“Why wouldn’t she leave?” is the most popular reaction you get from people when they’ve just heard another story of wife battery. This is actually a better reaction to that of stories of women who left marriages, “she should have stayed and worked things out, build her home”.
Leaving an abusive
home is not as easy as some would think. A lot of factors contribute to a woman’s
hesitance or inability to leave her abuser.
One of the reasons
women are unable to leave abusive homes is upbringing- the way girls are raised
in our societies. Many parents raise us in such a way that it is imprinted in
us that the successes of our homes are our only mission in life. A failed
marriage therefore means failure for the woman. So instead of leaving,
she keeps giving up pieces of herself, losing herself, changing and tweaking,
anything to stop the abuse from repeating. But the abuse repeats again and
again, making her to make more changes...she gives up her friends, her family,
her voice, until she is a ghost of herself who says things like, I can't live
without him...if I don't provoke him, he won't beat me. OR if he doesn't love
me, he won't beat me.
Another reason is religion, especially the Christian religion. The "phrase till death do us part" said as vows are exchanged has claimed many lives prematurely. Divorce is frowned upon heavily by majority of Christian leaders and some of them encourage the victim to pray harder, cook better and sex more often to keep her husband happy and save her made in heaven marriage. The "hear from God" craze among Africans as regards picking a spouse doesn't help. How can a woman leave a man she has advertised as "God's will" for her? Would she tell the members of her world she isn't sure anymore it was God who spoke to her? Trivial as it sounds, this is a strong reason many stay on.
Fear of injury and death is another reason victims of Domestic Violence stay with their abusers. These abusers threaten to hurt and kill their victims if they think of leaving. They say things like. "I love you and I will kill you then kill myself if you think of leaving me". Sometimes, they say these things between punches or slaps on their victims. A lot of times, perpetrators of Domestic Violence have made good their threats by hunting for and harming their spouses who had somehow made it out of the door. This fact further serves as a deterrent for those thinking of leaving their abusers.
Coincidentally,
someone who just left her abuser walked in just as I was compiling the above
written reasons; I have just returned from “speaking out” for her. Like her,
most women do not leave their abusers early enough. Their major reason (not the
only) being finances. They do not want to leave without the children and they
do not want to be faced with the reality of taking care of the financial needs
of both the children and themselves. Mostly, they are scared they would be
unable to earn enough to give the children the life they are accustomed to or
keep them in their current schools. This is no small matter considering the fact
that women work twice as much as men but earn twice as less (at least
approximately so).
Methinks that women
do not leave for one major reason; they have been gradually reduced to become
less than who they were created to be. The subtle but frequent and seemingly
harmless critique he gives to her even before marrying her, the alienating her
from family and friends, the passive aggressive way of telling her that nothing
she does is ever good enough, and the reminders, however false, that she is
nothing without him. These add up to make it difficult, nearly impossible for her to make a life saving decision to leave her abuser. It takes a whole person to take a step as big as leaving a spouse. Her inability to take this gigantic step is because she isn't a whole person anymore, it is NOT because she is stupid.
