Ok, me n Rose have privately discussed the matters of which you speak - but did you read further to see where he was beginning to become physically agressive with her? I know from another post you do not agree with physical violence to a female. Do you somehow see this particular set of circumstances in a different light or does that still not classify as abuse or did you simply not see it?

I have been abused in the past. People do not start out all out controlling n abusive to the point you can look at it and scream "get away now", they ease into it. The fact that she was indicating this was a new behavior and that he was developing other little new behaviors that were upsetting to her as well as a way to obviously shut her out at least momentarily, are the things that indicated control to me. Those are things he would likely use as a manipulation to get her to do something in order to obtain more attention from him. Yes his guitar is his and yes his apartment is his and yes he has the right to control what happens to these things - but when he suddenly changes the rules on what happens to these things, that's when one has to question "why"?

It's much like if you had a girlfriend with a puppy. The puppy liked to play with you and you liked to play with it, but then one day she started caging it up everytime you came over. Would you wonder why? Imagine other little changes like that suddenly starting to take place. Wouldn't you start to worry and question things? Then you try to talk to her - but instead of talking, she just gets defensive and angry. You figure maybe it is just you, after all - its just little things, right? So, you just drop it, but things dont get better - so instead of trying to talk again, you try to figure out what you did differently when this all started. Maybe you upset her somehow. You think back - and can think of nothing, but try to be extra nice anyway. She treats you better for a day or two and then she gets angrier than ever at you when you try to make a joke and she somehow finds offense even though it was not about her or anyone. See...this is how abuse starts, and the problem is, the reason people do not leave is there is enough hope to fix the relationship you don't want to give up on it, or there is an underlying fear of harm to self or those you love or there is financial control as well. But since control and abuse starts off so gradual and over such a long period of time very few people that know the couple personally will recognize it for what it is and the abuser will often turn those close to the victim away from the victim to keep them isolated and helpless and dependant upon the abuser. So what I was hearing was the beginning stages of the control within abuse. Since it is not obvious, I prefer to err on the side of caution by listening to the emotion of the victim and his or her own sense of what is happening rather than arguing what constitutes "enough proof" of abuse. When I was being abused, nobody would hear me. Victims need to be heard in order to gain strength.