Intimate Partner Violence

The development of a highly effective working relationship between workers in an office setting is very important in handling problems associated with day-to-day lives. Within such environments, people are likely to develop trust and even open up to discuss their personal issues. In such instances, the propensity to meet up with a colleague experiencing Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) exists and the best one can do is to offer a shoulder to lean on before designing a strategy to counter the problem. 

In such a setting, I meet up with George. Yes, he is a man but one who is in an abusive relationship. His wife terrorizes him and he has lost his self-esteem, his ego, and happiness. He is under the constant threat of verbal and physical attack by his wife. He is a victim of IPV. He does not like to talk about it but after a careful look at his life and mannerisms, one cannot help but tell that George is troubled and traumatized. He does not have a straight way out of it.

To help George, it is important to understand his situation. He is under the learned helplessness theory where he stays in the relationship as a means to self-punish. At one point during early times of his relationship, George and his now abusive wife got a baby who later died out of George’s negligence. Since then, he has been viewing the violence he is meted by his wife as a punishment. He needs to understand that whatever happened is in the past and it is only wise to focus on the future. His current situation also affects his existing children and they too, do not know peace due to a past mistake.