Each year, approximately 16,000 people are murdered in the United States. 7% of the killers are female.*

Who are these women and what drives them to kill?

Have you ever seen the show “Snapped?” This show is creepy. To see these women (whom they mostly base their series around) who have been accused of murder and hear their crazy stories putting you in the suspense of “Did they really do it? And, if they did, why?

Whether the motivation was revenge against a cheating husband, the promise of a hefty insurance payoff, or putting an end to years of abuse, the reasons are as varied as the women themselves. From socialites to secretaries, female killers share one thing in common: at some point, they all snapped.

What causes one to snap and go postal?

I have this friend who was a little psycho in her teenage years (but aren’t we all) but made it through okay. This girl seems to have everything going for her. She’s got the looks, the brains, the determination to do anything, and yet she’s been in a few relationships that have been mildly to severely abusive, both physically and mentally. I’ve often heard other friends comment saying, “We’re so going to see her on ‘Snapped’.”

What is it that keeps this relationship cycle going?

New research indicates that many women who live with chronic psychological abuse still see certain positive traits in their abusers — such as dependability and being affectionate — which may partly explain why they stay.

Using survey data from a project funded by the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, the researchers explored the experiences of 611 urban-dwelling, low-income American women.

• Overall, 42.8 percent of those surveyed said they had been abused by their intimate male partners in the year preceding the survey.
• Psychological abuse was significantly more of an ongoing problem than physical abuse, while sexual abuse was reported as least common.
• A relatively small number of women (2.3 percent) perceived their partners as extremely controlling, while 1.2 percent reported that their partners engaged in extreme generally violent behaviors.

But a considerable number of women felt their abusive male partners still possessed some good qualities: More than half (54 percent) saw their partners as highly dependable, while one in five (21 percent) felt the men in their lives possessed significant positive traits (i.e., being affectionate).

Okay, I get it. I’ve been there, done that. I’ve been in a couple of these myself and let me just say I stayed in them way too long. I knew it was time to leave one relationship when I would lie in bed next to them wondering how I could smother them with a pillow and get away with it. I’ve been threatened, told no one would ever want me, told that I wasn’t good enough, blah, blah, blah. I’ve been thrown out of moving cars, slapped around, cheated on, lied to, and so on and so on. One day, I woke up and said, “You know what – I’m too old for this BS. I don’t have to live like this, life’s too short!” ….. and I walked out.

That was the best day of my life.

It may not be this simple for some, but there is always a way out! And I’d rather be dead trying to get out of that mess, than continuing to live in that kind of hell on earth.

Source:

* Based on figures from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program.

Why Women Stay in Abusive Relationships