Women who stay in abusive relationships

[Cabbageheads]

I don't want this thread to turn into one bashing women who aren't in a position to leave a relationship that's gone rotten, for whatever reason. There are however quite often posts where it's clear that there are massive red flags in a relationship, or posters are asking if abusive behaviour is abusive etc.

What I'd like to ask women in those relationships, especially women who stay, is what you think the impact on your children is.

Do you think they are aware, or do you think it's hidden?
Do you think your abusive partner is abusing the children in any way?
Do you think being in that environment is causing them harm, and if so, what is it, or do you think they are coping/unaffected and if so, why?
What do you think your relationship with your children will look like once they reach adulthood? How do you expect your children to treat you?
Is it possible to be in an abusive relationship and parent well?

(For backstory, I'm the adult version of the child who grew up with parents who had an abusive relationship and chose to stay in the marriage for a very long time. I'm trying to make peace with some very difficult feelings ATM).

Yes they know. Yes it affects them negatively. It models terrible behaviours and relationships. They can end up with all sorts of mental health problems from anxiety to PTSD. They can become codependent. They can have low self esteem. They can feel unlovable and unloved. They can have issues around trust. They become hyper aware of the feelings and demeanour of others. They can become abusive themselves or abused. They are also victims as children of people in abusive relationships. They are exposed to it and it is very damaging. There is no hiding it from the children. And that can be in either case where the man or the woman is the victim of abuse.

I'm sorry you were that child. Do you know why your mother stayed? My sister was in an abusive relationship. Her DH was emotionally abusive. He could be very nasty.

We as a family tried to support her to leave however she was scared of the consequences. She was scared her DH would turn the children against her which would damage them more, and that she wouldn't be there to protect them.

She thought if she could stop her DH's temper or absorb the worst of it herself she was protecting her children.

It took a toll and she suffered with a whole range of chronic illnesses. I worry that living with the stress has probably shortened her life.

She says now that her DH is undiagnosed autistic and the emotional abuse when they were younger was due to him being disregulated.
Idk, I just see a man who has been pandered to and life made easy at the expense of my sister.

Her dcs are young adults now and get along with the dad although the DD has anxiety and MH problems.

I don't know if this helps, I guess so always feel sorry for my sister and understand how once she had the DCs she felt trapped, and did her best to mitigate her DH's issues.

I am sorry this happened to you. I am married to someone who experienced it as child. It has affected him, affected me and lately affected my daughter.
The consequences might not be immediate. But they are long-lasting.

Having worked with a lot of abused women I would say that most of them range between complete denial of the impact through to believing that there is nothing they can do so they have to put up with it. Some women deliberately choose to stay because they genuinely believe that’s the best way of mitigating the risk to the DC.

The barriers to leaving are huge, both practically and psychologically, especially if you’ve had a long time of someone attacking your self belief and you also have limited resources at your disposal. Most abused women simply cannot see their situation with clarity the way they can once they’ve managed to leave and built a new life.

It’s not ok for the DC but far far more needs to be done to assist parents who want to leave abusive relationships. Providing real options would be way more beneficial than the authorities blaming adult victims
for being unable to protect their children by extricating themselves from an impossible situation.

i have been in two abusive relationships ( no Kids )
firstly it takes a really long time to recognise you are actually in an abusive relationship as things slowly slowly build up and you do a hell of a lot of making excuses
for me one was a family member I was desperate to keep a relationship with and no one else in my family was telling them or me that they were behaving badly , I was blamed a lot for his anger outburst and made to feel it was two people antagonising each other rather than a vulnerable person being bullied and attacked

other relationship i felt it was his difficult childhood that had made him abusive and that if I just loved him harder and stuck by him he would change and love me all the more for it ( I was very young and dumb)

massive low self esteem , believing you can’t cope on your own and that no one else will want you
genuinely loving the person and excusing all the shit on their depression , anxiety childhood etc etc

my sil in in an abusive relationship and its hell watching and not being able to help
she excuses his behaviour as “ he gets agitated” he has been with her her whole adult life and she us isolated from friends and family

its so hard to wake up and leave and I don’t judge anyone who can’t do it yet

All the reasons others have said... Trying to soak up his moods/stand up for DCs (you don’t want to share custody and them be on their own with him), because he’s not always bad (there’s always a cycle), and maybe above all because he makes you distrust your reactions.

H ‘just’ has anger issues. He’s not violent. I’m almost out - after 20 years - but even now I have an inner voice that says I’m overreacting.

I'm not judging, I'm not asking does it cause harm, because I know that it does. I'm living with the fallout. I'm aware of all the reasons why women don't leave and why it drags on for years, decades even.

I want to know what the those mothers think when they look at their children. I want to know, after their partner has blown his top in front of the children (again), when he's kicked her out of the car 10 miles from home and trapped the kids in the car so they have to stay with him, when he's smashed the plates at the dinner table, when the kids have been woken in the night by the sound of her crying, when he's explaining away black eyes like it's all a big joke, when yet another family holiday has ended early because he's had a violent tantrum, when the children are chronically ill with unexplained rashes and constant digestive problems, what thoughts go through their heads when they look at their children, and if they can see the harm being done, or do they just not have those thoughts at all.

Do you worry that his behaviour is damaging your children?

@Resilience thank you for answering the question I asked, that's really helpful. Seems that denial in one form or another is common.

I often want to ask my Mum this.

But I dont want to upset her. She and I have a good relationship now. I think she felt she was doing the right thing. I also was terrified of being alone with him so not sure how that would've possibly worked if she had have left!

With some women, I think It's a product of female socialisation overall, low self worth, feeling like they need a man. It's very slowly improving.

@Arniesaxe for a long time this has been the elephant in the room with my relationship with my mother, the part of it that hasn't been spoken about, but some things have happened recently and comments made that have made it apparent that she was oblivious to the misery of her children. She wasn't ignoring it, she didn't even notice it was happening.

Sorry @Cabbageheads- I didn’t read your post properly. To answer your question, I always try to call him out. I tell them separately he was out of order.

I do worry, but when he makes me feel like I’m overreacting it’s hard.

I think about their adult relationships and as they get older I’ll talk to them more. It’s not like the scenario you described, but I do worry. It is hard though to accept it’s abuse though and so to act.

I don’t know how old you are now but you also have to remember that it was even harder for women to leave abusive relationships even in the 90’s. There were far less work opportunities for women, many left work to raise their children and became solely reliant on their husbands. Women didn’t have the same rights as human beings as they do now. Spousal rape was still legal in the UK until, I think 1996 and even after that, the law wasn’t really upheld until around 2003. So, add that in to all the things that abused women struggle with today and you’ll maybe begin to look at your mothers choices differently.

I understand that it might be an upsetting and difficult conversation to have with your mother and it may not provide you with the answers you’ll be satisfied with but why can’t you ask her? Why can’t you say, in a kind and gentle was, “Mum, I know you went through hell and I’m sorry that happened to you. I just wanted to ask why you stayed so long and if you knew that I knew what was happening?”

Just open the conversation and see where it goes. Do so with empathy and be calm. Remember, your mum was a victim. She probably didn’t know what to do. It’s really only been a recent development that we are understanding the long term consequences for children living in domestic abuse households. I would also consider some therapy to work through whatever comes up for you whether you decide to speak to your mum or not.

Abusive relationships are highly complex and have many different layers to them. Whilst there is the 90% of really difficult/abusive times there can also be the 10% of good times that keep you hanging on.
Most people don't realise how abusive there relationships are until they want to leave and then that's the most dangerous time. I don't think you will get one answer as there is no one answer.

You sound angrier with your mother than your father...
I can see that your childhood had a huge impact on you. I myself spent my whole childhood wishing my mum would leave my dad... And then ended up in an abusive relationship myself.

As pp say, it takes years to realise you are actually in an abusive relationship, especially if you are constantly told that you are the problem and gaslit

My children genuinely had no idea what was going on and were shocked by the separation, they are only realising now how manipulative and toxic their father is now that they are young adults.

They remember their childhood as pretty idyllic so I want necessarily wrong to stay so long.

In 3 weeks it will be my 25 years freedom anniversary. The impact on my child was what made me leave. It was a Sunday morning and my ex was asleep after a particularly nasty and heavy night of drinking and being horrible. There had been quite a few terrifying and violent incidents as well as emotional and verbal abuse. I was up with my my then toddler. The heaven and earth show was on TV and they were talking about the impact of DA on children. I don't know why but that feature was the turning point. I realised that I couldn't be a better partner, do more, make it work etc and that it was damaging my child. By the end of the show I had packed a small bag and I walked away from my entire life with just that bag and my child. It was really hard and some people judged me harshly for being a single mum, needing help from benefits and so on but I have never looked back.

Most of the abused women that I come across at work think it's their fault that they make the other person so angry, and they feel useless and bad for doing so. They see the consequences to their children, and internalise it as their own fault for being so inadequate (and making the abuser angry). This guilt often cripples them emotionally until they disassociate from their reality.

1. Fear of consequences of leaving: often abuse gets worse after the woman leaves so it feels safer to stay
2. Not having the financial ir practical resources to leave. There can be a long delay in realising you need to leave snd actuslly being able to.
3. Confusion and denial because abuse happens in a cycle. No one is abusive all the time because otherwise the partners would just leave. There may be long periods of okay/good in between abusive episodes. When the abuse happens you tell yourself you will leave if it ever happens again, but then everything is quite nice for several months and you forget how bad it was.
4. Knowledge that except in cases of clearly documented physical abuse it is likely that the abusive partner will be awarded regular contact with children, perhaps 50:50. In that time the woman won't be able to protect the children. So it feels better for the children to be living with them full time so you can manage and mitigate the behaviour. Especially if abusive parent has drug or alcohol issues and the children may be regularly endangered by neglect.
5. A feeling of guilt that you are the one causing your partner's poor behaviour and if you can just fix yourself snd your own shortcomings then things will get better
6. The fact that often the children love the abusive parent and don't want the family to be broken up, so by being the one who initiates the separation you become the object of hatred and resentment from the child that you were trying to protect by leaving

I left... For all the reasons you say.

As a result I was then homeless with two young children. Thankfully family and a supportive employer meant we scraped by, but it was only even remotely possible due to that network. He had taken all my money, my home, isolated me from family and friends. Taken my confidence and my health.

But cafcass thought my tiny children should have unsupervised contact with their dad. So they are regularly scared and unsafe. There is no easy answer. Leaving can mean you all jump out of the frying pan into the fire. The person to be angry at is the abusive person.

He didn't stop being abusive to me, or the children, when he left. Cafcass don't care, CMS don't care

This is good advice.

I find it hard to conclude that my parents didn’t just notice the damage their behavior did. I think they just didn’t care.

Both my parents were abusive.

My mum stayed for many reasons, Catholicism, status, fear of change, denial and not knowing any better. She came from a tough background and this was how it was.

She took her rage out on us. Asking ridiculous questions like has your dad been drinking? When he was a raging alcoholic. She would sit with him in the pub while he drank all day then pack us all into the car and he'd drink drive us home.

I remember her smashing a guitar over his legs once. We'd come home from school to chaos, food up the walls.

One of the worst things she did was get us out of bed and line us up and hit us in front of my dad. He had broken a plate but wouldn't admit it so she hit us until one of us admitted it.

My dad was a complete bulging eyed monster with veins that stuck out on his neck when he was angry. He used to call us animals and loved winding us up.

We all grew up and got into abusive relationships. But she got to stay in a nice house in a nice area.

You need to work this out in therapy not here, this will not help anyone

Because they are desperate and and any man is a good man and they put themselves before the parents put themselves before their children and the children suffer and think they have done something wrong, but both parents can be abusive and just keep on having children and not putting them first and it happens over and over again, hopefully adults can break the cycle but no it continues

there is no excuses and no one can say anything to make you feel better really, only you can find peace with it

I disagree with so much of this. The 1990s were not a restrictive time for women in the way you’re describing. Spousal rape was outlawed in 1991 and from 1992 women were outnumbering men at university - this was not a decade where women were helpless and completely reliant on men. Far from it. Women made great strides in the 1990s. The situation you’re describing is more the 1950s and 1960s. I also completely disagree that the devastating impact on children from domestic violence is a recent discovery. This has been known for decades, the issue is no one cares about the children, it’s always viewed from the perspective of the ‘poor helpless woman’. The truth is, a woman is not helpless in that situation, she has options. They may not be the most palatable options, they may leave her financially worse off etc., but they’re options nonetheless. What options does a 5 year-old child have in the face of domestic violence? Absolutely zero. They are dependent on the parent to get them out of that situation. A parent who stays in an abusive relationship bears responsibility for the impact it has on the children - this is indisputable, as far as I’m concerned.