While reading chapter 14 about violent/abusive relationships, I couldn't help but think about what happened to a friend of mine not more than a year ago. I have decided to blog about this in order to share her story with you all because it was almost scary to see how much some of the contents of this chapter related to what my friend was going through.
First of all, in my opinion, emotional abuse is probably the most overlooked form of abuse out there. As I mentioned in my reading review of chapter 14, on the surface it might seem as simple as the book defines it as "threatening a partner or his or her loved ones or possessions or harming a partner's sense of self-worth." I believe that it is much deeper than just this and that this behavior all comes from the need for control.
My friend Anna was in a relationship with her boyfriend (now ex-boyfriend), John, for a short time before he started controlling everything she did. Looking at the characteristics of a "batterer," our text book describes in the Resource Theory, such abusers have a lower education...as a result have fewer resources in the relationship. They also are described as people who abuse drugs in which John does, marijuana and alcohol. John was a year younger than Anna and as Anna was successful in school and graduated, moving on to college, it was apparent at times that John was jealous of her success. He wanted the recognition that she was receiving at that time in her life and as a result, he felt a lack of control in the relationship. After all, he is the boy in the relationship therefore, traditionally, the control is supposed to lie in his possession. Contributing to this loss of control is John's upbringing. Not to make any racial references, but John is Hispanic and his family is from Mexico. If anyone is friends with a person of this ethnicity, you know that they view gender roles very traditionally and they are very strict, especially towards women. Another characteristic of such abusers are that "they may have seen a parent, usually a father...use violence to resolve conflict." Traditionally, Hispanics are controlling over their women for this reason, it's a learned behavior. John tore Anna away from her family and most of her friends. His family became her family in the process. She was with him so much that her only "supportive" relationships as they seemed at the time were with him and his family. I was one of her few friends who she still hung out with regularly and talked to, much to John's dismay.
Any time I would be out with Anna in the time that she was still with John, I can remember her frequently texting John updating him on where she was, who she was with, what we were doing, and when we would be headed back. It was exhausting for her to constantly be checking in with him but she justified it as him having a "small" insecurity problem that he will grow out of once the relationship develops. Does this sound familiar? Anna was "seduced by the Cinderella fantasy" that chapter 14 of our book discusses.
At other times, Anna would tell me of crazy instances such as one time when John had called her one night asking about a car parked outside of her house. He wanted to know who was over and what she was doing. She had no idea whose car it was and told him that she had neighbors and it was probably one of their cars. He refused to believe her and insisted that he come inside, only to see her watching a movie with her brothers and sister.
Another time, before going out for the night with Anna, she would be one the phone arguing relentlessly with John about her plans. He would get angry if she were going anywhere without him in general and if we were to head to a party, he needed details. How many guys would be there. When they were going. The address. Often times I contemplated just asking the party host if he could come to make things easy for Anna but knew that if he were there, some how or some way he would cause a scene about some issue that he created. As their relationship developed Anna become numb to the arguments. She just didn't care because she knew that they would argue and the next day things would be as if nothing happened at all. It got to the point where she would tell him she was "going to sleep" and turn her phone off before we would go out, just to put an end to it all and deal with it in the morning.
In their arguments John would call Anna horrible names and put her down. I have never seen someone treat anyone with so much disrespect, yet Anna stayed in the relationship. I eventually reasoned that because of his continuous battering of her emotions, he had control over her. If he didn't like something she was wearing because it was too revealing (a simple v-neck shirt), he would tell her to change or else he'd throw a fit. She would give in him at these crazy moments, just to avoid the conflict because according to her, things were a lot easier when she just didn't argue with him. Towards the end of their relationship she was so emotionally torn apart, had the lowest self-esteem for someone who is an all around great person. I began to wonder how she could, if she ever would be able to pull herself out of this situation because of her skewed emotional perception of herself, thanks to John.
I decided that I needed to talk to Anna about all of this and I was surprised to find out that she knew what she was doing was not healthy but she didn't know how to handle the situation because she truly cared for John. She loved his family because she had formed an identity with them (as he pulled her from her own family) and didn't want to hurt them by hurting him. She figured that it was better to be with John than to deal with the mess.
After this, on multiple occasions, we would talk frequently about how this was so unhealthy for her and she needed to be good to herself. She had such skewed visions of herself because of the relationship that she didn't think she would be able to move on from the situation and find happiness elsewhere. Anna was the person to teach me to be confident in myself and now she had lost her own confidence. She no longer saw herself for who she truly was; beautiful, intelligent, successful, and caring.
A major turning point for Anna's situation was after John and her attended Dayglow when it came through our hometown. They went together and had an argument while at the concert. He had left without her, leaving her alone and stranded downtown. Luckily she knew of friends who attended the concert as well and was able to hook up with them for a ride back home. Once home Anna went straight to John's. They live a convenient walking distance from each other so this wasn't exactly out of her way as she would say. He met her in the driveway and began screaming at her--the details of the argument are lost on me, but you get the idea. He began grasping her arms so tight she thought he was going to rip them off her body and shook her to the point that she was lucky she didn't suffer from whiplash. This was the first time he had actually laid a hand on her aside from the countless threats of doing so over the year that they had been together at the time. His mother came outside and tried to mediate the situation, sending Anna home.
I remember the phone call from her, explaining to me what happened and how badly her arms hurt the next morning when she woke up and told me what happened. I explained to her that I hope this was a wake up call and that she would truly reconsider her relationship because clearly it was not healthy by any means. However, after getting off the phone with me, John's mother called her asking to meet with her. She went and his mother encouraged her to forgive her son. She made excuses for his behavior and Anna accepted them because of the tight bond that she had formed with his family.
A few months later after this incidence, Anna finally realized how wrong this relationship was for her and that she needed to detach herself from John and his family completely. This was brought on by a heated argument between John and Anna one night. Drinking was involved on John's side as he was throwing a party at his house. Anna got to the party and left shortly after because of the argument. After she got home she ignored a series of John's calls and called me. She was hysterical and promised that this was it, she was done, and that she was so sorry for not listening to me sooner. She was scared and didn't know what to do because prior to calling me, while ignoring John's calls he made his way to her house. Was banging on the doors and windows threatening to beat her if she didn't let him inside (which was ridiculous of him to say because why would anyone answer the door after a person says that). Anna told me that it was miracle that the class on the windows and back door didn't break. Fortunately, her neighbors were outside on their patio having a gathering and called Anna to see what was going on. She asked them to call the cops and they did. John was tried to run but it didn't work out in his favor. He was charged with trespassing and attempted breaking and entering.
Again, John's mother and family tried to reason with Anna. This time it did not work. She did everything I told her to do from the beginning; she blocked all of their numbers, blocked them from Facebook, and moved to her mother's house (it's her father's house that is in John's neighborhood) so that John would not know where to find her. After she officially cut off all ties and John's family bailed him out of jail, he came to the restaurant where she served and sat in her section, forcing them to meet after the incidence. He would follow her car if he was out on the road and saw her driving. He tried contacting her multiple times from different people's phones. After a while, he got the hint and stopped bothering her, thank the Lord. It was a long process, but Anna finally regained her independence and found her way back to happiness.
I was so proud that Anna found her strength and was able to walk away from it all. It hurt me to see her go through that time in her life and it was unfortunate that it took an extreme situation for her to wake up and deal with everything, but she eventually got there. I hope you all can now see the implications within an abusive relationship and that the chapter information is indeed accurate. Since helping my friend through that time in her life, I learned to have a new respect for those in an abusive relationship. Before personally experiencing such a situation, I thought that women put themselves in these situations and they truly are stupid for doing so when all they have to do is walk away, I thought that it should be pretty easy because why would anyone want to put up with a relationship like that? Well, seeing one of my best friends go through it really taught me a lot. I hope this story has helped clear up any misconceptions you have about abuse victims, or maybe it just reaffirmed what you might have already known. Fact is, these situations are hard to deal with, harder than many will ever consider.
**Names have been changed to protect keep the identity of my friend and her psycho ex anonymous.
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