Why She Stayed

According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, "On average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. During one year, this equates to more than 10 million women and men."[i] The number one question most people on the outside looking in ask is, "Why do they stay?" What makes a man or a woman stay with someone who voices their love in one breathe yet destroys their partner's soul through physical, emotional, and psychological abuse in the very next? Jacqualine Boles never considered herself a victim of abuse while she was with her abusive partners. Things were always "just difficult", "not exactly what she had expected", "going to get better one day". These were the lies she told herself just to get through the day. When she finally accepted that things would no longer get better; she left her drug-addict husband for what she thought was a much better man. Her rebound relationship seemed like an excellent catch; he wasn't dabbling in drugs so that was an excellent start. Little did she know she had just stepped into drama that the best daytime soap operas would covet-multiple baby mamas, cheating spouses, noisy in-laws, small-town gossip and even murder! Why She Stayed is just that, a story of why one woman stayed in her awful relationships only to realize later that there was much more she could experience in a relationship.