It can seem perplexing from the outside, this pull that many women experience to make things better for those who have hurt us. The impulse to smooth things over to keep ourselves safe, as well as the constant messages many of us have received in our lives to “make things nice” no matter what harm has been done, can be so deeply rooted that it often results in behaviour that can later appear nonsensical to an outside eye. (The betrayal of oneself that results from this “making things nice” with an attacker can also make one bleed on a subterranean level.)
