The Girl Dating an Asshole

We all have that friend whom we desperately want to save. Shake her body and tell her to open her eyes. Make her realize what kind of guy she's dating. Because he cheats. Because there's a lot of yelling, followed by days of silence. Because she calls you crying after he just threw a punch. She's hysterical. She's hyperventilating. She's everything you don't want anyone to be. Every time she mentions his wrongdoings, we ask her why. Why do you let him do this to you? Why don't you leave him? You know you deserve better, right? Our pleadings don't leave a scratch unlike the ones he leaves, so we keep quiet. We learn to shut up because there's no changing her mind. He treats me right, she says. He makes me happy, she says. We learn that we can't save her no matter how much we want to.

So we talk behind her back. Is that shitty? Yeah, but that's what good friends do. We support her through conventional methods as good friends should. She sends us long screenshots of what he said and we respond. We see an Instagram post of them together, we double tap, and we move on. We stop confronting her with negativity because she gets enough of that from him. I guess it makes sense, we say. She's too nice. When someone says they care, she just doesn't question it. Manipulative and caring aren't two adjectives that go together in her world and we don't blame her for it. She's not dumb nor naive. Okay, maybe a little gullible, but can you really blame her? Why accept a pessimistic notion of human nature when you could just choose not to? We analyze amongst ourselves until their relationship ends, after which we finally tell her everything.

So one day we'll sit her down and let her know it was never her fault. That bad people come into our lives without discrimination and that they aren't entitled to our forgiveness. We don't dare let this become a cycle.

But for now, we love you. We love you more than he has ever made you believe. We love you because your words never mean harm and your laugh puts a smile on the grumpiest person in the room. We love you because you're the mama-bear who takes care of our drunk friends and won't let us text boys in haziness. We love you because you always make time for us despite being the busiest person we know. Please never change. Please don't let him pop your bubbly personality. Please continue to be our role model because the world could use more people like you.