My Real Friends Don’t …

I guess you could say I’m a victim of my own terminal naivety and hopefulness, even when none is warranted. How else could you explain my repeated attempts to make peace, even after everything that has been done to me? Is there any other way to explain why I would try to even co-exist with people who actively and with malice aforethought planned harm on me?

I’m generally not a stupid person. Truly. But when you are trying to move forward in positivity, it becomes easy to convince yourself that a positive outlook requires forgiveness and ease between all involved. Forgiveness, of course, is a very good thing. But co-existence, peace, ease … You can’t have this with everyone. You just can’t. Some people are simply evil, and opening yourself up to them invites nothing but pain.

I’m ashamed to say I did this. It was for all the right reasons: moving on, closure, a positive outlook … Whatever label you’d like to slap on it, they all mean the same. But I overlooked one major detail: you can’t make nice with people with no heart, no empathy, nothing inside.

I have spent months crying to my therapist that I keep hitting a wall in my healing and telling her how frustrated I am by the memories that keep surfacing. I begged her to help me figure out why I’m caught in a loop. The answer is not only painfully clear but comes courtesy of the one who deliberately caused all my pain, for no other reason than their own amusement.

See, that’s what narcissists do. They play with their victims, take what they will, and then leave them twisting in the wind. Mine went above and beyond, by fracturing my family. I have to continue to deal with them until my children grow up since they wormed their way inside my marriage and took my ex-spouse. The children were one of my reasons for trying to at least be civil.

But the narcissist will never stop if they have an opening. So my attempts at peace just opened the door for more abuse, more reminders, more pain both new and old. And when I finally reach my limit and react, and I have a few times, the narcissist points the finger at me and tells me I’m the one at fault. But this time, they did so with a quote that inadvertently unlocked the chains I had unwittingly put back on myself:

“I don’t see how we can talk. My real friends don’t say such things to me.”

“Such things” being that I had the audacity to remind the narcissist of what they had done to me.

But, you know what?

That’s some true wisdom.

Real friends don’t try to cause harm.

Real friends don’t steal spouses.

Real friends don’t fracture families for their own amusement.

Real friends don’t play God with others’ lives to cure their own terminal boredom.

Real friends don’t lie repeatedly.

Real friends don’t gaslight.

I could go on and on.

But mostly, real friends don’t do what you did.

But that’s because you were never a real friend. So thank you for the truth bomb you didn’t realize you were giving me.

I’m now set free from my imagined obligation to keep the peace with someone who deserves no peace from me.

He Didn’t Do It To Me

It was the middle of the night when I woke up to being raped.

I’d heard so many times about how to keep myself safe: don’t go out alone after dark, don’t go into unsafe areas, don’t put myself into a dangerous situation … I guess I missed the PSA that said not to go to bed next to my husband.

You read that right. My husband was my rapist. And the next morning he got up, kissed me, and waited for me to pack his lunch as he went off to work. Me, the person he had raped 3 hours prior … he waited for ME to make his breakfast and pack his lunch.

And I did it.

He had been verbally and emotionally abusive for as long as we’d been together. Shame on me for staying, and letting him treat me that way. I always felt like if I just gave in to whatever it was he wanted this time, maybe he would stop being an abusive bully and go back to the act that had won me over.

Let’s be honest here. It’s all an act with these kinds of men. If I gave him an inch he took ten miles, along with my dignity and self-respect. I wish I had learned to stand up to him when I had the chance. I wish. I wish.

I WISH

Do not let yourself be someone who wishes. Just don’t. You are worth too much and your boundaries are too valuable. Wishes are many things, but when they’re boundaries that you wouldn’t enforce, they’re painful and sharp reminders of things you once stood for.

I woke up confused, because something was off, something was wrong. What was it? Do you know those first few seconds when you can’t figure out why you were jolted from sleep? Well that, plus something much more. A blink, maybe two, and then I felt the sweat from above. What the hell? What is going on, and why am I being sweated on? What are the grunts for and … wait … it hurts. OMG it hurts. What is happening?? Why am I in pain??? And … THERE. Why does it hurt there? Wait, stop, why are you hurting me?? Please, stop. Please.

Why won’t you stop?

I put my head down, face-first into the mattress, to muffle my screams. And I screamed into the mattress until he was satisfied.

I bled when I pooped for the next few days. He professed his sorrow and immediately apologized, putting on his “contrite and good partner” act. I bought it, which is unfortunate because he did this to me two more times. He did this to me two more times after promising he never would. He did this to me two more times after I told him I was bleeding all week and he swore I would never wake up to anal rape again.

BUT I DID.

I think the best illustration I can give for what’s wrong with society is what happened next. I confided in one of my closest friends all of the above. I trusted my friend, and believed in her friendship. She took my private confidences and used them when she befriended my husband, something I allowed because I trusted her. I couldn’t believe she would betray that, because I wouldn’t.

Silly me. I wouldn’t, so I think others wouldn’t.

She thought that a man who anally raped his wife was attractive. Call me a prude, but I can’t see it. She thought that the man who anally raped me was not only worth falling in love with but worth throwing away my trust and destroying my family. I have 4 children who suffered because she was hot for a man who would rape his wife, the mother of his children. And her excuse was: “Well he didn’t do it to me.”

He didn’t do it to me.

THIS is why our country is so morally bankrupt. We are no longer our brothers’ (or sisters’) keepers. We only care what happens to us. “He didn’t do it to me.” Can you imagine if our justice system was built on “he didn’t do it to me?” How about our police force? What if nothing happened to criminals unless they “did it to us??”

What kind of person abandons a friend to prop their rapist? I’ve heard of victim blaming/shaming, but this seems like it needs a whole new category. I’ve never met anyone who found a rapist irresistible.

My rapist lives a happy life with his partner and her two children. I’m in therapy to process his years of abuse. I thank God every day that I’m here to raise my children to be moral and good people. I am aspiring to forgive the two of them for the worst evil ever done to me.

“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

I’m sure the above Bible verse, a quote from Jesus, applies somehow here.

The Storm

The storm outside seems to be a manifestation of my soul this evening. For weeks now I’ve been churning inside, emotions and anguish bubbling up to the surface unbidden, painful memories haunting my sleep and darkening my days. My hope is that this is the storm that leads to a brighter tomorrow, that the work I’ve been doing on myself has come to this: the memories and pain and loss have created this storm inside me, and it won’t end until I can face all that pain without flinching. I’m finally ready, and so it’s here. I have to stand here, in the midst of the storm, and let all the hurt pass through me and finally away to be able to move forward into the sun.

My introspection has brought up many buried feelings, and lately I have been lost in them … Searching the remembered pain for things I could have done differently. I’ve spent days chastising myself for trusting someone who couldn’t be trusted with my friendship … Let alone my family. The thunder crashes in my head and heart as I feel shame, regret, and the loss of time I can’t retrieve. I look at pictures and feel the weight of the past like a boulder on my heart. I can’t escape the recrimination; it’s mine to carry.

The lightning flashes both outside my window and inside my heart as the anger melts away to pain, and then white hot fury. How dare you take the precious gift I entrusted you with, and soil it with your sick designs?? Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?? It wasn’t for you to play God with my life, and decide to “make it better.” And how is this better, exactly? The only question is if I’m more furious with you for what you tried to do to me, under the guise of love, or me for being so stupid and believing you. I can’t seem to separate where the pain ends and the anger begins, and I’m not entirely sure they’re separate anyhow.

I want to cry into the storm until I have no more voice. I want to scream until all the pain and all the rage and all the injustice is gone. What would I be left with?

When the storm ends, and the world is washed clean, there’s a silence and a waiting. I’m not there, yet. I’m still caught inside the storm. But someday soon, the clouds will part and I’ll see the sky above.

The Words Have Now Been Spoken

After all these years you’ve finally decided to admit the truth: that I was wronged, specifically by you. I have it in writing; you acknowledged every single thing that I’ve written about, every single thing I have cried about, every single thing that caused my family to fracture into a million pieces. It is all because of you.

For those 2 long years of hell, you lied right to my face over and over, and tried to make me think it was all in my head. That’s called gas lighting, in case you weren’t clear on that. The fact that you have now admitted that it wasn’t all in my head only further proves my point that it was a clear case of emotional abuse and gas lighting. You might want to look into how you could treat another human being, someone you claimed to love, so cruelly and with no remorse whatsoever.

You can claim now that you felt remorse, but what exactly would convince me to believe you? You knowingly and with laughter ripped my life out from under me. Every time I expressed any emotion at the destruction of my family, the heartbreak I was going through, or my fear at what was coming, you used those emotions against me to justify further taking from me.

DID YOU HEAR ME??? You CAUSED the fear and insecurity, you DELIGHTED in it, and then you USED IT AGAINST ME to destroy my family!!!!

I was so happy to finally have your admission, right there in black and white. But then … I wasn’t. It was hollow. In its place … anger. White hot fury. Because, you followed up your admission with asking what can be done, and wondering why I needed this admission.

What can be done? Why did I need this? You took so much from me, and danced off merrily to live MY life with MY family. What can be done? How about not be such an evil person that you could destroy a family from within and not care?

You partied your way through those 2 years, leaving me to take care of the home and kids. Now you have the audacity to complain to me that the party is over, since you no longer have me to be the only adult? When you kicked me out of my own family, you told me I was too insecure and too “unstable.” Let’s revisit … I was the only sane, stable person there. I would go out shopping with multiple kids and come home to you drunk at 3 pm. Who does that? Certainly not the stable one.

This post is rambling, I know. I am so angry, and so hurt, and so desirous of justice that I know can never really come. But what I do have, is the satisfaction of knowing that I have full custody of my children. You could not really take my family. What you took was the illusion of family that I thought I had. You took a faithless spouse, and you took years of my life. You took my house. You took my ability to stay home with my children.

So you go get in your hot tub and live it up in your luxuries and try to sleep well at night, knowing you are nothing more than the other woman, a homewrecker, a classless and faithless person yourself. You are a match.

The Key

I left my key at the office today, and walked out for the very last time. Although that office ultimately became one of the symbols for how you destroyed my life (or tried to), it still hurts. I left with red, puffy eyes, and wept all the way home.

I’ve been over this in my head and heart a million times, but I’ll still never know how it was ok for you to do what you did to me and my family. I’ll never truly understand how you can just skip merrily on your way, never once glancing backwards at the devastation you’ve left in your wake. Does it ever cross your mind how you hurt people? Do you have cognizance of using people up and then throwing them away, leaving them with gaping holes for hearts and walls a thousand miles tall to protect them from anyone remotely like YOU???

First, you decided that you would win my trust. That isn’t easily done, so you spent a year+ working on that. Kudos to your long game. Seriously. Then, you decided you’d manipulate my feelings about my abusive husband, promising to protect me from his anger and wrath. “I’ll send him pink light. Just let me know when he’s being hurtful.”

My ideas of pink light and yours are very different.

Once you had my husband completely in your talons, which didn’t take long as he’s a cheater, you started your campaign to turn him against me. You planted seeds of doubt, outright lied about me, and ultimately succeeded in getting an abusive, porn-addicted, serial cheater to move onto his next conquest (victim). Congratulations?

That’s kind of like congratulating someone for blinking. You realize, that wasn’t hard, right?

In the midst of all of that, you offered me a job. I had been looking, because my “husband” had been insulting me on a regular basis for not bringing money into the household. This was a new development, since he and I had made the decision that I would be a stay-at-home-homeschooling-mother, but I suppose you might have influenced that. It probably scared you when I was going to look for jobs, because if I landed one, that would be lots of people who would point out your scheming, and help me see you for what you really were. So you hired me.

I’ve worked there for 5 years now. It was my first job in … 13 years? It turns out I’m really good at it, and I was moved to full time, given a raise, and I really enjoy it. After you threw me out of my own family, without a second of regret after worming your way into it, you fired me but then re-hired me only days later. You tried to paint me publicly as “unstable,” but that held no water. First, because it wasn’t true. Second, after you threw me out no one objected to my taking my children with me. (When you left your husband to show up on my doorstep, you left your children behind for 2 weeks. Why was that, exactly?? Many people noticed that, by the way.) Third, well, you re-hired me.

I realized in December that my ex-husband (thanks to you) has been shorting me on child support. That was corrected, and the right amount of money started coming to me. That affected your household, since you two are still together, a match made in hell. Within a month of rectifying almost two years of underpaying ($9000!!!) you told me you couldn’t afford to stay in business as you were, and had to lay me off. My ex had a silver platter new career handed to him by your wealthy best friend, but me? Good luck, sayonara, buh bye.

You gave me a two week notice on my job ending, but also told me I wasn’t allowed to publicly job search. Gee, thanks. So much more evidence of your caring, which you claim that you do. Luckily, you are about as reliable in that department as every other, and you kept extending the time. But it’s crunch time now. You’ve packed up your office, to go rent a room from a friend, who is only renting to you to use you to get your patients to become her clients … Simply money. She was a huge fan of getting rid of me back in the day, going so far as to tell you not to be the other woman within earshot of people I know. She loves money more than her own children, and it sounds like she’s your perfect puppet master. I hope you enjoy her hand up your ass.

Today, I went into that office for the last time. Memories flooded in, of being just a patient there, back when I thought my doctor actually cared. And then when I thought you wanted to be my friend, and as an abused woman (which you knew), it was a welcome overture. I could hear the echoes of all the times there, my first day, laughter, the patients that I’ve grown to care about. I thought about the job I thought would be there so I could support my family, which you made exponentially harder by your meddling in my life.

Why couldn’t you just leave me alone??? If you had to leave your husband and whore yourself out, couldn’t you have found some other family to ruin?? One solace is, back when you were pretending to be my friend, you told me you swore you’d never be with an Italian man, because of their tendency to be verbally abusive and co-dependent. I’m not agreeing with your stereotype, but I think it’s hilarious that you risked it all to be with … an abusive, co-dependent Italian man.

You showed your true colors, when after everything, you took time out of your day to let me know you don’t have time for anyone. You are unavailable. Did you think I wanted to lean on you, when all this heartache is BECAUSE of you? Go flatter yourself somewhere else. Good luck, because you’ll need it. People are starting to see through your act.

People are waking up to the fact that you have no soul. You’re a narcissist.

First, Do No Harm

The primary directive, as it were, for doctors is “First, do no harm.” If we expand this thought, it means that the first step in helping and healing is to not cause harm. At first this may seem obvious, but it’s quite deep. Doctors, don’t make your patients’ lives worse than before they came to you!

You were my doctor. You slowly worked your way into my life as my friend, and then as my close friend. You drew out of me every single detail about my life: my abusive marriage with a porn addict who raped me and refused to let me leave the house without him for 7 years, the loss of my mom as a child and how that affected me, the loss of my twins halfway though my very first pregnancy. You set yourself up as my trusted confidante, offering advice, support, love, care. At my appointments we would touch on these issues, and at home you would text and Facebook message me, until it was an all-day-long conversation. If I woke up at night, you would instantly message me, checking on me.

I trusted you.

You told me this would better my life, would protect me from him yet keep my family together. Everyone asks me how I could be so naive, so stupid, but I couldn’t envision an evil that complete. I had never known someone so cold, so calculating, to play a long game with such drawn out precision that you waited over a year to get me to trust you implicitly.

And then you did me harm.

You took all that information about my abusive husband, and his addictions and fetishes, and turned yourself into his perfect partner overnight. At the same time, you messaged him, planting little seeds of doubt about me, questioning my stability. He didn’t need a long game, and through some expert gaslighting and prepping, you robbed me of my family, my husband, my house, and my future.

That is harm. Physician, you harmed me. And you did it on purpose.

I don’t think you expected me to bounce back from the hell you put me through. You either underestimated me or overestimated your reach. I have my children, and although you stole the house that I owned from me, I rent a home and we are happy here. You still have my ex-husband, but if an abusive porn addict, serial cheater, co-dependent who can’t be alone is your dream guy … well, I guess you hit the lottery there. My only mistake was not leaving him years ago.

Scratch that. I made one other mistake. It was trusting my doctor not to harm me.

You violated your oath, and you have no remorse. Now you and my children’s father live your lives in material comfort, and I have full custody as a single mom. I’m rocking this, but you have made my life so very much harder. You took from me everything I spent almost 20 years building, and without a single pang of guilt on your part.

Good people don’t go around destroying other people’s lives. You were my doctor, and you violated your ethics in so many ways, I don’t even know where to start. And now you have the gall to say I should be grateful to you for freeing me from an abusive marriage??

You should be grateful to me that I haven’t called a lawyer.

Maybe Tonight

The sound of my bedside fan seems to mark the seconds that go by, as I lie in bed staring at the silhouettes of trees standing out against a red-tinged night sky. Seconds turn to minutes, minutes bleed into hours, and I’m no closer to sleep than when I got into bed. The only noise I can hear is the fan blades whirring, stirring the air and insulating me from the sounds of the night. It seems to be a metaphor for me, isolated from the voices of the rest of the world.

You don’t really grasp how valuable human contact and closeness is until you no longer have it. I spend most nights like this, with my soul longing for anyone to want to connect, but getting nothing but white noise whenever I try to reach out. I might get two word responses, or a polite haha, maybe even an emoji … All dismissals, done out of a sense of obligation or just habit.

I have a couple really good friends. Other than them, no one really talks to me. I don’t mean conversation for the sake of it or discussing the weather … I mean really talking, about feelings and dreams and fears and heartbreaks and joy. These are the things that matter, that connect us as humans to each other. But most nights, I lie here and wait for anyone to actually wish for that kind of connection with me. I wonder why people have forgotten me … How can they not see me anymore?

I’ve tried to spark a discussion. Most nights I end up making a fool of myself, sending random memes and one line messages, because I can’t find the words to say “Please want my company. Can’t we connect?”

With a couple of exceptions, and I cherish them dearly, people have all faded into the background of my world. Now I’m alone, shouldering an almost impossible task as a single mom, and at the end of my long days when I fall into bed exhausted, I set my alarm to do it all over again tomorrow … I just wish I wasn’t one of the forgotten.

The fan keeps turning, turning, kind of like the years of my life going by. I’m starting to wonder if it will always be this way, and why. I’ve always tried to do good for others, but at the end of the day … Maybe tonight, someone will want to talk.

Maybe tonight.

Karma Will Always Come

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” (Isaiah 5:20)

I don’t always start my blog with a Bible verse, but when I do, you can be sure I really really mean it. We all know someone like this verse references, and we’ve all suffered some hurt at their hands I bet. These people look on goodness and not only reject it but put evil above it. I’ve come to the conclusion that the people who do this are insecure and jealous about someone else having a sense of right and wrong that they themselves do not possess, and so whenever they come across someone with this kind of moral compass, the only thing to do is try to squash it.

They can’t risk looking bad by comparison, now can they?

I was emotionally abused for most of my adult life. I was controlled and screamed at, I had vicious names and threats hurled at me by my partner, and I stayed because A: I was afraid they would take my kids, and B: I take my commitments literally and I was going to see this through. Even though it was hell on earth most of the time, it was worth it to me to keep my family intact.

In the above, in case you couldn’t tell, the emotional abuser would be the evil one, and the one who stays because of threats and commitment would be the good. When the abuser was having emotional affairs, that was evil too. Just because they are a serial cheater and couldn’t scrounge up loyalty if their lives depended on it, doesn’t make it less evil.

Do you know what’s more evil? Excusing, rewarding, and joining with the evil person who abused someone. Especially if they abused someone you know. Even MORE so if you they were viciously cruel and abusive to one you called a friend.

But the most evil of all? Telling your friend to put their trust in you, to save them from the abuse, and then using that trust to engineer your friend right out of her own family and taking the abuser for yourself. And THEN telling your friend that his abuse was justified because he was “anxious for his family.” I cannot accurately describe what it’s like to look your friend in the eyes and have her say to you “I know he denigrated and humiliated you. I know you weren’t allowed to go anywhere without him with you. But HE WAS SO ANXIOUS ABOUT YOUR SAFETY!!!”

Then friend goes and gets in the car with the ex. She can’t go anywhere without him now … trying to feel bad. Trying. I wonder if he calls her the same names and threatens to take the kids? I mean, it would be ok, because the poor guy is SO ANXIOUS …

What?? Uh, come again? Poor wittle poopsy was anxious? That is BULLSHIT and you know it. It’s the lamest of excuses for treating another human like crap, and anyone who falls for it is no better than you. NO BETTER. Oops … sorry. I forgot you fell for it.

“Therefore, as tongues of fire lick up straw and as dry grass sinks down in the flames, so their roots will decay and their flowers blow away like dust … ” (Isaiah 5:24) Sounds like karma to me …

I See Through You

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away … or maybe just a few years ago … I actually cared. I’m not saying I don’t care anymore, because to stop caring would be the opposite of who I am. But I’ve taken a page or two from your playbook, and caring is locked away safely where it can no longer hurt me.

I care enough to study what happened to me, like a science experiment. It’s lovely when you can reach that level of detachment, and go over the events and the facts without any attachment to the emotions that used to fill those events up. And I can see a truth, hidden carefully under the wreckage you’ve left everywhere in your wake.

You were at the tail end of a toxic relationship, and looking for a way out. In truth, you had checked out long before. When you formed a new connection, it was intense, deep, and real. It was exciting. But it also scared you … And one of these realizations is that you aren’t as brave as your public persona. It’s less work to take the easy path.

Speaking of the easy path, when someone has had a childhood where they had to be the adult it can produce either a very mature adult, or one that is resentful and anxious to recapture their missing childhood. When presented with the chance of living responsibility-free (or responsibility-lite) many of these people jump at the chance. They pay no attention to the fact that to do so requires they ransom at least half their soul in the process of not being true to themselves.

It looks like a chance to live “free” as a child/teenager would, but it’s anything but. Shirking one’s responsibilities and betraying the trust people have in you isn’t an alluring or attractive life. And whoever holds that carrot on the end of a stick to you has sinister motives at best, and they give away their true nature. As you join with this poor influence and sink to their level, your heart and mind shrinks to the narrow world view and shallow empathy of people like that.

Like begats like. You become like those you spend time with.

It always seems fun at first. “Eat, drink, and be merry” purports to be the way to live. But life is not just fun. And there needs to always be a balance. What did you give up, to shut part of yourself down? Who did you sacrifice on the altar of fun, thinking you could redo your lost childhood? Because you can’t have a do-over on those years.

Or these.

If you’re healthy, strong, happy, and your career is flourishing, then congratulations! You clearly are living your truth and partnered with someone who is your match and complements you. But if the opposite is true … Well, you may want to check what parts of yourself you sacrificed for the chance to live “stress-free.”

Life isn’t without stress. Happiness doesn’t exist without sadness. Childhood, once gone, is over. The tears and smiles of years long past have ended. Just like the feelings of one you sacrificed for an empty promise of good times and an easy path.

What Kind Of Woman Are You?

Are you the kind of woman who, when you hear about your friend being abused/mistreated, you listen to her tearful secrets of abuse and support her as she unburdens herself to someone she trusts? Do you help her try to find the strength within herself to stand up for herself and set boundaries? Have you set yourself up as the one person she turns to?

What have you done, as her friend, to make her trust you this much? Do you always reach out to check on her? Have you been there every single time he’s screaming at her, calling her names, threatening to take her children? Are you making sure she starts to rely on you?

When she is leaning wholly and fully on you, have you taken advantage of her weakened state to suggest ways that will make the abuse less? Do you turn to her trusting eyes and heart and put thoughts in there, taking advantage of her abused and shattered soul, to steer her in a direction she never would have gone?

What kind of woman are you?

It’s bad enough to tell someone you care when you don’t. It’s cruel to put yourself out there so that someone begins to trust you, only to have emptiness behind your promises of love and friendship. It’s so much worse to take advantage of your friend, a fellow woman, a woman who was being abused, who had been raped more than once by her husband.

But, let’s put the personal aside for a moment. AS A WOMAN, how can you hear the vicious abuse, the rape, the trauma inflicted upon a fellow woman … and not only not care, not only use the stories of every incident to your own advantage, but actually want that for yourself?? How can you look at a man who could treat ANYONE that way, and think “I want some of that! Hearing the way he calls her a psycho b@tch makes me want to lie to my friend and steal him from his family!” (P.S. A man that would abandon his family/children for a girlfriend is SO not attractive)

You can try to rationalize it all sorts of ways. You have, even. But saying the relationship was toxic is a coward’s cop-out. It was TOXIC because he made it that way with his verbal and emotional abuse. And you knew that because you had endless examples of it given to you. What your friend needed was the way out, not a path to worse abuse, this time doubled. You had the option of not reaching out and supporting, but you chose instead to be a lifeline for your friend. It’s too bad the line you threw had weights on the end, to drag her right down and out.

And every day you lie down next to that abuser and think you are living right, and that you did the right thing. How you can think that, I’ll never know. Guess what? You become complicit with what you allow, excuse, and give a pass on. You have become one with it. It’s as good as participating in the abuse of one you called a friend.

So, what kind of woman are you? What kind of friend are you? If the only way you measure yourself is by how good a partner you are to him, you may want to re-examine your priorities and how much influence he’s got over you.

Or not. Maybe you’re happy as His Partner. That might be the answer to what kind of woman you are.