What Women Think and What Men Think Women Think: Perceptions of Abuse and Kindness in Dating Relationships

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate how college women and their boyfriends viewed their relationships in terms of both abuse and kindness. The women filled out the Psychological Abuse-Kindness Relationship Inventory for themselves and their boyfriends responded to the questionnaire as they thought their girlfriends would. Several intriguing findings resulted. (1) Men thought their girlfriends would respond more negatively about the relationship than the women actually did. (2) Certain aspects of the relationship resulted in more discrepancies between the men's and women's perceptions. (3) Women distinguished present from past relationships by describing the former as more positive and the latter as more negative; men made no such distinction. Alternative explanations were offered to account for these results including projection, denial, projective identification, lack of psychological separation within couples, men's emotional upbringing and deeply rooted feelings towards women.