We are all familiar with the promotion of non contact as a benevolent or even necessary practice following the break-up of a relationship. But what about 'non contact' being used specifically as a tool of abuse? When a break of a significant relationship is accompanied by complete silence, a total refusal to communicate, provide any information or negotiate any boundaries... when any expression is denied and any attempt to initiate even friendly contact is greeted with further psychological, social and emotional attack, the recipient can be left in confusion, isolation and bewilderment. 

Avoidant abuse can sound like a contradictory term. In an age where the 'right' to privacy can often be considered a fundamental, inaliable right, it can be difficult to justify absence as being abusive. And while abuse within a relationship is today widely recognised - and condemned - yet, abusive behaviour can go undetected, unrecognised and even validated during and after relationship breakdowns. There is almost a lacuna that exists in social consciousness where victims suffering from abandonment and other forms of avoidant abuse are dismissed in their experience, and as they are no longer with the partner they are seen as having no rights or expectations of behaviour, while the abuse is not often even seen as being abusive.

With the abusers tactics veiled in silence, secrecy and deception, many targets of avoidant abuse speak of being 'blindsided' and mistake their response to abuse trauma as being 'heartbreak' grief. In addition, the absence of widespread recognition or awareness of avoidant abuse or its resultant trauma can add to the suffering of its victims who can not only face an almost complete lack of any support system, but are also vulnerable to retraumatisation with mistaken and inappropriate responses. 

Avoidant abuse, though common and widespread, can often be overlooked and downplayed, even though in it's effects it can be responsible for emotionally crippling trauma with long lasting adverse impacts on ones health, happiness and well being, with symptoms akin to PTSD in extreme cases. Here for the first time we explore the culture, the tactics, and the consequences of avoidant abuse strategies, take an in depth look at its short term and long term consequences, and challenge widespread myths and commonly held beliefs in order to propose alternative perspectives and approaches.

Avoidant abuse is an umbrella term used to denote many different types of passive aggressive covert abuse strategies. It includes techniques such as stonewalling, the silent treatment, the 'cold shoulder', neglect, absence to cause harm (ATCH), banishment or abandonment, excommunication and even covert rape. The common factor underlying these abuses is the employment of 'withholding' tactics, particularly, the withholding of authentic communication, expression or information with the effect of causing distress or harm to the recipient. Avoidant abuse is sheltered within a culture of secrets, lies, denial and dismissal.

Avoidant abuse often consists of tactics of emotional abuse, such as silent abuse, stealth or ambient abuse, as well as psychological abuse such as manipulation and brainwashing techniques such as gaslighting and subversion - which can lead to the target doubting their perceptions and sanity. It also crucially involves social abuse in many cases - smear campaigns, distortion campaigns and humiliation campaigns (such as revenge porn for example) - as these are effective methods to avoidantly abuse another not directly with any objective proof but indirectly through using other agents as 'proxies' to commit abusive acts on behalf of the abuser. Social abuse leads to alienation and isolation, unlike other overt abuses where the recipient of abuse can still receive sympathy and support from external parties. The avoidant abuser ensures that the target is not only abused but also revictimised while their credibility is held in doubt by others.

Along with alienation, the common conclusion of avoidant abuse campaigns is abandonment and complete excommunication, including socially. The target of avoidant abuse is disvalued, discredited, defiled and discarded with their only seeming option to accept the abusers will without protest. The banishment of the avoidant abuser is generally final and irrevocable.

Due to it's subtle and covert nature avoidant abuse can be difficult to detect and reveal, and recipients of this form of abuse can often be left without any sources of support and understanding, and as a result many can doubt themselves as being 'guilty' for what they have faced, as if they are responsible for it to a degree, or feel 'defective' in some way for feeling violated and traumatised. Many can find it difficult to articulate thair abuse experience, often not recognising the abuse for what it is, giving the abuser the benefit of doubt in regards to their malevolent intentions in committing the abuse. Many can thus go through years or even a lifetime with unresolved grief, a sense of not having achieved 'closure', and a sense of not being able to 'move on' or 'get over it'. Often these feelings can be the first clues pointing to the possibility of the existence of avoidant abuse.

While avoidant abuse can take place at any point in a relationship, is usually expressed in it's fullest and most complete sense during intimate relationship breakdowns and uncouplings, and can often carry on through the transition period and even post uncoupling. Avoidant abuse can also take place between close family members, such as parent and child, for example following a divorce and remarriage by one parent, after which the child from a previous relationship can be abandoned and excommunicated (or a parent kept away from their child) which can also be particularly distressing and traumatic experiences.

Avoidant abuse needs widespread awareness and recognition in order to help recipients of abuse as well as hold abusers accountable for their actions.