According to a recent survey, one out of every three women in the world has been involved in or is still involved in an abusive relationship. However I beg to differ on this matter because any survey or study carried out only takes into account physical abuse and not mental abuse. Even though a physically abusive relationship may show more prominently in the form of scars or burns and bruises, it is the mentally abusive relationship which I believe leaves a bigger mark on the victim’s general well being. I say so because scars on the body may disappear soon enough, but the ones ceded on the mind take a while to vanish.

Physically abusive relationships i.e. domestic violence is the single biggest scourge for women in the world today. Women are safer in a dark alley or an abandoned street but they are still not safe in their own homes. Domestic violence kills more women in the world than heart attacks, cancer and car accidents combined together.

A mentally abusive relationship is tougher to spot and almost impossible to draw statistics from because in most cases women themselves do not realize that they are being abused.

The abuser has them thinking that they are always wrong so much so that the victim begins to question her own sanity. If you are always told that you are wrong, at some point you begin to believe it yourself. Verbally abusing your partner and calling them names in private or public is not acceptable whether done once or several times.

The one big question people always ask is why women can not gather enough fortitude to walk out of an abusive relationship. There may be many possible explanations for this. The first and the most practical reason, even though it may not seem rational, is that the victim in an abusive relationship may be so monetarily dependent on the abuser that she may fear not being able to provide her children and herself. Some mothers may decide not to walk out of an abusive relationship because they believe that children grow into better human beings if in an intact home than a divorced one. However these women fail to realize that children are better off with a single mother than with an abusive father. Some women bear abuse to avoid social stigma and taboo associated with a broken marriage. Also, a lot of women remain in denial of being in an abusive relationship and decide to either forgive or ignore their abuser’s ill treatment as a fit of rage.