Patterns of domestic abuse are changing, and quickly!

With many countries locking down their societies, with so much change occurring at light speed pace, patterns of domestic abuse are changing — indeed, amping up — at just the same clip.

A recent video from Proven Men reported a massive spike in pornography access and use, especially in locked down areas of the world, and that’s attributed to the fact that everyone’s out of the normal routine stuck at home.  People aren’t just singing out their windows.

The issue with increased use of pornography is its direct impact on the person addicted and their family. It sets up patterns that become almost impossible to break, and it sets up patterns of behaviour with others that are abusive or that exacerbate the abuse that’s already apparent.

You might think that’s about sexual abuse, but it’s far more complicated than that.

This small article doesn’t have the room nor the objective of spelling all that out, but what can be said is, wherever there’s pornography addiction, there’s potentially a whole range of flow-on abuses.

·               sexual abuse is easy to identify.  Then there’s the mental, verbal, emotional and spiritual abuse that potentially occur because a person’s fantasy cannot be realised in real life, and yet they’re stuck in a reality of insisting their unreality become real

·               when addicts go unsatisfied, their unmet drives propel them toward tyranny, especially when they have limited supply — and yet, a plenteous supply also just makes things worse

·               we might well appreciate how much abuse rises when change is inflicted on people, stress is heightened, there is no escaping conflict, and when people feel imprisoned

o       add to this change that foisted on them very quickly

o       this just helps us understand the causes of what makes it worse

·               it’s not just pornography.  The patterns of drug abuse are changing in this period of enforced lockdowns too, and that would be tragedy enough, but there are also children involved, implicated and inculcated

·               if only we played out in the public square what happens in many homes where there is next to no structure for work and life, many of us would be horrified — and yet, many will simply read and nod their heads; they know all too well

·               people often joke that this sort of confinement will produce a baby boom, but just as much, this confinement will also produce vast degrees of a boom in violence and trauma

·               this confinement, for one instance, will be the catalyst for significant marital tension in many if not most marriages, and much of this will lead to abuse

·               then there are the dynamics where there is already overt or covert abuse happening

·               and finally, there is the sad reality where home is the haven for child abuse; be it sexual, physical violence, financial, emotional and verbal abuse

·               at the base of the abuse is always the narcissist who feels they have the right to consume anything they want and then treat people however they want

Where one person wreaks havoc, the whole family suffer, and when it’s a situation where abuse is rampant in the adults in a home, young lives enter a path of destruction.  There are many with significant abuse problems that are making life hell for the victim of abuse.

Having people locked up in the same house together is having huge social impacts that will revisit society for years to come.  There’s just not much we can do about it.

I am actually in support of early lockdowns to flatten the curve, and personally don’t believe governments are acting anywhere near quickly enough, but if there’s one thing in support of leaving lockdowns until later it is the social impact of myriad dimension of domestic abuse occurring.

Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash