I keep thinking of the Julia Roberts movie, Sleeping with the Enemy.
Evidently, we get the idea that the husband was irresistible at first, before he became 100% controlling over her life. She had to take swimming lessons in secret, squirrel away money by the littles and hide it to have some for herself when she escaped from him, lie and tell him that her mamma had died, she had to plan and pretend her own death just to get away from that monster.

I also have a friend whose boyfriend is verbally and emotionally abusive, and I have listened patiently, wobbling back and forth between telling her in no uncertain terms to dump him before he hits her, to telling myself, "2quilt, stop giving her unsolicited advice! Especially when she is older than I am, has had 3 children, 3 husbands and lots more life experience than I have had. Who am I to dole out life advice to her."

Sigh.

Sometimes I want to tell her, "I care about what happens to you, and I see alarms going off when he speaks to you disrespectfully. How would you feel if I said those things to you? How about if the checkout cashier said those things? What would you do? Don't tolerate disrespect from anyone, especially your partner!" (I want to say don't be a doormat, but that is insulting.) I would say, it makes me feel bad when I hear that he is speaking to you like something on the bottom of his shoe. Tell her that she is valuable and that it bothers you to know that he does not treat her right. Say that it's hard to see her in emotional pain, and you don't want this to go on and become physical pain.

There goes the unsolicited advice again. I can't help myself. I can't sit by and watch a train wreck. I voice my opinion, even when it's not wanted.

My friend does not want to be alone; she likes to have a boyfriend. I want to tell her than being treated badly makes her self esteem suffer, so having a bad boyfriend is NOT better than not having one at all. Unload the dead weight.