Each situation is different, but perhaps like many women you are financially dependent on your partner. It might be that you cannot afford to rent a house, and it is true that in many countries there may not be sufficient hostels or refuges for fleeing women and their children. The bloglet Lean on Me. An Information Guide for Women Living with Domestic Abuse lists women’s refuges and support services in Ireland. These services are run by voluntary boards and are part funded by the health service.
Sadly, you may not have the support of your family, who may see separation or divorce as a scandal, and they may try to pressurise you to remain in the abusive relationship for the sake of ‘respectability’. It is also very difficult to leave friends and neighbours. There is every chance that you feel isolated and powerless, especially if the abuser’s family is powerful and well connected.
There are also many powerful emotional factors influencing the decision stay. Sometimes, it is because the full impact of abuse renders women incapable of leaving. They become exhausted, and are almost mentally paralysed from sheer terror, and from being in a state of continuous anxiety. Because of the controlling and sometimes physical nature of abuse, victims may also feel trapped. Others become emotionally dependent because they lack self-esteem, and, at another level, victims bond with perpetrators through the trauma, and this, too, leads to emotional dependence.
Even if you are not bonded with your abuser through trauma, you may harbour a whole plethora of emotions that ties you to the relationship. At the time of marriage, for example, you pledged loyalty to the abuser, and this lingers even in the presence of abuse. You may, like Linda, blind yourself to the reality, and make excuses for your tormentor. It is not easy to abandon the emotional investment in the relationship, and, like some victims, you may see the hidden, hurt child in the abuser, and a rescuing urge is magnified as you become aware of his vulnerability, depression, and loneliness. It seems as if you are abandoning a vulnerable child.
I have no doubt that you have experienced loneliness and rejection in your abusive relationship, and it is understandable that you may not wish to add to your sense of loneliness, and stall at the prospect of being abandoned and alone, of losing a relationship or the friendship of the abuser’s family, whom you may have liked. Staying may also indicate a denial or a reluctance on your part to admit that the relationship has failed, and a hope that it might be salvaged. It may be that an abusive environment was normal because of your childhood experience, and you have been unintentionally conditioned by a parent-victim to remain in the relationship.
Adapted from Jim O’Shea’s book Abuse. Domestic Violence, Workplace and School Bullying published by Cork University Press
THERAPISTS IN TIPPERARY
PSYCHOTHERAPISTS IN TIPPERARY
COUNSELLORS IN TIPPERARY
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
ABUSE
DEATH OF A CHILD
