What Happens if We View Thursday's Debate through the Lens of Domestic Abuse?

Hot take: Blaming Biden for “not being better prepared” for Trump is akin to blaming a domestic abuse survivor for not standing up to their abuser.

How are y’all recovering from the Thursday debate?

To be fair, I didn’t watch it. It started at 2 am The Netherlands time, and I was already fast asleep.

However, I awoke to a litany of panic, both from news sources and individuals on social media saying that the debate was an unmitigated disaster, that Biden should step down, and echoes C3PO’s of existential despair:

A lot of the early response reeked of ageism. I unfollowed one Substack that I subscribed to that asked Joe Biden to take a nap. If we’re going to take stances against sexism, racism, and homophobia, the progressive community has to also take a stance against ageism.

Intersectionality, and all.

It’s likely that Friday morning’s panic was worse than the actual debate.

And it was encapsulated by this confusing, although not entirely unsurprising editorial from the editorial team at the NYT, who has been a shocking ringleader of ageism against Biden. They write:

“The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence.”

Clearly nobody at the New York Times has ever been a couples therapist before. My guess is that most of the “Biden out” contingent have never been couples therapists either.

I’m thinking of many a high conflict session where both partners scream at each other, sometimes in the form of obscenities, sometimes in the form of Brick Tamland running around shouting, “Loud noises!” An earlier version of Jeremiah would have operated like Dana Bash and Jake Tapper and frozen in overwhelm by the energy, volume, and aggressive tonality.

Only with 16 years of experience have I developed the confidence to set structures around high-conflict couples. I interrupt often. I tell people to “Stop talking,” sometimes with a chuckle, sometimes with an F word, and remind couples of the rules of couples therapy. (Remember, most of my clients are from Boston, where the F word is commonplace.)

I’ve really only become decent with high-conflict couples in the last year or two, and even then, I need some time after a high conflict session to detox the pent-up energy and frustration, which is often not possible because I typically have another couple waiting for me.

I had a session Friday morning with a woman whose parents have died in the last year; we’re doing a lot of grief work, especially around what it’s like to simultaneously respect and admire the hell out of your parents as they are in their 70s and 80s and grieve the people they were in their 40s and 50s.

She described how angry she was by the debate. She said, “I see my parents in President Biden. So much to be proud of, especially in their older years. And the fact that he was receiving this abuse from Trump and could only do so much to fight back made me weep. If I was a cameraperson, I would have been arrested because I would have run up on stage, slapped Trump, and told him not to talk to Biden that way.”

My client’s statement reminded me of another important feature of the debate.

This wasn’t a conversation between two men using equal standards to talk about policy and the advancement of the American nation.

Thursday’s debate was a domestic abuse session.

And this wasn’t a common couple violence situation, where both couples were equally, consistently barking at each other. The domestic abuse was one-way traffic, from Trump to Biden.

Trump routinely interrupted Biden. He often name-called Biden and made threatening comments against Black and Brown people. He demanded that he wouldn’t accept the results of a Democratic victory in November, and invoked similar language that he did prior to the January 6 attempted government overthrow.

Seth Abramson

noted that in 40 minutes of airtime, Trump spoke 602 lies. That’s one lie every 3.8 seconds. He counted and provided links, as you can read along in this morning’s Substack. (Thank you

Seth Abramson

for doing the work that CNN either refused to do or was incapable of doing Thursday night and in following days.)

No shit that Biden, to quote the NYT, “struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans”. Most people dissociate in some capacity when they are in an interaction where they are being abused.

So what would happen if we view Thursday’s debate, and any argument with Trump, from a domestic abuse lens? How would that shape our response to Thursday, and any future interactions with Trump?

Four days later, I have three immediate observations that stem from this lens.

1. Blaming Biden for “not being better prepared” is akin to blaming a domestic abuse survivor for not standing up to their abuser.

2. Active domestic violence makes couples therapy (and other conversations between the abuser and another person) unsafe.

3. If the Democratic Party should be blamed for anything Thursday night, it’s that they encouraged this debate in the first place. Republican minions can now incorporate elements of the debate into their advertisements with a little less deep-faking.

And Biden is not the only person who’s victim to domestic abuse. Everyone who watched the debate is a victim to domestic abuse. The media who immediately covered this is a victim to domestic abuse.

This week, we’re posting two articles about the impact of domestic abuse.

Tomorrow (Tuesday), we’ll talk about how domestic abuse impacts the relationship between the couple (or, in the case of Biden/Trump, the two people who are attempting to engage in conversation), both in terms of the specific relationship dynamics, and the intrapsychic experiences from each individual.

Thursday, we’ll talk about how domestic abuse impacts the family system. And yes, the NYT editorial board is the allegedly responsible child in the family system that protects the abuser.

In the meantime, please share this article with others!

And please subscribe to Relationship 101. We’d also invite you to donate to Relationship 101 so Julia and I can continue to write about ways that you and those in your community can have the best possible relational and sexual health!

Let’s heal together!

Jeremiah and Julia