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Abusive relationships happen all the time; you may even be friends with someone who is in an abusive relationship, but are unaware of it. What goes on behind closed doors is not always pretty or welcome.

Millions of people over the years have been in abusive relationships. Some have left and others have, for various reasons, stayed and "put up with it". Usually anyone who is watching from the outside and knows all the facts wonders why on earth they do carry on with it. But we are all grown adults, with intelligence, personality, needs and choice. We are all able to look at our situations, see what is going on and how we feel about it, and work out what we can or wish to do. In a way when someone else interferes or tries to take over or control what you do they are abusing you too. To assume they know better than you and to talk down to you in this way is a form of emotional or mental abuse.

This is why a lot of abuse victims do not tell their family or friends, or they only tell them what they need to and hide the rest. They are upset and worried about the abuse itself and cannot cope with judgmental interfering comments on top of what is happening. And who can blame them?

We assume that victims of abuse are women, but sometimes they are men or children or someone has targeted someone because they are elderly and vulnerable. Men often suffer from abuse even more than women because they are more ashamed of what is happening to them. Men who are going through a relationship where their spouse is violent towards them are very confused and feel somehow unmanly that it is happening. They cannot bring themselves to hit her back, so she gets away with it. As well as hitting him physically she is damaging his manly pride.

There are times when the suffering an abuse victim feels is better than the unknown. They are the judge of that and nobody else should interfere. If a woman is living with an abusive partner who shouts at her and criticises her every day, she is the only person fit to work out if she can leave or if it is best to leave. It is ridiculous to look at the situation in pure black and white terms and say "she must leave". She may have no job, no money and nowhere to go. She may have to go somewhere which to her is even worse than where she is now.

If you know someone who is in an abusive relationship and who is suffering and somehow needs or wants to stay that way, then you must care for them by supporting them, not by criticising their actions. You criticise

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