Abuse is love according to my TOK classmates???

We had a symposium on the topic, "What is love?" and it started off as a light discussion from each of the AoKs, for example defining love from art, history, bio, chemistry's perspectives, etc.

Someone brought up ethics and to summarize, their statement was "Love ceases to be love the moment respect is gone in the relationship and when people try to control, hurt, mistreat, etc. the other person". I thought no one should question this because it's.. obvious??

However, people started to disagree. It started off with saying "Love can manifest in unhealthy forms" but soon derailed into "Abuse is a form of love"??? This one guy kept on saying "Abuse is a way of expressing love for some people" and got so mad when I tried to disagree???

It wasn't just one person taking this stance. Four people were saying different versions of this, and three of them were so mad and passionate about it as well. The fourth person seemed to realize something was wrong, as he said "I don't think it's good or healthy", but he still said "I just think it can be a form of love! I just don't view love as a pure thing as you do!"

At some point, as we were going back and forth, the guy said, "If someone grew up in an environment where abuse is normalized and then abuses their partner, is that not love?" No it's not??? And when I said that much he got even angrier..?

Oh, before this he also said we should "distinguish between different types of abuse" and said, "If someone makes a mistake to you do they not love you?"

Previously, I said "Love can be paradoxical because it can be both extremely selfish and extremely altruistic." Another guy went off of this and said "You said it yourself! Love is paradoxical and selfish, so abuse can be a form of love!" ???

Our teacher was heavily traumatized. He wanted the discussion to be about the mathematical and psychological etc. aspects of love, NOT about "Is abuse love?" He had to butt in and force someone else to talk about a different topic because we were 3 seconds away from throwing hands.

I am traumatized after this. Is this a normal TOK experience, or is our school cooked??

+ I can't believe this is a discussion in a "woke" international school among 17-18 grown ahh people.