All women in the study described the emotional violence that they lived with as a huge life problem. The stories that they told us were usually stories of an initial love affair and a short period of marital bliss, followed by a sudden change in their husband’s behaviour towards them. From being warm and attentive during the time of courtship, he suddenly became cold, indifferent, and distant, sometimes talking to them in derogatory ways. To illustrate how the women experienced such behaviours, we begin by presenting the case of Lan. We invited Lan to take part in the qualitative research because the cohort study interview with her revealed an EPDS score of 16 as well as extensive experience with emotional violence. When we called Lan to make the appointment for an interview, she immediately agreed to take part. On August 25, 2014, we went to visit her in the Dong Anh town where she lived.
Lan’s story
When we met her, Lan was 36 years old and 38 weeks pregnant with her third child, a girl. She shared a house with her husband, their two children, and her parents-in-law. Lan’s husband worked as an iron welder, and she herself ran a small café in the front room of their house, selling home-made sticky rice and tea. Since most of her customers came in the early morning, Lan had to get up very early every day, preparing for work. When we reached Lan’s house, it was 10 am and her café was quiet. Offering us each a cup of green tea, Lan seated us in the rattan furniture in the back of the room. She told us that she had felt much more tired during this pregnancy than during her first two pregnancies. Unlike her first pregnancies, this one was not planned. Also, with two small children and two elderly parents-in-law to take care of, alongside her work running the café, Lan had to work very hard during this pregnancy. She had felt quite weak, had vomited a lot, had difficulties sleeping, and suffered from hypertension.
We asked Lan to tell us about her marital life, beginning from the time when she and her husband met each other. At that time, Lan said, her husband had been so sweet and kind to her. He lived a simple life. Unlike many other men, he did not have a motorbike; instead, he biked the nine kilometres to her parents’ house to visit her. She fell in love with him, and they got married. Since the day of their marriage, Lan feels, her husband has become colder towards her day by day. She does not understand why, but he seems to act completely differently with other people than he does with her. With his parents, he is always gentle and respectful, treating them with love and care. If they get ill, he asks constantly how they are, expressing sincere concern about them and buying medicine for them at the local drugstore. He is also very friendly with his neighbours, who see him as a kind man. When he is with Lan, however, he seems to be a completely different person. When at home, he ignores her; he does not talk to her and acts as if she is not present; a non-person of no value. He leaves all housework to her, failing to help out with any domestic chores. When she is ill, he does not ask how she is and does not do anything to support her. Lan feels that there is no love in their marriage anymore. Her husband’s coldness towards her is particularly painful to her because she is pregnant:
When I asked him to drive me to the hospital for an antenatal check-up, he refused. He does not seem to care about the little one or me at all. It’s so strange, because other people see him as a kind man, but at home, we never talk to each other. Sometimes I look at other couples. They talk to each other, like friends. But my husband and I never talk. When the children are ill, it’s only me who takes care of them. If they wake up at night, my husband just continues sleeping. The children cry, but he just sleeps. This makes me feel very angry. Sometimes, if I have problems with my health, I tell him that I’m not feeling well. But he does not care.
Sharing a household with his parents also places strain on the relationship between Lan and her husband. At first, when she moved into this house after their wedding, Lan found it very difficult to live with his parents: she found them old-fashioned, and she felt that they were constantly observing her and correcting her. They commented on behaviours that seemed of minor importance to Lan, such as the way she washed the dishes and the amount of water that she used. If she returned from an errand and failed to greet them in the way that her husband found correct, he would scold her in a harsh tone.
When moving to live here, Lan constantly missed her parents’ house where she had felt much more relaxed and at ease – the atmosphere in her husband’s home was so different and much more tense. Even though she had lived here for several years now, there was no one in the family or in the local area that she felt she could really trust, as everyone here was closely related to her husband and his family: “To tell you the truth,” she said, “I don’t confide in anyone. I’ve married a man who lives far from my own home, so I have no one to confide in. I also don’t hang out with anyone here. I just stay at home and work.” Even though he himself does not want to talk to her, Lan says, her husband gets angry if she talks too much to male customers or other men: “One day when my phone rang, my husband grabbed it. The person on the other end did not respond. Then my husband asked me, ‘Why is the person not speaking?’ After that my husband became very angry. He shouted, in a really coarse tone, and said that he would trace the phone number to find out who had called.”
Living in this marriage, Lan feels deeply unhappy. She cries a lot and thinks a lot. “Sadness is always there,” she says, “it’s always haunting me.” She has often thought of ending the marriage, but she stays for the sake of the children, feeling that a divorce would make their lives very difficult. She also feels that if she leaves this house, there is nowhere else that she can go. Even though her mother has invited her to return to her parents’ house, this house now belongs to Lan’s brother and his wife, and Lan does not feel she would be welcome there. So she endures: “Whatever one’s life conditions are like,” she says, “one must endure those conditions.”
Lan’s story resembles many other stories that we heard when talking to women who lived with emotional partner violence. From our analysis of the women’s narratives of their marital lives, three forms of emotional abuse emerged as the most common and painful to women: being ignored by the husband; not being supported by the husband, particularly in case of family conflicts; and being the victim of controlling behaviours. In Lan’s case, all three problems seemed to coincide, whereas in other cases, one of these problems was the most pressing. We shall now go on to a presentation of each of these behaviours as the women described them.
Being ignored
Like Lan, many of the women struggled with feelings of being ignored by their husband. They told us that their husband seemed to have no interest in talking to them; even though he might be lively and talkative in the company of others, he would turn silent as soon as they were alone, failing to respond to the things that his wife said to him. To many women, this behaviour from their husband’s side seemed to be aggravated by two conditions: firstly, by the fact that they were pregnant or had recently given birth, and secondly, by the fact that – in accordance with local kinship prescriptions – they had moved to live in their husband’s household after getting married. Being pregnant, or having recently given birth, seemed to increase the women’s expectations regarding marital intimacy. Since the days of courtship, they had felt a need to be in touch with their husband, but now they needed it more than ever. The women generally experienced their pregnancies as a time of vulnerability and transformation, a time where they needed to be in contact with the father of the child that they expected. Liên, who was 33 years old when we met her, described her marriage in these words:
These days we barely talk to one another or look at each other. It seems as if he hates me. He does not care about me at all. But I’m pregnant, so I need some encouraging words so much. Everyone encourages me to be strong and take care of my health, but frankly, I feel so unhappy when I receive no words from my husband. Even if I speak very gently to him, he just shouts back at me.
Further, living in their husband’s household often seemed to increase the women’s vulnerability to their husband’s behaviours. Like Lan, many women had to leave their natal home behind when getting married – the people who used to be their supporters and best friends now lived in another locality, and they found themselves in a household and a village populated by strangers. In case of marital conflicts, other household and community members would usually side with those they knew best: the husband. In many cases, this residential situation created deep feelings of social isolation – feelings that were aggravated in situations where the woman, as in Lan’s case, did not have employment outside the house.
Being denied support
Like Lan, many women in the study felt burdened by their husband’s lack of support for them. The women’s narratives indicated that the support they lacked could be either of a practical, an emotional, or a social nature. Some women expressed needs for more practical support, while others longed for more emotional or social support. The needs for practical support might concern, for instance, transport to antenatal care or other health check-ups, help with domestic chores, assistance with child care, or other forms of sharing of tasks that were usually considered female obligations. Many women also missed receiving more emotional support from their husband. They felt that their husband did not want to listen to them or take their concerns seriously, and that he seemed uninterested in helping or consoling them if they felt sad or distressed. Finally, many women expressed needs for more sustained social support from the husband. This need for social support was particularly evident in cases of family conflicts. Living together with, or nearby, their mother-in-law threw many women into domestic disagreements and conflicts: like Lan, many felt that their mother-in-law lived in old-fashioned ways, and that her recommendations regarding childcare and housekeeping were outdated, belonging to an earlier era. At the same time, the older woman would usually expect to be in authority: this was her household, and the daughter-in-law was a very new member of it. Many women therefore told us of clashes and conflicts between themselves and their mother-in-law; conflicts that seemed to be particularly painful when they occurred in the vulnerable times of pregnancy and the postpartum period. The disagreements often centered on childcare questions, such as which supplemental food to give the child or how the child should sleep. In such disagreements, the women hoped that their husband would support them – but in many cases, he opted to side with his mother. One 25-year old woman named Hạnh told us of a conflict between her and her mother-in-law that resulted in her husband’s humiliation of her:
One day when I was nursing my baby, my mother-in-law was shouting a lot at me and I had a really bad headache. She went out and came back with some medicine and asked me to take it. I agreed, but I also said that her shouting made me feel worse. Then she got really angry, scolding me in a loud voice and telling me how rude I was. Then she told me to leave the house and let the baby stay. When I told my husband the story, he scolded me in a rude language, saying things such as ‘Go and fuck your mother,’ and shouted, ‘Shut up, if you don’t want me to beat you right now.’
Again, the combined conditions of being pregnant/having recently given birth and living in the husband’s household together with his parents seemed to aggravate the women’s vulnerability to emotional partner violence.
Being controlled
The last dimension of emotional violence that emerged particularly frequently in the women’s accounts concerned feelings of being placed under control. Many women told us that their husband was very jealous, always keeping a close eye on them, interrogating them about their whereabouts, and sometimes checking their mobile phones to see whom they had talked to. Twenty-five year old Lý said:
My husband doesn’t allow me to have much contact with others. He does not want me to go out, even if he is present himself he does not like it. He says, ‘Now you are a married woman, so I think you should refrain from hanging out with your friends. You see, it’s so meaningless...’ He threw out my phone immediately when I was Facebook surfing... He is jealous. Now, he no longer allows me to use a cell phone.
Another woman, Duyên, who was 18 years old and newly married, told us about how isolated she felt living in her husband’s household. She missed her natal parents and siblings intensely and sometimes regretted that she had married her husband. He had been very sweet to her before they got married, but now his attitude toward her had changed completely. Since she had given birth to her child, she felt that she was losing all self-confidence and trust in herself due to the criticism that her husband directed at her and due to her lack of social network in the area where she was now residing:
My husband criticizes me for being fat and tells me to lose weight. I feel so sad, and I just want to stay at home with my child. Due to my appearance, I don’t want to go out and get attention from others. Before we got married, my husband never spoke like this, but these days, he criticizes me because I’ve gained weight after the birth. He says that I eat too much and that my skin is too dark.
Seeking to maintain domestic stability and peace, most of the women who experienced controlling behaviours from their husband’s side tried to adapt to his wishes by not going out too much and by not challenging the limitations that he placed on them. Combined with the fact that they were either pregnant or had recently given birth, this often placed the women in a situation of existential isolation. Even though most women had daily contact with others in their household concerning practical matters such as shopping or cooking, they often longed for the trustful and intimate social relations that they had to friends and natal relatives prior to getting married.