Sorry for a long one. We went out last night with an old schoolfriend of my dh, his wife and their 7 year old. We only see them once or twice a year as they live in Germany (for schoolfriend's job) so whenever they are in the UK, he and my dh love to have a few beers and reminisce. I do like the wife and she can be very funny but her main topic of conversation is always how badly people have treated her. She is from Asia and doesn't get on with her family there, so they don't visit. Schoolfriend has only his elderly parents left in the UK as well as ex-wives and children from previous marriages scattered around the globe (his job has meant lots of travel) so they are quite isolated as a couple. Ever since their child was born, the wife has been telling me about her sufferings from post-natal depression. She did go and see someone last year after she had a total breakdown and he gave her something "to boost serotonin". Their kid seems great and is now at school but at no point has the wife made any friends or acquaintances in Germany. When kid was a baby she told me that was because the Germans were racist, judgemental and unhygienic in their child-rearing methods. Now the kid is at school, she said she wasn't prepared to do "free child minding" just to make sure the kid had friends. She now speaks German very well but doesn't work and I don't get the impression she has integrated into her husband's circle of work friends (his job is a very sociable one). They met in England but she says she wouldn't move back here now because "everyone is so hateful since Brexit". Of course I see how difficult it must be to follow a spouse to a country where you know nobody, there are cultural differences and you don't have a role, but a I do think she could have taken a more positive approach to it. At the same time, I don't think her husband has been very supportive. He has taken on freelance work as well as a full-time job so is out a lot and she spends most of her time alone in a very small flat with their kid.
Anyway, last night she told me that at a recent birthday party of another old schoolfriend, her husband got very very drunk (she doesn't really drink) and they had a "physical fight" in front of his friends and in front of their kid, and he was shouting at her "I've never known anyone with as many things wrong with them as you". Later in the conversation she also told me that "he hit me". I was disconcerted by the fact that we were sitting right next to her dh and her kid was drawing but also probably listening to our conversation.
I told my dh on the way home and he was very shocked and says he will talk to his friend and that his friend is "rubbish at communicating with women". Well that's definitely true but I keep wondering if I/we should do something else. I don't know whether "he hit me" in the context of a fight they were both part of is something that means I should tell her to leave him/seek help? I didn't feel I could probe any further sitting at that table with her dh and kid. My feeling at the time was that this was consistent with her general dramatic manner of telling stories about how she is hard done by, so I didn't react the way I would if another friend had said those words to me. But perhaps this is her way of asking for help?