When you recognise yourself as the one who is violent

He was standing in the kitchen, reaching up to the shelf for a glass. Nothing special, a movement he makes every day. She was standing by the counter, and she flinched. Not much, just a step back, shoulders slightly forward, hands rising of their own accord. Then she stopped, as if she had caught herself, and smiled as though it were nothing.

In that moment he knew. Not because anyone had accused him, and not because he had read an article. He knew because her body said something he had long refused to hear: she is afraid of him.

This piece is for those of you who have found yourselves on this side of the story. For the person who woke up in the night with the sentence “what I am doing is violence” and doesn’t know what to do with it. It is not meant to reassure you, and it is not meant to condemn you. It is meant to make sure this moment doesn’t pass without changing anything. And let it be clear from the start: responsibility for violence lies with the person who commits it. Not with the partner, not with the children, not with stress and not with alcohol. That is not a sentence against you. It is the only sentence from which anything can change.

Recognising yourself is different from “I lost my temper once”

Most people who are violent in a relationship don’t see themselves as violent. They see themselves as people who were provoked, who had a hard day, who “only raised their voice”. Recognising yourself means something else: seeing the pattern. Not one outburst, but the fact that the other person adapts around you. That they check your mood when you come home. That the children go quiet when they hear your key in the door. That your partner doesn’t say where they are going, or says it in too much detail, so there won’t be trouble.

Violence in a relationship is not only a blow. It is also humiliation, threats, control over money, phone and friendships, sexual coercion, smashing things so the other person sees what could happen. You will find a short overview of its forms in the knowledge base under violence in a relationship. The sociologist Evan Stark used the term coercive control for a pattern in which the other person’s life gradually narrows. Some people never hit, and yet they keep the other in fear.

It is not rare. In 2022 the World Health Organization and a team of researchers estimated that around 27 per cent of women aged 15 to 49 who had ever been in a relationship had experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner at least once in their lives. Behind every one of those figures is someone who committed that violence. Women are violent too, and violence happens in same-sex relationships as well. In the examples here I talk about a man, because that is the most common picture, but what follows applies regardless of gender.

Violence is not a loss of control

The story people who are violent most often tell about themselves is a story of losing control. “Something washed over me.” “That wasn’t me.” “I saw red.” The feeling may be real. But when you look more closely, it turns out that control mostly remained.

The same man who kicks in a door at home doesn’t say a word to the boss who humiliates him. He hits where it won’t show. He stops when the neighbour rings the bell. He shouts at his partner, but not at her brother, who is taller than him. Lundy Bancroft, a counsellor who worked for many years with groups of men who were abusive, described exactly this as a key finding: violence is selective. It is directed at someone over whom a person feels entitled to have power.

That is not easy to hear, because the loss-of-control story is in a way comforting. If I “snapped”, then I am not the one who decided. But this very story makes change impossible. If violence is a loss of control, the solution is better anger management. If violence is a way of putting someone else in a subordinate position, the solution is different: the question of why you think you have the right to do it.

Anger itself is not the problem. It is an emotion everyone has, and it can be valuable — that is the subject of Anger is not the problem: how it turns from helplessness into energy for change. The problem is what you do with anger and to whom. That is why anger management courses on their own are not enough for violence in a relationship: someone can learn to breathe and count to ten and still monitor their partner’s phone.

How responsibility slips away

Alan Jenkins, an Australian therapist who wrote about working with men who are violent, described how skilfully responsibility slips away. Not necessarily through lies, but through language. There are a few typical ways:

• Minimising. “I only pushed her.” “It wasn’t anything serious.” The act remains; its weight disappears.
• Shifting blame. “If she hadn’t started.” “She knows what sets me off.” Responsibility moves to the person who suffered.
• Circumstances. Stress, alcohol, work, childhood. All of it may be real, and all of it may contribute. None of it threw the punch.
• Denial. “That’s not how I remember it.” “She’s exaggerating.” The memory of the person who was violent is often kinder than the memory of the person who lived through it.

Jenkins made an important point here: people don’t use these languages because they are rotten. They use them because facing what they have done is unbearable. His approach is therefore called an invitation to responsibility: not coercion and not condemnation, but a persistent invitation for a person to take up what is theirs. But an invitation is not the same as leniency. The boundary stays clear.

Shame that hides and guilt that repairs

When a person recognises themselves, they are often flooded with shame. “I’m a monster.” “I’m just like my father.” “I don’t deserve anyone.” It may seem like a good sign — as if shame proves remorse. Not necessarily.

Shame is an emotion about who you are. Guilt is an emotion about what you did. The difference matters, because they lead in different directions. Shame pulls towards hiding, defensiveness and often a new attack: someone who feels worthless finds it hard to bear their partner looking at them with reproach, and often that is exactly when they hit or shout again. Guilt leads towards repair: I did something wrong, so I need to change something. This difference is explored in Guilt and shame are not the same — and the difference matters, and there is a short explanation under shame in the knowledge base.

It also matters where you put your shame. If you bring it to your partner — if they have to comfort you because you feel so bad about what you did to them — the roles reverse yet again. Once more they are the one looking after how you feel. The shame you feel is real and deserves space. But that space is not with the person you hurt. It is with a professional, in a programme, in your own therapy.

Why an apology is not enough

After an outburst there is often a wish to sort everything out as quickly as possible. An apology, flowers, a promise that it won’t happen again. The wish is understandable. But for the person who has experienced violence, this is often just another phase in a familiar cycle — the one we call the honeymoon phase. How that cycle turns is described in The cycle of violence: tension, explosion and the honeymoon phase.

A real apology asks for nothing in return. It doesn’t expect forgiveness, it doesn’t set a deadline by which your partner should “stop being angry”, and it doesn’t say “I’ve apologised, what more do you want”. What a good apology contains is described in the knowledge base under apology. With violence, though, one more thing needs adding: an apology is not change. At most it is the start of it. Change shows over months and years, in whether the other person feels safer around you — not in how beautifully you said something.

And something else that is hard: your partner does not owe you staying. If you change, it won’t be in order to earn their staying. You have to change because violence is wrong — towards the next person you may one day live with, too, and towards the children who are watching you.

The first people to hear that someone has recognised themselves are often friends or brothers. Their response matters, because it can open the way or close it. This is how a conversation that opens it might sound (composite, not a real person):

“Yesterday I grabbed her arm so hard she had a bruise. But you know what she’s like when she starts…”
“Stop there. You said she had a bruise.”
“Yeah. I didn’t mean to.”
“I believe you feel sick about it now. But ‘I didn’t mean to’ doesn’t help her. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. It won’t happen again.”
“You said that last year too. Let’s look together at where you can turn. I’ll come with you if you want. But this is your thing, not hers.”

The friend doesn’t preach and isn’t disgusted. But he doesn’t accept the “but” either. He brings the conversation back to the act, to the consequence and to what the person is going to do. That is one of the most valuable things anyone can do for someone who is violent: not help them feel better, but help them stay with the truth.

What programmes for people who are violent are

For people who are violent in relationships there are specialised programmes around the world, and in Slovenia too. Most often this is group work that lasts for a longer period. The focus is not only on managing anger, but on beliefs about power, control and entitlement to another person, on the consequences of violence for the partner and the children, and on concrete changes in behaviour. Good programmes work together with services that support victims, because the measure of success is the partner’s safety, not just the participant’s own report. A social work centre can show you the way to them; tell them plainly that you are looking for help because you are violent.

Do programmes work? The honest answer is: partly. A 2004 meta-analysis by Julia Babcock and colleagues showed that the effect of programmes on repeat violence is, on average, small. The researchers behind Project Mirabal in the UK, Liz Kelly and Nicole Westmarland, showed in 2015 something that complements this picture. Women whose partners had been in programmes spoke about success more broadly than whether there were fewer blows. They spoke about the space they had regained, about respect, about safer childhoods for their children. According to their findings, physical violence generally decreased more markedly than other, quieter forms of control.

From this follows something worth knowing before you begin. A programme is not a sentence you serve, and it is not a certificate you show your partner so they will come back. It is the start of long work whose result you will not be the one to judge. The verdict will come from a house where the silence is no longer tense, and from children who no longer go quiet when you open the door.

Where therapy fits

You may be wondering whether you could go to therapy instead of a programme. Individual therapy can be valuable — for your own history, for childhood trauma, for addiction, for depression, for the shame you carry. But it does not replace a specialised programme. Therapy that focuses mainly on why you became who you are can, without a clear boundary, unintentionally become a place where violence is explained and so, a little, excused.

A good therapist will therefore first ask about the safety of the people you live with and point you towards help designed precisely for this. In therapy we can look together at what lies beneath your behaviour: your own history, shame, anger you never learned to put into words, and a responsibility you cannot shift onto anyone else. But where there is violence, therapy alone is often not enough — very often a specialised programme for people who are violent is needed too, and a social work centre can show you the way to one. But there is one more thing you should know: couples therapy is not an appropriate form of help when there is violence. In a shared room your partner cannot speak freely, because they know they will go home with you afterwards. Why that is so is explained in more detail in Why couples therapy is not the right help when there is violence.

If alcohol or another addiction is in the background, you also need help with the addiction. But here too: a sober person is not automatically a non-violent one. Addiction and violence often meet, but one problem does not explain the other.

Exercise: an honest account of one event

This exercise is not for your partner. Don’t send it to them, don’t ask them to read it, and don’t use it as proof that you are trying. It is for you, so that you can bear to look at what happened. It takes half an hour.

1. Write down one event without the word “but”. What you said, what you did, where the other person was standing. Only facts, in the first person.
2. Write down how the other person protected themselves. Did they look away, go silent, retreat to another room, carry the child out? Every such movement is a sign of fear.
3. Write down what you wanted to achieve. For them to be quiet? To do it your way? To know who decides? Be precise, even if the answer is unpleasant.
4. Write down what it cost them and the children. Not what it cost you. Sleep, trust, friends they no longer invite round, a child who shuts themselves in their room.
5. Write down one concrete step you will take this week. A call to the social work centre, a conversation with your GP, looking for a programme. Not a promise, but a step you can check.

If, while writing, it feels as though it would be easier to forget the whole thing, that is normal. It is precisely this feeling that has so far allowed the violence to repeat.

When this piece doesn’t apply to you

I want to be precise here too, because this subject doesn’t tolerate simplification.

If you were defending yourself. The researcher Michael Johnson described how not all violence in relationships is the same. If you live with someone who controls you and whom you fear, and you once hit back, that is not the same as the violence this piece describes. People who live in a violent relationship for a long time often take on the blame for everything, including what was self-defence. If you recognise yourself in this, Self-image after abuse: when you believe it was your fault will be closer to you.

If you are looking for an assessment of whether you are “really” dangerous. This piece is not a self-assessment tool. It cannot tell you whether someone around you is in danger. If there is any doubt at all, the answer is: yes, act.

If you expect recognition to save you. Recognising yourself is a necessary step, but not a sufficient one. Even people who deeply regret what they did repeat violence if they don’t change the beliefs and habits it grows from. Regret without work is just another way of feeling like a good person without anything changing.

When it is dangerous right now

If you feel you are about to take it out on someone, leave. Not to punish them with your leaving, but to keep them safe. Don’t drive if you have been drinking. Call someone you trust. If someone is in danger, call 112 or the police on 113 in Slovenia — even if it means you will be the one who is taken away.

If you need to talk in the middle of the night because what you did has broken you, call the Mental Distress Helpline on 01 520 99 00 in Slovenia (every day from 7 pm to 7 am) or the Samaritan helpline on 116 123 in Slovenia (24 hours). If you are having thoughts of harming yourself, say so directly. For people experiencing violence there is the SOS helpline for women and children victims of violence, 080 11 55 in Slovenia — if your partner needs it, don’t forbid it and don’t check whether they have called.

What to remember

• Responsibility for violence lies with the person who commits it — not with the partner, stress, alcohol or childhood.
• Violence rarely means a loss of control; mostly it is directed at someone over whom a person feels entitled to have power.
• Shame leads to hiding, guilt to repair. Take your shame to a professional, not to the person you hurt.
• An apology is not change. Change is measured by how safe others feel around you, and it takes a long time.
• The way forward is through a specialised programme; a social work centre can show you where. Couples therapy is not an appropriate form of help when there is violence.