why do women stay with abusive men?

[notpythagoras]

There is thread after thread where women are in an abusive relationship, posters tell them to leave and later the OP namechanges and asks essentially the same question. It might be (has happened to me) that the first thread was hijacked by calls of troll, or that she thinks she was misunderstood and got freak advice but often it seems that she is just frozen. Why is this? Is it for practical reasons? Is it a question of time to adjust one's mindset?

In a survey, 36% of female college students said they had been assaulted by a boyfriend, and of those, half stayed in the relationship afterwards. Is that the same syndrome? That can't be for practical reasons (like sharing a house and kids) so why do they do it?

I have some ideas but wanted to know what others thought/ had experienced.

I stayed for longer than I should have done because the years of abuse had taken me away from myself. I didn't believe in myself. I didn't believe that I had the strength to stand on my own two feet. It took me a decade to find enough backbone to take a chance on having the strength.

As to why younger people would stay after an assault - could it also be self-esteem issues? judging yourself by your ability to attract and keep a man? then not wanting to lose face by being single? Don't know.

They wear you down, slowly and subtley.

many many different reasons for this I'm afraid. there is no one answer. if there was i would imagine it would be very easy to put and end to.

for me it was, feeling embarrassed to have a failed relationship/picked a wrong'un, hoping he would change, wanting my dcs to grow up in a two parent family, not wanting the blame for breaking up the family, blaming myself for some of his behaviour, worrying about how he would treat me if we separated, how he would treat the dcs, doubting if it was actually abuse, those are all i can think of now but i am sure there are more reasons.

I stayed with exh for so long because he had totally and utterly worn me down and I had no belief in myself or my self worth.

I was also in denial that my relationship had failed and was kidding myself that I had the relationship I had dreamed of.

Because I wanted it to work.

Everything Booy said. Plus I desperately didn't want to follow in my mothers footsteps and become a single parent. At the time, the real or imagined stigma of that really got to me. Not anymore, thankfully.

He made me believe it was all my fault, so instead of focussing on what a wanker he was, instead all my attention was turned inwards and I spent all my energies trying to change myself, believing that I was the one responsible for things going wrong and constantly trying to fix it.

It's so obvious to me now that he was just a twat, but I was so full of self doubt, I didn't trust my judgement about anything. I could barely even decide what to have for dinner without consulting him first.

It's fucked, but that's just the way it is.

And then (hopefully) one day you stumble across mumsnet (or similar) while you're looking for something totally unrelated and a big, massive lightbulb goes off in your head.

can i just say that my EX was totally unaware that he was abusing me, he did not have an agenda or set out to abuse me. it was simply what he learned from his parent's relationship, it was how you were. when not getting your way, you sulk, strop, guilt trip, manipulate in whichever way was most appropriate for getting your way. his parents were both masters at manipulation, he is the same and it is how he is. he didn't realise that his behaviour was abusive, it was a means to an end.

All those reasons make sense (although not so much for the college students), and I am glad that all of you finally made the move......I assume everyone is glad they did.

In that context, it is a shame that some posters can be quite impatient when women repost - saying things like "well, we all told you months ago to leave" "you are such-and-such namechanged and we can't be bothered any more". Perhaps we should all try to be more sympthetic and supportive for much longer (some are already).

So what it is that these women need to prompt them to take action sooner rather than later (or is that the wrong way to look at it)?. Is it merely the reality check?

I think my ex knew what he was doing. He got a kick out of having power over, and being able to manipulate, others; not just me, he did it to his friends and family too.

I think he will end up very lonely.

yes very glad. i have never been happier or felt more like myself since i asked him to leave.

Because for so many they are conditioned in childhood by the carers that the abuse is normal, another reason is that in childhood some are conditioned that abuse is all they should expect from others, as their care givers never had the skill to stand up for themselves and were incapable of passing on the skills needed to their children and on goes the cycle.

What prompts action, many never leave, many never realise there is a problem and spend their life in denial and in depression. Some hum and ha about it. some leave. Some are left. Some repeat the pattern again with others and never get out of the abusive relationships, they just change partners and sometimes types of abuse or levels of abuse.

Then some with lots of time, help and support recover.

My ex is also oblivious to his behaviour and blames everything on me.

What do women need to prompt them? I'm sure it will be different for everyone. For me it was the death of a close relative. I decided I didn't want to spend another 20 years being miserable because life is too short and precious.

and yes, I am very glad I made the break. My only regret is that I wasted so much of my life trying to make the tosser happy. It was never going to happen.

Because I had a life filled with abuse, because I was made to believe that I was worth nothing, because I knew that life, better the devil you know, you hope they will change, lots of reasons, I was a youngster in a violent relationship.

I think people here generally have a very high empathy threshold, but there are certain posters here who come back time and again asking the same questions about their relationships - 'Is he out of order for doing this?'...answer: Yes!; 'What would you do if your H did this?'...answer: Leave!, etc.

Maybe those posters do need more sympathy. It's just that I know when I was in my EA relationship, if any of my RL friends gave me even the tiniest fragment of an excuse for his behaviour; "Maybe he's really stressed with work...", or whatever, I would jump on it as a reason to keep nurturing false hope, because it meant I didn't have to face the reality that if I was going to get out of this toxic situation, it would require a lot of courage and strength on my part. Part of me didn't want to have the weight of the responsibility of that so it was easier to stay in denial.

BUT, what ultimately made me jump was when people stopped offering me lifelines. There were no more, "Maybe he's stressed"'s, all I met with whenever I talked about it was, "He's a wanker, you have to leave him", and that bluntness and lack of other options made me realise that I really didn't have (and oughtn't to have had) any other choice.

It may be harsh sometimes but there can be no room for excusing bad behaviour or giving false hope, or enabling denial.

i think i am one of the women who had the advice but didn't act straight away. i could tell a few posters were frustrated with me for not leaving and didn't want to be bothered advising further. but others (chippingin/AF/WWIFN and others) hung around and were there for me as i gathered up the strength to do it.

i am really not sure at all if anything could have made me do it sooner, other than his behaviour worsening quicker.

the last straw for me was when we had my best friend and her DH over for a barbeque and EXP spent the evening putting me down, belittling me and disrespecting me. at one point BF and i were standing beside the dying BBQ for heat and EX grabbed the bottle of lighter fluid. i told him to put it away as ds was standing with us and i didn't want him to think messing with it was a good idea but EXp ignored me and proceeded to pour a huge amount of it on the BBQ sending massive flames up between BF and i roasting my arm. ds was terrified and EXP stood laughing. how BF's husband didn't kill EXp i do not know. i could have killed him right there but i bit my tongue to keep the peace and put on the happy face for my guests. throughout the rest of the evening he would say things and BF would look at me with this expression that said "why are you taking that from him?" i made my mind up that night and while he was eating his cornflakes the next morning i told him that when he wa finished i wanted him to leave.

it can be hard to recognise you are being abused and even if you have an inkling there can be a lot of self denial - much like the alcoholic who refuses to see they are an alcoholic.

the concept of being an abused woman can carry a lot of stigma and people don't want to label themselves as such.

the abused woman may be very isolated and not have any other sources of help - or fail to see the sources of help she might be able to tap into.

sometimes there is an emotional cycle to the abuse that can be quite addictive and the abused woman may have been conditioned even prior to the abuse by that partner to accept such a cycle and even to feel it as a type of love.

borderline personality disordered or those with bp traits can be drawn to abusers because it appeals to them to lose themselves in a relationship, cling, be in the drama and mood swing.

fear. not only of what the abuser might do if they try to leave but also of the unknown and their own ability to cope with that.

I'm an example of what Bella described. I didn't know any better. Once I'd got my head around the idea that it wasn't okay for my partner to beat me up (ironically, with help from Dad, who gave me the misconception in the first place) I "progressed" to partners who used verbal, mental, emotional, sexual and financial abuse instead. I never did grasp that.

I was ever so good at understanding why abusers abuse - still am, I guess - but the idea that I should not be abused was completely absent from my world view. I'd wasn't used to tenderness, respect & condiseration although I'd always been expected to provide them to others. This is what "low self-worth" really means. You probably wouldn't have guessed it of me - I was successful & popular - but I never even wondered if I was worth care. I never asked for any.

Not all abused women are like me, but many are. When you ask us to perceive that our partners should be bothered about our feelings and should add happiness to our lives, you're asking us to perceive that the whole world is not what we thought it was! It's a massive ask. That kind of shock is best absorbed in stages.

"Telling" an abuse target to leave is never going to work. People are already telling her what to do with her life every hour of every day - what makes you think she's going to do what you say, all of a sudden? I hate it when respondents get shouty on an abuse thread: they fail to see how they're doing exactly what the OP suffers all the time - and don't realise that, when they criticise her, she agrees.

BTW, it was a forum post that finally set me on the road to recovery. A poster wrote, "If he loved you, he'd care about your feelings and want to help you feel better". This basic truth was a revelation to me. I was 45.

I stayed because I was scared to go. As simple as that.

I had nobody to help me, and nowhere to go that he wouldnt come and find me.

I owned the house, all in my name. He wouldnt leave, and threatened to burn the house down with me in it if I tried to kick him out.

I left by biding my time, lying about a job transfer to an office 200 miles away, saying it was for a couple of weeks. (Had already arranged to stay on a colleagues sofa till we found a flat to share).

I let the house get repossessed. I really didnt give a shit that I lost the money I had put into it, I was just happy to be free of him.

If I had stayed, I would have been dead by now.

I can totally sympathise when people find it so hard to escape, and unless you have been in the situation, it is impossible to understand.

I think traumatic bonding plays a large part in why people stay with & are loyal to their abusers. There is loads of literature available that explains this better than I ever could.

And for those with children/ family ties it is terribly difficult. I have heard many people suggesting that women leave immediately & go into a refuge but in reality this often means leaving their entire lives behind permanantly. In effect they have to go into hiding & not even give their location away to closest family/ friends, leave their jobs, schools etc overnight & never ever go back. And the refuges are not easy places to live in which explains why women find it all too much & go back even if they did manage to leave in the first place.

My abuser said "first you fuck their body, and then you fuck their minds"

He was very proud of this line.

I echo what others have said too, most of the time, you don't realise until it's too late and they have taken over your life, your self worth, YOU.

Or worse, you and your child/ren.

Why do men abuse women? Why don't they leave. Abuse is the only crime where the victim is told to move. Imagine someone walked into your home and smashed your tv. Would you move t o stop it happening again?

I don't have any experience of abuse in a relationship, but I do had a boss once who was a bit of a bully, and it completely sapped my confidence. I ended up with masses of stress-related illnesses and completely unable to do anything about it, because getting through the experience was such hard work that I didn't have the headspace.

I imagine that it's like that - you've been worn down so much that you don't have the mental energy to work out an exit strategy.

Women abuse men too. It happened in my family, and everyone knew about it (it was so obvious), but no-one did anything about it. :(

I might if my belongings were smashed up regularly, Glenn. You have to do what works.