Why Women Stay In Abusive Relationships Essay

Domestic violence perpetrators that become involved in the criminal justice system are overwhelmingly male offenders between the ages of 18 and 35 years old. Data from studies conducted in the United States have revealed that a significant amount of male abusers have had some type of previous contact with the criminal justice system. It should be noted that this contact includes positive and negative encounters. Since abusers come from all walks of life, they can be respected law-abiding members of their communities or unpopular individuals with a criminal history. There are no set standards or explicit personality traits that wholly identify abusers. However, researchers have identified certain indicators and risk factors that may predispose one to become an abuser (U.S. Department of Justice, 2009).

According to Alanna Vaglonos, (“30 Shocking Domestic Violence Statistics That Remind Us it’s an Epidemic”), “Domestic violence is the third leading cause of homelessness among families”. This statistic demonstrates that staying in an abusive relationship may be a person’s only option due to economic dependency. A victim may be afraid to leave if they have no other place to go and their only way to avoid homelessness is to stay with their abuser. Each abusive relationship is different and the factors causing the person to stay is different for each

Many people are perplexed by the unwillingness of victims in abusive relationships to abandon the tumultuous environment, even when given an opportunity to escape. Outside of personal, subjective experience friends and family can learn why and how this helpless mentality develops and most importantly, ways in which they can help.

The entrapment model suggests that staying in an abusive relationship is a way to justify "past effort and time devoted to the relationship" (Strube, 1988). The investment model challenges that the more time, effort, money, emotion, etc. invested into a relationship the longer one devotes to staying in the relationship even when intimate partner violence is frequent. The hypotheses were that women more subjectively invested in baseline data would be especially likely to engage in relationship sacrifices following Intimate Partner Violence. These findings were not supported by the results. The second hypotheses were that women in the long term dating relationship were more likely to engage in relationship sacrifices following Intimate Partner Violence. This proved to be accurate. Researchers suggest that the results may not be generalized to the general population because of the lack of ethnicity and the small severity of abuse occurring.

Domestic Violence: Victims Should Leave For many years, domestic violence has been a subject of many discussions, concerns and fears. As we all have probably heard or seen, most of the victims of domestic violence are women. It’s not unusual to question- Why don’t they just leave? Why silently endure the pains inflicted by the perpetrator when the door is open and there is so much help out there.

Domestic violence or intimate partner violence is one of the act of dehumanization that despises me. “Domestic violence is the willful intimidation, physical assault, battery, sexual assault, and/or other abusive behavior as part of a systematic pattern of power and control perpetrated by one intimate partner against another” (NCADV, n.d). Statistics from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) shows that every nine seconds a woman is assaulted or beaten in the US. Also on the average 20 people are physically assaulted by intimate partner, this equates to 10 million people per year. This has increased in the past few years.

One aspect is the role that society plays in acclimatizing women to be a victim. Engel (1990 p. 44) explains that women have been taught by society to become martyrs. As children, boys are encouraged to stick up for themselves and girls are urged to accept what is and to be passive, conditioning women to have a victim mindset (Engel, 1990, p. 44). This psychological theory is also supported by Hyde and Else – Quest (2013 p. 298), identifying it the learned helplessness theory. In this theory, when individuals are exposed to disagreeable situations with no hope of avoidance, they learn to accept the circumstance and become helpless (Hyde & Else, 2013, p. 298). When a woman stays in an abusive relationship, she feels powerless, losing hopefulness and accepts the despair (Engel, 1990, p. 143). This can be one of the reasons why women stay in abusive

Every choice that an abused woman considers to do with regards in seeking help or ending the relationship involves a variety of risks. Time and time again, the common question arises, “why doesn’t she just leave?” Most often abused women, at great and potentially fatal risk, do leave their abusive relationships. However, there is a multitude of barriers, including increasing abuse and the potential for re-victimization by the system that does not respond accordingly, and most often force many women to return to their abusers. A woman may become vulnerable as she goes through the stages of leaving her abuser. There are many reasons why a woman becomes vulnerable; guilt, denial, and fear may be among a few reasons, though no matter what the

Some women take the position that “hope springs eternal” for people in love and they shouldn’t be held accountable for the abusive spousal choices they make. That is precisely the kind of romantic notion that men and women cling to and use to seduce them into staying in relationships in which there is abundant evidence that they should leave. Often friends and parents try to intervene but when “hope springs eternal” obvious dangers are overlooked, denied and women tell themselves something like, “If I just love him enough, he’ll change.” Battered men usually say exactly the same things. “What is needed in situations of verbal and physical abuse and danger is not romantic fantasy but a critical and self-protective assessment of the facts followed by a decision based on those facts”(Walker 17).

Though some women are able to escape abusive relationships their lives may be prone to certain conditions due to their struggles with depression, generalized anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress (Tolman & Rosen, 2001). These conditions include living

I agree women stay in abusive relationships for a variety of reasons. Women dealing with abuse as you stated handle the situation differently. Some women are strong enough to walk away from an abusive relationship without any concern of backlash from their abuser and this is usually true for women who endured the abuse for a short period of time. Whereas, women who have lived a long term life of abuse are the ones who struggle most with leaving their abuser. They are the ones that burden themselves with the shame, fear, and the worry that without their abuser, they will not make it. The more women are empowered the slimmer chances of then accepting the life of the

Introduction As previously stated, every year violence between intimate partners affects many Americans, according to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, “20 people per minute are victims of physical violence by and intimate partner in the U.S” (Centers for Disease Control, 2014, p.1). A lot of people may wonder why someone would stay in an abusive relationship knowing that they are getting harmed in many ways since even though it is hard to fight against these relations, at the end the effort is worth. By doing this research, it is shown how quitting an abusive relationship is not as simple as it looks like as there are many factors that influence this problem. Getting away from an abusive relationship is harder than it seems since it implies so many things to consider but it is important to start somewhere in order

A woman’s reasons for staying are more complex than simply her strength of character. In many cases it is dangerous for a woman to leave her abuser. If the abuser has all of the economic and social status, leaving can cause additional problems for the woman such as losing financial support. The fear that over took my life was the fear of losing custody of my two children. One of the obstacles that stood in my way were the fact that I had no support from family,

Everyone has witnessed an abusive relationship, even if it was only for a moment. As people notice the bruises on the abused girl and the fear in her eyes, questions well up. The main question that confuses many people is, “why doesn't she just leave?” The reasoning sounds simple, but the complex factors are mountains for the girl suffering. For instance, fear is powerful enough to drive them, their past almost defines them, and their roots decide their path.

Every year in the United States, One in four women are victims of the domestic violence; however, this is only based on what has been reported to the department of justice (Stahly 2008). While men are also victims of domestic violence, women are more often the victims. Moreover, 90% of domestic violence is male initiated. In severe cases domestic violence ends with victims being murdered. More specifically, domestic violence resulted in 2,340 deaths in the United States in 2007, and 70% of those killed were females (CDC 2012). Many people think that victims have the option of leaving and many people blame victims for putting up with the abuse; what many people don 't know is, victims of domestic violence have many reasons preventing them from leaving their abusers, these reasons include, isolation, having children bounding them with the abuser and lack of financial support. "It 's never pretty when you leave an abusive and controlling relationship. The warden always protests when a prison gets shut down," says Dr. Steve Maraboli (qtd from web). Whether a victim stays or leaves their abuser, the outcomes of both situations are not always as easy as many people predict. In some situations, the outcomes of leaving may be very dangerous for both the victim and her children.