You sure put a lot of effort into that headline, subby. Kudos to you.

Well, to be fair, he offered to pay for that nose job she wanted.

I figure crazy men and women are both inclined to despondently annihilate both partners when their obsessive relationship goes wrong. They just usually swap around the order on whether to kill self or other first.

Yeah, they're not so great at thinking through a plan, either.

This guy? Instant murder/suicide. Just add water.

Umeraken Ideut: If she's anything like half the women in my life, she'll wake up in the morning, pretend nothing ever happened, and if anybody tries to bring it up, tell them "I was exaggerating. We're getting married"

Or something

/bitter about 2am phone calls from my sister telling me she can't stand his drunken ass
//she's still with his drunken ass
///get the same phone calls from a good friend of mine
////ditto

It's tough to leave and stay gone. It's hard as hell.

Frequently abused women are lacking some critical life skills, or have some problems functioning on their own that the abusive relationship masks. Frequently they also have problems because of the various ways the abuser has isolated them and tried to make them even more dependent.

So when they do leave, it's really hard to acquire those skills, it's a daily struggle to practice those skills, life is not fun while you're behind the eight ball playing catch-up. It is not fun trying to get out and date again and being afraid of men all the time. It's not fun knowing how to progress beyond saying hi to that guy in the bar and talking to him for a few minutes and not know if he's going to beat you or rape you. You know he probably won't. But you know he could. And you're scared. Every day.

Every single day.

Therapy helps. You get to where you can walk around silently reciting statistics to yourself like a protective litany that tells you the likelihood, wherever you happen to be or whatever you happen to be doing, that you're probably okay. Eventually, for common situations, you don't need the stats anymore.

Being with the abuser is passive--he fosters the illusion that if you do everything "right" it will all be okay. And it all is okay--except for when it's not, again. You're in denial and you're hiding from reality.

Being out on your own is actively difficult, because you're awake, you're aware, you're facing reality---and reality is very much not pretty. And you're facing it in the hope that someday it will get better, or easier. But you never know if it ever will. And over the months and years it can frequently be real hard to tell if it's getting better or worse. Real reality gives no guarantees that it won't just suck.

It's understandable to feel sad and bitter that they don't leave, just realize that leaving is a hell of a lot harder than it looks.

Eckyhade: What can you tell a woman with two black eyes?

Nothing, shes already been told twice.

By chance did she work at The Waffle House?

If she was beaten unconscious, there's a decent chance of that showing up on some kind of scan. Definitely with her getting medical attention right away, there should be enough physical evidence to tell the tale.

Julie Cochrane: It's understandable to feel sad and bitter that they don't leave, just realize that leaving is a hell of a lot harder than it looks.

The devil you know is also a lot less scary than the devil you don't know.

CapeFearCadaver: But 'life skills'? Ok, I get it, everyone's experiences are vastly differential; but to pat the woman (or man) on the head and tell them it's ok, you simply don't have the skills to live without being co-dependent on an abusive partner is lax at best.

I cringed at the word choice of "life skills," too, but I get what Julie Cochrane is trying to say. When you get into a relationship that is that far from normal, and that's all you know, it can be really difficult to then know what normal is and what is or isn't acceptable for normal. So you wind up second-guessing yourself or the other person on a lot, if not everything. If that makes more sense.

CapeFearCadaver: Julie Cochrane: It's tough to leave and stay gone. It's hard as hell... stuff...

For me, personally, it was the fear of "if I leave, he will kill me."

But 'life skills'? Ok, I get it, everyone's experiences are vastly differential; but to pat the woman (or man) on the head and tell them it's ok, you simply don't have the skills to live without being co-dependent on an abusive partner is lax at best.

I'm using "skills" in the sense that they use them in DBT for treating Borderline Personality Disorder. And a lot of other mental health problems get improvement out of DBT, too. (I have PTSD and bipolar.)

The DBT "skills" are very much the kind of social skills you need to not be attracted into a co-dependent relationship with an abuser, and to not let an abuser latch onto you as prey. They're skills about things like decision making, deciding whether to say yes or no to a request and how, asking for what you need, managing your emotions over the short and long term, making decisions about whether a relationship is a good one for you to be in or not, setting goals, relieving stress, managing personal crises----bunches and bunches of stuff that relates directly to being emotionally stable, functional and dealing with other people without allowing yourself to be exploited or being prone to self-defeating outbursts.

As you learn these DBT skills, you learn what a sane relationship balance of power looks like, and you learn what sane, healthy interpersonal interaction to deal with problems and issues looks like. It makes it more likely that you'll recognize an abuser from red flags, that you'll dump him, and that you'll dump him without a drunken, swearing, technicolor harpy fight.

Yes, I've been there on fear of if I left the psycho ex-bf from hell would kill me. Took some planning to get out of that. It sucked.

But saying "this victim lacks these skills" is not patronizing her. It's identifying a need to be included in her post-trauma treatment program, to reduce her chances of being re-victimized in the future.

The point is to break the cycle and stop that victim from going through the revolving door either back to the old abuser or on to a new abuser.