Dealing with discomfort: Affective dissonance in fathers’ narratives of violence

Fathers’ violence against partners and children is an important feminist topic, and focusing on fathers’ violence in research and practice is a key element in working towards safety for women and children. Men who subject their women partners to violence are often fathers and, despite the country's reputation as a pioneer in gender equality, Iceland is no exception (Icelandic Police, 2022; Kjaran & Kristinsdóttir, 2021). Some have pointed out the benefit of an increased focus on fathers who perpetrate intimate partner violence (IPV), as men's identities as fathers make them especially receptive to therapy (Pfitzner et al., 2017; Stanley et al., 2012). A central concern in research on fathers who commit IPV has been to highlight what succeeds in motivating them to change (Pfitzner et al., 2017) and to identify ambivalent experiences related to the tension between diverse discourses on masculinity, fatherhood, and violence (Päivinen et al., 2020). Others have shown that violence as well as desistance from it are emotionally complex problems (Perel & Peled, 2008) and contend that, consequently, it is important to pay attention to those complexities when studying fathers who have been violent and their processes of change.

Recently, calls have been made for a focus on the intersections of violence, affect, and gender under the premise that affect is present in all forms of violence and violation; thus, affect must be considered to understand gendered violence as both a personal experience and a structural phenomenon (Hook & Wolfe, 2018; Husso et al., 2021). Siltala et al. (2021) emphasise that working with diverse emotions related to IPV and considering how they might be assessed in interventions for perpetrators is a “key element of change” (p. 138). This is in line with feminist scholars such as Hemmings (2012) and Chadwick (2020), who have theorised change as an affective and relational process that requires reflexivity.

Hemmings (2012) argues that the desire for transformation is based on affective dissonance, that is, a gap or mismatch between experience and identity, which differs somewhat from the perspective in criminology that sees desistance as rooted in identity (e.g., Maruna, 2001; Walker et al., 2018). Chadwick (2020) develops this argument further, foregrounding the importance of how we respond to or deal with affective experiences of discomfort. For instance, while moments of discomfort may offer an opportunity for reconsideration and change, they may also be swiftly ignored or dismissed.

This paper explores the centrality of dealing with discomfort in fathers’ narratives of violence and change. Drawing upon eight interviews in Iceland, we show how the affects of comfort and discomfort emerged in the interview setting and were often invoked in the fathers’ accounts of their violence and relations to women partners and children. Drawing upon Chadwick, we suggest that moments of discomfort can offer opportunities for reflexivity, accountability, and change, but may also be glossed over, reproducing gendered power relations.

Violent fathers and processes of change

Research on masculinity and violence against women has taken several forms (Berggren et al., 2021), often focusing on how men account for their violence after the fact (e.g., Lau & Stevens, 2012; LeCouteur & Oxlad, 2011) or on their trajectories to becoming violent men in the first place (e.g., Gadd, 2000; Messerschmidt, 2012). Questions about change have been more prominent in research on batterer programmes, which has focused on how violent men cease their abuse (Dobash et al., 1999; Stanley et al., 2012). Although affect tends to attract little attention in studies on perpetrator programmes, men's complex emotional experiences are often mentioned (e.g., Hearn, 1998; Seymour et al., 2021). For example, drawing on an analysis of a group model for perpetrators in Finland, Siltala et al. (2021) discuss the ways emotions can be displayed and worked through in therapeutic treatment for IPV. They argue that for “long-term change towards non-violence to happen, it is not enough for perpetrators to work on their own emotions and behaviour; instead, they must also move outside their subjective experiences and reflect on the feelings of others” (Siltala et al., 2021 p. 150). Research specifically on fathers and IPV also closely focuses on therapy models and what motivates fathers to change (Stanley et al., 2012). Analyses of fathers’ accounts of IPV have shown that their attempts to emphasise their identities as good men and involved fathers tend to divert attention from explanations that look at heteronormative structures and gendered power relations (Kjaran & Kristinsdóttir, 2021; Päivinen et al., 2020). Others have highlighted the emotional tensions that men experience when negotiating their identities as simultaneously good fathers and perpetrators of violence (Päivinen et al., 2020; Perel & Peled, 2008).

Emerging criminological research on desistance from IPV has addressed questions about changing from violence (Berggren et al., 2020; Walker et al., 2015). In this context, Hall and Harris (2022) emphasise the importance of examining the impact of men's desistance processes on their female partners. While intimate relationships can play an important role in the process of changing violent men's behaviour, emotional work may be unevenly distributed, with female partners doing the work and providing support to men to achieve change, to the women's own detriment.

To date, relatively little is known about fathers and violence in Iceland, but Kjaran and Kristinsdóttir (2021) suggest that violent men's role as fathers is central to their identity and could inspire change. Critical self-reflection, including engaging with children's perspectives, can be vital to fathers’ processes of changing violent behaviour (Guðjónsdóttir & Stanley, 2023). Moreover, a study of media representations showed that a polarised discourse prevails that depicts fathers as either good or violent, ignoring the complexity of the phenomenon (Guðjónsdóttir & Kjaran, 2023). Futhermore, the perspectives of children living with domestic violence in Iceland suggest that questions about fathers and violence are more ambivalent and emotionally complex (Kristinsdóttir et al., 2014).

Focusing on violent fathers’ change is urgent because, without change, violence continues to harm both the men's children and their (ex)partners (Bruno, 2022). While previous research has pointed out in various ways that emotions are important in the process of change, this paper further advances the discussion by turning to feminist theories of affective dissonance and discomfort.

The affective potential of discomfort

There is a long, rich feminist discussion of emotions and embodied affects within and beyond feminist psychology (e.g., Åhäll, 2018; Parvulescu, 2019). Feminist theorists have, in diverse ways, emphasised the importance of “staying with the trouble” (Haraway, 2016, p. 1) and being “willing to be proximate to unhappiness” (Ahmed, 2010, p. 87). More recently, feminist affect scholars have noted that exploring comfort and, in particular, discomfort can be crucial to understanding change (Chadwick, 2020; Hemmings, 2012). Drawing attention to discomfort as a potentially transformative affect, Hemmings (2012) argues that experiencing dissonance between our self-perception and how the world sees us can move and inspire us to pause, reflect, and potentially act differently. She further explains this as “feeling the desire for transformation out of the experience of discomfort” (Hemmings, 2012, p. 158). Thus, feeling differently can move us towards different kinds of knowing, being, and resisting. Chadwick (2020) builds on Hemmings’s work and adds that discomfort merges and morphs into other feelings and affects; it does not “necessarily manifest as a standalone emotional response” (p. 561). In the case of fathers and violence, for example, discomfort merges with shame, guilt, sorrow, and disappointment.

Drawing upon Hemmings, Chadwick (2020) notes that “affective dissonance and discomfort do not necessarily manifest as moments that result in a seamless shift towards transformative praxis or politicisation” (p. 562). Rather, being moved by discomfort is a complicated process that involves various experiences and engagements that can disrupt our taken-for-granted thinking and existence, and fracture our view of the world. We can thus think of affective dissonance and discomfort as a spark that, given oxygen and the right circumstances, can grow into a flame. However, that spark can also be extinguished. Chadwick (2020) and Hemmings (2012) agree that discomfort does not automatically lead to transformation. For example, Chadwick (2020) argues that privileged persons may be tempted to ignore, avoid, or dismiss feelings of discomfort and return to familiar “epistemic comfort zones” (p. 563).

While Hemmings (2012) and Chadwick (2020) both view dissonance and discomfort from the perspective of women and subordinate groups, we suggest that theorising discomfort as a possible critical moment or process of rupture (as Chadwick proposes) can inform an understanding of fathers’ complex experiences of having perpetrated violence and trying to change, an approach that aligns with recent interest in how discomfort and shame manifest in the context of masculinity and IPV (Gottzén, 2019a; Pease, 2012).

Methods

This study drew on data from in-depth interviews with eight Icelandic fathers, aged 30 to 65, who had been violent against their female partner and/or children. The interviews were characterised by open questions from the interviewer, which enabled the participants to talk about their background and experience of fathering, including their views on the father role, intimate relationships, violence, and masculinity. The interviews were conducted by the first author for her PhD project in 2019–2020, and most lasted for more than 2 hours. With the help of gatekeepers, six participants were recruited from the Icelandic therapy model Peace at Home (Heimilisfriður). Inspired and aligned with the Norwegian ATV (alternative to violence), Heimilisfriður is an individual and group based psychological treatment and Iceland's only therapeutic programme for IPV perpetrators. Two more men offered to participate through a general call to fathers who self-identified as having perpetrated violence. Due to the gravity of the topic, finding participants in a country as sparsely populated as Iceland (387,758 in 2023) presented a challenge. In light of that, we provide as little detail about the participants as possible to ensure their anonymity. Importantly, maintaining the anonymity of the participants protects the identity of their (ex)partners and children, who were not asked to participate in this research. The research was positively reviewed by the Ethical Board of the University of Iceland, and minimising emotional harm was a priority throughout the research process. This was done, for example, by informing the fathers where they could seek assistance if they struggled emotionally after the interview.

The fathers were offered no incentive for their participation. All but one interview took place in an office where most of the participants were in treatment, so they were familiar with the environment. One interview was held in an office at the University of Iceland. Only one participant had served time in prison, and few had been charged or convicted for their violence, but all but one of them recognised their behaviour as violence. The violence they had committed varied in type, form, and duration. All the participants had subjected the mother of their child/children to violence, and many noted that they had been violent against other female intimate partners. Two participants were still in a relationship with a woman towards whom they had been violent; four fathers were single when the interview took place, and two were in new relationships. Five fathers described direct violence against their child/children. Most of the fathers shared custody of one or all their children, but two had almost no contact with some or all of their children. The participants were all cisgender and heterosexual. Four fathers may be described as working-class, and the other four as middle-class, as they had finished secondary school and had a university degree or jobs that normally provide an income above the legal minimum wage in Iceland.

All interviews were conducted and transcribed in Icelandic. The parts of the interviews that related to (dis)comfort were then translated into English by the first author, in dialogue with the second author and proofreaders. We analysed the interviews through dialogic narrative analysis (Kohler-Riessman, 2008) with a focus on affect (Chadwick, 2021), which we approached as both discursive and embodied (Åhäll, 2018; Ahmed, 2014). In terms of analysis, this means that we paid attention to what the participants said as well as to how they expressed themselves by analysing hesitancies, silences, changes in voice speed and volume, facial expressions, and other forms of body language. Affective atmospheres depend on the baggage we bring with us (Åhäll, 2018; Ahmed, 2014), so we had to be mindful of how our position and experiences impacted the research process. The interviews required the first author, a cis-woman in her early 30s, to navigate her experience as a mother and victim-survivor in the interview setting, to manage a balance between comfort and discomfort. This entailed that she continuously reflected upon what information and when it was shared with participants. To ensure her well-being, the first author made use of debriefing through writing after the interviews, as well as discussing difficult and complex emotions with the second author and a therapist. As the aim in the interview setting was to make the participants feel comfortable enough to express themselves freely, moments of discomfort stood out and sparked interest in the gendered power relations embedded in these encounters.

Findings

In analysing the interviews, we observed that discomfort played a prominent part in the fathers’ narratives of violence and change. Discomfort came up as both a topic in the fathers’ narratives and as something that occurred in the interview interactions. On the one hand, the fathers spoke directly of comfort and discomfort, for example, when they discussed their heterosexual relationships or fatherhood. On the other hand, discomfort could be present even though they did not mention it directly, such as when they were asked about their violent practices and their impact on their children and women partners. In the following, we first show that the fathers tried to avoid the discomfort that followed acknowledging their violent behaviour. We then suggest that dwelling in discomfort had the potential to move them towards self-reflection and enabled them—for example, by consciously stopping and correcting themselves—to practice holding themselves accountable.

Avoiding discomfort

A prominent theme in research on masculinity and violence is how men talk about, justify, or shy away from responsibility for their violent practices (e.g., Hearn, 1998). Many of our participants did that at some point during the interview by stressing that they mostly perpetrated psychological violence, by limiting their physical violence to “that one time,” or by pointing out their partner's role in the violence. Drawing on feminist affect theories, we argue that talking about violence is also an affective process. In this section, we discuss how the fathers avoided discomfort and grappled with justifications, stigmatising discourses, and emotional investments in gendered power structures. All the fathers showed and described discomfort in facing their responsibility for being violent. Tommy stated that “you naturally always want to be able to blame the core of it [the violence] on somebody else.” Between pauses and silences, Tommy explained his quest for “some reason to hold on to,” trying to express his feeling of not being able to blame anyone else for his violent behaviour:

I did not experience any sexual violence or severe violence as a child, you see, so I cannot hide behind anything like that. And I just come from a normal middle-class home. Did not suffer any shortage, did not have to break in to steal computer games or anything. So, there is no concrete reason I could refer to, a violation to hide behind. Which is rather uncomfortable.

Tommy provides insight into his process of looking for a reason he could cling to that would allow him to avoid the uncomfortable fact that he was responsible for the violence on his ex-partner. Others grappled with trying to understand their own justification, as seen in Jonatan's explanation of avoiding discomfort:

If you don’t justify this to yourself [pause] what are you going to do then? This is of course a crazy uncomfortable feeling, just “I’m such an ass.” … Based on what I’ve heard in the group, the justification always starts to avoid the discomfort. [Silence] And people often misunderstand this justification, like we then think it's okay to behave this way. But it's really a way of escaping.

According to Jonatan, men justify their violence to escape the discomfort of feeling like “an ass.” This echoes Chadwick's (2020) assertation that we instinctively respond to “feelings of discomfort by withdrawing from triggering situations or encounters and repressing or avoiding confrontation or engagement with uncomfortable affects” (p. 563). Although both Tommy and Jonatan recognised their behaviour as violence, their accounts of struggling with a desire to explain and justify or escape the discomfort of facing their violence show the emotional complexity of identifying with the category of “violent men.” This aligns with Ólafsdóttir and Rúdólfsdóttir's (2023) recent study in Iceland suggesting that middle-class men—such as Jonatan and Tommy—face an identity crisis when they recognise their behaviour as violence, as it threatens their status within respectable hetero-masculinity.

All the fathers in our study found it hard to identify with being a perpetrator of violence because they felt that it would stigmatise them as monsters according to the dominant discourse (e.g., Guðjónsdóttir & Kjaran, 2023). Jonatan found the stigmatising “monster” discourse very uncomfortable and felt that “you just need to accept having ‘I am a monster’ tattooed on your forehead. Just by facing it.” He experienced this discomfort as a hindrance; speaking slowly, he said, “That [the monster tattoo] makes the steps towards seeking help very heavy.” He then lapsed into silence. According to Jonatan, wishing to avoid being put in the uncomfortable category of monster can make perpetrators of IPV reluctant to seek help (cf. Gottzén, 2017; Ólafsdóttir & Rúdólfsdóttir, 2023). For three fathers, the desire to differentiate themselves from “real perpetrators” discouraged them from accepting the available help, such as group therapy. Petur explained:

That is what is most difficult for me, and that is still difficult. I still have prejudice towards people that are physically violent. But I am just somehow so close to it. I am just at the edge, or there. But I still don’t want to be judged with that other group, you know. So that is also some kind of a stopper for seeking help. That I don’t want to be stigmatised, in some group with … [hesitates] I still want the help. But there is a stopper. [Pause] I have not gone to this kind of group. Anxious, I am a bit anxious about it. Or I find it a bit uncomfortable … to be in that category.

We see that discomfort merges with anxiety and shame and then collides with the will to change and get help, which makes the experience messy and complicated. While Petur seemed aware of what he must do to change, he still avoided the discomfort he felt was inherent in being categorised with “that other group” of more violent men. Similarly, Borki, who had a history of crime, drugs, and violence, seemed to know what he needed to do to change his behaviour, along with getting sober: “You just have to dare. Dare to talk. Dare to have the conversation. Dive into this matter. Start discussing it.” However, he did not follow his own advice. When asked whether he discussed his emotions or situation with his friends or professionals, he answered:

Borki: No, no, no, no, no.

Researcher: Do you discuss it with anyone?

Borki: No, no, no, no. Are you crazy? Mom maybe, at most [coughs uncomfortably and remains silent for a while].

Even though Borki wished to change and claimed that an important part of the process was to “dare to talk,” he seemed to find the thought of the vulnerability inherent in a conversation about his emotions too uncomfortable to handle. Ciurria (2018) argues that, because people in liberal democracies have access to information, education, and treatment, perpetrators are responsible for their choice not to use those resources to control their abusive behaviour; even though knowledge of domestic violence is not as widespread as it should be, it is sufficiently “available,” so perpetrators are responsible for using available knowledge and resources to move away from violence.

Chadwick (2020) argues that, while people may be tempted to smooth over discomfort and quickly return to familiar spaces or “epistemic comfort zones” (p. 563), closing down feelings of discomfort can be dangerous. Avoiding discomfort can, at worst, not only discourage men from seeking help and acknowledging the experience of their ex-partners, but also risk reproducing what Chadwick (2020) describes as “hierarchical and dominant forms of knowing and power relations” (p. 563). Ignoring gendered power differences and victim/survivor experiences allowed Borki to present acts of severe violence as humorous:

Borki: [Smiling, talking cheerfully] I just think it is so amusing, especially when they think they are going to win. And they really think that it is going to happen. And they go on and on and on. I have told them, “no more, no more, no more, no more. I will knock you out” [laughs quietly], and they keep punching. Until I beat them unconscious.

Researcher: [I maintain a neutral facial expression when Borki talks but squirm uncomfortably in my chair, which he clearly notices]

Borki: [Hesitates] It is not pretty to say this. I have never talked about this vio-, vio-. Never. Not once.

In line with Pease (2012), we suggest that Borki's emotional investment in the reproduction of male power and privilege discouraged him from considering the experience of the women he had subjected to violence. Since he did not have to face them, he could joke, describe the physical violence he subjected several intimate female partners to as a competition (“they think they are going to win”), and dismiss the gendered power differences embedded in the relationship. In fact, he did not seem to find anything wrong with his narrative until he noticed the female interviewer's affective response. In this example, discomfort was reflected to the father through the interviewer's affective squirming. While he recognised that he had been violent, he had never discussed his actions as violence before, and struggled to finish the word violence.

Discomfort is relational, something that “moves” (Hemmings, 2012, p. 151) and “flows” (Chadwick, 2020, p. 4) between people and their bodies, for example, through words and the meanings and histories behind those words (Ahmed, 2014). Ahmed (2014) points out that the “availability of comfort for some bodies may depend on the labour of others, and the burden of concealment” (p. 149). The female researcher's inability to conceal her discomfort disrupted Borki's “availability of comfort” in his cheerful narrative of violence and was, in that sense, contagious. He did not have to face his victim-survivors while joking about his violence, but he had to face the discomfort his violence created in other women (the woman sitting across from him). Our findings echo assertions by Chadwick (2020) and Pease (2012) that, although feelings of discomfort can potentially be used to motivate men to interrogate their privilege and change violent behaviour, this does not happen automatically but rather requires effort and continual practice.

Leaning on women's emotional labour

As feminist researchers, we consider it important to expand the discussion of emotions from a focus on the individual perpetrator and his feelings to the relational setting. Thus, we highlight how others are affected by fathers’ attempts to change and, in particular, how the feeling of comfort may “move” (see Ahmed, 2014) the fathers to rely on the support of women in their lives. In doing so, we suggest that the gendered division of emotional labour and the support that the men received from mothers, girlfriends, and ex-partners—both in the violent relationship and after it ended—made it possible for the fathers to avoid moments of discomfort. Jonatan described his mother as “always very flexible in helping,” especially when it came to his therapy sessions. He also noted the emotional support from his girlfriend when he worried that he would be viewed as a “monster for life.” Similarly, a major factor in Tommy's change was the help and support he received from the women in his life, mainly his ex-wife and his mother, who both encouraged and praised him, and took care of his children, which cleared the path for him timewise. Only two participants expressed awareness of the uneven emotional labour in their relationships, whereas others, including Tommy, normalised it: “Yes. [Carelessly] I naturally had so much support. [My ex-partner] was at home, and mum was, of course, a widow and had stopped working.” Tommy's narrative presumed that, because his ex-wife was on maternity leave and his mother retired, it was “natural” that they supported him by prioritising his schedule. Tommy had been active for years in a therapy model for perpetrators and had changed his lifestyle considerably. He had also gone to rehab, which seemed to be an empowering experience for him rather than shameful or embarrassing as for some of the other participants. This was largely because his ex-wife took care of all the uncomfortable conversations.

[My ex-partner] answered my phone while I was in therapy for those 20 days, and she of course just asked, “What should I tell people?” I just said, “Tell them that I am in rehab.” [Smiles and talks cheerfully] So, it was incredibly comfortable for me to come out. Those who had contacted me just knew that I had been in rehab.

Because Tommy's ex-partner took on his discomfort work by answering his phone, he could avoid uncomfortable conversations about his problems and the nature of the situation. According to Hochschild (2003) and, more recently, Kolehmainen and Juvonen (2018), gendered power is reproduced in how we manage emotions, so that being a woman often entails the emotional labour of making others feel better. Enander (2010) has shown that victim-survivors sometimes do extensive emotional labour in the aftermaths of violence by trying to understand the perpetrators’ pain and showing them compassion. Although they had been separated for years, Tommy's ex-wife continued to support him by prioritising his time and needs. While Tommy seemed to notice this, he was reluctant to change this very comfortable arrangement. He continued, “So, overall, the relationship was incredibly comfortable. You know, for me. But it was apparently a complete hell for her at times.” Even though he recognised his behaviour as violence, he used words such as “apparently,” suggesting that her experience of the relationship as a “complete hell” came as a surprise to him. According to Hemmings (2012), feelings are entangled with our knowing, and moments of affect are thus at the core of change. Therefore, for Tommy to recognise the gendered power dynamics inherent in his and his ex-wife's different experiences of the relationship, his emotional investment in the comfort of his privilege would have to be disrupted (see Pease, 2012). We suggest that, sometimes, the fathers in our study could avoid dealing with the uncomfortable emotional baggage of having committed domestic violence because they leant on women's emotional labour and relied on them to do their discomfort work for them.

This section described how the fathers in this study could avoid feelings of discomfort, but that is not the only way of dealing with discomfort. As Hemmings (2012, p. 157) points out, “Affective dissonance cannot guarantee feminist politicisation or even a resistant mode. And yet, it just might.”

Dwelling in discomfort: A space for self-reflection

We have shown how fathers who subjected their partners and/or children to violence could avoid dealing with the discomfort of facing their violent behaviour. However, when the fathers engaged with these uncomfortable moments and encounters by staying with them, they opened space for a sense of dissonance that could provoke questions and reflection on other people's perspectives. According to Chadwick (2020), discomfort is “an affective force” (p. 571) that can move people both towards and away from different ways of knowing. We observed numerous examples in our data of participants stopping, hesitating, and responding with uncomfortable silence or fidgeting (body language) when asked about their violence's effect on their children. For example, Emil was silent for a long time before he answered, “I [hesitating, his voice filling with sorrow] don’t know.” Anton was in intensive therapy at the time of the interview: with his partner, singly in a therapy programme for perpetrators, and in a rehabilitation centre for burnout. He seemed to be in a place of dissonance and intense discomfort. He had begun to view his behaviour and attitudes critically and wanted to get better. Reflecting on his violence against his children seemed painful.

Anton: Yes, the parenting has been characterised by anger. And there would be some threats: “If you do not obey, you will not get this. If you don’t stop” [chokes up]. I don’t know.

Researcher: But how do you think your children experience you as a father?

Anton: [A long silence fills with palpable sorrow while Anton tears up] Eh. [Long silence] Wow. You are just making me cry over here. [Wipes away tears] It's, you know—I don’t know if I can answer that.

By noticing Anton's body language—how he choked up after describing his parenting as characterised by anger—we see that this admission caused him discomfort. In his case, emotional responses to the intensity of discomfort seemed to increase when he was asked to consider how his children experienced him. Instead of contemplating his parenting from his own perspective, he was directed towards thinking of their perspective, which caused considerably more discomfort (perceptible in long silences and crying). Moments in which the fathers’ discomfort and pain seemed to fill the interview’s atmosphere were often followed by more critical self-reflection. After the tangible discomfort and sorrow illustrated in the extract above, Anton continued reflecting on his children's experience of him and seemed to recognise the power imbalance between them.

But then, when they start to think about it, of course they see the brittleness. But whether they have the confidence to point it out, that is another question. You are on a certain pedestal in the parenting role. The day will come when the children see through you, and then you are no longer on a pedestal. But [he assumes a serious, sad facial expression during a long silence] I mean, I … [quickly and with humour] I just hope I will have moved to an elderly home when that happens [grins].

In his reflection, Anton saw his behaviour from his children's perspective and recognised, through the reference to a pedestal, the power difference between them. Imagining the day when his children will “see through” him and when, consequently, his power over them would decrease, seemed to cause him discomfort, as he stopped and was sad and silent for a while before switching gears and resorting to humour. Therefore, we suggest that by responding to discomfort by dwelling in it, fathers could allow it to move them towards different ways of knowing. According to Matthias, looking back on how he had felt and thought was “just really uncomfortable. Because I never saw that I had any part in it.” Before he sought help, Matthias felt that he was “at the edge” and had feared how much his violent behaviour would escalate if it continued. This uncomfortable dissonance between his behaviour and his identity made him want to turn to several organisations and models for guidance.

Discomfort could be a part of the fathers’ emotional path towards seeking help, and starting therapy often brought even more discomfort. Feeling defensive when they started seeing a psychologist or couples’ therapist was something that came up in all the interviews. When he began couples’ treatment, Tommy felt that the therapy was not on “his terms” and that he was being “attacked,” a feeling shared by four other fathers. Tommy reflected, “Nothing was my fault; back then, everything was still her fault. If I woke up too late, it was her fault.” As in the extract from Matthias above, Tommy shared that “back then” he saw no problem in his behaviour and felt that everything wrong in their relationship was his partner's fault. Recognising that he had been violent required Tommy to learn about various forms of violence and practice reflecting on his ex-wife's experience.

I had not connected the dots, but, when we went over it, then I just got like [makes a sound as though he lost his breath from shock] just like a punch in the stomach. Just, “Shit, yes, this is a description of me.”

With practice, Tommy became less defensive and more open to listening and staying with the discomfort of recognising that he had been violent. That included allowing uncomfortable sensations “like a punch in the stomach” to move him towards different understandings of violence. In this way, dealing with discomfort by returning to it and staying with it offered the fathers the possibility of critically reflecting on their actions, identity, and privilege.

“Hey, I did this”: Holding oneself accountable

The interviews provided numerous examples of participants forcing themselves into moments of discomfort by stopping, correcting, and holding themselves accountable after their initial response had been to shy away from discomfort. Tommy said:

Tommy: It helps me so much to talk about it. Keeps me on my toes. Because I know very well how to use violence. I am really good at it. [Smiles awkwardly] And I get my way by using violence, and I know that I get ahead by doing it. But you know, by admitting to people how I use violence and what I gain from it, I am of course giving them my weapons. So, they will not work anymore. Which is of course a crazy method.

Researcher: Yes. That sounds very, like, exposing.

Tommy: [In a matter-of-fact tone, lightly and quickly] This behaviour is beneficial for me in a lot of circumstances; I get ahead, I can make money faster by doing this and gain a certain quality of life much faster by just using harshness and meanness. [Slowly and seriously] But I don’t want to. [Silence]

While Tommy described his talent for violence (“I am really good at it”) and some ambiguity regarding letting go of the “quality of life” he could gain, he also had a means of exposing himself to hold himself accountable and to work towards change. Because he had been active in a therapy programme for years, he was presumably aware that holding himself accountable was important to achieving change (Stanley et al., 2012; Walker et al., 2015). Emil also seemed to realise this when he said, “I have used psychological violence against a partner. And I believe I have done so in all my relationships. Or, I think that is just very clear.” Here, Emil changed his initial “belie[f]” that he had been violent in all his relationships to acknowledging that it was “very clear.”

A prominent aim of the Icelandic therapy model is getting perpetrators to recognise their violent behaviour, hold themselves accountable, and develop ways of handling partner communication constructively (Heimilisfriður [Peace at Home], n.d.). The preceding extracts suggest that Tommy and Emil, who both sought help from Peace at Home, tried to practice accountability for their violence. Similarly, Matthias had been working on himself for almost a decade. He had sought help from a broad range of counsellors and therapy models, and seemed determined to take responsibility for his actions, even though it was uncomfortable. Matthias had developed a method of holding himself accountable by giving nitty-gritty descriptions of how he grabbed, pinched, shook, and threw his children; doing so meant that he could not for a moment justify or attempt to deny the behaviour. He consciously steered himself into uncomfortable accountability when, for example, he firmly stated, “Just, hey, I did this!” Matthias explained that, in attempts to counteract shame and support his children's healing from the pain he had caused them, he repeatedly discussed with them how he was trying to change, emphasising that they were not responsible for his behaviour. For Matthias, accepting that the process of change would require ongoing practice was uncomfortable.

This anger is still a part of me. And just because there has not been physical violence anymore, if they spilled a glass of milk or knocked over a bowl of cereal, one could snap, you know. And to see [hesitates] the fear. It has happened very seldom over the past years, [firmly] but it has happened. It always just takes me back to [in a hopeless, sad voice] “fuck.” I need to be careful as shit!

We have shown that one element of the fathers’ desistance process could involve dealing with discomfort by reflecting on their partners’ and/or children's perspectives on their violence. For Matthias, realising that he was still capable of causing his children so much fear was a painful reminder that change required continuous and conscious practice. In sum, fathers who had subjected their partners and/or children to violence could deal with moments of discomfort by consciously steering themselves towards that discomfort. Taking over the discomfort work thus entailed listening, having uncomfortable and vulnerable conversations, and returning to their process after having been defensive.

Conclusions

We have argued in this article that insights from feminist affect theory can benefit research on fathers who have been violent. Feminist theories on affect have noted that staying with discomfort can move us towards interrogating attitudes and privileges and may thus contribute to behavioural change. We examined discomfort as a prominent part of the change process in eight Icelandic fathers who had been violent against female partners and children. Drawing on Chadwick's (2020) and Hemmings’s (2012) work on the potentially transformative qualities of discomfort, we have shown that dealing with discomfort could move fathers towards self-reflection. Some fathers found ways to hold themselves accountable by consciously steering themselves into moments of discomfort, as they recognised possibilities of change there. In line with other research (e.g., Gottzén, 2019b; Stanley et al., 2012), the fathers’ desistance from domestic violence was a long-term process that seemed to require regular practice, often under professional guidance. As Chadwick (2020) points out, however, change is not an automatic effect of discomfort. Although there is currently only one programme in Iceland that focuses on treating perpetrators, it can be argued that the Icelandic society offers sufficient resources, knowledge, and counter-discourses with which violent fathers can engage in working towards change. Ahmed (2014) connects comfort to privilege and power, contending that experiencing (normative) comfort can make it very hard to notice. The fathers could often lean on the support of women in their lives in the aftermath of violence, which they could use either to avoid or address discomfort. Relying on women's emotional labour sometimes appeared to discourage fathers from taking responsibility for their process of change, which suggests that beyond the injustice and harmful consequences of being subjected to violence, women may continue to endure uneven emotional labour after the relationship ends, to support men's desistance processes (cf. Hall & Harris, 2022). Men who have been violent may therefore depend upon the emotional labour and compliance of women to ensure their own uninterrupted comfort. We suggest that, if fathers who have been violent are to notice their power and the consequences of their violence, their comfort may need to be disrupted, for example, by having to deal with someone else's discomfort, as in the encounter between the female researcher and Borki. As Päivinen et al. (2020) have shown, this can also be done in therapy by persuading fathers to reflect on the emotions and experiences of women and children. Our findings suggest that discomfort is a relational coproduction, and we therefore propose that discomfort could be incorporated more centrally into therapeutic practices with violent men and fathers as a core aspect of reflexive therapy. By applying a feminist affect approach to discomfort in studying fathers’ desistance processes, we have captured the ambivalent and contradictory voices of fathers who, at times, seemed to both avoid discomfort and continually practice letting discomfort move them towards change. We view this attention to affective dissonance, comfort, and discomfort as a productive way of approaching questions about violent fathers’ change. It is also important that the analysis of affect is not restricted to violent men's emotions but situates them in relation to gendered power relations as well as the experiences, perspectives, and affects of women and children.