10 Reasons We Stay in Emotionally Abusive Relationships

There was this comment — “Why would you want him back home? Why wait for misery?”

That’s a fair question. And so is, “Why did you stay so long?”

Or any variation of those questions, really.

I’m sure if you’re reading this, you’ve had your fair share of those questions. And they always come from people who haven’t experienced life with a narcissist. Because if you have been in a relationship with a narcissist, you know just how complicated life is. And you don’t ask that question of someone else because you know the pain it causes you to try and answer that for yourself.

But since people do ask, here are 10 reasons we stay in a relationship with a narcissist.

Narcissists are Experts in YOU

At the beginning of the relationship, the narcissist will get to know you very well. He will want to know everything about you. Your likes, your dreams, your hopes…but more importantly, your fears, your hurts, your embarrassing secrets, and the things you would give your life to protect. He is so easy to talk to. In fact, you’ve never met anyone like him in your life. You truly open up to him and share everything.

But then when the mask slips, you realize that he uses those things against you.

He twists your hopes and dreams and makes you think you’re not good enough to accomplish them. He sabotages any effort you make to better yourself. So you start to believe that you’re nothing without him.

When you start to think about leaving and he gets a sense of it, he will use all your secrets against you. We’ve all done things we’re not proud of. The narcissist has no problem telling the world what you’ve done. He uses the fear of your secrets getting out to keep you right where he wants you.

Since he’s an expert when it comes to you, he knows just which things to use to threaten you, persuade you, and even woo you, if it suits his purpose.

In short, the narcissist knows very well how to manipulate you in particular.

You’ve Seen How He Treated Other People Who Stood Up to Him

The narcissist generally surrounds himself with people who think he’s the best thing ever. But there are plenty of people who see through his mask and stand up to him and call him out.

If the person who calls him out is a superior, or has any kind of authority over him (like, for instance, a boss), then often the narcissist will just quit. If he can’t quit, then he will blame all of his failures on someone else. He will go on to tell everyone how unfair the boss is.

However, when the narcissist feels superior to the person who calls him out or stands up to him, the narcissist will then make that person’s life a nightmare.

And when you’re in a relationship with a narcissist, you have a front row seat to his actions against someone else.

My former mother-in-law was a widow and didn’t like to cook. So every night after work, she would come over to our house for dinner. She would eat with us and then help me with the dishes and it was a great system. The kids looked forward to seeing her every night. Well one night, she walked in and my ex and I were having an argument. She didn’t like seeing anyone disagree about anything, so she made a suggestion for a compromise.

Well my ex decided that she was taking my side and told her that she needed to leave.

But not just for that night.

He told her that until she could be supportive of him, she couldn’t come over. She couldn’t call me. She couldn’t see her grand kids. He basically cut her off from our lives.

She was devastated. I was devastated. The kids were devastated.

She tried to call him and apologize but he wouldn’t take her calls. She would leave gifts for the kids on our porch and he would throw them away. She wrote him apology letters and he would throw them away. He would ask me every day if I talked to her and check my cell phone call log.

Finally after almost four months of this, he needed her for something. So he invited her out to lunch and said that she could come back in to our lives on a “probationary” basis. As long as she would do what he wanted her to do and not stand up to him, she was welcome to be a part of our family again.

That’s how he treated his mom.

The argument that caused all of this was whether or not I made enough lasagna for a family who had just had a baby.

So standing up to him always felt a little dangerous. Especially when…

You Have Children Together

This was a huge factor for me. I have four children and they are my life. I was a stay-at-home mom from the day my first daughter was born. Then when my youngest son went to kindergarten, I started an in-home daycare so I could still be home when my kids got home from school every day.

The first time I tried to leave, the kids were not old enough to have a voice in who they lived with. So if I did leave, the kids at minimum would have had to spend every other weekend and one day a week with my ex. The lawyer warned me, however, that if he filed for joint custody, I could possibly only have my kids half of the time. I knew down deep that my ex would definitely fight me for this, not because of his relationship with the kids, but because of mine (see reason #1). He knew I was a great mother and would have loved to strip this from me.

So I stayed for the kids. Because if they were with him half of the time, what would happen?

Would he still be MIA for days at a time?

Would he leave them in the care of someone else for extended periods?

He was absent from their lives, even though we all lived in the same house. So if I left, who would be raising my kids half the time?

When I did finally leave, the kids were old enough to speak on their own behalf. They talked to the magistrate and they talked to the guardian ad litem without me or my ex present. They were able to speak openly and honestly. And I was given full custody. My ex was denied even standard visitation rights, and the kids were ordered to see him eight hours every other week. My ex shortened it to four hours after a few months.

A lot of people will say that staying for the kids isn’t a good reason, but for me it was a big reason why I stayed.

You Have a Joint Venture Together

I write from the perspective of having an emotionally abusive ex-spouse because that is what I know, but this one could apply to many different types of relationships. Sometimes people will stay in an unhealthy relationship because of a joint venture.

You’ve built a business together and you don’t want to lose all your hard work. Or you’ve worked on an important project with someone and you don’t want her to sabotage it.

The summer between my junior and senior year of high school, I surrendered to full-time ministry. I abandoned my plans to be a psychologist and instead went to Bible college. I didn’t know where God wanted me to serve, but I knew it was in full-time ministry.

I met my ex at Bible college. We dated for about a month before he was already talking about marriage and a future ministry together. It all sounded perfect.

After college, we served on and off in churches in many various staff positions. Although our marriage was a joke, I loved the church. I went back to school and got my Master’s of Religious Education degree. I was hired by two local school districts to teach the Release Time Bible Education program, which is a program where students are able to leave school property during school hours with permission from their parents to attend Bible classes. It was a dream job.

When I was finally ready to leave my marriage, I knew I would also be leaving this dream job. I was hired in part because I was the pastor’s wife at the local church. I knew it would cause problems that I was divorced. So leaving my marriage also meant giving up a dream job.

He Created an Environment of Dependence

Usually in a relationship with a narcissist, he controls the money. This was true for my relationship. I never knew the state of affairs with our finances. Our debit cards expired and I asked for the new one and he said that I could just tell him what I needed and he would get it. One time I told him I needed gas money and he said if I didn’t drive so much I wouldn’t need it. The driving I did was for the kids’ school and activities.

I finally opened up my own bank account when the money I had earned from the daycare would just be gone as soon as I deposited it in our joint banking account. I wouldn’t have money for the daycare supplies and he would just say, “I needed it for bills.”

When we moved to our current location, he closed our joint account and opened up his own account and we kept our money separate.

I was fortunate in this matter because I have heard from so many other people that they weren’t allowed to have their own account. One lady said that even though her husband was on unemployment and she earned most of the money in the house, her husband was in complete control of the finances and gave her an “allowance” — from the money she earned. That “allowance” was the only money she was able to spend.

I didn’t have a lot of money when I left, but I had some. I also knew how to earn it. Others are not so lucky and are financially dependent on an emotionally abusive person, so they stay because they don’t think they have any other option.

You’re Exhausted

Living with an emotionally abusive person is exhausting. It’s mentally exhausting. It’s emotionally exhausting. And that exhaustion spreads into physical exhaustion.

You live in fear all the time. When he comes home, what will he blow up about? What do you need to walk on eggshells for today?

One day if you talk he’s mad. The next day, if you don’t talk he’s mad.

What will he accuse you of this time?

You live with anxiety. Will he even come home? Where is he? What is he doing?

All of this takes up a lot of brain space and there is little room for logic or dreaming of a better future or elaborate escape plans.

You’re most likely sleep deprived as well. One of the tactics abusers use is sleep deprivation. They like to pick fights right before bed so you stay awake.

My ex would come in very late and make a lot of noise on purpose. When I would wake up, he would say something like, “Oh, I bet you had a great day today, didn’t you?”

I would be very confused and say, “What do you mean?”

And he would say, “You know exactly what I’m talking about!” and would roll over and leave me wide awake wondering what I had done. I never knew what he was talking about, because the truth was I hadn’t done anything. It was just his way of getting in my head and leaving me exhausted.

Toward the end when he made a lot of noise, I just ignored him. I pretended to be asleep. But I was awake and would stay awake and be tired when my alarm went off.

So I stayed so long because leaving would take mental and physical energy I just didn’t have.

You Feel Like a Hypocrite

Leaving an emotionally abusive relationship takes a lot of planning. I am not a licensed therapist or a lawyer or a social worker, so if you are still in your emotionally abusive relationship, I cannot give you any advice on how to leave. Seek professional help.

I had to. There was no way I could have gotten out without help from our local domestic violence center. They helped me secure a lawyer and had temporary housing available for me and my kids.

But going to that center and meeting with my lawyer before I had actually filed for divorce made me feel like a hypocrite.

For so many years of my marriage, one of my biggest complaints was that I never knew where my ex was or what he was doing. I knew he wasn’t where he said he was. But now…wasn’t I doing the same thing?

A friend had a house for us to rent and I went over to look at it before I filed for divorce. I already had a story planned if my ex asked where I was. I was going to say I was delivering some photos from a photo shoot.

My ex actually never asked where I was when I was doing all these things in preparation to leave. But just the fact that I always had a story ready just in case made me feel very hypocritical. It was a necessary part of the process, because I feared for my safety if he ever got wind of my plans. But still. Doing all that sneaking around made me feel like I was no better than he was.

Divorce is a Sin?

This is one I hear over and over again and struggled with myself.

There’s no getting around the fact that God hates divorce. And for good reason. Divorce tears families apart. After going through the process myself, I can verify that divorce is horrible and not something to take lightly.

But a sin?

In Matthew 19:3-9, Jesus was approached by some Pharisees. The passage reads:

3 The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?”

4 And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’

5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?

6 So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

7 They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?”

8 He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.

9 And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.” (NKJV).

So Jesus says that divorce is not God’s plan for marriage, but there is an exception for sexual immorality. Some argue that the sin is not in divorce but in remarriage, based on verse 9.

So this compounds the problem for the Christian who is seeking to live a holy life. If you can’t prove sexual immorality, are you obligated to stay?

Christianity Today has a very helpful article on this called When Does the Bible Allow Divorce? About 1/3 of the way down is a section on domestic abuse that might shed light on this subject.

It’s Familiar

Not comfortable.

But familiar.

Leaving is a whole different ball game.

Leaving brings up new problems and new stresses. New fears and new anxieties.

Maybe I’ll just stay with the ones I already know.

It’s Final

It’s hard to admit something is over.

It’s hard to admit that a relationship failed.

Leaving is the end. The end of what started out as a perfect relationship. Even though it was based on a lie, it felt real.

Sometimes the finality of it all means you’ll have to talk about it. People will ask questions. People will have opinions. And then there’s the embarrassment of why you stayed so long.

I stayed for 20 years. People always asked me, “If it was so bad, why did you stay so long?” Like I was making it allup. No one could live like that for so long, right?

So for a while, you stay because staying means it’s not the end.

But I’m living testament to the fact that an end to something means the beginning of something else.

And do you know what my something else is?

A life of freedom and purpose.

Two weeks ago my son told me that when he’s an adult, he hopes he has a life like mine. I asked what he meant and he said, “You have a job you love. You’re always happy and you’re fun to be around.”

That wasn’t my life when I was married to an emotionally abusive person.

So even though I feared the “end” of the relationship, and even though the “beginning” of my new life was rocky and scary, look at me now.

What About You?

Why did you stay?