This article presents the results of a study critically exploring men's accounts of their violence to their female partners. Thirteen New Zealand men attending a Stopping Violence programme who had physically assaulted their spouses in the home were interviewed. A Foucauldian post-structuralist framework was used to discursively analyse the interviews. Themes in the way in which the men construct their violence were identified. Analysis revealed two predominant discourses in the men's accounts of their abuse: the dominant story is one of inner tension overwhelming the man to the point where he loses control. This interpretation of the men's own constructions is further analysed and reveals two predominant discursive resources: romantic 'expressive tension' and personal 'pathology'. In a second story, men constructed their partner's behaviour as pushing the men's tension levels to violence. These accounts are theorised in their own terms and the implications of these narrative structures for understanding and intervening in men's domestic violence are discussed. The research itself transformed the author from looking at men's violence from a feminist perspective to a more eclectic approach. It is suggested that new forms of gender, which step outside a language that uses a bi-polar discourse, may construct violence differently.

New Zealand Sociology 15(1) 2000 : 1-29