Auntie SparkNotes: My Friend Is Abusing His Girlfriend

Dear Auntie,

I have a problem with a relationship that isn’t mine. And I know, if it’s not mine I should mind my own business, but I can’t help wondering if some outside perspective would be helpful in this situation.

Two of my best friends (let’s call them Gregory and Paula) are dating. I love them both, but I have had this feeling for a while that something is off in their relationship. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it because they have what seems like a happy, healthy relationship. I recently realized, however, that their relationship only seems happy and healthy when everything is going the way Gregory wants it to go. And I think some of his behaviors fall into emotional abuse.

When they fight it’s always Paula’s fault, always Paula that is the person who did something wrong. She’s absolutely miserable and tells me that she feels helpless and as though she can’t do anything right. She avoids doing certain things because she knows they will make him unhappy (he has a lot of opinions on what clothing and makeup she wears, for example), and she is constantly worried about “messing up.” These seem like small things but combined they’ve made her doubtful of herself and scared of disappointing him, and she’s not that kind of person.

And the thing is, Gregory is also my friend, so I don’t see this situation as evil abuser against poor victim. He deeply loves Paula and doesn’t realize how much he is hurting her—he legitimately feels wronged and thinks that his anger is justified. Unless he is a horrible monster and everything I know about him as a wonderful caring person is a lie (which I highly doubt), if he understood how his behavior affected her I know he would try hard to change it.

I’m always super confused when these things happen because in all other ways Gregory is a great guy. I don’t get why it’s such a big deal to him when she doesn’t do exactly what he wants her to, he’s super chill about most other things and otherwise very supportive of Paula.

I don’t want them to break up because they are so in love and so happy together apart from the emotional abuse. I know that’s sort of a ridiculous sentence, but I have a strong conviction that they belong together and that they can work through this.

So the question is, how do I bring this issue to light without causing their relationship to blow up? Should I get involved at all? I usually stay out of other people’s relationships, but is it a bad idea to even lightly suggest to Paula that Gregory is emotionally abusing her? I don’t think she will see it by herself otherwise, and I don’t think he will believe it coming from anyone else but her. I am closer to Gregory but because of this I would be more likely to bring it up to Paula. This way she can sit with the idea and bring it up to Gregory when and if she feels inclined to (because who knows, she might completely disagree with me and choose to never talk with him about it).

I’m also a little concerned that this might torpedo my friendship with them. No one likes to hear that they are an emotional abuser/abusee. If ultimately Paula is happier because of this I think it would be worth it to lose a couple of friends, but if you think me bringing it up would be ineffectual and pointless then I would rather just keep my mouth shut. Thoughts?

Uh, yeah. I have thoughts.

And the first one is that based on your letter—including the part we didn’t publish here at your request*—it just doesn’t matter if your speaking up is ineffectual, for the same reason that it doesn’t matter if it’s ineffectual to warn a group of hapless teenage campers in a summer slasher flick that they should really rethink their trip down the Winding Dirt Road of Death to the remote Lake of a Thousand Dismembered Bodies in Varying States of Decay. Even if you’re fairly sure that you’ll be ignored, laughed at, even shunned, you still say something. Why?

BECAUSE IT’S THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

That’s true for the horror-movie gas station guy, who watches resignedly as another van of campers ignore his warnings and drive away merrily into the jaws of death. And it’s also true for you, who have until this moment been standing idly by, watching as one of your friends methodically shatters the other’s dignity, courage, and sense of self-worth into little tiny pieces.

*FYI to readers: The unpublished part of this letter included multiple specific examples of Gregory’s abusive behavior (which have been redacted for anonymity’s sake), but also the information that the couple in question not only live together, but are secretly married, which I am mentioning because it’s important.

And you have an interesting perspective, Sparkler, as someone who is closer to the abuser than the abusee—and yet doesn’t realize how much your perspective is just part and parcel of the terrible dynamic within that relationship. Of course abusers are charismatic and likable, and of course they for all appearances care deeply for the person they’re tormenting; otherwise, nobody would ever date them to begin with. And when you say you don’t see Gregory as evil, that’s probably because he isn’t, per se. You don’t need to be evil to be a terrible, abusive partner; you just need to be insecure, controlling, and crazy-afraid of abandonment to the point where you’ll cross every awful line in the book to insulate yourself against it.

Most abusers don’t set out specifically to hurt the people they love. They just want to feel safe—but instead of cultivating the kind of confidence and intimacy that allows a person to be comfortably vulnerable in a relationship, the abuser’s idea of security is to isolate, undermine, and control their S.O. until the person is a shell of quivering self-doubt, constantly tying themselves into ever-more-convoluted knots to please the abuser, and too convinced of their own unlovability to ever walk out the door. In Gregory’s world, there’s no such thing as just trusting your girlfriend to choose you; that’s why abusers push for a major commitment early on (and why I’d bet a million-gajillion bucks that eloping was his idea): A shared lease, a marriage certificate, and (eventually and most especially) a child are all binding insurance against the other person ever leaving.

As you can see, there’s nothing necessarily evil about this, or even conscious. It’s just deeply, completely [bleep]ed up—and that’s why, even with the admittedly bleak odds of it making a difference, you need to say something to everyone involved.

With Gregory, you can start by at the very least not being a source of validation—for his controlling attitude, his anger when things don’t go exactly his way, or his choice to deal with that anger by belittling and berating his girlfriend. Clearly, he’s talking about this stuff with you, which means you have the opportunity to shake your head and say, “I know you don’t want to hear this, but dude, that is really cruel and unfair. Would you want to be treated that way?” You can even take it a step further: “I suspect Paula won’t say this to you because she loves you, but I will: The way you treat her is not okay.”

And yes, Gregory may well see you as a threat the moment you express disapproval of his behavior, and yes, it’ll probably affect your friendship. But honey, if you’re willing to condone what you know to be abuse just for the (BARF BARF BARF) pleasure of keeping your relationship as-is, then I regret to inform you that your membership in the Worldwide Society of Decent Human Beings is now officially revoked (and here in its place is a letter of congratulations for having a little ball of lint where your moral compass ought to be.) Your continued friendship with Gregory is a reckoning in its own right; you need to decide where you draw the line in terms of what you’ll witness without speaking up, and what doing so says about your character.

And with Paula, what you offer is this: a lifeline, full stop. Because—and this is the part where the notion of remaining uninvolved really goes out the window, not to mention the part that makes Auntie SparkNotes lose her mind just a little bit every time I think about it—a lifeline is not only what she needs, but what she is already asking you for. She is telling you she’s miserable, she is reaching out to you, she is all but begging you to say, “I see what you see, and it’s not okay.” And the worst part is, you won’t say it! Not because you don’t recognize the reality of this situation, which you do, but because in spite of that reality, you personally still ship them together.

To return to our summer-camp-slasher-flick analogy, this is no longer a question of you simply failing to warn the naive teens that they’re about to turn down the Dirt Road of Death to go camping by the Lake of 1,000 Corpses. In this scenario, it’s more like one of the campers keeps saying to you, “Is it just me, or is this this lake full of human femurs?”, and you’re like, “Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t, but it’s definitely a great place to swim! Here, go on in! I’ll hold your towel!”

Remember that membership I mentioned, in the Worldwide Society of Decent Human Beings? You are treading dangerously close to losing yours by virtue of that one decision alone. Please take this opportunity to stop denying the truth just because you think they make a cute couple, and tell Paula that she’s not crazy to be unhappy in this relationship. Tell her you see how he treats her, and more importantly, tell her you see how the way he treats her makes her feel. Tell her what you told me: That she is not a frightened, insecure, worried person at heart, but that she is becoming one, because Gregory is preying on her insecurities with precisely that goal in mind. There are few more powerful wakeup calls than hearing a trusted friend say, “I know you, I love you, and I can see you becoming less and less like yourself every day.”

There are also few more powerful motivators than a trusted friend saying, “You are not imagining things. You are being abused. And if you ever want to leave, call me, and I will help you, no questions asked.”

I hope you can be that person, Sparkler. I hope you can say that to your friend; I hope you can mean it.

And once you’ve said it, if you say it, you’ll just have to see what happens—and the healthiest outcome, despite your personal conviction that these two are “meant” to be together, will likely be that she packs her things and files for divorce—or that she at least insists on couples therapy as a non-negotiable condition of not divorcing.

But that’s for Paula to decide. You will have done what you can; if you end up doing more, it’ll be because she asked you to. And if you need something to do while you wait to see what happens here, I’d suggest some good, hard thinking about where you personally draw the line between “neutral witness” and “unwitting accomplice” when it comes to other people’s bad acts, so that if and when you find yourself confronted with a situation like this in the future, you’ll know when it’s just not right to stay silent.

Got something to say? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.
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