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Ask Dr. NerdLove: Was I Too Toxic?

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Dear Doc

This is unusual, because after reading all your blog posts about toxic relationships and such I’d like your insight on my previous toxic relationship. The twist : I think I was the toxic one.

I was in a relationship with a girl for 3 years. She was madly in love with me in the beginning and would do almost anything to please me (mistake #1). I was less into her at that stage but I figured hey what the hell she’s cool to hang with and the sex is great so why not. There were things about her I didn’t like and what I didn’t like I fixed by giving her my advice and of course she changed those things, because of mistake #1.

Her family didn’t mesh well with me mostly because some of them would treat her badly. Never did I take her away from them out of fear or jealousy. I took her away because they would degrade her in their drunkenness in front of 30 other people and I couldn’t handle that. So I started to keep her away from them.

The same applied to her friends. The one’s I judged as irresponsible drunks I kept her from and when she wanted to hang out with the mature ones who had normal lives and wanted to take her to coffee I said “Go and enjoy yourself” and didn’t go with her so as to give her some space.

I did always use the “Then we should break up” when arguments go heated and she told me that I was the only person who made her so upset and angry that she would start throwing things around. I think my being calm when she was losing it made her even more angry.

Eventually it ended and now she wants nothing to do with me. I miss her dearly and recognize that I’m not in a good place to make a informed decision about whether it was in fact a good relationship with bad parts that I’d like to fix or if it was terrible.

I want to know whether I should blame myself. Was she just not the right type of woman for me? Do I have to be with someone who has mature friends and a loving family ? Did I ruin her life and leave her with more bitterness than I could ever make up for ? Finally, is there a way to move on without always feeling like I should go back and try to make amends ? (I did contact her to try and just set up a normal coffee meeting where we could chat about normal things, because I figured “talk is cheap” and saying “I see where I went wrong” was less useful than showing it but she refused and I could hear the bitterness in her voice so I accepted the no and said goodbye)

Blaming himself

Let me sum this one up in advance BH, because I’m pretty sure you know what I’m already about to say:

Holy hopping sheep-shit YES you were being the toxic one.

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s break this down a little, shall we? This is going to be harsh but honestly, I’m not sure you quite get what happened here.

Let’s start with mistake #1. This wasn’t that your girlfriend was madly in love with you and would do anything to please you, it’s the way you took advantage of it. “There were things about her I didn’t like, and what I didn’t like I fixed by giving her my advice and of course she changed those things.” 

Um… do I need to point out how incredibly goddamn creepy and manipulative that sounds? Because that sounds unbelievably creepy and manipulative. People are not repair projects. Being in a relationship doesn’t mean that you get to customize someone to fit your specifications. Nobody – not Brad Pitt, not Drake, not Taylor Swift, not Nicki Minaj, nobody – gets 100% of what they want in a relationship. You get 60%, 70%, even 80% and you round up to 100% because that percentage is so damn awesome that you’re willing to accept the rest as the price of entry. If you’re not willing to accept those imperfections and flaws, then you break up and find someone whose flaws and imperfections you can accept. You don’t try to mold them into the perfect person as though they don’t have a will or personality of their own.

See, it’d be one thing if, say, she’d come to you and said “You know what, I’m not happy with X part of my life, would you help me fix this?” That’s part of being a supportive partner. It’d be equally a understandable if it was a case of maintaining your boundaries and saying “I don’t appreciate it when you treat me like X”. However, unless you miswrote things, that isn’t what you were doing.  Telling her “I don’t like X part of your life and if you loved me, you’d fix it,” and you weren’t staging an intervention for her alcoholism or substance abuse or something equally destructive, then holy crap this is starting to border on emotional abuse.

And I don’t use that term lightly, because of what you say next:

“Her family didn’t mesh well with me mostly because some of them would treat her badly. Never did I take her away from them out of fear or jealousy. I took her away because they would degrade her in their drunkenness in front of 30 other people and I couldn’t handle that. So I started to keep her away from them.”

Which you then follow up with:

“The one’s I judged as irresponsible drunks I kept her from and when she wanted to hang out with the mature ones who had normal lives and wanted to take her to coffee I said “Go and enjoy yourself” and didn’t go with her so as to give her some space.”

Want to know why I’m singling these out? Because isolating someone from their friends and family is one of the key hallmarks of an abusive relationship!! Dude, I’m sorry if her family were a bunch of drunk assholes, but it’s not your place to take it upon yourself to decide shit for her! You can advise. You can give your opinion. You can tell her that you don’t like how her family treats her. You can suggest that it might be healthier for her to not spend time with family members who’re going to treat her like shit and encourage her to stand up for herself and her boundaries. But “keeping her away from them” is not your call.
Same for isolating her from her friends, because her friends don’t meet your approval. I’m sorry you don’t like her friends. Too goddamn bad. You don’t get to tell someone who they are and aren’t allowed to hang out with. Again, I refer you back to the Duluth Power and Control Wheel:

It’s right there: “Use Isolation – control what she does, who she sees, and who she talks to” and “limits her outside involvement”.

The fact that you were doing this out of supposed “concern” for her well being instead of jealousy doesn’t make it better or any less coercive.

“I did always use the “Then we should break up” when arguments go heated and she told me that I was the only person who made her so upset and angry that she would start throwing things around.”

Remember when I was talking about abusive Red Pill tactics like “dread game”? This is an example right here. Constantly holding the state of the relationship over her head is not a way of handling an argument in a relationship, it’s a way of controlling someone. That’s not a relationship, that’s someone trying to train someone into never complaining. No, her throwing things isn’t the best way of handling things either but Jesus fucking Christ, I’m not entirely surprised that it would escalate to this level.

“I think my being calm when she was losing it made her even more angry.”

Or maybe it’s because you were constantly threatening to break up with her instead of trying to resolve the argument.

Here’s a free hint: arguments are about engagement. Standing there and acting like the stern, disapproving parent isn’t how you resolve things even if you’re 100% in the right. All that’s going to do is piss people off even more.

Eventually it ended and now she wants nothing to do with me.

GOOD.

I miss her dearly and recognize that I’m not in a good place to make a informed decision about whether it was in fact a good relationship with bad parts that I’d like to fix or if it was terrible.

It was terrible. And while she may have had her flaws, there is literally nothing in this telling me that this was a case of “picking the wrong partner.”
Well… at least not for you. For her, it very much was.

I want to know whether I should blame myself.

YES.

Do I have to be with someone who has mature friends and a loving family ?

Dude, if you think that was the problem with your relationship, you really missed the point.

Did I ruin her life and leave her with more bitterness than I could ever make up for?

I couldn’t say about “ruining” her life, but you were definitely an abusive, controlling piece of shit to her.

Finally, is there a way to move on without always feeling like I should go back and try to make amends ?

Here’s the thing about making amends: it’s only useful if trying to make amends won’t cause even more harm… and that’s exactly what trying to contact her again will do. I simply don’t believe that your desire to make amends is about actually helping her heal so much as an attempt to salve your conscience and convince yourself that you’re not the bad guy here.

No, if you want to move on, you need to change.
The good news is that you’re at least starting to question your behavior. That’s how change starts… but that’s not where it ends. Where it ends is after you’ve gotten help to recognize not just how your behavior was abusive but why and how to start taking responsibility for it. And that’s not going to be a quick and easy transformation.

Here’s what you need to do: you need to call the National Domestic Abuse Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE and talk with some of the counselors there. They’re there to listen, to help and to make recommendations as to how and brainstorm with you to find possible courses of action. But you need to be completely honest; giving excuses or rationalizations is only going to make any progress take longer.

Here are signs – adapted from author Lundy Bancroft – that you’re making progress:

  • Admitting fully to what you have done
  • Stopping excuses and blaming
  • Accepting responsibility and recognizing that abuse is a choice
  • Identifying patterns of controlling behavior used
  • Identifying the attitudes that drive  abuse
  • Accepting that overcoming abusiveness is a decades-long process and not declaring yourself “cured”
  • Not demanding credit for improvements you’ve made
  • Not treating improvements as vouchers to be spent on occasional acts of abuse (ex. “I haven’t done anything like this in a long time, so it’s not a big deal)
  • Developing respectful, kind, supportive behaviors
  • Changing how you respond to their partner’s (or former partner’s) anger and grievances
  • Changing how you act in heated conflicts
  • Accepting the consequences of actions (including not feeling sorry for yourself about the consequences, and not blaming your partner or children for them)

You’re admitting that you’ve made mistakes. That’s a strong first step. Now you need to take the next one and get help. It’s going to take time – a lot of time. It’s going to take work. But you can do better. You can be better.

Good luck.

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  • so then, if one is in a similar scenario (say, your significant other has an awful, toxic family) and that's a dealbreaker for you, what do you do? Because telling them to leave their awful family is toxic, and telling them that a toxic family is a dealbreaker is toxic. So how does deal with that situation?

    • embertine

      Protecting your own boundaries and explaining to your partner why you don't think their family treats them well, defining how much you are prepared to interact with said family, leaving if that boundary is crossed. You're allowed your own dealbreakers, and if being dragged into someone else's Poisonous Soup of Unending Awfulness is one of them (and I feel you if so), then you know what to do.

    • rebootI730

      Tell them that you will only spend X number of hours a year with them (and X can be 0)

      • embertine

        In fact I think you should exactly phrase it like that: "X = the number of hours I will spend with your family/year. Where X=0, we are cool."

    • LordAzazel

      Well, I'd say that saying that /you/ wanting nothing to do with their family isn't toxic. You still own your own time, and not wanting to spend it with alcoholics is just enforcing your boundaries. You just shouldn't make decisions for your SO.

      Although I can understand how hard it is to take a step back when you know that certain people are a bad influence in someone's life. Especially if someone takes advice as law, so you couldn't even discuss whether she would be better off without them without her taking it as "you should break off with your family".

      In the end if you can't deal with it, just leave. Not only threaten to leave, not lie that everything's okay and stay, not go back if she then breaks with her family to win you back, just leave.

      • enail0_o

        I think maybe a useful way to think of it is, you get a say in behaviors that involve you: If you are being asked to be around her destructive family, you get to say no. If shewants to be around her destructive family, that's not your call to make. If every time she goes to see her family, she comes home stressed out and takes it out on you, you get to say that she has to find a way not to take it out on you, because that's the part that affects you. If she comes home stressed out, but treats you fine, you can let her know that you're worried about her, but you don't get to decide whether or not the stress is worth it for her, because that's about her, not about you.

        But keep in mind that it's only behaviors that affect you. If things she does unrelatedly to you make you have feelings, because you care about her, those are yours to manage, not hers.

        • I'd even take it a step further than this: If she comes home stressed out, but treats you fine, but her stress is stressing you out, you can decide that the price of admission is too high for you and say, "No." You can even, at that point, say, "Look, every time you come home from your parents', you are obviously miserable and hurting and raw and bleeding. I want to help, but I don't know how, and it's making both of us unhappy. Is there anything I can do to make it easier, or have you thought about what you're getting out of these meetings? Because this is kind of an us situation now, not just a you situation, and I want to help."

    • Then you leave. Or you don't: you establish boundaries and say, "Look, I know they're your family, but I don't think they treat you well. It hurts me to watch them hurting you, and I am going to stop going along when you see them." But you don't use threats and coercion to make them stop seeing them.

      The seesaw between two loyalties is brutal and horrible and feels like being torn in half. It's easier by far to get dumped and be done than balanced between two forces.

      I will add, because I think it's there in what the Doc wrote, but I don't know how explicit it got: leaving someone because of differences, or toxic family, or bad friend groups, or because you don't like their toenails, or because of anything else in the universe, is not toxic or abusive. THREATENING to leave someone, over and over again, in order to effect their behavior, is toxic and abusive.

      • raindancing

        "Leaving someone because of differences, or toxic family, or bad friend groups, or because you don't like their toenails, or because of anything else in the universe, is not toxic or abusive. THREATENING to leave someone, over and over again, in order to effect their behavior, is toxic and abusive."

        Yup. That really needs to be on a billboard or something.

      • Beth

        Yesyesyes!

        If you have a partner, whom you love, with a toxic family whose influence is damaging to her/him — your partner will have a lot more success at fighting free of the toxic mess if you're supportive and healing. If your relationship — your love and support — feeds your partner's self-confidence and sense of self-worth, she'll be in a better place to step away from the family toxins, and you'll be able to share in that growing health.

        My own parents deliberately moved away from my mother's toxic family — and they made that decision together. My father didn't haul her off across the country "for her own good".

      • eris523

        Put up that billboard in my home city, please.

        I tried for months to get a boyfriend to recognize this. I have a friend I've known for almost 25 years who is a self-acknowledged, high-functioning sociopath. I won't get into why I maintain that friendship and think it's okay to do so; I do, and I do. Twenty-five years is a lot of experience to base a decision on.

        A bare couple of months after I started seeing a new guy, this friend went through a life-altering rough patch. He leaned on my shoulder a little, then called to say he didn't think he should do that any more because he could feel himself… destabilizing?… and didn't want to be around me if he couldn't promise himself and me not to be harmful to me. I told him I appreciated the warning. Then things got even worse, and my friend texted looking to lean on me more.

        I was with the new beau when that happened and had to explain why the text upset me so much. I got as far as roughing out the situation, but not what I was thinking of doing about it, when the beau broke in with "I want you to call him right now and tell him never to contact you again. No better, call him and then give the phone to me."

        This turned into a 2-hour fight about (on my side) him not having the right to make that decision for me and certainly not to take it on himself to "protect" me from my friend or insert himself into our private communications to make my goodbyes for me and (on his side) how he had been through this with another girlfriend and "couldn't put himself through that again". He demanded that I promise to have no contact or he'd break up with me. I told him I wasn't going to make that promise, certainly not then on the spot in the middle of high emotion, and not ever for any reasons but my own. He then amended it to "You don't have to declare no contact to him, but if you ever have contact with him again, this relationship is over. I'm just protecting myself and you."

        No, there's nothing to protect yourself from yet, and I can take care of myself. If there ever is, you have the right to demand I mitigate the harm to you, or to leave the arena in which the harm occurs — even if that's our relationship. But brinkmanship is brinkmanship (is emotional coercion) regardless of the motives behind it or the means toward which it's employed — and ends do not justify means.

        • "You don't have to declare no contact to him, but if you ever have contact with him again, this relationship is over. I'm just protecting myself and you."

          The phrasing certainly is unacceptable, but if he'd said something like "hey, I've had an ex who went through something similar, and I just can't put myself through that again, if I see this situation heading that way, I can't stay with you" would be acceptable (as well as unlikely to be said in the heat of the moment.

          • eselle28

            I don't think it's acceptable there, either. She'd already said she intended to stay in contact with her friend. At that point, the "if" language ignores her decision and tries to set up an ax hanging over her head. I think all that's left at that point is saying he's not willing to be in the relationship going forward.

          • I guess I was thinking in the 2nd scenario, it's no longer "you can't have any contact with them", but rather "I just want you to know this is making me wary" hopefully immediately followed by concrete examples of what would result in the situation heading down that road. Ideally "don't have contact with him" never would have been brought up in the first place, but since it had, I can see where you're coming from.

          • eris523

            Later conversations about it did head a bit down that road, but without the healthier aspects you describe.

            * He never gave examples of behavior or events he would not be comfortable with. The line he drew had nothing to do with effects or actions. It wasn't even my continuing to have contact; it was my willingness to have contact. If I did not renounce the very possibility, he was going to be unhappy even if contact itself never happened. He did later try to amend this to something softer, but could not specify what would be acceptable or unacceptable and in that very conversation came right back to "Are you willing ever to have contact with him again? Because that's where my boundary is."

            * The argument had very little to do with my friend, whom the guy had never met or even spoken to online. They never had any contact with each other in any way. The argument was about my willingness to be friends with a person who has been very toxic to others but never (and often the reverse) to me, and whether I'm a sucker for thinking he'll continue to treat me differently.

            * The complaint was not that the guy didn't want to be exposed to my friend or even to the effects my friend actually has on me; the complaint was that the guy didn't want to "invest" in the kind of person who will be friends with a sociopath. Ultimately, it wasn't about anything real that did or did not happen, but about whether I was "the kind of person" who would let the guy lay down rules for me to make himself feel safer, the only alternative he offered to being the kind of person who was going to expose him to predicted heartache he didn't want to go through again. (Note that the effects on me of giving up a close and supportive friend when he demonstrably needed me most did not weigh against the catastrophizing predictions.)

            * More specifically, the point was brought up whether he would ever be able to "trust" me if I wouldn't "defend" myself (by cutting off as toxic a person who has been nothing but supportive of me for 25 years on the say-so of a guy who had been dating me for about two months). I pointed out that if he was worried about assessing my ability to make decisions, he was never going to be able to gather information toward that assessment if he opened the conversation by telling me what my decision should be. If doing as I'm told is what builds trust, then no… he probably shouldn't "trust" me.

          • thathat

            I dunno, I think without the "and you" at the end, it wouldn't be the worst phrasing. I remember my BFF's then-girlfriend basically saying the same thing to him when they were mending from him having cheated on her with his unstable ex. "If you contact this person again, our relationship is over" to me is boundary setting.

            Of course, it depends on context, and eris's context seems very different, since it's not based on any experiences or problems they'd had as a couple, but on the boyfriend's preconceived notions (maybe a little closer to a new SO saying that if you talked to any of your exes, that would make them uncomfortable because they'd been cheated on once before, so if you did they were gone).

            I agree with eselle's assessment of it–eris had already said her piece, and he was trying to keep pushing.

          • eris523

            Re: "If you contact this person again, our relationship is over" — I've said that before too, and also about the person my ex-husband cheated on me with.

            A clarifying distinction here is that I was saying that about a person who made repeated attempts (that she herself acknowledged) to hurt me and to seduce him — she was actively malicious toward me and actively unconcerned about the boundaries of his relationship with me.

            Another clarifying distinction is that I asked it of him as part of an answer to what would help me to rebuild trust with him, and it wasn't a "never", it was "for the foreseeable future, until we have rebuilt this broken trust".

          • Jess

            So, this was actually a very helpful post to me, because I was trying to figure out my own approach to this. I've definitely said to my husband, "This person cannot be in our lives anymore" – like the guy we found out had raped and abused his girlfriend – but I couldn't quite articulate why it works in a non-toxic way in our relationship. Here are a few things that make it work.

            – We agree on moral and ethical norms, and that we want a community full of people we respect and admire.
            – Because I'm willing to be the hard-ass in our relationship, my husband has explicitly given me the job of policing boundaries. He's the wise and perceptive one, so part of his role is to gather information and be understanding – but when someone crosses the line, he actively wants me to be the one drawing the boundaries and enforcing them.
            – He knows that there's some room to negotiate "this person cannot be in our lives" if need be. For example, I won't condone or endorse the aforementioned dude's behavior, and I won't extend any benefits (social or otherwise) to this person, but if my husband wanted to find a way to relate to this guy that didn't do any of the above, then I'd be unhappy but okay.
            – When we talk about things that might make us leave the relationship, we are both as honest as we can be. For example, I told him very early on that if he ever hit me for any reason, I would leave – period, end of story, no negotiation. But for, say, befriending Mr. Rapist, I would say something more like, "I don't understand how this behavior could be compatible with the man I think you are." If he changed so much that he wasn't the man I love anymore, then I might leave him – but that's something that would require a lot of thought and reflection, and I would also be open to him showing me how it is in fact compatible in ways I didn't see.

          • eris523

            That second version, as you phrase it, would still be alarming, but an acceptable level of alarming. Specifically, it allows for waiting to see what actually happens rather than demanding I act preemptively.

            However, that's not what was said. Aspects of it, like framing it as a personal boundary he was drawing, did come into it, but there was no "wait to see" (or "if things head that way"). In the heat of the moment, it was a demand that I allow an angry guy I'd dated for about two months to stand in for my last goodbye contact with a friend of 25 years. In a calmer discussion weeks later, it tried to turn into "wait and see" but instead came back to angrily pressuring me to say right then whether I thought I might ever have contact with my friend again.

            I'm sympathetic to the plea for special consideration of feelings the guy does not want to have again, and open to negotiating what specifics he would and would not be willing and able to stick around through, and what I should carefully avoid exposing him to. But no such specifics were given, and every attempt to draw them out to ease the situation came back to "I am not willing to be invested in someone who is willing to be friends with a guy like I imagine your friend to be", and "I want you to turn your back completely on a real-life friend of over half your lifetime to assuage my fears that bad things I won't specify might happen."

            At the risk of making this story too confusing, what really sets off for contrast everything I don't like about that conversation is what the sociopathic friend had told me a few years before, the day he met my eventually-abusive then-boyfriend (not mentioned before in this story): "I know you won't let me tell you who to see or be friends with, and it probably won't do any good for me to tell you all the reasons I don't like this guy. I just want you to know that I think he's really going to hurt you, and when he does, I'll be here for you." (And when it happened, he was.)

            Result: the boyfriend, in the process of drawing his boundaries, was more controlling and manipulative than the sociopath he was determined to protect himself and me from.

      • username_6916

        How do we draw a distinction between someone making a threat in order to effect someone else's behavior, and a statement of fact that yes, if you do X, I will leave? It seems that everyone here says the latter is perfectly acceptable, but the former isn't, but I'm not sure how they are functionally different.

        I mean, saying "yes, if you have sexual a sexual relationship with someone outside the relationship without discussing it with me first, I will leave" is likely to have an effect on someone's behavior, no? Yet, I doubt that saying this would be considered toxic or abusive. Would it?

        Is it the nature of the request? We consider asking for fidelity to be a reasonable request, is saying the same thing thing about having friends of a certain race, or reading certain things online an abusive act? Is this solely because the request at the heart of it is considered less reasonable?

        • eselle28

          I don't think it is the nature of the request. I think it's mostly the circumstances. Nuances vary a bit, but I'm more inclined to say something is a valid statement of a boundary when it's done calmly and not during an argument, when the statement is made once or seldom, and when the person setting the boundary actually enforces it. Extra points if it's discussed before the situation actually occurs. I'm more inclined to say something is a threat if it's said in anger and if it's frequently repeated but never backed up by the person actually leaving.

          I think the cheating mandate could be an abusive threat if said constantly to a partner who's said they have no intent of being monogamous and if it's never followed up by actually ending the relationship. I think the gross, racist request to only socialize with people of certain races could be something other than an abusive threat if it was stated calmly, at the beginning of a relationship. (I'd say although the latter isn't a threat, any broad demand about who your partner can be in contact with is a bit of a red flag to me, though.)

        • eris523

          Personally, I draw that distinction this way:

          * a statement about the parameters of a relationship I'm willing to be in is okay: I will agree to (or require) fidelity within monogamy, I will agree to (or require) polyamory with veto powers, I will agree to (or require) dating only white supremacists. Then negotiate specifics. Note that these are not threats; they are negotiations.

          * a statement about specific behaviors I know ahead of time I'm not willing to put up with is okay: Lying to me is a relationship-ender, breaking my stuff in a fit of anger is a relationship-ender, watching new Doctor Who first with anyone but me is a relationship-ender. The other person doesn't have to agree to those, but has a chance to agree or bow out unwilling. These are also negotiations.

          * a statement about specific behaviors that I did not or could not foresee, but which have occurred and need addressing is okay: If you lie to me again it's over, if you break my stuff again it's over, if you watch Doctor Who with someone else again it's over. Note that these are not threats; they are reactions to something that has occurred with predicted consequences of re-occurrence. Also important is meaning it — if I actually leave a guy for watching Doctor Who with someone else, regardless of my reasons and how valid or not they might be, it was a boundary rather than a threat. If he says "that's unreasonable and I'm not going to agree to it, so it's over" and I argue that he should stay and give me what I want, it was only a bluff. If he keeps doing it and I keep only saying that, I'm not actually trying to set a firm boundary, I'm just engaging in brinkmanship to get the behavior I want.

          * a statement that I will leave if I don't get to shape my partner's behavior or person to suit me is not okay: If you don't start dressing better it's over, if you insult me in front of my family again it's over, if you keep contact with friends I don't like it's over.

          Note that everything in that last category could be restated as "Here's what you often do, here's how it makes me feel, here's my statement that I'm not willing to feel that way any more, so now let's talk about mitigating that effect on me." Even "I'm not willing to stick around and keep feeling this, so let's talk about how that effect can stop" has its place. Claiming there's a problem but then offering one and only one acceptable solution "or I'm outta here" isn't trying to protect against the effects, it's trying to coerce a specific behavior I think wouldn't be agreed to if I asked without special leverage.

          • eselle28

            I agree with much of this, but I did a fairly sharp stop at "if you insult me in front of my family again it's over." I can see how the other two things on that list are broad areas in which a person can easily be held to an impossible to meet vague standard, but insulting someone in front of their family seems specific (it's a fairly narrow range of behavior in the presence of one group of people) and unforseeable. This may be because I had a discussion once with a boyfriend where I told him that I objected to him making jokes at my expense in front of his friends and that it was a dealbreaker for me if he kept doing it. It didn't strike me as trying to shape his behavior in a larger sense, and it apparently wasn't hard for him to change, since he instantly stopped doing it. I also don't feel it was abusive – my tone wasn't threatening and his response wasn't the begging to preserve the relationship that threats generally produce.

          • eris523

            I apologize for choosing that example clumsily. You're right, that is a specific behavior the way I worded it. I was actually masking a specific example I had in mind with vaguer wording, and the mask altered the meaning too far. Your interpretation of what I did say is dead-on valid, and I didn't see it until you pointed it out.

          • eselle28

            No apology needed! I'd wondered if you might be thinking about one set of facts that did fit the theme of broad attempts at control while I was thinking about my particular experience.

        • Reine_margaux

          It's the same kind of distinction between I statements and accusations. "I don't feel comfortable being in a relationship with someone who is not monogamous" and "You can't do that" will have different effects on a person. You can't tell someone that they aren't allowed to see their family or their friends. You can totally say that you, personally for x-y-z reasons can't spend time with them. You can tell the person that you're concerned for them, that you're afraid of the effect their family has on them. You can't tell them that you'll leave them if they continue to see their family.

        • kath

          I think the intent is important as well (and therefore, what is an acceptable answer). If you are telling them so that they know, and then do what you said you would, that's clear communication and isn't, in itself, coercive (though if you did other manipulative things while you also stated a boundary you did indeed enforce, those other things would still be manipulative. Luckily, you have also enforced a boundary which results in you leaving, so you are both out of that situation) .The thing you are trying to do (coerce someone into behaving how you want vs. letting them know something is a dealbreaker so that if they do it, they are fully aware the relationship will end) is key, and will impact how you respond to them not following your request. If you are trying to coerce specific behavior, "I can't do that for you, so we're ending this relationship" is not an acceptable answer. If you're stating a boundary, it may be an answer that makes you very sad, but it's acceptable.

          (Also, of course, the consequence for someone overstepping a boundary is ceasing to be in the relationship with them, and possibly telling them, without belittling them, that you did not appreciate that behavior. It's not beating them up, killing them, emotionally abusing them, etc. I think that matters too.)

    • eselle28

      In addition to what's already been said about setting up boundaries about how much contact you'll have with their family, I think it's good to be very aware of how much time you're asking them to spend with yours. The usual tradeoff in a long term relationship is that each person does a certain amount of putting up with each other's family, even though most families have some issues and all have their quirks and inexplicable traditions. If your partner's family is so toxic that you can't do that or can only do a very small amount of it, then that tradeoff can't happen.

      I think where things start to look dicey to me is when the partner with the comparatively more functional family uses that as an excuse to reallocate the time they'd normally spend with the other person's family to their own family's events. "I can't spend holidays with your family" is reasonable. Adding "…so we'll just spend all of the major ones with my family" is selfish at best and manipulative and controlling at worst. I think if you've declared your partner's family too toxic to be around, you then have some responsibility for setting up some holidays that are vacations or the two of you forming your own traditions and making sure your family obligations aren't weighing on them too heavily.

      • I disagree with everything except "making sure your family obligations aren't weighing on them too heavily." I would agree you have a responsibility to do that, but not by automatically being around your own family less. On the other hand, the other person also absolutely has the responsibility to be honest with you about how your family obligations affect them. If "hey, i know we've been spending a lot of time with my family lately (/have a lot of plans with them in the future), how do you feel about that" is met with "it's great, I love your family", I'm going to take them at their word. If I can't trust what they say about something as simple as that, why are we even in a relationship.

        • eselle28

          I think certainly think people should talk about these issues, but I disagree as to the burden or your suggested way of presenting the issue. Whether or not the reasons for avoiding a partner's family are valid, the situation ends up being one in which one person is going to two sets of family events while the other person is only attending one. As such, I think it's reasonable to assign the extra work of keeping an eye on whether this arrangement isn't unfair to the person who has less on their plate.

          I certainly wouldn't advocate anyone making these decisions automatically and without communicating (many of them are things that have to be talked about by necessity anyway), but I don't think your script is one that makes it very easy for the other person to express negative feelings. I would instead recommend something more like, "We spent last Christmas at my parents'. Do you want to do something different this time around and take a trip, or would you rather do that again?" or "Mother's Day is coming up. Would you rather swing by my parents' place, or should we split up and see our families separately?" Offering alternatives makes it a lot easier for someone to control the uneven family obligations load.

          Beyond basic emotional workloads, I think there's another reason that the person who's not up for interaction with their partner's family should take on this work: it keeps the incentives right. Dealing with other people's families can be annoying, and someone who's selfish or lazy has some incentives to label tolerable relatives as off limits because it's easier. Someone who's manipulative and controlling generally prefers that their partner gives up their independent life and becomes a side kick to their own. Given this, I'm a lot more likely to assume good faith if someone who objects to socializing with their partner's family is willing to take on the more negative bits of that, and more likely to assume bad faith if they expect their partner to tag along or object.

          • Oh, ok that makes more sense now, I was reading it as cutting one family out completely, in which case both would be attending only one set of family events. Your scenario (to a lesser extent, basically what happened was we would go see her family whenever she wanted, but whenever we'd go see my family she'd want to leave early or skip it entirely) was a major factor in my last breakup, so I get what you're saying. I was looking at it more from the perspective of "we agree that this side of the family is toxic and we want to avoid them as much as possible"

          • eselle28

            Oh, yeah, I was thinking specifically of a case where the other partner wanted to maintain ties with their family, whether or not they agreed they were toxic. Basically, the situation that I think can veer into abuse territory is if one partner won't see the other's family, and then has a cousin's wedding next weekend, a family cookout the one after, and then it's Thanksgiving so of course they're going up to that person's grandparents' house, and then it's a sibling's birthday in December, and of course splitting up during Christmas isn't an option because people who are in love want to spend the holidays together…and at some point, the second person doesn't really have the energy to keep up their own family ties and lets them dwindle. That's a pretty extreme version, but I've seen it happen in various degrees to quite a few people, especially in situations where some contact is tolerated like yours.

            I do think that in cases where the second person has sworn off their family as well that it still gets a bit complicated. That person might have a family of choice or not want to be quasi-adopted by their partner's family, or they might welcome attending all that family's events. But I think the conversation is a little different when both people agree that one set of relatives needs to be avoided completely.

          • "if one partner won't see the other's family, and then has a cousin's wedding next weekend, a family cookout the one after, and then it's Thanksgiving so of course they're going up to that person's grandparents' house, and then it's a sibling's birthday in December, and of course splitting up during Christmas isn't an option because people who are in love want to spend the holidays together"

            That is almost word for word what happened to me. It was actually much worse because my family lives close enough that we could go over to my parents house for dinner and come back the same night, but hers didn't, so even though we were not seeing her family much more frequently than we were seeing mine, each visit to her family was 1-3 days but each visit to mine was 1-3 hours (excepting holidays and such, which were complicated by the fact that her parents are divorced and mine are not).

            Aside to people with divorced parents (who have a good relationship with both parents) in relationships with people who don't: Spending one day with your mom, one day with your dad, and one day with their parents is not an equitable split of time. That's not to say the situation is completely unworkable, but you have to acknowledge that to your partner, it's not "one day with your mom, one day with your dad, and one day with my parents", it's "two days with your family, one day with my family".

          • eselle28

            Yikes. That's bad news, and I'm glad you're out of that relationship. Best case scenario is that your girlfriend is a selfish asshole. Worst case scenario is that you were being isolated from your family in a way that gave her plausible deniability if you'd ever complained (because she could say it's your choice not to go over there on your own and that she doesn't mind in the slightest).

          • Yeah, fortunately for me, it was the former. She was selfish, and had anger issues, but was never abusive. It was never quite as clear as when I was talking to her brother (who I'm still friends with) told me how she came over after we had counselling (we hadn't broken up yet and were trying to reconcile) and was talking about how she thought she "won".

    • ziddydee

      I would explain why you feel they are toxic, but I would also be very careful that you are sure that they are toxic to her and not that you're misinterpreting their dynamic and culture. My family is very loud and can be quite helicoptery. I'm also expected to do to help them out, but they do a lot for me too. I know there are people who think my family takes advantage of my willingness to help, but to me and them that's just what family does. Be completely sure that what they are doing to your SO is actually hurtful, and not just something you don't understand.

      • eris523

        One thing to remember, though, is that even if the are hurtful, declaring them too hurtful is not the other person's call to make. You can bring up the question, but you can't decide the answer.

        • eselle28

          This is a good point. Boundaries are important, but attempting a little empathy for a situation that's not black and white is a good thing as well. People have very complicated reasons for choosing whether to maintain or cut family ties, and in most cases there are people involved other than the person making the decision and the family members who are actively hurtful.

    • theOtherDude

      well rather than pit her against her family you talk I statements. Say how you feel when rather than cast stones at the family or her. I feel ___________ when we were at your parents house yesterday. see how it doesn’t cast stones? Then wait and see if she is willing to engage in conversation about the subject. You must avoid taking crap about the family if you are really not trying to isolate her. Most of the abusive ones who try the isolation thing will make it seem like the family/friends are a bad situation for her/him.

      Don’t try to change her. That might be you telling her she is messed up as her family (the good old it takes 2 to tango). Even little things like offering unsolicited advice or support can be telling them they can’t handle life and you can do it for them. Worse, you are saying she can’t do it without you.

      Read the book Games People Play. Sometimes it isn’t an outsiders job to change things. Even if you get that great feeling of being the “hero” for it (aka, being selfish).

      If the problem is too tough for you to handle, you have to end the relationship rather than threaten to end it. For those who will jump on this, remember earlier I said you should say your feelings, so it should have been brought up before the breakup. 😀

    • Jenn

      Not wanting to be a part of a Family O'Assholes seems like a good reason to break up to me. Yeah it sucks but the person your dating isn't a child and you don't get to control who they interact with.

  • embertine

    Oh, LW. In ten years time your ex-girlfriend will still be telling people about that one dude she dated that was so abusive and controlling, and in a way she's glad, you know? because now she knows what a red flag looks like? I am very pleased for her that she got away from you.

    • Squirrel

      Yeah, this letter could have been written by my Asshole Ex, save for a few differences. Right down to the "I think I may have treated you bad and want to get your forgiveness." Fuck no, dude. You want to make amends? Never contact me ever again and consider that the only act of contrition I am ever going to want or need from you.

      • ziddydee

        Ditto for my ex. I got an email from him a few years ago (over a year after breaking up with me by emailing me and telling me he's moving out of my apartment in 2 days or whatever and leaving me with nothing but a post it note and a $200 parking ticket) where he essentially said "yeah I guess I left things kind of bad. If you want to talk, I suppose I owe you an explanation or whatever." Yeah dude, if you can't even be bothered to say "I'm sorry for being a total dick to you for a year and taking advantage of your nearly endless generosity" I sure as hell don't need to waste my time with your attempt at an explanation. I hope I never have to see that asshole again, but I'm not sure I'll be that lucky.

        • Blurgle

          Oh, and all the self-serving bullshit about her justified anger being "bitterness".

          "Bitter" is what you call anger that doesn't serve your purpose.

  • rebootI730

    I am going to touch on your last two points:

    Did I ruin her life: No. She will get over it in whatever timeframe it takes, but she will get over it.

    Should I try to make amends: First off, admit that you do not want to make amends because you care about how she feels but because you want to absolve yourself of guilt for hurting her. Next, leave her the hell alone because the best thing you can do is stay out of her life and let her heal. This is a situation that "sorry" will not fix.

    I am curious LW, if you happen to come by and read this, did your relationship end because she finally took you up on your "We should break up" offer? If yes, multiply everything I said above by two.

    • embertine

      My abusive ex made a lot of noise (to others, thankfully) about how he had supposedly ruined my life. Haha, no, dude, don't flatter yourself. I know you like the idea that you are just so special and important that I'll Never! Know! Love! Again!, but really you are just a sad little man.

      • rebootI730

        I get that and think, "Love again? You did not love the first time around,"

        • embertine

          "You'll never find someone like me!"
          "Well no, I don't make the same mistake twice."

          • alternatively "Yeah, I know, that's kind of the point."

      • ziddydee

        Yes, if anything my abusive ex saved me by finally leaving. A couple years ago he emailed me offering me some "closure" if I wanted it, because he said he felt owed me. I replied that I didn't need any closure considering how little I thought about him and how little influence he had on my life at that point.

        The weird thing about breakups is that after enough time passes, it feels almost like none of it ever happened in the first place.

    • OffWrldColonizr

      "Making amends" in this case would be rather patronizing, and really just self-serving.
      Genuine amends will be made when / if LW learns from this experience and behaviours are changed.

    • Light37

      Yeah, "making amends" here isn't about actually regretting his behavior, but salving his concience.

  • thathat

    Welp, I tried to crawl out of my skin about halfway through that letter.

    Weird thing that popped into my head during the bit with friends was a scene from Wheel of Time, where one of the girls had been captured and turned into a slave. Her friend comes to rescue her and she breaks down crying because that day she'd done her duties well and been given a pat on the head and a pudding and had been *glad* about that.

    That bit about how LW *allowed* his girlfriend to see the friends he deemed worthy, especially the way it's phrased so magnanimously…that just gave me freaking chills. Because the isolating her from friends he didn't like is bad, but the next sentence portraying the *allowances* he gave her as some kind of reasonable benevolence on his part… geeze, no, that's really deeply upsetting. And speaking of upsetting…

    " I took her away because they would degrade her in their drunkenness in front of 30 other people and I couldn’t handle that. "

    That's an…odd way to phrase it (beyond the psuedo-poetic talk that sets my hackles up because it almost always signals someone trying to be Reasonable and Wise). Not that *she* couldn't handle her family's treatment of her, but that *he* couldn't handle it. I mean, it's possible he means that she was really visibly hurt by her family's words and that it upset him to see her hurt, but that's…that's not the way it's phrased.

    I think Doc is spot on with the advice here. LW has had some seriously toxic behavior in his past and doesn't seem quiet able to recognize it. Counseling would be a wonderful start for him.

    • embertine

      Yes, I think someone needs to unleash the Nopetopus on this here post.

    • ziddydee

      It's exactly the kind of "I'm making her better! She should thank me!" thinking abusers employ. My ex used to say that kind of shit to me all the time.

    • Yup, I was ok until that same sentence. I gave him the benefit of the doubt on "i told her what bothered me and of course she changed" cuz that could just be sloppy phrasing. "I took her away" goes well beyond that though. The first could be a really really really really bad way of saying "we discussed some things that were bothering me, and she changed her behavior (in ways that, upon further reflection, she really shouldn't have)". There's no charitable interpretation of "I took her away", however.

      • To expand further, "took away" has implications (but they won't say no, you know, because of the implications) that the other person had no choice in the matter. This is acceptable if you're talking about a child, or taking someone to jail, but even when used positively ("I took her away for the weekend") it's a little too squicky for me.

        • thathat

          No, yeah, absolutely. That sentence kind of encapsulates everything that makes this letter read with eerie softly-drawn-out violin music in the background–the way he basically describes her as a child that he directs and corrects.

          Also, though (and this may not be the case, just now I'm inclined to read it as badly as possible), it reads a bit like he can't handle people degrading *his* thing, not people hurting his girlfriend's feelings.

          • eris523

            "It reads a bit like he can't handle people degrading *his* thing, not people hurting his girlfriend's feelings."

            This exactly, to me.

            That phrasing in wider context: "Never did I take her away from them out of fear or jealousy. I took her away because they would degrade her in their drunkenness in front of 30 other people and I couldn’t handle that. So I started to keep her away from them."

            The awkward "never did I" might just be a stilted attempt to sound formal or poetic, but to me it has implications of "I took her away from her family repeatedly, but never out of fear or jealousy" — which kind of raises the question how she felt about being "taken away from her family" if she kept going back — whether to backyard cookouts or to being in contact. And of course, there's the question of why he felt the need to specify that it wasn't fear or jealousy — did she say she took it that way? Did her friends say it looked like fear or jealousy to them? Who made that a frame or reference to respond to?

            But that second sentence really makes it creepy: "I took her away because [X] and I couldn’t handle that." Not she couldn't handle it, or he couldn't handle the way it made her behave toward him, or he couldn't handle the way it made him feel to see her hurt. And he didn't ask her to stay away from them, he kept her away from them, which puts rather more emphasis on making the decision for her and implies that it was done counter to her wishes.

          • thathat

            Geeze, the more you go back and read it, the more that whole section reads like something out of a Poe story.

          • physicsnerd531

            I don't think it's just you reading it badly.

            Aside from the lack of concern about whether she was hurt or could potentially be hurt while in the relationship and only expressing concern for her wellbeing once she was outside of his control, the opening, presentation of 'mistake #1' is very chilling.

            It's victim blaming. It's using her flaw, her tendency to try to please someone, as an excuse for his behaviour, and it's controlling image to make his manipulative behaviour look less bad in the eyes of others, at her expense.

            It also sounds suspiciously like he automatically equates drinking to sinfulness. "Degrading in drunkenness" and "irresponsible drunks" sounds like the words of a teetotaller with zero-tolerance and makes me wonder if these family members and friends even did anything harmful.

          • the815

            **It also sounds suspiciously like he automatically equates drinking to sinfulness. "Degrading in drunkenness" and "irresponsible drunks" sounds like the words of a teetotaller with zero-tolerance and makes me wonder if these family members and friends even did anything harmful.**

            Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, maybe her family are shitbags, and she's right to stay away from them (though as others have pointed out, that is TOTALLY HER CALL TO MAKE, dude. It's telling he never mentions how she actually felt about her family's behavior. It probably never occurred to him to even ask – that or, he's gerrymandering the facts to make himself look better).

            The point is, we only have his opinion on her family's behavior. We do not know what specific behaviors they engaged in that made him feel this way. Did they yell at her and call her stupid, ugly, and unlovable? Or did they simply act silly with liquor and talk loud and tell the same boring stories over and over again?

            The worst guy I ever dated was a recovering alcoholic and he got violently angry at me for drinking at a party and acting a little tipsy and silly. (If he had had a mature talk with me beforehand about not wanting me to drink in front of him, I might be able to respect that. Instead, on the first date, he said, "Oh, I understand that other people drink and I'm totally fine with it. Get a beer if you want." I realize people try to put their best foot forward on a first date, but that goes beyond that into bait & switch territory). Anyway.

    • Reine_margaux

      Yeah, seriously. I mean instead of being supportive to her and being her rock facing her difficult family, he isolated her. Every family has their problems and some are worse than others. We get used to our family's dysfunction and we develop ways to deal with it. If he can't deal with that, that's HIS problem, not hers.

      • Blurgle

        I still think he deliberately and with malice aforethought *chose* to date someone from a difficult family, specifically so he could claim that he was isolating her from them for her own good. Plausible deniability.

  • LordAzazel

    I am wondering though, where do you guys draw the line where "what I didn’t like I fixed by giving her my advice and of course she changed those things" into abusive territory?

    I mean, imagine that my SO doesn't like how I keep quoting movies (wait, first imagine I've got a SO (and you know, imagine me as having a Brad Pitt physique, if we're already imagining unrealistic things here)). It's rather insignificant to me, and I would be able to reduce that drastically. I'd be a bit bummed out if she broke up with me over that because she thought it was abusive to tell me to change.

    • Is she saying, "Stop quoting so many movies at me, it's driving me crazy!" or "Stop quoting movies at anyone!" or "Stop watching so many movies" or "Stop hanging out with movie-watching people!"

      If the first, she's fine. If it's any of the others… I personally would find any of those completely unacceptable. SO gets a say in SO's life, and since you are a part of your SO's life, they get a say in the parts of your behavior that touch their life. But that doesn't mean they get to dictate what you do when they're not there.

    • embertine

      I agree, but anything where you're restricting your partner's access to other people in such a way that it sounds as though her body parts will shortly be found in black bags all over Gotham is a bit different from "please can you try to cut down on that one annoying thing you do?".

    • rebootI730

      Ideally if it bothered her she would tell you and explain why it bothered her, then you would explain why you enjoy it, then you would reach a compromise (e.g. only quote movies she has seen around her, do not quote movies around her parents, you can quote anything, anytime that you have seen together) and then adjust from there.

    • Aggrax

      My best friend and his wife have a situation like that all the time. He tends to find things he like quoting and will quote them into the ground. Before they were married his wife would just put up with it until it became unbearable, then explode at him, which was never good. Now though, they have developed a better way of communicating about these sorts of things.

      In their specific situation, my friend was constantly (as in multiple time per night) quoting the line "What are those wooden things? Chairs?" from the show Metalocalypse. This bothered his wife because she was sick of hearing it. So now he varies up the jokes he makes a lot more than before and neither of them seem to have an issue with the situation.

      The key in these situation, as I see it, is to approach the situation on equal ground from both parties. Understand that it isn't your right to demand change from your partner, but to communicate about behavior issues that are bothering you. Quite often, in a healthy relationship, these issues can be alleviated and both parties can walk away happy. When someone approaches the situation from a position of greater power and more absolute authority, that's a sign that things are less equal and more likely to be abusive.

    • eris523

      One distinction I've had to draw before is that my partners are welcome to request that I change any behavior. I may ignore the request. They are welcome to decide how to respond to or buffer themselves against behavior I don't change if they feel it affects them (in contrast to whether I think it does — their perception decides their experience, not mine). In turn, if I don't like their response or buffer, I also get to respond or buffer because those are behaviors on their part.

      What they don't get to do is tell me how to feel, think, or be, even if it's in the form of telling me how much better off I would be if I felt, were, or thought differently.

      In other words, "Please don't put yourself down when you're talking to me; it makes me feel bad" is perfectly acceptable, regardless of whether I can or will honor the request (and we'll talk about the extent of my ability and willingness). It's a specific stimulus that provokes a response in them, whether that's mild annoyance or the triggering of PTSD — and we can discuss that. "Stop thinking so negatively about yourself" or "You really need to improve your self-esteem" is not okay, and will only turn into criticism of my person on their side and defense of myself on mine unless altered to be about a specific behavior instead.

    • Jess

      I have a whole lot of experience dealing with this, if you're curious about some of the ways it gets negotiated in practice.

      For example, when my husband and I moved in together, he had a habit of throwing his clothing on the bedroom floor. This drove me nuts, because for me home is a place of peace, calm, and order. Every time I walked into our bedroom I was stressed out by the mess. However, this wasn't insignificant behavior to him, because for him home was a space where he had to exert the minimum effort.

      What I said to him was, "I can't handle living in a space where I am constantly stressed out. One big factor is the pile of clothes on our bedroom floor. How can we solve this problem together?"

      For a long time, he wasn't willing to change. I said, "Okay, I can't make you change, but I'm not going to pretend I'm happy, either. I understand that complaining is not going to change your behavior, but every time I am stressed out by your pile I want you to be aware of it, so that you know just what a big impact this is having on me." He agreed.

      After a while, he said, "Wow, I did not realize how much this affected you. How can I reduce the impact on you?" I explained that I didn't care if he had a pile, but it couldn't be somewhere I could see it. We rearranged our room to give him the walk-in closet. Instead of making a pile on the floor, he made his pile in there.

      What made this work was 1) I identified the underlying issue as it affected me, 2) I recognized he might not change, 3) I didn't martyr myself and pretend I was okay with it if he didn't, and 4) we partnered to find a solution instead of me telling him what the solution had to be.

      There've been plenty of times where we start on the same page, or when I explicitly make a suggestion for how he might resolve the issue, but this is a good example of a number of relationship negotiation tactics.

      Is that helpful?

      • kath

        I found that really helpful, thanks! I also live with someone who has different ideas about what a stress-free home means 🙂

  • Mel_

    Re: Making amends, Captain Awkward & commenters have (as often) some excellent advice on how a victimizer can show they recognize they've done wrong in a way that helps rather than discomforts the victim. Most recently, from this post (#16, about stalking but generally applicable):

    "one crucial step in developing that self-awareness is to a) realize that this person’s good opinion of you is likely gone forever, and to b) let go completely of needing their good opinion or attention. 99% of the time, the right answer is: Leave them the fuck alone. Forever. Completely. [snip] Whatever resolution or closure is possible, it has to come from you, from within you, and be resolved by you, without them having to do a single iota of emotional work on your behalf. The less you make them think about you, the better."

    There are other posts that cover realizing you've been abusive and how to "make up for" that, if you search for them. But in essence it boils down to letting the person you hurt dictate the terms of their healing. Continuing to try to decide for them what would help them is just continuing the pattern of abuse. If your girlfriend wants to talk to you for some reason, presumably she knows how to contact you. If she isn't contacting you, you really need to assume it's because she would rather deal with this without you than with you, and that she is the authority on what is best for her, and deal with your own guilt without imposing on her life any further.

    • lyanna_stark

      "[I]t boils down to letting the person you hurt dictate the terms of their healing. Continuing to try to decide for them what would help them is just continuing the pattern of abuse. If your girlfriend wants to talk to you for some reason, presumably she knows how to contact you. If she isn't contacting you, you really need to assume it's because she would rather deal with this without you than with you, and that she is the authority on what is best for her, and deal with your own guilt without imposing on her life any further."

      This x 1,000. Thank you for posting this.

  • melG42

    I'd say it's a context thing. In the context of these behaviors, how he took advantage of her being way more into him than he was into her, how he controlled who she hung out with and what she did, how he threatened to leave her when she put up any kind of a fuss, him "fixing her" is clearly part of a toxic PATTERN of behavior.

    Obviously, even in the most healthy of relationships, your partner will do stuff that drives you batshit crazy, and it's ok to be up front about it and let them know, kindly, how their behavior affects you. And they may change that behavior. But ultimately, even if they don't, you can't control that. you can only control how you feel about that, and how you react to it. If it's something they just can't change or it is just deeply ingrained, and you literally cannot live with it, then the relationship can't last. For the most part, people compromise.

    • rebootI730

      One thing I find helpful is to remember that for every little quirk they have that drives you bugfuck crazy there is probably one of yours that drives them equally bugfuck. I usually think about why it bothers me and if I rule out more serious issues (e.g. boundary pushing, inequality in workload) I rate my annoyance on a scale of 1-10. Anything above a 5 I bring up and try to work around. Everything else I shrug off and deal with.

      Thus far it is working in my friend/couchsufer situation where we have crammed two adults, a cat, and a dog into my 250 sq ft studio where picking your battles is key because there is no room to escape.

  • Blurgle

    I want to point out something here. You deliberately goaded her into losing her calm. You deliberately incited her to anger, then stood there calmly as if to prove to her that her anger was a failure on her part. After all, look at calm, collected you! If you can do it she can do it, so her not doing it is proof that she just isn't as rational or smart as you.

    In other words, you callously manipulated her specifically so you could feel like the cool, rational, superior male, as compared to the crazy, raging, irrational, inferior female. In fact I think that you chose this woman specifically because you could twist her faults into justification for thinking of yourself as her superior.

    It also shines a laser onto the real problem here: you're entitled enough to expect your partner to do all the hard emotional work in the relationship, but insecure enough to be threatened if she's too good at it. So you choose someone who already has a lot on her plate, make her responsible for guarding your widdle feewings, then you sabotage her constantly. That way you never have to face your insecurities head-on or do the hard work of handling them yourself, plus your ego gets puffed up because you can pretend she isn't your equal.

    • embertine

      PREACH

    • Robjection

      Wow. I gotta admit I hadn't thought about it like that. Come to think of it, I probably should have, considering I used to say that if I can be calm in a particular situation then anyone could. Never mind the fact that I often wasn't actually calm when I was saying that.

      Needless to say, I'll definitely have to keep this in mind.

      • Blurgle

        Being able to display a superficial veneer of calm can be a positive trait in certain situations (fighting a fire, for instance, or in battle). But being proficient at it doesn't actually mean that you're more logical or rational than your partner, let alone more likely to be right; it just means that you've developed one skill. But when you interpret calmness as rationality in an argument you're confusing substance and style – which is totally irrational. The facts don't care how they're argued: the facts just are.

        It's sort of like being a champion debater. You can use every rhetorical tool in the box to construct a brilliant argument that the sun rises in the west, one so brilliant that your partner can't poke a hole in it, yet the sun still rises in the east.

        • embertine

          "He Tells Her"

          He tells her that the Earth is flat—
          He knows the facts, and that is that.
          In altercations fierce and long
          She tries her best to prove him wrong.
          But he has learned to argue well.
          He calls her arguments unsound
          And often asks her not to yell.
          She cannot win. He stands his ground.

          The planet goes on being round.

          —Wendy Cope

    • CactusLiver47

      Five stars. I know this dynamic better than anyone should. And you nailed it.

  • StarlightArcher

    I couldn't think of a way to reply that didn't sound like banshee screeching. I think thatthat hit the nail on the head beautifully! Though while this letter puts me in the stabbiest of stabby moods, it also is an interesting PoV not often seen.

    On many such self-help sights there's tons of discussion by folks on the receiving side of abusive behavior. With so many tips, strategies, scripts, warning sign check lists and jedi hugs for those coping, it's easy to forget that the toxic people aren't Saturday morning cartoon villains. They aren't one dimensional sketches who are toxic or abusive because someone's gotta be the antagonist. These are also real people who, like this LW, may have no goddamn clue that they're being toxic, manipulative or abusive. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that if an independent observer had pointed this out when he was mid-relationship that he would have been gobsmacked.

    This young lady was more than right to run from his "caring" machinations (and to run like the devil knew her name). I don't think there's a bit of Doc's advice that I wouldn't second, but I also think it's a reminder to us, the peanut gallery, to have our eyes open to toxic behaviors and to have the courage to call our friends/acquaintances on it when we see it.

  • Arwind

    This letter was more like asking doc to absolve him from the guilt than to actually make amends.

    To LW: Since you are the toxic one, it's obvious that she would need space away from you.

    Like it or not, your presence triggers miserable feelings. If you were serious about her well-being (and not what-will-everybody-else-thinks-of-me-coz-I'm-really-nice), then give her ALL THE TIME SHE NEEDS to heal. You owe her that.

    Once it clears on her end (warning: it could take a few months to years), then go ahead and officially apologize.

    • rebootI730

      Actually I disagree with your last statement. She does not need his apology and certainly does not need it after she has recovered. He should apologize if she ever contacts him. He should NOT contact her ever again.

      • eselle28

        Agreed. People sometimes put too much emphasis on apologies, and they can be used to mask all kinds of desires to get back in touch or rehash old issues. She's already said she doesn't want to meet him to talk. Unless she contacts him again, he should take that as final. Sometimes even after years have passed, the contact isn't going to be appreciated. I once got one of those "I'm in AA now and am going through my making amends step" apologies from someone I hadn't heard from in years…and would have preferred to have never heard from again. I would have much preferred he…I don't know, made a donation to charity in my name or something, or just generally committed to being less of a piece of shit.

        • rebootI730

          In these situations I feel it is often a way to reassert control by insisting on reentering the person's life, especially when there is the whole, "I just want to apologize! What is wrong with that? Accept my apology. I am trying to do what is right." thing

        • Here's the thing that gets me about that: making amends doesn't mean apologizing. It means doing your best to repair the damage, or compensate for losses that were suffered.

          There are times when, yes, it may be possible to make amends as a toxic ex, but it's never going to be by apologizing or reaching out.

          There are some people who were ugly parts of my life. And I think part of me would sing if I ever got a note saying, "I was a shit to you, and you never deserved it. When I told you that you were crazy, I was deliberately and consciously lying to make you depend on me. There is not now, nor was there ever, anything wrong with you, and I am deeply, deeply ashamed that I ever tried to make you believe there was. I hope that you have come through this strong, and while I don't ask or expect any response, I hope you see yourself more clearly than I ever did, because I did not deserve you then, and you certainly didn't deserve to be stuck with someone like me."

          "I'm sorry" is an apology. It's not amends. Amends is working to educate people about how not to be you. Amends is owning up to what you did and telling people, "And I was wrong," so they can see that they're wrong, too. Amends is sending a check for the $7000 you stole on your way out the door. Amends is admitting to your mutual friends that you were the problem, so they stop blaming her.

          Amends is hard, and amends cost something. Apologies are wind.

          • Christine

            "Apologies are wind."

            AWESOME!

    • Jess

      The LW cannot and should not apologize to this woman until he has changed his behavior (and the underlying attitudes that drove them). He can't be the only judge of when that has happened, and it's got to be a process that has been successfully sustained over a long period of time – 3x the length of the relationship would be a good rule of thumb. Even then, he can contact her to apologize but he should do it in such a way that makes it clear he does not expect his apology to be accepted, or even that he expects a response.

      (As usual, this approach is based on Jewish ethics; I'm happy to point toward sources for the curious.)

  • TheWisp

    This is interesting. This guy is not who I pictured an abuser to be like. This guy is very toxic, but he is so because he seems ignorant and immature, not angry or evil. I guess I expected an abuser to be an angry, scheming bastard once you pulled the curtain back to their inner thoughts.

    • rebootI730

      Abusers are generally unaware that they are abusing someone or that their behaviors are not justified. They are usually not intentionally scheming, "Well how shall I torture X today?" They generally think their actions are exactly what anyone would do in their place.

      • TheWisp

        Well, that's a bit cartoonishly evil. I guess what I had in mind is, for example, a damaged guy with abandonment issues with his mother who takes out that anger on his girlfriend or something.

        • eselle28

          I think that may be because the parts of abuse that end up being most discussed are those that involve an angry and sometimes violent partner. But no one's angry all the time. The general atmosphere of control is a pretty common one, and that creates a space for things to get very scary when there is an argument.

        • rebootI730

          Oh abusers can have those but they do not actually perceive that they are doing is abusive. The abandonment might justify why their partner should do what they say, but they do not generally see their behavior as anything abnormal.

        • LurkingGhest

          I think that's a pretty common mainstream idea of what an abuser looks like – an angry, uneducated, lower-class guy from a broken home who was damaged by childhood abuse, a mother abandoning him, or a cheating ex, and who hits his girlfriend when he drinks.

          There's also another idea of an abuser (maybe from all those Lifetime movies) but it fits with the idea you mention in your original post of "pulling back the curtain, see the guy is evil" – in this case, a successful, pleasant, handsome guy who is actually an evil abuser. But the pleasant part is just an act, he's really all evil.

          I think both ideas suggest that abusers are a different kind of person from "normal people" and that you can either identify them easily or they are just naturally evil. Both views don't tend to suggest that your seemingly normal coworker or neighbor is an abuser and probably doesn't think they are one – they think they have good reasons for all the abuse.

          • TheWisp

            I guess there's a problem in the way we talk about abusers that imply they know the nature of what they're doing on some level, even if they wouldn't consider it morally wrong. There isn't much room in our language of abuse for the accidental abuser, the immature abuser, the self-deluding abuser, or the ignorant abuser, you know?

          • rebootI730

            The reason they do not know it is wrong is because they do not listen when the person they are hurting asks them to stop. They are informed of the harm but choose not to act on it.

            Everyone accidentally hurts people they care about on occasion. It only slips into abuse when people persist in doing the behavior that they know is hurting someone and then justifying why they continue the behavior.

          • Mel_

            I think it's important to note that many (most?) abusers do at least know what they're doing would be considered wrong by the majority of other people. They may have justified to themselves why it's okay for them to do this to this person in this particular situation, but in a lot of cases they seem to be pretty good at hiding the abuse (or at least the worst of it) from other people around the couple. Which indicates they know other people would disapprove.

            That's a fairly different moral stance from thinking you're doing something totally acceptable by general standards.

          • rebootI730

            Good point and one I did not make clear enough. They will know isolating someone from their family is wrong in the abstract, but will see the isolation of their partner from their family as the right thing to do because of $reasons and would bristle if ever challenged on the topic.

      • LurkingGhest

        Yes, this. A good book for refuting some of these stereotypes is Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft, who DNL cites above. Some of the other "stereotypes of abusive guys" that he refutes – was abused as a child, working-class men as being more prone to abuse, he abuses because of a cheating girlfriend or mother who abandoned him. There's also the idea of an abusive man being "explosively angry", but actually abusers are very controlled in who they explode at.

        • eris523

          Seconded.

          One of the most telling bits of that book for me was the comment about abusers who "lose control" and break things — that although they may claim to have "lost control", if they never break their own stuff then they obviously do retain enough control not to do damage where it matters to them. The abused person's stuff just doesn't matter to them, which is a huge red flag about whether the abused person's feelings or self will matter enough to remain exempt.

          It's the best explanation I've ever heard for that feeling of creeping horror: "Today it was my car / my collectibles / my grandmother's china; will it be me tomorrow?"

          • My current partner had a habit of throwing and breaking things when he got really angry. One of the reasons I decided to stay with him was that he only broke or threw his OWN stuff. He worked hard on learning to control his angry and find healthy ways of expressing it, and it's been over 2 years since since he's broken anything. I still see him occasionally start to reach for something, stop, clench his hands, and take a few deep breathes.

          • Light37

            Or the ones who "lose control"- but never at work/grocery shopping/anywhere in public.Only at home, where the GF/spouse/kids are- but no one else.

    • Bwmn

      What I like about this letter is how it gives a very brief insight in abusers – because most of the time they really aren't angry evil ogres easy to spot from a distance.

      There are often very distinct reasons that explain a logic why x abusive behavior makes sense (i.e. her family is destructive, she's bad with finances and in a lot of debt). But then isolating her from her family, or preventing her to have a bank account/access to money beyond an allowance (not to imply that the LW did that – but to give another example) contribute to controlling the partner, and makes it difficult for the partner to leave, especially should things become physically violent.

      • LurkingGhest

        Yes, I think the abuser will have some sort of logic for their actions besides "because I'm an abuser". For example, my friend dated an abuser (who, to be honest, I always thought was a sociopath, but IANA mental health professional) who didn't tell her for months about his kids. When she got angry, he said she did the same thing because she didn't tell him about some insignificant illness she had as a child. I'm sure that made logical sense to him.

        No one wants to see themselves as an abuser – there will always be good reasons for what they did, they'll say. The whole tone of the LW's letter is "maybe I was toxic, but I had all these REASONS". The LW is also careful to distinguish their actions from what a supposed abuser might do "I didn't cut her off from friends and family because I was jealous, it was for her own good!"

      • Blurgle

        These guys deliberately choose partners that give them that excuse – either that or they manufacture reasons through distortion, exaggeration, or outright lying. (They may believe the lies, but they're still lies.)

    • StarlightArcher

      Exactly, we expect "bad guys" to look like Skeletor or Leatherface. We forget that people, even bad people, are on the surface just people. They look like every other person we meet, and this means that each of us have the potential to be the villain in someone else' story.

    • I think your understanding of anger may be lacking. Shouting, throwing things, hitting — that's not anger. Those are behaviors that people sometimes use to express their anger. Your assessment that LW was not angry is, IMO, incorrect. His words drip defensiveness and passive aggression. This is just one of the many ways that anger manifests itself. It becomes a bit clearer when you focus on the fact that he was treating her like a misbehaving child. Everything that he withholds from her is a form of punishment, and the punishment comes from anger, too.

    • Reine_margaux

      Abusers come in many, many different shapes and sizes and most of the time you can't immediately attribute to malice what could be explained by ignorance. A lot of men do think that by giving that kind of advice to make a woman change that they're "saving" her or "making her better". Sometimes they are even acting out of concern. I had an ex like that. His behaviour was seriously hurtful, but he never was actually trying to hurt me. He would constantly comment on things he didn't like about my appearance because he wanted me to look my best and he thought that was the way to help me do that. There were a whole slew of other things of that nature, but he was just acting the way he had been taught to act around women and had no idea that it was hurtful to me until I told him so.

    • Jess

      I think other people have pointed out some good things, but I also want to say: I strongly doubt we're getting the LW's inner thoughts. He knows that this letter is going to be posted publicly, and whenever we act in public we put on a performance. I don't think performance is bad – I think it's how we make ourselves intelligible to other people – but it does mean that I think you're wrong that we're getting the "pulled back the curtain" version of this guy.

      • rebootI730

        Oh good point. This does read as a "presenting my actions in their best light" because he frames everything with "legitimate" reasons for doing what he did. I kind of read it with the thought that he was hoping DNL would tell him he was not toxic.

  • OffWrldColonizr

    LW has some serious superiority-complex and control-freak issues. Willing to bet this this is a recurring theme that affects many, most or all of his relationships, family and friends included.

    • LW says "I miss her dearly" – I'm sure losing this relationship must hurt, but tbh I suspect what LW "misses dearly" is not his girlfriend but the calm satisfaction of controlling her.

  • Henry Gorman

    What I found nastiest here was the LW's underlying "I-know-what's-best-for-her-so-I-should-govern-her-life" attitude. This is why being in a relationship with somebody who you don't respect as an equal is awful. I'm also not sure that the LW realizes what a big chunk of his problem this is yet. I hope he comes to understand it. If you're reading this, dude, please only get into relationships with people who you're able to respect and treat as autonomous adults. And if you can't do that with anybody, please don't be in relationships with people until you learn how to.

  • Tea_Fish

    Letter Writer, it sounds like you're just beginning to realize the wrong you've done to your ex-girlfriend, and while other people have hit on the NO NO NO aspects of your letter, I'm glad for that. I'm also glad (sort of) that you want to apologize, but the thing about apologies is that nobody has to accept an apology if they don't want to, and the apologizer will just have to live with that (and not badger the other person for an apology.) I hope you will be able to make peace with the wrong you did her, and try not to do the same harm to anyone else, but you'll have to do it without any absolution from her (or really, anyone, because we can't offer you absolution.)

    Here is a concept I think you ought to put some real thought into, really try to wrap your head around and sink into your skin for the next relationship you have of any sort, romantic or platonic or both:

    YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF OTHER PEOPLE.* YOU CANNOT MANIPULATE/FORCE/CONTROL/ISOLATE OTHER PEOPLE INTO DOING WHAT YOU WANT.

    Not for their own good, which is sounds like you were trying to do. Not even for YOUR own good. You can't make them change their habits, you can't make them ditch the people they care for, no matter how shitty or abusive, you can't make them wash on the regular, you can't make them take the trash out. You can advise, offer your feelings and suggestions, you can leave (I'd leave someone who wouldn't take the trash out), but skipping the step where they CHOOSE (to change, to wash, to take the trash) is a one way train to FUCKNOVille.

    It sounds like part of the problem was that your ex-girlfriend was extremely into you, thought you were the sun and moon, while it sounded like you… liked her, probably, felt affection toward her, wanted to take care of her. In the game of "Who likes the other person more" Chicken, you were the indisputable winner, but you wielded this imbalance of power like a weapon– a scalpel at times, cutting out the parts you didn't like or didn't approve of, a club at others, to beat down her arguments (when you say "Let's just break up," cold and calm and uncaring, what you are really saying is, "I care so little, I have the power to leave you whenever I want." Even if those were not the words in your heart, that is the implication of the words in your mouth.) With great power comes great responsibility etc., but you didn't use your power responsibly, you didn't use it with kind intentions and respect toward her (I suspect you used it with "good" intentions, but road to hell and all that.) Remember that as well, next time power falls into your hands.

    *(unless you are literally their boss, and paying them $$$ so you can boss them, or they are your kids, totally dependent on you, and even then, to an limited extent)

  • Robjection

    When I got to the bit in the letter that said about judging some of her friends as irresponsible drunks, my first thought was "And what criteria are you using to make that judgement?" It's probably only the difference between "Isolating your SO from them was really (x10) bad" and "Isolating your SO from them was really (x11) bad" or something, but I do still wonder if the LW was quite liberal in applying that judgement.

    • eselle28

      Yeah, Abuser Logic tends to be pretty flexible when it comes to who is judged to be a bad influence on their partner. A lot of times it comes down to, "Which of this person's friends are most likely to see through and call out my bullshit?"

      • "They are bad for our relationship, so they are clearly bad for her"?

        • eselle28

          Exactly that. I think it's kind of telling that the only friends the LW's girlfriend was allowed to see were the ones who took her out to coffee. Not, you know, the ones who invited her to bars, or house parties, or activities, or conventions, or anywhere else that she might conceivably meet other guys.

          • thathat

            "mature ones who had normal lives" — people already coupled? (Also, sheesh, I live in the South. "Normal lives" is a pretty narrow descriptor here.)

    • Blurgle

      Yeah, my Meter of Disbelieving the LW's Story pegged at that comment. I'm guessing that his "irresponsible drunk" is "has a glass of wine occasionally, and tried to get GF to "ditch her responsibilities" by breaking up with me".

    • I thought of this. When arguing with disingenuous people, they will always try to frame you as being childish or irrational. It's all too easy to believe that this dude's definition of mature, acceptable behavior is as fluid as the people around him. It's an eminently movable goalpost.

      You could argue that people who have not yet decided on a career path by the age of thirty are immature, and maybe it's true. But that doesn't make them bad friends or a bad influence. Just to give one example.

  • theOtherDude

    The end it now bit is the death of the relationship. It falls under what I think is an ultimatum how ever different it sounds from one. This guy has major red flags and needs therapy before even thinking about dating.

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