SpaceAgeSage

When I walked in, the tension could be cut with the cleaver sitting on the man’s kitchen counter. The words “gun,” “I am scared for my life,” and “he is acting crazy” were about all I had to go on when I learned my friend needed to get out a threatening situation with a new boyfriend. No physical violence yet, just words that had erupted the night before with some liquid courage stirring his anger, but still, words can lead to action, plus the information I received from family was 15 hours old.

Now it was late morning and neither of them knew I was coming. From the stairs leading to the front door landing, I announced, “Hello the house — any one home?” I called out her name and walked in as casually as possible through the open door. It was 80 degrees inside the single-wide mobile home. I saw him first and realized the pot on the stove contained the lunch he was fixing. I introduced myself, and he looked rather surprised, but not confrontational. Seeing a woman come through the door, he didn’t get territorial, and if anything, seemed unsure with my quiet confidence.

As a senior instructor in the martial arts, I know controlling the opponent’s mind and the situation is far more desirable that jumping into an altercation. It is about controlling the situation without sending out signals that escalate into violence. I sized him up without looking like I was doing so and realized he was a drug user and probably an alcoholic. There was no friendliness in him toward me, but instead I could see behind his masking that he was sizing me up and weighing his options. I could sense more than read his insecurity. He didn’t know what to make of me. I watched him keep himself nonchalant and relaxed, but behind his eyes was a coldness that hadn’t fired up into anger yet, but was quite capable of doing so.

My friend came out of the back bedroom to give me a hug. She didn’t look frightened, more tired and concerned. I relaxed a little knowing he wasn’t currently violent or drunk, but even after learning I was her friend, he did not become friendly. If anything, his mostly concealed wariness jumped a bit, but not into the danger zone. We did a minute of small talk, and I asked my friend to take a walk with me. I waited rather expectantly to see if he would let go of the control and isolation he had worked to put her in. He didn’t stop us.

As we walked on a nearby dirt road and talked, I let my friend know I had already called the sheriff’s department to send an officer for a “stand-by to prevent” situation, and I assumed someone would be there soon. She immediately got embarrassed, tried to get me to call law enforcement off, and kept trying to tell me that she was already packing to leave him, that her car was about half loaded, and that everything was fine. She didn’t want to embarrass him in front of the neighbors because “they will talk.” She told me he didn’t have a gun in the house, but that his threat was to go get his gun from another family member’s house and bring it back.

Finally I said, “What would you do if your niece came to you one night and said her boyfriend had threatened to get a gun and kill her?”

Without any hesitation at all, she said, “I’d kill him.”

I threw my hands up in the biggest Duh! body language I could manage and then looked at her questioningly, letting her connect the dots. I knew she was obviously under the sway of a very manipulative abuser in the late honeymoon stage, and she needed a very quick reality check. I could see it starting to dawn on her, but she was pretty resistant and put out with her family’s interference, because she is normally quite a strong-willed and savvy person. I didn’t care. I knew she would come to her senses once she left him.

Back at the trailer house, he was playing cool about it all, trying to show what a “nice, reasonable, and genuine” guy he was. He made sure, though, to put blame on her even while I was there, trying to paint himself as the one who was wounded and betrayed. He even tried to spin a different story for me than the one I had heard. I cut him off with, “Hey it doesn’t matter how anything happened. She felt threatened and that’s what matters.”

He had no response.

As she and I continued to carry out boxes, he said, “I’ll go work outside,” as if he was magnanimously letting us know he was giving us some space and thus “proving” he was anything but menacing or threatening. I had to laugh inside, but at least we were no longer cramped in a small dining room area with a short attack distance. Then my cell phone rang. It was the deputy. I could hear his siren over the phone. He wanted an update. Poor guy. He had heard that I was walking into a domestic violence scene where a gun was in use, and he had presumed the worst. I calmly told him he could go down to Code 2 — no lights and siren — that there was no gun involved and the guy was being calm about it.

The deputy rolled up when both my friend and I were loading our vehicles. He wanted to know what was going on. My friend continued to say, “It is alright. Everything is alright.” I told the deputy, “She is pretty much in denial, but yes, he is acting calmly about all this.” The deputy walked into the guy’s yard and asked for his ID as she and I kept carrying out stuff. I was so glad the deputy showed up so that the guy would be on record about all this and less likely to retaliate, but I let the deputy know a few minutes later that it would be OK for him to leave.

We drove the half hour to my home, and after a few days of decompressing from it all, she has realized how many “red flags” she ignored because the guy was so good at manipulating. He knew she was vulnerable from a past relationship and sweet talked her into, “give me one week to prove my love,” during which time he called her his queen and told her he wanted to lift her up and let her become all she could be. She didn’t realize when a charmer puts you on a pedestal, your head is up in the sky and your feet are no longer on firm ground. She thought he was feeding her heart and soul, but the food was slow poison.

• He controlled her food intake with discussions of not wanting either one of them to get “two asses” and did the cooking to slowly take away from her something she is quite good at.

• He played with her mind by offering her sugary foods despite wanting her not to get fat, sending mixed messages meant to break down her own willpower to his decision making and his version of reality.

• He found out what she needed emotionally and found ways to make her feel like he was providing it fully by making a big show of her to friends, planning a huge birthday party, etc.

• He slowly and carefully kept her isolated from family and friends, by moving her attention away from texting or by saying, “Let’s go out and you can email them later.”

• He told her she would not need to go back to family to get her cats or other personal items, that he loved her so much he would buy her all new stuff, including a cat.

• He cut her hair to the style he liked.

• He kept giving her input, input, input with music, activities, or work, giving her little time to think.

• He said, “Yes, we should find a church to attend, that would be nice,” but when they came near a church to check one out, he would always make sure something else would always come up that they had to go do.

• He was just competitive enough to make it clear he was better at certain things than she was.

• He said he could do “anything and everything,” so much so that people probably wouldn’t believe him, thus trying to come across as the one to make all future decisions.

• He kept being “honest” with her by letting her know in words that he was naturally possessive, which desensitized her more and more to any red flags.

• He said that she wasn’t a musician, so he put down her desire to learn to play the drums.

All his actions were designed to isolate her, make her dependent on him, and create a sense of obligation in her so she would respond by being loyal to him. It was so subtle, so smooth, so sneaky that she was unaware of how insidious it all was.

But then he made the mistake of getting too drunk and revealing what was to come if she stuck around. A male friend of hers made the guy jealous, and the controller and abuser personality finally came out. My friend was talking to the male friend’s mom when the drunk boyfriend asked to talk to her. Thinking her boyfriend just wanted to say ‘Hi,” she gave him the phone. He proceeded to threaten the mom’s life and anyone else who came between him and my friend.

“If you step on to my property and come between us, I will kill you,” were his exact words, adding “If I ever see your son, I will kill him.”

After the call, my friend could hardly believe what was happening. This knight in shining armor wasn’t so nice any more.

Then my friend’s sister in the hospital kept texting updates about her night in the Emergency Room. The boy friend grew even more suspicious and jealous. He said, “If I look at that phone, it better have your sister’s name on the caller ID.”

My friend shot back, “It would.”

(My friend would look back a few days later and realize how glad she was to have her cell phone with her at all times. It was the lifeline that probably saved her life.)

She realized she couldn’t push the issue at that time and waited until he was asleep to text a message to her niece about him being crazy and threatening. In the morning before my arrival she got in his face about possessiveness, about disrespecting her best friend of 20 years, and told him she was leaving. She was waking up to his real self. True to abuser form — once caught they can go sickly sweet to pull you back in again — he said, “I think I f**ked up last night.” She replied, “At least you are thinkin’ right today.” His apology lessened her anger as he expected. He knew she still had a long time to go to pack and plenty of opportunity to convince her not to leave.

He didn’t know I would enter the mix to bust up his plans. But with two against one, I think he realized it would take too much effort to try to “work” both of us.

—

My friend just read this post and is both mad as a hornet at him and yet still torn because “he was such a nice guy.”

If you have never faced an abuser or manipulator or seen a predator in action with your eyes wide open, it is hard to recognize the evil intent behind charming actions, chivalrous talk, or tales of exciting adventures to come. It is hard to see the strings being attached gently to your heart or to recognize when they turn into hooks with barbs. The smooth or exciting words and actions really are like a sweet poison meant to manipulate deep wounds to create a more and more powerful level of control. People who spend a lifetime learning how to weave a web of control are just like anyone else who spends a lot of time learning a skill — they become relaxed, seamless experts.

My friend wanted me to post this story so others can recognize some of the warning signs.

Tags: abuse, abuser, control, finding sagehood, getting out, manipulation, threats