Why Doesn't She Just Leave?

Why doesn't she just leave him?

Before my first marriage ended in shambles, I used to wonder why people, usually women stayed in controlling or abusive relationships. It seemed the most obvious thing in the world, especially if there were no children involved. Generally it was a woman married to a man who could not be satisfied by any of her efforts to be a good wife. On occasion, nothing she tried kept him from getting so mad that he felt a need to hit her, bite grab her ankle and swing her head and shoulders against the wall like a bat (true story). Obvious solution? Grab your stuff, get a lawyer and leave. Most common reasons given why women don't do that? He might kill her and she has no idea where to go.

The first one is an understandable fear, but, the media hype notwithstanding, the percentage of controlling spouses who actually murder their partners is small. I'm not down playing how horrific such a thing is or deny that it happens, but statistically it is not a good reason not to leave. More importantly, people in fear for their lives often do attempt to escape.

The second objection to just leaving, she doesn't know where else to go, may have been a factor fifty years ago, but most of the women I have known who were in such relationships were well educated, well-liked, successful in their careers, and well-traveled. In short, there was no way they couldn't find some place to go.

Both of these objections appeal to our sense of what makes sense and divert attention away from blaming the victim, certainly a worthy motive, but perhaps misguide. Everyone I know in such a circumstance has told that they were (or are) trying to do the right thing by staying.

Like I said, I used to subscribe to the above notions, until one day a friend said to me, “Why don't you just leave?”

This was in response to hearing about how unhappy my marriage was. For me there was the likelihood that I would lose my children because fathers do not do well in divorce when it comes to custody, but that was later and I knew she was going to leave me as long as I stayed where I was. Before that, though, this question from a concerned friend, perhaps the only one who even knew that things were so bad, caught me off guard. I realized a few things immediately and a few more things eventually. First, it occurred to me that to an outsider I was enduring controlling relationship in much the same way some of my female friends were. At the same time, aside from my kids, I had to wonder; why didn't I leave, or make preparations sooner for the virtual certainty that she would? I didn't think she'd kill me and I had options for other living arrangements. It took a long time to piece together the logic behind control, but when I did, it made so much sense and seemed almost brilliant in its simplicity. I could be wrong about this, but I thought I would share it and see if this makes sense to my billions of readers. 

Most of the people I know are by nature helpful and friendly. I have been blessed to be surrounded by people of many faiths or no faith at all who step up when there is a need for their help. I like to think that I am such a person. It dawned on my very slowly that when I help a person, there seems to be a need for some kind of feedback that says one of four things.

1. Thank-you, that was helpful.

2. Thank-you, that was not helpful.

3. Thank-you, please keep helping me.

4. I don't need or want your help.

To be clear, this is not about needing gratitude but about being informed about whether or not my help was useful, still needed, or not even wanted. The message needed to be that my help was finished or not. The same thing was true of my efforts to help cheer up my first wife when she was in a bad mood. The underlying instinct for the need for this feedback seems to come from a sense of obligation to help others because we are all connected by compassion and mutual needs. Put simply we have a duty to be of use to each other that is grounded in our capacity for empathy. The greater a person's capacity for empathy, the greater the sense of duty they will feel. Empathy consists of two elements; the first is the ability to feel vicariously the pains and joys of other people and the desire to alleviate pain and augment joy in other people.

But what if you are trying to be helpful to someone who is not connected to you by means of empathy but who sees you as a tool or a plaything. Such people are hard to recognize even at times for experienced psychologists. Such people are much more common than you might think. Worst of all, such people have a genius for using your kindest instincts against you. I realized that in my first marriage that virtually everything I ever did for my wife regardless of whether or not she said thank-you, was also met with some kind of comment or signal to indicate that it wasn't really enough. Or was too much. Or was the wrong things. On some level, I was still obligated, not only to keep trying, but to make up for the successive failures that piled up almost daily over the years. They on the other hand simply need to lead you along with a tiny carrot – possibility that one day you will be good enough, or occasionally pull out that stick to beat you with the guilt of not being good enough yet.

See the genius? The control of another is accomplished best by getting that other to keep trying to measure up. The person being controlled does almost all the work necessary to keep that control in place. That stick I mentioned for the bit of guilty beating is often just one rhetorical question, with a myriad of variations based on the change of one word.

“What kind of a _________ wouldn't help someone who really needs it?”

That blank can be filled with any word that encapsulates what you believe to be your best qualities; man, father, husband, wife, mother, sister, Christian, Jew, Catholic, neighbour, and so on and so on....” And so you double your efforts to prove you are a dutiful or loving or kind or dedicated etc. man, father, husband, wife, mother, sister, Christian, Jew, Catholic, neighbour, and so on and so on....

The controller says one sentence, but the controlled adjusts everything in his or her life to accommodate the controller because the controlled believes it to be his or her responsibility to do whatever it takes to make things right.

The controlled feels they are doing something virtuous. This is a lie. And it is a cherished lie. And it usually crumbles slowly until a wearied victim realizes not only that they resent having made this effort for someone who will never reciprocate in any way, but also that the love that motivated this prolonged effort had long since died. 

Then the controlled no longer feels they are doing something virtuous. They just feel foolish.

And nobody, male or female, wants to be a fool.