Why don’t we leave abusers?
I mean, if they’re that awful, we’d leave, right? I mean, it can’t be THAT bad if we choose to stay............

Part 1:
A THREAD
#domesticabuse
#coercivecontrol
#domesticviolence

It doesn’t start out abusive. That’s the first thing.
If they punched us on the first date, there wouldn’t be a second.

But they don’t.

They are lovely and interested. Interested in US.

And they stay lovely until you fall in love with them.

You don’t get to see their *flip* side.
Not at the beginning.

You see them as wonderful and caring and attentive and loving and supportive and.......

One. Day. It. Changes.

So you believe it’s your fault. I mean, they were lovely and attentive and caring and kind up to this point and then they flip out and then they are SO sorry. They are SO upset by their outburst and they promise not to do it again and you want to believe it because you love them.

And for a while it’s wonderful again and you are so relieved.

You put *that incident* away as an anomaly.

And this is the crucial point. You see the incident as an anomaly.
You don’t realise that the anomaly is them being wonderful.

And so life carries on again, back to where it was and you feel loved and you love right back.

Until it happens again.

And this time they have another excuse. They can’t claim it’ll never happen again- because it has.
So they say something else to get you back.
- That they’ll get help
- That they need your help to get better
Or they will just blame you

They will turn it around and blame you.
- If you hadn’t done this...
- You made them do this to you
- Why do you deliberately push their buttons until they lose it with you?

You no longer see them as the problem. You believe the problem is you.

So we don’t leave the abuser because we don’t see them as the abuser. We think that WE are the problem and we feel so lucky that they still want to be with us.

That they haven’t left, knowing how awful we are.

And they tell us this frequently.