First of all, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Second, she was abusing him. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to stand up to your abuser, and it starts with recognising abuse in the first place. You can't blame a victim of abuse for not speaking out to their abuser about how they're being abused, because that's not the power dynamic. Ruby ingrained into him that he's worthless and she's the only one for whom he can be useful.
I would definitely have mixed feelings if I learned that my father was about to die, but he still left lifelong scars on my mental state that took me decades to even recognise. The damage he inflicted is easy to minimise in part because I've never really known life without it; if you've always been degraded as a person, it's just the norm, not a sign of horrible abuse that it is. In other words, it's okay for Lloyd to feel conflicted but I don't think it justifies redemption for Ruby.
Well, as someone who did stand up to my families emotional abuse and cut contact with them and am still in therapy dealing with the aftermath... I can safely say that telling the victim to take accountability for their part, small as it may be, is important for their eventual overcoming of the trauma.
In my case, specifically, I was raised by a toxic narcissist mother and an emotionally distant father (he's actually who I was basing my example on before my previous comment posted when I thought it got erased lol). My father was raised poor and even my early childhood was relatively poor, but he pulled a "Click" and hyper focused on improving his career and earnings to provide for us and while my standard of living improved he didn't care about me at all as a person but doted on my younger sister. My mother, being a narcissist, manipulated me and my siblings against each other to fight for her attention and only saw us aa tools to brag about if we did well. I have very little fault in how I was raised and the trauma I was put through, but there were many circumstances that I held my tongue, bowed my head, and let the situation continue because I was too scared to stand up to them.
Lloyd never stood up to Ruby and even his "I'm leaving" was him running away. Before I cut contact, I clearly laid out every resentment that I had, explaining why I felt the way I did and why that last straw was final. I asked them to take accountability for their actions or to never contact me again, and they chose losing a chance to have a real relationship with their son over taking accountability. I didn't run away, Lloyd, as the victim, said "you've been harrassing me and bullying me and don't appreciate me" and Ruby said "and?", Lloyd goes "I'm leaving". Ruby believed he'd be back because she believes she's right.
That's not a conversation, he didn't explain anything to her except "you're mean". Ok, why is she mean? What did she do? When did she abuse you? When did she take advantage of you? How can she be better? What can she do to atone? On Ruby's side: stop shutting down when someone tells you that you did something wrong, listen to people when they say you hurt them, you may not have intended to do harm but they felt harmed, offense isn't taken it's given. Tell Lloyd why you're trying so hard and let him know why
you are feeling hurt by
his actions.
Humans aren't mind readers and the other person can't know how you're feeling if you don't talk to them.
I'm not blaming Lloyd for how he was treated, I'm saying he could have spoken up sooner and more clearly. Ruby still has an opportunity to listen to Lloyd and explain her side. It'll likely be another brawl to get their feelings across, but a simple sit down face to face works best in reality.
In cases like ours, where the abuser has no intention of admitting fault or taking responsibility because they refuse to see that they did any wrong, then all you can do is walk away and cut contact.
