TLDR: Friend inadvertently took the side of my abuser and caused me way more damage, now I’ve escaped I’m trying to find a way to forgive and move on.
I (43M) have a long term friend (32M ish). He is my moral compass and greatest confidant.
I was in an abusive relationship and he sided with my abuser, falling for her manipulation in the same way I did. As he saw me deteriorate from the abuse and get frustrated and scared and disrespectful from the constant torture and the feeling of being alone, and being totally stitched up by the manipulation in his conversations with her, this became further confirmation that I was the problem.
He went as far as telling both my abuser, and a close mutual friend, that I was the abuser, based on the lies he ate up from the secret conversations he had with my ex. This obviously radiated out further and gave my abuser ‘proof’ that even my best friend said I was abusing her, based on the twisted stories she told (5% truth, 95% spin, but very believable). She regularly used ‘proof’ like this to run a smear campaign, to cover her abuse, and cause me to become isolated.
He also had information from those conversations with her that would have greatly helped me understand I was being abused, information in direct contrast to what I was discussing with him at the time, and that he let me continue to believe despite knowing the truth.
It drove a great wedge between us and I want nothing more than to heal this.
I reached out and explained how I felt, and why, and gave him the monumental out of saying he’d been manipulated too and that I knew he was a victim of hers so I understood what had happened.
He basically came back and said he understood how I felt but beyond that said that despite secret conversations, withheld information, telling others I was the abuser, any assessment that he had done the wrong thing was out of line.
I literally watered down his fault to about 20%, while making my own clear apology, and he sorta threw it in my face.
How do I deal with this?
2 comments
Why do you want to heal this friendship?
Why do you want to keep someone else who abused you in your life?
Hello friend,
The best advice I’ve ever heard about this is “abusers groom all the people around them as well as they groom their victims”. It’s really so true, because they need those character witnesses in order to keep things up. So, I think your friend may have fallen for this because he is a person at the end of the day and your abuser most likely tugged on his heartstrings to get him to gain sympathy. But, this doesn’t mean you have to forgive him. If you feel like he isn’t isn’t doing enough to amend his wrongdoings, tell him. If he is genuine, he will try to fix it. But if not, you’re well within your rights to cut him off and move onto the sorts of friends who really will support you and believe your side of the story in such a situation.
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Hope that helps 🙂