Badly done Helen, badly done - you're as stuffed as a Grundy turkey. Discuss The Archers here.

[PseudoBadger]

New thread in time for Friday's episode...

bertrand no i hadn't forgotten [about the sexual assault] I alluded to it in my post.

However that didn't happen after an argument. It happened at the end of a 'lovely evening'(boak) but in response to a decision on Hs part that she was not ready for a baby.

However, we do know Tob is capable of being very aggressive and verbally abusive - he was to Jess, and once to Hellin in the village shop.

I am assuming there are or were a lot of 'arguments' behind closed doors that we have not heard that explain how she knows there really is no point disagreeing.

I do think though that unless this kind of detail is either played out on air or alluded to retrospectively in conversations with Kirsty, then there will always be a danger listeners will say he isn't that bad. I don't understand why she didn't just tell him to F off.

This kind of very subtle, quiet bullying where the abuser only has to say very little for the survivor to acquiesce definitely does occur but usually after a period of training (again boak) the survivor unless they have already been trained as part of their childhood, to break down the boundaries.

Its not that I want to listen to all the gory details. Far from it. But I do wish they would make it absolutely clear he is abusive and she is frightened of him. She isn't pathetic. She is terrified and resigned and confused.

Nightmarish.

The gleeful way he indicated the next step in his campaign to alienate her family from her.

It's as if he has a progress chart in the attic.

I knew I'd get comments on the 'takes two to tango' but she is partly to blame because she never calls him on his EA.
They live in her village, with her friends & family, where she has a parental home she can escape to at any time (it's in walking distance fgs and P&T can afford to take her in). The only reason why she is trapped is because of her own pride.
This storyline would have made more sense with an isolated figure like Nic or Kirsty.

I hope Kirsty and Fallon get together, figure things out and stage an intervention

R4 is it not possible she blames herself for his behaviour? She isn't sure of herself, she thinks he wants what is best for her, so he must be right- yet she's conflicted as it doesn't feel right.

Helen has lots of self doubt as a character, I think it fits perfectly in her pattern.

The very idea she is willing to collude in her abuse because she in some way enjoys it 'it takes two to tango' is really over simplifying a very complex situation.

I suspect it's going to be revealed the baby is at high risk for DS, and we are going to see Rob's rage at Helen for not producing a 'perfect' baby.

I think this thread shows that the sw haven't demonstrated exactly why she is cowed. Yes we have heard him being an arsehole to others and we have heard her be fobbed off by him but we haven't had a scene where she has tried to stand up to him and he has got really nasty. As it is, I do think a lot of people will be asking why she doesn't stand up for herself and it's not very helpful as an educational piece. It would be nice if they had made more of explaining why Helen isn't fighting back/walking out as that is something a lot of people don't understand about ea/dv

Having said that, it is often'tough' women an abuser will take on because it is a challenge to 'break' them. So i don't see him picking Helen as odd.

I would also imagine Helen didn't push back too much because Henry was there and she was worried what he might witness

I think you are showing an absolutely horrifying lack of understanding of EA if you really think it's that simple R4

And smalllegs I think it is absolutely 100% crystal clear that he is controlling and abusive.

Wasn't the scene with "badly done Helen, badly done" one that showed her trying to stand up to him and him being really nasty?

Think it was because at the family meeting that he didn't attend they all agreed to let Fallon have the cafe contract. (Against his express wishes and instructions to Helen.)

Wasn't there a horrible time after the cricket where he lost it with her and she was stunned?

It takes two to tango. said every abuser and their victim-blaming apologists ever

I see the point about not making it clear enough why Helen acts as she does - but I think whatever they had done there would be some portion of the audience saying, "why doesn't she just tell him where to go/hit him back/call the police/leave straightaway" etc. You're not going to be able to get everyone to understand. I think on the whole they've done a very convincing job of a horrible and complex situation.

I hope that when Helen does finally talk to someone that she is given a chance to explain her thought processes and how confusing and difficult it is to get her point across, or even to know what she wants, trust her own perceptions, work out what she is feeling etc.

Some are taking "two to tango" to be suggesting that Helen is enjoying this situation or that she shares the blame. I'm giving whoever used the phrase the benefit of the doubt that they didn't mean to imply such horrendous things.

How will Helen's terrible situation end? Most likely when Helen realises she needs to leave and is honest with friends and family who might help her do that (with all the shame and anxiety that she might feel doing so). In that sense, this gruesome tango ends when Helen walks off the dance floor.

I'm not convinced there'll be a problem with the baby. It may well be a girl (and then he can coo about how a little Helen will be so lovely, and of course Darling the next one can be a son - we'll get cracking once the Dr gives you the all clear etc.), but a baby with medical issues would give Rob a chance to play the 'hero Dad of poor ill baby'.

May be a late miscarriage if they want to tie the ends of the story up and get rid of him (he pushes her and she falls and loses it? Too Eastenders?). I think it's very possible though that it will just be a normal birth and a normal baby and Helen tied to Knob through SOK in perpetuity. He can disappear when they divorce (especially if its not a son that H produces and he's not so fussed about it after all) and then just pop up every few years for a storyline to remind listeners of all the history.

I think we are meant to assume she has reason to be meek. The rape scene was written and broadcast but there was a lot unsaid about what went on. That's as far as the writing went but are we to assume he hasn't done similar since? Or do we assume it was so bad that she dare not cross him and risk a repeat?
Either explanation is bad enough.

We are also being toyed with in the sense that many of us (me) disliked Helen as a character before the EA started. I have gradually developed sympathy for her but I can't help feeling that she played a big part in choking off her mother's doubts about Rob and convincing her that Rob was the best thing to ever happen to her, thus closing off a possible escape route now that she needs one.

She is not responsible for Rob's despicable behaviour towards her though. He's battened on to a curious contradiction in Helen's character. She's vulnerable because of her history but she's also strong, or has been in the past, when she's going after something she really wants. Both traits would attract a dominating man like Rob - to prey on one trait and to 'break' her of another.

I still hate Helen!

But her making pat love rob (implausible!) is all part of the script isn't it?

The problem for me with the writing is that at the beginning she seemed to enjoy his control and smothering when it was clearly sinister! The rape was the turning point of course but she did seem to like being controlled and mollycoddled.

I'm just not convinced about the writing on this anymore

I suppose Helen is emotionally needy, she gloms onto men who are also emotionally needy.
Don't shoot me, I find being emotionally needy a rather repulsive personality trait (in fiction or real life).
Don't know how this fits with people trying to say Rob+Hell is an EA story line. Fans trying to shoehorn this as "must be EA" reminds me of fans trying to shoehorn Sheldon Cooper or the modern Sherlock Holmes into "Must be ASD". I think TA scriptwriters have tried hard to not call this an EA storyline?

It gives the scriptwriters more creativity and less duty to somebody's idea of fidelity if they absolutely do not make Rob+Hell into "Emotional Abuse". For me, Rob is "just a jerk" & Helen to some extent colludes with him -- which makes her human not necessarily a fellow jerk, btw. Which makes this storyline into whatever you want to call that kind of situation.

I think this is clearly abusive

Just three examples
He won't let her attend medical appointments alone
He raped her
He tells her she's rambling on and makes out she's mad when she's not

Is she strong? She was very badly affected by John's death and Pat's subsequent depressive episode. I can't remember if we did hear signs then that she had an eating disorder or if they backfilled that story years later after Greg died, which was of course the second traumatic bereavement she's had to contend with. She ended up in a residential clinic being treated for the ED.

There was the time she took to drinking too much and ended up drink driving and making Tom take the blame when she ran into Mike in the dark.

She's consistently attracted to men who turn out to be troubled/difficult/untrustworthy. She's not all that perceptive - she never worked out what had happened between that Australian barman she was dating and Greg's daughter. I thought it was very telling that Annette couldn't tell her the truth about that and moved away instead.

She was really nasty to Tony when she was pregnant with Henry. He wasn't happy about her decision to have a baby by sperm donor and she just rode roughshod over all his concerns and shut him out of the pregnancy. She was also very nasty to Hayley after John's death and to Clarrie when she promoted Tracy Horrobin while Pat was in hospital.

She's very, very bad at admitting she's made a mistake. She's going through agonies now trying to reconcile her rose-tinted view of what life with Rob was going to be like with the reality and not wanting anyone else to know just how wrong she got it.

R4 I'm really upset to hear your opinion on this.
If it was really that easy for someone in an EA or D B situation to walk, there would be no need for women's refuges or protection orders.

Sheesh. Horrible.

She is mentally weak but incredibly stubborn. And people mistake that for strength

So when can an adult take responsibility for their own decisions, if they can't take them even when an abusive relationship?

At the risk of being over-infested I wonder if subconscious guilt plays a part in Helen's paralysis now.
She too has been manipulative and deceitful in the past. Rob knows she deceived her mother about the bracelet, for example. He could accuse her of that if she pointed out any deceit on his part. She colluded with him in the affair while he was married to Jess. She was not a good friend to Kirsty before the wedding, now she's keeping something similar from Ian.
He knows all that as well as about Greg so he has all the weapons on his side.

I agree that 'stubborn' describes her better than 'strong'.

So when can an adult take responsibility for their own decisions, if they can't take them even when an abusive relationship?

Isn't the point that one of the major features of abuse is making it exceptionally difficult for the abused person, no matter how old they are, to see clearly what's happening and to be able to do something about it?