Therapists Reveal Why Indian Women Feel Compelled To Stay In Abusive Marriages
Huffington Post | Sometimes even recognising patterns of abuse is a challenge for a lot of women.
When Kolkata-based psychotherapist Mansi Poddar got a divorce in 2008, she sensed a sudden change in how people in her extended social circle interacted with her. For starters, many men, especially married men, assumed she was ‘available’ to have sex with them. And many women assumed she must have been at some kind of fault for her husband to have ‘left’ her. Which means she must be ready to ‘hit on’ their partners.
“When I went through a divorce, I had both men and women judge me. God, it was terrible,” Poddar told HuffPost India.
Poddar managed to tide over the hurdles, but following her divorce, she realised why so many Indian women choose to suffer bad marriages instead of looking for a way out. Social stigma, Poddar told HuffPost India, is so pervasive even among the educated and affluent that economically independent women too often stay in physically and mentally abusive marriages.
According to National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4), nearly 38% women in India have experienced spousal violence. And that is just the number of cases that women reported, there’s always a vast number of cases which never reach the police. Equally staggering is the number of women who choose to stay in abusive marriages, despite laws that protect them from marital violence.
HuffPost India spoke to therapists to understand why Indian women, some of them economically independent, choose to stay in abusive marriages.
