People assume she stayed because she didn’t know. Didn’t know her worth.Didn’t know what he was doing to her.Didn’t know what love is supposed to l
Photo by Faisal Rahman
People assume she stayed because she didn’t know.
Didn’t know her worth.
Didn’t know what he was doing to her.
Didn’t know what love is supposed to look like.
But that’s not the truth.
She knew.
She knew exactly what he was capable of.
She knew how quickly the air in the room could change.
How love could turn to threat.
How silence could become the safest answer.
She knew that when someone with power—social, legal, physical—decides you are their target, you don’t just leave. You calculate. You survive.
She didn’t stay because she was weak.
She stayed because she was strategic.
She stayed because:
He knew where her mother lived.
He had a badge.
He had followers.
He had friends in high places—and in dark corners.
She knew that even if she whispered “he’s hurting me,” there were people who’d silence her before she could say anything else.
Even other men—men who didn’t want to be him, but wanted to be liked by him.
Men who didn’t want his violence, but wanted his approval.
She didn’t stay because she was confused.
She stayed because she saw clearly—maybe clearer than any of us want to admit.
She saw the courts protect him.
She saw the community praise him.
She saw how quickly the story could flip.
If you still think she stayed because she didn’t know…
Maybe it’s you who’s in the dark.
Maybe it’s you who doesn’t understand how systems protect harm, how charm can shield violence, how community silence becomes part of the abuse.
So let’s stop asking, “Why didn’t she leave?”
And start asking, “What made her feel like staying was safer?”
“Who failed her?”
“What did she know that we refused to see?”
Because she didn’t stay because she didn’t know.
She stayed because she did.
And when she left, she did so with the kind of courage most people will never understand.
