Why people stay in abusive relations?
This was a beautiful Sunday morning in this small city of Satara, me and my friends went to Yewteshwar temple for prayers. When we reached on the top of this beautiful mountain after a lovely 30 mins drive and parked outside the temple, we witnessed the most shocking experience of our time in the university. A boy slapped his partner repeatedly with full force on the face, and the poor girl stood there scared, I think terrified is more appropriate like a statue without any protest.
One of my friends ran over and stopped the man, he even tried to hit my friend but seeing us there he stopped and left, swearing at us and at his partner. This event made all of us numb as we have had never seen anything like this in our lives. We went to the temple, done our prayers but we all were thinking about the incident all the time while we were in there. We were deeply saddened and shocked by the incident, we all felt like killing that man.
But when we came out of the temple what we found, was really sick. Few men standing there who also had witnessed this were laughing and one of them even said that “it was really entertaining.” What a sick mentality. This made us more angry. None of us ate whole day.
The question is “How women can live with this kind of men?” How do they tolerate and live with this aggressive, annoying, uncivilised, abuser and rude man? Because growing up my grandfather always taught us one thing, that a man who raises hand on a woman is not a man. And to this day I live with this and even more, man has to respect the woman. It is their right and our duty.
But the opposite must be practised as one of my friends in the university had a terrifying girlfriend. This boy was so scared of her that he had to take permission from her to hang out with us. Once we planned to go camping in the forest on the other side of the Kaas lake, but this poor guy didn’t get the permission.
The incident that made us realise the abusive nature of their relationship was when we were on the university trip and he bought some toys for his niece. She shouted at him on top of her voice in front of the whole crowd that how he bought those toys without her permission. This left us all shocked along with the fellow shopper and the staff.
He was so embarrassed that he didn’t even took the bus with us back to the university. Later I asked him, “why are you so scared of her?” and typical answer I got “I love her.” I told him straight that “Love and fear can’t live together.”
There are so many incidents that I can write a book and I might one day of my experiences with people in abusive relationships, both men and woman. But the reason of this writing is to find out “why do people stay in abusive relationships?”
There is no straight answer to this question as every individual is different and every situation is different. But I will try to share few from my point of view and there would be many more which you know, so please share your thoughts in the comments.
On the top of my list is the society as there a several societies in the world where they still believe that woman is a domesticated being and should not be allowed to go out. They are not allowed to study; they are not allowed to do jobs. In these societies’ woman are just there to look after men and have their children. Ironically, they are mothers of the kids, but those kids are not theirs. Yes, we talk about the development in 21st century, but we still have societies where women just exist to meet the needs of a man.
Now the list of few common ones.
1. Because they lose trust in themselves.
What happens is that the abusive partner, with clever tactics and shrewd planning isolates her from family, friends, basically anybody whom she can approach in the times of need. Now, whenever she thinks of getting out, she thinks about all the difficulties she and her kids would have to face their whole life, without the father and the shelter of a house and family.
She doesn’t think she’s capable. She doesn’t think she’s enough. She doesn’t think she has it in her to make it on her own. They are so emotionally and psychologically tortured that they lose their identity.
2. Support system doesn’t exist for them.
Most of the times it is visible to all that the husband to the girl is a jerk even before the marriage. But still girl is forced into this relationship, you know why? Because we all are scared of
“What will people say?”
Even the girl that is getting into this has the same thinking process, “what will people say?”
Surprisingly, even her parents aren’t ready to support her. The stigma of their daughter being labelled a divorcee matters more to them then the emotional abuse she has to put up with every day. I agree, they are of good age and it’s not easy taking care of a daughter and her kid. Yet, they are her family. If anything, they could at least help her out till she’s back on her feet. Maybe then, they can gently extricate themselves out of her life.
On the contrary, the mothers of the girls in abusive relations keep pushing them not to break away, keep the family intact. I can see that she’s is thinking of the future, but from her own perspective not the daughters. But is that future worth of what her daughter will have to go through?
Many a times, people stay in such relationships because there’s nowhere else to go.
But I would say just go, universe is huge. You will find some where to live and get something to do. Just leave!
3. They are afraid.
Fear often brings out the worst in us. Sometimes, it makes us do things we never knew we were capable of. At others, it just paralyzes our capacity to think or act. When you ask them to get out, they say that they are afraid if they would be able to make it out in the world. Emotionally and financially.
The uncertainty of the future forces them to stay in their dreadful present, which, even if grim — is at least familiar. Years of gaslighting that they are capable of nothing probably has had its effect too. They sees a problem with all the solutions we think of — what if this goes wrong? What if I don’t get help? What will happen to my child?
4. Hope; things will change!
I hate this word as much as I love it, because it had two extremes. Either it liberates you or ir enslaves you.
There are two problems with this assumption. One, you think they are capable of being good. Second, if they aren’t, you think they would change for you. Both the scenarios are highly presumptuous.
I’m not saying people can’t change. They can, and in many cases, they do. But you can’t choose to spend your life with a person hoping they will. Basing your relationship on the expectation that you can change them isn’t fair or feasible for the other person. If this person has spent thirty years of their life being a jerk, there’s a high chance they’re going to stay that way. Not even love can change that.
In all the years of relationship, whenever push comes to shove and they make a decision, there partner suddenly starts being nice and they forgives him/her, hoping this time things would be different. They never were.
I sometimes think why they does this. And then I realise. Ending their relationship means the last six/seven/ten years meant nothing. Their love meant nothing. They meant nothing. How would they face society? When their kids grow up and asks why her parents separated? That they didn’t know any better and this was all a mistake?
Everybody have the right to be in a happy and healthy relationship. So it is the time to say NO to the abuse no matter what the relationship is. If there is abuse in a relationship, then it is not a relationship.
It better to be single and live in a shelter rather than living in a golden palace with abusive partner.