What is it called when wives love abusive husbands?

Question

"He only abuses me because he loves me" - it's a delusion to stay with a husband who hurts you.

What illness does the wife have in this case?

I'm asking for the technical term dealing with one loving out of fear of being left/ neediness.

Answer 1

"Battered woman syndrome" has many explanations. There is no one answer that fits in every situation for every woman. I realize that you are looking for specific information regarding a particular reason that does apply in many situations and I will attempt to answer that, but forgive me for needing to elaborate on other reasons that explain "why women stay" as it would seem misleading to me to answer without the full explanation.

One explanation in many instances where there is severe abuse and threats is that fear of injury and death keeps women from leaving. All the research verifies that women are at greatest risk of being murdered when they actually attempt to leave the abuser and the danger level skyrockets.
Another reason is depression and low self-esteem resulting from years of emotional and psychological battering where a woman becomes convinced that she is worthless and unappealing to anyone else. Like anyone, a woman who hears negative evaluations repeated often enough will begin to believe it and doubt her own value and those who are predisposed to this distorted view of themself by having grown up in abusive family situations are particularly vulnerable. For them, it is just a continuation of what they were told as children and they don't expect it to be any different. Many blame themselves for the abuse (and generally the abuser feeds this belief in the way that they project blame onto the victim) and stay in an attempt to change themselves into the perfect person, believing that it is their inadequacies that cause the other person's abuse. This partially explains your assumption that women believe the abuse is a form of a love: if he didn't love me, he wouldn't try to correct me. A corollary here is that jealousy is another form of passionate desire and translates into he belief that the man's desperate need for the woman causes such insecurity that jealousy is how it gets expressed and controlling behavior is the man's attempt to relieve his insecurity and fear of loss.
A far deeper explanation of why women stay and love and abuse become confused and intertwined is because the abusive relationship is rarely just abusive. It also has many elements of nurturing and caretaking. If a man is just abusive, it wouldn't be nearly so complicated or confusing and a decision to leave would be much easier. But that is rarely ever the case. Most relationships in which abuse occurs consists of a mixture of both loving kinds of behavior as well as abusive behavior. Add to this the fact that most abusers often express remorse after the abuse, but defend their behavior with the explanation that the woman's "transgression" drove them to it. "Please don't make me hit you" is often heard after an episode of abuse. This dynamic is evidenced in the concept of ambivalent attachment to the perpetrator. "Stockholm Syndrome" offers a dramatic example of this. Stockholm Syndrome is an example of the defense mechanism of "identification with the aggressor" and is usually used to describe situations where hostages bond with their captors. However, other common examples include the loyalty abused children show to their abusive parents and the attachment that many domestic violence victims feel for the offenders. The mechanism is explained as a survival strategy where attachment to those you are dependent on is necessary in order to insure your survival.
I think a more clear explanation is postulated by Colin Ross in which the attachment is shown as ambivalent and results from the defense mechanism of splitting. It accounts for the contradictory behavior of perpetrators who simultaneously abuse and nurture/caretake their victims, creating mixed feelings of love and hatred in the victim for their abuser which are handled by psychologically splitting the self and the abuser into good and bad. The "bad self" is then used to explain the "bad abuser" and the "good self" to explain the "good abuser" and thereby allows the victim to maintain attachment to the abuser they are dependent on for their survival. There is an evolutionary drive that we are are "wired" with at birth to attach to our caretakers. The problem arises when the caretaker is also abusive and the feelings of rage resulting from the abuse would threaten the bond necessary to survive if expressed and acknowledged, so it is "split off" from the self as a "bad part" and used to explain the abusive actions of the perpetrator otherwise the victim is forced to acknowledge that the person they depend on for survival is also the person who threatens their very existence and would result in overwhelming terror.

I apologize for the very long diatribe, but to simply answer your question felt like an inadequate response to me. There are so many misconceptions and misinformation as to why women stay in abusive situations and this so often leads to a tendency to blame the victim (which only exacerbates the damage) that i really felt compelled to offer more information. Even what I have attempted to state here does not fully describe the complexity involved.

Answer 2

Its not like that - you dont know unless you have been there.

No guy hits you on the first date he wears you down gradually because despite what you think men like this are really clever. You wake up eventually thinking that no one else cares about you ( he has by this point convinced you that you dont really fit in with your friends and family and they are all just using you anyway). So your life is him and nothing else. When he hits you he convinces you that you have done something to wind him up and if you were a bit more like he wanted you to be.

It is not an illness is it having all your self esteem and self confidence taken away from you. I went from being the life and soul of any room to being someone who was too scared to leave the house during the day. I gave up a job I loved and was good at because he convinced me the panic attacks I was having (which started after he started to abuse me - mentally and physically) were going to get in the way of me doing my job.

24/7 I was in the house with him and he would pick anytime to lash out and start an arguement with me. I am a funny person but if I tried to have a laugh with him he would laugh along at the time but a few days later he would go on about it starting off laughing (with a sharks smile on his face) until I was on the floor begging him to stop kicking me.

I knew I had to leave when I was booked into the hospital in a few months time to get a cyst removed - I would have been at his mercy whilst I was recovering and I was really scared at what he would do. The doctors had already told me I was not allowed to have sexual intercourse for 6 weeks after my operation and he basically said that it was his choice whether this would happen. A few weeks later he pointed a gun in my face.

I left him while he was at the shops - managed to break a lock and get a person from a womans refuge to get me (while I had been at a hospital appointment I had managed to get hold of leaflet).

When I was taken to the refuge I had to go out and get my own groceries and I didnt know what food I liked.

I always said I would never let a man hit me and now I m a shadow of my former self. You can never judge until you have been there - it can happen to anybody.

I am building my life back up but I will never be the person I used to and that is what breaks my heart.

Answer 3

Co-dependency

Answer 4

The illness sounds like fear.

Answer 5

It's called co-dependant

Answer 6

you should research "learned helplessness". . . it's hard to leave someone you love, even when they hurt you. A lot of women may feel that their man needs them to help him get better, or her really does love her.

Answer 7

Co-dependency. And do keep in mind that "abuse" can be physical, mental, or emotional.

Answer 8

The illness of stupidity and self denial

Answer 9

"Battered Wife Syndrome" is often bandied about in the legal system, if 'Law and Order' has taught me anything.

Answer 10

Whipped?