AIBU to think she should have spoken to his partner first?

[NotSurprisedReallyNow]

A long time ago (about 15 years!) my best friend dated someone she knew via her friend(he was a relative of her friend).

They didn’t end on good terms but that’s all I know. Anyway yesterday she got a message from his current partner , ultra polite asking did she date him and could she please , if possible speak to her.
To me this would ring alarm bells?
To find someone on fb and ask in the way she did ?

My friend immediately contacted the friend who she knew him through and asked her to call his family to say this woman is messaging her and that he needed to know.

AIBU to think she should have waited and actually asked the current partner if everything was ok ?? She’s now pissed off with me because I said I think she did the wrong thing and if it’s a dv situation or something like a Clare’s law disclosure she could have really contributed to an issue alerting him ?

Your friend is a dick. Women should support women. If one of my ex's current partner contacted me in a similar manner, I would absolutely speak to her first. Most of them would get a glowing review. A couple of them I would really like to warn other women about.

You’re not wrong. She may have endangered the woman, or at least alerted her ex that his current partner is aware of an affair etc.

She didnt want to get involved, and so involved someone closer to the couple who probably does know more of what's going on.

I think I would just have blocked her. I wouldn't want to be dragged into a situation like that either.

Yes even if she had just ignored / blocked it would have been better just in case there’s a safety issue. She’s just so annoyed with me for criticising her.

I’ve been there - I actually messaged a partners ex on Facebook in a similar way as I was becoming scared of him and feared a history of DV and that a pattern of behaved was developing. This is before Claire’s law requests could be made. She was honest with me, obviously didnt tell him, and I got away. I could well owe my life to that woman.

I don't think you should have criticised her.

She clearly has some kind of trauma from the relationship to have such a reaction, so you telling her she's awful for reacting badly to an unsolocited message about a guy who hurt her was never going to end well.

You're thinking about this stranger and her feelings, but you haven't thought about your friend and her feelings.

I think this is also a fair point too.

You do have a point and I do care about her feelings but my concern was for someone who might be in danger of harm rather than feeling upset

You've made up a scenario in your head and had a go about it, rather than sympathising with your friend who is upset and dealing with a real situation right in front of you.

It may be the guy using a fake account, she may be asking about an affair, he might have made up some shit that your friend is obsessed and she wants to have a go.... there are a million reasons. You jumped to the worst case scenario and had a go at a hurt woman who didnt ask to be involved.

I really think you're due your friend an apology.

The safest option is to assume that the woman who going in touch is in danger. It's not that wild of an assumption to make given how many women are in these circumstances. It the OP's friend is still traumatised after a relationship which ended 15 years ago, it's unlikely to have ended over an argument of what to have for dinner...
Even if she didn't want to get involved, alerting the man in question was a dick move. It would have been better to just ignore the message. Yes, you may be right that the interaction was trivial but you may also be very wrong, in which case there may be a woman out there in real trouble as a result of OP's friend's actions.

This. I also wouldn’t want to be involved in someone else’s drama.

If she was in danger then she needs to go to the police. Not some random ex gf.

The safest option for the woman would be to contact WA or the police, not reach out to a complete stranger online.

Ops friend may not have handled it perfectly, but people rarely do if there's trauma involved. She didnt deserve to chastised for it.

Yanbu imo, she is wrong - i would guess it was more about 'keep me out of drama' than anything, but she should've thought it through properly 😩, I would instantly think 'abuser'

I cant believe she did that.
If she was worried it would bring drama to her door, she could have just bloody ignored it and blocked her. Surely by running to the family she's more involved?!?

Women in dv situations don't always think straight, so calling the police or WA may not have occurred to her or it could be that she wasn't ready to make it 'official' . (If it was indeed a dv situation)

“Women should support women” is just a ridiculous sentiment. Nobody is perfect. People make mistakes and do wrong things.

Just because they’re a woman doesn’t mean we should support them in everything.

It's about who you already trust.

Message from complete stranger on the internet - zero trust, normally assume scam.

Pre-existing friend, with known contact details - known person, probably trusted.

People would really override that because completely unknown message says it comes from a woman?? I'm stunned.

We should support them if there is even the slightest chance they can be in danger. Even if the woman is a racist, even if she is poisoning homeless cats, even if she is bloody Margaret Thatcher, I would put my personal feelings aside if I thought there was even a small chance she was in trouble. Once I was confident she was safe, then I would tell her how I feel about racism and killing cats without sparing her feelings. It's really not that hard a concept to grasp.

It’s not a hard concept to grasp that this isn’t a “woman supporting woman” thing.

People should support anyone who might be in danger regardless of their sex. Now that is not a hard concept to grasp.

I think your friend was hasty, how old is she? As I’ve gotten older I’ve learned to try and delay a response to anything like this because you need time to process. I agree with you that to reach out to someone from a long time ago probably means there are some red flags and it isn’t helpful to then go and declare this and maybe putting someone in a difficult situation.

That said, this isn’t your friends responsibility to shoulder and she is entitled to do as she pleases. At this point, I would reach out to her and say that you don’t want to fall out about it. Many women haven’t been on the other end of any type of abuse and I think it shows. I assume you maybe have and therefore can pick up on signs and behaviours as I probably would. Your friend will hopefully come around a bit and realise this. I do hope the other woman is okay. I don’t think you are the right people to help her though.

Also, this man may have videos / photos of your friend that shouldn’t have been discarded or that she wasn’t aware of. Maybe he admitted to doing something to your friend that the girlfriend feels she ought to know. 15 years is a long time but if you catch an STD it can stay with you forever and drive you mad wondering how you got it when you were careful etc. I think your friend has handled this unwisely but it’s up to her as an adult isn’t it? I think she’ll regret her response one day.

This was my 1st thought. Something has most likely happened and the woman is only just starting to realise she’s being abused in some way. Very sad, I hope she gets some help elsewhere. I doubt she is reaching out over any sort of small matteretc after 15 years. I think the OP’s friend has been very silly here personally. He may well have old photos / videos of her or admitted to doing some something to her historically that she’s unaware of and this woman may have wanted to let her know.

If a stranger contacted me about an ex who hadn't abused me, and who hadn't displayed potentially abusive red flags while we were dating, I wouldn't assume abuse just from a random message. Thinking about one of my exes - about the gentlest man you could ever meet, too much for his own good sometimes - I would actually worry more FOR him.

There are also exes who - despite breaking up for whatever reason - you still respect enough to automatically take their side.

Of course there are plenty of men I've known where I might well assume abuse if I was contacted about them. But in this case, it's the OP's friend who actually knows him, and she obviously didn't. That's not because she's stupid or naive, that's because she's going off what she knows about this man. And she knows him better than the OP does, so I'm not sure it's the OP's place to scold her.

I am sure you are aware that, statistically, women are at a much higher risk of DV. I worked with male victims of DV for a very long time and, yes, I will support any man or any person who identifies as anyone they wish. However, I will continue presuming that any woman is a higher priority of me personally because, statistically, I am much more likely to come across her in my daily and my working life.
I am finding it interesting that you chose to pick this particular line as problematic rather than acknowledge that a person contacting OP's friend (regardless of their sex and/or gender) could have been at risk. If you truly believe that everyone who might be at risk needs support, why does it matter what language I use to advocate for this person?

I would have done what the friend did tbh. I don’t need or want to be dragged into a couple’s relationship.

If it is a DV situation how is contacting a girlfriend from 15 years ago going to help.

Actually I likely would have just ignored the message.