Fugitivus Discussion Forum

I didn't want to tangent too much and the more I thought about it the more I realized it was probably better suited to 101, so... continuation from the Mental Health Rant thread.

Spoilered for lengthy quote:




I am a little bothered by the aforementioned thought process tbh. I feel like I may be treading a little into victimblaming territory even though I'm trying not to. Because I don't know for certain what my friends' relationships with my ex-friends/abusers are, I don't know if they are in fact in a abuser/abused kind of relationship or just a skeeze/non-skeeze one. But I kind of blame them either way without even having that information.

And on the one hand I sort of feel like, because I don't know for absolute certain one way or the other, that's my right even if they are being victimized as long as my blaming them stays in my head and has no opportunity to affect them, because I don't know and am assuming they're not being abused, rather than assuming they are, because that's what the situation with them last time I was truly able to know what the situation was. And on the other hand that still sounds wrong wrong wrong even if they never know I blame them because there's even a potential that they're being abused.

It's tricky and I'm not sure what to think about it.

My first thought is that you might benefit from drawing a clear separation between "I should break off contact with this person," which doesn't necessarily fault either of you, and "I blame this person for something," which doesn't necessarily mean you should avoid them.

I can't tell whether you're saying "Because they hang around with abusers, any interaction I have with them is indirectly an interaction with an abuser, and I'm not okay with that, so I should avoid them" or saying "Because they hang around with abusers, they're shitty people, and I'd rather not interact with shitty people, because they are shitty." (Or something else. The basic gist of this post is me asking you a question, not me telling you something.)

Um, I'm not really sure of that myself, which is probably why it's unclear. I want it to be strictly the former but I think in my head there's a little bit of the latter included, and I don't want it to be there. ._.

In a nutshell, I don't know whether they're being abused or not (the relationship dynamic as far as I'm aware has always been a non-abusive one, but who knows what's going on in their private lives now). I kind of blame them for choosing to hang around shitty abusive people either way, even though they might not actually feel they have much of a choice at all if the dynamic's changed for the worse. Thus, I feel shitty that I might be blaming someone who's being abused (even if they're probably not), even if they'll never know.

I guess I just kind of wanted someone to weigh in on the muddled soup in my head and tell me if I'm a terrible awful victim-blaming person for feeling like it's okay to place blame when I don't know their situation, if it stays in my head and I just quietly cut off contact with them.

I guess that's not really a 101 kind of question, but if I super simplified it it'd be "Is this victim-blaming? If so, how do I fix my brain?" ... so IDK.

Yeah, I read and answered the original post. Are you really placing blame? I guess if you are judging them for not getting out, you are. Especially when it comes to living with abusive parents. It's really, really hard to get out, especially of a family situation that has always felt like home. It took me 7 years to leave an abusive relationship, and I do feel like I went through a lot of "personal growth" even while I stayed.

That being said, as I said on the OP, it is perfectly fine for you to set your boundaries.

Hm. I guess I can't add anything that hasn't already been covered by everyone else here. What I get from this is that you're angry at your friends for choosing abusive fucks over you, and I think that's already been covered. I've felt the same way with lots of friends. "Oh, so they treated you like shit they stepped in, then scraped you off their shoe and left you for the flies? WELL, I DON'T WANT TO TAKE SIDES, SO I'M JUST GOING TO KEEP HANGING OUT WITH THEM AND SLOWLY STOP GIVING A SHIT ABOUT YOU."

I think it's okay to be angry at them even while not blaming them for their abuse or questioning the validity of it. I mean, there's plenty of people who say "YOU'RE ABUSING ME!" just because you're setting boundaries with them, or because you're disabled and can't live up to their expectations, or for whatever maze-like "logical" reason they can think of, and if you know they have a tendency to do that, your doubt would be understandable, although either way your doubt isn't really helping them or hurting them since you're disconnected from the group and they don't appear to care enough to come over to "let's not treat each other like shit" street, where you're at.

Eirwyn, I think you nailed it. Thanks.

After some thought I think blaming them for picking "sides" when it really wasn't necessary to pick sides to begin with is a whole separate issue from blaming them for hanging with abusive people (and possibly being abused). One blames them for their own actions, the other blames them indirectly for the actions of others. I think it just took me a while to sort out what it was I was doing in my head, because either way the end result is kinda the same. >_<

*nodnods* I'm glad I could help. :+