[BB_Eye]

Originally Posted by Zippy

No but life is about choices and unless youre being held captive against your will then you have options. Its up to you to find the strength to get out of a bad relationship. After all, the woman chose him and got herself into it in the first place.

Plus every relationship has two sides. Just as a battered woman can make excuses for not having the strength to leave, the guy also has reasons for being that way too. Truth is, they are usually both bad for each other and bring out the worst. By staying and taking continual abuse you are feeding his troubles. One of them needs to break the cycle and its unlikely to be the one with the upperhand.

This is the same reasoning as saying women who who wear revealing clothes deserve to get raped. People who spend years in these relationships lose any sense of agency or self-worth. Such that surviving without the abuser seems impossible. Breaking up the relationship is not something which benefits both parties either. The abuser needs a partner as source of narcissistic supply in order to regulate their self-esteem where the abused needs to break away from the relationship if they don't want their life to be a misery. It's simply that years of brainwashing will make it seem otherwise and they remain with their partner (possibly for their whole lives) out of cimpulsion. Narcissists cannot survive on their own, because their brittle self-esteem is dependent on the adulation and praise of others. This is why they themselves are sensitive to criticism and cannot 'take what they dish out' so to speak.

There's a grain of truth to what you say that both partners perpetuate the relationship in a vicious cycle. But it's not as simple as co-dependent 'battered wife' being able to leave at any time. The abused stays with their partner out of compulsion, the narcissist chooses to keep the relationship going because they know only too well the state of depression and self-loathing being alone would return them to. This is why it is impossible for two narcissists to form a relationship with eachother.