I might write another post about all the reasons I've seen as to why women stay in a toxic and/or abusive relationship. I met many of these when I left my ex with (probable) narcissistic personality disorder. It's easy to look at someone else's situation and wonder why they don't just leave, but it's much harder from the inside.
The USA, especially, makes it difficult to live a good life as a single mother. It's difficult to make a good living on a single (unskilled) wage. And the stigma is significantly worse than it was in the UK (where it was much easier to live a good life as a single mother.) But even in the UK, I saw many reasons why women stayed.
Often, the first thing is to recognize that it's a bad situation - which is sometimes the hardest part. With my abusive first husband, (as he never hit or called me abusive names) it was when I first said the word abuse to a friend of mine - wondering if I was experiencing this... It took me 1.5 weeks to leave at that point.
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