Distinguishing Between BDSM and Intimate Partner Violence

"IPV can include physical and/or sexual violence, stalking, and/or psychological aggression. Its most common expressions are situational couple violence and intimate partner terrorism. Situational violence tends to happen when stress reaches uncomfortably high levels and is often accompanied by mood alteration. For example, people who are completely stressed out may get drunk or high and attack each other. There is generally no plan behind the attack, and the violence might be one against another or mutual."

"Researchers know about situational couple violence primarily from family studies that ask about interactions. In contrast, intimate partner terrorism is generally calculated, patterned, and far more intentional. Intimate partner terrorists control every aspect of their partners through violence and fear by isolating them from their friends and family, prohibiting their financial independence, and threatening to harm the beings closest to them (children, pets, parents, and friends). Researchers know about intimate partner terrorism from people (almost all women) who flee to seek shelter in removed facilities."

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is nonconsensual physical or sexual violence, stalking, or psychological aggression occurring across ages, races, genders, sexual orientations, regions, and social classes. IPV commonly appears as situational couple violence, arising from acute stress and often lacking premeditation, or as intimate partner terrorism, which is deliberate, patterned control via isolation, financial restriction, and threats. BDSM comprises erotic interactions that can include consensual dominance/submission, sadism/masochism, or bondage. Overlapping actions may occur in both IPV and BDSM, but the key difference lies in consent and intent, with consent making BDSM pleasurable and IPV abusive.

Read at Psychology Today