“Why are you still friends with him?” asked my boyfriend. And my best friend, close friends, not-so-close friends, and even my mom.

My boyfriend, in particular, asked me this question after I had another huge fight with my friend — whom I had a peculiar relationship with — that led me to develop an awful migraine… and “other” complications.

On the day my friend and I fought, I developed a raging headache that lasted the entire day. That night, I also started having diarrhea. The next day, with the fighting still unresolved, my stomachache (and diarrhea) remained, despite being sure that I did not eat anything that might have caused it. On the third day of the fight, I had developed a fever that forced me into bed rest.

It was only once my friend finally apologised (“for real this time…”) that my physical ailments got better.

“It seems like prolonged interaction with him makes you physically ill,” my boyfriend observed. “Maybe it’s the stress.”

“I don’t get why you are still friends with him,” he continued.

Everyone who knew me and my “friend” couldn’t understand why I was still friends with the guy who everyone understood to be an asshole.

I didn’t understand why either.

Our relationship was complicated, like relationships between trauma survivors often are.

Our relationship, like the circumstances that brought (and kept) us together, was complex, and not something easy to explain to those who had never been trauma-bonded.

How does it feel to be trauma-bonded?

Trauma bonding in psychology refers to a bond in a relationship that involves a foundation of abuse, such as shaming, belittling, gaslighting, manipulation, and sabotage, mixed with occasional displays of affection which function as intermittent reinforcement.

This pattern of highs and lows creates an addictive feeling where the victim can’t help but return to the abuser to get their “fix.” In particular, the “fix” refers to a dopamine high from the abuser’s occasional kindness.

It feels like you have a penchant for attracting, and being attracted to, “complicated” men. Specifically, men who could not stop themselves from hurting others — not out of any deliberate malice, but simply because they did not care how their actions hurt others.

Like when my friend said that my boobs were too small for his liking, and triggered a boob job obsession, he didn’t really mean to hurt me; he didn’t care that he did. In his words, he was “telling the truth!”

Or when he propositioned me when I was fifteen, with the intention to insult me by suggesting that I was “easy” (he was eighteen).

The countless times he commented on my or another woman’s body sexually and disgustingly.

When I try to talk to him like he is genuinely my friend, like by being vulnerable, he says: “Shut up, woman!” “Listen, woman!” “Jesus Christ, woman!” and other derogatory ways of referring to me by my sex.

He called me “inhuman” when I admitted that I didn’t want to have a baby, despite him being a biological male who will never get pregnant.

He also says things like, “Men are more logical, less emotional, and less sensitive than women, who need to have their feelings specially catered to,” without realising that the obvious reason why women block him, and men don’t, is because he doesn’t go around asking for men’s dick length as he does for women’s cup size.

His excuse is that the reason why women block him is that they are “the fairer sex,” “too sensitive,” “more emotional,” and other sexist and patronising comments.

Whenever I point to his misogyny, he says that I am just being “too much of a feminist,” and that none of his friends (mostly guys) thinks his behaviour is an issue.

When I tell him that the other guys I’m close to don’t hold patriarchal values, like when I told him that my boyfriend is perfectly fine with non-penetrative sex, he always insists that my boyfriend is lying. In his mind, all guys are just like him, and women have to put up with his patriarchal bullshit.

One day, when he asked about my friend’s cup size, saying that all men find that information important and that any guy who claims otherwise is lying, I finally responded, “Before you tell me that my guy friends are lying to my face, pause for a minute and think about what that says about you — that you can’t fathom a man genuinely being respectful to women. What does that say about your status quo? And about the men you are surrounded by?”

At this point, I didn’t have an excuse to be friends with him, because I clearly didn’t even like him as a person.

But I also realised that I could not leave him, no matter how bad his behaviour got, how difficult it is for him to change, and how much he hurt me. I have been friends with him for so long that the behaviour I would not tolerate in anyone else, in him, felt normal.

Sometimes, he can be nice to me, like calling me his friend or telling me that I deserve better. I feel pathologically euphoric when that happens, and I feel addicted to receiving breadcrumbs.

If I were being honest with myself, if I didn’t grow up in an abusive family, I wouldn’t have the patience to deal with guys like him.

For some reason, I had always believed that callousness and cruelty added depth to someone’s character. I’ve always wanted to believe that behind a venomous exterior lies a “good person” underneath.

So I kept peeling back the layers, hoping to find something that isn’t another layer.

I stayed with him because I see so much of myself in him: that I am broken, disgusting, ruined, and damaged. That I will never be someone worthy of love and respect.

Our relationship was fueled by schadenfreude. We both took sadistic pleasure in seeing the other in pain, and being the one to inflict it. Because he reminded me of my father, and everything I hated in men, I saw him worthy of retribution. I was probably everything he hated in women, too.

I forgave him for a long time because I saw him as another traumatised victim. We “trauma-bonded” in both the psychological and colloquial definition. Our relationship was a toxic cycle of denigration and occasional affection (which made leaving difficult), yet the friendship was formed from a genuine understanding between two trauma survivors.

I learned through therapy, though, that just because something is not your fault doesn’t mean it isn’t your responsibility to overcome. Whatever the effects of trauma were on our subsequent behaviour, it is still our responsibility not to hurt others or ourselves.

I did decide to move on and take responsibility for my life. I went to therapy, joined support groups, took my meds, lived in a new country, made genuine friends, and developed a healthy romantic relationship with my current partner.

At 22, I wasn’t the same girl I was when I was 15. I wasn’t going to keep on accepting the same treatment.

Finally, I gathered the courage to text him:

I sent him support resources, like where to access affordable therapy and free support groups.

I have not spoken to him since.

—

This post was previously published on Age of Empathy.

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