But Websdale argues that abusers are just as vulnerable in a sense by their own inability to live without that victim. “My question isn’t ‘Why doesn’t she leave?’ ” he says, “It’s ‘Why does he stay?’ Many of these men are terribly dependent on their female partners. They see them as a conduit to the world of feeling that they don’t inhabit, generally. Often these men have an inchoate sense of shame about their masculinity that they don’t understand.” Websdale calls it the great paradox of domestic violence, how an abuser can be both controlling over his or her partner, while simultaneously
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