I’m really close friends with this one girl, and ever since I met her (a few months back) I knew she was in a relationship. In fact, the first week we met she talked about relationship problems. All relationships have problems, right? That was not a big deal.

Ever since we’ve met we’ve become very close. We just finished watching Hill House together and we always talk to each other about very personal problems.

Cut to last week - I get a tearful call from her asking if she can come over because she “needed to rant”. That’s fine - this has happened before, and it usually involves her being upset at coworkers or small stuff with her boyfriend. This time, she was in tears telling me about how her boyfriend sexually assaulted her. Twice. She no longer felt safe around him, and she didn’t know what to do.

I calmed her down and told her she needs to have a serious conversation with him about what happened and leave him. He’s had a history of being super clingy, and he’ll get upset with her if she doesn’t have sex with him.

She told him that she doesn’t want to speak to him for a week, and he agrees. He ends up leaving his job “sick” last week, and since he doesn’t have a car, she was the only one to pick him up - he basically forced her to pick him up. In the car he starts bawling his eyes out and hysterically says he’d die without her. This whole week he has messaged her (even did it 50 times in 10 minutes) blaming her, getting angry at her, swearing, talking about jealousy of us (we don’t see each other TOO much outside of work). He was bothering her for days, interrupting her at University and continuously crying and blaming her for the sexual assault he committed.

I texted her last night after she left my house (we watched the last episode of Hill House) and told her that the relationship seemed abusive and he was manipulating her. She got super upset and said “well what if I stay with him and I’m happy? He’s going to change.” Among a couple other things.

I really just want to make sure she’s safe.

Am I the asshole?

Tl;dr - Close friend’s boyfriend sexually assaulted and verbally abused her among other controlling methods and I told her that he was manipulating her.