There are countless stories about battered women who stick with their abusive boyfriends or husbands to the bitter end, making people wonder why they don’t just leave. Multiple studies have shown that the answer to this question is not that simple. There’s a variety of reasons victims of domestic violence don’t separate from their abusive partners, from total financial dependence on their abusers to fear for their and their children’s lives.

What Is Domestic Violence?

One of the reasons women stay with their batterers is that they are not even aware they are being abused. Domestic violence, or domestic abuse, is any type of violence aimed at an intimate partner to gain and maintain power and control over that partner and alter the relationship dynamics.

Domestic violence has many forms, including physical, financial, sexual, emotional, and psychological. While in some relationships, the abuse is quite blatant, like someone beating his wife or withdrawing funds from their dependent partner to maintain control, in other relationships, the abuse is not that evident.

The abuse might include psychological manipulation and intimidation, including keeping the other person in a permanent state of fear or self-doubt through verbal violence and gaslighting. The covert abuse is often carried out by people with deeply flawed personalities known as malignant narcissists, which can inflict the most damage on a relationship and another person’s self-worth and mental health.

Why Victims Don’t Leave

There are several reasons victims of domestic violence choose to stay, including:

1. Fear. Severely abused women are afraid that if they leave, their partner might turn more violent or their situation might get worse. And oftentimes, they are right. More than 70% of domestic abuse-related murders happened after the woman threatened to leave or left. That is because the ego of the abuser is so fragile that they feel the need to punish everyone who wronged them, including the victim whom the abuser perceives as the only one guilty for the breakup. And the ultimate punishment is often death.

Other women are afraid not only for their lives but for their children’s wellbeing too. They might be afraid not to lose custody or for their partner not to turn violent on their children.

2. They aren’t even aware of the abuse. Many women choose to stay in an abusive relationship because they are not even aware of the abuse. There are countless domestic violence victims who can confirm that they didn’t even know that they were being raped or that their partner’s behavior was textbook violent. This happens especially when the woman is isolated and doesn’t have anyone to talk to, which is very common for victims of domestic abuse as some of their partners intentionally isolate them from their loved ones and community.
3. Massive psychological trauma. Some women are so abused mentally and emotionally day in and day out that they develop damaged self-worth and believe that they deserve everything that happens to them. They even find excuses for the aggressor. Many of them, at some point, even stop trying to get away from their abuser even if their life is in danger.

This learned helplessness and total dependence on the abusive partner has even a name: The Battered Woman Syndrome, which is a subcategory of PTSD. The only way out for these women is to get to a safe place and get in contact with a therapist with experience in PTSD or narcissistic abuse. Talking to friends and family about the abuse is just not enough for these women to heal, and an inexperienced therapist might do more harm than good.

4. Financial issues. Some women don’t leave their abusive partners because they literally have no place to go. Many of these women are completely financially dependent on their partners, while their family and friends are not supportive. If these women want to escape, they’ll have to work long and hard on an escape plan behind their partners’ backs, like putting away funds or finding a source of income to become financially independent after separation.
5. Lack of support. Many women decide to stay in an abusive relationship because there’s no one out there to help them. Some abused women didn’t find support, not even in law enforcement or courts who sided with their abusers. Others were rejected by family and friends and called crazy, especially when the abuser is charismatic and managed to turn everyone against the woman. Some women need someplace safe to flee with their children, but they often find that the community centers built for them cannot accommodate them.

Conclusion

Some victims of domestic abuse stick around their abusive partners for decades before deciding to leave finally. Others are not that lucky as they are killed when they choose to separate from their partner. Being aware of domestic violence and its victims is not easy and many people ironically side with these women’s abusers, making them having second thoughts about their decisions.

Other women have no place to go, while just as many are not even aware, they are being abused. There are many reasons a battered woman sticks around, but the first lesson she needs to learn is that she doesn’t deserve the abuse. Only from that point on change can happen.