Why women stay

Leaving any relationship is hard. It is particularly hard when that relationship is an abusive one. It is virtually impossible when that relationship is with someone who has undiagnosed NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) and whose vampire-like existence revolves around keeping you imprisoned so that he has a permanent source of what he needs (if he were a vampire, of course, it would be blood but as he isn’t, your very life force will do).

Making the decision to leave is probably the hardest part – but that is not to underestimate the magnitude of the practical and emotional difficulties associated with leaving. That is why most women in abusive relationships leave or try to leave at least seven or eight times, before they eventually do make a complete break. Abusive relationships – whether with a narcissist or not – to keep you imprisoned. The perpetrator will have done his/her utmost to set it up that way, ensuring that they have control (or at least a great deal of influence) over every area of your life including your home, work, money, kids, friends and social circle – you name it, they will have a stake in it – and they will not let go! They would rather see you dead than living as a free, fully self-actualised human being.

Feeling stuck

That’s what makes it so hard. Disentangling yourself from an abusive partner is like trying to untangle a ball of wool that has become unraveled and got caught up with a load of other flotsam. We’ve all been there, right?! You think you’ve got it untangled and blow me you pull and everything tightens into a unfathomable knot that just can’t be unpicked. Disentangling your life from an abusive partner is like that. When you’re in the middle of that tangle, you just can’t see your way out. It almost seams easier to stay tangled up. Lots of people do, for too long.

The problem with staying is that life, which has deteriorated into an almost unbearable existence, continues to deteriorate, slowly. The abuse escalates, becomes even less predictable. S/he changes tack. The cycle of abuse (mounting tension, blow up, remorse, apology, mounting tension) speeds up. You find yourself even more isolated, more controlled, less able to escape. Your life isn’t really a life, it’s an existence. A very lonely, terrifying and unpredictable one at that. The longer you stay, the less support you have. Friends you’ve relied on in the past, you no longer see (s/he’s made sure you don’t have time to keep in touch). Friends whom you have ‘disclosed’ to and who have so far been supportive may become less so over time, losing sympathy with you because you don’t leave. They may even come to the mistaken conclusion that – because you haven’t left “it can’t be that bad”. Even the most well-meaning friends can lose sympathy with you the longer you stay and put up with it. And let’s face it, most people who have never been in abusive relationships don’t really understand what it’s like. They offer over-simplified advice like “well, just leave him. You can come and stay with Pete and I for a while whilst you get back on your feet”. If only it were that simple.

Too scared of what s/he might do when you leave

You know that as soon as you make a move to leave you’ll set off a whole other process in which your abuser will try even harder to stop you. And you just don’t know how nasty they could get. If they don’t manage to stop you, you will live in fear in every moment of everyday that every time the gate latch goes, that it’s them. They’ve tracked you down, found you – and they are here, with a gun or a knife, ready to kill you. You see stories on TV news, read them in the paper of women who have been killed by their partners. You read statistics that say “two women a week are killed by their abusive partner” and you wonder – will it be me? Then you stop yourself, tell yourself you are being over-dramatic, but yet the fear doesn’t subside. You know all this before you leave. You think about it daily. It’s one thing that makes you stay. At least if you stay you know roughly what they’re up to, right?!

S/He’s the person you fell in love with again

Another reason you stay is because you love him/her. Unbelievable, I know, but seasoned abusers can be charm personified when they are not abusing – that’s why you married him/her, right!? During the times when they are being the charming person you fell in love with, you feel relief. You breath a sigh and think “perhaps this is it. Perhaps they’ve turned a corner and things will be good from now on”.

You married him/her because you loved them. They were not like this then. If you’d known they would end up like this you would never have married them – you’re not stupid! But they were not like this then. When you first met them, you were drawn in by their charm, confidence, uniqueness but most of all by their attentiveness to you. No-one else had ever treated you like they did, making you the centre of their entire world, lavishing you with attention, affection, love, gifts – all sorts! No-one else had made you feel so special, or said things that really resonated with you or wanted to know so much about you. Even now, in between the abusive outbursts, there are moments, sometimes very tender moments, where s/he is behaving just like they did back then and you are reminded of who you fell in love with and you think that perhaps that is really them and this other abusive character is just a temporary alien invasion. You hope at least.

None of us wants to think of our relationship, or marriage as a sham, unreal, not true, based on falsehood but sadly that’s what abusive relationships are but when you are in the thick of it you can’t believe that. You don’t want to believe that. You can’t even acknowledge that you are in an abusive relationship. You don’t know – isn’t arguing normal in every relationship? You don’t know at the time that this is not normal arguing, that this is so much more than that. But no-one tells you that. No-one knows.

You’re isolated and alone

That’s the thing about abusive relationships, not many people really truly understands them or what it is like to be in one. Even some of the best trained counselors don’t understand and can’t help you. That requires specialist knowledge few people possess. The usual kinds of relationship therapy or marriage guidance counseling don’t work – in fact they make it worse but no-one knows that – least of all you so you plough on regardless doing everything to can to try and make it better, make it work, make it so that you don’t have to leave, be a better person. But it only gets worse and you become increasingly more distraught, desperate and depressed and that gives him/her the perfect excuse to blame you – again – saying “well, it’s because you’re depressed that our marriage isn’t working”.

What about the kids?

Then you stay for the kids. You don’t want to break up the marriage because of them. They are only young and they need a father/mother and sometimes s/he can be a really good parent and the kids love them. They’d be distraught if you left. Perhaps the perpetrator has got to them, in that clever and adept way they have of charming people onside by saying things like: “Your mother/father can’t help it. They have problems, which they have had for a long time and that’s why sometimes I have to shout at mummy/daddy because otherwise s/he is going to try and take you away”. One thing is for sure, abusers are very good and extremely well practiced at manipulation to get people (including their own kids) onside. They may even have been successful in setting the kids against you so any thoughts of leaving may mean you have to think about doing it without the kids and that’s just impossible. S/he may even have told you things like: “if you leave, I will go to the authorities and prove you are an unfit parent and you will never see your kids again.” So, you stay. Yet again, you stay.

You can’t afford to leave

Then you stay for financial reasons. S/he is the main bread-winner – or if they weren’t they’ve made damn sure they have control over all the finances – and you cannot imagine how you will get by on your own salary! Perhaps you don’t have a job and have been away from the job market raising kids for several years and you are not sure how you are going to get a job – with your lack of skills and up-to-date qualifications and experience – particularly in this economic climate! Perhaps you have a job but all you money goes into a joint account over which s/he has control. You know full well that if you left, they could easily stop you having access to it. Perhaps, like me, you are in business together and all your resources are tied up in that. If you left him/her, technically you’d be leaving your job too.

You feel too guilty to leave, like it’s your fault somehow

Then you stay for the family. Your extended family, I mean, all of whom have a relationship with your spouse/partner that may or may not reflect yours. In my case, my father, for a long while, thought I was better off with my husband and was willing to forgive the fact that he had hit me a few times and this added to my difficulty in leaving the relationship. Also, my husband’s family (at lease his mother and father) did everything they could to try and keep us together and that too made it difficult to leave. Outside of close family, my husband had a rather extended group of relatives who all lived close by and whom we also used to see often and that too made it difficult to leave.

Aside from all that, you don’t leave because you don’t want to be another statistic. You don’t want your marriage to have failed too. When I took my vows, I had no doubts I was doing the right thing. Pre-marital nerves didn’t come into it for me (although everyone kept assuring me they would) and when I said my vows I meant it – ‘till death us do part’. Prior to being married, I had a judgment about people who were divorced. I used to think they had failed somehow and I didn’t want to have to admit that to myself. I didn’t want people saying Oh well, you just didn’t try hard enough to make it work.

Low self-esteem

Also, you stay because you think it’s what you deserve and that you would rather be with him/her than on your own. Strange as it may seem, after having been married, the thought of starting over again, being on your own again, is just awful and seems (no matter how bad the abuse is) to almost be a better option than being alone. By that stage, your self esteem is at such a low ebb you even believe what s/he says that you deserve it, that no-one else will have you and that your life will be ruined without him/her. You feel that perhaps you don’t deserve any better and that this is all there is. People who think like this have often been abused before, in the family, at school, at work, in a previous relationship – or perhaps all four! For them, the situation, although bad, seems normal. They don’t know any other way to live and fear that if they leave this relationship they will only come across it in another one. You just know that, as soon as you leave, the talk and incessant questioning “what happened”, “why?”, will start and you just can’t face it.

You’ve been driven into the ground and you just don’t have the energy or physical resources

Maybe you’ve stayed too long, become too depleted and do not feel strong enough to leave. Being in an abusive relationship is like canoeing through rapids – with no still water in sight! It gets exhausting after a while.  In such a scenario, the thought of leaving an abusive relationship, starting all over again and rebuilding your life is just too much to contemplate.

So, for all of these reasons and more, you stay. You stay and you put up with it. You find ways to survive. But it’s not a life – it’s a living hell. A fate worse than death.

Leaving, getting the hell away, no matter how hard it may seem, is always the better option. I can say that now, having done it three years ago. These last three years have been hell but not half so hellish as the three before. I’m so glad I left him. All the doubts, negative thoughts, fears I had about leaving were unfounded. In the end, they were just thoughts, unreal. The abuse I left; that was real.

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