How Can I Save My Best Friend From Her Husband?

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

Dear Dr. NerdLove, I am a huge fan and have been following you for many years (2013?) but have never written. This is a crazy story but sadly it is true.

My cousin (age 36) who is my best friend was in an abusive relationship for 7 years where she was subjected to violence on a regular basis. One day her boyfriend said she was bad for him and left. She called me in hysterics and we went on a girl’s night out to try and soothe her. That evening she began texting men on dating apps and paid special attention to one in particular.

I figured it was harmless but then she asked me if I could take her in my truck, 3 hours away, to MOVE a man in with her. I figured she was wasted as we had been drinking. The next morning, she asked me again and I said no. Who was this guy?? It was an old coworker (age 36) she had not talked to in 5 years but messaged the night before and confessed her long-term crush for him. He was being evicted and said he had a crush on her too. She went and got him that day and I was, quite frankly, shocked out of my mind.

She moved him in with her into her dorm where he ultimately wasn’t allowed and they got kicked out. Fast forward to 10 months later she gives birth to their unplanned child and they get married. Throughout all of this she talked to me way less and I figured it was because she had started a new chapter of her life, however hasty I thought that it was.

Five years later after only scarce contact and visits she calls me crying saying he had been verbally and emotionally abusive the entire relationship and was cheating on her. He was unemployed, binge drinking, had wrecked their car while drunk driving, and was with a woman 10 years his senior. He brought that woman into their home and around their kids when my cousin wasn’t around. He degraded my cousin on a daily basis, neglected their kids, and finally, brought crack cocaine into their home. I had enough and called my cousin’s mother, who kicked him out.

After my cousin left her husband and filed for divorce, she started talking to me regularly again and seeing me more often. But it wasn’t about me, she was the happiest I had seen her in a long time. She was finally free. Then just a few months later she stopped being communicative again and blew me off for the holidays. I figured she was just busy with her family but I found out she got back with her husband.

That was two years ago and they’ve been together since and she says he no longer drinks or does crack cocaine. I was happy to hear that and didn’t think anything of it. She took up to a week to respond to simple messages and it was back to how it was when she first got married but again, I just figured she was busy.

Lately she had been very angry and complaining about every little thing so when she insulted one of my friends, I called her out on it. I said she couldn’t just behave like that. And that’s when she told me her husband only let her go out with the children, and that he hated me with a passion. That he couldn’t even say my name without experiencing rage, and that he was “jealous” of our friendship. I’ve never had a fight with the man and have only ever been friendly when around him. In fact, I’ve barely seen him, we just never spent time together in a group.

We are due for our yearly girl’s night where we stay in, drink, and watch movies, but she isn’t allowed to go. Her husband doesn’t even want her to text me which is why I haven’t heard from her as much since she got with him. I don’t know what to do. Her relationship is none of my business, but this isn’t right. Her mother already knows the situation and just wants their 3 kids to have a present father. But I feel my cousin is being abused, probably worse than she is letting on.

-Missing My Homegirl

Hoo boy. This is a shitty situation, MMH, and I’m sorry you and your cousin are going through this.

Your cousin’s relationship with her husband isn’t your business, but your cousin’s health and well-being is. She’s family, she’s your best friend, that puts caring about her and her situation pretty firmly in the side of “yes, your business”.

And I think you’re right: it sounds like this is a bad situation all around. There’s an immediate tell in that she drops out of contact as soon as she gets with this guy. Once she reaches her breaking point and reaches out to you for support, she gets back in contact with you. As soon as she is back with the same dude… crickets. Increasingly long delays in returning texts. Unwilling (or unable, per her husband’s dictates) to see you socially. Constantly on edge and stressed out and snapping at everyone. Basic pattern recognition would suggest that this is Abusive Relationship 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Though, honestly, you don’t even need that; the fact that her husband refuses to “let” her go out except when taking the kids somewhere, doesn’t like her texting you ever and apparently explodes with rage at hearing your name are all pretty solid tells that this is a bad, bad scene. Isolating people from their support networks, especially their family and close friends is a textbook abuser move. This makes it harder for their victims to access support from people who care about them and lessens the odds that anyone will tell them “hey, this guy you’re with? I’m thinking maybe he’s not such a good guy.”

I mean, let’s be real: you demonstrated this during the first go-round. Her reaching out to you lead to your reaching out to her mom, which helped tip the dominoes that lead to her divorcing his ass. The fact that he experiences violent rage at the thought of you is incredibly unsurprising; to his mind, you were directly responsible for your cousin leaving him. Small wonder that he’s determined to cut her off from you; you’re the greatest threat to his control.

So, I think you’re right and you should trust the way your Spidey-sense is tingling; she’s in a bad place, and it’s not going to get better.

The problem is… well, honestly, there’s not much you can do, here. Your cousin’s a grown-ass woman and she’s capable of making her own bad decisions. And to be fair: she seems very determined to make them. I’m trying to be generous, because leaving a violent and abusive relationship can fuck some people up, and I doubt that she was thinking terribly clearly at the time. But even so… leaping from a violent and abusive relationship to immediately confessing a crush to a guy she hadn’t seen in years and then moving him into her dorm room suggests that maybe she’s not so great with making decisions.  

I don’t even mean that she leapt from one abuser to another; I can all but guarantee that he didn’t show his true colors until later. I just mean that this is a series of very poor choices, made at a time when she really shouldn’t have been making them. You don’t say how long it took between leaving her abusive ex to connecting with this dude to shacking up with him, but it sounds like it was a matter of days. Which, if that’s the case, really would imply that either she has seriously bad judgement or impulse control issues.

I mean, she moved him into her dorm room. Call me an optimist, but I would think that “hey, he’s not a student here, maybe I should see if this is even an option” should’ve bubbled up to the surface at least once before he was filling out change of address forms.

Now, to be absolutely clear: I’m not saying that she brought this on herself or that she deserves what happened to her. Nobody deserves to be abused, period, end of. Physically, emotionally, psychologically, no way and no how. This does, however, suggest a pattern of behaviors and decision making that’s going to make it difficult for her to extract herself from this situation. As a result, I think you are going to have to be ready for this to be a long project.

The thing is, her bad decisions are going to be one of the reasons why she stays with him. Part of why people have a hard time leaving abusive relationships is often, they don’t want to admit that they’re the sort of person who would “let” themselves be abused. And those scare-quotes around “let” are deliberate; a lot of folks see being a victim of an abuser as a character flaw or moral failing. It’s the sort of thing where you can, in the abstract, say “I’d never fall for this, I would never let someone treat me this way, I’m too smart/independent/cool/whatever for that.” But once it’s happening to them… well, admitting that they are the sort of person who could fall victim to an abuser is a bitter pill to swallow, and so many people won’t. Not at first.

People are very good at coming up with all sorts of plausible reasons and excuses for their abuser’s behavior and why it’s not “really” abuse. It’s hard to own up to – believe me, I know – and it’s harder to believe that someone you love and care about could treat you this way. And to make matters worse, abusers are very good at displacing blame, pulling a DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim and offender) or selling a “but baby, I’ve changed!” narrative.

That’s why I wish I were surprised that she went back to him after the way he mistreated her so badly the first time. Unfortunately, this part of the cycle is incredibly common. A lot of abusers will circle back around to their victims and make a lot of noise about how they’ve seen the light and now this time things will be different and doesn’t he deserve a second chance? And to someone who wants to believe that their partner loves them and wants to be better… well, those are very seductive things to hear. Especially from the father of your children.

I bring this up because, like last time, she’s going to be with him until she’s ready to leave. At some point, she will hit her breaking point and she will decide that enough is enough and it’s time to get the fuck out. There isn’t really any way for you to speed up this process; trying to force the issue is more likely to make her dig in her heels and give him more leverage to cut her contact with you.

Now, the thing I’m most concerned about is your aunt/her mother. Getting her involved was key to helping your cousin to get away from this dude last time. The fact that she seems to think that emotional abuse and dictatorial control over her daughter is an acceptable price to pay for her grandkids to have a father in their lives is… worrying. That cuts out a very important and influential voice. If she’s erring on the side of “…but think of the children!” if and when your cousin comes to her with complaints about his behavior, that’s going to be more pressure for her to stay instead of divorcing this guy so hard his ancestors split up retroactively.

This is going to be incredibly difficult and frustrating for you, but the best move you have here is to just wait. Putting pressure on your cousin to leave is more likely to hit like a threat to her sense of self – that belief of “I’m not the sort of person who gets abused” that I mentioned. When we feel a part of our identity get challenged like that, we tend to dig our heels in and double-down, rather than admit people are right. It’s stupid, I know, but as a species, we’d rather stay in a shitty situation than face the humiliation of admitting that we were wrong and other people were right.

The best thing – the only thing, really – that you can do for your cousin is to make sure that she knows that she can always reach out to you, to talk, to vent, to ask for advice or for help, no questions asked and no judgement given. You can even try to make sure she has ways of reaching you that her husband is less likely to find or take away from her. Shit, you could always take a tip from high-schoolers and use a shared Google doc as an ersatz WhatsApp or Discord server.

If she asks your opinion or your advice, be careful in how you deliver it. Situations like this tend to work better when other people think that their decision was ultimately their choice. You can express concern – “You don’t seem happy, lately”, or “I haven’t’ heard from you in forever, I’ve been missing you!”, and you can ask leading questions like “why would he be so against a family night out?”. Your goal is to plant seeds whenever and wherever possible and hope that they grow.

The important thing is that if the day comes that she does decide that she needs to leave him (again), that you do not give her any form of shit. No “FINALLY,” no “Praise Jesus, at last”, no “it’s about time”, nothing. That’s precisely the sort of thing that she’s afraid of hearing, and even the slightest hint of judgement or criticism is likely to push her back to him. All she should hear is “What do you need? I can be at your door in X hours.”

If and when this happens, she’s going to need the love and support of her friends and family, and reassurance that she’s not an idiot, a victim or someone who brought this on herself.

And if you happen to encourage her to take a little more time to recover, re-settle herself and maybe take a break from dating and meeting men… well, that’s not a bad idea, either.

I hope things improve for your cousin soon, MMH. Write back and let us know how things are going.   

Good luck.