Abstract
Intimate partner violence in later life includes physical, psychological, sexual, and financial abuse. Although some researchers have investigated how women in long-term violent partnerships cope with abuse, little is known about the history, experiences, and needs of older women who leave abusive relationships. From a feminist, life course perspective, we interviewed 10 women who had left their abusive partners later in life. We used qualitative methods to analyze the data and found four major themes: (a) the women used the past to account for abuse in their relationships later in life, (b) recognizing abuse signaled to the women to fight back and exit the relationship, (c) financial abuse and exploitation affected women’s mental and physical health, and (d) rebuilding was especially challenging as the women faced their future alone with financial, physical, or mental health problems. We conclude that abuse presents lasting and unique challenges for older women.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) can happen throughout the life course and in all different kinds of intimate relationships, including dating relationships, cohabitation, new marriages, long-term marriages, and lifelong marriages. Typically, researchers studying IPV in later life look at incidents of violence reported as part of large data sets (e.g., Fisher & Regan, 2006), or how older women in lifelong marriages cope with being in an abusive relationship over the course of their lives (Eisikovits & Band-Winterstein, 2015). IPV is often conflated with other types of elder abuse, making it difficult to tease out needs of older women specifically experiencing abuse by an intimate partner. Although researchers and activists have begun to integrate knowledge about and services for older survivors of domestic violence and for victims of elder abuse (Crocket, Brandl, & Dabby, 2015; Otto & Quinn, 2007), collaborations are often challenged by language differences (e.g., victims vs. survivors; abuse vs. violence) and ability status (e.g., caregiving; complex medical needs) among others (Hightower, Smith, & Hightower, 2006; Otto & Quinn, 2007). Community services designed for younger women with children often miss the unique needs of older women (Crocket et al., 2015; Straka & Montminy, 2006).
Our qualitative investigation of violence and abuse presented in this article differs from other studies, in that we interviewed rural women between the ages of 54 and 70 who had left abusive intimate relationships in late life. Our purpose was twofold: We wanted to know how the women experienced IPV over the course of their lives and in different contexts. Because the older women we identified had exited abusive partnerships, we investigated which resources were most helpful when they decided to end their most current relationship.
Literature Review
Theoretical Perspective
We used a feminist, life course perspective to conceptualize the study and analyze our data (Hightower et al., 2006). Although missing from most work on elder abuse (Straka & Montminy, 2006), implicit in a feminist gerontologist perspective is the concept of intersectionality. Paying attention to intersectionality means that we recognize that age and gender (among other social locations such as health status, race, and class) are intersecting statuses that influence women involved in intimate relationships over the life span. Age matters when trying to understand IPV (Nerenberg, 2002; Otto & Quinn, 2007; Penhale, 2003). Band-Winterstein (2015) argued that older women (a) have been socialized to uphold values that support male dominance, (b) tend to be more economically dependent on their partners while having fewer employment options to support themselves, and (c) are more likely to be interdependent with their partners in giving and receiving care. As such, relationships that were strained, but perhaps not abusive, may become abusive later in life (Penhale, 2003).
With younger women, IPV is defined as physical, emotional, or sexual abuse by an intimate partner or spouse, but aging scholars have found that it is important to also include neglect and financial abuse by partners because older women have reported this kind of abuse in their marriages and other intimate partnerships (e.g., Hightower et al., 2006). In addition, older women who experience abuse may have different needs than younger women as they attempt to exit abusive relationships and rebuild their lives (Hightower et al., 2006). In our study, we explored how women experienced IPV over their life course and how they left abusive partnerships as older women. Importantly, we wanted to know what unique challenges the older women faced as they rebuilt their lives.
In addition to staying attuned to issues of intersectionality, we explored how the women’s experience in their unique social locations unfolded over the course of their lives. Scholars are increasingly using a life course perspective to understand how childhood disadvantage plays out in relationships in later life. Although focused on older men, Umberson, Thomeer, Williams, Thomas, and Liu (2016) provide a recent example of the value of using a life course perspective for understanding long-term influences of abuse. They found that older men who had experienced childhood adversity, including child abuse and neglect, described a diminished sense of mastery over their lives, including their personal relationships. The men, especially African American men, felt isolated socially and had difficulty maintaining close relationships during times of stress. McCann and Allen (2016) found that older rural single women who experienced abuse in childhood, and who were less embedded in their families of origin, were more likely to have had multiple romantic relationships across adulthood and were more likely to be interested in pursuing new romantic relationships as older women. Collectively, these findings suggest that a life course perspective can add insights into how people navigate relationships in later life.
An important concept in both feminist theory and life course theory is agency, or the ability to make choices and direct one’s life. Agency has been difficult to define and measure because social structural constraints, such as gender, race, and age, affect people’s abilities to make choices. An emerging concept, constrained choice, may be useful in understanding the role of early life history in people’s relationships throughout adulthood. Constrained choice is the idea that people exercise agency but are constrained by their circumstances and histories. In the context of gendered health behaviors and outcomes, Bird and Reiker (2008) theorized that individuals make constrained choices regarding their health behavior because of their gendered experiences. For example, an older woman may feel responsible for all household labor and not take time to exercise. Applied to understanding IPV, we propose that older women’s choices regarding relationships are limited by the intimate experiences they have had in the past. For example, if women did not have appropriate modeling of healthy, loving relationships, their ability to make wise choices in finding a romantic partner may have been constrained.
Empirical Literature
Violence against older women is a subject of growing interest among gerontologists who study both elder abuse and IPV. Because elder abuse is typically defined by types of abuse (e.g., physical, financial, verbal) rather than contexts (e.g., intimate partnerships, strangers, caregiving relationships), it has been difficult for researchers to estimate the prevalence of IPV among older women (Brownell, 2016; Otto & Quinn, 2007). Moreover, IPV is studied by scholars in different fields who use varying and conflicting measurements of age (e.g., women above age 50 vs. women above age 65; Brownell, 2016). Thus, researchers have estimated that anywhere from 2% to more than 25% of women experience IPV in later life (Roberto, McPherson, & Brossoie, 2013).
As the aging population grows, it is likely that older women will need increasing levels of service related to IPV (Brossoie & Roberto, 2015). In a review of the literature, (Roberto et al., 2013) found that agism is a barrier to service provision. Professionals may attribute violence in late life partnerships to cognitive decline in the perpetrator, and the victim may not receive the support he or she needs in terms of information about services for domestic violence. In addition, services for survivors of IPV are typically geared toward women with dependent children (Otto & Quinn, 2007). Some studies suggested that support groups may be a better intervention than shelters for older women (Roberto et al., 2013).
Other findings identified in the literature included a decrease in physical abuse and an increase in psychological abuse in later life; however, experience with violence in later life was associated with negative health outcomes (see also Crocket et al., 2015; Finfgeld-Connett, 2014). Women who reported abuse by a family member, especially emotional abuse, reported more chronic health problems, such as heart or joint problems, suggesting that chronic abuse may exacerbate, if not cause, health problems in later life (Fisher & Regan, 2006).
The literature on help seeking supports our assumptions about the role of early life experiences. Scholars have argued that help seeking is a complex process (Anderson & Saunders, 2003). As a first step, survivors of IPV have to both recognize abusive behavior as problematic and believe that others can help them (Liang, Goodman, Tummala-Narra, & Weintraub, 2005; Shannon, Logan, Cole, & Medley, 2006). Findings from empirical studies suggest that women may not recognize behaviors involved in psychological abuse, such as controlling behaviors and isolation, as abuse (Flicker et al., 2011; Taft, Resick, Panuzio, Vogt, & Mechannic, 2007). In a large sample of rural and urban women, Mage = 32, SD = 9.47, Shannon and colleagues found that rural women were more likely to experience severe physical abuse over the course of their lives and more psychological abuse in the year surveyed than urban women. With the exception of lawyers, rural women were less likely to use resources within the criminal justice system (e.g., police), suggesting that the women did not see the abuse they experienced as criminal behavior. Indeed, rural women were 3 times as likely to engage in denial as a strategy to cope with their abusive relationships as their urban counterparts (14% compared with 5.8%, respectively).
Guided by an ecological systems framework, Teaster, Roberto, and Dugar (2006) interviewed 10 rural, older women who had experienced IPV and 24 service providers in the region in which the women lived. They found that it was common for rural women to have grown up in abusive households where they were abused themselves or witnessed IPV, and that as older women they often did not know where to turn to for help in leaving an abusive relationship. Service providers indicated that older women were reluctant to leave their homes, especially if their marriage was long term, they held traditional views on gender roles, and they felt vulnerable financially. They also noted that their rural communities often lack the array of services available for victims of domestic violence found in more urban areas. Thus, help seeking for older rural women involved not only how they viewed their relationships but also included how they conceptualize their communities, echoing Anderson and Saunders’s (2003) claim that victims must believe that they can get the help they need.
Band-Winterstein and Eisikovits (2009) used a life span perspective to understand violence in long-term marriages. Based on their analysis of interviews with 20 Jewish Israeli couples between the ages of 60 and 84, they found four clusters of violence: (a) violence is alive and active (violence is continuous); (b) violent ecology (violence is episodic); (c) more of the same, but different (transition to different types of abuse); and (d) violence through illness (violence escalated or was attributed to the partner’s terminal illness). Wives typically described relationships in which the men had always been violent, whereas husbands typically minimized or denied the violence in their relationships. Importantly, the researchers mention that the women interviewed also felt exploited and abandoned financially.
For their recent study, these same investigators interviewed 40 older and younger Jewish Israeli women about their experiences with IPV (Eisikovits & Band-Winterstein, 2015). Both older and younger women were suffering from isolation and control, enduring physical pain and loneliness in their own homes. For the older women especially, there was a transition from enduring physical violence to emotional suffering, suggesting that over the life course women felt that it was their duty to endure the abuse for the sake of family, but realized later in life that staying in the relationship had brought nothing but suffering. Among older women, time was also an important finding; that is, some of them expressed the sense that they had lost their whole lives to being involved with an abusive partner.
Studies of elder abuse in general help shed light on IPV in later life. For example, substance abuse was commonly reported among perpetrators of elder mistreatment, and those who used alcohol or other drugs were more likely to be men (Conrad, Liu, & Iris, 2016). Thus, substance abuse can exacerbate abusive intimate relationships across the life span. Luo and Waite (2011) found that among persons who experienced elder mistreatment, older adults who had more social support, social participation, and social connectedness had more positive outcomes than isolated elders. Because victims of IPV are often socially isolated by their partners, especially those living in rural areas, we can extrapolate that older abused women may have few ways of maintaining psychological health in light of the abuse (Taft et al., 2007). Indeed, loss of financial resources and community connections is an important consideration if older, rural women leave an abusive situation (Roberto et al., 2013).
The growing literature on elder mistreatment and IPV in later life is beginning to paint a more complete picture of the lives of older women in abusive partnerships. One area that has not been explored, however, is the challenges facing older women who have ended abusive relationships in later life. Anderson and Saunders (2003) concluded from their review of the literature on younger women leaving abusive relationships that many women felt they traded one set of stressors for another, but that over time women tended to report an increase in the quality of life. In our study, we interviewed 10 older women who had exited abusive relationships and were trying to rebuild their lives. From a feminist, life course perspective, we wanted to know how older women conceptualized IPV over the course of their lives and in different relationships. Our first research question asked at what point did the older women seek help to end the relationships, and what resources were most helpful? Our second research question was, what challenges did older women face while rebuilding their lives?
Method
We used qualitative methods to investigate how older women have experienced violence over the course of their lives. The larger study from which these data were taken was a community-based research project whose primary aim was to further understand the support and service, and resource needs of rural older women experiencing IPV (see Roberto et al., 2013).
Sample and Procedure
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in conjunction with the Women’s Resource Center of the New River Valley (Women’s Resource Center) designed a community-based research project to address the needs of rural women who had experienced IPV. Interviews were conducted with 10 rural older women aged 54 to 70 who had experienced IPV within 5 years of the interview (see Table 1 for additional demographic characteristics). All women were White (a reflection of the larger rural population in the study area) but came from varied class and professional backgrounds. All the women lived alone at the time of the interview, although the husband of one woman regularly came to the home while she was out to take care of the house (they had no plans to divorce because of their shared home). Nine of the 10 women had been in multiple married or cohabitating relationships over the course of their lives. The women moved in and out of relationships, and often women were involved in dating relationships that slid into cohabitation over time as they increasingly spent time with their partner, so that we were not able to consistently and reliably ascertain relationship length.
Relational Histories.
Note. Marital history: M = married; C = cohabited; W = widowed; D = dating; types of abuse in most recent relationship: P = physical; I = intimidation (threats of physical violence); E = emotional; S = sexual; resolved: yes = most recent relationship is completely resolved, no lingering ties; no = there are unresolved issues with abusive partner. Needs continued support encompassed the women’s report of needing help coping with physical and mental health (including the loneliness of leaving their homes and relationships).
The women were recruited by one of the project’s original investigators who had come in contact with some of the women through her work at the Women’s Resource Center’s women’s shelter. The project’s advisory group, which was comprised of community leaders and service providers, also assisted with recruitment efforts. Semistructured interviews were conducted by two team members with expertise in domestic violence, elder abuse, and mental health. Interviews were conducted in a public place deemed safe by the women (e.g., library; service agency). Interviews lasted approximately 90 min, and were tape recorded, transcribed verbatim, and verified by the original project team for accuracy before coding and analysis. Examples of structured questions include the following: “Tell me a little about the history of your abusive relationship? When did it start? Did you seek help in the community at some point? How helpful was the staff at X agency?” Prompts were given to participants to help understand their stories. Names were changed while transcribing the data. The research project was approved by the Virginia Tech institutional review board.
Data Analysis
As a first step of the analysis, we used an open-coding strategy to make sense of the women’s stories. During open coding, we read the interviews, made notes, and created an exhaustive list of possible codes. While we did not impose a coding system on the data, we used sensitizing concepts (Charmaz, 2006) from the previous literature such as the prevalence of abuse in the relationship, abuse as a cyclical process, and patterns of violence in relationships over the life course to help analyzing the data. We grouped all possible codes into preliminary categories and began coding, marking each analytically meaningful segment of data (e.g., an explanation of or brief reference to the part alcohol played in the abuse). Next, we read through the interviews again, collapsing similar codes and finalizing categories. We had five descriptive categories: Histories of Abuse (eight codes); Health Issues (two codes relating to physical and mental health); Abuse in Later Life (21 codes); Service Provision (13 codes); and Accounting (13 codes).
After open coding, we began focused coding, considering how the women’s stories and transitions could be interpreted using a feminist, life course perspective in light of the literature on late life IPV. For example, examining the women’s discussion of how the abuse began in later life relationships, we wanted to know if and how abuse in the first relationships mattered in these later partnerships. Importantly, we operationalized the presence of past abuse on the basis of the women’s narratives. For example, the women described abuse they had experienced as younger women or as children. These women were not asked explicitly about previous relationships, but when we asked for their story of abuse, they often asked, “Which one?” or started with how they were abused in childhood.
Within the five categories developed during the open-coding process, we examined the most salient codes in each category. The intersections of the eight most salient codes (e.g., how financial abuse code intersected with health issues code) organize the findings and reveal the story of the data (Band-Winterstein, 2015).
Findings
In the presentation of our findings, we lay out the intersections of the four most salient codes: The Past and Accounting; Not Again and Fighting Back; Financial Exploitation and Health Consequences; and Rebuilding and Mental Health. We begin with a synopsis of the women’s most recent intimate partnerships. As is consistent with the literature, most of the women interviewed experienced infrequent, if any, physical abuse in later life. Although most of the older women dealt with emotional abuse, most commonly controlling behavior, they did not recognize the emotional abuse as abuse until about a year into the relationship. Once they acknowledged that their conflicted relationships were detrimental to their mental or physical well-being, they sought to leave the relationship. Occasionally, a physically violent episode precipitated the woman seeking help to exit the relationship. Usually the local women’s shelter was not the first place the older women tried to get help, but for the nine women who accessed their services, the shelter was the most helpful community resource. Most of the women reported financial and health difficulties after leaving their relationships, saying that they needed ongoing support from community agencies.
The Past and Accounting
Childhood abuse
The most compelling finding in the data was the description of a lifetime of abuse, directly speaking to our first research question. Many of the women had experienced some kind of abuse as children. Six of the women spoke of experiencing trauma in their family of origin, and five of the women said that they had experienced physical or sexual abuse as a child.
Even women who did not describe being abused as a child did not necessarily have supportive families. Ginny, for example, said that her family of origin blamed her for the abuse she suffered over the years in intimate relationships. Likewise, Donna did not speak directly of experiencing parental abuse, but said that her mother died when she was a little girl and she entered her first abusive marriage at the age of 16. Importantly, she admitted to having trouble recognizing abuse, saying that she often blamed herself when abuse began. She claimed that her second husband was good to her and not abusive, then described emotional abuse and controlling behavior present in their relationship—the reasons why she left him.
Previous marital abuse
If a woman, like Donna, was fortunate enough to have escaped childhood abuse, she encountered it in her intimate relationships as an adult. Indeed, nine of the women had been in multiple abusive marriages or serious partnerships with men (see Table 1). Having experienced abuse in the past, either as a child or as a young woman, did not alert these women to early warning signs such as fast-moving relationships and controlling behavior. Particularly with controlling behavior, such as a man wanting to go with her everywhere she went, the women interpreted it as love. For example, Martha’s parents were both alcoholics and abusive. Speaking of herself and her sisters’ troubled intimate relationships, Martha said, “We never considered the type of person, you know, whether they were really after love. We just took it as being love because we got the attention of that person.” This comment was reflective of most of the women’s fast-moving relationships with controlling men—they understood the intensity of the men’s attentions as love rather than as inappropriate.
The one woman who reported being in only one relationship spoke about warning signs she missed in this relationship: “I guess there were, in [some] ways when we were first married. I took it as being loving and wanting to be with me, you know, but always wanting to go with me if I went somewhere, you know.” Although Judy had dealt with less lifetime violence than the other women, her comments were echoed by other study participants. Despite harrowing experiences as children or young women, these women seemed to have had constrained choice in their ability to choose; again and again they chose partners who had propensities for controlling and abusive behavior.
Stephanie said that she put up with her second (of five) husband’s “bossy” behavior because he treated her better than she had experienced previously. Louise did not say she was flattered by the controlling behavior but felt tricked. She said, “[W]hen he was at my house [for the first year and a half of their relationship], he was being kind of polite, but when [we moved to] his house, he could do whatever he wanted. It was his territory.” Even though he had asked her to tell him if he became like his abusive father, he refused to acknowledge his bad behavior and began to drink more, and became increasingly controlling and intimidating over the years. Louise said she felt that unemployment and alcohol abuse contributed to the IPV she experienced late in life, just as it had in her first marriage.
Not Again and Fighting Back
Eight of the women described that they had learned to navigate abusive relationships in later life from mistakes made in past relationships. Unlike their younger selves, who felt they must be subservient to their husbands, the women recognized (occasionally with the help of a therapist) that their partners had crossed a line and began fighting back. Of her most recent cohabiting relationship Ginny said, “Well, now see like about six years ago he started making wise cracks and doing things that was so much like my first husband that I kept saying this can’t be happening, this can’t be real. He doesn’t drink.” Ginny could not believe that her partner was becoming verbally abusive, repeating the pattern she had experienced as a young woman with her first husband. Her first husband was a heavy drinker, and both physically and emotionally abusive. Ginny attributed much of her first husband’s abuse to his drinking habits. She had trouble accepting that her most recent partner was becoming abusive despite the fact that he did not drink. In fact, she sought therapy because she thought she was causing the abuse when she attempted to resist her boyfriend’s controlling behavior and fought with him. She said that the relationship ended when she realized she “couldn’t fight for [her] rights. [She] simply had to get out.”
Comparisons with ex-partners often served as a wakeup call to leave the relationship, but such comparisons were often nuanced. For example, Justine explained that she had cared for her now deceased second husband in later life, even though he had become emotionally abusive when he began drinking. She explained that she cared for him because earlier in life he had helped her and her children escape an even worse situation. He had been the only father her children had known. But when she became involved with a new man, and began to feel used and exploited due to financial and caretaking responsibilities, she saw no reason to stay in the relationship.
In addition to exiting a relationship, other ways women fought back included becoming physically aggressive themselves, talking back, and yelling. Marie said that when she was young and did not know how to fight back, she was hospitalized when her first husband beat her. When asked if she had been injured by her last partner, she said, “No, because I could fight with him pretty good.” It was not until he choked her to the point of unconsciousness that she left him for good.
Other women fought back using avoidance behaviors. For Donna, fighting back meant avoiding situations where she would be compelled to stand her ground. Although her most recent partner did not beat her, his controlling behavior was reminiscent of her first husband: I mean if I had stopped somewhere and was gone ten minutes longer than I should have been. If I went paying bills and everything, he had me feeling so insecure I had to answer everywhere I had been and how long I had been there.
Donna said that she locked herself in her room when they argued because she feared the confrontation would break out in physical violence and they would be “boxing it out.” When asked if the police had ever been involved, she said only when they found her sleeping in her car at a rest area because she did not want to go home and have a fight.
Becky was the only woman we spoke with whose most recent relationship had been a dating relationship. She said that although she had been in abusive relationships before, she ignored her partner’s controlling behavior because he was in law enforcement, and she felt his profession caused him to act paranoid. She said compared with her ex-husband who constantly berated her, her boyfriend “seemed to be so attentive and cared about what I thought about things, or so I thought, so then he gained my confidence.” But as he became more controlling and “bullying,” she realized that she was in an abusive relationship again. She said when his controlling behavior escalated to the point that he called her at work several times a day, as well as called her friends and acquaintances to check up on her, she finally ended the relationship by threatening to take out a restraining order against him, something she knew he feared.
Martha’s story also illustrates the typical controlling behavior that these women lived with and which was reminiscent of earlier abusive relationships. She described the incident that caused her to leave her second abusive husband after 28 years of marriage. She had been shopping in a Wal-Mart and stopped to talk with a former coworker while her husband listened to a ball game in the car. When she came out, he was angry that she had been in the store for a long time and began to berate her. She said, [T]here’s just this feeling and he started driving just a little bit faster than what was normal, and it really scared me. My insides just started shaking like the same feeling I had had years and years ago with my first husband.
After that, she began preparing to leave the marriage.
Marie reflected on her abusive marriages (four of her five husbands had been abusive): I have learned over my lifetime, I guess since my mother left us, and my daddy was the way he was, I’ve always been looking for someone to care about me and treat me the way I treated them, but I just haven’t found them. Seems like I’m always picking the wrong ones.
Her statements and willingness to leave abusive situations show the difficulties that these women face. People often ask why battered women do not leave their partners. Many do. The real question is why do they enter abusive relationships over and over again. Perhaps one answer is that these women do not recognize abusive tendencies early in the relationship.
Financial Exploitation and Health Consequences
Related to our second research question, we found that health problems were frequently an impetus to leave the relationship as abuse exacerbated mental and physical health. For eight of the women interviewed, financial abuse and exploitation from a partner seemed to be associated with their health. Many of these women were the primary income earners in the households, yet they did not control their own money. Financial difficulties and lack of autonomy were sources of chronic stress. In some of these relationships, the men withheld the money that women needed for treatment of chronic health conditions.
In describing her pathway out of the relationship, Ginny, who had diabetes, said she was on the verge of collapsing when her partner’s sister insisted he take Ginny to the emergency room. She explained, “I reached the point where . . . I didn’t care if I went and got my medicine. I would have to argue with him that I needed $12 just to go to the clinic to get my pills.” Once at the hospital, he abandoned her. When she was released from the hospital for mental and physical health treatments, she returned to their home where she was intimated by her partner’s nephew. When she went to the police for help, she was advised to get her things and seek refuge at the women’s shelter. Because they were unmarried, she was told she had no legal rights to the home they shared.
Judy’s husband was controlling and condescending from the beginning, telling her what she could wear and where she could go. He then began to drink and become physically violent when he lost his job about 7 years into the marriage. As the years went by, he became increasingly controlling toward her and their money. Judy said that she kept a “knot in the pit of her stomach” because everything set him off and her health began to decline. She had to quit working because of her poor health, and their relationship deteriorated further: “[W]hen things blew up here at the end, you know, he said things like that that, you know, made me realize that he didn’t like being in a relationship where he had to maybe take care of me.” Judy finally left her home when the couple began to have financial difficulties. She knew that he would blame her for their high credit card bills (even though he had been the one making the purchases) and feared he would try to kill her. At that point, she contacted a friend who had connections to a Women’s Resource Center to seek refuge.
In other cases, the man’s more acute health problems contributed to the financial abuse. Before having evidence that her boyfriend was exploiting her financially, Justine said she had a gut feeling that she ignored: “I was lonely, and I was wanting something to love me even though I knew he didn’t. I knew he didn’t. I kept telling him you don’t love me. You’re using me. I knew it.” Justine did not report major physical health problems, but her boyfriend was trying to get on disability after having a stroke. She began to resent the relationship when he expected her to take care of all his paperwork while he drank beer and did drugs. While completing his paperwork, she discovered that he had not been working for many years, even while he was in good health. She felt that she was sliding into another situation, as was the case with her second husband, of caregiving for an abusive man. She said that although it had taken a toll on her, she had been willing to make the sacrifice for her deceased husband who was abusive because he had been a good provider and father. As the stress mounted and confrontations escalated with her boyfriend, she began to think of leaving.
Stephanie also dealt with violence over the course of her 24-year marriage (her fifth one). Her husband had multiple employment woes throughout their marriage and developed elevated blood pressure in later life. Stephanie said that his health problems changed their sex life which she believed amplified his anger, and caused him to be more controlling and violent. She referred rather casually to the general “slapping, shoving, and throwing around” that occurred in their relationship, and described times when her husband threatened to take his own life if she did not comply with his wishes. She said that although they had everything they needed, he became obsessed with money. Finally, she sought help after a violent episode that put her in the hospital: It just got worse, and then all of a sudden, he took all of our money, he cleaned out our checking account one day and jumped on me the next. And I ended up with a blood clot in my lung and in the hospital having to take shots, which I’m still taking cumin, blood thinners, to try to dissolve the blood clot, and he’s away from the house now.
Although living by herself in an apartment at the time of the interview, she indicated that she was still married and would consider reconciling with her husband if he showed he had changed.
Rebuilding and Mental Health
All the women had made a break with their abusive partners in one way or another, but only four of them were resolved in their situations, meaning that they had completely separated their lives from their former partners. However, even those four women needed continued supportive services. Related to our second research question, we found that generally the women had mixed responses toward the various social service agencies they used, and all of them wished there were more supportive mental health services available for rebuilding their lives. Seeking help could be difficult because these women lived in rural areas where family members, friends, or the perpetrators worked for local social service agencies. Thus, the women did not necessarily view the agencies as places of trust. The nine women who used the Women’s Resource Center were very satisfied with the services they received, and felt that they had finally found people who would help them navigate the transition of the abusive relationships. For example, Center staff helped them find support services and housing as well access financial services and programs.
Loneliness
Most of the participants discussed awareness that they were older women, and some worried about being alone in the future. Many sought help or wished for ongoing services to deal with persistent mental health issues as a result of what for many was a lifetime of abusive intimate relationships. Marie’s health problems, particularly her lifelong struggle with depression, helped her exit abusive relationships as she had prior knowledge of community resources due to her treatment for depression. However, at the time of the interview, she was frustrated with health care services because she was not old enough to qualify for Medicare and not poor enough for Medicaid. She had applied for disability and was waiting to see what would happen.
Sarah, too, felt uncertain about her future alone. At the time of the interview, Sarah was still married, but felt finished with the relationship. She lived alone for the first time in her life, and reported missing her home and gardens, something she had left in the care of her husband. She was afraid of her future, saying that it was difficult for her to leave the safe haven of the women’s shelter and be alone. Prior to exiting the relationship, Sarah had repeatedly reached out for help with her second abusive marriage (21 years) when she realized that her physical and mental health were deteriorating. Both Sarah and her husband had significant health problems, and she felt badly about leaving the relationship as well as her home. At first, she tried to get admitted to a local mental health facility, but they would not take her, and invited her husband to stay with her while she filled out intake forms. Because she was not suicidal, the hospital would not admit her for treatment. Finally, a counselor that she saw told her about the Women’s Resource Center, and she then began planning her escape.
Agism appeared to play a large role in Sarah’s story. Because she was in poor health, it did not seem imaginable to the many health professionals she saw to ever inquire about her home life. Because the abuse was not physical and her husband was her caregiver, it took Sarah’s counselor over 2 years to understand and help Sarah understand that she was in an abusive relationship. In fact, her husband often accompanied Sarah to her therapy appointments.
Like Sarah, Judy was very much attached to her home as well saying, And we did have times that we did things that we really enjoyed, you know, we had our home, we planted trees and everything, and I loved where I lived, you know, and so it was like I could put up with him, it’s like I put up with him to be in the home.
She only left her home and pets when she feared for her life. After she left and began seeking a divorce, he bullied her into a no-fault divorce in which she gave up all rights to their joint property. Beside wishing that she had received legal advice, she said she wished for more supportive services, such as a support group for older people. Noting that her husband had kept her isolated for decades, she said, “I’ve never had interests of my own, you know, and so I’m finding it difficult to build on something.”
The aftershocks of emotional abuse
All the women had dealt with emotional abuse and controlling behavior. When asked about how the abuse had changed her, Ginny said, And if a man tells me something, don’t believe it. If a man makes a promise, don’t believe it. If I want something done, then I’m going to have to go do it myself. Never assume that the rent had been paid. Never assume that the light bill had been paid. And it makes you a bitch.
She went on to say that she believed her behavior related to being angry over financial and emotional abuse was the problem in her most previous relationships. Seeing a therapist helped her see that her husband’s controlling behavior was the root cause of the problems in the relationship. She said she needed not only help with housing and finances as she rebuilt her life but continued physical and mental health services.
Donna was in a similar situation with rebuilding. She said of her experience with therapy and rebuilding: “It takes quite a while to realize that you’re not pulling the strings, he is,” meaning that she thought that a lot of the abuse was her own fault. She said at first she was very depressed and began contacting the hotlines at the Women’s Resource Center, and then finally left the relationship. She said, “I don’t think it’s always fair that the woman has to find somewhere to go. They need to make a place for these men.” Like others, she was frustrated that she had to leave her home. There was never any desire to see the men jailed or punished, only that the women wanted to live their lives in peace, in the homes they had come to love.
For some women, rebuilding was complicated because there were unresolved issues between themselves and the men who had abused them. Often, these issues related to property owned by the women. Justine left tools and other home repair items at her ex-boyfriend’s as she had been making repairs for him for some time. The night his emotional abuse turned physical and she called the police, she left her things at his home. Justine was unable to recover her property, and authorities told her that there was nothing they could do to help her: I gave his stuff back to him, and I don’t want to hurt him, I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to see him trouble, I don’t want him to lose his disability, I don’t want him in jail, I don’t want anything bad to happen to him. I just want to forget, or I’ll never forget it because it’s a learning lesson for me. I just want to get completely out of the situation.
Illustrative of the long reach of emotional abuse, Martha said, “[Y]ou can’t just hardly get it out of your mind. If you slap somebody or something it’s an incident that happened for the moment, but it’s soon forgotten. I mean not completely but the hurt goes away.” Louise also suffered from the effects of her husband’s emotional abuse. She said she was frustrated that she was treated as her husband’s caregiver even though she had left him after 10 years of marriage which had become increasingly abusive. When he tried to kill himself, his doctors asked her to visit him in the hospital. She wished for more support for her own mental health, saying, Nobody ever called me up and said you’ve been through a lot . . . How are you, you know, and they didn’t even know over there that he was under a protective order . . . They didn’t know that he committed violence against me. All he was in there for was poor Bill, he tried to kill himself.
After Bill was released from the hospital, he stayed with a friend, and Louise was able to keep their house. Because Louise did not want to give up her cherished home, they had no plans to divorce and sometimes met in the evenings.
Discussion
The study findings highlight the value of bringing a life course perspective to understand IPV in later life. Answering our first research question, how do older, rural women conceptualize IPV, the women in our study tended to view extremely controlling behavior as a source of stress, or as a problem area in their relationships but usually not as IPV. Often, they had experiences with extreme physical violence as younger women, and did not recognize emotional abuse in later life for what it was until the abuse turned physical or affected their health.
Our data suggest that researchers and clinicians might better understand the complex nature of IPV in later life by focusing more attention on controlling behaviors (see also Montminy, 2005), specifically psychological abuse (i.e., emotional abuse, verbal abuse, intimidation). Psychological abuse is characterized by what Johnson and colleagues refer to as “coercive control” (Hardesty et al., 2015). Coercive control is when one partner attempts to control the other partner’s entire life through the use of fear and intimidation. It is beyond common couple violence where on occasion an argument escalates into a physical altercation. Rather, coercive control is a hallmark of intimate partner terrorism when one partner consistently seeks to dominate the other. In that sense, financial abuse in the context of IPV is closely related to psychological abuse. Typically, the women tolerated domineering behavior at the beginning of their relationships because they perceived it as normal male behavior, or as a sign that she was loved. Yet, all the women came to see their partners’ controlling behavior as problematic in the end as the abuse escalated into intimidation, and they feared for their safety. Thus, practitioners working with older women should screen for the presence of controlling behaviors in intimate relationships.
Despite living in small, rural communities with family nearby, the women in our study often had poor social networks related to the isolating behaviors of their spouses, as well as life course histories of abuse and multiple romantic partnerships over their adult lives. Recently, researchers have found that the more embedded in their networks, the lower the likelihood of older adults experiencing elder abuse in the past year (Schafer & Koltai, 2014). In addition, because women often had experienced a lifetime of abusive relationships, they had weak ties to other family members. Conversely, the intimate nature of rural environments frequently inhibited the women from seeking support from their social network for fear that their partner would find out their intentions (Teaster et al., 2006). Most of the women we interviewed reported being worried about the future alone as they faced both health and financial problems. Given their isolation and history of repeatedly entering abusive relationships, these women seemed vulnerable to being victimized by new romantic partners.
IPV in later life is a complex issue. As with elder abuse in general, IPV in later life can include physical, psychological, sexual, and financial abuse. In response to our overall study question, how do older rural women conceptualize IPV, we found that IPV, particularly psychological and financial abuse, had lasting effects on the women as they attempted to rebuild their lives. Although staff at the Women’s Resource Center initially helped the women access community services for older adults, most of the women reported needing ongoing financial assistance and psychological support, suggesting that efforts to bridge community services for victims of elder abuse and IPV need further development (Crocket et al., 2015; Otto & Quinn, 2007; Penhale, 2003).
Practitioners working with older women should be alert to signs of domineering behavior from partners and provide informational resources for women who may be at risk. Service providers working with middle-aged and older women should especially be sensitive to the needs of women who may have lived for years in social isolation, and feel overwhelmed with the thoughts of beginning their lives again and leaving their homes (Anderson & Saunders, 2003). Some of the older women were especially sorrowful about having to leave their rural homes to exit their relationships. One area that the women expressed their desire for more help was with legal issues, at a minimum being offered basic legal advice. Several women assumed that they had no rights to their homes and property, or were told as much by authority figures who were not fully acquainted with their circumstances, and simply gave up their rights to move forward.
Our study was limited in that we did not gather in-depth information explicitly from the women on why they entered abusive relationships repeatedly over the course of their lives. This is an important avenue for future research as it may help professionals better understand intersecting influences on abusive relationships and help women of all ages stop the life course cycle of abuse. In addition, due to the small sample, we were not able to explore multiple perspectives of women in lifelong marriages who left abusive partners. It is unknown whether women in lifelong marriages are less likely to leave abusive marriages as compared with women who have been divorced or widowed. Finally, we interviewed rural White women. Older minority women living in rural areas may face even more challenges accessing services if they believe that service providers may discriminate against them or their partners. Older women living in different social contexts, such as urban areas, may also have different challenges upon leaving abusive relationships.
In sum, a feminist, life course perspective revealed ways in which scholars and practitioners can be sensitive to the unique needs of older women rebuilding their lives after exiting an abusive relationship. Most of the participants mentioned that a support group for older women would be beneficial in combatting feelings of isolation and coping with their future. They said that the women’s shelter was a supportive place to help them begin a new life, whether that was helping them gain access to mental health care or helping them find a new place to live, but that they felt they had different needs than the young women with children whom they met at the shelter.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The project described was supported by Award Number R03HD059478 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD) and the Office of the Director (OD). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors, and does not necessarily represent the official views of NICHD or OD.
