Once upon a time, a man was accused of horrific crimes by his family. His wife left him, after telling over a hundred people of his plight, and went off with someone else.
Then he met someone else, whom he pretended to like in order to avoid being alone. When he told her of the problems with his family, she realised she had to decide whether he was guilty or not, despite not knowing him for terribly long. After due consideration, she decided that he was not guilty of the crimes, and despite him being very difficult, remained as his friend and helped him as best she could.
In the course of this ‘relationship’, ostensibly due to stress, he poured two pints of boiling water over her and repeatedly headbutted her shouting ‘You’re stupid, you’re stupid’ a lot. She ended up in hospital.
Oddly, she still kept in touch after this, as he was under intense pressure at the time. It was not until he did something similar to his sister that she realised that she had been used to rehearse the second attack.
Several years later, when as she knew, he turned out to be innocent he returned to her life. She was trying to repair her damaged health at the time. An on-again -off-again friendship ensued, during which he attacked her again. He was suffering from PTSD by this time, and had poor health due to the earlier trauma.
She, in the meantime had taken care of her parents, and as her family was also abusive, did not go out. He was the only person that she saw, since there was nobody she could trust at all. She was so lonely, in fact, that she fell in love with a random stranger that she had met online. Her other friends, in the meantime, had decided that she was mad to be in love with the stranger, he could not possibly be interested in her and she had always been a bit weird anyway, since she did not share their low self-esteem and yet did not appear to need other people as much as they did.
So, the man decided, he must take revenge on her. So, he turned up at her home when she was very upset about the random stranger, and announced that he would do as he pleased and bring food that she did not want into the house.
This happened twice. She had already asked him not to bring any more food, and he did it again. In tears, she asked him again. He laughed at her.
She stood in the kitchen weeping. She knew this was another assault, but she did not know why. He was, as usual very tense so she knew she either had to let him play out this scene or she had to physically remove him, which could prove difficult in front of her sick mother. She also knew that she had nobody at all to talk to, and so she let him get on with it.
Over the months that followed, she often noticed his sneer as he watched her eat and grow fatter and fatter, and wondered what all this was in aid of? He kept bringing it up, over and over again as if his behaviour was not his responsibility at all. Because he had picked food as an issue, he imagined he could do this and insist that everything he had done was her fault.
When she finally confronted him and requested the reason why he would do these things, whether he thought her life was easy, he simply said:
I did not consider you at all.