Their expectations are lessened over time much more than women in civilian life. These acts may take the form of demeaning verbal assaults that assert the authority of the male partner and keeps them in a subservient role. The act of taunting her in public or when in mixed company, or ignoring her completely causes her to feel humiliated. A more active form of humilation includes withholding money for food so that the victim needs to beg to keep food on the table and has no say in the economy of the family. This economic dependency revealed itself in the feeling that she and her children could be abandoned at any time.
Fears of abandonment are also present in the narratives of military wives.
This fear ultimately rules the life of abused military wives. Isolation is also a major feature of emotional abuse of military wives, due to the constant moves from base to base and to assignments in communities that are isolated. Besides physical isolation because of transfers to unfamiliar geographical locations, military wives whose first language is French are often put in a position of being linguistically isolated. Women who were married to Canadian military members in Germany and returned to Canada with underdeveloped English language skills were further isolated and reported being taunted by their partners. Only rarely does the military provide funds for a separating military wife to return to her home community.