I'm not posting for myself, but to try and understand a situation with a close friend (I know that everyone says that but honestly, it isn't me, I am just frustrated with failed efforts to help).
A close friend who was in a low place after a difficult relationship loss moved city to start afresh with a new job. She was quite lonely in a new place, and a male colleague made friends with her and started giving her a lot of time and a friendly shoulder to cry on.
She wasn't interested in him romantically and didn't give any signals she was but he went to a big effort to make her feel included and like she was settling in as well as to listen to her and offer emotional support.
He love-bombed her basically, when she was feeling low about herself and lonely. She was enjoying having someone to do things with and the emotional intimacy and support he was offering her, but I did warn her at the time that it was a lot of red flags. He was adopting all her interests and trying to insert himself very quickly into her life as her new best friend and it was very intense and over the top.
Then after this had been going on for about 5 months and they were more best friends, the lockdown happened last year and faced with the idea of being alone in her flat, she agreed he could stay with her through lockdown (his idea) never thinking the lockdown would go on (on and off) for such a long period. They were WFH and locked in so now spending 24 hours a day together and over a few months, and some shared drinking, it turned into a FWB situation.
He told her he loved her and she said to him she didn't feel the same and didn't see herself in a relationship with him, but he didn't accept that and started acting like her boyfriend, posting on social media in a way to indicate that he was her boyfriend and she said she was really uncomfortable with it but he seemed to have some sort of manipulative hold on her by this point because he would do things like have angry outbursts and then apologise and say it was just because he loved her so much and alternating threatening with very kind and caring behavior.
He had escalated things gradually with her by cutting her off from friends and family (he'd monitor her online or on the phone and have an outburst if she was talking to anyone else) and he said a lot of things to make her feel she couldn't trust her family and friends and she withdrew from everyone over a period of months so he was more or less the only person she ever spoke to.
He was fun and very caring to her and she said she felt very special and liked being told she was loved, but she was increasingly scared of the outburts which got worse and worse. It started to happen every weekend when he'd get drunk and get angry saying he wanted to live together permanently and when she said she didn't want that or feel the way he did he would get more and more abusive.
Over this period of a few months he got very abusive indeed and smashed her property, emotional and direct blackmail, threats to ruin her life with secrets she had told him, extreme jealousy, going through her phone and then alternating that with kindness and remorse and saying it was just because he loved her so much.
She said by then she felt trapped by the situation and also like she was dependent on him because he was the only human she really saw or spoke to and when he withheld affection she felt really bad. She was a victim of childhood trauma, so I think this played into why she was so affected by this. He also told her he was a victim of past abuse and this made her feel sorry for him and excuse a lot of his actions.
Eventually it got to the point where he was never really nice and it was just outbursts and she got ill with stress so she bit the bullet and had him move out. Through all this, she hadn't really spoken to friends and family for months, but she spoke to me then and told me the whole story. She was really resolute that she realised how toxic and abusive he was and she said she was going to look for another job and return home and in the meantime was going to have no contact with him.
He continued to try and contact her, dropping things off, knocking on the door, emailing her and it was all saying he loved her and he was so sorry and it was just the drink and I begged her over time to report it and sort something legally to get him to leave her alone but she said it would blow over. It's a bit difficult as she is still loving in a different city with her new job and with the lockdown she's still isolated and alone now.
In the end he persuaded her to meet up for his closure against my advice. He persuaded her basically that it was all her fault, because she led him on by spending so much time with him, letting him sleep in her bed for months and live with her and she seemed to swallow that story hook, line and sinker and started saying she felt responsible for him having a mental health crisis and she "owed him" whatever he needed to move on.
After meeting him for closure he sort of sucked her back into the vortex and that turned into lots more urgent meetings he needed to have and her replying to his messages. She's gotten more and more ill with stress over it, but since she's been back in contact with him she suddenly seems to have adopted his reality and she thinks maybe she is the abuser and she says she doesn't trust her own judgement anymore.
I've tried to push her to see that he's an incredibly toxic person who plays on all her childhood wounds, but she oscillates between seeing that and agreeing with me to seeming to be almost angry that I am trying to separate her from him and she actually even defends him and puts a lot of the blame on herself. She even started saying she misses him.
It's a bit difficult as she is still loving in a different city with her new job and with the lockdown she's still isolated and alone now but she should be coming home within a few months once the practicalities are sorted out, but I have been really confused by why a really intelligent, professional woman with all her marbles seems to have such a distorted and favorable view of someone who essentially terrorised her.
I stumbled upon the idea of some kind of Stockholm syndrome, as the lockdown and situation meant he more or less had her completely isolated for six months or so in a way she felt she couldn't escape and she's formed some sort of deep bond with this person. She's not in love with him, doesn't want to be in a relationship with him but she also seems to not want him to go away fully.
I thought maybe anyone whos' experienced abuse could give advice on how to help her to move on from this. The situation seems to have exposed all her buried trauma from childhood and she's unwell from stress and so on. She has even said, although it makes obvious sense, that she is scared of returning home because she associates it with her past abuse and the new place is a place she saw as a happy fresh start (and he was a big part of that).
Is there anything we can do to help her? She is having counselling, but only just started a few weeks ago and hasn't seemed to have had any benefit.