Surviving Abusive Dating Relationships: Processes of Leaving, Healing, and Moving On (From Out of the Darkness: Contemporary Perspectives on Family Violence, P 170-182, 1997, Glenda K. Kantor, Jana L. Jasinski, eds. - See NCJ-171756)

• NCJ Number: 171769
• Author(s): K H Rosen; S M Stith
• Date Published: 1997
• Length: 13 pages
• Sale Source: Sage Publications, Inc
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study examines the processes of disentangling from abusive premarital relationships and discusses how women are able to heal and to move on in their lives after leaving.

Abstract

Despite the fact that premarital relationships rarely have legal, financial, or familial ties that bind partners together as do marital relationships, disentangling from those relationships can be difficult. The 22 women in this study had become entrapped in abusive relationships in which their needs and self-interests were subsumed by and, to some degree, synonymous with their relationships. The women moved from entrapment to disentanglement via a process that included: seeds of doubt, turning points, reappraisals, objective reflections, and self-reclaiming actions that were interrelated and part of a healthy cycle of building readiness to leave the relationship. The process culminated for many of the women in a paradigmatic shift in perspective about themselves and their relationship, accompanied by a last straw event, which provided the final impetus to leave the relationship. The article describes each of these stages in detail. References