When Conflict Isn’t the Problem: Why Distinguishing Types of Interpersonal Violence Matters

One of the reasons domestic violence is so difficult to understand—both publicly and in research—is that it is often treated as a single phenomenon. We talk about “abusive relationships” or “toxic conflict” as though all harm in intimate relationships looks the same, arises from the same causes, and requires the same solutions.

It doesn’t.

When I was a graduate student, I began volunteering at a local DV center, completing 40 hours of advocate training in the shelter and 16 additional hours of on-the-job training. Shortly afterward, I was asked to facilitate a DV-based support group in an addiction treatment center for women. I was super nervous because of the importance, but I said yes. To prepare, I immersed myself in the research on domestic violence and addiction.

And quickly became confused.

It was obvious to me that interpersonal violence (IPV) is a very complex issue because I saw great variation in how IPV is defined, how it affects people, its causes, and who experiences it. Often, research findings were even contradictory!

Definitions of domestic violence varied widely (especially between the legal system, research, and lived experience). Findings about causes, effects, prevalence, and appropriate intervention often conflicted. Some framed DV as a problem of poor communication skills; others argued it was rooted in power and control. It was difficult to reconcile these competing narratives.

What eventually helped everything fall into place was when I found sociologist Dr. Michael Johnson’s work that acknowledged a critical truth: not all interpersonal violence is the same.

Different Origins, Dynamics, & Consequences

Johnson’s work helped explain why domestic violence research can appear so contradictory. As Johnson (2006) explained, a failure to recognize the "different origins, different dynamics, and different consequences" and varying types of DV has "led to major errors in the empirical literature on [interpersonal violence], and perhaps on violence in other types of relationships" (p. 558). In other words, some DV may stem from poor communication skills, so a pair's conflict escalates into violence. Alternatively, others' experiences of DV stem from one person using a system of behaviors (e.g., psychological abuse, playing mind games, using threats and intimidation, calling names) to have power and control over another. DV may include physical violence, but it also might not.

Overall, I volunteered in the DV shelter and the addiction treatment center for about two and a half years, and the women I worked with were truly the experts. I heard hundreds of women's stories that illuminated just how important it is to consider nuance among patterns. I often spoke of Johnson's (2006; 2008) work with the women, and they overwhelmingly reported that his typology is useful for understanding the patterns in different types of IPV.

After conducting a meta-analysis (where you combine and examine multiple studies all together) on current IPV research at the time, Johnson proposed a typology that identifies four forms of domestic violence:

• Intimate Terrorism (IT):
  A pattern in which a person uses a system of behaviors to gain and maintain power and control over their partner. That system of controlling behaviors may include: economic abuse (e.g., not letting the partner have or keep a job, controlling the finances and making all financial decisions); using children as a means of control (e.g., making the partner feel guilty about parenting skills, controlling time spent with children); isolation (ensuring they are their partner's "only source of information, of support, of money, of everything"); emotional/psychological abuse (e.g., belittling the partner, calling names, chipping away at their self-esteem); minimizing, denying, or blaming in regards to the abuse (e.g., saying the abuse is the partner's fault, saying the abuse isn't "that bad," or saying it didn't happen); intimidation (e.g., using threatening looks or gestures, destroying property, injuring pets); and coercion and threats (threatening to harm/kill the partner or threatening suicide) among many other abusive actions (Johnson, 2008, pp. 7-9). Physical and sexual violence may or may not be present, but it is only one part of a broader coercive strategy.

• Violent Resistance (VR):
  Violence used by a partner who is being controlled, often as an attempt to protect themselves, retaliate against abuse, or in reaction to abuse.

• Situational Couple Violence (SCV):
  Violence that arises from conflict that escalates. It is typically mutual and symmetrical, but its effects are not always experienced equally (Anderson, 2002). Couples who experience SCV usually do not engage in power and control tactics during their everyday lives, but they become aggressive and violent during conflict situations (Johnson, 2008).

• Mutual Violent Control (MVC):
  A rare form in which both partners engage in controlling, intimate terrorism behaviors. We need more research about this, but intuitively some believe this is rare because the partners would grow tired of ineffectually trying to gain power and control over the other. Moreover, some cases of the other types of violence are miscategorized as MVC.

These distinctions matter enormously.

Without them, it is easy to draw misleading conclusions such as claims that women abuse men at equal rates, or that domestic violence can be addressed primarily through communication or anger-management training. In reality, such conclusions often stem from studies that rely on general population surveys capturing mostly situational couple violence, while shelter-based samples overwhelmingly reflect intimate terrorism (Johnson, 2006).

The policy implications are profound. When distinctions are ignored, funding priorities shift, interventions are mismatched, and survivors of coercive abuse are placed at risk by responses that misunderstand the nature of the harm.

Different Interventions

Importantly, different interventions are needed for the different types. For SCV, the couple can benefit from anger management training, couples counseling, or communication & conflict skills training because those are the root of the issue. This skill-building can help promote more healthy conflict behaviors before violent escalation occurs.

On the other hand, these interventions will generally not lessen IT, and they can even make IT worse or more covert. For example, couples counseling can make IT worse for a number of reasons (including but not limited to): the abusive partner manipulates therapy sessions - and perhaps even the therapist - into assuming mutual responsibility; it can create retaliation risk; it can enable further gaslighting and increase self-doubt in the person being abused; or it can give the abusive party new tools to enact power and control (e.g., using “therapy speak” to further gaslight).

Anger management is also generally not effective for IT because many who perpetrate IT actually can manage their anger. For example, they may be charming and well-liked in public, but retaliate against a partner upon returning home for a perceived slight. Or, when angry, they only break their partner’s possessions. In other words, they manage their anger in it’s timing and direction.

For IT, individual counseling that focuses on decreasing the abusive partner's controlling behaviors and/or feelings of entitlement may be more beneficial, but we need further research on how to effectively mitigate IT.

When Clarity Replaces Self-Blame

These distinctions don’t just shape research, policy, or intervention strategies. They also shape how people make sense of their own experiences. When I shared Johnson’s framework in support group settings, the response was overwhelming. Women consistently said that these distinctions helped them make sense of their experiences without minimizing them or forcing them into simplistic narratives that did not match their realities. They found it deeply validating to learn that not all violence stems from “crappy conflict skills,” and that attempts to resist or survive abuse did not make them equally responsible for it.

That insight stayed with me. It ultimately shaped my dissertation research, where I examined what survivors find helpful — and unhelpful — in services and social responses. Several themes emerged again and again: Survivors want to be believed. They want accurate information. They want their interpretations of their own experiences affirmed.

They also described how powerful it was to hear one another’s stories. Research mattered, but so did recognition, solidarity, and the relief of realizing they were not alone.

Understanding the different patterns of interpersonal violence gave them permission to trust their own perceptions and to name harm without self-blame (Guthrie & Kunkel, 2015; Guthrie & Kunkel, 2016).

Why This Still Matters

Failing to distinguish among types of interpersonal violence doesn’t just create academic confusion — it can cause real harm. It can lead people experiencing coercive abuse (IT) to believe they are “just bad at conflict” (SCV). It can encourage interventions that are ineffective at best or even dangerous at worst. And it can reinforce cultural narratives that minimize control and systemic inequality.

The people affected by harm are often the clearest interpreters of it. Listening to survivors reshaped not only my scholarship, but my understanding of what ethical, responsible work requires. Also, their willingness to engage in the research process with me and share their stories and insights ultimately helped me recognize my own experiences, too.

Their strength, their insight, and their refusal to accept simplistic explanations continue to guide everything I do.

Adapted from original publication: Guthrie, J. A. (2016). Researching domestic violence. In custom textbook for COM102, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

References

Anderson, K. L. (2002). Perpetrator or victim? Relationship between intimate partner violence and well-being. Journal of Marriage and Family, 64, 851-863, doi:10.1111/j.1741-3737.2002.00851.x

Guthrie, J. A., & Kunkel, A. (2015). Problematizing the uniform application of the formula story: Advocacy for survivors in a domestic violence support group. Women & Language, 38(1), 43-62.

Guthrie, J. A., & Kunkel, A. (2016). “No more trapping me!”: Communication scholarship in the service of women experiencing domestic violence and substance abuse. Communication Quarterly, 64(4), 434-453. doi:10.1080/01463373.201 5.1103296

Johnson, M. P. (2006). Violence and abuse in personal relationships: Conflict, terror, and resistance in intimate partnerships. In A. L. Vangelisti & D. Perlman (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of personal relationships (pp. 557-576). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Johnson, M. P. (2008). A typology of domestic violence: Intimate terrorism, violence resistance, and situational couple violence. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.