Introduction
The question of why women stay in abusive relationships has been studied from many perspectives including the impact of the abuse on the women, the severity of the abuse on the decision to leave, and the types of coping used by women in abusive relationships. Some women leave or request help after an initial incident while others experience repeated beatings before involving social institutions or leaving the relationship. Some never leave, rarely revealing the incidents and don’t involve social institutions. One prominent researcher in the field found that the more severe the abuse, the more likely were the women to seek some form of intervention with divorce or separation being the most likely result as opposed to police intervention or going to an agency. Women who were hit more frequently were more likely to call police. Women who were hit less often but more severely were more likely to leave.

Rationalization and Denial
Battering is seen as a victimization of the woman and her responses often parallel those of victims of violent crimes. However, abused women are different from other victims of violent crimes in that the assailant is an intimate and previously trusted partner. The psychological repercussions include loss of a sense of trust and safety and intense feelings of helplessness. There is confusion as the woman attempts to absorb the impact of being hurt by someone who was thought to be caring and protective. High anxiety, passivity and/or apathy often characterize the woman’s response. The women who are more likely to remain in the relationship are believed to engage in a process of rationalization which denies the reality of the situation, the options available, the truth about the victimizer and the victimization, and the causes of the violence.

Profound Consequences
If the woman remains in the situation without taking any action, the abuse is likely to increase in frequency and severity. She may experience something similar to post traumatic stress syndrome. She begins to identify with the aggressor, becomes brainwashed, may cling to her husband or lover and behave in irrational ways. The long-term psychological effects include a profound sense of betrayal of trust, depression, suicidal ideation, guilt, shame and feelings of inferiority. The woman may be extremely afraid for her personal safety. The psychological consequences of battering are, therefore, profound. They cluster around physical symptoms and mixed anxiety/depressive symptoms.

Women who have been beaten and abused are also more likely to attempt suicide.  Women in an abusive relationship use self-blame which imposes meaning on the situation and gives them some semblance of perceived control. Battered women ask the question, “Why now?” They blame themselves for causing the husband to act violently in order to feel as if they have some control over what has happened. But as the violence continues, they begin to blame themselves more and more for not being able to modify it or for tolerating such behavior.

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Introduction

Intimate partner violence is all too common throughout the world and takes many forms. The most serious of these is homicide by an intimate partner. The fear of being killed, in fact, is a major dynamic in male-on-female violence and sometimes in motivating women to kill the perpetrator of abuse out of fear or desperation.

Facts on Domestic Homicide

In the U.S., estimates from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) are that more than three women a day are killed by their intimate partners. Women are killed by intimate partners more often than by another acquaintance of stranger. Most of these murders involved were preceded by physical and psychological abuse.

Outside the domestic realm, males are killed much more often than females; they are killed most often in fights with other men.

According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, 1,055 women and 287 men were murdered by their intimate partners in 2005. These figures are striking, because in the past, in the 1970s and earlier, the numbers of men and women so victimized were about even. In other words, there has been a significant decline in the numbers of men killed by their partners but not for women.

The number of men who were murdered by intimates dropped by 75% between 1976 and 2005 (BJS). The number of black females murdered in this time has declined but the number of white females murdered has dropped only by 6%. Statistics Canada (1998, 2005), similarly, reveals a sharp decline in the numbers of male domestic homicide victims but not of female victims of homicide.

The reason that women are resorting less to murder of their partners is most likely because many of these women were battered women who felt trapped in a dangerous situation. Today, the presence of violence prevention programming and the availability of shelters are paving the way to other options. The fact that domestic violence services apparently are saving the lives of more men than women is a positive, though unintended consequence of the women’s shelter movement (see van Wormer and Bartollas, 2007).

Situations of Domestic Murder Suicide

The National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) is a recently developed state-based surveillance system that includes data from 17 states as of 2007. Now for the first time, a national data base exists that reveals the numbers of homicides that end in suicide. The goal is to collect data on homicide for all 50 states. Results so far reveal that over 90% of the perpetrators of murder-suicide are male. About one third of these male perpetuated homicides end in suicide. (Data available at www.nvdrs.com.)

These results are consistent with those of the Violence Policy Center (VPC). The VPC bases their findings on an Internet search of media accounts of deaths by murder-suicide. VPC reports that a total of 591 murder-suicide deaths took place nationwide in the six months between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2005.

As reported by the Violence Policy Center (2005), the pattern of the murder-suicide is predictable: the pattern involves a male perpetrator, female victim, a decision by the woman to leave the man, and a gun. A handgun was used in 92% of the incidents. The offender was 6.3 years older on average than the victim. Texas had the highest number of cases; the typical Florida pattern involved an elderly male caregiver overwhelmed by his inability to care for an infirmed wife.

Some researchers argue that murder is the primary motive in such cases; others point to the double and multiple killings as a form of extended suicide (van Wormer and Bartollas, 2007). The urge to kill can be described as an urge toward total self-destruction including the destruction of the person who rejected him.

The pattern that emerges in these cases involves intimate partners in the 20 to 35-year-old range: The man is abusive, psychologically and/or physically. Obsessed with the woman to the extent that he feels he can’t live without her, he is fiercely jealous and determined to isolate her.

Characteristically, suicidal murderers have little regard for the lives of other people; they would be considered, in mental health jargon, to be antisocial. Yet they are so emotionally dependent on their wives or girlfriends that they would sooner be dead than to live without them. When the girlfriend/wife makes a move to leave, her partner is absolutely distraught in the belief that he can’t live without her.

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Ever since the 1970’s, divorce has become commonplace. In fact, the definition of family has changed dramatically. Less than fifty percent of families are intact families with the original mother and father. Families now include single heads of households—with women as the head of household, couples living together and step-families that become “blended” through divorce and re-marriage.

Included in the rising divorce rates are long-term marriages. Why, we ask, would someone get divorced after more than twenty years of marriage? Before we take a look at the top reasons for why some long-term marriages end in divorce, let’s first see why some long-term marriages succeed or just “go along to get along.” “Success” means that BOTH partners report being happy.

Good Reasons Why Some People Stay in Long-Term Marriages—What Makes These Good, Happy Marriages Work?

Good, happy marriages consist of people who:

1. Are both truly happy, optimistic people who know how to problem-solve.
2. Tended to get married when older and more settled in their careers/education and more mature.
3. Are financially comfortable.
4. Have college degrees or technical training.
5. Find ways to “renew” the marriage spark. Some couples do this by traveling, taking classes of some kind together, doing a large project together (building a dream house, etc.), volunteering together and basically finding a new shared interest etc.
6. Are happily involved with their grandchildren and/or adult children.
7. Have good health.
8. Don’t criticize and reject each other.
9. Respect and like each other.
10. Have more than “weathered or gotten through” major stresses such as affairs, financial or emotional problems. Instead, they triumph over these issues and grow.
11. Have a wildcard factor—a highly personalized reason for being happy and together!

Make a checklist of which ones are part of your marriage. Now let’s take a look at why some unhappy, long-term marriages continue.

Why Some Unhappy, Long-Term Marriages Continue

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