Abuse can affect all aspects of your marriage, regardless of whether the abuse is physical or emotional. Your spouse’s emotional abuse may be one reason—or the primary reason—for your divorce. Emotional abuse may not leave visible scars, but it can be just as damaging as physical violence.
COVID-19 Update: The coronavirus outbreak has impacted how the courts and domestic violence organizations are able to operate. To learn how their services are affected and what resources are still available to you while shelter-in-place orders are in place, see the article, What Should I Do If My Spouse Is Threatening or Harassing Me?
What Constitutes Emotional Abuse?
Many abusers seek control of their victims. If you’ve been the victim of abuse, you may suffer from feelings of worthlessness, inadequacy, or fear. Although physical and emotional abuse differ, their result is the same—the victims often feel ashamed, embarrassed, afraid, and helpless.
Emotional abuse can include verbal threats of physical violence, humiliation, controlling a spouse’s whereabouts, isolating a spouse from family and friends, shaming, and following or recording a spouse without their knowledge or consent. Even though the scars of emotional abuse are invisible, it can be just as traumatizing as broken bones and bruises. Often a spouse who is emotionally abusive to a partner also emotionally abuses the couple’s children. Be sure to watch for signs of depression or low self-esteem in your children and get them the help they need.
Effects of Abuse on Divorce
In many cases, one spouse’s emotional abuse may worsen once the victim leaves or files for divorce. It’s a way for the abuser to try to regain some control and keep you in the marriage. You should carefully document every instance of abuse during your marriage and your divorce. Specifically, save text messages, emails, handwritten notes, voicemails, and write down the details of abusive conversations. You will need to present this evidence to a judge and gathering it will help you prepare for the custody part of your case.
Abuse and Custody
An abusive spouse is going to face a stark disadvantage in a custody case. A judge will try to come up with a parenting plan that serves a child’s best interests when evaluating custody. One parent’s abuse, even if it’s only against the other parent, can doom the abusive parent’s chances at obtaining custody.
Some of the factors a judge may consider in a custody case, include:
- each parent’s mental and physical health
- each parent’s ability to meet the child’s needs
- the child’s medical, educational, and emotional needs
- the child’s relationship with each parent
- each parent’s stability
- each parent’s employment demands
- the child’s ties to extended family and/or siblings
- either parent’s history of domestic violence, and
- any other factor the court deems necessary.
A judge may consider all of these factors or any other factor that impacts the child’s needs—including a parent’s physical or emotional abuse within the family. Parents who habitually ridicule, degrade, or otherwise emotionally abuse their children are unlikely to obtain custody. A child’s safety and emotional well-being is central to any custody decision.
When looking for help as a victim of abuse, remember to consider how private your computer, Internet, and phone use are. Consider whether there's anything you can and should do to prevent someone else from learning that you’re doing research or seeking help. Some victims, for instance, might use the same computer or device as the abuser or might have a phone plan that allows the abuser to see the calls they make and receive. Other kinds of technology, like home security cameras and GPS in phones and cars, can also allow for monitoring by the abuser.
