"Why Do They Stay?"
Ezra Klein points us to this post on the psychology of spousal abuse which is, indeed, “one of the best blog posts I’ve ever read,” and focuses on the seemingly simple question of why abused women don’t just leave, and peels off the profound intricacies of these situations.
(I might have some things to say about it later, but I felt that bringing this great post to the attention of TAS readers deserved its own post.)
Okfine.
I have to agree with PEG twice in one day.
I’ll add in my own story to hilzoy’s.
Abuse is like boiling a frog, so insidious, so gradual, you never even feel it until your skin starts peeling off.
But the issue wasn’t hitting for him, it was control.
How can you leave your abuser when he just wants what is best for you both, best for your relationship, when he just wants you to be the person you CAN be, to live up to your enormous potential?
When he adores you so much that you both have to get twitternames so that he can know what you are doing every single second of every single day that you are apart?
And I saw what hilzoy describes, the Hyde effect.
It drove him into a frenzy that I never got jealous. His Hyde behavior just involved yelling, but in retrospect I think he might have hit me if if i was in a more vulnerable position, if we were actually married or had a child.
And I never left him.
He broke up with me.
He was sorry afterwards, and wanted a do-over, but I had this shocking feeling of being able to breathe again.
So I escaped.
— matoko_chan · Apr 12, 04:22 PM · #
Ok, he would have hit me.
Honesty is hard.
:(
— matoko_chan · Apr 12, 06:15 PM · #
Women tend to fall in love with violent men because they tend to be sexier than nice guys.
Leaving any relationship is hard. So, the best advice society can give young women is to not get into a sexual relationship with a jerk just because he’s hot in the first place. There are plenty of nice guys out there if you’ll stop and notice them.
— Steve Sailer · Apr 14, 12:20 AM · #
Matoko: You have my sincere sympathy.
Steve: I think things are just a leeettle more complicated than that. Although your pitch to the womankind is noted. ;)
— PEG · Apr 14, 08:08 AM · #