The Point of Abuse is to Make You Stay

why Chloe Dykstra’s texts to Chris Hardwick don’t discredit her

(Content Warning: This post discusses emotional abuse and sexual assault, including a detailed account of a specific incident.)

On Saturday morning my boyfriend, a touch of sadness in his voice, asked me “Did you hear about Chris Hardwick?” My heart dropped into my stomach. On the heels of losing an artist recently who meant a great deal to me, my first morbid thought was that Hardwick had committed suicide. My second thought, upon learning of the abuse allegations, was that suicide would have been less shocking. But after reading Chloe Dykstra’s post, I began examining why I found this news so surprising. Then I read Hardwick’s response statement, and my shock turned to anger — and not just because I know firsthand how skilled abusers are at masking their abuse.

I have been a fan of Chris Hardwick for years. I thoroughly enjoyed his podcast, and there was a time when I wouldn’t miss an episode of @midnight. I’ll even admit that I harbored a tiny crush on him for a while there. When I met him briefly after a standup show in Seattle, he was incredibly kind to me. One of the reasons I’d always been a fan was because he seemed like such a genuinely nice human. But as I read his statement and felt my blood pressure rising in a visceral reaction to his words, it became very clear to me that his nice guy persona was an image he carefully cultivated. Chris Hardwick isn’t a nice guy, he’s a “Nice Guy”. And, like so many other Nice Guys, he would have you believe he’s the kind-hearted underdog, the exact opposite of those muscular jerks with their blatant machismo and toxic masculinity. But Nice Guys aren’t interested in being nice, they’re concerned with making sure everyone thinks they’re nice in order to get the things they want. Because at the core of the Nice Guy beats a heart filled with narcissism and a desire to be showered with love and adoration. The Nice Guy doesn’t see women as people — he sees them as something he is entitled to as his reward for being a good person. Above all else, though, the Nice Guy is an emotional abuser.

I started writing this on Monday, intending only to put down my observations on Chloe’s post and Hardwick’s response. And then, on Tuesday, he leaked the text messages between him and Chloe to TMZ. If I had any doubt about the validity of her story — and I really fucking didn’t — it would have evaporated reading this. The things he said echoed so many of the things I heard from my abusive ex that it was like they were reading from the same playbook. The accusations of emotional infidelity. The self-righteous attempts to paint himself as a martyr, betrayed by a cold-hearted woman who he gave all his love to. The not-so-subtle guilt trips he laid on by letting her know she’s free to ‘make all those “young, stupid choices” that are so important’ while making damned sure she knew she was tossing aside the person who loved her most to do it. The underlying current of self-victimization running through the entire message. The fact that the only point at which he acknowledges his own shortcomings is when he says that he is insecure, gets frustrated easily, and works too much. All of which, unsurprisingly, aren’t really character flaws. The person that wrote this text is deeply narcissistic. At no point was anything in this text about Chloe — it was all about him and his feelings. As I sit here typing this, my palms are sweaty and I’m shaking off the remains of a low-grade panic attack. Because I know this guy, I really do. Chloe did an incredibly difficult thing when she shared her story — something I’ve been unable to do, in anything other than the vaguest way, since leaving my abusive relationship. So, I’m going to do a difficult thing now, and explain to you why I know she’s telling the truth.

The first thing I’ll say, and the most important thing to understand, is that abuse victims are usually in love with their abuser. When I hear people saying things like “If she was really being abused, why did she stay so long?” or “If it was really that bad, why would she want to stay friends with him?” it makes me want to scream until their bones crumble. When you’re in an abusive relationship there are still moments when you are so happy. There are moments when things are so good. You keep holding on because you believe their promises that things are going to change, no matter how many times they don’t. Added to that is the fact that when you live with abuse for an extended amount of time, you start to convince yourself it’s normal. And your abuser is doing everything they can to convince you it’s normal. They are gaslighting you and manipulating you, they are isolating you from your friends. You come to depend on your abuser completely, even knowing how destructive the relationship is (there’s a term for this in psychology, it’s called trauma bonding). Your world becomes very, very small, and your relationship becomes the biggest thing in it.

The thing that struck me immediately when I started reading Hardwick’s text, and which triggered emotions I haven’t had to feel for a long time, was the subtle manipulation and blame. See, abusers have this way of turning everything upside down. No matter how poorly they are treating you, no matter how illogical it would be to think it’s your fault, they will deftly manipulate you into feeling you are to blame. They will shift the paradigm of power and suddenly you will find yourself begging THEM to forgive YOU. You desperately want to leave and simultaneously feel like leaving would mean the end of the world.

It would take me a long time to detail all of my own experiences with abuse. I’m not really ready to do that yet, and it isn’t really the point of this post. So I’m just going to tell one story. It’s one that’s incredibly difficult for me to tell, but it’s important to me that people understand that wanting to stay with your abuser is NOT proof that abuse isn’t occurring. If anything, Chloe’s texts pleading Hardwick to take her back further support her claims. The desire to stay is a result of long-term abuse. The cycle of being torn down and built back up by your abuser breeds a desperation to be affirmed and loved by the person you’ve come to rely on for the tiny shred of self-worth that still remains within you. Even now, putting this into words feels like I’m betraying my ex. Despite all logic, speaking out still feels wrong.

I spent much of my abusive relationship being coerced and guilted into sex. I keep hearing this denounced as not truly being sexual assault. This is a lie. I keep hearing that if she really didn’t want to she would say no. This is a lie. I keep hearing that if she’d spoken up and said no he wouldn’t have done it. This is the biggest lie of all.

During the final few years of this relationship, my ex and I were invited to spend the weekend out of town with some friends. As we were hanging out with them that day, my ex kept not-so-subtly hinting about wanting to have sex after everyone else went upstairs to bed. I felt very uncomfortable with this idea (and said so), since we were sleeping on an air mattress in the middle of the living room where anyone could walk in on us. Somehow he convinced me to do it quickly and quietly. Or maybe I just didn’t have the energy that night to deal with the fallout and sullen silent treatment that inevitably followed my saying no.

Whatever the reason, I acquiesced. A couple minutes into the stealthy, uncomfortable tryst I started feeling sick. I was panicking at the thought that someone would come downstairs and listening for any little noise. I was overcome with a sense of claustrophobia and finding it difficult to catch my breath. I told him quietly to stop. He didn’t. I told him more loudly to stop. He began to move faster, knowing I didn’t want to continue but attempting to finish quickly anyway. I placed both hands on his chest and shoved, demanding for the third time that he stop. He stopped, finally.

The conversation/shouting match that ensued at this point is mostly a blur now, existing in my memory in fragments of anger and sadness and confusion. But I remember very clearly saying to him “You have to stop when I tell you to stop. Do you realize that what you just did is rape?” He would own this and admit to it years later, but that night he reacted by telling me that he was leaving me. He told me that it was over because “you obviously don’t think much of me as a person if you can accuse me of that.” Cue the end of the world. I began sobbing, begging him to please not end things. He refused to speak to me any further that night, and he continued this silent treatment through half of the next day. We sat through an agonizing brunch with our friends, pretending everything was fine. I don’t recall the details of the conversation that took place when we were finally alone, only that it ended with more apologies from me and him retracting his threat to end things. This was not the first time he’d threatened to leave me amid an argument, nor would it be the last. But it was one of the worst and most memorable ones.

I am not sharing this story to get revenge on my ex, or in the hopes that it will hurt him. In fact, not wanting to hurt him is the reason I haven’t shared it until now. Writing this and reliving that night has been an incredibly painful experience. My hope is that putting this out there will help someone — someone who has been lucky enough not to suffer this kind of severe emotional and psychological abuse — grasp the effect it can have on a person. Even after being coerced into sex and forced to continue after saying no, things still ended with me begging and apologizing. This is why Chloe begging her ex not to end things doesn’t make me think she’s lying. It makes me think she’s telling the truth. Being emotionally abused and constantly gaslit robs you of your self-esteem. It leaves you a shell of yourself. Eventually, your only source of self-worth becomes your abuser. You can’t bear to lose them because there is this tiny, sinister voice inside you now constantly whispering that you are only worth as much as you mean to them.

I believe Chloe both because you SHOULD believe women and because I saw so many of my own experiences with abuse mirrored in her story. I don’t believe anyone who hasn’t lived through this abuse could detail it so intimately. My heart breaks seeing her attacked for having the bravery to share her experiences and attempt to heal. But, most of all, I am grateful to Chloe and every single woman who’s had the strength to speak out. Because the insidious nature of abuse is that your abuser convinces you that you’re jumping at shadows, that nothing is wrong and it’s all in your head. Breaking the silence is terrifying because that fear that you won’t be believed never completely goes away. Abuse grows in dark, silent corners, and breaking that silence, turning on that light and exposing the ugliness, is the only way we will end it. Thank you, Chloe, for giving me courage to turn on the light.