Saw another guy harassing his girlfriend

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One of the hardest things I have difficulty reconciling is why women who get abused often refuse help or even look for help.

Just yesterday, in a town not too far from here, a man was arrested for beating up a woman with brass knuckles in the street. As bloody as she was, she declined medical help, refused to press charges, and eventually disappeared from the scene.

This is a common occurrence which baffles me. I suppose I have to simply accept it's just another case of PTSD, sub-category Battered Women's Syndrome.

And it takes insight to understand the difference between playing and seriously harassing someone. Not understanding the difference between the two leads to never taking the initiative to attempt the former for fear of it coming off as the latter.

What Marknis is describing and what redrobin are describing aren't even remotely similar and if one can't see the difference between the two one's opinion on this matter isn't worth considering anymore than a blind man's opinion of your appearance.

(Not that I doubt you fail to understand the difference, but certainly there are posters who do.)

It was just baffling to me how the girl was talking in an irritated tone to the guy and seemed to want him to stop. I didn’t think he was abusing her, just being disrespectful.
Would I want to show affection to a girlfriend? Yes but I wouldn’t do anything that would be disrespectful to her.

NTs are capable of understanding that not every single action that appears disrespectful is intended to be, sharing this understanding helps in interactions with them as well with interpreting interactions you witness. People sometimes tease each other, sometimes pester each other, etc. It becomes more acceptable once a degree of intimacy is established, obvious friends and lovers and spouses and offspring are likely to get more leeway than a lot of other folks.

Would you cut a close friend out of your life because they once said or did something that got under your skin? I'd hope not. Would you let playful or otherwise insincere teasing sour things without ever discussing it seriously? I'd hope not. Even if she did genuinely want him to stop, that doesn't mean that her desire for that outcome was significant enough for that interaction to alter her overall opinion of him and their relationship. Further, that's ignoring the possibility that it was entirely playful and that the stated desire that he stop was insincere. People who are playing might choose to not break role because they understand the context of their interaction in a way a third-party likely doesn't.

I don't think you're framing it as serious abuse, that doesn't mean I don't think you're failing to interpret it correctly by interpreting it as far more serious than the involved parties were. They know their relationship and feelings towards each other far better than you can, and you sound like Commander Data observing it without being able to place it into appropriate context.

Do yourself a favour and smack your white knight tendency when it rears it's ugly head. It's not going to improve things for you in this regard and it likely has been contributing to sabotaging your interactions.

What makes you think I would do any of that?
I wouldn’t and I’ve discussed things with friends when they needed to be talked about. However, I won’t ever allow myself to be exploited ever again like my ex-friends did to me.

You know what a rhetorical question is, right? I don't think you'd do that. I wasn't asking you because I doubted the answer, I was asking you to force you to remember that those weren't reasonable patterns of behaviour. If they're not for reasonable you, they're not for her either, that's why the behaviour her boyfriend is engaging in is tolerated.

Now that you get why I said it, let me repeat myself: Would you cut a close friend out of your life because they once said or did something that got under your skin? I'd hope not. Would you let playful or otherwise insincere teasing sour things without ever discussing it seriously? I'd hope not. Even if she did genuinely want him to stop, that doesn't mean that her desire for that outcome was significant enough for that interaction to alter her overall opinion of him and their relationship. Further, that's ignoring the possibility that it was entirely playful and that the stated desire that he stop was insincere. People who are playing might choose to not break role because they understand the context of their interaction in a way a third-party likely doesn't.

That's also why, if you were to discuss the way you've framed the issue for us with her, she'd likely be confused and left uneasy by the interaction because your conclusions and overall 'read' of the situation aren't likely to be considered reasonable by the participants or most other observers.