Acknowledgement or Acceptance: Understanding the Abused Part I

“My daddy be lyin’. I wasn’t protecting him.  My son was at home, they came to my door with guns and stuff trying to pull him out the house.  My son wasn’t about to watch his father die.  I was afraid of what would happen.  Plus my daddy all old, what if his people retaliated and my daddy got hurt.  You can’t make nobody leave their relationship if they ain’t ready to go, and I ain’t see no point having all that drama in front of my son, and we were still gonna be together.”

-My Cousin

I had to include this snippet of a conversation I had previously with my cousin (who is now married to someone else...thank GOD!) because I had a conversation today about a similar issue.  Because she is a mother, I couldn’t bring myself to include her name, but I could not have written this without her words.  Since the above paragraph contains a number of the most common excuses of abused women, this was the perfect opening for this piece, but for a loved one, more painful words could never be spoken.

Whenever I hear about people in abusive relationships of any type, my heart aches.  The psychology of abuse is a sensitive matter, especially given that the abused are not always aware of the abuse.  It is easier to speak of the abuser because their actions are born of the same foundation, but the abused are more complex and so is their reasoning.  Many people believe that women stay in abusive relationships because they fear being alone; others figure getting out is so easy these women must enjoy being beaten or abused.  Neither of these is true and below you will find information about the mindset of the abused that is likely to make you doubt everything you thought you knew about domestic violence.

Who are the abused?

To start, anyone who is arrogant enough to believe that it can’t happen to them is fooling themselves.  It is reported that more than one in three American women will engage in a physically abusive relationship at some point in her life, and more than 3 million are physically assaulted by their mate each year.  You're never too cute or too smart to be abused, and don't kid yourself...everyone can do better, but you have to reach a place where you realize that you deserve better.  Women like Halle Berry, Tyra Banks, and millions of others have suffered abuse so not only could it happen to you, it probably has, and if it hasn’t, there’s a strong chance it might. 

We must remember that most often, statistics are based on physical abuse only. Making it that much more important to point out that the majority of abuse cases go unreported, largely because the abuse goes unrecognized.  Many do not consider verbal, emotional, psychological, or reproductive abuse, actual abuse.

Society has the problem of considering the abused woman to be weak and stupid, but she is neither.  She is not just called a victim because she is being abused, but because she is also being victimized by the cycle of abuse; a cycle not easily broken.  An abused woman has been one of three people: an abused child, a child who has witnessed long-term abuse, or both.  Being abused is not a sign of weakness; it’s a symptom of disease.

Instead of focusing on the individual we often worry about who is being abused, what ‘type’ of person, when the truth is there is no ‘type’ of person.  Abuse doesn’t discriminate.  The abused woman was once a little girl who was never taught any better, so she doesn’t know any better.  She is the woman who failed to trust her instincts or listen to her gut.  She is your cousin, your sister, a best friend, college roommate, grad school professor, the judge on the cover of the newspaper, your favorite author, your mom…and she needs your help.  So instead of criticizing or belittling her, why don’t we try to understand why she stays so that next time we know a woman who is being abused, we can tell her what to do?

In attempting to build awareness, this piece became increasingly lengthy, and as such has been cut into three (3) parts: Acknowledgement or Acceptance, Why Women Stay, and Finding Freedom.  Please, share this information with anyone that you know needs this information.