Why Does She Stay?

Come sit with me for a while. I’ve been thinking about something…

A woman with curly hair looking at her reflection in a round mirror, partially obscured by textured glass and warm sunlight.

The Everyday Moment

I was watching a documentary recently about a turbulent relationship.

And somewhere between watching the story and listening to the conversations surrounding it, I noticed the same question appearing again and again.

Why does she stay?

Sometimes it sounded genuinely curious.

Other times, it sounded more like an answer disguised as a question.

She must not love herself.

She needs to know her worth.

Where is her self-respect?

And I found myself less interested in answering why she stayed, and more interested in something else.

How did we get from what someone did to deciding what they must believe about themselves?

The Question Underneath the Question

We do this more often than we probably realize.

Someone stays in a relationship we would leave, and we question their self-respect.

Someone accepts less than we think they deserve, and we assume they don’t know their worth.

Someone struggles to make a change that seems obvious from the outside, and we decide they must lack confidence.

But these ideas; self-worth, self-esteem, self-respect, self-efficacy, self-concept, and self-respect, are often treated as though they’re interchangeable.

Psychologically, they aren’t.

And that distinction matters.

Because a person isn’t one single measure of “how they feel about themselves.”

The Different Parts of Self

Self-worth asks: Do I believe I have value simply because I am me?

Self-esteem asks: How do I evaluate and feel about myself?

Self-efficacy asks: Do I believe I can actually do this?

Self-concept asks: Who do I understand myself to be?

Self-respect shows up in how we honour our values, needs, limits, and dignity.

They can influence one another.

But they don’t always move together.

Someone can know they are intelligent and capable and still doubt their ability to cope alone.

Someone can genuinely like who they are and struggle to hold a boundary with someone they love.

Someone can believe they deserve better and still feel uncertain about whether they can create something different.

Someone can be confident at work, secure in friendships, independent in everyday life, and feel completely different inside one particular relationship.

Human beings can hold seemingly contradictory truths at the same time.

The Psychology

This is where “Why does she stay?” becomes a much more complicated question.

Because staying, by itself, doesn’t tell us which part of self we’re looking at.

In fact, it doesn’t tell us that the explanation lives within the “self” at all.

Attachment can matter.

Fear can matter.

Hope can matter.

History can matter.

Finances, culture, family, safety, children, grief, familiarity, access to resources, previous experiences and the circumstances surrounding the relationship can all matter.

Sometimes several things are true at once.

And sometimes the person themselves may still be trying to understand why something feels so difficult to change.

A behaviour gives us information. It does not give us the whole formulation.

Perhaps that’s what gets lost when we watch someone else’s life from the outside.

We can see the decision.

We cannot automatically see everything underneath it.

Gentle Reflection

Think about a decision, yours or someone else’s, that you’ve explained with a label.

Weak.

Insecure.

No self-respect.

Too dependent.

Doesn’t know their worth.

Now make the explanation a little less certain.

What else might be true at the same time?

Could someone know their worth and still be afraid?

Could someone respect themselves and still be attached?

Could someone want something different and not yet believe they can create it?

Could someone be strong and still struggle?

And perhaps most importantly:

What becomes possible when we stop using one behaviour to define an entire self?

Journal Prompt

Think of a time when something you did seemed inconsistent with who you believed yourself to be.

What did you assume that behaviour said about you?

Which part of “self” were you actually questioning?

What other factors were influencing you at the time?

What changes when you allow more than one thing to be true?

And then we don’t resolve it.

Until next time…

Keep noticing.

Carrin Adoma, MSW, RSW.

Grounded in Science. Guided by Soul.

Sources & Further Reading

Chen, G., Gully, S. M., & Eden, D. (2004). General self-efficacy and self-esteem: Toward theoretical and empirical distinction between correlated self-evaluations. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 25(3), 375–395.

Clucas, C. (2020). Understanding self-respect and its relationship to self-esteem. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 46(6), 839–855.

Crocker, J., & Wolfe, C. T. (2001). Contingencies of self-worth. Psychological Review, 108(3), 593–623.

Germain, R. B. (1978). Self-concept and self-esteem reexamined. Psychology in the Schools, 15(3), 386–390.

A note on the psychology: The concepts explored in this entry, self-worth, self-esteem, self-efficacy, self-concept, and self-respect, are closely related and can overlap, but they are not interchangeable. Psychological literature has distinguished between how we understand ourselves, how we evaluate our worth, what we believe ourselves capable of doing, and the respect we hold for ourselves and our values. These boundaries are not absolute, and researchers continue to examine where these constructs overlap. The distinctions used here are intended as a framework for reflection rather than rigid categories.