It Ends With US
“[My abuser] would have killed us if I had gone back. If intake had gone differently - and I got scared - if the staff was off-putting or rude, and if I thought I could just deal with it a little longer...
I started college today. I will buy [a] house in a few years. I will watch my children get married, and I will grow old because of your smiles, because of kindness, because of your lack of judgement, because of your education...
I will never be on the news. My babies will never be on the news”
Colleen Hoover’s novel turned feature film, It Ends with Us, has sparked a national conversation on the origins and impacts of domestic abuse. The New York Times best-seller follows 23-year old Lily Bloom as she navigates the complex process of leaving an abusive relationship after a nightmarish childhood filled with enduring the same behaviors from her father.
While Hoover’s book is based on a fictional account and is by no means representative of every survivor’s experience, Lily’s journey highlights the intense rollercoaster of emotions a survivor may feel, the confusion around loving a violent person, as well as the desperation to keep your family together, despite the abuse.
However, a common reaction to It Ends with Us from those who have never experienced domestic abuse has been,
“Why did Lily stay so long?”
At KCWS, we know that barriers to leaving an abuser go far beyond those outlined in Lily’s story. And just as people are walking out of theatres confused by Lily’s choices throughout the movie, the loved ones of survivors are also often overwhelmed with trying to understand their choice to stay.
The Hidden Patterns of Abuse
In a single year (2020), the Texas Council on Family Violence reported that 228 Texans had been killed by their romantic partners, the highest rate of intimate partner homicides ever recorded in a single year. Moreover, the number of Texan women killed by a firearm has doubled in the past decade, with reports from 2022 showing that more than 7 out of 10 Texan female survivor deaths were directly caused by firearm use. These data showed that death by a firearm was, in fact, the most common means of ending a survivor’s life.
While up to three-fourths of domestic abuse related homicides occur when the survivor decides to leave their perpetrator, domestic abuse survivor turned advocate, Kit Gruelle, has stated that these are, “preventable homicides,” because “they follow a reliable trajectory. Society just has to learn to listen to [survivors].”
“My case is a high profile, high risk case... [but] my safety is protected here... staff is caring enough to ask how I feel and what they can do to make me feel safe. The one-on-one talks anytime to vent, laugh, or to research things with the staff - I feel like I can really trust them.”
For most, there seems to be a simple solution: People should leave their partners when they become abusive.
Then why do so many continue enduring abusive behaviors from their partners, and what makes leaving these relationships be so difficult?
Reality Check: In most cases, an abuser uses extremely effective tactics to assert power, control and dominance over the other person’s body, mind, and life. This creates a very real sense of powerlessness and/or hopelessness within the survivor.
Within a cycle of abuse, survivors often experience chronic trauma, or events that expose one to actual or threatened death, serious injury or sexual assault. Chronic exposure to traumatic events can have a substantial impact on one’s physical and emotional health. Stress from domestic abuse may actually change the chemical/physical structure of a survivor’s brain, resulting in significant difficulties in decision making and emotional regulation processes.
Note: The Cycle of Abuse was originally created by psychologist Lenore Walker, and does not represent all cases of domestic abuse.
Still feel confused about why a survivor would choose to endure abuse rather than leave? Factors influencing the decision to leave their perpetrator go far beyond the state of their current health.
“Friends and family don’t see the everyday manipulation and coercion... [These acts] portray the message that there is no one out there that will help the survivor, they are not worthy of anything outside of the abusers’ control, or no one will love them like the abuser does.”
Other reasons for staying may include (but are surely not limited to), financial restrictions, a lack of support and/or understanding, as well as the justified fear of enduring further/more extreme harm, which is often the case for survivors attempting to end or leave the relationship.
Reality Check: When supporting a survivor of domestic abuse, it is critical to acknowledge that that while you might not always fully understand their choices, you have also never had to walk in their shoes.
Why Do They Stay?
Fear of Further/Lethal Abuse
Safety for Children and/or Pets
Lack of Support from Friends/Family
Shame
Immigration Issues
Religious/Cultural Beliefs
Financial Restrictions
Lack of Understanding around Abuse
Lack of Understanding around Available/Affordable Resources
Complex Feelings about their Abuser
“Friends and family typically don’t have all of the information and are also approaching the situation from a different lens... They aren’t living in the reality. It’s easy to place judgment from the outside.”
Even for those who have previously survived an abusive relationship, your past partners, experiences, and viewpoints will never be identical to another survivors’.
Proven Strategies: What We Know Works
In 2016, the Institute for Family Studies conducted a qualitative analysis of X (formally Twitter) posts written by women using the hashtag #WhyILeft, sharing personal accounts of why they ended an abusive relationship. The researchers found that there were four factors that motivated survivors to finally leave their perpetrator.
These motivators for leaving an abuser included:
Facing Reality/Choosing Personal Growth
(“Because I woke up. Because I saw myself in the pain of my family’s eyes. I deserved to love myself again.”)
Accepting Support
(“I finally told my family. I admitted to myself that I needed help and strength/support”.)
Protecting Children/Pets
(“When my 5 yo little girl asked why Daddy treats me like that with tears in her eyes, I knew I had to leave.”)
Fear/Exhaustion
(“I didn’t want the next time that he hurt me to be the very last…ever.”)
“Survivors stay with their abusers out of fear - Fear of getting hurt... of being alone... of not having money... of rejection... of lack of support from others... of the unknown... But in my opinion, staying always boils down to fear.”
These are all individual “survivor factors” that may help a person to finally gain the courage necessary to leave their abuser. While friends and family members can help foster these ideas in those experiencing abuse, there are also evidence-based practices that domestic abuse support organizations should not only be aware of, but prioritize in their work:
Be Knowledgeable about Local and National Support Resources. Every client we serve at KCWS comes to us with unique experiences, but still needs to properly heal from their abuse. This means that clients will need different forms of support, and agency staff should be aware of many distinct types of available resources when referring clients (support for mental health, substance abuse, legal aid, etc.).
Validate the Survivor’s Feelings and Experiences. The survivor may not be ready to leave the relationship yet, and that is okay. Truly listening and empathizing as advocates can help survivors feel validated, and oftentimes increases a sense of rapport between staff and client.
Increase the Survivor’s Sense of Belonging. Feeling that you are a “part of something” is an intrinsic human motivator, whether you have experienced abuse or not. In many cases, survivors may endure their abuser’s behavior simply due to the fear of being “alone.” When we help create a sense of positive community, survivors are more likely to thrive and build new healthy relationships and thrive.
Safety Plan. More than once, if necessary. At KCWS, we safety-plan with every client, from the point of crisis call/intake to the day our clients exit our program. A safety-plan is a personalized, practical strategy that is created to help survivors protect themselves, as well as their children and pets, in certain cases. These plans help ensure the survivor’s safety by “thinking ahead” and identifying actions that reduce risk and prepare the individual for potentially dangerous situations.
Rethinking Our Approach: Punitive vs. Prevention Models
Currently, most communities mitigate domestic abuse using what is known as a “punitive paradigm.” What this means is that domestic abuse is managed at a community-level through legal consequences, aiming to hold abusers accountable for the harm that they have caused - after the abuse has occurred. These actions may include the arrest, prosecution, and sentencing of abusers, or establishing protection/restraining orders for a survivor, with the goal of preventing further abuse.
Reality Check: While accountability after inflicting abuse is critical, punitive models assume that justice for the survivor is met through deterrence and retribution. This approach fails to address the root causes of the abuse, and quite often, fails to prevent future cases within the same partners.
More recently, researchers and policy makers have strongly advocated for the development of a more effective approach to mitigating domestic abuse: one that focuses on preventing violence, rather than addressing it after a crisis event has occurred. A “prevention model” could help address existing issues in cases where a criminal justice response is not appropriate, and the harm of legal repercussions for the abuser outweigh the benefits.
To highlight this need, the Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment, conducted from 1987 to 1998, concluded that focusing on the arrest and/or prosecution of an abuser may create more harm for survivors than good. An example of this issue is often exhibited through mandatory arrest policies, which require law enforcement officers to make an arrest in cases of domestic abuse, regardless of whether the survivor wished to press charges. These situations often lead to an abuser feeling enraged by having to face legal consequences for their actions, and shortly after being released from jail, often attempt to inflict further harm to the survivor. Further, the study found that arrests do not, in fact, reduce rates of recidivism, and survivors whose abusers were arrested were actually 60% more likely to later be killed by their perpetrator.
How can we actually achieve a systemic shift towards a community-level prevention model for domestic abuse?
By shifting our focus from aiding the impacted survivor, to focusing on lowering a potential abuser’s risk for perpetration.
However, research identifying risk-factors for domestic abuse perpetration is limited, and oftentimes available data on these subjects is sorely outdated.
With these limitations in mind, studies have identified that witnessing domestic abuse between parents, experiencing childhood abuse or neglect, familial financial distress, as well as mental health and substance abuse issues, are all risk-factors linked to perpetrating abuse upon an intimate partner. If we can mitigate the occurrence and impacts of these factors from the start, domestic abuse is likely to be mitigated or prevented.
KCWS exists to serve survivors and their families. We see firsthand the intergenerational impacts of the cycle of abuse and work to foster a sense of empowerment and resilience in our adult clients, so they may go off and empower their children to make healthy choices themselves.
This can be accomplished by lowering the impact of abuse on the parent through effective programming, which equips them to better connect with and support their families. This also often gives their children the tools needed to choose healthy relationship behaviors in the future.
“Community level responses begin with the removal of judgement... A healthy community believes survivors, assists without strings or expectations, and removes their ego or preferences from the offer of support.”
Using a prevention framework, programs should also work to foster financial, psychological, and social well-being in those at risk for perpetration, prior to engaging in abusive behaviors. Offering services such as psychoeducation, financial coaching, and social bonding events to those who are at high-risk for abusive behaviors may help lower that risk, avoiding the intergenerational impacts of domestic abuse.
Research on Limitations to Punishment-Focused Models Existed in the ‘80's - So Why Haven’t We Changed our Approach?
In Hoover’s novel, Lily Bloom courageously leaves her abuser, claiming that the intergenerational cycle of abuse she had been enduring would finally “end with us.”
Given that in the US an average of 32 people per minute are still either abused, harassed, or stalked by an intimate partner (according to NISV 2026/2017 data), as advocates, practitioners, policy makers, and researchers, ending domestic abuse truly “Starts with Us.”
We must begin critically evaluating and reforming our approach to ending family violence.
KCWS 2024 Lavender Lens Roundtable Discussion
Last month, KCWS hosted a community roundtable event, Lavender Lens. We sat down and began having the hard, but necessary, conversations around domestic abuse, barriers we face when working to end abusive relationships, and how we can come together to improve relational health in our community.
If you, as a friend, advocate, or agency are not sure where to start to aid in the important mission of ending domestic abuse, we highly encourage you to begin by sitting down with others and just “talking about it.” You may be surprised how quickly conversation will spark action.
The figure provided at the end of this article (Supporting Cycle Breaking) offers evidence-based strategies for improving approaches to mitigating, and hopefully one day ending, domestic abuse in our communities from three different lenses: practice, policy, and programming.
Our hope is that domestic abuse support organizations invest in the necessary resources to not only break cycles of abuse in our communities, but prevent abuse from ever impacting current relationships, and those and future generations.
Are you or someone you know struggling to break free from the cycle of domestic abuse? Call Kendall County Women’s Shelter’s 24/7 Hotline to create a safety-plan with us today.
KCWS 24/7 Hotline: 1-800-495-8078
About the Author
Prior to her service at KCWS as the Research & Education Coordinator, Sarah received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado Boulder and a master’s degree in Psychology from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Having dedicated the past six years to researching factors related to posttraumatic stress, Sarah has collaborated with domestic abuse, foster care, and military support agencies. She is passionate about enhancing trauma-informed policies and practices, and is on track to obtain her PhD, Fall 2024.
Email: sarah@kcwstexas.org
KCWS Phone: 830.428.4930