Feeling Trapped

From the outside of an abusive relationship, people often wonder why the person who is being abused doesn’t “just leave.” As many of our participants shared with us, though, things can look very different from the outside than they do on the inside of the relationship. For example, take a look at the following participants’ comments, and you’ll see how survivors often feel trapped and stuck in their relationships for a variety of complicated reasons:

• “I felt like I couldn’t stay but at the same time it just seemed like there was nothing, in thinking about what I would do when I left, if I got out of there, it just felt like there was nothing after it.”
  
  
• “And it’s not a case of ‘you’re stupid’.  You’re stuck.”
  
  
• “It’s like living in quicksand.”
  
  
• “As more and more women are garnering the courage to leave these relationships, people expect them to leave and then just “OK!  You left”.  Well, there’s so much more to it.  You know, there’s the financial piece, there’s you know the constant conversation if you were in an abusing situation, the amount of healing that has to go on.”
  
  

It is well-known among professionals who work with clients experiencing domestic violence that leaving an abusive relationship often increases the risk of more severe violence. Therefore, this greater risk adds to the complexity of the situation.

One of our main goals through the See the Triumph campaign is to work toward ending the stigma surrounding intimate partner violence,and  we believe that it’s important to reduce this stigma in part by stopping these sort of harmful judgments against survivors.