Out of loyalty, for the kids and sometimes even for the
It’s all in the pay-off. It’s all about us getting what we need to get through our lives and relationship. It’s all about some sort of need we have that gets met even if in the process of meeting the need of our lover, we struggle to stay afloat.
Other people can criticize an emasculated man, but the man allows the emasculation. Her girlfriends might curse their friend’s demanding and demeaning husband, but the woman stays because in the end, even if the man cuts his woman’s self esteem to the quick, the woman is still getting something much more from staying then she imagines she would leaving.
It’s the classic Florence Nightingale Syndrome, the reason men gravitate towards needy women and why the abused stay with their abusers. The life we know fulfills some need, even if staying is not good for our general mental or physical health.
The agony of supposing a life with the need met, the habit broken, the addiction fulfilled and submerged is often so scary that even when we are full-up, done, complete with why we have stayed in the relationship we might stay longer or even search for another just like it once we leave it. Time and again we repeat patterns to either cure ourselves of what we missed somewhere in our development or because we are not yet full-up from what we need.