I’m sorry if this is the wrong board, and I’m sorry to start out here like this but I’ve been paying attention to these boards for awhile and I really respect a lot of your opinions.
I’m not sure how to best say all this, so I’m sorry if it comes across as scattered and nonsensical. My sister, who I used to look up to, is in a (not-really) relationship with a 23 year-old, sexually confused*, drug-addicted abusive jerk. ZERO positive qualities, I assure you.
I remember the first night we met him, we were in a restaurant winding down after last call. There was a group of us that had met earlier at the bar, so we were sharing french fries and having a get-to-know-you group conversation.
The first thing that struck me as odd about him was that he spoke eagerly and openly about his drug use and sexual history (he said he had slept with an impressive ninety-two women… though that number had changed several more times over the next few days), but when it came to talking religion and politics he became visibly agitated and closed-off, saying that it was inappropriate discussion for meeting for the first time.
After having heard him describe, in rather gross detail, how he had done an “urban pinup” (sex against the wall) earlier in the week with some girl he barely knew, hearing that he thought it socially rude to be asked whether he was democrat or republican made me laugh uncontrollably. I can’t believe no one else found this odd.
Anyway, I began to notice more negatives - repeated backtracking, lying, (badly veiled) manipulation, temper tantrums, and control issues - all of which, my sister pathologically ignored. Whenever I would bring something new to her attention, she would grow angry, turn it around on me, and make some type of excuse for his behavior.
I didn’t get it she allowed it to continue, I still don’t. They were in this weird not-really relationship, where he would demand attention, time, exclusivity and loyalty from her, but still see other people(males and females) on the side. She rationalized that it was “okay for their relationship, because she was just having fun and not interested in being serious”.
He become emotionally abusive, too, and began physically lashing out. He would kick things, throw things, slam doors, hit walls, and even himself. I had little tolerance for it, so I called attention to it before too long. This is where he described that it “was of no fault of his”, because of his “Bipolar”. I asked when he had been diagnosed, and by whom, and he revealed that it had been in his teen years, by a family doctor. I’m not going to pretend I understand this disease as good as any person should, or how it’s properly diagnosed, but… it seems wrong to me that a Family Doctor, someone who prescribes medicines when you come in with an infection, would have any right to diagnose a teenage boy with a personality disorder (is it a personality disorder?) because his mother came in complaining about his “violent mood swings”. I told him I thought it was bullshit, and he argued about that for awhile before finally pacifying me and agreeing that he didn’t have bipolar disorder after all.
His aggression increased even more, if you can believe. He would become angry whenever he would walk in and hear my sister and I speaking in another language because he couldn’t understand what we were saying and break up with her because of it. It got to the point where we couldn’t talk to each other if he wasn’t standing there to monitor the conversation. If he thought he noticed a whisper, a word he didn’t understand or a shared look or facial expression he would fly off the handle, scream and break up with her and leave, causing her to call his phone all night begging him to come back home. There were many times he would be driving us around in the car (he was the only one alloed to drive…) and he’d become angry if we talked about books or music he didn’t wasn’t familar with or couldn’t understand, and would often stop the car on busy roads and jump out of the driver’s seat and sprint away. She’d have to climb over the seat and drive after him, crying out the window and begging him to get back in the car. He even began running through the house and jumping the back fence to run away whenever he got angry… over something he didn’t understand, over something he didn’t agree with or initiate. He would just… jump to his feet and run, knocking things in the way over and throwing his body over the fence like a criminal running from the cops. He even did it once with no shoes or shirt.
During those nights he would throw a fit and break up with her so he could go and have sex with someone else, or just punish her for no good reason, she would confide in me pretty shocking things. I learned that he had had sex with her while she was passed out (She rationalized that as “something that happens when you’re in a real relationship” when I told her it sounded a lot like rape), that he wouldn’t look at her during sex, that he would “freak out” and jump out of bed if she made the first move and berate her for being a whore, that he had some perverse obsession with seeing her (and other people) messed up on drugs, and that couldn’t even bring himself to the point of sex without being under the influence of drugs or alcohol himself. There are other things, far more messed-up things, but I think this should paint a good enough picture of what he is like.
He physically attacked me one night, after I had witnessed him strip naked and allow himself to be fondled in a gay club. My sister saw it happen, but maintains to this day that she was drunk and doesn’t remember. When I confronted her about it later that night, all she had to say was “well, you have a way of upsetting people” and “and it’s not like you’re dead, so get over it”. I knew at that point, a point I never thought I would get to… my own sister letting a man physically harm me… that I had to leave. She chose him over me, her little sister, her only family.
So I packed my things and bought a plane ticket. Of course, on my last day there, he picked a fight with her and broke off their relationship (yet again). The last thing she said to me in person, through her own tears was, “I don’t know if I’m sad because he just broke up with me, or because you’re leaving. How fucked-up is that.” He can’t handle something being about someone other than him, he has to always have total control over her mental and emotional state. He often did that, it was sickening. Even if we were all doing something lame like watching a movie, and something sad in the movie happened and caused my sister to cry, he would have to trump that by telling her some story of something horrible that happened to him.
I’ve been gone for about a year or more now, and every time she calls me it’s the same shitty story. He stole money from her again, he cheated on her again, he drugged her and let his friends have sex with her again, he put their sex tapes on the internet again, he beat her unconscious again, he fractured something of hers again, he broke her tooth again, he wrecked another car.
It’s been a whirlwind of drug use, physical and sexual abuse, them getting kicked out of their apartments, them being arrested, and her crying about it to me. I don’t think she understands that it affects my life negatively, which… is insane to me. I have panic attacks far too often for someone with no real problems of my own.
Whenever she complains about something horrible he’s done yet again, and I butt in and say something negative about him, she turns cold and attacks me, saying I’m judgmental and relentless and miserable, and defends him by saying that “he was molested” (something he made up after watching Christian on Nip/Tuck admit that he was molested) or that all of his ex-girlfriends cheated on him and he has trust issues with women, or his parents got divorced and he has never gotten over it, or he was “just drunk” or high, or that he has “The Bipolar”. Whenever I tell her to leave him, she tells me that I “don’t understand” and that “relationships are hard” and that “when you love someone you don’t give up on them.”
She called me last night and put me on speaker phone, and I overheard him in the background yelling at her. Since I was on speakerphone, I took the opportunity and told him that if he hits her again (I learned her beat her again a few nights ago because she “embarrassed” him in front of his friend or whatever lame shit he decided was good enough a reason to hurt her) that I was going to fly back down and make him pay, and he yelled that he “will do what the fuck he wants” as a response. I called him an asshole for saying that, and I could hear things being thrown around as he was yelling that he has a gun, and is going to come and find me and kill me. She defended me for a whole two seconds, crying, saying “that’s my sister, stop, don’t say that” but he kept screaming “she’s dead, she’s fucking dead”. Then after he took off in her car in anger, she turned on me, yelling and being nasty to me because I apparently CAUSED him to leave with my comments (he was just bailed out of jail a week or so ago - where he was in for a drive-by shooting where he shot at 2 teenagers - so he has a curfew and isn’t even supposed to be driving).
I feel like if her constant mixture of drinking and drug use doesn’t kill her, he will hit her a little too hard one day, or not let go in time when he’s choking her (another thing he likes to do), and she will die. She will be another statistic, another female killed by a violent boyfriend.
So what can I do? What can I say? Listening to her and agreeing with her (which I’ve tried… a lot, as a means to stay part of her life, because if you show her you don’t approve of her incredibly stupid choices she shuts you out) doesn’t help, disagreeing doesn’t help.
How can I tell her that the relationship she is in is not normal? How can I tell her that there are other males out there who will treat her with respect, that what she has is NOT love. How can I reach her? Can you write something to her, so I that I can link her to this to read? Maybe if she hears it from well-educated people, people outside of her current loser drug-circle, she will listen. Maybe there’s something you can say that I haven’t thought of… I’ve tried everything. Every day I want to give up and distance myself from her, stop taking her calls, but I’m scared that if she dies I’ll never forgive myself for shutting her out. I guess, this is the last thing I could think of to do.
And maybe you could clear up what bipolar really means, if it makes you rape (someone you refuse to call) your girlfriend, organize rapes while she’s unconscious, steal, lie, and beat up on females. And what about drinking? I’ve tried to tell them that drinking doesn’t change your personality, that it doesn’t all-of-a-sudden make you violent, but they disagree. Maybe you could clear up those things as well.
I’d really like to talk about how she has wasted about half a million dollars on buying cars, drugs, bailing him, his friends and herself out of jail and paying legal fees and having money stolen, but I’m not sure if all that is necessary or relevant to his personality. (What IS wrong with him?)
*He has sex with males. I know of at least five, so I’m sure there are more. The first gay male he slept with was a casual friend of my sister. After he slept with the casual friend of my sister who is gay, he started to tell my sister evil things about him, telling her not to trust him, and ordering her to never see him again if she wanted them to be together. The next guy he had sex with, he said he was “drugged out of his mind and didn’t know what was happening”, and the next guy “fed him drugs and raped him”, and he’s just gone with that excuse again and again.