling, parent, friend or coworker without trying to exert power and control over them. A single occurrence of violence may be harmful, but may not be part of an ongoing pattern of abuse.

Violence could also occur between people who don’t know each other well, or between strangers. Aggressive road rage, for example, would be violent but not abusive because it’s a one time occurrence. And children can be violent, especially if they have witnessed domestic violence, but that’s not the same as abuse. Aggression and behavior problems are symptoms of children who have experienced trauma.  

What Is Abuse?

Abuse, often referred to as domestic violence or intimate partner violence,  is when one person exerts a pattern of power and control over another person. These two people don’t need to be in an intimate relationship, they could be roommates, a teacher and student, or a parent and child – the key here is that there is a pattern of power and control.  Abuse may or may not include physical violence. Abuse could also be financial, psychological, emotional, technological or spiritual. It may involve coercion or manipulation and multiple types of abuse can happen at the same time.

Key Differences Between Abuse and Violence

Abuse is typically committed in the context of intimate partners, family members or others in close personal relationships. Violence can be an abuse tactic, but can also happen between strangers, acquaintances or within institutions.

Abuse can sometimes be a cycle: Tension builds, an incident by an abuser is committed, you reconcile, and there’s a calm period before tension rises again.

Legally, violence is more clearly defined than abuse. Acts like making threats, hitting or pushing someone, or striking someone with an object or weapon are considered violent. However, more clarity around what abuse looks like is being legally defined with coercive control laws being passed in an increasing number of states and countries.

It’s common for people to think that abuse is only physical or violent. Domestic violence survivors in movies and TVs are often portrayed as women wearing sunglasses to cover up a black eye. Individuals may not think that abuse tactics like these, which may or may not involve physical violence are, in fact, abusive. But they are. 

Abuse can look different based on culture, gender, socioeconomic status or marginalized identity. These factors can make abuse harder to recognize or report. 

As a survivor, you could be facing non-violent tactics like these, with or without physical violence:

• Financial abuse: Cutting off your access to income or finances can make you dependent or vulnerable.
• Psychological abuse: Manipulating your emotions or criticizing, isolating or gaslighting you could reduce your confidence.
• Spiritual abuse: Controlling you based on your religious beliefs could isolate you.
• Technological abuse: You could be stalked, harassed or coerced via text, social media posts or email.
• Sexual abuse: Coercing, manipulating or pressuring you into a sexual act is a type of abuse that can cause feelings of helplessness and disempowerment.
• Stalking: Making a person feel distressed or unsafe by watching them, calling or messaging them, tracking them or using other unwanted behaviors toward them.

Even without physical violence, forms of abuse like these can cause deep emotional and psychological harm through constant fear and manipulation.

Why It’s Important for Survivors to Understand Violence and Abuse

If you’re a domestic violence survivor, understanding the difference between violence and abuse may help you:

• Validate your experiences: Recognizing that abuse can take a lot of different forms besides violence can help make it clear that you’re not imagining or exaggerating what’s happening to you. It can help you see if you’ve been minimizing your experiences.
• Spot harmful patterns: Abuse can be subtle, and watching for ongoing behaviors can help you realize the harm they are causing.
• Make informed decisions: Recognizing abusive behavior can help you decide if you want to get support, make a plan to leave the relationship or take legal action. It can help you realize you may need to consider emotional, financial and technological safety in your plans.
• Speak with clarity: Awareness can help you document the forms of abuse you are facing and better explain your situation to advocates, law enforcement or lawyers.
• Break the stigma: Recognizing that abuse can be nonviolent may help reduce feelings of shame.
• Heal and recover: You may see the need to heal emotionally and psychologically from abuse.
• Spot red flags: Knowing the warning signs of non-violent abuse may make you less likely to return to an abusive partner or to start a relationship with a new partner with abusive tendencies.

It’s crucial to remember that abuse is always serious, whether or not it involves violence. Survivors, as well as some law enforcement, courts and even one’s close friends and family,  may minimize the risk an abusive partner poses because the abuse is not outright violent, but exerting power and control over another can always lead to injury or harm. This is especially true for abusers who find the nonviolent tactics of control have stopped working to their advantage.