Rethinking Men's Experiences of Intimate Partner Violence with Dr. Alexandra Lysova

In this episode, Dan is joined by Dr. Alexandra Lysova, professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University. 

Dr. Lysova discusses the often-overlooked issue of male victims of intimate partner violence and her journey from studying dysfunctional family communication to focusing on the complexities of domestic violence. Dan and Dr. Lysova expand on the importance of recognizing male victimization, the statistics surrounding it, and the need for a nuanced understanding of interpersonal violence that includes bidirectional and mutual abuse. 

Special Guest: Dr. Alexandra Lysova

Dr. Lysova on:

  LinkedIn

  Researchgate

Canadian Centre for Men & Families

Hines, D. A., & Lysova, A. (2024). Male intimate partner violence victims’ experiences with seeking help from legal system services over time and across countries. Partner Abuse, 15(3), 250–280. https://doi.org/10.1891/PA-2023-0018

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Podcast Overview
• 3:32 Origins of Interest in Male Victims of IPV
• 7:40 Early Research and Challenges in the Field
• 11:58 Political and Academic Resistance
• 15:20 Complexity of IPV in Intimate Relationships
• 18:27 Benefits of Expanding IPV Research to Include Men
• 25:05 Forms of Abuse Beyond Physical and Sexual
• 31:45 Societal Blind Spots and Victim Perceptions
• 34:40 Prevalence of IPV Against Men in Canada
• 38:12 Statistical Misinterpretations and Implications
• 40:45 Gender Comparisons and Impact of IPV
• 43:10 Bidirectional and Mutual Abuse in Relationships

Transcript

0:00

[Music] One of my goals with this podcast is to bring you knowledge and insights about the human experience that have clinical relevance, yet many of us know little about. I'll admit that I hadn't given much thought to male victims of intimate partner violence until a few months ago when I met today's guest in my conversation with her made it clear. This is a subject worth talking about. That's what today's episode is about, but first, if you're new here, I'm your host, Dr. Dan Cox, a professor of counseling psychology at the University of British Columbia, and welcome to psychotherapy and applied psychology. Rye dive deep with leading researchers to uncover practical insights, pull back the curtain, and hopefully have a little bit of fun along the way. If you enjoy the show, consider sharing it with someone who might find it meaningful. It's one of the best ways to keep the conversation going. This episode begins with my guest responding to my question about how she became interested in studying intimate partner violence against men. Without further ado, it is my pleasure to welcome my very special guest, Dr. Alexandra Lysova. First of all, thank you so much for inviting me to this podcast. I really appreciate the opportunity to discuss male victims of intimate partner violence with domestic violence. I began to be interested in it quite a long time ago. I was born and grew up in the far east of Russia. And as an undergraduate student in psychology, I became very much interested in dysfunctional family communication, despite having a very happy family. So I kind of was interested, why is it happening in the relationship which are meant to be the closest relationships with this people in the family. And it was not much information about the violence, per se, or aggression among the family members. And I moved on to the Graduate School in Sociology. And I expanded my search to examining the responses from service providers, psychologists, social workers, judges, police officers. I talked to them. And many of them had no idea what family violence was and how to respond to this in general. So anyways, that was the field when I realized that I'm so curious and I can go any way to explore it. I was not restricted by any specific theory, ideology, mainstream idea. So, and this is where I began to be interested in violence against women, violence against children, and also violence against men. And now I understand that every time I go to conferences where there are more practitioners rather than academics, there is so much more agreement with me, basically saying yes, of course male victims exist. We see them all the time. We hear the stories. I mean, we know that it's hard to get to them. They do not trust us very often. But we know they exist. We know there are female aggressors who exist. So they hurt someone. And this is where I began to be interested. I actually published the first paper in 2001 back at the university in Russia on male victims of domestic violence. And there was so much curiosity. There was no resistance to this issue. And then to my surprise, I became a full bride scholar. And I went to New York University in 2003, 2004. And I worked with Linda Mills, a social worker professor. And I also collaborated at that time, met Mary Strauss, a leading researcher in the field of domestic violence in the United States. And he told me it's a very difficult topic. It's extremely difficult to study it because it's controversial. There are there is a resistance in the field to look in at male victims at spirituality of violence. And to my surprise, this is where I realize that it is not just an issue. We as researchers want to go and examine it has some kind of a political angle in it. So, but I was undeterred and I continued to look into male victims. And when I immigrated to Canada in 2010, we studied a big research with my colleagues from the United States, New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom. So five English-speaking countries, we actually know there were four at that time, four English-speaking countries. We got together. And we had focus groups with men who experienced abuse in the relationships. And we did it in 2012. It was a big study, we published a number of papers based on this. And that was something new. I realized it was a lot of secrecy, a lot of lack of understanding who this man are, what type of abuse the experience, how they're looking for help. And it was really important for me to talk to male to man who experienced abuse. And since then, I've done many studies talking to man in my interviews, focus groups here in Canada. And also analyzing statistics from statistics Canada like survey data, also homicides survey data. So, that was my interest. Again, the interest is just because as a researcher, we go and fill the gaps. And I know some of these gaps are hard to fill, particularly, I realized it was in the West sadly, because there was a very strong idea in the place. And it was a strong theory or paradigm. It's called gender paradigm. So I know, Tony Nichols and Don Datton from by the way, you will see they called it that way or mainstream feminist or radical feminist ideas in the place. They were basically resisting to expand the field to male victims of domestic violence. They would see this as drawing attention and resources away from violence against women that they consider it as a more important issue. So that is why I got entangled in this kind of discusses who is a more victim, who needs more help. And I try to always think about the intimate partner violence issue as a complex, a messy issue. It's a very different phenomenon from stranger crime, where there is a clear victim, a clear perpetrator. An intimate partner relationships, it's a rarely the case. So the partner is engaged in the very complex, very often long communication. And sometimes something happened 20 years ago, something happened several evenings ago. And people are engaged in this very complex interaction. It's hard to say that she's a victim and he's a perpetrator. But unfortunately, this is what we do in the criminal justice system. We always find a one victim and one perpetrator. And then it's not always the case in real life. And maybe that makes plain why we may not be that effective in preventing domestic violence really well. So my idea was to see the complexity and to engage with this complexity, even though it is difficult and we need to develop a new way of thinking about it, just because we're serving these people. And the more honest we are in our search, the more likely we help those victims. And what I also argued in my conversation paper in 2022 is that if we help men victims as well, along with female victims and any other victims. And here I actually help you notice this individual man and their families, but we're also helping to prevent violence against women perpetrated by these men. And also again violence against children perpetrated by this man. So in general, we improve the society. So if we change our lenses to see differently, rather than looking for this simplicity, we're actually looking for some kind of complexity and find the way to classify these typology types and maybe addressing each one of those communications with an intimate partner relationship differently. We actually will be more effective in dealing with this. So male victims again, it's my big interest now. I see there is still gap, but I'm so much more optimistic now. It's the field is developing. It's been a bit damaging for the career to do that about 10, 15 years ago. But now it's becoming more interesting. I'm seeing more papers coming from from Asia, from Africa, from Middle East, when the exploring violence against men, experiences of men in different societies, for marriages, all kind of things that we never thought that would affect men as well. What is going so I'm glad to see that people actually change in their views on this issue. So when before we dig too deep into it, when we, when you say interpersonal violence, what do you, what does that mean? So interpersonal violence is in some ways I see it as part of domestic violence issue. So I see domestic violence as a broader term for include violence in the in the relationships between the family members, living usually in one household. It includes relationship between children and between parents, of course, and also with children and other relatives. And intimate partner violence focuses more specifically on two adults in the relationship. So this is intimate partner violence. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think this is extremely important question to ask. So the round go in debates how broadly or narrowly we define this term. There is there is an approach that we define in narrowly and violence means physical or and sexual violence. So this is how statistics Canada in general social survey and victimization defines intimate partner violence. It's either physical and or sexual component of it only. And this is how in many countries the intimate partner violence is measured. And that is why the term violence is selected here. So there is another broader approach actually very much inspired and proposed by the feminist researchers back in the 70s and 80s, who argue to that it is not enough to converse the physical and or sexual component of violence. Violence is much broader in some forms of violence is controlling behavior, psychological abuse, financial abuse. All these different forms actually even more damaging without leaving a trace on the victim harder to prove in the criminal justice system. So they kind of proposed to expand it and it's a very important step forward. And the term was suggested to abuse as more this kind of more psychological emotional components, which is why the term abuse is more often used. So abuse a bit broader. And when people use the term intimate partner abuse, it kind of includes all these components of violent violent component and abusive behaviors, which may be controlling behaviors asking repeatedly where did you go, where did you need, how to spend money checking the account of that person. And also right now we know it's expanding in the third day right now it's parental alienation as well. So the in the relationship with children when one of the partners controls and damages relationships with other partner with children. So that also part of this kind of controlling pattern, but it affects children involved in this relationship. So we see that and there is another new form of abuse have discovered recently it's called legitimate administrative control abuse legitimate administrative abuse. So these form of abuse was particularly found in relation to male victims of abuse who complained that female victims use the criminal justice system and family justice system against them. Threatening to use to punish them to put them in jail, take the children away, you know, leave them homeless and so on. So that's another form of also kind of a broader control in behaviors, but it's different right. So it's it has this component of threatening to destroy relationship with loved ones with the co workers. So it has this kind of reputation race can also very serious criminal justice system response that will harm them the old victim. So yeah, so that is why I would say the what I also suggest the students do whenever they read any report or any paper or anything online always pay attention to the definition. So how do the authors understand that if it's a broad definition and include all of these forms that which may explain the higher rates of extremization in their 50s and 60s sometimes. Or if it's only physical or sexual or both for these components involved and it will explain much lower rate of prevalence of extremization and 5 10% for 15% is on population. So always to look at that and then compare with different countries or different communities. So so just to make sure I have a straight in my head. So violence were primarily looking at physical or sexual for abuse. That can include the more emotional or psychological and does what in your way of thinking about it because obviously people use different terms, different ways. And your ways of thinking about it does violence also fall under abuse or those distinct categories. I see that abuse is a broader category. So in my view actually I think violence is more specific relates to this kind of what we traditionally think violence is when it's more physical or hurting and has consequences of the criminal justice system can actually deal with this. And the abuse is a broader term that includes physical component. And so that is why I'm seeing even in some of our papers we try to incorporate this term intimate partner abuse kind of signaling that it's a broader one we include all forms of abuse that and relationship not just physical and sexual but again it depends on an author's and on their approach. So it's important to see them as different entities as well. So but as I see it's usually it's a narrow and broad definition. Okay, so when we're talking today and your work. Are we going to be talking about intimate partner violence or intimate partner abuse or is it going to depend abuse. Yeah, I prefer to talk about this as abuse and particularly when we talk about male victims. Got it. So how do you think about when I guess particularly if we're talking about abuse more broadly when does it become abuse right like partners can argue can disagree can be and can say things that are hurtful that we wouldn't right that's just part of having a partner and then but at some point it passes that's a threshold where you're saying that is abuse or but like how do you think about that. That's a great question and I haven't seen much discussion on that for a long time and I actually when I talk to my students I teach the class on family violence this is what I ask them to do is just to think where there's a normal family communication with can be quite dysfunctional but not violent not abusive ends and when this kind of abusive behavior that we're talking about starts. Great question. I think we have to look at several things first is of course legislation in the country of the liven and in Canada certain forms of behavior are just outlawed as violent or abuse. In Canada special legislation against intimate partner violence so it's a part of the criminal code of Canada so the same as in Russia came originally from Russia so it's the same as there right while some countries have specific specific traditions for the intimate partner violence or family violence. So in in Canada is just the if it's abuse it means it's a physical physical harm it's a it's the all kind of beatings physical abuse it's all part of the criminal code so all these behaviors and technically pushing somebody or hurting somebody physically this is actually abuse right so this is a physical abuse. Psychologically it is harder to it is harder to provide evidence for this forms of behavior within the family so right now Canada is working on in the due criminalizing course of control so they actually trying to criminalize forms of behavior that are extremely difficult to prove which is would be controlling behavior asking questions about the way of being what you've done. And doing it consistently so some countries did it already like English caught went so we kind of following that path and it's a very interesting how how it will be implemented and if we do not hurt victims in the middle of this because unfortunately what happens that we want to do some good but we as it happens with a little bit digress and right now it happens with mandatory abuse laws in the United States so mandatory laws means that it's not going to be a real crime. So it's not going to be a real crime. So it's not going to be a real crime. So it's not going to be a real crime. So it's not going to be a real crime. So it's not going to be a real crime. So it's not going to be a real crime. So it's not going to be a real crime. So it's not going to be a real crime. So it's not going to be a real crime. So it's not going to be a real crime. So it's not going to be a real crime. It's not going to be a real crime. It's not going to be a real crime. It's not going to be a real crime. It's not going to be a real crime. It's not going to be a real crime. It's not going to be a real crime. It's not going to be a real crime. It's not going to be a real crime. It's not going to be a real crime. It's not going to be a real crime. It's not going to be a real crime. It's not going to be a real crime. It's not going to be a real crime. It's not going to be a real crime. It's not going to be a real crime. If a person is hurt, and of course, if it's an accident, an accident, but if it's an intentional behavior to hurt another partner, use a weapon of them, burn them somehow. Does it have to actually hurt them? Right. So you could imagine something where a person throws something at another person. So there isn't. So in certain cases, it could be an intent to hurt, but it won't actually happen. Yeah, you're right. I mean, it shouldn't. It shouldn't hurt. The consequences are just, it's much easier to prove that it happens. It shouldn't hurt. There should be an intention. There should be. But since this case is extremely difficult because it's a he and she's sad and there are no very often known weaknesses present. So it's extremely difficult to actually investigate what happened. That is why we had some ideas in place for the criminal justice systems. We they were trained to believe a woman. So that is why women would be considered as a primary victim. And men would be considered as a primary perpetrator. That is why this is how the system kind of simplified the way how you deal with intimate partner violence situations. That is why it's so damaged in for male victims who are actually victims in the situation. But the entire training system and entire criminal justice approach is based on seeing them as perpetrators. So other examples, of course, it's not just legislation. It's also how victims feel. This is the how they feel and if victims, especially it comes to the psychological aggression or coercive control. If they feel that they can they terrorize in their family, they are afraid for their for their life. They can no longer communicate with the loved ones isolated by the perpetrator. Again, it's extremely difficult to recognize this forms and victims themselves very much justify this behavior by the perpetrator. Oh, he wants me the best or she wants me the best or she or he writes right. It's extremely difficult everything when it comes to this, but when it's a clear perpetrator who is dominating the victim, then in this case, the victim may go and will for help again, without the coercive control legislation, it's harder to deal to make a case of that. So, so yes, I think the with all these different situations in the family life, anything that people when they, especially when they educated and informed that this is called abuse, this is abuse, this is what is abuse is the reality in many families, many people don't see the clearly abusive situations as abusive. They just don't call them that this is what we saw with male victims, they just never call it that way. They never say we statistics Canada conducts the every five years, the general social servant victimization, they ask the question, why didn't you look for help? And this is the answer to your question, they say, I've never seen it as a major problem, I've never seen it as a criminal justice system problem, I would never call it abuse, it's something that we can fix, and so and so forth. So, a lot of rationalization, a lot of explanation, just because I know this person, we've been through this, and she's going through a difficult time. So, there are so many different ways how people explain themselves the situation without calling it abuse. So, how, one of the things, in preparing for this and really thinking about it, as I was like writing notes and writing down questions, what kept happening was in my head, I kept saying men versus women. So, I kept saying like, what, coming up with questions that were like, you know, how frequent are demanded of, demand experience in, in to mid partner abuse versus women. Then I was sort of like, is that how I should ask the question, like does it, you know what I mean, like does it, like it's not to say that that isn't interesting, or, you know, but it's like, it almost felt like it was undermining the, like, well, if it's a small percent, then it doesn't matter. So, you know, versus saying, well, yeah, but that's still thousands of people, right? So, I don't know. So, in these questions, I'm going to ask, please feel free to respond to them, whether just overall or men, women, because I sort of had this challenge personally. But so, how frequent is interpersonal abuse against men? So, when we see right now, the frequency rates are extremely prevalence rates in the population of Canada, I would say. And also we see right now, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom. The rates are just much closer than we ever thought. So, in statistics, statistics Canada showed something that interests me a lot, and it was 2014. And so, they do this survey that Alexander was talking about every five years, and the idea is that they do all this sophisticated sampling, with the idea that it's representative of the national population. So, even though they sample X many thousand Canadians, they do it in such a sophisticated way that you can generalize this to all 35 million of us. Yeah. That's exactly what they do. They question about 30,000 people every five years, and they ask them questions a very detailed scale, the number of questions for each scale, physical violence, the ask them sexual violence. And also, they added questions, they have questions about psychological abuse. And the questions look like, have you had your partner ever threw a thing at you that could hurt? So, that's a very specific question. And another question, has your partner ever used a weapon on you in the last five years? So, that would be an next question. So, this is how the questions look. We call them behavioral scale questions. It's not so much about you understanding what, like they never ask you question, do you think you have victim of violence or victim of abuse? Because every one of us will have their own understanding what the victim or what his abuse means, right? And many people we know would never recognize themselves as victims. While on this scale, they simply reporting on behaviors, if it happened or not. And if they say, "Yeah, it happened in the past five years, my partner actually threw a thing at me that could hurt because she was angry." Or she, or he did something to me, he kicked me when we were discussing a difficult topic, like people say, "Yes." So, if people answered at least one of these items, then they considered to be a victim of sexual or physical violence. So, this is how the statistics can add a count. And when we have data for the past five cycles of victimization from 1999 for the first time, and the last time 2019 and 2024, they're still working on it. So, the rates are very similar. So, for example, the rates of victimization in current ongoing relationship. So, they actually ask people who stay still with that partner. So, the rates in 1999 were 3.5% of women in whole Canada reported that they were victims of that physical or sexual abuse. In their current relationship? In their current relationship, and 4% of men, then 4% of men. So, 3.5% of women, 94% of men. It was not a statistically significant difference. There were a little bit more men who reported that. In 2004, it was 3.1% of women and 3.8% of men. And then in 2009, it was 3.2% of women, and 4.4% of men. And this difference was statistically significant. So, there were many more men in current ongoing relationships who reported they were victims of physical and or sexual abuse. The difference states' significance, again, it declined overall because it was in 2014, it was only 1.8% of women versus 2.9% of men. So, it's declined, but the significance still remained. So, again, men were more likely to experience abuse in current relationship. And then recently, the recent report 2019, it's 2.1% of women versus 1.9% of men. So, it's very similar. It's around 2% of men and 2% of women. So, you see, in terms of frequency, we actually see quite a difference. We never thought that men would be even on the higher end of receiving victimization from female partners. And we know they are female partners because it's about 1 or 2% of population who are in same sex couples. So, majority of these people are living with female partners. So, this is surprising. And this is ongoing relationship. When we look at ex-partner relationships, the picture is very different. Women are statistically significantly more likely to be victims of physical and or sexual abuse. In ex-relationship, it means they're no longer with those partners, but the partners were abusive. So, when then, what statistics can it does, it combines these two numbers, saying, prior relationship and ongoing relationship. And in this case, we see a lot of similarity in the rates between men and women. So, this is what I'm saying. So, we just, when I looked at these numbers, this is where I got so excited because in 2014, when you look at combined numbers, the number of men who are victims of abuse is still higher significantly. And even statistics, the Canada report, unfortunately, didn't highlight it in the summary. They say the rates were equal. And only after we contacted them and saying, "But this is not what your table show." They actually issued a correction and they indicated that men are indeed more likely to be victims or physical and of sexual abuse in Canada in 2014. So, the point is, I guess, the problem is that we just not prepared to deal with this information. Even statistics Canada, it looks like, doesn't know what to do with this and how to make sense of it. We've been told so many times, for so many years, that violence against women as a priority, we don't even know what to do with when men actually become reporting on the same skill and the same study that they actually are also victimized. How I might say it made sense of this, I've just realized we're very blind to the abuse of men. We just don't see those forms of behavior towards men as serious as damaging them. We almost immediately start saying, "Oh, if she kicked him, it's not that serious if he kicked her." So we immediately start saying, "And it's true, the consequences of use are very different." We know that majority of those who killed in the relationship are women, but in a way that initiating violence or reporting violence that just happens, there are very similar rates. And this is where I see the danger and maybe not even danger, but the way for us to intervene and prevent escalation to no severe violence. If we just teach both boys and girls, men and women, who encourage individuals to stop any violence, when you just think you slap in your partner in the face just because you're angering, it's fine for women to do that. No, it's not fine to do that. That's actually called violence. This is what we cognize about us because then the next step, you don't know how he will respond. And how he responds, maybe actually much more serious consequences for her. So you see, I'm seeing this even instead of, and towards your question about when we compare men and women, "Yeah, this is how we do statistics. We compare things. I agree with you. It's not the best way." Because you kind of downplay the experiences of those who just last prevalent. But it's indeed you're right, we're talking about thousands of people who experience this. Even the 20,000 men who killed in Canada as victims of intimate violence, 20,000, no sorry, not in Canada, in 10 years, between 2008 and 2018, about 20,000 men, there are thousands of men who were killed in intimate relationships. We cannot just say it's only 20% of the general sample. There are still many of them. So yes, each one of them is alive. So yeah, I agree with you. We need to keep in mind these numbers are, there are people behind these numbers. But at the same time, it's interesting to see the comparison by gender over time. We also see how we spend resources, how we help victims, male and female victims. But this is a reality and it's also reality in many other countries, not just Canada. Are there differences in terms of the types of violence that men experience versus women? Okay, we actually have that. We can actually look at every single item on general social survey and see how it's represented. We see that many, many more men report. I don't have it just before me, but I remember many more men reported that women slapped them in the face. So we do some traditional forms of behavior by women actually more represented for men throwing something. Men reported was something thrown at them that would hurt them. So there are certain differences, but overall a lot of similarity between the gender. You sort of alluded to it, but do we have data on interpersonal violence like men against men versus women against men? Oh, yes, yes, we do. We do. These literature is going now. So it's violence and sex relationship is going. Go in action with just finishing the paper right now, a big review comprehensive review on violence in sexual minority couples and also comparing them with violence in heterosexual relationship. And what we find clearly see that violence in sexual minority couples is much higher. So it's much higher, particularly among in in the bisexual for bisexual individuals. So this is the highest followed by same sex, same sex couples, same sex individuals. So in particular lesbian lesbian relationship. This is one of the highest rates of intimate partner violence and the lowest and gay couples really. Yeah, this is and this is again, when we see this and we collected data for the past 10 years. And right now we were ready to publish this and we're looking at these and we were saying, why? Why? It doesn't make sense. But then we're looking at other studies and we see it's very consistent. So violence and gay relationships is lowest is at lowest levels. It's still a bit higher than in heterosexual couples. We just published a report for heterosexual couples and according to these general general victimization rate is about 14%. And that's not Canada. It's the whatever we could find any in which we've been countries in the past 10 years. So it's about 15% of victimization rate in the population for in intimate partner relationship. While in the gay couples, what I remember right now is about 19% so it's higher and then in lesbian couples it's about 40%. So it's a lot. It's much higher. And then in bisexual it's even higher than that. Yeah. Yeah. So and we knew that there are additional risk factors associated with those relationship. There is what they call something related to LGBTQ specific threats of outing or being in minority experience and stress being in minority. So everything what drags the kind of being in this type of relationship and social response to this. So it's kind of all this additional stress. In addition to all other stresses related to just intimate life and personality types. So but yeah. The next paper we will be working on is trying to understand the risk factors. So this is where we do the big review of all these different risk factors for violence in sexual minority integrals. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah. I sort of I had like a couple of questions written down sort of thinking like, ah, that's this is sort of like obscure. You probably won't have any thought. But then here you are and there's actually like it sounds like a growing literature on trying to understand what's going on here. Yeah. Yeah. It's an amazing literature. It's very interesting to comparing a particular with heterosexual couples. Yeah. So one of the things that you do work on is sort of I don't know if you want to call it bi directional or mutual. Yeah. Intimate partner violence. Can can you give us like what what that is. So ideally, I would like to see the way we look at the issue of intimate partner violence. Not just violence against women of violence against men issue. Ideally, I think we develop the sense that this a very specific issues related to the relationships. And ideally, we start thinking about the types of relationships and where the violence happens. So in and since the intimate relationships don't just happen, right. I mean, they take some time to develop them. And so we may see some development. Or what do we call escalation of violence in relationship or de escalation of violence over time. So that is why I think it's a very different mindset. Very different from violence against women violence against women, static issues. We're just looking at the prevalence rates. We look at the victims or not victims with mutuality and bidirectionality would look at the interaction within the couple. We're looking at the type of relationships that can have different dynamic over time, depending on certain risk factors. So we know there are several types of violent relationships. Thanks to Michael Johnson. So he identified four major types of violence. He said, we shouldn't think about violence is just one thing. And we all probably know some of the couples that have more of situational couple violence. So this is where people just fight sometimes through things that each other call names. And again, it has no strong controlling component. It just it just happens with many couples. In fact, 60% of all violence. It looks like this is what it is situational couple violence. People just fight. They don't go to the police. It just happens. They resolve issues or the six psychotherapy. But then there is about 10% of couples that experience the most dangerous type of violence called intimate terrorism. And this is where there is a clear perpetrator and a usually clear victim. And it can be women who are victims of intermeteries or male female terrorists. And it can be men who are victims of female intermeteries. And in the literature right now, we see a lot of cases of when women are victims of intermeteries. But it's going to we see many more men who suffer from these terrorists again in their families. So what I think about is that relationships develop and we see some duality. We see some complexity in their relationship escalation. So what we do in mutual or bidirectional violence, we actually try to look at how both partners in the couple, if they both victims and if they both perpetrators. Rather than like W H O world have organization is doing research on asking only women and asking only about victimization experiences. This is what they got. We know violence against women in different countries. We have no idea if this while women were violent as well. Right. We don't know who the victims are. So what is important to do is to ask these questions. And what we see is the majority of couples experience by direct violence by directionally. So in our recent review, we just published this year. It's about 50, 53% of couples experience violence by directionally. It means both partners can be victims and both partners can be perpetrators. And the most interesting thing next one is the next prevalent type is that when women are unilaterally perpetrators of abuse followed by only men unilaterally perpetrators of abuse. So this is this is what we see. And again, this is a next controversial topic in intimate partner violence literature. It looks like right now there is more recognition that men can be victims of abuse, even some of the feminist researcher talk to they saying we see that. So it's more understanding that we need to do something about it. But when it comes to by directionality or mutuality, it's still a very difficult topic to discuss. Because some call it, oh, you call it blaming the victim they like to say, well, it has nothing to do with blaming anybody. It's about understanding who is violent and what these consequences for this violence will be. If it's just a woman who initiates abuse by screaming at the partner throwing things at him, right. That's an initiation of violence. So what the next step will be we need to see it can be escalation can be the escalation. So to think in these terms to develop better instrument to develop better screening for the practitioners to see what type of couple we deal with. And if the chances of escalation to lethal violence to homicide are actually very high there because this is what we see when we look at homicides. We see some of these couple fights a lot before and then finally somebody kills somebody and it's not always it's not just one intermediaries kills a victim. It may be a victim who kills an intermediaries and self defense. Or it can be just both partners fighting and it just happens that she had a knife. Right. So when you said 50 something percent you're talking about of the situations where there is intimate partner abuse that 50 something percent of them it's bidirectional. Yeah, 53% among the couple among all violent couples. All of them who experience violence. The type of this violence 53% more than half of all these violence will be bidirectional nature. Right. In intimate relationship and then the next type about 30% will be when men was sorry when women are unilaterally perpetrators or abuse. And then the remaining it will be when men are unilaterally perpetrators or abuse. And it makes sense. I mean one thing I'm hearing you say is that like when you just ask men or women or you just ask one person. Are you a victim that what you lose is all the situations in which it's bidirectional and that bidirectional abuse is just a phenomenologically like different thing. And then when there's a single perpetrator. It's it's a very different concept for us to understand as well. And in terms of measurement. The ideally we just talk to couples. We just kind of talk to both in the relationship and we ask them separately ideally right so seeing their their understanding what happens and other partners and kind of match. We see what happens. We've seen this studies they have very small samples though because it's difficult to do and what partners agree to that. What the more likely to happen is the use of the conflict tactic scales developed by meristraus. So conflict tactic scales is the most widely broadly used tool scale to measure intimate partner violence both perpetration and victimization components. And why this scale is so popular and used in most of the countries and use by statistics Canada is because it has two questions there one is about victimization experience my partner has you know kicked me or kicked me in the past five years but then there's the next question I kicked my partner. So this is why this is how we know that they did this both what is still missing is a context and we got this questions a lot like but how do you know maybe he kicked shake it came because he was abusive fair point. That is why please add questions on context and that is why some studies add questions on context when you said that you kicked him what was it was it in response to violence or it was an initiation of violence so we can always add but conflict tactic scales is a tool that measures is violence if violence to place and reach what type was it was a bidirectional both they were both perpetrators and victims or is just one way violence. When when it is bidirectional are both partners typically engaging in the same type of abuse or yeah that's a good question this is what I don't know this is what I cannot say we still at the very we still at the stage when I think we're still fighting for broader acceptance of even narrative of bidirectionality and mutuality and that said I've always saying that we have to focus fully on studying the phenomenon rather than fighting for this kind of public recognition or even within the academic community it's harder to get grants it's harder to get publications when you still many people still don't consider it as an important issue or they consider it as going again some mainstream ideas which are more important. So that is why when time passes by and we see more understanding that okay this is really important we want to have answers to the question like is it more it is a similar types of abuse or if it's more escalation or do you who do escalates and under which circumstances this is all very important questions they're next they're next in our research so it's by sound like a weird question but can bidirectional interpersonal abuse ever be okay. The question is can be okay I think it's it's not like a normative question we shouldn't it I don't think I don't know who I'd who actually answer this question you know in in the couple if it's if it's a reality it's a reality. If it if it's something that happens in the relationship it happens and I'm sure people don't call the police every time it happens. I don't I don't think any violence is okay I just know it's part of life you know the point is that I'm kind of really saying understand it's best not to ever hit our children never discipline them physically it's best never to raise our voice but we do we human beings we do raise our voice with sometimes discipline our children with sometimes you know talk to our partners the way we don't want to right so I think the reality is that we human beings things happen the way if we learn from them. If we have a talk and saying what just happened we don't want that to happen anymore so if people recognize that as a dangerous situation and look for help and both recognize that as such or it just becomes what I know in some couples called part of life. It's just there is no other way this is just this is type of communication people just scream at each other call each other names they drunk and they throw things at each other. This is not okay of course because these are potentially extremely dangerous situations that may lead to lethal outcome for one of the partners who will be killed. So yeah or both of them will be very much injured so no violence is not okay if we can avoid it we can learn to address it in a different way and that is why we hear that is why we do this type of research to inform the public that this forms exist men do not like being called certain things. Men do not like being hit or scratched or when somebody speeds up their face like boys don't like that too like you see we kind of telling the public we try to educate the public by saying there are certain behaviors that are just very dangerous potentially and they hurt other people don't do that. There are other ways how you learn how to deal with this and we should start early we should start in late teens in high school when they start dating learning that this is teaching them that this is what it is how we treat other people. We know that those who were in very destructive data relationship they unfortunately continue with some patterns in the future life. So yeah I think education is a big stuff and changing the paradigm is have this shift in paradigm seeing all human beings regardless of gender male and female and everybody else deserving polite respectful and kind of behavior. And men deserve it too and kind of in terms of talk about men it's also about empathy to men I don't see much in our society people don't think that most of the victims of society men. Right men go to dangerous industries men goes to wars men men experience a lot of issues and they are less likely to look for help because they also socialize in the way to be strong and never cry and they embarrassed if the people learn about their you know weaknesses so I would say with there is so many achievements with. In the area of intimate partner violence in relation to female victims people are aware of this issue right there are many there are many centers help centers people know they can go and call and get help but with men they are rejected when they call for help. And that was that one thing I was going to my follow up was how do authorities react to men when men bring up this issue is yeah so at this point I say it's very unfortunate I have. That's a wrap on the first part of our conversation as noted at the top of the show be much appreciated if you spread the word to anyone else who you think might enjoy it until next time.[Music]