Does it take a certain amount of strength to stay in an abusive relationship?

[ellarosemay]

I don't exactly mean strength, but I suppose stubbornness, will, I don't know?

A few times I could easily have given in but didn't and I "admire" my strength in a weird way, although I guess I just should have left him.

It may be dangerous for women to think it takes strength to stay in a dangerous situation. As PP have said, it takes strength to survive it and to stand up for yourself and your children but strength that no woman should need or be expected to find.

No, I honestly think it takes strength to leave. Staying is the burying head in the sand option or the thinking it's 'manageable' when it's just abuse.

Fear isn't strength

It takes endurance to live with abuse. That endurance is fed by the belief that you don't deserve any better, so you see no other option really.

It takes strength to switch to the belief that actually, you do deserve better, and moreover that you are capable of getting yourself the hell out of there.

No, your definition of strength is an interesting example of cognitive dissonance and individual masochism.
Get some serious counselling and get yourself away from anyone who takes pleasure in hurting you.

Maybe some day. Not right now.

No, wounding is what keeps people in an abusive relationship. Strength is the thing that gets them out.

I think it takes an unhealthy kind of determination,you persevere, you grit your teeth, you persuede yourself its not happening. I wasnt strong in my ea relationship, i was living in some kind of surreal reality. I was pretending it wasnt happening.
I held, gripped on to the good times and tried to protect myself from the bad. That wasnt strength, it was encouraging myself to evolve into someone else,someone who accepted abuse.
From recent experience (which i cant go into details) the true strength comes from admitting the abuse, accepting i am not responsible for anyone actions other than mine and for seeking professuonal help to enable me to undo the damage that has been done to me.
The real strength is learning my self worth and cutting out someone whom i still love but i know just wanted to destroy me.
The real strength, for me, has been to make the decision to change my whole world and ask for help to unravel the confusion that has become my thought process.
Ime it has taken the most courage not to stay, but to stand up and speak out,to face his anger but to still keep going. Right now im lonely, heart broken deeply traumatised but each day i dig deep. Im managing to find the strength, the strength i need to get over the fear of how i feel right now and to continue to rebuild myself, my life. I am determined to become the best version,the strongest version of myself, so that somewhere in my future i will be happy, rather than abused.

Sometimes I think it gives me something to push against so a purpose

It takes more strength to leave in my opinion. For years I felt I couldn't leave because I had no family, couldn't afford it, couldn't cope with the DC etc etc. There was always an excuse because I was scared of the alternative!
Now we have separated, it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do and its been a hell few months but now I am out the other side, it feels great.
I'm not sure what positives you can get from being with someone who has no respect for you.

Nope. It takes fear to stay.

It takes strength to leave and put yourself back together.

I'm not saying it doesn't take strength to leave by the way.

But I feel I had\have a certain amount of something

I wouldn't use the word strength no, denial yes.

I think you have to believe wholeheartedly they don't mean it deep down.

Which is lovely but not helpful, because it's unlikely to be true.

I don't think that Not, I suppose I've just briefly been quite pleased about my own intelligence I suppose.

It takes more strength to leave than to stay. You may be airbrush fear of leaving in parenthesis.

What is that, please?

I'm not sure it's strength to stay, but self preservation, certainly in my case. As Riding says, it takes more strength to leave than to stay, but it is so worth it.

The thing is, even if it is strength, so what? What's the reward? Self satisfaction that you're staying with a bumwipe longer than you need to? Being unhappy unnecessarily?

I really think that women put up with a lot of shit because we've somehow been conditioned to think that there'll be a reward at the end of it if we just suffer enough, just do enough, just hold out long enough. It's bollocks. There is no reward. There is no admiration. There is just a longer time to be in shit and more of your life wasted. There is no prize. There is only loss.

You do have to feel some form of superiority to get through it I think.

I mean that you are not a violent person, therefore you are a better person.

Knowing they are hurting you but it's not your fault is empowering in that many do blame themselves.

I have only just left my increasingly emotionally and financially abusive husband after nearly thirty years. Do I think I was strong to stay with him? No, not at all, I think physically and socially and emotionally I have paid the price for not leaving sooner. I think it took far more strength to make and put in place a plan to leave (it actually took me 15 months to get everything in place). Living without him, for me, is the easy bit. I haven't felt so happy, settled, relaxed and content as I do now, for many years.There is some satisfaction in knowing that he is finding it much more difficult as well, after being told for years that I needed him and that I wouldn't manage without him.

Strength to try to stay sane...yes. But I would think myself a fool to stay in an abusive relationship out of stubbornness. He is trying to control you and you are too stubborn to get the hell out.....that sounds like a lose/lose situation to me. Maybe talk to someone professional to see why you are staying. Perhaps you don't feel you are worthy of anything better for some reason.

Airbrushing fear of leaving as an aside. Spinning it as strength.

Like this:

I'm too scared to leave (I must be really strong to stay).

The phrases that spring to my mind are "sunk cost fallacy" and "cognitive dissonance", not "strength".

Sunk costs because what you're doing is thinking "all those years I spent with him will be wasted if I don't hang on in there" rather than "all those years I spent with him - they're gone, there's nothing I can do about them now. But what I can do something about is whether I waste any more years on him."

And cognitive dissonance because when you say "strength" I hear "I'm in a desperate situation but if I admit that to myself my whole world will fall apart so I find a way of reconceptualizing it as 'strength' to try to protect myself psychologically."

They're both perfectly understandable responses from a psychological point of view. They're also both completely fallacious and damaging.

I do hope you find the genuine, real strength to leave him some time. (Don't for a moment think I don't understand that leaving is easier said than done - I watched my DSis put up with 20 years of an abusive marriage).