Is Your Life in Danger?

Did your partner move your relationship along quickly? (For example, my ex boyfriend wanted to me to let go of my house and move my family into his house after dating for like two months.)

 

Does he use intimidation, bullying, manipulation, or violence to resolve conflict? (For example, my ex boyfriend was known as a scary guy.  I thought I was special because he was different with me.  Really, it was only a matter of time before he was scary to me too.)

 

Does he use threats and/or intimidation to control? This includes threats to: hurt you physically, defame, embarrass, restrict freedom, tell secrets, cut off support, abandon, and/or commit suicide.  (Example, after I broke up with him my ex boyfriend he threatened to kill himself several times to try to get me to take him back.)  

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Does he break things in anger? 

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Does he use symbolic violence, like tearing or burning pictures or other possessions he knows are important to you? (Example, my ex husband broke shot glasses that I had collected while traveling that were irreplaceable.)

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Has he physically abused an intimate partner before?  (Example: My ex husband told me that he assaulted his previous girlfriend, but he justified it as only being once and for a good reason.  That should have been a red flag.) 

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Does he become hostile or cruel or does he black out when using drugs or alcohol?  (Example: One time when my ex husband was drunk he gently held my hands and then squeezed them hard and told me how easily he could break me.)

      

Does he use alcohol or drugs as an excuse or explanation for angry or violent behavior?  (Example: When he was drunk my ex     husband grabbed me and shoved me through a divider in our house and then choked his friend when he tried to get him to let me go. Of course, later on he was really sorry and it was the alcohol's fault.) 

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Does he have a history of police encounters for behaviors (threats, stalking, assault, etc.)?  (Example: One of my ex boyfriends was proud of the fact that he was listed as dangerous in his long police file).  

 

Has there been more than once incident of violent behavior (including vandalism, breaking things, throwing things, etc)?  (Example: In time I came to find out that the guy I was dating was prohibited from being on the grounds of two businesses and only allowed supervised visits with his child due to previous violent behavior.)

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Does he use money to control your activities/purchases/ behavior?  (For example: When I was married, my husband worked and I stayed home with our kids for a time.  I couldn't even buy shoes for our kids because he wasn't ok with me spending his money.)

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Does he become jealous of anyone or anything that takes your time away from him? ( For example, my ex boyfriend got really upset because I was emotionally close to my best friend.  He felt like I was cheating on him with her because everything should have been about him.)

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Does he require that you account for your time?  (Example: I remember my ex husband calling me because I ran to the store and then stopped to rinse the ocean salt off of the car.  I hadn't told him I was going to rinse the car, which took 15 minutes so he was upset.) 

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Does he refuse to accept rejection?  (Example: My ex boyfriend couldn't accept that I didn't want to be in a romantic relationship at that time in my life so he has been stalking me for a year now.)

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Does he expect the relationship to go on forever, using phrases like ‘til death do us part,’ ‘ride or die,’ ‘together for life,’ or ‘no matter what’?  (Example: In In Case I'm Murdered I talk about a woman who's boyfriend killed her after yelling in front of her friends "I told you 'til death do us part!")

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Does he minimize incidences of abuse? (Examples: “Oh, it wasn’t that bad.”  “I might have pinned you to the wall, but I didn’t hurt you.”  "You're over-reacting.")

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​Does he spend a disproportionate amount of time talking about you? (Example: My ex boyfriend told everyone that we were together and all about me, not because people needed to know, but because his identity was in being my boyfriend.  Without me he felt like he was nothing.)  

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Does he get a lot of his identity from being your boyfriend/husband/lover? 

 

Does he try to get your friends or family to pressure you to stay with or go back to him?  (Example: My ex boyfriend has emailed my little sister a few times since we broke up telling her to give me messages and at the same time trying to convince her to screw him in order to hurt me.) 

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Has he stalked or followed you?  Has he had other people follow you?  (Example: One of my ex boyfriends would often tell me what I did and who I talked to during the day.  He had people everywhere who reported back to him about me.  I never knew who was a spy and who wasn't.)

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Does he believe others are out to get him?  Does he believe that people around you don’t like him and are trying to get you to leave him? (Example: My ex really didn't like it when I began going to counseling.  He was sure that the counselor would convince me to leave him.)

 

Does he suffer from mood swings, anger issues, or depression? 

 

Does he resist change?  Is he unwilling to compromise? (It's his way or no way.)

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Does he identify with violent people in movies, the news, or history? (Example: I finally realized how dangerous my ex was when he identified with a shooter in a mass shooting incident that happened while we were together. Anyone who can relate to someone shooting a bunch of innocent people they don't even know is not ok.)  

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Does he believe that the violent acts of others are justified? (Believing that it's ok for a guy who was bullied in school to do a school shooting, or believing that it's ok to hit his girlfriend if she flirts with another guy, for example.)

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Does he consistently blame others; refuse to take responsibility for the results of his own actions? (Example: My ex husband believed that he is on the sex offender registry, not because he sexually abused our daughter, but because I reported him.  He believed that was all my fault and I ruined his life.)   

 

Does he refer to weapons as instruments of power, control, and/or revenge?

 

Are weapons a big part of who he is? (He talks about, jokes about, reads about, owns and/or collects weapons.)  (Example: I have dated a couple of guys who carried weapons with them all of the time.  Their weapons were part of their identities.)

 

Does he use ‘male privilege’ as justification for the way he acts? (Treats you like a servant, makes all the big decisions without consulting you, the king of his castle so to speak) 

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Did he experience or witness violence as a child? 

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Have you ever made any plans in case he would hurt or kill you?  Have you mentioned it to someone else? Have you bought life insurance so that just in case you would be murdered, your kids will be taken care of?  Have you made plans or wrote does your wishes to be carried out in the event of your death?