Karmic, I’m not sure where you are, but I wonder if your Provincial/State Health Services could provide you with a starting point?
Also any Transition House or Shelter may be able to point your friend in the right direction.
To me, anything that demeans someone and plays on their weaknesses or their fears, is abuse. Maybe it would help the more skeptical Dopers to think of it as ‘bullying’ or ‘intimidation’ if the word ‘abuse’ to them appears overused.
I wish your friend luck. I have been in unhappy relationships that really left me questioning myself and created huge holes in my self-esteem. Counselling, time, and friends, definitely helped me break free of those relationships and learn to value myself.
A kind thank you to those who have offered advice and experience. I have passed on a couple of different phone numbers for shelters and the like that have community services for those who are in or who have experienced unhealthy relationships. She told me today that she thinks that she has some reason for attracting boyfriends that are excessively controlling.* She also told me that she has no idea what that reason is. She hopes to find out.
I’m also especially thankful for the advice given on what I and her other friends can do, as there seems to be much less information about that kind of thing.
I hope your friend is ready for counselling - it can be a tough painful process, although it is definitely worthwhile. She needs to be prepared to take full responsibility for her choices and her actions - for example, she will need to lose her victim mentality and the notion that she is attracting controlling boyfriends - it is the opposite, they are attracting HER.
If she is open and honest with her counselor, and she is prepared for some hard work, she will find out why she is in this pattern and she will find ways to develop newer, healthier patterns.
Just going to a counselor is not enough - she has to be truly willing to delve deep and she has to be able to accept that counseling can be very challenging.
It may be helpful for you to step back from the ‘counseling’ role once she is seeing a professional. It is an introspective, almost selfish process, and she may welcome some distractions that only a good friend can provide - a silly movie, window-shopping, walks …
Where, pray tell, are threats of physical violence considered part-and-parcel of relationships? He’s threatened to ‘kick her teeth in’. I myself would consider that a strong danger signal; if you think that it’s nothing to worry about, I think it’s time you did some soul-searching.
And frankly, the movie theater thing isn’t exactly Movie of the Week material but it’s obviously a real dick move. I’d be mightily pissed at anyone who tried to pull that shit on me.
But once the threats of violence kick in, there’s some real danger. He’s warning her, in so many words, that he’s potentially violent. This isn’t anything to mess around with. She needs to make sure that, for at least a while afterwards, she’s not alone and has people nearby in case he does escalate to violence.
Please let your friend know this. >> It is not within her power or her place to “cure” him. He needs to do this for himself but he won’t because he is also a narcissist which is common for controlling personalities.
I recommend she go to the library and look up books on emotional abuse. This was recommended to me by my therapist and it helped me to recognize what was happening faster than she could. There is “The Verbally Abusive Relationship” that was particularly helpful by Patricia Evans. She also has a new one entitled “Controlling People”.
Just let her know she has to be strong. This usually happens to extremely good hearted people who have faith in human kind. They can spot them a mile away. Their reasoning is, they were doing YOU a favor. Don’t expect any satisfaction other than the personal satisfaction you helped protect yourself from many years of trying to squash you own personality and what you want to suit him. Then trying to rebuild what is left of your life when he claims you are flawed.
I have a long way to go before I can actually have a conversation with a man without getting the thought that I am not worth talking to out of my head.