Marriage is often a complex reality with women carrying most of the burden to navigate a space where emotional abuse, control, and sometimes physical violence are normalised, endured, and negotiated quietly. Deeply rooted in patriarchal social structures, conventional gender norms and institutional expectations surrounding marriage, the conflict between a couple and the response of abuse becomes manufactured consent.
As the world changes, it remains the same. Modern Indian women are still being forced to deal with emotional abuse and physical assault from male partners in marriages and similar relationships. They are fighting legal battles, hoping for psychological understanding, facing social pressure to deal with the violence. While there is improvement in their situation and there are many more support networks for them than earlier, the journey towards psychological and physical recovery is still ardous.
A deeper dive
Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “symbolic violence” explains how individuals find it difficult to identify and move out of an abusive household. Symbolic violence refers to subtle forms of domination that are accepted as natural by those subjected to them. When women internalise the belief that enduring hardship is part of marriage, the power imbalance becomes self-sustaining.
An RJ from Delhi who was subjected to such a turbulent marriage confirms the theory. She said that she had lost a sense of agency while being subjected to constant abuse in the marriage. “My parents and in-laws expected me to remain silent, often stating that every marriage has certain problems that need to be worked on. More often than not I was made to feel that I was the problem… I was overthinking and overreacting,” she said.
It was a love marriage, and things seemed to be great only till she refused to be manipulated. The RJ who wished to stay anonymous said that all her achievements were sidelined. She was expected to fit into the conventional gender roles – cook, clean and care for all. After the first child was born, there was more trouble in paradise. She had to quit her job; her body structure had changed, and her husband was a different man—love faded in a series of lies. What was a non-verbal, nonchalant emotional abuse had transformed into bruises all over the skin.
Psychologists opine that there are recurring phases in abusive relationships—tension building, violent incident, reconciliation, and calm—which stop the survivor from drawing a conclusion. The temporary calm period creates hope that the partner will change, making it harder to leave. For marriages that are forged out of love, it becomes even more difficult to believe that one is being abused.
Not only is the grey area normalised by society, but the emotional dependence also makes it difficult for women to leave abusive marriages. A senior clinical psychologist based out of NCR said, “In my practice, I often have to explain that abuse in marriages rarely begins with physical violence. Most of the time it starts quietly through emotional control. It may appear as constant criticism, dismissing the partner’s feelings, controlling where she goes, or repeatedly making her feel inadequate. Over time this slowly erodes a person’s confidence.”
She endured the physical violence, she said, not because she didn’t have the understanding to recognise the pattern or because she lacked the guts or financial independence but because she was conditioned to believe, “It was the right decision for the child.” Her family made her question her self-worth to an extent that she almost believed that her husband was cheating on her with multiple women because she had gained weight after childbirth.
She justified infidelity, alcoholism and manipulation not out of love but social conditioning. “They said you must look at yourself and get in shape; otherwise your husband will, of course, stray outside the marriage,” she said. Body-shaming and self-doubt were overpowering her when she started to question the manipulation, but the physical violence got out of hand, and she decided to move out after almost two decades of marriage. But did she press criminal charges? No, just a mutual divorce.
Even as we move towards modernity, the inherent concept of “a bad marriage is still a marriage” makes women question their decision to move on and live with a hope for better days. She said, “In retrospect, I feel that it would have helped the child better if I had moved out and raised him in an abuse-free home. But I had nobody to rely on. I was sold the hope that my husband would change and the fear that my child would suffer if I left”.
Into the minds and more
Emotional abuse is invisible, woven into factors that are difficult to identify. It is linked to power imbalances within the institution of marriage, where patriarchal norms may legitimise male authority and female compliance. Psychologists identify this behaviour as the result of a social stigma that believes that it is always a woman’s responsibility to make a marriage successful.
Aakriti Bhanjo, a counselling psychologist, said, “Trauma bonding of the partners makes the brain addicted to the positive reinforcement of love and affection that follows the abusive episodes, leading to intense dependency on the abuser and inability to draw a line.” At this point the victims feel that they are doing something wrong, and they lose their sense of self-esteem.
The manipulation, gaslighting, and humiliation add to it, and one fails to break the pattern. In Indian societies the stigma and shame associated with a divorce or separation are extremely high. Based on her professional experience, Bhanjo said, “The fear of isolation, lack of social support, financial sustainability, and care for a child makes the process of separation extremely complicated. They try to fix things at the cost of their mental and physical health. ”.
Across caste, class and social order, the problems and pattern remain the same. A househelp from East Delhi complained of repeated domestic violence for the past 5 years of a 7-year marriage. She pays the rent of her 1BHK, provides for her son’s education, saves money in a bank for his future and works in 8 houses to make a living. She said her husband is an alcoholic who hits her almost every day.
Sometimes when the physical assault takes a pause, he verbally abuses her and teaches the 5-year-old son to call her derogatory names. It doesn’t stop there; he even doubts her loyalty, snatches her money and threatens to kill her sometimes, along with the lesser-acknowledged marital rape. She endures it all, saying, “My child is very young; I can’t keep him alone in the house when I go for work.
My parents and brothers will never support me. I am independent in the financial sense, but if I leave my husband, the society will look down upon me and won’t ever let me live in peace with my child. ” She recalled an incident when her husband had assaulted her to the extent that she was admitted to the hospital. But after a month of separation, they got back together. No FIR, no case filed—just a silent reconciliation.
Laws exist on white papers
Indian law at present increasingly recognises emotional abuse within marriage as serious forms of cruelty even in the absence of physical violence. While earlier matrimonial jurisprudence focused largely on instances of physical cruelty, over time the courts have evolved to acknowledge that mental cruelty can be equally damaging and, in some cases, even more severe than physical cruelty.
However, marital rape continues to be a complex issue in India. Though courts have increasingly acknowledged that forced sexual relations within marriage can amount to cruelty or sexual abuse under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act.
Samvedna Verma, a Delhi-based lawyer, said, “In practice, such allegations often arise alongside complaints of physical assault and other forms of domestic violence. The real difficulty, however, lies in proof since most incidents occur within the privacy of the household and often lack direct evidence.
Custody disputes are sometimes used as a means of pressure in abusive relationships.” Neha, a marketing professional from Delhi-NCR, has been entangled in legal battles since 2022 with a series of cases, countercases, police verifications and raised eyebrows. The 41-year-old mother of two minor daughters is “allowed” to meet the children as per the father’s whims and fancies. She said, “The legal system isn’t kind to survivors. They constantly change narratives, and cases go on. The custody battle, too, hasn’t moved much, and I hardly get to spend time with my children. ”.
In 2022, when she decided to move out of her abusive marriage, she realised how she was made to endure the pain since the beginning. She said, “Conditioning from childhood leads to submissive behaviour of females. I wasn’t bold enough to take a stand for myself because I had also been subject to the same treatment.
Men are never questioned, whereas women are always made to panic for every life choice. The control society exerts on women puts the seed of abuse.” Neha’s in-laws, she said, had a history of violence. “My husband thought it was normal to hit his wife, say derogatory words and behave violently.” She endured it, bringing up two daughters in an abusive household, and people kept telling her to “adjust”.
Feminist author Nandini Krishnan highlights this issue of abusers being a product of a toxic household with a history of violence. She said, “India excels at handing down intergenerational trauma. Parents rarely read books or manuals on parenting. They raise children either as they were raised or as they would have liked to have been raised.
Most Indian people are victims of parental emotional abuse and manipulative behaviour. The word therapists use is “narcissism”, which can be overt or covert. When choosing spouses, people often gravitate towards partners who remind them of their abusive parents, because it is familiar. It is trauma-bonding. And we come up with phrases like “opposites attract”. No, familiar abuse attracts.”
Neha had left her job at the peak of her career because the family never approved of or understood her profession. The disparity was revealed when her brother-in-law was married to a doctor. “She was valued and no restrictions were imposed on her. In fact, everybody in the house was on their best behaviour in front of her,” Neha said. Her husband’s episodes of violence had also reduced, and she had a reignited hope. “Emotional abuse and patriarchy were visible in my family too. So they also had normalised it, and I was always asked not to complain,” she said.
Problems arose when she began to rebel against the casual taunts, violence, emotional unavailability and disparity. In the middle of night, she was thrown out of house because she refused to stay silent to the torture any more. Stating that legal battles were once taking a toll on her mental well-being, she said she has healed from the abuse, the social conditioning and the patriarchal mindset.
But the question remains, for how long should Neha fight in court? Lawyers say that the legal hassle, including scrutiny, lack of evidence and delay in reports, increase the pendency of cases, and survivors are stuck in chaos. Matrimonial disputes involving abuse frequently lead to multiple parallel proceedings, such as domestic violence complaints under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, criminal complaints for cruelty, maintenance proceedings etc.
In situations where one spouse attempts to leave an abusive marriage, the other partner initiates or threatens prolonged custody litigation as a way to retain control over the situation. This takes the form of filing strong custody claims, refusing to cooperate with visitation arrangements, making counter-allegations, or deliberately prolonging court proceedings. In many such cases, the intention may not necessarily be to obtain custody of the child, rather to place the spouse under pressure so that they withdraw complaints, agree to unfavourable terms of settlement.
The social institution
Marriage is essentially a contract that carries the weight of centuries of patriarchy. Lack of objectivity, awareness, and love blindness are the common reasons why this abuse in this institution is identified late or never. “Historically, it has also been a contract between families, clans and communities. Looking at the institution before modernity—during feudal and early modern periods—marriage functioned as a crucial social and cultural arrangement with deep political and economic implications,” said Mallarika Sinha Roy, assistant professor at JNU. Even today these historical structures continue to shape the way marriages operate. All the survivors tell the same ordeal of socio-economic complications.
“In India, marriages are embedded within caste and community structures. All these factors influence how abuse within marriages is perceived, tolerated or silenced,” she explained. Patriarchy, she added, is not an external force that can simply be removed from society. “It would have been easier if patriarchy existed somewhere outside our lives so that we could uproot it and discard it. But it is woven into everyday existence—in the way our identities are shaped and the way we perceive ourselves.”
She argues that these realities compel society to reconsider one fundamental assumption: the idea that marriage must be a universal and necessary milestone in every individual’s life. “For many women, acknowledging that they are being abused is itself a profound internal struggle,” she said. It goes fundamentally against one’s sense of selfhood. Admitting it can feel like a personal failure and can deeply affect self-esteem. “The imposition of marriage as an inevitable institution,” she said, “is something we need to rethink.”
What’s next?
Psychologists say leaving an abusive relationship is rarely one dramatic decision. It is a gradual journey, after all, the victim is used to a certain pattern that feels normal. The abuse stems from deep insecurity, power play as the only tool to feel chivalrous, unresolved childhood trauma and more. Also, many women are raised to believe that enduring hardship is part of marriage, making it difficult to recognise abuse or take action against it.
Psychologist Maitri Dhingra said many of her clients are often unaware that they are experiencing abuse or emotional infidelity in relationships. Accepting and asking for help is the first step towards putting an end to such traumatic relationships. The issue isn’t about individual abusive relationships but about how societies define marriage. Legal protections and fostering cultural narratives that prioritise autonomy over social conformity are a must so that more women learn the art of nurturing themselves before others.