I’m definitely against that—but why won’t some women leave these losers ?

Or why do they go back to them ?

That’s something I’ve never been able to understand, really. I was once under the impression that women who stayed in abusive relationships did so because they had no options and were basically trapped. I now understand that while occasionally that is so, when I volunteered at a women’s shelter for a couple of years I saw that it was much less cut & dried than that.

I saw educated women, women with family trying to save them, even women who were paying the bills going back to abusive losers. Most such shelters operate with some anonymity and privacy because many of the women and children there are in hiding, often even fearing for their lives. So some of the women who couldn’t let go endangered all of us.

They would sneak and call their abusive partners from the shelter ! One of the counselors was murdered by the estranged husband of one of the women—who had left him but then phoned him and told him where she was. When he arrived, she told him that the volunteers and counselors weren’t letting her leave (which was false). I eventually had to stop volunteering there, because frankly, I was afraid.

In addition to that, there was a situation when a friend’s brother lost his life trying to stop a man from beating up his pregnant girlfriend on a public street. There were several witnesses, but when the man went on trial, the girlfriend testified that her boyfriend had been protecting her from our friend—thankfully then those witnesses spoke up and refuted that lie.

I came away from those experiences feeling rather cynical, alas. And much less likely to intervene than when I was younger. I’ll still call 911, but I won’t go charging in there myself. And even my brother, a retired policeman, says they hate domestic calls above all because most have had the experience of being jumped on by the wife while taking away the husband who had given her that black eye or broken nose. 😞

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

MethDozer · M

It's hard. I get it 100%. It's the psychology of abuse though. Sense of value becomes broken. That breaks the self esteem. The sense of self suffiency is destroyed. Rational thinking , out the window. A person is left without those thingsthay create their sense of self, and they're left trying to justify and correct the past time wasted on a hope of a better future with said person. The abuse seems normal and just part of what passion entails. Weakened, they feel desperate and unable, the abuser at least provides a twisted comfort of familiarity. Convinced they are the worthless and incapable garbage the abuser trwated them as. They can't possibly make it alone but who would want trash besides them. Ot goes farther but that's the short of the cycle, and a cycle is exactly what it is.

It's hard to wrap ones head around in the third person watching and seeing but it's how it tends to play out from tue psychological aspect of it. You work with or are friends with wnough women who are in these situations you become able to notice a domestic victim immediately. The nervous smiles, the twitchy squirrelness when someone moves too fast near them, the uncomfortableness being to physically close to someone at the lunch table, the uneasyness of taking work calls from fellow employees, the totsl aversion to any eye contact, the lack of facial expression.

It's not just women in abusive relationships either. You see the same patterns, behaviours, and appologies in children from abusive homes, certain prisoners, or anyone who has been beaten down past their will and abiliity to defend against it. Even some workers who have toxic and mentally abusive work environments exhibit the same behavior.