Why Doesn't She Leave? When Trauma Binds
She’s standing at the threshold, dressed in the first clean things she could get her hands on.
Both hands are clutched around the strap of an overnight bag.
The door is open. All she has to do is walk through it.
He’ll be home any minute.
She’s running out of time.
She has a place to go.
She has money in the bank.
She has a car to drive away in.
All she has to do is step through that door.
So, why doesn’t she leave?
(I’ll refer to the person in this story as ‘she’, for readability. But for the men, and for non binary people, I see you, I’ve heard some of your stories. This is for you too.)
There are a bunch of reasons women don’t leave their abusive partners.
Finances. Shame. A lack of family and social support. The erroneous belief that it’s better for the children to keep the family together.
There’s also the glaring fact that the risk of serious physical harm and even death goes through the roof once she leaves.
According to the Femicide Census, 38% of women killed by their ex partners between 2009 - 2018 were murdered within one month of leaving. While 89% were killed within 12 months.
But these are not the things I want to talk about today.
I want to talk about the psychological deadlock that is trauma bonding.
Put simply, trauma bonding happens when the person you love is also the person who hurts you.
It’s a terrible and very real thing that happens in your brain and keeps you stuck. And I mean really stuck.
It can happen to anyone, but the groundwork is often laid in childhood.
Children are dependent on their parents for survival, so the brain creates neural pathways that bond them to their caregivers.
And sometimes parents are abusive, inconsistent and unpredictable.
When this happens, pain and survival are all wrapped up in the same person. The child has no choice but to put all their energy into pleasing that parent. They try to predict how the parent will behave and they bend themselves in order to appease. They learn very quickly that their needs don’t matter, their focus is survival.
Sounds like hell, doesn’t it?
But that’s children, right? They’re helpless.
The trouble is, if you’ve experienced this as a child, these patterns are more likely to follow you into adulthood.
Here’s why.
When we’re born, our brains aren’t fully formed. That’s why our early years are so crucial. This is when many of our neural pathways get wired in, pathways that determine social, relational and emotional development.
You might not remember your first year of life but believe me, it affected you.
And in the tragedy of child abuse, these children learn that the people who love them also hurt them.
Now, what do you think happens when one of these children grows up and meets someone who at first seems kind, caring and charming?
What do you think that feels like for someone who has never experienced love in a consistent and safe way?
Imagine being thirsty for 20 years and someone hands you a glass of water.
Now imagine, after a little while, maybe a few months, perhaps a year, essentially whenever he can be sure he’s got control, the water supply becomes inconsistent. Sometimes it gushes, sometimes it’s just a trickle.
Where do you think she’s going to put her energy?
On him.
Because she’s come to depend on that water.
This is called intermittent reinforcement, and here’s a study that shows how powerful it is.
So that’s what the abusive partner does. He starts withdrawing his love.
He tells her it’s her fault things have changed.
And guess what?
Her brain follows the well worn pathways and concludes that he must be right.
And so she tries harder.
She figures, it’s just a little thing that he doesn’t like it when I leave the towels like that. I’m just being stubborn to fight about something so silly.
I’ll do it the way he likes.
But then it’s not just the towels. It’s how she arranges her shoes, how she makes coffee, how she dresses, how she speaks.
And over time, her world gets smaller and smaller.
Meanwhile he’s peppering in criticism and just enough gaslighting to keep her off balance. Pretty soon she starts doubting herself, and in time she’ll stop trusting herself altogether.
Then he hits her for the first time.
Now this is an important point.
Because the fork in the road comes way sooner than you think. You see, by the time he hits her, it’s already too late.
She’s already cooked.
At this point her brain smashes into itself. She knows physical violence isn’t acceptable. She knows that what he did was wrong.
But she’s so distressed that she needs his comfort more than ever.
So when he apologises, she believes him.
He didn’t mean it. He’ll never do it again. She’s so relieved. She puts it down to a momentary mistake. Everything’s back to normal. Because the alternative is too frightening to contemplate.
And the trauma bond gets stronger.
Then it happens again, and this time it’s worse.
But by now she’s hooked on hope.
The key is the inconsistency. Because he’s not a monster all the time.
And so the cycle goes on. And on. And on.
Eventually, she can’t take it anymore.
She packs a bag. She gets to the door but she finds she can’t move.
Half her brain is screaming at her to get out of there.
But the other half?
That part is screaming at her to run to him, to do anything within her power to get things back to how they were. He is her bully and her main source of comfort all in one person.
So the terror of staying and the terror of leaving are at the same intensity.
Let’s go back to the woman at the start of this blog.
She’s standing at the threshold, bag in hand. She has somewhere to go, money in the bank and a car to drive away in.
But she can’t move.
Literally, she can’t move. Her brain is looping, bouncing between two petrifying alternatives.
Eventually, she drops to the floor and that’s where he finds her. Crying over her overnight bag.
‘You’re pathetic,’ he says.
And she nods. She must be.
Otherwise, why wouldn’t she leave?
If you’d like insights like this to land in your inbox once a fortnight, sign up to my newsletter. It’s useful.