Why do people stay in unhealthy or abusive relationships?

There are several reasons why people stay in abusive relationships.

1. Lack of Courage

It takes a lot of courage to fight against your spouse who had been so close to you. You have to start a new life and there is no guarantee that the new person would be better. People prefer to live with a known devil than explore than unknown.

1. Social Pressure

Divorce and separation has a huge social dimensions. It causes social disrepute to the parents, family and often to the entire clan. In Western Countries, divorces are far more common and also acceptable. However, in India, society often criticize the separated couple as divorces are almost negligible in India. People believe that if they can live with unhappy marriages, so should others.

1. Love for Children

While couple may have disagreement and even hatred for each other, most parents love their children. They don’t want to harm their future by choosing to separate and let them be brought up by step parents. This often force couples to stay together.

1. Financial Independence

In a developing country like India, most women are not financially independent. If they are divorced or separated, they would find it difficult to live the same level of life as they are living with their husbands. If women are independent, they are less likely to tolerate abusive relationships.

1. Religion and Culture

Hindu religion does not have any provision for divorce and the marriages are supposed to be for seven lives. Many couples seriously believe in the sacredness of marriage and consider it a sin to break the marriage. They would tolerate everything in this world in the hope of rewards from God.

1. Hope for Reform

Many couple hope that the other person would gradually understand his/her mistake and get reformed, if they keep doing good things to them. You see such lessons taught in many movies where an abusive and adulterous husband get reformed and become a good husband again. Some woman keep hoping for the best and bear everything with hope and pray.