"I Have Lost Everything": Trade-Offs of Seeking Safety From Intimate Partner Violence

A primary aim of mainstream domestic violence (DV) programs is to help survivors and their children achieve safety from intimate partner violence. That goal, however, is neither simple nor straightforward. Instead, research demonstrates that the very actions survivors take to achieve safety may trigger a wide range of negative consequences. Missing from this research, however, is a focus on survivors' own perception, evaluation, and expectation of the costs surrounding their safety-seeking efforts. Using a mixed-methods design, this study explored safety-related trade-offs among a convenience sample of 301 female survivors seeking DV services across 3 states in the Northeast region of the United States. Quantitative findings demonstrate that 62% of participants reported having to give up too much to keep safe, 55% reported that safety led to new problems in other domains for survivors and their loved ones, and 50% reported that these problems were often unexpected. Qualitative findings illuminated the categories of loss participants experienced as they worked toward safety, as well as the actions participants would have taken had they anticipated these losses. Findings suggest that an emphasis on safety over other needs-common in a human services landscape composed of multiple narrowly defined service silos-can force survivors into a zero-sum trap of painful and detrimental trade-offs.