So there’s this girl I know...
She’s not a super close friend, but I’ve known her for more than a year now. We used to get dinner together almost every night, and she was “part of the gang”. She’s petite and really pretty and adorable. She doesn’t speak much, but is one of the most extroverted people I know. She has such a bright personality, you just want to keep her under your wing forever.
She’s just as naive as she looks--which is almost like a middle schooler. But we all love that about her. At the beginning of this school year, I remember she was telling us about this boy she liked. She was in another relationship at the time, but the boyfriend wasn’t such a caring guy. He didn’t seem to care whether she existed or not. Naturally, we all rooted for her to break up and go with the other guy.
So she does that. She breaks up and has this childish phase where she just avoided her ex at all costs. Sure, it wasn’t the most mature thing to do, but that’s just her. Then she hung out with the guy she liked all the time. Like I said, she’s not shy at all. She made it pretty clear, without seeming to utter a single word.
I don’t know the guy well. My friends know him better, but not by much. We joke about how when we say something to him, his reaction will be that he will take out his earphones and go: “What?” He’s that kind of guy. Aloof, clueless, but not a bad dude. He always speaks gently and I always found his shy smiles and whispers at my friend to be reassuring that he’d treat her right. He always listened to what she had to say. He never pushed for her to talk more, as some other people did. When they finally started going out, I was so happy for her.
I thought, that is the perfect college couple. The puppy love you see in movies. It was perfect and I was happy that my friends were happy.
Then we started seeing less and less of my friend. She spent a lot of her time with her boyfriend. We joked that she basically lived at his dorm. It was cute, but the rest of us (even though we never said it aloud) felt a bit like we were kicked to the curb. But we understood. She had fallen hard for him.
But my friend conveyed to us, in her special way of not being offensive at all, that she couldn’t really hang out with us anymore. She had other friends, other obligations, etc. It’s been months since it has been like that. But what it finally came down to was that her boyfriend got jealous of her hanging around one of our friends, who is the only guy in our usual group of friends.
I found this a little bit understandable. She and the guy friend seems to have a close relationship. I only know because I was upset once when he had told her everything about me and him (we had a thing, confessed to each other, never went out, blah blah blah). I mean, I was jealous of their relationship too.
And so life goes on. I’d see her and say hi once in a while. And finally today, we had a lot of down time together because we were preparing for a show (cultural night sort of thing).
Since she doesn’t speak much, it’s always a bit hard to be alone with her. We did a lot of small talk... then I asked how things were with her boyfriend. I expected a usual answer, maybe I’d just coo over how perfect their relationship with. But she hesitates. Then she asks, “Do you think he’s a nice guy?”
I say, sure, but I don’t actually know him. He seems quiet and gentle. My friend then tells me how they fight sometimes, and how he gets angry. I really couldn’t imagine him being angry, but it was understandable. Couples fight.
I ask her, “Do you still like him?” To which she answers, “I like him when he’s normal.”
Big red flags and alarms start going off in my head. I dig deeper.
She tells me about how he gets jealous of, not just that one guy friend, but all guys in general. He didn’t like her talking to other guys. At all. He didn’t like what she was wearing that day, a slight v-neck. He would get angry at her at random times for talking to guys or just being jealous and angry in general. What shocked me the most was a text conversation she had screenshotted. It’s not verbatim but it went something like this:
(she has asked him to wake her up from a nap at 2)
Her: (sleepy emoticon--she probably didn’t know how else to respond)
Him: stop being to fucking lazy
Are you as outraged as I am right now?!?! I had to read this a couple of times to make sure he didn’t make some terrible typo. The gentle guy I knew? I have never heard him curse before in my life. Nobody in the fucking world can talk to my friend that way. I don’t care if you’re joking. She, nor any of my friends, nor I, will be talked to in that way. This seemed to be one of the worse things he did, but not a one-time deal.
She told me how they had fought just recently too. They keep breaking up and getting back together. She tells me he never does this in public, only when they’re alone. He curses at her like this. And if she tries to leave, he stops her. She says this in a way to convey that it means he loves her--and he doesn’t want her to go. But to me, physically holding her back from leaving doesn’t sound too nice.
She tells me about his “normal” phase, which she likes. It’s the guy she used to know. He’s cute, he’s caring, etc. It feels like she has hope that he could be like that more. But she also says that she understands when he gets angry, he can’t control it. He gets irrational because he’s insecure. Like that’s a good excuse to be a terrible human being.
Then she shows me their most recent text conversation, which she says (with a bit of a bitter edge) is his normal phase. It goes something like:
Him: (lovely emoticon) did you let any guys talk to you today?
Him: (emoticon) good (emoticon) make sure to not talk to them
As if emoticons can hide douchebaggery.
I’m just so angry. I don’t know what to do. Of course I told her to consider dumping him, but I didn’t tell her in any strict way. She trusted me enough to tell me, I don’t want to lash out at her like it was her fault. She said she has only told one other person (who has also suggested the dumping route).
How the fuck does he think he has a right to not only degrade another human being but control their freedom to do whatever the fuck they want? If he was my boyfriend I would have dumped his sorry ass a long time ago. There are not enough insults in this world to describe him. I think I’m even more angry because he is so fucking nice and is such a soft-spoken pushover in public life. My friend has dubbed him as the “Fake Gentleman”.
The worst part is about the frequent breaking up and getting back together. That’ll make it harder for them to break up for good. And they need to.
I am so worried about my friend. I want to help her. But also I do have faith that she can hold her own. She seems like a strong person, although she may look like bunnies and rainbows on the outside. I just hope that she realizes, before it’s too late, that she’s not gonna be able to “change him for the better”. He’s only going to get worse because that’s how abusive relationships work.
romaincrisis
gummygunk
snowghoul
germansingergirl
izzy806
tangentwithtanner
pixelskylines