How do I support a friend who chooses to stay in an abusive relationship?

[CandyAppleGrey]

Have namechanged and can't be too specific, but a very close friend of mine has been with her DP for about a year during which time he has shown himself to be possessive, controlling and basically a total cockfarmer.

In the past few days his jealousy has gone completely nuts, they had a big row and she has moved out. But now he is turning on the charm I can see the signs that she is going to get back with him. I think she would be an idiot to not run for the hills.

How can I best support her, is the tough love option best or do I have to stay neutral and supportive of her decision? Would welcome advice from wise MNers...

you have to leave her to it.....but be there in the background with the womens aid phone number ready for her,a bottle of wine and some chocolate...

I have absolutely no experience in that field but my gut feeling is that all you can do is be there when she needs you.

I am sure there are other Mneeters who will be of more help.

i was once in a bizarere position....i was in a long term abusive and violent relationship,at the same time as my best friend....we supported each other but it was mad,why the hell we both stuck it out for over ten years is beyond me!!!

Unfortunately they moved a long way away (near his family but far from all her support network) so I can't offer wine and chocs directly, I am supporting via email and text as best I can.

Is there a middle ground between tough love and unconditional support?

Just wondering if you can say something along lines of "I will be there for you no matter what you decide, but to be honest I think he is bad for you and I would breathe easier for you if you were not with him"

But I also am without RL experience so may not have thought of all the angles.

That's the thing though, do you think you would have escaped sooner if you had been more blunt with each other? I do not want to normalise this kind of behaviour in her relationship.

Dont say anything specifically bad about him, i.e. he is a wanker. If they do get back together you will end up the bad one and will give him an excuse to isolate her from her friends.

By all means, tell her his behaviour is not normal and ask her if does get back with him whether she will be happy in 5 years time living with a man who doesnt let her have a life.

Make it clear to her that you will always be there for her and that if she does get back with him that she has somewhere to go if it doesnt work out.

Unfortunately, you cant make someone leave an abusive relationship but a good friend will be there for the fallout.

I put up with it for 8 years before I left. SHe doesn't have children with this guy does she??

try to prevent her having children with him, because if she does, she's f***cked. She'll be trapped for decades. It's so much harder to leave.

Try to keep the lines of communication open. Don't punish her if she can't come to see you. It'll be his fault. But don't fade in to the background either. Stay there, as an ever constant but silent judge of his behaviour to you. Your normal life will provide a reminder of what normal relationships are like.. it'll be harder to fool herself that her relationship is normal when she is confronted with a loving relationship. So, if possible, if you have a good relationship with your partner go out the four of you. You don't have to be mushy in a fake way. Just an equal affectionate respectful relationship that she is forced to observe will pierce her forcefield of denial.

I hope she leaves. It must be very draining for the friends and the sisters of women in these relationships. I feel guilty for the years of upset I put my mother and one friend in particular (who I confided in) through.

very good advice from maggie

The biggest issue is the 'mind-warping' that goes on in this type of relationship. His constant allegations that she's at fault - coupled with her desire to please him and be 'good' - work to convince her that there's nothing too bad about their relationship, and make her doubt her own instincts and revulsion at his behaviour.

As her friend, the most valuable thing you can give her is affirmation. Let her know the way she's feeling is a result of his behaviour, not the cause of their problems. Be specific as often as you can; for example, getting her to move away from her personal networks is a classic step. It's designed to make her more & more dependent on him and their home life, and will be followed by escalating abuse to generate timidity in her. This helps him gain full control over every aspect of her.

Discovering that abuse follows totally predictable patterns is a real wake-up call - it's as if abusers all read the same handbook! This awareness is very empowering, since they all think they're being wonderfully clever & original. It would be a great idea to get her to read at least one book about it; my recommendations are Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them: When Love Hurts and You Don't Know Why by Susan Forward, and Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft. Once she's read about it, she will be far less easy to bamboozle.

Don't let her minimise what's happening - pick her up when she says "It's not that bad" and "He means well". Please make sure you don't minimise it either - I'm sure that sounds obvious, but it's an easy mistake to make when you're trying not to hurt her. She is being hurt! She needs to know you're there to validate her, and will support her when she leaves.

I once gave a close friend the keys to my house, along with a copy of Bancroft's book. She didn't leave but has succeeded in moderating her marriage: I still think she should have left, but my point is that knowing she had somewhere to go, along with the knowledge, strengthened her to do what she felt was right.

Good luck

Thank you for all your wise advice. They have moved abroad so sadly I can't see her face-to-face. They don't have DC yet.

can you forward her a link of abusive behaviour? I remember being genuinely shocked that my x did every single thing on the list. If she bites your head off, give her a bit of space, and then resume friendship as though nothing has happened.. when she's had time to reflect, and miss your emails..

Obviously, it must be extremely draining to be worrying about your friend like this and it's not an easy role, especially when the other person seems determined to self-destruct.

That might be an idea MM. Do you know a good link I could send her?

I'm trying not to sound like I know it all. The trouble is that I had a similar (though shorter lived) relationship a long long time ago. So I can see the danger signals a mile off but then you know how it is, you start to doubt your own judgement. If I could send her a list that she could tick off then maybe it would make it clearer to her.

this is a classic one here

I lived with an abusive twat for years, and now sadly i have a freind whos married to an abusive twat.

I dont think pointing out that shes being abused will help. Its likeley she knows that already and has a wide range of excuses available for him, ie he didnt mean it, hes stressed, or worse, its my fault, i make him do it ect.

I genuineley didnt know i was being abused, and if someone had pointed it out i wouldve assumed it was my fault. More than anything, my sense of denial, and that of my freinds, is so great, that i just wouldnt have it.

There is nothing more painfull than acknowledging that you have married a man who doesnt love you, and worse, who enjoys hurting you. Many women will do anything to avoid knowing this , in some ways it wouldve been less painfull to carry on being abused than to realise i have wasted years with an abusive wanker.

My advice is if she calls you with a example of his bad behaviour, do not focus on his behaviour, dont let it all be about he said this and what a nob he is. Focus on how she feels. If you tell her hes a prick and she shouldnt put up with him , it will only add to her low self esteem and she needs the opposite. Avoid saying " i would do this ect ", perhaps instead, how do you feel about that ect.

Very very difficult, breaks my heart to hear about my freind being abused in this way.She knows the ins and outs of my marriage, recognises the abuse of others , i have given her my famous lundy book, yet still, as far as she is concerned, she is not being abused.

i just read that drjoecarver link. it was excellent. i wish i'd read something like that before i left. I wouldn't have wasted a year trying to get him to understand how wrong his behaviour to me had been. I spent 8 years with him, and then wasted a 9th trying to get him to acknowledge how unreasonable his treatment of me had been.

AF, i have a good friend whose dh ticks a lot of the boxes on your link.

Unfortunately, 9 years and 2dcs later, it's not easy to up and go. i think she's in denial to an extent about just how f**ed up he is.

you have to deny, or you couldn't get through each day

however, she could escape....but only once she properly accepts he will never change and her life will always be lived in fear of his "moods" and modifying her behaviour in ana attempt to minimise his

AF..yes i can see that . She's not ready or willing to take things a stage further. The tragic thing is that as a highly intelligent professional woman (Oxbridge maths degree, accountancy professional, extrovert with lots of friends) who is capable of analysing most things to the nth degree, he has managed to make her live her emotional life on eggshells. She flags up apparently small things to me and a couple of pther friends, and we feel she is signalling for help. I've broached it with her. At times she responds and admits she's upset with him, and rants and complains, and at other times is at pains to emphasise how affectionate and loving etc T (=dh) is...

canihavemypocketmoney ... Whilst I was trying to handle my own denial, I kept a spreadsheet plotting various relationship markers (yes, I am a pedant!) I ought to tell you it didn't completely do the trick for me - but its message did sink in. Fixed cycles & correlations became apparent, even though I wished they wouldn't. Perhaps your friend would find the idea intriguing?

Maggiemaeve - I haven't left my H yet. But I have stopped the pointless scenario of trying to make him understand how his behaviour affects me and he could be a better person (ha ha!!!!!!).

There is no acknowledgement, acceptance or understanding that he has done anything/does anything wrong. So there will never be any responsibility taken.

I have therefore been hitting my head against a brick wall (excuse the terminology) and nothing ever upset him and never will at a personal level.

Sometimes I wonder how easy life would be if I never had a conscience too. But, I would not want to be like this in reality.

canihavemypocketmoney, show your friend a leaflet about domestic abuse. I thought that becuase my x was only aggressive following a heated argument that I could 'handle' it and that it was partly my 'fault', even though I obviously felt he was very unreasonable...

but after I'd left, I was getting some free legal advice at citizen's advice bureau and I saw some DA leaflets and lo and behold, the unreasonable man who had no respect for me and made me miserable was actually a text book abuser. Big shock. It helped me deal with what I'd been through though. So it was a welcome revelation.

But those leaflets, they list off all the classic behaviours. And I sat there waiting to speak to a solicitor with this tiny leaflet in my hand, thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that too yeah..... you get the picture.

sounds like she needs some really good advice about getting out of this relationship its only been a year not too long, but if it goes on for years, she may never have her confidence back to what it was. dont placate the situation by being too sympathetic, she is making a mistake by staying with him any longer (on the basis of your description of him), and she needs to move on before its too late- ie she gets pregnant or married to him. if she asks you, straightforwardly tell her what you think but yes, no name calling! if she stays with him long term, you may find that you gradually lose contact with her, and perhaps lose a bit of respect for her too,so you may not see her too much anyway.

Well she has gone back to him. I have not said too much about it since she made her decision -- it's her choice innit.