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He Was Abusive. So Why Did She Stay?
My husband’s abuse wasn’t always so obvious.
Before the physical violence and the wanton death threats, before the temper tantrums that involved breaking or throwing things, before the hole he punched in the wall or the menacing texts or emails, or any of those often public displays of domestic violence, he was regularly abusing me in other, less visible ways. And yet, I stayed.
I stayed right up until he tried to kill me.
Abuse is complicated. It can be visible and obvious, as is many times the case in relationships with physical abuse, or it can be subtle and hard to spot, like with emotional or financial abuse. But once it’s been detected by friends and family of the victim, one of the questions often asked (even by the most well-meaning loved ones) is: “Why don’t you just leave?”
Putting such a simple query to something as complex as abuse is misguided at best, and actively harmful at worst. It implies that the solution to deeply traumatic pain and suffering is a simple matter of choice, which makes the victim feel ashamed for what they’ve experienced or even at fault for it. After all, if things were so bad, why did they stay?
The truth is, there are a lot of reasons a person stays with an abusive partner. For starters, it can be difficult to judge what’s abusive in a…
