Why women choose to stay in abusive marriages

 

Adverse Childhood experiences

So there has been an uproar in social media why women choose to stay in abusive relationships to a point of dying due to the abuse. People have blamed different things in society. However, I choose to give it a psychological perspective based on a child's brain development. Where it all begins in childhood. 

A child's brain start developing before birth while they're are in their mother's womb. Significant wiring happens during this time which determines the rest of their brain development in childhood. After birth, the most significant years for brain development is 0-7 years. The first 7 years are the most critical in a child's development. Their brain is conditioned based on the experiences they observe from their caregivers and the environment they grow in. 

Now let's focus on a child that grows in an environment where abuse is the order of the day. Let us focus on a female child in this case. We know there are women who are physically abused when they are pregnant. The beating continues after birth. A girl who grows up seeing her mother being physically abused and the mother does nothing to end the abuse, the child might be conditioned that violence is acceptable in love relationships. This is because the parents are the first agents of socialization in this case and they are the first example of an intimate relationship to the child. 

Later in life, the girl who grew up observing her mother being abused and never left the marriage or look for a solution to end the abuse, is highly prone to attract an abuser. This is because it is what her brain is conditioned to and it feels familiar. She will attract an abuser and tolerate the beatings just like what she saw her mother doing. When she tries to leave the marriage, she might go back again and continue receiving more and more beatings. This is how Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) affects the brain of a child later in  adulthood. Even when she leaves completely, if she does not heal from the ACEs, she will attract another abuser in her consequent relationships. 

So it comes down to what we expose our children to! Are pregnant women being beaten and persevering? Is your daughter observing you being beaten and being thrown out of the house. Are you sleeping in the cold with your daughter due to abuse and then go back to the same man? Do you hurl insults at each other when children are observing? You're conditioning your daughters brain to normalize abuse! Children need to be exposed to a loving, caring and nurturing environment. In their later life, they will be able to know abuse and run away from it. 

So before we judge a woman who is finding it hard to keep off abuse, before we blame the society or religion, let's also know that their childhood experiences are a major driver of her life. Let's do conscious parenting and expose our children to healthy relationships

#joyinsights