Why Did I Stay in an Abusive Relationship? Unpacking Shame
It's Not Your Fault You Stayed: Unpacking the Shame of Abusive Relationships
"Why didn't you just leave?" is one of the most common - and most harmful - things said to survivors of abusive relationships. It's a question loaded with judgment, and for many people, it becomes a source of deep shame that makes healing harder, not easier.
The truth is, staying in an abusive relationship is rarely a simple choice. It's a deeply human response to a complex set of circumstances. It’s also often the most adaptive and protective response in the moment. Understanding why we stay and accessing compassion for ourselves is one of the most important steps toward healing as a survivor of abuse.
Whether you are:
A person who recognizes they are in an abusive relationship,
A person who believes they may be in an abusive relationship but is unsure,
A person who has been told they are in an abusive relationship but is unsure or does not believe it,
A friend, family member, or loved one of someone who is in an abusive relationship, or
A person in any stage of healing from an abusive relationship,
This article is for you.
This article features reasons we remain in abusive relationships, and we wanted to begin here because disentangling shame from these reasons is one of the most common roadblocks in leaving abusive relationships as well as healing from them.
What Is Shame, and Why Does It Follow Abuse? A Denver Trauma Therapist Explains
Shame is an emotion or thought that originates within ourselves or stems from the words or actions of others that tells us in some way You are wrong. It makes us feel smaller, lesser, and more doubtful of our decision-making capabilities and how others perceive us. Shame typically manifests itself through criticism, especially in the forms of “I should have/You should have…” or “If you had…”.
With abusive relationships, we often hear from others first- especially if we are just identifying and processing ourselves we are in an abusive situation- “Why don’t you leave?”
If you are currently in an abusive relationship, you may feel a tug between defensiveness for yourself and your partner (They treated me well when…) as well as shame (Why don’t I leave?). In later stages of healing after one has exited an abusive relationship, this question can become self-directed: Why didn’t I just leave? What was going through my head that made me stay? I should have known better. The signs were all there, everyone told me. I hurt myself, my kids….
Shame doesn’t pause and allow us to remember that abusive relationships are a form of living, breathing trauma: a state of flight or flight that waxes and wanes with time but overall, erodes our sense of wellbeing, self-worth and emotional reserves. A crucial step in trauma therapy for healing after abusive relationships is grabbing shame by its shoulders and reframing the narrative about why we stayed.
What Is the Difference Between Shame and Guilt After Abuse?
Many survivors of abusive relationships carry both shame and guilt, and while they are often experienced together, they aren’t the same thing.
Guilt says I did something wrong.
Shame says I am wrong.
In the context of abusive relationships, guilt might sound like: I should have left sooner. I should have protected my kids. Shame sounds like: I am stupid for staying. I am weak. I should have known better.
Both are painful. But shame is the one that burrows deepest. Shame is the emotion behind the voice that tells us we are fundamentally flawed for having stayed, for having loved someone who hurt us, for not seeing what others claim was so obvious. We see this so often with the abuse survivors we work with at our practice. In trauma therapy for abuse, untangling shame from guilt is one of the first and most important threads we pull from to support the early process of healing.
9 Reasons Why People Stay in Abusive Relationships
Shame from ourselves or others may tell us we stayed in abusive relationships because we are/were “crazy”, “stupid”, “spineless”, “blind” or “cowardly”. At CZ Therapy Group, our approach to trauma therapy in Denver, CO rejects all of those perspectives, and instead conceptualizes why we stay/stayed in two primary categories:
Abusive relationships are all we have ever known so we may not be able to recognize what is “normal” and what constitutes relational abuse.
It is protective to stay.
Below are 9 reasons why staying in abusive relationships can often be a protective choice.
Staying for the Children: Why Leaving Feels Impossible as a Parent
Western society champions the image of the two parent, nuclear family household, and we are told in various ways that children benefit from a two-parent household. In actuality, the most beneficial family structure is a home in which NO violence is present, even if that means a one-parent household. We often stay because we fear the instability of a "broken home," yet the body remembers the tension of an unsafe one. Prioritizing a peaceful environment over a traditional structure is an act of profound protection for your children’s developing nervous systems.
Financial Control: How Abusers Use Money to Keep Us Trapped
Abusers control the flow of money in a household to create isolation. If economic resources are cut off, we do not feel that we are capable of creating a different life if we can and do leave. This "economic abuse" is a calculated strategy to dismantle our autonomy and make the outside world feel inaccessible. When our bank accounts are monitored or emptied, staying becomes a matter of basic survival and a lack of immediate options rather than a lack of will.
Familial Pressure: When Family Encourages Us to Stay
Family members cannot see abusive dynamics that occur behind closed doors. For the sake of the children, family image, or well-intentioned hopes for your wellbeing, they may encourage reconciliation or staying with your abuser. This external pressure can lead us to second-guess our own reality, making us feel like the "difficult" one for wanting to leave. It creates a painful double-bind where choosing our safety feels like betraying our lineage or our support system.
Community and Religious Pressure: When Outside Voices Keep Us Stuck
Community members with strong values about how family life should operate (i.e. pastors, school officials, etc) prescribe a vision about marriage or commitment to relationships that often does not entail recognition of domestic violence. These institutions may emphasize "working through it" or "sanctity" without acknowledging the physical or emotional toll of the abuse. In these spaces, the shame of "failing" the community’s standards can feel just as heavy as the abuse itself.
Erosion of Self-Worth: How Abuse Warps the Way We See Ourselves
Through name-calling, put downs, or verbal abuse, abusers warp our vision of ourselves as competent, desirable, and worthy individuals who can make their own decisions and experience happiness without them. Over time, we may begin to internalize the abuser’s voice as our own inner critic. This erosion makes the prospect of a life on our own feel not just daunting, but impossible, as we lose touch with the version of ourselves that was once confident and capable.
Lack of Awareness: When Abuse Is All We've Ever Known
Our childhood experiences may have painted a picture of abusive dynamics as normal, and our schools and medical institutions do not often explain to us how to recognize abuse. We may tell ourselves what we are experiencing is typical, or “not that bad”, because we lack a baseline for what a safe, healthy relationship looks like. Without these tools for comparison, the red flags simply blend into the landscape of our everyday lives.
The Honeymoon Phase: Why Hope Keeps Us Holding On
Following an abusive episode, there is often a “honeymoon” phase where the abuser is apologetic, accommodating, and a glimpse of the person we fell in love with or a version of our partner that promises to be better. This intermittent reinforcement creates a powerful psychological hook, convincing us that the "good" version is the true version and the abuse is just a temporary glitch. Because of this hope for newness, we stay, waiting for the person we love to finally reappear for good.
Socialized Selflessness: Why Leaving Feels Like Failure
Women are socialized since childhood to be selfless and endure in the face of trouble for partners and children. We are often taught that the success of a relationship rests solely on our ability to be patient, forgiving, and resilient. We may feel guilty or like we have “failed” if we recognize we need help or that the relationship is inherently unsupportive. Choosing ourselves can feel like an act of rebellion against everything we were told a "good" woman should be.
Lack of Resources: Staying Because We Don't Know What's Out There
Unsure of what organizations or individuals could help us financially, logistically, or emotionally if we do decide to leave, we remain inside abusive relationships because we are at least familiar with the current structure. The unknown can feel far more terrifying than a known danger, especially when we lack a clear map for the next steps. Without a tangible path toward housing, legal aid, or childcare, staying can feel like the only logistical option available in the moment.
There are many other individualized reasons why individuals remain in abusive relationships, and it often takes time, patience, and compassion to be able to distinguish them from the shame we receive from ourselves or external sources. Trauma therapy in Denver, CO is a space to not only help establish immediate safety and access to resources, but to understand underlying factors in our life story- identities, family system, spiritual beliefs, core values, and more- that impacted our entry into an abusive relationship and our exit from one.
Trauma Bonding: When Love and Fear Become Entangled
Trauma bonding is one of the most misunderstood and under-discussed reasons survivors remain in abusive relationships. It’s also one of the most prevalent and important. A trauma bond forms when cycles of abuse are punctuated by moments of affection, relief, or connection. Over time, the nervous system becomes conditioned to the cycle of tension, rupture, and repair. With repetition, that cycle begins to feel like love, or at least like something familiar and necessary.
Trauma bonding is a neurological response to an environment of intermittent reward and threat. It is the body and brain doing exactly what they are designed to do: attach to the person who is both the source of pain and the source of relief. Understanding trauma bonding is often a turning point in healing. It shines a light on the reasons why we stayed and helps us release the shame that has wrapped itself around that question for so long.
Staying is Protective: When Leaving Feels More Dangerous Than Staying
For many survivors, leaving an abusive relationship carries a very real physical risk, to themselves and their children or other closed loved ones. Statistically, the most dangerous time in an abusive relationship is the period immediately following separation. This is the point in time when the abuser's sense of control is most threatened, which commonly activates violence in perpetrators. Fear of escalated violence, fear of losing children, fear of retaliation are real, valid fears rooted in your deepest survival instincts, and they deserve to be named and honored rather than dismissed.
How Does Shame Block Healing After an Abusive Relationship?
Shame is not just painful in the moment; it actively interferes with healing by keeping us stuck in a heavy, familiar cycle. When we are deep in shame, we are less likely to reach out for support, less likely to trust our own perceptions, and more likely to remain isolated. Shame tells us we brought this on ourselves, that we should have known better, that we don't deserve help. Shame is a convincing narrator and has an astute way of convincing us to believe that it’s story is true.
In somatic trauma therapy, we understand shame not just as a thought or belief, but as something that lives in the body. It shows up as the urge to make ourselves smaller, to avoid eye contact, or to disappear entirely. Moving through shame after an abusive relationship means working at the level where it actually lives. In our work with clients, the focus is not just on reframing the story in our minds, but on helping the nervous system experience something different together: safety, worthiness, and the felt sense that we are not too much, and we are not to blame.
Healing From an Abusive Relationship with Trauma Therapy in Denver, CO
If you resonated with this blog or other blogs in this series and are ready to seek support, reach out to learn more about working with us. Follow these three steps to get started:
Reach out to schedule a free 20-minute consult call.
Connect with the Denver trauma therapist of your choice via a phone consult.
Begin your unique healing journey.
Continue Your Journey: More Resources on Healing from Relational Abuse
This article is part of an ongoing series from the Denver trauma therapists at CZ Therapy Group exploring relational abuse - how to recognize it, what keeps us inside it, and how to form healthy relationships on the other side. Explore the full series:
Meet The Writer: Jordan Kurtz, Trauma Therapist in Denver, CO.
Jordan Kurtz (she/her) is a Denver trauma therapist, couples counselor, and staff writer at CZTG. Jordan focuses on therapy for trauma, grief, adolescence, and relationships. Her approach is authentic, warm, and affirming, which she interweaves throughout her use of advanced evidence-based modalities, including EMDR therapy in Denver, CO, Emotion Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT), and somatic therapy. She provides EMDR and general trauma therapy in Denver, CO and virtually throughout the state of Colorado. If you’d like to work with Jordan, feel free to reach out to schedule a consultation call.