i looked on your abuse tag for a while and didn’t see that you answered this but if i’m wrong lmk. any tips on how to pull a friend out of an abusive relationship? i know i can’t control her but she asked me to tell her when her relationship starts to look like what mine did and when i told her she didn’t listen and now she’s getting back with the same person after 3 days. i know i’m not supposed to control her but i don’t know what to do besides an ultimatum at this point. hoping someone else has better advice before i do that.
Thank you for asking this highly relevant question. I'm sorry your friend is in a bad relationship and I'm sorry you have been through this as well - abuse is too common and that's why I'm glad you asked. We all need this information.
Most people's first instinct when their loved one seems to be in an unhealthy relationship is to raise the question with them. How people do this differs, and I would always opt for what's called curious exploration (open questions about the relationship and reflections of the emotions your loved one expresses) over confrontation, as the latter seldom is productive. In your case, anon, you raised it as agreed upon beforehand but your friend wasn't receptive to your thoughts. This, too, is common.
In my experience with clients in a abusive relationships, there is a lot of shame tied up into being a "victim", one of several reasons "survivor" is a preferred term. To imply or explicitly state that their relationship seems abusive can in instances when they're not ready to hear that yet lead to resistance and a deeper commitment to said relationship. The genuine concern for their safety is taken as criticism of themselves and their own person, usually as there probably exists some doubts and insecurities already. When we are already insecure we tend to become more protective of whatever it is we are insecure about. For this reason I would stray from words such as 'abuse' or even 'unhealthy'. Not to say that labeling abuse as abuse cannot be a relief to some - when they are ready for it it can be very cathartic for somebody else to see and acknowledge their experiences as abuse - but they need to be further along in their acceptance and insight for that to work.
As people who care about them, it can be difficult to see a loved one stay with or go back to an abusive partner. We want them to be safe and happy and to us it seems obvious that the source of their misery is the abusive partner. But abusive relationships aren't always all bad all the time. That's how we get stuck. It's like a slot machine. It can be helpful for some to speak about their relationships like a behavioral addiction - the mechanisms are similar or the same. That's what the actual definition of love-bombing is, btw. The increase in loving behaviors by an abuser right before or right after a bad abusive episode meant to keep the victim in the relationship. Because of this pattern - tension, incident, reconciliation (honeymoon phase or love-bombing), calm - it can be difficult for the person being abused to see the abuse, as it's not all bad all the time. That hope that the love-bombing or calm phases will prevail is what is so addictive about the abusive relationship. "This time maybe it will work out".
For us who see the abuse, we want to support our loved one, and the first instinct if usually to get them to leave. As discussed, that's not an easy task. It's common for abused partners (speaking explicitly about IPV, but any type of domestic violence regardless of relationship works similarly, although leaving may look different when the abuser is a relative) to leave the abuser between 3 to 11 times before they leave for good. Some never leave. What abuse does, at its core, is strip us of agency and dignity. We become dependent and degraded. If somebody else then comes along, no matter how good their intentions, and tells us that we must leave that too is stripping of agency and will be met with resistance. The change needs to come from within the abused person themselves.
Confrontation creates tension both within you as a friend and within the loved one you're trying to help, and can lead you to drift apart, especially if the abused feel like you are judgemental of their relationship. We don't want this to happen. Isolation is one of the main tools an abuses utilizes, consciously or not (because while some people are just cruel and consciously abuse others, a lot of the time the abuser is only half-way aware of what they are doing), to keep their victim in the relationship. Instead, what we want to do is offer support on the abused person's terms. Don't try to persuade them to leave. Instead offer support like a place to stay if they need it. Or a shoulder to cry on and an ear to listen. Just doing friendship things and preventing isolation. What somebody needs will be based on their relationship and other social and psychological factors. If the abuse is physical they may need somebody who can drive them to the ER. Or if the abuse is more psychological (not mutually exclusive obviously) they may need somebody they can call at any hour to cry. Economical abused people may need someone who can open an account for them to stash away money or such. Ask your friend what they need if they are open to that. Or if you notice something they might need help with if you can do that for them. If they are very downtrodden and lack the ability to decide if they want help with X thing, you can speak in statements like "I will do X thing for you when you need me to".
When it comes to talking about the relationship, I use a lot of elements om motivational interviewing (MI) when I meet people in abusive relationships. You're not a therapist or a counselor, you're a friend, but the core tenets of MI are based in compassion and evoking change through that. To use skills like active listening, simple and complex emotional reflections, and open questions to bring to surface the person's own reasoning are not outside the scope of a layperson. To hear yourself say something aloud often makes it easier for us to hear the flaws in our own reasoning because now it's not just an internal thought, now we hear it as others do, and that is what using MI elements does. Again, you're not a therapist, but to use active listening skills is good in any private relationship.
I hope this was helpful. I also invite followers to share their tips from experience both as survivor and friend of survivors.
