Mutual attraction is what makes people get in a relationship. Love is what makes them commit to a relationship!

Love should be enough! It is considered enough to make a relationship work. Yet sometimes, love isn’t enough!

In fact, love, or the notion of love, is the very thing that entraps the victim in a violent relationship.

Love is All that Matters!

It is the idea that love is enough that sometimes entraps partners in abusive relationships! The victim and the perpetrator both believe that the man is controlling or hitting the partner because he loves his partner!

His love allows him to correct whatever he sees or thinks is or has been done wrong by the partner. Or he thinks that his violent actions are just a sincere attempt to correct his partner’s mistakes and guide them. What is ironic is that the victim too ends up believing the same things. These are the things women trapped in violent relationship end up telling themselves:

He loves me! I actually deserve that slap!

The man hit me because he cares! He loves too much!

He hit me but it doesn’t matter because he loves me.

He loves me too much to hurt me and not regret it later.

We will be alright because he loves me!

It is then that very love that is supposed to liberate people becomes a kind of a cage, an entrapment that keeps two people bound together forcefully.

One person has the need to control the other; meanwhile, the other considers that control as a disguised form of love, hence justified. In psychology, this term is identified as the Stockholm Syndrome.  

Wanting to Be the Savior

Last week, I was watching Lou, an action thriller, on Netflix. Something that Hannah, a domestic violence survivor, said while reflecting on why she initially stayed on with her abusive husband, stuck with me. She said that when she was staying with her abusive husband, she was angry at herself, rather than on him, as to why her love was not enough to change him.

This is so true about women in abusive relationships. They firstly get attracted to a macho man, the so-called bad boy. They sympathize with the abuser, thinking that the abuser might be a good person who just can’t control him or herself. He needs to be loved in order to become a better person!

Consequently, they think that they are the saviors and then can turn a violent man around, reform him eventually. That’s why they refuse to leave an abusive relationship, despite getting may chances.

What Love Actually Demands

The true definition of love in a relationship requires a lot of serious work, from both the partners. The violent partner needs to put in more work obviously, but the abused one also needs to do some work:

Compromise

If there is some love indeed in a relationship, then partners talk, argue, try to compromise, reach solutions, rather than use violence as a way to navigate through the ups and downs of life.

Willing and Commitment towards ‘Change’

If there is enough love, an aggressive person would be willing to control his behavior, rather than keep trying to control the other person through coercion and violence. Therapy can help troubled marriages in many cases.

Choosing Self-Love & Healing

Usually, when a battered woman chooses to stay in a violent relationship, it points towards personal issues, such as low self-esteem, a non existent or depreciating sense of self-respect, trauma, even delusion. She needs to remember that the willingness to love herself, cherishing her independence and individuality, valuing her self-esteem above her relationship status are ultimately the things that would help her salvage and/or free herself from an abusive relationship and seek her own healing in the process.

Conclusion

The notion of love and companionship are what make us seek a relationship. However, in an abusive relationship, love is a misguided notion, a façade. It brinks more towards obsession, control and violence. However, there is hope for those relationship where there is realization and the commitment towards change. Therapy and intervention can work. It’s not only the violent partner who needs to seek help and change. Likewise, the battered woman also needs to address the internal psychological issues which makes her misinterpret the control and violence of the other person as love. Lastly, there is nothing charming about crazy love; it’s domestic abuse!