“I’m worried about my brother. I think something is really wrong with my sister-in-law. She’s so abusive to him.”
“That is not a healthy relationship — I think it’s abusive.”
I remember when, as a community, we wouldn’t acknowledge the existence of abuse. When Shalom Task Force couldn’t get Jewish publications to run a paid advertisement for their domestic violence hotline. It should be gratifying, the fact that people are able to talk about abuse so freely. Actually though, it’s very troubling when the terms abuse or abusive are thrown around about all sorts of problems, without nuance, and often without accuracy.
The reality is that when everything is abuse, it dilutes focus, resources, and commitment from addressing the problem of actual domestic violence. Moreover, if we’re unclear or lack nuance in our understanding of what, specifically, is going wrong when a marriage is troubled and someone is unhappy, we can’t suggest the appropriate intervention to address that unhappiness, whatever it does or doesn’t include.
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