If a woman leaves the batterer, she loses.
The motion “If a woman leaves the batterer, she loses” suggests that the appropriate and right thing for a battering victim to do is to stay in the abusive relationship and try to cope with the situation rather than call it quits. However, this does not imply passively condoning ferocious violence and putting up with the never-ending bruisers, black eyes and scratches the battering partner inflicts on the woman. Rather, it points out that a battered woman should pull herself together and muster the courage to bring her abuser to therapy and through counseling break the cycle of abuse, physical intimidation and emotional manipulation. At the same time, according to the motion, if a woman walks away, leaving the batterer alone with his demons, she concedes defeat.
When domestic violence is contentiously debated, the chief controversial point remains whether the battering victim should leave the abuser or stay and live through the therapy and correction process with the battering partner. To psychologist, social worker or abuse specialist, no matter how professional, can give a universal advice on the problem, applicable to all cases of home abuse and suitable to all abuse victims. However, specialists roughly fall into two camps on the issue: when some think the woman should stay no matter what and help her beloved one break the habit of abusing her, others claim battered women should start over leaving the abuser behind. Both parties support their stands with a range of arguments, the most convincing of which will be given below.
Arguments for:
By leaving the batterer, the woman walks away from the problem instead of solving it.
Leaving the batterer does not guarantee safety to the battering victim, since in case of divorce he stays at large, free to persecute his ex-wife, menace and blackmail her. Hence, though walking away from the abuser she doesn’t walk away from the problem, remaining in dire jeopardy. Instead, she should try to tackle the problem by talking her partner into individual therapy or going through couple counseling together. If after the treatment session she still feels like leaving him, she, on the one hand, will be able to do it without fearing for her safety and, on the other hand, will know she has done everything she could to help her partner and gave him a hand when he needed her most.
A battered woman should not leave the batterer since marriage should be preserved at all costs.
The wedding vows say: "I take you for my lawful wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, until death do us part." By taking these vows, people give a solemn promise before God to go through ups and downs of life hand in hand and work on their marriage rather than abandon it no matter what. This promise does not allow them to easily and freely call it quits once a hardship arises; and domestic violence is just as much of a hardship as economic instability or illness. Home abuse is a problem that can only be solved together, and just like any other, it deserves attention and effort from both sides.
The batterer is the same person the victim has ones married, hence before filing for divorce she should try to bring that person back.
A popular wisdom says that people do not change. This suggests that the person, who now beats the woman black and blue, is the very one who used to cherish her once; and that the prince Charming is still there, deep inside, hidden behind the horrific brutal façade. No matter what he has done, the beloved person is always worth digging out.
An abusive father is better than no father at all.
Getting divorce from a battering husband differs little from any other divorce and presupposes all the same negative consequences behind any spousal separation. It is more than hard for a woman to start a new life without any male support, especially if the woman has kids to rear all alone. By leaving the abusive husband she takes the burden of providing for the kids on her own, taking care of them without the father’s support. What is more, she deprives her children of any male role-model to follow and any male guardian at large. Hence, unless the husband beats the wife unconscious and staying with the father puts the children lives at risk, the woman should fight for her marriage and for having the father of her kids by her side.
Just like in case of drug or alcohol abuse, the victimizer cannot break the habit and heal without his partner’s help.
Aggression and incapacity of controlling it is a disease that can hardly be solved by the ill person himself; and in order to cure he needs help from the outside. Here, the woman should be of help to the abuser at several levels. First, no one but her can make the victimizer recognize he has a problem. Second, she is usually the one in the position to talk him into seeking aid of psychologists or other professionals. And finally, just like in case of any other addict, the person addicted to violence will need support and assistance of his partners while going through “rehab”.
Being violent is a disease just like any others; and spouses do not abandon their partners just because they fall ill.
Domestic violence is as a rule associated with the abuser’s having some sort of anger-management problem which is a mental disease. Since in their marriage vows people say “for sickness and health” they should stay in the abusive relationship and take all possible measures to cure the abuser.
By leaving the batterer the woman develops a guilt complex.
Walking away from a beloved one inevitably makes the woman feel guilty. She blames herself for the entire gamut of negative results of her life-changing decision. She tortures herself for not helping her husband when he needed her most, for dooming her kids to a “dadless” life, not fighting hard enough to preserve her marriage or simply not having done whatever it takes to solve the problem. At a certain stage, every beating victim comes to the conclusion she regrets not trying hard enough, hence it is a good piece of advice for every abused woman to stay in the relationship and try first before leaving.
By leaving, the battered woman dooms herself to financial instability and economic hardships.
Most cases of physical abuse within the household are accompanied by economic abuse. Victimizers make their victims develop a complete financial dependence upon them; and once they do, they start blackmailing and manipulating them, as well as bringing this argument forward during every altercation. In attempt to break this vicious cycle of economic abuse, the woman abandons her abuser. But once she does, she realizes that there was truth behind her victimizer’s accuses of her financial insecurity. She finds herself unable to earn money or provide for herself, thus reaffirming his control over her and making the economic issue even more of a problem than it used to be in her abusive household.
Getting a divorce can ignite deadly assault.
Disturbingly, the very means designed to protect women – divorce decrees, arrest warrants, court orders of protection – are often read by enraged men as a license to kill. “Divorce is a way of ending up dead faster,” warn professionals. “Someone who is truly dangerous will see this as an extreme denial of what he’s entitled to, his God-given right.” That slip of paper, which documents his loss, may be interpreted by the man as a threat to his own life. In a last-ditch, nihilistic act he will engage in behavior that destroys the source of that threat. And in the expanding range of rage, victims can include children, a woman’s lawyer, her family, - anyone in the way.
The mere fact of walking away from the batterer does not fix the victim’s broken personality.
Even if she musters the courage to leave, the once-battered-woman stays face to face with her demons and complexes she developed while abused. She is most likely to continue feeling like no one needs her, or she does not deserve anything better than the on-going hell she has just abandoned. She will continue to feel miserable, useless, ugly, and stupid, together with all the other names her ex-abuser used to call her. As a result of constant abuse, the victim grows increasingly resentful of the past, fearful of the present and uncertain about the future. At the same time, once she confronts the problem and seeks professional psychological help, she gets a chance of fixing her shattered self-esteem and put her life together.
Arguments against:
Walking away from the abuser is the only way to secure the victim’s safety.
A person, who has committed a domestic assault once, has propensity to resort to spousal battery again and again, no matter what preventive measures are taking and how hard the victim tries not to trigger abuse. Once abused, the victim will never feel the same again; fear and feeling of uncertainty will follow her till the end. The abused woman is never going to be and feel safe both physically and emotionally in an abusive marriage or partnership. Hence, the only way to break the abuse cycle is to abandon the batterer and take a chance at starting a new life with a better partner.
By leaving the battered the woman gets a chance to start over and build a new life.
Every person deserves a second chance. The very fact that the woman has made a wrong choice earlier in life by marrying an abusive man does not make her a bad or unworthy person. The toughest thing here is for the woman to give herself a chance to leave the abuser and start over. The best course, domestic-violence experts say, is for a woman to leave immediately the first time her partner hits her. In this case she not only gets out of the relationship less broken, but also considerably lowers the risk of getting used to being victimized, develop pity and compassion to the abuser and getting stuck for long in the destructive relationship.
The woman is obliged to call it quits once the children are at risk.
No woman has a right to jeopardize her children’s life and safety in a desperate attempt to fix the broken personality of her abusive husband, hoping to mend their long-gone affection. It is the woman’s holy and primary obligation to protect her children and do whatever is best for them; and rearing the kids in an abusive household is never the right thing to do.
No child can be happy in an abusive family.
Even if the victimizer does not physically abuse kids and takes all his rage out on their mother, by doing so he exercises emotional abuse over the children, which is far from harmless. No kid should be subject to horrific and brutal scenes of their parents’ battery; and when the father turns out to be too violent to care, it is the mother’s obligation to stand up for the child and take him away to a safer place. Safety-wise, living in a single-parent family is both healthier and more joyful, than staying in an abusive environment, hence the woman should opt for the better for their kids.
Children reared in abusive families tend to grow up victimizers/victims.
Children, who constantly witness abuse, are likely to get a dysfunctional view of family and gender relationships. From early age they absorb a distorted lesson, thinking that abuse is normative male behavior towards women and a woman, in her turn, is born to be victimized and silently endure this burden. The value system of these kids is shattered, their morals shifted; there is little chance they will ever be able to build up a healthy, abuse-free relationship. At the same time, if their mother leaves the abuser, she teaches the kids the priceless lesson: no woman should endure being victimized and if the man abuses his woman she will inevitably leave him. That is why, the earlier their mother leaves the battering father, the better chance her kids get at growing up into healthy social beings.
Abusive impulses are the batterer’s personal problem and the woman should not feel obliged to share the burden with him.
While exercising violence on the woman, no batterer seems to be concerned about the victim’s feelings, thoughts and emotions; so why should she care more? One can expect help when he asks for it, not once he literally tries to wring it out of the woman. Hence, the battered woman should listen to her heart and do what is best for her, not taking into account what is right for the batterer since he simply does not deserve her compassion.