Johnny Depp VS Amber Heard

I was really torn about whether or not I would blog about this topic or not. I have to admit, having been in an abusive relationship, I identify with Johnny Depp. But my significant other, who has been in an abusive relationship, points out that women do suffer terrible violence from men who often put on a facade. So I’m going to challenge myself to attempt to write about this objectively. Y’all please let me know in the comments if you think I’ve accomplished what I set out to do. Examining this case, I will discuss three things:

• 1) Abuse victims tend to attract abusive partners. The abuser needs someone who is used to execrable treatment, normal people would never put up with their shtuff!
• 2) Narcissists and those with Borderline Personality Disorder often seduce their victims with a strategy called by survivors a “love bomb.”
• 3) This case has riveted us so much because we are all aware of a deep divide between the sexes that has gone on all of my lifetime, and it is a microcosm of what many of us go through.

On my first point…..abusers love to prey upon the abused. Possibly some of this is due to the weakness of psyche you experience after abuse, but I think the main reason is they know on some level they are going to treat this person badly, and someone with healthy self esteem just won’t put up with it. So when we are analyzing the case of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard….which of them has suffered abuse in the past?

Johnny Depp has admitted to suffering from abuse as a child, saying that his mother was verbally abusive, and that his father would just walk away when this happened. Amber Heard says her father was an alcoholic and violent. So both came from abusive families, which sounds about right. Either one of them could be the abuser.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/watch-johnny-depp-details-abuse-he-suffered-as-a-child-during-defamation-trial

https://pagesix.com/2020/07/23/amber-heard-compared-johnny-depp-to-her-violent-dad-texts-reveal/

I remember when I first started dating my ex wife, she was the sweetest, most loving and kind person I had ever known up to that time. She basically made me the center of her world, treating me like a king and a hero. Once the ring was on the finger, however, all bets were off. I’ve recently joined a Facebook group, Male Victims of Female Narcissists, and it is crazy how many go through similar experiences. But in the interests of fairness, let’s examine the testimony as it stands.

I bring this up because Johnny Depp’s testimony about how wonderful things were when they were first dating all sounds familiar. I quote from an article about his first day of testimony:

https://apnews.com/article/johnny-depp-testifies-amber-heard-court-1b6bb6736dd750c8a85a46c3c51a497f

“In Tuesday’s session, he testified…about the early years of his relationship with Heard, saying she seemed “too good to be true” at first.”

“She was attentive,” Depp said of the woman he married in 2015. “She was loving. She was smart. She was kind. She was funny. She was understanding … We had many things in common, certain blues music … literature.”

He said there were little things, though, that gave him indications of a rocky relationship ahead. She became upset, he said, when he broke an established routine in which she took off his boots for him when he came home. And he said she was angry when he wouldn’t go to bed when she was ready.

“I didn’t understand why, as a 50-some-year-old man, I couldn’t go to sleep when I wanted to.” he said.

Depp, 58, said he was cognizant of the age difference between him and Heard, 35.

“I acknowledge the fact I was the old, craggy fogey and she was this beautiful, creature,” he said.

But Depp said that within a year and a half, it was as if Heard had become another person.

So far, Depp’s friends, family and employees have testified that Heard was the aggressor in the relationship, physically attacking him on multiple occasions. Heard’s former personal assistant testified that Heard spit in her face in a fit of rage.

So we have Johnny Depp’s testimony about being “love bombed,” but I can’t be fair here, as I would like. Likely it is out there, but I don’t find anything from Amber Heard describing the beginning of their relationship, and she is going to testify next week. If anyone has any information, please let me know in the comments. And likely we will all know more in a few more days. But at this time, all this tired blogger knows is, JD claims to have been “love bombed” AH is silent on that, but claims to have been abused by an alcoholic, drug using husband. And in all fairness, I wish to point out that there is not enough here to make a true diagnosis (even if I were qualified to do that, which I am not).

Last of all….it has been established by in depth psychological analysis that the person who cares the least in a relationship is the one with the most power. That is often the reason why narcissists wield so much of the power in a relationship (and this is true of both men and women). It is called The Principle of Least Interest, and you can read about it here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_interest#:~:text=The%20Principle%20of%20Least%20Interest,the%20balance%20of%20power%20tilts.

It’s honestly one reason why abused, battered women and men often stay in the relationship for years or decades after everyone has told them to get out. They love the other person. And we’ve all been told that “love conquers all.” We have begun to wake up to how women can be oppressed with this myth, but we rarely discuss (or care) how it can on occasion be the man that is mistreated and he stays because he loves her so much….and surely….if I just live her better….if I hadn’t made her mad….I shouldn’t have said that. In the end, we have to realize it is the abuser who is at fault. Does that mean we should taunt the abuser….no. Is there room for sympathy for an abuser….well…..I think in some cases, though honestly, as a survivor of abuse myself, it is not easy to feel any sympathy for those who bully their partners (we’ll leave the discussion about those who abuse children for another post).

On my last point, while I have my own take on it and frankly my own predisposed beliefs, the truth of the matter is, I don’t know who did what to whom. We have a lot of testimony, photos, and videos, that should frankly embarrass both of them. But this case has taken center stage a lot more deeply than most celebrity debacles do. I look at a list of last years celebrity divorces….and I frankly don’t remember any of them. I know maybe half of the names, and don’t even care to research any of them. Yet this case has caught my attention to the point I’ve written a post twice the size of what I intend to write, and the nation has practically forgotten covid. Why is this?

The divide between the sexes in my lifetime has been, in my humble opinion, a tragic crime. I don’t know who (other than maybe Satan) to lay the blame on, but I honestly think there are not many more destructive elements in our culture than this division in our houses. I’ve read the stories of pioneers, heard my grandpa tell me the stories of his dad, who was a pioneer in Oklahoma. If the man and the woman did not band together and face the difficult world around them as a team, they and their children were all dead.

Are we really so arrogant now, as to think we can take on this world, which is at least as cruel as it was a hundred twenty years ago in my great grandfather’s day, without the love and aid and comfort of the Other? Are we really all so selfish that we think we can just beat (physically or mentally) our partners into submission and make abject slaves of them? Too many men (and yes….too many women) think it is their right to dominate and not care about anyone else.

No, I don’t really know who is right or wrong here (I suspect neither has done right by the other). I don’t intend in this post to really pick a side, especially since Heard has not given her testimony yet. I’m going to leave two links that I think make good cases for both sides so readers can make up their own minds:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7947733/Amber-Heard-admits-hitting-ex-husband-Johnny-Depp-pelting-pots-pans-tape.html

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/johnny-depp-amber-heard-trial-why-internet-wants-justice-for-depp/news-story/363c65cc8048cfe02e6fddcd983f33df