Miss Paula will never learn. She is now beyond learning.
I’ve been reading up on topics like this the past year. Generally - the view I have encountered is that she was with him in the first place because she did learn - people teach these women early in life, often in childhood, that, as young children, they aren’t very valuable as humans and that even ‘good’ and ‘important’ people that she cares about (mom, dad, other guardians etc.) who love her are ‘made’ to treat her abusively because she is stupid, does the wrong thing, asks the wrong questions, complains about mistreatment when ‘no one is hurting you’ etc.
And as an adult, abusers she meets are able to detect this kind of emotional scar tissue very quickly - often within the first meeting with their eventual victim - like sharks sense blood in the water. Initially the relationship is good and the woman hopes that the abusive past is behind her and she plans on being ‘good enough’ not to be treated abusively - and then he steadily begins to reveal his true nature. With so little self esteem and the view that even her ‘loving family’ hurt her when she disappointed them - she just tries harder and harder to be ‘good enough’ and doesn’t imagine there is a safe place in the world for her.
So she did learn the wrong information from the start and it takes a total change in very basic assumptions of world view and life for this kind of woman to really learn the truth and walk/run away.
I helped a woman escape a violent husband about a year ago - I have to say it was like this situation in that I jsut couldn’t figure out what the attraction was - why go back to him? He was unspeakably abusive and yet should would reminisce about the few golden moments in the past when he was good to her. Her belief system was so strong she really couldn’t hear what I or others were saying.
It seems that women who do escape either make a commitment to long term therapy or gradually with their own determination and support from others who’ve ‘been there’...they claw their way out. But, without a change in world view and restoring of self esteem - that sort of woman goes on to the next abuser. So very sad.