Why Women Stay

Women who stay with those who hurt them are often asked "Why". Why do you continue to love him? Why does she stay with him? Why does she let him hurt her? Women stay for a collage of reasons. There's Stockholm Syndrome, low self esteem, the belief she deserves maltreatment, for the children, the expectation that the emotional investment will eventually pay out, the belief he will change, the belief his abuse is only temporary, not understanding she's actually being abused, the desire to be a good Mormon, Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, fear of making it on her own, the list goes on and on. If I can control myself, I want to write about only two of those reasons. Yesterday for the first time a friend of mine expressed a drive that has driven me for decades, that she too has. Frequently, when I look at someone, I see who they are, and who they are meant to be. Now when I say Who they are. I m deceiving you. It should be past tense. My faith teaches that our spirits all stood together before our Father God before we were born, that we rejoiced at the plan for us to have a chance at life and prove ourselves here. We all chose to be here, and we felt love for each other, felt the love of God, and wanted to help each other grow. Each of us has a great potential, but their is no fate or destiny, just a specific calling we can choose to live up to or not. When I say Who they are it's really a sense of Who they were in the presence of God. When you look on someone with the mindset of who they were before God and who they are meant to be your heart is filled with a passion for the individual. You love them without reserve, and you hope their life will be filled with events that will lead them to their own greatness. While this beautiful view of others fills you with compassion, a desire to help them on their way, and even be a part of it, it has a hellish side affect. By the first few decades in life, so many of us are off track and lost our faith, hope and charity. Some have become emotional predators to others. Many have completely lost themselves in their challenges and are no where near who they were meant to be. Sometimes women like me are so filled with the vision of another's potential she simply can't see what he has chosen to become and is. She's blind to the danger of now, and what they are choosing to become. She cannot accept who he is Now. And/Or Seeing his choice not to become all he was meant to be is pure hell. She wants to shake him and say, Can't you see what you were meant to be? Why are you choosing less? That old nurturing drive kicks in. She may try to help him back on track. During the worst of my own ordeal, the image of being tightly strapped to the back leg of a stampeding elephant filled my mind. Viewing in Mosaic is one other reason it can be hard to leave or see in the moment. When I look at someone, every memory, every event, every emotion I have ever felt toward them surfaces to create one larger picture and combined emotion. Every time I see him, even now, I remember hearing his voice for the first time, the first time I felt his hand take mine, our first date, our second and on, I feel his hand holding my head as he kissed me across the altar and refused to let go, I remember him the night his mother died, I see him sit discouraged at terrible setbacks, I feel him pick me up over his head and spin me, I hear him say ditto , I see him hold our first new baby, I hear him tell me he wants to bash our new son's head into the ceiling and the intense fear, I feel him hold me as I cry at night, I see him work hard day after day in school, I see his mother telling stories of him, I remember every sacrifice and trial faced to help him achieve his desires, comforting him, and it goes on and one. The most powerful memory was our marriage. The overwhelming sense of peace, being in the right place, at the right time with the right man at our wedding. An overwhelming peaceful sense of this is good, and this is right, remembering that every day. Every event, every memory is always there. The love, the abuse, the fear, the hope, the incredible joy, and the incredible pain. It is the whole picture I have at the moment that drives me. A present hurtful moment is out weighted by a vast mosaic of life. Thus in the moment of one very cruel act, it is still difficult to become angry. It is not until the number of cruel moments in the mosaic memory overwhelms the sweet. It's hard to become angry in with your husband when every morning, every day you remember the feeling of the first time you kissed. One singular terrible event rarely out weighs the many other memories. Those who see in mosaic take a long time to become angry. A mosaic view and mosaic emotion made it difficult for me to understand his anger at simple events. He saw in the present, and each event of the present was powerful enough to overwhelm everything else. I could not relate to that. But I knew and sensed that for him, if I did anything or appeared to do anything wrong, in any moment that would be it for him.