When It’s Someone You Know

I feel compelled to post about this because I need to share it with someones who can understand from a feminist perspective.

I’m a second year university student, last year my roommate (potluck) [referred to as C] and I became very close friends. From the minute she walked in the door of our little room, we were friends. And within the first 7 hours of knowing her, she was fighting with her boyfriend (who was several years her senior).

He was mad because she had left her phone on vibrate in her backpack and didn’t answer when he called (I was showing her around campus because she’d only been there once before, whereas I’d spent several days just roaming around). That fight lasted about a week, and shortly thereafter he was mad because she didn’t pick up the phone fast enough when he called.

Can you see the set up? As we got closer, and I listened to C’s conversations with this guy (and held her while she cried because he told her that she was letting her sisters down by being her high school valedictorian and coming to one of the most prestiguous schools in the state), I slowly realised what was going on.

C’s boyfriend was a manipulative, possessive, and verbally/mentally abusive ass. He constantly wanted to know where she was, what she’d been doing, and who she’d been with. He got angry when she needed to take a student loan because he believed they were going to get married and she was putting him in debt. He disapproved of her considering becoming a dentist rather than a dental hygienist. He even objected to her participating in student organisations and doing anything but spending all her free time studying (when he was okay with her being at college at all).

She finally broke up with him in spring, but the drama didn’t end there. He refused to accept that she’d found a new (supportive, mature, and well rounded) boyfriend, and kept asking her to marry him. He constantly accused her of not working hard enough for their relationship (she gave him too many chances, in my opinion), betraying him, and setting herself up for ruin by not moving to his town and becoming wife and mommy at 19.

She’s broken up with new boyfriend, R, several times to try and work things out with J (abusive asshole). R, happily, has been very supportive of her need for closure, etc. But anyway…

Last week she asked me to go on a road trip, because apparently there had been another big blow up with J. Over the summer, she had let him stay at her apartment a few times, and he once cleaned her room – apparently he went through her trash and found a used condom. She denied that she knew whose it was, but had recently admitted that it was indeed hers (and R’s). He, predictably, flipped out and demanded to know who/what/when/where/how – but she maintained that if they were going to work things out they had to put the past behind them. The argument left C nearly suicidal, but eventually ended with him demanding she return some things he’d given her along with several hundred dollars.

For various reasons (mostly regarding physical safety, because he actually threatened to "not let her leave" if she went to his house), I convinced her NOT to go there. But as we drove, I learned more about their relationship and the first time they’d had (PIV) sex.

It was one of those "If you love me, you’ll do it" situations, and I have a sick gut feeling that what happened amounts to rape by coercion and browbeating. The last week I’ve been struck by how what I’ve read about people in abusive relationships is so true – how they blame themselves and believe their abuser acts from love/will change if s/he just acts right.

I don’t know if I should broach the idea that she was raped with C, because I know I can’t define her experience for her, but I desperately want to help her heal. It is small consolation that she did reveal to me that I helped her see what the real problems in her relationship were, but I’m afraid she’s just going to live with this pain and blame herself.

Survivors of abuse and rape, what did you need and want from your friends at a time like this? Friends of survivors, what can I do besides be there?