Aggression is not charming
Content warning: graphic description
When I was sixteen, my best friend Sam* (name changed) began dating a guy in the same grade as us named James who sheâd had a crush on for a few months. They were cute at first and she seemed happy, but things changed for the worst very quickly: it wasnât even a full month yet before he began showing subtle signs of being controlling. She had been dying her hair bright red for years (her nickname was âRedâ; it was a bit of a signature), and he literally demanded that she stop dyeing her hair for him. He also wanted her to stop wearing so much black, wearing so much makeup, etc. She was raised with two older brothers; she wasnât the type to be pushed around by men (not that any woman is âthe right typeâ for pushing around). Naturally, she said, âFuck you, noâ. He let that issue drop, but then he started to get jealous and possessive.
He started demanding that she skip school with him so they could go hang out. At the time her father was an alcoholic and would yell at or abuse her and her two older brothers if they skipped or didnât do well in class, so she told him that she wasnât willing to skip school just to hang out with him. He sulked for the entire rest of the day. Just before the last class, as we were getting our binders from our lockers (our lockers were right next to each other), he strode up to her without a word, grabbed her by the arm so hard that she ended up with a bruise, and literally pulled her into the staircase and started yelling at her. She tried to walk away and he grabbed her again so hard that she almost fell down the stairs. A couple of us saw what was happening and went to get her, at which point he stopped; but after that, she wouldnât tolerate his weirdly controlling, aggressive advances anymore, and she broke up with him. Their whole relationship lasted a little over three months. (By comparison, she is now 25 and has at this point been dating the same guy for seven years.)
Thatâs when the really crazy behavior began.
It started out innocently enough: a note in her locker that she didnât remember putting there. It was from him, a six-page letter oscillating between begging for forgiveness, pitying himself for being such a fuck-up, and berating her for being a heartless bitch. She ignored it. A couple of days later, in the middle of class, she got a call from the office to come down because her dad had randomly signed her out of class. Luckily she had the presence of mind to call her mom to confirm, because it turned out that her father had done no such thing - James had called the office pretending to be her dad in order to lure her out in front of the school in the middle of the day so that he could be alone with her and talk to her. The next day, when she came into school, there was something drawn on her locker. It turns out that after she had figured out it was him, he went back into the school and punched a wall until he started to bleed, and then drew a heart on her locker in his own blood. I shit you not, this actually happened. To this day you can still see it, eight years later.
After this failed attempt at communicating with her, he began ârandomlyâ biking past her house, even though the bike ride from his house to hers was at least an hour (and this was in the middle of the Canadian winter. I lived across the street from him, it would have taken him well over an hour and a half to bike to her house through the snow and the ice). She woke up once in the middle of the night and looked out her window to see him sitting on her roof, watching her sleep. Iâm dead serious. While their house was being renovated, they moved to a temporary house owned by her grandparents in another part of the city. Nobody knew where she was living at the time except for me (because Iâd once been there to hang out with her after school). She saw him more than once biking past that house, too. The only explanation for him knowing where she was living at the time was that he must have somehow either followed her home from school, or had been watching her on the day that she moved.
But I think the worst part of this whole experience is that the whole time it was happening, various people kept pressuring her to go back to him, saying that his harassment would stop if sheâd just give in a little, that he was a nice guy and she was doing this to him, that she should give him a second chance, etc. Two of the people saying this were her own parents, who had witnessed the whole thing but just couldnât get past his charming, parent-friendly demeanor.
I know that this story isnât as dramatic or violent as the other posts on here, but I think it highlights a very important fact: the idea that women are somehow âresponsibleâ for the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of men, and that men are somehow entitled to a second, and third, and fourth, and fifth chance after displaying violent and aggressive tendencies. After my friend, James went on to date and marry another woman, who Iâve since heard he frequently abuses.
kianamaiart
tangentwithtanner
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dailybridgerton
