This is my friend's story. She and I have been friends since school. And I have taken her permission to post her story here.
My friend, P married a guy, M 5 years ago. Right from the beginning of their marriage he has been showing lots of red flags. Few examples: a month after their marriage P saw a message on his phone that said,"miss you a lot." That was sent by a woman. Later he started going out to a gym with a female friend of his. He refused to take his wife with him to this gym. He started coming home late and always lied about where he was and who he was with. He is a party animal. So every weekend he goes to some pub with his friends to party. His friends would, very oftenly, bring their respective wives to these pubs but he would rarely bring P with him. He would dance with stranger women in parties (revealed by his friend's wife).
Aside from these obvious red flags, 2 years after their marriage P caught him sexting a coworker of his. This was the first time he was caught red handed. But then he apologized and acted like he was remorseful and somehow successfully manipulated her to forgive him. He also told P that it was just chats and nothing physical happened with this coworker. P called this coworker and she told P that this was 1 year long affair and nothing physical had happened. P ate this shit sandwich and agreed to give him second chance without making him walk through reformation path. She didn't follow any of the steps that are usually advised on this forum. That was her big mistake. He didn't change but got more careful in covering his tracks. Then a year later dday2 happened. One night he was as usual late from work. He said he would be at home by 1 o clock at midnight. Around 12.30 P called him to ask where he was. He picked the call to respond. While P was talking him, she heard a woman's voice in the call. The voice said,"who are you talking to?". When P asked him who this lady was, he said "there's no lady here. It's all in your mind. Stop doubting me" and he hung up call. She called back but he didn't pick the call. Next day, at home when she confronted him, he goes with the same "it's all in your head" routine.
This is when she realized that nothing has changed in him since the first Dday. He still carries the same red flags that he carried before dday1. Not only that, one night he went for party and was super drunk and messaged P's sister around 3 mid night, calling her 'Babe!'. When he is drunk he is a complete different person. He gets abusive. Throws foul and derogatory terms at her and her family. Couple of times he hit her. When he is sober he is polite and soft spoken until he gets angry which is very frequent nowadays and many times he gets angry over silly reasons and tend to overreact.
From all the things P has told me about M, he looks like a complete narcissistic, manipulative, self absorbed, and insecure person. P is complete opposite to him. She is very sweet, and completely harmless person. She is an introvert. She does know how to make friends with people who are safer and good to her. She never wishes harm to anyone. But she is too ignorant and naive. She believed that him hitting her when he was drunk is 'not that serious of a problem'. Him texting her sister and calling her 'Babe' is, according to P, bad but not that bad because he was drunk. She has found many screenshots taken by him of him texting to prostitutes and has evidences of payments made to these people. But for some odd reasons, him trying to have his way with these prostitutes really doesn't bother her that much. He always maintained that they were just texts and he never met them. Her only problems were his affair with coworker, his continuing lies and lack of physical and emotional affection from his part.
Until recently she truely believed that his affair with his coworker was only emotional and through text. She had taken screenshots of those chat messages they shared before dday1. Until now she never completely read all these messages. She only read few selective messages that confirmed their affair. That's it. I was skeptical about that relation just being only emotional. So I asked her to read them. And yes, as I expected, these messages clearly indicated that it was also physical affair. A couple of messages revealed that they used to have their affair meet after office hours. Ap once wrote what she wants to do (sexual) next time they meet. And that meet did happen. This was a wake up call for P. Until now she was in this naive believe that 'it was all just text. Just emotional etc". She never wanted to believe it had gone physical. She really didn't believe until now that emotional affair is a form of cheating. She only saw it as 'inappropriate'. Evidences were so clear and infront of her all the time. She didn't wanted to look at them. Few months back she reached out to me after dday2. It took 2 months for her to give me every detail that he had done. After hearing her out, I carefully pulled out every detail, every lie he has told her, every evidence that points to what exactly he has done and painted a clear picture of what this guy really is - a classic, remorseless, non-empathetic, pathological liar and a serial cheater.
Now she gets it. She is furious. Extremely sad and depressed. She went to her parents house for few months to think this through. Meanwhile, I gave her all the standards advises that are given on this website. Refereed her some books related to infidelity. Talked about doing 180. Asked her to go to therapy. Asked her to expose him to his and her family. Told her to meet an attorney to know her rights and how she could protect herself. Her husband is a lawyer. So he knows more about law than her and so he could use it against her to harm her and her family legally if she went on divorce path. So asked her to be prepared for it. I gave many more advices. She followed none of it. She cried every day but followed none of my advices. She did absolutely nothing during the days she was with her parents. She has a job. She works from home. So i don't know if it's because of the job or something else that she couldnt to do anything to heal or come out this mess. She used to say she wanted divorce. She wanted to leave him.
Now, everybody in her and his family knew their marriage is in trouble but didn't know why. So they came forward to resolve it through talks. P never revealed to both families what M has really done to her. So they all thought it was usual martial problem which can be easily fixed through talks. So they fixed a date to talk and reconcile P and M. And only few days before the TALK, P revealed to her family what all M has done. They were shocked. No doubt. But it seems it didn't help her cause. They were already in reconciliation mode and so they asked her to rug sweep it and give him another chance. And during the TALK, she revealed only a tiny part of M's indiscretions infront of his family but again it was too late and too little. He had already manipulated them to believe that 'she was at the fault here'. They also forced her to rug sweep it and reconcile. Worst part here is she didn't defend herself. She had all the cards but didn't reveal any of them. She immediately agreed to go back to him. And within a week she went back to his house. He acted nice for few days and immediately went back to his old habits. Nothing changed.
She still cries and whines about what he does. I asked her, "why did you go back to him?","why didn't you stand up for yourself?", "why didn't you reveal all the evidences you had infront of his family?". She replied," because I still love him. I don't want to loose him." I asked her, " Even after all the shit he gave to you, all the mental abuse he put you through, you still love him? Even after knowing what kind of a person he is, you still love him? Why? How?". I seriously couldn't wrap my mind around this. So this was not a rhetorical question but a genuine frustrated curiosity. She only replied, "I know it's weird. But I can't help it. I am addicted to him. I can't function without him." And yet she acts surprised when he does something he always do.
So my question here is: what is this behavior of P?
Is she in some form of fog? Or Stockholm syndrome? Or is this what true love looks like?? Will she ever come out of this trap?
She is very depressed and feels lost and clueless. I have no idea what to tell her. Even our other friends are clueless about this. Hence, I came to you.
Sorry, if my English is bad. English is not native language. Also, sorry for this super long post and thank you for your patience.
