Shame on you: Love, shame and women victim/survivors' experiences of intimate abuse

Abstract

Published version made available with permission from Publisher (No To Violence http://ntv.org.au/contact-us).Love, shame and intimate abuse are often connected to one another through a web of complex emotions, beliefs, experiences, perceptions and stories. In this article, I consider how love and shame may converge for women victims/survivors of intimate abuse. While the work draws on data produced through 84 qualitative narrative feminist interviews, the central aim is to examine the effects of shame for women victims/survivors of intimate abuse through the stories that are told about it. Essentially, I argue that shame is worth exploring because it has some potent but also specific meanings for this population in intimate love relationships