From the moment a girl enters the world, she is handed an invisible script.
Be patient. Adjust. Keep the peace. Don’t question too much. Don’t create trouble. Don’t walk away.
These messages don’t arrive loudly. They seep in quietly through family, culture, tradition, and even love, until endurance feels like virtue and silence feels like strength.
This is not the conditioning of one culture alone.
It is deeply ingrained social conditioning, shaped by culture yet echoed across societies worldwide.
And it teaches women, again and again, that staying is noble and choosing themselves is selfish.
Often, this conditioning is not enforced by men alone.
It is carried, reinforced, and passed down by women too.
Not because they intend harm.
But because this is what they were taught.
Because endurance was framed as survival.
So when a woman finds herself in an unhealthy or abusive relationship, she isn’t just facing what is happening in her present… she is battling generations of inherited beliefs that whisper:
“Stay. Adjust. This is what women do.”
We see this play out every day.
A woman finally speaks about her partner’s behaviour, hoping for understanding, and hears… often from another woman
“All men get angry. Don’t overreact. Just keep the marriage together.”
Another considers leaving a toxic relationship, but the women in her family urge her to think of reputation, shame, and community before her own wellbeing:
“What will people say?”
Women who carry emotional pain quietly are praised for it:
“You’re so strong. You’re holding the family together.”
As though suffering is proof of character.
A woman who has given up her career is told,
“How will you survive on your own?”
A sentence that quietly erodes confidence rather than offering support.
Many women are burdened with the responsibility of fixing the very person who is hurting them:
“Be patient with him. He needs you. Give him some time.”
As if her wounds are secondary.
And countless women who speak about emotional or psychological abuse are dismissed with,
“At least he doesn’t hit you.”
This is the quiet truth we rarely name:
when you normalise endurance at the cost of a woman’s wellbeing, you unknowingly add to the toxicity.
Not through cruelty.
Not through intention.
But through repetition.
When pain is minimised, explained away, or reframed as duty, it does not disappear… it deepens. And in this way, conditioning survives not through violence alone, but through normalisation passed lovingly from one generation to the next.
And sometimes, the cost of this conditioning is devastating.
Every few months, the news carries a familiar headline – a married woman, found dead by suicide. In India, this is not rare. It is heartbreakingly common. And yet, the conversation that follows is often the same.
We ask why she didn’t speak up sooner.
Why didn’t she ask for help.
We ask why she didn’t try harder.
What we rarely ask is what kind of life she was enduring in silence.
Many of these women were doing exactly what society asked of them – staying, adjusting, tolerating, holding families together, not “breaking” the marriage. They were praised for endurance while being denied support. Told to wait, to hope, to be patient, to give it time – until the weight became unbearable.
When a woman feels she cannot stay, and is not allowed to leave… when her pain is minimised and her voice repeatedly dismissed, silence stops being strength. It becomes lethal.
This is the part we avoid confronting.
Because it forces us to look beyond individual choices and ask harder questions about collective responsibility.
This Is Not About Encouraging Anyone to Leave
Let me be clear.
This is not about telling women to stay.
And it is not about telling women to leave.
Only a woman can know what is right for her life… her safety, her family, her future, her sense of self.
What needs to change is not her decision, but the way society responds to her truth.
Instead of pressuring women to “adjust” no matter the cost, we should be asking:
- Are you safe?
- What do you need?
- How can we support you without judgement?
- Do you have the freedom to choose for yourself?
Support is not control.
Support is not advice disguised as concern.
Support is information, options, emotional safety, and respect.
Rewriting the Narrative
We’ve got to stop measuring strength by how much a woman can endure.
Strength is awareness.
Strength is autonomy.
Strength is choosing dignity over expectation and peace over performance.
When women are allowed to make decisions without fear, guilt, or societal pressure… whether that decision is to stay, to seek help, to create boundaries, or to walk away… they begin to reclaim their voice.
Not because someone told them what to do.
But because they were finally trusted to know what they need.
So maybe healing begins when a woman is no longer told to stay,
no longer shamed for leaving,
no longer praised for suffering ,
but is finally trusted enough to choose a life that doesn’t cost her herself,
and to decide, without fear or permission, how she wants to live, love and exist.
And until we get there, perhaps the question we as a society must sit with is this:
How many women must disappear into an abyss of normalised neglect before we stop calling endurance strength and start calling support a responsibility?
Before we learn to listen rather than instruct?
And perhaps, before assuming we know better than a woman about her own life without offering anything healing, helpful, or humane, we might pause to consider whether silence is the more respectful choice.
And if you’re a woman reading this, can we find the courage to change the narrative?
To stop handing down endurance as our legacy?
Can we choose to end this cycle in our lifetime, at least within our own families?
About the writer
Ritika Furtado Sharma is a Mindset Coach, Director of Aikya The One, and a passionate wildlife photographer. Having helped many people through some of life’s most challenging moments, she incorporates nature therapy and powerful mindset shifts into her work. Her approach is rooted in authenticity and self-discovery, guiding individuals to break free from limiting beliefs, navigate difficult relationships and step into their true power.
Thnx Ritika. Again so true and you didn’t tiptoe around this writing landed hard. I myself have faced this so many times in my own life. so many times i wish i had someone who just heard me rather then tell me what to do or what family and society wants me to do. And your so right, I hope we never pass these nonsense inheritance down to our children. I promise i will not.
I wish this article reaches every woman and she understands it. Women unknowingly or knowingly cause a lot of damage to other women. I am glad that now a days there are many avenues to make women understand her strength and potential and to stand on her feet. Whether women accept it or not is another story but few do and that itself if great 👍 thank you Rithika for bringing up this topic.
Incisive and straight-from-the-shoulder, Ritika has once put together just the right words woven into a mirror image which shocks us into confronting, face-to-face, the darker side of life’s rulebook for women (yes, the article shocks most us guys us with the knowledge that men have a different book), the drafting of which we have all, albeit unknowingly, participated in. All of us, even if we have never consciously thought about it. Great job done Ritika.