Have you ever felt a surge of rage while reading a real-life story on social media?
You listen as a woman narrates a harrowing tale of abuse, only for her to end with: "But I still love him."
In that moment, it’s easy to feel like you’re being "rage-baited". You want to scream at the screen, “How can you love someone who hurts you?”
I recently spoke with a woman whose identity I must protect. She was a living map of trauma, covered in scars and fresh bruises.
When I tried to tell her how fundamentally wrong her situation was, she looked at me and said, “My husband does this because he loves me.” I was caught off-guard, silenced by a logic that felt entirely alien.
As the secretary of the Young Women’s Forum, many women come to me with their burdens.
Another told me her husband only beats her when he is drunk, placing the blame on alcohol rather than the man. While I am a dedicated women’s rights activist, my background is in media and communications rather than psychology. Emotionally, these conversations are devastating; logically, they remain the most difficult thing I have ever had to process.
However, these women do not reach these heartbreaking conclusions in isolation. They have likely cried and begged to be heard, only to be met by a society that whispers that this is “normal” or “just the way men are”. Our society fails victims by offering excuses instead of exits, but researchers and psychologists offer a deeper look into why the human mind clings to its captors.
- Model uses fitness training to fight drug abuse
- Village Rhapsody: Rising suicide cases among men worrying
- Young voters could decide Zim’s 2023 presidential election: Will they?
- Politicians giving us nightmares — Police
Keep Reading
Experts point to “traumatic bonding” and the “cycle of violence” as the invisible chains holding these women back. In the cycle of abuse, a period of acute violence is almost always followed by a “honeymoon phase” where the abuser is apologetic and overwhelmingly kind. This creates a powerful cognitive dissonance; to survive, the victim convinces herself that the loving man is the “real” husband and the violent one is a temporary aberration. This is often compounded by “learned helplessness,” a psychological state where repeated trauma convinces a person they have no power to change their circumstances, causing them to stop trying to escape altogether.
We must move beyond being a society that provides “advice” on how to endure and start being a community that provides the means to flee. We must stop normalising violence by challenging the scripts that say “men will be men” or “it was just the drink.” Silence in the face of these excuses is a co-signer to the abuse itself. We must also learn to support without judgement; when a victim says they love their abuser, they are speaking from a place of deep psychological conditioning. Your frustration may be valid, but your judgement might be the very thing that stops them from seeking help again.
If you or someone you know is experiencing this trauma, please reach out to local authorities. We must break the silence because love does not leave bruises, and “normal” should never hurt this much. Winky D, Amara Brown, Freeman, Holy Ten, Sandra Ndebele and Hwarabaty collaborated to sing, Rudo Harurove, love shouldn’t hurt, a song people need to listen to.
