It used to mystify me but it doesn’t anymore, as each day I come closer to understanding just a little more about human nature and the human condition. I am not going to refer to domestic violence and men. There are few men, compared to women, who experience domestic violence. Men know how to handle it better somehow. I wish to concentrate on women whose marriages become hell. We are constantly reading and hearing about them. Some marriages may not be hell but purgatory. But the question we continually ask is: Why do these women stay on in such marriages? Why don’t they grab their children and run for it? Why don’t they turn their back on a life which is simply not tenable, seeing that we only have but one life?

Well, one reason which is evident to all of us is that they are afraid of their violent husband and they are even more afraid that their children will get hurt. They have resigned themselves to their ‘place’ in life and an attitude of ‘grin and bear it’ – this in situations where a woman should be clawing her way out, fighting and finding an alternative, safer, environment for herself and her children.

Why do so many women have the Little Match Girl (of Hans Christian Anderson fame) syndrome? I have never understood the Little Match Girl, either. I always questioned her passivity. Why didn’t she get herself some other job to do? Selling boxes of matches out in the snow always struck me as being totally impractical. Couldn’t she have delivered papers perhaps or served in a grocery store, or gone to work with some rich family as a domestic help? There she was, freezing, and yet going about in a trance waiting for someone to give her some food rather than pulling herself together and looking at better options.

Instead, the poor little match seller sat sadly beside the fountain. Her ragged dress and worn shawl did not keep out the cold and she tried to keep her bare feet from touching the frozen ground. And if she hadn’t sold at least one box of matches in a day she was too frightened to return home, for that would have angered her father. It wouldn’t be much warmer anyway, in the draughty attic where she lived. And let’s not ask why her father expected his daughter to work. What was he doing all day long?

And then one day the inevitable happened. The little girl’s lifeless body was found near the fountain. “Poor little thing!” exclaimed the passers-by. “She was trying to keep warm!”

But such is the fate of women who ‘grin and bear it’ when they are in situations which are unacceptable. Yes, so many accept the unacceptable. Think of the many women you know who have found themselves in an environment that is unhealthy, in a destructive relationship but yet stay on for years and years.

And yet we all need people who warm us, who endorse and exalt us, otherwise we freeze. What is the point of a husband if he cannot do that?

But these women get more and more isolated. Don’t they realise that a husband who does not support you is not worth your time? This may be harsh but it is true. So these women live only a little of their life, for toxic husbands freeze out all feelings, all thought and all hope. And yet these women stay on. Some fantasise and imagine that one day things will be different. Who knows, the toad may turn into a prince… one day.

Fantasy is a good thing as long as it is used as a vehicle that prompts us into action. I knew girls in Mauritius who spent years dreaming of perhaps marrying some Frenchman or a French Swiss (because they spoke French) who would swish them away from their poverty or maybe a husband who controlled them, beat them even. They dreamt of having a kitchen with a fridge and a cooker and a house that did not have a corrugated iron roof. They read cheap romantic paperbacks which further fanned their imagination… but they were stuck in their fantasies. The likelihood of their escaping their poverty was remote, short of finding their way to Europe through prostitution channels.

What they needed was the kind of fantasy which was going to take them forward to action. All success as we know begins in our minds – with a dream, a fantasy.

So instead of trying to find a way out, these women – who are in marriages that are unbearable – just sit there hoping their husband will change, will stop destroying their soul, will stop beating them and abusing them, will stop contaminating the very lives of their children too. Or will stop being serial adulterers perhaps.

But they need the kind of fantasy that prompts them to do something about it. They have to do something so that their situation changes for the better. But many indulge only in lethal fantasies: “Some day… he will die” or “he will change…” or “Perhaps when the children are older…”

Women who marry young, or who are married off young, have not had the chance to find themselves and be their own person. But the mentality still persists that a woman must be taken ‘off the shelf’ and married off, preferably to someone who can support her for the rest of her life, while she, in return, takes care of the home and the children. When the marriage works, all well and good, but when there are hostile conditions in the home, and little chance of them changing, a woman needs another venue, another environment to thrive. Coldness spells the end of any relationship and violence kills it. As soon as one becomes frozen in feeling, thinking or action, a relationship is no longer possible.

Love energises. When emotional conditions in a relationship are positive then one can bear many things, including poverty and sickness. When there is not love, or it has been killed off, there is a loss of energy.

But because women tend to accept the unacceptable, as each day passes they persuade themselves that they can stand it. Fear immobilises them – the fear of the unknown. What will they do? Where will they go? Who is going to feed them? So, “I will look the other way…” They are in denial, sometimes for a lifetime, and their life becomes one of complacency and numbness. They push decisions to a mythical future. They remain knock-kneed and green-gilled with fear at the thought of an alternative environment and become immobile, catatonic and physically unable to act.

In the case of the Little Match Girl, she dreamt of her grandmother who would take her away. Helplessness is lethal. It is dangerous to think that our salvation lies with other people. Salvation lies within ourselves. No one can save us but ourselves.  

I don’t know where we are with the Domestic Violence Bill or Law. I am so tired of the subject – as tired as I am of wars and immigrants. However, we know only too well that laws aren’t everything. Laws have to be enforced. In the end, it is each individual who must empower her/himself and feel in charge of his/her life and destiny. This comes from education and giving women self-esteem; enough belief in themselves so that when destiny lands them in such situations, they can walk away – but without walking from the frying pan into the fire, from a violent husband to a pimp, for example, or – in the frenzy of coupling – from one bad man to an equally bad one.

So many, and not just women, have this false idea that they have to take abuse from someone they love. I say forgiveness is enough but you don’t have to stay. Empower yourself and get away from any situation which may be poisoning your life. Staying on in hell is not going to lead you to heaven, no matter what the priest or anyone else may tell you. Take no notice. Flee. Do not accept the unacceptable.