While I agree that once a woman has decided to leave, the fear of escalating violence will keep her there longer than she wants to stay, in my personal experience with domestic violence women go through a process of realization before they are ready to leave. Keep in mind that violence did not start on day one of the relationship. The batterer is smart enough to wait until the woman is hooked on him. Women believe their husband when he promises to stop because they started out seeing the best side of him. It takes time to realize that Mr. Hyde is a package deal if you want to love Dr. Jekyll. People don't leave alcoholics immediately for the same reason-when you love someone you have hope. Eventually they prove to you over and over again that your hope is misplaced.

I wrote an article about this years ago: http://www.labyris.com/jerk.html

Also, keep in mind that there are different types of batterers and I think that we need a lot more research to tell them apart. Then maybe we can figure out the difference between the men who carry out their threats of murder and the men who are just trying to instill fear. If women could tell an idle threat from a genuine one, they'd leave much sooner.

I understand why women stay with abusive men (or with any combination of gender abuser and abused).

But what I don't understand is why we don't put more effort into getting people to recognize the danger signs for abuse early in, or before getting into, a relationship. People don't generally transform into an abuser without some clues earlier on. Why don't we put effort into making people aware of warning signs in potential partners? Why not figure out how someone can recognize if their buddy has the sort traits that might lead them to domestic violence?

because sometimes people don't believe that men can be battered. Battering is not only a women's issue, although being killed by a battering spouse is something that happens more often to women.

I know a family -- a man and woman -- who are headed down a bad road. She hits. So far, she has not caused lasting physical damage, but this is happening more and more frequently as this couple's marriage turns out not to be the romantic idyll they had hoped. I was unfortunate enough to hear the story from both sides. One time, she kept hitting and hitting him with her fists and he got out a gun and pointed at her and told her he would use it if she ever hit him again. The upshot is that both threatened to leave and then they both decided that they cannot live without each other. He refuses to go to counseling with her.

Both the drama queen and the drama king in this instance come from abusive families. His family used physical violence and hers was one where sexual abuse by her brother was tolerated.

Here is what I suspect was not studied in the backgrounds of these women. I'll bet no one ever asked if hitting was allowed in their families. By that I mean, any hitting at all, because to allow it is to excuse it. No one needs to hit anyone.

Families where any sort of abuse or physical violence is allowed are families where children do not learn the boundaries that are so essential to respectful adult relationships. People learn to be both victims and abusers in such families.

There are so many families like that. I bet everyone reading this knows of one. I bet some people come from one. I know I do.

I've never been hit by a man, but there have been a few who have been scary as heck to leave. Their behavior became erratic, going from abject apology to verbal aggression. Not abuse, just aggression, sometimes even a bit of door slamming. In all cases, I've had to do my best to simply avoid them, even if it has meant giving up activities I enjoyed. It just wasn't worth the headache.

If you know that low-grade weird behavior escalates when you challenge someone, then it's darned hard to make that challenge. This is true even if the weird is just weird. Imagine if the weird is violent. If it's a choice between an occasional black eye and being stabbed to death, it's a lot safer and even saner to choose the black eye.

We've known for ages that a sense of impending abandonment can turn mildly threatening men dangerous and seriously threatening men into killers. We've also known that far more women are killed by men they know than by male strangers, and the overwhelming majority of these men were intimate partners. Has it really taken this long to put two and two together?

Of course women keep going back. Better battered than dead.

the book seems like a very well thought out, balanced attempt to discuss this issue, sure. but what irritates me to no end is the way we ask over and over again: why do women stay with abusive husbands or lovers? instead of: why do men sometimes abuse their wives or lovers?

I think the broader question is why do some people need to control other people, even to the point of using violence?

Domestic violence is about control. That's why it escalates to terribly when the victim leaves and the abuser is no longer in control.

Why do some people need to feel in control like that, to the point where they'd rather kill the object of their abuse and go to prison rather than just letting that person go and moving on?

To me, it seems so obvious that not all abusers are alike, but everybody wants to make them all the same. Some abusers have antisocial personality disorder and are nothing more or less than psychopaths. Some surely have intense fear of abandonment and poor emotional communication skills, so resort to violence and control to assure themselves they will never be left. Others are probably codependents who stray over into violence occasionally, often in mutually abusive relationships. And yes, you should be able to tell who is who.

And why does everybody treat violence like it's a man = abuser / woman = victim kind of thing? Why is the incidence of domestic violence just as high in gay relationships as it is in straight relationships? What does that tell us about how much of this violence is gender-based and how much of it is more a part of the human condition?

People try to make the issue too simple and usually what happens is they substitute propaganda for constructive dialogue. There are therapeutic treatment programs out there that stop men from abusing, but nobody wants to hear about them, because it would force them to humanize people they're used to demonizing and dehumanizing. Sure there probably are some abusers who can't be helped and need to be locked up. I would be the large majority of abusers do not fall into this category and could be reached with the right court-ordered therapy.