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Emotionally abusive marriage, from the outside
"Jane Doe" keeps asking me for help and advice but I don't know how to help her. Her boyfriend...well now husband, is abusive. He isn't physically abusive (yet) but he is definitely mentally/emotionally abusive! She is only 21 and he is 24 or so. We have been friends since high school and ever since they got together it's been a whirlwind. My boyfriend, family members, and other friends say I should give up. They have been together for four years give or take a few months. She is not allowed to see her family, her friends, he checks her phone an computer like clockwork everyday. He has to know where she is at all times. It's like she's in a prison, and he was actually a prison guard a few years ago but got fired. She has 'tried' to leave him many times, but he talks her out of it, or she changes her mind at the last minute. I know the statistics are that you have to leave at least 6 times before it sticks? I'm not sure.
She isn't supposed to talk to me but we do talk sometimes, through email. That's the only thing he doesn't think of checking.
She feels so bad about herself. She has said he is the best she could ever get. She was raped when she was 15 by a 50 year old man in her church. The case was overturned and he was never charged. It happened for months and she blames this on herself. She says her current marriage is because of her 'affair' with the old man. I think him sexually abusing her has deeply messed her up. She has never been to counseling or anything. Her husband forced her to marry him because I guess that gives him even more control.
When she decides to talk to me she says she wants to kill herself, she's so sad, and other things like that. Then she'll turn around and act like she's happy and tell me to leave her alone. What is some good advice? I've tried everything I'm about to give up. I don't want her to die, or for it to get even worse and get to a physically abusive level. She won't leave him so I don't know what she wants me to do? Her familyk nows about this and aren't really doing anything. It's even worse now that she's married because they are super religious and don't believe in divorce. He has messaged me before I blocked him on facebook and told me I will pay if I don't get out of their relationship. But she comes to me begging for help and to talk to her.
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I lived 30 yrs with emotional/mental abuse from husband. My own family saw things were very wrong early on in their interactions with him and advised me to leave him. I stayed because of religious reasons, not because I was mentally incapable of breaking out of the cycle. My reasons being the same, both of us attended church and were taught that divorce is not an option, that we must trust God to heal our marriage. I had to have a good enough reason to leave that over-rode that belief, which is faulty.
For her, there isn't a good enough reason. Combined with her traumatic experiences in the past, her mind is not working at a reasoning level that is able to really comprehend and see her situation for what it is, HOPELESS. An abusive person can't be forced to seek counseling and must want to go but preceeding that, must be willing to acknowledge they have a problem.
What she is currently going thru is called the cycle. She suffers the abuse, he apologizes, trieds to make up to her and then comes the 'honeymoon period' during which all seems fine and happy again in how she is treated. But the pressures in him that compell him to be this way, build again until he explodes and becomes abusive again. And so the cycle repeats. This explains why she asks for help at one point and then tells you to mind your own business the next.
Now, I will share what happened to me to break away from that faulty belief that God will heal our marriage.
I was always close to God and learned to be able to hear back from him in prayer. It wasnt until I reached my forties that God was really able to achieve some major spiritual growth in me because the fact was...I was ready. Once ready to really listen to and trust God, He finally spoke and explained why my belief that He would heal my marriage is 'faulty'.
He said that He created each one of us to have a personal will, with which we could make our own decisions to do positive or negative. He would never force a person who was doing negative against their own will because that would mean taking away their choice of will. He would never pick and choose like that, leaving alone those who made the right choice and stepping in to change by force those who didnt want to change or weren't willing to admit there was something wrong with them. Therefore, the only way I could be free of this abuse was for me to leave because the husband would not change. A psychiatrist told me that few people with the extent of mental illness that was behind my husbands condition of getting worse and worse would likely not change in an entire lifetime or would change only slightly for the better in a lifetime.
What i meant by worse and worse, is that the even balance at first that your friend experiences between the bad times and the good times with him can easily change slowly over the years until the bad times grow longer and the period of good times grows shorter until eventually it is bad 24/7. Unfortunately, the pressure had to reach that point before I left.
It took hearing from my husbands counselor that there was little chance of his improving that got me thinking the following which is something you could present to your girlfriend everytime she contacts you for help.
Tell her this: Ask yourself is you can handle another month of him treating you like this. The answer will be, yeah, but I wont like it, but yeah I can handle it. Then ask, can you picture yourself putting up with this for another whole year. Oh, thats tougher, a feeling of dread but a person can still with determination do it. Next ask, can you handle it if its the same with no improvement for the next 10 year, 20, or til the day you die? This progression in thinking is what I talked myself through and when I finally comtemplated what it would be like after 30 yrs of abuse, enduring another 30 just the same, I broke down and cried, and something snapped inside me, changed.
Now God could get through to me.He told me at one point in the end that If I didn't leave husband soon, I would be dead in 4 years from heart attach or cancer, which ever came first. I could doubt that or take it to heart. I believed it. I could not imaginie not being around to see all my grown daughters marry, have kids and become a grandmother. I wanted to stay alive for that part of my life experience, and that made my leave and divorce him.
Change like this must come from a want within her and won't until she hears the explanation I shared of how the belief in God healing marriages is faulty, combined with her imagining if she can see herself putting up with the same til the day she dies, is the best thing you can share in her particular circumstance with those beliefs.
There are professional counciling centers for abused women and they might go about what they say a little differently, but without the religious understanding and viewpoint, of choosing to belief in something so faulty and narrow minded while thinking it solid perfect sound advice, they will not likely be able to really reach her with what she needs to hear.
You repeat the same every time she emails you. I'd write it out, and copy and paste every time.
The only other thing you can do is pray for her daily that her guardian angels or God himself are eventually able to get her mind to become ready to accept and believe differently, until then, there is no good compelling reason for her to leave him.
Good luck dear. Patience...it's a long process and I am glad my family never gave up praying. It hurt them as it hurts friends to see someone suffer so but like I said, until one can break through and they take your words to heart and it breaks down her belief, she won't be able to make such a drastic decision and change in her life.
And it won't be until she is away from him that she can get help, counciling for both her past rape and also for the emotional abuse from husband. I needed counciling too as a person with such experiences puts up certain coping mechanisms that help during that period but are detrimental to moving on with life once away from the abuse. ANd there are other reasons but that was the biggest for me.
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For one thing by listening to your friend and being a shoulder for her to cry on you are in a sense enabling her not to do anything about her situation. I know that must sound strange to you as she is calling on you for help. But she never follows through with that help. Right know what your are doing is leading her to water but she is refusing to drink. By walking away she may be forced to drink the water.
By being there and listening to her and offering advice this is the enablement. What you have to do is force her to stand up and do something. You need to tell her you have given her all the advice you can that you will always be there for her. Until she is actually ready to leave him there is nothing else you can do for her. She should call you when she is ready to leave him and you will come get her and take her someplace safe.
Once you have done this look on the web to see if there is a House of Ruth or other battered woman's shelter in your area. If not look for you county's or city's crisis intervention center. Contact then tell them about your friend and ask what and how to get your friend to them when and if she calls you.
Be prepared with the phone numbers you need to so you can pick your friend up, make the calls needed and take her to a safe place. Do not take her home to her parents as that is the first place he will look for her.
Where you drop her off is not generally where these women stay. These organizations have safe houses or hotels that they put women in so there spouses or significant others cannot track them down. If her husband asks you can genuinely say she is someplace safe I kno9w not where.
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ok first off you need to KNOW, not think but KNOW that you cant help someone that doesnt want to be helped ok, trust me ive been through this with a few friends before and their escape had to literally be timed, planned, and executed in the middle of the night in order to them to leave him because they didnt feel "secure" with leaving and not knowing that they would be covered on the back end.
You need to talk to her about entering a battered womens shelter first. find her one over the net, call it, and say youd like some information on it because you know someone thats going through a bad situation and you want to help them get out, they are willing but are scared so you want to know exactly what it is they offer first so that you can tell her and then plan the get away should she be SURE about leaving.
typically at one of these womens shelters, they will feed, cloth, and hide you for a long time. They arent highly advertised because they need to keep the location mostly a secret so that he cant come there and try to attack her or steal her back. (yes they have security but they still insist on secrecy.)
They will tell her not to tell ANYONE where she is specifically while they help her file a report with the police, and get things in order. she will be totally safe there, they will even help her find a job, get counseling and do everything they can to help her get on her feet.
what YOU can do should she agree to going is tell her that you called ahead and they know shes coming so that she feels youve done the foot work for her, offer to pick her up or to have her picked up if need be, and take her there. they are open 24 hours a day and will take her even in the middle of the night if need be if you call ahead and let them know your coming and all her man will know is that shes gone but he wont know where. ; )
if she comes to you "begging for help" then you have to just be honest with her, be frank and say "i want to help you and i will get you out of this if you really want to but you have to agree to it and REALLY DO IT" because once shes at the shelter she cannot have ANY contact with him at all. they will consider him dangerous and wont allow it.
The people at the shelter will tell you what her and your options are if you just tell them everything thats going on. they get these kinds of calls alllll the time so really your nothing uncommon i can promise you that.
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