by N. D. Guerre

Created on: June 11, 2008

If i am asked which is healthier for a woman, to stay with an abusive partner or to leave, i would, of course, encourage her to leave. Who wouldn't? But when asked if it is EASIER to stay or to go, i am sure that leaving is much harder.

This type of relationship is, by design, hard to walk away from. The abuser's goal is to control his partner, to keep her right where she is, and so making it the harder choice to fight to be free. This is not to discount the difficult day to day existence of a woman who lives in fear and dread, but most will tell you that this can become a way of life, one that is horrible but that she desensitizes herself to, a little at a time. One that may at least be familiar, even if not preferred.

(My choice of a male pronoun for the abuser is based on percentages, not any ignorance to the fact of male abuse, but in recognition that the dynamics are different and i think we are speaking of the majority, in this case.)

Having worked with battered women for years, having researched and studied and observed violent relationships in many forms, I can say with absolute conviction that any woman contemplating an exit from her abusive situation is in far more danger, at least at a certain critical point, than she has likely experienced up until then. Now, there are certainly extreme cases, those involving guns and hospitalizations and where children live and suffer in the line of fire, but these are the more extreme, and the following still applies.

At the point that a man realizes that he has lost her, and this may come at the time of her departure, much later or even be felt as a loss of control over her while she physically remains with him, he finds he has nothing to lose. When he feels that she is truly gone that old trite but often used phrase comes to mind: "If i can't have her, no one will", and is often the thought that serves as the catalyst for more violence than she may ever have dreamed him capable of.

While still working in advocacy for a local women's shelter, I had as a client a woman who was quite typical of the fed up victim. She had done everything right and spent her time in shelter well. She left to a new home, with her children, a job that would support her and all seemed to point to a good future for her and her children.

About 4 weeks after she left us, when he had approached her several times and finally must have realized that this was not going to be like the times before, that she was not returning, and with a storm raging

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