Opinions please thoughtless comment after domestic abuse

[Scarcity20]

I will try and keep this brief but would like others opinions on something which happened a while ago and I still have not really managed to process. I was the victim of an unprovoked domestic assault involving strangling and was obviously left fairly traumatised and in shock. For reasons I will not go into I only confided in one friend about this, and then at a later date when another (male) member of our friendship group had trouble with his long term partner (she was in the wrong in this relationship due to affairs and unreasonable behaviour) he eventually broke up with her but she would refuse to leave his flat and my friend (knowing what I had been through specifically with being strangled) was putting words in his mouth saying 'I bet you wanted to strangle her'. I was a bit in shock at the time she was saying this, and it wasn't only said once, so can't have been a thoughtless mistake, but several times in different conversations. I feel hurt by this but wonder what she may be playing at? It can't have been a mistake but why would she specifically say the very thing I had confided in her, Trying to place blame on me as though I deserved what happened maybe?

Firstly, I am incredibly sorry for what you went through.

There's two possibilities here. Either your friend is heartless and cruel, and in which case she's not a friend..

..or, it is just a turn of phrase, and she didn't really think too deeply into it. It's easy to pick up on things when you're the one who's been through it, but it doesn't affect other people the way it affects you - it won't be with them, haunting them every minute - so they will still say things like this which you might see as hurtful, but they just see as a throwaway comment. It CAN have been a mistake. It really can.

She is almost certainly NOT trying to place the blame on you.

Life is full of people thinking people mean things by saying certain things when they don't. Your friend probably didn't think anything of it when she said it. It might just be something they say. In fact you know what, I say it myself. When my partner snores at night, I will say to him in the morning "You know what, I'd have happily strangled you last night." That's not in any way a dig at people who have been strangled, or anything like that. It's honestly just a phrase that people don't think too deeply about.

Thanks sunshine angel that is reassuring!

I've done this sort of thing, used a turn of phrase and not thought about it as a literal act.
It makes you cringe when you realise what you've done. Just quietly ask her to stop, I think.

I'm very sorry you've been through what you have

I had a suicide attempt at university and afterwards it felt almost like people were being flippant in saying 'oh god I'd just die' or 'ffs I'd rather slit my wrists than see that band' or similar. On a few occasions people would say it and then look at me and suddenly go a shade of pink and look mortified. On other occasions they didn't notice. At the time it felt like it was purposeful - it had to be - but as time went on I realised that it really was just a turn of phrase, one that I didn't notice before but was hyper-aware of because my suicide attempt was always at the top of my mind. It just wasn't for other people. That doesn't make them bad people at all, it just means they weren't obsessing about it in the same way that I was.

It's sort of like how you don't really notice pregnant women until you're trying for a baby, and then all of a sudden they're everywhere (we've been trying 7 months and I know there aren't any more pregnant people on the streets than there were last year but god does it feel like there is!)

Nowadays with much better mental health I've realised I've stopped noticing those sorts of turns of phrase and don't think of them as being directed at me, although with my experiences I do try not to use phrases like that in flippant ways.

There is of course the potential that your friend was making a dig but in all honesty unless she has any sort of form for that sort of behaviour I wouldn't jump to assume it.

Be kind to yourself. If this is all still weighing on your mind (I'm sorry, if you'd mentioned the timescales I missed them) as something that sounds like it happened in the past then it just means you still need a little more time to get beyond it all.

Hmm it could go either way, it's obviously a turn of phrase, but if your friend has form for making digs I'd be wary OP

I agree @Treesthemovie but by the sounds of things this friend was there for OP at one point (she only confided in her) so I’m inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt without more details