My friend is stuck in an abusive relationship.

[neveragain2493]

My best friend's roommate (whose boyfriend is, ironically, the last roommate of my ex boyfriend) and I recently all became good friends. I've seen her in the past at my ex's apartment but never really got to know her until now. I'll try to break her relationship down as simply as I can.

 

- They've dated for about two and a half years, and it's always been him to break up with her.

- She has a low sex drive and only wants to have sex maybe once a week. He gets angry when she doesn't give in and sees it as a huge issue that she doesn't want to have sex sometimes, let alone "try new things." He's only good to her when she does. She's self conscious about her body, and he gets angry that she isn't comfortable being fully naked in front of him.

- Whenever she cries or is upset, he calls her a crybaby and tells her to go cut her wrists. He calls her stupid, stubborn, and disrespectful to him.

- Their fights have gotten physical. She told me about an incident where she told him, "I'm not a dog," and he replied with, "Yeah, you are. B****." When she slapped him, he picked her up, carried her down the stairs, and threw her on the ground.

- A guy friend of hers has been texting her, and when her boyfriend found out, he told her he was going to spend the night with his ex girlfriend to "do math homework." He isn't taking a math course.

- He broke up with her then called her over the next day. He apologized and then asked to have sex as a "security thing" because he knows she has a low sex drive and won't run off to hook up with someone else after having sex with him. She gave in, and the next day, he said he was just feeling horny and said those things to get in her pants.

- Yesterday, she begged him to be with her and said that if he wanted to be with her, it was only that simple. He replied that he did love her, but she'd have to fix a lot of her issues first, including "the sexual problem." He told her he wasn't getting back with her until he was 100% sure he really loved her (I heard these exact words from my ex and know it is a RED FLAG).

 

Today, she called me crying and came into my apartment. She told me she literally walked to his car, got in, and he physically picked her up and put her out of the car because he didn't want to talk to her. He's ignoring her texts and calls on purpose.

Since my best friend and I have both been abused in some way, we keep telling her that she deserves better. She literally said, "I don't care how he treats me. I just want us to be together." He obviously abuses her in every way. No matter what advice we give, she doesn't listen, and I know it isn't an option to let her "find out for herself" because they do get physical. It's a cycle that keeps occurring, and she always thinks that it's her fault ("maybe if I make a change"/"maybe if I fix this"). It hurts me to watch this, and if it gets physical again, my friend and I have agreed to find help for her.

[KathyM]

Don't wait for it to happen again. Find her some counseling right away so she can break out of this pattern of allowing herself to be abused. Women who are abused generally suffer from low self esteem and think that they deserve to be abused, and that if only they did something differently, it wouldn't happen. Your friend has to learn that abuse is not her fault, that her abuser will continue to abuse her if she stays with him, and that there is nothing she can do to change him. Abusive men often come from abusive childhoods where either they were abused themselves as children, or they witnessed a parent being abused by the other parent, and so they've adopted this pattern of violent control of others that they learned in childhood, which is very difficult to change, and requires a lot of therapy to even begin to change. The abuse WILL happen again, no matter what your friend does. Try to convince her to stay away from him and to seek therapy so that she gets an understanding about the nature of abuse, and to help her to recognize signs that a man will become abusive, and to help her to a more healthy perspective and healthier self esteem so that she will not stay in a relationship where she is being abused.