We Need to Stop Normalizing Domestic Violence in the Albanian Community

Part One: When Harm Becomes “Normal”

There are some conversations that are much easier to have about other people's families and other people's cultures than they are to have about our own. This is one of them.

I am Albanian. I love my culture, and there are so many parts of being Albanian that I am incredibly proud of. I value our connection to family, our loyalty, our traditions, our hospitality, our strength, and the way so many of us remain connected to where we came from even after living generations away from Albania. But loving our culture does not mean that we have to defend everything that has existed within it. I actually believe that when you truly care about your culture and the generations coming after you, you have to be willing to look at the parts that have caused harm.

Domestic violence is one of those parts, and I think we need to talk about it differently.

I have worked in mental health for many years, particularly with individuals, couples and families, and one of the things I have learned is that people often recognize a problem much later than the problem actually began. This happens because we tend to look for an event. We look for the slap, the punch, the police being called, the neighbor hearing something, or the moment when someone finally says, "This is abuse."

But relationships usually don't change in one moment. Patterns develop.

Control can start small. Someone wants to know where you are. Then who you are with. Then why you were talking to that person. Maybe your clothing becomes an issue. Your friends become an issue. Your family becomes an issue. Money becomes something you have to explain. You start thinking about how something you say will be received before you say it. You begin changing your behavior because you know what might happen if you don't.

There may not be a bruise anywhere on your body, but you are beginning to live differently because of someone else's reactions.

That matters.

At the same time, I want to be responsible about the language we use. Not every unhealthy relationship is abusive. Not every argument is domestic violence. Not every person who becomes angry is an abuser. I talk frequently in my work about the difference between dysfunctional, toxic and abusive behavior because those words have meanings, and we should not use them interchangeably.

But we also cannot go in the opposite direction and minimize a pattern simply because physical violence has not occurred. When fear, intimidation, threats, coercion, humiliation, isolation, financial control, sexual coercion or physical violence become part of how one person maintains power over another, we are no longer simply talking about a couple that needs to communicate better.

And within our Albanian community, there is another layer that I think we have to be willing to examine.

Many of us grew up understanding that family business stayed within the family. There were certain things you simply did not discuss outside the home. Marriage was private. Problems between a husband and wife were private. Divorce was heavily judged, particularly for women. What other people thought mattered. The reputation of the family mattered. Sometimes it mattered so much that the appearance of the family became more important than what was actually happening inside the family.

I want us to think about that.

When did keeping something private become more important than keeping someone safe? When did enduring mistreatment become evidence that a woman was strong? When did remaining married become the measurement of whether a marriage was successful?

I don't ask these questions to disrespect the women who came before us. Actually, I think we need to understand their lives much more deeply.

Some women had very few choices. Some were financially dependent on their husbands. Some had children and nowhere else to go. Some knew that leaving a marriage could mean losing their family, their community, their financial security or their reputation. Some were told by their own mothers to go home and work things out because their mothers had been taught exactly the same thing.

That is how generational patterns work.

We sometimes imagine that a pattern is passed down because a parent sits a child down and deliberately teaches it. Most of the time, that is not what happens. Children absorb what is normal in the environment around them. They watch. They listen. They adjust. They form beliefs long before they have the language to explain those beliefs.

Imagine a home where everyone knows one person's temper. Maybe nobody calls the person abusive. The family simply says, "You know how he is."

Everyone does know.

They know when not to speak. They know which subjects to avoid. They know when he comes through the door whether it is going to be a good night or a bad night. His wife knows how to read his face. The children know when to become quiet. Someone in the extended family knows what is happening but tells her to be patient. Someone else tells her not to provoke him. After something happens, maybe there is an apology. Maybe everyone moves on. Maybe there are a few good weeks.

Then it happens again.

Eventually, the entire household can begin organizing itself around one person's behavior.

That is something I want people to understand about family systems. Sometimes the problem isn't only the person behaving badly. A whole system can develop around protecting, accommodating, excusing or avoiding that behavior.

And after enough years, people stop recognizing how much they have changed themselves in order to manage one person.

This is where the word "normal" becomes very important.

Normal does not always mean healthy. Sometimes normal simply means familiar.

If you grew up hearing yelling every night, yelling may feel familiar. If you watched your mother become quiet whenever your father became angry, that may feel familiar. If the men in your family made the decisions and the women were expected to adjust, that may feel familiar. If jealousy was described as love, control was described as protection, and obedience was described as respect, those ideas can follow you into adulthood without you ever consciously deciding to believe them.

This is one of the reasons I talk so much about breaking cycles. You cannot challenge a pattern you don't recognize as a pattern.

And this affects our sons and our daughters.

A daughter does not need to be told, "When you grow up, tolerate mistreatment from your husband." She can learn something about relationships simply by watching what her mother tolerates.

A son does not need to be told, "A man should control his wife." He can learn something about power by watching how the men around him behave and how everyone responds to that behavior.

This does not mean children who grow up witnessing unhealthy or abusive relationships are destined to repeat them. They are not. People can question what they were taught. They can heal. They can choose differently. That is exactly why these conversations matter.

But we cannot pretend children aren't learning.

They are learning who gets to be angry. They are learning who has to apologize. They are learning whose voice carries more weight. They are learning whether a woman saying no is respected. They are learning whether a man's anger changes everybody else's behavior. They are learning whether love comes with fear. They are learning what happens when someone crosses a boundary.

And they are also watching whether anyone holds that person accountable.

There is one phrase I especially want us to stop using: "That's just how Albanian men are."

No.

That statement is damaging to women, but it is also incredibly unfair to Albanian men.

There are Albanian men who are loving husbands, involved fathers and respectful partners. There are men who do not need to control a woman in order to feel like a man. There are fathers raising their sons differently. There are Albanian men breaking cycles too.

When we say controlling or aggressive behavior is simply "how Albanian men are," we do something very dangerous. We lower the expectation for men while simultaneously raising the expectation for women to tolerate the behavior.

We excuse him because he is a man, and then we judge her because she cannot handle it.

That is a pattern.

I also know what happens when we begin conversations like this. Someone will say, "Domestic violence happens in every culture."

Of course it does.

Domestic violence is not an Albanian problem. It exists across cultures, religions, races, education levels and socioeconomic backgrounds. Talking specifically about our community does not mean we are claiming that our community invented it.

But "everybody does it" cannot become another excuse not to look at ourselves.

This is an Albanian mental wellness platform. I believe we should be able to celebrate the beautiful parts of our culture while also being mature enough to examine the painful ones. We don't protect our culture by pretending something doesn't happen. We protect future generations by becoming educated enough to recognize when something needs to change.

There is also a question that women in abusive relationships hear far too often: "Why didn't she leave?"

I would like us to stop beginning there.

I would rather ask: What made leaving so difficult?

Was she afraid? Was she financially dependent? Did she have children? Did she have somewhere safe to go? Did her family support her? Was she worried that the community would judge her? Had she been threatened? Had she been isolated from people who could help her? Did she still love him? Did she believe he would change? Had she spent years being told that his behavior was somehow her fault?

And perhaps the hardest question: What had she been taught a wife was supposed to endure?

There are women who have stayed because they were afraid of what would happen if they left. There are women who stayed because they believed keeping their children in a two-parent home was better. There are women who stayed because the person hurting them was not hurting them every day. There may have been good days, apologies, affection, promises, family vacations, birthdays and periods when everything seemed normal.

Human relationships are complicated. That does not make abuse acceptable. It explains why simply asking someone, "Why didn't you leave?" misses so much of what may actually be happening.

And then there is shame.

This is something I believe our community needs to examine very carefully.

If a woman finally tells someone she is being abused and suddenly everyone is worried about what people will think, whose shame are we protecting?

If she calls the police, she embarrassed the family.

If she leaves, she broke up the family.

If she tells relatives, she exposed private business.

If she files for divorce, everyone wants to know what happened.

Notice how quickly the attention can move from the behavior of the person causing the harm to the actions of the person responding to it.

We need to turn that back around.

Speaking about abuse does not create abuse. Leaving abuse does not create abuse. Calling for help does not create abuse. Those actions expose something that was already happening.

The person talking about the problem is not automatically the person who created the problem.

This is where I believe breaking cycles becomes much more difficult than simply saying, "I want to do things differently than my parents."

Breaking cycles requires us to question beliefs that may be deeply connected to family, culture and identity. It means being able to say, "I understand why my mother believed this, but I don't believe it." It means being able to understand why a grandmother stayed without teaching her granddaughter that she must stay. It means understanding how a man was raised without using his upbringing to excuse the harm he causes.

I say this often in different ways in my work: understanding behavior and excusing behavior are not the same thing.

We can understand where something came from and still hold someone accountable for changing it.

And we can do the same thing with culture.

I don't want younger Albanians to believe they have to reject their culture in order to have healthier relationships. I want them to understand that we are allowed to decide what we carry forward.

We can carry our language. We can carry our traditions. We can carry our closeness to family, our celebrations, our music, our food, our history and our pride.

We do not have to carry silence around domestic violence with them.

We can value marriage without believing a person should remain in an abusive one. We can teach respect without confusing respect with obedience. We can raise strong daughters without teaching them that strength means suffering quietly. We can raise strong sons without teaching them that masculinity means authority over someone else.

And maybe most importantly, we can stop protecting harmful behavior simply because confronting it makes the family uncomfortable.

That is what breaking cycles actually asks of us.

Not to hate where we came from. Not to blame an entire generation. Not to blame all Albanian men. Not to tell women who stayed that they should have known better.

It asks us to look at what was handed to us with enough honesty to decide what deserves to be handed to the next generation.

So before Part Two, I want to leave you with something to think about.

Think about what you learned growing up about marriage. Think about what you learned about men and women. Think about anger, respect, obedience, jealousy, divorce, privacy and family reputation. Think about what happened in your home when someone became angry and who everyone else had to become in response.

Then ask yourself a harder question: How much of what I once considered normal was actually healthy?

In Part Two, I am going to go further back and look at where some of these beliefs came from within Albanian history and culture. We are going to talk about patriarchy, the Kanun, honor and shame, the historical roles of men and women, and how beliefs can continue moving through families long after we have forgotten where they originally came from.

Because if we are serious about breaking cycles, we cannot only talk about what people do.

We also have to understand what taught them to believe it was normal.

— Maria Shkreli, LMHC

Albanian Mental Wellness Hub

Where Culture and Mental Wellness Come Together.