The Effects of Abuse—Why Does She Stay? - Reasons To Stay

Women stay in abusive relationships for a variety of reasons. A major reason women stay is their economic dependency on their batterers. Many women feel they are better off with a violent husband than facing the challenge of raising children on their own. Some harbor deep feelings for their abusive partners and believe that over time they can change their partners' behavior. Others mistakenly interpret their abusers' efforts to control their life as expressions of love. Other frequently reported considerations include:

• Most women have at least one dependent child who must be cared for.
• Many are unemployed.
• Their parents are either distant, unable, or unwilling to help.
• The women may fear losing mutual friends and the support of family, especially in-laws.
• Many have no property that is solely their own.
• Some lack access to cash, credit, or any financial resources.
• If the woman leaves, then she risks being charged with desertion and losing her children and joint assets.
• She may face a decline in living standards for herself and her children, and the children, especially older ones, may resent this reduced living standard.
• The woman and/or children may be in poor health.
• The abuser may have threatened or harmed her pets, as noted by Catherine A. Faver and Elizabeth B. Strand in "To Leave or To Stay? Battered Women's Concern for Vulnerable Pets" (Journal of Interpersonal Violence, vol. 18, no. 12, December 2003).

Some battered women hold values and beliefs that experts term "traditional ideology." These patriarchal beliefs, often reinforced by clergy, mental health profesionals, and physicians, tend to normalize violence against women. This ideology may include:

• a belief that divorce is not a viable alternative and that marriage is a permanent commitment
• a belief that having both a mother and father is crucial for children
• an emotional dependence on her husband, and a feeling she needs someone to take care of her
• feelings of helplessness and a belief that she is dependent on a man and unable to take the initiative to escape her situation
• a belief that a "successful marriage" depends on her, leading her to assume responsibility or to blame herself for the abuse
• feelings of low self-esteem and self-worth
• the rationalization that her situation is caused by heavy stress, alcohol, problems at work, or unemployment
• a cycle of abuse that includes periods when her husband is exceedingly romantic, leading her to believe that she still loves him or that he is basically good
• a feeling of isolation from friends and family that may have been forced on her by a jealous and possessive husband who did not allow her any freedom

Some social isolation may be self-imposed by a woman who is ashamed and neither wishes to admit that the person she loves is an abuser, nor wants visible signs of beating to be seen by friends or family.

Leaving an abusive partner is a process some therapists and counselors have termed an "evolution of separation," because many victimized women have to make several attempts before they depart from and remain parted from their abusive husbands. In order to separate from their abusers, women must first acknowledge that their relationship is unhealthy and will not get better, experience a catalyst for leaving (for example, a particularly severe beating), give up their dreams for the relationship, and accept that some aspects of the relationship will continue (for example, child-visitation arrangements). On average, women leave and return five times before separating for a final time (see Barnett citation at the head of this chapter).

Whether a separated woman will permanently leave her battering spouse largely depends on whether she has the economic resources to survive without him. Women who are economically dependent on their husbands are more likely to be battered, and also less likely to leave. Leaving will expose these women to the hazards of poverty: crime, violence, lack of health care, lack of affordable housing and quality child care. Batterers also often interfere with their partners' ability to find and keep employment, according to Ola W. Barnett in "Why Battered Women Do Not Leave, Part I" (Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, vol. 1, October 2000).

The Most Prevalent Reasons Women Stay in Abusive Relationships

A 1999 research project in Maricopa County, Arizona, considered intimate partner violence and asked women who participated why they remained in emotionally and physically abusive situations. Although nearly half of the study participants said they fought weekly or even daily with their abusive partners, 62% felt they would be unlikely to leave their current partners. The reasons they offered for remaining in dangerous and destructive relationships included:

• Income—Sixty percent of participants said they earned less than $20,000 per year and 32% said they had no money of their own.
• Hope—Fifty-five percent felt they would be able to repair the relationship.
• Fear—Forty-five percent worried that they could not take their children with them if they left their abusers.
• Opportunity—Forty-four percent could not see any way they could earn enough money to support themselves and their children.
• Education—Forty percent reported no education beyond high school.
• Lack of information—Thirty-six percent of respondents said they did not know where to go to escape an abusive relationship.

More than 30% of the participants said they had been abused as children and more than half had grown up watching their parents in abusive relationships. Analyzing these data, Jude Miller-Burke concluded that along with the stated economic reasons and practical logistical considerations involved in ending abusive relationships, many women remain because they mistakenly believe they either cause or deserve the abuse.

How Will Abusive Men Respond When Women Try to Leave?

A battered woman's fear of reprisal is very real and well founded. As Lenore Walker explained in Terrifying Love: Why Battered Women Kill and How Society Responds (New York: Harper and Row, 1989), batterers often panic when they think women are going to end the relationship. In the personal stories women told Walker, they repeatedly related that after calling the police or asking for a divorce, their partners' violence escalated.

Walker observed that in an abusive relationship it is often the man who is desperately dependent on the relationship. Battered women are likely to feel that the batterers' sanity and emotional stability is their responsibility—that they are their men's only link to the normal world. Walker alleged that almost 10% of abandoned batterers committed suicide when their women left them.

It appears, however, that more batterers become homicidal than suicidal. Angela Browne, the author of When Battered Women Kill, and Kirk Williams, of the Family Research Laboratory, in "Resource Availability for Women at Risk and Partner Homicide" (both published in Law and Society [Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire, 1989]), found that more than 50% of all female homicide victims were murdered by former abusive male partners. Ola W. Barnett emphasized that evidence consistently demonstrates that after women leave abusive partners they often continue to be assaulted, stalked, and threatened, and that leaving provokes some batterers to kill their partners (see citation at the head of this chapter). Carolyn Rebecca Block concurred that an attempt to leave can escalate domestic violence; she found that 45% of homicides of a woman by a man were in response to women trying to leave abusive partners ("How Can Practitioners Help an Abused Woman Lower Her Risk of Death?" National Institute of Justice Journal, no. 250, November 2003).