Breaking Up

Although leaving an abusive relationship is safer in the long run, the period of time immediately following a breakup can be extremely dangerous. Often the abuser becomes more violent, or threatens to hurt himself or his ex-girlfriend. When planning a breakup, it is essential to prepare for harassment or a potential escalation of violence.

Guiding Your Teen through a Breakup

Breaking up a relationship is difficult to do, even if the relationship is not abusive or violent. But ending an abusive relationship is not like ending a healthy one, because the abuser may not accept the breakup and then react with threats and violence. The abuser will often continue his controlling behavior and try to keep in contact with her. Loveisrespect.org, a teen dating violence prevention organization, suggests the following tips for you and your daughter:

• If it doesn’t feel safe, don’t break up in person. It may seem cruel to break up over the phone or by e-mail, but it may be the safest way.
• If the breakup occurs in person, it should be done in a public place. You or your daughter’s friends should wait nearby.
• Your daughter shouldn’t try to explain her reasons for ending the relationship more than once. There is nothing to say that will make the abuser happy.
• Let friends and other family members know that the relationship is ending, especially if you think the abuser will come to your house or confront your daughter when she’s alone.
• Advise your daughter that if the abuser does come to your house when she’s alone, she should not open the door, and she should call someone.
• Trust your instincts, and encourage everyone else involved to do the same. If anyone feels afraid, there is probably a good reason.
• Ask for help. You or your daughter should call an advocate who is trained and ready to answer your questions.³⁷

After Breaking Up

Your daughter’s ex-boyfriend may be extremely upset and feel desperately lost after she breaks up with him. He may not believe or accept that the relationship is really over. Your daughter may feel torn apart and worried about him. Or, if he is explosively angry with her for leaving, she may be afraid of what he might do to her or her family. She may also find that his anger and desperation lead him to behave in ways that are disruptive, threatening, and harassing.

There are several common kinds of harassment after a breakup:

• constant texting and calling at all hours of the day and night
• having friends repeatedly pressure her during her school day or at her job “not to do this to him”
• cornering her sisters, brothers, or friends for long periods of time to talk about the breakup and get information about her comings and goings
• asking her close friends out on dates, or pursuing sexual relations with one of her close friends
• talking, starting rumors, or writing graffiti about her on school property that contains sexually humiliating lies
• having his friends sexually harass her (name-calling, crudely talking to her, physically harassing her)
• repeatedly waking her up in the middle of the night from outside her bedroom window “to talk”
• calling or coming to her house and threatening to hurt or kill her or her family members
• forcing her or convincing her to get into his car or to go somewhere where he barrages her with questions and accusations, or pleads and pressures her to change her mind, not letting her get away

The ex-boyfriend may begin stalking your daughter. Stalking is a way the abuser intimidates and instills fear by persistently contacting the victim, or making her aware of his presence and surveillance of her. It can constantly disrupt whatever peaceful moments you and your daughter may attain. Stalking contains a threat of danger to your daughter and to your family. It can go on for days, weeks, months, or years. Stalking is against the law, and it is recognized as a tactic of abuse. It is known to intensify during and after a breakup. (See chapters 15 and 16 for information on your legal options, including what to do when stalking is taking place.)

There are a number of common kinds of stalking behavior an abuser can exhibit:

• making persistent, repeated phone calls or texts to the victim at all hours
• leaving threatening messages on your phone, in your mailbox, in your daughter’s school locker, and other places
• sitting in a parked car or standing outside your home for hours
• watching your daughter and letting her know in a menacing way that she is being watched
• following her or having friends follow her
• showing up wherever she goes—for example, at parties or outings with her family and friends

Post-Breakup Safety

Breaking up may involve your daughter making a clear separation from her abuser, certain that she no longer wants to be with him. Or breaking up may be a process of her telling him she wants to break up, and then trying to help him deal with it. This process might go on for days or weeks—even months—until she makes a final break and has no more contact with him, or until he accepts that the relationship is over. Another common experience is that when she suggests that they break up, he breaks up with her or goes out with someone else. She then becomes extremely upset and confused about what she wants. She may be devastated that he doesn’t want to be with her and become obsessive about being with him.

In general, the major safety concern after the end of a battering relationship is how to avoid contact with an abuser who is volatile, especially if the abuser and the victim live in the same community and go to the same school. Safety planning usually focuses on her staying away from him, and keeping him away from her.

Teens who have been abused are often hooked back into the relationship because of fear or worry about the abuser: “He needs me.” “He can’t live without me.” “It’s safer to be with him where I can keep him from hurting my family.” The victim needs to get away from his pressure to go back to him and get away from his harassment or stalking. She needs to get away so she can think clearly. When an ex-girlfriend is around the abuser, she often thinks the way he thinks rather than making her own safety a priority. If he is desperately upset, she focuses on taking care of him and has a terrible time taking care of herself.

Ending a battering relationship is unlike ending other relationships. It is rarely possible to maintain contact or a friendship after the breakup. It may be possible to work out ways to safely maintain contact if necessary—for example, when a child is involved. Often, though not always, extreme measures are taken to avoid contact.

There are many specific techniques for avoiding contact. Here are a few:

• No one should reply to his texts, calls, e-mails, or social network postings.
• Screen calls to the house and to her cell phone.
• Get a restraining order (also called an “order of protection” or a “keep-away order”).
• Save harassing or threatening text messages or voicemails to use to get a restraining order or make a police report; keep a record of dates and times the messages were sent or calls were made.
• Change your phone number.
• Turn off phones at night when everyone is at home, or whenever you need a break.
• If he has a key to your house, or knows where you keep one, change the lock and remove the key.
• Arrange for your daughter not to be by herself when she is vulnerable; for example, if he is likely to confront her on her way somewhere, family members and friends can accompany her for a while.
• Alert people at work and school that she doesn’t want to see or talk to him.
• Make sure that an adult knows where she is going if it’s not part of her usual routine, and when she is expected to return; if you are especially concerned, ask her to call when she arrives at her destination and when she leaves for home.
• Remind everyone in the family of emergency procedures, with a discussion about the kinds of circumstances in which to follow emergency procedures.
• Have her stay with a friend or a family member where he can’t find her.

Cooperation and coordination between your family and community resources can enhance your daughter’s safety, as illustrated in Lisa’s story.

Lisa

Lisa, a fourteen-year-old girl, was trying to break up with fifteen-year-old Eric. Several incidents took place at school. Eric pushed Lisa against the wall and choked her in the girl’s bathroom, trapping her when she screamed and tried to get away from him. He verbally harassed her, yelled at her, and threatened her, and called her “bitch” and “whore” across the schoolyard. He didn’t believe that she wanted to break up with him and persisted in following her, writing her love letters and harassing and pleading with her. His friends cornered her and accused her of ruining Eric’s life.

To try to protect Lisa, a juvenile police officer worked with school administrators. The juvenile police officer and school principal and vice principal let Eric know that they would take disciplinary action according to school protocols if he did not stay away from her. It was clear to Eric that he would be arrested if he hurt Lisa in any way. Teachers and other school personnel were informed that Eric was not to be alone with Lisa. Lisa and her parents arranged for friends to walk to and from school with her. The domestic violence program in the school educated classmates in general so they were alert and aware, even though they were not told about Lisa’s situation in particular. Lisa and her family received counseling through the domestic violence program. Counseling was also offered to Eric.

Everyone working out this safety plan agreed that it should not be up to Lisa alone to convey to Eric the seriousness of his problem or her wish to stay away from him. She was too frightened of him and worried about his devastated reaction to the breakup. She was better able to take care of herself with the coordinated efforts of her parents, her friends, her school, and the police.

There are cases in which the only way to end the violence after the relationship ends is for the family to take extreme measures to get the battered teen completely away from the batterer. These kinds of measures are especially necessary when the batterer’s threats or behavior indicate that it is possible he will try to kill his ex-girlfriend or someone in her family.

She may have to hide from him, changing her school and residence. She may try to stay in one of the shelters for battered women that have been established for this purpose; some of these shelters accept teens. She may have to leave town for a while, sometimes for a long time, staying with relatives or family friends. She may have to keep her new residence a secret from school, friends, and others so that it will not be inadvertently revealed to the batterer.

In some cases, the whole family must move to another city without leaving a forwarding address. Occasionally, the family must also change their name and take detailed precautions so that the batterer does not find out where they are living.

The process of breaking up is very complicated in these situations. The planning involved may take considerable time and effort so that the batterer does not suspect that his girlfriend is thinking of leaving. The family must sometimes make detailed plans for her to disappear suddenly, so that when he finds out that she has left and he becomes enraged, he cannot find her.

For teen mothers whose abuser is the father of their child, this can be an especially complicated process because of legal issues regarding the custody and visitation of the child. It will take extra planning to leave town with the child.

Emotional Reactions after the Breakup

You can help your daughter anticipate her feelings about being apart from her boyfriend when she breaks up with him. What will she need? Will she want to be physically far away from him so that she can’t see him (even by accident) and can avoid feeling pressured by him or letting her own feelings pull her back to him? Will she want to be with other people most of the time? Will she want to be at home and doing her usual routine? Will she need help from others to keep her from having any contact with him?

Most people leaving a battering relationship are vulnerable to going back, especially between two weeks and two months after breaking up. This is a critical period. It is not a matter of how much time it takes to get over the relationship, but of getting through the moments when your daughter feels the pull back to him. Your daughter needs continuous support. You cannot assume that her need for your support is over just because the relationship is over. Quite the contrary: She will still be emotionally vulnerable, and possibly in physical danger, for a long time after the breakup.

After things quiet down, and she has become involved in a new routine that doesn’t focus on her relationship, she may feel the pull to go back. She will start missing the things that were good in the relationship and minimizing the bad times. She will feel bad about how much the boyfriend may be suffering or despairing or missing her. She will experience the fear and intense pain of being alone, which is especially acute after the intense demands of an abusive relationship. She will be afraid of what the boyfriend will do, and the tension can be unbearable. She might seek the relief of staying close to him, watching over him, accommodating him—feeling like she is managing the situation by being in contact with him rather than coping with the fear of the unknown when she is apart from him.

Once her boyfriend is not around, your daughter may experience intense feelings she could not feel when she was with him. She may be depressed, even thinking of suicide. She may be angry with herself and afraid to trust herself in the future. Her self-esteem has been seriously undermined, and she may be having a hard time believing that she can get over this, or do better on her own, or do the things she wants to do. She may be terrified, realizing what she has been through. She may feel ashamed and guilty when she understands what her family has been through. She may be angry, realizing how badly she has been treated or how unsupportive some people have been.

Your daughter needs support to overcome the isolation she experienced during the relationship. She has to re-establish friendships and fill the gaps in her social and emotional life that were caused by the intense relationship. She needs to be embraced by her family.

What about you, the parents? She’s getting over a relationship, and you are recovering from a prolonged and intense crisis. Your emotional reactions after the breakup may surprise you. Of course you will feel relieved, but you may also realize the degree to which you were traumatized. You may dwell on your past decisions and/or mistakes. You may find it difficult to trust your daughter, her judgment, or her friends. Returning to “normal” may take a while. This is a time of healing and restoration for all of you.

Your daughter needs help from you and from people at her school to regain lost ground—academically, socially, and in her other activities. She needs counseling to help her recover her self-esteem and to deal with the intense push and pull to and from the battering relationship. She needs counseling to recover from the traumatic effects of the relationship and to evaluate what she has been through, how it has affected her, and how to believe in herself once more. She can get through this and thrive again.