I know my last few posts have been about my own relationship… (Chris was here for 12 days, and I need a better word for “AMAZING”) so I am going to take a break from that.
What has been on my mind lately is what is considered an “abusive relationship.” Because I have never been in an abusive relationship and my current relationship is one of complete love, I have never even thought about it.
About a month ago, one of my very good friends told me that her ex-boyfriend used to beat her. I didn’t know how to react. I wasn’t sure if she was telling me because she needed my help or she just needed to talk to someone about it.
After hearing her horrible stories, I then recently had to read an article about domestic violence for my Psychology class. In this article it stated that 700,000 women a year are abused by their significant other or husband. That is one woman being abused every 45 seconds. This absolutely alarmed me. I knew about battered women and domestic violence but after reading that it is, “the number one health problem for women in the United States causing more injuries to women than automobile accidents, muggings and rapes combined,” I was completely appalled.
What shocked me the most while reading up on this topic, was how people actually believe that some women are O.K. with the abuse because they don’t leave the man. To me this is ridiculous. Why would any woman like getting abused? Some reason’s for not leaving were given in the article. They were, lack of money, lack of resources, fear of family disapproval and hope that the marriage still might work.
What boggles my mind is how any man could beat a woman. A woman that is committed to him. A woman that might have bore his children. A woman who might even stay with him because she feels he is not a bad man, just having a bad phase.
Some people even believe that these women probably did something for them to deserve it. That is was ticks me off even more. No one deserves to be abused, whether physically or emotionally.
Here are some links to help the efforts towards battered women:
Center against Domestic violence
(I also want to add that men are abused as well. For now, I focused on women, maybe another day I will focus on men and the issues that they have to deal with. For example: most men refuse to call the cops because they get made fun of that they got beat up by their wife.)
