Behind the Perfect Marriage Is a Pattern of Abuse Too Many Immigrant Women Know

My friend Mariana is originally from Mexico, and landed in New York with her husband in 2016, a highly accomplished director at a multinational firm. It’s been a while since she has been on and off taking psychological therapy to navigate his sudden — and constant — outbursts of anger, which have her as her main target. For security reasons, HipLatina convened to safeguard her identity to comment on her case.

She told me that recently, for example, he lost his temper in front of their 5-year-old child after thinking she wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying. It all started when she stood up from the breakfast table to finish packing the boy’s snack for summer camp. She said he began yelling at her, his voice growing progressively louder, before punching walls, slamming doors, and violently throwing a chair to the floor. Fearing the terror in her child’s eyes, she asked him to calm down, but it backfired. The aggressive outburst escalated even further. When he went to change and get ready for work, she quickly grabbed a dress from the laundry room, picked up her child, and left their New York home an hour earlier than she was supposed to.

Weeping bitterly, she described how she found her son hiding in a corner of his room. He asked her, “Why are you so nervous and in such a hurry?”. “He was just trying to make sense of it,” she said. She fears he’s becoming increasingly aware of these episodes. 

How was it possible that her LinkedIn-perfect, professional husband — so educated and well-mannered in every public situation — was capable of such a scene? “It’s always been like this… I don’t know what crossed my mind to actually stay with him for so long, and on top of everything, give up my own life. Now I don’t know what to do. I can’t anticipate what’s going to set him off, and I’m his easy target. Usually, after an outburst, some time goes by, we spend a few days without speaking, eventually reconcile, and move on. But it’s always the same. He also makes some aggressive comments here and there, but I try not to make a big deal out of them,” she said.

She feels trapped because her U.S. visa is entirely tied to his work status. Humiliated and overwhelmed, she doesn’t know how to leave the household, or whether she should return to Mexico after all. In an ironic twist, she still cares about him too; she wonders how their son will continue to see him.

She admits that the fact he’s never hit her has made everything more confusing. “I don’t know how, but I’ve adapted to living like this. Maybe because everything material is provided, too,” she reflected. From the outside, Mariana appears to have a ‘beautiful life’ — married to a successful, celebrated, and good-looking man no one would ever suspect is violent.

But he is. “Inside, he’s just a fearful boy, dismissed and underestimated by his father. He needs my attention 100% of the time to fill his emotional voids, no matter how much recognition he gets from his peers and professional environment. He should be in therapy, but he would never actually consider it. That’s why I feel this relationship is a dead end,” she revealed, visibly heartbroken.

Mariana is an educated, middle-class woman who still finds it hard to openly describe herself as a victim of abuse. But as Irina Faneite would say, “violence does not discriminate.” Faneite is a psychologist with 18 years of experience working in the field of gender-based violence. She is the founder and director of Corazones of Courage Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Houston that supports women survivors of violence as they rebuild their lives through educational programs.

“The truth is it can happen to anyone, really,” Faneite told HipLatina. “In our program, we’ve seen how women who felt very confident in themselves, who believed this could never happen to them, still ended up in these situations. The problem is that we’re often dealing with a highly manipulative partner, and you get caught in the cycle. When it happens — no matter your personality — you start to drown little by little. You begin to feel like you can’t get out. You spiral down in time; you do not fall suddenly. You start to feel you deserve it, like [violence] is your fault. Your self-esteem starts to deteriorate, and then the abuse has no boundaries, and it keeps escalating.”

As terrifying as it is, gender-based violence, often manifested as domestic violence, is a blight that slowly carves away at a person until they no longer recognize themselves. What triggers the violence is almost anecdotal: it could be a dismissive comment, a tasteless, publicly humiliating joke about a mistake you made, or a yell when you fail to say what your partner expected. A range of mental health issues or personality disorders may underlie the perpetrator’s psyche, but it is not the victim’s responsibility to diagnose them; that is a task for specialists.

“It’s a process. Statistics show that, on average, a woman returns to her abuser nine times before breaking the cycle,” Faneite indicated.

The Cycle of Domestic Violence

When someone stays in an abusive relationship, the answer is rarely simple. Abuse isn’t constant — it follows a painful, manipulative pattern known as the Cycle of Domestic Violence. American psychologist Dr. Lenore E. Walker pioneered the research and first described the cycle in 1979, after listening to the stories of hundreds of women who had lived through abuse. She published her research in the groundbreaking book “The Battered Woman.”

Understanding this cycle explains why many victims, especially vulnerable Latina migrants, stay in abusive relationships. Emotional manipulation, fear of deportation, financial dependency, language barriers, and isolation make it incredibly difficult to break the cycle without external support.

Here’s how the cycle usually works:

1. Tension Builds. It starts small. The abuser becomes moody, controlling, or jealous. Arguments happen more often. The victim may feel like they’re walking on eggshells, trying to avoid anything that might trigger anger.

2. The Abuse Happens. This is when verbal insults, threats, physical violence, or other forms of harm occur. It might be a slap, a push, or cruel words. This is the most dangerous moment in the cycle.

3. The Honeymoon Phase. After the violence, the abuser often apologizes, promises it will never happen again, or blames stress, alcohol, or jealousy. There may be gifts, affection, and emotional manipulation to make the victim stay. In this phase, survivors may cling to the hope that the person they love will change.

4. A Temporary Calm. For a while, things seem peaceful. But without real accountability or help, the same tensions start to build again, and the cycle repeats.

Latinas Are as Vulnerable as They Can Be

“I work especially with the Latinx community. It’s clear there’s an unresolved social and cultural framework of male-driven violence rooted in prevailing machismo,” Irina Faneite asserted. She added that cultural phenomena such as familismo and marianismo, along with a rigid adherence to certain Catholic values, often pressure survivors to stay silent and endure the violence.

Faneite also noted that normalized yet harmful ideas about what it means to be in a relationship continue to influence many Latinas: “We come from an idea of romantic love where jealousy, harassment, and controlling behaviors have been normalized and are often seen as expressions of love.”

The CDC estimates that about 42% of Latinas (7.6 million) have experienced sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner at some point, as published in their last National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS).

Also, among Latinx couples, reoccurrence rates of domestic violence can be as high as 59%, compared to 37% for White couples. 

Immigrant Latina survivors in the U.S. face unique and often life-threatening barriers when seeking help, particularly due to their immigration status. A late report of the nonprofit Esperanza United indicates that while approximately 1 in 3 Latinas (34%) will experience intimate partner violence (IPV) in her lifetime, “[in] a current systemic review of over 40,000 survivors of IPV in North America, Latina and Black women were less likely to seek mental health services compared to White women.”   

In the current context of heightened immigration enforcement, many feel increasingly afraid to call the police or seek social services for fear of deportation. Moreover, abusive partners frequently exploit this vulnerability, using immigration status as a control tactic to keep survivors trapped in violent relationships. Additionally, the threat of taking away their children has been identified as a particularly common and devastating form of control, particularly against undocumented, non-English-speaking women.

A survey of over 500 foreign-born Latina women revealed that 14% experienced difficulties accessing intimate partner violence (IPV) services because of immigration-related issues, with some reporting they were denied services due to a lack of proper identification. Other related factors reported have been “lack of health care insurance, distrust of providers, historical and ongoing racism and trauma, fear of discrimination.”

In this same light, a recent survey and research about Latinas in rural areas of California found that only 37% of Latina IPV survivors sought medical help, 27% police help, 25% legal aid, and just 14% social services.

Alicia Martínez and Her Fight for Freedom

It may seem hard, but breaking the cycle is possible. It often takes community, resources, and someone to believe in you. “You don’t choose to be a victim. But you have the power to choose survival,” says Irina Fainete.

That’s certainly the case for Alicia Martinez, whose story is worthy of a film. A Mexican immigrant, she has emerged victorious after fighting through layers of deep, gender-based abuse. “I’m grateful to be alive to tell my story. Others don’t survive,” she said.

Alicia crossed the border with a coyote on November 2, 2001, in Tijuana, hidden beneath the seats of a van, and not exactly by choice.

“In Mexico, I had a job, rented my own apartment. I had never thought about coming to the United States. One day, I met someone at a bar — an American citizen of Mexican descent. He was very persistent, and we started dating. I fell in love. At first, he was very attentive, helped me financially, and met my family. Eventually, we decided to get married,” she told HipLatina during a phone interview from her current home in Sacramento, California.

After the wedding, they planned to live in California. But he claimed the paperwork for her residency would take “too long,” so he pressured her to come in “a less conventional way,” to say the least. “I trusted him. I decided to go through with it. Back then, the good memories of the man I loved felt real to me,” she explained.

Once she crossed the border, the situation in the U.S. quickly began to raise red flags. They moved frequently, and he would lock her inside empty houses with no furniture or food while he was out all day. He would only bring her a few things to eat at night.

Because she didn’t speak English, in those days Alicia was deceived and subjected to profound violence against her health and integrity. She had an abortion performed without her informed consent and was coerced into taking antidepressants without proper medical supervision.

Everything finally became clear to her when he took her to a party with an unusually large number of men. After one man tried to make a move on her, she realized she had been trafficked for sexual purposes. She fell into despair. “I tried to escape, but he caught me again,” she explained.

One day, locked in an office in Fresno, she managed to call her sister, who lived in Sacramento with her family. She promised to pick her up. While going through some correspondence to give her the address, Alicia found a letter from USCIS stating her K-1 visa status as a fiancée — proof that her marriage had been fake. He had never filed her paperwork as a spouse. She decided to call the 1-800 number on the letter and literally ask for help. “I told them I didn’t speak English, that I had been brought to the U.S. under false pretenses, that I had been lied to, and was now being kept captive against my will,” she recounted. Officers rescued her shortly after that call.

Later, she was able to rebuild her life and marry another man, a Mexican immigrant. But after some years of peace and two children together, the couple began to struggle. Once again, she had to fight to stay safe. When problems arose, her husband assaulted her physically, psychologically, and economically, denying her the basic means to support their son and daughter. She had to push for custody and child support. “It was 2014 — long before I had filed a self-petition for a green card under VAWA for trafficking by an American citizen. As I dealt with those new legal issues, I also decided to restart that process,” Alicia said.

She refers to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), a law that, among many protections, allows certain survivors of domestic violence, abuse, or extreme cruelty to petition for legal status without their abuser’s knowledge or involvement.

After the sad experience with her second partner, she was determined to get her legal status and improve her life on her own terms. She connected with the organization Mil Mujeres, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering immigrant women in the U.S., offering legal services and advocacy for survivors of domestic and gender-based violence.

Johanna Fonseca, attorney and CEO of Mil Mujeres, is outstandingly conscious of the responsibility they carry at their organization: “We always offer alternatives to help whoever comes to us. From free services to very accessible personalized payment plans, if we cannot fully cover the fees. These are people with immense needs. We also know that it’s already incredibly difficult for our beneficiaries to reach out for help, so we would never dismiss them with no choices. We have a comprehensive approach to try to tackle each aspect of their vulnerability. Women need a shelter, a place where they can physically escape from the abusive situation. They need emotional therapy, English classes, and a job. We try to assist with those needs as well. That’s exactly why we work on strengthening networks and building partnerships with other organizations, so we can offer resources and options to the people we’re trying to support.”

She is also proud that the team at Mil Mujeres often becomes the initial support network the victims need to gain the necessary strength to fight: “Our staff is 90% Latinx, mostly immigrants, either first or second generation. They know firsthand the challenges of being undocumented, even of surviving violent crimes in the U.S. Our team often becomes that first safe space, where people can break down, cry, and be comforted. That’s what this is about: supporting them with both experience and empathy.”

Alicia has been a legal resident in the U.S. thanks to their work for five years now. Her case received financial support from the Mexican Consulate in California and the organization’s own funds. “Meeting them was the best thing that ever happened to me. Finally, someone honestly connected with my suffering and tried to help me. I feel like a spokesperson for them now. I like to tell my story so that other women know it is possible to get out of violence. It takes a lot of resilience. But there is hope, and there is help out there,” she affirmed vehemently.

Mil Mujeres has offices all over the country. Only last year, they filed almost 4,000 cases at USCIS. Fonseca explained that due to the sensitivity of the cases they manage, they usually work with police departments and public agencies to support the victims, and request restraining and protection orders when necessary. 

Speaking Up, The First Step Against Violence

After almost ten years at work with the most vulnerable in the Latinx community in the U.S., Johanna Fonseca is determined to transmit courage and hope: “I would like to tell [the women suffering violence] to dare break the silence. I wouldn’t tell them not to be afraid, because fear will be there. However, if you are afraid, do it afraid. Get informed. It’s a long process, but it is possible to get out. Psychologically, you may be at your lowest, but you can make it. We have over 5,000 success stories to prove it — survivors of extremely violent situations, and they managed to rebuild their lives.”

Challenging violence in any form demands immense energy and grit. You need to find the pillar you can lean on inside yourself to gather that strength, and dare to do what once felt unspeakable.

As activist and writer Audre Lorde reminds us, “Your silence will not protect you.” Hope is an active force we must choose every day.

You are valuable. You are worthy. It isn’t a question of if you will reclaim your freedom — it’s a question of when.