In her May 4,2009, Nation column "What Do (Battered) Women Want?" Katha Pollitt covered nearly all the bases of the complex and numerous reasons why women stay with abusive partners: economic pressures; coercion by family, religious and cultural authorities; fear of being murdered; feeling helpless or hopeless; worry about the children; compassion for the perpetrator and lots more.

Yet one answer to the question escapes nearly everyone's attention. The decision to stay in a hazardous situation is often accepted as normal - as long as you're not talking about a "battered woman." But why do people stay in homes and even re-build after serious damage from forest fires, floods or volcano eruptions? Why do experts build nuclear plants on earthquake faults? Why do people with few options choose not to leave dangerous neighborhoods or countries ruled by tyrants? Rescue workers persist in going back to dangerous areas; journalists and soldiers volunteer for high risk assignments. Athletes risk life-long disabilities and pain rather than give up the game. Workers stay on at jobs fraught with physical hazards, such as mining, or emotional and economic abuse by bosses or co-workers. When people leave the Communist Party, a cloistered convent or Jonestown type cult, we may not remember that they also stayed for months or years. .Why, why, why do they do all those people stay? And then why do they leave?

I have led workshops in which I have asked hundreds of people how they feel in those situations, what they say when they're in them, how they cope and why they don't leave. There is scant variation in their answers. They feel angry, hopeless, helpless, anxious, paralyzed or inadequate. They say "It must be my fault." "It will get better." "He or she or it will change." "It might be worse if I leave." They cope by eating or sleeping too much or not enough. They drink too much alcohol, complain, take out their distress on the kids, the dog or anyone who will listen. After a while they talk to a friend about the problem. See a counselor. Then, sometimes, they leave.

They stay on a job because they don't want to abandon co-workers or clients. They rebuild houses because this is where they've always lived. It's where their family, community, church, mosque, temple or synagogue is. They will never find another job, partner or place that offers so many benefits. They need the money. They can fix themselves so it will be better; fix the others; fix the situation. And, besides, the bad stuff (volcanoes, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, beatings, humiliations) doesn't happen all that often.

The answers to my questions often translated to months or years of balancing hope against fear. The details differed, but generally my respondents reacted to their situations in pretty much the same way most of us do when faced with hard choices. We fear the risks of the unknown more than the devil we know. But then, for some of us, those all too familiar risks become intolerable. Or some event raises our hope that we will be better off if we get out of the situation.

Women who stay are not part of some exotic species. Like most of us, they take risks and also do whatever they can to minimize the damage. They and we do that because that's part of our human condition.

For over thirty years Ginny NiCarthy M.S.W. has been an activist in the movement to stop men's abuse of women.  She is author of Getting Free: You Can Take Back Your LIfe,  and You Can Be Free (an easy to read version of Getting Free), both recently updated with significant additions.
See www.abusedwomen.org for more on her publications and www.ginnynicarthy.org for information about her counseling.