Alright since my ex was almost exactly like this including being a Latina, I will try to way in on why I stayed for 18 months. First, abusers like this are master manipulators. They know how to dial up the abuse in a perfectly calibrated manner to get the response they want. They also are great at putting on appearances at first and slowly, carefully ra pong things up so that you're always just waiting for things to get back to normal. That same manipulation isn't always negative. The sex was amazing but in retrospect, it was just one more layer of the onion of control they have put over you.

Somehow, like the frog in the pot, you find yourself months into it, feel like you can't leave because they'll harm themselves or others and can't survive without you, and no fucking clue how it got this bad. Everyone is telling you to leave and you're just like " I know, I know, I will eventually". Or even " shit if you think this is bad, you should see what it's like when no one is around l" as you rub your arm over the freshly healed bite marks.

Besides, you're a man. And you've been sort of taught that it's not possible for you to get abused. And deep down you know you could stop it physically if you had to. You don't necessarily feel the fear of imminent danger that a woman might feel in the same situation. You have the choice, right? Besides, they're just PMS'ing, this will all blow over in a day or two.

But man they're good. They wedge themselves between you and your friends, family and support. They gas light you so much you actually start to believe that maybe you are an asshole. Maybe if you were just a better partner they wouldn't act like this. It was you, after all, that set them off every time this shit happened. And they've used up every last drop of your supply of empathy that you thought was never ending, so yeah, you "don't even care" do you? You start to question if maybe you really are a bad person.

And the depth of their control is sooooo multi-layered. Every favor is calculated. Every emotional heartstring is pulled. They've made it clear they would basically die without you. Even though you hate your situation so much and you're emotionally exhausted, you don't want someone to straight up suffer and die because of you. So you slog on trying to extricate yourself as they throw more and more layers of the onion on top of you until something breaks.

And then one day, I realized that every time I had a big test, my ex would blow up and argue with me so I couldn't study. She knew I wanted to go to med school but thought that would mean I'd escape her clutches. And I called her on it, and in the middle of her "emotional" blowout, I saw the faintest hint of a half smile flash across her face and we had this moment of "oops, busted" that we shared before she tried to pickup where she left off. ...and at that moment I realized that basically everything she ever did was a way to control me. All of a sudden the layers of the onion became clear. ...and it still took me two more months to fully extricate myself, plus some residual bullshit, but when I finally was OUT, I suddenly became aware of how the last year of my life was just a blur, like I was in a stupor, under her spell. And all of a sudden, I was free! And my reality was my own again, free of the gaslighting, I realized I actually wasn't the bad guy. And my God the weight off of my shoulders sure was something. And I saw with clarity all the shit that I'd been through, and was left wondering: "How the fuck did I let myself get put through that?!"