Does Separation or Divorce Make any Difference? An Interactional Perspective on Intimate Partner Violence with Focus on Marital Status

This article reports a study of the impact of marital status on interactional aspects of intimate partner violence (IPV) among
help-seeking women. Are there differences among marital status groups concerning (a) other sociodemographic variables, (b)
IPV categories, (c) interactional IPV variables, and (d) perception and interpretation of IPV? A representative sample of
157 women recruited from family counseling, the police, and shelters were interviewed. There was no significant sociodemographic
difference among the marital status groups. There were no significant differences pertaining to IPV categories, neither for
IPV severity, injury, duration, frequency, mortal danger, and regularity, nor for physical, psychological, or sexual IPV.
However, multivariate logistic regression showed that post-separation women were significantly more likely to have (a) had
longer duration since the last psychological and sexual IPV episode, (2) reported the physical IPV to be more predictable,
and (3) used more active coping strategies against physical IPV. However, our research was not able to determine if perception
and interpretation predict actual leaving behavior, or vice versa, or how the victim’s subjective perception and interpretation
of the IPV changes over time.