Domestic violence, aka abuse, is a tricky conversation to have. It’s a tricky situation to be in.
While I have my opinion on people leaving those relationships, I still understand the whys that keep people in those relationships. I don’t give people grief about staying, even well before I was ever facing the decision to get out and when to get out.
For clarity, because I don’t want to paint a different picture than what it was:
Most of the time I was in this particular relationship, it was a lot of starting unnecessary arguments with me. Then one day we full-out fought because he put his hand on me (mushed me into the wall and here in Florida, that’s fight time). I still went through the emotions. I still delayed leaving. We agreed that he would go to counseling and everything was fine until he stopped going. When he stopped going, he started back aggressively grabbing my arms like he would do every blue moon before… and I said, we can never be together again. And so we never have and I left.
It was a pretty embarrassing situation to be in especially when people would make a sudden movement and I jumped then tried to play it off hoping nobody noticed.
I fought back, but I still struggled with some of the same things people who don’t fight back struggle with.
I started talking about it rather quickly. However, by then I had already started talking about other abuse YEARS later (childhood SA). I’d already built myself up to speak up about abuse and wrongdoing towards me.
I said all this to say, that you have got to stop villainizing victims of abuse simply because speaking up about it was delayed. You have got to stop automatically labeling what they’re saying as lies because “it’s just coming out now” after happening 5 years ago.
There are MANY reasons people take so long to speak on things that have happened to them, especially abuse.
And let’s be honest, it doesn’t matter if the victim says it as soon as it happens or years later, people will still find a way to call the victim a liar and/or to villainize them.
The time it takes someone to speak up should not be your reason for not believing them. It’s illogical!