Betrayal Trauma Recovery - BTR.ORG

Do you feel like something is “off” with your husband? If he uses pornography, you need support. Here’s what the research tells women to do when he uses pornography. Dr. Hastings and Dr. Lucero Jones are on the podcast talking about their groundbreaking research on how a husband’s pornography use affects his wife.

You deserve support, learn about Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions.

Here at BTR.ORG, we understand the overwhelming chaos you feel when you discover your partner’s secret pornography use. Just brushing your teeth can feel like an insurmountable task.

Try to remember to give yourself grace as you process this new information, and give yourself the space to create emotional safety for yourself, rather than immediately “working on the marriage”.

Anne: I have Dr. Heidi Hastings and Dr. Rebecca Lucero Jones on today’s episode. Dr. Hastings recently completed her PhD in family studies at Texas Women’s University. Her research is on religious women who married men with compulsive pornography use or other compulsive sexual behaviors.

Dr. Lucero Jones is a practicing marriage and family therapist and professor of marriage and family therapy at Texas Women’s University. Together, they have researched women who have experienced betrayal, and I’m so excited to share their research with us today. Welcome.

Heidi: Thanks, Anne. We’re happy to be here.

Rebecca: Thank you. We’re glad to be here.

Anne: So in your studies, you develop the five stages of betrayal and self development. Why don’t we start there?

Heidi: So we are interested in the experience of religious women when their husbands use pornography. When it comes to pornography use for religious men, what’s going on with their wives?

We recruited women from non-denominational Christian religions, from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, several Protestant Christian religions, fundamentalist Christian religions, Jewish religions, and we had one Muslim participant, and Catholic. We also had a few women in different religions who moved towards spirituality instead.

So, our range of religious representation here is pretty broad.

Rebecca: We conducted interviews with 31 women of various denominations and sects of different religions, and wanted to understand their experience as a whole and understand the process they go through. Maybe even before they find out that their husband has some sort of sexual compulsive behaviors. Then what happens afterwards, and kind of where do they eventually land.

As we asked them these questions, they told us their stories of their experiences of discovery, that he uses pornography. And also of how they coped and what happened with the marriage. What kind of help they sought out. Their experience with their religions, religious leaders, other family members, friends, just anybody in their social circles.

From that, we developed this model that showed us that there were actually five distinct stages that women went through when their husband uses pornography. But we also noticed a lot of self-development throughout their healing process.

Heidi: So the first stage is religious, family, and cultural scripts. Which scripts are, if you think about a play, somebody gets a script that tells them this is how they behave.

Before the discovery of that, their husband uses pornography, sometimes even before marriage. This understanding from a religious perspective facilitated her creation of beautiful, yet innocent core beliefs. About herself, her marriage, her sexuality, her faith, and her relationship with God.

Her personal identity was often abandoned, for the couple’s identity created at marriage. While these women had innocent beliefs that are beneficial to many women. For women I interviewed, their innocence later proves problematic in relation to pornography.

Heidi: So the things that religion brings to many beautiful marriages. Actually compromised some parts and made them susceptible to danger, abuse, and trauma.

They described these initial innocent beliefs as naive and shallow, shameful or confusing later on. Their naivety was also seen in women who knew about their husband’s pornography use before marriage. So we did have several women for whom it wasn’t secret.

Their husbands were clear upfront that he uses pornography. But most of the time they let her know that this isn’t a big deal. I’ve taken care of it. It’s no longer an issue. Or they tell her, and the women believed when we marry, we can have all the sex we want. So the desire to view porn isn’t going to be an issue anymore. It’s just going to go away.

Anne: Marriage is going to be the solution.

Heidi: Marriage will be the solution,yes.

Anne: That is a common myth. That even sometimes church leaders perpetuate that marriage will solve his pornography problem, or maybe his immaturity problem. If he’s immature, he should probably just get married. And then he’ll be fine, rather than wait a minute, solve the problem first.

Heidi: Exactly. So even those women who knew he uses pornography ahead of time truly underestimated the problem. So each of the women in our study had a unique belief system and path leading to the discovery of her husband’s pornography use. Or the discovery of how problematic it truly was.

But there were many common characteristics that describe the process. That most of the women went through in this stage. Their naive beliefs about gender and sexuality, and God, really influenced their understanding of pornography at this point.

Anne: When you say naive, it sounds like victim blaming-ish. But not simultaneously, right?

Heidi: That’s why we also use the word innocent, yes.

Anne: Innocent, but also maybe even faithful.

Heidi: That’s a good point.

Anne: They believed what their church leaders told them. If their church leader said, “if you obey the commandments and if you marry a “good guy”.” Under these circumstances, your marriage will be good. They checked all those boxes and had faith, thinking, “I did everything I was supposed to do”. It wasn’t a naive thing. I listened to my leaders and did what they said. I wasn’t naive, I had a college degree.”

Rebecca: The reason we chose the word naive is that it is the word the women use. So many times with this research, we try to use the words of the participants. So we capture their experience as they experienced it. And I think maybe that is a resentment towards your earlier self, right? At that time, I just listened to my leaders, and I let them tell me what was best, and I ignored my gut.

So I think there might be a little bit of resentment when they’re using that word. I think you’re right. That whether we use the word naive or faithful, it’s capturing this thing women are often taught. That they are better women. You’re a good woman. If you’re more innocent, pure, you believe, faithful, and we are taught to listen to leaders.

Rebecca: Many times, in the religious context in which many of these women operate, we have quotes from the women. Where they met with a pastor or church leader, or not as much with the rabbis, but with different leaders. And they were directly told to submit to their husbands that their husbands will lead them in the sexual arena. That they would be safe, and that their husbands knew what they were doing.

So you’re right, many women did, I would say, appease their husband’s requests. That they went along with these things. Because religious leaders are directed to listen to their husband or that they could trust their husband.

Heidi: Particularly for those that aligned with fundamentalist religions. And they had innocent or naive beliefs about pornography. And that’s just that it’s bad, that’s all they knew. This is bad, people who view it are bad. And that was an incomplete understanding they later identified.

Anne: Also a lack of education about emotional and psychological abuse, sexual coercion, and rape even. So with that lack of education about sexual coercion, rape, abuse, that the religion didn’t give them. They didn’t say, okay, we’re going to teach you about marriage. But also read the Bible and read this book about abuse before you marry?

There wasn’t that. So in terms of abuse education, they didn’t have the exposure to it.

Heidi: Well, and even one step further, they didn’t even have education surrounding sexuality. They entered it in a very pure and innocent way. Often expecting their husband to guide and show them the way. Which most men had had many years of pornography under their belt by the time they came to that point. And the pornography was their sex education, and there’s just a big dissonance.

Anne: Sexual abuse is their sex education.

Rebecca: And I would say not only not being aware of rules of consent, but also knowing about abuse. But also not having a roadmap for healthy sexuality. Because many times in religions, it’s like no sex. And then suddenly it’s a free for all. And you’re just supposed to know what that looks like. So there’s no roadmap for what healthy looks like.

And I will say in the interviews, it’s clear within the religious context. The message women receive is say yes to everything. There is no consent. So church leaders teach them to say yes to everything. So you don’t have any agency within the sexual relationship.

Your husband will take care of you. Just trust him. So I would say even basic things like agency, consent. Learning how to figure out what feels good in your body is very important, positive behaviors of sexuality. There’s a real absence of that in the religious context.

Heidi: One Catholic woman reported that in her Pre-Cana, which is meeting with the priest before her marriage. Her priest said to her, “Your husband has a right to have sex”. He has a right to conjugal visits, and you can’t say no. And in hindsight, she was horrified that he’d used the word conjugal visits. Like it was a jail or a prison.

Anne: If you can’t say no, that priest is saying your husband can rape you.

Rebecca: That’s the sad thing, right? This is often the arrangement of the marriage. Consent is not even part of the equation. There’s no equity in the relationship, there’s no freedom.

Anne: You have the right to say no, which you technically do have the right to say no. But they don’t think they do. Which is rape. Rape is being supported by these religious scripts.

Rebecca: A lot of them, sex was not happening. But there were definitely some of our participants who said, looking back, this was definitely sexual abuse.

This was definitely rape, but at the time they couldn’t see it. Because they marry with a larger social script saying, you always say yes. But how do you say yes? If you always have to say yes. You can’t, it doesn’t mean anything.

Anne: It is the definition of rape, and nobody taught him that. If you can’t say no, it’s rape.

Heidi: We definitely had some participants who realized that later, but they didn’t even understand it at the time. Because through religious messaging, they had such explicit trust in their husbands. That allowed them to be really emotionally, physically, and sexually vulnerable. It gave them a false sense of security, because they thought their husbands would be loyal and faithful. Especially when they belong to the same religion.

They had so much trust for them that they made these naive assumptions. And the assumptions were that they’d be trustworthy, monogamous, exclusive, they’d avoid pornography. Even though there wasn’t any behavioral evidence for doing so. And they assume their relationship sexually would be healthy, robust and intimate. Which many of them were the exact opposite, but they relinquish power.

Knowingly for some women because they’ve been told to, but for others they unconsciously yield to his needs. For his preferences, and they didn’t know their own. Many of them started to be silent.

Anne: Well, it’s interesting to me that victims don’t recognize they are doing that for emotional safety or psychological safety. Because of her emotional safety, her financial safety depends on him. They are really weighing out the pros and cons of, is this safe for me to do, is this not? If I don’t have sex with him, he’s going to be angry.

Anne: He might yell at me. It’s going to be scary. And that’s why pornography use, at least the way we approach it here at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, is a domestic abuse issue. Because if you’re coming at it from a place of fear. And the reason why you’re agreeing is because you’re silenced, afraid, or you feel like you have to. Then, you’re in an abusive situation.

And so many women have these concerns and worries. They don’t know to define it as abuse. Did they define it as abuse in the study?

Heidi: In this first innocent stage, specifically, the kind of sexual relationships or abuse you’re talking about weren’t on the forefront of their mind. That comes later on, but I would say very few saw it as abuse. Some did after some work with coaches, but largely at this point, no.

Anne: Well, that’s what I see too.

Rebecca: When we recruited our participants, we found that over half of the men have extramarital behaviors. So it isn’t just pornography. Women are not saying, oh my husband looked at one picture. He’s got a problem, and they’re making a big fuss of it.

Women are complaining because there is a lot going on in the background. There is a lot of lying, there is no sex. There are many problems in the marriage that make a woman say, “Something’s off here”. Something’s wrong. It’s not just he looked at some pictures, right?

Heidi: That said, we did have one participant, probably her level of PTSD was one of the two or three highest in all of the group. And she had just seen one picture her husband had looked at. They were Christian missionaries in the mountains of Mexico, and that put her over the edge. The idea of this innocence then shifts into what Anne was saying through stage two, which is crisis.

Anne: We talk about this one man somewhere who might look at porn and be a nice guy. The women who come to BTR, none of them have that experience. It’s that they try to get help, they try to figure it out, and no one told them it was abuse. And so they couldn’t find their way out. Because it was more like put your shoulders to the wheel sort of thing. Like help him with his addiction and stand by your man kind of stuff.

And at least from the women I’ve sampled, which is not everyone, but it’s never just this one time this guy looks at this one picture. So for that woman in the mountains, there’s probably so much abuse going on that she didn’t even realize, lying, gas lighting, and psychological abuse. Which is why she reacts the way she did

She might not have even been aware of it when she described it to you. Which is so hard, because women who don’t have abuse education can’t describe what it is. It makes it hard to grasp what’s happening, because they’re not going to say, yes, this was psychological abuse.

Rebecca: I think you’re right. I mean, anytime I have someone coming in and discussing any sort of, it could be texting, it could be a picture. I can never know the depth of what’s going on because many times people will come and catch somebody. Or somebody disclosed some sort of sexual behavior. That’s outside of, I would say what we call the marital contract, right.

Anne: There’s boundaries or something, yeah.

Rebecca: That they have set, right. Every couple may have different boundaries. But whatever boundaries they’ve set, there’s some sort of behavior outside of that, and as a therapist, I always have to remember. I can never know whether they’re being honest with me.

Like you said, there could be many behaviors going on. But if the woman is desperate to save the marriage. She will also not create a narrative for the therapist that says, yes, he looked at this picture. And there’s also this thing where I don’t feel like I can do what I want. Also, I don’t have agency in my life, and I don’t have control of my finances.

Many of that stuff takes time to come out. And so it is hard, because there’s so much invested in saving the marriage. Sometimes, one, the man is not honest, he’s hiding something. And two, the woman does not know about the things she’s experiencing.

Anne: She can be completely honest. She’s just not educated about abuse.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Anne: What I’ve seen most of the time. If I say, did you know that’s abuse? They’re like, what? Well, he’s not punching me in the face. So as they transition to stage two, let’s talk about that now.

Rebecca: I’ll talk about that. Stage 2 we named crisis. This is often where things are starting to unravel for the woman. So one of the first things that happens for her is that she notices something isn’t right in the marriage. So it can be that her husband is withdrawing. Many women talk about how sex starts to not happen as much or at all.

Maybe she buys new lingerie and he has no reaction. It could be other behaviors, but she is noticing that something isn’t right in the marriage. Something is off. And so often, when this happens, she may try to compensate to stabilize the relationship.

So that can look like doing sexual acts that maybe before she wasn’t willing to do. It can look like offering herself up at different times that she wasn’t wanting to. That can look a lot of different ways .

Rebecca: And then one of the most important things that happens in the crisis stage is discovery. Sometimes men would come forward, maybe they listened to a sermon that made them feel guilty. And they may actually confess to their wives what has been happening. This might happen in a relationship where maybe he was honest that he viewed pornography prior to the marriage. Then he’s said in the marriage, I’ve been good.

Then suddenly he’s like, actually, you know what, I have continued to do this. He’ll share that. And sometimes women discover pornography. Sometimes they’re walking in on their husbands viewing pornography and masturbating. And many times the women are having traumatic responses. Especially if she sees him in the act of masturbation while watching something. It’s very traumatic if she sees that happening in real time.

Heidi: It was especially traumatic if she actually saw what he was looking at. Because most women imagine pornography as something that would appear in a porn magazine. But when she saw the severity, intensity, violence, whatever it was. That really created severe shock and trauma responses.

Rebecca: A lot can come from that. A client stumbled upon the pornography her husband had been viewing. And she was disturbed to find that the people he was looking at looked like her. And we had one person in our study who was Black, and I don’t remember the race of the woman he watched, but it wasn’t hers.

Rebecca: It’s interesting whether it’s someone who looks like you or doesn’t look like you. I think it triggers this thing inside of you. Where you don’t know what your husband’s attracted to. You don’t know if he marries you, because you’re his fantasy versus a real person. I think it just objectifies you either way.

The meaning you make around that may vary depending on what he’s viewing. But either way, I think the woman begins to realize that she’s questioning whether he sees her as a full person. Who he is sexually engaging with versus these images. And so it’s very traumatic, and many women can’t speak. They literally cannot speak for 20, 30 minutes, an hour, they are completely speechless. They have visceral reactions in their body.

Some of them talk about feeling the life drain out of them. Some of them got very ill. We have some women talk about immediately feeling suicidal, where there was no suicidal ideation before this. So we see a lot of symptoms physiologically. Research shows that in Iraqi troops, rates of PTSD were as high as 35%. But we know that with those who experience betrayal trauma, the rates of PTSD can be even higher. And so I think that’s important.

We do a lot in our country in America for veterans, because they experience PTSD symptoms. But it is important, I think, for clinicians, friends, families and those experiencing this, to know that PTSD is common. And many times we are not recognizing that with infidelity or sexually compulsive behaviors, the partners are experiencing a bit of trauma.

Rebecca: This is something that many people don’t like to talk about. They talk about it as a relationship problem, not as a traumatic experience. So really, it is a crisis when the woman experiences this. Because it’s not just, Oh, we got marriage problems. She’s also having a very physiological response to learning about her husband’s behaviors.

When the crisis hits, many times women don’t know how to proceed. No one’s prepared them for this. And so many times they’re in a hurry to keep themselves safe, and that makes sense.

Anne: That’s what we do here at BTR, strategic boundaries! This is why I wrote The Living Free Workshop.

Heidi: BTR really does come in nicely in this stage and in the next stage. In fact, one of our participants mentioned nine times in her interview about BTR. Which is what helps us decide that it might be a good idea to talk to you. But one of the decisions they make often is that they’re going to have a lot of sex with him to try to fix that.

That’s not fully thought out. But it is one of the things that emerged in the interviews that is happening right after the discovery.

Anne: Thinking that was maybe the cause, they didn’t have enough sex.

Heidi: Right

Rebecca: So following that, many women feel silenced. It is so hard for anyone, I think, to tell your friend that your husband has cancer. But telling him he has a pornography problem, strip clubs or seeing prostitutes is not on the list of things you’re going to share. Even with a best friend, even with family, there’s so much shame around this. And what it might say about the woman.

There’s so much onus put on, like, well, you didn’t have enough sex with him. Those are definitely messages I think within the cultural context that these women are operating in. And so the shame just absolutely silences the women. So they’re in this crisis. Many of them talked about how much they’d been through in their lives. And this was by far the worst thing. We’re talking like a lot of painful things in people’s lives. And that this is the hardest.

I think one of the reasons it is the hardest is because there is so much invested in their silence. Whether it’s the man in a church position or in the military. We noticed that many times these men had high profile positions. Whether they were in the context of the religion or outside, that made it feel impossible for her to disclose to anybody of status of what was going on. Because a lot of times it might hurt her.

Rebecca: So like one person shared that her husband was a high ranking military personnel. She said she couldn’t disclose that he’s an adulterer. Because if he was caught for that, he might get demoted and kicked out. And she’s going to lose all her benefits, and she’s going to lose their military retirement. So there are really not many policies and procedures in place to protect women when men behave in this way. So we saw a lot of silencing of the women.

That was something that I think kept them in a place of shame.

Anne: How will I take care of my kids? How will I put food on the table? And those are really just typical, checklist definitions of domestic abuse.

Heidi: Well, and those who weren’t afraid were necessarily embarrassed that it made them look like they weren’t enough. That they weren’t good enough in bed, that they weren’t a good enough person to keep their husband tied to them. Very complex decision making that goes on that keeps them silent at that point.

Anne: Well, and that’s also the psychological abuse. They’ve been manipulated to think they’re not a good enough person. They’ve been manipulated to think they’re not good enough in bed, because he blames her for everything.

Heidi: Sometimes during that crisis, they tried to tell a family member, they tried to tell a religious leader, they tried to tell a therapist that didn’t result in actual help. And so that’s in part what leads to this aftermath stage of, I’ve tried to get help for some of them.

Some of them, I was the first person they’d ever told, but some had made attempts and It was hurtful rather than helpful.

Anne: Yeah, we see that a lot here, yeah.

Rebecca: So that leads us into our third stage, which we call the aftermath. In the aftermath, the woman is left with this severed trust and attachment. Many women give up a lot to marry and trust their husband. And then now their husband has let them down in such a major way. With the level of deception that has occurred, in the level of behaviors that have occurred without her knowing. Without her consent.

And so many times in the wake of this betrayal, not knowing what to do at this point. Can they restore trust? Can this be fixed? And so with that comes not just the questioning of, I would say, the marriage, but a questioning of everything they once believed.

Rebecca: Many of these women, because they’re religious and trust God, are marrying somebody within their religion. Many times that feels like they’re making the right choices. Especially when they’re caught off guard. It feels like, why didn’t God warn me? Why didn’t God help me learn this earlier?

I mean, we’re talking to some women finding this out after 30 years of marriage. So it’s a long time to feel like God didn’t even give me a heads up. So many of them ask, you know, God, why’d you allow this to happen to me? Why did you allow me to marry him?

Anne: Did you notice they also simultaneously said, and I don’t know if they did? But sorry, I’m just wondering. Because I see this a lot, that they also simultaneously said God kind of did warn them. Like they knew in their gut that something was wrong, and they couldn’t figure out what it was. Or did some of them just say they had no idea and it came out of nowhere?

Heidi: I think that’s where that something isn’t right comes in. They knew something was not right in that second stage of crisis.

Anne: They just didn’t identify it as a spiritual warning maybe?

Rebecca: I wouldn’t say they knew. Because I’m going to guess that many of these women are the praying kind. And I would say that if they feel something is off. Then I would imagine they would ask God about that. So I did not get the impression, that inclination, that something’s off from God. I feel like they, many of them, felt pretty abandoned in the moment of the crisis. And many times, because for some people, the lies were severe.

There was one person whose husband was with 300 prostitutes. So we’re talking about a lot of lies. And I think it’s so different from their relationship with God. They’ve probably felt like they’ve received answers from God. And that it’s probably why they feel abandoned. Because they’ve probably felt guided by God in a lot of areas of their life.

And then now they’re finding out there are all these secrets in this part of their life. And I think that is probably what makes it not make sense. How’s God been helping me in these ways? But with this major thing, I’m totally caught off guard. And many women are caught off guard.

There were some people who were not from the U.S., from Europe, and some Jewish women. And I would say in those cultures, pornography viewing is considered more normative. And so many times they are still caught off guard. Because they were taught to watch pornography sometimes as a normal behavior. And then they saw their husband’s mental health really decline, and physical health even declined with his viewing of pornography.

Rebecca: Sometimes they’re even shocked to discover it. And again, I think it’s because in their minds, they didn’t know that pornography could be such a problem. So even those women raised in a climate where pornography was tolerated still experienced a level of shock, which is interesting.

Anne: Yeah, that makes sense.

Rebecca: Yes. And so they were surprised to see that it was a big deal. So I think they were like, no, this can be a problem. It’s not, yeah, it’s not just pictures.

Heidi: All this questioning is going on. There are many women who are also having spiritual experiences with God at this time. So we had both camps going on that they felt they had dreams, heard voices, felt a presence near them. They had these spiritual experiences going on.

I don’t want to discount the women who weren’t going through a faith crisis of sorts because of this. But many of them questioned not only their faith, but they questioned everything they knew about their husband.

Heidi: Okay, so if this isn’t true, what else isn’t true.

Anne: Well, and they should in that moment.

Heidi: Right? Their whole reality in every way. They couldn’t figure out what is real.

Anne: He’s just shown himself as a compulsive liar. If they didn’t do that, it wouldn’t be normal.

Anne: I’m still fascinated, and many women don’t, so this is not a new idea. But I just want to point out that it’s interesting that women don’t recognize their own gut feelings through the abuse, through the psychological abuse and the gaslighting and the institutional gaslighting going on.

They don’t see it as God telling them something. So then rather than thinking, God’s trying to tell me something, I need to listen. I need to listen. They think, oh, I must be crazy.

Heidi: And that’s a big thing that we heard.

Anne: He’s telling me I’m crazy. My priest tells me I’m cuckoo. I asked too many questions. I just need to chill out, rather than think God is trying to tell me something. And then even after finding out. That something was wrong, rather than thinking, Oh, God did warn me. He was trying to warn me the whole time. They’re still thinking, I’m stupid. I didn’t see it.

That’s what makes me sad. Every place they turn to try to understand what’s happening or get help, they’re just kind of squashed down. Repeatedly over the years, which I think is like the culmination of the 20 years of trauma when they see that porn. It’s not just that one thing. It’s like the culmination of institutional abuse, the psychological abuse, and the societal abuse is like sort of coming to a head. And so that’s so painful.

Heidi: Well, and also, because we’re looking at this through a developmental lens. We have to remember that in that stage of innocence, their ability to recognize that intuition, their ability to recognize maybe spiritual promptings is less developed.

Than it becomes later through experience. So a lot of experiential learning teaches us how to be more attuned to our own agency to making choices for ourselves, to our own power as women. And at some stages, they weren’t experienced in that yet. And that comes with more experience.

Anne: Well, and also the result of that, if you’re like, okay, well, my pastor told me it’s fine. So I guess that’s okay, because you haven’t yet seen the end result. So in that moment you think, Oh, I must be crazy. It is fine. I don’t know why I’m making a big deal out of this, because he is nice.

Everything’s okay. What was I freaking out about? But then two years later, five years later, 20 years later, you’re like, Oh, this is what I was freaking out about, no wonder. But in that moment, because you don’t know what’s happening, it’s hard to wrap your head around it.

Heidi: Yeah, they had no comprehension.

Rebecca: Many women were desperate to fix the marriage, to fix what was broken. So many times that’s trying to help him, help him overcome the addiction. Maybe having more sex. And many of them talked about how that was a strategy they tried to use. But it never worked, because the lack of sex, or whatever the sex was, was not the problem. And so a lot of desperation to fix things.

Another important part of this was how women were coping. Some women were coping by using their religion or spirituality as a resource. Many of them spent a lot of time in prayer or meditation seeking solace. But then some other women had some, I would say, more maladaptive coping strategies like drinking. Many times, there were not many resources available to these women.

Heidi: It’s mostly maladaptive, like starving themselves, focusing on their body. How it’s not good enough, screaming, yelling, trauma responses.

Rebecca: As they’re trying desperately to fix it and salvage it.

Anne: And I would say control is safety seeking. In a, I need some semblance of emotional safety, psychological safety.

Rebecca: Many times, the women have not been able to do it on their own. So many times when we were talking about how this is too big, this is going to kill me. They can’t manage it.

Rebecca: And at that point, they’re ready to give it to God, because they cannot hold it. It is too big for them to fix it, fix the marriage, and fix what’s wrong with their husband when he uses pornography. And so at this point, many of them are ready to hand it to God.

Heidi: Or to just a level of acceptance. Some that didn’t necessarily align with God maybe thought more of it as a higher power. Or just acceptance that this was the state they were in and they couldn’t handle it.

Anne: Just accepting the situation. Like, okay, this is a situation, and there’s nothing I can do about it. That kind of acceptance?

Heidi: Right. I can’t control what has happened.

Heidi: So the fourth stage is healing. After they’re realizing they have no control over what has happened, when he uses pornography, they start grabbing hold of this power within themselves. It almost seemed like, and they start vulnerably breaking their silence.

Many for the first time, they are desperate to find help, ask for help through therapists, sometimes through religious leaders or different religious leaders. Because maybe who they’d gone to before wasn’t helpful. But they in the past didn’t have the language to speak about pornography or sexuality, and they felt so much shame.

So many of the women started their learning process, their learning journey, their healing process through books, podcasts, websites, social media. Things that you have through BTR, anything that they could find on pornography addiction or on betrayal, trauma, or infidelity. If that was part of their experience.

They sought out support groups like yours. And the more quickly they broke their silence, they reduced shame. Which getting rid of shame was key to healing, the less time they spend in those crisis and aftermath stages. So some women had spent decades in crisis and aftermath, but finally, when they start learning and getting ahold of resources, they can start healing. And so we appreciate the work you do to help women heal.

Heidi: Additionally, many women leaned heavily upon and reported receiving support from God, like I mentioned. But even at a different level, when they had religious leaders that would actually validate them, see them.

Anne: Which is rare. How many of the 31 you interviewed had that?

Heidi: I think many women went to several religious leaders, so they would find some that didn’t work, and then they would change congregations.

Anne: So it’s hit and miss.

Heidi: Find different pastors, it was definitely hit and miss, but there were some who had really phenomenal support from religious leaders.

Heidi: One that comes specifically to mind was a Jewish woman, who her friends said, “We’re taking you to see the rabbi”. And the rabbi happened to be a woman.

And she said she pushed it away. She kept saying no, because she was so embarrassed when her husband uses pornography. Her husband’s in a high profile position. But she finally went to see the rabbi, and the rabbi took her to the mikveh. Which is a sacred immersion in living waters in the Jewish tradition that symbolizes coming out of the Garden of Eden.

And they enter the waters completely naked, immersing themselves back into the waters of creation for purposes of rebirth and renewal. Like a new start, we’re going to wash away all the corruption, all the negativity, all the pain, the suffering, and start new. And it didn’t happen immediately for her, but the step that that religious leader took to help her see that she was cared for. She was validated, that was so meaningful.

And there were a few stories of women who had great experiences with religious leaders, typically that they helped women find resources. Not that they necessarily tried to handle it, control it, or fix it on their own. But they were able to access resources for the women to get them help immediately.

Heidi: And then with that support that the women got, usually in groups. They learned how to set intentional boundaries that allowed them to feel more empowered, protected and safe. As you’ve said, one of the interesting findings in this stage. Was as the women learned about almost anything, but especially when he uses pornography, compulsion and addiction from a scientific perspective.

Or about betrayal, relationships, or sex, or even God in new ways, played a significant role in their healing. And in the reconstruction of their identity. Because they for so long during this crisis and aftermath stage, they didn’t know who they were anymore.

Even learning for a new career or any kind of learning seemed to open up pathways of healing. This is the first time many of them start caring for themselves. Because they, for so long, had been conditioned to care for everyone else first. But once they started implementing those self care strategies, they recognized how much it could improve relationships with their children.

Several women reported how art, poetry, music, dance, or any other types of artistic forms were key to their healing. Quilting was another big one. And perhaps part of that is because quilting is often done in groups of women and provides support in many ways. So those artistic forms brought comfort and understanding, coping and peace. And especially, I think, like I said, quilting. There are other things, dancing with other women, doing just movement.

Heidi: So through these different forms of healing, they started to see their reality through new, more educated and experienced lenses. They started to see the injustices they’d experienced during this stage when he uses pornography. And I think what you’re doing helps teach women. Help them also see, Oh my goodness, I didn’t even recognize that when I didn’t give consent, that could be rape or abuse.

Anne: You mentioned a bunch of things they learned about, like addiction and other things. They didn’t mention abuse? They didn’t say I learned so much about abuse.

Heidi: No, there were a few who said they had learned that their husband’s way of having sex with them was abusive. That was about the only thing they saw as abuse. But many of them had talked about gas lighting, which I think you consider abuse, right?

Anne: Yeah, because the person’s purposefully trying to alter their reality.

Heidi: So they didn’t use that language, but they started, like I said, to see the injustices they’d experienced. And they started to see parts of the religious narratives that had contributed to the marginalization of women. And led them to assume they were responsible for their husband’s behavior.

Which now they could see, Oh my goodness, that’s not truth. So as their self awareness expanded, they started to expand their self development and understanding of who they are and their own use of their agency.

Anne: And spiritual trauma, that happens too, because it’s the opposite of what they’ve been taught. That if you just love, serve, forgive and self sacrifice, you’ll have enlightenment when he uses pornography. And they’re like, well I did all that, and I for sure was not enlightened. I was, in fact, kept in the dark, and now I’m having more enlightenment than ever. And it’s focusing on my own interests.

It’s a weird place to be, because it feels so good and freeing. And then also kind of like, but this is the opposite of what I was taught. So it’s also a confusing time, I think.

Heidi: Because often I think in religious marriages, they’re taught, be one and sacrifice.

Heidi: And those things are truly important, but they’re important in a safe and healthy relationship. And I think the more we give women the language and power to do that. The examples, the more it’s modeled for them, the more they’ll take that upon their own way of doing things. But when you’ve especially seen a mother as a sacrificial role, we take that script and believe that that is the way we behave.

Anne: Well, because if she tried to do anything else, people were like, you’re selfish.

Heidi: Exactly.

Anne: And it wasn’t okay for her to want to do something, which is sad. That was my personal situation with my abusive ex, because I was like, nope, this is what I want to do. And I’m going to do it. And I was the most terrible woman in the world because women aren’t supposed to be like that.

They’re supposed to be kind and loving, and they’re supposed to sacrifice for their family. And yet his dysfunctional family was doing that, what they wanted to do. But instead of saying, Oh, I just want to do this, so I’m doing it. They were like, I’m doing this because I love you. And I’m doing this because I’m so righteous.

And so, because I wasn’t apparently saying it the right way, you can’t just say it’s because I want to do it. I was actually not doing what I was supposed to do, apparently.

Heidi: There were several women during stage four, where they started to see things differently. They did talk about spiritual abuse. That they recognized it was going on in their relationship. I was thinking more, you’re talking about sexual and emotional abuse, when he uses pornography. But I would say perhaps spiritual abuse is what they most identified. Or at least spoke of during that stage, where they start seeing what’s going on.

Rebecca: I want to add that anytime you’re in a relationship with someone who has any sort of spiritual authority over you. Which often, I would say, within different religions, the man is seen as a little like the head of the household. Or spiritual kind of leader in the home.

Sexual abuse is spiritual abuse. Because if the person who sexually abuses you has spiritual power over you, just by that alone. That person is a person through which your relationship with God is somewhat filtered through that person. So I think spiritual abuse is actually much more common than I think people actually talk about.

Anne: Well, not just from the abusive spouse, but also secondarily through the help they might try to get from a religious leader. Who is not only aiding and abetting sexual coercion, but also through spiritual abuse. Like this is what God would want you to do. And I’m your spiritual leader.

And you need to give him sex whenever he wants it. It’s super traumatic. Did these guys not go to their work, sexual harassment training?

Rebecca: While some of them have zero training,

Anne: I know.

Rebecca: That’s a part of it.

Anne: But I’m like, maybe they should have learned about rape before they give women advice.

Heidi: Well, I went through a similar situation, perhaps an issue, but it was three decades ago. When I learned he uses pornography. And so there weren’t the resources available. And yes, a religious leader told me that I needed to submit. I wanted to leave the marriage, and he wanted me to stay. And the religious leader told me that I needed to stay.

And I knew he was wrong. But I did it anyway, for at least a while longer.

Anne: Which amounts to spiritual abuse in that it was a way of coercing you to stay in an abusive situation. It’s really sad that that’s happening. And even though yours was three decades ago, it’s happening every day, all day long now. Which I’m still floored about. I’m like, what? Well, and it happened to me. I’ve been divorced for eight years, but I’m still shocked that women are coming to me, and it happened to them literally last week.

Rebecca: I wanted to add that he is not only in that position, but also that a church leader encourages you to stay in a situation unsafe for you. But I think the real abusive part is where they have power over you and give you advice. Knowing that you see them as an authority. And they’re giving you advice that goes against your spiritual feelings, whatever you feel like God has told you.

So I think that subversion of your relationship with God is pretty damaging. And that to me is the most sinister part. Many times, they’re ignorant. They probably are not meant to be. putting you in an unsafe position, but their lack of knowledge harms women so much. It is problematic.

Rebecca: And they are usually the first people women go to. And sometimes the only people they talk to when he uses pornography. And then when they get that response, it doesn’t feel safe to go to anybody else.

Anne: I would not only say it is going against women’s intuition, which is the most important thing, but also against just like literally basic domestic abuse education. And because they don’t have, or maybe they’re abusers themselves. And when I say basic domestic abuse education, I mean, what is psychological abuse?

What is emotional abuse? What is spiritual abuse? Many people think they know what that is, because they watched Safe Harbor, the movie with Julianna Hough. And they think they know, Oh, yeah, he looks bad. And that’s what this looks like. I would know that if she walked in and had a black eye, but it’s not just her intuition.

It’s also any domestic abuse expert would be like, check, check, check. This is checking all the boxes. It’s scary to me that they’re giving advice to abuse victims when they do not know what they’re looking at. But it’s also not surprising, because hardly anyone does.

And so I have a lot of grace for them, because I was also in that boat where I had a master’s degree and was doing my best to be an educated person. I thought I understood abuse, but was in an abusive situation for seven years and did not know.

Anne: Until I knew, and then I was like, Oh, okay, now I know more. And so that having grace for us not being educated about it and for other people not being educated about it is really hard. When it’s not like a class everybody takes in high school or something.

Thank you for sharing that information about the healing stage. I’ve also seen that with the women who come to BTR. Okay. Let’s talk about the fifth stage now.

Heidi: The fifth stage is transformation, and that’s where the women start to take these ideas. The cognitive reconstruction of their reality and put it into action. They have changed these previously held beliefs, and now they’re going to do something about it. They start to see themselves in a very different way.

In fact, one of the women I loved most said, after the betrayal, the words she said to herself were, I can think of nothing that’s the same. Because her reality has shifted so much, when she learned he used pornography. But after moving into this transformation stage, she said, I told myself those same words, nothing is the same.

Initially, those words felt un-fixable, like everything was broken and would never heal. And at this point, she says, nothing is the same. Speaking of her own identity and her own love for herself. The women start to feel like they can be genuine, honest, and vulnerable in their relationships. Especially with those friends they made in support groups.

They spoke about healthy sexuality and how closely intertwined it can be with spirituality.

The women spoke of that. I know I want to learn about healthy sexuality. I know it’s more intimate and spiritual than what I was having in this relationship before. Most women stayed in their religion. But during the crisis, and specifically the aftermath stage, where they deconstructed some of those religious beliefs that weren’t serving them. That made them more vulnerable.

Heidi: At this point, they reconstructed a simpler belief system where religion became the scaffolding. And their relationship with God was central. So, rather than religious rituals and beliefs being the center part of it. Their relationship with God, or their spirituality is what we call it, was all based upon their relationship with God.

They were able to develop a deeper, more personal relationship with God. Or attachment to God, because they found God much more trustworthy than their husband was.

A few of the women from different religions actually, and it was I think three or four women talked about longing for a female deity that had an equal weight to a male God. Not that replaced a male God, but that had an equal weight. That would elevate women to an equal status with men and could work together.

And they loved that vision of that might model for their own current or future relationships. There were a few women who no longer felt they could worship in the same way. While most stayed in their religion, we had a few who completely left religion.

There were some who changed locations and yet still maintained that spiritual aspect of religion that they’d gained belief in a higher power, belief in prayer, they started taking ownership of their preferences and behaviors.

One of my favorite interviews had a Native American woman who stayed with a high ranking military officer for years. Because she would have been left with nothing financially. During this period, she just decided I don’t care.

Heidi: She moved back onto the reservation into her grandfather’s abandoned home. That had been abandoned for decades. And she, all by herself, with a Home Depot credit card, rebuilt that entire home.

It had no running water, no electricity and no windows. She was cold and had hardly any money. But that was symbolic to me of building herself. She loved that home and it became a safe place for her. She was able to see what she was really made of. And what she could do when she took control of her own agency. More women spoke out about their experiences. They found their voices.

They often helped other women speak out against pornography in their churches. And they became awakened to a more complete sense of themselves. They were able to, because they did that, reach new levels of intimacy, because they did that.

To have true intimacy, we have to know ourselves. They started to see life as completely different and God as completely different. And use their voices in powerful ways, and use their agency in powerful ways. That sums up that model in those five stages. But through the five stages, they align closely with many human development stages in literature, and experiential learning is learning that we never forget.

And in those advanced levels of experiential learning, we truly learn to help others and fill love at deeper levels.

Anne: I love that I’ve seen that just anecdotally through my experience. But it’s awesome to know how hopeful the situation is, because it feels so dark and so awful when you’re going through it. When he uses pornography, I remember thinking when people say like, it’ll get better or something like that.

Anne: I was so mad. I thought, you don’t know, you don’t know how bad it is. And people might say things like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, something like that. I just was so angry about it. And now I find myself saying that same thing to others. And so I want to say, I know that it doesn’t feel good to have someone say, “You’re brave and you’re strong” and that you will come out of this, this amazing brave woman.

It feels terrible, but there is so much hope. And I want them to feel that like deep, deep down inside. And if they can’t feel it, like I couldn’t, just maybe hold on to our words or maybe don’t be really mad like I was. Because I was just ticked all the time for a while and that’s okay too.

Heidi: I think that’s part of the value of having groups. They can see women going through the same thing, when he uses pornography. And see, maybe a year down the road or maybe six months down the road. I’ll be in the same position she is right now. And we found that groups were a big part of what gave the women hope. Seeing, okay, if I stick with it, and if I learn about boundaries, it will be better. They could see that in the women in the same group with them.

Rebecca: And I think another thing about groups that can be helpful is to see that women end up at all sorts of positions. It helps women see women end up in various places, and they feel happy and feel like they’re a better version of themselves.

Rebecca: Healing can happen in many ways. And really, however, this plays out for any individual woman she’s going to have to be thoughtful and honest with herself. Am I safe here? I think it can be hard for women to trust they would be better off single.

For some women to trust that they could see themselves, like rebuilding a house, like the story you told Heidi, that they could take care of themselves and be happy in that future. I think that’s hard for some people to envision right in the midst of a loss. It’s such a huge loss. Because it’s not only the loss of someone you loved and devoted years of your life to. But it’s a loss of, I would say, the dream that we try to co-create with our partners.

And so to know that that isn’t possible anymore is heartbreaking. And there’s a lot to be mad about.

Anne: Yeah, at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, it’s just safety first in whatever way works for you. I don’t know what that’s going to look like for you. And I don’t know what the safest course of action is. But all I care about is your safety. So how do we assess our emotional, psychological, and sexual safety?

How do we learn to set boundaries when he uses pornography. Learning about safety and making safety the priority, I think, is always to use the word safety again, a safe bet. Because you never know what’s going to happen, and it leaves the door open for any opportunity or situation safe.

Anne: My concern is that women often think they’re safe when they don’t understand safety, and haven’t been educated about it much. When they find out he uses pornography. And so, my concern is to ensure they have the education they need.

Rebecca: Safety is the foundation for any relationship that’s going to be intimate. So if you’re intimate without safety. That’s where you can get manipulated, because you’re vulnerable. You’re right, making sure safety is first present. Otherwise, you’re vulnerable to manipulation and abuse. So having safety as the goal, it’s a great place to start for any relationship. But it is the starting point. So you can’t skip that step.

Anne: No, many people are like, Oh, Betrayal Trauma Recovery, they set the bar so high. And I’m like, it’s the lowest possible rung. You can’t set it lower. We’ve literally set it at the lowest possible place. I’m not saying he has to be a model, or he has to have an incredible job, or anything like that. No, no, no. I’m just saying he needs to be emotionally and psychologically, sexually, financially and spiritually safe. That’s the lowest bar.

Heidi: That’s why identity was such an important part of this as they go through this experience. They learn about themselves, most of all, and how to navigate. Things in a way that keeps them safe and true to their identity.

Anne: I’m so grateful that people are starting to do research like this. It’s awesome. Hopefully, people will continue to do more. So thank you so much for your work. It means a lot to all the women in the world. So thank you.

Heidi: Thank you so much for letting us come and share with you. We love women. We’re champions of women.

Anne: I am so grateful for Dr. Hastings and Dr. Lucero Jones for sharing their studies today. So thank you so much.

Rebecca: Thank you for having us, Anne.

Heidi: And for all the great work that you’re doing.

Does your husband promise you that he will do anything to help heal your marriage from his betrayal, lies, and emotional abuse? Then then doesn’t do anything? “I fight for our marriage, but he doesn’t follow through,” said Kirsten, a member of our community.

Does this sound familiar? We’re here for you, learn about our Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions.

Anne: I have Kirsten on the podcast today. I know her personally, and she’s amazing. She’s a member of our community. She is a divorced mom of four, and she’s also an incredible artist and writer. Who likes to write to explore being a real human being breaking through destructive personal and generational patterns. And how handling hard times with humor can make life more palatable.

Kirsten strives to not take herself too seriously. To help balance out the very serious things she’s been through in her life with humor and art and other modes of coping. We’re going to talk about a phrase that she invented. I’m not going to let the cat out of the bag. I’m going to let her set up what this term is and then we’ll have a discussion about it.

So can you talk about the background of this term, first of all?

Kirsten: So a little bit about my personal backstory. I had been about 17 years into my then marriage, and we were about a year into an in house separation. And working on him trying to recover from his sex addiction. And me trying to recover from 17 years of long term premeditated and fairly disturbing mind games and lies and betrayals.

Kirsten: We were doing an in house separation, and he said that he would do anything to fix the damage that was happening in our marriage. And I believed him. I wanted to believe him when he said he would fight for our marriage. One night he came down from his bedroom that he was staying in and asked me when I would drop my boundary of him Not being able to initiate any physical touch in our marriage.

I reminded him that he had not followed through with the task that he’d been given by his therapist and by our religious leader. That my personal therapist had suggested that I may even need some really specialized sex therapy to be able to heal. To get back to that point where I’d be comfortable being physically intimate with him.

He asked me how long it would take for me to do this healing. And I said, I don’t, I don’t know. Six months? A year? I don’t know. He let me know that that was too long. That my boundary was impeding his recovery. So, that’s kind of when I knew that that marriage was over.

I’m a pretty visual thinker. I’m an artist. I have a brain full of all kinds of ridiculous cultural references. When he said that, I could see in my head this video and song that came out in the early 90s from this rocker, Meatloaf.

Kirsten: He did this ridiculous video called, I will do anything for love. And I could hear his voice in my head. You know, I can do anything for love, but I won’t do that. I just started laughing and walked out of the room. I’m sure that it appeared very rude to him, but I just, the ridiculousness of it. You know, 17 years of really awful behavior and damage, and he couldn’t give me this. This one thing that I was asking for him to do.

I’m in the Betrayal Trauma Recovery community, and one day a woman said her partner was not going to do the thing that she had asked him to do. To be able to receive healing in their marriage. That came back to my head and I said, Oh, he’s Meatloafing you.

Of course, you know, I often forget that I’m one of the older members of the community. You probably have to be over maybe 35 to kind of get that reference right away. But he said, what are you talking about? And I said, don’t you remember that song by Meatloaf? I’ll do anything for love, but I won’t do that.

And that just started a whole entire thing of hilarity where we made up memes about Meatloaf and what he would and wouldn’t do. It was fun. And we need the laugh, quite frankly, things can get quite heavy in the community at times. They are all saying I will do anything to fight for our marriage, but in reality won’t do what it actually takes. But it’s a really appropriate term to describe the way that sometimes when addicts try to keep all the things.

Kirsten: Why wouldn’t they? They have a loving partner and a family, they’re taking care of all their stuff. Then on the side, they also have their addiction and whatever life they’ve built around that. They’ll say, “I want to fight for our marriage.” To be able to try and protect that dual life and that addiction.

So you can’t really listen to the things they say. You know, I mean, this meatloaf song is like eight minutes long. It’s ridiculous. I mean, he just goes on and on and on about all these things that he’ll do for her. He’ll go to hell and back. He’ll do, you know, I mean, it’s just, the video is hilarious. And not to mention that, by the way, he’s a monster in the video, but when she gives him love, he turns into a man.

Anne: Oh, wow. The Beauty and the Beast. scenario. Does it ever say what the thing he won’t do is?

Kirsten: Well, in actuality, of course, the song doesn’t really mean that. Because what he means is he won’t cheat on her. He won’t forget her feelings. He’ll do all these things. And then she comes in on her verse and she says, are you gonna cheat on me?

Are you gonna hurt my feelings and break my heart? And he’s like, I won’t do that. So in actuality, the song’s not really as bad as it sounds when we made the meme out of it. But you know, we all have that line in our head from the song, if we’re old enough.

Anne: Yeah, I will do anything for love, but I won’t do that. A woman in our community, she got her young daughter’s ears pierced in like January? And I don’t know, four months later or something, she sent her daughter to her ex’s house. They were these really expensive stud earrings. And he lost one of the earrings and then he wrote this email that was like this five paragraph manifesto about how could they improve communication and what could he do, “To fight for our marriage?”

He would do anything to help out, you know, that kind of a thing. She wrote back and said, pay $20 for Sophie’s earring. He wrote this big rant about how he never consented to her getting her ears pierced. There was no way he was going to pay for the earring. But he didn’t bring that up back in January when she had her ears pierced.

So he was like, I will do anything, but there’s no way I’ll pay $20 for a lost earring. And it’s funny the things that they won’t do. When they say, “I want to fight for our marriage.” Well, they won’t do what they don’t want to do is the thing.

Kirsten: Right. You know, when you speak about serious breaches in trust and contract of a partnership, which, most of our members are married and their partnership is a marriage and, you know, the onus of healing, the broken trust is on the person that broke the trust.

Kirsten: So, as the offended partner begins their healing process. And they start to gather their strength and their dignity back around them. Also they have a community that builds them up, they learn about boundaries and they start to put those in place. They’ll begin to set healing tasks and limits on the allowed behaviors for that offending partner.

This is not an attempt to control the partner, this is their attempt to try and stay in the relationship. This is their attempt to “Fight for our marriage.”

Anne: To establish some safety.

Kirsten: Exactly. I mean, because they’ve now realized. That all these things have gone on. My first reaction when I found out the true depth of the betrayal, that had happened in my marriage, was to just leave.

I was done right then. But my attempt to be able to feel safe enough to wait to give him some time to heal and fix his problem. Was to have boundaries in place. That’s the only way I could stay. I wasn’t trying to control him as a person. I just needed that. You know, I needed that for myself. I wanted to fight for our marriage.

Oftentimes the offending partner will profess with all kinds of words, all the things that they’re willing to do. They feel so bad. I’ll do anything I can to fix this. But when they’re actually put to the test, they refuse to engage. They refuse to follow through. That just goes to show you that the old adage that you watch their feet and not their mouth is true.

Anne: Like the, I would do it if you wouldn’t bother me about it. You’ve heard that one before.

Anne: Where they’re like, I was about to do it, but now that you reminded me, I won’t be doing it on my own. So just let me do it in my own time.

Kirsten: I don’t like it when you act like my Mom. You’re taking my dignity away. Let me do this in my own time.

Anne: In their own time is never. They’re only saying that to avoid doing the thing.

Kirsten: Why should they get to do anything in their own time? They’re the one that broke the contract. They’re the one that broke the trust. They are the one’s who should fight for our marriage. They really should do anything. I mean, you know, within reason. Most of the women in our community are pretty healthy people. They’re not trying to use this as an opportunity to control their spouse or their partner.

Anne: No, they’re looking for safety and they’re looking for truth. In your situation, did you ever consider your situation to be abuse while you were in this place of knowing about his sexual behavior. But thinking maybe he could get into recovery when you’re kind of thinking of him as an addict?

Was there ever a time where you were like, wait a minute, I was abused this whole time?

Kirsten: No, it never really crossed my mind. See, one of the things about my situation is I was married before this marriage, very shortly. For 18 months and it was a very abusive, destructive marriage. So to me, anything that wasn’t that was better.

Anytime I start to feel like something might be wrong or my body was like, Oh, I’m uncomfortable. If I would bring it up to my spouse. He would say, yeah, you’re right, something is wrong, you need to go to therapy because you’re broken from your first marriage. I became the kind of person that would just completely take all of it in on myself.

I was sure that everything that was wrong in our marriage was my fault. It wasn’t until I was in my therapeutic disclosure, and this is after a surprise dump disclosure, I thought I knew everything. But after a therapist had helped lead him through. all the things, which, you know, turned in from a five page thing to ten page disclosure.

When I heard some of the very specific things that he did that were so twisted that my brain starts to say, wait a minute, only crazy people do this. Like abusive, crazy, like you see in the lifetime movies, kind of people. Even then, it still took me a good year, year and a half to accept the fact that I was actually severely abused for many, many years.

Anne: Why do you think it’s so easy? Well, not so easy, but easier for women to recognize abuse when they’re in a relationship, like your first marriage? Where the abuse was really obvious compared to how long was your second marriage?

Kirsten: By the time the divorce went through, we’d been married for 20 years.

Anne: So compared to the second marriage, that was 20 years where the whole time, You’re in this fog of abuse, but you can’t see it, and you’re trying to wrap your head around what’s going on. Why do you think it’s so difficult for women to see this second type of abuse?

Kirsten: Well, I’ve never considered myself a person that could be abused.

I’m not stupid or weak. I’m quite sassy and strong willed. I never thought that anything like that could ever happen to me, and it was very subtle. Very, very subtle and not only that, but I grew up in a family and in a religion where I was groomed. Some people don’t like that term, but it’s true. To turn over my knowing and my will to the patriarch of the home, the husband, the leader of our church, that’s what a good woman does.

So my natural ability to kind of say, Hey, this doesn’t feel right. Just over the years really was squashed. So, you know, never in my brain until like a therapist or a podcast or something would say, Hey, this behavior is abusive. Would I ever think, Oh, you’re right. Putting that label on it, which seems extreme to a lot of people and they really kick against it was enough to clear my brain up from the fog to start to look for more truth.

Anne: Yeah, you mentioned a lot of people kick against the term abuse, especially within the context of sex addiction. Why do you think so many people are unwilling to say, if you’re in a relationship with an active sex addict or an active porn user, you are in an abusive relationship? It is an abuse issue.

Anne: Why do you think so many people don’t want to go there?

Kirsten: Well, there’s a lot of shame around anything that has to do with sex. People don’t like to talk about sex. They don’t want to be real about sex. They certainly don’t want to talk about anything that has to do with abusive behaviors and sex. The level of shame will make it so people don’t want to talk about it at all.

Let alone slap a label of abuse on it. There’s all this cultural misogyny. That a woman should do what her spouse wants her to do. Her needs should be subservient to her spouse’s needs. Even things like a woman shouldn’t enjoy sex, or she shouldn’t have to worry about feeling safe because it’s just a duty that needs to happen in a marriage.

With all this cultural baggage and all these things generationally that we’re dragging with us as women, it’s just something that we wouldn’t even consider unless it’s, you know, a violent rape, say. You know, but in a marriage context, I mean, we’ve had women in the community that didn’t even realize until they heard somebody else talk about it. That they actually were raped in their own marriage, when I had that experience.

And you just don’t understand what’s going on. You have no context or words for it. You don’t have the vocabulary for it. We weren’t taught that until you get into the Betrayal Trauma Recovery community and learn . The verbiage that you need to be able to start clarifying those things in your head.

Anne: What helps you realize you were raped? I’m guessing multiple rapes.

Kirsten: Well, yeah multiple times. I didn’t understand my body’s fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response. I didn’t understand the trauma response. So, I didn’t recognize that those times when I didn’t want to be there doing what he wanted. I would just leave my body so that I could make it through it.

That that was something that would be considered a rape. And there was one specific situation that involved a big production that he had put together almost like a movie. A play that he wanted me to play out. With notes and letters and this big thing where I had to go here and do this and then here and do that. And da da da and ended up in a hotel room and it was a horrendous experience for me.

Somebody had mentioned, hey, this thing happened to me, I think I was raped by my husband. And I was like, wait, rape? That’s rape? And it just hit me. I was like, that is what I was experiencing that night. I left my body so I wasn’t there, and let him do what he wanted to do. But I didn’t want to be there.

I had not given consent for that experience. But I didn’t know how to say no. I didn’t know I could say no.

Anne: Yeah, and for someone who thinks they’re entitled, to sex from their wife because she is an object or she is subservient, then asking for consent is not even on the table either.

Kirsten: Right. If you’ve lived most of your marriage in a place of trauma where you didn’t ever speak up and say, I don’t like this or no, I’m not doing that.

In my case, my then spouse considered that I was into it. You know, he never stopped to question that I might not enjoy it. And he was so good at building up fantasies in his head that he wouldn’t probably have seen or cared to see, that I wasn’t really fully giving consent.

Anne: We have so much that we’ve learned through these experiences and hopefully sharing it can help other women

Kirsten: Yes, and when you learn that, you need things to help you be brave. You need a community around you of women who understand what you’ve gone through. No one has to try and explain everything to them because they already know.

You need people that you can laugh with. I mean you can’t just go over to your next door neighbor and make a joke about marital rape. You can’t do that. It’s totally inappropriate. But sometimes we need to laugh. The absurdity of our situations will hit us. And it’s all you can do. I mean, if you can’t laugh, you’ll die.

If you need to be able to have that picture of Meatloaf singing in your head. While your spouse is trying to give you all the reasons why he can’t do this one thing that you’ve asked him to do. To try and fix the damage that he did, to be able to help you get through that without going crazy, you need that. He’s saying I want to fight for our marriage, and you can see through his actions that he’s not going to.

Anne: Kirsten is an incredible artist and I want her to talk about her art. And how that has helped her process her trauma and heal from what she has been through.

I had the opportunity to go to her art show with my Mother. We spent, I don’t know, maybe two hours. We spent so long there because every single painting was so touching to me. I read the descriptions and I just sat and pondered it. We didn’t want to leave. We just wanted to stay there and it was one of the best experiences I’ve had viewing art. It really spoke to me, and helped me process my own trauma.

Having had that experience with your art, able to view it and process my own trauma and interpret it in different ways. Can you talk about your art and what it means to you and how it helped you?

Kirsten: You know, sometimes we think, Oh, I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I have all this trauma stored up in me and I didn’t know how to process it. But the human mind is incredibly flexible and, you know, very able to defend itself against trauma in any way that it can. For me, a way that I didn’t realize, I was doing that before I find out anything about what was happening in my marriage was through art.

Kirsten: I was processing the things that were happening in my life through art. I initially had gone to school to be a children’s book illustrator. That’s what I thought I wanted to do. I love that still, but I found myself being drawn to doing a lot of really angsty and introspective self portraits. I laugh sometimes because I think, what am I, a narcissist?

That word is thrown around a lot. I just keep painting myself over and over and over again. I don’t know if you know anything about the artist Frida Kahlo, but she did a lot of self processing through her art as well. A lot of self portraits. I don’t know if I would say that I’m as amazing as she was. But she’s kind of my guide as far as just going ahead and doing what your heart tells you to do as an artist.

The first self portrait that I did was right after my first divorce from my 18 month marriage, and it was surprising to me how cathartic it was to paint the feelings I was feeling. To get them out onto this canvas. That continued through the years. My entire getting married again, being a young mother, and through a very toxic marriage.

I would do these self portraits. Usually, I would have a dream, and the image would be in my head when I would wake up. Then I would go through the process of doing sketches, taking pictures, preparing the work and then making it. I’d always feel better afterwards. I didn’t really realize what I was doing.

Kirsten: Now looking back and having had so much education about , abuse and learning more about trauma and what it does to the body and the brain. I realized that I was releasing a lot of trauma into my paintings. In fact, sometimes I laugh and call my paintings horcruxes because I feel like I’ve cut a piece of my soul out and put it into the painting.

But usually the things that I leave in the painting are things that are good to be leaving. So it’s just a really important way for me to journal my life, to express my feelings and to get something out of my soul.

Anne: I’d like to talk about a couple of specific pieces, if you don’t mind. One of them is this incredible painting of you in a nightgown with a halo in a dirty bathroom.

I really wanted to talk to you about this because I have had so many dirty bathroom dreams. Where I’m in like a stall, the toilet’s overflowing. There’s dirty water on the ground, the sink is overflowing, and it’s just disgusting. I have to figure out how to go to the bathroom in there. This is a recurring dream that I’ve had. And when I saw this painting, I was like, this is straight out of my dream.

I don’t know if this was one that you had a dream about as well. There’s also a chicken in it and a candle.

Kirsten: This was the first painting that I did after my therapeutic disclosure that I went through with my now ex husband and our therapist. When I wanted to fight for our marriage.

Kirsten: In which I heard all the things, all the things that had been happening in my marriage for 17 years. I had read online a call for entry to a show in which they were asking people to do theme specific artwork. It was for a gallery that was in LA and the name of the show was Waterline. They wanted women artists to do works about water and its effect on their lives. I never enter a show that isn’t local, I wanted to be brave.

I kind of had my fists up in a fighting mode after finding out all these awful things. And so I was thinking about what I could do for the show if I was going to enter it and I had a dream that night.

That I was in a old, dirty and for me it wasn’t a bath, it was actually, an abandoned psychiatric hospital. Like from a horror movie, you know, with broken tiles and the old school look of the industrial in the 20s and 30s and drains and yucky, dirty water everywhere. I was, covered in mud with the lines from floods.

You know, when there’s a flood, how it leaves a line of debris on whatever, the building or the edge of the creek or something. There’s a flood and they’ll leave these lines and each line, you know, progressively went up what was representing different traumas that I’d been through in my life. The fight for our marriage, was in those flood lines.

Kirsten: It was as if I was there, you know, the, the image already existed. It was created, if you will, spiritually in my head that night. I got up the next morning and I ran to the thrift store and I found a nightgown and I went outside and started dumping myself in mud so that I could take photos to, to draw from for this painting.

And just the process of actually preparing the reference photos, getting this nightgown muddy, getting my arms muddy, taking the pictures was incredibly important to me. It would, if anybody filmed it, be considered a piece of performance art that went along with the painting. But you know, it was a private experience and not something that I wanted documented for everybody to see.

Then when I start putting the imagery together, I had to include a chicken because I love chickens and they’re my girls. So don’t try to ask me to explain it, but the chicken’s like my spirit guide. So that was one of my hens, Penny, my hen, and she was in the painting.

I also included a prayer candle, like you would find in a Catholic church at the altar, I like to use a lot of old Renaissance imagery in my artwork. I just like it. So I put a halo around myself because I felt like not toot my own horn or anything, but sometimes when you go through really traumatic experiences. Especially when they last for a long time, it changes you.

Kirsten: Those experiences can be sanctified by your healing. You kind of feel like these old saints, you know, there’s a saint for everything in the Catholic church. There’s a saint for everything. A saint for moving, a saint for people that drown in water, a saint for being killed by an arrow on the back of a wagon.

I mean, anything that you can think of. And, and I’m like, yeah, I feel like I’m the saint in my fight for our marriage, toxic marriages or something. So that’s why I included that imagery and it just came pouring out of me. I got the painting done really quickly. I sent it to the show. It did very well there. I’ve won several awards with it. It’s kind of like an icon for me.

Anne: St. Kirsten

Kirsten: Yeah, right..

Anne: Yeah, it was very, I don’t know if shocking is the right word that I would use for me. But because it just spoke to me so deeply of the imagery that I had experienced in my dreams. It’s interesting that the experience of this type of abuse, the details are all different for every woman, but this feeling of we were almost drowning in someone else’s filth.

In a place where we should be safe. Like, yours was a psychiatric hospital. That’s a place where someone should be helping you. You know, technically. In a bathroom, it should be somewhere that you feel safe enough to just, you know, relax, I guess. But instead of that, you’re drowning in someone else’s filth. It is kind of a sanctifying experience.

Kirsten: It leaves marks on you. And those marks don’t go away. They can be transformed, but they don’t go away.

Anne: The title is Flood Damage and that really, really looks like that. It was amazing. There were so many, like every single one I could talk about. Especially your, what are the ones called, Japanese ones, where you put yourself back together with gold?

Kirsten: Kintsugi

Anne: Those really spoke to me. But the second one I’d like to really focus on is called Unequally Yoked. So this is a painting of Kirsten with a yoke and she is yoked on one side.

Kirsten: Yes, yeah. I have my neck in one side of the double yoke.

Anne: Okay. Yeah. And the other one is just empty and she’s pulling this by herself. This one too, it just, I mean every one of your paintings just hit me at my core. But this one I spent so much time just observing and thinking about and processing my own things. Can you talk about this one a little bit?

Kirsten: I did this painting, it’s probably my favorite painting that I’ve ever done, by the way.

It really speaks to me still. I did it in 2018. I was divorced and just start to get back into trying to date. It was a vulnerable time for me. There was a lot of heaviness and loneliness at that time. And again, I’m not quite sure why this happens, but I had a dream about this painting and woke up with the image in my head already.

Kirsten: So I couldn’t find a yoke to make the painting. When I did the reference photos, I put a very heavy beam of wood over my shoulders so that I could get that sense of weight and heaviness. I just have so much grief over the fact that I had two partners who were supposed to be my forever companion. In which that didn’t happen, and not only did it not happen, but I carried the brunt of the emotional work. I carried their shame. It was my fight for our marriage, and they didn’t try.

Now I carry the weight of being a single mom and trying to deal with the damage that’s happening to my children. I just felt it so heavily. I think that it just needs to come out in this image. And you know in the scriptures, Jesus talks about a yoke and he says that his yoke is is easy and his burden is light. That if you’ll yoke yourself to him, you can make it through the things in life.

But the yoke also connotes being tied to something. When you yoke yourself to something, that double yoke of the ox and team, you can’t move unless they’re moving. And if they don’t move, you have to drag them. So there was a lot of feelings and symbolism in that for me. Then I put fig leaves around in the background to kind of represent some things that I feel about partnership, the Garden of Eden and that story of creation.

Kirsten: Then I also added a, a wedding ring in the background. To symbolize the fight for our marriage. I had a ton of feelings come out while I was painting this painting. Many times I actually had to stop and put it away because I would just start crying and I couldn’t see the panel I was working on.

I would just have to put it away. But I think you can feel that when you look at the painting. One of the cool things about seeing artwork in life as opposed to just a picture online. You can really feel the feelings that were poured into a piece.

Anne: That is what is incredible about excellent art, is that you painted it and put in the work. But it seemed like it was painted just for me. And for all the members of our community who can imagine that feeling of being unequally yoked, and then having to carry the burden of the lack of a partner. We fight for our marriage, and they leave us alone.

I really appreciate your art and your talent. And so many women have gone through this and they’re, so incredibly talented and you are one of those amazing talented women. Here is her website so you can look at the paintings yourself www.kirstenbeitler.com

Anne: I would really encourage you to go take a look at her artwork. Hopefully it will speak to you as it spoke to me. Can you talk a little bit about how the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group has helped you to heal?

Kirsten: Absolutely. This community, this idea of community and sisterhood is one of the things. I’m not exaggerating that I say actually saved my life and my sanity. It started for me when I don’t know how this happened. I wasn’t looking for it, I was just online looking how to fight for our marriage, and then suddenly it was there in front of me.

It was a tender mercy from God. The loving compassion I felt because you all knew exactly what I was going through. I didn’t have to say anything or do anything. I am enfolded in love.

And from those groups came some of the best and truest friends that I’ve ever had in my life. They saved me. They walked with me through horrendous things. And I’ve been able to be there for them too.

Finding BTR filled so many holes in my heart because I didn’t feel like a freak anymore. I didn’t feel alone. There was at least one woman whose story was so similar to mine that I knew, okay, this isn’t just because of me. This isn’t just because of how broken I am. This is happening to other people too.

It was such a relief. It was such a relief to me. Not that you would ever want anybody to go through that, like you did, but just to know that it’s not because of you. I’m always grateful for the BTR community where something horrible is turned into something holy.

Anne: Yeah, it’s amazing how much our Shero community has evolved over the years. We’ve all evolved together to be like, that didn’t work, right? Like, Oh, he may be an addict. There’s no question about that. But what we were experiencing the entire time was abuse. We didn’t know that back then. Sometimes we fight for our marriage, and don’t realize how much we are suffering.

It’s so nice to come out of the fog and be able to define it and help other women so that they don’t have to go through the, you know, 10, 20 year process, seven, however long it was process of figuring that out. Figuring out how long to fight for our marriage.

Kirsten: Oh my goodness. And thousands and thousands of dollars worth of therapy and agony.

Anne: The cool thing is because we’re all together now and because we’re continuing our healing journey together. We are still evolving and we still don’t know what we don’t know, right? We still are there for each other and when one of us has an epiphany, all of us have an epiphany.

You know, it’s like, oh, why didn’t we think of that before? So it’s a really amazing community to be a part of, to see it evolve. Because our true desire is for safety, truth and peace. We are evolving to be more gentle with each other and more kind and more understanding. Yet also more fierce in our boundaries and more fierce in our belief in ourselves and what we deserve and that we are worth it.

So it’s, it’s a mix of like, amazing bravery and also this incredible vulnerability at the same time. That to me is just the most amazing army of healthy women who can help bring other women out of the fog of abuse.

Kirsten: Absolutely. You know, none of us are perfect. We’re all still learning. We’re learning from each other every day. There are so many people that have so many different opinions about everything, but still working together. To try and clear everybody’s mind, you know, “Should I fight for our marriage?” We can come out healed, and it can happen, and it does happen every day.

Anne: Well, thank you for sharing parts of your story and some of your talent, especially with your Meatloaf metaphors. And your, “fight for our marriage.” You’re amazing, Kirsten. Thank you so much for coming on today’s episode.

Have you spent endless hours and countless efforts trying to find a therapist that knows and understands what you’re going through? Because the best betrayal trauma recovery groups are available online to help you. Read what Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session Clients have to say about their experiences.

Anne: Women frequently, write to me about how they feel. Also what they’re going through, what they think of Betrayal Trauma Recovery, and how grateful they are for my podcast and the services at BTR.ORG.

So today I’m going to share some of these messages with you. I’ll be reading them and then I also received some audio recordings from women so I’ll be playing those for you.

If you’d like to come on the podcast and talk to me, I would love to talk to you. So please come share your experience with me. If you want to do that, email [email protected]. Or if you’re shy and you want to share, but you don’t want to talk to me, (I don’t blame you if you don’t want to talk to me:), you can use voice recordings on your phone and email it to [email protected]. and then I can share it on the podcast anonymously.

It means so much to me to hear from you. I’m so honored to listen to your story and share that space with you. It warms my spirit to hear from you. It keeps me going. So thank you.

Anne: Let’s start with an audio recording I received.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups Session Client #1: When I finally found BTR, my husband and I had spent over 10 years and $10, 000 in and out of couples counseling. Even though my husband was unfaithful, used pornography, and chronically masturbated. They looked at our issues as a, “couple problem”. The multiple therapists we saw had years of experience. But they knew nothing whatsoever about betrayal trauma, sexual integrity issues, addiction, or emotional abuse involved.

In fact, my husband was able to successfully gaslight one therapist to the point where he told me. That if I would become a, “safe person,” my husband would quit lying to me. I bet you can guess the result.

Yep, my husband lied to me again, and again, and again. In fact it was never about me. So thankfully, everything turned almost on a dime the day I read an article on gaslighting from BTR. This was one of the biggest aha moments of my entire life. Overall it was almost as if I could hear the angel singing in the background as 26 painful years of fog began to lift.

Client #1 continues: I immediately set up a coaching appointment with one of the BTR Coaches. Then for the first time ever found someone who got it immediately. I didn’t have to convince her, educate her, or prove a thing. She understood exactly what I was going through. Because she had been there too.

After years and years and thousands of dollars spent on traditional therapy, I finally found someone who understood exactly what I was going through! She named it, educated me, and provided the support and contagious courage needed to become empowered to stop the abuse.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups Session Client #2: These groups of amazing women represented different stages of discovery and grief cycles. We came from various backgrounds and bonded together to find solutions to the challenges women face.

After the initial shock of disclosure and abuse, when we were unable to make sense of reality. When I recognized that the feelings attached to the experience of trauma are universal in nature. But there are some unique heightened and very personal pain points around this particular addiction. I was able to sort out truth from fiction and find coping tools.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups Session Client #3: I was desperate for help and searched the internet for answers. Then I came across info on gaslighting. So this is what I’d been experiencing in my marriage for 26 years. And there’s a name for it! It was literally a mind blowing revelation for me that led me to the BTR website where I went on a podcast binge.

I listened to everything I could get my hands on. Then the fog of gaslighting began to lift. And with the help of one of the coaches, I gained the courage to set some significant and appropriate boundaries. Honestly, I thought I had had a pretty good handle on the subject and didn’t expect to learn much more.

Was I ever wrong! What I thought I knew about gaslighting was only a drop in the bucket. The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups were very informative and practical with examples. Also in a safe situation with feedback and encouragement. If you’ve been betrayed, chances are gaslighting is a significant part of your story as well.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups Session Client #4: These aren’t your cookie cutter Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups with an unmovable agenda. There isn’t one way to approach the challenge of boundaries. Sex addiction is real. So treat yourself to this healing experience. Transcend the past, move past the crazy, and stand in your own truth in sisterhood.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups Session Client #5: The BTR community is amazing. Because in the support groups, everyone gets it. There’s no judgment. They don’t re-traumatize you like some therapists do. I truly feel that everyone who participates validates our experience. They offer very helpful feedback and suggestions.

Everyone is a wealth of information. Additionally I get great resources, all sorts of different pieces that I would not have necessarily found on my own. Also I appreciate that people will share what has worked and also what hasn’t worked for them.

I really appreciate the ease of use. Because there are many different times during the day. That you can connect with the coaches and with other group members.

Client #5 continues: The response is really quick if you want to make an appointment. You don’t have to wait, and you don’t have to travel. You can do it from your computer. Especially for women with kids, the ability to quickly get an appointment and not have to find a babysitter. You can, you know, toss a movie in for an hour and get your needs met.

Get that validation and that help that we’re all so, so searching for. So I strongly suggest people try it. The fee is nominal. It’s much less than you’re ever going to find anywhere else. You can use as many groups as you want during the month, and I think it’s probably the best investment you can make in your healing from betrayal trauma.

I’m a huge fan and I love the style, the program and the model.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups Session Client #6: BTR has been such a validating and positive experience. The process has given me the courage to face some of my demons regarding triggers. It has also given me clarity about my next steps and ideas about how to improve my relationship. I have a clearer idea of how I want to integrate this whole nightmare into my life in a really positive way.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups Session Client #7: BTR has been life changing for me. It challenged me out of my comfort zone, and encouraged me to make the hard choices for the betterment of my family, and out of love for myself. I’ve been deeply impacted by hearing of the other ladies struggles and victories. As well as being able to learn from their stories and journey.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups Session Client #8: When I was first introduced to BTR, my world had turned upside down. I was lost in overpowering emotions. The BTR coaches guided me to discover peace and advocate for myself. Thank you for Betrayal Trauma Recovery Individual Sessions and for the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group. I have found a place of healing and strength.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups Session Client #9: Thank goodness I found BTR.ORG! The coaches are just wonderful. I was really desperate when I found BTR because I was fed up after going to three therapists in a row who didn’t get it.

The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups are so fulfilling themselves, but the individual sessions with the coaches are also wonderful. Everybody is so kind and and helpful and gives me a lot of hope about what I’ve been going through. Thank you.

Anne: Here’s one from a woman in Colorado.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups Session Client #10: He was charming, handsome, and a doctor from three generations of physicians.

I had a nice job with two great sons. My life was full. I didn’t see it coming. Things started out great, slowly transforming into emotional game playing, crazy making, and gaslighting. I was blind to his pornography addiction, and abuse until he had a heart attack and couldn’t hide it anymore.

After strategic planning to get to emotional safety without family or a support system, the emotional turmoil and trauma came tumbling out. I’ve spent hours of therapy and reading to research my own issues of letting go. This has been my life for the past six years. I finally found BTR and it has been my lifeline. I write this with much gratitude and appreciation.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups Session Client #11: I just happened to find The BTR Podcast in the midst of finding out my spouse had been lying and cheating. Again, actually number six that I know of. During the deepest, darkest moment of my life. Words can’t express how listening to the podcast truly saved my life.

It made me feel like there are others out there. I wasn’t alone. The words of encouragement, education, support, and knowing that the situation is for real. I wasn’t crazy, it was so comforting. After searching the BTR site, I noticed BTR had services that could help me personally. I decided now was the time and attended my first Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session.

Words truly can’t express how this experience helped in my life. I also joined Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group. Each story and experience shared was helpful. From the others touch my life in so many ways. I received so much encouragement, education, and knowledge from other women. It will forever be a part of my life.

I wish I would have found BTR sooner, but I know it was simply in God’s timing to bring this organization into my life. I look forward to continuing individual sessions. Thank you, BTR and Anne for everything.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups Session Client #12: BTR helped me to calm down and refocus away from my problems and onto finding a genuine solution so that I can move forward.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups Session Client #13: BTR coaches are in tune with the needs of victims, learning about them and intuitively recognizing details. And proactively offering creative and innovative solutions.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups Session Client #14: BTR Group Sessions provide support, validation, empowerment, education, organization, consistency, safety, confidentiality, respect, kindness, acceptance, and love.

I don’t use those words lightly! BTR Group Sessions and all of BTR has been a lifeline for me that is indescribable. Thank you so very much. I like the fact that I can get help from home. As I am unable to travel outside the home. The coaches provide helpful feedback, insightful feedback. They are knowledgeable, kind, patient, and have helped me to stay grounded in reality.

The group members provide much needed community and validation. BTR has been a godsend that I can share what I’m going through with other women that understand. It’s amazing.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups Session Client #15: Hello, Ann. I just felt I needed to send you a letter of encouragement and gratitude. I heard about BTR through one of my dear friends. That I met doing an intensive with her sex addicted husband.

After the five day intensive, I felt confused and alone, especially when I came home to our small town with no support. I followed the 12 Step program and joined a program with our church. Then the leaders shut it down. I wanted so badly to recover, but I had no support group until I found you, and BTR!

My marriage had been so painful and so crazy. I had no idea what gas lighting was, or that I was in a full on abusive relationship. My boundaries and self worth were low. Even though I presented myself as strong and confident. I lost my voice. Since finding Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups and the amazing BTR coaches, I’ve grown and discovered my inner strength and true voice.

Thank you for what you are doing. Also thank you for the love and time you pour into this ministry. You are a beautiful, glorious woman, and I hope to meet you in person someday.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups Session Client #16: I stumbled across BTR and fortunately attended a Group Session. And was privileged to enter one of the, emotionally, safest places ever held for me. Since my world was turned upside down.

The time I have shared with BTR since has been filled with compassionate truths. And an endless amount of space and safety. The times I have felt the most alone and afraid, the BTR coaches assured me that I am no longer walking through this journey alone.

You provide personalized recommendations that fit me so perfectly. And tailor information to fit the individual client. Thank you. You have changed my life.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups Session Client #17: I was told about my husband’s sexual addiction in 2015. We sought professional help right away. He seemed to be in recovery. But it wasn’t until the summer of 2018 when I discovered BTR. I finally heard someone describe what I was living through as gaslighting! And there was something I could do about it. I’m not typically a person to sign up for things. But after listening to the BTR podcast, I recognized I had more to learn.

I scheduled an individual session with a BTR coach. I realized my husband had not been sober and I had been emotionally abused. Then during a critical period, just before my husband moved to actively cast me off and discard our marriage. During the period when he rapidly ramped up abusive behaviors. The BTR coaches were there with me with incredible empathy and profound insight.

Client #17 continues: In a few hours, they validated my pain and taught me more about gaslighting than most people would know in a lifetime. They helped equip me to manage a situation that was about to rapidly unfold. Unlike beginning with a new therapist, I didn’t have to spend hours giving background. The BTR Coaches already understood what was going on in my heart and in my home.

Gaslighting, DARVO, and emotional abuse were huge topics that had not been addressed in traditional counseling. Also, the podcast covered topics that I found extremely helpful. I listened, pausing, jotting notes, then printing the transcripts of some episodes. This material deeply resonated with me and I used parts of it as a script to identify what I needed for safety.

Thank you for what you do. You are making a difference.

Anne: I am so grateful for the women who are brave enough to share their insight and to send their stories. Thank you for being a part of our community. I’m always looking for victims stories . If you’d like to come on the podcast and share your story, please email me at [email protected]. The more we can share and get stories like this out into the light, the more it helps all victims everywhere.

If your in-laws enable emotional abuse, you’re not alone. Tragically, this is an extremely common occurrence for victims. Tanya shares her heartbreaking story of living through financial, physical, and emotional abuse – all while her in-laws enable her abuser.

If you need live support, learn about our online Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions.

Anne: I have a member of the BTR community on today’s episode, we’re going to call her Tania. I recorded this a few years ago.

Welcome, Tanya.

Tanya: Thank you so much for having me.

Originally, I’m from Africa, but I moved to Canada when I was 16 years old. And I was young, my first time living without my parents. In our culture, we’re not supposed to marry out of the African community. But he was a football player. He moved to Canada from Africa to play a minor league, and when we met, it was pure bliss to meet someone like him. Because I came from a society that men are very, I can say, machos.

Tanya: I had a couple family members involved in a very abusive relationship. And for me, it was easy to recognize, but I couldn’t break it off right away. Because it would be like dumb of me. So I had to get to know him and see what was going on.

Anne: When you say dumb of you, why did you think at the time it would be dumb of you to break it off?

Tanya: Because I thought that I didn’t give him a chance.

Tanya: I had friends around me also that were like, you need to get to know him better so that you can make that decision. So I felt like because of the peer pressure that I had around me.

Anne: So people are saying you can’t just judge him right off the bat. Because you need to get to know him better. How does it progress from there?

Tanya: At that time I was only 18 years old. Also it was the first time living in a different country by myself. I was just like, okay, I can make my boundaries. Because I’m not married to him and he’s not really like my boyfriend. Additionally I have my apartment and I don’t have to go to his house.

Tanya: But that summer, he got laid off from football, so he had to move back to the United States where there is another league that wanted him. I just felt like, yeah, he’s moving back to the United States. Also he’s an American. I just thought, yeah, our relationship is done.

I don’t have to pursue that relationship anymore, but we reconnected again and we start dating. Then he decided, oh, do you want to come to visit? I said, yes.

I just felt like, oh, I can rescue him for some reason, I just thought like, I can talk to him. Maybe influence him in a better way because the difference between me and him in what I felt like it was too wild. He was a football player, but I just started noticing differences amongst our values and whatever I believed about family.

When I came to visit him here in the United States, I just told him, I don’t, think this is going to work. One, because I’m just starting to see that our personalities don’t really go together.

Tanya: And right away I saw this anger come out of him. I couldn’t believe so I grabbed my phone and called my friend. I said, he is angry. In fact he shows anger that I don’t think I can deal with. My friend said, again, I think you’re judging him for just one time situation.

You are in his country. So you should chill out and calm down. He’s a good candidate for marriage. He would speak to my friends about marriage, saying he would like to marry me. That I’m a good person. That he likes me because I am not like this American woman. Instead, they’re more into material things, and I’m very grounded. So my friend said, you know, I think you should try it.

Tanya: He asked me to marry him. My friends threw a big engagement party. I left my job, left my apartment, my car, I moved to the United States.

And that time his friend was also married with a woman from Columbia. She said, oh, let’s go to brunch. When we were at the brunch, it was only two hours. We took a long time to come home, because our car stopped and we were looking for someone to help us see what was going on with the car. He was calling me, was calling me, was calling me. It took us three hours to get back home.

As soon as we get back home, he pushes my phone. Then he throws the phone on the floor and grabs my computer. After that, he throws the computer on the ground. So everything is broken. My friend said, Tanya, what are you going to do now? Because you already accept this man proposal. So now do you want to return to Canada? What’s everyone going to say?

Anne: Where’s your friend from

Tanya: A couple of them were Canadians.

Anne: Would you say, where you’re from in Africa, that this was a cultural thing? That men just get mad and it’s no big deal?

Tanya: It’s pretty common, but it depends also on the family you came from, because my family were not like that. Meeting him and his family and seeing the manipulation. Especially the way they speak and silent treatment. Then I already knew that this marriage was not supposed to happen. Because it was something I’ve never experienced, and it goes back to pornography.

Tanya: Pornography was something that I never heard, not in my house as I was growing up. Even with my friends in Canada. Because we never spoke about pornography.

But when I returned to the United States, he had invited me to my in-laws home in Chicago. Then sleeping downstairs in their basement, he had pornography. Because he wanted to watch, I was shocked. And then I said, no, your family is from Africa. How come you have pornography inside your parents’ home?

Tanya: This is not supposed to happen. I was so shocked that he had something like that inside his parents’ home. But I guess he was hiding, and he’s like, let’s watch. I said, no, I cannot watch it. Because I’m a Christian, so I can’t watch it.

He was very angry again. He said, There are so many women that would like to be with me. because I’m an American football player and I played for NFL. Including this team, also that team. And do you know how many women would like to be in your place right now? You’re telling me no? It’s just sex.

I said, no. For me, it’s not just sex. If we’re married, sex for me in a marriage means something different. No, I cannot do this.

And we broke up. We stopped talking for three or four days. But mind you, I’m already here in the United States. We’re already preparing for this marriage. What will I tell people that I’m breaking up because of pornography? Because I found pornography in his parents basement? I felt like everyone around me was just trying to invalidate me? Because I found this guy that plays NFL, I guess it is a big thing.

And I also noticed that he was able to get me as an African, I guess, humble and naive. That would bend to whatever it is that he wanted to. And the abuse was not just based on just pornography. It escalated to almost everything, not just from him, but also from his family members.

Anne: So his psychological abuse, isn’t just coming from him. But he’s also roping your in-laws into emotionally abusing you and coercing you.

Tanya: Exactly. The emotional abuse from my in-laws was, How can you speak up? Who are you? How dare you go out there and speak up? This is our son. He’s been doing so great. He plays football so well.

He’s successful. You’re supposed to be lucky that you have him in your life. Now you’re coming to us, telling us that he’s abusive, that he calls you names. That he takes stuff away from you. Because he took my green card. He took my Canadian citizenship. He would take bank cards. Throughout our marriage, I did not have access to any finances.

Anne: So you ended up marrying him, then.

Tanya: This time that I left him would be my third time leaving him.

Anne: So talk about the first couple of times you left.

Tanya: The abuse was also from my in-laws. I would call my in-laws, I said next time he asks me to do any kind of sexual behavior that I don’t want to. I’ll call the police. Because how can I have sex with my husband, and he calls me the B word? I’m not going to do that. And when I started speaking up, the family didn’t like it. My in-laws emotionally abused me by blaming me. They would say, “No, it’s you. You have a big mouth. You speak too much.”

I went upstairs and put my son to bed. Then he says, “You have to know that this marriage is between me and you. And if you want me to be closer to you, you have to understand. There are certain things that a wife should do.”

I said, “What?”

He says, “First off, we need to start with sex. If you can give me oral sex, I can go downstairs and speak to my mom to stop.”

Anne: Wow, so sexual coercion right there. Yeah, in that moment he’s sexually coercing you.

Tanya: And I left him. My son was only three months at that time. He wasn’t calling, he wasn’t contacting, which for me was fine. Because I have already gone through so much with him. And no support around me.

Tanya: His dad calls me. I completely understand what you’re talking about. I want to apologize, but we are Christians, and you have to understand you guys are married. We don’t believe in divorce. And I don’t want you to raise a son without a father.

I promise you that I’ll take him to a counselor. He’ll do therapy, and I’ll be beside you. I just don’t want you to tell anybody. Please come back, I am here and I’ll support you. I said, I don’t want to come back. Because it’s been almost a year, and I haven’t seen any support from any of you. I feel like you guys are blaming me for whatever is going on. And I don’t even understand what was going on. That was the first time, and they begged, and he asked, and I came back.

Tanya: Three months after me being back, he was starting again, verbally abusing me. It was just a cycle, verbally abusing me. No one will believe you. You just came back from Canada. I know it’s something with you. You want to return here to destroy my career. I said, but your dad promised me. So I stayed for another three years.

Anne: Yeah, that’s common. My in-laws emotionally abused me by telling me that I was trying to ruin her son’s life. And I was like, what are you talking about? I’m trying to save our marriage. But the in-laws accusation, You’re trying to harm our son.” Is what a lot of in-laws say.

Tanya: My in-laws said, I was trying to destroy his career. I was trying to destroy his family. But it was because he was having an affair with a woman from his gym. And not just one. There was multiple.

Anne: And your in-laws knew about the abuse and they still blamed you?

Tanya: My in-laws knew about the abuse. His mom blames me. He would watch pornography in front of me. He would sleep outside the home.

Tanya: He completely isolated me from everyone at this time. Now, I wasn’t even able to contact my family members. Because I started to feel so ashamed.

So my family practically, they wash their hands. My in-laws enable him to continue to abuse. I was home with my son, worried about COVID. He had this cough that we’re afraid of. It was so congested. And he wouldn’t give me the car keys or money to take my son to the hospital. That day, he came home at one o’clock in the morning. Me and my son were sleeping, and he comes upstairs. He didn’t take a shower, and he wants to jump in bed.

And I told him, no, you can’t. My son also looks at him and says, “No, you can’t”. And he says, This is my home, this is my bed, I’ll sleep here. I said, No, you can’t. And I stood up off the bed, and as I was walking, he came behind me. He starts doing like sexual movement. And I push him.

And he calls me B word the S word. Nobody wants me. Nobody likes me, I am nothing. Look at me znd look at him as a football player. Everybody wants to be with him.

I said, go, I don’t care what women would like to be with you. But I will not stand you talking to me like that anymore. Never again, not in front of my son. And he says, listen, tonight we’ll see who’s going to live. My son started crying, and I grabbed my son. I went to another room and closed the door. I run outside and he comes behind me.

Tanya: He grabs my night down and pushes the night ground, and I grab a picture frame and throw the picture frame in his head. He calls the police. The police came in and they said, what happened? I start to explain, and he says, even my son saw her throwing the picture frame on me.

Anne: So you are arrested for domestic violence after being abused consistently for years. What happens next?

Tanya: In jail, I felt this peace coming over me. I know God took me out, of the situation. Because all these years, I was not ever, ever able to explain to anyone what was going on. When I went to church, I told them, “Listen. This is what he does sexually.

This is what he says. Yes, I am his wife. But how can a wife have sex with her husband that does those things? That calls her names. How can I do that?”

Everyone that I went to, they were like, “You have to try. You have to save your marriage.” The more I tried, the more he was abusing me. In fact the more I cleaned the home, became more submissive, and dressed up, he was more abusive. I didn’t speak to my family. The more I didn’t go to his place of work, the more I stayed home. Anything I tried, it was abuse.

To the point where I was starting to develop hives all over my body. I was starting to develop anxiety. Anyone who would come to my home and knock on the door would have these panic attacks. When I went to jail, everything stopped. I stayed in jail for three days. I didn’t have any panic attacks.

Tanya: When I came out of jail, I didn’t have a place to go. Because again, he isolated me from anything that I know, everybody that I know. I couldn’t go home.

One of the moms called, and she told me, I want to invite you to bring your son. Let’s play soccer, go to the beach. Let’s do something. I said, please help me. Also, I just came out of jail and she says, where are you? I told her where I was. Right away, she came to pick me up. And took me to her home. I stayed there for almost a month.

After a month, I had to find a place to go. Shelters helped me with food and lawyers. Also people that I can talk to to help me with my case. I’m here, I haven’t gone home yet, and our case is still going on. He was fighting to take custody of my son for almost a month. I wasn’t allowed to see my son. My lawyer actually helped me recover the custody. So now we have 50/50.

Anne: Okay.

Anne: You’re staying in an apartment with the help of the domestic violence shelter now.

Tanya: Yes, and since I have been here in this apartment, he’s been trying to contact me. He’s telling me he doesn’t want to get a divorce, and that he’s sorry. He’s telling me that he doesn’t know why he has been behaving the way he does. But I still have this confusion in my head. Outside, everyone sees him as this wonderful man.

He’s a coach. He’s a leader in our community. He volunteers at my son’s school. He helps his clients develop this positive attitude about themselves. About their bodies, minds, and soul. But at home, he was so disrespectful to me. That I lost myself.

Tanya: After me going to jail, for me to be where I am, for him to say he wants to go back with me. That he doesn’t want to get a divorce, I am still confused. I am still lost.

Anne: Well, he does not want to lose control. When he says those things, that’s grooming. He’s trying to groom you back to be with him. Because he does not want to lose control over you.

Tanya: Yes, I’m not important to him, because he has never done anything to make me feel important. He thinks that I am only worthwhile to take care of our son. Also have sex with him, clean the home, cook, and do whatever he needed to do with me.

Anne: So in this confusion, are people helping you see through that? Because it is a really hard time to think, maybe he does care or maybe he will change or something like that, and that’s a dangerous time because he’s never shown any evidence of doing that. Is it easy for you to see it as grooming, or is it still so traumatizing and confusing?

Tanya: I’m speaking to a counselor, and she’s helping me. She’s saying, listen, you can’t speak to him. You can’t return to his home or gym. You cannot speak to your in-laws. He has a restraining order on me.

Anne: Despite that, he’s contacting you to try and get you to talk to him?

Tanya: He’s the one who’s contacting me. He’s the one who calls me. He invited me to a staycation and wants to buy me stuff. He keeps asking me if I need anything. I blocked him from my phone, but he’s still wanting that communication. And another part of the confusion just comes, maybe this fact of me going to jail. Maybe something clicked in his mind, and me filing for divorce, I keep going back and forth.

Anne: These similar thoughts go through every woman’s head who is faced with this. Do I just put up with the abuse? What alternative do I have? Am I going to be homeless? Am I going to have my son? However, you are not crazy. The only thing that these types of thoughts prove is that you are a victim of abuse. This is how victims of abuse think.

Tanya: Yeah, I have a seven year old and I have nobody, and I just filed for divorce. I have no finances and depended on him. I wasn’t allowed to take any courses, any going to school, any training, nothing.

For almost everything and anything. So I am very sure. Because I know my lawyer told me that he denied my request for child support and alimony. So I’m sitting down here and still waiting. Until when will I continue to live in a shelter? Now, my question is, do I return to Canada? And even if I return to Canada, am I going to take my son with me?

I cannot continue to be in a shelter having 50/50 percent of custody. I don’t have financial means to take care of my son. And you have to remember I don’t have my green card in order to get a good job.

Anne: What does your lawyer say about the circumstances right now?

Tanya: She’s helping, trying to regain all my documentation that he has taken away from me. He actually insists I should go and take a psychological evaluation. When he asked for my son’s custody. He wanted me to do that. My lawyer said no.

Just the simple fact that she doesn’t have her documentation. And all this year, she hasn’t been able to go see her family. There are proofs. So no, we’re going to continue to support you. We’ll continue to listen to you. And we’re going to get something for you to survive, for you to help your son.

And I think this is where he knows. That I am that vulnerable that I’m going to want to get help from him. So that my head would go back. And say, oh, listen, I don’t have anyone here and life is really hard out there.

Anne: Yeah, you’re in an extremely vulnerable situation, but you can get out of it.

Anne: It’s going to take time and effort, and it’s so hard. And probably seems impossible. But I just want all our listeners who are listening to pray for Tanya? She needs us. She has nothing and needs our help. They do have family, they still feel that sense of like nobody believes me. I can’t figure out how to fix this. And they feel stuck. So that feeling of being stuck is something that’s familiar to all of our listeners. We can empathize with you.

Tanya: But I think the impossible part is that I feel like nobody’s listening. No one is listening. No one cares that no one wants to believe me. I also feel like, should I even pray? Because the times I went to church and spoke to them, and having counseling in the church. They kept pushing me back to that place of abuse. I keep having that picture of him masturbating in front of me, of him completely disregarding me in that way.

Anne: That’s extreme sexual coercion, psychological and emotional abuse that you’re experiencing. It is mind boggling to me that people think that pornography is not an abuse issue. Or that their husband’s pornography use does not affect women. Or that somehow their infidelity is like just something that men do. Also, that it’s not an absolutely debilitating abuse to their spouse is crazy to me.

Anne: It’s interesting to me that in telling your story, you’ve been verbally abused. You’ve been psychologically abused, you’ve mentioned that several times. So one of the most traumatic things for you was the pornography. And people might be like, well, that wasn’t a big deal. He punched you. And you’re like, the thing most traumatizing was the sexual abuse.

Tanya: It’s because I feel that if it wasn’t the sexual behavior. Meaning the infidelity, watching porno, just having a woman at his disposal. It was the main aspect of the abuse. Because if I have access to these porno women, if they’re looking in front of me. Then when I come home, what do I need you for, but to be angry with you?

Not to respect you, to call you the names that I can call you. I really do believe the sexual for me was a very, very big thing. Very big part of my abuse in my marriage. I really do believe that.

I came across your podcast listening to all the stories and they resonate with me so much. That my in-laws enabled the abuse.

I feel very sad and lost. But, I believe I will come out of this strong.

Anne: There are thousands of listeners to this podcast. And so just little old you, little Tanya, who thinks no one is listening. And that nobody cares, you’ve now just told your story to thousands of women.

You’ve listened to us on the podcast. We’ve been this, hopefully, light in the darkness, but in this moment, right now, we’re all here with you. I hope you can feel our love and support. Across the world, we are here with you in sisterhood and we will hope that God provides a miracle for you.

Because not knowing where your next meal is going to come from. Not having any control over where you’re living, no money and no support system. Is a completely overwhelming situation. But I do know that God sees you. He’s listening now. He loves you and we love you. You have to fight.

Tanya: Yes, yes, it is. It is crazy and it’s scary and it’s lonely. But I do have my son and I do have this podcast that I have been listening to and it just made me feel. I am not alone.

Anne: You are incredible and brave and strong. You are amazing and I’m proud of you for coming on this podcast and sharing your story. When you don’t have a happy ending, yet.

Tanya: To anyone that is listening. I don’t want to go back to that man. I would like to have my son with me. To everyone, send me that energy. That strength and courage to please make me be strong. Not to go back in the hands of that man. Because I never knew rest until I went inside of that jail. I’m asking to please pray for me.

Anne: We are with you. We will pray for you, Tanya. Thank you for being so brave and sharing your story.

I want to thank everyone for listening. My heart is really tender right now. Not just Tanya’s story, but the mini stories that I’ve heard. And if you’d like to spend time with women who get it. With women who can sit with you in pain and totally understand. Because they’ve been in a similar situation.

Please attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group session. You can attend one today. We built our BTR group sessions for this situation. So no woman out there. It feels like she’s alone. It’s the least expensive, appropriate option out there. And it’s unlimited live support multiple sessions a day. In every single time zone. We’d love to see you in a session today.

If you’re experiencing narcissistic abuse, know that you’re not alone. Here are 5 ways to spot narcissistic abuse – Rachel shares her story.

If you relate and need support, attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session today.

Anne: I have Rachel and Megan Wilford on today’s episode. They are cousins, and they also recently started podcasting and their podcast is called the Traumedy Show. Which is of course, a mix of trauma and comedy. Welcome Rachel and Megan.

Rachel: Thank you so much for having us. We’re so excited to be here with you.

Megan: Thank you.

Anne: When I first found out that my husband was using pornography, and that he had this secret life that I didn’t know about, we just had a baby. I think if I not had children, then my life would have taken kind of a different turn at that point.

But because I had a child. Also because he was saying, I’m going to go to a pornography addiction recovery. I thought okay, I’ll try and work this out because we’ve got a kid.

Anne: Anyway, instead of, starting podcasting about that at that time, I actually started a comedy blog called Coming To Grips.

I got a lot of followers, which was fun, but I never wrote about what was actually happening. So I was processing my pain through the lens of comedy. I think a lot of comedians do that. I’ve since pulled it from the internet. When my book comes out, I will be simultaneously publishing my comedy blog. So people can kind read them side by side, to be like, okay, this is what was really happening. And then this is how she was kind of . . .

Megan: Processing it.

Anne: This is the public face that I was showing online. I was telling people in person, but I wasn’t really publishing online about it.

Rachel: I love what you just shared about using comedy to process what you were going through. Because that’s what we do too. I think we would say that we come from a family of traumedians. We have a big family and we all lean into dark humor and laugh a lot. We’re a bunch of jokesters.

When my life started blowing up, I definitely was leaning into comedy about it pretty quickly. The day that I left my ex-fiance, I started dreaming about what I could do with my whole story. Coming up with one liners about it. I was thinking about like a standup comedy set, just dreaming big.

Then I ended up getting into another relationship in the winter. About six months after, that also imploded in a similar way. And for about a week after that relationship ended, I was in this really crazy creative processing mode. Where I was writing all the time and I was so mad and all these words were coming to me.

Then all of a sudden I lost it. Like it was like a cord was cut and I started asking God, okay, where can I channel this now? So I started creating our podcast all day long, came up with the artwork, came up with the name.

I invited Megan over and sat her down and pitched it to her and she was down for it. That’s how the podcast came to be.

Anne: Let’s start with that.

Anne: This episode is called Five Ways to Spot Narcissistic Abuse. So as Rachel tells her story, I’m going to flag the things that indicated, hey, this is a situation that is emotionally dangerous, that is psychologically dangerous. So I’ll be pointing those out as she shares her story.

Can you start at the beginning? How did your relationship start? Did you recognize any red flags at first?

Rachel: I would say that there were red flags from the beginning, but I started dating him really young. I was 17 and he was 20 and he was from my same hometown. We had never met before, but he friended me on Facebook. It was back in the day when everybody was just kind of friending everybody on Facebook.

But we quickly started talking and quickly started dating. I’m 29 now. I was with him for about 10 and a half years. Just as a spoiler alert, there’s two engagements in this story too, with him. Yeah, wait.

Anne: Can’t wait.

Rachel: Good. So, I would say pretty early on I started spotting lying and hiding things.

Rachel: He pretty quickly he put me and his ex in a group chat accidentally a couple of months into our relationship.

Anne: “Accidentally?” Do you think it was on purpose now?

Rachel: No. He had a lot of technological blunders over the course of our relationship. That kind of led to me finding things out and the demise of the whole thing.

Anne: Maybe that’s going to be number one red flag. I’m going to say here that they do things on purpose sometimes. And they make you think it’s an accident. That’s Not your case, Rachel. Sorry, I’m not trying to be like, no, you don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s not what I’m trying to say. In your specific case it was an accident .

Anne: But in general, they’re strangely the stupidest smart people or like the smart stupid people. Victims have a really hard time because they’re like, for how smart he is, why is he doing this? I want to just maybe throw out the idea that one of the things you can look for is that dissonance.

When you’re like, wait, if they’re so smart, why are they doing this thing? In so many cases, it’s actually on purpose to throw people off, to get people confused.

Rachel: This girl on our podcast, I call her Natasha and there’s more to the story with her. But since our podcast came out, she actually came on and I interviewed her. She reached out to me and she and I are now friends 11 years later. It’s pretty awesome. There’s a lot of teaming up with the other woman that happened since our podcast.

Yeah. So he puts Natasha and I in a group chat and so she and I have each other’s numbers. He sends a picture of him snowboarding and then a couple of months later, both to me and her.

Anne: So is he intending to send it to both of you? Who is the intended

Rachel: He was intending to send it to both of us, he didn’t have an iPhone. He had like a Windows phone. He didn’t realize that if you sent it in the same thread, it would go in a group chat at the time. A couple months later, it’s my 18th birthday and he cheats on me with her.

He drives down to San Diego to pick her up from the airport. The next day on my 18th birthday, I get a text from her. Since she now has my number that he came down, picked her up and made a move on her. And they kissed, all this stuff.

Rachel: I end up breaking up with him at that time. Then I ended up getting back together with him a week later. I wish that I never had. Staying broken up when you are a victim of narcissistic abuse would have been better.

Anne: This is a crossroads for you. What did he say to groom you to get back together with him?

Rachel: Good question.

Anne: Maybe this is another red flag. So number one, they do things on purpose when you think they do them accidentally. Number two, There’s a point at which you notice, hey, something really bad happened. But also I’m going to give him a second chance.

So many women have this story where they found out he was having an affair. Or they found out he was stealing money from them. Or they found out he’d hidden a camera in their bedroom or something like that.

Rachel: Yeah, he definitely was kind of promising me that it was nothing. She just was somebody that needed help. It was nothing. They hadn’t been talking, but she had said that he’d been sending her pictures and stuff this whole time. Texting her and communicating. In that conversation, he did threaten suicide when he drove away.

So I would say that you could think that maybe that’s a red flag too.

Rachel: So over the course of a week, I took some time apart and then I decided to give him another chance. You know, and this was 11 years ago now. I went off to college, the next year is my freshman year of college.

So we were long distance and then something happened to me while I was there. That I, you know, haven’t shared publicly, but it bonded him and I. It made it hard for me to leave for a long time. I ended up coming home from college and went to community college and he ended up coming home too.

We were both in our hometown again. I was working a job at Starbucks, going to school. I had an internship, and was very busy. Then I found out about a virtual affair he was having with an old friend of mine. I started noticing some suspicious behavior online.

Anne: An old friend of yours.

Rachel: Yes.

Anne: But not an old friend of his?

Rachel: No. An old friend of mine. Yep.

Anne: And I’m guessing he met her the same way he met you through social media.

Rachel: Yes, he told me that he met her because she worked at a restaurant in town. He went to pick up food and that was the first time that he met her. But he friended her on Facebook and Instagram and I started fishing around for information. Because I ran into her on campus one time, because she went to the same community college at the time and her behavior was super weird.

I was noticing weird online behavior and so I went searching and found messages between the two of them. And that was devastating and embarrassing and a lot of shame for me. Especially because it was somebody from my life that I had known and we knew a lot of mutual people. I felt a lot of shame about that, but I felt really stuck and like I couldn’t leave. This is a sign of narcissistic abuse.

Anne: Were you living together?

Rachel: We were not living together now.

Anne: It’s his fault that you felt stuck. We’re putting 100 percent of the fault on him. So this is not like a victim blaming question, but can you kind of explain that feeling of being stuck?

The majority of our listeners share children with their abuser. And so in that way, it’s very difficult to extricate yourself. So those of us with kids, when we hear people who don’t have kids saying they feel stuck. We’re like thinking oh, what was it? But then I want all the listeners to think about when you stayed with him, when you didn’t have kids. Like when you got married, we also were stuck at some point.

So to have empathy for that all around.

Rachel: Yeah, and I totally empathize with people that have kids. With their abuser, it’s really hard to break away. I’m fortunate that that wasn’t the case for me. There were a few reasons that I felt stuck. I think this event that bonded us really tied me to him. He was a big support system for me. I considered him my best friend.

I think I really isolated myself during this time of my life and kind of removed myself from friendships. Because of this narcissistic abuse cycle that was going on with him. Because of this shame spiral that I was in from his infidelities. He was kind of my person at this time. Um, and also there was this sense of I just moved home with this person. We were kind of like starting this new chapter and journey together back home.

I don’t want it to all be for nothing. That I just left school and changed paths. I put a lot of the blame on myself because I had been depressed. Because of what had happened my freshman year of college.

He put some blame on me too. At the time of what you weren’t giving me enough attention and whatever. This happens with narcissistic abuse. So this becomes a pattern for the next eight years of our relationship. This becomes a pattern of, I need to work on myself so that I can be better and he won’t do these things.

This kind of is when I think this starts.

Anne: It’s my fault, and if I were acting differently, he would not be acting like this way.

Rachel: Yeah, so a couple years goes by. And we get engaged the first time on a family trip to Machu Picchu. Actually of all places, he comes and he proposes to me on New Year’s Day. At this point I am 22 and I’m a senior in college. I’d been living down in San Diego, going to San Diego State for the past couple of years. I was about to graduate.

We were looking at apartments. We were planning our wedding and getting ready to start life. At this point there hadn’t been any signs of infidelity in a couple of years.

Anne: Is this with your family, like your parents and your brothers and sisters? Okay, how do they feel about him at this time?

Rachel: My dad had actually had a chat with me, a couple of years prior, that he was worried. And didn’t think that this person was right for me. He saw some signs that definitely gave him pause. And I think my family accepted him, but they didn’t love him for me. For sure.

Anne: What’s your feeling about your family feeling this way. Did it kind of accidentally bond you closer to him? Which it does with so many abusers. Because then it’s like well, it’s just you and me against the world sort of a feeling.

Rachel: Absolutely. That’s a really good way to describe it. It made me protective. I would say of him too. And yeah, accidentally bonding me closer to him. This kind of like fierceness of like, we’ll prove them wrong kind of a thing.

Anne: Yeah. So we’re going to call that number three. When something happens where you start to pull away from healthy people that care about you. Because this is narcissistic abuse. The isolation kind of starts.

Rachel: Oh yeah, I was definitely isolated. So we are planning this wedding. I’m about to graduate college and I graduate. And then all of a sudden his behavior starts getting really fishy and weird. He’s kind of just MIA all of a sudden. And one day I’m at his parents house with him. He goes to the bathroom.

I look on his phone and there are texts with him and a coworker.

He had at this point started an emotional affair, we call this person Grace. I’m distraught. We are at this point, like four months away from our wedding. We start going to couples counseling and all sorts of things.

I’m trying to make it work. I’m trying to hold together this image for my family and friends that nothing’s wrong. Ultimately it blows up and we call off our wedding, but I tell no one the real reason why.

Anne: When you started going to couple therapy with an abuser. Which we never recommend. But because you don’t know it’s narcissistic abuse, did the therapist help you realize this is narcissistic abuse?

Rachel: No, it made it much worse. I think we only went to a few sessions before we really kind of broke away from each other for a bit. She was treating it like premarital counseling. An issue would come up in this session and we would kind of blow up about it. Then we would leave because the time was up. Then we would try to kind of resolve it ourselves afterwards.

It would just make it so much worse. It just was this big snowball effect of things getting worse. Definitely the couple’s therapy exacerbated it for sure.

Anne: It always does with narcissistic abuse. So it’s never, ever, ever recommended. But most couple therapists don’t know about it. If someone’s not coming in saying I’m being abused, then the couple therapist doesn’t hear that. They don’t help the victim identify it. And if they did, they would have to stop being their therapist.

They have an invested interest in not identifying the narcissistic abuse for monetary interest. I’m like, don’t ever go to couple therapy. If your relationship is so bad that you need couple therapy. I’m like, 99 percent of the time there’s a narcissistic abuse issue. And you shouldn’t be going to couple therapy.

Rachel: There’s twice that we go to the couple’s therapy and it ends up helping our relationship blow up. Which is what needed to happen for me personally. So we break up.

Rachel: I tell no one the real reason why. I take all the blame because he was telling me at this time that I was selfish and I wasn’t giving him what he needed. He was questioning if we should get married.

I took the fall and told literally not a single person about his emotional affair with Grace at this time. I got away from him for about a month. Then one day he comes knocking back on my door and it started the whole process over again. I’m a writer, I’m a journal a lot.

At the time I was writing a lot and this was summer of 2018. There’s a handful of pages from right when I break up with him. My mind is clear and I know I don’t deserve this. I’m pointing out so many issues with him. Then he comes knocking back on the door. The rest of the pages of that journal are just anxiety, so much anxiety.

Rachel: For the next year, I moved down into an apartment with a friend and kind of just start over. I was having anxiety and panic attacks all the time because he and I were still seeing each other. But there was no label. He was very secretive, very emotionally shut down.

It was this battle of me kind of trying to get him to open back up. After a year of that, I end up starting to see someone else. At this time he and I weren’t seeing anybody else. Or so he told me, that he was just taking a break. He was taking time for himself. He needed to think about what was going on and just heal.

I was doing the same thing, but then I met somebody. And so I asked for permission and I kind of start seeing this other person.

Anne: You asked him for permission?

Rachel: I did. I ask him if it’s okay if I pursue something with this other man.

Anne: And he’s like, it’s fine. Even though you had no defined relationship, really. Are you kind of just friends at the time? Are you kissing him?

Rachel: We were still like being physical. We were still going to dinner. It was acting like we were in a relationship, but a lot of the kind of emotional connection was removed on his part at that time. I couldn’t really figure out why.

Anne: How often were you seeing him?

Rachel: At least once a week.

Anne: Once a week, but you’re not really serious.

Rachel: So it was a lot of anxiety for me.

Anne: Do you want it to be more?

Rachel: Yes, yes, yes, I do. I want to figure it out. I’m dealing with the shame of my failed engagement and calling off the wedding. I had this whole picture for my life and I felt like this was my person. We just needed to figure this out and work through it.

Anne: So what are your motivations for dating the other guy? While you’re still being physical with the wolf and seeing him once a week ?

Rachel: Yeah, the other guy we call Jack and I think I saw him as maybe an out. He lives a handful of hours away. So he wasn’t close necessarily. We weren’t seeing each other all the time, but I kind of saw him as this like escape. And maybe the answer to getting out of what I was in. I felt super stuck and super confused.

Rachel: I just kind of wanted to explore, like, what else was out there? And see if maybe this could be the answer or a different path or something, Or maybe in a way to, I was hoping that it would make the wolf think he wanted to be with me for sure. And get more serious and be a little bit upset that I was with this other person, even.

Anne: The motivation is like twofold. It’s maybe an escape. But maybe this will like be the light bulb that he needs to realize how amazing that I am. Many women start to realize they may need a strategy for dealing with these types of men. To learn more about strategy, enroll in The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop.

Anne: So many women don’t realize that there’s this awesome option and it’s because we haven’t been taught that especially women of faith who’ve grown up, when are you going to get married? Asking you about who you’re dating, that there’s this other awesome option, which is not dating anyone.

You really don’t need someone else as an escape plan or something, But we don’t think of that in the moment. We can just be alone and it’s fine. Since my divorce, I’ve been single for 10 years. And I was single for 10 years until I married my husband.

So I’m almost 47. I got married at 30, so single 10 years till I’m 30. Then he gets arrested when I’m 37.

You guys don’t know my story, but you’ll find out when you interview me for your podcast. So 37 to 47, I’ve also been single. So for that 27 years since I’ve been 20, I’ve only been married for seven of those years. And now I’m proudly, happily single and not dating anyone. And it’s great for me, I love it.

Megan: We need more examples of that.

Megan: We don’t actually need to be in a relationship to be fulfilled.

Anne: Exactly, so that feeling of like, maybe this is my out. I think is how so many victims feel, but it’s also really dangerous because it often sets you up. Which I’m guessing we’re going to hear in a little bit for another abusive relationship. Sometimes, when we think we need a man for anything. Really it’s a little dangerous.

Rachel: I was 24 and I think what you said about growing up as a woman of faith. Yeah, you are taught that finding a husband is the end all be all. You’re in your early 20s and that’s the time to do it. So I thought I need to just grab all these pieces and make them fit. Like I don’t want to start over.

This is how it’s supposed to be. This is the person I am supposed to marry. We’re just hitting a bump in the road or whatever. I started dating this other person a little bit and see him. After a few months, he was dating around, but he starts having a serious girlfriend where he lives. So that was kind of over.

And the wolf at that point jumps in and is like, okay let’s be, you know, a little more serious here.

Rachel: This is around COVID. So early COVID time, we start getting more serious. We start integrating back into each other’s families and friends, and that was a big deal.

For the next couple of years, I really thought that he and I had worked through our things. We had come back together in a way that I thought was healthy. Fast forward a little bit, we get engaged again in November, 2022. And this is definitely where things are getting very dicey. Because I didn’t realize that he had been living a double life for about four years. At this point I am 27 and he is 30 and we pretty quickly start planning our second wedding.

We buy a house in February 2023 in which I pay for 80 percent of it and he pays for 20 percent of it. Because I have more of the stable and successful career than he does.

This was a big point of contention, our whole relationship too. I really wanted him to pick up another thing because we live in Southern California. It’s expensive to live here. He kind of tried some things, but at the end of the day, was kind of a quitter. He lived at his parents house for this whole time.

It kind of allowed him to not be super ambitious in this way. I was always kind of trying to push him and motivate him because I am a self starter.

Anne: Was he future faking you? Like, Oh, I’ve got this thing going on and I’m going to be doing this. This happens a lot in narcissistic abuse.

Rachel: Yeah, I think he would definitely do that sometimes. Or like, oh I can’t say what he does for work. But he would be like, come fall I’m going to be doing something different. I’m not going to be doing this anymore. Like he would kind of come up with these promises and these plans and they would, yeah, never come to fruition.

Anne: Okay. That’s number four, future faking. Hey, we’re going to do this thing. We’re going to go on this trip. And then to actually get that thing done, either they never do it. Or you have to be part of that. You have to be the one that’s like, okay, you know, that cruise that you promised me six years ago? I’m going to be the one that plans it.

Then if you end up going, he’s like, see, I did this for you. And you’re like, no, no, no, no. Lots of victims have applied to college for them or applied to jobs for them, or . . .

Rachel: Yes, and I was doing this stuff. Yes.

Anne: That’s part of that future faking, right?

Megan: Me too.

Anne: They’re like, I’m going to do this. You’re waiting for them to do it. Then you end up doing it for them. Then it doesn’t go very well because they never wanted to do it in the first place. They were just lying to you.

Rachel: Yeah. That was a big pattern for us. And I would say too that he was doing that for the second proposal too. He’d be like, this is coming. Let’s go look at rings. And then it would be like months would go by and he would waffle. He was promising me the world.

It was getting frustrating waiting for it. So I started getting pushy, and then his proposal was blasé, and Megan has more context on that, because she was kind of involved in it.

Megan: Very haphazard, last minute put together, because he had another girlfriend at the same time.

Rachel: Yep, so we move into our house March 1st, 2023. He finally starts a new job. Because now we’re paying a mortgage and he started seeing the dollar signs and got a reality check. He starts this new job and in mid-March, we’d only been living together a couple of weeks.

Rachel: And one day he has his phone plugged into the kitchen. And a text pops up from a girl and I asked to see it and he opens it. It’s this very suspicious message about what are you doing tonight? And it’s a coworker from this new job. I say to him, what, what is happening here? And he’s like, well, she’s the one that plans the group get togethers for all the coworkers.

So I just was trying to see if they were going to play volleyball tonight. And I say, that’s not what you asked. You asked, what are you doing tonight? I said, do you understand how triggering this is for me? Last time we were engaged, you were having this emotional affair. I found texts on your phone.

Rachel: At that point, I decide to go snooping. I open his laptop and the last place that I look is his trash and there’s a document in there detailing in bullet point format. It’s like a diary detailing his whole sexual history with Grace for the last four years.

The woman that he had an emotional affair with when we were engaged.

Anne: What? Do you know why?

Rachel: I think there were a couple of reasons why. I think it was like a fetishized thing for him. Um, he would go and like, look back on. Even think . . .

Anne: Like his own erotic novel that he wrote himself?

Rachel: I think so, but he was trying to convince me that none of it was true. But there are weird details in there that we’re confirming that it was. So I find this document.

Rachel: I call him. He’s gone to his next job and he comes home and we sit down on the bed and he has a panic attack. And he is trying to convince me that none of what he wrote is true. He made it all up as a fantasy to help him cope with me dating Jack years ago. He made it all up.

Anne: Was this a fake panic attack?

Rachel: Uh, yes, I definitely believe so. Looking back.

Anne: At the time it feels like it’s an “accident,” but they’re doing it on purpose. Which was our number one thing. He’s acting like he’s having a panic attack. My ex would say like, I’m feeling so much shame. At first I was like, Oh, I feel bad for you. And later I was like, so what?

Rachel: Exactly. So he has this panic attack. He’s trying to convince me none of these things that he wrote are true. Then he says these words to me, it’s a direct quote, which comes back into play later. This is mid-April. And so he says to me, “I would never touch another woman with my dick.” That is what he says to me.

So for a week, I am trying to believe these words that he’s telling me. He’s telling me every single day. None of that’s true. The next day he goes to work after this event happened. I’m at home having panic attacks. I work from home and he is texting me that I’m safe, that I can trust him, that he would never hurt me. Anytime that he hurts me, it hurts him, and all these things.

Rachel: And so, for a week I’m trying to believe him and my body is physically rejecting his lies. I physically cannot do it. On the seventh day, after I have the gnarliest panic attack I’ve ever had. I say to him, I’m going to be contacting her. She had also blocked me on social media too. And that didn’t make sense to me either.

If nothing had happened between them, why would she go through the trouble of blocking me? And so I told him. I’m going to be contacting her because I cannot believe what you’re saying. I physically cannot believe you. And so at this point he tells me, okay, I’m going to come clean.

We did have a relationship for a couple years and it ended during COVID and when you and I started dating again. And he tells me this made up timeline. I am devastated because obviously that’s still been a lie the whole time we were still seeing each other. And he was seeing her at the same time and lying about it. And so I am devastated. I’m not eating. I’m not sleeping. I still say to him, that’s still cheating.

The timeline that he made up, he thought it was safe, but it wasn’t. It was overlapping. And I say, okay, you know what? It was years ago. I’m going to choose to forgive you and move past this.

Rachel: And then we go on my bachelorette trip in Mexico. And on the last day there, we’re all sitting around the table having a great time playing games. One of my best friends, she gets messaged screenshots from one of her friends from high school. And he had been sending messages to a girl while I was gone. This girl was a sister of my friend Sabrina’s friend. So these messages get back to Sabrina, and he had been asking to hang out with this girl while I was gone.

I see these screenshots on her phone the next day in the van on the way to the airport. I asked her, what the heck are those? And she tells me she was trying to wait until we got home. I confront him about it. I’m devastated. I’m having a panic attack in the Cancun airport. My best friends and my sister are on this trip for my bachelorette party celebrating this wedding that we’re supposed to have in a couple months.

And it’s all blowing up again in my face. Now everybody that I love essentially is involved and knows. And so I’m deep, deep, deep in shame here. He’s telling me he just wanted to hang out with her as a friend. She’s a friend from high school and all his friends were busy.

Rachel: And I get home and what starts happening is I start figuring out how to out manipulate him. And how to essentially coerce him into giving me more information. So I learned, with me saying, I’m going to contact her. That got him to confess things. So I kind of do the same thing. And I get him to confess when I get home from Mexico, a bunch of virtual affairs that he’d been having for years. He confesses all the ones that he can remember.

Anne: Is hat what he said?

Rachel: That’s what he said.

Anne: He said all the ones I can remember. I want to say number five is when they tell you a story, like, I never touched another woman with my penis, for example. Then they for sure did.

Rachel: Yeah.

Anne: For sure did that thing. So if they give you a strange detail that is a sign that they’re lying.

Anne: Because, for some reason they think if I lie specifically about the specific thing. That’s going to cover it up rather than realizing it’s like a dead giveaway. So I 100 percent did not hang out with her at that restaurant on Wednesday. If they’re giving you specific details. Then you can be like, okay, well now I totally know. That he for sure hung out with her at that restaurant on Wednesday.

Like you wouldn’t even think to lie about something like that unless it had happened. That’s what I’m trying to say. Like the details are not things that you think of lying about if they didn’t happen. Does that make sense?

Rachel: Yeah. No, that does make sense.

Anne: So I think that’s where you’re going with this, is that he’s telling you specific things.

Like I didn’t touch another woman with my penis. And you’re just finding out every detail that he told you, that he didn’t do, is the thing that he did.

Rachel: Yes. Oh, yes. He confesses. Okay. The relationship with Grace went on longer than I said, and it essentially went on up until he proposed to me a second time.

Megan: And he was trying to decide between you and her.

Rachel: Yeah,

Anne: Did Grace know about you?

Rachel: Grace knew that I existed and I still haven’t talked to her yet. I would love to, but she was blindsided too. She didn’t know that he and I were back together. So he was puppet mastering us both. At this point I am a shell of myself, my friends are distraught.

My sister is a mess and I’ve asked her not to say anything to my parents. I am in this deep trying to keep everything together all over again mode. Almost exactly five years later to the day.

Anne: in this mode are you still really wanting to get married? You’re still trying to hold it together because you’re still like, this wedding is happening?

Rachel: Yes, mm hmm. And he was definitely very much brainwashing me. There was a lot of like spiritual manipulation going on at this point, too. This also is part of the narcissistic abuse cycle. That we were going to church and God was giving him these messages and dreams. And he’s learned so much . Now we’re in mid-June. And I’m basically just like not functioning.

One night in June, his phone has plugged in to the charger upstairs and he’s downstairs. I have already scoured his phone, but I get this weird feeling that I need to go and check his voicemails. I scroll down all the way to this little section at the bottom that has blocked messages and deleted messages.

There are two messages in his blocked messages little tab from very recently, like just a couple of weeks prior. It’s a woman and it’s this sultry voice saying how she misses him and hasn’t heard from him in a while. And he initially was telling me they just are sending inappropriate messages to each other.

It’s a coworker from his new job. Over the course of eight hours, I out manipulate him at five in the morning into telling me that he had slept with her twice in April. He tells me that he told me a lie, that he texted me that he was going to be late coming home from work. And I go back in my texts and I figure out when this was.

The first time that he slept with her was the day before I found the document on his computer about Grace. And then the second time was the day after I found the document about Grace on his computer when he’s texting me that I’m safe. You know, that he would never hurt me and all these things. I’m experiencing full on narcissistic abuse.

I’m finding out about this other four year relationship at the same time that he’s having an affair with his coworker, a completely different woman. It was a Sunday, went to church and I screamed in church during worship, get me out of this hell. I was so manic at this point. I felt like I was losing my mind.

Rachel: My family at this time was noticing that something was going on. They could tell my sister was like hiding secrets and like something was not right. They end up getting some information out of me. Over the course of a few days they invite me over for a series of interventions. And the last day my parents tell me you can’t marry this person.

We don’t support it. We’re not gonna pay for it This needs to not be happening. I tell him this and he essentially shuts down. Then kind of tries to manipulate me in these other ways. He starts mocking me like a child and kind of throwing a lot of tantrums and crying. He says that I’m abandoning him if I’m gonna go over and spend time with my family. All these things that are common in narcissistic abuse. and the next day he leaves for work. I take my dog on a walk and I asked God, What am I supposed to do now?

It’s June 29th and I hear God go, open up your journal from five years ago, and I open up my journal. And to the day, I had written five years prior, that there’s a darkness in him. That he has sexual addiction and I need to get away from him, all these things. It was like I was writing it right then.

It snapped me out of whatever brainwash that I was in. And I came back to myself and I just started screaming in my house. No more, I’m not doing this anymore. I’m not giving him another five years. Like this is it, My parents called me in that moment, which was so strange because they had only been texting me that week.

Rachel: And in the middle of this panic, I had them come over and we came up with a plan and I left him. Over the next few months while we’re selling my house and everything, he does some really crazy things. He tells me he’s going to get a tattoo of me. All sorts of ridiculous stuff common things with narcissistic abuse. At that point, Megan and I went on my honeymoon together.

Anne: Yay!

Megan: After I just left my husband as well, so we were both on her honeymoon, single for the first time in a decade. Being like, Oh, let’s start over our lives.

Anne: That was epic.

Rachel: Yeah. And that was the beginning of the rest of my life, honestly. So that’s my story.

Anne: Thank you so much for sharing your story, Rachel. So many women that listen to this podcast are going through that same thing. Only they are married and they didn’t find any of these things out until after the marriage. Or after they had a kid or multiple children. And so good for you. You always had it in you.

That’s the thing that kills me about narcissistic abuse. Sorry, the one thing, no, there’s so many things. Is that women are trying to get to safety, right? The whole time you’re trying to face it, the whole time you’re trying to figure it out. The whole time you were trying to do the right thing and had you known he is a con man. He is a compulsive liar and a narcissist.

Because you don’t know what you’re looking at. You’re trying to figure it out. Once you figure it out, you’re like, okay, I know what to do now. But they love to keep you in the dark. That’s what is so infuriating, that they are keeping you in the dark on purpose. To exploit you for whatever they’re exploiting you for, your emotions, sex, for some people it’s money.

It can be all sorts of things. Maybe all of those things combined, but they are exploiters. And they want to keep you in the dark. So I’m so, so glad that you were finally able to see the truth.

Rachel: Yeah, me too. I thought that it was a redemption path for us getting this house and getting re-engaged in all these things. I am so grateful that we did buy that house and we did live together for a few months. Because that allowed me to find out what he had been hiding for years. I really do feel so strongly that I was saved at the final hour twice.

I just really try to live now and not take it for granted and just lean super hard into life.

Anne: That’s awesome. If you want to hear more of her story and Megan’s story, their podcast is The Traumedy Show with Rachel and Megan Wilford. Thank you both for being here today.

Rachel & Megan: Thank you so much, Anne.

Voicing the agony of betrayal trauma can come in many different forms. Ralynne Riggs, a professional singer and victim of betrayal and abuse, shares her experience. She created a YouTube cover of the song Anything Worth Holding On To.

Anne: I’ve posted the music video we’re talking about today on our YouTube channel. So after you’ve listened to this episode, find our channel on YouTube. Search Betrayal Trauma Recovery or BTR.ORG. Look for our logo and colors.

This music video really captures the emotions that women go through when they’re experiencing betrayal trauma. So many women feel this way. They’re going to relate when they see it. Once you see it, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s incredible. And I really want to get this video out there.

Anne: So maybe with your help. We can get it to go viral. Anything you can do to help us go viral would be greatly appreciated. So go to YouTube and watch it. Like it, share it, subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Anne: Ralynne Riggs is the woman who created this music video. She was born and raised in Chandler, Arizona. Her passions include singing, dancing, acting, horseback riding, baking and making movies. As you will see when you go to our YouTube channel. As well as being the favorite aunt to her beautiful nieces and nephews.

Since she was young, her greatest passion has been the stage. She received her bachelor’s degree in vocal performance from Brigham Young University and has performed as a leading soprano throughout the U. S., China, and Austria. After graduation, she became a lead singer for Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida and on a Disney cruise line.

Ralynne has learned the importance of hard work, confidence, self worth, and perseverance in bringing one’s dreams to life. Her mantra is you can do anything. If you just do it. Welcome Ralynne.

Ralynne: Thank you so much Anne.

Anne: So I’m hoping by this time people have paused this podcast. They’ve gone to our YouTube channel. They have seen this amazing music video that you made. I hope they shared it and commented. I’m hoping that they’re letting their friends and family know about this incredible video. Also that they’re understanding that this can help their friends and family. And other people understand the pain that victims go through.

So you were prompted to create this video to help educate people about betrayal trauma.

Anne: But before we get to that and what happens with that, let’s start with your own personal story. Did you know about your husband’s pornography addiction before you married?

Ralynne: I did know a little bit about his addiction before we were married. There was one night when after things were more serious in our dating that he approached me. He said there were things in his past that he wanted to make me aware of. So that I truly knew everything about him. He shared with me that he struggled with pornography throughout his teenage years.

But you know, I was kind of naive to the problem, to how serious a pornography addiction could be. What that all entailed. I didn’t know the right questions to ask. I thought, well no one’s perfect, and I asked him if he had struggled with it since. Because he said he had cleaned up and didn’t struggle with it at all.

To me, I thought, well, that was brave of him to bring that up with me and share it with me. And I believed him and I didn’t know what else to ask about it.

Anne: Even if you had, because we know that pornography users often lie about their pornography use. Or abusive men often lie and manipulate. So even if you had known the so-called right questions to ask, that likely wouldn’t have helped you.

What we find helps women more, and you know this now, is what behaviors to look for. And you also didn’t know that at the time. What was your reaction to his disclosure about viewing and acting out with pornography after you married?

Ralynne: Well it was about five months into our marriage that he called me very distraught and crying. And telling me that I needed to come home because he needed me. I didn’t know what was going on. And then I got home. He shares with me that he viewed and acted out to pornography. In my mind I was thinking, okay. So all of a sudden after four or five years of not viewing pornography, you’ve gone back to it.

Why? So, as a new bride, I of course was sitting there in utter shock. I felt immediately like it had something to do with me. Was I not enough? Why would he go back to this now? And I mostly was just in shock and disbelief. But he also seemed so sorry when he told me that. My immediate reaction was, I love you.

Thank you for being honest with me and telling me about it. Let’s go meet with our bishop and get a therapist and start working through this together. I literally told him, use me when you need to use me, let’s be open and get through this together. Use me as far as, if you’re feeling tempted, talk to me, tell me when you’ve done it.

Let’s be open and honest. Part of me was like, hey, well, if you’re feeling the urge. Hello, we married. Let me know, like, why would you turn to that instead of turning to me, your wife? I know now, that those were a lot of the wrong things to do.

Anne: I’m guessing you didn’t understand the emotional abuse that you experienced.

Ralynne: Not at all.

Anne: And I’m guessing, you also didn’t understand, boundaries or keeping yourself safe?

Ralynne: I knew nothing about that because it did not register in my mind that anything had been done to me. At that point.

Anne: Yeah, you’re just thinking, Oh, this is too bad for him, but I can help him through it. Kind of like he got a broken finger or something. Describe what happened in your personal life during this time. And what were your days like as you tried to “help” your husband worked through his addiction.

Ralynne: They were pretty awful for me, long story short, I kind of took on the problem. I’m a go getter in all of the things that I do in life.

It’s not surprising to me that I took everything on my shoulders. I became very worried about doing check ins with him. And I was even worried when I talked to him if he was telling me the truth or not. Setting up appointments for therapy, we went together and we went separately. Then I was told about addiction recovery programs and started going to those. I didn’t realize I was experiencing the agony of betrayal trauma.

But as we went, there was no real desire or effort coming from him to want to go. It was like I was dragging him along, which made things worse. Then I felt like I was fighting harder for something that wasn’t even really my issue to begin with. But it was becoming my issue and it was consuming my days.

Ralynne: And I actually was let go from my job. In that meeting my boss said, ultimately he was very sorry, but I was just so sad all the time. He had to let me go. That was a huge wake up call for me. Because that is not a way I’ve ever been described in my life.

Usually people associate me with words like you’re so bubbly and so happy. And so outgoing, to see that I had become this sad person that couldn’t even hide my sadness. Everything was spiraling the other way and affecting my life in a very negative way was a huge wake up call for me. The agony of betrayal trauma was so intense, I became this kind of introverted ball of depression, tears and anxiety.

Ralynne: I began to have panic attacks, which I had never experienced before in my life. And it just seemed like I could not succeed anywhere. I couldn’t succeed at my job and I couldn’t succeed at home. Everything was just so dark and hopeless during that time. I lost myself completely just trying to survive each day. I became very numb through that whole process.

Anne: So, you did not realize at that time that you were a victim of abuse. You didn’t realize that the reason this was happening was because you were a victim of abuse. But you did start to realize that your were suffering from the agony of betrayal trauma. How did you realize the betrayal trauma piece?

Ralynne: My ecclesiastical leader had been told by my husband that I was depressed. Because that’s what my husband was blaming things on. I was suffering from depression. So, my ecclesiastical leader met with me and I said, I’m not depressed, this is what’s going on.

I found Betrayal Trauma Recovery, what’s betrayal trauma? I had no idea what that was at the time.

Ralynne: The coach at BTR.ORG did expound further and mention the different types of abuse that were going on emotional, spiritual, mental, all of those things. And I just listened to her say that in disbelief. But as she said it, it kind of dawned on me.

Of course, that makes complete sense. But as most people, when I think of abuse, I don’t think of all the emotional types of abuse . And I especially wouldn’t associate that with me. I would never think my spouse would be someone who would be emotionally, spiritually, and mentally abusing me. The agony of betrayal trauma was so intense.

But unfortunately that was the reality. It wasn’t until I spoke with her that all those light bulbs went on and I realized how bad the situation was.

Anne: Yeah. It’s a lot worse than people imagine. I think it’s really interesting how victims don’t recognize how bad the situation is. Because everyone listening to this podcast has been through it, everyone can empathize with you. And be like, yeah, that’s exactly how it was for me.

I think that’s one thing that we need to educate people about in regard to abuse is that victims don’t always know what is happening to them. What is the most difficult thing you realized throughout this experience?

Ralynne: The most difficult thing that I realized throughout this experience was the fact that I could not save my husband. No matter how many times I went to therapy or how many times I prayed. Or how many times I took him to a recovery class. No matter how hard I try to save our marriage and help him, I was powerless. I had to learn that his actions were separate from mine.

That his actions did not have anything to do with me, even though that’s the hardest thing I think for a spouse to believe. But that they didn’t have anything to do with me. That it was all his choices, his actions. There was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

Anne: When women find out that they’re being abused, they think one of their options is to help him stop being abusive. And that’s never an option because it never works. So there’s either, he just stops on his own somehow and then you’re safe or you have to start setting boundaries.

Anne: Speaking of boundaries, knowing what you know now, if you could go back in time and do it over again. Which none of us can, but we’ve all thought this, what would you have done differently?

And this question isn’t meant to like, Oh, what should you have done? But to educate women who are currently in this situation, to help them know what to do now.

Ralynne: Yes. Well, first of all, I would have loved to know right away. It’s not my fault and I can’t blame myself. Or take it on my shoulders. So knowing that, I would definitely take that off of myself right away.

Secondly, I would have done a lot more research before finding a therapist that we met with. Because we just went with someone recommended to us by our ecclesiastical leader. Who was not qualified in any way regarding abuse. I also would be more vocal about it. Because the decision that we made when it first happened. Was that we didn’t want to share with our family what’s going on.

Because we didn’t want either person to be viewed in a bad light or gossiped about amongst our family. And we decided we could get through it together on our own with each other and with our therapist. I think that was also a huge mistake because It allowed him to continue to get away with not having to own up to his addiction. And the problems that were happening within our marriage because of it.

I think if we would have involved our parents. At least as a support, it maybe would have helped him to be more accountable right away. Rather than feeling like he could keep hiding it.

Anne: Maybe, let me put your heart at ease in that regard. I told everyone. My ex didn’t want me to, but then it ended up getting used against me by my in-laws. So it can go either way. I’m not saying people should or shouldn’t tell other people, but just know that both of them have risks.

Anne: But I do think victims need a safe support network. You don’t know if someone is safe if you don’t try. So even if you try and it doesn’t go so well with a particular person. Your mother-in-law, a father-in-law, even your own parents, at least you tried to see if they were safe. Which you won’t know if you don’t try. So try, and then if they are unsafe, you can always set boundaries or pull back later. But building a really strong support network is really important.

Ralynne: Yes, and with setting boundaries, again, that was a concept that I didn’t know about. It was brought to my knowledge way too far into the issue. So, if I knew about that and went through something like this again. Or could do it again, I immediately would have started setting safe boundaries and sticking to them.

Ralynne: Because trying to do that two years into problems already going on. Immediately turned into him feeling like, what you’re going to punish me now. As if I already don’t feel bad enough, you’re going to punish me now. And he just reacts in the way that he was a child and he punished. How could I do that to him when he was already hurting so much. So boundaries never worked for us.

Anne: Well, they worked for you, they didn’t work for your abuser. And then he was trying to get around the abuse by saying that stuff. But that was meant to manipulate you to drop your boundaries. That was a calculated way of trying to convince you, gaslight you, manipulate you, lie to you, so you would drop the boundaries.

So, did your boundaries work? For you, yes. So when people say boundaries didn’t work for us, I always want to tell women, Oh, no, they’re always going to work for you. They might not work for your abuser, but great! If they don’t work for your abuser, then yay! If he’s mad because he can’t abuse you anymore, fantastic!

You’ve done yourself a favor and if someone is abusive and you set a boundary, their abuse will escalate. So they’ll manipulate you more, they’ll get more angry. If they’re not abusive and you set a boundary, things will slowly get better over time. So setting a boundary is always going to help victims know their baseline safety situation, which is good.

Anne: Okay, so let’s talk about this music video. Again, I’m going to pause here one more time. Go to our YouTube channel, Betrayal Trauma Recovery. Watch this video. We just posted it. Please subscribe to our channel. Share it with your friends and family, share it on Facebook, share it everywhere you can.

Please help us get this video out so other people can understand the pain and suffering that women go through. Because Ralynne has done such a good job of illustrating this.

I got an email a while ago that said, Hey, I’m Ralynne Riggs. I’m a singer. I want to create a music video. We started talking and became friends. I am inspired by you. That you create a music video. And then you put your whole heart and soul into it and made this incredible video. It’s an illustration of pain and also hope.

Anne: So please tell our audience, what inspired you to create it?

Ralynne: Well, this song became a song that was very important to me as part of my survival and healing. When I was in the middle of all of this experience and it was just on my mind For a while. I’m not gonna lie.

It had been on my mind for about a year and a half. I waited too long to make this, but the song gave words to my pain and exactly what I was feeling so poignantly. That it was such a strength to me. Music has done that for me through my whole life and I just thought you know I wonder if I should make a music video.

To do this and just spread awareness about what happens to the spouse in this situation. Because there’s so much help out there and support for the addict or for the abuser.

And I feel like, in my personal experience and in my experiences with other women that I met in support groups. That we often are the ones pushed aside. While we are asked to hold on a little longer while our husband gets help. And we’re left with all of these emotions and this agony of betrayal trauma and we don’t know what to do with it.

Ralynne: So I wanted to make this video in hopes that if there is another woman out there on the other end of the computer screen. That was going through what I was going through or who has been through it. And they’re out there searching for support or help or to know what’s happening to them. I wanted to make this for them.

Because the faster they can know about it. The faster they can find the help and the resources for healing, the better. I’m grateful that I found BTR.ORG. It has been such a saving grace.

I know there’s thousands of women out there going through this and I don’t want them to suffer or feel hopeless any longer than they need to. So that was my hope. My simple hope in doing this is that even if one woman out there going through the agony of betrayal trauma watches this. And then finds a community of love and support to help her heal. It’ll have been worth it.

Anne: You said something that’s really interesting. You said that women are just asked to wait. Like, just hold on a little bit longer.

Anne: But what they’re not told is you may not be safe while you’re waiting. They’re not told, How can we help create a seriously safe environment for you where you can wait from a safe distance? I think that is one reason why the trauma is so bad. Even with professionals or church leaders or other people. We weren’t sort of like cocooned in a safe place during the waiting period.

In fact, the abuse escalates and escalates and escalates. We are encouraged to “do our part” or to be supportive. When really we’ve been abused that whole time and it hasn’t stopped the abuse. This video, it really hit home, the abuse that we experience during that time. I love that end where she just takes another woman’s hand. And that network of support is waiting for women.

All over the world. It doesn’t necessarily have to be Betrayal Trauma Recovery. It could be friends at work or It could be anyone who can reach out and buoy you up and help you. Your video just showed that so well.

Ralynne: Thank you so much. I a hundred percent agree with you. But what about you in the meantime? How do you remain safe? None of that was ever addressed with me. I remember asking the third time I was asked to hold on and keep waiting. I remember my reply was, why would I keep fighting and holding on for something that makes me so miserable and is so abusive? And there was no answer, really, for me from that person.

Anne: Well you get a divorce.

Ralynne: Yes.

Anne: Do you feel like creating this video has helped you heal?

Ralynne: I do. The way I was raised and what I’ve been taught in my faith is that everything happens for a reason. Through all of this, I’ve often struggled. Because I’ve sat there and thought, what have I done to deserve this?

I’ve been a loyal, faithful wife and stayed true. I’ve tried to love unconditionally and endlessly, and this is what I get for it. How is this fair? And that’s been something I’ve really struggled with. But I’ve tried to have the outlook of how is this making me stronger? And what’s the purpose? And that’s been something that I’ve been so grateful with making this video.

Because as soon as I started taking action and making plans to have this made and reaching out to people. And getting volunteers to be in it and just producing it. There were so many little miracles that immediately fell into place.

I could not deny that God’s hand was in it. And I felt so happy and good knowing I was doing something. That he was guiding me to do and would hopefully lead to helping a lot of women. And as we finished making the video, I just thought, you know, I’m so grateful.

Ralynne: This is the first time I’ve been able to make beauty out of these ashes of the agony of betrayal trauma. Make a little bit of sense or have some good come from the worst years of my life ever. And I’m so grateful. I’m grateful that I followed the prompting and have made it. I only hope that it does what I’ve been hoping that it would do and help so many women. It has definitely helped me heal.

Anne: Our hope, Ralynne’s and mine is that we can get this video to go viral. The reason we wanted to do that is because so many women are in this situation. They don’t understand what is happening to them. It’s very important that we help women get educated about abuse. What it looks like, what it sounds like, and what to look for if your husband says he’s in “recovery from pornography addiction.”

How to tell the difference between someone who is just grooming you, and saying they’re in recovery and going through the motions. And someone who is genuinely a safe person. They’re two completely different things. So again, please go to our YouTube channel if you haven’t already. Watch it, share it.

Anne: I am so grateful for Ralynne for following these promptings to help women throughout the world find peace after the agony of betrayal trauma, to help them know that they are not alone.

So even if it doesn’t go viral, if some women find out about BTR.ORG who have not found out about it before. Or if some women watch this video and realize, wait a minute, this is what has been happening to me. Then it will have been a success. So thank you, Ralynne, for coming on today’s episode to talk about your experience.

Ralynne: Thank you so, much for having me, and allowing me to share my story. And thank you to everyone who’s watched so far, I hope it helps you.

Felicia spent years wondering if she was codependent. She didn’t realize she was experiencing emotional, psychological, and sexual abuse. If you’re wondering if you’re codependent. Hopefully Felicia’s story can help you see why you’re not codependent.

If you’re experiencing emotional abuse check out our Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session Schedule, we’d love to see you in a session.

Often, Betrayal Trauma victims have little to no control over their own bodies, privacy, finances, and other aspects of their lives. This leads many women to engage in safety-seeking behaviors. She’s trying to protect herself, which is good! Some people want to put these healthy behaviors in a negative light. They call her codependent, misleading her.

They tell her to blame herself: “What have YOU done to contribute to the problem?” This wrong advice helps the abuser continue to harm her. It also makes it harder for the victim to set healthy boundaries.

Many women find that after they create distance between herself and emotional and psychological abuse, what they thought were “character flaws” often fade away. These traits were really healthy resistance to abuse. They helped her protect herself. She’s not codependent.

Anne: I have a member of our community, we’re going to call her Felicia, on today’s episode. Welcome, Felicia.

Felicia: Thank you.

Anne: I’m so grateful you’re sharing your story with us. We’re going to be addressing the label of codependent. But let’s start at the beginning. Can you talk about how he seemed to you at first?

Felicia: We met at a Bible college and the first thing that I asked is, Could I use his book? Because I didn’t want to buy the professor’s book. He said, Oh, this is a wonderful book. I’ll buy it for you. I want to tell you my intentions are not to hit on you or to flirt with you. So I love that he was so straightforward and didn’t have any other intentions.

We became friends because I believed that he said what he meant. We fell in love, but there was no flirting, we didn’t have the same friends. So I was like, this is really weird, but I really, really like you. But it’s not like this desperate feeling, and that’s how we started off.

Felicia: It was a long distance relationship at first.

Anne: Looking back, do you think that he was being honest or do you think he really did have intentions to have a relationship with you?

Felicia: I think he just told me what I wanted to hear. I was like, it’s not this desperate feeling. And he was like, me either. So let’s not date right away. I thought we would date. Because we both just told each other we liked each other.

It was the relationship I thought I wanted at first. Except for lack of an emotional side to it. But yeah looking back, I think he just is really good at picking up on what people want to hear. Then filling that in.

Anne: Like low key. Hey, we’re just friends. Type grooming.

Anne: How did it transition into dating?

Felicia: I was just leaving the area. He said, yeah, let’s just do emails and phone calls. He said, I want you to pray about this for one week, that we should be boyfriend and girlfriend. I was just kind of disappointed that there wasn’t this emotional connection. I didn’t have any boyfriends through life to speak of. He said I want you to think about what you need in a relationship. Then we dated long distance still just talking on the phone.

Felicia: It wasn’t gooey at all. They were like really good conversations. That to me was the perfect part of our relationship. Very good conversations about how we felt and thought. They weren’t long and drawn out. It was just fun to talk to him and then we started setting boundaries.

He said, We’re probably going to pursue each other for marriage. Also, I think that I should come and get you. He was in Georgia and wanted to come to Idaho to get me. He said we should live in the same community if we’re going to see if we’re fit for marriage. We laid down physical boundaries, and I was like, okay, cool. I definitely don’t want to get over involved physically before I’m married. He said he needed these boundaries for himself.

But as soon as we saw each other, we started crossing the boundaries that we had laid. It didn’t feel good. I didn’t like it. By the time we were back to our destination, where we were going to live in the same town. I was kind of like, what did I get into? And that was when we were dating. We weren’t even engaged yet. We got engaged several months later and married the next year.

Anne: So at this time, you’re thinking, all that stuff we talked about. The boundaries that we set up, he didn’t adhere to any of them. Do you feel like you were coerced into it? He’s already setting you up to be responsible for him not keeping the boundary, and you identifying as codependent.

Felicia: Yeah, I thought it was sinning. And he was like, we can pray for peace and forgiveness. Because Jesus will give us that. It would feel so good and amazing and freeing, then within hours a day or whatever later, we’d be at it again. He would say that I was seducing him. Which I would feel really bad about. So I just thought I was bad. And we went to our family and our church and told them, we’re in sin.

We’re not having sex, but we’re breaking sexual boundaries. And we tried to get help, and I thought, we just can’t resist each other. So then when we got engaged, I thought, let’s just get married right away. At least we have that connection.

Felicia: But when we got married, it immediately stopped. We didn’t have a sexual connection. We had a really bad beginning of marriage, no honeymoon spot, we would fight. I thought, Oh, it’s because we were sinful before. But I married thinking I was pure and it was confusing. How did we struggle so bad before marriage? Now that we’re married, it immediately stopped.

Anne: He’s basically saying, I’m so attracted to you that I cannot keep my hands off you. So even though I’ve set these boundaries, it’s impossible to keep them. Because I’m so attracted to you. Don’t worry about it because we can just call on Jesus, he understands and we’ll both be fine. We can repent and yet he never actually repents because he keeps doing it.

Then you get married and then he’s just not attracted to you anymore, apparently. Because now it’s very easy for him to avoid physical contact. Is that what I’m hearing?

Felicia: You said it all right. He made a lot of excuses. So that period of the marriage lasted 12 years. I lived in like a giant fog of why our sexual life had never been ignited once we got married.

Felicia: The sex was kind of the big red flag, but emotionally we didn’t connect. We had a really bad honeymoon and after that he would say things like, Sex is just emotional for me. So if we’re not connected, I don’t want to have sex with you. Things like that, that made me feel like, well, I can’t force him.

Over 12 years, I mean, we started having kids together. My drive waned, so it was kind of like, well, it’s no big deal now. But I would ask things like, why he thought it was like that. And one time he just said, he was going through medical school so it was so strenuous. I just looked up things and thought, I bet he’s too busy.

Anne: He was using any excuse he could get his hands on. Anything that he heard, maybe women are like, Oh, I’m not emotionally connected so I don’t want to have sex. Which was not his case. Because I’m guessing we’re going to find out real soon that he’s having sex with someone else. Or he’s masturbating and using pornography. But he’s just trying to grab hold of any excuse he can. To groom you into thinking it’s your fault that he’s not interested.

When did you find out about the pornography use or the masturbation or the infidelity?

Felicia: After twelve years of marriage. So it was in twenty, twenty one. I think it was the Holy Spirit coming into my intuition, cause I was just like, something is wrong. For some reason it’s bothering me more now, and I’m not gonna let it stop bothering me. I had gone to lots of counseling over the years, and never really found a problem with me.

I went through a major lifestyle program, like residential treatment program for depression. That always owned up to being postpartum depressed and seasonal depression and all this stuff. Finally was like, you know what? It’s my marriage.

Then I went to counseling and being like, it’s my marriage, help me. But at this point in time, I couldn’t sleep. I was just crying all the time. I was pregnant with our fourth kid, but I was like, this is not the same thing as pregnancy hormones. This is something deeper.

So I just started digging and finding it on his device and I was like, the kids could have found this.

You got to make sure that this doesn’t pop up on your computer screen. And he’s like, yeah, you’re right. That’s really bad. I’ll make sure I don’t leave that up anymore. But then I dug and dug and dug and kept saying, tell me the whole truth. Because I need to know that I know everything, because I’m finding images on his device.

Anne: You’re finding lots of pornography and he’s giving excuses or saying, I don’t know.

Felicia: Just kind of acting like he used a thing to watch movies. It would just pop up so he would just exit back out, you know? That’s all it is.

Felicia: One thing that he’d never done is ever had a big problem he’d been sorry about. I’d had like, a number of problems but he’d never been like, you know what, here’s this big issue or problem. I feel like In marriages two people usually have problems, but in our marriage, it was always just me.

Anne: Tell me more about that. Was it like, Oh, I have a problem with my friend, for example. Or I have a problem because I’m sick. Or was it like, you mean just like general everyday problems that humans have? Like he didn’t have any of these regular problems.

Felicia: He didn’t have regular problems. I would be like, do you think you’re a sinner? And he’s like, oh yeah, of course I’m a sinner. But he never had any confession of like, you know what, I feel really bad about this. He didn’t actually even say sorry, so I didn’t learn about gaslighting until much later. But If I came to him with, like, this makes me feel bad, when this happens. It would turn into, like, you don’t know how hard it is to have a depressed wife.

Felicia: Or, he was now in medical residency, so he’s like, I think you have ADD. So I actually went to my own doctor saying, like, I think I might have ADD. And my doctor was like, No, you don’t have ADD at all. He didn’t even seem like he had problems. I was like, I guess he’s this amazing person, I guess I’m just a monster. I decided when I got married that I was a monster and I never knew that I was. When we ever had a problem, it would go back to, I bet he hasn’t forgiven me.

For how badly I treated him when we were first married. That’s what I decided it was, I just treated him really bad.

He’s like a super awesome guy. And he just can’t forgive me because he’s so sensitive. I hurt him that bad. He never had any offerings for why our marriage sucked. So I would offer things.

Anne: But he wouldn’t.

Felicia: Yeah, he would never.

Anne: Abusers have a very distinct pattern. They only start their story after the real victim has started to resist the abuse. So the beginning of your marriage, you’re being abused and you’re trying to resist this abuse.

He starts the story with like, everything was fine. Nothing was wrong. Suddenly she started treating me really bad rather than saying, I actually coerced her. And made her seem like I was super attracted to her. And then we got married and I completely ignored her and didn’t have sex with her at all.

Anne: And I was a complete jerk, and then she was trying to resist me being terrible. If they started the story there, it would make sense. But instead they’re like, “Yeah, everything was fine.” We got married. I thought our marriage was great. They don’t tell people I was refusing to have sex with her. I was giving her the impression I wasn’t into to her.

So then when people hear his side of the story. They’re like, Wow, she just out of the blue is like super mad at you.

Felicia: The other thing is there’s this common, I don’t know if that’s like a religious thing or whatever. But where like the man’s passive and the woman pushes him to not be passive. And that pushing to not be passive is really bad. That’s what I did. I was like, you know what, that was really bad that I pushed him to not be passive.

I would let myself get all enraged at his passiveness. But looking back, it was like this passive aggression that he knew he was doing. And like, silent treatments, he’s very argumentative. Somehow he would like, shut down right when I ignited. Anyway, so I learned to like, turn that off. And stop pushing him, especially so that we could have children.

Cause he said, we can’t have children until I stop this aggression and our marriage gets better. So I like became someone who just swallowed everything. Now I go back and I’m seeing there was a beautiful woman inside of me clawing. Saying, this is wrong. Something is completely messed it up and I disagree. And I’m not just going to go along with it.

Felicia: That’s what happened. I became someone who just went along with stuff. I didn’t I didn’t talk to him very much at all because he was just going to disagree. We were going to have an argument so I just listened to him. He would just go on and on and on and on. He was a like a monologue-er. That’s where we were when I found porn.

I finally said I have to know everything. And he was like, oh, no, you know everything. And I said, okay, I’m never gonna talk to you about this again. I’m gonna ask you one more time. Do I know everything? Have you told me the whole truth about this porn that I keep finding? And he said, yes. So I said, okay, I’m never going to talk about it again.

I wrote him an email, because I couldn’t sleep at night. And I was like, I know that there’s something wrong. I said that either Satan’s tormenting me. Or the Holy Spirit’s trying to communicate something to me. And that’s when he said, okay, let’s talk. That’s when he took me on a walk, and we dropped the kids off.

Then he told me the whole truth about the previous 12 years. And how he’d done porn off and on. He said it was like, good porn, it wasn’t violent porn, or whatever. He said he’d done that off and on for 12 years, actually his whole life.

Anne: I feel like when they give details, you know that that’s the thing that they’re lying about. Because, why do you need to say that? A lot of times they do this fake honesty where they’re like, this is the whole truth. I highly doubt that it was. Do you feel the same way?

Felicia: I feel the same way. I mean, I felt peace for a little bit. I was like, you know what, our marriage is totally gonna work now. Because we have honesty. But the relationship was just as broken as it ever had been.

Anne: At this point where you’re like, okay, he’s told me the “whole truth.” So I’m not really going to bring it up again. Did he go to therapy? Was he just like, okay, now that I’ve told you the whole truth, I’m never going to do it again.

Felicia: I started bringing it up again. So I never decided, you know what, I’m not going to bring it up again. I did that email, and then he told me the whole truth, and then I just took the liberty to put the relationship into his hands. And be like, give me a reason for all of this. Because It was just such big thing. That our whole marriage was.

I’m constantly like, How do two people find each other like this, fall in love. Then it becomes what it is? It never made sense. I walked around meeting people, older women, being like, Can we talk? Thinking that they would be like, my mentor and help me find out. But it was me that needed to find out the truth.

Felicia: No one else knew. When I finally found out, I was like, I feel like this is the reason for our whole entire relationship. And then that’s when I realized about covert emotional abuse and covert narcissism. One, when you do pornography, you become less emotionally attentive and able.

Anne: I’ve started seeing you become less interested instead of “blaming” the pornography. It’s like when you use pornography. You don’t have the desire to be intimate with people anymore. It’s not like it makes you that way. You just don’t care anymore. Because I think if we say, if you view pornography, then your brain gets shut off. It sort of takes the choice away.

We have to recognize that they could still say, wait a minute, this is hurting my wife, this is hurting me. This is hurting my family. I don’t want to do this anymore, but they just don’t have the desire to make anything different.

Felicia: He did start into therapy. He of course he had problems with his counselor. And didn’t think it was working. So he wanted to, stop. I think he’d like jumped around. Needed to find like the perfect therapy. But he found his own therapy and like his own books that he thought he should read. I actually thought that sources that he found were very good and should have been helpful.

Felicia: But our relationship was not getting any better. One thing that bothered him as I started to say that he needed to take all the responsibility for the pathology in our marriage. I was like you need to take all the responsibility for that. Because along the way, I had been taking responsibility for each bad thing that I thought I did.

If he brought something up, I would be like, you know what, you’re right. And I would try to change. But he never had, then I was like, well now you have to take the responsibility for the whole pathology. He took that to mean I was blaming all of our marital problems on him. And he’s like, this is just too much. This is just too much pressure.

Anne: For some reason it wasn’t too much pressure for him to blame it all on you.

Felicia: Exactly, I know. I’m like, Oh my gosh, you have no idea what I’ve been putting on my shoulders this whole time.

Anne: Also, it was 100 percent his fault. So, what’s the problem? Literally was 100 percent his fault.

Felicia: He wants to back up until the original in a marriage, it takes two people to make it work. So like, that’s what I had gone by. And I had tried to be the person to stand up and say, I’m going to do my part. Then after he completely has a secret for over a decade, that I never found out about.

That I couldn’t know about, now all of a sudden I’m like, this is your fault. If he really felt sorry he would have been like, you’re totally right, it’s all my fault.

Felicia: But instead he’s like, oh my gosh, that’s too much pressure. This is a marriage, you can’t blame it all on me. I found Betrayal Trauma Recovery at that time. I grew a lot and found out a lot, it really helped me. He was just focused on porn and I was finding out that this is not about porn. This is about every way we relate.

The gaslighting and the blaming, it’s just like a physical abuse problem where the husband batters the wife. Except for you don’t want to look bad by actually hitting me. So you hit me emotionally, and there are no bruises. I mean, that’s, I feel like it’s 100 percent what the problem was. So I started to get to safety. We had times where I left the house for a few weeks. I think at a time, like three times that year. That was the year we got divorced.

Anne: When did you think that you might be codependent?

Felicia: It was probably 2021. Actually, before I found out about his pornography. I was calling myself an empath because he would come home and have these rages. And it would really bother me. Sliming cupboards when he’s cleaning and stonewalling. I would be like, you know what, this is my fault because he’s had a really bad day.

He didn’t tell me that I did anything wrong. And he’s like, he’s not telling me that, you know, I’m in a bad mood and don’t talk to me. So I was blaming it on that I feel him too much. Like he’s coming home and I’m like feeling all of this. Then I’m starting in on this fix it thing, which is labeling me as codependent. When I should just be like, Oh, you know, you’re allowed to have a bad day. That’s okay if you slam cupboards and stuff because you’re not hurting me.

Anne: During the time where you think maybe you’re an empath, was that when you thought that maybe you were codependent?

Felicia: I guess we have to kind of define codependency.

Anne: The official definition of codependent, which I do not think codependent is a thing. So I don’t even want to be like this. I want to be like, people have made this up and it’s a victim blaming thing that people use.

And in their minds, this is what codependent means. Characterized by excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a partner. Typically one who requires support on account of an illness or addiction.

Anne: So it’s saying you’re the one with the problem because you, Felicia. Which this is not true, but this is why it’s victim blaming.

You have this excessive emotional and psychological reliance on him. That’s not the case. He’s abusing you and you’re just trying to survive. Because in trying to get to safety, you’re trying to figure out what do I have control over? Maybe if I don’t feel all of his feelings. If I’m not so excessively reliant on him, then things will get better is what you’re thinking?

You are trying to make him into a safe person and other people are defining it as codependent.

Felicia: Yeah, almost like, oh, I need him to come home and be a peaceful person. That’s really bad of me to need someone to come home and be peaceful. Is that really codependent? That’s exactly it. And you know what? I do remember asking a counselor back in 2017 if I was codependent. She said, oh my gosh being codependent is a big problem. Let’s work on that.

I always felt like it was led by me to try to find what was wrong. I never wanted to be like, I’m here because I hate my marriage and my marriage is like ruining my life. So I thought it was a broader problem. Maybe it was my growing up or my background. Then when I found out it was porn, she said, “I want to tell you this is abuse.”

I kind of rolled my eyes, because I was like, oh brother, like, abuse. That was just annoying to me.

Felicia: And I think it was just too much for me to look into, so I waited six or nine months. And that’s when I found Betrayal Trauma Recovery. And was like, yeah, it’s abuse.

Anne: So you didn’t stay in that codependent place forever. Women think that if their codependent then they can fix things. You find BTR. You were like, Oh, I’m not codependent, it’s really important to me that women know they are not codependent. Did you use BTR services at all?

Felicia: I did the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions, and I did the BTR.ORG Individual Sessions. The group sessions were mind blowing. Because it was the first time I’d found a bunch of other people that completely related with absolutely everything I was saying. I thought this covert emotional abuse was like a specific problem that I had that, you know, was obscure.

Yeah, everyone in the group understood and you didn’t have to get them to understand what you were talking about. It was just like, yeah, we get it.

Anne: How was that different than the therapy that you had been going to?

Felicia: All those years. I was like looking for friendships, mentorships, counselors. Who would say, “Oh I found the problem that is perplexing your whole life.” I mean, it’s dragging you down. There’s that cave analogy where I’ve been like locked in a cave with an abuser. But also like a slave, a slave who like feels they need to be there because they need to help the master because that’s going to be a beautiful relationship.

Anne: Once you can help him enough, it’s going to be great. Just hold on a little bit longer.

Felicia: Yeah, it’s going to be a good marriage. That’s what marriage is.

Felicia: And now here I am finding out that it is not the right way. And people don’t understand. I tell my friends and family pretend like this is physical abuse because it’s exactly the same. I don’t know what people think emotional abuse is. But it seems at first that it’s like an excuse or something.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery answered all of that. I was just desperate for years to find an answer. And it answered like all of that confusion that I had. I’m like, I don’t know how these other wives find out about porn and then they just go on In their marriage. For me, I couldn’t be safe doing that.

Anne: Let’s talk to women who are like, “Well, what if it’s not abuse?” who think, “Maybe I’m codependent.” or ” Maybe he’s a porn addict.”

How do you know that the Betrayal Trauma Recovery model, the abuse model is real. Because I think some women are worried, I’ve thought it’s that before and it hasn’t been that. So there’s no reason to go down this abuse thing. Because I’m just going to find out in six months that it’s not abuse, that it’s actually something else.

Felicia: I’m still kind of in that, because now that we’re divorced, the co parenting is a nightmare. And I still am like, is it me?

Anne: This is why I wrote The Living Free Workshop.

Felicia: Not only that, but one humongous piece of the story is that right when I got the divorce, he turned all my friends against me. I have no friends now. It’s really hard to go to a church where you’re connected. And you have, good friends that you get together with, I told them about the abuse.

And they were like yeah, and I didn’t think they totally got it. I didn’t think they were gonna disown me. Like, these people have called me names and are not fun to see at the grocery store. So, it’s hard to believe that It’s not me, and so I’ve wondered if it’s me.

I think relationships, good marriage relationships are not confusing. There’s problems. You can see what’s going on. You can try to fix the problems and try to love each other more. But this relationship was completely confusing. There was no reconciliation. There was no now we can love each other now that we found that out. None of that. There was never any of that.

Anne: I think some women do go through a period of, Oh, now that we know this, things will get better. And if they do go to a CSAT or a pornography addiction recovery specialist, they’ll actually tell them that. They’ll actually say things will get better now that you know this. They kind of do get better for a little bit, but then they don’t get all the way better and things are still confusing.

Anne: Then some pornography addiction recovery folks, like a 12 step group or something, they’ll say, well, now you have to stay in recovery. And wife, you also have to do 12 step and you have to do this the rest of your life. Because this will always be an issue. Then do you just keep seeing that pattern over and over? And the problem is an abuse problem that keeps cropping up.

We all have healthy relationships with people who aren’t perfect. You can laugh about it. Like, Oh man, that’s funny. She sometimes is disorganized and she forgets things. She doesn’t become less forgetful necessarily. But the resolution is you learn, Oh, she’s forgetful sometimes. And that’s okay. We can work with this.

Abuse is not something that you can work with because abuse is always a power over dynamic. And so anytime it gets to a place where something feels resolved and you feel equal. Then the abuser will try to push you down again somehow. There’s never going to be any resolution possible.

Felicia: Trying to stop the porn, but it’s like the porn is a symptom of this power and control. So it’d be like if you get physically abused and you try to stop the hitting. And the solution is to stop the hitting. That doesn’t make sense. They’re hitting you because of a power and control. You’re not just gonna try to stop the hitting and be like for the rest of your life. We’re gonna just try to stop the hitting.

Anne: But you can still lie and manipulate and all kinds of other things.

Felicia: Yeah, I also learned about the secret sexual basement from Betrayal Trauma Recovery. It’s like, why is it abusive when someone lies to you? When you get married to that person, and let’s say you build a house together. And then after 12 years you realize there’s this basement that no one knew about.

That person got to go into the basement whenever they did, because they always knew about it. The whole family is like, what? I didn’t even know that we had this basement. That’s why it’s like abuse, because it’s It’s his choice when he wants to go. Also, why he wants to go, he knows all about it. Everyone else just has no clue that it was even in the makings of a construction. Much less what the content of that basement is.

Anne: It’s so hard, and it’s also hard when other people don’t know how to help victims identify this, right? Because they’ll go and say, my husband, to use this metaphor a little bit longer, he left, I don’t know where he’s going, I’m so confused. And instead of saying, oh, well, maybe he’s an abuser. Maybe you’re being psychologically abused, maybe he’s doing porn in the basement, you know?

They’re like, oh, he just probably needs his space, and it’s healthy for people to have space, and then it just gets so confusing.

Felicia: Yeah, the normal marriage wisdom doesn’t work for abuse situations. Just don’t expect so much. That doesn’t work. Give, give, give, and don’t expect anything in return. I mean, those were the things I grew up hearing about marriages. If you could guarantee me that both people were doing that, that’s true.

But the minute one person does that and the other person has no intentions of doing that. That’s what was baffling is after all these years, I’m like, I can’t believe that we’re marriage partners.

This is the person I’m supposed to be more intimate with than anyone else in the whole world. And I find out that you’ve been doing this. Against me and they say it’s not about you that porn isn’t about you. That’s also very disturbing and not helpful. I don’t know who it’s about but it’s totally done to me. When you say to your wife, I don’t want to have sex. No, thanks. I’m not in the mood. Or whatever your reasoning is, and then you’re off, having sex with yourself.

Anne: It’s not true because they are in the mood to have sex, but they’d rather have sex with the computer. They’re not being truthful when they say that. They’re not being truthful when they say “I’m not in the mood.”

Anne: They’re in the mood all the time to have sex with someone else. Instead they should say, “Oh, I totally want to have sex.

I have sex so much. I masturbate every day, twice a day. When I look at porn, I just don’t want to have sex with you. That would be the truth. Then you’d be like, Oh, whoa. Instead, he’s just happy to have you think that you’re just unattractive, and somehow he doesn’t want to have sex at all because you’re the way that you are. That’s absolutely not true.

Felicia: There’s so much problem in that, when you really think about a husband and a wife. What you just said is like, can you believe that would just be a simple problem? No. There’s so much, on every level, of betrayal right there. My ex explained to me that when he was trying to get me to see what porn really was.

But when he said this, it was helpful. He’s like, it’s like going through a drive thru and ordering whatever you want. Then going and eating it in your car. You didn’t want to eat it in front of everybody because it’s kind of embarrassing that you’re a pig, or whatever. Even though it’s bad that he was trying to get me to understand that, that is exactly what it is.

Felicia: It’s like a menu, and I wasn’t on the menu. Almost ever. I’m like barely ever on the menu.

Anne: Well, and you don’t want to be on the menu.

Felicia: I don’t want to be on the menu either.

Anne: Basically, you’re not a person to them. That’s just gross. No woman wants to be like, Oh yeah, I’m on the menu. Yay. Like, no.

Felicia: You’re exactly right.

Anne: Why do you think it takes victims so long to realize they’re a victim of emotional abuse?

Felicia: I don’t know. For me, like I said, I kind of rolled my eyes when I heard abuse. Because it’s like, oh great, everything’s abuse nowadays.

Felicia: Abuse is one sided. I get into a marriage and if it’s abuse, I have to be like, you have a problem with hurting me. And it’s not my fault. And it ruins our relationship, but you need to change, and I can do nothing about it. That sucks. Not only am I not gonna say it’s my fault, but you’re not gonna say it’s your fault either. And I can’t do anything about it. The powerlessness, I guess.

Anne: It’s awful. I think that’s why women sometimes like the word codependent because It seems more empowering to them in the moment than abuse. Because if you are codependent then there is something you can do about it. If you’re partially responsible, by being codependent then you can do something about it. But if you’re not responsible for it at all, you can’t. And that feels terrible. Some women are like, I’d rather think I was codependent because then I have some power in the situation.

Whereas If I say it’s abuse, then the only thing I can do is get to safety. It doesn’t necessarily mean divorce. You can work towards safety. And he could have an epiphany like we talk about in the BTR BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop and the BTR The BTR.ORG Message Workshop. At any given time, he could enter reality and realize, Oh, I am being abusive.

I’m not going to do this anymore. But if he’s doing it on purpose, you telling him, “Hey, this is abuse,” is only going to make him abuse you more. Because he’s trying to shut that down.

Felicia: Right, and there’s obviously a power dynamic anyway. That makes it worse now the powerful person is mad, basically.

I used to think it was wrong for me to think that my husband should treat me more affectionate, more loving. those are woman qualities. You shouldn’t expect a man to have those woman qualities. He can be gruff and, and kind of dumb, kind of clueless.

It was a thread throughout our whole marriage where he’s accidentally doing stuff to me. But because I’m extremely sensitive it causes a problem, but he’s really just like bumbling around in life. He can’t be hurting me if it’s not intentional.

He only can hurt me if he purposely did it. That was grooming, where I was like, made to believe that his intentions were always good. So I shouldn’t accuse him of doing anything that might say that he had bad intentions, because he never did.

Anne: Well, and the problem with that is the reason why they’re so hell bent on proving that their intentions are good. And that they didn’t mean to do it on purpose is because they did mean it on purpose. That is so hard for women to understand. That they want you to think. that they are doing it accidentally. Then they can kind of keep doing it because they always have a reason to do it. Oh, it was an accident.

Anne: Of course I don’t think that if they said to their wives, no, I do this on purpose so I can exploit you. The wives would immediately be like, Oh, what? No, so they have to continually convince their victims that It’s accidental.

Therapists love that too. Oh, you’re doing it because of your childhood trauma. Or because of this and that, and whatever excuse they can think of, because it’s just too hard to admit. No, I do this on purpose because if I didn’t, I would have to take out the trash. And I would have to make dinner. I would have to help drive the kids around, and I don’t want to do that.

I just want to exploit her. And so I’m going to keep doing this instead. It’s absolutely more socially acceptable to pretend like you’re doing it on accident.

Anne: So now that you’re divorced and you can still see that he is abusive. Because he’s still doing it. now. he’s still blaming you and causing problems and co parenting is just an absolute nightmare. What would you say to women who are starting this process of, well, I’m not sure if he’s so abusive. Maybe I can do something about it. Maybe I am codependent. What would you say to them?

Felicia: The part that I’m still wrapping my head around is my whole community of believers just abandon me.

Anne: Like your congregation or your church?

Felicia: Yeah, that’s where I had friends, and I mean, we were moving cross country. I’ve lived all over the place in his educational and career pursuit. But I had lived where I lived for a couple of years. It was going to be like our forever home. I actually found friends, really good friends, right away. I guess I’m just mind boggled that they turned against me.

They do not want to have anything to do with me and they must believe I’m the bad guy. I don’t know what they believe about me, what lies were told about me. There’s three towns where I don’t even want to go to the grocery store. Because I have friends from those towns that I have seen at the grocery store. And had a bad encounter with.

That doesn’t even answer your question at all. It’s part of the story that’s the cliffhanger. Where I’m just trying to get healthy again, and stand up for myself. Because I know I’m right. And I’m trying to be my best friend that listens to me.

Anne: Would you say that maybe what you’re struggling with is all of this secondary abuse that you’re experiencing? Because he has purposefully now tried to convince all of these people. And actually not just tried, been successful in convincing them that you’re the abuser on purpose, to isolate you and hurt you.

So now it’s like, oh, I thought I was so healed. I thought I understood, but he’s still actively trying to harm you. By harming your relationships with other people. He’s still actively abusing you.

Felicia: I told everyone the truth. He admitted to it and the divorce was supposed to be in agreement. I wanted to divorce him. I wanted people to know that this is because of his abuse that I’m doing this. He was saying yeah. Now my community is beating me up in the same way I always was.

They’re calling me a liar and I have like this fear now of, I’m a victim! I’m afraid of being like that. But that’s actually what’s happening. I’m another victim, and this time, it’s my whole community.

Anne: None of the abuse you’re experiencing now is convincing you, even more, that it’s abuse.

Anne: You’ve done BTR group sessions. You’ve been to Individual Sessions. So the two things to do now are get more educated about are strategy and how to deal with all the unsafe people around you. And then start praying you can make friends in your area.

People that you’ve never met before. People who know nothing about it to be on your team in your local area. You will find people. And they will be a great support to you. It might take a minute and it might be someone who’s going through it herself right now. It might be someone who you’re actually going to be an answer to her prayer.

That she’s like, I’m going through this too, and I need help. Those are the women who tend to be the most helpful in this situation. You tend to end up supporting each other because we really, really get it. And that’s why Betrayal Trauma Recovery is awesome because there’s nobody here that isn’t on your side.

Felicia: I found a new friend and she started to sound exactly like me a while ago. And so I decided to be for her what I would have wanted. I thought, his might be it. But we’re not really hanging out that much anymore. I was trying to be gentle in case she wanted to stay. I just don’t want her to go not knowing that this might be the answer. It’s not a good way to make friends talking about people’s husbands badly.

Anne: Oh, that’s true. She didn’t realize he was abusive.

Felicia: I was like, do you guys have a good relationship? Is it confusing? Does he ever have any problems? She was answering them all in the red flag sense. So I was like, it might be this, you’re not codependent. She didn’t tell me no. Like, she said like, gosh, I had a feeling I should have been done with him a long time ago. They’re on their second marriage to each other. They already divorced and now they’re married.

Someone told me one time that they thought that my husband was into porn. And I was just like, ugh, I did not like hearing that. I was like, No he’s not, You don’t understand. And now years later I’m like, she was right.

Anne: In order to make a true friendship, I feel like being honest is always the best policy. So if you’re like, hey, I feel like this is abuse. And they’re not ready for that for whatever reason. And it offends them and they don’t want to be your friend anymore. Then that’s okay. Maybe they’ll be your friend later.

Because you don’t want a service project. You want a really good friend who you really get each other. If her husband is abusive and she can’t see it. You’re not going to be a good friend to her either because it’s going to be driving you crazy.

Anne: And that’s why professional services are so important. Because friendships really should be an equal thing, not service projects. Our services aren’t service projects. Because if we did them for free, we’d have to get other jobs. And we would not be able to help women, but they’re our job. So getting professional services is totally different than looking for a friend who’s on your level.

She’s almost doing you a favor in some ways because you would have been really annoyed all the time. You know, wait, she’s not seeing it. If she’s telling you clearly abusive things and you’re like, uh, you know it’s not going to be fun for you either.

Felicia: And then I’m just gonna build another fake community of a bunch of friends. That I don’t want to tell the truth to, so that’s not good. We don’t want a big group of women deciding that their all codependent. Yeah, I can see that being honest with people, and hopefully friendships will follow.

Anne: I think that you will. It’s just a hard time. Have faith and be yourself and stay true to who you are. And things will work out eventually. I’m so sorry that you’re going through that right now. That is so hard. You’re amazing.

Felicia: Thank you so much for being beautiful.

Anne: You’re amazing, you’re incredible, you’re strong, things are complex.

Anne: A lot of people don’t like me because I say their husband is abusive. Not because I know him personally, not because I’m trying to hurt their marriage. But because objectively the behaviors she is describing are checking the boxes. That any domestic abuse services would say, yes, this is abuse.

That’s it. We’re not making abuse out of nothing. We don’t even know the people. We’re just saying, Okay, this is abuse. Also, we’re not giving any excuses for it.

Maybe he does have a brain lesion. Maybe he does have PTSD from when he served in Iraq. But that doesn’t mean it’s not abuse to you.

It doesn’t mean that it’s okay that you’re being abused. So, the reasons don’t matter why you’re being abused. The thing that matters is you’re being harmed. And it’s not your fault, you don’t deserve to be harmed. You don’t deserve to be harmed because someone has labeled you codependent.

Felicia: You’re right, and I’m not gonna feel sorry for spreading that message. I want women to not be harmed in their relationships. And I shouldn’t feel bad about not wanting that. I don’t want that for myself either, which I forget about myself. But yeah, I don’t want myself to be harmed.

Anne: But it is a lonely place sometimes, it’s just such a hard road and you don’t have to do it alone. We’re here for you, Felicia, and we’re here for all women going through this.

Anne: All I want to do is educate women about abuse so that they would know what they were facing. So they would have information. They could make the decisions. That they aren’t going to be blamed for being codependent.

They want to make them and get to safety and we can support them in doing that. And then once they feel stable and safe and that they have friends in their area. Then we’re like, We’re so glad we were here for you when you needed us. And we wish you the best of luck.

We’re here again if you need us again. Unlike 12 step or even religion that’s like you can’t leave. You know, you have to stay in 12 step or you’ll do it. We’re like, there’s nothing wrong with you you’re not codependent. You’re amazing. We’re just here to support you through a very difficult time.

And then when you’re stable and you feel good and you feel like, Oh, I’ve got friends we’re like, yay. We love you. You’re going to do great. You’re brave, strong and incredible.

Anne: Well, thank you so much, Felicia, for sharing your story. I really appreciate it.

Felicia: Thank you so much. I can do this.

Anne: You can, thanks for helping me get the word out that you are not codependent. You’re doing great. Talk to you soon.

Felicia: Bye

If you’re wondering, “How do I know if my husband is abusive?” You’re not alone. Hearing the stories of other women can help you know what to do next. Coach Jo is a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Coach who had to ask herself that question in two different marriages.

f you relate with her experience learn about Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions here.

Women have the right to information about their partner’s sexual behaviors before choosing to be intimately involved and committed to him. A man is not giving his partner the ability to make informed consent if he withholds information about pornography use.

This is called sexual coercion and it is abusive.

An appropriate conversation would include her partner disclosing the full truth his use of pornography and other sexual behaviors prior to intimate contact.

Often, women find that they are in a relationship for several months or years with a pornography user before discovering his secret sexual behaviors.

Gaslighting, lying, and manipulation are all psychologically abusive tactics. Psychological abuse differs from emotional abuse in that it is intended to make the victim question her own reality.

Often, psychological abusers will take the stance that they “didn’t do it intentionally” or that it “wasn’t calculated.” Perhaps they didn’t intend for their partner to become so depressed from their abuse that she fantasizes about suicide every day…. or perhaps they didn’t intend for their partner to become so unsure of her reality that she truly wonders if she is insane… but they were intentionally choosing to protect their sexual acting-out behaviors by not being honest and forthright.

Every abuser is completely accountable for their every word and action. The consequences on victims can be overwhelmingly tragic and abusers must face the reality that even if it wasn’t “calculated”, it was still intentional.

Betrayed women suffer from Betrayal Trauma. Betrayal Trauma is a symptom of abuse, not addiction. Betrayal in and of itself is emotionally abusive. It creates feelings of immense anguish, rejection, terror, and grief. At BTR, we understand that it’s not “just porn”. We understand that your world is crashing down around you. We’re here for you.

Anne: I’m so excited to have coach Jo on today’s episode. She’s one of our amazing BTR coaches. All of the coaches here at BTR have been through this and are now able to live free through strategy and boundaries. I’m so passionate about only having women who have been through this on our team.

Jo facilitates Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions and also Betrayal Trauma Recovery Individual Sessions here at BTR. She’s incredible. And I’m so grateful to have her.

Anne: Coach Jo was married to two different abusers. Let’s start with the first one. Did you recognize that he was an abuser at first?

Coach Jo: I didn’t have a clear understanding of what abuse was before we were married. Then pretty quickly it became apparent that there was something wrong, and that it wasn’t safe. I didn’t have the words for that initially, but it became clear very very quickly. It started on the honeymoon.

The second night of the honeymoon he left me in the hotel room for a couple of hours. I had no idea where he had gone. This is pre cell phone. I was distraught and wondering what the heck had happened and what I had gotten myself into.

Anne: What happened after this?

Coach Jo: There were explosions at the house, a lot of angry outbursts, a lot of name calling, a lot of breaking things. I had no idea what to do. Then we went on a trip together and got lost in the middle of the night. We were circling around looking for our exit or the connecting road, this was before GPS.

He was cussing and screaming and driving like a maniac. Every time we went over an overpass, he would threaten to drive off the overpass. This went on for probably a good hour and a half. And by the time we reached our destination, I locked myself in the bathroom and couldn’t move. There was 20 years of that kind of behavior. We have five children together.

Anne: How did you describe his behavior when you didn’t know it was abuse?

Coach Jo: I told one relative and she said communicate better, try not to trigger him, walk on eggshells around him. It never even occurred to me to ask myself, is my husband abusive?

I did bring it to clergy. Of course my husband was in the room too, and the response that I got was, “Has he hit you?” And the answer was no. Then he said, “So what’s the problem?”

Anne: At BTR, we are interfaith, but also inter-paradigm. In fact we have women who work here from various different faiths, also who are agnostic. Wherever a client is, is where we meet them. Would you mind sharing what your specific faith is?

Coach Jo: I am Catholic, this was the only priest that I have encountered personally that had that kind of an attitude .

Anne: This particular priest says, what’s the problem? did you try to get help from anyone else during this time?

Coach Jo: About year six we went to couples therapy and did individual therapy.

Anne: So many women think that couple therapy was going to be the solution. So finally, if he agrees to it, they’re really excited about it and then surprised and so devastated to realize that it makes it worse.

Coach Jo: I kept thinking he doesn’t understand surely he doesn’t understand. Surely, he just doesn’t know a better way. I focused my energy on trying to fix him so couples therapy was my idea.

Anne: Did you know about pornography use with him or affairs or prostitutes or anything?

Coach Jo: Later on, I really understood what BTR talks about, sexual coercion. The idea that you are not a whole being and a whole person. That you are there for somebody else’s sexual gratification.

You have a person receiving sexual gratification from the humiliation and degradation of another person. Even if you don’t have proof positive that they’re watching porn, It will be very apparent in the way that they treat you, the way they look at and speak to other women as well. Really what it came down to was he did not have respect for me. He had no respect for women. He did sexual coercion, if I would not comply with his sexual wishes, he threatened to kill himself.

I found out he had slept with women in our church congregation, in the neighborhood and at the school. It was precarious and degrading not to know. I still didn’t know if my husband was abusive. I didn’t have words or definitions for it.

Coach Jo: I did file for divorce ultimately. Then it was a long, hard road.

Anne: Like you were saying before we recorded, your parents.

Coach Jo: They ended up siding with my first husband.

Anne: Throughout the separation and divorce, you were estranged from your mom and dad. I’m so sorry. That’s so hard.

Coach Jo: If I had to rate traumas, that’s probably not a good idea, I would say that the trauma from that probably hit 10 times worse.

Anne: I’m so sorry. That’s so hard.

Anne: You mentioned to me before we started recording that the second marriage was completely different. Really quick, before you share, at the very beginning of my marriage, I made friends with someone who had been punched.

Her husband didn’t help around the house. I think he was gone a lot of the time. I said to her, something is wrong. She said to me, “Oh, your husband is amazing. He’s so great, he comes to church, he’s always helping people out. Like, no, he’s not abusive. You don’t have to worry.”

Comparing her abuser, who was overtly abusive, in contrast to what I experienced. The gaslighting, lying, manipulation, and pornography use was so different. She couldn’t recognize it, I also couldn’t, but I knew something was very wrong. I didn’t know even to ask if my husband is abusive.

Anne: I’m not sure if that’s what’s coming when it comes to your story, but let’s start with your second marriage. So three and a half years later, you meet your second husband. Can you talk about when you first met him.

Coach Jo: , I don’t think I had my sea legs under me from the first marriage. I felt like I failed at the first marriage. There was an eagerness to get it right, to do it again, to do it better. I asked all the right questions.

I looked for all the flags, but what I didn’t understand is you don’t ask the person your questions. You ask the question and you observe the answer.

Anne: I did the same thing, I asked all the right questions. And yes, I didn’t give it enough time to observe. What I was observing was very disturbing, but I would talk to him about it and he would give me the right answers. Is that what happened to you too?

Coach Jo: Yes. It was like a test. He knew the right answers. The answers I wanted to hear. He hid who he was and what the agenda was. I didn’t find that out until after the honeymoon

Anne: So you’re experiencing sexual coercion. Again, just like you did in the first marriage in this second marriage. He’s also using pornography secretly and lying to you. But in the second one, you do find out that he’s using porn.

Coach Jo: Yeah, he had joined a men’s program for addicts/abusers.

Anne: Pornography addicts. Did he do this on his own, or were you kind of like, hey, you should try this?

Coach Jo: I did all the research. I thought, I have to make this work. I found everything. We had a couple’s therapist. Not helpful. Zero out of five stars, it was during COVID. I kept thinking that maybe something would change if I just hung on tight. I say that my first husband was abuse by fire. The second was abuse by ice. So he would withdraw and ignore your presence. He would tell you what you were feeling, but all of it, very calm, very metered, nothing to see here.

He wanted me to function in certain roles as a companion for activities to show up and be the couple. I was useful for that. But then when I wanted to take up space and be something other than the role, it wasn’t okay. I was too much. It was obvious that it was a pain if I were me instead of the role. It took me a long time to identify that my husband is abusive.

Anne: Because this wasn’t a relationship, to him it was a show or something?

Coach Jo: It was functional. There was an image. If I was upholding the image, then that was fine. If I was asking for something more, if I was asking for something relational, there was no room for that. Early one morning we were talking. It wasn’t a conflict, he was talking about how I looked or how I presented. He said he wanted to pour acid on my face and then sloughed it off as a joke, and I was horrified.

It was through a conversation with my friend who said, listen, this is a big deal and you can’t ignore this. You really need to speak with these women over at Betrayal Trauma Recovery. They can help you, BTR was a game changer for me because it gave me language. Somebody in Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions said “wife appliance”. That’s it, that’s what I am. I’m a “wife appliance.” That term really resonated with me.

Joining BTR and getting coaching was what what I needed BTR said the pornography user is responsible for their own actions. Not just the viewing of porn, but the way they treat their spouse and the other individuals in their life as a result of the pornography use. And it is not my responsibility to make it comfortable for the abuser so that they can stop their behaviors. The responsibility lies solely with the abuser and not the victim. And my husband is abusive.

Anne: How was that different than the other program? that you were in or the therapy you were going to?

Coach Jo: Sex addiction therapy does not give you the same language. It doesn’t give you the same solution. In sex addiction therapy you’re told to communicate better, to provide a safe environment. You check in and you talk about your feelings and you talk about what’s bothering you and you talk about what you need.

In couples therapy you’re supposed to communicate better. When you’re communicating with an abuser, anything you say is used against you. Any information that you give is used to maintain that power and control. So it’s very, very high risk for the spouse

Anne: The emotional abuser exploits your emotions and the things that you tell them for their own purposes. It’s never resolving something between you. He’s just excited that you’re giving him information that he can use to exploit you. So it’s extremely dangerous to be vulnerable with an emotional abuser. And my husband is abusive.

I can’t figure out why therapists haven’t figured this out yet. It’s probably because they don’t have any other tools. They just think communication is always good. Also, they don’t think of him as exploiting the emotion. They think, well, obviously when she tells him how hurt she is, that will make a difference. They don’t realize that’s not what has happened in the past, and it’s certainly not what’s going to happen in the future.

Anne: Therapists haven’t figured this out yet because abusers lie. They say they care about the relationship, about the family and about us when they don’t. They’re not going to walk right into a therapist and say, I actually don’t like my wife. As well as, I want to have sex with other people.

Coach Jo: I’m sorry, I’m laughing because I can’t picture that ever happening. At least the playing field would be level, right? That you can make an informed decision. As painful as it would be, it would give you enough information to make a decision in your best interest.

Anne: Because it’s exploitative, they have a reason to lie. If they weren’t getting something from you, maybe meals, maybe childcare, and sex. If they weren’t getting something, then they probably wouldn’t mind saying, “Hey, you know what? I’m done. I’m going to go have sex with other people.” But they need to keep their exploitative privilege intact. And that is why they’re not willing to be honest. Because they’re going to lose something if they’re honest.

Coach Jo: I think that’s a difficult thing to come to terms with, the reality of, Hey, hold on a second. None of this was in my best interest. It was difficult to see it as intentional. That’s the main difference that I found, at least on a practical boots on the ground level at Betrayal Trauma Recovery.

Coach Jo: You weren’t required to become vulnerable to your spouse in order to solve the problem. That is the beauty of BTR. It provides a space where you’re able to speak the truth of what’s happening. Without any background noise, without anybody trying to circumvent. What you see, you can duck out of the subterfuge take a minute to breathe and assess what’s happening. Its a space where I can figure out if my husband is abusive.

Coach Jo: It’s so helpful. If I could wave a magic wand. I would give women in these situations turning the volume down on the abuser’s voice. You could sit back and watch the actions, the attitudes, what’s actually happening and not what’s being said. You can actually assess if your husband is abusive. That would be a huge gift. Betrayal Trauma Recovery does provide that place to pause and assess what’s happening.

Anne: Without any interference from anyone else.

Even though it’s difficult information, it provides a place to process that’s safe. Then you can listen to other women’s stories as well and see that you’re not the only one. And look at the common threads. And it becomes easier to identify when you see it. You can view from a distance if my husband is abusive.

Anne: You found BTR in your second marriage, which helped you know If your husband is abusive. You saw the emotional and psychological abuse and sexual coercion. How would it have been different had you found BTR in your first marriage?

Coach Jo: I think it would have been a game changer. I did not understand the emotional abuse the exists and things of that nature. Even engaging in an individual session or two and just throwing out some of these behaviors and saying, Hey, hold on a second. Is this okay? Is this all right? Without my spouse there. Because up until then, all of the appointments had occurred with him in the room,

Anne: Trying to identify if your husband is abusive with your abuser in the room. That’s so unethical for the therapist doing that. They have no idea what they were doing and it’s so scary.

Coach Jo: Because you can’t say anything. Like how do you speak the truth when you know there’s going to be consequences? So they never have an opportunity to hear the truth of what’s happening.

Anne: Yeah, it’s really scary actually . None of the situation was your fault. People don’t get abuse education and even if you understand it, trying to figure out how to be safe is difficult. Can you also talk about maybe what would have been different had you known about BTR going into your second marriage.

Coach Jo: It would have been a more expanded view of what abuse looks like. And then the converse, what character looks like, what integrity looks like. It’s not what somebody says. It’s what they do. Where their eyes trail, it’s all of the things. BTR really helped me to know if my husband is abusive. Character and integrity show up in every area of somebody’s life. Just being able to bounce that off of somebody.

Coach Jo: I think BTR is the perfect place if you’re dating, maybe not in group sessions, but in individual sessions. It’s a beautiful space to talk about behaviors, attitudes, tone, habits and things like that. Where you can sort these things out with somebody else who gets it. Then take time to investigate and make an informed decision or as informed as you can. The gift of a pause and a little bit of silence makes all the difference in the world.

One of the things that made Betrayal Trauma Recovery different was the focus on the things that I had control over, like setting boundaries. Like what level of risk I wanted to take when I was talking with my husband. How to navigate day to day living and all of the details where the abuse permeates your life. It helped me to know if my husband is abusive.

Anne: Did you find any other resource you went to understood all the different ways that it permeates your life?

Coach Jo: I think that the underlying understanding was that they believed the mask. Truly, he was a good guy. He was just good. Not slick enough to recognize the mistakes he was making. BTR reframed it as well, he’s hitting the bullseye every time.

How is that an accident? How does he happen to say the thing that hurts you the most? Right after you told him that was painful? How does he happen to withhold when you’re having the worst day ever and you’ve got tears running down your face. That’s not an accident. But all the other programs looked at it like, oh it’s just goofy, doesn’t mean any of it.

Coach Jo: BTR looked at it and went, no, hold on a second. You can’t hit the mark right on that many times accidentally. It doesn’t work that way. And if you step back and look at it, it makes total sense. But you have to step back and look at it from a different angle. And it’s not my job to figure out why, but BTR helped me to say, Hey, what’s happening, what does it feel like? What does it look like? And then what do you want to do? It gave me choices.

Anne: I think one of the things that other professionals are maybe afraid of is the consequences of calling it abuse. And BTR is not afraid. We’re not pro divorce, we’re definitely pro safety, and pro safety means we’re not afraid of looking it right in the eye and calling it what it is. Whereas I think other people are like, if I say that to him, it might hurt his feelings. Or it might make him angry, or the marriage might fall apart, or this or that. And BTR is not afraid of the consequences of truth.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery wants you to figure out if your husband is abusive.

Coach Jo: The way I look at it is, who’s paying the price tag for these behaviors. Everybody’s okay with the wife paying the price tag for the behaviors, but nobody wants to put it on the perpetrator. That is a huge shift which is, hold on a second. I pay the price tags for my actions and you need to pay them for yours.

Anne: Why do you think that is? Why do you think the typical professional in this doesn’t mind having the woman pay the price tag, but they really have a hard time with the man paying it?

Coach Jo: There’s an image that’s maintained of the man being just a hapless victim of his own actions. Which is kind of insulting, quite frankly.

Anne: Insulting to him, you mean?

Coach Jo: Absolutely, but I’m looking at somebody that makes the same choice 10, 12, 20, 100 times in a row, and it’s a conscious decision. He actually has to make an effort to make these choices. He’s got free will and he’s exercising it. Why can’t we look at that and say, all right. Now, what are we going to do?

Oh, he’s a big, goofy, nice guy who doesn’t really understand what he’s doing. Give him a break. Just be nicer. Just communicate better. He’ll get it eventually that’s the prevailing paradigm.

Anne: Which only benefits him. It doesn’t benefit the victim at all.

Anne: So after you had such success and healing through BTR, you decided that you wanted to be a BTR coach. Can you talk more about why you made that decision?

Coach Jo: It’s just such a beautiful community to be a part of. Seeing women grow, become strong, Make decisions that will benefit them and their families moving forward.

I absolutely loved when I was in group. Women dream again and dreaming in myself something different for my life that may or may not include marriage. That may or may not include dating, there was a sense of freedom. To be a part of that was just so special. And also helping women through the rough times.

Sitting with them, to be a comfort and to give language where none existed before. And then maybe help them focus their hope towards a brighter future. And just seeing that happen was just so beautiful. The desire to be a part of that was overwhelming.

Anne: We’re so grateful to have you. You’re such an important part of our team.

Anne: Coach Jo had an amazing career that she could have continued. She decided to stop and do this because she wanted her career and her work life to be more fulfilling. You have all these amazing skills that you bring to the table when you coach at Betrayal Trauma Recovery.

Coach Jo: Yeah. BTR fit with everything that I have loved in my professional career with finance. So the additional training that I’ve been able to take as a BTR coach for divorce. Some in finance and with some of the legalities were right in my wheelhouse.

Then combining that with being able to walk with women. As they go through these just courageous journeys In dealing with the abuse and transforming through all of it. It’s a fulfilling culmination of putting all the skills to good use to help women.

Anne: One of the things I think is so important with abuse coaching is having someone who has experience, personal experience. All of the coaches here at BTR have been through this. They’ve all experienced this type of abuse, and then they also have the training so they know what it feels like to have their husband cheat on them.

They know what it feels like to tell people and not get help. All of our coaches here really understand it on a visceral level. But also educated, all of us at BTR have been through the harrowing adventure that is healing from betrayal trauma.

Anne: Can you talk about helping women through that as a coach? Because I think that’s another thing that perhaps influencers or therapists might give people. The impression that oh, as soon as you change this, things will go really fast for you. You’ll be fine kind of a thing.

I’m just thinking of a few influencers that I know. They have these fix your marriage workshops. They’re like six classes, each class is a half hour or so. It’s the static thing online. You check off some boxes. Like, did you tell him how you feel? Great. Box checked. Did you do this? Check. As if there’s some magic thing that can solve all these problems quickly. Or he stopped using porn. Yay. Check. It’s over with.

Coach Jo: That’s so scary

Anne: It’s so scary.

Anne: I know this is a journey. It’s hard for me to say that because I want to give women hope that safety is possible. Also to have realistic expectations. A friend was over at my house the other night and she was feeling really terrible. She’s about to file for divorce and she is just not feeling great.

I said to her, I promise you’re going to feel better in, and then I paused and I said, are you ready for me to tell you how long? I said, definitely. At least three years. It’s like the most awful thing to say to someone. But it also kind of liberates you to know I’m not weird. I’m not crazy. There’s nothing wrong with me, that it’s taking a while for me to extricate myself from this nightmare. Because it’s a nightmare.

Coach Jo: Yeah, absolutely And the idea is not that, you go through purgatory for three years and all of a sudden you’ve arrived. It is a process. It’s like a snowball rolling downhill over time. Incrementally, you’re adding on to your confidence, belief in yourself, knowledge, and skills to be out in the world. You’re building a life. That takes time. It’s a beautiful incremental step by step process and being a part of Betrayal Trauma Recovery while you’re going through that process.

Coach Jo: BTR provides language, provides support in the form of community. And other women who are going through it with you. It also provides vision. You see they’ve been here for two years and they’re finally wrapping up their divorce. That healing that has taken place along the way, you’re a witness. Even if that’s not where you’re at on your path, it does show you that a different future is possible. It’s a baby step process.

It’s beautiful as a coach to be able to have the client look in the rear view mirror and see how far they’ve come. I think that’s one of the greatest gifts of coaching. You know, you’re going through the hard stuff, but it’s also being able to remind somebody. Remember when we started out back here and look how far you’ve come.

Anne: Everybody’s path is different it doesn’t have to include divorce. Regardless of what you choose and where your path leads you, BTR can help you on that path.

Anne: If someone is listening and this is the first episode they’ve ever heard of the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast and they’re thinking, I’m not sure my husband is abusive. This sounds kind of extreme. I don’t know. Maybe I should try couple therapy first. What would you say to them?

Coach Jo: Check your gut because there’s a reason why you’re listening. Do an inner inventory. Be really honest, it’s scary at first. Then, bring in points of view from women who have gone through it. Give BTR a shot. Nobody at BTR is going to push you anywhere you don’t want to go. No Betrayal Trauma Recovery Coach is going to try and direct you somewhere . You’re going to determine your path, your pace.

Anne: I had a hard time considering it was abuse. It was emotional and psychological abuse and sexual coercion that I was dealing with. I didn’t want that to be the case because I didn’t want the consequences of it. Sometimes people wonder, if I get educated about abuse, am I going to see it where it isn’t?

That’s like saying, if you’re a hammer, everything’s a nail. Am I going to say it’s abuse if it’s not that? Women listening whose husbands are not abusive tell me, I didn’t really relate. Abuse education is just abuse education. It doesn’t create abuse when abuse doesn’t exist. As we describe these things, if you relate, that is exactly what’s happening to me. You can know if your husband is abusive. Then you can start making decisions in the light of truth.

Anne: That’s one thing we do really well here, is give women very concrete ways to improve their safety, and they can observe at a safe distance to see what the reality of their situation is, what they really couldn’t see before.

Coach Jo: The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop is excellent at defining what boundaries are, what they look like, and a practical map for how to use them. One of the most important ideas that I did not grasp during the first marriage or the second marriage was that you can’t be perfect enough to stop abuse.

So spinning your wheels, trying to get everything right, keep all the plates spinning. Do it with a smile on your face, don’t react or be harsh. Communicate things that make him feel good about himself or whatever the paradigm is. Can’t do it right enough to fix whatever’s happening with him. You can’t stop his abuse by being more perfect. Identifying that my husband was abusive was just the first step.

Anne: Or even by getting them in the right program. There’s lots of things that would apply there.

Coach Jo: Yeah, say it right, do it right, find the right instructor, the right video.

Anne: Find the right video, therapist, this, or that. It’s crazy, all the things.

Coach Jo: Have my cousin’s husband talk to him, maybe that’ll fix it.

Anne: Exactly.

Coach Jo: The proof is in the pudding. He’s been doing this for years, and people know right and wrong. I think that’s the hardest thing to come to grips with is that this is a conscious decision. Watching what’s happening and looking at that in reality and saying, Hey, hold on a second.

Coach Jo: This is a conscious decision, and so in turn I have to start making conscious decisions. About my emotional safety, the safety of my family, what does safety look like in my context? The beauty of Betrayal Trauma Recovery is that we’ll walk alongside as you figure it out. Sometimes the spouses do come alongside. So what you were saying before, it doesn’t always end in divorce. A spouse can choose to come alongside and walk that new path.

Anne: Yeah, we have no idea what’s going to happen. I wish we did. I wish there were some guarantees. That’s what we all wanted when we started this journey. It was just something to let us know that we would be okay. And the good news is there’s a way to be okay. There’s a way to heal and away to live a life of peace. There’s a way to thrive. We don’t know exactly how you’re going to apply the principles of safety, but we do know what those principles of safety are.

And that is why I think other programs are dangerous. They assume that if you just educate him a little bit better that he’ll be able to do the right thing, which doesn’t make sense because he knows how to do the right thing. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to even act like he knew how to do the right thing. If he didn’t know what the right thing was. At BTR we help you identify if your husband is abusive.

Anne: Coach Jo is available to do Betrayal Trauma Recovery Individual Sessions with clients. She also runs several of our group sessions. Attending Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions is a great way to get to know all the coaches. And see which one you jive with, and then do an individual session from there. Our coaches are all incredible. They’re all so knowledgeable. And the most important thing, they’ve all been through it. They all totally understand what you’re going through.

Anne: You’re amazing coach Jo. I love having you on the BTR team. And I’m so glad that we got to talk today on the podcast so the listeners get to know you better. Thank you so much.

Coach Jo: Absolutely, Anne. I appreciate being on the team with you. It’s such a joy.

Emotional abuse survivors overwhelmingly report that hearing other emotional abuse survivor stories helped them get to emotional safety.

If you’re experiencing your husband’s emotional abuse, check out our daily, online support group for women. We’d love to see you in a Session TODAY.

Anne: Today’s episode is a montage of stories from emotional abuse survivors.

I’m also super humbled as I listened to these stories of the impact that BTR has had on women. Throughout the world then helping them recognize their abusive situations. Helping them know how loved and how cared for they are, and how much they deserve psychological and emotional peace and safety.

I honor all the women who listen to this podcast who are searching for answers. Who are genuinely trying to save their families. Not knowing what to do and getting harmful information from therapists, internet articles or clergy. Including resources that haven’t helped them understand the abuse.

I want to thank everyone for listening. Above all I hope that BTR is helpful. The thought of any woman being in an abusive situation and not understanding what it is, is heartbreaking to me. Also, a thank you to all of you who have shared our material on social media or shared it with friends. In an effort to educate more women. So with that, here are their stories.

I have been in therapy for 12 years. Only now have I felt that I have the expert care and clarity that I have been searching for. You and this whole group are what I call, proactive. Where before it was just wishy washy, hit or miss, psycho-babble type of therapy. This group is exactly what women need, and I cannot thank you enough.

This group is new to me. I have been in not a good place for about three years. This is the first time that I have had other people share their stories. Where I felt so validated. I could totally relate. This isn’t just me. I’m not going crazy. I can stand my ground and create boundaries to keep myself safe. To keep my kids safe. I have multiple daily options to check in, check out, share, not share, listen. The isolation that I felt before is starting to dissipate.

I arrived at BTR in full blown trauma. Never having known what he was doing for years, and prior to we were married. Thank God that this is the place that I found. Because there was love and nurturing and education. All of the coaches are friends to walk with me and support me and I will forever be grateful.

I had been in therapy for a while, years, and at least a year with Chuck before I found Betrayal Trauma Recovery. There were no breakthroughs or anything. It was just the same cycle. Now that I know what it is, it was the same cycle of abuse. Happening over and over and over again with no real solution.

When I found BTR, I I honestly was trying to find reasons in my head as to why the group wouldn’t be good for me. Because I knew it was gonna change everything about my life. It did because I joined the group right before I initially separated from Chuck. So having BTR during that time of separation got me through. And then helped me make the decision to separate permanently and just not want to be with him anymore.

I wouldn’t be here and be growing the way that I am without BTR.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group has been very important for me through this journey. I can just very succinctly say that it has saved my life. Chiefly I would say just simply that. Without BTR I wouldn’t be here.

For years we’d have fights. I would go to the internet to find out how I could be better. So that we could stop having fights, I would always search.

And article after article was never right. I just knew. And finally one day I stumbled upon the BTR podcast and I don’t really like listening to them. I like to read them so I’m thankful for the transcript. I finally knew that what I was reading was right. When I had a name for what was going on in my marriage. I could finally start to work to fix it and fixing it has meant not what I thought it would. It has saved my life too.

So without BTR, I wouldn’t have a name for what I experienced and I wouldn’t have the healing.

I didn’t ever think that I would be In the position that I’m in, I was with my ex fiancé from the age of 13 for 20 years. He was living a double life. I found BTR when I was staying in hotels.

I had nowhere else to go and I booked a one on one with a coach. And I haven’t looked back. I have learned so much every single day that I hop on group. I see women that I am inspired by and women who are ahead of me in the journey. Women who are following me on the journey. We’re all on different journeys, but somehow the connection that we have and the love that we share is really real.

So thank you so much. I don’t know what I would have done without BTR for the last 12 months.

I found BTR to be really helpful. In fact Betrayal Trauma Group Sessions are really helpful at connecting with other people going through this. Not feeling alone. Recognizing that there are lots of actually super capable, strong, determined, people experiencing abuse at different stages along the way.

I found the Group Sessions to be really helpful. Also he podcast is really nice just to listen to and understand broader patterns and trends. I wish people didn’t have to find this on their own, I’m really glad BTR exists.

Discovery was in 2011, of sex addiction. There’s just no support out there for women, other than the groups that are available in that realm.

And my therapist of many years never mentioned the word abuse. I felt like I was duped, I started attending BTR Group Sessions. I learned so much from the coaches, I was terrified with a learning disability. And think I could never do this. I could never, ever, ever be free from a covert narcissist.

As I’m going through all this, the post separation abuse was just heinous. And since then, with the help of BTR through this process and as I am safe. In my new place, I’m now starting to process it even more. Because I had been so busy going through all the process of divorce and everything else.

And due to all the coaches and the love and support. They have allowed me to have such great strength. I’m realizing I am worth it. I am enough. BTR is a lifesaver and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You helped save my life and I am now free and I am now safe.

I feel like attending BTR.ORG Group Sessions helped me create some routine in my life. Additionally something I can do every single day.

It has just created some routine and structure and support in a life that I currently have. Which is very chaotic and unpredictable and challenging. And I genuinely feel like I like meeting with all the coaches because they have different perspectives. Each coach, has a different vibe.

That’s really helpful. That’s been great. I’ve only been doing this a couple months, but I’m really happy. I don’t think I’m going to stop anytime soon. It’s a really beautiful community of women who’ve been doing it for a long time. It’s really cool to see those connections and to be building them.

I’ve been through this for over 30 years of dealing with this in my life. I’ve been in BTR for five months. My life has changed more in the last five months than all of those years that I went through. I so appreciate all of the coaches just the clarity has helped me through a lot of individual sessions, group sessions.

I really appreciate that everyone has something different. Similarly all the shares help you understand other ways to do self care and stay safe. I really appreciate BTR. I can’t say enough about it. It’s changed my life.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery was literally an answer to prayer for me. After disclosure, I really didn’t know what to think about my situation.

After almost 30 years being with my husband, I felt like I was brainwashed. Also I didn’t know what to do. I prayed and I did a Google search and I found the podcast and it literally changed my life.

After a year, I feel so much more empowered and connected and validated. I have so much clarity on the trauma that I had been going through. Everything just started to make sense.

I’m a completely different person than I was a year ago. I just love this group.

BTR Group Sessions and Individual Sessions. They have all been an amazing space for me to be able to find safety, encouragement, and support. BTR has helped me and continues to help me as I’m still in this process. To be reminded that I’m not crazy and that I can watch for the signs. I can check in with myself and check in with my body.

I’m grateful to have this community. It’s been really important to help me be able to recover. And I look forward to recovering more.

Well, I found BTR.ORG through Instagram. Anne would post reels and I realized they were about me. They helped me so much. So I started attending BTR Group Sessions. It was like finally having the place where everything in my life that didn’t make sense made sense. Because there could be words put to it. I wasn’t alone and to be able to literally put the voices from group in my, in my ears. And be able to hear that as things are happening in my life.

It’s just been life changing. It’s been a great support.

Setting Boundaries When You Are An Emotional Abuse Survivor

Anne created The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop for emotional abuse survivors to understand and implement boundaries, check it out today.

Is it possible to heal from emotional abuse and betrayal trauma? Everyday, brave women resist in a variety of ways. Penny shares her story of how she resisted abuse and finally was able to heal from emotional abuse.

Attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session today to share your story with other women who have endured the same type of emotional and psychological abuse and begin healing from emotional abuse TODAY.

Anne: I have Penny Lane on today’s episode. She’s a writer, wife, and mother with an insatiable passion for life and books. Originally from Queens, she loves being outdoors. Cycling, hiking, traveling, and connecting to and inspiring people.

She has a master’s degree in industrial and organizational psychology from Golden State University. And in her spare time, she helps underserved youth learn to read, apply to college and find jobs.

Anne: Her book, Redeemed, A Memoir of a Stolen Childhood, she recounts how she was pressured into marriage and endured years of forced confessions, Salem style accusations, secretive disciplinary actions, and excommunication. Penny finally reached her breaking point, and we’re going to talk about her story today. Welcome, Penny.

Penny: Thank you for having me.

Anne: Why do you feel it’s important for you to speak out about your abuse and write this memoir?

Penny: For one, I feel compelled to write it. Because I met a lot of people who have childhood trauma of different sorts and they tend to be ashamed of it. And the opposite is actually true. When we talk about it is when we begin to heal from emotional abuse, find relief, solace and community.

I think it is important to write my story to remove some of the stigma involved with abuse or trauma. It will help others heal from emotional abuse as well.

Anne: You were coerced into marrying your husband. Can you talk about the abuse that led to that and then also the abuse that you experienced from him?

Penny: I was a 16 year old runaway when I met my husband. He was my boss. I worked at an IHOP as a waitress and he quickly saw that I was a very hard worker. He promoted me and then took me out on dates . Because I was a runaway, you know, it was basically living with a family and paying rent. I had no time to heal from emotional abuse from my upbringing.

Pretty soon he said, why don’t you move in with me? Then I was working for him and living with him. I didn’t have any friends. I didn’t have any family because I was a runaway. He started asking me to work more hours. At first I said yes, because he paid me a little bit extra and I made a lot of money waitressing. It was great.

But then he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Let’s say I worked three double shifts in a row. Even though I was 16, it’s exhausting to be on your feet in a very fast moving restaurant for 12 hours, 14 hours a day. I tried to say, no. I’m too tired. Get someone else. And he’d say, this wasn’t a question. You need to get to work. Be there in five minutes or I’m coming to pick you up in five minutes.

Anne: How old was he?

Penny: He was six years older than me. He was 23, he left college, and was a restaurant manager for four or five years before I met him. So he was managing a staff of 30 or 40 people in a very busy, high revenue restaurant in a busy location.

And he was domineering. A little while after we started dating, he started disappearing and I didn’t know where he was. The girls I worked with said, Oh, he’s got another girlfriend, blah, blah, blah. You know, I didn’t think that was true. Half of you doesn’t believe and half of you does.

Penny: So one time I went along with him to where he was going, because he said he was going to church. I thought, this guy gambles, drinks, curses and I didn’t think he was a very honest guy. And I didn’t think he would possibly be going to church. So I went along with him.

And he had indeed gone to church. He went to a very fundamentalist, Bible believing, evangelical type church. This was in the 70’s, and it was quite emotionally wrought. The services were long and drawn out. At the end of the service, there was a call to walk the aisle, to accept Jesus as your personal savior.

I wanted nothing to do with that. I thought it was totally weird. Besides, I had just run away from home. I didn’t want to belong to something else. I wanted to be free.

Anne: Were you raised religious at all?

Penny: No, I was born Catholic and communion at 12, under duress. I didn’t know anything. We didn’t really do anything. else.

Penny: So, long story short, once I went to the church, he would ask me each time he went. He went Wednesdays, Thursdays and twice on Sundays. He would just wait for me at the restaurant and say, okay, we’re going to church. I’d get in the car with him and we’d go. I wasn’t really given a choice .

I went two, three weeks of this, going three or four times a week. People started pressuring me to accept Jesus and the story is very compelling. I’m sure you and your readers know this. It’s don’t you want to be loved forever? Yes, of course. Who doesn’t? Don’t you want to have a forever family?

Don’t you want to have God’s love? Well, the answer to all of that is yes. I didn’t feel loved. Don’t you want to belong? Of course. I didn’t belong anywhere. Didn’t belong in my family. I didn’t have a family at the moment. So eventually I gave in to the emotional pressure of accepting Jesus and I walked the aisle

Anne: At the time, did you feel like you were doing it of your own free will or at the time were you like, I don’t really want to do this, but in order to stay in his good graces, I have to do this. Can you talk about a bit of your thought process at the time?

Penny: At the time I thought I was doing it for my own free will. But look, I was 17. And I was a runaway, working for this man, living with this man. I thought that he loved me. I loved him and this is what he’s doing with his life. In hindsight, I don’t know if it was really free will or if it was emotional manipulation and pressure.

Because I knew that if I didn’t do this, I would have to walk away from the whole package. Leave him, my job, my living arrangement. And remember I was 17 and I didn’t know how to negotiate in the world. I didn’t know how to find an apartment or find a new job.

Anne: This is also your first experience with religion.

Penny: Yes, and he is my second boyfriend. I had a boyfriend while I was going through high school and I broke up with him because he wasn’t ambitious enough. Then I started working at the IHOP and I met this man. Though here’s the interesting thing that happened. It was a bait and switch.

Penny: At first it was all lovey dovey and Jesus loves you and you’re part of this forever family. But pretty soon the pastor’s wife and the other women in the church pulled me aside. And said, you can’t dress like that here. And again, I was 17. It was the seventies. We wore blue jeans, platform sandals, high heels, lots of makeup, long shaggy hair, and tight clothes.

That’s what we wore, and that’s all I had. And all of a sudden, I couldn’t dress that way anymore. I had to wear skirts and I couldn’t wear makeup or wear less makeup.

Anne: Only at church or all the time?

Penny: Well, they talked to me about it at church. I really kind of didn’t have any other life. I worked in the restaurant, and I had a uniform. Then I went to church. We didn’t really do anything else. Because previously his life was drinking and going out to eat and drinking. We didn’t do that anymore because he stopped drinking and he stopped smoking.

He didn’t pressure me outside of church, but at church I was required. And I kept arguing with the pastor and saying, you guys didn’t tell me this. Like, I don’t want to change. I like this and I liked that. It was a lot. And let’s fast forward three or four months. The pastor said, I want to meet with you guys on Friday night at my house.

And so of course I was told I was off work and went to the pastor’s house and the pastor made me wait in the living room. He took my boyfriend into his study and they were gone about 10 minutes, maybe more. When he came out, my boyfriend looked very troubled.

Penny: He looked preoccupied. And he said, Penny, will you marry me? We’re living in sin and I can’t live in sin anymore. So will you marry me?

He had talked to me about that before. My boyfriend had said to me like three or four visits after I got saved. He said, you know, we’re living in sin, right? I really didn’t know what he meant because I didn’t really have a concept of sin or hell or heaven, even though they talked about it at the church.

I wasn’t absorbing it. Like my little 17 year old brain was looking at people and looking at clothes and looking at the guitar player and looking at the piano. I wasn’t able to comprehend that. So it meant nothing to me. And I didn’t feel guilty. Like, I hadn’t been a, what I would call a terrible sinner, right?

I know now, because I’ve read the Bible, that like any sin, even jealousy is sin. At the time, I didn’t even think sleeping with your boyfriend was sin. I kind of knew it was wrong, but I didn’t equate it to sin. I didn’t feel any guilt in my heart whatsoever. However, unbeknownst to me, because he didn’t tell me yet, that my boyfriend did.

He had been stealing from his boss, he had gambled, he had drank and he had lots of sex. He felt very guilty. And so he really absorbed this Christian thing and became all in from the minute he got saved. He immediately quit drinking and quit smoking cold turkey. And that wasn’t the case for me. So then we have this meeting with the pastor.

Penny: He comes out and he says, will you marry me? Nobody twisted my arm physically, but again, I knew in that moment that if I didn’t say yes, I was out. I was out of a place to live, a job and out of the church.

I thought I loved him at the time and I didn’t see a lot of dangerous signals yet. Again, I’m 17. The big thing was he didn’t beat me. So I assumed I was safe. We got engaged and we started planning a wedding. The church was very, very heavily involved. Very heavily, from the get go. I did end up finding another apartment and moving out.

So I didn’t live with him anymore after that. The church would talk to us about things like birth control. And again, I’m 17, and I’m thinking, Are you kidding me? If we can’t use birth control, I could have a baby a year for the next 20 years. I said, this is ridiculous. I was pushing back and I was pushing back so much that the pastor said to me, you have a rebellious spirit. We need to send you to Bible school.

Anne: I’ve heard this before. You have a rebellious spirit thing,

Penny: So they sent me away to Bible school, literally. And you know what? I didn’t mind going because the pastor was overbearing and my then fiance, became overbearing. Because the way he looked at the world was different than the way I look at the world now.

He looked at the world like the pastor said, therefore you need to do it. No free will. No your own relationship with God, even though that’s what they preach. He became like my spiritual director and enforcer. So I had to do whatever the pastor said. Whether I wanted to or not, whether I was ready to or not.

And the pastor made me do some really strange things that I did not want to do. But again, under pressure from my boyfriend, here’s an example. The Bible says, children obey your parents. Well, that’s great when you’re living with your parents, maybe, but what happens if your parents beat you? So the pastor made me go back to my stepmother and ask her forgiveness for running away. Now I still had no opportunity to heal from emotional abuse from childhood.

Anne: Even though you ran away because your stepmother was beating you.

Penny: Beating me, mean to me, calling me names, withholding food. I was humiliated. And again I knew, if I don’t do this I have to walk away. So I did it. He even said, if she wants, you need to move back home. And I thought, you’ve got to be kidding me. I have been gone a year and a half. I have my own apartment, job and bank account. I’m engaged. Are you kidding? Nope.

They weren’t kidding. So luckily, my stepmother said, no, I don’t have to move back that I would disrupt the family. I had a little sister and I’ve hurt my sister by running away. I wasn’t able heal from emotional abuse from childhood yet. So luckily I didn’t have to do it, but that’s the kind of thing I mean about domineering and overbearing and making me do things.

Now, as a middle aged woman, I look back and say. Why didn’t that tell me right then and there? Who’s going to be in charge of the relationship? That whatever my husband will say will be right. Not whatever I feel in my heart is right, but I didn’t see that. So I go away to Bible college for a year and it’s a wonderful, wonderful experience.

Penny: During this time, things change at the IHOP. My husband quits and opens up a restaurant. The restaurant ends up failing. Now he’s out of a job and he’s out of money. He gets another job at IHOP, but it’s in Maryland. I’m thrilled to move away from this overbearing pastor. I finished Bible college. We get married after Bible college by that same pastor and immediately move away.

Anne: Really quickly, how did you like Bible college?

Penny: I loved it, and the reason I loved it is because it was in a beautiful, beautiful setting in upstate New York. I lived in an all girls dorm. I’ve never had friendships with girls my age before because I wasn’t allowed to.

Anne: You have this good experience where you’re safe, you’re housed, have food. You’re getting an education, even though it’s something you didn’t expect.

Penny: The college is a lot less focused on rules. I mean, there are rules. For instance at Bible colleges, Christian colleges in that time, I don’t know how it is today. You couldn’t wear pants. Even though it was winter, we wore long wool skirts over boots. It gets really cold in upstate.

We had long coats. And there’s rules like that, but you can live with that, right? Because of the rest of it. You’re having a great time, studying and you’re going on little field trips. In the summer, you’re a camp counselor at a Christian camp. So it’s fun. It’s fun to be around other girls my age, something I’ve never had before.

I graduate, we get married, we move away, I’m a New Yorker so I dress up. I’m back to wearing jeans and high heels and makeup and pretty dresses. I’m myself.

Penny: We live in Maryland for about three years, and it’s rocky. It’s not an easy marriage because he’s domineering. Everything is his way. I feel lost but I don’t know what to do because the church teaches that divorce is sin. And further they teach that if you deliberately do something that you know is sin, like divorce. You may not even be a Christian at all, which is scary, right?

Because if you’re a Christian, which I thought I was at the time, then you’re afraid of hell. You’re afraid of displeasing God. It’s a mind game. They differentiate between accidental sin, like, Oh, I fell into temptation. I committed adultery. That would be accidental sin.

Anne: Which is not accidental at all. That is 100 percent on purpose. Your penis just doesn’t fly out of your pants.

Penny: Right. But that’s what they teach. And I’m sure you’ve heard that before.

Anne: Oh, 100%. And then what? You just trip and then you accidentally have sex with, no! It’s misogynistic because it always benefits the man. The man, it’s always accidental. But women, it’s always on purpose.

Penny: Right.

Penny: At some point, We meet up with this guy who runs a Bible study in his home. He’s in Bible college in Maryland. My then husband is an acolyte of this pastor, right?

Anne: What does acolyte mean in that context?

Penny: He loves this pastor and is a follower of this pastor. He thinks he’s the greatest. This pastor finally graduates from Bible college and he tries to get ordained. And he’s having a very hard time getting ordained. Which should have been a red flag, but it wasn’t.

Finally, this pastor finds a sect that will ordain him. He gets assigned to some rural church in the middle of very rural Michigan in a town of 200. A church that’s been around like a hundred years. It’s a handful of old ladies that are just keeping this church alive. The pastor moves away and my husband misses him so much. He arranges a trip to visit this pastor. I think, great, it’s just a one week trip.

We drive to Michigan from Maryland. We go to visit and I’m out of my element. I’ve never been in a place so rural. before. The church is weird and it’s small and I’m uncomfortable. I grew up in a city and these people are people that have never left their hometown. They’ve maybe never left the state. They’re just different. Nothing wrong with them, just different from me. So we go back to Maryland.

Penny: I go back to work and I’m happy. I’m focused on being a good wife. I don’t think about church. We’re visiting different churches every weekend. All of a sudden the pastor who lives in Michigan, his wife calls and says, Hey Penny, I found you guys an apartment.

I said, what? She said, Oh yeah, your husband told me to look for an apartment for you guys, that you guys are moving. He hadn’t asked me and he hadn’t told me. So I’m very upset because I did not want to move. I knew that place would kill me. I knew it was too weird for me I didn’t want to move, but he’s making plans.

He said, listen, I’m moving. So you need to get your head around this. I’ve given my notice to my boss. We’re moving in two months and I don’t know what to do.

Penny: And I remember talking to his, brother’s wife. So my sister-in-law, and she’s also born again, Christian, but she lives in New Jersey and she’s an independent woman. Back then I would have called myself a weak person, because I had no freedom as a child.

I hadn’t healed from my childhood trauma. So healing from emotional abuse seemed daunting. I was scared and timid, and had never lived on my own. My sister-in-law, on the other hand, was a strong woman. She went into her marriage as a strong woman. She was already a Christian when she met my brother-in-law, and she kind of called the shots for her life.

When she got married, for example, she said, I don’t want children. In the evangelical church, that’s huge. That’s a big no no. Because that’s your job as a woman, to be a good mother and keep house. So, I trusted her. I called her up and said, what do I do? I don’t remember exactly what she said. But she somehow, in a way that I can’t even remember, talked me into it. By saying, look, he’s your husband.

This is part of God’s plan. You think you won’t like it, but God’s plan is always wonderful. And you’re probably going to like it once you get there. So I think you should go. That sort of thing. She didn’t pressure me. She didn’t threaten or ultimatum. There was no hell, nothing like that, but somehow she made it okay. I don’t remember how, probably cause I was traumatized.

Penny: So we moved and uprooted everything we knew. And it was very weird. I was very young. We got married when I was 18, three years later, I’m 21. And we moved to this place where everybody is at least 10 years older than me.

And they had never been to college. The women never worked outside the home. They got married to their childhood sweethearts at 17, 18 or 19. And now they had a bunch of kids. And the area was very depressed. People didn’t have a lot of money, they literally stretched a giant jar of peanut butter week to week.

It was very dependent on the auto industry, so people were needy. People were very committed to the church, because really that’s all they had. I think I’m judging here. I’m making a judgment. Whereas I always looked at things wide open. Like why aren’t we going anywhere on weekends? We lived an hour and a half from Ann Arbor and two hours from Detroit. But nobody ever went to see museums, art or theater. Nothing. I didn’t fit in.

Penny: And I started questioning things again. I didn’t like what was being taught. They were teaching some really weird stuff. The church becomes your authority and you have to ask the church’s permission before you do anything. Like buy a house, go on vacation or to have another baby.

I was trying to have a baby at the time. And instead of encouraging me to have a baby. They were having me babysit people’s children while they went away for a few days. Kind of to teach me how hard it was to have a baby.

Anne: But like, didn’t they ultimately want you to be a parent?

Penny: It’s hard to say now, yes and no. But I had been trying for three years and I was not getting pregnant.

Anne: Oh, maybe they’re trying to “make you feel better”.

Penny: Or here’s the thing, like in the church, everybody has a gift. And wouldn’t it be convenient if I had the gift of serving and I don’t have my own children to take care of? Because then I could serve the church a lot. I could serve other people in the church.

Anne: Be people’s free babysitter.

Penny: Right.

Penny: Some people I get along with in the church and some people I don’t. And we typically had somebody over for Sunday dinner, or they had us over. We were supposed to fellowship and meet with people and have coffee with them. We weren’t supposed to have relationships with anybody outside the church.

So none of us had friends outside the church, unless of course you had family there, which we didn’t. It ended up that you only spent time with people in the church. I was not happy, but I was doing my thing. I was doing all the reading the Bible, going to prayer, fellowshipping with the women, helping out in the church and that kind of stuff.

Penny: And at some point, a cousin of mine was getting married on the East Coast and I had asked to go.

Anne: You asked the church to go?

Penny: I asked my husband to go and my husband went and asked the church, went and asked the pastor.

Anne: Wow, that’s intense, ok.

Penny: Yeah. The pastors came over and met with the pastor and the elder came over and met with me and they said, Penny, why do you want to go to this church on the East Coast?

You know, I didn’t tell them the real reason. It’s boring as heck here. But I just said, My cousins, it’s fun, I haven’t been away, haven’t been back. I haven’t seen them and I want to go.

Anne: Wait, why do you want to go to this church? You’re just going for like one day, right? For the wedding. You’re not like becoming a member of this other church, right?

Penny: Oh, it wasn’t even at a church. It was just a wedding, a cousin’s wedding somewhere on the East coast. Right.

Anne: Wow. Why do you want to go to this wedding? Okay.

Penny: What they said was you pray about it. If the Lord tells you to go, that’s fine with us. Well, of course I didn’t hear voices and I didn’t hear a yay or nay. And so I decided, well, I didn’t hear no. So let’s go. So we. Packed up the car, we drove, it’s, you know, eight hour drive or something back to the east coast from Michigan.

Penny: We get there, we’re there for the whole weekend. We stay with cousins or grandmother, I can’t remember. And we had a great time. But as soon as we start driving, getting close to Michigan again, I start feeling this uneasy feeling in my stomach. Like, Oh, I wonder if I’m going to get in trouble for this. Sure enough, there’s a knock on the door.

The day after we get back, the pastor and the elder come and they say, Penny, tell us about your trip. I look over at my husband and he’s looking at the floor. I’m like, well, we went, we had a great time. We danced, we socialized and they say, we don’t believe you. Like, what do you mean? You don’t believe me.

He said, we don’t believe you had a good time. I said, I had a really good time. And he said, are you sure you didn’t just try to have a good time? I said, no. And they said, we think you’re lying. We think God told you not to go. So we think you’re lying about going and having fun.

Penny: So we’re going to excommunicate you. We’re going to discipline you is the word they use.

Anne: Did they think you went somewhere else?

Penny: No.

Anne: So this is just like a huge manipulation thing. They know you actually went.

Penny: My husband went with me and my husband’s in the room. Yeah.

Anne: And he doesn’t stand up for you?

Penny: Nope

Anne: Or defend you?

Penny: Nope

Anne: or anything.

Penny: As a matter of fact, he must’ve called the elders behind my back. To say, We’re back.

Anne: He was abusive. We know he was abusive, even though you didn’t know it at the time, right? He’s emotionally abusive, psychologically abusive. What do you think was his abusive reason for calling the elders on you and getting you excommunicated?

Penny: I think he thought that it was his job to keep me holy and keep me righteous. Therefore, anything that the pastor thought was wrong?

Anne: But you hadn’t done anything wrong.

Penny: That’s correct.

Anne: He was just trying to put you down. I’m just trying to think of his abusive reason. He goes to this wedding with you and he sees you happy and dancing. He sees, Oh my word, she could notice that I’m abusing her and that she’s so exploited and sad. I don’t want her to recognize when she’s happy. I’m going to try and shut this down. Maybe something like that. We don’t know.

I so wish I could have given you The Living Free Workshop at this point in your life, I made it so women could recognize when someone is manipulating them and help them get to safety.

Penny: Possible. So the elder says, you’re on discipline, we’re disciplining you. Discipline means you don’t talk to anybody in the church. You don’t call them, say hi to them on the street, meet with them or come to services. You’re excommunicated. You stay home or you stay away from anybody in the church and we’ll get back to you when we think you’re repentant.

So here I am, we have a tiny, tiny apartment, it’s a studio apartment and I’m an outgoing person. I’m an extrovert, and I’m left on my own. My husband leaves for work in the morning, and you can clean the whole apartment in half an hour. I wash the dishes, do the laundry, and do the shopping. I mow the lawn, and do all the stuff.

Luckily I love to read. So I go to the library, but I’m heartbroken. I’m crestfallen and depressed. I stay in bed most of the day. Because this has happened to me and I don’t know how it happened.

I didn’t lie, I didn’t know how to change it. So I’m powerless and stuck. Again, I don’t even think of leaving at this point, right? Because now I’m three years into a marriage, into the church. I’m a good Christian and believe what I’m taught. I believe the Bible but yet, God’s not helping me

Anne: And you’re exactly where they want you.

Penny: I’m depressed and I’m not eating and I’m not sleeping. Again I call my sister-in-law or my sister-in-law calls me. She must have heard about it and she calls me. And she says, Oh Penny, you know, we’re all in sin one way or the other we’re all in sin.

Penny: So just confess to the elders that you lied and get it over with and they’ll take you back. It’ll be fine And so I say to myself, Oh my God, I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. That’s what I’m going to do. So I do it. I tell my husband, I’m ready to confess. He goes and tells the elders. A couple of days later, the elders come back to me and they come to the house and they’re all smiling with these fake smiles.

Cause there’s a verse in the Bible that says that there’s more joy in heaven over the one son who comes back to the faith and the hundred non believers that convert. I don’t remember the exact verse, but it’s something like that. So they say, we forgive you. And we’re so happy. This is midweek so stay away from the church . And We’ll invite you back to the church at the Sunday service.

Penny: And what I didn’t know, which they didn’t tell me at the time, was that when they invited me back to the Sunday service, I basically sat outside until the elders brought me in.

And then they said, congregation, we have something to tell you. We have something to rejoice in. Our sister Penny has repented of her sins and she’s been in sin for a month. Thank God, praise God. She’s repented. She’s come back to us and the Bible tells us to welcome her with open arms.

Well, a couple of people in the church stood up, a husband and wife team that were kind of newish to the church. They’d been there maybe a couple months. They got up and they said, this is wrong. And they got up and they walked out.

Anne: Were they like, we don’t want her back? So that’s why they left?

Penny: No, I think that they were upset that this happened to me.

Anne: Oh, okay. So they were on your side. Good for them.

Penny: Everybody else in the church was dead silent. Nobody said a word and everybody’s staring at me. I had no idea this was going to happen.

In those days we sat in a circle, so a great big circle. Imagine we were in like a a ballroom. We were renting an old, old, old hotel in this town, a big giant ballroom. We’re all sitting in a circle all facing each other and everybody’s staring at me aghast. He doesn’t tell them what the sin is.

Penny: So you can imagine people are thinking, was it adultery? Was it child abuse? Does she need to heal from emotional abuse? Was it theft? Is she a gambler? Is she a drinker? Does she take drugs? Nobody knew, right?

Anne: I just want to pause here for a second to point out why this is happening, not necessarily to you in particular, but just in general. It’s psychological abuse to try and force someone to think that something happened when it didn’t. And then they also want to ruin someone’s reputation. It’s so hard to heal from emotional abuse when you can’t get the right help.

So they could be like, okay, the sin was you jaywalked, but we’re not going to tell people that . And we’re just going to leave it up to everybody’s imagination in order to ruin your reputation and harm you. Wow.

Penny: it was really horrific.

Penny: And then here’s the other thing that happens to me as a person. On the inside because I didn’t do anything wrong to begin with, and they told me I did. From that moment on I walked on eggshells every minute of every day. I could never relax because I never knew if I was doing something wrong.

And I didn’t know if I was lying because if somebody said to me, how are you doing today, Penny? But really I was nervous in my stomach, but I didn’t want to say that. Then I would run back to that person and say, I’m okay, but I’m nervous in my stomach and I didn’t want to lie to you. I was constantly going back to everybody and correcting myself. I looked like a fool. Now people don’t know if they trust me.

Anne: I want to point out, this is what an abuser would do to undermine your confidence to exploit you more or control you more. It is a purposeful tactic that someone would do to stop them from healing from emotional abuse.

Penny: I did not know that at the time.

Anne: Right. I’m just pointing that out to my listeners. So that if they’re like, Oh, this is happening to me right now. It is a purposeful thing to undermine someone’s confidence so they can’t heal from emotional abuse.

Penny: this went on for another couple of years, living in fear and turmoil and insecurity. Something else happened and I was accused and disciplined again, for a very long time, for a year. I was really broken as a person, suicidal, very broken. And when it came time, the elders decided enough.

Penny: They said, you either leave or you confess. I decided to leave and that meant leaving the church. I left my husband and I left the state. Clearly I was a completely broken person. I was 31 by that point. And I basically had to start life all over again. Meaning I didn’t have a job, money, degree or career. I was scared of everybody, I thought my life was over at 31. Nobody would love me and I would just be a street beggar and maybe a waitress.

But that’s not what happened. Because once I was free I became a full human being . It’s been a powerful, powerful thing. Once I began to heal from emotional abuse, I became a highly successful and highly paid salesperson. I have a master’s degree and undergrad degree, am highly respected and retired early. I adopted a son, have a wonderful husband and home. It took a lot of work and it’s still work.

Anne: If you could go back to that 17 year old that you were and talk to yourself when you’re working at that IHOP. What would you say to yourself?

Penny: I would say don’t do it. There are many people in the world. He’s not the only one. This isn’t your only job in the world. There’s many jobs in the world. You don’t need them. You’re stronger, you’re wiser, you’re smarter. You can do it on your own.

Anne: That’s what I want to share with our listeners is I don’t know where your journey to psychological and emotional safety will take you. It’s so different for every single person. But the important thing is that you are brave and you are strong and you can do it. The abusers want you to think that you can’t heal from emotional abuse.

They want you to think you’re dependent on them. They want you to think that you’re not smart or incapable. And that is not true. You are brave and strong. You are capable. When you heal from emotional abuse, you can do anything. So Penny, thank you for your story, and wish you well as you heal after emotional abuse. I appreciate you coming on today’s episode.

Penny: It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.