When Your Relationship Isn’t Safe: Intimate Partner Violence in the Queer Community
- Sarah Lawson, Clinical MSW Intern
- Apr 7
- 5 min read
When you’re in an unsafe relationship, it can feel like you’re all alone. It’s often difficult to put into words what you’re experiencing or to try to protect yourself. It can also feel overwhelming to know where to find support and to put your trust in someone by asking them for help. Sometimes it also feels like it’s all or nothing, like you either have to have a plan to get out of the relationship right away or keep things a secret from everyone until you do feel ready to leave.
If any of this sounds familiar, there are resources that you can explore to help you navigate your relationship and your personal safety in whatever way feels best to you for now, knowing that that might change in the future. Let’s start with a closer look at Intimate Partner Violence, or IPV…
IPV can look a lot of different ways depending on the individuals and dynamics involved in the relationship. However, the defining factor of IPV is a pattern of repeated behaviors by one partner that seek to exert power and control over another. This may show up as a partner using physical or emotional violence, but it also may include a partner preventing you from getting or keeping a job as a way of exerting economic control. Isolation and privilege—such as cis-passing privilege, white privilege, citizenship, social and cultural capital, nepotism, education, or others—may also be factors in IPV, limiting your involvement with friends and family outside of the relationship or treating you like a subservient partner and making all the decisions. In queer relationships, IPV may also look like forced-outing or threats of disclosing your gender and/or sexual identities without consent.
IPV can happen to anyone but it’s important to know that queer and trans folks, people of color, and people who identify as part of other marginalized or vulnerable groups experience an increased risk of IPV. If you’ve experienced trauma from being in a high-demand religion, it’s also possible that you may experience an elevated risk for IPV since spirituality and religion can contribute to the very factors that drive IPV such as an emphasis on patriarchal beliefs and gender norms.
If you or someone you know are in a queer relationship where you think IPV might be happening, the LGBTQ+ Power & Control Wheel can be helpful in identifying different tactics being used in your relationship that may point towards IPV, giving you words to help describe what you’re experiencing. The wheel outlines internal dynamics that play out within relationships as well as external forces, such as heterosexism and transphobia, that may keep someone in an unsafe relationship.
Before you look at the wheel, try to find a quiet place where you can have privacy to read through the tactics of power and control that show up in IPV. Take breaks to breathe if you’re feeling triggered by anything on the wheel and don’t push yourself. Even if these aren’t tactics that are showing up in your current relationship, it’s possible that you’ve experienced them in past relationships and this can be dysregulating and retraumatizing.
If tactics on the wheel resonate with you and feel like they describe your relationship, there are resources that you can reach out to for confidential support and crisis response, to help you better understand what’s happening, assess the danger you may be in, create a safety plan, and support you in deciding what to do next. In Central Virginia, these include:
SARA services are available to all individuals affected by sexual violence as well as friends, family, and loved ones of survivors. All services are free of cost to clients. Located in Charlottesville, Virginia, SARA serves the city of Charlottesville as well as the counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, and Nelson. Their 24-hour hotline number is 434-977-7273.
The Shelter for Help in Emergency also operates a 24-hour hotline for victims and survivors who need a safe place to talk, and for families and friends of survivors who may seek information to help their loved one. The hotline number is 434-293-8509 V/TTY (collect calls accepted). Language interpretation is available. The Shelter for Help in Emergency also offers emergency, temporary housing to victims of domestic violence in need of safety, as well as services for children and youth, a pet-safe program, and legal advocacy services.
As you explore these resources, it’s important to remember that recovering from IPV isn’t a one-time activity. For survivors of IPV and other forms of violence, healing from trauma takes time. Sometimes it takes months or years to even feel the effects of the trauma and identify it as such, and then begin to take steps towards recovery—and that’s okay. There is no one way that you’re expected to react or respond to what you’ve experienced.
As part of this journey, survivors of IPV often find Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) to be useful in addressing their trauma and related mental health challenges. ACT is an evidence-based form of psychotherapy that focuses on developing psychological flexibility in addressing trauma and other issues, which many survivors find helpful. Unlike other therapeutic approaches, ACT is not focused on changing your thoughts or behaviors but instead supports you in changing your relationship to your thoughts and feelings. ACT can provide strategies and techniques that empower you to work towards living the values-aligned life that you envision, rather than feeling trapped in the past or defined by ideas about yourself that are rooted in trauma.
As a trauma-informed social work practitioner, it’s my hope that you know that you are not alone if you’re experiencing IPV or trying to address feelings related to past IPV. Whether you are a survivor yourself or a friend or family member of a survivor, there are resources and services available to support you in a variety of ways, depending on where you are in your journey and what you need in order to be able to feel safe. I hope you’ll share this information with others and seek out help if you realize that you or someone you know is in an unsafe relationship.
Sarah Lawson
Clinical social work intern
Student therapist at Divergent Path Wellness
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