Quote Originally Posted by Winston001 View Post
Glad your daughter found her way out of that awful situation but only with your strength and help.

I suggest you are making a couple of mistakes in reasoning. Firstly don't attribute general behaviours to personal situations. There is no one-size fits all. I agree your daughters experience wasn't trying to repair her paternal relationship.

I suspect she was dealing with a socio-path (psychopath) because your description is straight out of a text book.

Secondly, women go back to abusers for complex reasons. Your daughter was confronted with a mistake of her own judgement of the perfect guy, and naturally tried time and again to get that good guy back. Its hard to admit she could be so wrong.

Other women saw their mums treated the same way so think its normal. Yet others consider abuse to be attention and become grateful for it. And then there are the women who dislike themselves and believe they deserve the abuse.

But overall daughters look for their fathers and try to heal/change the things they needed as a child. This isn't deep stuff although its hard to accept.
To a large extent, I understand your points, however I have, as a result of my daughter's experience, done a considerable amount of study on the subject, esp. as to finding out why women do go back. What was also unsettling was that I got flack from all sides, including my wife for a while, over the fact that I would not let her go back. Few seemed to appreciate the danger my daughter was in and I was on my own for a while in making my stand to keep her safe.

Abuser's use of EB includes outpourings of remorse and promises to change and turning in the charm again anf again until the victim returns. Matthew even agreed to attend anger management courses as directing by the court. Each time she returned it was only a matter of days, even hours before the violence and abuse, (both emotional and physical), atarted again.

Fathers and mothers here, may appreciate what it does to you to come home and find your daughter hiding in your closet, crying and shaking and begging you not to let him find her. Yet even after this, she would have gone back, so damaged was she emotionally.

It is a very complex subject and suffice to say, it has taken years and a huge amount of support from both family and professionals to heal her and allow her to live again. Victims must be given full access to professional help as well as the unrelenting support of their families.

My son was amazing and I know he was a literal body guard for his sister and if Matthew had tried to hurt her again, I don't know how far my son would have gone. I do know I wouoldn't want to be on the receiving end of my son's anger, he's built!