In intimate partner violence, isolation is not an accidental consequence of “a conflict.” It is one of the key tactics that abusive men use to gain and maintain control over their partner. By limiting a woman’s access to people and support outside the relationship, isolation strengthens the power of the abusive partner and makes it harder for the woman to seek help or perspective from others.
How isolation starts
Isolation rarely starts with an outright ban on seeing friends or family. In the early stages, it is often hidden behind the language of love and may appear as a desire for closeness. An abusive partner may say things like:
“I want to be with you all the time.”
“We don’t need anyone else when we have each other.”
“Your friends don’t really understand you.”
While these statements may sound caring, their real purpose is to gradually limit a woman’s contact with the outside world and weaken her sources of support.
Over time, this process often leads to noticeable changes in a woman’s life. She may begin to spend less time with family and friends, slowly withdraw from people who are important to her, give up hobbies, interests, or work and educational activities, and lose access to support beyond the relationship. This happens gradually, making it difficult to recognise that isolation is taking place.
Pressure and Guilt-Inducing Tactics
If a woman continues to meet with friends or family, an abusive partner often escalates to stronger forms of manipulation and pressure:
“When you go to your mother’s, I’m left here alone.”
“Your family doesn’t understand me and doesn’t like me!”
“Your friends are strange — I think they’re a bad influence on you.”
These statements create feelings of guilt and undermine the woman’s relationships with people close to her.. Manipulation and pressure can lead her to gradually limit contact with loved ones, even though these relationships are natural and healthy.
The abusive partner may intensify isolation by using arguments related to children and motherhood:
“When you go out with friends, you don’t have time to take care of the children.”
“Children need their mother at home, not sitting in cafés.”
“What kind of mother puts going to the gym before her family?”
As a result, the woman often feels pressured and obligated to stay at home or to give up her interests. Over time, this reduces her ability to maintain social connections, seek support, and talk about the violence she is experiencing.
Open Restriction and Control
Over time, isolation becomes more overt. An abusive partner may explicitly forbid the woman from meeting, calling, or messaging specific people, openly mock or discredit her family or close friends, and induce guilt whenever she attends a meeting or training. He may monitor her location through her phone and control who she is in contact with by phone or online.
The goal of these behaviours is to strip the woman of external support and a sense of safety outside the relationship, making her more vulnerable to control.
Why Outside Support and Social Contacts Matter
Isolation is not just about limiting contact. It is a repeated pattern of behaviour that reduces a woman’s ability to gain information or perspective from outside, prevents others from learning about her experiences of abuse, gradually undermines her self-confidence and determination to seek help, and reinforces control of the abusive partner.
Research consistently shows that contact with friends and family and access to support outside the relationship play a crucial role in helping women cope with abuse – seeking assistance and leaving the abusive relationship. Isolation, by contrast, increases the risk that violence will continue and intensify and contributes to more severe psychological and health consequences for women.
What a Healthy Relationship Looks Like
In a healthy relationship, both partners feel free and support each other’s relationships with friends and family and respect the need for personal space and individual interests. Mutual trust and respect for boundaries are central, and conflicts are addressed through communication rather than pressure or control. Both partners are able to maintain social connections and sources of support outside the relationship, which strengthens individual wellbeing as well as the relationship itself
Conclusion
Isolation is not a sign of care or love. It is a deliberate tactic used by abusive men to weaken a woman’s external support and resources and to gain control over her life. Recognising the difference between healthy closeness and controlling behaviour is essential for understanding, identifying, and preventing intimate partner violence against women.
Activities of Fenestra Counselling and Intervention Centre in 2025 are supported by the Ministry of Justice of the Slovak Republic through the grant program for providing professional assistance to victims of crime, the Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family of the Slovak Republic within the grant for promoting gender equality and equal opportunities, and the Košice Self-Governing Region.
Fenestra bears sole responsibility for the content of this article.
