I have a best friend that is currently being emotionally abused by her husband. She has suffered from abuse by an ex before a few years ago, I supported her during that time as well and helped her realize that she needed to leave him for her own safety. Now I see the same patterns in her new relationship; even when they weren’t married yet, we talked a lot about the current abuse, I even witnessed some things that he did with my own eyes and she was very close to end the relationship, but she married him still and is now planning to move to another country with him (they are leaving in a few weeks). I tried to tell her about my worries for her well being and already made clear that she can always talk to me when she needs help, but the Problem is that she can’t apparently remember what he did to her and therefore thinks that it wasn’t that bad after all (She Said that he just hast a unique way to “show his love” which apparently led to misunderstandings). She doesn’t want me to be worried and even asked if I can explain the things that happened to her because she didn’t get why I reacted so negatively when she told me that they made up.
I feel like the abuse is affecting our friendship as well, because I feel like she is not being honest with me anymore and it is almost like she is playing a character when she is talking to me. It has been really draining to talk to her lately, because I am also going through some stuff right now that I need to recover from and everytime we spend time, her husband is either with us or she is talking about him. I have been taking more time to reply to her and don’t call her anymore and I can tell that she is sometimes angry at me about that and disappointed, but it is just so hard to act happy when I am just constantly worried about her.
Does anyone have advice about what I could do? I have been thinking about telling her that I need to distance myself from the friendship while still offering my help when she is in danger, but I am afraid that she won’t have anyone else when we don’t talk frequently anymore, especially considering that she is moving to another country with him soon.
Thank you so much for all your advice.
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