Danger Signals
Without help, domestic violence often continues to get more severe over time. It can sometimes become deadly.

1.	Do you feel frightened when you are with him? Do you constantly think about what might make him happy?
2.	Family background…were his child/parent or prior romantic relationships violent and / or abusive?
3.	Did he beat his previous wife (wives) or girlfriends?
4.	Has he ever threatened you with violence?
5.	Has he ever destroyed your property in anger?
6.	Does he use force in a disagreement with you?
7.	Is he unreasonably jealous?
8.	Does he try to control you?
9.	Does he blame others? Whatever goes wrong is someone else’s fault, usually yours.
10.	Does he refuse to claim his own feelings?
11.	Is he hypersensitive? Any criticism is an attack. Any inconvenience is a personal injustice.
12.	Is he cruel or rude to those unable to defend themselves: children, pets, or service people?
13.	Does he force sex, or make you perform sexual acts you do not want to do?
14.	Does his personality change suddenly from loving and pleasant to violent and cruel?

REMEMBER, yes to one of these may be the only signal you get. You can not change other people, but you can take care of yourself!

Other actions to watch out for include

•	Isolation from family and friends
•	Induced exhaustion
•	Threats, causing anxiety and fear
•	Occasional indulgences in order to confuse and to increase compliance
•	Demonstrations of power…physical, mental, and within the "system"
•	Degradation…to enforce loss of self-esteem
•	Public Humiliation
•	Enforcing trivial demands in order to develop habits of obedience

Through these techniques, a batterer seeks to create the perfect victim: exhausted, confused, depressed, demoralized, spiritless, and alone. Control becomes easy at this point because he has achieved monopolization of focus, creating a state of absolute attention on how to avoid his anger.