Friend (37f) still being abused. She won't fight back at all. I (34f) feel helpless, annoyed, and drained.

TW: Abuse

So my (34f) best friend (37f) of 8 years (minus 2, you'll understand) hooked up with an abuser (34m) in February 2019. He made it really hard to be her friend and after a couple of months of trying to excise the tumor, I realized I couldn't keep draining my bucket to fill hers up. I stopped being her friend. Two years later, last February, she reached out to me saying she missed me. He was still in her life. We started hanging out regularly, with the rule being we don't discuss him. Well eventually it all came out anyway. He is an emotional manipulator. In September, I convinced her to finally leave him.

He moved out mid-November 2021 but he is still torturing her. The thing is, throughout this whole process, she has almost outright refused to protect herself. She never goes to the cops when she has reportable crimes, she takes things into her own hands (committing felonies like logging into his credit card account to delete her ACH info), and she gets cagey talking about the details when she knows I will disapprove.

I am starting to feel my bucket draining again. I want to be her friend, she makes me so happy when we aren't nearly fighting over how she needs to advocate for herself because I can't do literally everything. Prior to the abuser, we NEVER had issues. He is truly the only issue that has ever come between us.

He doesn't live with her anymore and can only torture her through other means. He got into her Nest and moved her thermostat up to 98 overnight. He cut the cord to her HVAC unit. He threatens to sue her for hundreds of reasons. He tells her if she doesn't adopt his dog, he will put it down and blame her forever. Just non-stop evil bullshit. I'm so sick of it and I am starting to feel like she's partially responsible for not taking control of the situation and fighting back.

But I know she's a victim of abuse. And I know she needs support the most right now. And I know she doesn't have a huge support network.

How can I best provide her support while protecting myself? I feel my mental illness could be triggered by all of this drama. My life is DRAMA FREE and I want to keep it that way.

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TL;DR: Best friend managed to escape an abuser but the abuse continues. She is not advocating for herself and I am getting tired of fighting with her about how she needs to. I want to be her friend but i need to protect myself at the same time.

Submitted December 21, 2021 at 08:49AM by uhnjuhnj https://ift.tt/3mpIvtY