SO, there were 25,000 new cases of women and children needing support with domestic abuse in Scotland last year.

Is this figure surprising? It was certainly reported as such, as a shockingly high number. A number to make you stop in your tracks.

The figure was generated by the lobby group Scottish Women’s Aid, an umbrella organisation for 37 various charities around Scotland that provide refuge for victims of domestic abuse.

No one on the frontline would be surprised by these figures.

But no one, anywhere, should take 25,000 and view it as a shock.

We know about domestic abuse but we still don’t stop to consider the multi-faceted societal quirks and tics that allow it to continue like a canker in our neighbours’ homes and our loved ones’ homes and, perhaps, even our own homes.

Most people know something of domestic abuse but perhaps not the full extent. Perhaps they think of it as a husband slapping his wife after a hard day at work or a raised voice over a spoiled dinner.

Sometimes it is as insidious as a comment on what she’s wearing. Sometimes it is psychological tricks. Sometimes financial control. Sometimes it is unimaginable physical trauma, such as the woman who told her story to my colleague, that after the birth of each of her children her husband would rip out her stitches.

If your first thought on reading that was, “But why didn’t she...” then it’s time to educate yourself about the problem.

Domestic abuse is driven by a need for power and control but there are so many everyday, unremarkable attitudes that allow it to continue. Attitudes we should constantly challenge. Pressure to remain in a relationship, for one.

Telling people that being in a relationship is an important life goal is subtle pressure to stay in unhappy or abusive couplings. It makes them resentful of the opposite sex when a relationship is hard to find. It’s just damned unhealthy.

Abuse might begin with something as simple as making himself a cup of tea and not making you one.

You can argue that rudeness or thoughtlessness do not equate to abuse. But why allow someone to be rude or thoughtless because this is preferable to being alone?

We need to take the shame and sense of failure from divorce. We need to stop thinking of divorce as unquestioningly damaging for children. Staying for the children should not be the default noble course of action.

Financial control is a common form of abuse, made easy by the expectation that women take on caring roles while men continue to work.

We need to roll our eyes at songs with lyrics that normalise men’s control over women (Pharrell’s Blurred Lines is far from the only culprit), to sigh loudly at films where the woman is the cipher or the damsel damned to wait for rescue.

Women allow themselves to be objectified in the name of romance. But then, they’re conditioned to that end by popular culture that encourages increasingly dramatic public proposals or attention-seeking romantic gestures.

Can we make it the norm to be frank about a friend’s partner? If not entirely taboo, then it’s an incredibly difficult and risky conversation to have with a friend. A second set of eyes, a spare gut feeling should be welcomed, not rejected.

Get to know a woman well enough and she’ll more likely than not have a story about a relationship where she experienced abuse. Some 45 per cent of women have experienced domestic abuse in some form, according to the British Crime Survey.

In the debate about obesity, we talk about an obesogenic culture, the way our culture fosters poor health. Alongside shock statistics we need to talk about how our culture is abuse-friendly, encouraging and supporting the unhealthy attitudes to relationships that contribute to those 25,000 women and children being in desperate situations, from which they need help to escape. Otherwise these numbers will not fall. Without a massive attitudinal shift the only surprise will be that domestic abuse is not even more common.