The Real Choice

In order to understand why I stayed with an abusive husband for over 20 years, you have to understand what my real choices were. The nature of his abusive behaviour was such that I didn't have a chance of winning sole custody of the children, without visitation rights. He never hit them. He pushed and grabbed me. He shouted at me in fits of rage that made his face turn purple, snot stream from his nose and spittal fly from his mouth. He called me names. He had tantrums over the mundane annoyances of everyday life. He blamed it all on me.

It was abuse. It was wrong, but it wasn't enough to keep him from the kids if I had left him. So what were my choices?

1. Stay and try and make the best of it for my kids, acting as a buffer, telling them what he was doing was wrong and that I was trying to get him to stop
2. Leave and accept the courts decisions, which would have almost definitely resulted in his getting some form of regular contact with them
3. Leave and take measures to keep him away from them

I rejected choice number 3, because I knew that he was controlling and resourceful and I didn't judge that I would suceed in alluding him. I rejected choice number 2 because I was sure that if I left him he would be very angry and that he would not cope well with the children on his own. At this point I figured he would either totally lose it and do them or me real physical damage or he would keep his behaviour under enough control that the courts would continue to allow contact.

So what it boiled down to was a choice between staying with him and helping them cope with his violent rages, or leaving him and leaving them to cope with his violent rages alone. For me there was no choice. I stayed until both my daughters were in there late teens and could make their own choices about contact.