#he LOVED anecdotes and also giving his unsolicited opinions on everything. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fandomele · 5 years

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it is a fact, though, that is is common for people to leave a bad relationship by falling into a new romantic one. it is not wise. it is a pattern of behaviour and codependency and can be a cycle that cannot be escaped. if I had a nickel for everyone I knew who just traded one relationship for another without dealing with what they needed to first, and then just want up making more excuses and putting up with more problematic behaviour, and trying to make it work. it's not about Chris. not

first of all: not only you (general you, the people of my original post, maybe you too, I don’t know) might be accusing a good, honest man and husband of being abusive or at the very least careless as hell, you are really assuming that Melissa must be unable to determine whether this relationship is okay or not because... everybody is the same, I guess, and you know her personally, know if she’s going to therapy, know what kind of support she has in her daily life, know how Chris behaves, know how aware she is of red flags and how careful she is now? Do the people posting about them know about any of this? Or are they just assuming things and deciding for her and publicly speaking about her as someone who can only be pushed around right now, something that frankly if Melissa read, or anyone in her position did, wouldn’t exactly feel great and would also feel pretty invasive and entitled?

yes, I’ve had friends in the same exact situation, in one case 3 monster-boyfriends in a row, and I’m well aware of how you must work on yourself too, it’s not enough to break up with a guy. I also have had friends who out of a toxic relationship and found the perfect guy and I’m so happy for her, she didn’t have to wait at all, it’s like he came from the sky and he’s the most sweet, respectful guy who takes care of her. Anything can happen. In no case, they’d want a stranger to start discussing their new partners in public, or their ability to say no, how much they might have healed before they dated someone new, how much detaching and healing and therapy was happening before they got together with the new person, and to doubt their ability to choose again. I don’t know about the people you know, but everybody I know would be disgusted and angry and feel very insulted.In fact, no one I know really wants even their friends to assume and imply and hint at them not having the ability to be in a decent relationship when 1 they aren’t asked 2 they don’t have all the facts 3 they aren’t asked and 4 they are actually discussing it in a public forum for other strangers. I’ll discuss how it is about Chris later, but even if it weren’t, nobody is entitled to spread suspects about a relationship between two people they don’t even know and who didn’t ask for those opinions (especially when they have been bullied for years and mistreated by loud parts of the public who was already making up stuff based on how they read the little they knew) and Melissa would be disgusted too, like anyone in her position. Like you would, if strangers started deciding how you are living and what problems you have and if your loved ones are assholes based on their experience.

Many abuse survivors have to also re-learn to trust their instincts, when they are in a new relationship they have to be careful about not becoming abusers themselves because they want to control the situation or expect the worst and mistreat their partner (happened to some of my friends as I said before), they have to re-learn to see what’s good and what isn’t without people, much less strangers, putting their two cents and filling their head with paranoia, insecurity, and honestly, straight up badmouthing the new guy based on their imagination, their prejudice towards him and/or their personal experience which is different for everybody. The abuse survivor could be in therapy, or sadly not, but they can read these things and still get more messed up because feeling powerless and unable to understand the situation they are in, it’s not all the same for everybody and I can’t imagine someone actually benefiting from these kind of posts, they can only cause harm (or delight for people who feel so excited about giving unsolicited opinions). Melissa won’t. Chris won’t. Abuse survivors reading this who already doubt themselves will be even more scared. Abuse survivors who are getting in another abusive relationship won’t realize what’s happening reading posts that gossip about Melissa’s new husband without proof. Melissa came out to help people in abusive relationships, not to have people start dissecting her life and her choices before and after.

And considering that some of the comments there were literally about Chris looking like her ex husband, some comments were about the things Chris does and that “”””must”””” make her feel bad but she’s too weak after her past problems to say no right away, I’d say that 1 it’s definitely personal and about Chris and there is hardly any good faith in it 2 in some cases people are projecting their own traumas. Don’t do that. It’s bad. You lose objectivity and you also mess up another person life 3 don’t assume you know how Melissa had changed now, what she’ll put up with, and what Chris considers healthy. It takes two to be in a couple. 4 don’t go spread your opinions about how she must be still manipulated by her new husband in tags where everybody can read and just take it at face value, which is not the same as you discussing it alone with your friend, it’s more like you standing on top of a table at the market and discussing the personal life of someone who works nearby and is an abuse survivor and telling people “I think her new boyfriend is still manipulating her because she didn’t take enough me-time after the divorce and he looks like an asshole and I have many other reasons to believe so”. You will get sued. You will get people to believe you even if they don’t have facts and make her more uncomfortable. You’ll get people to doubt their own instincts and hers, you’ll be dismissing what she says, how she feels, and somehow it’s still better than what’s happening on tumblr where people skip the whole ‘I think’ and go straight to ‘it’s like this, it’s a fact’. Look at the Melissa tag right now and tell me you don’t see posts speculating on what Chris has been doing and how it badly affected Melissa who was too weak to fight it. Or how men aren’t supposed to get together with women that fast (who cares about what the women want there, right). All put in words that would make anyone go ‘oh that must be true’ except you have no idea of what went down there and they are just, as always, making something look worse and worse so more people can later jump in and immediately go to the worst case scenario.

Also let’s not pretend that years after starring in a tvshow Chris doesn’t get regularly bullied by hundreds of people on all social networks because they can’t distinguish fiction from reality and also think they are bettering the world because they are punishing someone they deem morally questionable due to a role he played, and do so attacking everything from his physical appearance (classy and not at all going to hit people who have ‘flaws’ like his) and volunteer work and personality and mental issues.

And just to conclude with a personal and important anecdote: My friend, an abuse survivor, ended up adopting abusive techniques to deal with her new boyfriend. Because of how she described the relationship, with no facts, just my opinion and how I was so paranoid due to my past and due to tumblr itself, I was convinced he was the one acting with malice and being abusive because everything can be read that way if you have prejudices, and once she actually went to therapy it turns out that no, it’s not him, she’s manipulating him and he’s just an ass, and my idea that ‘I saw these two things he did, must be a pattern, she’s already been abused, he’s abusive too’ actually pushed her behind in her healing process. Because I spread my ideas as facts due to my own perception of what was happening, with the limited knowledge I am, I hurt people. What do you think what’s happening on tumblr will do to all the sensitive people reading? Don’t assume that something is happening just because ‘historically’ it can happen or because it happened to you and more importantly don’t spread it around. Don’t put malicious ideas in people’s heads. Hope for the best, if you believe the worst discuss it in private where it can’t harm anyone, but don’t tell me what Melissa must or must not be doing or feelings because we DON’T KNOW HER. You can barely try to guess what your friends do and feel with the knowledge they allow you to have, what more a stranger. Hell, even therapists have to be careful not to ‘decide’ what the patient has right away or they’ll only see what they want to see and dismiss the rest, it goes twice for people yelling about it on the internet.

#melissa benoist #abuse tw #I'm sorry this got so long but it all needs to be said #chris wood #Anonymous #ele answers

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