Solveig Lelaurain
email: solveig.lelaurain@gmail.com

Léa Restivo

Thémis Apostolidis

When "the dream "dies" but the ideal persists: Representations of the couple relationship and its connection to intimate partner violence experiences

Introduction

Long ignored, Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is now at the heart of political, social and health concerns. It is recognized internationally as a human rights issue and as a form of violence against women, that is, any acts of gender-based violence resulting in, or likely to result in, physical, sexual, psychological or economic harm or suffering to women. In addition, since the 1980s, in many countries, a growing number of specialized associations and emergency shelters have been created as well as legal and legislative measures passed to k m m , w " w " [START_REF] Herman | Lutter contre les violences conjugales [Combating domestic violence[END_REF]). Yet, this violence remains frequent, under-reported and little prosecuted. For instance, a recent cross-national survey led by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (2014), conducted in 28-member states of the European Union, concluded that 22 % of women had experienced physical and/or sexual violence from either a current or a previous partner. This was even more significant for psychological violence which had been experienced by 43% in some form or another. Moreover, still according to this research, almost 40% of the survivors did not report their experience to police and 32% had not talked to anyone about the violence. In France, the last statistical survey led on this topic in 2015 (see [START_REF] Brown | Violences et rapports de genre [Violence and gender relations[END_REF] revealed that 40 in 1000 women aged 20 to 69 report acts of IPV during the year, including 25 moderate, little repeated violence, nine cumulative, repeated or serious violence, and five very severe violence. Moreover, a total of 6% of women report having experienced repeated abuse by an intimate partner during their life. This study also shows that the steps taken are often not followed up, disclosing violence is still limited to the private sphere and that links with the aggressor are often maintained. For women with children, separation is more complex and when it occurs, joint parental authority implies maintaining the bond that can overexpose to violence. Considering IPV as the most severe expression of gender inequalities, the French Government recently reaffirmed the necessity to develop more scientific knowledge in order to fight this social phenomenon.

The under-appreciation of the socio-cultural context to understand IPV This brief overview illustrates the ambivalence surrounding IPV: on the one hand, it is the subject of strong social and political recognition as well as of strong moral condemnation, and on the other, it is a persistent phenomenon which is little disclosed and socially accepted.

The understanding of the psychological and social mechanisms underlying the persistence of this violence and the help-seeking barriers faced by survivors is thus an important issue.

Many of these barriers are linked to socially shaped beliefs, norms and values [START_REF] Liang | A theoretical framework for understanding help-seeking processes among survivors of intimate partner violence[END_REF]. However, these aspects are often underestimated. A recent systematic review of the literature aiming at identifying and discussing factors that inhibit help-seeking [START_REF] Lelaurain | Intimate partner violence and help-seeking: A systematic review and social psychological tracks for future research[END_REF] has shown that a significant number of studies in this area of research are descriptive and focused on internal and individual processes. In other words, these studies do not take sufficient consideration of the social context (i.e., norms, values, ideologies, representations, social relations) surrounding the seeking of help to cope with IPV. To conclude, this state of the art highlights the need to mobilize theoretical approaches which question the complex, dynamic and social aspects of the construction of IPV as well as its impact on help-seeking through a multi-level analysis linking psychological processes and social interactions to normative and ideological issues (see Doise, 1982Doise, /1986)).

Such a perspective refers to a longstanding concern highlighted for instance by D M w " w w m mm w muster the will to examine how closely it is bound up with some of our most cherished values m w " (1996, . 174). T

IPV through the broader representation systems in which it is anchored, such as the couple relationship, love or gender relations, and to analyze it regarding the patriarchal norms and values shared through socio-cultural affiliations. From this perspective, although some researchers have investigated the relationship between love and violence (see Towns & Adams, 2000;Wood, 2001), very little is known about the connection between couple relationship representations and the experience of IPV as well as the possible impact on the victims in terms of coping strategies and help-seeking barriers. Indeed, some studies have explored the experience of the couple relation " " , example, specific features of romantic relationships associated with the perpetration of IPV (see [START_REF] Giordano | The characteristics of romantic relationships associated with teen dating violence[END_REF] or factors predicting relationship satisfaction and long term commitment [START_REF] Stoeber | Dyadic perfectionism in romantic relationships: Predicting relationship satisfaction and long-term commitment[END_REF]; see also Furler et al., 2014). However, to our knowledge, no studies have directly questioned how victims represent, imagine, and fantasize about the romantic relationship.

A socio-representational approach of IPV

The Social Representations (SR) Theory [START_REF] Moscovici | Psychoanalysis: Its image and its public[END_REF], developed in the field of social psychology, offers a relevant framework for exploring how survivors of IPV construct the meaning of the couple relationship, and more generally speaking, the representations system in which the experience of IPV is anchored. SRs can be defined as "an organized set of opinions, attitudes, beliefs and information referring to an object or situation. They are determined both by the subject himself (his history, his experiences), by the social and ideological system in which he is embedded, and by the nature of the subject's links with the social system" (Jodelet, 1989, p. 188). This approach offers the possibility of accounting for the individual and collective forms that contribute to the experience of IPV and the couple relationship. It invites us to consider these objects not only as an individual experience, but also as a socially regulated experience. From the perspective of SR, taking an interest in personal experiences of IPV and the couple relationship is indeed considered within a dialectic between three spheres of belonging of representations: the subjective sphere, the inter-subjective sphere and the trans-subjective sphere [START_REF] Jodelet | Le mouvement de retou j é [The movement back to the subject and the social representations approach[END_REF]. More precisely, in our case, the intra-subjective sphere refers to the set of meanings that the victims draw on to give meaning to the couple relationship, IPV and to their experience. When we look at the intersubjective sphere, we must analyze these representations as systems of expectations and anticipation that govern the social or symbolic relationships between the victims of IPV and the perpetrator, their family members, certain professionals or others in general (i.e., minimization or non-recognition of the violence, making the victim feel guilty, denouncing the violence and help-seeking). Finally, the trans-subjective sphere makes it possible to contextualize IPV and the couple relationship within a broader social system structuring the social and symbolic relationships between gender, where SRs are considered as a set of beliefs, norms and values that have a function of social integration and maintenance of the patriarchal social order. The relationship to IPV is thus constructed both through personal dimensions and also through relational, social and ideological dimensions.

Based on this theoretical framework, the aims of this study, part of wider research (authors), were to explore the subjective and social experience of IPV and the systems of representations that victims mobilize to give it meaning. Associated with this aim, the specific research questions were defined as follow:

Research Question 1: How do women survivors of IPV represent the couple relationship?

Research Question 2: How and in what way are the experience and representations of IPV anchored in these couple-relationship-focused representation systems?

Method

Participants and Recruitment Strategy

Women who had suffered from IPV and had attained the legal age of 18 years old or older were recruited through an IPV-focused agency located in the South of France. More specifically, thirty-five women supported by this association were contacted by email or directly on site, by one of the organization's workers in order to offer them the opportunity to participate in the research and to explain to them its objectives as well as the ethical conditions governing it. They were not proposed financial incentives to participate in the research. Nineteen women agreed to participate in the research and were interviewed between September 2016 and June 2017.

Data Collection Procedure

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the participants in private meeting m m m . T author (SL), a psychologist and PhD student specializing in IPV, conducted the interviews which lasted between 36 and 99 minutes (on average 61 minutes), depending on the participants and their time constraints. Prior to the interview, the participants signed an informed consent form that set out the objectives and procedures of the study, the , m . I , topic, the importance of voluntary consent was emphasized before and during the interviews.

Women were also notified that confidentiality would be fully maintained and that they could end the interview at any time they chose. Ethical approval for this research was obtained from the University Ethics Committee of Aix-Marseille University, France (n° 2018-06-02-02-007).

The interviews were conducted using a semi-directive approach [START_REF] Smith | Semi-structured interviewing and qualitative analysis[END_REF] with open-ended questions rather than closed-ended questions. Semi-structured interviews were used because they enabled the participants to speak spontaneously about the topic under investigation during the first stage, and the researchers were subsequently able to ask specifically targeted questions based on an interview schedule. In line with this, the topics featuring on the interview guide were only defined fairly roughly and included: (a)

Data Analysis

A thematic content analysis was applied to the data [START_REF] Braun | Using thematic analysis in psychology[END_REF]. The following main principles were adopted in this analysis: (1) identifying patterns (themes) in the data collected, taking the theme to be a unit of meaning having a psychological reality rather than a linguistic one, and (2) studying inferences in order to go beyond the manifest . m m m , ( . ., pronoun use, verb tense use) were also taken into account in the analysis. More precisely, in order to study the couple relationship and IPV from the w m j , w explore a data-driven set of thematic categories corresponding to this topic. Guided by the SR m n the introduction, special attention was also paid in the analysis to the expression of judgements and values as they were considered to reflect, in , [START_REF] Braun | Using thematic analysis in psychology[END_REF].

Concretely, the data analysis was organized around two main steps involving three researchers with a social psychology background (SL, LR & TA) in a process of investigator triangulation [START_REF] Denzin | The research act: A theoretical introduction to sociological methods[END_REF]. Firstly, the two main coders (SL & LR) conducted an open coding horizontal analysis based on the reading of the whole data set. The second step of the analysis consisted of a vertical analysis based on a close and repeated reading of each interview separately and was carried out independently by the two coders (SL, LR). They met regularly to discuss, compare and contrast their interpretations and to draw up a codebook in which they recorded the themes they had identified and agreed on. More specifically, the analysis of the first nine interviews resulted in the creation of an initial codebook, the applicability of which was tested on interview 10 and then supplemented with the vertical analysis of the other 9 interviews. The content of this codebook was discussed and stabilized during five workshops attended by the third analyst (TA). This triangulation strategy used in the analysis of interviews allowed us to add credibility to our results by reducing the risk of over-interpretation of the data or dependence on analyses specific to the subjectivity of a single researcher [START_REF] Apostolidis | é : é [Social representations and triangulation: an application in social psychology of health[END_REF]. In addition, beyond a reduction of some of the limitations inherent in the analysis being conducted by a single researcher, this approach was also particularly useful for extending our understanding of the data and their interpretation.

The use of the points of view of more than one researcher as an additional source of knowledge of the object allowed us to access a particularly detailed and rich analysis of these interviews. This space for exchange and comparison of the way in which each of us understood the speeches encouraged reflexivity as to how our own representations might intervene in the analysis.

From this analysis, different analytical ideas emerged for future examination. In particular, some linguistic elem " "/" " " "/" " , m valence of the words spontaneously mentioned to characterize what a couple relationship meant to participants at the time of the interview (68.75% of positive words mentioned such " ", " ", " ", " ", " ", " m "), q m " " ations " " w : Research question 3: What are the representations of the ideal couple relationship from the perspectives of women survivors of IPV? How can or cannot these representations be affected by the experience of violence? What position does this ideal occupy in the definition and the experience of violence, in the way of dealing with it and in particular in help-seeking barriers faced by survivors? The results discussed in this article correspond to a deep and detailed exploration of the themes connected to these research questions. Only these themes will be presented here.

Results

T m 24

67 (M = 42.32, SD = 11.72) and most of them reported having a professional activity (77.8%). All women stated that they had experienced multiple types of violence. More specifically, they reported psychological (100%), verbal (100%), physical (73.7%), sexual (68.4%) and economic (57.9%) abuse. They all had children and were all separated from their abusive partners at the time of the interview.

Length of relationship ranged from 1 to 27 years (M = 8.89 SD = 9.50) and the violence from 1 to 25 years (M = 6.63; SD = 5.72).

1. Representations of the couple relationship: an ideal that persists in spite of IPV 1.1. Description of the ideal. Despite the experience of violence, the majority of participants seemed to have retained an idealized vision of the couple relationship. In fact, when asked about this object after having had one or more experiences of IPV, most of them used positive words when talking about it (n = 14). The couple relationship was perceived in two ways that coexisted within certain discourses: that of "fairy tales" (n = 17) and that in opposition to the lived experience (n = 17). More precisely, the couple was described above all in terms of reciprocity and communion (e.g., "sharing", "exchange", "complementarity", n = 12), as well as investment in the other person (e.g., "wanting their success", "pleasing the other", "becoming better for the other", n = 9).

The ideal couple relationship was also portrayed as one which faced obstacles and stayed together until the end (i.e., "sharing the worst and the best", n = 5). In this sense, some interviewees evoked the negative representations of loneliness and celibacy: not being in a couple meant lacking something (n = 3). The idealization of the couple relationship was also found in the use of terms to describe it which evoked normative (e.g., "normally", "in theory", "deep down", "a real couple") and prescriptive (e.g., "it must", "it should", "it should not") aspects. In contrast to the lived experience of violence, respect/non-disparagement (n = 10), balance/symmetry of "rights" (n = 10), or not changing for the other person and remaining oneself ("not forcing oneself") (n = 3), were identified as the conditions for establishing a good couple relationship. In this context, violence appeared as an exception, or "not being part of the couple relationship". The victims' representations of the ideal couple relationship appeared to be interdependent of their conceptions of love and gender relations. More specifically, the meanings associated with love served as a reference for constructing the idealized couple model. Fifteen participants spontaneously addressed this theme, five of them at the initial instruction. More precisely, they evoked the criteria and characteristics of the ideal relationship based on the validation of romantic love (n = 11), such as "not being able to live without the other", "putting the other before oneself", or "proving it by attention". There was also the use of the popular adages (n = 11) that love is "stronger than everything" or "something that everyone needs".

"L m k , , w m x , … k m w k , . I q of mak … m , w w m
, , m , , mean changing for the other person, it really means being yourself and being accepted as , , I k x w, I perhaps when I was little because I was brought up like that, to get married and have " (Emm , 36 ).

Reconsidering the ideal for a minority of women.

A minority of the women interviewed discussed how the experience of violence had challenged this past ideal by transforming their conception of the couple relationship based on romanticism and conventional gender roles (n = 4). This change in their representations of the couple was characterized by a discourse structured by opposing time markers such as "before"/"now".

The survivors thus questioned a marital model in which the two partners are "one and the same", and in which the woman sees only through her partner and devotes herself to his wellbeing without ever thinking of herself. Some victims then expressed the need for a return to themselves and for reconnecting with their own individuality. A woman thus evoked the satisfaction of leaving her role as a wife and devoted mother to finally take care of herself and find herself as a woman again. Another explained that she had always been attracted by a certain profile of men "with problems" ("people who drink a lot or smoke a lot, who have addictions") and had idealized "spicy" relationships in which she was not bored and in which she could take on the role of "savior". She then revealed her renunciation of wanting to rescue this "type" of man who would not really want to be helped. In this way, in addition to the separation from the violent partner, leaving the relationship can also mean breaking with the traditional roles attributed to women in conventional heterosexual couples. Breaking away from the couple relationship ideal, and particularly the renouncement of it, nevertheless constitutes a source of suffering in the experience of IPV.

Suffering in the experience of IPV: tensions and renunciation of the ideal

2.1 Tension between an ideal and lived experience. The speech of many women interviewed was marked by a tension between an ideal of the couple relationship and the reality of lived experience (n = 12). Violence was seen as a break-up of the idealized couple and this renunciation of the ideal often became a source of suffering. The expression of this disenchantment appeared quite marked among the victims who, following the initial instruction, referred to the idea of "Utopia" (n = 2) to describe the couple and the illusion that surrounds it; and among those who expressed not being able to define the couple relationship and not knowing what it represented for them today (n = 2). Other expressions: "that was not the case", "that didn't happen at all as planned", "I was fooled", "in reality it's not always the case", highlighted this disillusionment. Moreover, the redundant use of the past conditional within the discourses testified to the guilt and the regret caused by the failure to match up to a certain idealized model of the couple relationship. This tension between ideal and experience was revealed particularly in two spheres: that of domestic life and that of feelings of love. In the first sphere, it was when the interviewees addressed the roles of everyday life within the couple, that suffering was expressed in the gap between the ideal and the lived experience. Indeed, the ideal of the couple relationship and of love was described as being "natural", "spontaneous", "specific to each person" (e.g., "there is no set idea", "each couple functions as they wish") (n = 8). This ideal of spontaneity was particularly expressed when they addressed the functioning of the couple and the distribution of tasks as something that "happened naturally", unlike, according to them, in the fifties and sixties when roles were imposed, "the woman at home, the man working". Many survivors therefore felt that female and male roles had changed over the generations, giving way to roles that are more balanced and freely chosen (n = 10). However, when they described their own experience, most of them described a conjugal space strongly determined by conventional gender roles and by very asymmetrical task distribution, breaking with their ideal (n = 12). Within the discourses, this ideal of balance was considered in two ways: some advocated an indistinction of gender roles (n = 7), while others expressed the importance of "everyone staying in their place" and not "encroaching on the other's territory" through respect for traditional gender roles (n = 5). The justification for these differentiated roles was based on the physical and biological distinctions between sexes. The role of women would then be characterized by the upbringing of children, and the care and support of men because of their natural disposition for it. As for men, their natural strength would lead them to show protection and parental authority while providing financial security for the family.

"M , I q w , q w … I w , m , w m m , m j w m men than women, so I think there has to be a balance, but with each one doing their w

j …[…] k w , m w k , I k " ( , 48 years old).
Secondly, concerning the ideal of love, it was the way in which the experience of love and the experience of violence seemed to merge, in the "romantic" idea of a relationship that was both passionate and destructive, which appeared to be at the heart of the experience of suffering. Aware of the destructive effects of this relationship model, several survivors stated that they no longer felt that they were subjects of their own existence. They then mentioned the fact of being kept in a situation of emotional dependence on the violent partner, the fact of seeing and thinking only through him or the fact of having to be constantly available and at his service in order to meet his expectations (n = 4). Furthermore, within certain discourses, women saw violence as a particular form of love (n = 4) certainly deviating from the norm, but specific to their partner. As illustrated in the following excerpts, these victims analyzed the coercive control exercised by the spouse, under the pretext of amorous jealousy, as being their particular way of loving women. These representations of love that coexist with IPV thus hinder its identification and testify to the ambivalent nature of this experience. The majority of the women interviewed cited feelings of love for the perpetrator as a barrier to departure (n = 13). , 35 ).

Although these tensions between the ideal and experience appeared as a major source of suffering, the renunciation of the ideal of one's couple relationship but also of an enchanted vision of one's partner was presented as being particularly difficult.

2.2 Renouncing one's ideal as a source of suffering. The example of marriage " " mm m , w m k, illustrates particularly well the suffering linked to the renunciation of the ideal of the eternal couple. Divorce and separation were thus perceived as a "failure" and referred to a poor self-image. This feeling of failure -women also spoke of feelings of humiliation and guiltseemed to be reinforced by the social comparison between one's own "failed" couple and their parents' still existing couple relationship. Several victims then reported not seeking help and not having broken off the relationship for fear of the judgment and scrutiny of others in a context of family or religious pressure (n = 9), or simply for fear of destroying their own idealized vision of the couple relationship and the family (n = 9). In this discursive context, leaving meant in some way renouncing one's family and marital ideals. The idea of "mourning" evoked by several survivors, "mourning the ideal family", "the image of the couple they were part of... I was mourning, huh", "I was mourning my idyll", testified to this renunciation.

"F m , marriage was already sacred, so I really did everything for it to work, yes, , It was also the confrontation with the violence of renouncing the idealized image of their partner that the participants mentioned. In fact, several described him as someone "nice", "generous", "charming", "caring" at the beginning of the relationship (n = 7) " m " w w . T difficulty in abandoning this positive vision of their partner, the latter having been precisely "chosen for his qualities" and "because deep down he was a good person". They then stated that they were hopeful he would change and become once again "the man they knew at the start" as well as hoping to be able to "save" him with their love. This hope was mentioned as slowing down their departure from the relationship (n = 12).

Well, there were feelings, we loved each other and still wanted each other. Me, I always remembered the early days, when he was charming, and nice, I used to say to m , m k […] m . , well, there were worries, there was of course the routine, and the job, but deep down, I was persuaded that he was nice really because he was at the beginning, and I wanted him to become like that again, so I tried to recreate moments and in fact he chucked it w m . Y w k , possible to return to a given moment, no, k" (M , 30 old).

Thus, the representations, norms and values associated with the couple relationship make breaking away from the violent partner complicated. These difficulties can be found in x m x s. More precisely, breaking up was experienced both as a good decision, because it brought back positive emotions and a feeling of freedom, and also as a pain emanating from the guilt for still feeling in love with the author of the violence or from the expected judgments of other people. In line with this, the extract below represents a prototypical example of the coexistence between these two thoughts where the contradiction between the satisfaction of being left and the pain of seeing the partner suffering raised doubts and pain for the woman interviewed: k again than to live with the guilt of telling yourself every day that the other person is suffering (Lisa 24 years old).

I
In order to preserve their ideal of the couple relationship and the "first image" of their partner who they did not want to give up and to avoid the associated suffering, a set of strategies were developed by the women. The consequences of these different strategies were to minimize and conceal violence. T " " (" ", "w k ", " ") w x w by the participants. Some of them referred to the difficulty in handling the disillusion and disenchantment with the marriage they had hoped for and the person they had chosen. Several women explained in this regard the desire they had to protect their couple or their violent partner, finding excuses for him in order to avoid changing their representations of him (n = 9).

Preservation strategies of the idealized couple relationship and help

T w , I w w I w x […] w w you say things that you regret afterwards, anyway you get carried away and you want to forgive and see good things in the person and not categorize them as a monster or someone bad, or dangerous, that w

x m " (S , 37

).

More specifically, different strategies of preservation of the ideal, no matter the x , w .

Psychologization of the partner and individualization of the violence.

The psychologization of the partner on the one hand and the individualization of the violence on the other hand are two strategies that we identify as allowing women to cope with the experience of disenchantment they express. The psychological and psychoanalytical terminology that they use in their speech (e.g., "post-traumatic syndrome, "narcissistic and perverse", "neurosis") as well as the use of implicit personality theories to describe the authors of the violence illustrates this. Some of them described their partner as being sick and thus unaware of the violence they were perpetrating which allowed the women to not question the fact that their partners loved them. Indeed, admitting the lucidity of the violent partner involves managing disillusion and disenchantment. Labelling " w "

w x w k w m x . I x , m
that they suffered when they discovered that their partner was conscious of the violence they perpetrated; others mentioned the intention to hurt as a major criteria in describing the gravity of the violence. The interviewees also referenced personality traits to describe their exbehaviors, which help to conceal the violence. In concrete terms, in some speeches, the term

" " w m , w m m m m f their w . T " / " w "m ". S m m m " x ", " " " ". W " " x " k", " ", " m ", m w " ". T m m
unpredictable and uncontrollable.

"I w w m , w very impulsive, so I have always said as a friend he is nice, but on the other hand living with him as a couple was very, very compli

[…] w friend, but as a partner he was very bad-tempered, very impulsive, so you never knew how he was going to react, in fact (Anne, 43 years old).

Like this participant describing differently her ex-partner depending on whether she was speaking about him as a friend or as a lover/intimate partner, it is interesting to notice that the survivors seemed to have different representations of the author of the violence according to the context of their accounts. Indeed, if they depicted their ex-partner as intentionally

m w k , k m " k m " m w w " w " w k m love(d).
Finally, the individualization of violence was expressed in the speech of some w " ",

x " ", " m ", " m ", " " ( = 5). O s contrasted the violent relationship they experienced with their new couple relationship which was judged as being more in keeping with their vision of the ideal

k " " w m w m x ( = 4). Tw m w : " ", w k , w w w k w w " m ". "I , m m , w […] S m , m w w , m m , k m m w m m , m worst times, as . […] T w m I k, …[…] k , m , m k m k m , I , !" (M q , 55
).

These different strategies, drawn on to cope with the disenchantment and the loss of their love-related ideals, inhibited the identification of violence, help-seeking and illustrate the ambivalent nature of this experience.

Discussion

This qualitative research aimed to explore the representations that women survivors of IPV draw on to give meaning to the couple relationship and the links that these representations maintain with IPV and the help-seeking process. Three questions, regarding the representations of the ideal couple relationship, the connection between these w m x w m w m help-seeking strategies were more particularly investigated. Our results show that most participants had retained a positive and idealized image of the couple and corroborate other works showing that the discourse of IPV victims can be marked by this strong idealization of the couple relationship [START_REF] Manseur | Entre projet de départ et soumission : la souffrance de la femme battue [Between initial project and submission: the suffering of the battered woman[END_REF]. The tensions between the representations of the ideal couple and the experience of IPV and its impact on the survivors in terms of suffering, coping strategies and obstacles to leaving the relationship are discussed here.

Romantic love as a frame of reference for talking about the couple relationship and its links with IPV

The theme of love, present in most speeches of the interviewees, emerged spontaneously, appearing as a frame of reference or as a perspective for the construction of the idealized couple relationship model. Survivors seem to refer in part to a romantic conception of love insofar as they included ideas about the idealization of the love relationship as well as the duty of self-denial and total involvement with the loved one (Sprecher & Metts, 1998). These accounts about love are rooted in a conventional conception of gender roles, which is consistent with several studies showing that heterosexual romantic love is often used to maintain stereotypical gender relations and to justify the order of subordination of women to men (Singh, 2013;Wood, 2001), for example, by placing them in charge of the emotional work of the relationship (Myra & Jackson, 2001). This is something that is found in our results when the survivors mention having done everything they could to change their partner and their hope that he could be "saved" because of all the love they gave them. In certain discourses, violence is even interpreted as a particular form of love. The feelings of love and attachment that victims believe they receive from their aggressor represent true legitimizing myths that have the effect of making them feel guilty about the violence they have experienced [START_REF] Pyles | Building bridges to safety and justice: Stories of survival and resistance[END_REF]. Indeed, the romantic vision of love has been shown to be a hegemonic construct that helps to facilitate the negotiation of social norms outlawing IPV against women [START_REF] Lelaurain | Social representations and conditional logics in legitimization of intimate partner violence[END_REF] and to be linked to patriarchal ideologies and helping to legitimize IPV (see [START_REF] Lelaurain | Legitimizing intimate partner violence: The role of romantic love and the mediating effect of patriarchal ideologies[END_REF]. IPV appears as rooted in broader systems of representations related to representations of the couple relationship and love and the gender relations that shape them. These are networks of "already there" and preexisting meanings [START_REF] Jodelet | Les représentations Sociales [Social Representations[END_REF] at play in the patriarchal definition of socio-symbolic gender relations and more globally in the idealization of sexual life [START_REF] Luhmann | Amour comme passion. De la codification de l'intimité[END_REF].

Renouncing one's ideal as a major source of suffering

The women interviewed also refer explicitly to the violence they may have suffered, which necessarily creates a discrepancy between their vision of the ideal couple and the reality of their own experience of conjugality. Among the different forms of abuse, such as physical, psychological, financial and sexual, usually distinguished in the typology of violence (WHO cited by [START_REF] Pocock | Intimate partner violence and the power of love: A qualitative systematic review[END_REF], the pain related to the delusional romantic relationship does not appear. Yet, other studies conducted among women victims of IPV corroborate our results mentioning the difficulty for w m "grieving the loss of a dream" [START_REF] Kearney | Enduring love: A grounded formal th w m x domestic violence[END_REF]. More specifically, the unwillingness of the participants in our study to give up on their initial visions of a forever couple and tight-knit family finds an echo in studies " onfl " (D k & , 2016) " mm " which faced survivors when the desire to leave the relationship (i.e., individualistic ideology favoring autonomy and independence vs collectivistic ideology corresponding to the desire to stay in the relationship and take care of their family (Towns & Adams, 2009). Many studies have accounted for the power and the salience of these ideals of the love relationship to be " m " m m , , TV , advertisements, etc. (Boonzaier, 2008;Ja k , 2001;[START_REF] Myra | w " : S x adolescent dating relationships[END_REF]. W m m of these representations of love, couple relationships and gender roles can be analyzed as a way for them to provide a meaningful and structured framework in order to make sense of the violent situation they are facing, of their relationship and their position within it (Wood, 2001;Jackson, 2001). Moreover, taking into account the specificities of the self in late modernity enrich the analysis of the power of the ideal of love [START_REF] Illouz | Pourquoi l'amour fait mal. L'expérience amoureuse dans la modernité[END_REF]. Analyzing disillusion as a cultural practice and a recurring characteristic of modern lives, [START_REF] Illouz | Pourquoi l'amour fait mal. L'expérience amoureuse dans la modernité[END_REF] distinguishes two types of disillusion including one stemming from the experience of the accumulations of daily life (i.e., where domestics tasks and routine compete with the expected passion), that we found in the accounts of participants in the current study. The growing gap between expectations and reality are said to characterize the modern way of suffering from love, not because people are thought to have unrealistic desires but because the structure of reality would make these desires impossible. The juxtaposition of idealized love and the institution of marriage (i.e., monogamy, cohabitation, merger of economic resources) is an example of the social and cultural contradictions which structure modernity and recall the different tensions imbued with the experience of IPV.

Women's strategies to maintain their ideal and connections to help-seeking barriers

In order to preserve their idealized vision of the couple relationship, romantic love and the partner that they fell in love with, despite the reality of the situation, and to prevent the suffering associated with this disenchantment, the women interviewed draw on several Borochowitz & Eisikovits, 2002, cited by Boonzaier, 2008, p. 194).

These strategies, which constitute one of the many ways of coping with the situation of IPV, help to minimize or conceal the violence (Dekel & Andipati, 2016) and thus inhibit the help-seeking process and departure from the relationship. Love for the spouse [START_REF] Kiss | Brazilian policy responses to violence against women: government strategy and the help-seeking behaviors of women who experience violence[END_REF] and the desire to preserve the relationship [START_REF] Spencer | Women's help seeking for intimate partner violence in Jordan[END_REF] are some of the main reasons that lead victims not to denounce the violence they have suffered.

Limitations

Although the women interviewed in this study have diversified profiles in terms of , w w m and most of them had a professional activity at the time of the interview. Moreover, they were all separated from their abusive partners at the time of the interview. These women are thus speaking from a specific social place which may differ from women being in a more precarious socioeconomic situation or who have not engaged in a help-seeking journey. Also, we did not diversify our sample in terms of race, which did not allow us to adopt an intersectional perspective [START_REF] Crenshaw | Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color[END_REF] and to identify specific issues related to the legitimization and experience of IPV when it is intertwined within several relationships of domination. Although this population is more difficult to reach, it would be interesting to interview survivors of violence who are still with their abusive partner in order to analyze the meanings they associate with the couple relationship and violence as well as women facing precarious socioeconomic situations or women belonging to minority groups in France. A second limitation refers to the absence of a specific section in the interview guide devoted to love, which limits our understanding of the meanings that participants associate with this object and the links it has with IPV representations.

Implications for Research and Practice

The results of this study inform the theoretical and practical importance of paying attention to the diversity of suffering women can experience through IPV without neglecting the pain derived from breaking-up which involves the renouncement of an idealized vision of , w .

Theoretically speaking, this issue would imply focusing more on consensual and apparently insignificant cultural objects such as love and the couple relationship with the development of more social psychological research directly questioning cultural material such , TV w m w w m m relationships (see [START_REF] Bonomi | Double crap!" abuse and harmed identity in Fifty Shades of Grey[END_REF]. I w " m m w m w " (S k é, 2012), research offers an interesting opportunity to overcome the individualistic approaches of IPV concealing the normative aspects at stake in this phenomenon. In the Social Representations (SR) Theory area of research, the development of works focused on this cultural material would constitute a fruitful way to enrich the questioning regarding the connection between social representations and culture [START_REF] Jodelet | Les Représentations Sociales Dans le Champ de la Culture. [Social Representations in the Field of Culture[END_REF]. The SR approach allows not to underestimate the social structures and relations at stake in these cultural mental productions. Indeed the gender relationships and the patriarchal systems, referring to the trans-subjective sphere in which SR are anchored, m w m I V .

The idealization of the loved one is characteristic of this form of love [START_REF] Sprecher | Development of the Romantic Beliefs Scale and examination of the effects of gender and gender-role orientation[END_REF]. T m H (1958) k existential meaning associated with it for the loving subject. The specific idealization and mythologization of women for their purity or fragility in the context of gender relationship [START_REF] Goffman | The arrangement between the sexes[END_REF], makes male domination such complex and invisible and especially IPV experience.

In terms of practical implications, our results call for social workers taking care of women experiencing IPV to open their minds to this type of suffering and to focus on the loss of ideals, as mentioned in the therapies recommended by the American Psychiatric Association, which can be overlooked faced with the spectacular aspects recounted by women when speaking about their experiences of violence. The apparent trivial characteristic of love leads us to underline the importance for social workers to engage in reflexive and deconstructive thinking about the w m w (T -Bj k & Morgan, 2010). This work is not as easy as it seems: the greater or lesser axiological proximity between the values to which we personally adhere and those of society always runs the risk of blinding us when we try to study familiar social phenomena. Romantic love does not escape this warning, since it is not only a consensual cultural object but also a socially desired and valued object in relationships.

These results underline finally the interest and the necessity of developing, within the French context, feminist psychotherapeutic approaches that take into account the relations of power and domination involved in the etiology of women's psychological suffering. Feminist psychology explains IPV through structural causes while reversing the cause and effect relationship between this violence and certain psychological manifestations encountered in the victims [START_REF] Sturdivant | Therapy with Women: A Feminist Philosophy of Treatment[END_REF]. Taking feminist epistemologies into account in the care of IPV is all the more important since feminist psychologists have often denounced therapeutic interventions that function as a means of control favouring the subjection of individuals to social norms rather than as a path of social change in the service of the development of autonomy [START_REF] Aim | Penser le rapport aux corps dans une perspective féministe [Thinking about the relationship to bodies from a feminist perspective[END_REF]. Concretely, these therapies allow to work on internalized representation and social norms linked to gender roles and relation of power and domination that impede violence recognition and help-seeking process. Helping women to identify and deconstruct the representations at the heart of their violent experiences is a way of considering engaging women in imaginary changes that question our own morality as well as in renewing the narratives they create of their experiences and the position they occupy in these narratives.

Conclusion

This study represents one step toward improving our understanding of the different tensions characterizing women's experiences of IPV. A relevant way of analyzing the processes involved in the legitimation of violence as well as help-seeking barriers consists in broadening IPV to the socio-cultural context which gives it meaning through the study of the representations of couple relationships and love, social relationships of gender, and patriarchal norms and values. While IPV is a revealing transgression of the norms of contemporary conjugality (Séverac, 2003), the apprehension of violence within the couple as a relationship "apart", as if its protagonists were people "out of the norm" and far from oneself, therefore seems to be an obstacle to understanding the mechanisms underlying it.

"

  two human beings who love each other, normally who respect each other [which unfortunately doesn't exist for me, the couple I would have liked to be part of […] I dreamed of meeting someone and told myself that at 80

  the man doing that, ok, now things can be done together or the other w unbearable about my life in my relationship, I want to say, I got lumbered with all the work for moving house on my own, I did everything in the h

  violence, they reported at the same time that they did not recognize it, were aware of it or identified themselves as victims (n = 18). The issue of the non-recognition of IPV was significant in the experience of the women interviewed, in particular through violence from inside the relationship (n=15), which led them to spot it only once they had left it (n = 7). The extract below is a representative example of this inside/outside differentiation: of things afterwards, but you see some things at the time, but you say

  Before, I rather saw my happiness as being dependent on the other person but now[…] now, I would be more able to live with someone, I see the couple relationship more as something in which I get pleasure, and happiness from sharing good times with someone and then afterwards I return to my own little bubble.

	T	w	w w	before had completely disappeared, before I was
	... in my relationship I was totally in harmony, I mean really it was like if he was
	unhappy I was unhappy, and then if he was happy I was happy, I would have done
				j m	w	w […] now, I have
	q		I w	w m		, w	,
	before, for m , I	k w w	w m		m	, I
	k	m	m			w […]
	revolved around the man concerned (Lisa, 24 years old).

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the participants for their willingness to disclose their experiences and for making this research possible.

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research --(PACA).