But after Lindsay got pregnant, the dynamic changed:

"That's when the fear set in, because I was so sick and had no way to defend myself. He kept going, and it got worse ... he dragged me down a flight of stairs by my hair and threw me over a balcony."

See, here's the thing: Even bringing up the concept of a woman getting physical with a man is borderline offensive to some, because it makes it sound like they're equally at fault, and that therefore no one involved can be considered a victim. The reality is that mutual abuse can mean one party gets slapped, while the other gets put in the hospital; one lives in fear for their life, the other is merely annoyed. What we do know is that women are twice as likely to get injured from abuse, simply because guys generally are bigger and stronger than them.

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Which isn't exactly the best factoid for guys unwilling to pick on someone their own size.

But, as wrong as it is to say that men have it as bad, it's equally wrong to pretend male victims don't exist. The two men we spoke to both said that they had trouble believing that they were victims themselves, let alone convincing other people:

"The first one that I remember the most vividly is when she threw a DS at my head," said Dean. Another time, they were shopping and, "there was a problem with her card, and after it went through it, ended up overcharging her. I tried to reach over and comfort her, but she dug her fingernails into my arm and cut my wrist open." And that right there is another misconception. It isn't always about huge blow-ups and dramatic beatings; it can also mean smaller, but constant, abuse that slowly wears away the victim's sense of self-worth and urge to protect themselves.

Oh, and when Dean finally called the police on his abuser, he almost ended up being the one arrested.

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Which isn't surprising, since the idea that domestic violence only flows one way is pretty damn ingrained.

Once again, these cases get used as ammo by people trying to argue which gender gets it worse, but at the end of the day, the same gender roles wind up screwing everybody -- just in different ways. As Will says, "There are very few people who could ever believe I was unsafe, or I was manipulated or used. How can a man be physically scared of a woman, let alone emotionally? That doesn't compute to society. Men aren't meant to have emotions. We are supposed to be the rock or whatever."

Sometimes the abuse is manipulation, like how Shannon's ex repeatedly told her he was going to kill himself. "He took my keys, went back to my room to get a knife he had given me to keep him from killing himself, and then he wouldn't leave. I had to call my friends at 5 a.m. to get him out of my room. Later, a girl took me aside and told me that he had planned to do this. He had told his boss that he wouldn't be in that morning."

What these stories have in common is that the victims and perpetrators both knew that no one would take claims of abuse seriously if they didn't have a black eye, or at least a few bruises to show off. Shannon said that because she was never beaten, she didn't think it was abuse. Hell, the abuser probably didn't, either. "What, does this look like a mullet and a tank top to you? I'm not one of those guys."

For some couples, the bad shit doesn't surface until their lives have become entwined in ways that are impossible to cleanly separate. When you're living under the same roof and have kids, joint bank accounts, and the same social circles, severing a relationship is severing a part of yourself. How long would you have to have your leg caught in a bear trap before you'd finally decided it was worth it to hack the thing off, 127-Hours-style? You'd try almost everything else first.

And if it's not a broken version of love or financial dependence that keeps you in an abusive relationship, it might be something far stranger. "At times, I would provoke him, because afterwards, the sex would be so great," Lindsay said. "After every time, he would sit there and cry and moan about how much it hurt him to hurt me, he'd treat my wounds, and then we would have the most awesome sex ever and everything would go back the way it was."

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Almost everything.

And this is where we're going to lose a lot of readers, because they can use this story as an excuse to dismiss everything Lindsay is saying. "She provoked him? On purpose? That must mean she liked it! Hey, I bet all women secretly like it! Look at me, I'm a piece of shit!" Don't do that. Understanding how she came to think that that is what intimacy looks like is a knot that it would take a therapist to untie. In fact, many have tried. And the truth is that most of our subjects mentioned a strong attraction to their abuser, even though they knew that the attraction was destroying them emotionally and putting their lives at risk.

"As much as I hate to admit this, the thought of [her] still makes my heart skip a beat," Dean said. "I know I could never be in a relationship with her again. It would have to be a perfect storm, she would have to prove she was different. But even after the hell I went through, even after all that, I still miss her."

It's so hard to get domestic abuse victims to press charges against their abuser that many jurisdictions no longer give them a choice. They'd prefer to try to "work through it," but unfortunately ...

We all already know that Beauty And The Beast isn't the most enlightened glimpse at relationship dynamics, considering the fact that someone who locks you in the attic and regularly tries to claw you to death is indeed an abuser. But have you ever thought about how old that story is, and how often it gets retold in different forms, even today? The myth of a victim changing -- fixing -- an abuser is powerful, because human beings really want to believe that you can somehow repair an abusive relationship. At least, that's according to therapists, who explain that victims are extremely likely to return to their abuser when given the chance.

Some people believe that it's a survival technique. In pre-civilization days, even being with an abusive partner was safer than trying to live alone (because tigers). But no matter the reason, the fact remains that the human brain (and all of society) will do everything it can to keep you in a shitty situation. Hell, that's what Fifty Shades Of Grey is about, even if the author doesn't know it.

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Even if it's staring her directly in the fucking face.

"I tried really hard to put us into counseling throughout the years," Diane, another abuse victim, says. "Couples counseling, individual counseling, AA [because her abuser was a heavy drinker]. But he couldn't accept that, because his friends and mother never had a problem with what he did." Even if Diane had gotten her abuser to go to a counselor, it may not have worked. When Sarah told a counselor that her abuser had threatened to kill himself in front of their children, the counselor cried out, "Why don't you go back? Don't you care? He's gonna kill himself!"

And like counselors, Sarah blamed herself for the abuse: "When watching Crazy Heart ... there's a scene where [Jeff Bridges] tries to reconcile with [Maggie Gyllenhaal]. When she turned him down, my immediate reaction was, 'Don't do that! You're going to drive him to drink!' That's the mentality many of us take on. If we just do this, or just do that, he will be better. And the people around us reinforce that."

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To clarify: With the possible exception of Uber drivers, no one drives anyone else to drink.

The implication behind all the outside advice Sarah got was that this problem was somehow a communication issue, and if they could just listen to each other, it would be solved. You know, kind of like how you need to let your spouse know that you don't actually like their meatloaf, and that you've always eaten it to avoid hurting their feelings ("Well shit, honey, why didn't you say something before?"). But that's naive; what abusers want/need is control, at all costs. Even if you can get them to give up certain behaviors (say, threatening to call the police if they get violent again), getting them to give up their need for control requires fundamentally changing who they are as a person. It's not that this kind of change never happens, but you sure as fuck can't count on it.

But don't take our word for it. Experts recommend against going to couples counseling at all when the relationship is abusive. There's no point. Usually, the abuser will see the counseling as one more way to get control (for instance, by using the sessions to put all of the blame on the partner) or as a threat to their power (in which case, they'll stop going the moment the counselor recommends any meaningful change, often claiming they were the victim of bias).

That means that, yes, leaving is often the only choice. But ...