Battered women have a hard time deciding to stay or leave abusive relationships because there may be many factors involved. Many battered women have to decide if they want to leave the violent relationship. This is a hard decision-making process among battered women. The decision to stay or leave does not happen in a single point of time but it is a process.
Many factors affect the decision to stay or leave the relationship.
Many variables such as sociodemographic factors, severe pathology, low self-esteem, or childcare can explain the reasons why they stay in the violent relationship. Many researchers have recently been studying the perceptual and cognitive variables. They examined the role of attributions and emotional reactions to partner violence in the relationships between how severe and frequent it was. The study had sixty-eight participants from battered women's shelters. Most of the women either were married or cohabited with their partners for at least a year.