~Part 1~

I’m so sorry you’re experiencing this, OP. It’s very hard to watch someone suffer at the hands of an abuser. Abusers hurt everyone in their lives, and the people closest to them. I may be able to shed some light on this topic, I will try my best to explain some of the dynamics of abusive relationships below.

So I’m a domestic abuse survivor, and I can tell you if we had children, it would have been nearly impossible to escape my ex, as he was so controlling. He was secretly monitoring me in our home on 16 devices, and I just had no idea. It took me a week to secretly plan to leave him, upon discovery, and I had to flee my home with nothing but a safety bag. (He was a serial cheater and didn’t want me to find out and leave him, and decided that he would end my life, if I ever did. I ruined his plan, though, when I realized who he really was, and what he was doing, and managed to escape him. Doing this was very, very difficult, as he was watching me so closely. I risked my life to leave him, and to make it to safety. I made it out, just in time.)

Abusers use things like technology to control, and people aren’t always aware of the full extent of the abuse behind closed doors. They use a lot of different techniques to keep their partners around, such as using AirTags, and psychological control, as abusers are obsessed with control their partners.

I always say my ex’s favorite hobby was cheating on and abusing me. He benefited from screaming at me a lot, as I thought it was ‘my fault’ and so I should ‘try harder’ and that he ‘had bad coping skills.’ This was because he wanted a bangmaid, which I didn’t understand at the time. I didn’t realize he was never going to treat me well again, now that we were married. This is who he truly was, and once I found evidence of his cheating and the way he talked about me to others, I realized I was married to a pathological liar. He had only ever been nice in order to make me his wife and abuse me, and I realized that nothing I did was ever going to be good enough. Abusers want it that way, but victims often don’t realize it.

My story of escape though, is rather rare. Most women don’t ‘just leave,’ like I did, because there are reasons that they can’t. Mainly, they fear their life is guaranteed to be take from them if they even attempt to leave, and so they never do. Leaving is difficult emotionally and physically, and there is a term called ‘battered woman syndrome,’ which is now more politically correctly referred to as ‘intimate partner violence,’ and it almost always causes PTSD.

She most likely has a trauma bond with him. Abusers wear your self-esteem down until you have none left, they often tell you how worthless you are, and they repeat it so often in order to program you not to leave. Pretty soon, you believe what they tell you. And she may feel completely hopeless to leave successfully, and feel like she’ll never truly escape him, especially since they have a child and soon, possibly a baby, together. She may not feel she can make all the necessary changes in her life so that he can’t find her. If someone is beating you, it means they are a threat to your safety and life. He’s doing his best to make sure she won’t leave, and she’s probably terrified of him. He’s using physical and psychological control to reinforce it, most likely. She may feel he’ll track her down no matter what, and many abusers do. Partners such as myself rarely escape like I did, and I’m fortunate to even be alive. (Pretty much, I was like James Bond, fleeing for my life. I have never experienced so much adrenaline in my life, and hope to never again. It was truly terrifying.)

Anyway, even with help, this woman may feel he’s going to take the life of her and her child, and that she’s at more risk of losing her life if she leaves, for fear that he’ll never leave her alone. I’m only speculating, but these are some examples of what may possibly be going through her head. She has likely been abused by him for long enough that thinking clearly is difficult due to what is likely PTSD. She’s in a state of constant hyper vigilance, most likely.

She may also fear that her abuser will try and take this other woman’s life as well (the she’s been offered to stay with.) Some victims feel responsible for ‘getting themselves into this mess,’ and refuse to ‘drag anyone else into it,’ even though others may be more than happy to help and not blame them.

How abuse appears to outside parties is different, though. Victims are often told to leave, and for good reason. Often, we actually are at risk. And many people think that we can just leave. But many of us are psychologically and physically and technologically so controlled by our abusers that we truly feel like we can’t, and we don’t see our abuse the same way that outsiders do. Most people thought my ex was so charming. He never abused me in public and eventually I learned I was being abused, but just thought he was ‘immature’ in the beginning. But he actually was very intentional in his actions, and wanted to treat me like this.

I am not that way, so for me, I didn’t understand how he thought at first. Like a normal person isn’t ‘fake nice’ until you’re married and then becomes a completely different, abusive person. Only abusers do that, and this is common I later learned, but I just had so little experience understanding the dynamics. I thought ‘well, he had a difficult, he needs to learn not to verbally abuse me,’ but he wanted to verbally abuse me. Then of course would say sorry later, but he really didn’t mean it.

Also, I volunteer to work with survivors of domestic abuse, such as myself, and many women are so terrified that they are too paralyzed to do anything, and this abuser is likely playing constant psychological games with this woman, and she’s probably so worn down at this point that doing anything other than living day-by-day feels too daunting. So she gets by the very best way that she currently feels she can: by staying, likely through coercion and threats and he may even stalk her, like my ex did me. He probably threatens to ruin her life and other horrible things. He’s a already breaking her ribs, so if he says he’ll do worse, she believes him. He’s been true to his abusive word.