Friend confessed she physically abuses husband

[whatamess101]

Looking for some advice on how to deal with this situation. A close friend has a very volatile relationship with her husband. They've always argued a lot (been together about 15 years) and been on and off until they had children. She struggles through life and has mental health problems that she hasn't addressed. I found out from her recently that she hits her husband when they argue but he doesn't retaliate. Last night she text me that they had a physical fight (I don't know if it was two way) in front of their children.

She's always been a very good friend to me and is always kind and caring to other people. I want to help her but I find this behaviour shocking and unacceptable. She wants me to make her feel better, that's it's normal and she's not in the wrong but I can't do that. I know that he pushes her to her limits emotionally and suspect he gaslights her. I just don't know how to help her and I'm really worried about her children witnessing violence like this. Any advice?

If this woman is undertaking violent attacks and she is not being controlled or abused then why isn’t her husband doing something about it?

That is out and out victim blaming.

@User135644

If this woman is undertaking violent attacks and she is not being controlled or abused then why isn’t her husband doing something about it?

That is out and out victim blaming.

Hardly I’m one of the statistic myself hardly likely to blame someone whose been though it. You are made to feel bad enough by the person themselves already

I know how hard it is to me as how bad things have to be because you are so scared of either alternative . The fact remains that if there are children involved he has an obligation to prioritise their welfare. In the same way as a woman would .
He needs to seek support and take steps to do this or risk being seek as part of the problem and also losing them

If she is in fact a violent abuser

The pushing his mentally unwell wife to her emotional limits in front of their children though might be as big an issue to deal with when it all comes out in the wash though

The pushing his mentally unwell wife to her emotional limits

Anyone who hits their partner is mentally unwell.

@User135644

The pushing his mentally unwell wife to her emotional limits

Anyone who hits their partner is mentally unwell.

Yes And someone that reduces them to a state through emotional manipulation and pushing them to their limit to do this is utterly abusive

One is illegal
One needs support

Depends on what is going on behind closed doors and I would put money on his not being quite the innocent in this

And that will out an entirely different complexion on the matter

From ops comments she won’t do anything about her mental illness. I read it as being there prior to her meeting him.
The question is why didn’t she do something about it years ago before adding a husband and children into the mix

Depends on what is going on behind closed doors and I would put money on his not being quite the innocent in this

But that doesn’t mean she should raise a hand to him.

This sounds like you are saying he is at fault so deserved the beating he got.

Would you say the same thing if the sexes were reversed

She isn’t whiter than white so deserved the slapping she got.

@Bythemillpond

Depends on what is going on behind closed doors and I would put money on his not being quite the innocent in this

But that doesn’t mean she should raise a hand to him.

This sounds like you are saying he is at fault so deserved the beating he got.

Would you say the same thing if the sexes were reversed

She isn’t whiter than white so deserved the slapping she got.

You are putting clichés and words in my mouth that I have not once said.

I have not made this a sex issue other than to refer to facts around perpetrators and other processes including family courts and criminal courts where overwhelmingly the evidence shows us that the aggressors are male.

You clearly don’t understand what myself and other people have been discussing about reactive abuse and the place it occupies in the arsenal of many abusers especially emotional and narcissistic ones .

So I’m not wasting my breath anymore

You can chose to put your own construct on it. Sadly my own experiences tell me that this is a rabbit hole abusers want their victims to fall down and when they get what they want it increases their power

You need to learn to distinguish between being violent as a means of communicating and destruction versus a reaction exhorted from year by sometimes years of your sanity, happiness, physical and mental health to being eroded by someone who is good at pretending to the outside world they love and care for you.

Then come back to me and others on here and write this sort of hackneyed shit about it being men versus women and if if the roles were reversed

@Cleverpolly3 I hear you. I've lived through that. Several posters here literally have no idea. Don't get me started on their attitude to poor mental health.

My mother is another one that could readily find apologists for her behaviour on account of her sex. I’m sure she’d accuse my father (and me, actually, because she was quite ready to turn her rages on her children as well) of ‘gaslighting’ and whatnot, at any loss of control she had over us. For men it seems there’s no excuse, but there are plenty provided for women.

A woman is capable of inflicting just as much mental and emotional abuse a man, and while there may indeed be a discrepancy in physical strength, it doesn’t mean that the weaker one can’t still inflict damage, or indeed serious damage. I’ve seen my own father bruised and bleeding, and he nearly lost an eye as a result of one attack. So no, I wouldn’t hesitate to report a friend who made such a confession to me.

@ThePriceIsNotRight

My mother is another one that could readily find apologists for her behaviour on account of her sex. I’m sure she’d accuse my father (and me, actually, because she was quite ready to turn her rages on her children as well) of ‘gaslighting’ and whatnot, at any loss of control she had over us. For men it seems there’s no excuse, but there are plenty provided for women.

A woman is capable of inflicting just as much mental and emotional abuse a man, and while there may indeed be a discrepancy in physical strength, it doesn’t mean that the weaker one can’t still inflict damage, or indeed serious damage. I’ve seen my own father bruised and bleeding, and he nearly lost an eye as a result of one attack. So no, I wouldn’t hesitate to report a friend who made such a confession to me.

In which case you'd be absolutely right to do so. No one here has said women aren't capable of the kind of abuse you describe.

Just that often, these situations aren't as black and white as they might first appear. I'm sorry you went through that, it must've been horrible to witness.

Maybe he gaslights her because she is abusive and that's his method of control of the situation, it really doesn't matter anyway why she hits him, she hits him. There are children involved and it's abusive to them. End of. And I've been in an abusive relationship. If he's gaslighting, she leaves or chucks him out.

Refer your friend to Care2talk. It's a program for women who abuse.

The narrative I’m talking about is the “she hit him therefore she is an abuser” It’s top level and ignorant of the circumstances that I suspect sadly feature in this relationship

@Cleverpolly3
No, I don’t think my statement is a narrative or ignorant at all. If you do any abuse, you are an abuser plain and simple. I did verbal and emotional abuse as a way to manage and survive the physical abuse I was subjected to. That’s why my abuse is called “reactive abuse” and therefore because of the complexity of the dynamics of abuse, I was found to be the more innocent party when the police came on the scene. So then, the labels come out as the law weighs everything up and concludes on balance, i was “the victim” and he “the abuser”

So saying “an abuser” if you get my meaning, simply means one who has done abuse. That’s different from saying “the abuser”, as in the one who has initiated and done the vast majority of abuse in a relationship.

No one is a perfect victim of abuse in my experience. And actually I think you are simply stuck in the binary where one party is “the victim” and one “the abuser” where the victim has done no abuse and the abuser does 100% of the abuse.

Life is messy, chaotic, it doesn’t fall into perfect black/white, either/or binaries. Even more so when we are looking at toxic relationships.

@PlanDeRaccordement

The narrative I’m talking about is the “she hit him therefore she is an abuser” It’s top level and ignorant of the circumstances that I suspect sadly feature in this relationship

@Cleverpolly3
No, I don’t think my statement is a narrative or ignorant at all. If you do any abuse, you are an abuser plain and simple. I did verbal and emotional abuse as a way to manage and survive the physical abuse I was subjected to. That’s why my abuse is called “reactive abuse” and therefore because of the complexity of the dynamics of abuse, I was found to be the more innocent party when the police came on the scene. So then, the labels come out as the law weighs everything up and concludes on balance, i was “the victim” and he “the abuser”

So saying “an abuser” if you get my meaning, simply means one who has done abuse. That’s different from saying “the abuser”, as in the one who has initiated and done the vast majority of abuse in a relationship.

No one is a perfect victim of abuse in my experience. And actually I think you are simply stuck in the binary where one party is “the victim” and one “the abuser” where the victim has done no abuse and the abuser does 100% of the abuse.

Life is messy, chaotic, it doesn’t fall into perfect black/white, either/or binaries. Even more so when we are looking at toxic relationships.

Did you miss the comment I made linking to several articles on reactive abuse reactive : such terms are at actually not considered a useful or appropriate terms for what you and I have been describing as it seeks to create a dynamic of mutual abuse when it manifestly is not. That is the current thinking in reactive abuse and your analogy is effectively rebalancing an abusive relationship into a toxic one when the two are not the same.

What you did was not abuse

It was extracted via a form of abuse in itself, upon you. it is a by product of being abused not a course of action designed to hurt another person just because they happened to be in thrall to them due to an damaging relationship.

To self flagellate based on the fact you reacted to vile treatment is victim blaming.

You did something as a result of what you were subjected to: it does not make you an abuser.

I have no time for people describing relationships as toxic when the balance of power within and the provenance of said abuse lies solely with one person. You didn’t generate or sustain that environment : the person that beat you and treated you like dirt did.
Having to stay in an abusive relationship as for what reasons you perceive at the time to be the lesser or two evils does not make you as guilty or more innocent. It is a reflection of the desperate situation many of us have been packed in due to a many number of factors which are beyond our control: the police, family court, support services, children’s services, employment, finances etc.
Myself and others have spent quite some time being professionally supported into understanding our reactions were part of the horror show that was our prison and so called life. Through accepting and understanding this I am finally on the path to stopping blaming myself for someone who tried to utterly destroy me and break me. I am able to be the person and mother I want to be. Accepting I am to blame for what he wilfully brought out in me via hideous psychological torture? Well I might as well be dead. He will have won. And I want my life back, what’s left of it

If you want to reduce this as your being more innocent then that is in my mind an apologists view of abuse and something that you need to revisit in order to stop casting that shadow over yourself

Thank you to all of you that have taken to time to post, this is a very emotive subject and it has raised a very important discussion. I am sorry that I haven't come back to you sooner.

Social services are now involved, and as many of you have suspected, this has been a much more complex issue than it first seemed. I feel now that my friend telling me that she hits her husband was a cry for help, she knew things had gone too far and didn't know what to do about it. It seems that her husband has been emotionally abusing and controlling her for a long time and it has been getting worse. He has been incredible cruel but she started to believe everything he told her and felt trapped and hopeless. She hit him when she couldn't take it any more, when he was in her face being aggressive and he won't stop. I have been getting advice on how to support them all and that is what I am doing. I'm glad I didn't turn my back on her and I'm glad she has been shown a there is a way out.

@whatamess101 that’s probably the best outcome you could get.

Is your friend still living with her H ?

@KeepingTrack no thankfully he's not living there now.