Her Cheating Husband Has Cancer. Can She Leave?

You’re not alone. I don’t think anyone undergoing Stockholm syndrome/captor bonding really sees it happening or understands it in the moment and, even if they did, they wouldn’t necessarily have control of it. Even people trained in understanding victimology can still succumb. That’s because captor bonding wouldn’t work to gain “mercy” from abusers if victims were actually conscious of the process. Abusers, being telepathic to cues of rebellion, could become more dangerous and punitive if the ruse of loyalty didn’t appear cellular-level genuine.

That’s the rub. I think the reason our species evolved to have this mental “emergency” mechanism is precisely because it’s highly successful in promoting survival due to the fact that most captors/abusers are not completely immune to seamless displays of loyalty from victims.

But this sort of dual-bonding dynamic can start to weaken over time, either because an abuser becomes progressively more callous so that the danger of the victim remaining in the relationship is beginning to exceed the very considerable statistical danger of escape (women face an 800% or so increased risk of being killed within two months of leaving an abuser) or because an abuser loses power over their victim for whatever reason as has arguably happened in your situation.

But, as they say, even a dying snake can give a fatal bite so it may be at the point when an abuser has lost power and control over a victim that they become the most dangerous. So the danger isn’t over just because an abuser becomes ill or weak or loses financial control. For safety reasons, it’s very important for survivors and their supporters to grasp that most abusers operate on a “beat by need” basis, typically preferring less athletic and less legally risky psychological, financial and coercive means of controlling and dominating their prey. If those “subviolent” means of control begin to fail, this is when violence becomes a significant risk and this may be true even if an abuser never previously lifted a finger or fist. Research in Australia found that, in about 40% of domestic murder cases, there had been no previous reports of assault or violence. The first assault was the last, though, as social researchers discovered, the real warning of potential lethality all along was the existence of coercion and control in the relationship.

Regarding the snowballing callousness of some abusers, something I repeatedly saw as an advocate is that survivors perceive one of the biggest cues that the “danger of staying” is starting to exceed the danger of leaving is when abusers cheat (which virtually all do). It makes sense if you think about it: because most victims come to understand that their chief or only value to an abuser is as a “sexual appliance” and that this may be the only reason abusers show them any mercy, the specter of being “sexually replaced” may signal that the gloves are coming off and, however bad the abuse was prior to cheating, it’s about to become much worse.

I think that partly explains why cheating often feels so catastrophically traumatic to victims of it: because, on some subconscious animal level, people sense “death around the margins” of infidelity. But the fact that cheating is often the “last straw” for abuse survivors that prompts many to finally take the risk of escaping is still grossly misunderstood by bystanders and less competent helping professionals. Uninformed or blaming bystanders may assume that victims are simply being “jealous and territorial” by responding more intensely to cheating than they may have responded to other forms of abuse. It’s not because victims didn’t “mind” those other forms of abuse, yet bystanders’ misinterpretation of this goes back to the moldy old blaming theory that abuse victims are somehow naturally attracted to abusers and codependently “get something” out of the abuse. But, again, I think the truth is that cheating by abusers is a strong cue that abuse may suddenly worsen or even shift to lethal because victims have lost their last window of “amnesty” from abusers by losing their sexual “value.”

It’s not just victims of domestic abuse who may suddenly “pickme dance” when they find themselves “falling of out of favor” with an abuser. Political hostages may also apparently go through similar panic and efforts to boost and refresh a captor’s bond to them if they sense the captor’s attachment to them is weakening and captives find themselves losing favored status. Hostages may also feel the same shame and confusion over their own reactions as abuse survivors and may also be subject to the same misinterpretation by bystanders. In any case, in both situations, if the captor/abuser continues to become more callous or chooses another “favorite,” this is the point where the hostage’s bond to the captor will also begin to weaken. This puts victims in terrible straits because, even if the captor’s bond has weakened, they may still punish the victim if they sense the victim is beginning to rebel.

Anyway, if any of this rings bells, there are some good resources out there on the subject though also some crappy ones. Any book or study by the late, great Dr. Evan Stark is a good start. He and his wife and co-researcher Ann Flitcraft were early founders of the shelter movement and Stark later became one of the main spearheads of the movement to criminalize coercive control. He has several successors who continue to carry the torch, such as Drs. Emma Katz and Christine Cocciola.

One very important essay by Stark and Flitcraft is in an older book titled Post-Traumatic Stress Therapy and the Victims of Violent Crime. I think it’s one of the greatest clinical denunciations of traditional victim-blaming approaches to treating abuse survivors. This duo really knew their field and I think the chapter on DV is like an “inoculation” against victim blaming perspectives which, unfortunately, still run pretty thick in pop-psychology.

For instance, I recommend caution if you come across a source that uses the term “trauma bonding” rather than “captor bonding.” As a term, “trauma bonding” was kind of a conceptual hijack by sex addiction guru and CSAT founder Dr. Patrick Carnes who pretty much specializes in exonerating sex abusers and falsely splitting blame with their victims. Because Carnes and sex addiction therapists make their money by whitewashing sexually abusive behaviors as some kind of sad sausage “addiction,” it wouldn’t do to use traditional terms like “captor bonding” because “captor” implies fault and responsibility and also implies the existence of an entirely innocent captive or victim. While “captor bonding” correctly measures seriousness (the crime of taking someone captive) and correctly apportions blame– putting the onus on abusers and removing it from victims– and this specificity is very helpful for victims/captives, abusive individuals really don’t like being branded abusers and won’t pay therapists who label them as such. I think this is probably why Carnes had to alter a perfectly accurate and functional concept– captor bonding– for political and financial reasons.

The term “trauma bonding” has become so viral that even well-meaning advocates and helping professionals will use it these days. But I tend to find the professionals who use the expression “trauma bonding” a bit “green” if they don’t understand the term’s history or the healing power of descriptive and accurate clinical terminology. If anything, captor bonding is the better term because abuse victims universally need constant reminders that it wasn’t their fault simply because abusers (and their apologists) so intensely campaign to blame victims.

Another excellent book is The Batterer. It’s based on prison studies of domestic abusers and gets very surgical in describing many of the diabolical tactics used by abusers to control victims and also gets into how abusers become bent and dangerous to begin with, usually due to witnessing and experiencing abuse in childhood. But the takeaway is not to paint abusers as poor, pathetic victims of difficult backgrounds, simply to make a greater case for why victims and their children need support in escaping and need to be protected to end generational cycles.

It’s a valuable book but I have to give another caveat that one of the clinical authors, Donald Dutton, did some weird 180 after this book was published and started stumping for the manosphere and so-called “men’s rights movement” (an organized collective of accused or convicted batterers who use junk science to blame victims). This is why I think co-author Susan Golant was the real force behind many of the important insights in the book and I suspect that, in the era the book was written, Golant probably needed a male co-author as a beard to get her ground-breaking work published.

I hope some of this helps strengthen your resolve in continuing to be mighty. Sometimes I think half the task of escape is about survivors throwing off the massive burden of false blame that’s been heaped on victims since the dawn of time.