Leaving an abusive relationship may be a difficult choice but it's still a choice, right?

[maggiethemagpie]

I will confess before we go any further that I have very little experience of abusive relationships. Personally - never, I am just not attracted to that kind of dynamic. I was exposed to my mum's abusive relationship with my stepfather when I was a child however. Maybe that's why I have 'never gone there' as an adult?

I have a friend who knows being with her abusive partner is the wrong thing, and says things like she hopes it will fizzle out or he'll want to spend less time with her (fat chance) but despite repeatedly trying to leave him, can't do so.

I have struggled to understand why. They are not married, or cohabiting, have no dependents, and have been together apx 18 months (they are late 30s) however she has been trying to leave him since 4 months in.

I can see that psychologically she's in some sort of trap, but surely the ultimate choice to stay or go is hers? I'm not denying that it's a difficult choice, it must be a very difficult choice but then life is full of difficult choices and these are what shape us and make us grow.

So is it a free choice to stay in these kind of relationships? Or is it a bit like addiction - where logically the right thing to do is to stop but due to the drug dependency it's not so easy?

I do have some experience with addiction so that may be an easier way to understand it. I don't subscribe to a disease model though - I still think remaining addicted to anything be it drink, substance or gambling or whatever, is still a choice although often a very difficult one.

So is remaining in an abusive relationship a choice or not?

I hardly think it is empowering telling someone that if they stay in what they see as a difficult rs until they are ready to leave that they are particpating in their own abuse.

You shifting the goalposts a bit here OP. You started of with them choosing to stay and now you are saying you are telling them they can choose to leave.

Yes. And if you read rs threads on MN you'll see me amongst many posters reassuring those suffering DV that they can leave they will be ok etc. What you won't EVER see me saying is if they stay they deserve what they get.

And salt what I was saying was I once thought the same way you did. So I am not just talking about an opinion but about experience.

In the scenario above 4 kids nowhere to go. You will lose your house and possibly your kids..you'll still be paying the mortgage on that hpuse though until you sort out the divorce.

So you'd walk out that night in the middle of the night with 4 kids because he called you a fat lazy cow once?

After all you said, the first time, you'd be off straight away.

Small legs - I don't have 4 kids but yes I would leave if someone called me a fat lazy cow.

Small legs, no not for calling me that once. But in my mum's situation, the first time he hit her (after years of EA) she did leave, in the middle of the night, two kids in tow.

So I have seen it done with my own eyes.

Small legs, let me explain.

If i were to go out with an abusive man. He EAs me. That is his fault, it is not my fault.

If he continues to EA me ... I can either leave the relationship or stay in it.

If I leave the relationship, I am no longer abused. I am not there for him to abuse.

If I stay in the relationship, he continues to abuse me. That's still not my fault. It's the abusers fault. However, I have failed to take responsibility for leaving and ensuring that I'm not around for him to continue to abuse me.

I hope you can see how I'm saying someone can take responsibility for their own life to get out of the abusive situation, without saying that the abuse is their fault.

If not, then I don't know how else I can explain it.

Er I think your living OP in a past era where women could just leave. I know 3 cases in the last few years where the man gets 50/50 of the kids. Things are more in favour of men's rights now.

Why does that mean a woman can't leave an abusive man Creative?

Because she is afraid he will be nasty to the kids when she is not there?

I give up game over

Can't answer the question Creative?

Go on, be.....creative

Anyway does not explain my friends situation, no kids, no house...

Can you, magpie, not think of a single possible psychological, physical or circumstantial reason why a woman may - although on the surface/on paper as it were - be able to leave but cannot actually leave this relationship? Which isn't just shit or unfortunate but ABUSIVE?

And that whilst in theory she knows she would be better "out" the relationship, it's not as easy as getting up and leaving and that's it he's out of her life?

Since we don't know your friend we can't say why she hasn't left him although going off lived experience and understanding of abusers and the mindset and damage abusers do most of us can empathise and figure out that whilst ideally she would not be in that relationship, leaving an abuser is a lot more complex than leaving a standard partner.

I never said it was an easy decision...refer to the thread title.

I feel immensely sorry for anyone stuck in this kind of relationship and didn't mean to give the impression that I don't.

However I still think it is an issue of taking personal responsibility, or not as the case may be.

But maybe some people just can't do that.

There are many reasons why a woman might find it hard to leave when she's in an abusive relationship, regardless of whether she has children or not.

If you have done even the most cursory reading or research around this you will know that the time a woman leaves an abusive partner is when she's most at risk. Someone has provided an example of this upthread, which you seem to have disregarded. Just my opinion? Do some googling and you will find a great number of desperately upsetting, real life examples where this has happened. There are several recent cases I can think of, off the top of my head.

Say she does pluck up the courage to get out. Her abusive ex isn't just going to shrug their shoulders and say ah well, never mind, she's caught me out and that's that. He will stalk, harrass and even physically abuse her. If they have children and he has access (and it's very hard to prevent access) then he won't hesitate to use them to get at her.

It isn't as simple as 'just leave'. It really isn't.

Not saying it is simple. But it is possible.

Anyway my mum did it, kids in tow. And she's not a particularly strong person. But she had her limits and the day he smacked her was the day she left for good.

It's in the thread title yet you still don't seem to grasp why it's neither a reflection on the person who is being abused nor a signifier of their responsibility when they don't just hop up and leave and I'm not sure what exactly you're missing.

We're not talking about a partner who is continually flaky, or a cheater then you leave him, go back, he cheats again. We're not talking about your standard shit DP.

We're talking about an abuser. Abusers CAN be cut from your life and when you do leave them it's the biggest brightest step. But just because after months and months and being burnt and assaulted again, i got free of an abusive manipulative sociopathic man does not mean that women who are still in the process of leaving are any less responsible or strong than me. I was just more able to get him out my life. And such was his manipulation of me that occasionally i still feel i should contact him. It's a fucked up web, that's all i can say and ime it's tough to be free of their manipulation and gaslighting and guilt. Especially in the first few months which is probably why your friend keeps going back

OP - I understand your question completely.

It may be sheer dumb luck in how we are wired, but when I look at the exchange StillAwakeandIt'sLate posted as a starting example, I wouldn't even stand for that exchange. It made my head hurt reading it. It's a clear example of Massive Trouble.

I have stopped dating men after they uttered one sentence which I found alarming and I daresay not many people would have found those sentences anything other than entirely innocent.

I am also confused by the concept of "victim" in some cases. OP you ask what happened to personal responsibility - I find myself wondering this too. I also come across people - of both sexes - in horrible relationships, particularly on the "emotional abuse" front, no money issues, not married, no children - and they are choosing to stay and it is a choice. I do hope that one day they will leave and look back on it as an experience that should not be repeated.

It's not about strength. Last time i saw my abuser i was gripped by an anorexia relapse, eating one meal a day and for the process of getting him out of my life i had to see him after a month of NC. I was crying in fear that he'd look at me and think he had "won" when he saw how "fat" i'd become... despite being only bones

Mentally I was the weakest I had ever been and his abuse hadn't even been going on for long, nor was it as severe as some i've heard.

But it was that I had a lot more scope than other women to get him out their lives. I'm no more empowered or strong or brave than any woman in an abusive relationship, not even now that i have no one at all abusive or toxic in my life. I just had more freedom emotionally and physically, i had the necessary support network and the "resources" as it were to keep him away.

I don't think anyone has linked to this TED talk above - Leslie Morgan Steiner is about as far away as you can imagine from a 'typical' domestic violence victim. Yet she stayed. Not because of fear but because in the unhealthy dynamic of the relationship she had been taught to believe that she was the only one who could understand this tortured man, who blamed his childhood for the way he behaved. The implication was that if she could just love him enough, hang on long enough, he would overcome his demons and be the man she could see he could be. In reality he would have killed her.

These things are deeply rooted in our myths - Beauty and the Beast, the Princess and the Frog. The man transformed by the love of the woman.

The way you feel about your friend is entirely understandable, maggie - most of us have felt the same about posters in Relationships over the years. It sometimes seems as if the scales have finally fallen from their eyes and this time they really will leave .. and then within days something, almost anything, appears to have happened and back they go again.

Unfortunately we can't make our friends do what we can clearly see is the right thing for them. We can choose to say "I'm not going to engage on this subject, you know my view and I will always help you to leave when you're ready".

You will see the same themes over and over here - it was my fault, I 'wound him up'. It was my fault, he is stressed from work. I've told him if it happens again I'm definitely leaving .. and then when it does happen again the victim is persuaded this time it was their fault.

As a final quote, . He makes it very clear that, despite understanding his father's violence was triggered by shellshock, it was wholly and completely unacceptable.

So why didn't you leave any earlier Fauchelevent? I'm genuinely interested to know. Did you think he could change him? Was it hard to admit that he was not the man you believed he was at the start of the relationship?

tribpot "These things are deeply rooted in our myths - Beauty and the Beast, the Princess and the Frog. The man transformed by the love of the woman"

they are called fairytales for a reason!

I should add, I do understand if someone is scared of their partner violently attacking them. But the case described by the OP is someone who just goes back for more with no risk of that. Sorry to say I've seen people go back for more when the abusive party wouldn't ever have contacted them anyway.

Yes, he's not been physically violent to her yet - it's all emotional abuse. He will tell her she's crazy, that kind of thing and she's started to believe it.

I'm actually on a bit of a break from her, the last time she left him when she went back she pretended she hadn't and didn't stay in touch, I then found out on the grapevine they were back together. I think she's afraid to tell me she's back with him.

Also I said he wasn't invited to my wedding as he said he'd do drugs despite me telling him that was not on, (plus he hates me), so now she isn't coming either which I am really, really hacked off about. Regardless of her relationship with him, that's a shit way to treat a friend who's tried to help you. I've no doubt he's behind it, but it would take a person with much more grace than I to accept that.

People go back because it's their home and when the abuser tells them that they are sorry and it will never happen again, it's the truth. At that moment in time it's the truth.