Andi Dorfman - The Bachelorette 10 - Discussion - #6

Can I just    to all of you. I pretty much agree with every single post on the previous page and cannot like them enough.

IMO this was not an abusive relationship. Hot, volatile, nasty...yes. Abusive...no. Calling it abusive just seems to diminish the very real abusive relationships that are out there.

Josh was the one trying to get out of the relationship and Andi was clinging on for dear life. As some have mentioned above, an abused person is looking for a way out, Andi wasn't. Whatever her reasons...not wanting to admit to a very public failure, wanting to get the opportunities from being a successful couple, sheer stubbornness, whatever...she was not running and even came back for more.

Andi is just a hot mess and will continue to remain that way until she admits she has a problem, but I doubt that will be happening any time soon because her parents are still so very proud of her and continue to enable her. In addition, she still has fans who worship the image that she tries to sell of herself and those are the people she seems to listen to...those that agree with everything she says. Heaven help those who disagree.

I don't think that someone with no experience with a controlling, abusive person is necessarily looking for a quick way out. She may have loved him and believed she could fix it for some period of time. If Josh was physically abusive over her lie, no one would justify that. Verbal and emotional abuse can be just as toxic, especially over time. Nothing justifies the words he used, if true. I just don't have a hard time seeing Josh exactly as she describes and I can't write it off to just a bad match either. Picture someone like say Chris Siegfried or Ben Higgins in this situation with Andi. As emotionally healthy guys (imo) they would work through the situation with her and either accept it or break up. They wouldn't be triggered by Andi into an abusive person. I don't like either Andi or Josh and the book sounds like trash, but if Josh was capable of this, it wasn't about Andi.

I agree grace. He needed to pull a Shawn Booth and decide if it was something he was willing to accept.

^^ Love your post, grace! I agree with all of it. And I agree Bleu, either deal with the situation like Shawn/Chris/Lauren/fill in the blank mature F1, or ... There is the door. Peace.

I disagree with the notion being thrown around that people in abusive relationships are always looking for a way out. On the contrary, true emotional abuse in a relationship can make you codependant and afraid to leave. I'm not saying that's what happened to Andi. But I can see, given her circumstance, why she clung on and kept trying to make it work. That can all happen in conjunction with Josh throwing around nasty terminology about her while he's throwing his temper tantrums.

I'm going back to my initial thesis. Josh and Andi both are crappy people and both have issues they need to work on. Being together only magnified their crappiness tenfold.

Has it not come out that Josh tried to break it up a couple of times but she would not let go?  He must have come to the conclusion that she is unhinged and wanted to get out, along with the lying, narcissistic attitude.  I feel sorry in a way for him but still not letting him off the hook for calling her those names but then again she acted like it.  So you damn if you do damn if you dont.  He has moved on with his life, I just wish she would have done the same. The limelight is what she craves and she has no talent to get anywhere in it.  I call her the hanger on.

grace8136 wrote:I don't think that someone with no experience with a controlling, abusive person is necessarily looking for a quick way out. She may have loved him and believed she could fix it for some period of time. If Josh was physically abusive over her lie, no one would justify that. Verbal and emotional abuse can be just as toxic, especially over time. Nothing justifies the words he used, if true. I just don't have a hard time seeing Josh exactly as she describes and I can't write it off to just a bad match either. Picture someone like say Chris Siegfried or Ben Higgins in this situation with Andi. As emotionally healthy guys (imo) they would work through the situation with her and either accept it or break up. They wouldn't be triggered by Andi into an abusive person. I don't like either Andi or Josh and the book sounds like trash, but if Josh was capable of this, it wasn't about Andi.

I try not repost long posts but this needs to be stickied somewhere!! ITA!!! The idea that Andi forced josh to call her a whore is so insane to me. They both suck but she didn't turn him into a temperamental, anger jerk.

It's really not fair to judge him as an abusive person over this relationship. Sure he may have a temper and it may or may not be out of control. But they were also in the spotlight, she didn't lie to him about Nick in a normal relationship she lied to him in front of 8 million people +++ I think that there is a huge embarrassment factor for Josh to deal with which probably magnified his emotions tenfold. Not saying anyone deserves to be talked down to or anything because I don't believe they do but at the same time she's lied to him, the whole nation knows and she's parading him around talking about the wedding still??? Remember their last appearance together, she was talking about how happy they were and how wedding planning was going and inside he probably was dying of embarrassment and ready to be done with it all.

In my experience, when someone raises their voice or is angry, yelling back is the worst thing you can do. Responding in a calm, soft voice is ideal. Here you have "two hotheads" (her words, not mine) going at each other. Nasty stuff will be said. If either of them had a more calming, laid back personality (like a Chris Siegfred) it may have all gone down differently.  Josh showed his temper for sure, but I watched Andi lose her cool during the show with Eric, JP and even Josh during the lie detector test date. He started off calm telling her his concerns and she got all defensive on him and worked up. I don't for one minute believe that she wasn't yelling nasty stuff back at him during their fights. I'm pretty confident she may have even instigated many of them.  So like Sprite said, I don't see this as an abusive relationship, at least not a one sided one, I just see them as a hot mess together.

Well said beach lover!

She has lost her cool several times that we've seen when it concerns her. Who could forget "No more pictures"!!!

Or how she responded to Eric during the episode he left. 
Her way or the highway.
Even in death he could not escape her excuses.

Does anyone else remember Josh in interviews saying that he and Andi would be HBO type programming? At the time I thought maybe he was joking about their sex life, but in hindsight now I think he was talking about their volatile "banter" (maybe then leading to some hot make-up sex).  Someone told me they heard these two would have their knock down drag outs and then be all lovey dovey making up. I think as nasty as they were to each other they still probably loved each other in a very sick unhealthy way.