If Your Spouse Threatens Suicide When You Try to Leave, Leave Anyway.

I know how that sounds. Harsh. Cruel. Maybe even heartless.

Your social conditioning and your empathy want to push back. They say: Don’t go. Stay in the marriage. Nurse your spouse back to stability. Keep the family together at all costs.

But what if the cost is the family itself?

What if the cost is your nervous system? Your children’s nervous systems? Your mental health, your physical health, and your children’s ability to one day build healthy families of their own?

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and there is one tactic almost no one talks about: weaponized suicide threats.

When most people think of domestic violence, they picture physical beatings and verbal assaults. If you have read my book, Silenced to Soaring: Heal from Chronic Silent Treatments, Toxic Relationships, and Abuse, or followed my work and the work of other advocates, you may also think of the silent treatment.

But there is another form of domestic violence, or more precisely, coercive control, that hides in plain sight. It is the suicide threat.

It shows up at the exact moment a target tries to leave or tell the truth. The marriage is ending. The secret is coming out. And suddenly the conversation is no longer about what they did to you. It is about whether they will live or die. And somehow, that is now your job.

That is the trick. The abuser takes back control by turning your own compassion into a weapon against you.

It sounds like this:

“If you leave me, I’ll kill myself.”

“You won’t have to worry about me much longer.”

“If you really loved me, you’d stay.”

And it looks like this in real life:

Emma spent seven years with a partner who abused her financially, sexually, physically, and emotionally. When she tried to end the relationship, he took an overdose. She stayed because she was terrified he would die and she would carry his death on her conscience forever. Today she helps run a refuge for women escaping abuse.

Jerhonda Pace, one of the women who spoke out against R. Kelly, described being part of a suicide pact with him. If he went to jail or was harmed, she was supposed to kill herself. Same weapon, pointed in a different direction. Death used as a leash.

And here is the part that should stop every one of us cold. When Maine’s Domestic Abuse Homicide Review Panel studied 16 domestic violence killings, nine of the perpetrators had threatened suicide, and six followed through. Multiple studies link an abuser’s threats to kill himself with greater danger to the people closest to him.

Read that again. The threat is not only about his life. It can be a warning about yours.

So let me be clear about what “leave anyway” means. It does not mean ignore it. When the threat comes, call 911 or 988 and let trained professionals respond. That is caring. Then call a domestic violence advocate and build a safety plan for you and your children, because leaving is often the most dangerous moment. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788.

What it does mean is this: you do not stay.

I personally believe targets of abuse must divorce themselves of responsibility. We are not responsible for another adult’s choices. We cannot be held hostage. You can care about someone and still refuse to be controlled by them.

Make the call. Then keep walking.

If you are a woman rebuilding your life after toxicity, I invite you to join a free sample session of Soaring Sister Circles, a support, accountability, and mastermind group for women leveling up to live out their wildest dreams. Visit soaringsistercircles.com.

If you are having thoughts of suicide yourself, call or text 988. You deserve support too.

Sources

1. ‘Surviving R. Kelly Part II’: R. Kelly Victims Detail Horrifying ‘Suicide Pact,’ Starvation, and Threats (Yahoo Entertainment)
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/surviving-r-kelly-part-ii-094056714.html

2. “Threatening suicide is a form of abuse, and my partner used it to control me” (Cosmopolitan via Yahoo)
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/apos-abusive-partner-used-suicide-135303154.html

3. Maine Domestic Abuse Homicide Review Panel findings on suicide threats (Portland Press Herald)

https://www.pressherald.com/?p=1020818

4. Threats of suicide or self-harm (WomensLaw.org)
https://www.womenslaw.org/about-abuse/forms-abuse/emotional-and-psychological-abuse/forms-emotional-and-psychological-abuse-5

5. What to Do If an Abuser Threatens Suicide (DomesticShelters.org)
https://www.domesticshelters.org/articles/identifying-abuse/what-to-do-if-an-abuser-threatens-suicide

6. National Domestic Violence Hotline

https://www.thehotline.org

7. 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline

https://988lifeline.org