This topic might be triggering, so tread accordingly.
I have a friend. She's a year older than me, but somehow, I've always felt like the older one. Though that's probably because despite my young age, I act like a full-on adult. She's the normal one, all things considered.
When she was a child, she was sexually abused. Not once, it was continual, over a period of time. I dunno if anyone here has any experience with anything like that, but basically, there's no "getting over" it; it's something you have to deal with for the rest of your life, and she's never dealt with it very well. In her twenty five years, she's attempted suicide five times. Not cries for help, but sincere attempts, two of which landed her in the hospital for several weeks each. She has absolutely no self-esteem; she sometimes laments that she isn't attractive at all, or that she's really dumb, neither of which are remotely true.
Here's the thing, though. Despite her abuse and low self-esteem, she's had more romantic and sexual partners than even me, and I consider myself something of a playboy. The problem is, she's attracted to domineering, controlling, physically powerful men who end up abusing her. Always emotionally - putting her down and telling her she's fat and ugly and worthless - but sometimes physically as well. Two of her suicide attempts were while dating a physically abusing boyfriend she felt she couldn't get away from.
The problem is all the more insidious because she never realizes she's being abused until it turns physical. She has such an unhealthy, fractured scheme in her mind of what a relationship is like that even as they make her feel terrible about herself, she doesn't think of the put-downs and emotional abuse and severe control as unusual or problematic. It's only when it turns physical that she realizes something's wrong.
Nor can my or anyone else's words convince her before it's too late. Every guy she's dated, whether it was for three weeks or three years, she's proclaimed to be absolutely head-over-heels in love with, and no matter how badly they treat her, she refuses to hear an unkind word against them, refuses to listen to us when we tell her she doesn't have to put up with the denigration and name-calling and domination, that that's not normal and even if it was, she has the right to dictate the terms of her own relationships.
I'm torn. On the one hand, from my third-person perspective, I can always see when her boyfriends are treating her like crap, when trouble looms on the horizon, and she clearly can't -- in fact, she denies it. As such, I want to try to convince her that she can and should find someone who treats her decently, like a fellow human being, not like a personal posession. But on the other hand, because she's so adamant that there's nothing wrong (until the physical abuse starts), I feel bad about berating her to dump the loser she's with and find someone else. I mean, I'm trying to convince her that she has the right to be happy, but at the same time, I'm kinda telling her what to do and how to live her life. Maybe she is truly, madly, head-over-heels in love with these assholes she dates; I would never presume to know her thoughts and feelings better than her. But she just seems so miserably unhappy, even as she denies it.
I don't know how adamant I myself should be in convincing her that those losers she dates aren't worth her affection. And here's why -- and this is tricky and you may even wag your finger at me, so bear with me.
See...one of the first women I was ever seriously involved with developed a drinking problem while we were dating because her father died, and they were really close, not to mention that her mother was never a part of her life; he raised her on his own. I said I was a playboy, and I chose that word instead of lecher or some such for a reason; I don't not care about the women I'm with. On the contrary; I have love enough for many, which is why I can't stay with any one woman too long. But I've honestly and deeply cared about each and every woman I've ever been with. I really did love her.
Anyway, sometimes, when she'd get drunk, she'd get violent. And I simply accepted it. I never put up any resistance, I never tried to stop her, I let her do what she had to. Nor did I leave her. Obviously, I didn't like getting the crap kicked out of me, but my love for her was greater than my instinct for personal safety. I was willing to accept this part of our relationship, unpleasant as it was, because I loved her so much. And if you would have told me, at the time, that you thought I should dump her, I'd've told you to mind your own fucking business and let me make my own choices in life.
So from personal experience, I can intimately understand the idea of loving someone who hurts you. I know that sounds absolutely terrible. I won't try to justify myself, but neither do I feel I was wrong. I wouldn't call it right, exactly. It was a choice. That's all. A choice. It was my choice. Self-direction, choosing one's own path; these things are truly valuable.
So this is why I'm so torn. Who am I to tell my friend she should dump her abusive boyfriend, when she claims to love him? Maybe she does. And either way, it's her choice, not mine. Yet at the very same time, in my human heart, from my irrational emotions, I hate seeing her with these assholes who treat her so foully, and want her to dump them. Certainly to dump the douche she's dating at the moment.
How do I reconcile my desire to see my friend in a non-abusive, happy relationship with her adamancy that she loves her boyfriend and wants to be with him? Even given her past and her pattern of relationships, what right do I have to tell her that her judgement isn't as good as mine and I can see things that she can't? And, considering my own experience with abuse, what right do I even have to tell her that she's wrong to be in an abusive relationship? As terrible as that sounds, like I said, I highly value self-direction. What right do I have to tell my friend to change?
= my life
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