I think the vast majority of women, and I’m including myself in this, don’t realise they’re in a crap relationship until things get really bad, by which time they’re tied down by marriage, children and financial dependence. It’s the old boiled frog analogy, the heat is slowly turned up and you don’t notice. Things can be absolutely awful, completely unacceptable to most other people but you don’t realise because it’s your normal. Then when you do realise, your self esteem has been eroded so much that it seems impossible to escape.
Women don’t go out looking for a bad man, and when they start out in a relationship things aren’t bad. If abusive men were abusive from the get go they’d never get a partner in the first place, and of course they’re lovely and charming to everyone on the outside. Most abusive men are perfectly lovely to everyone other than their partner, which only goes to prove that being abusive is a conscious choice, rather than a character or personality flaw.
Unfortunately we still live in a society that is trained to favour the man, sympathise with the man and blames women for poor choices which they didn’t intentionally make, rather than blaming the perpetrator of the abuse. I remember when I left my abusive ex even my own family took his side. Sometimes it can feel more lonely and isolating escaping a bad relationship than staying put and being abused.
As a society we really need to do better at educating our young people about what is and what isn’t acceptable behaviour in a relationship. Unfortunately it would seem that we’re actually going backwards at this. Virtually from toddlerhood girls are being fed the message that their worth is dependent on how pretty they look, then as they get older how many likes they get. Even before they’re interested in boys they’re already acutely aware of the need to look sexy And be demure and passive. Mean while most of our young men and boys are wanking themselves sick to violent and degrading porn, then taking their pornsick ideas of sex into the bedroom where they inflict it on their partner. Young women are expecting sex to be painful and unpleasant and good sex now is any sex that doesn’t hurt. It’s sickening, young children are seeing porn before they really understand what sex is, and before they’ve even felt the desire for someone else. I’ve had long chats with my 11 yo DS about internet porn already, because I know that it’s already being talked about. He’s still in every way a child and yet I’m having to discuss something that I find abhorrent but the rest of society seems to think is normal. This is not how I planned to teach my child about relationships, it’s all the wrong way around, but yet I have to before someone else tells him all the wrong things.
So no, unfortunately women put up with the most appalling behaviour from their male partners, and unless we decide as a society that abusive behaviour is unacceptable and we stop minimising and enabling it, and stop pretending it’s fine that our boys and young men are getting off on more and more misogynistic depravity then it’ll only get worse.