When i was 14-17 (2014-2017) a “family friend” was emotionally manipulative to me (saying he would end it if i ever stopped talking to him, making very public posts obviously about me about everyone hating him, when we would argue my family would come to me asking me what i did to make him so upset) and sexually manipulating (taking pictures of my feet/body when no one was looking, touching me while i slept, touched me in front of my family when they were asleep)
I eventually cut off my abuser but it made a long and lasting impression on me, especially the fact that a lot of my family and friends knew about this but never helped me . My family kept him around the house and even when my partner/just friends at the time found out that my abuser was taking pictures of me/my feet for sexual uses, no one did anything to help me.
In 2023 i went through inpatient recovery for a few weeks, was out for a few weeks, OD and was back in inpatient for 2 weeks. A big obstacle i went through during this time was coming completely clean to my family and partner about the extent of the abuse and how it’s affected me that they all kept any sort of contact with him.
My partner said that he cannot avoid my abuser because they were in all of the same social groups. I initially had a hard time, but came to an understanding that I cant expect my partner to cut out all of his friends because of this one awful person. And assumed that he only talked to him when needed/through groups.
But i recently saw that my prtner has an active and recent dm chat on instagram with my abuser and I’m feeling uneasy and unsure if I should bring this up. I was on his phone to check something else and when I saw my abusers name my stomach turned. I opened the chat and just saw insta reels being sent back and forth recently but was too anxious to go back any further in their chat.
I’m not sure what to do next or if its worth bringing up.
Comments
You seriously need to sit your partner down and talk about how serious this is. This is a huge breach of boundaries
He’s probably just keeping the peace. If they both have the same friends, they are surely going to talk to each other at some point. Don’t take it personally.
There is absolutely no chance I would stay friends with or even polite acquaintances with, a person who ab/ed a family member or lover of mine. It’s actually mind boggling that you forced yourself to be okay with your boyfriend doing this. Unless he’s got some disability quite literally making it impossible for him to leave his current social group or kick the ab/er out then this is unacceptable. And honestly I’d he had a disability preventing him from finding a new friend group it’s still unacceptable he’s direct messaging this horrible person.
I’m not saying you should break up, but I would.