Kaye Wright's Blog, page 19

5 Reasons Victims of Domestic Violence Stay

5 Reasons Women Stay With Their Abusers

Why do victims of Domestic Violence stay with their abusers? Why doesn’t she just leave? Who would stay with someone who hits them? These are probably the most commonly asked questions by outsiders. As a woman, as a mother and as someone who values herself, I get it! I completely understand the logic most apply to a domestic violence situation they happen to hear about. That being said, as a survivor and former victim of domestic violence, I am here to tell you that it is simply not that easy. There are many more layers to getting into, surviving within and successfully exiting a violent relationship. I touch on most of them in my book Messy Marvin. And while I could never reduce the psychology behind domestic abuse to a single blog post, I can offer some insight to the question that stands out in the minds of so many.

1. MONEY – Finances are one of the main ways an abuser expresses control over his victim. Controlling money is one of the simplest ways to ensure that a person’s movements are limited. Many abusers will limit the amount of funds that are available to their victims. For instance, a woman may be given what would equate to a weekly allowance. The amount of the allowance may be just enough to not arouse suspicion by outsiders, but just less than enough to fund an exit from the relationship. When leaving an abusive relationship, money is essential. Without proper funding, a woman will often return to her abuser from sheer desperation and an inability to obtain daily basics like food and transportation. WomensLaw.org has a great article on this topic which sheds more light on Financial Abuse.

2. LACK OF CONFIDENCE – I read a great book once. It was titled The Confidence Code written by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman. In the book multiple women were interviewed about confidence and how they had developed their own. The interesting thing I took from the book was the confusion we have in our society between self esteem and confidence. Most of us confuse the lack of confidence with low self esteem. Confidence is your belief in your own ability to produce a certain outcome. When a woman is in the throws of an abusive relationship, her confidence is the first thing to go. Abusers make sure of it. Slowly and methodically, the victim is fooled into believing that she cannot produce the outcome she desires. Think of it this way, if you do something and your partner reacts with displeasure, you change your behavior in an attempt to please him. Over time you run out of options to choose from. You cannot come up with any more ideas for behavior changes that may please him. Eventually, you begin to doubt your ability to produce the outcome you desire. And like with most things, that lack of confidence evades other areas of your life. Combine the mental anguish that is self-inflicted with the verbal and physical attack on who you know yourself to be and the outcome is a lack of confidence in your ability to successfully detach yourself from the situation you have found yourself in.

Women are usually killed when attempting to LEAVE their abuser.

 

 

3. ISOLATION – For a woman to successfully leave an abusive relationship, she must have a fool-proof plan. A fool-proof plan requires that she have resources and people that she can rely on. Both those are incredibly hard to secure when your main focus is daily survival. Aside from being able to set up the necessary resources, such as money, shelter and transportation, a woman would need help from others outside of the relationship. Those ‘others’ would need to be willing and available to help her. One of the strategic steps of a classic abuser is isolation. There is a great video from a TED presentation given by Leslie Morgan Steiner where she outlines the steps an abuser takes when he is setting his partner up to be victimized. Often an abusive man will systematically isolate a woman from friends and family members. This comes off many times as his wanting to spend as much time with his new partner as possible. It morphs into complete isolation. Many women find themselves physically removed from their loved ones because they have moved out of town or to a more secluded location. Also, women who are being abuse are embarrassed and feel better keeping their predicament from friends and family members. Attempting to leave when you have found yourself existing on a virtual island with someone who controls your comings and goings, your money and your access to the outside world, is a daunting task. When a woman’s confidence has already taken a beating, many women simply give up because it seems they will never win anyway. So, unfortunately, they stay.

4. COMPASSION – As odd as this one sounds, it is true. Women develop compassion for their abusers. The compassion is linked to love. It sometimes makes me laugh when I hear a person say, “How could you love someone who hits you?” I imagine in their minds a woman meets a man, is asked out on a date, and while enjoying her dinner, her date reaches across the table and smacks her in the face. The woman responds by throwing herself into his arms and proclaiming her love for him. That example is a bit exaggerated, but it illustrates a point. The sequence of events does not occur in that order. An abusive relationship begins and progresses as does any other relationship. The euphoric highs and delusional perfection of the new partnering overtakes the mind of the woman who is unaware that she will later be battered. She is wined and dined and falls in love with her future abuser as a wonderful man FIRST. Signs of abuse or even first instances do not show up lots of times until well into the relationship. There are accounts of women never being hit or verbally abused until after marriage. Yes, after MARRIAGE. Once you are in love and into a committed relationship, things progress over time into a situation which causes you to need to leave in order to survive. The love felt for the abuser does not disappear because he has become abusive. Love doesn’t disappear when a partner cheats, or disappoints or develops a gambling addiction because of the compassion that comes with loving and seeing a person for the flawed human being they are. A woman will still make a decision to leave a cheater or gambler, in spite of her love for him. A woman being abused must make the same decision to leave, IN SPITE OF the fact that she loves and feels compassion for her partner.

5. DEATH – Seventy percent of women who are killed by their abusers, are killed while attempting to leave. Leaving an abusive relationship is a matter of life or death, literally. I have not mentioned kids in this post, but if you have children it complicates the decision by 10 fold. Abusers are controlling. Their entire make up in terms of how they relate within a relationship is built around their insatiable need for control. Most of these men have very low self esteem (despite what they display publicly) and used control to make sure the women they think they love stay with them. They believe they are unable to garner a woman’s love and affection outside of a situation where they demand it from her by using abuse and control. It is a ticking time bomb type situation. Inevitably a situation will arise where he will feel out of control and the level of abuse will escalate. A woman in the situation can sense when the escalation is getting to a place that nears death. Beside a situation that escalates to one where the abuser may kill her, leaving is an absolute sure-fire way to immediately trigger his sense of lack of control and escalate his response to one of death. It is a very real danger as highlighted perfectly in this article from safehorizon.org titled What You Should Know About The Most Dangerous Week.  As someone who lived inside of an abuse relationship, I can attest to the fact that the awareness of death lingers and plays in your mind when considering leaving. For me, the decision to leave was ultimately made because I knew that I would die either way. If I stayed, I would surely die at his hand, if I left I MIGHT die, but leaving was the only option that offered a chance at survival, so I took my chances. Many, many women take the chance and do not beat the odds.

Domestic Violence/Abuse is real. It is a life or death situation. In our current society, it is an epidemic. There was an article published on the Huffington Post about the alarming statistics of domestic violence that highlights why it is an epidemic.

Understanding those who suffer from domestic abuse is a crucial first step to eliminating the problem. This article my personal story shared in my book Messy Marvin are my offerings at an attempt to bridge the gap.

If you have a story to share, please feel free to do so in the comments below.

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