If you’re getting notified about this, FYI, this post is old.
I’ll admit, I don’t think that I would’ve really known how to be a good friend to someone going through this stuff. I think I would’ve fallen into doing a number of the things my friends did. So, I am not above them. I don’t know what I’m doing… But I think potentially there are maybe some lessons here. So, I’m gonna talk about how I feel about various things that happened with my friends over this past year and a half.
[I do first just want to acknowledge and say thanks to everyone who’s done their absolute best, especially when I’ve bene such a mess.]
I love my friends. I think they always have the best intentions at heart… But there were some things that were hard for me:
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Attitudes that were hard to deal with:
[1 & 2 have sort of been covered on the blog before, in case you want to skip to number 3.]
- 1) “Yeah. Well, you know how men are.”(Or any such version of that sentence.) I’ve talked about this before. So, I’ll try not to drill this point into the ground. But, please. I don’t want to hear any version (from men or women) about how “men are just abusive” (even if those aren’t the exact words you use). That’s hurtful. Not just to me, but also to great men (whom we should expect more of than that).
- 2) “One of these days another women is going to come along, and she’s gonna know how to deal with them/What these men need is good women to shape them up.” I’ve also talked about this before. But I’m mentioning again, because it really hurt and felt really pretty harmful. I really never want to hear another woman be blamed for her own abuse/mistreatment. It’s not about a “good woman” changing an abusive man.The culture needs to shift. The abusive man needs to shift. I’m sure the woman is not a perfect person, and has things she needs to work on – but trying to figure out how to magically make a man not abusive toward her is not one of them. (p.s. random thought/side note – in the small sample size of my life, I basically only heard that thought from (mainly) New Yorkers (or, I guess maybe a coupe of midwesterners). Never from people in Southern California.So, I don’t know if parts of America have different views on what relationships are, or how men treat women, or what. But in SoCal – or at least in my circles – we didn’t expect the men to be like that, and nobody even insinuated that if only I’d “put him in his place,” or “put my foot down,” or “reigned him in” or whatever that he would’ve stopped abusing me.)
- 3) This is one I don’t think I’ve talked about a whole lot. But one thing that felt really really hard was the frustration my friends would express along the lines of “You’re Aurora! You’re not gonna just melt down because of a guy! That’s not you! Stop it. Why are you being like this?! I’ve known you for [some people can fill in this blank in with a long time, like even a decade for some]. And I’ve never seen you act like this! Get over it! Snap out of it!”And it’s like, “Okay, if this is the first time you’ve seen my act like this in a decade, then maybe instead of being annoyed, take that to mean something is really (really!) wrong, and let’s figure out what to do about that. If you need a break from me, okay. But telling me how frustrated you are isn’t helping. Don’t you understand I’m frustrated too, and that if I could “snap out of it,” I would? (This one feels like maybe the hardest one to deal with, for me (though they all were).)