No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us

by Rachel Louise Snyder

They stay in abusive marriages because they understand something that most of us do not, something from the inside out, something that seems to defy logic: as dangerous as it is in their homes, it is almost always far more dangerous to leave.

Leaving is never an event; it’s a process.

It’s not women who need to learn violence; it’s men who need to learn nonviolence.

“My question isn’t ‘Why doesn’t she leave?’ ” he says, “It’s ‘Why does he stay?’

It’s that thing, right, where men can relate to wanting their own daughters kept safe, kept from men like themselves, but somehow it doesn’t extend to their partners. This view has always sat uncomfortably with me; must we always see ourselves, our own stories, to make someone else’s mean something? Can’t we just believe that all people should be safe and not just those who resemble our own mothers and daughters? Is relatability necessary for empathy?

Whatever we envision when we envision a victim, there is one universal truth to each and every one of those images: none of us ever picture ourselves.

The United States is the most dangerous developed country in the world for women when it comes to gun violence.