The cycle of abuse…. where do I even begin. When an outsider looks at a toxic or abusive relationship, they often have a hard time understanding why the person stays in that relationship. The thing that those outsiders don’t understand is that it really isn’t an easy thing to leave a relationship like that. And they also don’t understand that the relationship wasn’t always like that.
You see, unless you have been in an abusive or toxic relationship, you truly can’t understand the dynamics of what that person is going through. I say this even about therapists. Sure, a therapist can read about the cycle of abuse and study it, but unless they themselves have been through a toxic relationship, they are going to have a hard time relating to their client.
What is the Cycle of Abuse?
Now, I want to spend a little bit of time going over the cycle of abuse. The cycle of abuse doesn’t start with abuse, it starts with what we call the initial honeymoon phase. The initial honeymoon phase is when you first meet the person, you begin to form a relationship with this person. They appear to be nice, warm, welcoming, funny… basically all of the good qualities you look for in a person. But over time, tension starts to build from the pressures of daily life. The person becomes irritable more quickly, starts to slowly make comments about friends and family members saying you shouldn’t be around them because your partner just “doesn’t like them,” maybe they start to call you names or use language that puts you down. And all of these things happen so incrementally that you don’t necessarily notice them as red flags. The reason you don’t notice them as red flags is because you know how this person treated you in the beginning, so you make an excuse for them that they “must be really stressed out,” or you think “I must have really hurt this person if they are treating me like this.” They only treat you poorly every once in a while in the beginning so you also don’t necessarily notice a pattern. But the longer you are with this person, the more frequent the abuse happens. Typically the abuse starts with verbal,mental and/or psychological abuse. Because of this, we tell ourselves that it’s “not abuse” because we don’t have any visible marks. But verbal abuse can oftentimes hurt much deeper than physical abuse. When the abuse becomes frequent enough, we start to see the cycle of abuse speed up. We see that there is the honeymoon phase, followed by a period of calmness, leading up to the tension building that results in an abusive incident, followed by the honeymoon phase. And round and round the cycle goes.
The faster the cycle goes, the shorter the phases become within the cycle. You see, part of the reason why people don’t see the warning signs in the beginning is because so much time goes on between the phases that it is nearly impossible to recognize as abuse. The honeymoon phase can last anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, same with the calm phase. Then when the tension phase begins, this phase only lasts a week or so and then the abusive incident happens. So when you look at the time length of each phase, it shows that the “good” times are much longer than the “bad” moments. So the person receiving the abuse doesn’t view it as abuse, they view it as a “bad” moment. However, the longer this cycle goes on, we see a reverse in time spans on the phases. So the longer a person stays in the abusive cycle, the longer the tension phase becomes, the more frequent the abusive incidents happen, and the shorter the honeymoon and calm phases become.
So Why Don’t They Leave?
So you might be thinking, well if the abuse is getting more frequent, why doesn’t the person just leave? And to this I say, it’s not that simple. One of the reasons a person might stay in the abusive cycle is because they “know” how nice and sweet this person can be. The issue with this is that the nice and sweet person they are remembering, wasn’t really that person underneath. So although, yes, they were nice and sweet in the beginning, that isn’t who that person actually is. That was a facade they put on to hook the person. And it works a good chunk of the time.
Another common reason people stay in abusive relationships is because overtime, the abuser tears down the person verbally and mentally, so much that the person is convinced that they deserve this type of treatment. They are convinced that they are unworthy and that no one else would want a person like them. And sometimes people’s biggest fear is being alone, so they would rather be with someone and be abused, than not be with someone at all.
Finances are also a big reason people stay in an abusive relationship. The two common situations I see is that the abused doesn’t have a job anymore or they have a job but don’t make enough to cover expenses on their own. This is a reason I see a lot of people stay even when they are ready to leave, because they can’t afford to live on their own. This doesn’t stop them from figuring out a solution, especially with the help of a therapist. But it definitely makes things hard when you are mentally ready to leave the person but have to play nice while you are trying to financially get things in place.
A final reason I will discuss in regards to why people don’t leave these abusive relationships is out of fear. Sometimes abusers can go as far as threatening to kill the person and/or their family if they leave them. So the person stays out of fear. Now, you might be thinking, why don’t they tell someone? Majority of the time, either no one believes them when they do tell or nothing can be done about it. So they figure, what’s the point?
Ending Thoughts.
Even with just four examples, I hope you can see what I mean when I say that it’s not that simple to leave an abusive relationship. There are many factors that come into play especially because not every abuser is the same. Some are worse than others and when it comes to attempting to leave a relationship like this, it takes planning and strategy.
If you are in a relationship like this, please seek out help from a professional. They can help you plan and strategize on how to get away from this abusive person while also helping you heal from it. If you know someone who is in a relationship like this, support them in whatever ways you can. Understand it is going to be hard for this person to leave the relationship so encourage them to go to therapy and just support them in whatever way they say they need.