July 11, 2008
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July 11, 2008
By Gienie Assink
Dialectical tensions, conflicts that arise when two opposing or incompatible forces exist simultaneously, occur often in many relationships. For couples especially, privacy dialectic centers on decisions to reveal or conceal good news about their relationship. “Should we tell our friends we’re dating?” or “Is it time for you to meet my family?” are questions they might ask about sharing positive relational information with others.
For some couples, however, the concealed news isn’t so pleasant. Lara Dieckmann, author of Private Secrets and Public Disclosures, looked into the world of battered women and found that most of them wrestle with the dialectic of staying private or going public about the abuse in their relationships.
Dieckmann conducted in-depth interviews at an agency for battered women in Chicago. She also talked with shelter volunteers and drew upon her experience as a legal advocate for battered women.
Her goal was to interpret “abused women’s experience in relation to their social and political context and with reference to their own words.” A word that Dieckmann used to describe the women’s experience is balance—that is, their need to constantly balance the competing demands of privacy and publicity, secrecy and disclosure, safety and danger.
Telling others about partner abuse can be the first step in disengaging from a violent relationship, but it can also threaten a woman’s self-esteem, security, and very life.
Consider, for example, the dilemma of a battered woman who wants to reach out to friends and family for help, but fears her mate will find out and react violently. Or, imagine the spouse whose shame at confessing to being victimized conflicts with the desire to share the problem.
From the outside, it can be hard to understand why victims of abuse keep quiet about their awful situations. But understanding the dialectical tension between openness and privacy can help us appreciate the dilemmas often faced by people in abusive relationships.
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You always have such great, thoughtful articles G.A. The abusive woman’s situation also causes a dilemma in the hearts and minds of her friends, or even women who don’t know her but want to help her. The Clackamas Women Shelter was a wonderful organization that provided an opportunity for abused women to escape quickly. People in the community could open there doors to the women to provide them a safe (and discrete) place to stay until they could get their feet on the ground. It was a noble jesture, but definitely a very scary step to take for the family doing the helping. Certainly they were helping the woman and children in need, but unfortunately also exposing their own family to the potential violence of the abusive husband if he should find out what home his wife is staying in. There are so very many twists and turns to the abusive situation. Wish we could just teach our young girls these days to recognize the “bad boys” may seem “exciting” but sometimes excitement isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Personally, I found the “peaceful valleys” to be a far better choice than the “roaring volcanos” in the long run.