Forgiving yourself for staying

Content note: This letter discusses self-blame, shame, and processing difficult emotions about staying in abusive relationships. I use she/her pronouns when referring to 'you' to reflect gendered patterns in IPV statistics, but this letter is for all survivors of all genders.

You’ve stopped being angry at them. Or maybe you’re still angry at them, but that’s not what keeps you up at night anymore.

What keeps you up is the feeling you have when you think about the version of you that stayed. That went back. That believed them. That made excuses. That defended them to people who saw it clearly. That ignored every red flag. That chose them again and again even when choosing them meant choosing your own diminishment.

It’s not just anger. Sometimes it’s anger, yes. But more often it’s something messier. Disappointment. Confusion. A deep, aching sadness. The feeling of looking at past you and thinking “how could you have been so stupid.”

You don’t understand her anymore. You don’t recognise the decisions she made. You can see now, with painful clarity, what she couldn’t or wouldn’t see then. And you don’t know what to do with that gap between who you were and who you are now.

You look at her and you feel embarrassed. Like she’s evidence of something fundamentally wrong with you. Like anyone who knew what you tolerated would judge you the way you’re judging yourself. Like you failed some basic test of self-preservation that other people pass without thinking.

You replay moments in your head. The time your friend asked if you were okay and you lied. The promotion you didn’t take because it would have threatened them. The birthday you spent walking on eggshells. The night you should have left and didn’t. You watch yourself make those choices and you feel bewildered. Who was that person? What was she thinking?

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“Why didn’t you just leave?” isn’t a question other people are asking anymore. It’s the question you’re asking yourself. On repeat. At 3am. Every time you remember something else you endured. Every time the damage becomes clearer.

And underneath that question is a specific kind of shame. Not only the shame they gave you. This is different. This is the shame of having stayed. Of having been, in your mind, complicit in your own harm. Of having looked at the situation and chosen to remain in it.

It feels like a failure. Like evidence that you were weak, stupid, naïve, broken. Like proof that some part of you believed you deserved it or didn’t deserve better. You know, intellectually, that’s not true. But knowing it and feeling it are different countries and you’re stuck between them.

Sometimes the feeling is anger. Hot, sharp, directed squarely at past you. How could you have been so blind? How could you have let it go on that long? How could you not have seen what everyone else could see?

But sometimes it’s just profound sadness. Grief for the time you lost. For the version of yourself you were before. For how long you suffered. For the life you might have had if you’d left sooner, protected yourself better, seen it coming.

Sometimes it’s confusion. You genuinely don’t understand the choices you made. They don’t make sense from where you’re standing now. You try to remember what you were thinking and you can’t access it anymore. The logic that governed your decisions then feels completely foreign to you now.

Sometimes it’s disappointment. In yourself, yes. But also in the situation. In how it all turned out. In the fact that this happened to you at all. In the person you thought you were, strong, smart, self-aware, turning out to be someone who stayed in something like that.

And sometimes it’s just the feeling of being an idiot. That’s the word that shows up, isn’t it? “I was such an idiot.” “How could I have been so stupid?” “I feel like the biggest fool.” It’s harsh and it’s mean and it’s the voice in your head that won’t shut up.

You compare yourself to people who left sooner. Who saw it clearly. Who didn’t go back. Who had one bad incident and said never again. And you feel like you failed some test they passed. Like they had something you didn’t: strength, clarity, boundaries, sense?

You might think about the person you were before them. The version of yourself that had boundaries, that wouldn’t have tolerated this, that knew her worth. And you mourn her. You’re disappointed that she disappeared. That you became someone you don’t respect.

Or maybe you think you were always the kind of person this would happen to. That something in you was already broken or needy or lacking enough to accept it. That you were marked for this somehow. And you’re ashamed of that too.

The feelings aren’t stable. They shift. One day you’re furious at yourself. The next day you’re just sad. The day after that you’re bewildered all over again, trying to make sense of choices that don’t make sense anymore.

You might be holding onto these feelings because they feel safer than the alternative. If it’s your fault for staying, then you had control. You could have stopped it. That’s terrifying in its own way, but it’s less terrifying than admitting you were trapped, that leaving wasn’t as simple as deciding to, that you stayed because leaving felt impossible or more dangerous or because your nervous system couldn’t compute it yet.

If you can blame yourself, judge yourself, be disappointed in yourself… you don’t have to sit with how powerless you actually were. How much they controlled. How many factors kept you there that weren’t about your strength or intelligence or worth.

So you stay stuck in these feelings about past you. Because she’s an easier target than the systems that failed you. Than the person who abused you. Than the reality that you were doing the best you could with what you had at the time.

The version of you that stayed had reasons. You know this. You can list them when your rational brain kicks in. Financial dependence. Children. Isolation. Fear. Trauma bonding. Hope that it would change. Love that didn’t just evaporate because someone hurt you. Nowhere safe to go. The violence that escalates when you try to leave. The time you did try and it got worse so you learned not to.

You can list them. But you don’t feel them anymore. You feel the distance between who you are now, clear-eyed, free, healing, and who you were then. And that distance feels like evidence of how obviously wrong you were, how much you failed yourself.

You don’t remember how it felt to be inside it. You remember the facts, what they did, what you tolerated, how long it went on. But the emotional reality of it, the fog of it, the way your perception was warped by being in it, that’s harder to access now. So you judge past you by present standards. And she fails every time.

She stayed after the first incident. But you don’t remember the apology that came after, how convincing it was, how you’d never seen them cry like that. How they seemed genuinely broken by what they’d done. How it felt like a one-time thing, a terrible mistake, something you could move past together.

She went back after leaving. But you don’t remember the terror of being alone. The financial panic. The way they promised change and it sounded real. The pull of the good memories. The hope that maybe this time it would stick. The exhaustion of starting over.

She defended them to friends. But you don’t remember how carefully they’d framed everything. How they’d convinced you that you were the problem, that you provoked it, that everyone fights like this. How defending them was really defending yourself because if they were the problem, then you were the idiot who stayed.

She ignored red flags. But you don’t remember how gradual it was. How each boundary crossed was small enough to rationalise. How by the time it was undeniable, you were already in too deep. How the red flags only look obvious now, from the outside, after.

She loved them. And you’re ashamed of that most of all. That you loved someone who hurt you. That the love didn’t just stop when the harm started. That you can still, even now, remember moments of real tenderness and not know how to reconcile those with everything else.

You think love should have protected you. That if you’d really loved yourself, you would have left. That loving them despite the abuse means something was fundamentally wrong with you.

But love doesn’t work like that. Love and harm coexisted in the same relationship, in the same person, sometimes in the same moment. Your capacity to love someone who hurt you doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’re human. And it means they exploited something good in you, your ability to love, to hope, to forgive, and used it to keep you there.

You stayed because leaving is the most dangerous time. You stayed because you had children and you thought they needed a family. You stayed because you had no money and nowhere to go. You stayed because they threatened to kill you and you believed them. You stayed because you’d already tried and it got worse.

You stayed because the person you fell in love with showed up just often enough to make you believe they were still in there somewhere. You stayed because good days followed bad days and the good days felt like proof it could work. You stayed because they cried and begged and promised and you wanted to believe people can change.

You stayed because you were isolated and everyone you might have gone to for help was already gone or turned against you. You stayed because the abuse was invisible and you couldn’t prove it and you thought no one would believe you. You stayed because you didn’t have the language for what was happening.

You stayed because your nervous system was in survival mode and survival mode doesn’t make long-term plans: it gets through the day. You stayed because you were traumatised and trauma makes it hard to think clearly, to access your sense of danger, to trust your instincts.

You stayed because you were tired. Because you’d used up all your fight just surviving. Because the idea of leaving, packing, finding somewhere to go, starting over, being alone, felt more overwhelming than staying.

You stayed because you loved them. And that love was real even if the relationship was harmful. Those things can both be true.

The version of you that stayed wasn’t stupid. She was surviving in a situation where her options kept shrinking. She was making the best decisions she could with the information and resources she had. She was protecting herself in the ways she knew how, even if those ways don’t make sense now.

She was you. Doing what you needed to do to get through it.

And maybe the anger, the disappointment, the confusion, the sadness, maybe all of it is really grief. Grief for the time you lost. For the experiences you missed. For the version of yourself that existed before and won’t exist again. For how long it took. For what it cost.

Maybe the harsh feelings are easier to feel than the sadness. Easier than sitting with the reality that something was done to you, that you were harmed, that years of your life were shaped by someone else’s violence and you can’t get them back.

Maybe being hard on yourself is the last bit of control you’re clinging to. If it was your fault, then you had power. If you chose it, then you weren’t helpless. Even though that’s not true, even though it hurts more, it feels safer than the alternative.

You might never fully understand the choices you made in the past. You might always have moments where you look back and feel that flare of anger or disappointment or confusion or shame. That’s okay. You don’t have to understand her perfectly to stop punishing her.

She kept you alive. Whatever choices she made, however long she stayed, she got you out the other side. You’re here. You’re reading this. You survived. That was her. She did that.

And maybe forgiveness isn’t even the right word. Maybe it’s just letting her be what she was, a person in an impossible situation doing the best she could. Maybe it’s stopping the loop of “why didn’t I,” “I should have,” “if only I’d,” “how could I have been so stupid.”

Maybe it’s recognising that the question “why did you stay” puts the responsibility in the wrong place. The question was never “why did you stay.” It was always “why did they abuse you.” And you didn’t have control over that.

You’re carrying shame that isn’t yours. You’re holding yourself accountable for someone else’s choices. You’re blaming yourself for not escaping something that was designed to keep you trapped.

The person you were then deserves your compassion, not your contempt. She was doing what she needed to do to survive. She didn’t fail. She endured. And eventually, when she could, she got out.

That’s you. You did that.

Thank you for being here… exactly as you are, and exactly where you are in your healing ♡

Warmly,

Debbie x

Some things to sit with if you’re ready:

• What would you say to a friend who stayed as long as you did? Would you judge them the way you judge yourself?

• What did staying protect you from that leaving couldn’t—at that time, with what you had?

• If past you could speak to present you, what might she want you to know?