Although it was nothing so dire as what AudreyK’s friend went through, I once dated a guy who none of my friends liked. One of the reasons I didn’t break up with him sooner was because I had no safety net of friends to fall back on.
I think also some people stay in a bad relationship they’ve sacrificed much for, is they have to be right (or at least not wrong). I’ve also seen people get zero sympathy/support when they’ve broken up with the SO they left their spouse for.
This is quite common with abusive relationships, especially since it’s often the intention of the abuser to cut you off from your friends. There may also be an element of ‘If I break up with them I’ll be proving them all right.’ All the more reason to make it clear to anyone in an abusive relationship that, while you won’t support their relationship, you will always be there to help them if and when they want to get out. And to hold back the 'I told you so’s.
Aside from the logistical and financial concerns of splitting up a household, you have to take into account the reasons that many people get deeply involved in a bad relationship to begin with; to wit, an unconscious desire to recreate and attempt to fix some aspect of their childhood development experience that was stunted, incomplete, or abusive? Had an alcoholic father? Marry an incipient drunk and make him sober. Had a verbally abusive mother? Marry a shrewish bitch. Ignored by daddy? Get involved with a man whose main attraction is his emotional remoteness. Et cetera, ad nausum. The problem with this is twofold: because it is unconscious, most people don’t actually get around to the “fixing” step (at least, without outside counsel), and second, even if they do, the fact is that you can’t really change someone else’s bad behaviors without their willing cooperation. Instead of bailing at signs of trouble, many people have too much of their identity invested in fixing the problem before they can move on. (One recent thread about alcoholic spouses had one poster explaining how she wouldn’t leave her husband until he sobered up…as if there was any incentive for that to occur.) So they stay in a deteriorating situation, rearranging the deck chairs while the icebergs loom afore.
And unless one has known a good relationship (either by direct experience or close observation), one may just assume that this is the best it will ever be, that it can’t get or one doesn’t deserve any better, or that one lays in the bed that has been made regardless of the inequity and frustration. Besides, if this is the situation, the sad fact is that the person in question will probably hop from one bad relationship to another. Until a conscious, objective assessment of why one enters into and remains in bad relationships has been made (usually, again, requiring some kind of external critical commentary), the pattern is just repeated; all of the quirky little habits that are initially appealing become obnoxious and hated. See Charlie Kaufman’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for a mediation on this. Even if you do understand the reasons and motives, lacking the proper experience and modeling it may be difficult or impossible to have a genuinely healthy relationship with someone; certainly it is a constant struggle to monitor and modify behavior that is ingrained from childhood.
It is also quite frankly the case that many people realistically aren’t going to do better than what they have (given age, attractiveness, and mostly irresolvable emotional problems), and are unwilling to be alone for the rest of their lives despite how bad the situation is. It may be a situation of staying with the known devil over the winding unknown path through the dark forest. Most people want to walk hand in hand with someone, even if that person won’t actually deign to hold their hand. It may also be that they get something else–belonging to a family, approval of friends, amenities and luxuries that could otherwise not be afforded–despite how poor the primary relationship is. Some of the best relationships I’ve seen–in terms of viability and comfort–are closer to business arrangements than romance and companionship.
Nearly all of my (few) of my romantic relationships have been various grades of horrible owing to a combination of the above reasons, and the one that wasn’t collapsed primarily (I speculate) because I didn’t know how to cope with and provide for someone who didn’t suffer insecurity and misplaced resentment. In the end, I didn’t give her the healthy responses she needed, and she moved on, leaving me with the realization that this relationship business just doesn’t work for me. At least it gives me plenty of opportunity to read, watch Kurosawa films, and buy whatever whiskey I please without concern for what someone else wants or needs.
Stranger
I’m not certain why people stay in awful relationships, either. I have some friends in an awful one, though. My acquaintance is married to someone he seems to hate and who seems to hate him. However, he has this idealized picture of his adult life and always has. And, despite his current situation, he bluntly refuses to stray from that ideal life, even though he just doesn’t have it. He’s always been wife-shopping, even in high school. He had his married life mapped out long before he ever had a wife. He planned that he would get married before 30 (he made it at 28, I think), approximately one year later have baby #1, then another year later have baby #2. His wife would ideally stay at home and take care of the babies. His ideal was basically Leave it to Beaver.
When he got married, I think he did it because he couldn’t find anyone else who was single. Seriously. He talked about it with me somewhat extensively. Based on some comments he made, it was because it was time for him to marry and he happened to be dating this girl that he could live with. So they got married. And their personalities clashed long before the kids came along. Hell, they were at each other’s throats when they were just dating. They’d insult each other in public in front of their friends, these verbal jabs that were totally under the belt. They married anyway. She got pregnant. When they had kid #1, they insulted each other in front of him. She quit her job (she was a travel agent) to allegedly stay home with the kid, but instead of spending time with him, she parked him in front of the TV all day to keep him out of her way. Tensions escalated because that wasn’t how the guy wanted his kid raised. She later admitted that she didn’t feel very maternal at all and sometimes fantasized about never having had kids. Nonetheless, they had yet another kid, who I assume will have much the same experience as the first, who is very shy around his parents, but really shines whenever they’re out of the room.
I suspect these people will stay married forever. I think it’s because this guy had parents in a similar relationship (kind of a marriage of convenience) and she has nowhere else to go. Not because he’s abusive, but both of them have abrasive personalities and she’s extremely insecure, so much so that she cuts other people down to feel better about herself. I don’t understand them at all - I think their lives would be at least less stressful had they never married each other. But what do I know? I just work here.
Our first year of marriage, like many others’, was very rough. Lots of fighting, tension, so many adjustments to make… I’m glad I stuck it out now, because it’s completely wonderful (okay, 98% wonderful) but at the time, I think I stayed mostly because I couldn’t bear the thought that I’d “failed” at marriage. 
Some people have the mindset that you grow up and get married and there is no other alternative.
I have a coworker who is (theoretically) getting married. She was engaged to this guy before, and they didn’t get along. He broke off the engagement. Two years later they started dating again. They didn’t get along. (big surprise) They broke up for a year. This year they got back together. She told him it’s time to talk about getting married, and he claims he wants to. He just doesn’t want to get engaged yet. Maybe in the spring. Oh, the spring of next year. Yeah, that would be best. Then they could have a loooooong engagement. So now they’re enaged to be engaged.
Meanwhile he’s got the problem of living with his mother, who takes care of all his needs (he’s in his late 40’s). He won’t move into the coworker’s house. He spends only as much time with coworker as his other interests (drinking and cock fighting) allow for. He’s hiding information about major financial situations from her. She can’t stand the fact that he’s a total slob. To marry him, she has to rent or sell her house and move to his place once he convinces his mom to move in with a sister. She knows she’s going to have to cook and clean and do the laundry because she knows he won’t lift a finger. She is dreading this already.
Warning bells are ringing left and right, and she hears them loud and clear, but she still wants to get married. Because she feels that it is what she should be doing.
People are odd creatures.
I do respect that vow. A great deal. (Which is why I want people to shut the fuck up about ME getting married. I won’t get married until he and I are both 100% convinced we want to do this until death do us part. I love him and he loves me but if he were to flip-flop his personality and start acting like a jerk or something you can bet I’d leave him.)
Still, I guess it comes down to personality, too. I’d rather have to pay through the nose and yet be single and happy/content than have money and be living with someone unhappily. So I am somewhat of a hedonist.
But as I said before, in my mind, this is it. I’m 33 now. Once I die, whenever that is, I will never ever get another chance again. There will never be another me. So I don’t want to spend day in and day out in misery, and don’t understand how others do.
When I was a child I came home every day to a half-crazy mother. I never knew if she’d be screaming at me or being civil to me. My home is my castle now and I am determined for it to be happy, whatever it takes.
I totally agree with the female complaints thing. One of the girls here at work does it, and I finally looked at her and said, “But you do love him, right?” Every day it’s something.
And yes, a great deal of people think you grow up and get married and that is the logical next step. I think we need to lay off the marriage thing and change our whole mindset on that. Our mindset on marriages is WHY people stay married through abusive relationships. And I’ve seen a lot of abusive relationships, the majority of them in my own family. Any wonder I’m so burned on marriage? Personally, the only reason I really see an absolute NEED for marriage is for kids, so they can get the assets if something happens, and that will work with civil unions, too. I mean, marry if you want, but maybe we should ease up on it being a necessity to be “truly in love”, as I’ve been told many many times.
I hope civil unions come soon. Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion I’d much prefer a civil union, perhaps with a set “expiration date”, that I could renew periodically, like a license, than the outdated and old-fashioned custom of “till death do us part”.
ETA: That was a long wandering post, but basically I agree with what the poster before me said. People are odd.
I think some people just LIKE to show love at the top of their lungs. I also strongly agree that after awhile people stop noticing they’re bickering constantly. So to them this isn’t a sign of a bad marriage
Some people aren’t happy unless they are miserable.
That sounded ridiculous when I first heard it, forty-some years ago. Not so much now.
Regards,
Shodan
Kids and expectations, perhaps?
Bottom line? Most women seem to live in fear of boarding that train at Single and Fabulous in the City, making stops at Divorcee Junction, North Fatal Attractionville, Cougar-upon-Barstool and Crazy Cat Lady Terminal.
And as they get older and see that the only thing out there is Never Get Married Guy, Aging High School Jock Bar Guy, and 45 Year Old Drunk Cockfighting Living With His Mom Guy, that fear gets more pronounced.
Shit, don’t you guys watch Sex and the City? And those are the problems upper middle class attractive white girls have in the biggest singles city on the planet. Imagine being an educated divorced 30-something woman living in Allentown, PA or someplace. I have a friend like that and she is always telling me horror stories about her dates. And you know what? I knew her husband and while he wasn’t perfect and I don’t know what specifically went wrong, he had to be better than 90% of the d-bags she’s dated since.
Don’t take this as a recomendation for people to just stay together for it’s own sake. I’m just trying to provide a thought process why some people might not be in such a rush to get divorced or separated.
and
This is the root of why I stayed with Mrs. Montoya for as long as I did. I didn’t/don’t view marriage as a contract in the sense that one party’s actions void the others’ responsibilities. I see it as two people making promises to each other. Promises that they will strain their very souls to not break. In my mind if I were to break mine, irrespective of what my wife did, then I would only add to the net moral failure of the situation. Breaking my vows wouldn’t unwreck things.
Interestingly, the decision to finally leave her came down to my failure to respect her in front of the kids. She and I got into an argument and I simply packed all the hate and pain I’d been holding back for the last 5 years and delivered a verbal assault on her that reduced her to a sobbing mess on the floor. While the kids looked on. I decided that 1) I didn’t want my kids to think that it was ok for anyone to be on either side of that kind of exchange, and 2) my vow was broken in that moment of disrespect and there was really nothing left.
Things are going great for me now, but I still consider the divorce to be a major moral failure on my part.
And yeah, I bitched on The Dope about it, but only to vent and to get insight. It really wasn’t about attention-whoring. Maybe there was a good bit of denial, though. Because if I didn’t end the marriage then things couldn’t really be as bad as they appeared.
Whereas I consider my divorce from a mentally ill, emotionally abusive liar to be my crowning moment of personal integrity. Even if it was horridly painful at the time. And even if SHE was the one to file.
Hey, I never said I don’t feel a whole lot better without her. And I’m a much better person without her. 
One of our follow dopers once observed about people bitching about thier jobs:
But you could replace “job” with “spouse” and it still kinda works.
Well, the real answer in my case is “the kids.” We do it for the kids. My wife and I do not have an ideal marriage. She knows it, and I know it. But we have a wonderful 11 and 10 year old whom we both love entirely more than we do each other. I could get into a lot of specifics, but I won’t. We tolerate each other with absolutely no fighting or abuse, and very little outward bitchiness to one another, but there sure ain’t any love involved. We co-habitate. We haven’'t had sex in 2 years. We have little other than superficial communication really. I know it sounds just awful, but believe me we hide it well, and our kids are much better in this scenario than they would be if we split. Instead of one common household managing to keep it together financially and logistically, we’d be split into two lower income joints with a crap load of problems regarding school bus schedules, extracurricular activities, and other general parental tradeoffs regarding vacation, sick days, school trips, etc.
Nope. I am CONVINCED that staying in this sham of a relationship provides much better care for my kids than the alternative, and therefore I’m keeping up my end of the bargain. I love the little guys too much.
You left out Laser Slut Crossing. 
How can you stand a life of no sex or spousal affection or respect? Won’t you end up resenting your kids? Don’t you think that, eventually, on some level, they’ll “get” it and it will end up sending them the wrong message about what a good marriage can be?
Marriage vows are important, and marriage should be a lifelong commitment. Your first instinct when there are problems shouldn’t be towards flight. You should be trying to solve the problems, and understand that there will be periods of misery. However, when misery becomes chronic, it’s time to end things and move on.
Man, I missed a bunch of posts on the first page and thought this was just a hyperbolic hypothetical.