Dating violence does not always look dangerous at first. Sometimes, it looks like jealousy. Sometimes, it sounds like protection. Sometimes, people even call it passion, romance, or “real love.”
A boy pulls a girl’s hair, and adults laugh: “He probably likes you.” A partner checks your phone, questions your clothes, or tells you who you can speak to, and people say: “They just care about you.” A person frightens, controls, or humiliates their partner, and someone still says: “What happens between partners is private.”
But we need to be honest about what these messages teach.
When adults tell girls that cruelty might be flirting, girls learn to ignore their own discomfort. When adults teach boys that hurting girls can count as attraction, boys learn not to take girls’ pain seriously.
That is not romance.
That is how dating violence starts to feel normal.
Dating Violence Starts Before the First Relationship
Many people first learn unhealthy relationship patterns long before they start dating.
They learn them in childhood. In school. At home. In films. In songs. In jokes. In the way adults explain boys’ bad behaviour as “just a crush.”
“He is only teasing you because he likes you.”
It may sound harmless, but it teaches a dangerous lesson. It tells girls, and young people raised as girls, to mistake disrespect for affection. If he insults you, maybe he is just nervous. If he follows you, maybe he is interested. If he gets angry, maybe he cares too much. If he crosses a boundary, maybe you should feel flattered.
At the same time, it teaches boys that aggression can be part of attraction. Instead of learning kindness, consent, emotional responsibility, and respect for boundaries, they learn that people may still describe making a girl uncomfortable as romantic.
This is how red flags become familiar before people even begin dating.
Control Is Not Protection
One of the biggest lies about unhealthy relationships is that people can disguise control as care.
“He only worries about you.”
“He gets jealous because he loves you.”
“He does not want you dressing like that because he respects you.”
“He checks your phone because he has trust issues.”
No.
Love does not need surveillance. Love does not need fear. Love does not isolate you from your friends, monitor your messages, shame your clothes, control your sexuality, or punish you for having a life outside the relationship.
Dating violence is not only physical. It can also be emotional, psychological, sexual, financial, or digital.
It can look like constant jealousy, threats, humiliation, pressure, stalking, intimidation, sexual coercion, digital monitoring, or making someone feel guilty for saying no.
If love makes someone feel afraid, trapped, watched, or responsible for another person’s anger, that is not love.
That is control.
Dating Violence Is Not a Private Problem
The phrase “what happens between partners is private” may sound neutral, but it has helped abusers hide for generations.
It teaches people to look away.
It tells neighbours not to ask questions. It tells friends not to get involved. It tells families to stay quiet. It tells victims that their pain is a private embarrassment instead of a serious safety concern.
But abuse grows in silence.
When society treats violence as a “relationship problem,” it gives abusers more privacy and victims less protection. When people say, “We do not know what happens between them,” they may think they are being neutral.
But neutrality often protects the person with more power.
If someone feels afraid of their partner, it is no longer just a couple’s issue. It is a safety issue.
“She Pushed Him Too Far” Is Victim-Blaming
One of the most common ways society excuses male violence is by blaming the victim.
“She made him angry.”
“She provoked him.”
“She should have known when to stop.”
“She pushed him too far.”
This kind of thinking appears everywhere. We hear it in gossip, media headlines, family conversations, police failures, comment sections, and even in the way people talk about femicide and domestic abuse.
But anger does not excuse violence. Jealousy does not excuse control. Rejection does not excuse harassment. Disagreement does not excuse intimidation.
A person can feel hurt, insecure, rejected, embarrassed, or angry and still be responsible for what they choose to do next.
The moment we say “she pushed him too far,” we take responsibility away from the person who chose violence.
That is exactly how abuse gets justified.
Misogyny Makes Dating Violence Easier to Excuse
Misogyny is not just an opinion. It can shape how people understand violence, victims, and responsibility.
A recent Australian national survey by Sara Meger and Kate Reynolds from the University of Melbourne studied more than 2,300 adults and 1,100 young people aged 13 to 17. Their findings suggest that misogyny can act as a pathway into violent extremism.
One of the most alarming findings was that around 40% of boys aged 13 to 17 agreed that women lie about domestic and sexual violence. More than 17% of Australians agreed that feminism should be resisted with violence. Among adolescent boys, that number rose to 28%.
The same research found that 25–30% of boys in this age group agreed with several forms of violent extremism, while 36% agreed with misogynistic attitudes.
These numbers matter because victim-blaming does not stay harmless. The belief that women lie, exaggerate, provoke, or deserve control can become part of a much larger culture of violence.
And that culture makes dating violence easier to deny, excuse, or romanticise.
From Red Flags to Radicalisation
Misogyny does not always begin with extreme slogans.
Sometimes it starts with “jokes.” With podcasts. With memes. With influencers who tell boys that women are manipulative, feminism has gone too far, and men are the real victims.
These messages often give boys something they may be searching for: identity, belonging, status, and someone to blame.
That is why online misogyny can be so powerful. It takes real feelings, such as loneliness, insecurity, rejection, and confusion, and turns them into resentment toward women.
Instead of teaching boys how to process pain, it teaches them to punish women for it.
This does not mean boys and men are naturally violent. They are not. Many boys and men also suffer under rigid gender roles that tell them not to cry, not to be vulnerable, and not to ask for help.
But that pain should never become an excuse to control, humiliate, or hurt women.
We can care about male loneliness without making women responsible for fixing it.
Real Love Should Not Feel Like Survival
Healthy love does not make you smaller.
It does not make you afraid to speak. It does not make you hide your clothes, your friends, your opinions, your phone, or your personality. It does not force you to manage someone else’s anger every day.
Real love leaves room for boundaries. It respects no. It allows freedom. It feels safe, even during conflict.
Calling a red flag “passion” does not make it romantic. Abuse does not become less harmful because it happens inside a relationship. Violence is not love just because a culture has learned to sing about it, joke about it, or excuse it.
So maybe the question is not only:
Is this a red flag or real love?
Maybe the deeper question is:
Who taught us to confuse the two?
References
Meger, S., & Reynolds, K. (2026, March 6). 40% of teenage boys believe women lie about domestic and sexual violence: New research. The Conversation.
World Health Organization. (2021). Violence against women prevalence estimates, 2018: Global, regional and national prevalence estimates for intimate partner violence against women and global and regional prevalence estimates for non-partner sexual violence against women. World Health Organization.
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