This has been, frankly, one of the most disheartening aspects of ending relationships with emotionally abusive people in my experience. That is, having already seen their manipulative, image-control bent; having already witnessed their skillful attempts to skew the narrative (*observable in their gaslighting attempts while the relationship is ongoing), etc., I can see how easy it would be for them to manipulate mutual friends.

At the same time, being a kindhearted person myself, my first instinct is NOT to run a smear campaign on anybody else, AND my M.O. throughout abusive relationships has always been to protect that person's image (out of compassion) while I patiently tried accommodating their habits — and so the idea that the person might be abusive never even crossed the MINDS of anyone else in our circles. (Which makes a smear campaign that much more believable.)

All of this adds up to a uniquely lonely aspect of parting ways with an abusive person. Knowing they're likely smearing you (however subtly) and that, in this, they hold an imbalance of power already — even from afar and out of your life. Meanwhile, there's the aspect of personally feeling like you can't even talk to your friends about what's bothering you because... well... they might already think poorly of you (due to the abuser's version of events). Not to mention that attempting to clear your name will make YOU look like the lesser, untrustworthy person. Hence, the split becomes this big, significant life event that you can't even talk freely about with any of the people you wish you could.

Okay, sorry, didn't mean to ramble so much, but thank you, Carrie, for writing about this!