How Federal Law Defines Dating and Intimate Partner Violence

Under federal law, an intimate partner is a current or former spouse, someone you share a child with, or someone you live with or have lived with as a spouse; a dating partner is someone you are or were in a romantic or intimate social relationship with, judged by how long it lasted, what kind of relationship it was, and how often you interacted. Violence against those people covers far more than a punch. Federal statutes reach physical and sexual abuse, credible threats, stalking (including by text, email, or social media), and patterns of coercive behavior used to control a partner. Understanding how federal law defines dating and intimate partner violence matters because that definition is the gate: it decides who can get a federal protective order enforced across state lines, who loses the right to own a gun, and when interstate conduct becomes a federal crime.

Who Counts as an Intimate Partner

The criminal code sets out the core definition. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2266, “spouse or intimate partner” means a current or former spouse, a person who shares a child with the abuser, and a person who cohabits or has cohabited with the abuser as a spouse.¹ Co-parents qualify whether or not they ever married, lived together, or had a romantic relationship. Cohabitation means sharing a residence in a way that resembles a household, not simply splitting rent as roommates.

VAWA’s grant provisions in 34 U.S.C. § 12291 use a parallel framework for “domestic violence,” reaching current and former spouses or intimate partners, cohabitants, and people who share a child.² Both definitions include a catch-all: anyone “similarly situated to a spouse” who is protected under the domestic or family violence laws of the state or tribe where the harm occurred.¹ That clause lets courts protect people in relationships that don’t fit neatly into the enumerated categories, by borrowing from whatever the local jurisdiction already recognizes.

Put together, the statutory categories are:

Current spouses
Former spouses
People who share a child, regardless of any prior relationship
People who live or lived together as spouses
Dating partners (see below)
Anyone similarly situated to a spouse under state or tribal law

The Three-Factor Test for Dating Partners

People who never married, never lived together, and share no children can still qualify. Federal law defines a “dating partner” as a person who is or was in a social relationship of a romantic or intimate nature with the abuser, and directs courts to weigh three factors: the length of the relationship, the type of relationship, and the frequency of interaction between the two people.² The same three-factor test appears in the criminal code.¹

Judges weigh these factors together rather than running a checklist. A relationship of several months with regular contact looks very different from a single date. The “type” prong asks whether there was an expectation of romantic or sexual involvement that separates the relationship from a friendship or a professional contact. Someone who meets a service provider weekly for a year has frequent, sustained contact, but the type is commercial, not romantic, so it fails. Judges also consider whether the two people presented themselves as a couple to others; if friends and family understood them to be in a relationship, that supports classification as dating partners. The point of the analysis is to reach people who face the same risks as married couples but have no marriage certificate or shared address to point to.

What Counts as Violence Against a Partner

The definition of the conduct is as broad as the definition of the relationship. VAWA covers felonies and misdemeanors committed by an intimate partner, and in the context of victim services it reaches “the use or attempted use of physical abuse or sexual abuse, or a pattern of any other coercive behavior committed, enabled, or solicited to gain or maintain power and control over a victim.”² That language captures verbal, psychological, economic, and technological abuse even where the individual acts would not be crimes on their own.

Across the federal and state systems, the acts most commonly recognized include:

Physical assault
Sexual violence
Stalking
Threats that cause reasonable fear of harm
Restraining someone’s freedom of movement
Damaging property or harming pets

A credible threat can trigger legal protections even without physical injury. Threats against a pet or acts of property destruction can meet the standard because they signal escalation.

Coercive Control

Coercive control is a pattern of behavior designed to dominate another person through fear, isolation, or dependency: controlling finances, restricting movement, monitoring communications, cutting a partner off from friends and family, dictating daily decisions about clothing, routines, or social activity. VAWA’s definition explicitly references “economic” and “psychological” abuse as forms of coercive behavior.² A growing number of states now recognize coercive control in their own statutes, so abusers who never throw a punch can still be brought within the reach of protective-order laws.

Stalking and Technology-Facilitated Abuse

Federal stalking law explicitly reaches conduct carried out through electronic means. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2261A, it is a federal crime to use the internet, email, or any electronic communication service to engage in conduct that places someone in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury, or that causes or would be expected to cause substantial emotional distress.³ The behavior must be a “course of conduct,” defined as two or more acts showing a continuity of purpose, so a single threatening message does not meet the federal threshold on its own.¹

The 2022 VAWA reauthorization added a federal civil right of action for people whose intimate images are shared without their consent in interstate commerce. Victims can sue for damages and injunctive relief, and courts allow them to proceed under a pseudonym. The reauthorization also created a federal grant program to help state and local law enforcement investigate cybercrimes against individuals, defined to include threats, harassment, stalking, and the nonconsensual distribution of intimate images.⁴

Why the Definition Matters

Fitting inside these definitions is what unlocks federal protections. Three of them do the heaviest work.

Standing to Seek a Protective Order

A civil protective order is a court order that can bar contact, require the abuser to stay a set distance away, and impose other tailored conditions, with immediate arrest available for violations. To petition for one, you need legal standing, which means the court must recognize you as a victim within a qualifying relationship: spouse, former spouse, cohabitant, co-parent, or dating partner. Without that recognized relationship, other civil remedies may still exist, but the expedited domestic violence process is closed.

Federal Firearm Restrictions

Two separate federal firearm prohibitions turn on intimate partner status. Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), a person cannot lawfully possess a firearm or ammunition while subject to a court order that (1) was issued after notice and an opportunity to participate in a hearing, (2) restrains the person from threatening or harassing an intimate partner or that partner’s child, and (3) either includes a finding of a credible threat to the partner’s physical safety or explicitly prohibits the use of physical force.⁵ The Supreme Court upheld this provision in 2024 in an 8-1 decision, holding that someone found by a court to pose a credible threat to another person’s physical safety may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.⁶

A separate provision, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9), bans firearm possession by anyone convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.⁵ A qualifying misdemeanor involves the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon, against a spouse, former spouse, co-parent, cohabitant, or someone similarly situated to a spouse. This ban is permanent unless the conviction is expunged or set aside.

Federal Interstate Crimes

When conduct against an intimate partner crosses a state line, federal criminal law takes over. Section 2261 makes it a federal offense to travel across state lines with the intent to injure, harass, or intimidate an intimate partner, with penalties that scale up to life in prison if the victim dies.⁷ Section 2261A applies the same structure to interstate and electronic stalking, and stalking committed in violation of an existing protective order carries a mandatory minimum of one year.³ Section 2262 criminalizes crossing state lines to violate a protective order and, notably, extends coverage to harm inflicted on pets, service animals, and emotional support animals.⁸

A protective order also does not stop at the state line. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2265, any protection order issued by a state, tribal, or territorial court is entitled to full faith and credit from every other state, tribe, and territory, and law enforcement in the enforcing state must treat it as its own. The order qualifies as long as the issuing court had jurisdiction and the restrained person received reasonable notice and an opportunity to be heard.⁹

Every one of these consequences depends first on whether the relationship and the conduct fit the statutory definitions. That is why the definitional questions are not academic: they decide whether the federal system treats what happened to you as domestic violence at all.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2266 – Definitions
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 34 USC 12291 – Definitions and Grant Provisions
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2261A – Stalking
4
Congress.gov. The 2022 Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 922 – Unlawful Acts
6
Supreme Court of the United States. United States v Rahimi, 602 US (2024)
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2261 – Interstate Domestic Violence
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2262 – Interstate Violation of Protection Order
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2265 – Full Faith and Credit Given to Protection Orders