April 4-6, 2024 • Hyatt Regency • Lexington, KY
Innovations in Health Communication
Innovations in Health Communication
Abstract: “I’m spoon-feeding him my trauma”: An Analysis of Sexual Assault Survivors’ Ongoing Privacy Management in Romantic Relationships
For survivors of sexual assault, navigating privacy boundaries can be challenging. Communication privacy management (CPM) theory posits privacy and disclosure as a dialectical tension (Petronio, 2002). As boundaries are negotiated, breached, and renegotiated, people are faced with examining the roles ownership, control, and turbulence play when regulating their private information, particularly around the highly sensitive topic of sexual assault in romantic relationships. Through semi-structured interviews (n=21) and a phronetic iterative approach to data analysis, we examined the ongoing privacy management of survivors of sexual assault in romantic relationships.
Participants relied upon strategies to control information, especially the graphic details of the experience and its aftermath. They drew upon intentional single disclosures, ongoing and incremental disclosures, and downplaying during their first disclosure. Furthermore, participants set boundaries following their first disclosure, which were influenced by the confidant’s response.
The findings of this study are consistent with current understandings of privacy management that frame privacy management as a process (Bute & Vik, 2010). Due to the recipients’ response or the survivors’ comfortability with the topic of disclosures, however, future disclosures rarely occurred. Therefore, privacy management is unfinished business (Bute & Vik, 2010), but incongruent privacy management kept the topic tabled even if participants held a desire to incrementally disclose over the course of their relationships.
Additionally, participants did not always desire disclosure to be ongoing and incremental as many intentionally presented their partners with a single, one-time disclosure or explicitly said they would shut down further inquiry. Furthermore, these single, one-time disclosures rarely included the full details of the assault as participants typically held back information they considered to be more vulnerable (Petronio, 2002), not relevant to their current functioning, or details they anticipated to provoke a negative response in their partner (e.g., multiple assaults, perpetrators’ names). These findings demonstrate the unfinished business of privacy management in a relationship, even when constructed as “finished” in the minds of the discloser.
Findings from this study have many practical applications in addition to the theoretical extensions. When they are the recipient of a disclosure of sexual assault, romantic partners should inquire of survivors how they would like future conversations to look throughout the course of the relationship. Furthermore, recipients of a disclosure should be cognizant of the fact that even if they have received some details regarding the sexual assault incident, they likely do not know everything that occurred or the full effect the incident had on the survivor and should be mindful of potential triggers.
Practitioners may serve as mediators in romantic relationships between survivors and their partners. For couples who are experiencing incongruent privacy management, practitioners can help couples navigate future disclosures, determine privacy boundaries, and provide ongoing support as boundaries may change as the relationship progresses.
Participants relied upon strategies to control information, especially the graphic details of the experience and its aftermath. They drew upon intentional single disclosures, ongoing and incremental disclosures, and downplaying during their first disclosure. Furthermore, participants set boundaries following their first disclosure, which were influenced by the confidant’s response.
The findings of this study are consistent with current understandings of privacy management that frame privacy management as a process (Bute & Vik, 2010). Due to the recipients’ response or the survivors’ comfortability with the topic of disclosures, however, future disclosures rarely occurred. Therefore, privacy management is unfinished business (Bute & Vik, 2010), but incongruent privacy management kept the topic tabled even if participants held a desire to incrementally disclose over the course of their relationships.
Additionally, participants did not always desire disclosure to be ongoing and incremental as many intentionally presented their partners with a single, one-time disclosure or explicitly said they would shut down further inquiry. Furthermore, these single, one-time disclosures rarely included the full details of the assault as participants typically held back information they considered to be more vulnerable (Petronio, 2002), not relevant to their current functioning, or details they anticipated to provoke a negative response in their partner (e.g., multiple assaults, perpetrators’ names). These findings demonstrate the unfinished business of privacy management in a relationship, even when constructed as “finished” in the minds of the discloser.
Findings from this study have many practical applications in addition to the theoretical extensions. When they are the recipient of a disclosure of sexual assault, romantic partners should inquire of survivors how they would like future conversations to look throughout the course of the relationship. Furthermore, recipients of a disclosure should be cognizant of the fact that even if they have received some details regarding the sexual assault incident, they likely do not know everything that occurred or the full effect the incident had on the survivor and should be mindful of potential triggers.
Practitioners may serve as mediators in romantic relationships between survivors and their partners. For couples who are experiencing incongruent privacy management, practitioners can help couples navigate future disclosures, determine privacy boundaries, and provide ongoing support as boundaries may change as the relationship progresses.