capntom asked this question on 4/3/2000:

Evening Xperts,I was just wondering, it appears to me that there seems to be a large segment of the people who ask us questions are women with abusive boyfriends or husbands. My question is why do women insist in staying in abusive enviroments. My job during the day is working in a Salvation Army Shelter as the director of security with A daily flow of 1100 clients, it boggles my mind when i watch these women get tormented by their mates, Yet they stay and take it

STB56 gave this response on 4/4/2000:

Hello, First of all I would like to respond to the misconception that women are the only targetes for domestic violence. There are many men who are also victims of domestic violence, who do not get recognized. Not that this problem does not exist, but it is not socially acceptable. So the main question as I see it is why victims of domestic violence insist on staying in abusive relationships.

There are many complex answers to your question as it is one that the law enforcement community has struggled with for years. One of the answers seems to be that violence begotts violence, being that possible a young person growing up in an abusive environment doesn't know anything else. If a young person was getting beat or saw domestic violence at an early age, you know the old saying, that women gravitate to men like their fathers and men to women like their mothers.

Another reason is that it takes such a big committment to leave, you are not just leaving the one who hit you, you are basically leaving your whole life. Especially if they have spent a long time together. Suppose a women gets hit by her husband, packs up everything and decides to leave. Once she gets out of the driveway she realizes that she has no where to go. So she goes to her parents house, who are from the old school and decide it is just a little quarel and she should not be too upset about it. He calls and her parents give her the phone and again ask her just to work things out, he then tells her how much of a fool he was and that it will never happen again. She falls into the trap and it is a vicious cycle.

Another example as hard as this is to sound, some people are crazy and like abuse, but it is socially unacceptable so they try to pretend that they do not like it. They are called Masochism. Most commonly refered to as sado-masocists. However Sadism get pleasure from giving pain. I suspect that this is from early trama at a young age however I am not sure. So it could be that they actually get a high or rush or some sort of sexual pleasure out of it.

So in closing is it possible that sometimes we feel sorry for these people and think they want help, when in some instances they really don't? I think so because I used to know a girl like this, she used to feel that a boy really cared about her when he was jealous and went into a jealous rampage. So maybe instead of just trying to treat one party maybe we need to treat both especially if they have a habbit of getting into abusive relationships. I hope that this provides some insite into some problems with the cycle of domestic violence. Please rate my answer, thank you.

The average rating for this answer is 5.

capntom rated this answer a 5.