How the experience of domestic abuse differs for men — and why those differences matter
by Mike, founder, SoulForge Community
Around 1.5 million men experience domestic abuse in England and Wales every year.
That figure comes from the Office for National Statistics — the government’s own data, not from an advocacy group with an agenda. It represents approximately 41% of all domestic abuse victims. One in five men in the UK will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime.
Most people, when they hear these numbers, are surprised. Some don’t believe them. And that reaction — the surprise, the scepticism — is itself part of the problem. Because the reason those numbers feel wrong is that everything in our culture about domestic abuse is framed around the female experience. Which is real, and serious, and well-documented. But it has left an enormous gap — a gap that SoulForge Community exists to help address.
This post is about what domestic abuse actually looks like when it happens to men. Not to dismiss the female experience — which is completely valid and important to address in society - but to add that part of the picture that is almost entirely absent from public conversation.
How it tends to look different
The public image of domestic abuse is physical violence. Visible injuries, hospital admissions, the need for emergency refuge. That image isn’t wrong — it describes something real and serious. And perhaps this is what’s mostly associated with domestic abuse because it’s signs are visible. But it maps more readily onto the female experience than the male one.
Male victims report overwhelmingly psychological, emotional, and coercive abuse rather than physical violence — though physical and sexual abuse do also occur. According to data from the ManKind Initiative, which runs a national (UK) helpline for male victims, 99% of male callers experience psychological abuse, 89% experience coercive control, and 62% experience physical abuse. The physical element can be present, but the dominant form of what’s being done to these men is harder to see, harder to document, and harder for them and the people around them to recognise.
Coercive control operates gradually and invisibly. Not through dramatic incidents but through accumulation — small erosions of confidence, small losses of freedom, a slowly narrowing world. Rules that are never stated but somehow understood. Things you know not to do, topics you know not to raise, opportunities you know not to pursue. The cumulative effect is a man who no longer trusts his own perceptions, who apologises for things that aren’t his fault, who has lost confidence in his own judgement — without being able to point to a single event that caused it.
Why men don’t recognise it
One of the most consistent things men say, looking back, is that they didn’t recognise what was happening to them as abuse. Sometimes for a number of years. Sometimes for the entire duration of the relationship.
This isn’t stupidity or weakness. It’s a predictable consequence of how abuse is culturally framed. The narrative of domestic abuse — the one in public health campaigns, in drama, in journalism — is almost entirely built around female victims. The word ’victim’ itself doesn’t feel like a category that applies to men. For a man experiencing coercive control, the internal language is more likely to be: this is a difficult relationship, my partner has problems, we’re going through a rough patch, I need to be more patient. Not: I am being abused.
That absence of language delays recognition by years. And it means that when the relationship does end, men often don’t have the framework to understand what they’ve been through — which makes processing and recovery significantly harder.
Why men don’t seek help
Even when men do recognise what’s happening, the barriers to seeking help are substantial and specific.
The idea of shame is significant. The cultural expectation of male self-sufficiency makes asking for help feel like failure. Admitting that a woman has been abusing you runs against the grain of how most men have been taught, certainly traditionally, to understand themselves.
Fear of not being believed is also real. Men who have tried to disclose abuse to friends, family, GPs, or police frequently describe being dismissed, minimised, or laughed at. That response — whether it comes from a professional or a friend — teaches men not to try again.
Fear about the children is particularly powerful. Many men in abusive relationships stay, or don’t report, because they are afraid that disclosing the abuse might lead to their losing contact with their children. In situations where the other parent is controlling, that fear is often well-founded.
The ManKind Initiative reports that 21% of male victims tell nobody about what is happening to them. Not their GP. Not their friends. Not the police. Nobody.
What the infrastructure looks like
When a woman experiencing domestic abuse reaches out for help, she is entering a support system that has been built and funded over decades. Refuges, specialist services, legal aid provisions, trained professionals. The provision is imperfect and under-resourced — but it exists, at scale. And, let me be clear, it’s important this support exists. Nothing of what we’re saying means to take away from that.
But when a man experiencing domestic abuse reaches out for help, he is entering a very different landscape. There are only 59 organisations (including many small local ones) providing refuge or sanctuary for men across the whole of England and Wales, with 429 spaces. For comparison, there are hundreds of refuges for women, with thousands of spaces. The therapeutic services that exist for male victims are a fraction of those available to female victims. Most domestic abuse training for professionals is oriented toward female victimisation – and the basic assumption that men are usually perpetrators not victims.
This isn’t an argument against provision for women. The provision for women exists because it was needed and it was built through enormous effort over many years. The argument is simply that the equivalent doesn’t exist for men — and that gap is causing preventable harm.
Why these differences matter
Understanding how male abuse differs from the female experience isn’t just an academic exercise. It has practical implications for how men are supported — or not supported — through every stage of what follows.
Men who can’t name what happened to them can’t seek help for it. Men who seek help and aren’t believed don’t seek it again. Men who leave an abusive relationship without adequate support are more likely to face the next phase — which in many cases involves the family court system — entirely unprepared and entirely alone. For some the road is a dark one that leads to despair, and even suicidal ideation.
SoulForge Community is trying to address some of that gap — through information, through peer support, through community. But the gap is large, and the work is significant.
If you recognise yourself in any of this — if the relationship you’ve been through or are in doesn’t look like the public image of domestic abuse but something in this post feels familiar — the Domestic Abuse section of the SoulForge Community website covers the specific dynamics in more detail at soulforge.org.uk/domestic-abuse-overview. The ManKind Initiative’s helpline (0808 800 1170) is confidential and staffed by people who understand.
Mike, founder, SoulForge Community
SoulForge Community exists to support men navigating domestic abuse, parental alienation, and the family court system — and the longer work of rebuilding. Visit soulforge.org.uk.