The movie adaption of the BookTok-viral Colleen Hoover novel "It Ends with Us" exceeded expectations with a $50 million opening weekend. Much like the "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour" concert film, its premiere was fashion-forward, glittering with florals evocative of the main character, florist Lily Bloom. Hoover’s readers, known as CoHorts, have taken a page from the Swiftie playbook alongside the film’s star Blake Lively, the human embodiment of “we all got crowns.” With enough purchasing power to upend the publishing industry, outsell the Bible and necessitate a dedicated BookTok table at Barnes & Noble, Hoover’s readership is a force. Whether you’re Team CoHo or no-go, there’s reason to pay attention: Hoover has hit a cultural nerve.
The story of a woman’s reckoning with domestic violence, "It Ends with Us" has been called “trauma porn” and criticized for romanticizing abusive relationships, at least in part because readers are asked to empathize with the abuser; which is tricky, because good writing (and good living) invites empathy for every character. The onscreen version of Lily’s love interest, neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid, is portrayed by the film’s director and producer Justin Baldoni, best known for winning the final rose on "Jane the Virgin." The florist shop Lily Bloom’s is an enchanted wonderland, gleaming nearly as much as Ryle’s teeth. Who’s to say this is not realistic? Abusers do not arrive scowling like The Prick on "Bad Sisters." The road to domestic violence is paved with Cartier bracelets and Hallmark cards.
Which is perhaps the beating heart of so much emotion surrounding the story. Women identify. According to the National Institutes of Health, 1 in 4 women have experienced intimate partner violence, with the highest incidence among women age 18 to 34 (not coincidentally, the demographic responsible for 60% of the weekend box office). The UN defines domestic abuse as “a pattern of behavior in any relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner.” So, that time he mocked me in front of our friends because he was feeling insecure? You’re in the pot, and the water has started to boil.
Why did she stay?
Hoover explains in the novel’s afterword that she wrote "It Ends with Us" – based loosely on her parents except for, I’m assuming, the smokin’ hot sex – “for all the people who didn’t quite understand women like [Hoover’s mother]. I was one of those people,” the author confesses. “I quickly realized it’s not as black and white as it seems from the outside.”
Why did she stay? Fielded by every survivor I’ve counseled during my 20-plus years as a psychotherapist in private practice, the question is back in the ether 10 years after #WhyIStayed first trended on Twitter. Women don the mantle of emotional labor like the latest crossbody bag, determined to make our relationships work. I’ve witnessed women agree to have, or not have, children against their will. Convert to a different religion. Invite unwanted third partners into the bedroom. I once knew a woman who’d been a competitive gymnast and as an adult, she earned two graduate degrees – who considered having undesired plastic surgery because her partner asserted his right to “what he considered beautiful” — and that woman was me.
A master class in love bombing, my early relationship started with letters, trips and “You’re the most beautiful woman in the world.” It ended with my phoning a friend for instructions on how to remove the bullets from my then partner’s handgun, my fingers shaking, terrified he would kill me or himself. My friend had known us from the beginning, the glimmer of limerence still in my eyes. Even back then, she knew never to call me on a Friday. That was his day off, when he required my full attention.
Healing is slow. I understand why it’s Hoover, a generation removed, who tells her mother’s story. Survivors of abuse are three times more likely to meet the criteria for PTSD. We’re six times more likely to struggle with addiction. I have been sober since 2022, but I self-medicated for years after leaving my relationship. It’s only with the passage of time and the benefit of therapy (as client, not practitioner) that I dare speak up now.
“[S]ometimes the reason women go back,” writes Hoover, “is simply because they’re in love.” I have never known a woman for whom leaving was simple. Trauma bonding is real. The emotional connection a victim feels toward her perpetrator is only strengthened by his inconsistency. Remember those grainy videos from Psych 101, white rats pressing levers with eager paws? Wham! A hit of dopamine. Turns out, an intermittent schedule of reinforcement — occasional pellets of counterfeit love dispensed like unpredictable manna — proves most effective to keep us pressing. The greatest crime of Colleen Hoover is having depicted an extraordinarily lustrous lever.
Other reasons for staying, implicit in the text, include financial insecurity, self-recrimination, lack of social support, concern for the welfare of children, conditioning from one’s upbringing, navigating a power differential, and — pay attention here, because this one’s a biggie: operating under the illusion that “we could work on his anger issues together.” Reader, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve said in couples counseling, “You can’t want it badly enough for both of you,” I could, well, pay for my own therapy.
To the above reasons I would add fear. Fight, flight or freeze: fear of staying, fear of leaving, fear of doing nothing at all. “I’m scared I’m being too weak and that I should have had him arrested,” says Lily. “I’m scared I’m being too sensitive and I don’t know if I’m overreacting,” Too sensitive: the accusation abusers apply like masking tape to the mouths of their victims. Aided by screen time filled with "Inside Out," any modern child can tell you (like, duh) our emotions are lights on the dashboard, ignored at our peril.
Another, more amorphous kind of fear is anxiety, or fear of the unknown. What would leaving even look like? Sure, this pot is hot, but I’ve gotten so used to the water. Sometimes I assign my clients the homework of imagining three scenarios for life outside the pot, er, relationship. (For inspo, try watching "Dark Matter" on Apple TV+ or reading "The Midnight Library.") Get specific, I say. Talk to me about Goodwill sofas and grocery bills. Or paying the divorce attorney’s consultation fee with cash stashed in a box of tampons. Think of this as the world’s most depressing vision board. Except the assignment is anything but depressing. Hope springs from empowerment, feeling a sense of personal agency as the locus of control shifts from the outside in.
Toward the end of my relationship, my then partner shook his head incredulously. “Nothing works on you,” he said out loud. And that is the goal. Spiritual warriors train in staying present and free. Our psychoemotional well-being depends upon casting a protective mental barrier like a post-change Bella Swan. Whatever or whomever works on you is the reason why you’ll stay. Sometimes days too long, sometimes years. Sometimes an entire lifetime.
“We all have a limit. What we’re willing to put up with before we break,” writes Hoover. “Every incident [of abuse] chips away at your limit . . . [until] you lose sight of your limit altogether.”
What if the limit were zero? Women are so afraid of wanting too much, we don’t want nearly enough. But with standards that high, won’t I end up alone? You might. I lived alone for a decade. It had been indescribably worse living with contempt, insults and rigid rules as my joie de vivre dulled into depression. Thank God I missed sparkling.
Perhaps Taylor Swift gave us the ultimate litmus test: Are you less sparkly in his presence? Then repeat after me, quoting Lily:
F**k.
That.
S**t.
If you’re headed to the theater this weekend, I hope you wear sequins and florals, like the flower-embroidered shirt Ryan Reynolds donned to promote his wife’s new film. Or the book-themed sweatpants available on CoHo’s website for $60. Whatever you wear, I hope you share M&M’s and popcorn with someone who straightens your crown.
