Abstract
Most research on intimate partner violence to date has focused on young men. Although interest and research regarding older abused women has increased in recent years, research on the voices and experiences of older abusive men is still scarce. The purpose of this article is to present a typology of older battering men dwelling in lifelong intimate violence relationships. Fifteen older Israeli abusive men, aged 65 to 84 years, were interviewed in depth. Four types were identified: the “Non-quitter,” the “Cover-up”-er, the “In-between”-er, and the “Normalizer.” These types were constructed based on four dimensions: the construction of violence over the years, the perception of the spouse over the years, losses accompanying the violent relationship, and the meaning of violence in old age. The four types enable an in-depth look at the experiential world of older abusers and paint a complex picture of various ways in which abusive men live with violence over time.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) relates to a nonlegitimate use of force employed by one party to cause physical and/or psychological harm to the other party. It includes the use of physical force and infliction of injuries, as well as emotional and sexual abuse, sexual harassment and financial exploitation. Some (but not all) IPV is perpetrated to control a situation or cause harm to the partner (Crowell & Burgess, 1996; DeKeseredy, 2000; DeKeseredy & MacLeod, 1997; Johnson & Ferraro, 2000; Winstok, 2007). Traditionally, the majority of IPV research has focused on young age groups (the 25-50 age group) and, mostly guided by feminist thinkers, was dealt with the woman victim’s perspective (Eisikovits & Bailey, 2011). More recently, increased attention has been given in the literature to older battered women (Band-Winterstein & Eisikovits, 2009; Beaulaurier, Seff, Newman, & Dunlop, 2007; Lazenbatt, Devaney, & Gildea, 2010; Mahoney, Williams, & West, 2001; Seaver, 1996; Straka & Montminy, 2006; Vinton, 2001; Zink, Regan, Jacobson, & Pabst, 2003). However, the male perpetrators’ perspective is conspicuously missing. The gerontological literature dealing with elder abuse focuses on older women victims as the center of the problem and continuously disregards older male perpetrators (Kosberg, 2009). Older men appear to be invisible also in the criminological literature, which describes them as aging out of crime in general (Sampson & Laub, 2005) and of IPV in particular (Band-Winterstein & Eisikovits, 2009).
The purpose of this article is to present a typology of older battering men dwelling in lifelong intimate violence relationships. Addressing older men’s experience may provide additional insights into the interaction between old age and IPV from the men’s viewpoint.
Literature Review
Being a Man Who Batters From a Life-Course Perspective
The theoretical framework of this article is the life-course perspective. It offers a broad outlook for understanding IPV (Williams, 2003). This perspective is a useful heuristic device, as it is located at the intersection of social, cultural, and historical factors with personal biography. The life-course perspective places a dynamic emphasis on transitions, timing, and multiple career lines, adding fluidity and color to family life. Life-course analysis is based on identifying common markers, turning points, life events, and transitions, which, taken together, create the composite picture of family history also known as life trajectories (Elder, 1998). For example, recent studies explore how older men perceive their own life experience over the years, including dealing with family relationships, coping with the aging body, illness and treatment, disability, and death (Hearn, 1995). In the context of the present article, the nature of IPV can change over the years: Quiet and “normal” periods, characterized by casual abusive behavior, are followed by unexpected stormy periods of physical and emotional harms (Gordon, 2000; Johnson, 1995; Mahoney et al., 2001). The life-course perspective enables the perception of IPV as a cumulative process rather than a static, one-time event, whose consequences over the years are different. To understand the implications of this experience, it is important to examine the chronic patterns of abuse and how they change over time (Williams, 2003).
Most of the research on abusers has focused on younger men who batter their partners and men from clinical populations (Holtzworth-Munroe & Meehan, 2004; Johnson, 1995, 2000; Johnson & Ferraro, 2000; Romans, Poore, & Martin, 2000; Rosenbaum & Leisring, 2003; Widiger & Mullins-Sweatt, 2004). These studies described mental health diagnoses, including substance abuse, exposure to abuse during childhood, and the various batterer typologies.
The typology generally accepted today divides young batterers into three distinct groups: family-only batterers, dysphoric/borderline batterers, and generally violent/antisocial batterers (Holtzworth-Munroe & Stuart, 1994). Family-only batterers are violent only toward family members and not outside the home. Neither are they involved in legal problems. On a relative scale, their engagement in severe marital violence, psychological abuse, or sexual abuse is the lowest of the three groups. Dysphoric/borderline batterers may sometimes engage in violence outside of the family and display criminal behavior. Relative to the other two groups, their engagement in severe marital violence, psychological abuse, or sexual abuse is moderate. The third type, whose engagement in severe marital violence, psychological abuse, or sexual abuse is the highest among the groups, refers to the generally violent/antisocial batterers. They display the most extrafamilial aggression, are most heavily involved in related criminal behavior, and have been involved with the law (Holtzworth-Munroe, Meehan, Herron, Rehman, & Stuart, 2000).
In studies in which an attempt was made to characterize the components that distinguish violent from nonviolent men, the former were found to have poor problem-solving capability, to be less assertive, and to have a tendency toward passive or aggressive behavior. Old age was found to indicate a decrease in the rate of violence, although it was impossible to predict which men would reduce their violence and which would continue in spite of their age (Holtzworth-Munroe, Bates, Smutzler, & Sandin, 1997).
An additional layer of knowledge relates to understanding the process, the context, and the way in which violent men construct memories and justify and escalate conflicts in intimate violence relationships. The tactics chosen by violent men to deal with memories include minimizing and diminishing the reasons for violence; denying its existence, causes, and implications; as well as playing down its intensity, duration, and severity. Other ways of constructing the reality in accordance with the partner’s aims are by distraction or by embracing past memories, which define the couple relationship as ideal (Eisikovits & Enosh, 1996).
Additional studies shed light on the process of escalation in conflicts in intimate relationships from the violent men’s point of view (Winstok, Eisikovits, & Gelles, 2002). The process starts by the men perceiving themselves as having the right and the obligation to protect their life systems, while recognizing their general ownership of family members. They acquire for themselves the authority to act as a lawmaking, judging, and executive power. They perceive any violation of the balance or disruption of their hegemony by their partners as a threat, which requires control and the restoration of balance, while considering effectiveness versus cost, and taking aggressive action.
In their criticism of the research on violent men, Mahoney et al. (2001) noted that in addition to the limited access to violent men outside of the therapeutic system, the focus is on physical violence, with no evaluation of other forms of violence and their chronic nature. They claimed that the field lacks an understanding of the schemata of violent men through the life course and their development through landmarks, phases in relationships, or other life events.
In conclusion, no study to date has examined profiles or patterns of behavior of older abusers from their own point of view (Zink, Jacobson, Regan, Fisher, & Pabst, 2006).
Being an Older Man Who Batters: Women’s View
To understand the meaning and effects of long-term intimate violence, it is important to explore the perspectives of both the abuser and the victim. Whereas extant studies, conducted in Israel, Australia, Canada, and the United States, focused on the experiences, perceptions, needs, and coping strategies among older battered women (Buchbinder & Winterstein, 2003; Mears, 2003; Montminy, 2005; Schaffer, 1999; Zink et al., 2006), the viewpoint of older abusive men is only rarely represented (Band-Winterstein & Eisikovits, 2009).
Some of the studies about older abused women focused on the way they described and perceived their partner’s violent behavior (Band-Winterstein & Eisikovits, 2009; Zink at al., 2003; Zink et al., 2006; Zink, Jacobson, Regan, & Pabst, 2004). These women tried to “make sense” of what they had experienced and to define “who” these men were, by using various personality and mental health descriptors to characterize the abusers’ behaviors using accounts and metaphors to address these behaviors (Winterstein, 2002; Zink et al., 2006), attributing negative and repulsive traits to their husbands, which reflect their present and past mental processes. For example, they describe their partners as physically repulsive or as having an obnoxious personality, and bestial habits regarding sex, eating, and hygiene. As well as being repulsive, they are presented as abusive, evil, brutal, and frightening (Winterstein, 2002).
In summary, the existing literature focuses on enhancing awareness of the plight of older battered women while almost completely ignoring older violent men. The purpose of this article is to present a typology of older abusers based on their self-report. This will be based on qualitative in-depth interviews with older batterers in Israel, using a phenomenological perspective. The research questions referred to battering men’s perceptions of the conflictual relationship with their wives throughout life and their experience of growing older in such a relationship.
Method
Fifteen men living in Israel, aged between 60 and 84 years (73.7 ± 4.6), were purposefully sampled. Their wives were clients of the unit for prevention and treatment of elder abuse in the municipal social service agencies. Thirteen were living with their wives and two were separated but not divorced. They represented diverse ethnic origins and levels of education. Two of the men were born in Israel, four in Morocco, three in Egypt, two in Iraq, and the other four in the Czech Republic, Greece, Poland, and Yemen. Half of the participants had elementary school education, and the other half had high school education. Seven of the men had worked as professionals in various occupations. All of them were retired at the time of the study. Three men were orthodox religious, two professed traditional beliefs but not a religious life style, and the remainder reported a secular life style. The mean length of the relationships was 51 years. The participants had between two and seven children (3.8 ± 1.6), who were all aged 35 years and older at the time of the study, and all participants were grandparents.
The participants were identified as violent—by their wives, who were treated in the aforementioned centers, and by their grown up children, who had all participated in a larger study, which explored the multiple perspectives of family members on lifelong IPV. The men had not taken part in intervention programs. None of the wives or adult children reported violence by the women toward the men. The wives and adult children reported past physical violence by the men, as well as the following forms and differing degrees of violence in the present (Band-Winterstein and Eisikovits, 2009): the same severity and frequency of violence across the life-span (three participants); an “ecology” of violence, namely, an environment of terror in old age after the husbands’ arrest restrained the physical abuse (four participants); transition in old age to different types of abuse (emotional, economic, and continuous conflicts), replacing the physical violence (five participants); and continuous escalation of violence due to chronic or terminal illness (three participants). It should be noted that the women sought help as a result of public awareness and exposure to programs for the prevention of elder abuse and neglect.
Instruments and Research Procedure
Face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted with each individual participant by the author—a qualified social worker and experienced qualitative researcher. They lasted 1.5 to 2.5 hours and were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The interview was based on several content categories, including intimate relationship with the partner over the life span (e.g., “describe major life events in your couplehood over the years”), family relationships over the life course (e.g., “describe major changes in your family relationships over the years”), effects of the violence/conflictual relationships over the years (e.g., “reviewing your relationship over the years, what gains and what losses did you incur?”), and hopes and wishes for the present and future (e.g., “how would you like to end your relationship in this stage of life?”). Violence was not addressed directly, but questions about conflicts in the relationship were asked, which provided openings to relate to the violence.
From the outset, the topic of this study was considered to be highly sensitive, and special provision was therefore made to ensure informed consent and confidentiality (Corbin & Morse, 2003; Dickson-Swift, James, Kippen, & Liamputtong Rice, 2007; Renzetti & Lee, 1993). Each participant signed a letter of consent to participate, which included a promise to safeguard their privacy. Identifying details were changed to preserve confidentiality. In addition, interviews were saved on the author’s personal computer, which allowed no outside access. The study was approved by the ethics committee of the University of Haifa in Israel.
The interviews were conducted either at the participants’ homes (11 participants) or at any other location of their choice (one participant at his son’s house, one at the local city park, one at a long-term care facility to which he had been removed by court order, and one at the local domestic abuse intervention clinic). The final number of participants was obtained when theoretical saturation was reached, that is, when the data provided became repetitive and when no new meaningful information was produced (Padgett, 1998).
When I presented the study topic to the participants, I was surprised to receive a positive response almost immediately. A possible explanation for this is that the men, who had not participated in therapy, felt the need to express their point of view regarding the relationship.
Analysis
Data analysis was performed according to the phenomenological method. I read each interview to become familiar with the text. In the next reading, the process of horizontalization began by finding statements by the participants regarding their experiences with the phenomenon. The next step involved grouping the statements into units of meaning, including quotes to describe their experiences and perceptions. In the third step, the emerging themes were identified by shifting from the descriptive to the interpretive levels of analysis. The final stage included the construction of an overall integrative description and an interpretation of the essence of the experience was achieved (Creswell, 2007; Moustakas, 1994).
Trustworthiness
According to the phenomenological perspective, this research aimed at achieving a structural understanding of the experiences of older men who batter their wives. This perspective enables a critical view of the situations where the lived experiences take place (Giorgi, 2002). By exploring these lived experiences, the researchers would be able to identify structures that would tell us how the participants created their everyday life experiences. The validity question for this phenomenological research was the following: “How valid is the knowledge gained from the qualitative research of the older batterers’ experiences?” (Giorgi, 2002).
The subjective nature of qualitative research and the researcher’s involvement in the inquiry procedure requires her or his full attention through all the research stages. One of the ways of dealing with this is trustworthiness. Trustworthiness refers to the process of establishing the validity and reliability of qualitative research (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Trustworthiness was achieved in several ways. First, the interview material was transcribed verbatim, enabling a return to the original narrations. Second, I analyzed the material and my mentor and I, separately, performed peer debriefing to ensure credibility (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Throughout the article, the participants’ point of view is illustrated by quotation and analysis, which was translated from Hebrew.
Findings
The changes over time in the occurrence, severity, and type of violence interact with the transitions of old age (Teachman & Crowder, 2002). As the following findings show, this interaction leads to unique experiences of older battering men living in IPV over the years. The emerging experience is expressed by four dimensions: the construction of violence over the years, the perception of the spouse over the years, losses accompanying the violent relationship, and the meaning of violence in old age. From the various ways in which these men expressed their experiences according to the four dimensions, I identified a typology of older men who batter their wives: the “Non-quitter,” the “Cover-up”-er, the “In-between”-er, and the “Normalizer.” Table 1 presents the above dimensions as they apply to the types mentioned.
Typology of Older Violent Man.
In the following sections, I describe each type, using relevant excerpts from the participants’ interviews. It should be noted that the men rarely admitted to being violent, but as mentioned above, this information was received from the wives and adult children.
The Construction of Violence Over the Years
The older battering men described continuous lifelong IPV in different ways, relating to the violence dynamics and its severity, its impact over the years, and the intensity of the events; the character of the aggressive violent behavior; and the nature of the conflictual interactions with the spouse. Each of the types constructs the violence over the years in a different way.
The “Nonquitter.”
This type is illustrated by Shimon, aged 80, as he described how he constructs the violence:
I don’t quarrel, I never raise a hand. She’s the one who raises a hand. . . . I catch her sometimes and pull her hair out, and say to her, “Don’t you raise a hand to me.” . . . Lately . . . she chased me with a broom on the stairs. There was a lid at the end of the broom, which I pulled, and it gave her a tiny scratch. . . . She called the police. They opened a file. I left the house, just like that, with nothing, and I hadn’t done anything. The police are bigger bastards than anyone else. . . . What a pity; that day there should have been a quadruple murder, of me and my wife and the two investigating police officers.
Shimon’s narrative not only fails to reflect a violent life but denies and disregards the violence through the years. While denying the violence, he uses violent language, “pull her hair out,” which betrays his violent inner world and the resulting behavioral intentions. His removal from the home was a significant event. He perceives himself as the direct victim of circumstances instigated by his wife, with the assistance of the system.
The “Cover-up”-er
In contrast to the “Nonquitter,” “Cover-up”-er Yigal, aged 70, and aware of approaching death, stated the following:
She and I are from the same town. We had a good life . . . like all of our friends. We always got along well. That’s all. And we’ve remained together until now, 50 years together. Yes, we had quarrels; every home goes through things like that. . . . When we argued, it was just words. That’s all. She wouldn’t speak to me all the time. That would make me angry. Afterwards, friends would come and patch things up. . . . There were some arguments, not a lot, a few. Recently, I told her, that’s enough, I’m sick of it, let’s go back and live like we used to. And now, everything is all right. Today, I want to die knowing that my wife will remember the good years we had together. The bad things? We’ve forgotten them all. Now everything is fine. . . . She takes care of me.
Yigal minimizes the violence and frames a “normal–conflictual” relationship. The key theme in his narrative is the “normal curve,” which seems to him essential at this juncture of his life. He describes a normal, fluctuating family life. Approaching the end of his life, Yigal tries to predetermine his memorial. He expects his wife to erase the difficult memories and remember him in the context of the good times. He must be remembered as he was expected to be and according to his self-expectations: a steady, normative family man.
The “In-between”-er
While the above two types expressed clear statements about constructing the violence, Dov, aged 82, said the following:
There was great love and great passion; she loved me more than I did. . . . I cheated on her for 20 years. . . . Today, our situation is such that it doesn’t matter what I say or do, or what I don’t do. Within a few minutes, I hear that I am a murderer and that I must die and it’s a shame that I’m not paralyzed. . . . “Your mother is a whore and the Nazis did a good job in burning her.” . . . Besides the physical reason and besides the reason related to my age. . . . I feel angry and I feel, how do you say it, loathing? I am incapable of empathizing with her. . . . In the same breath, she worries, she worries that I shouldn’t go out alone because I might fall and no-one will come and help me . . . it is hard for me to be with her and hard to be without her.
Retrospectively, Dov describes a narrative of couplehood based on the fundamental level of love and desire but not on mutuality in the relationship. Over the years, and on account of the changes that occurred with aging, the ongoing violence, the unfaithfulness to his wife, and the deterioration in his health, his wife lets out everything that she has bottled up throughout the years and uses aggressive expressions intended to humiliate, damage, and hurt. He is incapable of accepting or containing her behavior toward him, but at the same time, he needs her care. This construction of the relationship describes the violence as a pendulum that ultimately brings the relationship to a dead end.
The “Normalizer.”
The fourth type constructs the violence as a one-time, nonrepresentative incident in the lifelong relationship. This is illustrated by Ze’ev, aged 70:
Like everyone else, we were simply trying to get along, to manage . . . the whole time, I was struggling to make a living . . . today, thank God, we are well-known and respected . . . our house is always open, people come and go. . . . I never had a black mark in my book, apart from this thing. . . . I was only ever at the police station in connection with my job . . . that was an accident, no more. . . . I was in shock and didn’t know what was happening to me . . . they were talking about psychiatric treatment, what, I’m a psycho? We’re normal people.
Ze’ev describes his professional success against all the odds. He mentions his own and their social mobility as an additional measure of success whereas the violence is alien. Ze’ev is concerned with bridging between his normative image and the exposure of his violent behavior and he does so by presenting the violence as an accident rather than an incident, a passing episode. By so doing, he removes himself from the position of perpetrator. Signs of deviation such as the encounter with the police and suggestions of mental illness are held at a distance and undergo normalization by the contrast that he creates: “ordinary violence for ordinary people.”
The Perception of the Spouse Over the Years
The spousal relationship and the violence are mutually nurturing and create unique content in the intimate relationship. This combination is created and evolves through the years and is dramatically expressed in old age by the way in which the spouse is perceived.
The “Nonquitter.”
The “Nonquitter” describes his spouse in extremely negative terms. Yitzhak, aged 71, presents a narrative of a soulless and self-centered spouse:
I loved that woman so much. She was like my dream. . . . I gave her all my love. Something is not right with that woman. My wife is romantic. You know what romantic means? . . . Her eyes are elsewhere, I feel as though maybe she doesn’t love me, that maybe she never loved me. Until now . . . I love her, can you believe it? . . . She treated me so badly and I dream about her. . . . I get up at night and cry. . . . Her heart is wild, sadistic, she is a woman who causes harm; she has no conscience. She is dramatic, egoistic, fanatical, a liar; she has no feelings, she is cold-blooded, she harbors hatred, she treated me badly, she knifed me in the back. . . . I wrote this down and stuck it to the fridge, so that I won’t forget, so that I will hate her. . . . I plucked her like a flower when she was 17. I raised her and suddenly, she was gone, as if nothing had happened. She doesn’t want to grow up. . . . How can she think of divorce at our age?
Yitzhak focuses on his feelings toward his partner, clinging to the nostalgia of love, and on his surprise at her leaving home. This emotion-focused construction creates in him the sense of victimization. He develops highly intense negative emotions toward his partner and leaves no room for forgiveness, reminding himself to hate her. He perceives her act of separation as egotistic and unacceptable, both because of his long-standing emotional investment in the couple relationship and because of the apparent harm to the conservative family values, which incorporate stereotypes of old-age-appropriate behavior.
The “Cover-up”-er
The “Cover-up”-er begins by painting a positive picture of his wife and their relationship, and attempts to explain the change in the relationship over the years as a turning point caused by her capriciousness. Moshe, aged 70, presents the way in which he perceives his partner, which indicates the desire to whitewash the relationship:
Believe me, she was my darling . . . at that time, we lived so well, and suddenly the whole thing overturned. Up until the surgery, we were like man and wife, like brother and sister. I was fine, devoted to the wife, to the children, I was loving and helpful . . . and she is an absolute disgrace. But I don’t know how she changed so completely. . . . The wife started to take control. . . . She wanted a divorce, but in the end, she relented, because she saw that I repaid her with good, not with bad. She knew that I loved her . . . Divorce! What an idea! Did I raise a hand? Did I shout at her or slap her? . . . I don’t have it in my heart to leave her even for one day. . . . What can you do when love is blind? Once, we would sleep with our arms around each other, all the time. Love, what can you do, a person changed. That is not good.
Moshe presents a harmonious, loving couple narrative, up to a sharp turning point. The simultaneous deterioration of his health and of the relationship led to his perception of the change in the power relations. His partner has become dominant and is described as ungrateful, abandoning, rejecting, and neglecting. Moshe negates all grounds for divorce, by presenting a total self, based on extreme emotions of love and loyalty, which deny all association with the violent behavior.
The “In between”-er
The “In between”-er sees his spouse as a split self: showing one face to him and another to outsiders, for she is a pretender and a hypocrite. Ya’akov, aged 78, described his wife as follows:
She is like a panther chasing its prey, that is what she is like with me . . . she treats me like a dog, but when someone suddenly calls, even if we have been quarreling a second beforehand, you should hear how she speaks on the phone, “My sweetie, my life.” As if she vanishes and is replaced by another woman. You wouldn’t believe it, her face changes and after she has finished talking, she goes back to normal and continues cursing . . . all women are the same.
Ya’akov presents his wife as someone living in a double system of values and norms, one directed outwards and one directed toward the spouse. His metaphors are designed to highlight the contrast between how his wife behaves toward him and how she behaves in social situations. He emphasizes his partner’s behavior in society as conveying only good, whereas with him, she is like a panther pursuing its prey.
The “Normalizer.”
Like the “Cover-up”-er, the “Normalizer” also describes a sudden change in his spouse and their relationship, from positive to negative. However, the two types differ in two respects: first, the cause for change, unknown to the “Cover-up”-er and the exposure by the wife of the violent relationship in the case of the “Normalizer”; second, regarding the chance of restoring the original state of affairs: The “Cover-up”-er still believes that his capricious wife might become good again, whereas the “Normalizer” sees her as deviant from now on. Nahum, aged 70, describes his spouse as follows:
My wife already tried to trick me, keep me on a short leash. She wanted us to separate, so she could get my pension. She aired all the dirty laundry in public. I don’t remember any more what she claimed in the legal proceedings. In the end, she came crawling home. . . . It was a turning point for me. I was happy that she came home. Today, we try to show more consideration for each other, but she is not really with me, and often, she goes against me. She doesn’t understand me enough.
Nahum describes his wife’s behavior during the divorce proceedings as normal, with no violence context. Therefore, in his view, “airing the dirty laundry” comes under the category of normal divorce events. Nahum interprets her actions as causing irreversible damage to his quality of life. Despite all this, he wants her back, and views her return as a testimony to the renormalization of the relationship. Nevertheless, the humiliating image that she “came crawling home” expresses his victory in the struggle for control.
Losses Accompanying the Violent Relationship
The combination of violence and old age increases the feeling of cumulative losses experienced by the older battering men over the years. Old age cannot be separated from the sense of loss, because the losses are irreversible, and therefore increase the suffering.
The “Nonquitter.”
The first type experiences a total loss of family members, the home and the intimate relationship. Menachem, aged 80, illustrates his losses in the following quote:
The children have broken me. I tear my clothes in mourning [according to Jewish tradition] and can’t even mention their names. . . . I am fed up with doing laundry, preparing food; it is hard. . . . Why don’t they come? . . . I ask my granddaughter: “Why don’t you call?” . . . “You hit Grandma.” . . . What was my wife’s weapon? That I wouldn’t have anywhere that I can knock at the door . . . there is no forgiveness . . . even though she is dead. After what happened to me, this catastrophe. I lived at home [and now] my house is “burned,” all my possessions are “burned.” I took nothing from the house I built . . . for 50 years, and in one week, everything was ruined, and since then, I’ve had no appetite, I don’t want to remember things that happened. . . . I want to lie down. . . . I want to die. . . . She gave me no rest and no life. How did I have the patience to live with her like that? . . . She can go to Hell, to where she is now, she should go to the abyss . . . she died and got what she deserved.
The central motifs in Menachem’s narrative include separation, mourning, loneliness, collapse, lack of a wish to live, loss of family, and general experience of unlimited loss. All these present a large catastrophic puzzle, the climax of which is in his removal from the home and the general exposure of his violence. As a result of the exposure, he experiences strong rejection by his children, bringing him to rent his clothes as a sign of mourning. On the other hand, he neither mourns his ex-wife’s death nor expresses remorse for his behavior but preserves and perpetuates his anger toward her for exposing his violence. From his point of view, the removal from home is a turning point, following which everything he owned was burned: family, memories, health, and possessions. The process is accompanied by a sense of injustice and wrong, derived from his disownment, and finishes with a curse that reflects the immediacy of the pain.
The “Cover-up”-er
These men who belong to this type described the potential end of the relationship as a loss to the intimate relationship, as seen in 70-year-old Moshe’s words:
She wanted a divorce, but in the end, she relented. . . . Divorce! What an idea! Did I raise a hand? Did I shout at her or slap her? . . . I don’t have it in my heart to leave her even for one day.
Moshe describes his constant love for his wife and expresses his concern that she might leave him again, at a time when he needs her so much.
The “In-between”-er
The losses of the “In-between”-er relate to the gap between what could have happened and the reality. Dov, aged 82, views missed opportunities as losses:
I think that, those years, or in the last 20 years, we both suffered and wasted ideal conditions. . . . I think that our “together times” were certainly not ideal, long before I had the affair, I don’t think that was the first and only reason, it’s not true. I think that my wife was so deeply wounded by it that she can’t get over it, but I can’t help her now, I’m an old person and need her caring. I don’t look back, I don’t remember the past, unlike my wife.
This man’s central focus is on long-term suffering. The sense of missed opportunity is apparent from his words. He reviews their joint life, and especially the last 20 years, and reaches the conclusion that the suffering was mutual and the “togetherness” of the relationship was far from how he had wished or expected it to be. He mentions his story of infidelity and places it in the general context of the relationship, and therefore finds that he has lost the “inside” (the intimate relationship with his wife) as well as the “outside” (the relationship with his lover).
The “Normalizer.”
The greatest loss to the “Normalizer” is the threat to his social status and self-identity. Ze’ev, aged 70, describes his losses in terms of social status:
I suffered very much from all this business; six months, because I wanted to keep it quiet, without it leaking out. It broke out at some point. We’re from a certain social stratum and I wouldn’t want us put to shame, so I put up with a lot, to cover it up. I often stayed home.
Ze’ev focuses on his routine life in which the violence was well hidden, and only its public exposure threatens his social-public identity. Therefore, he chooses to set it up as an irregular incident, demanding attention and selective treatment on the local level, and takes steps to reduce the damage to his social status.
The Meaning of Violence in Old Age
In this stage, the need to review their lives leads the older batterers to construct, organize, and give meaning to their violent relationships over the years in different ways.
The “Nonquitter.”
The following two quotes express these men’s difficulty in facing the reality of their lives at this point in time. The strength of the concealment is apparent from the interview excerpts of Yitzhak (aged 71) and Shimon (aged 80):
I always used to think, when I heard of people getting divorced, that this would never happen to me. . . . Certainly not. My wife and I, I love her, she loves me. (Yitzhak) I didn’t see her like that. I’m going crazy. Sometimes, I say to myself, it’s not true, it isn’t her, how much suffering, how much, and for what? I don’t know, did she lack food? Money? She had everything. (Shimon)
The older men’s bad faith is expressed through statements such as: “this would never happen to me,” “it’s not true, it isn’t her.” The other participant, Shimon, apparently does not understand how his wife came to have him removed from the home. According to him, she lacked nothing, and he tries to convince himself and his audience that violence is irrelevant to the relationship.
The “Cover-up”-er
Through their declining health and the sense of approaching death, the “Cover-up”-ers are aware of the need for positive closure. The meaning of long-term violent relationships into old age arises in 73-year-old Yisrael’s narrative:
Now, we have made peace. . . . I want only quiet. . . . I am quick to forget [the past]. Apart from the illness, I am happy. . . . I love her with all my heart, I don’t want her to go. Once, she left me for six months, and I couldn’t cope. I will love her, whatever she does to me. I have often said I’m sorry, but a woman who loves her husband doesn’t complain about him to the police (cries). . . . I have no intention of leaving her, or of taking another woman. God is great; the two of us may get along; she will love me and I will love her.
Yisrael constructs a version grounded in the hope that the power of love will prevail and that they will be able to live together for the rest of their lives. He forgives her for his lost respect for the sake of not being left alone. By declaring that he has no intention to get divorced or to take a second wife, he turns the emotion into a means of ensnaring his partner.
The “In-between”-er
Unlike the previous two types, who paint black and white pictures, the “In-between”-er describes, and comes to terms with, the spousal relationship as an ongoing constant roller-coaster of ups-and-downs, and being “in” and “out.” Ya’akov, aged 78, describes a complex relationship, which enables him to be both “inside” and “outside” in old age:
“When things are so stormy, you get used to trouble.” I sometimes used to say: “I will leave her with all her craziness,” but how can I leave her when she has all those problems with her leg and her blood pressure? Who will care for her? . . . Today, also, there are good days and not good days and on those days, I simply get on the train [out of town], but I can’t go every day . . . maybe I do love her. . . . I am trying to do what I didn’t do for many years, to go out, walk around, get rid of my evil inclinations. . . . I don’t want to destroy what I have created. There’s no time to build it back up again . . . the bittersweet destiny begins when a person is born and that sums up my whole life.
Ya’akov makes use of an idiom about a storm, taken from his life experience as a sailor, meaning that uncomfortable situations can be coped with, because, in the end, everything calms down and returns to normal. Thus, in his position, the drama becomes routine; in spite of the ups and downs, everything falls back into place in the end. This drawing on his rich life experience to create a version in accord with his wish to remain with his wife is reaffirmed by his cynical-humoristic remark, “There’s no time to build it back up again.” This illustrates his attitude to the present stage of his life; the sand clock is running out, and he is forced to make changes to enable the continuity of the family relationship. Referring to the relationship system as “the bittersweet destiny” illustrates the duality of living “in between,” with both the bitter and the sweet.
The “Normalizer.”
The fourth type tries to give center stage to the normal relationship in old age, thus causing the violence to vanish. Yosef, aged 76, describes an ordinary relationship with his wife in old age:
Look, a marital relationship isn’t just about having a child, it is much more than that . . . today, I say to myself it was such nonsense that I don’t even remember, we had a much greater load than all this nonsense. Today, thank God, we both have everything we need, she stands her ground, and sometimes I stand mine. There are always differences of opinion in families; so what? . . . Like in Ecclesiastes, where it says that “all is vanity.”
Yosef constructs his violence through a narrative of an intimate relationship that is so strong that the violence totally evaporates. Perceiving the violence as such enables him to maneuver the memory and to erase anything irrelevant to the pseudo-ethical definition of couplehood, namely, the violent memories. He describes the conflicts as kept under strict control, while maintaining discernible boundaries that must not be overstepped. This description normalizes and trivializes the violence, which occurs just as frequently as in any reasonable home.
Discussion
Four dimensions were identified: the construction of violence over the years, the perception of the spouse over the years, losses accompanying the violent relationship, and the meaning of violence in old age. From these dimensions emerged four types of older battering men: the “Nonquitter,” the “Cover-up”-er, the “In-between”-er, and the “Normalizer.” The four types enable an in-depth look at the life-world of older abusers and paint a complex picture of various ways in which abusive men live and age with violence over time.
To examine the experience of IPV in old age, from the perspective of older abusers, a life-course perspective is necessary to attribute depth and validity to the research findings (Williams, 2003). The experience of being an older abusive man appears to move along the continuity and change continuum. It means that the older abusers make adaptive choices in an attempt to preserve and maintain existing internal and external self-identity (Atchley, 1989). They use strategies tied to their past self-experiences by preserving the abusive world, while changing it according to their physical well-being.
The first type, the “Nonquitter,” is characterized by continuity, from the “nothing new under the sun” perspective. The men’s behavior patterns of their youth continue into old age. These men are described in the literature as having strong control needs and as displaying high arousal and anger reactions in conflicts with their partners. Their emotional world is driven by anger, jealousy, and depression and is characterized by an emotional cycle of creating tension—violent outburst—calming down/relief (Dutton, 1995). Despite their advancement in age, which is associated in the literature with a decrease in the rate of violence, these men continue their violent behavior (Holtzworth-Munroe et al., 1997). Their transition to old age does not lead them to change their behavior, and therefore, the narrative that they construct is characterized by a denial of the violence, a sense of victimization, and, hence, by a desire to avenge their partners. Research has shed light on younger men’s structuring and content of conflict escalation (Winstok et al., 2002), and only the “Nonquitter” type fits this pattern. The “Nonquitter” corresponds to the two subtypes of the classification of the intimate terrorist by Johnson (1995, 2000), which are the dysphoric/borderline and generally violent/antisocial types described by Holtzworth-Munroe and Stuart (1994).
The “In-between”-er type is also characterized by continuity. These men consistently present dual behavior throughout their life of couplehood. This is expressed through a double—internal and external—intimate relationship. The pattern of continuity is expressed also by the men’s “inability to manage with and inability to manage without,” which is an experience that intensifies with age. On the one hand, they experience their partner in negative terms and speak about their marital life in a negative light, and on the other hand, because of their acute need for physical care and assistance at their advanced age, they find themselves trapped in the couple relationship. These men have set themselves a way to live within the marital framework: through love, infidelity (both physical and emotional), and violence. Although the “Nonquitter” type continues the violent relationship both constantly and continuously, the “In-between”-ers continue in the same pattern, but adapt it to their current life circumstances. The “In-between”-er type corresponds to the family-only batterer type identified by Holtzworth-Munroe and Stuart (1994), and the common couple violence type identified by Johnson (1995, 2000).
The life-course perspective relates to transitions in health and sickness among the different types of men. It seems that the “Cover-up”-er type includes men who experienced dramatic changes in their health throughout their lives and especially in old age, which influenced the way in which they constructed their relationships in violence and led to a meaningful change in their behavior pattern. Due to the severity of their medical condition, they experience themselves today as more dependent on their wives. To ensure proper treatment, they attempt to wipe out the unpleasant memories of their violent behavior and to highlight the good periods and good personality traits of themselves and their partners, as well as emphasizing issues that bring them together rather than those that cause separation. Old age and increasing dependence on the wife brings about a calculated change. The aging process supplies an additional element to the extended present—the acute sense of time running out, accompanied by a sense of urgency and temporality (Butler, 1977). For aging men of this type, the past, with its memories, is experienced as a burden, which intrudes on the present and future (Eyal, 1996). In addition, the end of life and the imminence of death lead men of this type to review their lives and to wish to leave a positive legacy. They wish to be remembered as good people, and not as violent husbands. Their descriptions can even be seen as a “draft” for their “concluding speech” before God on the Day of Judgment. Due to the big change in their lives because of their failing health, the traces of past violence are “covered up” by their adaptive strategies. Therefore, the “Cover-up”-ers may have been members of either type of violent men described by Holtzworth-Munroe and Stuart (1994) and by Johnson (1995, 2000).
Although the “In-between”-er type of men, on the one hand, and the “Cover-up”-ers, on the other, were found to be at opposite ends of the continuity–change continuum, the “Normalizers” experience both continuity and change in their violent life patterns. The continuity is expressed by the desire to maintain their social status and in indications of normality throughout their lives. This “chance” exposure of the violence at this stage of their lives diverted life from its path and broke the continuity (which was preferable to them) in which the violence was a built-in—and concealed—part of their married life. The exposure of the violence is a turning point in their lives, for which they are likely to have to pay a high social and personal price. Therefore, they make every effort to renormalize the relationship, mainly by constructing the violence as an “accident” or as a type of natural obstacle in any couple relationship. The change is expressed by the fact that they need to do everything to close the Pandora’s Box that was opened and to create new patterns of mutual help in their relationships and of caution in their couple dynamics, as well as to prevent repeated episodes of violence at all cost. The “Normalizer” type corresponds to the family-only subtype described by Holtzworth-Munroe and Meehan (2004), and the common couple violence in Johnson’s typology (1995, 2000).
Finally, living a full life in violence paints the relationship in unflattering colors. The acute needs of old age leave most of the couples in the relationship. Nevertheless, it can be said that, in one way or another, the relationships have reached a situation of schysmo-genesis (Denzin, 1984). The older men’s construction of violence is still based on social perceptions of male hegemony in social orders. They wish to maintain this hegemony and, therefore, use the language of power and control to feel superior and competent, in spite of the changing reality and sense of dependency, and the decrease in mental and physical resources that comes with old age.
Practical Implications
The current research enables a close examination of the older violent men’s experience from their point of view, and hence its importance in the shadow of the growing recognition and attention received by intimate violence in old age. Quality of life is improving and couples are tending to remain in relationships despite the violence. The understanding that an increasing number of couples are therefore living an increasing number of years together, including in violent relationships, arouses the need to investigate intervention methods to make these relationships tolerable. As is apparent from this study, the violent men’s life world does not have to be perceived as one unit, but can be examined according to its diverse characteristics. Acknowledgment of the complexity of their life world in general and of their perception of aging in violence in particular enables the development of different types of intervention channels. For example, intervention with men of the “Nonquitter” type will need to be authoritative, using law enforcement tools, including restriction orders. In contrast, intervention with the “Cover-up”-er type should include mediation processes, forgiveness, remorse, and taking responsibility, to provide closure for the relationships as the men approach the end of life.
Study Limitations
This study dealt with the experience of aging in the shadow of intimate violence at a given point in time, while the men retrospectively supplied events from other points in time. A longitudinal study could enrich our understanding both of the topic itself and of the developmental changes occurring in real time across the individual and family life span. The men’s account-rich narratives, which present their subjective constructions, could be enriched by the perspectives of additional family members, who shared the violent life course of the family. The deep and subjective nature of this study removes the ability to generalize. The information gathered, however, has important heuristic value toward the development of theory.
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) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.