Why do battered women stay?

It’s hard to imagine that Christabelle Amondi was once in an abusive marriage. The 42-year-old systems analysis consultant and mother of three is bubbly and comes across as an extremely capable woman. Still, she spent 10 years in a physically and emotionally abusive marriage.

Why?

Indeed, this is a question that many women in abusive relationships find themselves facing: Why are you still there? Why can’t you just take your children and leave? Don’t you know that if you stay he will kill you? Yes, it seems like an easy decision to make – a no-brainer. And yet millions of women who have the ability and the brains to take care of themselves financially and emotionally continue to seemingly willingly offer themselves up to the abusive men who married them. And sometimes, even they can’t give you an answer because they very often can’t articulate it.

One of the earliest questions a woman in such a position will have to deal with is why she didn’t see the signs when she was dating. Like Christabelle explains, there are things that one discovers only once they get married, not when they are dating. “There was one incident when we were dating: I was learning how to drive and he made a snide comment: ‘No wonder women can’t do signs.’ We had an academic argument about it and that was that.”

HELPLESS FEELING

Once the marriage papers were signed in 2001, the emotional violence escalated. Abusers usually start by tearing down a woman’s self-esteem. By the time the physical violence starts, the woman has such little faith in her ability to take care of herself that she stays in the relationship, feeling helpless.

“I am an affectionate and feely person, so he would reiterate by being very cold, sometimes going to the extent of saying that I was ugly,” Christabelle says. “He would chase me out of the house or tell the watchmen to lock the gate on me. He controlled the colour of nail polish I wore, and lotion, what time I got home…”

“One day he came home with two resignation letters saying if I didn’t quit my job, he would quit his. I thought, ‘If he’s mistreating me while I’m working, what about when I quit?’ So I continued working. Then he restricted my access to our joint bank account, claiming that I was misusing money. Honestly it felt as if I was in a child-adult relationship. I felt disempowered, even in front of my children. He’d say that he would leave (all his wealth) to the kids – insinuating that because I am a woman I didn’t matter.”

The straw finally broke the camel’s back when her husband interfered with her job. “I was supposed to travel for work but my passport disappeared. I had to call in sick. My boss was furious. Eventually, I told my boss what had really happened – that my husband had taken my passport. My boss was shocked.”

Around 2007, six years after the wedding, Christabelle started thinking about leaving. But it still took her four more years to finally walk out. “It wasn’t a 360-degree shift – this process is a marathon, not a sprint,” she says. “There was still a fear of the unknown. Most of us also stay because we still hope things will change. I had always kept up an appearance even in church, where we were both heavily involved. Everyone used to say we were a perfect couple. I used to revel in those ‘church’ moments where we were playing a part, hoping it would continue after we got home. But it didn’t,” she says.

There was also her background, heavily influenced by her Catholic faith and the shadow of her parents’ exemplary marriage. Nothing in her life had prepared her for the possible failure of her marriage. “One is also conscious of the social stigma of a broken home. You want to make it work; you don’t want to fail.” She tried to work harder at being ‘a good wife’, but, “going out of my way to comply didn’t make him any less of an insecure narcissist,” says Christabelle.

When Christabelle decided to seek help, she was encouraged to get professional counselling. She refers to her first session as the beginning of the end. However, part of the reason why many women stay is because they go to family members for help who are, themselves, wary of being related to someone who ‘cannot make marriage work’ because it may reflect badly on them.

TIPPING POINT

Religious leaders may also discourage separation and/or divorce, as was Christabelle’s experience. “Even though my priest said I should get separated because of the physical abuse, he didn’t encourage divorce.”

By then, it was too late; Christabelle had gotten out of her mental fog and decided that she wanted a divorce. “There was a shift in my perception,” she says. She had also suffered enough. “I did not care anymore. He had killed my sense of shame.”

Indeed, very often women in abusive relationships need to reach a tipping point within themselves where they see that it is better to leave than to stay for the children, the financial security or the social reputation.

Looking back, Christabelle questions any abused woman’s decision to stay. Many women stay because of the children.

“We have this erroneous belief that a woman’s life revolves around motherhood and wifehood,” she says. “Don’t you have a vision for yourself? Aren’t you an individual?” Christabelle adds that if anything, protecting the children should be enough motivation to get out of the insanity. “I considered what effect the violence would have on my children, especially the boys; what if they grew up to follow that example?”

While Christabelle agrees that it’s not easy to just up and leave, primarily because of the emotional abuse that diminishes one’s self-esteem, she knows from experience that one has to be willing to get out of this cycle. “In the end, it didn’t matter what he did to me; my dreams, what I wanted for myself and my children, were bigger than him.”

Today both she and her children are thriving. “My children are doing very well; they are the best in their respective classes and sports. Our mutual friends keep in touch with me, not with my ex. I also have a good relationship with his parents because they respect me. And yes, I am confident I will find love and I will marry again. So to the woman stuck in this marriage I would say; you are not there for the kids. You are there because of fear.”

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All you need to know about battered woman syndrome
Battered woman syndrome is a psychological condition perhaps even more than it is a physical one. Mary Wahome who is both a psychologist and a sociologist, and lead researcher at Schizophrenia Foundation of Kenya, refers to it as learned helplessness. She explains, “Abuse just doesn’t happen. It takes place over a period of time during which a woman’s perception is distorted,” she says.

While the blows and kicks are what are visible, physical abuse usually starts out as emotional. The abuser will tear at a woman’s self-esteem and make her doubt herself. When he finally lays his hands her, he will blame her for it. After an abuse it is common to hear the abuser say things like, “You made me hit you” or “I wouldn’t have hit you if you hadn’t done this or that.”

She may not believe it the first time but when she hears it over and over, it begins sinking in. Eventually, she is unable to assign the blame to anyone else other than herself. She stops denying that she is being abused and she accepts that abuse is happening but she believes that she is to blame for it. And because she doesn’t know what to do to achieve her abuser’s standards, helplessness becomes a part of her existence.

Monica Mucheru, a psychologist and owner of Kivuli Counselling Services in Ngong reckons that this sense of helplessness is heightened by the rays of hope that show when the abuser shows contrition. “A lot of physical abuse is followed by a phase where the abuser appears sorry.

Sometimes an abuser will be genuinely sorry but most of the time, it is a conscious effort to keep a woman in this abused state,” she explains.

Because a woman has seen better times with him, she believes him when he apologises because she still hopes that they can go back.

American Psychologist Lenore walker who coined the phrase ‘battered woman syndrome’ classified it as a sub-category of post-traumatic stress disorder, a psychological disorder which usually happens after one goes through a frightening experience.

In her book The Battered Woman, she writes that the cycle of abuse usually distorts a woman’s body image. Her abuser gets into her head. The cycle of abuse makes her believe that he has so much more power than he actually has. If he threatens her or the people she loves with bodily harm, she believes that he has that much power and so she stays to avoid the imagined consequences.

She believes that she is damned if she stays and damned if she tries to leave, a state that Walker describes as psychological paralysis.

- JOAN THATIAH