Understanding abuse
Why people stay, and why that is the wrong question
It is the first thing outsiders ask. It is also the question that keeps survivors quiet, because there is no answer that satisfies someone who has never been in it.
By Nopa Foundation Editorial Team · May 19, 2026 · 5 min read
Ask a room of people what they would do if a partner hit them, and almost every hand goes up with the same answer. I would leave that night.
Ask the same room how they would pay the deposit on somewhere else, where the children would go to school, what they would tell their mother, who would take the dog, whether the job would survive a month of court dates, and what would happen when he arrived at the new address. The hands come down.
Leaving is not a decision. It is a logistics operation carried out by someone who is frightened, often broke, frequently sleep deprived, and being actively undermined by the one person who knows all their passwords.
There is also the part that people find hardest to hear. Leaving is the most dangerous period in an abusive relationship. Advocates have understood this for decades, and homicide reviews in multiple countries keep confirming it. The weeks around separation carry the sharpest risk, because the whole architecture of control is collapsing at once. When a survivor hesitates, she is very often making an accurate risk assessment rather than a confused one.
Add to this the ordinary reasons that have nothing to do with fear. Love, which does not politely disappear because someone has hurt you. Hope, which is renewed every time he is briefly the person you married. Faith communities that treat the marriage as the thing to be preserved. Immigration status tied to a spouse. A disabled child who is settled with a particular school and carer. An older parent whose pension is being drawn by the son who abuses him.
So the better question, the one that actually helps, is not why does she stay. It is what would have to be true for her to be safe.
That question has answers. Somewhere to go. Money she controls. A phone he cannot see. Documents copied and stored elsewhere. A friend who knows the plan. A police report on file even if no charge follows. A protective order that a lawyer helped her file properly rather than one drafted alone at midnight.
Every one of those is something another person can help with. Judgement is not on the list.
When you next hear someone disclose, try not to reach for advice. Try, instead, one sentence. That should not be happening to you, and I will help you work out what you want to do next. Then wait.