I’m very sorry you are going through this, but you are making a wise decision to let her go for now. To see someone you love going through such a terrible cycle of abuse must be very difficult, but it will probably be easier if you get some distance.
I think in most cases when a relationship seems “mutually-abusive” it’s actually just uni-directionally abusive. Okay, she fights back. Is he actually scared of her? Probably not. Is she of him? Probably so, since he’s putting her in headlocks.
She’s making very poor decisions but she’s probably still a victim. Doesn’t mean you can do anything about it, but I would still have some sympathy for her, even if she’s a drama queen.
I do have sympathy for her. But I have to admit life is more peaceful now that she’s decided not to speak to me. I would have felt too guilty to cut her off, but I can enjoy her cutting me off. I do hope it ends soon and I will be here for her if it does with no hard feelings. My mother is in the 46th years of an abusive relationship with my father, so I’m intimately aware of the nuances of this.
Well, that’s all you can do then and I can understand your feelings. I just kinda bristle at the “mutually abusive” thing.
Sorry about your parents. That sucks.
Unless Alice mentioned somewhere upthread and I missed it, “mutually abusive” relationships can and do happen…do not automatically assume that a male partner would be the worse (or “the instigator”) of the pair…regardless if it’s emotional, physical, financial, etc.
Yea I’ve seen them, way more common than people believe.
I’d say be her friend, but don’t get sucked into her drama. If she flat out demands you “bless their union” just to go get some drinks I’d say cut her off that is ridiculous. Because in the end nothing you can do will make them breakup, and anything you do will likely just turn you into a mutual enemy of them both.
I’m so sorry you’re going through this. Like any addiction, it’s really hard to watch the downward spiral. Also hard to not get sucked into the vortex.
What I’ve done in the past:
- I told her that I still love her and want her to be happy.
- Also that I felt her current relaionship was beyond negative and well into dangerous.
- I made it clear that I would do almost anything to help her get out of this pattern, but nothing at all to help her stay in it.
- Helping her stay in it included listening and being her “sounding board” - because the attention and sympathy she was getting was part of her pay-off for staying in the relationship. (In retrospect, explaining the second half of this was a mistake, as she wasn’t ready to hear it and it just gave her a nugget of insult to hold on to.)
Then walk away and shake it off. I’ve heard it said that abused people generally leave an average of 6 times before they stay away. This can be increased when there is legitimately blame to go around on all sides. (Self-blame is accepted as mittigation of violent actions.)
In my case she came back as a friend and I helped her to leave. About two years later she almost went back, but I was able to talk her down.
It’s not your job or your responsibility to do any of this, but it’s an approach to consider if it feels right to you.
Hope that’s useful. . .
Boy does this remind me of the Yellow Dress play I watched last Thursday.
I am actually going to have to hijack this thread a little bit to ask a question I had after watching this play:
She said, when discussing the messages of the play, that relationships aren’t supposed to be heard work. She said, “Marriages are hard work; relationships are supposed to be fun.” Can someone further explain this sentence to me?
They do happen, but usually I don’t think they are even if it looks that way. Not with physical abuse anyway (and she did say it was physical). If someone much stronger than me is getting physically violent I’m going to be scared of him. Who wouldn’t be? If I get physically violent with a man, he’d be pissed I’m sure, but he wouldn’t be scared unless I was using weapons. I don’t see how that can really be called mutual. (And of course men and women can be equally matched physically, but they’re not usually.)
My bolding.
Thanks for making my point…anyone is quite capable of hurting anyone else regardless of size and strength. Unless Alice says otherwise, then mutual physical abuse is just that…mutual.
But my point wasn’t that it CAN’T happen, just that it isn’t usually the case. She didn’t mention any use of weapons. Two people both hitting each other isn’t necessarily mutual abuse, that’s all I’m saying. Depends on the motivation and intended and actual consequences.
Personally I wouldn’t hit back, because I’m more of a shut-downer than a fight-backer, but I can understand why a non-abusive woman would.
And she DID say it was mutual, so that is what we have to go with.
And there are those types of relationships where the larger person may only shove, but not hit while the smaller person who can’t shove the larger person would hit the larger person instead. It can be easily classified as mutual, and this is what I am envisioning what’s going on when I hear somebody saying that the abuse is mutual.
Will it stay that way? Over time, probably not…someone in the relationship will likely escalate the abuse.
She said he puts her in headlocks. Now, maybe she’s doing things that actually scare him too, but there’s a good chance she’s not. I think one person or the other is usually actually in control (when there’s abuse, not in all relationships).
The story about the headlock is that a few months ago, they were lying in bed, talking and cuddling, and he suddenly put her in a headlock and wouldn’t let her out of it, for no apparent reason. Someone else in the house had to actually come into the room and physically force him to let her go. This story scares me a lot about him, if true. For him to do this without any provocation, without being angry, is worse than if he had done it out of anger- this seems psychopathic to me. I can’t listen to stories like this and then pretend that he’s okay, she’s okay, and their relationship is normal and there’s nothing wrong.
WTF? What happened after that? She must have asked him to explain or SOMETHING.
No idea. But then, explanations don’t really play into the attention-seeking drama queen MO, do they? So I don’t really hear those, only the horror stories, for the most part.
…or something preceding the headlock was “omitted” that might explain the headlock…but what he did as told by her is a “WTF?” moment. Sounds very bully-like on his part and unacceptable if what she said is true to what actually happened.
Not that difficult to understand. She said they were cuddling. Most abusers are terrified of emotional vulnerability. He may simply have felt the onset of intimacy and had a sudden urge to assert control.
It’s seriously sick and dangerous, I hasten to add, but understandable. If I’m right, the closer this guy gets to her, the more dangerous he’ll be. There is nothing she can do or say that will be so perfect he’ll feel all right when he’s with her. In fact, the more perfect she is the more he’ll feel defensive of his flaws and feel the need to control, devalue and punish her.
Yuck.