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Why Do Women Stay?
from Battered Women: Living with the Enemy,
The question people ask most often is why do women stay in a home or relationship where they are abused. One friend's comments are typical: "I am sorry, but I really have no sympathy for a woman who stays with a man after repeated beating and abuse. We're not living in some part of the world where women's fathers sell them off to their husbands, and where they would have no way to survive on their own."
In the United States and Canada and many other countries, women have full opportunities to go to school and achieve independence. So, it is truly difficult to accept the fact that a large number of women are indeed being battered, and that they continue to stay with their batterer - even to the point that they may end up dead.
Women remain with abusers because of psychological, economic, and social reasons. Most importantly, they are afraid of the abuser. They are afraid for their lives. This fear rules their actions.
As my unsympathetic friend had put it, "If he hit me once, I'd be gone. I'd leave him in a minute." However, these women have several psychological characteristics that make it very difficult for them to conceive of leaving ... (T)hey often have low self-esteem. Sometimes through years of abuse, the husbands or partners have terrorized them into believing that the women cannot get along without them, and the women are afraid of what will happen to them if they leave. Many of the women accept the blame for their husbands' actions, and they believe that no one can really help them. Many women cannot imagine any alternative...
by Anna Kosof and Kaiser Permanente, excerpted from Facts for Women