Should I stay or should I go?

“She must have known”

“There must have been red flags”

“Why did she get involved with her abuser in the first place?”

The reasons why and circumstances in which victims end up in abusive relationships are as varied as victims themselves. It’s impossible to explain simply how or why it happens to us without listening to our stories.

Lend us some time and a listening ear and we may be able to dispel the notion that we knew our abuser’s true character and happily chose them anyway. Put simply, we didn’t know who they really were until it was too late, and if our abuser is your son, brother, friend or colleague, my guess is that you probably didn’t know, either.

Many of us understand there are complex socio-economic (financial, familial and cultural ties etc.) and psychological factors (cognitive dissonance, survival mode, trauma bonding etc), at play that can keep a victim trapped in cycle of abuse for years or even decades once it's begun. But what about those early ‘red flags’ which were ignored or dismissed? Surely, we had a sense something was ‘off’ about our abuser? Why did we even start the relationship and stay long enough to become trapped in that cycle?

A gut feeling, a woman’s intuition, a deep and ancient wisdom: call it what you will. For most of us, it was indeed there, whispering its warnings from day one. Firstly, dismiss is probably a better word than ignore, as most of us do pick up on the signs our body is sending us, scrutinise them and dismiss them as just a minor character flaw (which we all have) and nothing too worrisome.  

Put simply, most of us did know something was wrong with our abuser fairly early on in our relationship. We just had no idea what it was. And the thing that it would turn out to be (them being a pathological abuser) was the very last thing we could ever have imagined.  

For anyone who hasn’t, I entreat you to read Gisèle Pelicot’s extraordinary memoir ‘A Hymn to life’. It's a no-details spared account of her decades-long, ostensibly happy marriage to a man who not only began drugging and sexually abusing her when they were in their late sixties, but invited dozens and dozens of other men to rape her too, in her own home, on her own bed, filming them for his sick gratification whilst they did so. That wasn’t the extent of his criminal repertoire, either.

How could she not have known there was anything wrong? News flash: she did, and she sought help for it. Gisèle was perfectly aware that she was suffering from both neurological (the drugs he spiked her food with made her black out) and gynaecological symptoms and she sought treatment from both neurologists and gynaecologists for those. And guess what? Those doctors also didn’t jump to the immediate conclusion that her husband – who attended those appointments with her feigning deep concern for her welfare – was drugging and raping her and encouraging other men to rape her too. Rather, the professionals reinforced Gisèle’s own views that it was her ageing female body failing her and just something she would have to learn to live with. And so she did, with grace and dignity and total trust in her husband and the medical professionals who treated her.

Few victims have suffered anything near as horrific as Gisèle Pelicot. But my point here is that whilst most of us knew something was off, the thought of the person we were falling for being a violent abuser was the farthest thing from our minds.

In my own case, my abuser told me he believed he had undiagnosed ADHD on our very first date. It was probably true. I excused away so many of his poor behaviours early on due to that – many of which, whilst desperately annoying, didn’t seem at all sinister.

Many of us reach out to family and friends in those early days saying things like ‘I really like him BUT…’ and list off the niggling concerns we have. You’d be surprised how much positive reinforcement we often get from those closest to us. Often, our abusers, whilst love-bombing us, are also grooming our family and friends, making them believe they are head over heels for us – what mother/sister/friend wouldn’t be delighted to think we’ve finally found someone. I know I heard a lot of: “but he’s so nice, maybe give him another chance,’ or ‘no one is perfect. You need to accept him as he is.’

There are many reasons we dismiss red flags, but one of the most common is that we didn’t realise they were anything more than ordinary human foibles. I often hear victims say things like: if my abuser had punched me in the face on our first date or even expressed to me his desire to do so, I would have got up, walked out and never seen him again. My abuser didn’t do either of those things either – no abuser does. By the time my abuser committed his first act of abuse, we’d been together for months, were living together, had met each other’s families and I was pregnant with his child. Only then, did he feel safe enough to let the mask slip. I simply didn’t know who he really was until it was too late to escape the consequences.

Let’s try to treat victims with empathy and compassion. We all make choices and give people we care about the benefit of the doubt every day of our lives, and most of the time that's the right thing to do. One never knows when the consequences of their seemingly innocuous choices might come back to haunt them.