Identifying Abuse

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  Do You Feel Trapped Because of Your HIV Status?

  Survivors who are HIV positive face unique barriers to leaving an abuser | Enduring abuse is difficult for anyone. But add in living with HIV and a survivor faces a mu... read more

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  Abuse Almost Always Escalates

  Bad news: If you’re trapped in a cycle of abuse, it’s most likely going to only get worse | When you ask survivors what their last straw was during domestic violence, ... read more

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  When Your Partner Asks for an Open Relationship

  Here’s how to differentiate innocuous requests from red flags for abuse | For many individuals, monogamy is the norm—one partner, one relationship at a time. But some ... read more

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  Resisting Control When It's Disguised as Love

  Seeing through an abuser's performances of "love" gives victims renewed power | Abusive and controlling partners often use "loving" acts to manipulate th... read more

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  What Is Toxic Triangulation?

  Abusers can turn a survivor’s friends, family and children against them through harmful fabrications | Some abusers use a tactic called toxic triangulation as one more... read more

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  How to Help a Child Who's Being Abused

  Intimate partner violence and child abuse often go hand in hand. Here’s how you can intervene | Where there’s intimate partner violence, there’s often also child abuse... read more

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  When Domestic Abuse Happens in a Polygamous Relationship

  Finding nonjudgemental support is a challenge for those in plural relationships | People in polygamous or polyamorous relationships—aka, having more than one partner o... read more

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  Putting Trauma Down in Words

  The ways journaling can help survivors | For myself, journaling started with one of those palm-sized hardcover diaries adorned with a photograph of fluffy white kitten... read more

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  What Is Sexual Coercion?

  Just because it’s not rape, doesn’t mean it’s not abuse | Maybe your partner guilted you into it, or just kept asking until you relented. Or maybe he or she purposely ... read more

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  It's Not Love, It's Love Bombing

  Abusers rely on long-term tactics to build up a sense of dependency in their victim | You might not have heard of the term love bombing before, but you may have been t... read more

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  10 Must-Hear Podcasts on Domestic Violence

  Plus, thinking about getting behind the mic? Tips for starting your own | If you haven’t been pulled into a podcast yet, what are you waiting for? Since its launch on ... read more

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  How Limiting Abortion Rights Keeps Survivors in Danger

  As the fate of a woman’s right to choose is under attack, survivors know even a rape exception may not help them | COVID-19 Update: Anti-abortion groups are exploiting... read more

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  A Narcissistic Abuser Will Never Change

  Why no amount of love, counseling or batterer intervention will keep you safe | If you are in a relationship with a narcissistic abuser, hoping for things to change, d... read more

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  When Masculinity Is Toxic

  Traits men learn as boys can be dangerous—to them, and to the women in their lives | We hear a lot about “toxic masculinity” these days—a term often loaded with assump... read more

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  Are Abusers Narcissists, Psychopaths or Sociopaths?

  The differences between these three personality disorders | When describing an abusive partner, the terms narcissist, psychopath and sociopath often get thrown around.... read more