7 Reasons We Struggle To Leave the Ones Who Harm Us Most

“Why don’t you leave?”, “How can you love someone who treats you this way?”, “You need to stick up for yourself”, “I wouldn’t allow anyone to treat me this way”.

Anyone who has experienced any form of domestic abuse will probably have heard these sentences in one form or another. They are usually made by well-intended outsiders who have been fortunate enough and never experienced abuse. Or at least they don’t know that they have.

But the truth is, “leaving” is extremely difficult. And that’s all financial or family commitments taken aside. The mental effort of actually leaving an abusive relationship is a lot harder than walking away from a normal relationship that didn’t work out.

For me, walking away from guys I had dated for a few weeks, months or years was easy. Leaving my husband of 10 years with 2 kids was easy. Giving up on the 1 1/2 year relationship with a narcissist was the hardest thing I ever had to do.

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1. We want to believe in the good

Abusive relationships rarely start out abusive. They usually start with an intensive love-bombing phase.

During that time, the abuser seems to be the most charming, kind, compassionate and loving person we have ever met. Our soulmate. When they start to show problematic behaviour, we can’t accept that this is their true self.

It is much more comforting to think we got involved with a good person who struggles sometimes but is innately good than to admit that we fell in love with someone who never had good intentions.

But the statistics are devastating: Abusers rarely change.

It’s not because they can’t, it’s because they have a very different mindset: People are possessions that need to be controlled.

Quite often, when threatening to leave, abusers will turn around and promise heaven and earth. They might promise to go to therapy and vow to never treat us poorly again. And for a while, they might even be able to keep this up, showing us the wonderful person we saw at the start. And so we stay eternally optimistic, that if we can only change enough, or give our partner enough support, we can live the perfect life we had at the start again.

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2. We are trapped in the trauma bond

There is a psychological reason why we can’t seem to break free from someone who harms us, it’s called the trauma bond. The concept isn’t very different to drug addiction. We find ourselves drawn to the abusive person even if we know that we are putting our mental and sometimes physical health at risk.

As I said earlier, abusers also have a “good side”. During the course of an abusive relationship, they will continue to show this side in an irregular manner. In psychology, this is known as intermitted reinforcement, a phenomenon that has been replicated in experiments with rats in 1938.

The researchers found that rewarding someone (the rats with food, abusive victims with love and affection) causes a higher level of addiction or bonding if done in an irregular fashion.

In other words, we are more likely to become addicted / crave for people that show us inconsistent patterns of loving and harmful behaviour as we are to someone who is consistently nice.

What a demotivating thought.

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3. We are emotionally dependent

Believe me, you can be the most independent, fierce, confident and emotionally stable individual, if you are unlucky enough to fall for someone who is abusive, you will gradually lose it all.

This is because abusers use a variety of tactics to control their partners and make them emotionally dependent.

For example, it is common for abusive partners to isolate their victims by directly prohibiting them from seeing friends or family or manipulating them. They might spread false rumours to make victims think the abuser is the only person they can trust.

This is often paired with gaslighting and constant put-downs which ruins a victims self-esteem and makes them buy into the toxic mantra abusers repeat like a broken record: “You are nothing without me. No one would have you. I am the only one who puts up with all your flaws.”

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4. We don’t recognise that it’s abuse

Emotional abuse can be very difficult to spot if you aren’t looking for it. The stigma that there needs to be physical violence involved to call it “abuse” is still pervasive.

And even if there is physical violence involved, it’s often a very difficult step for victims to make to give problematic behaviour such an all-compassing term as “abusive relationship”.

It is much easier to buy the abusers point of view, where they were “just drunk” or “had a difficult childhood” and we are the ones that need to learn to live with it.

I didn’t recognise the abuse until I spoke to therapists. But when I look back now at all the messages, I can see abusive behaviour multiple times per day.

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5. We blame ourselves

I remember a fight I had with my ex. I was upset that he hadn’t called as agreed. (As I would much later find out he was probably seeing his mistress). But at that moment in time, I was just upset how little he cared about me. He got angry. I was trying to justify my reasoning. That’s how most of our fights went.

It didn’t help that this one was carried out over chat. It got messy.

Eventually, he called, but I was already whaling. He was shouting. Why was I always so sceptical? Why didn’t I just trust him? Why did I always make such a big deal out of tiny misunderstanding? Then he started crying, “I can’t do this anymore”, he said, “I really can’t handle this Kara. Maybe I am too sensitive, but I just can’t. You make me so fucking angry and so upset. Just before you called my son asked me a simple question, and I shouted at him because you made me so angry”. By this point, he was also whaling and added between sobs “my poor son. he is so innocent and sweet and I screamed at him. I never wanted to shout at my son. I can’t do this anymore Kara.”

When I told my therapist about this incident later, she instantly recognised it as a classic manipulation tactic to regain control and shift blame. But at the time I didn’t. I felt terrible that I was causing such a sensitive and kind man such pain and that my behaviour had even affected a 3-year old.

I vowed to get therapy for my anger-management issues and to never question my ex’s intentions and loyalty again.

Victims of abuse and rape are often the first people to point the finger at themselves. They buy into the abusers view that they are responsible for their behaviour or have caused it. Therefore it’s on them to also stick it out or fix it.

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6. No one believes us

I used to believe in the saying “What happens in a relationship stays in a relationship”. In other words, if you are having trouble or are fighting a lot you should focus on trying to resolve it with your partner rather than confide in outsiders.

What I didn’t know is that this does not apply to abusive relationships.

Because in abusive relationships there is no healthy way to resolve from within. Arguments are like a war, where the only goal is for the abuser to regain or retain power.

The problem is if you are stuck in an abusive relationship but treat it like a healthy relationship, there is a high chance the outside world will have no clue what is going on behind closed doors. And contrary to the pictures we see in the media, abusers are often charming and kind in front of other people.

Lundy Bancroft who worked on a program for domestic abusers states:

Among my clients I have had: numerous doctors, including two surgeons; many successful businesspeople, including owners and directors of large companies; about a dozen college professors; several lawyers; a prominent — and very mellow-sounding — radio personality; clergypeople; and two well-known professional athletes. One of my violent clients had spent every Thanksgiving for the past ten years volunteering at his local soup kitchen. Another was a publicly visible staff member of a major international human rights organization. The cruelty and destructiveness that these men were capable of would have stunned their communities had they known. Bancroft, Lundy. Why Does He Do That? (pp. 69–70).

You just cannot spot a domestic abuser by their appearance or behaviour outside the home. You cannot spot them by their job title. And you can never know what is going on behind closed doors.

But people want to believe otherwise. People want to believe they are “good at reading humans” and “would know what someone they have known for years is capable of doing”.

I have heard many stories of victims even losing the support of their own families when they finally spoke out about their experiences.

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7. It’s dangerous to leave

41% (37 of 91) of women killed by a male partner/former partner in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2018 had separated or taken steps to separate from them. Eleven of these 37 women were killed within the first month of separation and 24 were killed within the first year (Femicide Census, 2020).

Yes, statistically a woman is more likely to get killed by an abusive partner if she leaves the relationship than if she stays. Because in that moment, where a victim truly steps away from the relationship, the abuser loses all the power and control.

In my relationship, it was my ex who moved on, but the moment I found out everything he had done, I grew extremely fearful that he would come after me. My therapist advised me against reporting him to the police. “He is a narcissist and a sociopath”, he said, “you have to be very aware of the danger that stems from people like him. Think about your children as well. Do you want to be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life?”

I didn’t, but not many victims have that choice. And just because someone has never been physically violent doesn’t mean there isn’t a real danger they won’t commit more serious offences in the future.

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Final words

If you are a victim and struggle to tear yourself away from the situation: Please don’t beat yourself up over it. It is an incredibly difficult situation to be in.

If you are a victim and find yourself “longing” for your abusive ex, or even contemplating going back: Stay strong, but also know that it’s very normal and not your fault.

If you are a non-victim and have made it until this paragraph: Thank you for taking the time to try to understand. It means a lot to victims.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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