It is also possible that their love inundates their mind and blinds them to the extent that they are unable to see what is right for them. A woman who cannot stand up for herself needs therapy, help and support from the people around her. It can take a long time for her to even recognize abuse, let alone defend herself and walk away from that relationship. A controlling spouse, a jealous boyfriend or a stalker ex – why women stay in abusive relationships has to do with living in denial and not being able to acknowledge the reality of their situation.
Why Do Women Stay With Abusive Men?
Sometimes we know the truth and yet we can’t do what we should do. Love, often, happens to be the greatest culprit. Whoever said that love was one of the simplest of emotions, was so utterly wrong. Falling in love too fast changes the wiring of the most logical of brains and makes them behave irrationally and weakly. If I tell you the story of my friend, you will know what I mean. This friend of mine, whom I’ve known since my college days, met her current husband in college itself. It was a paint-the-town-red kind of passionate romance. So their getting married seemed a logical conclusion. Both being Bengalis and both being from the same caste, there was also no parental opposition. It was quite a fairy-tale wedding, replete with an array of my favorite non-vegetarian dishes!
We lost touch after they moved abroad
Within a year she was blessed with a child and soon after that her husband got himself a job in Canada and so they left. We kept in touch through emails, because international phone calls were still quite expensive in those days.
Then, time did what it does best – it got us both bogged down with raising a family and earning a living. The communication went down and slowly became abysmally less.
This was till a year ago when I got an email from her that said that she had come back to India. And wonder of wonders – she was in Delhi. We set up a rendezvous at the All American Diner at the Habitat Centre, a place we loved going to.
Something told me it would be a long conversation. I could not have been truer with my prediction. What started in the morning ended late evening and what she said to me during that span of time shocked me. That’s when I began questioning everything I knew about her relationship. Why women stay in abusive relationships is beyond me.
Women in abusive relationships – Her secret
They were in their 16th year of marriage and through all these years she had suffered at the hands of this man. Not one incident of physical abuse, but immense mental torture and emotional abuse. Right from blaming her for anything that ever went wrong in the household to forbidding her to wear certain kinds of clothes in public. From making her cut-off contacts with all her men friends to not letting her talk to her parents on weekends simply because she had to cook for all his friends who were coming over. She went on telling me – incident after incident – and I silently listened to her. Her face was expressionless and calm, while incessant tears rolled down mine. When she finished, I sat there silently until the waiter came with the bill. The walk outside should have been refreshing, but I felt stifled. My friend answered the questions that were running through my mind.
Why would she stay on with the abusive husband?
“You want to know why such a free-spirited and independent thinking person like me is still in this marriage?” I nodded. “You want to know why I didn’t tell you about this much earlier?” I nodded again. Her answers had me dumbfounded. She said that she hadn’t opened up to anyone. I had been the first. And this was not because she was scared, but because she wanted to protect her husband. It wasn’t because she was scared of leaving him and starting a new life, but because she still loved him. “Love? You have got to be insane!” I screamed at her. Why do women stay with abusive men? Because they have shrouded themselves in the garb of what seems to be love. She responded with one of the calmest of smiles and a nod in the affirmative. I had tried to make her see reason and tried to tell her that this was not good for her, but she just refused to listen. How can one reach out and help when the victim is going around wearing rose-tinted glasses even after so much abuse? Fixing a toxic relationship was not the answer. She needed to walk out of this immediately. We are still very much in touch, but we never talk about her marriage anymore. It’s a topic left for time to unfold. I can only hope that someday she will realize. Till then, all that I can say is that love can indeed make you irrational.
