Women in Bad Relationships: Eve’s Curse Isn’t Yours

Last updated on: February 17, 2009 at 11:23 am by John Shore

Women in Bad Relationships: Eve’s Curse Isn’t Yours 2009-02-17T11:23:01-08:00 John Shore

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(Update: All the posts of this series have been collected into one piece, Seven Reasons Women Stay in Abusive Relationships, and How to Defeat Each One of Them.)

It’s now time to write about the third reason I listed for why women stay in bad relationships, which is that it can be so embarrassing to have a relationship to which you’ve been long committed go publicly down in flames.

Before getting to that, though, I want to address something that’s come up via some letters I’ve lately received from women in bad relationships.

Many of these letters communicated this: “I know I should get out of the bad relationship I’m in—but right now I’m just not strong enough to make the break. For reasons I’m helpless to understand, I’m still too emotionally tied to this man that I know is no good for me.”

So I want to say this: Bad men thrive on exactly that kind of muddled need. They willfully, purposefully, and methodically create it in their women. They do it by just often enough making sure to be just sweet enough—just thoughtful enough, just kind enough, just boyishly winning enough—to keep their women believing in the possibility that they’ll change.

When in the Bible God banishes Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, he curses Eve by saying to her: “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” The translation of The Message makes the meaning of this quote even clearer: “You’ll want to please your husband, but he’ll lord it over you.”

Whether you believe in the Bible or not, that line perfectly describes the curse under which so many women spend such wretched lives: for reasons they cannot comprehend or control, they continue, against all reason, trying to please their man.

And if such a woman’s man is bad, he will use this weakness against her, the way a farmer uses a dangling carrot on a stick to entice his beast of burden to service his will.

I’ve got to run just now, so more on this tomorrow. But if you’re a woman “stuck” in a bad relationship, remember: that may have been Eve’s curse, but it doesn’t need to be yours. Think about your man. He knows what he’s doing. He likes making you wriggle on the hook of the hope he teases you with. It gives him power. But do you really think your purpose on earth is to be nothing more than the means by which a weak man pumps himself up?

Please forward this to anyone you think it might help.

Related post o’ mine: Surprise (Or Not)! Men Are Spoiled!

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