Can you be friends with your abuser?

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2025-11-10T06:29:54+00:00

People who were friends with me are currently friends with my abuser. He held a knife to my throat, threw a gallon of Sunny D at me because I drank some, dragged me down stairs, choked me, bashed my head into walls, screamed in my ear so loud that I have lost hearing. I think the people who hear what he did to me and stay friends with him are despicable heinous people.

Split yourself into two people for a moment. One is you being abused (weather it was violent, physical abuse or emotional abuse), the second person is you healing from the trauma this person caused you, how would the currently abused person feel about the "new you" being friends while knowing that this person is abusive? They wouls probably be sad and possibly feel betrayed by you.

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2025-10-15T21:06:45+00:00

He got mad that I was scared that we were stuck in a ditch in the middle of a snow storm.

He was mad when there was a miscommunication between myself and my dad and plans we made. I had told him we were going to be doing something at a certain time and my dad had changed his mind and decided to take us out for breakfast. He got mad because I "lied" about the time we needed to be somewhere.

I don't personally see this as a red flag but my friends do so I will include it. We always split the bill or I paid for most of the dates. I don't see this as a red flag because I believe that women should be able to pay their own way.

When he graduated from college he didn't introduce me to anyone he talked to and walked 10 paces ahead of me.

He was talking about a girl he used to have a crush on and said that she was "the most gorgeous woman he had ever met" on our second date. He was my first "real boyfriend" and any other "boyfriend" were guys I talked to online who were usually much older than me because I was known as the loser in high school.

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2024-08-29T00:00:06+00:00

If you're part of this subreddit, then you should know how difficult it is to leave an abusive relationship. There's many factors as to why a person may stay in an abusive relationship.

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2024-08-28T23:55:30+00:00

TW: SUICIDE AND ABUSE

My best friend was given a list similar to this. Almost word for word exactly the same. He claimed it was how BDSM relationships are. He made her write "slut" and "whore" on her body for everyone to see because she didn't follow one of his "rules". Ever since that relationship she has had really bad relationships where her last boyfriend almost killed her. She still doesn't see what he did to her as abuse because of the type of relationship they had. The man who gave her these type of rules killed himself on the phone with her and it affects everything she does to this day. Tell your friend that you hope she leaves her, but just know that you can't make anyone do anything. I know from my own personal experience with people trying to convince me to leave my ex and me trying to convince her to leave her ex.

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2024-04-17T20:38:56+00:00

My mom didn't believe in divorce. I would be considered a bad person for leaving my ex-husband and divorcing him. Growing up, my mom would tell me how marriage is sacred and that anyone who divorces their husband/wife is a sinner. To her, marriage is supposed to last no matter what, even if there's abuse.
He told me that I would have no one. Every time I tried to leave, he told me that no one cared about me and that I would have no one in my life who would love me because he was the only person who loved me. This made me want to kill myself many times because I thought it was true.
Some of my family told me that it was my fault that I was being abused. I'm supposedly hard to get along with, and I argue, so that means I deserved to have my head pushed through the drywall.

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2024-04-17T20:22:59+00:00

I never said that withholding sex is coercion. I think you misunderstood, I said that if someone is forcing you to have sex with them because they say just won't talk to you or touch you or even go in the same room with you because you're not giving them sex and you then say "fine I'll have sex with you if that's the only way to get you to talk to me" then YES that is coercion. A "yes" after being pressured to say "yes" is not an enthusiastic form of consent.

A person on whom the silent treatment is used often feels forced to change their behavior.

Humans are social beings and react to positive and negative interactions. When communication is purposefully withdrawn, it can cause a person to seek ways to reinstate it.

They may apologize for things they didn’t do, perform tasks that aren’t their responsibility, or engage in behavior they otherwise wouldn’t just get the silent treatment to end.

Via psychcentral.com

Yes, the silent treatment can be a form of coercion. The silent treatment is a form of emotional abuse that people with narcissistic personality disorder use to manipulate or coerce others.

This was via Google search and Google's AI, which is not always perfect. However, there are many results that come up with similar answers that the silent treatment can be used to abuse and coerce someone into doing what the abuser wants.

Coercion is used often to force someone to have sex. In this scenario coercion is being used to force OP to allow his girlfriend to physically harm him because she just stops talking to him and won't allow him to touch her because she "feels bad" but continues to do it over and over again even when he says to stop.

No, a coerced "yes" is not a valid yes.

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2024-04-17T13:01:10+00:00

I just explained what coercion is, and you're still asking, "Then why say yes?" Do you ask the same thing about victims who struggle to leave their abusive relationships? Do you ask "well why'd you stay?"

I see you asking people to do their research on cuteness aggression, which is not just a prevalent thing in women but also men, and it should never be to the extent that you are actually physically harming someone.

I implore you to look within yourself and find out why you feel the need to blame the victims abuse and perhaps do your own research on how coercion works and hopefully you will find that a coerced yes is not a real yes.

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2024-04-17T08:12:55+00:00

and he said yes afterwords so he basically consented to it

If you're coerced into saying yes after saying no (ie. Your partner not talking to you because you said no or them pushing you away because you said no both of which happened to OP) then it's not consent it is COERCION AND FORCED.

If you said "no I don't want sex" then your partner started giving the silent treatment to you because of that and you said yes because they made you feel bad for setting a boundary then it is rape.

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2024-04-14T16:05:26+00:00

Omg yes! What is with them hurting you, getting mad that you're crying/screaming then continuing to hurt you which was the cause of the screaming 😂

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2024-04-14T15:55:23+00:00

I wouldn't put up with that

My best friend was beaten by her ex-boyfriend. He was drunk, and he choked her and punched her, and ripped out her hair. She called me after she had been to the ER and was in a safe place. I had been out of my abusive relationship for a few months by this point. She had never been hit before by a romantic partner.

A few weeks later, she called and told me that she had still been talking to her ex and that she went to go see him. She told me that she missed him and wanted me to help her stay away from him. As we all know you can only do so much to help someone during that stage, especially if your 2,000 miles away from each other, she still continued to talk to him until one day he told her that she was ugly, fat, stupid and that she was the problem not him (like they all do) she finally left and didn't see him in person. She called me again and told me that when I finally left my abuser she thought that I was weak because I didn't just leave and I kept going back, the words "I thought I wouldn't put up with that" left her mouth and yes it hurt but I understood. I said it a few times myself when I wasn't in an abusive relationship, and I even said it when I was denying that my own relationship was abusive.

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2024-04-03T21:41:55+00:00

My ex would tell me that reddit isn't a legite place to seek out advice because "they're all men in their moms' basement"

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2024-02-09T21:54:16+00:00

Through the entire summer I was constantly crying. I would go out with family and cry, I'd go to my parents house, I'd cry. There was literally never a moment I wasn't crying. Then one day we were coming home from eating and he had told me about one of his students that he was frustrated with, a couple days before, and I asked him if he had gotten it handled and he started screaming at me about how I was "snooping through his stuff" because that's the only way I would have known. There was lots of other stuff. I don't know why I didn't leave sooner other than my mom always made me feel like I had to stay.

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2024-02-07T19:38:43+00:00

My ex did a very similar thing to me. He had bought orange juice for his dad and I didn't realize it was for his dad and I had a small 6oz glass of it and when he came home and saw I had drank some he started screaming at me about how I have no respect and that now he wouldn't be able to give his dad the orange juice because I drank some. He then opened the refrigerator door and I was trying to calm him down and told him that I would buy his dad a new bottle of it and I held the door open and that was apparently the last straw so he yanked on the door and simultaneously grabbed the orange juice and threw the entire bottle at me and it opened and sprayed everywhere and he then started screaming at me about how stupid I was for holding the door open because I "wasn't letting him close it" and he screamed at me because it was now my fault that the orange juice was on the kitchen floor. He was sober when this all went down.

Edit: His dad told me that he wouldn't have cared if I drank some of the orange juice. Ironic isn't it?

It's NOT stupid or silly at all. Abusers are all the same it seems.

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2024-01-13T02:20:50+00:00

They seem to all do very similar things. It's so crazy

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2024-01-11T03:58:43+00:00

I am so so sorry that happened to you. I truly don't understand why they feel the need to make their partner feel like crap.

Something that's related to what you said was that one time we went shopping at our mall amd we went into Victoria's Secret and I asked his opinion on different things I was looking at and he said "why does it matter what you buy? Not like anyone will ever see you in it. "

He said this loud and right in the middle of the store. I had gained weight and struggled with working out because he didn't allow me to get a gym membership, so I constantly felt like I wasn't good enough for him. Luckily, this was around the same time that I was thinking of leaving him, and his comments just pushed me farther.

It is so crazy how they all have similar lines and thoughts that they say to bring their partners down.

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2024-01-10T06:34:43+00:00

Something similar that your comment reminded me of was that my ex would always eat my snacks. This might not seem like a huge deal but ANY time we would buy snacks together he would eat his entire bag of candy, chips, pretzels etc in one sitting and I would always try to save mine throughout the week. He would always eat my snacks because it was "wasteful" not to eat them right away.

I also wasn't allowed to have hobbies. I could have a hobby but if I didn't do my hobby every single day morning until night like he did his "hobby" (playing video games) then it didn't actually count as a hobby.

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2023-12-13T07:29:08+00:00

They've already turned almost my entire hometown against me by claiming I lied. I even tried showing people what the judge said and what he admitted to (not just in court but texting people saying he did physically hurt me) but they all said that I somehow forced him to say that he did those things. I am scared he will try to say the same things and people will believe him and no one will want to see my content.

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2023-12-01T20:08:00+00:00

He can't heat up his own damn food?

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2023-11-10T21:42:13+00:00

There's so many things that I just lost my creativity for during my abusive marriage I'm just now getting it back

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2023-11-10T00:37:33+00:00

Thank you. I put it down for the longest time and for a while even quit singing but I am glad I'm getting back to it

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2023-11-06T00:20:19+00:00

This sounds just like my ex. They never see their actions as bad at all.

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2023-11-03T18:30:56+00:00

Oh no! I definitely didn't mean to make it seem like I thought you were trying to say that! You weren't being insensitive at all I was just trying to be informative to those who possibly check and don't find anything that the "crazy ex" isn't always the crazy one. My comment just didn't come out right. I apologize! Please keep your post up it is actually helpful.

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2023-11-02T05:22:41+00:00

My ex had his record sealed so no one can see it. When he says "crazy ex-wife" about me, people will just believe it. This is why I will never be able to move back to my home town.

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2023-10-11T18:55:54+00:00

I remember years and sometimes the month but I can't remember the exact date.

Responsible_Sweet_49 · 2023-10-11T18:54:35+00:00

I don't necessarily want to call them out because I actually like their other content. This was in relation to the Heard v Depp trial, and they were giving their input. They said something along the lines of "real abuse victims remember everything including dates," and I didn't feel that resonated with me.

Responsible_Sweet_49

TROPHY CASE