Why do people judge victims of abuse for loving their abuser to the point where they always go back or never leave?

[Anonymous]

It’s easy to judge when it’s not your situation and you don’t know what’s really going on. What I mean by really is you only can go by what you notice, what they tell you or what you assume/think but you never really “know”. People love their abusers because they know them outside the abuse. They know who they are when they aren’t attacking them, hurting them etc others don’t so it’s easy to call them “dumb” or “stupid” for saying or always returning.

[JCrockett]

Because it's obviously a problem. There are complicated emotional realities that are hard to understand from the outside, true. But that doesn't change the fact that being emotionally attached to a destructive influence is bad. It is totally unintuitive to any objective outsider. Hence the judgement.

"I cut myself to relieve my depression."

"But shouldn't you, like, not do that?"

"Why are you judging me?"

"Because you're injuring yourself on purpose."

"It makes me feel like I can feel things again."

"Alright. How about we work on changing that so you don't do that anymore? You know, so that you stop getting injured."

"Stop judging me."

[Pterodon]

Because they’re stupid and deserve no sympathy. They complain yet change nothing so stfu and get out of our lives. You’ve made your choice now live with it

[Asker]

I personally have a sister who is in the situation I just described and she doesn’t really open up or talk about it at all let alone complain. We try to get her to open up to understand why she always goes back but we get a bunch of “I don’t knows” and “I don’t want to talk about it.” And the only reason we know he hits her or has is because of bruises, scars we’ve seen since she started dating him. My parents have called her stupid or dumb but with us being close in age I try to understand her more even if I’m not in her shoes.

[Pterodon]

All you’re doing is enabling.

[Asker]

It’s not enabling if no matter what you do or say they’re gonna go back anyway. So even if I do choose to not agree and call her stupid and make her feel worse than she probably already does by going through what she’s already going through, it wouldn’t matter because she’s gonna make her own choices. It’s family of victims of abusers that have went as far as pulling up on the abuser, fighting them etc and the person they did it for still went back. It’s no such thing as enabling when it comes to a victim of abuse, because it all comes down to them.

[Asker]

*victims of abuse

[Pterodon]

Anytime you lend a sympathetic ear to someone on a self destructive lifestyle it is enabling. Cut her off

[Asker]

It’s not a sympathetic ear either because I just said she never talks about it at all and when we try to get her talk about it she changes the subject, tells us bits and pieces or nothing at all by saying she doesn’t want to talk about it. She goes on with her life like it’s okay and normal. She comes home after weeks or days of being gone with him, we know he’s hit her again because she has new bruises, comes back acting solemn, more quiet than she usually is (she’s already a quiet person) and just pretends like nothing is wrong in her life. She holds everything in and I know, though she clearly loves him, he has damaged her and holding it all in she’s gonna break down one day and I’m not talking about with words.

[Pterodon]

It’s a ploy. Cut her off