“Lost the friends that I needed losing/Found others on the way.” (What to do when a buddy is abusive.)

I sometimes find it rather entertaining when the social networking site Facebook takes it upon itself to suggest a new “friend” to me. A lot of these folks turn out to be people from my past. I am thrilled by the idea of reconnecting with many them. About others I feel more ambivalent – but I do find myself kind of curious to find out what they have been up to. But some of the people whom Facebook locates I have no desire to have any contact with ever again.

Today Facebook suggested that I “friend” one of those people. No thanks. He and I were wonderful friends once. I even introduced him to his girlfriend. And that was when things quickly went bad between him and me. He was still super friendly to me, but it turned out that he treated the woman like dirt. This man who had been so much fun, so generous, so caring, so humorous, and so charming turned out to be awful to the women he got involved with.

He wasn’t overtly violent – at least not until the end, when he would see her in public and scream out “HOW CAN YOU DO THIS TO ME???” after she had left him. It was embarrassing, humiliating, and more than a little frightening. (Some may quibble and say that screaming at someone on the street is not actual violence. But I think they’re wrong. It is verbal violence. It is psychological violence. It is a form of terrorizing.) But for most of that relationship there wasn’t any yelling or hitting. It was mind games and psychological abuse. He focused on controlling her, manipulating her, and undermining her. On making her feel crazy so that he could dominate her.

Experiencing the mindf**k myself. One day she asked me to talk to him. To try to get him to stop being abusive to her. I agreed to do so. But he was so good at what he did that I left that conversation feeling pretty crazy myself. After talking with him I felt like I did not know up from down, left from right, front from back. At one point late in our lengthy conversation he actually said to me: “But can you really ever truly say that something is right or wrong?” And he had me feeling so scrambled by that point that I could not even begin to formulate an answer.

But of course my answer should have been: “Yes! What you are doing is wrong. And it makes you wrong. Wrong for her. Wrong for any woman.”

The next time I saw his girlfriend I apologized profusely to her. I told her that my conversation with the guy had left me so confused and so disoriented that I had failed in my mission to tell him that what he was doing was wrong and that he needed to stop it.

Her response surprised me. She looked at me with great relief in her eyes and said: “I feel so much better now! You experienced it, too! It’s not just me! Now you understand what I have been dealing with!”

And it was true. For three hours I experienced the sort of midf**k he had been subjecting her to for months and months! So even though I thought I had failed her, she thought the conversation was a success. It gave her the additional information that what she was experiencing was not about her. That this guy was good enough to make almost anyone feel crazy… even his good male friends. She left him soon after.

What to do when a buddy is abusive? So they broke up. But where did this leave me? I absolutely hate it when I find out that a man is abusive to his partner. And I hate it even more when that guy is a friend of mine. How do I reconcile what I stand for – my support of women’s liberation, my outright rejection of any violence or abuse in relationships, my deep-rooted belief that men’s abusive behavior is a choice, and my moral repugnance at this type of behavior – with my heartfelt fondness for the man in question?

And the answer is that I can’t. Discovering that a buddy of mine is being abusive immediately places the relationship with him in jeopardy. How can I continue to engage with this person who I now know is behaving in such horrible ways? And do I even want to? Can I just walk away? Should I?

It is a heartbreaking mess.

The other day I heard a radio interview with the singer Elton John. Apparently Elton John these days does a lot of outreach to other performers who are struggling with issues of substance abuse. He said that as long as they are seeking help and working hard to keep on the right track, he will support them. But only so long as they are seriously working to deal with their demons. And that’s how I have come to feel about friends who I find out are behaving abusively. While abusive behavior is not an addiction, some the same dynamics of denial and minimization often apply. If men acknowledge their bad behavior and are serious about dealing with their violence and abuse, then they will have my support. But any backsliding, excuse-making, minimizing, recidivism, or other such b.s., and I will have no time for them. Regardless of how troubled a man may be, being troubled is no excuse for mistreating women.

Letting go and moving on. It is my experience that the vast majority of men who behave abusively in relationships do not stop. And even if they do ever change their ways, it is almost certainly not going to be in the context of their current relationship. And so this leaves us all with a choice. Do we continue to be a man’s friend even though his behavior is unacceptable – and he is unlikely to change? What are the ethics in continuing to support him even though he is treating women like dirt?

To me, there is nothing ethical in continuing to support an active abuser. And although sometimes it breaks my heart to let these relationships go, this is just one more cost that we all must pay for men’s abusive behavior. I once heard a woman – who grew up with a violent father – say: “You know, no one ever did my father any favors by letting him get away with his abusive behavior.” To support an abuser without confronting his unacceptable behavior is no support at all. It is just enabling his horrid behavior to continue.

Sometimes when I am feeling down about the number of men with whom I have needed to end friendships because of the way they treat women, I listen to the song “Caledonia,” which has the powerful line:

“Lost the friends that I needed losing/Found others on the way.”