.
Research by Holtzworth-Munroe and Stuart in 1994: "family-only", "generally-violent-antisocial", and "dysphoric-borderline". The family-only type is in involved mainly with common-couple violence and thus are involved in the least severe marital violence and "the least likely to engage in psychological and sexual abuse". The generally-violent-antisocial and the dysphoric-borderline batterers are usually seen in intimate terrorism with the former being broadly "sociopathic and violent" and the latter simply having a strong dependence on the relationship between him and his partner (Johnson and Ferarro, 2003: 496). .
It is important to realize that there are a variety of different relationships in which violence occurs. Much has been learned about violence in same-sex relationships. Claire Renzetti's 1992 study shows that jealousy often accompanies control and power as a major source of conflict. It was also discovered that a major difference between same-sex battery and heterosexual battery is that the threat of "outing" a partner to family members or employees is a common form of psychological abuse. Violence is also seen in dating and cohabiting couples. In fact, studies in New Zealand and Canada report a higher rate of domestic violence in cohabiting couples than in married couples. Strets and Strauss theorized that lower commitment leads to more violence and this theory was upheld by data from Gaertner and Foshee showing an inverse relationship between commitment and violence in dating relationships (Johnson and Ferarro, 2003: 497-499).
The other distinctions in partner violence are in the cultural contexts that the violence occurs. One distinction is in the race and ethnicity in North America. There have been many studies on violence among ethnic groups but few have reached any solid conclusions. It is known that some violence patterns are similar among minority groups, possibly due to common experiences, and other violence patterns are unique to specific ethnic groups.