Abuse can be categorized as physical, verbal and emotional, or sexual.
Physical abuse is characterized by hitting, slapping, spitting at, punching, kicking, yanking (such as by the hair or limbs), throwing, banging, biting, restraining, or any act of physical coercion or violence directed at another person. Abusers attempt to control and intimidate others through violence, and also by creating an atmosphere or environment of anticipated violence. They might raise a fist, bang on a wall, or wave a gun in someone’s face.
These kinds of behaviors are abusive even if they do not result in visible injury to the victim. Abusive actions demonstrate profound disrespect for the well-being of the other person. If someone did these things to a stranger or in public, the conduct would unquestionably be considered abusive and the perpetrator might even be arrested.
Wherever there is physical abuse, there is always verbal and emotional abuse. Often sexual abuse is also part of the overall abusive pattern.
Verbal and emotional abuse occurs when words and gestures are the weapons used to hurt, destroy, or control and dominate another person. We often underestimate the power of words to harm others and can be unsympathetic to those trapped in verbally abusive relationships. We say things like “Don’t let it bother you,” or “Just let it roll off your back.” We all remember the nursery rhyme, “Sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt me.” But God knows how words affect our emotional, spiritual, and physical health. For example, Proverbs says, “Reckless words pierce like a sword” (12:18 NIV), and, “Wise words bring many benefits” (12:14). “Gentle words are a tree of life; a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit” (Proverbs 15:4). “Kind words are like honey—sweet to the soul and healthy for the body” (Proverbs 16:24).
Most often we think of name-calling, cursing, profanity, and mocking when we think of verbal abuse. However, verbal abuse can also include constant criticism and blaming; discounting or devaluing the feelings, thoughts, and opinions of another; as well as manipulating words to deceive, mislead, or confuse someone.
Emotional abuse can also be characterized by degrading someone, embarrassing them publicly, or humiliating them in front of family, friends, or work associates. Nonphysical abuse employs more than words to hurt another. Emotional abusers systematically undermine their victim in order to gain control. Abusers weaken others in order to strengthen themselves. They know what matters most to their target (for example, her children, his work, her appearance, her family, his pet, her friends), and they seek to destroy it.
Sexual abuse occurs whenever one person forces an unwilling party into having sexual relations or performing sexual acts, even within a marriage. Recently while teaching a class on domestic violence at a seminary, a student challenged my definition.
The seminary student argued that 1 Corinthians 7 was biblical proof that forcing a wife to have sex with her husband could not be considered abusive because it was biblically wrong for a wife to refuse her husband. From his perspective, it was a man’s God-given right to force his wife if she denied him.
It is true that the apostle Paul cautions husbands and wives not to deprive each other of sexual relations except under special circumstances. However, Paul also wrote that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church (Ephesians 5:25). Paul describes what that kind of love looks like; it is a giving and cherishing love, not a coercing or disrespectful love (Ephesians 5; 1 Corinthians 13).
If a wife sexually refuses her husband, whatever her reason may be, a loving husband would never respond to his legitimate disappointment by forcing his wife to have sex against her will. At most he might try to gently change her mind, but likely he will accept her decision and try again another time. If his wife regularly denies him, ideally he would pray for her as well as ask her what the problem is, encourage her to work on the problem herself, or go for help together. Forcing his wife to have sex against her will reduces her to an object for him to use as he sees fit regardless of her feelings. That is not only degrading and disrespectful to his wife, it is abusive.
Other forms of sexual abuse include touching others sexually without their permission, pressuring them to view or participate in pornography, talking to them in sexually derogatory or humiliating ways, taking sexually explicit pictures without their permission, or making uninvited suggestive comments.
All abuse is emotionally destructive and negates the personhood of the victim. A healthy relationship is impossible in the presence of any kind of ongoing or unrepentant abuse.