Why Women Choose To Stay In Abusive Relationships

According to the Dr. Potter, a lot of women chose to stay in the abusive relationship due to several reasons. First, the woman believed that the love still remains in the relationship. For some women in the study, they just did not recognize the behavior for their intimate partner tends to be violent. They see the abusive action as an incident. They believed that their intimate abuser will change by the time or in the future. Second, some women were too afraid to leave their abusive relationship because they thought they may get into serious injury or revenge after leaving the abuser. Third, some women financially and emotionally depend on their intimate partner. They do not have the job to support their life and most of the time they do not know where to go after ending

the relationship. Finally, the traditional social expectation of nuclear family makes them stay in the abusive relationship because those women do not want their children live without their father. They believed that it is more beneficial for their kids to grow up in a nuclear family rather than the single household.

The women sometimes have to wait until they realize their life or the children’s lives is in danger in order to be notified that it is crucial to leave the relationship for safety, otherwise, they may keep staying and putting themselves in the violence for certain time.

While these women make the decision to get out the unhealthy relationship, they will usually seek help from their family, friends, religion, and law enforcement. However, not all the resource for the victim could have positive feedback. In the study, Dr. Potter mentioned that majority of the women were seeking the police, prosecutorial, and judicial intervention for help but most of them do not have the positive feedback. Some women did not call help from police because they are fear of further abusive after their partner release from the law enforcements. Some police are just not helpful for the victim because the police did not be sensitive enough to notice the sign of abuse, most of the police only look for the symptoms or evidence of abuse. For example, the police ignore the victim’s need because they have darker skin and the bruise will not show on the skin, so the police did not take

it serious while the woman called help. In addition, the police did not be well trained to deal with the abuse case for confidential or forward protection. For instance, the case reported that the police as the victim “Is everything fine?” while the abuser stands beside her. If the police can ask the question in person to the victims, they may feel more safe to show their need rather than talk it out loud in front of their intimate partner. Moreover, the stereotype of Strong Black Women of Angry Black Women makes them harder to seek help from the law enforcements. For illustration, the case in the book mentioned that the police put her down and just not believed what she has been experienced in her abusive relationship which really hurt her feeling and let her not to talk about it again. Furthermore, the victim also felt helpless from the prosecutorial and judicial intervention due to the long process. They demonstrated in the book that sometimes the women not only felt guilt put their intimate partners into jail because they are a blood relative to their children, but also the women are frustrated with the long process of judicial intervention. They have to go to court and show the evidence in order to complete the judgment, it is very time-consuming and frustration for most of the case and some result just not came out with the victim’s expectation.
As result, for most of the case in the study, they demonstrated that is is very difficult to go through the processes for getting out the abusive relationship. They have to put a lot of effort to gain their life back and sometimes it is not easy to seek help from other resources.