UGLY TRUTH: WHY WOMEN STAY IN VIOLENT RELATIONSHIPS...

Survival

By this I mean fear about her own and her children’s safety if she leaves. All women look up to their husband for security of their marriage and most important the children. The question that keeps them going in the relationships is, “Who will provide security for my family if I leave? 

Economic Dependence

Some women depend entirely on their husbands for financial security. Financial security is one of the most common reasons that determine how comfortable a woman is in a relationship. Their fear then is that if they leave the marriage they won’t be able to sustain themselves financially and therefore opt to stay in their relationships even if they are violent. 

Fear

 

Women with kids, especially, may fear the absence of a man who can support them. Many women marry a man whom they know is a bad match, because the thought of being alone was so much more frightening than the idea of maybe having a rocky marriage.

Women attach more importance on company of their loved ones than men. For this reason, when the relationship is at stake, they develop fear of being alone, fear that she cannot cope with home and children by herself and therefore end up rooting herself in the relationship regardless of the fact that it is on fire.

Parenting

This is the main bond between a woman and a man who are in marriage. However, it is strange and shocking to learn that women take parenting more seriously than men. Sometimes women want to leave a relationship but when they think about children they tend to think twice as compared to men. Women want to raise their children with their fathers. That way they feel the family is complete and stronger. They want a father for the children.

Family

Family plays a major role in ensuring the success of marriages. Whenever there is any dispute in a marriage, family members will always come to make things work again, with reunion being their main objectives. This is why many women would be force to stay in abusive affairs. 

Loyalty

Most women understand their weaknesses and attach feelings to them. They feel if they left their men they won’t be accepted by other men. Others also feel sorry for their husbands, especially if they have illness like cancer. They feel if they left the man he would suffer in the hands of another woman. This is why if he had cancer, she’d stick by him and make him feel better.

Love 

Some women stay in violent relationship just because they love their husbands and that they are not ready to love any other person. She loves him, and he is quite often loving and lovable when he’s not being abusive. This is why she will stick by him no matter how much she gets abused

Identity. 

Many women feel that they need a man in order to be complete. They feel they need to be identified as someone’s wife

Shame, Embarrassment and Humiliation

Women for a very long time are known to be secretive.  One reason women stay in abusive relationships is fearing the shame and humiliation should anybody find out. Maybe the family warned the woman to begin with that this guy wasn't healthy for her, but she wouldn't listen and now she can't let them be right. Some women just want people to know they are happy in their marriages and relationships and therefore they wouldn’t want anybody to know about the fights in her relationship.

 

Low Self-Esteem

After years of being criticized by her abuser, she believes that it must be her fault, she must deserve it, she’ll never find anyone better, a little love is better than no love at all. Women tend to rate the abusers higher than them. They feel they cannot do anything without the ‘abusers.’ In this manner, they would, sometimes, feel they are safe in terms of decision making and proper family operation.