Abuse in Realtionships

i have a male friend (no, really - since i'm posting anonymously, why bother using the 'i have a friend' thing?) who has been dating a girl for almost a year now. she and i have become friends since they started dating, and she often confides in me. there was an abusive incident a few months ago where he pretty much sexually assaulted her. when she confessed this to me, i told her that it wasn't her fault at all, showed her a lot of sexual abuse counselling websites, urged her to tell her therapist (which she did), insisted that she try and convince him to seek therapy himself, and tried to encourage her in the strongest terms i could use that if anything like that ever happened again, she should immediately leave and phone the police. knowing that she has very low self-esteem, i knew that just yelling that she should 'dump his abusive ass' would not work. after she confronted him, she told me things got a lot better. i never brought it up with him, because i knew that he would blame her for having told me about it, and that it would most likely do no good.

now she has a different problem, which is that he has become obscenely posessive and jealous. he constantly harasses her about looking at other guys, insists on knowing where she is at all times, and when she walked into her room today she found him sitting in her room reading her e-mail. his excuse was that he 'wanted to know if she had a rehearsal or something', though this is not the first time he's done this. last weekend, she apparently convinced him to come to therapy with her, and the therapist got him to acknowledge that his behavior is inappropriate, and that he needs to seek help. he's still doing all of this, though, and the Instant Messages i saw on her desktop were decidedly threatening.

obviously this is textbook abusive boyfriend stuff. my question is, how do i get her out of what is obviously an extremely volatile and dangerous situation? even worse, he is moving into the nearby city (we live in a suburb) to start a new job in a month, and they will probably break up. i know his roommates as well, and i am trying to figure out the ethical thing to do - should i warn them? should i confront him? i don't want this girl to get hurt, and i certainly don't want his future girlfriends to end up in the same situation. what can i do here?

(thanks for reading all this, by the way, if you indeed made it this far)

You can be very intelligent & strong, and still let yourself be abused like this, and it's a very slippery slope to get back up. Just be there for her, and let her talk about it if she wants to, but unless you have training in domestic violence stuff, I wouldn't push her too hard to act on anything.

i'm not sure how you can have any respect for the guy thats doing this though, i mean, when you see him, doesnt now knowing the real person underneath make you feel kinda sick?

what are these potential room-mates like? i think they should be warned possibly yes, maybe you want to make sure this girl is extricated before doing that though?

yes and no. on the one hand, the mere thought of it makes me want to throw up. it also makes me shudder every time i think about some of the misogynist jokes we've made/laughed at, like i was encouraging his behavior (and if one good thing has come of it, anyone who tells a misogynist joke around me now gets the cold stare). on the other hand, the fact that i've never seen this side of him makes it almost easy to dissociate it from the person i know, or to see his actions as a mental illness rather than the emergence of the 'real person underneath'.

as for the roommates, there's no threat to them personally, since they're all hetero guys. what i meant about warning them is that maybe they should be aware of his abusive nature towards women in case he ever does try this again. i think if i warned the roommate i am friends with, though, he'd be in roughly the same position as i am now (ie mostly powerless), except that he isn't friends with the current g/f so i doubt he'd be able to provide much support for her. i imagine that the only thing he could really do would be to keep an eye / ear out in case he observes anything abnormal, but i imagine that a roommate would notice if there was anything to observe regardless. is it worth ruining this guy's living situation (for two years) for what likely amounts to very little real benefit?

(and thanks for the advice and kind words. it really is much appreciated).

Echoing what others have said, the *worst* thing you can do is go on about how abusive the guy is, or pester her to leave him. If you do that, you will drive him further *towards* him, as there is a big sense of "No, you're wrong, watch, we *can* make this work" even when it's obviously killing her, just to prove the naysayers wrong. That seems very romantic.

The best thing that you can do is be there, provide support, and if possible, be an escape route. Listen to her when she talks about what she does, don't make judgements or whatever, but let her talk, because hopefully she will start to listen to what she herself is saying. Having an escape route is important, because feeling *trapped* is the worst part of being in an abusive relationship - the feeling that you have nowhere else to go, esp. if she is living with the guy. The best thing a friend did when I was trying to leave my abusive relationship was offer me a couch "for a few days while you try to figure things out". That was the break that I needed to get out - the escape route.

I really feel for you, and I hope the best for your friend, I hope that she find the courage to get out. Seriously.

I think you're wise not to tell her what to do, but encouraging her to talk to an expert is a good thing. Otherwise, when you are with her, do what you can to counteract his behaviour. He is undermining her self-confidence and decision-making, so praise and interest will help.

if its just this one girl that brings the beast out in him maybe he'll get better too

I want to stamp on this one quickly. I'm sure Sterling didn't at all mean to suggest that the woman is causing his violence, but it could be read that way. More importantly, stats and studies consistently show that men who do this carry the behaviour to their future relationships. Exceptions to this are rare. This guy will do it again.

Also, the idea that the roommates will be fine because they are heterosexual males is not necessarily a valid assumption. I've not seen any studies on this, and the bullying nature of these men makes it far less likely that they will try it with other adult men; but this thinking is what leads many people to think that women should put up with some mistreatment "for the sake of the children" - you'd probably be amazed by how many parents of women in this situation say that, for instance. It is not stated often enough that the abusive man also abuses the children in over 80% of cases.

I feel so strongly for your friend. When I was in the situation she's in, I was so alone and people on the street who saw me being abused ignored it, never mind getting any help from my friends. The fact that you are concerned is so beautiful to me. You can step in and you should. You should confront this guy. One thing that I learnt from what happened to me is that you should never ignore it if you suspect violence in a relationship - you might be wrong and that would be a bit embarrassing but so what. But I guess you have to have been there to have that kind of conviction.

If you know of a specific act of violence, call the police and report it anonymously. Let both the boy and his girlfriend know that what's happening is serious and illegal. If all you know of is the sadism, then above all else I think you need to confront this guy. You need to find the strength to say to his face that what he's doing is wrong. If you don't want to get his girlfriend in trouble, just say that you noticed something yourself. Don't let this continue because you don't want to upset anyone.

It really is hopeless, though. My boyfriend tried to get me back by going to an anger management class. They had guest night - for the 'victims' - and he took me along. At one point in the class, the therapist requested that one of the men tell him about an angry act he'd committed during the week so that the class could 'analyse' it. As no-one else volunteered, my boyfriend did. To my horror, I had to relive an incident from a few days before when he'd broken into my car, kidnapped me, dragged me along the ground, etc etc. At this point I didn't see my boyfriend at all because I was too scared of him - the class was the first time I'd seen him, except for the kidnapping, for a couple of weeks. I was too upset to listen so I went and sat outside, but I was glad my boyfriend was going to get criticised by everyone else. A really nice girl came out and sat with me and gave me a cigarette. Then we went back in. On a flow chart on the wall, the therapist had written what my boyfriend had done, and what he could have done instead. My boyfriend had watered down the incident so it sounded like he'd just shouted at me in a car. As I came back in, the class and the therapist were comiserating with him about how hard it must have been for him. It turned out that my boyfriend had said, and this was true, that the spur for the incident had been that he'd broken into my car and found a letter where I'd talked about another boy I was 'in love with'. Actually, I'd made a one line joke to a girlfriend in another country about a boy - something completely innocent, as it happens, though what would have been the difference if he'd caught me fucking someone? - but he didn't explain that. We broke up for coffee and several of the participants in the group came up to me and said a sort of weak 'poor you' and then started attacking me for provoking my boyfriend by flirting with other boys. That was the anger management group.

The situation is hopeless.

I was lucky in that my ex's violent outbursts were directed at himself, rather than me (I only ever got hurt in the line of his own rage - this sounds crazy when I tell it, why I didn't talk about it at the time). He would freak out so badly that he injured himself - and then tell his friends that not only did I provoke the outburst with my "infidelity" (joking about boys in bands) but that *I* attacked *him*.

This "anger management group" sounds pretty piss-poor. Abusers are masters of emotional manipulation and lying - it sounds like he's manipulating the group like he manipulated you. This guy is not going to change.

Gah, this shit fucking sucks and it just doesn't end, it has such long-lasting effects. I'm freaking out now because I'm reacting to something perfectly ordinary in a way that was trained into me by my Ex, and I hate when that happens - not only because it makes me unable to trust my new lover, and that makes me edgy and unhappy. But also because I am so angry and so upset that this fucking CUNT has been able to have such a long-term effect on my emotional life. I know I have to let go, let him stop having power over me, but it's really difficult. :-(

::deep breath::

I've been friends with this guy for just over a year now. I'm also friends with a woman who told me at a gig recently that he beat up one of his ex-girlfriends (she's friends with this woman). Don't know how to react. I must say I've always quite liked this guy so it was very surprising and disappointing for me to hear this. I never knew the ex in question but I'm sure it's probably true. I'm curious if anyone else has had experiences of these sorts of revelations and how they reacted. Or general thoughts.

i'm kind of bridging over to this thread from the admin log thread because there was more i wanted to say. i'm drawing a line here and being clear that this isn't about the specific individual that was being discussed there. it's about abuse in general. the behavior and the path or reality that that behavior creates, for both the abuser and the abused.

i also want to say that this is all just based on my personal experience. i do not have any psych or treatment credentials. it's sort of me underlining some things that i've noticed. i won't pretend that these things haven't been brought up for me in more detail by the cases of two recent permabans, but mostly the phenomena i'm sort of sifting through are based on a lifelong journey from being the childhood victim of a narcissistic abuser who terrorized me psychologically and emotionally through freeing myself from that person, figuring out how to love myself and sort of wondering, at a distance, about how it all happens.

to start, i think it's useful to say that abuse is incredibly common. most of the abuse we hear about is physical and sexual, because those things are easy to point to as acts. but psychological and emotional abuse is just as common. it's not as easy to point to acts with it but it's important to understand that it is still very much abuse and the damage it causes can absolutely be as severe. it's also not out of bounds to say, i think, that abuse doesn't flourish significantly more with one gender than the other. it's fairly gender non-conforming.

from my primary lived experience, and from some of the secondhand exposure mentioned above, i want to posit a scenario. i'm not claiming that it's some kind of universal reality. just that it's a possibility. imagine that the behavior of abuse is .. almost like a temptation. the temptation of putting someone under your control, against their full will or knowledge. it was done to you. something about it feels right. something about being on the other side of it feels like a correction. imagine that it almost arises out of the corner of your mind. when you aren't paying attention. and it sort of grips you with a force. there's almost a libidinal energy to it. maybe a smidgen of unsure hesitation holds you back for a moment but ultimately you make the choice to let it drive you. it feels right. anyone who disagrees doesn't understand. they don't understand your pain and why you do what you do. that you need to do it. in order to keep burning, to keep yourself from being snuffed out. you find people who agree, who understand that this is what you need, and you make sure that they don't abandon you - you make it clear that abandoning you is unspeakable, unthinkable. you act with your 'good faith' and 'charming' and 'reasonable' and 'kind' self enough to always cast a seed of doubt in the people around you that you're really "that bad". between that and gaslighting, the reality holds steady. you keep doing it. you've found your way.

that is a scenario, a possibility, a characterization that might apply to "what happens" when someone starts abusing. it might go some way toward explaining why abuse isn't just that someone has some mental health issues which causes insensitive or bad behavior toward others. it might also explain why abuse is so stubbornly self-sustaining. you can't really just turn off abuse once you've started.

in order to do a full u-turn with abuse, to be something different, first you have to recognize the extend of what is going on which is incredibly difficult, often can't be done alone, and is a path and a process and a choice that takes a lot of time and work, and is probably a process that is never over. maybe you start with an inkling that something is terribly wrong and you enlist help. but you have to recognize what it is that you're doing and that it's wrong. this is a huge step that basically threatens your entire identity and sense of self. most abusers are never able to do this.

if that choice and commitment is taken on, then comes the incredibly difficult process of taking responsibility for your actions with others. often, here, there is the threat of facing the fact that you've lost people permanently because of your abuse--actions have consequences. needless to say, this whole path almost begs for the discovery of and reliance on some kind of higher power. god, even an invented one, can slot into someone's desperate need for a source of love when the prospect of truly facing and owning up to the damage one has done, while also choosing a different way of being in the here and now, would be just too much to bear alone.

i'm not sure where to go from here, or what else to say--i'm a little tired. other than people who break the cycle of abuse--that is one of the most difficult, noble, unsung acts of love and courage i know. this post is dedicated to those people.

it's also not out of bounds to say, i think, that abuse doesn't flourish significantly more with one gender than the other. it's fairly gender non-conforming.

i should add to this that it's intersectional with patriarchy, which is a systemic form of abuse.

most people's egos cannot reconcile the idea they have of themselves with the label abuser. this is why narcissists are so delusional --- they are desperately trying to reframe their life story in a way that makes them not the villain. this is because that temptation to control others, the behavior of controlling others, happens on a kind of unconscious level. the story that gets woven around it is one where the abuser is the one who has been wronged.

I think there’s also a tendency among some people to conflate abuse with not having all their needs met in adult relationships. It can be hard to agree where that line should be drawn. I think it also involves semantics of pain. Like both things can really hurt, so it makes sense to call someone’s behavior “abuse” when they have really hurt you, but it’s just a case of the person not meeting your needs or expectations.

very interesting post, map.

I just read about the ban and I kinda had a twinge of recognition with some of those posts they’d been making (on the masculinity thread). I don’t have opinions about banning. It’s really rare for me to read a post here that makes me think somebody deserves a flag, my eyes can kinda glaze over posts the rub me the wrong way.

(I don’t like getting apropos bizarre anger DMs, tho. Keep that shit to yourself.)

“Abuser” is a term I’ve used but I generally don’t like it, the non-specificity of the term seems intentionally devised to function as a tool to isolate and abjectify a target without any actual information given.

I’ve also seen the term used for the purposes of abjectification by some of the most chronically abusive individuals I’ve ever met, so…

I personally think of abuse as being “an act to cause intentional harm”. These acts come in two varieties, the first is reactionary (lashing out in anger). The second is more calculated, much like what map described— the kind of dangerous addictive pull that “causing harm” to someone can create.

I think it’s dumb as fuck to claim that any of us are incapable of abuse, I certainly have been reactionarily abusive (usually when upset or under the influence of alcohol), and I’ve intentionally and maliciously bullied others both as a kid and as an adult. And, I’ve been subject to abuse of both varieties in virtually every relationship and long-term friendship that I can recall.

Two relationships I’ve been in, I was being subject to chronic abuse. One was a dude who was always drunk or hungover and was always saying/doing intentionally hurtful things and making me feel like shit all the time, only to turn around and say “I’m so sorry” and “I love you” and “you know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you” and then we’d have sex and the sex was always amazing, as it so often is when one’s partner is chronically abusive.

The other was weird, this guy had some super deep traumas about his childhood and his relationship to racial injustice, he always was soap boxing on progressive topics and looking for ways to present himself as morally superior to me. Most nights he’d be monologuing to me about “we need to accept that women can have penises” or some argument I already agreed with, but he’d be lecturing me as if I disagreed with him and was some TERF, and I’d start to dissociate and just lie there with my eyes closed praying “please make him stop please make him stop”. The sex was also amazing in that relationship, ha! He was tracking my location on his phone secretly and snooping my texts and I didn’t like that. I had to dump him and he got really upset and tried to have me cancelled. Kind of a nice guy despite all that, sad we couldn’t be friends.

My ex long-term bf he could get violent when he was drunk. It was very rare but it happened. We were always able to navigate that stuff pretty well though, he was never not super aware that he’d crossed a line and would make amends.

I definitely have felt “the desire to cause harm”, and it does feel adjacent to erotic desire. I remember me and a friend, age 11, bullying my younger brother. It felt so good! But then my brother started crying and I was so surprised and upset! I didn’t actually want to hurt him, I was just enjoying the act of throwing mud at him, it felt dominating and awesome!

As an adult, I definitely have subjected an enemy to intentional abuse. I remember smiling about it, too. He was my enemy for a reason, he really fucked up my life and so I reciprocated by fucking up his life and it felt really good to do it. Then he tried to fuck up my life even worse and I bet that felt really good for him. Anyway that was years ago.

Anyway, insofar as that banned poster goes, I think it’s a little weird (but not entirely incorrect) to describe their behaviour as “abuse”. I really liked that poster’s presence, myself, but we rarely got into scrapes. I did see them launching into vitriolic explosions involving lots of ad hominem attacks and even some borderline doxxing stuff and it made me wonder if they were hungover all the time. It did seem harmful to the target. I don’t know if it was intentional or unintentional. It’s probably good they’re banned. I have fond memories of many of their ridiculous extrapolations from decades ago.

The poster in question sounds similar to boyfriend #2 in your post. People often use ideology — sometimes religion, sometimes progressive politics, doesn’t matter what it is — to bully others, retreating into abstractions and grand narratives as a way of avoiding the specifics of the situation they are involved with. Again bc doing so would mean facing themselves clearly.

I like to think of myself as a gentle and kind person but looking at my worst moments in relationships, that starts to fracture. Did I “intentionally cause harm”? I’m not sure. But I have been callous and distant in some relationships, needy and even “soap boxy” in others. And let’s not get into the ethics of monogamy and where and how lines have been crossed. At the same time, I have also been hurt, I have also been wronged, and I make a point of not holding onto bitterness.

The most interesting part of this to me is how romantic relationships often bring out the worst in people. Maybe even always. When you are with someone you *will* at some point see their *worst.* what is that about?

as sarahell said there has been a lot of concept creep in recent years. words like abuse, narcissist, gaslight are used to create a kind of false clarity in regard to situations that are messsy. and that is a very cruel thing to do too — making someone out to be a monster. A lot of content online about narcissism lends itself to this.
, people reinterpreting their unsatisfying relationships as being victims of abuse.

the "intentional" is worth interrogating i think

carelessly is a high enough bar if habitual, repeated, previously acknowledged or where the person responsible should be expected to know better

I used “adult” in my post intentionally because certain things are different when they involve kids… though I probably should also have said adults without major disabilities tbh … I have read a bunch recently about elder abuse and… damn, fuck, ughhh

just wanna say it's good to read others' thoughts and experiences on this. i'm glad that you all tend to move away from totalizing about it.

words like abuse, narcissist, gaslight are used to create a kind of false clarity in regard to situations that are messsy. and that is a very cruel thing to do too — making someone out to be a monster.

i want to suggest that there might be another thing going on here. that using these kinds of words can create a bridge for people who've been victims of this kind of behavior to a category of disease, so they can classify it and understand as a social phenomenon. this almost does the opposite thing of letting the perpetrator off the hook, because it can feel less like they had agency over their actions. ultimately i think it's most useful in any case of abuse to stick to what a person did (and didn't do), not to get too lost in trying to find explanations. let the actions speak for themselves.

on that note i think it's .. interesting to watch on the other thread how a feeling of "walking on eggshells" is present, even now. i think that tells us something.

Good point. Sometimes this language clarifies things in a way that helps the victim. Sometimes it can also be unfair and distort what really happened. It’s difficult.

Xp - I think the walking on eggshells feeling in the other thread, at least for me, is that it feels like a pile on, like there’s a power imbalance, but it could be different for other people. I had some conflicts with the ilxor in question, but for the last 10 years I didn’t. I had a lot of good discussions with them, and I didn’t feel like I was having to walk on eggshells in order to keep the peace, or go out of my way to avoid them. But I know that’s just me.

Though I do remember the time when they twittered about me and at least one other female ilxor that we “were ripped to the tits on SSRIs” and actually, I find that hilarious tbh.

lol I never knew where that quote came from

XD that’s pretty good tbh

For some reason, a lot of toxic and/or abusive women like me and spare me from being a target. They are always very open to me about their problems and the awful things they have done to people. This upsets me, and I wonder why they react to me this way--do they see me as being like them? Do they see me as being a child that they can interact with without judgment? Branwell wasn't a woman, but their reaction to me up until the very end was like this.

sarahell- two things i hope i can raise without causing rancour

i. you have a tendency imo to simply not think anyone should be banned and to kick against the prevailing opinion on any such authoritative action

ii. nobody has any job to countermand a "pile on" if that is simply a description of "everyone disagrees with one persons perspective"

i. Considering I have banned posters from threads and the sub-board I mod… and have no problem with temp bans … it would be accurate to say I have a tendency to think no one should be permanently banned. I am also against the death penalty… for reasons somewhat related.

ii. That wasn’t really the case in the other thread. And what I have been trying to say is that while I am uncomfortable, having to sit with my discomfort is fine in this case.

Also it’s weird deems that multiple people have alluded to the other thread, but you have singled me out to criticize. That feels awkward.

It’s amazing just the mere appearance of someone can cause such shockwaves across threads.

"it would be accurate to say I have a tendency to think no one should be permanently banned. I am also against the death penalty… for reasons somewhat related."

Ok..

It was a reference to a bit re deems and executions … old ILAFL running joke

darraghmac and executions

Once I tried to make a new nickname for darragh, dags, and he almost executed me.

Also it’s weird deems that multiple people have alluded to the other thread, but you have singled me out to criticize. That feels awkward.

― sarahell, 17 October 2025 19:13 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i was hoping it wouldn't be and it wasn't meant to be! but you have a specific strong set of traits/opinions on this

nb i got the executions reference ❤️

the "intentional" is worth interrogating i think

carelessly is a high enough bar if habitual, repeated, previously acknowledged or where the person responsible should be expected to know better

― tuah dé danann (darraghmac)

me personally i tend to not take into account intent very strongly at all. this is also one of the reasons i tend to not use the word "abuse" myself... just reducing it to actions and consequences, leaving out the question of who was at fault... that helps me a lot.

the word gets used regarding BPD, that some people have used regarding me, is "pattern of behavior". i'm not interested in clinical diagnoses but i will say that banned poster has certainly exhibited a documentable pattern of behavior over a period of literal decades.

the problem with a lot of abuse is that one _does_ need to look at the larger context, one _does_ need to see the pattern. there's also...

maybe some people are truly malicious, truly mean to inflict severe harm on someone over the long term, but that's not the experiences i've had. calling out the "cycle of abuse" is an important thing. for me, one of the challenges is, having grown up in what i guess is objectively a fairly horrifically abusive environment, having learned that behavior as _normal_, is to, well... i mean slowly rewriting all of my ideas about myself, about the world, about appropriate behavior.

i know how hard that's been, i know that it's not an all-or-nothing thing, i know that for as much as i've grown people i like and admire and mean no ill will towards can reject me. and that's really scary to me. a lot of the abusive behavior i experienced is what i'd call "pre-emptive self-defense". someone thinks i'm going to hurt them, so they do to me what they believe i'm going to do to them. i guess there is a sense of power, of control there, in a sense, but to me, to me that's weakness. that's indicative of a lack of confidence, a lack of trust in oneself. because at the heart of this pre-emptive self-defense, for me, is this idea that i _deserve_ to be hurt, that hurting me is _justified_. and it's not.

"abuse", to me, that means treating people in a way that _nobody_ deserves to be treated. a lot of times i don't advocate for myself as much as i advocate for other people, and that's what gets me in trouble, honestly. when i make myself an exception. i mean twenty fucking years! twenty fucking years of this behavior. twenty-five, i guess, at this point. cuz it's still happening. i mean no wonder people are on edge around them, they've been stalking us for more than four fucking years. and yes i know it's fucking hard. because i've been through that kind of social death myself, and i know it's fucking painful. and i'm not like them because i _have_ moved the fuck on and i don't blame myself or anybody else for what happened.

and, i mean, this is the fucked up thing, the idea of "pre-emptive self-defense", to me abuse is a _pattern_. it's someone who keeps hurting someone, whether or not it's intentional. and they'll do anything to avoid acknowledging it, to avoid _taking fucking responsibility_. it's always the victim blaming. one of the reasons i don't use the word "abuse" is because my abuser did say that _i_ was the abuser and _they_ were the victim, did say that i was gaslighting _them_. i don't like blame because abusers will always twist it around to make it their victims' fault, and yeah, i do have lots of doubt. particularly if it's someone i trust. taken individually, the things abusers - meaning people who perpetrate abuse, not people who have abuser-nature - say almost make sense. they always have these very reasonable-sounding explanations for why what they did was justified.

i'm not judging banned person's intent, but i do think it's good that we're talking about this here, because the more i talk with others about it, the more clear it becomes that yeah, wow, what they did was super fucked up. i think it's important to acknowledge how much a lot of us were hurt by this person's behavior. talking about it with other people, in a way that doesn't judge them or blame them or anything like that... i mean to me this is an act of compassion towards myself, to be able to affirm that i'm not the one at fault here. (how could i be? i'd been off the board for, i don't know, maybe a year at this point, in large part due to their behavior. not that i could've admitted it at the time. instead i made a post blaming, i don't know, aimless or something. because i was ashamed to admit that they'd gotten to me that badly.)