We will call her Linda

Linda used to be a good friend of mine.. and Ex's... and quite a few other people. We all worked together in a restaurant/bar for crap money when we were in our 20's. That is pretty much when the true life paths are chosen... at that age... that kind of environment can test your decision making ability as well..............

[insertion of quick reflection] Ex and I worked here as a couple already, left when we got "regular" jobs, got married, invited some of these co workers to it, bought our first house and celebrated at this bar, and some of them helped us move.... and countless other stories of the couples and hookups and breakups and failed marriages

Linda got back with her old boyfriend while we all worked there.. she had taken a few cracks at the manager and one of the waiters,,,, and funny enough.. my brother (I will ALWAYS find that amusing... mostly because she has always said he refused to have sex with her...which would be odd.... and I'm sure Delores has some stories about his choices and places... ). But this was the man that she loved......

I would ask her directly how she got the bruises on her arms..."I ran into the wall the other night".... I would ask why her wrist didn't work very well (we worked in a free-pour bar and it was obvious)..." I tripped last night and hurt it"... I pointed it out to EVERYONE that we were friends with.. My direct questioning/hinting wasn't working. And they stepped in as good friends do..... and asked about everything we could see. Remember, this was a friend who wasn't this accident prone before.

one day, I had to ask her "Linda... who punched you in the face and gave you that eye and lip?"
"Oh.. no one. I fell"

"You know.. I'm going to kick the shit out of him. You need to seriously drop him NOW. This shit ain't right...." ...and so on and so on and so on......

Everyone else stepped up to. There was no beating around the bush, we directly confronted her. We knew he was hitting her and said it to her face. She had dozens of offers of places to stay indefinitely.

She quit the next day...because he told her to.....married him a few weeks later.
None of us went to the wedding even though we were invited. She was going to do this, and we wouldn't watch it happen.

Linda popped up on FB a few weeks ago. I send all the recommendations out to the old crew... and we were happy to have her back.. I even told her straight up, in the first conversation, We knew he was hitting you, WTF??....

she said to me "I should have listened and I didn't then, but I need a favor"

4 of us moved her out this weekend to her mom's apartment. She left a lot behind including a stepdaughter that has been like her own for 10 yrs.... 10 yrs she put up with it. What boggles my mind even more is when I asked her what took so long... She told me "I was done 4 yrs ago and it took me this long to do it"....

I can understand some things... I took a lot of verbal crap from a trophy wife because, plain and simply, that's what she was; high maintenance through and through. ridiculously attractive, but had to have her way. I'm out now and all the happier for it..... Delores takes it (these are my thoughts) for the "safety"... no confrontations, not having to explain to anyone why.... not having to go through with it.....hurting someone... She has her reasons. One thing I do know, according to her, there is no physical danger... But she and I did have an interesting discussion about DH and what he has been up to the past few months and the behaviors are strangely similar to those of the "unfaithful"... trust me, I know. I've seen it it from many angles.
But Linda had nothing.. she lived in her in-laws basement... her husband, not exactly a model.. in fact... Jack Black would be a good description of him and she was not permitted computer use without him knowing all passwords and usernames... seriously.. I cant even comprehend that.

Linda got beat up for 10 yrs.. her friends begged her to drop him and even didn't attend the wedding. She married him and continued to get beat up even though her husbands ex wife tried to tell her to go (why can't some just listen to anothers mistakes and not repeat them?) Her In-laws told her to leave him because he was a POS (piece of shit).. That would be his own parents. And it took her 10 years....

Linda now lives in a room smaller than a jail cell with everything that was important to her... but now, she is able to go out, and have a cell phone, and see her friends... She wasted 10 yrs of her life and even more realistically, 4 yrs... because that was when she was done. 4 yrs waiting on "the right time". The right time came when she got fed up on waiting on him hand and foot despite the back and leg injuries that have crippled her. She turned 36 last week and is permanently disabled (not wheelchair bound or anything, but very difficult to employ).

That fucker is so lucky that his parents told him to stay away... because I would have shown him what it's like to have someone stronger throw you around.. I may have even fucked him after beating him to shit, just to prove a point ...

But that would have made me no better than him