Participant 2: “The pastor told me to persevere and that there is nothing greater than God and all I have to do is pray and believe, God will answer my prayers one day. There are many people crying out there, asking for help from God, so my time will come to be answered.”
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Participant 6: “I pray and give everything to God. One day He will hear my cries and answer my prayers.”
Participant 7: “When I am too stressed about the situation at home, I talk to my pastor, he would read different scriptures from the Bible and he prays for me and my marriage. He encourages me to have faith that one day my husband will change.”
Participant 8: “God knows everything and nothing is hidden from him. I leave everything in his hands, one day he will come through for me.”
Their pastors in the churches (Christian) they belong to encourage the women to stay in their abusive relationships and advise them to trust in God to change their situations. These pastors are probably from traditional, patriarchal backgrounds who believe that divorce is not an option. The participants’ believe that God will see them through brought them a lot of comfort. According to Barnett and LaViolet (1993), women turn to their spiritual advisers and to other members of their religious community for help and support but often they don’t receive the support they need. For battered woman, the quality of the assistance that is received can have life and death results. If a battered woman’s religious convictions lead her to believe that a wife is subordinate to the husband, that marriage is an unalterable life-time commitment or that suffering is the lot of the faithful, she is likely to stay in an abusive relationship much longer (Barnett & LaViolet, 1993). Religious beliefs can be a strong motivator in accepting violence in a woman’s life (James & Gilliland, 2013). In terms of Learned Helplessness her beliefs are that battering will happen and God will eventually help her, she does not have to do anything she remains passive waiting for change which is essentially a maladaptive behaviour. An active behaviour perhaps reporting the husband to the police or leaving is not seen as an option as the woman is unable to objectively assess her situation.
5.6.2 Denial and Avoidance
Another reason that battered women remain with batterers is that they have learned to make numerous accommodations in their abusive relationships. A pre-requisite to learning how to live with an abusive person is finding a way of making the violence acceptable. The basic psychological defence mechanisms of rationalisation and denial help the woman achieve this goal (Barnett et al., 1997). According to Walker (2009), denial and avoidance are major techniques battered women use to avoid dealing with their situations. Sometimes, battered women keep themselves occupied in order to avoid thinking about their situations. They often
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suppress their feelings to avoid becoming too excited or disappointed about things that used to have meaning for them. For example, the abusive husband’s promises to change is considered in terms of Learned Hopefulness, no matter how long or how bad the abuse is the woman still hopes her partner will change. Five of the participants stated that they used avoidance as a way to minimise the abuse. They mentioned that it helped because when they kept quiet and keep out of their husband’s way the abuse got better their partners were less abusive. They also mentioned that they kept themselves busy or occupied with house chores in order to avoid dealing with their situations. The participants also mentioned that they didn’t think about the abuse all the time as it was “too painful.” The following responses support these assertions.
Participant 1: “Well, these days when he starts making noise. I just keep quiet and do not say anything. During the weekends I spend most of my time in church when he is around.
Avoiding him helps because I know I don’t have to deal with him and his insults. It makes me feel a bit normal.”
Participant 3: “These days I keep quiet when I am at home, as long as my children have food to eat, it is okay. In this way there won’t be any reason for him to fight with me, one day he will change.”
Participant 4: “I try to avoid him at all costs. These days when he starts insulting and calling me names, I just keep quiet. It helps because sometimes when I avoid him and do what he wants he does not beat me. If I don’t do wrong things he won’t beat me.”
Participant 6: “I avoid confronting him about the things he does or his whereabouts, I pay more attention to my children. I am tired of this fighting. Maybe if I’m quiet, as he wants, the abuse will stop.”
Participant 7: “I try not to think about it, most of the time [it is too painful] I just pretend like everything is alright at home, like nothing is going on. When I do this it doesn’t hurt a lot and I don’t take out my anger on my children.”
5.6.3 Guilt and self-blame
Battered women suffer from guilt and self-blame. Many battered women develop a sense of self blame, as do most victims of severe violence who cannot control it or the situation that causes it. They attempt to invest more in the relationship to make it work and blame themselves for its failure (Barnet & LaViolet; 1993; Jasinski & Williams, 1998; Wallace, 1997). Guilt occurs when a woman experiences a sense of almost constant failure and is not allowed to express her feelings or frustrations. Her inability to express her feelings leads to
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anger. If there is no place for the battered woman to express her feelings, especially anger, she usually turns it on herself. This often becomes guilt and she feels guilty for almost any behaviour (Wilson, 2011). Five participant from the study indicated that they feel responsible for the abuse in their relationships. This point is reflected in the following responses.
Participant 1: “Maybe there are things I do that I’m not supposed to be doing, maybe I need to be a better wife and be more submissive like my mother-in-law suggested.”
Participant 2: “I do not know what to do anymore. It seems as if I am not doing enough.”
Participant 4: “I think I need to be more patient with him and be a good wife. I’m also not perfect, I have my own faults………. If I don’t do wrong things he won’t beat me ”