Men Murdering the Women They Love…

Elisha, E., Idisis, Y., Timor, U., & Addad, M. (2009). Typology of Intimate Partner Homicide: Personal, Interpersonal, and Environmental Characteristics of Men Who Murdered Their Female Intimate Partner International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 54 (4), 494-516 DOI: 10.1177/0306624X09338379

A more unpleasant topic I would struggle hard to find, but a necessary one to discuss, if for no other reason than to counter some of the nonsense that gushes out of the men’s rights movement. That is, when it comes to violence within intimate straight relationships, women give as good as they get (see, for example, the One in Three Campaign). The evidence, however, as Elisha et al. (2009) state here, is that ‘the number of women murdered by their husbands is 2 to 5 times higher than the number of men murdered by their wives’ (p.495). They also note that men who kill their female partners are much more likely to commit suicide thereafter than men who kill non-family members (2009, p.495). Hence, it is reasonable to assume that suicidal ideation can co-exist with murderous intent in the minds of men who, paradoxically, kill the women they would later claim to love.

Yes, to love…

From their research, albeit with a small sample of Israeli inmates who had murdered (n=13) or nearly murdered (n=2) their female partners, Elisha et al. (2009, p.499) found that the common feeling expressed by these men toward their deceased partners was ‘mainly love’ (p.495). Moreover, how love might turn to murder in the context of an intimate relationship is explained here as having several possible causative pathways, for example, that it might be a product of faulty attachment (2009, p.496). Violent men are supposedly insecurely attached and therefore are prone to an unwieldy pattern of clingy and explosive behaviours (2009, p.496). When a woman threatens to leave her abusive male partner or otherwise threatens his sense of control over her, that supposedly triggers within him intense, dangerous emotions such as jealousy, hate and rage (2009, p.496, p.512). I wonder if it can be that straightforward?

I have no doubt about the pivotal role that attachment plays in the behaviours and attitudes of both men and women. Boys, shunned and shamed as they routinely are by their primary carers and significant others, to ‘man them up’ and prevent them from turning into limp wristed fags, creates an army of men for whom the capacity to give and receive love is severely diminished. I would argue that attachment trauma is the fundamental reason behind why so many men successfully kill themselves, since their inability to take comfort in the arms of people who they would claim to love, renders them vulnerable to that extreme sense of abandonment that so often accompanies suicidal ideation. However, it is an altogether different proposition to infer that attachment trauma presages men murdering their female partners (2009, pp.496-497). That proposition would depend on constructing a thesis of attachment trauma as totally incapacitating psychopathology (2009, pp.496-497).

The 15 men who told their gruesome stories to the authors (2009, p.499) pointed to several fascinating yet disturbing themes, including:

• Constructing themselves as the ‘victims’ and not the perpetrators (2009, pp.502-503);
• Blaming their partners for their own inability to separate (2009, p.503);
• Failing to recognise their partners wants, needs and personhood (2009, p.503);
• Describing their partners in exclusively negative terms (2009, pp.503-504);
• Recalling childhood histories of parental rejection and/or neglect (2009, p.504); and
• Criticising the lack of male-friendly support services (2009, pp.504-505).

 

Elisha et al. (2009, p.512) conclude that there was discordance between what some of these 15 men said and what they actually did. For example, while some tried to ‘generate’ (2009, p.512) an impression that their murders were ‘impulsive, unplanned, or uncontrolled’ (2009, p.512), their actions spoke to the contrary:

The murder was preceded by a phase of emotional willingness to kill, murderous thoughts, and murder planning. Most of the participants revealed that they felt anxious, confused, depressed, and hopeless before the murder, which led them to the notion of killing the woman. The murder itself was carried out following marginal confrontation between the couples, which generally was a continuation of previous confrontations; however, sometimes no confrontation preceded the murder (2009, p.512).