Ms. Lloyd,

Your lack of empathy and understanding about this issue is disturbing. Since you or a loved one has never been in a domestic violence situation I realize it’s difficult for you to walk in somebody else’s shoes, but in your article there is a huge disconnect from reality that is only emphasized by your condescending tone. I'm currently interning at a domestic violence shelter that provides safety and support for women and their children from abusers. I myself am not a survivor of domestic violence and I admit it is frustrating when women go back because you are scared for them. However, I have come to understand how communities as a whole, from family members to friends to law enforcement to the entire judicial and social service system can work against a woman in her efforts to escape, not to mention how much control batterers exert over their lives. Since you don't understand why they return, you cannot understand the strength that these women possess. Ms. Lloyd, you have lost my respect due to your ignorance and insensitivity on this issue. I would challenge you to stop blogging about something you don't know much about and devote time to working with women who are in domestic violence situations, but honestly I think your sense of superiority would do them more harm then good.

-Kaitlin B.

Why? Anonymous, please tell me why you felt responsible. I am trying to understand. Was he like a child to you?

I don't think we will ever find the one single thing that causes victims to stay with abusers or abusers to abuse.

To provide an example of an abuser that was not really very interested in his wife, I will recount this:

A couple I knew in which the wife worked and the husband rarely worked. He was financially dependent upon her. There, for the most part, his interest ended. He was exactly the sort of guy we think about when we want to conjure some sort of male bogey man, the sort we warn our daughters to beware of. He drank, he raped, he screwed around, he had a regular mistress, and he once took his 4 year old daughter to a whore house while his wife was waiting at the hospital to be picked up with their new baby.

Occasionally, he battered his wife. She was not stupid. She was quite intelligent. He, however, wasn't neither smart nor pretty. He'd been in so many bar fights that one eye was askew from the other and his nose was on one side of his face. Mean, ugly guy.

"Why do you stay with him?" I had to ask. Her answer was (paraphrasing), "I have never been slim. In high school, I was the pudgy girl with the nice singing voice. Now I am a fat woman. Who would have me but him?"

Talk about low self-esteem!

He really only hit her to control her. She was his meal ticket. He also informed her that he was going to keep screwing around because "that is what men do."

I worked in child protection for 30+ years and worked with many families with domestic violence issues and frankly I was one of those "I'd never let a man hit me" and "Why doesn't she just leave" folks.

Then the man I was involved with for 15 years, a viet vet with problems started spirally out of control after 9/11. His heavy drinking became out of control alcoholism. His temper became erratic. At times, he was emotionally abusive and hateful.

Things kept getting worse and worse. There was a shove, something thrown in my face, a slap. I started Al-Anon.

By this time, he was living with me because he was effectively homeless. My friends all said "Get his sorry ass out! And get a restraining order!". I felt responsible for him and his situation. I felt helpless. I felt hopeless.

And I also knew that if I threw him out, restraining order or not, that he very well might kill me. From my work, I knew that most women who were killed by an intimate partner died AFTER they took decisive action to leave the relationship. Restraining orders only work if someone decides to follow them If a man is out to kill, he doesn't give a damn about a piece of paper. This guy was a sharpshooter in the military and was still an excellent shot.

My sponsor said "When you are ready, you will do what you need to do." Twelve hours later, after he woke me up to harange me about not every having served in combat, I left and had the police remove him from my home.

I felt I was dying slowly with him and I took decisive action only when I realized that I would prefer to have him kill me quickly than to continue to die slowly with him in my life.

So, I understand. . . .

Addiction model is probably a good one.

I know from watching the crazy-jealous type of abuse close up for many years that "love" or the perception of love, has everything to do with it. Ironically, at the same time I knew two couples in this type of relationship, one where the woman was the abuser. The abuser is PASSIONATELY INTERESTED in everything about the victim every moment of the day. For someone with a history of feeling unloved and unwanted, this is almost irresistible. And abusers are drawn like magnets to the ones who have that weakness.

I don't pretend to understand all that goes into the psychology of women who stay with their abusers, but I am familiar enough with the situation (I'm close friends with a woman who's currently in an abusive relationship and in a relationship myself with a woman who was previously in an abusive relationship). And it's clear to me that this theory is a vast oversimplification of the problem.

For one thing, the men in these relationships are not just abusers; they're complex humans who are also at times charming, warm, loving, or funny. Particularly at the beginning of these relationships their abusive tendencies are less than obvious; it's a gradual process, often many years long, in which the relationship deteriorates in small increments. They assert their control gradually, they demean these women, at first in small ways, so that self-confidence and self-esteem erode away almost unconsciously. By the time the full-blown abusive relationship has become the norm, the ability of the women to stand up for themselves is almost non-existent... and it's so unconscious that they'll angrily deny that they've become subservient, even while they're bowing to absurd demands.

It's easy to look at from the outside and feel incredulous that these women put up with these men; but it's important to remember that without having experienced those years of subtle personality degradation it's impossible to understand the psychological state that abuse victims are experiencing.