Why do women stay?
By: Michelle Lawrence
Tags: Domestic Violence, Relationships, Domestic Abuse, Pickme, Love

It has been two years since the last time he hit me. I have struggled that entire time to be honest with myself. I asked myself the usual questions, “how do I keep finding men like this?”, “what did I do to deserve this?”. I blamed a broken picker, or a certain magnetism for lowly men.

Yet the bigger, more important question lingered. How do I prevent it from happening again? I believe by examining my role in cultivating this relationship I have stumbled on the truth, and a hard truth at that.

It started 4 years ago. He was an attractive man, with dark skin and light green eyes. He wasnt very interesting, nor was he my usual type, but women seemed to flock to him. He had a certain charm about him. His accent was vaguely southern, his speech was peppered with subtle compliments, and he went out of his way to assist everyone in every way he could.

When he took an interest in me I did not take him seriously. I had seen him show up to work with various women, never the same woman twice, and many of them were very attractive. I slept with him immediately, due to my lack of belief that this would be anything but sex, and wrote him off.

He continued to pursue me. He was at my house every day. He asked me to go everywhere with him, even to places that didnt make much sense in hindsight. Why was he driving me to random apartments to sit in the parking lot?

I continued to date other men but didnt invest in them. I was delighted that a man was paying so much attention to me, I reveled in it when comparing him to the other men who didnt return my calls. But things got weird quickly.

Within a few weeks his car was gone. I know now that it was a rental car, but at the time he claimed it was impounded due to driving under the influence. I brushed his drug habits aside, it was common for the men I met to do some kind of recreational drugs. At least he liked me.

He began asking to use my car. At first, just to run some errands for both of us. A grocery trip there, a carwash here. All perfectly normal. But it began to take longer and longer and he invited me(in my own car) less.

I was annoyed, but not annoyed enough to dump him. When I began to make a fuss and place boundaries on the use of my car, he responded by moving into my house.

Without warning, without permission. He simply showed up one day with all of his belongings and did not leave. I was impressed by this. Yes, really. He had given me something that usually took me months of begging and reassurance to receive. Something I’d had to force my ex boyfriend into with ultimatums and immature responses.

Then came the family talk. At this point I had known this man for a total of 6 weeks. I had lived with him for less than 2 weeks, and I knew nothing about him. Not that it mattered. I was not interested in him, I was interested in a fantasy man that I had created in my own head. I wanted a family, a marriage, a man who loved me. And here he supposedly was, laying it out on a platter.

I was pregnant quickly. He was very excited for the pregnancy, which I took as another positive sign that our whirlwind romance meant something. But while his words grew more positive, his actions grew worse.

He was gone all the time. He was out sometimes until 4 in the morning, he stopped sleeping with me, he started having rage fits and temper tantrums.

Anything could set him off. Sometimes he was angry because I was rushing him, or I brought the wrong pasta back from the store, or someone called me and I wasnt giving him my attention. He called me names and degraded me, then when it was over he would shower me in love and affection. He’d do everything I wanted to do, cook me food, clean the house, compliment me.

I didnt run. Instead I googled relentlessly. Mood disorders, anger management, drug addiction. I could fix him! He was perfect, if he could just fix that tiny annoying habit of threatening to hurt me.

I miscarried the first pregnancy. He was very supportive during this time, in fact he seemed to revert back into the person I originally fell in love with(or clung to, really).

I thought he had been fixed, I was convinced that he’d had a change of heart and realized he truly did love me. Until I got pregnant again less than a month later.

This time there was no going back. By the time I was 5 months pregnant we’d moved into our own shared place and hed abandoned all pretense of being a decent human being.

Looking back it’s clear to see where each escalation happened. When I became pregnant he began to use vicious words against me(on one occasion suggesting I get an abortion before I ever consider leaving with his child). When we moved into an apartment together he began to threaten me as well. He used strong body language, blocking doorways and hallways, standing over me when I was sitting, puffing his chest to indicate he was ready for a fight.

I knew it was wrong. I began to resent him, but still I continued to google worthlessly. “Anger cycles", “bipolar disorder", “BPD". I ignored the many DV awareness columns I found. He wasnt hitting me, he was just threatening me. He had an anger problem!

I became afraid of his moods and addicted to the love bombing that came after these episodes. Most of the time he ignored me completely, but when he became irritable, I was suddenly the only thing he paid attention to.

Everything made him angry when he was irritable. He was looking for a reason to fight, he’d walk around the house with palpable rage, emanating from him like a force field. I lived in fear of poking at it, but it was unavoidable. If I didnt say anything sassy or smart to him, he’d manufacture it by sending me to the store and then being disappointed with whatever I brought back.

I developed a fear of the grocery store, or any activity that required me to leave the house. It was all a setup, but the release was often better than the buildup.

Once he’d gotten it out(it could be days or weeks to get past irritable) and blown up, with increasing rage and hostility each time, he was as docile as a puppy. He was the sweetest man alive. He would cook, clean, wine and dine, shower me with love and affection, elaborate apologies, and the time I’d been begging to spend with him.

I’m sure that sounds absurd. What does it matter if he spent time with me after he’d already treated me so badly? But herein lies the problem, I had no self esteem and I was already in too deep to leave. I couldn’t be a single mother, I was too poor and no one would love me. No reality would stand in my way, there was no behavior that I couldn’t make an excuse for.

After all, he didnt hit me! he didnt cheat! He had a job! Those are the only things I’d ever been warned against. So maybe this is what it was like to be in love, he just had some problems. I would google them again, I was sure there was an answer.

But of course he did cheat, what else would he have been doing outside the house until the early hours of the morning? I caught him several times before I gave birth, it was always to my detriment. There would be no apologies, of course, instead there would be backlash and anger. I remember, with the tightest cringe of embarrassment in my stomach, asking him if he loved me more than her and convincing myself that that was mattered.

After I gave birth(my ex put on a good happy show for the family, which pleased me) I fell into whatever the exact opposite of postpartum depression is. I really, really loved my baby. I was glowing, I was doting, I was giving and receiving a natural love that lit me up from the inside.

It was a far distance from the sulking and bitter pregnant girlfriend I had been weeks before. I no longer cared where he was, in fact I hoped he’d stay away longer. I started taking public transportation to see family and friends, I was saving money and decided to go back to school.

If you know anything about narcissists it should come as no surprise that this incensed my ex. He saw it, too, and he was determined to crush me back into an ant.

He began insulting me outside of his “irritable phase", playing strange games with my emotions. For example, pretending he had kidnapped the baby and run away on my birthday. He quit his job to stay home and torment me(I was on leave), and insisted on being in whatever room I was in.

One morning, he had been bullying me for several hours, sitting at a playstation idly discussing my failures as a mother(I’d been one for approximately 3 weeks)when I snapped. I told him, with gusto, to get out.

He responded swiftly, before the words were fully out of my mouth his hands were around my neck. My son was there, right on my chest, blissfully unaware that his mother was dying underneath him.

I felt my windpipe close. When you see this happen on movies it’s so violent, so physical, the victim reacts as though their brain is functioning the whole time. In real life it took me a moment to gain awareness that I was going to die without any action on my part, I was peacefully allowing him to choke me, as if I had frozen in time and the only thing I was aware of was the lack of oxygen.

I was still holding my coffee, which I threw at the wall. The sound startled him and I ran, for my phone, baby still in arms. He walked away, presumably satisfied with the fear he’d caused.

What I did next is endlessly gut wrenching. If you take any advice from this(if anyone ever finds this), do not ever do this. I dragged the phone back to the bed and announced I was calling the police.

He was fast, again, running across the room, across the bed, and “stomping” onto my face with his full body weight. I felt the crack in my jaw.

He took my baby and left. See here’s the thing about abusive men, I had spent months(years?)escaping reality, hiding from who he was, and he had spent the same amount of time studying me carefully. He knew I would never risk losing my only real love, he recognized that my son was now his most valuable weapon.

I’m ashamed to say that I did not leave that day. I didn’t leave for another 6 months. I dont need to describe each violent attack for you to get the idea, things were exactly as they’d always been, except now when be became “irritable” he was as likely to murder me as he was to yell at me.

I got my restraining order in October of 2018, my rebirth. I had survived. I had stored that little bit of joy and confidence I found in motherhood in a little jar, kept it closer to me where he couldn’t see it, and when the moment was right I escaped with all the detailed and strategic planning that he had unleashed on me.

(I do not recommend this to women who don’t have to. I could have died or been permanently injured at any point while I sorted out school, living arrangements, and savings. Leave immediately if you can.)

But I don’t write this as another proud survivor. I am proud that I escaped, of course, but I write this to elaborate on what happened here. Do you see a common theme?

My ex has a new girlfriend now. Naturally, I was still forced to share custody. That is an unfortunate outcome that I have had to live with, and the re-traumatizing effects of the system have been the hardest to bear.

They met in July, they were living together by August. Shes a beautiful woman, accomplished, smart, and appears to own her own home. (Seriously, get it girl!) Her Facebook posts all say “love you, Mike".

From this perspective I am finally aware, I can see very clearly what’s happened here to both of us and our own role in this situation. Why is an accomplished woman moving in with a drug dealer with no car? Why did I let him stay with me after he called me names? Why didn’t I tell on him, in the hospital, while they took x-rays of my fractured jaw?

And so we’re back to the first question. How do I prevent this from happening again? The answer is simple. With self respect and self esteem.

By lowering my standards I allowed the devil into my life. By refusing to see him as the failure he is I let him drag me down until I was a failure too. By being needy, clingy, and desperate for love as I had been for years I created an environment that was perfect for an abusive man to exist in.

I will not(and have not) chase love again. I will thrive in all that I love about me. My son, my great new hobbies, my new friends, my career(!), my peace. I’ve accepted the possibility of dying “alone". I don’t need to be picked by a man, I already picked me, and its great to finally be in love.