Not sure if I (27F) should say something to my friend (22F) about her “fiancé” (24M) being god awful, abusive, and no longer welcome in our home, or leave it alone.

names changed

Hi, all. I’ve been in a toxic relationship before and after a nightmarish 2 days with a younger acquaintance of mine (Rose) and her fiancé (John), I believe she is in one now. I’m not sure if I should go out of my way and risk alienating her by confirming abuse she seemed to be indirectly trying to ask about and ensure her fiancé never comes to our house again or just leave it alone and avoid having them in our house or hanging out when he is present, which her fiancé seems to purposely limit.

They’re from a town about an hour and a half away and were camping in our town to get out of their house after their beloved cat passed away this week. We aren’t close by any means and have only hung out a few times, but I know Rose looks up to and admires me and idealizes my and my husband’s relationship. We have a great one but it’s a lot of work, like any. I didn’t even know they were here until they called one morning and asked to come over, to which I reluctantly agreed. I have a specific profession that I do from home- for the sake of this post, I’ll say I cut hair. I had an appointment for a close friend that day that I was looking forward to spending with her alone, but nothing else planned. We decided to meet for coffee first- when we got to the coffee shop, they sidelined me by admitting they had no money. No problem- I covered their coffee, we chatted a bit, and then headed back to my house.

My client/friend came over after I made sure she was comfortable with 2 extra people in the house and got her hair cut. John is a huge dude and stands at nearly 7ft, so when he apologetically and shyly mentioned he was hungry and asked to grab something from the fridge, I was so embarrassed because I was so distracted with my client- My husband and I try to be gracious hosts. I was raised in an Italian family where food was always prepared and out for guests, and my husband and I carry this on whenever we expect company. I apologized to him for not having anything ready and said he could prepare himself a burrito from the pre-made containers of cooked chicken, cheese, etc intended to be for my husbands work lunches for the week. After calling my husband and making sure he was comfortable with this, I also offered our pull out couch for the evening if they were still struggling to go back home, and they took us up on it.

Anyway, about the food, I was under the assumption he would be courteous as someone who was traveling an hour and a half away with no money, but he went all in and ate about 3/4 of 5 days worth of lunches that I had cooked and prepared the day before, including an entire 1lb bag of shredded cheese and nearly an entire jar of salsa, leaving basically a tablespoon. (I didn’t realize this until after they’d left.

After my client left, they both started opening up to me individually. John and I both smoke cigarettes while Rose doesn’t, so there were a lot of moments where he and I would be outside together or I would be inside with Rose while he smoked. Apparently John was recently assaulted by another girl, who drugged him and had sex with him on five separate occasions over the course of last month. I heard both sides of this story. I am a survivor of assault and educated in emotional trauma pertaining to it and know there are strange ways people can behave when people who assault us are our friends. I hesitate to not believe his story, but it seems...so fishy. Its not my place to postulate over whether any victim of assault is telling the truth, because that’s wrong, but I have a hard time believing what he’s saying- not because of his gender or size, but simply because he’s a piece of shit in all other areas so it’s not hard to continue that narrative. While this was happening, Rose suspected it as cheating and asked John about it multiple times, which he denied, and continued seeing this girl for two months until finally admitting to Rose that he was actually repeatedly being drugged with sedative benzodiazepines and taken advantage of while sleeping. Rose threatened to leave, which resulted in John violently banging his head on the floor and hitting walls until she backed down from it. I told each of them individually to their face that this was abuse and completely unacceptable no matter the circumstances but was suddenly nervous about his stability as a 7ft man, me being 5”3 and my husband gone, who is not much bigger even if he was home. In relation to her seeming like she was trying to confirm whether or not this was normal, she kept making small comments like “sometimes I worry he’s a sociopath or something”, etc.

So that night was normal enough- I made a huge casserole dish pasta bake with bread and sides, and took Rose with me to a restaurant for drinks, as a girls thing. She kept mentioning how John would get upset being alone for so long, so it was good my husband was there to keep him company. When we got back, we all went to bed and while it was slightly uncomfortable, nothing happened to make us take the hard stance on barring him from our home until the next day.

My husband went to work again in the morning and when they woke up, I made a huge breakfast of eggs/toast/coffee for them. They mentioned that they really liked how yesterday’s haircut turned out so I offered to do theirs for free, which they were very excited about. As the day progressed, John slipped in a quip about how boring my husband was while we were gone because he put on Mario Party and John didn’t like that game. I replied that we found it really fun and he should have just said something to him. I started on Rose’s hair, which he took as a good time to eat almost every damn thing in our fridge. There was half of the pasta bake left, and while he offered us two bowls, ate the rest of it freely along with whatever else he could find I guess. I again didn’t notice until later when I was finished with her hair and had just started on John’s. My husband had just walked in the door from work and I took a break to say hello to him alone- while he was excited to see me, was 100% over their “visit” after he checked the fridge post 9 hour workday to find the scraps that John kindly left him.

As I was working on his hair, he refused to address my husband by name. I needed someone to hold a light for me and asked my husband to do it, which prompted John to refer to him as “light holder” and other sly enough but demeaning labels, which I combatted by thanking my husband graciously for everything he was doing and all the hard work he did over the day because John is unsurprisingly an unemployed dbag on top of everything else. My husband, assumably to gtfo from the situation without escalating it, decided to go get cat food. We have a really cool and fun local pet shop, so he offered to take Rose along since she wasn’t doing anything but watching John get his hair cut. She was excited and rode along with him. While they were gone, I briefly checked the time because I wanted him the hell out of my house and was trying to determine a limit- he apparently took this as a queue that I was also worrying about my husband and Rose (I absolutely wasn’t) and remarked they’d been gone a long time. I replied that it had only been a half hour, the pet shop closed at 8, and it was 8:06. I repeated that it was a really cool pet shop and how fun it was to hang with the animals.

When they returned, she case into the room gushing about the birds and the fish there, and he cut her off to ask if they had stopped for drinks on the way too because she’d been gone too long. She was clearly confused and told him exactly what I told him, only for him to fire back that she was “sure being dismissive and shady about it.” I didn’t even know what to say, I just shot him a glare to shut him up and finished his haircut, (which I honestly fucked up on purpose, sorry world) and did the whole routine of “thanks for coming, we’re so tired, time to pack up and head out” and they left, leaving my husband and I ranting for hours about what an awful experience it was and how he can NEVER come back to our home again.

Sorry this was long, but I’m worried about my friend. It seems like she was “playing house” in our house the entire time and John caught on and felt threatened by us having a good relationship and particularly my husband for just living his life and being a decent man that works hard to pull his weight in our household. I don’t like how he acted towards him and I feel like along with other relationships, Rose is trying to shove John as a round peg into the square hole of mimicking ours as this idyllic and peaceful life she desperately wants.

I want to reach out to her, but I know that relationships like that can foster a “us against the world mentality” and calling John out for what he is could potentially alienate her from any future support and intervention my husband and I could provide for her and even put our own safety in jeopardy in the .01% case that we are the final straw that shines a light on how he is clearly abusive and causes her to leave him.

tl;dr: friend is in a obviously toxic and controlling relationship with her very unstable and possibly violent fiancé, who was rude to my husband in our home and ate all of our food during a impromptu 2 day “visit.” Don’t know how to maintain her friendship for future support while also not allowing her fiancé into our home again, also struggling with whether I should flat out express concern for her safety and well-being at the risk of alienating her and possibly putting our safety in jeopardy

Submitted April 26, 2019 at 11:30AM by shirleythemedium http://bit.ly/2XIBshe