The Archers, Radio 4’s fictional soap, about daily life in Middle England, is breaking through one of the last taboos: lies, domination, the triangle of abuse and domestic violence in family life. Last year, Helen Archer, a single parent and member of the largest farming clan in the area, married Rob Titchner a new arrival to the village. Helen, a lively mid 30’s farmer’s daughter, had a partner who died, after which she struggled psychologically. A few years ago, she decided to have a child as a single parent, and re-emerged into adult life, competently juggling being a single mum with her responsibilities in her family’s farming business.
Rob is portrayed as dynamic, charming, knowledgeable and reliable. Yet there have been glimpses of another side to him. A side which is controlling, intimidating, manipulative, a liar and a bully. Chinks of this, came to light during his divorce from his first wife, however he was able to convince people HE was the victim and his first wife was mentally unstable, something he then recreated once he married for the second time. With the divorce through, he married Helen Archer on a surprise romantic holiday, away from friends and family. A fait accompli indeed!
Some family and friends had reservations, but the deed was done and Rob is charming enough, until something doesn’t go his way. Then you see a lack of maturity and stability, as he manipulates situations to reflect his version of events. He is never in the wrong! Rob’s ability to influence, includes intimidating deriding and dismissing others. For example, after assaulting a member of the public. he threatened another member of the Archer family, until she falsified her police statement. That should have been a warning, but the storyline, is very true to life. Rob was able to mentally intimidate the person until his version of events prevailed.
There are many types of abuse so no one definition encompasses all. Ultimately abuse is about power, the power to dominate one person and make the other person feel better about themselves in relation to the person or people they dominate. The tactics often used in abusive situation, throw a person off kilter so one minute the abuser shows loving attentive care until the other’s guard drops, then the person who's behaviour is abusive, says or does something undermining or degrading, getting under the mental defence mechanisms that would usually keep them safe. If challenged about this behaviour, the situation is minimised or the challenger is lead to believe they have misunderstood. Abusive behaviour has a knock on effect on a person’s relationships with friends, family, children, colleagues, workplace, finances, their ability to look after themselves and eventually to be think for themselves. The boundaries of emotional, physical and sexual abuse often blur with time. Therefore over time, mixed messages lead to a shift in power, away from a natural flow or balance experienced in healthy relationships.
When the power imbalance shifts, it’s quite common to find, that whatever someone does to please the abuser is ridiculed, or simply found fault with. Nothing, is good enough and this damages confidence and resilience. An example would be of someone cooking a meal and the other person deciding they didn’t like it, so they make a point of saying how disgusting it is and throwing it away, in front of the person who spent time preparing the meal. The message here is “whatever you do for me is of no value”… Combined with other things such as: disapproving of the way someone dresses; their friends; questioning their decisions; deriding their ability to make decisions and doesn’t take too long for the message to be interpreted as, “you are of no value.”
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