Mother's agony

by Laurie
(MA)

My daughter got involved in a battering relationship 6 years ago. She was only 18. Before she met him we had been very close and worked on a variety of projects together during her high school years. She had just gone away to college. Her long term high school sweetheart had broken up with her a few months before and had just announced his love for another girl. I knew she was hurting and lonely. She came home for vacation, had one too many at a party and accepted a date with this guy.

As soon as he came to the door I knew there was trouble. I got his name and looked him up on facebook when they left. I know what normal teenagers facebooks look like and this wasn't it. This was angry. I begged my daughter not to go out with him again- mistake #1. I spent the next 4 years hearing "you just hate Bob.....You are just trying to hold on to me. You don't want me to have a boyfriend....funny- I had always gotten along well with previous boyfriends.

Early on Bob would come to the house. He would explode over nothing and yell and scream at her and call her foul names right in front of me. He constantly accused her of cheating on him. He demanded constant cell phone contact when he wasn't with her. If she didn't answer instantly he would flood her phone with 100's of calls and make threats. I eventually said he couldn't come over because he was being aggressive toward my other children and me and I was afraid of him, so she moved to his father's house. I later discovered that during the months she was away at college out of state, she was answering 500+ calls a day plus 5-6 hours talking and was barely passing classes.

Eventually they moved in together near her college. She blamed me for everything saying I was trying to control her and told everyone she couldn't come home even for visits because I was an abusive controlling monster who wanted to keep her a little girl.

A few months after graduation she called and asked if she could move home. She said he had cheated on her and had thrown her out of their apartment. She showed me pictures of herself she had taken after one of her beatings. Horrible pictures with eyes swollen shut. She asked me to put a block on her phone because she was afraid she'd cave in. We quickly discovered we couldn't block calls from the internet. Within 3 days she was back talking to him.

Here is where things get really sick. I located a psychotherapist specializing in domestic abuse victims and we both saw her separately. We saw this lady for 6 months. During this time my daughter started making weekly visits to her abuser. Our relationship deteriorated. I assumed this was happening in spite of the therapists intervention.

With an hours notice, my daughter packed her bags and moved to the other side of the country with the abuser and wouldn't tell me her address or answer my calls.

A year later she called to say she had ended up in a battered woman's shelter but wouldn't come home. She got a waitress job and place of her own. She started calling me regularly again, was dating a nice fellow. All seemed well.

Then she called all upset saying a "friend" of hers had gotten mad at her and got even by telling Bob she had a boyfriend. She had also given Bob my daughter's number. Within a few days nice boyfriend was gone and she was saying Bob was the guy for her and she started getting emotionally volatile and distant. One night she called to say she was going to commit suicide. I called the therapist to see if she could call her. No. She wanted to talk to me first. I spent an hour giving her the whole story. She was so nice as I was spilling my guts. Then as I was about to leave, her face got contorted and angry and she told me that she wanted me to know she had been responsible for talking my daughter into moving across country (knowing full well that my daughter was going with the batterer). She said she would continue to talk her into staying as far away from me as possible and blamed me for all my daughters troubles. Why would anyone talk a young girl into moving across country with a batterer with no job, with no friends or family to turn to? Because she said I treated my daughter like a little girl and we were too close and it wasn't normal for her to confide in me about her troubles. My daughter still lives on the other side of the country. Since she isn't talking to me I suspect she's back with Bob. I know it won't last, but she's going to have to go through another round of beatings before she leaves again and I'm left bewildered and angry that a therapist would do this.