Why victims go back to an abusive partner — and what holds them

“I know what you’re going to think. I’m back with him.”

She says it almost in a whisper, eyes fixed on her cup, as if apologising for something she has done to you. Three weeks ago you helped her carry boxes out of the flat. You listened to everything that had been happening behind closed doors. And now she is back. Inside you there is a mix of worry, helplessness and — if you are honest — a flicker of anger too: why go back to someone who has hurt her so badly?

Friends, relatives, colleagues and professionals all ask this question. But the person who asks it loudest is often the one who went back. This piece is not meant to persuade anyone to stay or to leave. It is meant to help with understanding — because understanding is what keeps a door open for someone in an abusive relationship, while judgement closes it.

Before I go on, something important: I am not a specialist in domestic violence, and this piece is not a tool for assessing how dangerous your situation, or someone else’s, is. If you are in danger, call 112 or the police on 113 in Slovenia. For a conversation, information and support, the SOS helpline for women and children experiencing violence, 080 11 55 in Slovenia, is free of charge.

Going back is not proof that it wasn’t that bad

One of the most widespread ideas about violence in relationships is this: if it really were that bad, she would leave and stay gone. A return is therefore quickly read as proof of exaggeration, or even as proof that the person “chose” the violence.

Neither explanation holds up. Intimate partner violence is common and is not confined to any one group of people. A World Health Organization estimate, published by Lynnmarie Sardinha and colleagues in The Lancet in 2022, shows that around 27% of women aged 15 to 49 who have ever been in a partnership have experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner in their lifetime. That figure does not include emotional and economic abuse or controlling behaviour — the forms that are hardest to recognise. Men and people in same-sex relationships experience violence too, even though we hear about it less often.

If the problem is this widespread, then people who go back are not an exception and are not especially weak. They go back because an abusive relationship creates the conditions in which returning is a very understandable — if painful — outcome. Once we understand those conditions, the question “why does she go back?” turns into “what is holding her?”. The second question can be answered.

Leaving is a process, not a single moment

Researchers who have listened to women’s accounts of abusive relationships keep finding the same thing: leaving rarely means one decisive step through the door. In their 2003 review of the research, Deborah Anderson and Daniel Saunders described leaving as a process that stretches over a long period and often includes several departures and returns. Jessica Burke and colleagues applied the stages-of-change model to it: from the first doubt, when a person privately starts to think something is wrong, through preparation, to attempts, and finally to sustaining a life outside the relationship.

In this light, going back is not going back to square one. A person returns with the experience that it is possible to survive outside. With a number they have called. With a friend who has shown they will not judge. With the knowledge of where the safe house is, or what the police can do. I wrote about the obstacles that make leaving hard in the first place in Why leaving an abusive relationship is so hard. Here I want to focus on what happens after leaving, and what pulls a person back.

Trauma bonding: why the attachment can be so strong

In the 1980s the Canadian psychologists Donald Dutton and Susan Painter described a phenomenon they called traumatic bonding. They observed that a particularly strong emotional bond forms between two people when two conditions are met. The first is a power imbalance: one person decides, the other adapts, and the gap grows month by month. The second is intermittency: periods of abuse alternate with periods of kindness, remorse, promises and tenderness.

In 1993 they tested the theory with women who had left abusive partners. They found that precisely these two conditions — the power imbalance and the alternation of good and bad — were linked to the strength of attachment to the partner even months after leaving. Not so much how severe the abuse had been, but how unpredictably it alternated with closeness.

Why does this happen? When a person lives in fear for a long time, the body experiences every bit of relief very intensely. The moment when a partner apologises after an outburst, cries, makes promises and is tender again is felt not only as the end of danger but as deep closeness. The same person who is the source of fear also becomes the source of comfort. I wrote more about how confusing this is for our attachment system in Disorganised attachment: when the same person is both comfort and fear. Something similar often happens to adults in abusive relationships.

That is why the thought “but surely she can see what he is doing to her” misses the point. A person can see very clearly what their partner is doing to them and at the same time feel a bond that reason cannot cut. Seeing and being free are not the same thing.

The first weeks after leaving

When a person leaves, it is not only the relationship that ends. Often a whole world surrounding that relationship ends too: a home, a routine, sometimes contact with shared friends, sometimes financial security. Abusive relationships often involve what the sociologist Evan Stark calls coercive control — the gradual restriction of contacts, money, movement and independent decision-making. Someone who has lived like this for years finds themselves, after leaving, without the network they would need.

Something else joins in: withdrawal. When we lose a person we were attached to, the brain and body respond with intense longing, sleeplessness, restlessness and intrusive thoughts. This is true of any break-up, and I wrote about it in more detail in Why we think about an ex for so long after a break-up. With a trauma bond the longing can be even stronger, because the partner was also the one who brought relief.

And it is precisely during this time that the partner often does what he has done many times before: he regrets, promises, seeks help, begs for one more chance. Sometimes he threatens — himself, her, the children. Sometimes it is a mixture of both. People around often push in the same direction: “The children need their father.” “Every couple has problems.” “He’s really trying.”

On top of this there are very concrete obstacles: where will I live, how will I pay the rent, what will happen with the children, what will my family say. When a person is exhausted and frightened, going back can seem like the only path they know. This is also why returning to an abusive partner is something different from going back to an ex, which I wrote about in Why we go back to exes, and when going back is a pattern rather than love. There, it is about attachment and habit. Here, fear, control and very real danger are also in play.

The hope that he will change

When researchers asked women in shelters about their own reasons for going back, alongside practical obstacles they often mentioned emotional attachment to their partner and the hope that the relationship would improve. Hope is not naivety. It is part of love. And an abusive relationship almost never began with abuse. It began with a person who was attentive, passionate, perhaps the first person with whom someone felt chosen.

When that person shows that face again after an outburst, it can be very hard not to see him as the “real” one and the abuse as an exception, a slip, a consequence of stress or alcohol. A conversation about it might sound something like this (the conversation is composite, not a real person):

“You don’t understand what he’s like when he’s good. Then he’s the best person I know.”
“I believe you. And when he isn’t good?”
“Then … then I don’t recognise him.”
“Which of the two decides how you get to live?”
“…The other one. Always the other one.”

A conversation like this does not mean hope has to be destroyed. It means that, alongside the hope, the pattern also needs to be looked at. Change in a person who uses violence is possible, but it does not happen because of a promise, nor because the victim tries harder. It happens when he himself takes responsibility and works on himself over a long period in a specialised programme. Until then, promises remain part of the cycle, not a way out of it.

Guilt and shame

Many people who go back carry a voice that tells them they deserved the abuse. That voice did not appear out of nowhere. It often grew out of sentences the partner kept repeating: “You make me do this.” “If you paid more attention, this wouldn’t happen.” Hear them long enough and they become your own. The mechanism by which you start to doubt your own perception has a name, gaslighting, and more broadly it falls under manipulation.

Guilt keeps a person in the relationship in two ways. First, if you believe you are the cause, you also believe that by behaving better you can stop the abuse. That is powerful, because it gives an illusion of control. Second, once you have gone back, shame in front of other people joins in: how can I ask for help again, when I already threw it away once? That shame is one of the biggest reasons people stop calling anyone at the second or third attempt. I wrote about how abuse settles into self-image in Self-image after abuse: when you believe it was your fault.

Why the time after leaving can be dangerous

This needs to be said openly. Research on the most severe outcomes of partner violence, including a large study by Jacquelyn Campbell and colleagues in 2003, shows that the period around leaving — especially when the partner is highly controlling — can be particularly dangerous. Some people go back partly because they judge that they are safer close to their partner: they know where he is, they can read his mood and calm him before he erupts.

This does not mean that staying is safe. It means that leaving needs a plan and the support of people who know this field. I described how such a plan comes together in A safety plan for abuse: what it is and how to put one together. Assessing danger is a job for professionals who work with violence — on the SOS helpline, at the police, at the social work centre. No article online, this one included, can replace it.

What you can do if you have gone back, or are thinking about it

If you are reading this because you have gone back to a partner who was violent towards you, or are thinking about it, let me say this first: there is nothing wrong with you. Going back does not erase what happened, and it does not close the way out. The exercise below is not a decision made for you. It is a way of staying in touch with what you know, alongside what you feel.

Exercise: two truths at once

1. First, make the exercise itself safe. If your partner checks your phone, notebooks or messages, do not write anything down. Do the exercise in your head, or out loud with someone you trust.
2. Name what you miss or hope for. Three things, very concretely: “the way he hugs me in the morning”, “that the children have both parents”, “that he’ll be like he was at the beginning”. Don’t judge them. They are real.
3. Name what happened. Three events, just as concretely, without softening: what he said or did and how it ended. Not “sometimes he gets stressed”, but what actually happened.
4. Put them side by side. Don’t choose between them. Both truths exist at the same time. Notice which of them is deciding, today, how you feel, how safe you are and what you are allowed to do.
5. Take one small step towards the outside world. Save the SOS helpline number under a neutral name, arrange a coffee with someone you haven’t seen for a long time, or check where your personal documents are. Nothing more than that. Today, one step is enough.

The exercise will not dissolve the bond. But it helps keep the truth about the abuse from being lost under the weight of hope — which is often the first thing that happens in a relationship like this.

If you are close to someone who has gone back

Perhaps the hardest place to be is outside, watching someone you love return to danger. It is natural to feel helpless, tired and angry. But the ultimatum “if you go back to him, don’t count on me any more” often has the opposite effect to the one you want: it isolates the person even further, which is exactly what an abusive relationship needs in order to survive.

It helps more if you stay available. If you say that you are worried, without judging. If you focus less on the partner and more on the person you love: how they are, what they need, whether they know where to call. You can also call the SOS helpline on 080 11 55 in Slovenia and ask how you can help. And look after yourself — with a story like this, those close by also need someone to listen to them.

Where this explanation falls short

Trauma bonding is a useful concept, but it should not be used as a new label that once again takes away a person’s voice. People in abusive relationships are not just caught in a bond. They are also thoughtful people who constantly weigh up what is least dangerous, at any given moment, for themselves and their children. Sometimes going back is a considered decision in an impossible situation, not an expression of psychological dependence. Anyone who overlooks this misses an important part of the story.

Nor are all returns the same. For some, the emotional bond is decisive; for others, money, housing or the fear of losing the children. A psychological explanation will not help someone who has nowhere to go. That is why the first response to abuse is often practical and legal — safe accommodation, financial help, measures by the police and the courts — and only then psychological.

And one more limit worth stating: when there is violence in a relationship, couples therapy is not an appropriate form of help. It places both people in the same room as equal partners with a shared problem, which abuse is not. People living with violence first need safety and the help of specialised services. Individual therapy can come alongside, or later, when it is time to work through what remains.

Where you can turn

If you are in immediate danger, call 112 or the police on 113 in Slovenia. The SOS helpline for women and children experiencing violence is free on 080 11 55 in Slovenia — you can call even if you are not sure whether what you are experiencing is abuse, or if you want to help someone else. Slovenia has safe houses, mothers’ shelters and social work centres that help with leaving and planning. When distress is severe and thoughts turn dark, the Klic v duševni stiski crisis line, 01 520 99 00 in Slovenia, is available at night (from 7 pm to 7 am), and the Samarijan helpline, 116 123 in Slovenia, around the clock. You can find the basic concepts in the knowledge base under violence in a relationship.

What to remember

• Going back is not proof that there was no abuse or that it was “less bad”. Leaving is often a process with several attempts.
• A trauma bond forms from a power imbalance and the alternation of abuse with tenderness — not from weakness.
• The first weeks after leaving bring longing, practical obstacles, pressure from others and the partner’s promises — all of which pull back.
• The period around leaving can be particularly dangerous; that is why leaving needs a plan and professional support, not just a decision.
• As someone close, you help most by staying available and not judging. Help is always available on 080 11 55 in Slovenia.