A Cold Embrace: “Twilight” and Relationship Violence

In the past decade, the rise in popularity of vampire-themed books and movies for young adults has risen dramatically. While superficially vampires make for some good nail-biting fun in the Halloween season, they can send some unfortunate messages to the young people who love them. In this article, I argue that the popular Twilight series can be used to highlight patterns of behavior that put individuals at risk for abuse in dating relationships.

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Relationship Aggression is Not Forgivable

Forgiving partners when they make benign mistakes like forgetting to pick up the dry cleaning is good. Forgiving serious negative behaviors, such as relationship aggression, can have unfortunate consequences. In a recent study, newlyweds were tracked for four years. Men and women who were more forgiving, in general, experienced continued physical and psychological aggression across the course of their marriage whereas less forgiving partners experienced reduced aggression. Forgiveness may reinforce negative relationship behaviors like violence. 

McKnulty, J. K. (2011). The dark side of forgiveness: The tendency to forgive predicts continued psychological and physical aggression in marriage. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37, 770-783.

Why Do Victims Return to Abusive Relationships?

We like to write about “fun” studies here at S of R, but it’s important to tackle more serious issues from time to time. One of the more “darker” aspects of relationships is when they turn violent. Clearly, we’d like to enable the victims of abuse to break free from their relationships. Surprisingly, however, the abused often return to their violent partners. When they are on the verge of getting out, why do victims of violence return to abusive relationships?

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A Link Between Controlling Partners and Relationship Violence

Data from 600 young women reveals that most (68%) experienced a relationship partner's controlling behavior; approximately 10% experienced sexual or physical victimization while 25% were were prevented from seeing friends or were ignored by the partner. Women experiencing controlling behaviors were 2.5 times less likely to honestly report relationship violence.

Catallozzi, M., Simon, P. J., Davidson, L. L., Breitbart, V., & Rickert, V. I. (2011). Understanding control in adolescent and young adult relationships. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 165, 313-319.

Ronnie & Sam on the Jersey Shore: Will They Ever Stop Fighting?

Sammie came back to the house, swore that she and Ron were over, they got drunk and ended up back together…for about a day before they started fighting again. This may be the least surprising series of developments on Jersey Shore, well aside from Snooki getting arrested for public drunkenness. The roommates knew this was coming and that there was going to be a big fight. Paulie even remarked how he was going to get some popcorn, sit on the couch and watch the upcoming “movie” of the inevitable Ron and Sammie fight. Everyone thought the chain of events was obvious, yet Ron and Sammie tried to work it out.  

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