Today, my friend and I went to see Waitress the musical on Broadway. The show is about a woman in an abusive relationship who works as a waitress at a pie shop cafe, and she unexpectedly gets pregnant and doesn’t know what to do. She really doesn’t want the baby, but she feels too weak to leave her husband. The depiction of the husband in the show immediately reminded me of the abusive relationships I’ve seen, including ones that both my friend and I have been in, as well as other friends we’ve had through our lives who have succumbed to terrible men.

It’s really disturbing how even the strongest women can succumb to (verbally and/or physically) abusive men simply because of what we’ve been conditioned to believe are gender norms — that women need to be nurturing and accepting, that women have the ability to “change” the men they are with if they only try hard enough, that women need to “take care of” and in some ways even mother their partners. I still remember being in a terrible relationship when I was 19 and being in complete disbelief that all these awful things were happening to me… My friend even reminded me she didn’t realize how bad he was until it was almost over when I finally told her everything. It was surreal, as though it was all just a bad dream that I thought would end, but it took so, so long to end. But instead of walking away, I kept trying to believe things would get better and that he’d change, or maybe it was just a bad work day or a bad mood… classic women thoughts. I had a good friend constantly tell me to leave him, and when I finally did officially, it was the most liberating feeling ever.

The disheartening part of watching this musical, which both of us really enjoyed, is that it made me think about all the women out there in today’s day and age who are probably feeling just like Jenna the waitress, who feel trapped and like they can’t do any better than the loser abusive men that they’re with. There are too many problems in the world, and as many opportunities as there are out there for women, it’s sad when these opportunities aren’t made apparent to these women, and they think they have to put up with horrible sexist treatment that was normal fifty or a hundred years ago. I hope all women can be as strong as Jenna was in this show and leave their abusers, even if it means raising a child on their own. We don’t want to bring children into a world and raise them to think that abusive relationships are normal and expected.