Seeing my friend back in her relationship makes me sick

[Chachaslide1]

My friend has got back with her boyfriend. He is a horrible man. He's beat her up, he’s called her every disrespectful thing he can and restricts what she can do. She’s got back with him and sends me picks of them holding hands or tries to talk to me about him. She’s even brought him out to say hi to me.

Everything about him makes me sick and I don’t know why she keeps trying to force him onto me too.

I’ve told her in a nice beat around the bush way that I don’t want to know. But she’s continuing.

Has anyone got any advice? It’s making me want to stay away from her as she keep talking about him

I completely get why you’d feel this way.

But you have to try and remember that you are different people.

You would not allow yourself to be disrespected like this but she is obviously happy to be treated this way.

Tell her you don’t condone this relationship because you struggle that she has such little respect for herself but if she’s happy to be treated like this then that’s her choice.

I would back off from the relationship a bit.
If she sends photos then just read and ignore or just send a thumb emoji.

I fell out with my LT friend who was in a very controlling relationship.
It was a hard decision because she had already fallen out/been isolated from all her other friends and family.
But it was impacting me and I had to put myself first.
My friend was choosing to be in a controlling relationship but I was not, so why was I affected and so involved - so I decided to just back off and stopped seeing her.

I think you need to tell your friend that you don't want a person in your life who has treated her so badly. That while you love her, value her and want to stay connected with her, you can't socialise with him yourself.
As far as the pictures and talking about him go, I would try to tolerate this. Because if you close it down she won't feel able to disclose to you when things go bad again and will have lost a valuable means of support if she needs to leave in future.
If it were me, I'd just respond neutrally with, I'm glad it's going OK or similar. Any overt negativity is, in her current state of mind, going to place you in the camp of people who don't understand and are 'against them' and will make her less likely to trust you when you talk to her about the red flags of renewed abuse you will almost inevitably start seeing.

It’s so hard to stick around. When she’s in a relationship with him, I barely hear from her. When I do she’s either telling me how in love they are or something he’s done.

I feel like I put so much energy in supporting her to do better in life and she’s back in square one. Only last month we was down the abortion clinic and I know how hard that was for her, but it was also traumatising for me. Then I spent days having her boyfriend ringing me early in the morning and him sending me voice notes of him crying because ‘he loves her so much’. I want to see her as just my friend, but right now I can’t separate her from him

That is not fair to put on the op the friend is making deliberate choices the op is not a miracle worker

Not really sure what you mean here, there’s no requirement to be a miracle worker from what I said? To put a heart on a photo or nod along to a story so that, if needed, her friend knows she has support?

the friend is in an abusive relationship and to reduce it to making it about deliberate choices shows a lack of understanding of the severity of her situation. Of course anyone can choose to cut people off to protect their own peace but I’m just pointing out that can be a choice with consequences