Why Do People Decide to Leave?

When the day comes to explain why they divorced to their children, Marcantel said, she is confident in what she will tell them. “I stayed. I tried. I did as much as I could have,” she said.     

Now that she looks back on her experience, she is shocked. “It’s one of those things, as it happens, you don’t think it was that bad,” Marcantel said. “If it had been someone else, I would have said don’t take that, you don’t have to.”

ABUSE DEFINED   

Sheryl Cates, the CEO of the National Domestic Violence Hotline and the Texas Council on Family Violence, was not surprised that abuse rated high as a reason to divorce. “No that doesn’t surprise me at all – however people’s definition of abuse varies.  How it’s defined for the couple who is divorcing may or may not fit into the definition of what we recognize as domestic violence,” Cates said. Cates has spent more than 22 years working to end domestic violence. She has made several appearances at the White House to discuss violence issues.

Family violence can show its face in many forms, Cates said. For example, domestic abuse is a pattern of coercive control that one person exercises over another. She defined battering as a behavior that physically harms, arouses fear, prevents a partner from doing what they wish or forces them to behave in ways they do not want. Battering includes the use of physical and sexual violence, threats and intimidation, emotional abuse and economic deprivation. Cates also said there may be financial control, using the children, sexual violence, or for religious couples – taking Scripture out of context.

Cates recommended that anyone in these kinds of situation find help. The National Domestic Violence Hotline, 1-800-799-SAFE, provides advocates who are available for victims, and anyone calling on their behalf, to provide crisis intervention, safety planning, information and referrals to support and services within the caller’s community. It received more than 215,000 calls last year. The hotline is the only center in the nation that has access to more than 5,000 shelters and domestic violence programs.

INCREASED SOCIETAL AWARENESS   
    
Emilio Viano, a professor of justice, law and society at American University in Washington, D.C., said another reason that so many people report abuse as the reason for their divorce is because there is more public awareness of domestic violence. Viano conducts research into victimology and victims’ rights. He is the author of "Intimate Violence: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Critical Issues in Victimology, Crime and Its Victims and The Victimology Handbook." “At some point it clicks, so to speak, and society understands it,” Viano said.  “It becomes a relevant variable on which to make decisions in our lives.”       

In days past, the decision to leave a marriage because of abuse was not common, in part because it was not feasible, Viano said. Women didn’t earn their own money and could not support their families. Beyond the financial ties, previously women faced extended families that were not supportive of divorce, and they had to contend with social and legal complexities that are not as prevalent now.         

“No doubt that there was abuse in years past,” Viano said. “However women now have more chances to leave. That is the most crucial variable. People stayed, particularly women, because they had no choice. Where would they go?”            

The women of today understand that violence in marriages does not have to be tolerated, Viano said. 


Michele Bush Kimball has a Ph.D. in mass communication with a specialization in media law.  She has spent almost 15 years in the field of journalism, and she teaches at American University in Washington, D.C.  She recently won a national research award for her work.  She can be reached at m.kimball@divorce360.com.