There’s a lot of backstory to this, but basically my friend and flatmate has been dating a guy she met at work for over a year. In the beginning, he tried to end things suddenly when she said no to another round of intimacy, saying they were incompatible in the bedroom. Well, that same night he stayed over anyway and things happened, but it did shake us all when she told us and this was a few weeks into them talking.
That was the first warning sign for us as her friends, but they continued to date and a few incidents have happened since (for example she didn’t want to complain about a dish she got on a date as she’s quite socially anxious, he didn’t get it, said she was embarrassing him and then stormed out the restaurant and went home, leaving her at the table alone).
The trigger for this post was I overheard her on FaceTime to him last night. I didn’t get the context, but she was crying. She cries a lot when stressed and has been working two jobs back-to-back, both with early morning starts. I then hear him yelling aggressively at her, saying “you know I hate that, you cry all the fcking time, crying now, cried yesterday, cried the day before, I’m sick of it”. She then started apologising saying she will “do better”.
She wants to move in with this guy soon, and my friends and I are really terrified of just what that might look like. I can’t fathom screaming at a distressed partner like that, and I’d like some advice on how to tell her I overheard and am very concerned for her.
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Sometimes it’s easier to just be upfront “Hey, I overheard your boyfriend yelling at you yesterday and I wanted to make sure you’re okay” and then take it from there. You could then raise your concerns about her moving in with him and say that you think she deserves better
She may not know that he is being abusive. Tell her you overhead and you are worried about her as it raised some red flags for you. Talk about green flags versus red flags and how to know whether a relationship is healthy or toxic.
You’d want to approach this with caution. Obviously, she feels very strongly about this guy if she’s been with him this long, so letting her know that he’s crazy and abusive could push her further away, making her think and wonder that her friends don’t “know” him like she does, or that she’s been describing him wrong this entire time. The best you can do is try to help her understand on her own without speaking badly of him that she does deserve much better. I wouldn’t bring up you overhearing anything either, it could just make it worse.