The Rejection-abuse Cycle

The problems caused by domestic violence become more and more serious across the time. Compare with the incidents like car accidents and rape, there are more women getting hurt because of domestic violence. Many researches were carried out to understand men's domestic violence and some of the researchers suggested that the perpetrators of the domestic violence, abuse their partner due to their experience of rejection and shame. Thus, a rejection-abuse cycle existed (Brown, James, & Taylor, 2010). There are four steps in the cycle, which the sense of rejection of man make up a threat to self, leading to a defend against this threat and then results in abusive behaviour.

The first stage of the cycle is the man experiences rejection by his current partner. The past experience of rejection by the man's previous attachment relationships will be able to detonate by contact with his current partner's behaviour of rejection. Brown et al. (2010) pointed out that previous experiences of rejection weaken a man's ability to cope with present rejection. Such experiences include excessive rejection, punishment, neglect and abandonment. According to Bowlby's attachment research (as cited in Bretherton, 1992, p. 769), repeated threats of rejection may lead to excessive separation anxiety. Thus, an anxiously attached man tends to be the one being rejected or abandoned several times by parents or previous partner in his past life experience. Substantial research has been carried out which indicated a link between attachment style and man's abusive behaviour (Brown et al., 2010). Other than that, a man received excessive punishment during their childhood is more likely a troublesome individual (Fergusson & Lynskey, 1997). Therefore, when a m...

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... own childhood; no matter it are security and nurturing or abandonment and neglect, guidance and respect, or abuse and disdain. Not only the man becomes psychologically or physically abusive, but he is also aggressive towards his partner whenever he feels that his experience of rejection and consecutive disruption cannot be soothed by the defence that he mounted. Those people with a history of neglect or abuse, they usually not able to have confident in their partners whereby they perceive their partners as enemies instead of allies. These abusive relationships are often repeatable becoming more intense as if the man is riding on a rollercoaster ride. The rejection-abusive cycle is considered complete when the man felt he is not appreciated as his unrealistic expectation on relationships is not fulfilled - closeness and intimacy, in other words, further rejection.