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.

But that ties in with the other thing I think, NanaNina. I think that if you do have a positive male role model in your life, it's easier for you to get out. Because you know it doesn't have to be like that.

I have a friend, a wonderful, stunning girl whom every man who's met her has a bit of a crush on. She's with a total git who treats her like dirt. But despite all our advice she truly believes, down in her bones, that this is normal - as her father and her stepfather were also emotional abusers, so what else does she have to base things on?

Longtall you make a good point. I work with DV perpertrators and DV is often cyclic. They have often seen their father's beat their mothers for years. Then when they have their own relationships, they have no other strategies for dealing with relationship issues. This is not an excuse though.

Much of the work I do is getting perpertrators to accept responsibility for the abuse. Only once they can do this can they then start to work on changing things.

Out of interest Meggles who ran the course you attended? I am asking as I am interested in which perspectives are influencing the CJS & where the course leaders gained their insights from.

Now I am very interested as I would love to know more about UK perp programmes; is this what you do?

What fascinates me about the theory that abusers are lacking in relationship skills is how one explains that abusers often manage adequate relationships outside of the home & have the skills to do this? If an abuser has insufficient interpersonal skills surely they wouldn't be able to progress through society to hold responsible positions. Granted abusers may gain license to be bullying at work for example if they are the boss but most are able to get through life without beating up colleagues etc. Would be interested to hear any thoughts on this, sorry if it is leading thread off track.

thorny I don't deliver perp progs but am aware of them.

Oh Ok, sorry I misinterpreted what you said about working with perps to take responsibility & change their behaviours.

Am genuinely interested about what perspectives are influencing the CJS though.

I do work with perps but I don't do the programmes work directly.

The training that I went on looked at issues of power and control and denial, minimisation and blame.

Are you in the CJS thorny?

dignified your post has brought me up sharply. My oldest DD is seeing a boy and has said she wants to dump him. My DH and I have both said how lovely he is (he is good looking and polite to us both but we don't really know much more about him). He certainly takes care of her (expensive bunches of flowers, dinners and dates....not bad at 16) but she says he doesn't respect her opinions and he also turns up unannounced and won't take "no, I don't want to see you tonight" as an answer. I can't believe that perhaps we have put pressure on her to "be nicer" to him and, at the back of my mind, I have at least thought that she is lucky to have a handsome, charming boy clearly be so keen. Of course it isn't luck! She is clever, funny, interesting and beautiful. And more to the point, she doesn't NEED a boy at all.

Thanks for that.

Good on your daughter for wanting shot of him .

The turning up anounced and refusing to take no for an answer is actually a red flag im afraid . It shows a lack of boundarys and a lack of respect for her feelings . Is she concerned about dumping him at all ?

because you get used to it, it doesn't happen that often, he is quite nice in between incidents, he has done a dv course nd has promised to chnge, and does for a bit, because it is not as bad as some people put up with, because it is embaarressing to admitt that it has all gone wrong, you should haave known better than to pick that man, that people will think it is all your fault, you just want the violence to stop and to get on with your marrige in peace, you don't want your children brought up in a single parent household, you don't want to risk their safety at access visits because he is incapable of seeing danger aand watching them....

Yes she is a bit worried about how to do it, but perhaps that is because "I" have told her she has to consider his feelings. I should have kept well out. I don't present a good role model for knowing boundaries. Once she said that she didn't feel he ever listened to her, or took account of what she said/wanted, and was against ML as a blanket proposition, I should have told her to go with her instincts and get rid, not said "oh, he is such a lovely boy, what a shame."

And STILL I can't help thinking deep down how lucky she is to have such an attentive, (rich) handsome young man keen on her. I need to change my mind set.

Too , there is a very good book called " Living with the dominater ". The title sounds scary but its not , its an informative book detailing the " types" of men to avoid , ie, the nice guy , the victim ect. Its matter of fact and has funny sketches in places and describes these men and the tactics they use . It also lists red flgs , behaviours that indicate that people are possibly abusive. Its a few quid on amazon and is a good read along with several others.

Im not suggesting for one minuite that either you or you daughter are or have been abused , but these sort of books go some way to challenge the social ideas that girls should be nice to boys , that we owe them something , and that its ok to say no and enforce your boundarys.

Re you STILL thinking how lucky she is , it can be uncomfortable to challenge these ideas that our parents / teachers / disney films / peers / adverts ect teach us , but once you do , you start to see things very differantly .

You,ll start to feel angry that your daughter has felt shes had to put this boys feelings before her own , that she feels she has to spend time with someone she doesnt like through social pressure , that he turns up and effectiveley manipulates her into spending time when she doesnt want to , that he doesnt respect her opinions as shes so rightly identified . These things arent ok and arent indicitive of a nice person.

Id suggest she tells him in private at your home with you there in case he wont take no for an answer. After that , if he continually turns up ( and i expect he will ) either you or her dad will have to be very firm. Men / boys who make extravaganexpensive gestures often feel deep down that they are owed something in return , and the girls often feel tight and guilty .

I dont know if youve ever looked at the feminist section , but some of the stuff on there is really informative and really makes you think twice .

dignified is giving good advice - and perhaps, by example, helping to answer my quesion about how to light that lightbulb.

tooposh - there's a mantra in MN: when a new friend / prospective partner shows you / tells you what he's like (because they very often do, early on) TAKE NOTICE because that is what he is like.

your DD's BF maybe systematically trying to create an unwarranted sense of obligation.

Something else i think worth mentioning , and i do it a lot to just check that im not reverting back to old style , is to reverse genders , so in this case , swap daughters pushy boyfreind for daughters pushy female freind who turns up uninvited and ignores her wishes to not see her.

I think everyone would probably have identified this as odd rude behaviour and encouraged your daughter to not put up with it . But hes a boy , so its socially ok , we automaticly expect less, tolerate more . Without sounding like a raging feminist there is definateley a male priveledge and i think until this changes there will always be abuse.

In my case I was brought up to think that men were the boss. To cross any male was verboten. The word no was not in my vocabulary. The consequences of saying no, having an opinion or 'talking back' were dire.

My mother trained me to kow-tow to men, my father taught me what the consequences would be if I did not comply.

In fact there was no word for what I was, as I didn't exist, except as an extension of my mother and a punch bag for my father.

Of course all my 'relationships' have been with men who think they are God come to earth. It took me until I was 50 to realise that actually they all work to a script, and when I stumbled upon that script by accident it changed my life.

I too had a counsellor years ago who could see my anger clearly, even though it was turned entirely inwards onto myself, causing life-long depression, and she told me to go home and be nicer to my husband.

When you have been trained so well, expected to be the one who does not matter in the relationship, it takes some strength to get out. You just don't have the correct neurones to be 'normal'.

this thread is excellent
thank you.

mn please preserve it somewhere.

can we please put a link to this thread in with the other websites linked to at the top of the relationships threads thing?

Tooposh, I think it might be a good idea if you could apologise to your daughter for having given her bad advice, even though you meant well. Let her know that she doesn't owe this 'boyfriend' anything and it is entirely up to her who she wants to spend time with or date. If you can, tell her why you made the mistake of encouraging her to let this man have a relationship with her when she didn't want to.

SGB, you are right. I will try to do that. I am finding it difficult because (I guess) perhaps I am still making those mistakes myself and I might well sound hypocritical. I also struggle with the double think required in my own life. But I really don't want DD to grow up with the misconceptions and low expectations that I have probably had.

Sigh, my DH today told me not to leave on the landing light all day (I find the middle of the house gloomy without it on), but to turn it on and off when I pass. We are very well off and I am a SAHM. I expect he has lights on in the office. He's okay really though, and to a certain extent I have encouraged him to undervalue me (looking back, I can see I do that with all men).

I firmly believe we stay with an abuser because we think its ok to do so. I think if we have been raised by a parent who was uncaring, bad tempered, smacked us a lot, was vile tempered, impatient, intolerant, putting us down, criticizing us then we go for someone the same.
I have done it myself, 3x and it has taken me 25 yrs to pick the right man who is non of that. You think its ok to put up with all that shite because you deserve it. Your self esteem is low because you have been moulded that way through your upbringing and then you carry on the pattern by picking a partner who treats you the same.

Its so hard to break away,,, its like a drug.. You know its not good for you but you cant 'get off it'.

I had good parents, so less of an excuse. Most of the other reasons cited above apply to me, though. Plus, I had a misguided sense of my own ability to change him. I would soothe him, prop up his ego, make him understand and the problem would go away.

It's hard to see your own situation clearly when you're in the throes of it. He's messed with your head, you've normalized stuff, but I think you can also be wilfully blind as a kind of psychological self-defence. Because leaving is the most difficult and dangerous time - worth it, hell yes, but still very hard.

I'm in the middle of leaving my H as he has been very controlling and emotionally abusive and it is without a doubt the hardest thing I have ever done.

When H tells me that he loves me and cries because he hates himself because of what he has done to me, it is very difficult to not feel sorry for him. It is very difficult to not believe that my unreasonable behaviour is what has pushed him to be like this. When H says that he doesn't think he can get through this without me and can we not just give things one more chance it is difficult to say no. Apart from my close family and friends, everyone thinks that H is a great bloke and treats me like a princess. It is very difficult to accept that they are not seeing the real him and I am.

LongTallJosie's post sums it up for me. She has described how I have felt about H and how the behaviour becomes normal.

This thread is brilliant and reading it has helped me to stay strong and know that I am doing the right thing.

Yes, beware of him manipulating your pity, FromDespair. It's one of the reasons the Lundy Bancroft book is so helpful, because he explains that it's not about the poor man at the mercy of his insecurity/anger, it's a conscious choice by the man because it means he gets his own way about everything. A very useful insight.

I have not been in that situation myself but saddly have had friends who were in abusive relationships (1 actually left her DP after several years and I saddly lost contact with the other one affter moving to the UK). They were clever women, one of them was a social worker who had dealt with situations like this professionally but could not get out of it herself because she went from being a bright confident woman very slowly to someone totally dependant on her H. Being told constantly that she would be nothing without him and slowly isolated from friends by her H who was saying they were not good enough for her.

It is very easy for outsiders to see that the relationship is all but balanced but when you are up to your neck in it, when things have so slowly gone down it seems normal, usually until it affects potential children.