Choices

A woman chooses to be beaten.  I was told this by my father when I was a teenager and we had many discussion over this topic.  At the time I didin't know what had brought this up but years later I found out someone we loved had an abusive boyfriend.  The adults in my family had tried to save this young woman by taking her out of the situation, but she went back to him a year later.  Which is why he had decided a woman chooses to be beaten.  I was very firm in my standing that it's all a man's fault.  He is doing a dispicable thing and brainwashing the woman into staying by his side, to which my father conseeded it's a possiblity.  Or the woman was in a though situation of either stay and be beaten or end up on the streets of which she probably chose what she thought was the lesser of two evils. 
Now I'm in the position of knowing someone I love is in a abusive situation.  While she is currently seperated from her boyfriend, they have an off again on again realtionship.  I've just recently found out though that he abuses her.  I knew and she knows that the realtionship wasn't a good one, but I didn't know that he hit her.  I just thought they cheated on each other of which I saw as horrible and I asked why the hell are you they together if this keeps going on, but they stated they love each other.  Which I left alone seeing that they were messed up, but whatever they knew what they were doing.  I felt bad for their daughter who would see her father move in and out, but I thought him a good father because he made sure to spend every other weekend with her when they weren't together. 
Now I understand why my father says a woman chooses to be beaten.  This person I love and now weep for has taken back her boyfriend time and time again.  Even though she knows he's an asshole, hell she herself will tell you what a bastard he is, she takes him back.  She tells me its' because I've never loved, but to me that isn't love.  Love doesn't permit you to deemen yourself.  Infact as I see it a man should treasure the woman he loves as should a woman treasure the man in her life.  But the women in my life keep showing me that my thinking is off.