WHEN WOMEN LEAVE VIOLENT RELATIONSHIPS: DISPELLING CLINICAL MYTHS

This article revisits and reexamines previously reported findings addressing the longitudinal course of violent couples (specifically, those in Jacobson, Gottman, Gortner, Berns, and Shortt, 1996 ). In doing so we sought to examine the validity of three pieces of clinical lore: (1) Victims of domestic abuse are unlikely to leave their abusive husbands, (2) Victims of domestic violence are passive and self-defeating, and (3) Physical violence is the most important factor in women's decisions to leave. By recontacting a previously missing subset of our data, we were able to reanalyze our previously reported findings. Reanalyses revealed faults in all three of the preceding pieces of lore. The clinical implications of all three findings are discussed here.