If you’ve discovered your husband’s lies or infidelity, will marriage counseling help? What you need to know about the best marriage counseling near me for couples.

Did you know that most couples who are seeking counseling are dealing with emotional abuse? To find out if your husband is using any one of the 19 different types of emotional abuse, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

Are you considering marriage counseling because you just discovered your husband’s been lying to you. If you recognize that couple therapy is contraindicated for your specific situation, but are desperate for solutions, or at least support, please recognize that your emotional safety is the priority.

Rather than focusing on helping your partner recognize their harmful behavior, you can focus on establishing emotional and physical regulation and safety for yourself.

Consider:

It can be devastating to realize that addiction marriage counseling will likely make the situation worse.

To discover if you’re emotionally abused, take this free emotional abuse quiz.

Anne: It’s just me today. So many women wonder about marriage counseling. Women in our community often ask our coaches or ask me, “I need a good couple therapist. Who should I go to?” And that’s what I’m going to talk about today. When it comes to women seeking couple therapy or marriage counseling. These are the two scenarios I see the most often.

Anne: Number one when a woman is unaware that her husband secretly uses explicit material, has affairs or hooks up with women from online dating apps. Usually the woman isn’t aware that her husband is doing this. She just knows something’s wrong in her marriage. When couples are having problems, people usually recommend marriage counseling. And because this is the most common recommendation, of course, she’s going to think that marriage counseling will help.

Anne: And number two, the wife convinces the husband to go to therapy, his own therapy. But then when she doesn’t see a difference or feels like he’s getting worse. She’ll think, well maybe if I’m involved, then I’ll see the improvements I’m looking for.

Anne: I have a master’s degree in education. And abuse educators like me don’t advise marriage counseling in any way, shape or form. Some women are confused, because the rare abuse program asks for your involvement, meaning the victims. So the therapist can get the truth about what’s going on. Why does a so-called good abuse program want the wife’s involvement? It’s because they know that the abuser will continue to lie and manipulate the therapist.

They also know that if she’s not involved, he’s not going to go. Which is like the biggest red flag right there. I’ve interviewed over 300 betrayal trauma victims on my podcast and in our community. And due to their reports about the harm done to them in both scenarios. I don’t advise. Any of the following: couple therapy, marriage counseling, suggesting your husband get therapy, or being involved in his treatment in any way.

Even if you have your therapist, and your abusive husband’s therapist talk to each other. I do not recommend that either. I’ll talk about what I do recommend near the end of the podcast. It’ll become really obvious why I don’t recommend marriage counseling, ever.

Anne: As I talk about the five things that need to be true in order for marriage counseling to be effective.

Anne: Everyone involved needs to know the truth about the source of the conflict and agree on the source of the conflict.

So in on a regular marriage counseling situation. It might be. That he likes golf and she hates golf. And that’s it. That is the source of the conflict, but he golfs a lot, and she doesn’t want him to golf a lot. And he’s like, yeah, that is the source of the conflict. I mean, the truth is out there.

Anne: Both partners willingly, honestly, and humbly identify their contribution to the conflict without needing to be convinced of it by someone else. So no one is trying to impose their interpretation on one of the other people. And they both willingly, honestly, and humbly identify their contribution.

Anne: Both partners have healthy expectations for the relationship. So in regular marriage counseling, it might be that spending two nights together a week is healthy. But expecting your partner to be with you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, is not healthy.

Anne: Both partners have consistently demonstrated they actually do. So this is something that you’ve seen with your eyeballs, not something that they talk about. They actively actually do childcare, household chores, and relationship management independently. Without prompting or oversight from the other. So this would mean he takes care of the kids without being asked, without being managed.

He can do household chores without being managed. He takes the initiative to actively participate in the marriage, in his child’s life. And the upkeep of the household, grocery shopping, cleaning. You know, all that stuff.

Anne: The reason the couple will attend marriage counseling is to improve their communication skills, their conflict resolution skills or intimacy skills. It’s not to address his abuse, his lying, or his affairs.

So if a man is a explicit materials user and has affairs, inappropriately texts coworkers, or been lying to you for years. If he’s been blaming you to manipulate you and exploit you and you have betrayal trauma from infidelity. None of those five things I just said can be true.

Number one, because he’s purposefully lying in manipulating you and everyone else to avoid the true source of the conflict, his explicit content use, his lies or his double life.

Number two, he’s never willingly honestly, or humbly identified, that he is the source of the conflict. But his choices are the source of the conflict. In fact, he’s been hiding it from you on purpose. Gaslighting you so that you don’t discover it.

Number three, due to his explicit content use. He doesn’t have healthy expectations. If he expects you to look like the women in the content look, that’s not healthy. If he views you as an object, he’ll expect you to do what he wants. Like don’t ask questions. That’s not a healthy expectation. If he’s an exploiter, he’s going to see the relationship as a series of transactions.

He goes to work, you give him it, or he brings home a paycheck. And you manage the children in household chores, the relationship, and everything else. That’s a transactionship. That’s not a relationship.

Number four, if he has an exploitative character. The likelihood of him without you managing it for him, managing childcare, household tasks, any of that stuff, grocery shopping. The likelihood of him repairing the relationship, planning dates, or starting hard conversations is almost zero. He might do these things to groom you while he’s trying to achieve a goal. But once that goal was achieved, he’ll stop. So he doesn’t consistently do any of these things.

Anne: And number five, as you’re thinking about couple therapy in this scenario, if you’re thinking about marriage counseling. You don’t want to go to therapy to improve communication skills, because your communication is fine. Your conflict resolution skills, your intimacy skills are fine. So, if you’re not thinking, Hey, I need to improve my intimacy skills or my conflict resolution.

If you just want to stop him from abusing you, or you want to figure out what’s going on. Then number five is not true. And r addiction marriage counseling will not work for you. Unfortunately, even if none of the five requirements for couples therapy or addiction marriage counseling are true. She may not know that he’s lying.

Couple therapists don’t do emotional or psychological abuse screenings before they start couple therapy. And they don’t do abuse screenings for addiction marriage counseling. Most of the time, a couple therapist doesn’t know what is going on, and neither does the wife. And this situation is going to make it worse. A regular couple therapist only has one job. It’s to help the couple improve communication so they can resolve their conflicts.

A man with an exploitative character is never interested in resolving conflicts. Although he may talk like he is, that’s actually a way that he’s going to continue to manipulate a victim. If he’s only interested in exploiting you, he’s going to see this whole situation as this perfect setup to continue to lie and manipulate you through the therapist. So I just talked about the five things that need to be true for couple therapy.

Anne: They apply equally to addiction marriage counseling. Which is why no one ever should go. Because those five things are never true if there’s addiction. When it comes to classic couple therapy, there are five things that guarantee a couple therapist will enable his abuse. And things will get worse for you. It will actually put your marriage at a greater risk for divorce.

Because his abuse will escalate during couples therapy or addiction marriage counseling. And if he starts to escalate due to addiction marriage counseling, divorce might be your only option for safety. So you need to take this seriously. If you want to avoid divorce. I take this extremely seriously, because on a very personal level, divorce did not solve my ex-husband’s abuse problem.

He continued to abuse me and my children emotionally, psychologically, and financially for eight years after our divorce. So I get it that women don’t want to consider divorce. And I’ll tell you my personal story of what happened with couples therapy in a minute.

If you want to avoid divorce, you want to avoid an escalation of his abuse for obvious reasons. That’s the number one reason you never want to go to couple therapy. Or even desire couple therapy or addiction marriage counseling. When it comes to regular couple therapists, those trained in abuse will refuse to treat couples who meet the following criteria.

Anne: What I’ve noticed is they’re either not trained in abuse, so they don’t know to refuse couples who meet this criteria. Or they think there’s an exception. Women tell me so many stories. A couple therapist or addiction marriage counselor thought he or she was this gift to humanity. This pride caused them to bend the rules. Because they thought they’d been more successful than they actually were.

So in the 300 interviews I did with betrayal trauma victims. They report they went to a addiction marriage counseling. And then they actually thought it worked for a minute. These women were pretty happy in the moment. And then they stopped going to therapy. And then they find out six months, a year, or two years later. That the husband was lying and manipulating the entire time. And it’s so traumatic to find that out.

And so when she discovers that the addiction marriage counseling worsened it. He was able to groom her and manipulate her even worse than before. She usually doesn’t go back to that same therapist, because even the thought of that therapist is so traumatic for her. It’s painful to her to even think that she just spent all that money and time, and it didn’t do anything. So she usually doesn’t go back and say, hey, this didn’t work.

So these therapists, all they know is that she left happy. They don’t know the end of the story. Alternatively, women tell me all the time that they came to Betrayal Trauma Recovery, started listening to the podcast. And they were like, this is kind of extreme. I don’t think this is my situation. So then they went to a couple therapy, and had a horrific experience.

Anne: They return to Betrayal Trauma Recovery, like five years later. And let me know, oh, my word, this is what happened. And they tell me their stories. So women come back to Betrayal Trauma Recovery all the time to tell me. Whereas I don’t think your typical therapist has that scenario. So they just think they were successful.

I find the attitude of addiction marriage counselors, that they can fix an abuser offensive. They don’t understand abuse. In that case, or they think the criteria I’m about to tell you doesn’t apply to them. Which is a huge red flag. And if they don’t have a screening process for this type of abuse, it’s unethical. So a couple therapist should refuse to treat any couple who meets any of these five criteria.

Number one, if there is abuse of any type, emotional, psychological, sexual, physical, financial, any abuse whatsoever present. Lying, manipulation and gaslighting are abuse. So if your husband lied about his use, he’s been abusing you. And that disqualifies you from addiction marriage counseling, or couple therapy. But if you don’t know he’s been lying and you go to couple therapy, do you see the problem here?

If he’s been lying to you about his use or his infidelity. He’s not going to suddenly tell the truth to a couple therapist. Similarly, if he admits to the explicit content use or you find it. And so you’re like, hey, let’s go to addiction marriage counseling. You’re in the same boat.

Anne: Either way, there’s been abuse. But the addiction marriage counselor will not see it as an abuse issue. They’re going to treat it as an addiction issue.

Number two, any couple where one or both of the partners has a mental illness or addiction problem. Couple therapy is never indicated. So even if you don’t want to label his addiction as abuse, this still disqualifies you as a couple from addiction marriage counseling. Addiction marriage counseling should not even exist. It should not be a thing. Anyone doing it is unethical. Because you’ve got abuse, addiction, and maybe a mental illness issue.

Let’s look at the victim for just a second, even if she’s been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder or depression, or sometimes bipolar. Many times she’s diagnosed with these things because she’s an abuse victim, and they don’t factor that in. So rather than saying, you’re fine. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just an abuse victim. Let’s get you to safety. She gets a diagnosis. Every therapist should know that if mental illness is part of the mix, couple therapy is contraindicated.

So if there’s any mental illness in the mix that’s diagnosed or known, or if he’s a known addict, that couple therapist should immediately stop couple therapy. And if you ever have a therapist who says, hey, he’s a addict, and so you need addiction marriage counseling, that’s the biggest red flag in the universe.

Anne: Let’s go back to this mental illness issue for just a minute. Some experts say two thirds of addicts have a mental illness now. I don’t care about this part, because all I care about is how it affects her and to her it’s abuse. But the stats are 44% of addicts have a personality disorder or traits of a personality disorder. And so some therapists will be like, oh, there’s a mental illness. Let’s treat that. I’ll tell you why I’m not a big fan of that in just a minute.

They might say to you, you are experiencing PTSD symptoms, which is true. However, do they say you’re experiencing PTSD symptoms, but you’re fine? You’re totally normal. You’re acting exactly as you should be acting as an abuse victim. Because that’s what they should tell you. Instead, if they say you have some kind of mental illness because of your PTSD. Then you would be disqualified from couple therapy, which would sure disqualify you from addiction marriage counseling.

Number three, if there is a lack of empathy, then a couple therapy is contraindicated. This is where one or both parties are unwilling or unable to understand the other person’s perspective. If empathy is lacking, many therapists who have this, like I can fix him complex, will try to teach him to have empathy. They’ll give him scripts and do empathy training. Like a fake it till you make it sort of approach.

That is so dangerous, then abusers learn to mimic empathy, but they don’t actually feel it. So they understand the mechanics, and then they’ll use it as a weapon to groom you. And wives come back and report over and over that this type of therapy made their husband a super abuser.

Anne: He began to talk in very empathetic ways and sounded better, but it just felt so cruel because his behavior hadn’t changed. He was doing it in ways that were so much more insidious and almost evil. Like we’ve had women come back and say he turned into the scariest person ever.

Because everyone else was like, look how healthy and wonderful he is. And he’s so empathetic and loving. He used scripts from couples therapy or addiction marriage counseling to manipulate more. And that is one of the most distressing things that women report.

Number four, if one person has engaged in a relationship outside the marriage. So like explicit content, which is a relationship with hundreds of women outside the marriage. Emotional affairs, then couple therapy is always contraindicated.

Number five, if one person doesn’t want to reconcile or solve problems. So a man with an exploitative character, he never has the goal of solving problems. His only goal is to get what he wants from her, not to build something together. So if he’s got that type of character, whether you know it or not, couple therapy will escalate the situation.

As reported by the women I interviewed, some therapists will say that if an addict or abuser has had a certain period of sobriety, or hasn’t been abusive, or has been in treatment for his addiction for his abuse for a year. Or a certain amount of time, it’s okay to start couple therapy or marriage counseling. And they report it did not go well, even after a period of sobriety or treatment.

Anne: In fact, my own experience illustrates this well. I had been dealing with an addict husband going to his own individual addiction therapist for years. We’d never tried addiction marriage counseling or couple of therapy before. Because I’d always refused. And things seemed like they had gotten a little better. They hadn’t. It was more like I was the frog in the pot, you know, I didn’t know that he had learned to lie better.

But because I thought things had improved since he’d been doing therapy and going to 12 step, he admitted he was an addict. And then he said the reason why things aren’t going perfectly yet was because we needed to go to couple therapy. There were some things that “we needed to work out”. He’d been wanting me to do couple therapy the entire time.

Sorry, side note, just yesterday I had one victim ask me if I knew he wanted to do it? I knew it was a bad idea, and that was my best test for whether the course of action was safe. Which kind of makes me smile now. Because my husband wanted to do couple therapy at the time, he was so excited. I remember when I agreed, he literally leaped off the couch and was like, awesome. Everything’s going to get better now. So we did 19 addiction marriage counseling sessions.

And things only escalated. I think it’s because he thought now’s the time to unleash all my resentments toward her. All my feelings based on all my erroneous thought processes. Because he hadn’t changed his abusive thinking at all. And he wanted the couple therapist to cram it into me.

Anne: Because he was like, I can’t convince her that she’s got these problems, but now I can get the therapist to do it. And he became more and more abusive to the point where he hurt me and was actually arrested. And the court gave him a no contact order.

Now couples therapists ethically, to maintain their licensure, must operate under the assumption of safety and equality. And in a situation with betrayal and addiction, there is no equality. Lies create an abusive power dynamic, because one person has more power than the other, because they have more information. So any couple therapist who does not see lying as an abuse issue creates a situation unequal and unsafe.

And so they’re not maintaining those ethical standards of operating with safety and equality. Okay, let’s move on to the second scenario I introduced at the beginning, when wives avoid addiction marriage counseling, or couple therapy. But I think his individual therapy isn’t going that well. And maybe if she talks to his therapist, the outcome will improve.

When I discovered the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop Strategies, one of the things that was like rattling around in my mind was about one well-known addiction marriage counseling practitioner. I’d heard accounts of his abuse to women. He would require her to sign a contract that she wouldn’t leave the marriage for a year. That she couldn’t use anything she learned in addiction marriage counseling in a divorce. He made her sign a contract, stuff was really bad.

I’ve heard a lot about this guy. He would tell the addicts or the abusers. If she’s angry, don’t worry. We can work with that. That’s not a problem, the only thing we can’t use is your wife’s apathy.

Anne: Knowing that he thought he could use the woman’s emotions to benefit this himself. And the only thing he felt he could not use to the advantage of the abuser was apathy. That rattled around in my mind for a long time.

And that concept is well explained in The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. The Living Free Workshop outlines why it’s not safe to have your therapist talk to your husband’s therapist. Or to participate in your husband’s therapy as an observer, or to meet with a therapist with your husband. Even if the therapist says it’s not couple therapy or addiction marriage counseling. Which seems like word salad to me.

So after explaining to you all the reasons why a couple therapy is sometimes counter-indicated, and addiction marriage counseling is always contra-indicated. You’re probably thinking. We don’t fit the criteria, and he continues to harm me. So, what do I do?

I outline exactly what to do in The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop. Because it’s different than anything you’ve heard before, I wanted to visually show this to you. The Living Free Workshop is 55 video lessons. The total runtime of all 55 lessons is only two hours and 20 minutes. On average, they’re only three minutes each. I broke it up into tiny bite-sized pieces. The shortest video is 28 seconds, the longest is six minutes.

There’s a question between each lesson that you can either answer. If you want to process it on a really deep level, or you can just like put an X in the box and push next. Then you also process the information with the free workbook that comes with it. It’s a PDF, a beautiful two page spread.

Anne: And so if you want it in color, you can get it printed at like Kinko’s or something. It’s more expensive. The cheapest way to print it is to order it on Amazon. It’ll come quickly, or you can print it at your house either way. Just make sure if you print it, print it double-sided.

The Living Free Workshop will help determine your husband’s character. And help you know what to do. If you take the Living Free Workshop and you’re like, oh wait, he’s actually not abusive. Then couple therapy might be an option for you. And that would be great.

But addiction marriage counseling should never be on the table, because it never meets the criteria for a couple therapy, ever. I don’t even know why it exists. If you’ve enrolled in The Living Free Workshop, I’d love to know what you thought about it.

If you’ve just discovered your husband’s dark secrets, most women don’t know where to turn for help. If you’re wondering what to do when husband betrays your trust, here are 3 things to consider.

Most men who betray their wives use emotional abuse tactics long before their lies are discovered. The first thing to do after your husband betrays your trust is to become educated about emotional and psychological abuse. To find out if your husband used any of the 19 different types of emotional abuse before or after you discovered his lies, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

After you’ve discovered your husband’s betrayal, it’s imperative that you learn strategies to protect yourself. The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop teaches women thought, boundary, and communication strategies to protect yourself emotionally and psychologically after you discover your husband’s lies.

If your husband broke your trust, getting the right help is very important. Sadly, some people blame women who have been hurt. Therapists or clergy might say it’s her fault because she didn’t meet his needs or wasn’t easy to talk to. People often blame the victim, but this isn’t right. Victims of betrayal need support and kindness, not blame.

Some women find out their husband lies about how he spends his time. He might spend hours watching pornography. Others find out he lies about money. Some even discover he lied about having an affair with a co-worker.This type of betrayal of trust is emotional and psychological abuse and coercion. You’re not alone. If you need a safe place to talk about what happened, attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session TODAY.

Anne: I have a guest on today’s episode. She’s going to share her story. She actually wrote a book called Deceptive Liaisons, and we’re gonna call her Samantha, because that’s her pen name. As you’ll hear from her story, her husband betrayed her trust.

Anne: Okay, so Samantha, welcome. Thank you for sharing your story with us today.

Samantha: Thank you for having me.

Anne: When did you first suspect that something wasn’t quite right in your relationship?

Samantha: When I first caught him with exploitative material, he said, all guys do it. And I’m like, it doesn’t make me feel good. Yeah, he had hidden apps like the app would fake like a calculator, but you put in certain numbers and it opens up to private pictures. And he’s like, Oh, it’s not about you. It’s just, something that all guys do. But when it affected our intimacy, that’s when I questioned, what’s going on here?

He told me he had a big addiction. He did say this was something he should have told me before we were married. And he repeatedly promised he didn’t want to lose me over it. And he was going to get help. We were intimate, but it was very few and far between. And he would say, Oh, I have low testosterone or just make excuses.

He’d always have his phone with him and take it in the bathroom with him in the middle of the night. And, again, I thought it was exploitative material.

Anne: That makes sense. Did you realize that there was emotional and psychological abuse happening?

Samantha: I mean, there was gaslighting and manipulation, my husband betrayed my trust. So part of you looks inward. Why am I not good enough? What have I done? You question, what could I have done differently or what am I doing that I shouldn’t be doing?

Samantha: So, about one in the morning of my birthday, I couldn’t sleep. So I went downstairs to watch TV. I started thinking, I’m just going to check his email. I thought I’d find something. Everything looked pretty normal in the email. Communication between us, friends, work. But when I clicked on archive, the first email was a reservation for a hotel on a business trip the week prior. But the next archived email was a reservation for two for the following night.

And I was confused, because he had asked to go out for drinks with someone after work. He did this regularly. And that’s another reason why I didn’t suspect, because he always came home for the night. But I didn’t realize you can check in at 3 and be home by 11. Anyway, I was shocked. I was thinking, well, maybe I’m mistaken. Maybe it’s a surprise for me.

So I got ready for work, brought him coffee, and he’s like, what’s wrong? And I asked him point blank, are you having an affair? And he looked me right in the eyes, and he goes, no, babe, I would never do that. I love you way too much. So I went to work, and there were streamers, balloons and gifts around my desk. And I was like, I don’t feel like celebrating. I don’t feel like myself.

And then I double checked the, email just to see, maybe I saw something wrong. And when I clicked on the first reservation for his business trip, I did a double take and it wasn’t for a business trip, it was a beachfront resort in Hawaii for two the entire time. It is devastating to find out that my husband had betrayed my trust.

Samantha: And he was on the same island I was on the whole time. It confirmed what I had been feeling. I ended up having to leave work, got home, and was just staring into space. And the phone rang, I answered it, and it was him. He says, hey, I called you at work and they said, you left. And I said, yeah, I decided to take the day off. And he goes, are you sure nothing else is wrong? So I gave him another opportunity to tell me the truth.

And I asked him again, are you having an affair? And this time he’s almost got a little bit of anger in his voice. Like, come on, why are you asking me this? You know, I’d never do it. You need to get that out of your head. I love you too much. And that’s when I just lost it and broke down. And I’m like, I know you weren’t in Phoenix last week on business. You were with her. You’re meeting her again tomorrow night.

It was probably a very short pause, maybe five seconds, but to me it felt like an eternity. That confirmed exactly, because he had no answer. I had caught him, and that’s when I just crumbled to the floor. I went into complete shock and started blurting out, who is she? How long have you known her? Where’d you meet? Da, da, da, da, and, of course, he didn’t give me the truth, my husband just lie upon lie.

He had betrayed my trusts so deeply. The more I uncovered, the more questions I had.

Samantha: There was so much gaslighting, I thought I was the problem, you know? If I had only done this better, and if I could have just done that better. In fact, I went to a counselor myself. I just wanted to make sure I’m a better person for him. I tried to look inside myself.

And then realizing it wasn’t me after all. He was just turning it around so that I questioned myself and not him. And just so many lies upon lies. I don’t know how he kept up with it.

Anne: Wow, I’m so sorry. That is absolutely devastating. Now that you know what you went through. When you didn’t realize it while you went through it. Like now that you realize, oh, wow, he was emotionally and psychologically abusive to me. For a lot of our marriage, and I didn’t understand. How does that change your perspective now, looking back?

Samantha: I realize, looking back probably right from the beginning when we were dating. That the manipulation started back then, but I didn’t know what it was. How do you deal with that when you don’t know that your husband has been betraying your trust your whole marriage?

Anne: Yeah, they know that we don’t know, and they count on that. It’s not like we’re stupid for not knowing. They’re like, not good people for purposefully doing that and being happy that we don’t know. And that says nothing about us and everything about them.

Samantha: You know, if you’d have asked me, if your husband ever cheated, I’m like, I’m out of there. I’m leaving. But you don’t know until you’ve actually experienced it.

Samantha: And I wanted to save my marriage. We’d been married just over 20 years and had a blended family of six children. His first wife died of cancer when the boys were three and six. And together we raised six children, and I expected to be forever with him. So we went to counseling together, marriage counseling. and separate therapy. And he joined the addiction group to help with his addiction.

Anne: So even though you’d known about his addiction, your whole marriage. He didn’t start addiction recovery until after you found out about the affair. Now I know your story, so I know there are multiple affairs that you find out about later, all just contiued betrayals of your trust. Knowing your story, at this point you began doing a bunch of things that the marriage counselor suggested or he suggested. Can you talk about that?

Samantha: Oh, yeah, initially it was his idea for me to track him. I had access to all his everything, passwords and whatnot. I had an app that tracked everywhere he was, and if he was with anyone. Like in business or having lunch or with anyone, he would send a picture.

Anne: I’m actually wondering, and I don’t know if you’ve thought of this, but that he maybe had a burner phone or something, and so he suggested it knowing that he could gain your trust but still get away with it.

Samantha: I mean, he could have left his phone on his desk and gone out, and I wouldn’t have known. That’s stressful, and it creates anxiety.

Samantha: If I look at the app and see, oh, is he supposed to be here? It was exhausting. I’m constantly missing out on what’s going on in front of me. And I couldn’t do it anymore. To me, character is defined by how you behave when no one’s watching. So I wanted to see how he’s going to behave? I said to him one day I’m going to keep taking care of the bills, and I’m going to delete the app so I no longer track you.

And, within a week, he signed up with a couple of the sleazy dating sites. And, in no time, I found a 27 year old girl he met up and paid for sex in a hotel. Continued betrayal of trust from my husband. Another week went by, and we had our 20th anniversary. And I served him with divorce papers on our anniversary. I felt like I was worth more than what I was receiving. And I couldn’t keep putting myself in that place of pain. I wanted to move forward and have joy in my life again.

Anne: Can you talk about what helped you recover after betrayal?

Samantha: I narrow it down to: avoid alcohol and cannabis. Alcohol is a depressant, and you’ve already got a gaping wound. You don’t need to add salt to it. And, find someone to talk to, preferably someone who specializes in betrayal.

I needed help, and I wanted someone experienced in betrayal. So thank you. My pastor referred me. That makes you know that you’re not alone.

Anne: I couldn’t have said it better myself. When your husband betrays your trust, it’s so important to talk to someone who specializes in betrayal and understands it. Like we do here at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, our coaches are incredible. You can hear women’s stories on the podcast, which will help you know that you’re not alone.

Anne: Well, Samantha, thank you so much for sharing your story with us today.

Samantha: Thank you for having me.

So many women struggle with the question: “What to do when you are mad at your husband?”. If you’re angry because your husband has harmed you, your anger makes sense. Did you know that legitimate anger is not bad, and in fact, it’s helpful?

Anger is a natural response to harmful treatment, and it helps you know that something is wrong. It’s like a sacred internal warning system, alerting you to danger and calling you to action.

ANGER…

If you’re feeling angry about your husband’s destructive behavior, we get it. Attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session TODAY to talk to other women who have been in your situation and can support you.

When women take a moment to evaluate why they feel angry, they can determine the source. Often they’re experiencing anger in reaction to their husband’s anger and emotional abuse. They feel scared, frustrated, tired, hurt, and overwhelmed.

At BTR.ORG we encourage victims of emotional abuse to think differently about their anger.

To discover if your husband’s anger is actually emotional abuse, take this free emotional abuse quiz.

Anne: It’s just me today.

Has anyone else ever noticed that society has double standards for men and women’s anger? Society often celebrates and justifies men’s anger, while it views women’s anger as irrational and emotional.

Anne: Like if he says, “My wife cheated on me, and it makes me so angry.” Everyone would be like, yeah. I would be angry too. But if a husband cheats on his wife and she gets angry, somehow people blame her anger for his cheating. Anger for him is always justified as a response to apparent harm. For women, anger is considered a condition – like, “She’s angry” as if it’s a character trait rather than an emotion.

If your husband’s behavior is destructive, like he’s always angry, he’s lying to you, or he’s emotionally abusive, it’s not wrong to be angry.

Here are seven reasons why your anger is not bad.

Anne: Number one, anger alerts you to unfair treatment. Anger is your mind and body’s way of signaling to you that something is wrong. So when you feel a surge of anger, take a minute to determine what the anger is about.

Instead of like pushing it away and thinking I shouldn’t be angry, accept the lesson it’s offering you.

It might help you determine your level of emotional safety, and then you can start to heal from emotional abuse.

Anne: Number two, anger motivates action.

I believe God gave us anger to help us take action and protect ourselves.This can be confusing, because abusive men are often angry due to their exploitative privilege. Meaning that they get angry when people resist their exploitative behaviors.

And that is NOT a good reason to be angry. That’s actually an exploitative reason, and their anger is emotional abuse, because they’re using their anger to manipulate you. They’re using their anger to scare you or threaten you, so they can continue to exploit you.

However, if protection and safety are your top priorities, your anger is NOT BAD. It can actually help you get to safety.

Anne: Number three, anger clarifies reality.

One of the hardest parts about emotional abuse is that it muddles your sense of reality. The gaslighting and manipulation can make you doubt your own thoughts and feelings. Anger cuts through that confusion. It’s an inner voice that’s saying this is not okay.

Anne: Number four, anger restores your sense of self.

Emotional abuse often chips away your sense of identity, leaving you feeling small, powerless or invisible. But anger can strengthen your connection to your authentic self by reminding you of your worth and helping you get in touch with your own emotions.

Anne: Number five, anger builds resilience.

Women who acknowledge and channel their anger constructively often use it to fuel their personal growth. For example, I felt intense anger when I started podcasting and created the Betrayal Trauma Recovery podcast. My ex-husband’s oppression for eight years after our divorce angered me, motivating me to dedicate all my effort to this podcast and our services at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, especially the Living Free workshop.. The situation infuriated me, and I became determined to find a way to free myself from him, which I’ll discuss a little later.

Anne: Number six, anger interrupts manipulation.

Emotional abusers rely on manipulation to maintain control in relationships. And they use tactics like belittling or guilt tripping, or even grooming to manipulate you.

When you internalize that your righteous anger is not bad, it becomes harder for him to manipulate you.

Anne: And number seven, anger sparks hope for change.

You might think this is ironic.

It may sound counterintuitive, but anger can lead to hope. Anger signals that you can recognize the injustice happening to you, and that you’re ready to take action to protect yourself.

Countless women who have shared their stories on the BTR podcast, describe anger as the emotion that finally allowed them to see a future beyond abuse. A future filled with safety and dignity.

If your husband is angry, but he says that you can’t be angry about his anger. Know that anger as a response to abuse is a sign of strength, not weakness.

People often misunderstand anger, especially in women who are conditioned to suppress it or feel ashamed. Know your anger is not bad. When you face emotional abuse, your anger can empower you to see the truth and take action.

Anne: Years ago, I felt really angry, and people kept saying I had a problem with my anger. I didn’t believe it was a problem because I saw it as righteous anger, completely justified.

Like, who wouldn’t be angry?

My husband lied to me, cheated on me, and exploited me for his own gain.

He didn’t care about me at all and now I have to live with the consequences of that. Like. Of course, I’m angry.

Like, why are you not angry about it? What’s wrong with you, that you’re not angry about the situation.

Anne: I am Christian. So I turned to studying the scriptures to try to like process my anger, to figure out what God thought about my anger.

And interestingly, through that study, I actually came up with the Living Free strategies that enabled me to deliver myself and my kids.

Anne: The recording I’ll play is from when I studied and tried to figure out what God wanted me to do to be delivered. You can hear the hope in my voice.

A year or two after this recording, I discovered the Living Free Strategies and used them to completely free myself and my children from our abusive situation.

For years, we’ve lived free and have had peace.

To learn how I eventually delivered myself, click here to learn more about The Living Free Workshop strategies.

If reading scriptures is triggering and you want to skip the rest of this episode, go ahead. Or you may want to listen to hear when I’m trying to figure out if my anger is okay with God, and let it guide me.

I hoped for deliverance, even when I had no evidence of it.

So here is this recording from years ago. Hopefully, it will be helpful to you.

Anne: Once I realized that if I didn’t feel angry, something would be wrong with me, things started to change.

If I didn’t feel angry, I would be weird. Then, I could actually embrace it. Many righteous people throughout all of time have felt righteous anger and a desire for justice. Righteous anger is not bad.

In my situation, my ex is still using the kids to hurt me. So I don’t know when I will be delivered from having to interact with him.

I pray it will happen soon.

There’s no way that I, by myself, can make all things right for me and my kids. For me, as a Christian, relying on My Savior brings me peace and hope. And I know that all I need to do is set that boundary and maintain it. And when I continue to maintain it, I’m standing for truth and righteousness, and hopefully I will be delivered.

The scriptures, talk about righteous people who are healthy going through great trials. And the Lord promises them peace.

Anne: People like Moses, Elijah, David, and even Jesus demonstrated that righteous anger is not bad.  In Mark 3:5, for example, it’s talking about the Savior. And it said, “and when he had looked roundabout on them with anger being grieved for the hardness of their hearts.” Repeatedly. The scriptures talk about God being angry about wickedness. “His anger was not turned away, but his hand was stretched out still.”

Moses uses his righteous anger to deliver the Israelites from the bondage of Pharaoh, and helps them walk through the Red Sea on dry ground to safety. And then they end up wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, right?

That’s how I felt—God freed me from bondage, led me through on dry ground, and now I’m wandering in the wilderness, unsure of what will happen and still facing serious trials. This pattern has existed since the beginning of time.

And there are a bunch of war chapters in the scriptures. I’m going to read some today that have helped me understand righteous anger and what that looks like. The point of this is not to proselytize by any means. I respect all your views. However, this is how God showed me that my righteous anger is not bad, and how to allow it to guide me toward deliverance.

Anne: Moroni who is the captain of an army is one of the most righteous men in the scriptures.

It says, “And verily, verily, I say unto you, if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever, yea, the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men. Moroni is described as an extremely faithful, extremely righteous man.”

“He was a man of love and perfect understanding,” it says. “A man who did not delight in bloodshed, a man whose soul did joy in the liberty and the freedom of his brethren from the bondage of slavery. Yea, a man whose heart did swell with thanksgiving to his God for the many privileges and blessings which he bestowed upon his people, a man who did labor exceedingly for the welfare and safety of his people.”

So it says specifically in Alma 48 verse 12, “He labored for the safety of his people.” And then in 13, “Yea, he was a man who was firm in the faith of Christ, and taught to defend themselves against their enemies.”

“Yea, they were also taught never to give an offense. Yea, never to raise the sword, against an enemy, except it were to preserve their lives. Nevertheless, they could not suffer to lay down their lives that their wives and their children should be massacred by the barbarous cruelty of those that were once their brethren and had left them.”

Anne: Moroni is saying if you have harmed your children or your family, you cannot be here anymore. So, they create boundaries for safety.

Alma chapter 50 verse 18 says, “and thus we see how merciful and just are the dealings of the Lord to the fulfilling of all his words unto the children of men.” And the Lord says to them in verse 20, “Blessed art thou and thy children and thou shall be blessed but remember in as much as they will not keep my commandments, they shall be cut off.”

Now when we recognize that our spouse has not been healthy and is not making good overt or covert choices, we get the consequences of that, and our homes are in chaos, and things start to fall apart. And we start suffering from the unrighteousness of someone else, which is extremely painful and difficult, especially if we’re doing the right thing. In this case, our anger is not bad.

And it says in verse 21, “and we see that these promises have been verified for it has been their quarrelings and their contentions, yea, their murderings and their plunderings, their idolatry, their whoredoms and their abominations, which were among themselves, which brought upon them their wars and their destructions.”

Anne: The battle between an abuser and his victim at home brings all types of contention and chaos.

Those who were faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord were delivered at all times. While the wicked, brethren, having been consigned to bondage, perish. You are feeling the effects of that, and it does not feel good. Your anger is not bad.

It feels miserable, and that’s what Moroni felt, too. He felt like being in the situation where there were people who were not doing the right thing, who were not making healthy choices, it was miserable.

In Alma 52, verse 21, it says “and it came to pass that Moroni, having no hopes of meeting them upon fair grounds, can see that it is impossible to talk with these people who are lying and deceiving. On fair grounds, therefore, he resolved upon a plan.”

So, in several verses, it says that he is going to deal with them by stratagem, that he’s not going to actually speak with them, because that doesn’t get him anywhere.

Anne: If a person is too unhealthy to talk to, I need to figure out a way to get to safety, which doesn’t involve confronting them directly.

In chapter 54, verse 7, Moroni says, “Yea, I would tell them these things if they were capable of hearkening unto them. Yea, I would tell them concerning the awful hell that awaits them. Accept they withdraw and return their armies to their own lands. But as they have once rejected these things, and fought against the people of the Lord, even so, may I expect they will do it again.”

So Moroni’s saying, I just keep seeing this pattern over and over and over again.

And then he says in verse 11, “Behold, it’s supposed with me that I talk to them concerning these things in vain. Or it supposeth me that thou art a child of hell.”

So, Moroni is angry, in a good way. Then in verse 13, he says, “Behold, I am in my anger, and also my people. We have only sought to defend ourselves.”

And that is a righteous thing to do. Recognizing that righteous anger is not wrong.

Moroni is the most righteous person. And he is doing that. So we can follow his example with peace and with confidence.

Anne: Alma 55, says, “For I will not grant unto him that he shall have any more power than what he hath got.” Chapter 57, verse 20, says, “They were firm and undaunted.” I’m going to add, in their boundary, although it doesn’t say that.

In verse 26, miracles start happening. In says of Moroni’s people, the women and the children and the righteous people, “Now their preservation was astonishing to our whole army, yea, that they should be spared.”

“And we did justly ascribe it to the miraculous power of God because of the exceeding faith in that which they had been taught to believe, that there was a just God and whosoever did not doubt that they should be preserved by his miraculous power.” In chapter 58, verse 6, It says, “And the wicked were sallying forth against us from time to time, resolving to destroy us. Nevertheless, we could not come to battle with them, because of their strongholds. And it came to pass that we did wait in these difficult circumstances for the space of many months, even until we were about to perish for want of food.”

So they’ve created a boundary, they’re waiting it out, and it’s not going well for them. And then, The Lord’s promises are revealed.

Anne: Let me pause here as modern-day me to reflect on what I’ve learned through my experiences with the stages of anger after betrayal.

There were countless moments when I didn’t know how I’d pay my bills or keep my home. I couldn’t see a way forward, yet I kept moving, step by step, trusting that somehow, things would work out. And they did. Time and again, the Lord provided just what I needed. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I’m not in that same day-to-day survival mode anymore, but I know that if I ever find myself there again, I can look back on those times and trust that things will be okay. That trust didn’t remove my struggles, but it gave me the strength to face them.

In the scriptures, Moroni describes being under siege, feeling surrounded and overwhelmed. In Alma 58:9, it states, “…we grieved and felt fear; therefore, we poured out our souls in prayer to God to strengthen and deliver us.”

That prayer isn’t just about deliverance—it’s about recognizing that righteous anger is not bad, it’s telling you something is not right and giving you a call for action.

And in verse 11, it says, “The Lord our God visited us with assurances…he did speak peace to our souls, and grant unto us great faith, and did cause us that we should hope for our deliverance.”

That hope gave them the courage to act, to keep fighting. In verse 40, they declared, “We have received many wounds; nevertheless, we stand fast and are strict to remember the Lord our God from day to day.”

Anne: “Yea, And it came to pass that the Lord our God did visit us with assurances that he would deliver us.”

“Yeah in so much that he did speak peace to our souls and a grant unto us great faith, and did cause us that we should hope for deliverance in him.” And in verse 12, “And we did take courage.”

In 58 verse 37, “We trust God will deliver us, notwithstanding our weakness, yea, deliver us out of the hands of our enemies.” In verse 40, Talking about the righteous armies, and I’m talking about you, and I’m going to put a we instead of a they here, “But behold, we have received many wounds.”

“Nevertheless, we stand fast and we are strict to remember the Lord our God from day to day. Yeah, for our faith is strong in the prophecies concerning that which is to come.”

Anne: When I discovered the Living Free Strategies, I wanted to see if they would work for other women.

I didn’t know if it was just me, or if it was a fluke. So I mentored other women using the strategies, and we found they worked for everyone. Even if you’re not Christian.

The Living Free Workshop is presented in a more secular form. So the strategies apply to everyone.

But I’m so thankful. For my savior. For delivering my children and I.

My testimony of Jesus Christ is that he is the deliverer and he is our savior. And we can look to him.

And he will show us the path forward. That doesn’t mean we don’t get help or learn new things, right? We can learn through Living Free strategies, get help from a coach, or graphics on Instagram. In fact, so many women have told me they prayed to know what to do for help. And then they found the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast, it was an answer to their prayer.

If you’re not Christian, I hope that the information you find at Betrayal Trauma Recovery helps you find the peace that you deserve in your life.

If you’re wondering, “Why is my husband yelling at me?” the answer might surprise you. Here are 7 key questions to help uncover the real reasons behind his constant anger.

When your husband has something he wants to do that he doesn’t want you to know about. He will be very irritated when you ask normal everyday questions. Or try to interact with him like any normal person would. Hiding things from you is not only lying and deceit, it’s actually a form of emotional and psychological abuse. To know if he’s using any of the 19 types of emotional abuse to hide his secret, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

The purpose of yelling in the context of marriage is to overpower the other person. If he’s yelling at you, his primary motivation is to control you or the situation. Unfortunately for you, overpowering someone isn’t about relationship – it’s about control. If your husband frequently attempts to overpower you by yelling. He’s more interested in keeping his secrets hidden or exploiting you than solving problems.

As previously mentioned, yelling is never about solving problems. Healthy people who are solution oriented ask questions to clarify or understand, not to overpower.

If he’s yelling questions at you, he’s doing it to prove you wrong, silence you, or invalidate you, not solve a problem. It’s important to understand this type of emotionally abusive dynamic, so you can use strategies to protect yourself. To learn more, enroll in The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop.

Your husband may claim that yelling is just part of normal communication. Or he may even insist that he isn’t yelling when he is. But if he’s yelling, he’s using his voice to intimidate, control, and degrade you. If it hurts, it’s actually emotional harm. To learn more about why this is emotionally abusive, listen to The FREE Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast.

When he yells at you to create an excuse to stomp off and do the secret thing he had planned, it creates an environment of fear and instability for children. They’ll feel like they have to walk on eggshells. Additionally, witnessing their mother be emotionally abused in this way can have long-lasting effects on children’s mental health and well-being.

If he tells you he wouldn’t yell if only you (fill in the blank), that’s nonsense. He has a million choices about how he can respond, and yelling is only one of those choices. Did you know he could ask a question and listen to the answer? He could sit down and listen to what you have to say. He could stop being selfish. His yelling has literally nothing to do with you. If he blames you for it, that’s emotional and psychological abuse.

If your husband yells at you and then says, “I don’t want to do something I’m going to regret, so I’m going to go cool off,” you might not realize it, but this can actually be a veiled threat.

What he’s really communicating is that he’s capable of harming you, whether physically or emotionally. By framing it this way, he shifts the responsibility onto you to avoid triggering his harmful behavior, which is a form of manipulation.

If he stonewalls you by stomping off, that’s a threat to your dignity. That communicates clearly, “You’re not worth resolving problems with.” Anytime a husband yells at his wife and stomps off, it’s an abusive threat meant to silence and overpower her, whether she recognizes it or not.

While there’s no way to stop your husband from yelling or change his character to be an emotionally safe person. There is a way to protect yourself. Our Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions meet daily to provide healthy, compassionate support for women in this situation. Attend a session today.

Anne: We have a member of our community on today’s episode. We’re going to call her Cat. Before Cat shares her story. Here are seven key questions to ask yourself to determine: Why is my husband yelling at me? And if his yelling indicates something deeper. And you’ll hear these themes throughout Cat’s story.

Cat: Thanks, Anne. I’m happy to be here.

Anne: I’m honored that you volunteered to share your story today. And I’m so sorry about what you’ve been through.

Cat: Thank you.

Anne: Let’s start at the beginning.

Cat: The beginning is way back in the nineties. My ex-husband and I met in college and started dating. We were married for about twenty five years. We were together for 28. Looking back, there were a ton of red flags, but I just had no concept of those particular types of red flags. One of the best things that the Betrayal Trauma Recovery community and the coaches had me do was write a timeline of our entire relationship.

Throughout the process of separation, divorce, and healing, whenever I would feel wobbly, I would just go back and look at that timeline, and it immediately grounded me. So, I still look at it from time to time, just to remember it was always there.

Cat: It wasn’t me. The signs were always there. It took me that long to claw my way out. I think that’s probably the best thing any woman who finds herself in this situation can do. So many women are aware of the more overt and socially recognized forms of abuse. That’s what we’re on the lookout for. My parents raised me in the South. I was aware, staying away from the “bad guys.”

The guys who were more, maybe aggressive alpha males who were more overt in their expressions of aggression. Like men who are always yelling and stomping around. Oh, I would never end up in a relationship with someone like that. And I think most women have a hard time recognizing that highly intelligent, manipulative, covert, narcissistic type of abuse. That is consistently playing the long game. My ex-husband is considered a good guy.

He is very performative in his social kind of markers, very progressive, very liberal. He would seem very pro-women, sensitive, you know, all those things. But behind closed doors or with what probably feels like enabling company to him, there are many behaviors that I now recognize as problematic. One of the first was such an obvious red flag to me. Our junior year, we’d been dating for a while. But I had not seen any of the red flag behavior.

One of his dearest friends from childhood who also went to our college was his roommate. He pulled me aside and said, have you seen his dark side? And I didn’t know what he was talking about. I couldn’t even imagine what he was describing.

Cat: He would act moody and grouchy for a prolonged time. His friend group had become accustomed to and sort of made space for. I now understand that friend group is what would be called flying monkeys and enablers. At the time, I didn’t know that. And he was sort of the alpha of that friend group. Even though he was not your typical alpha male. And it wasn’t long after that that I did see a sort of dark side come out. I couldn’t figure out what had happened.

I still don’t know why he directed the moodiness and grouchiness at me. But no reason could be provided for it, you know, and I had never experienced anything like that. So I said, you know, what’s going on? What’s wrong? What do you need? How can I help you? Doing all the things, and nothing I did made a difference. And then just like within 24 hours, I guess it passed, but there was no reason given. Eventually, the narrative became this is something the men in my family do.

We all struggle with anxiety and depression. He implied it was part of their genetic makeup.

Anne: I have developed a theory, and when my book comes out, it clearly outlines this. When they start to escalate to yelling and fighting like that for seemingly no reason, it’s because they have something else they want to do. But they can’t figure out how to get away from us.

Cat: Mm hmm.

Anne: So he starts yelling to instigate a fight. They can stomp off and do the thing they want to do, like solicit a prostitute, but they can’t say to you, Hey, you know what, I’ve got a prostitute to solicit.

Cat: Right.

Anne: And so I’m going to go, some of them will be like, I’ve got homework to do. And go and solicit the prostitute. So the question I have is, did he escalate to the point where he kind of stomped off?

Cat: Yes, that was always what would happen. He even told me he managed outbursts like that.

Anne: Was stomping off?

Cat: Yeah, stomping off, going on a walk, going out. And that became the protocol, his way of dealing with this over the decades. I can’t even believe it, Anne, but now that you’re saying it that way.

Anne: This is all theoretical, he admitted to you this is what my family does. But he didn’t say we know how to leave the house and make it your fault so we can go solicit a prostitute. I’ve interviewed over 300 betrayal trauma victims in long form interviews like this one. And in the 70s, the 1970s in the 1900s. Maybe they went to like the corner secret store, but I’ve seen it as a pattern.

And until you put the pieces together. It’s hard to know, because they would never ever admit it. That they just want you to think they got so mad at you because you’re so terrible. That’s the only way they could cool down, and they’ll maybe even say it in a way that makes them sound a little bit nice.

Anne: Like I didn’t want to hurt you anymore. And so to explain why I yelled and stomped off to like, save you from my anger. When they invented a fight from nothing, to do the secret thing they wanted to do. That they had planned before they started the “argument.”

Cat: Yeah, yes, women who find themselves in this situation. The fact that we have a conscience makes it so easy to dupe us. By people who don’t have a conscience, because we just assume the person we’re with also has a conscience. So it’s hard to conceive the depth of manipulation and malignancy. And really, up until D-Day, I could not have conceived this was what was happening. I truly believed his rationales or reasons.

I know this is such a stereotype, but he had a lot of trauma in his childhood. His mother died in an accident when he was young. And a lot of the “moodiness, depression, and anxiety,” and I’m using air quotes there, because I no longer believe that’s what it was. But that’s what it was attributed to at the time. It was implicitly ascribed to that trauma, and I made space for that all the time. Even if it wasn’t directly talked about.

That was the narrative I created in my mind for what was going on and why he deserved compassion, understanding and support.

Anne: I had a therapist say to me once about my ex, he’s a psychopath, and I was like, what? She’d never met him, so she couldn’t diagnose him.

Anne: She said, did he manipulate you to feel sorry for him to get away with yelling and bad behavior? And I said, wow, I didn’t think about that. She said one of the hallmarks of a psychopath is they want someone to pity them.

Cat: Yeah.

Anne: Because a healthy person does not want someone’s pity. They’re like, yeah, my mom passed away from a car accident when I was a kid. It was a real bummer, it’s sad, but like, I’m healthy now and here I am as an adult.

Cat: Yeah.

Anne: But they could use anything to elicit pity to do what they want to do. Let’s go back to that flying monkey friend. It’s interesting to me that you said your husband was the alpha of this group. Who I assume took his side later from the way you described it. What do you think his motivation was to ask if you had seen a dark side? Do you think he was trying to warn you?

Cat: I don’t know if it was out of concern for me. I have to share the tone of this friend group. They’re all very sweet. They’re all very kind. Well, I know one of them has attacked me verbally, talking about me behind my back. I don’t know that any of the rest of them have.

They have all, at least to me, said kind, compassionate things, but it’s that sitting on the fence. You know, I want to be nice to you. I want to be a good guy and say the right thing to you, but I’m also going to totally support your ex-husband.

Cat: Although when my ex husband, I think, notified some of his cohort and requested privacy or something like that. One of those friends reached out to both of us and said, I’m so sorry to hear this. If either of you want to talk, I’m here. And, I did contact him, and I told him everything going on. We had a long conversation, and he believed everything I said because he had seen things.

But he said to me, you know Cat, we all knew he was capable of this. We just hoped it wasn’t happening to you. That’s like verbatim what he said to me, and yet they’re all just there for him. So I thought the group was all kind, all sensitive, all good guys. And yet they are his enablers to the end. I’ve since cut ties with everyone. Like, all of them, even though some of them were my friends, separate from my ex-husband before we got together in college, even most of his family, I’ve cut ties with.

I do have intermittent contact with his brother and brother’s wife from his family, who do not speak to him anymore. But the rest, I’ve cut everyone out.

Anne: That’s so hard. We perceive it as a warning, but part of me wonders if they’re testing the waters.

Cat: Mm hmm.

Anne: Because many of them drop the mask a little bit before the marriage, and then they put it back on. And I often wonder if it’s a little bit of a test, and again, this is not our fault that we believe them. Which is the most awful, unconscionable thing to think.

Anne: A normal person would be like, shoot, she believed me. I better tell her the truth so that she knows what she’s getting into.

Cat: Yeah.

Anne: uh, it’s awful.

Cat: Yeah, after that first, I didn’t know what it was at the time, but now I understand that was abuse early on. Nine months into dating, it didn’t happen again for a long time. I couldn’t figure out why those cycles of yelling and anger got closer and closer together, and it took 15 or more years. I mean, I was in my 30s with three children before I realized, like, this is just my life. It’s just one big, and I didn’t have the word abuse cycle then. But I understood that this is all the time now, it’s not intermittent episodes anymore.

It is just a constant, daily grind. We all know the frog in the pot of boiling water analogy. I look back now and understand the behaviors. Especially the outward behaviors that were happening within our various friend groups over the decades. They meant to create his false image to hide his secret behaviors, secret basement. And covert abuse while simultaneously invalidating me. So that if I ever went to someone, I wouldn’t be believed. He did actually write that to me.

He admitted he did that on purpose. So I know that the gaslighting, which was happening outwardly with our friends. Him putting on the mask of a good guy, all the way to him encouraging me to go to the Women’s March in DC. Like almost to the point of like, if I didn’t go, it would be disappointing him. Because that’s part of his mask.

Cat: The fact that he would be married to a feminist means there’s no way he could do what he’s doing. You know, it’s like a decorator crab. They’re just putting all these things on their shell, and I was like his crown jewel. But I was just social capital, that’s it. And I know now that’s what our family was. So that long game, it’s hard to wrap your mind around how deep and calculated it is. I still struggle with wondering, is it all conscious or “he can’t help it.”

And I’m saying that with air quotes like, he can’t help it. Not like, oh, poor him. I don’t feel that way at all. But that it’s such a part of who he is. And it’s kind of gotten to the point where it doesn’t matter to me. I just know that I want that level of manipulation nowhere around me. And, I know it works on many people, and I can’t worry about that.

Anne: And the answer might be that they yell and abuse because it works.

Cat: Yeah.

Anne: It allows them to exploit people. It allows them to work the least amount.

Cat: Yep.

Anne: In terms of emotional work, psychological work, and even physical labor. It allows them to have all the privileges of a family without having the responsibilities.

Cat: Yeah.

Anne: A survey done in prison that the counselor asked the abusers in the prison, why would you abuse? They just had lists and lists of reasons, all the entitlements they get. And then he said, why wouldn’t you? And they said things like, because I might get thrown in jail.

Anne: Because people might not like me, and guess what wasn’t on their list, because I care about her, was not on the list. So anytime someone lacks that basic human care for their own partner, and everyone is just fodder for exploitation, They’re just going to do what works and controlling people with anger and yelling works .They’re very practical, not to their credit, but their values and moral system are only based on what works to get them what they want, not what is the right thing to do.

Cat: Yeah, and I think that goes along with what I was talking about. People with a conscience have a hard time comprehending the behaviors of people without a conscience. It causes us to give them the benefit of the doubt all the time. And then the people without a conscience use that against us or use that for their own betterment.

To your point, about the therapist saying your ex husband was a psychopath. We did couple’s therapy for probably eight years, almost weekly, because of a fake disclosure that happened.

Anne: He lied about something he did?

Cat: I know crazy, right? He lied about something. Yeah, so this is, it’s almost like hard to believe I didn’t see it. So we had many, many years of abuse cycles, increasing in regularity. I had begged him to go to therapy, but there was so much I didn’t know about getting a therapist for my abusive husband. for a long time. He wouldn’t do it. He also had pretty regular impotence, which I had personally seen professionals about. Because I didn’t want a loveless marriage.

Cat: And I eventually encouraged him to seek help about it. I remember asking him if men attracted him. And I didn’t know about exploitative content use at that time. I had no concept that this material induced impotency. And no professional I went to, you know, doctors, therapists, acupuncture, whatever. No one said, could it be this? Nobody said that to me. So I went to him and said, can you go get checked out? Let’s figure out what’s going on, and he came back.

He said everything’s fine, they just said it’s anxiety, but the abuse cycles associated with his impotence were the worst. I had three kids, eventually I just kept them away as much as possible. While he was like in a dark room, on the computer and grouchy. So his dad, came to visit one time. He saw what was happening, and came to me and said he didn’t like what he was seeing. And I said, can you tell him to go to therapy? Because he won’t listen to me.

So he went to therapy after his dad told him to. He got on some anti-anxiety medication, and things nominally improved. The yelling and abuse cycles were still there, but they were not as extreme. And then he came to me and said, I’ve been talking to my therapist and I need to confess something to you, because I’m worried about how I might act on this impulse I’m having.

He said, I just wanted you to know that I was watching this horrible stuff. I have to admit, I didn’t care about it at that point. And I just thought it was something most guys did. I didn’t know all the harms associated with it.

Cat: I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t an area of concern for me. So he said I watched it, and all these pop up windows came up, and I clicked on a website. I started talking to a bot, and it was taking me further into chat rooms. And these are his words. “I was getting worried about how far I was going,” he said. “I ended up on a website called Ashley Madison”, and he said, “All I was doing was talking to people.”

But again, I had no idea, I mean, I look back now and I’m just like, I’m a different person, but I said, Ashley Madison. And then I realized what Ashley Madison was. I did not think he was cheating, I believed what he said about just talking to people.

Anne: For women who may not be aware of the Ashley Madison scandal, can you give a brief overview of that?

Cat: It’s a website for married people to sign up to cheat on their spouses.

Anne: Right, they hacked it and released all the names?

Cat: Well, I didn’t know that, but yes, that’s why he did it. Yes, he was preempting.

Anne: Exactly, he was getting ahead of it just in case you discovered it.

Cat: Yes, exactly. It was a fake disclosure.

Anne: That time, you think, of course he’s telling the truth. Because why would he tell me if he didn’t tell the truth? There’s no way you’d think he concocted a lie preemptively, so that he could lie to you if you discovered the truth.

Cat: Exactly.

Anne: When you said the abuse cycle with the impotence was the worst. That may or may not confirm my theory. That the reason why he’s yelling and angry is because you’re obstructing them from using. Or hooking up with married women on Ashley Madison. Because anytime you try to talk to them, if they’re like on their way to use it, or if they’re on their way to do the thing they want to do.

They’ll be extremely irritated. And mad at you, so that they have an “excuse” to go do something else. And that also might explain why he was so impotent at that time. Because if you’re using every day or multiple times a day, you’re definitely going to be impotent with your wife.

Cat: Yeah, and he told me at the end of the marriage that there were times where he was using it seven hours a day. He would leave his tech job and meet up with like Craigslist hookups. Which who knows, and my oldest son said to me, you would be an idiot to believe a word that comes out of his mouth at this point.

And that was just a few months after he admitted the “real” and I’m saying real in air quotes. Because I’m sure that’s the tip of the iceberg. Whatever he admitted. I mean, we had 26 years of him doing stuff. I don’t know about, whatever he admitted. There’s way worse out there, but that’s all I needed. And that’s when I went no contact.

Cat: But after the first fake disclosure regarding Ashley Madison, he had a whole plan in place. He had already contacted a couples therapist. He said, let’s start doing couples therapy. I want to use this to rebuild our marriage and all this stuff. And I never enthusiastically agreed, but I definitely acquiesced. And so we spent eight years in couples therapy, I realize now what garbage that was. He used couples therapy to manipulate me.

When more truth came out, I scheduled an appointment with that therapist and recounted several times. I had tried to point to what happened. And was silenced in couples therapy. That couples therapist, to his credit, said he’s definitely a covert narcissist. And I think he’s a sociopath. Probably like your therapist saying, your ex-husband was a psychopath. This therapist saw my ex-husband weekly for eight years. So that was eye opening for me.

Anne: That’s the first time the therapist recognized he lied for eight years. The fact that someone can go to therapy every week for eight years and lie the entire time. My ex did it through addiction recovery therapy. He’d go to 12-step meetings and lied to everyone. He enjoyed every minute of it.

Mine loved therapy. When I mentioned, hey, let’s go to therapy. He was like, yes. Once they discover that therapy will work for them, they don’t mind it at all. A lot of women think, if I could just get him in therapy, and it sounds like you thought that.

Cat: I did!

Anne: Then you did. And it gets worse.

Anne: They learn how to weaponize the therapy against us. So that they seem better and sound good. Yours was already good at that, so it makes them even more scary. So yeah, if you’re listening, thinking if he would only go to therapy.

Cat: It’s dangerous. Especially couples therapy, when you’re considering intensive couples therapy because couples therapists assume an equality of good intention. That both people are there because they’re trying to improve the relationship. That’s part of how they train therapists. But in reality with emotional abuse, where it’s hidden, even from the victim. It’s really dangerous, and therapy becomes a tool for further manipulation and control. And that’s definitely what happened.

The way I was able to gain awareness of the reality that what I was living with was abuse. Started when I discovered a large bag of marijuana in his backpack. While I helped my middle son look for something he had lost that my husband was mad about.

And I was trying to help him avoid his dad’s ire by helping him look for this thing. I opened up my husband’s backpack, and there was a big bag of marijuana in there. And he had been saying in therapy, he wasn’t doing anything. He wasn’t looking at exploitative material. He wasn’t doing drugs, he wasn’t doing all the stuff. And I just lost it.

Like I could not believe the level of deception I was still dealing with, and my husbands lying all the time. And so we had a big heated argument that night he did a lot of yelling. He’d obviously thought about, if he got caught, what he would do.

Cat: And he immediately redirected the conversation to the fact that he has an addiction problem with drugs and alcohol. This was news to me. I had no idea. I don’t think he actually, I mean, I think it’s more that he has a problem with entitlement. And if he wants to do something, he’s going to do it. Whether he said he won’t, or whether it’s harmful to others.

So, he said, I’m going to start going to AA, I’m going to go, do all these 12-step things. My oldest son had done a wilderness therapy program, and we were still working with his therapist from that program. I also now understand that was a whole redirection away from my husband’s issues to scapegoat my child. But anyway, I called that therapist to tell him what was going on. And he said to me Cat, I think I’ve seen signs in you of PTSD in our family sessions.

I think something’s going on and I recommend you look at, I think he gave me the name of a podcast, like the Betrayed and the something. And my ex husband started doing a men’s program and determined he had a problem lying. That was his problem. I was diagnosed with PTSD, or CPTSD.

Anne: I’m going to jump in and say, that there’s the P in CPTSD, the post.

Cat: Right.

Anne: If he’s still yelling, lying, and raging around. It’s not post, it’s still happening.

Cat: Right.

Anne: If they’re going to diagnose us, which I have to tell you, I disagree with. I think they should look at us and say, you’re acting completely normal. You’re not diagnosed with anything. And it’s not post anything. You’re still experiencing abuse.

Cat: Yes. He did that program. And we were still in constant contact. I look back now and all our text exchanges, and I can’t believe how much energy I put into explaining human decency to him for so long. He obviously knew, I mean, after that program, a few months later, he started another men’s program. And, then I found Betrayal Trauma Recovery.

Then he finished the program, all the while making pronouncements to me, “Oh, I’m going to do this.” And “Here’s all of this.” And then he said he wanted a divorce. And the biggest tell to me was that I wasn’t even sad. I was sad about our family, and I was scared. There was a lot of fear, but I’ve never once missed him.

Anne: Yeah, that is a good sign, or not.

Cat: Yeah.

Anne: It’s not a good sign, but that’s a sign.

Cat: It’s very clear, yeah.

Anne: Clarifying, I’m so glad you discovered that. I used to recommend men’s programs, and I don’t anymore because of this.

Cat: Totally, through this program, my ex-husband found a way to manipulate through therapy language. He went to those AA meetings and 12-step program meetings. And would come home and disparage all the people in those meetings and say like, Oh, I’m not as bad as those guys. You know, comparing himself to how much better he was than all these other people at these AA meetings, but yet he would still use them to build up his ego and stuff.

Anne: This is why it does not help them.

Cat: No, I don’t think anything would. I mean, even now he’s donning a new costume of healed or healing. Good dad, I know he dog whistles to all his enablers that this is my fault. Because his needs weren’t being met, he had to do what he did. And I even heard him say this through a year through the divorce and family court mediation. I know he even told the assigned family mediator he did what he did, so he didn’t hurt me.

And she ate it up, and she’s a highly trained therapist, and she repeated his words to me. The institutions around therapy and the way therapists are trained. From family court, to the criminal court system, to social systems in general, are all designed to support the main characters, which are these privileged men.

Anne: When they’ve learned the right things to say. And as long as they play the game right, they maintain their privilege and their power.

Cat: Yeah, that’s right.

Anne: It’s extremely discouraging.

Cat: It is. I’ve just immersed myself in learning so much about it. I’m interested in Dr. Peter Salerno, and his books. Which say we have to stop trying to help these men.

Anne: Yeah, this is exactly why I don’t recommend men’s programs anymore.

Anne: Due to hearing this story over and over from women over the years. And my own struggle to be free from this type of manipulation. I discovered and created the strategies in the Living Free Workshop. In The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop, 100 percent of the focus is on helping you. Does that mean I think he can’t change?

I don’t think that’s my call to make, the only person I’m concerned about is you. The only help you need is to see his true character. You can observe from a safe distance to see if he will continue to lie and exploit. Or will he make different choices? The strategies give you enough space to see who he really is and what he’s going to do. Because with a therapy program, a men’s program, or a couple’s program, you don’t get the space you need to see him for who he really is.

It just becomes an extension of his manipulation of you. You still have no way to protect yourself from his yelling and abusive behaviors. But the strategies in the Living Free Workshop enable you to create space for yourself to see his true character, because truth is the only way out of this.

Cat: Right, that’s exactly right. That’s so good.

Anne: Our local domestic violence coalition, instead of putting more money into helping victims. They decided to do a men’s program. And I’m like, don’t do it. Because they know what they’re doing.

Anne: I don’t know if you’re a fan of the Barbie movie.

Cat: Yeah, I loved it.

Anne: Ryan Gosling goes into that office building, and he’s in the lobby. I’m gonna do this scene for everyone. Ken says, I’ll take a high level, high paying job with influence, please. And the corporate man says, okay, then you’ll need at least an MBA, and a lot of our people have PhDs. Ken says, Isn’t being a man enough? And the corporate man says, actually, right now it’s the opposite.

Ken says, You guys are clearly not doing patriarchy very well. And here’s the kicker. The corporate man says, no, no, we’re doing it well. Yeah, we just hide it better now. And that’s what you’re talking about. They’re hiding it in feminist language, but they’re not actually feminists. They don’t actually see women as equals. They want to hold on to their exploitative privilege. The part I loved about that movie is they know that.

Cat: They do. And you know, that’s why the covert abusers are probably the most successful now. Because there are so few avenues still socially acceptable to exercise dominance and control.

Anne: Right, yeah, and they’re getting good at it. So in court they intend to, and they know that they can dysregulate us by abusing us. Their intent in yelling to strike fear, to dysregulate us. So they can claim we’re crazy, and we look disheveled and freaked out because we are.

Cat: Yeah, I was even very put together and calm and poised in all our family court meetings, with the judge. They said point blank, we don’t talk about anything that’s come before in here.

Cat: We only talk about how we’re moving forward, which is crazy to me. Knowing all the written admissions I had from him, I was not allowed to even present that. This is the twisted thing about family court. I was the only one showing up and advocating for the kids. He showed up and advocated for what he wanted from custody. And they said if I didn’t stop, I would be labeled a parental alienator.

So I just said, okay, we’re just 50/50, we’re not 50/50. I have more custody, but yeah, it’s broken. I just want to say how grateful I am to Betrayal Trauma Recovery for really accelerating my healing. And giving me compassionate but radical acceptance. So that I could start to get myself to safety and my kids to safety.

Anne: Cat, thank you so much for sharing your story.

A husband’s lying, infidelity, gaslighting, and emotional abuse causes betrayal trauma. The effects can leave women feeling lost, confused, and unsafe. Understanding the 4 stages of betrayal trauma can help you process what’s happening and take meaningful steps toward healing.

Most men who betray their wives are emotionally abusive. Before moving on, take our free emotional abuse quiz to see if you’re also experiencing emotional abuse.

When a husband lies, cheats, or manipulates, it can make a woman feel stressed and worried. She might have trouble eating or sleeping. Betrayal can hurt a lot, but that’s why it’s so important to figure out what’s going on. Then, you can start to heal and feel better as soon as possible.

Long before a woman discovers her husband’s lies or infidelity, women feel confused and unsure about what’s wrong. If it happens to you, you usually know something feels off, but it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what. This is critical, because that unease is your intuition signaling that there’s an issue. Often, abusers contribute to this confusion by blaming you, making you feel like you’re the problem. Many women try couple therapy during this time, which doesn’t seem to help.

Sometimes, trusted friends or professionals accidentally make things harder by giving simple advice. Like saying you should work harder on the relationship. During this time, it’s normal to feel confused and even blame yourself. However, it’s important to remember this: feeling confused means you are standing up to the abuse and trying to understand what’s really happening. Keep going, and don’t give up!

To learn more about this type of psychological abuse, listen to The Free Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast.

When a woman finds out about her husband’s lies and infidelity, it’s a new type of trauma – and also a relief. They feel relieved that they discovered what’s wrong, but they’re often re-traumatized. Because the wrong kind of support can worsen the trauma. Most professionals don’t understand that emotional abuse and coercion are what’s causing the betrayal trauma. Instead, they blame women and say she is the cause. This can be confusing and frustrating.

It’s imperative that you find the right help, because this stage of addiction recovery counseling or couple therapy will make things worse. Our daily, online Group Sessions are a safe place where only women will share their betrayal trauma experiences. We’d love to see you in a session today.

When you finally get the right kind of support and education, the puzzle pieces begin to fit together. You’ll recognize betrayal trauma for what it is, and you’ll start to see abusive patterns for what they’ve been all along.

You will see that lying and gaslighting are not your fault. These actions are done on purpose to hurt and control you. This is when many people stop blaming themselves. Then, they start setting rules to keep themselves safe, both emotionally and physically.

The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop helps women know exactly what’s going on and gives them safety strategies to protect themselves from this type of emotional and psychological abuse.

The final stage is applying what you’ve learned to gain more and more emotional and psychological safety. At BTR.ORG, we help survivors protect their thoughts from manipulation and trauma. First, you’ll learn how to create a safe life for yourself. This could mean leaving an abusive husband or building strong emotional boundaries. Next, you’ll start to see how strong and capable you are. Step by step, you’ll gain the tools to feel safe and in control again.

Our coaches guide you step by step, so you feel calm and confident again.

Betrayal trauma can feel really hard to handle, but you don’t have to face it by yourself. At Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we help women feel safe and start healing. No matter if you’re in a relationship, separated, or divorced, we have tools and resources to support you every step of the way.

Anne: It’s just me today, I’m going to talk about, the 4 stages of betrayal trauma. And how important it was to figure out how to set boundaries with my husband. That’s where the Living Free Workshop comes in. Because safety is the treatment. Women see that once they’re emotionally and psychologically safe, their betrayal trauma symptoms almost completely disappear.

I started podcasting in 2016. A long time ago. If you look at the podcast feed, it doesn’t go back that far. And the reason it doesn’t go back that far is when I started podcasting, I learned in real time and shared my experience of attempting to get to safety.

As I studied, I also did over 300 long form interviews with betrayal trauma victims, both on the podcast and in person. Through doing that, I began to see clear patterns. And I was also running my own experiments, seeing what worked and what didn’t in my own life. And seeing what was working and not working in other women’s situations. I learned the 4 stages of betrayal trauma.

After discovering the Living Free strategies, I actually got to safety. And then I realized that many of these very old recordings also had incorrect information. Theories or principles that I was testing through trial and error that I now know do not work. I didn’t want to hurt any woman, so I removed that incorrect information. But today, I’m going to share several recordings from long ago, when I was still trying to learn how to apply the safety principles.

You’ll hear a section where I talk about helping my son visualize his emotions. And those same types of visualizations are the pattern I later used to write in the workshop. I used that to help me heal, and has since helped so many other women heal from the inside out.

Anne: As you listen to these old recordings, you’ll hear the seeds of all the services we have here at Betrayal Trauma Recovery being planted. And the rest of this episode is snippets from those old recordings. After seven years of attempting to “help my husband” deal with his addiction and his anger problems. He sprained my fingers and pushed me against the kitchen cabinets during an argument.

He was arrested for domestic violence. The judge gave him a no contact order, which is a protective order. And that was the first time I’d ever conceived that he was really an abusive person. I waited, hoping for him to take accountability, change, truly repent and return home to us for nine months. And he decided to file for divorce. During that nine months, I prayed and prayed. And the only answer I received was to start a podcast, which is how this podcast started.

I used to go by the name Anon, Anne Blythe is not my real name. My friend had a Facebook account with the name Anne Blythe. Named after Anne Blythe from Anne of Green Gables. I ended up adopting that name and that Facebook account to represent all of us, because my story is the universal story. The details might be a little bit different, but we all go through a period of trying to “help our husbands” or support him this is one of the first stages of betrayal trauma.

Anne: I am an avid gardener. I have nine fruit trees, five 12 by two garden boxes, a huge section of my garden in my front yard, where I grow self-proclaimed prize winning pumpkins. On Monday, my five year old son and I planted the corn. It was such a sweet time. I dug the hole and he put the seed in. The obvious symbolism of faith that it takes to plant this seed so small and hope that in a few months we’ll have an eight foot stalk with delicious corn on it.

All my garlic is growing great, and I planted that in the fall. So planting a little bulb that, the next year, will turn into the most delicious, rich, buttery garlic. It’s called Romanian Red, and it’s amazing, and you can’t get it at the store. In my front yard, I have irises and tiger lilies, canna lilies and salvia. Every kind of beautiful perennial you can imagine. Every year they get better, bigger, and more beautiful.

It’s been almost three years since my ex’s arrest, and back then my front yard and all the perennials were kind of sad. It was like three irises that came up, but now they’re gorgeous. Everyone comments on how beautiful my garden is. I didn’t know that my garden would be so beautiful, but I had faith that it would be. And I dug things up, I split plants, and I moved things around.

And had faith that my hard work would pay off, and it has. I have not yet seen the hard work pay off with my setting boundaries.

Anne: My life is still really hard. I’m a single mom of three kids. Life is hard every day. It’s hard to get dinner on the table. It’s hard to keep the house clean, it’s really stressful and very overwhelming.

There are days when I sit on the couch and stare into space, and then end up crying because I’m overwhelmed. I’m still nervous about the future. I still don’t know exactly what’s gonna happen. But if my garden is any indication, as I stand there, especially my front yard with all the beautiful perennial flowers, I’m like, this feels safe, and this feels secure, and guess what else?

Beautiful, I have faith that my life will be beautiful like that. My garden has evolved to be something amazing. Maybe I will evolve to be something amazing someday. Right now, it seems like I’m still digging around in the dirt with nothing to show for it. Talk about late bloomer, I’m like the world’s latest bloomer, ha ha. But maybe when I do, I’ll be like that big, beautiful iris.

I want to talk about nightmares for a minute. My ex was supposedly in recovery, but I was still having nightmares. In the dreams, I was a single mom, and I knew I needed a husband. So I was like, there was that one guy I remember him. He was kind of nice. Where is he now? Why isn’t he here? And then I would try and find him and then I would find him and he would be kind of mean to me, brush me off. That was the nightmare. I had different forms of that all the time.

Anne: I remember I would put my hand over on him and touch him, and be like, oh good. It was just a dream, whew, like every night. And then I would tell him about it, and I would say, I’m having these nightmares. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Everything seems fine with us. One night when I was lying in bed right next to him, I said, I’ve been having these nightmares.

Not knowing this was one of the 4 stages of betrayal trauma. I really feel like something bad’s gonna happen. And I didn’t pause to let him speak. I said, yeah, but it’s just crazy. It must just be me. I’m still mentally messed up. Well, he never said anything about it. But now that I look back, he not only didn’t say anything, and I talked myself out of it.

But he also didn’t try and comfort me. There was a woman I talked to recently. She said, I’m having nightmares almost every night, but I wake up and look at him and everything’s fine. And I said, when you tell him about your nightmares, how far away is he? Is he standing more than four feet away from you? Looking at you, but not responding? She started crying. She said, that’s exactly what’s happening. Confusion is one of the 4 stages of betrayal trauma.

I said, I’m not sure what’s going on. But an empathetic, caring, connected person would not be four or five feet away in that situation. They would be giving you a hug. They’d say, I’m so sorry you’re having these nightmares. I love you. I care about you. Is there anything I can do? Something, some kind of connecting, interacting thing.

Anne: But the standing like four or five feet away with this blank stare on your face, like a deer in the headlights. And more and more as I hear these stories of women who have these nightmares. And then, months later, they find out something was really going on. Even though in their waking hours it seemed like everything was fine. Not to say that everyone who has a nightmare, her husband is lying.

Because thinking my husband was in recovery when he was not. He was lying to me and manipulating me. And I had those dreams. Now I see an indicator of a warning to me. Now that I’m disconnected from him. I rarely have those nightmares anymore.

I have a friend whose husband has labeled her borderline and kept taking her in to get help. Her husband had been lying to her and gaslighting her, and he had a double life. Addiction was going on, and this was a way for him to avoid anyone looking at him and making her look crazy. There’s no way to actually recover if you’re still being abused like this. This friend of mine, she has now separated herself from her abusive spouse, and her borderline symptoms are gone.

Now she’s having trauma symptoms. I have an unnamed autoimmune disorder. It’s not lupus, it’s not arthritis. I’ve been trying to get a diagnosis for a long time. I get super, super sleepy and all of my joints hurt really bad. So it has a lot of the same characteristics of these autoimmune diseases.

So the doctors are like, yep, you have one. We don’t know what it is, it’s unnamed. And we should call it the betrayal trauma autoimmune disorder.

Anne: I have spent so much time and money going to therapists, but not getting help for my trauma symptoms. I am paying them to sit there in their office and educate them about betrayal trauma. There was one therapist, it was like three months after my husband’s arrest. I was trying to convince her that my husband was abusive. It was crazy, wait a minute, what am I doing? I’m not going to her anymore. And I think she was confused because I didn’t want to divorce.

So she was like, you’re saying your husband’s abusive, but you don’t want to get a divorce. Like, I don’t know how to help you. Yes, he’s abusive, I don’t want to get a divorce, and I need help. Like, can you accept me where I am? And she had no idea how to help me. Part of my betrayal trauma symptoms were that I did not hear my children when they were talking to me.

And I wasn’t doing anything else. So I was available, and ready and willing to talk to them, but just didn’t hear them until they had said my name a few times. And then I was like, Oh, yeah, what is it? So zoning out, I found myself doing that frequently. So if I’m having a hard time concentrating. I feel the couch, maybe feel the couch fabric, maybe even touch my child’s arm, something that I can reconnect with the present moment.

I actually sat on the couch with my five year old son, and we just sat there for like, probably a half hour. And he was spouting off. I didn’t even know what he was talking about.

Anne: I was listening to him. And I was acknowledging him. I was looking him in the eyes. I was like, let’s have a stare contest. And we just looked at each other and smiled for a while. And it was just that I thought, Oh, this is what I’m trying to do. Okay, I’m going to be in the here and now with my daughter. And I’ll be available to you.

That’s, I think my biggest hurdle is, I’ve sat here with her for four minutes, and this is boring and I need to do the dishes. That’s what I’m struggling with the most right now.

When I stop and stare at my daughter, I think, how long do I have to do this for? I want to get better at it and more practiced. Until that is what I crave, those quiet moments with my children, and living in that moment with peace and stillness. And also, my soul needs that every day. We need a period of time of quiet, both spending time with ourselves in a quiet place, and spending time with the people that we love.

Anne: I’ve actually been doing visualization with my son every night about his emotions and his anger, and where he’s going to put it. One of the things we imagined was that he put all his feelings about how he doesn’t want to do his schoolwork. Like, I don’t want to do my work. I hate doing schoolwork, you know, that sort of thing in a box. And then if he was holding that box, could he pick up his pencil? to do his schoolwork. And he was like, no, I can’t.

So I said, well, where do you want to put the box? And he’s like, Oh, I’m just going to put it over here. And then he was like, Oh, mom, I can do my assignment now. He has improved significantly in his schoolwork. So using a betrayal meditation or visualization as a tool is an option for healing from betrayal trauma because I have used visualization before to be able to connect with my children.

Since that time, I haven’t solved all my problems. But in relation to my abusive ex husband, who abused me post divorce for eight years. I’m completely delivered from him, and so are my children. And I did this through the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Workshop Strategies. I spent so much time and effort putting everything I learned over the years into that workshop,

Applying those strategies and having those strategies deliver us was for sure the miracle I had been praying for. And I hope you find all the strategies to be the miracle you’ve been praying for too.

Did you recently discover you husband flirting with women online or using pornography? Are you confused, hurt, devastated, and afraid? If your wondering “Is online infidelity cheating?”, here are 7 things you need to know based on the research. Did you know that online cheating is a form of emotional abuse? To see if you’re experiencing any one of the 19 different types of emotional abuse, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

It can be really upsetting to find out your husband is talking to other women online or committing online infidelity. Learning about his lies and secret life might make you feel a mix of emotions like anger, sadness, confusion, and betrayal. You might wonder, “Why did he do this?” or “Am I not enough?” Online infidelity is cheating. These feelings are normal, and it’s important to let yourself feel them. Take it one step at a time, and don’t feel guilty for how you feel.

This level of deception is a form of intimate partner violence that includes emotional & psychological abuse and coercion. There’s no right way to react to this level of emotional and psychological abuse you’ve experienced up to this point. There’s also no wrong way to react. When it happened to me, I vacillated between wanting to be close to my husband and never wanting to see him again.

Realizing that your husband has been lying to you about how he uses his time or what he does online is shocking. Seeking support from others who understand your situation can make a world of difference. Consider a support group, like those offered by Betrayal Trauma Recovery, where you can connect with women who’ve experienced this type of emotional abuse.

Don’t get support anywhere that doesn’t consider this a serious emotional and psychological abuse issue. The significant trauma you’re experiencing is real. You deserve a safe place to process your trauma, without having to do anything for a man who’s been lying to you.

One of the first thoughts you might have is, “What did I do wrong?” But it’s essential to understand that your husband’s online behavior isn’t a reflection of your worth. His choice to view explicit content stems from his exploitative privilege, not from any failing on your part. Yes, online infidelity is cheating. seeing the situation accurately is crucial to begin making your way to emotional safety.

Psychological safety means those around you value honesty. If you’re psychologically safe with your husband, that means he never deceives you or obscures the truth to construct a false reality. Establishing psychological safety from someone who has shown a history of deceit is important.

The FREE Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast helped me more than anything. I wish I would have found it sooner. I couldn’t believe how helpful it was.

Amidst the chaos, it’s crucial to take care of yourself. Prioritize activities that make you feel good and distract you from the pain. Whether it’s reading a book, going for a walk, or spending time with friends, self-care is essential for your healing process. I watched all seven seasons of the Golden Girls, and I gardened. Anything that helps you is what you need.

Most women who experience this don’t know exactly what to do. Many turn to couple therapy, addiction recovery therapy, or clergy for help. Therapists and clergy don’t receive training in this type of abuse. They often prolong a woman’s suffering. To learn effective strategies and know what to do next, I enrolled in The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. It changed my life. I have no idea what I would have done without learning the safety strategies.

Navigating the emotional turmoil of discovering your husband’s online infidelity can be overwhelming. Betrayal Trauma Recovery will help you walk through the chaos.

Anne: Heidi Hastings and Rebecca Lucero Jones, two researchers are back on the podcast today. They’re going to share the results of two studies.

Anne: The first is how their partner’s online infidelity affects women’s religiosity and spirituality.

Anne: And then the results of when they studied how a partner’s online infidelity affected a woman’s sexuality. Their research revealed some interesting things about online infidelity, otherwise known as pornography use.

Anne: So Heidi and Rebecca, you studied how husband’s use affects women’s religiosity and spirituality. Can you share what you found?

Heidi: People taught them the husband is the leader in the home. They felt unsettled looking back on it, how that had actually put them at risk, or they’d given up their whole identity to serve him. And gender roles also within religion were disturbing to them that their role as a woman, as the wife in the home, was really dismissed. Tracy, a participant, looked at gender roles in scripture.

And she referred to the story of Queen Esther in the Old Testament. She said it’s not just the theme of strong women and saving the Jewish people in Persia. To me, the biggest theme is that men have always behaved badly with male entitlement, and that has been destructive to women. And women decided to stay in the marriage because of their religion. For some women, that was because they had honored their marital vows.

They were trying so hard to keep their part of the vows, regardless of what had happened. And staying in the marriage for the sake of religion didn’t mean they were healed or had a positive marital relationship. Many of them stayed in the marriage, and they were sleeping in different bedrooms or on different stories of the house. In order to make things work economically and keep their vows in what way they could.

But there were some women grateful that they had stayed in the relationship. Because of their commitments to their religion, because they healed the marriage eventually,

Heidi: Some who lived with this issue for a long time, the length of time since their discovery varied from nine months to two or three decades. Still had terrible marriages. We had many outcomes. About a third stayed married, and were happy with it. About a third stayed married, and were not happy with it. And about a third were divorced.

Anne: That answers my question. Because a lot of times I’ll interview them and they’re like, I did this program. It was incredible. He’s doing great. Our marriage is better. And then they’ll come back three years later and say, oh my word, he was lying to me the entire time, it was all grooming. I found something else. I’ve also found when a couple goes to therapy and they think that they’re successful, and the therapist thinks they’re successful, and it’s like, oh, awesome.

And then they don’t go to therapy anymore. And then If she finds out he was lying that entire time, they were going to that particular therapist. That they don’t go back to that same therapist, so they go to a different one. So that therapist would never know that he lied the whole time and was manipulating. They usually don’t circle back around to the same people they sought help from in the first place. They usually move on because they think like, well, that didn’t work.

Rebecca: Yeah, as a therapist, it is tricky to work with any type of infidelity or deception, because you don’t know if people are telling the truth. Clients lied to me many times. The wife may ask herself is online infidelity cheating?

Rebecca: It would be embarrassing to come back to the therapist and admit you’ve lied. And it could be the husband doing a power play to not return to the therapist.

Anne: Yeah, over seven years, we went to four different therapists, but I think going to multiple therapists is common. Was that a question in any of your studies?

Heidi: It was not, but several of the women brought that up. They went to therapists who didn’t help them. Who didn’t understand betrayal trauma. Who blamed them, or they felt disconnected from, and that was more harmful. And so they talked about switching therapists multiple times, without me asking anything about that.

So one of the other things that was big in the women wrestling with their religion was unmet expectations of religious leaders. So they thought their religious leader could fix the problem. You know, all he needed to do was talk to his religious leader, and somehow it would be fixed. They thought the religious leader would at least hold him accountable. Women felt disenfranchised when that didn’t happen. When clergy let husbands off easily.

The wives thought it was. And who knows, if he told them everything or just minimized it. Religious leaders gave them poor advice, because they didn’t understand the woman’s perspective of betrayal. And they felt like there were often dismissive attitudes.

Heidi: A woman named Ruth said, a bishop has got to be able to get him to stop and tell him that he can’t do this anymore. Then everything will be okay.

Nicole said, my religion didn’t give me the tools I needed to put my foot down earlier. This is my marriage too. You don’t get to be the authority on me if you’re acting in sin. A religious leader that tells me I need to have it with my husband more, and that’s how I’m going to help him stop online infidelity, is not speaking for Christ. She’s not speaking the Bible. She told me the story she heard.

Anne: Whoa, did you just say a woman religious leader? Who is causing marital coercion?

Heidi: Uh huh. Yeah, we had, we had several women that had women religious leaders.

Anne: And they weren’t better, huh?

Heidi: Not when they were speaking from tradition. This finding is that those wrestling with religion, who’d felt overlooked, ignored, dismissed and silenced by a leader. The resources all went to her husband, rather than resources going to support her. Rather than the leader regularly meeting with her, it was with her husband. So women experienced a sense of disenfranchisement with the expectations they had of their religious leader. Which they often projected onto the religion.

And they’re like, I don’t know what I believe anymore. Not all of them, but definitely some of them. And then they had these challenges to their faith. Because they felt their religious leader was linked to God or called by God. They pulled away from their church, a few of them, not a lot of them. One woman changed several times.

Heidi: She started as a fundamentalist Christian, a very, very, very fundamentalist conservative. Her pseudonym is Colette. She said, “All these people promised me in church that your virginity is the best gift you can ever give to your husband. Such bull*# and I don’t swear.” That’s a quote. She was like, I can’t believe how my leader taught me to serve, to do everything for him, and it put her in such a dangerous place.

So she changed religion several times. Another woman, Esther said, we pulled away from the church. I didn’t pray or look to God for anything. Serafina said, “I don’t go to the synagogue anymore. That loss is profound. I have so many rabbis and cantors with problematic behaviors as clients, and she’s a therapist now. She said, it just feels so hypocritical. Rituals are important to me.

What isn’t important to me is sitting and listening to a rabbi. Those who struggled with religion and left religion were a smaller percentage of our sample, but several struggled with multiple aspects of religion based on those things. Rebecca, do you want to take the next theme?

Rebecca: Yeah, I’m going to talk about a few different aspects of healing and what kinds of relationships were helpful. This is key. Because when a woman experiences betrayal trauma, many times women would first seek guidance from religious leaders, rather than secular sources. And I think a lot of this is based on the assumption that if you have a shared belief that online infidelity is a sin, and online infidelity is cheating? Definitely yes. You would get better support.

Rebecca: And if you go to a secular source, that they may not share that belief with you. That your partner’s belief, you know, online infidelity would be harmful to you. The view of, is online infidelity is cheating. So it was important for them to seek support from someone who shared that, I would say worldview.

We found that those professionals and religious leaders who really tended to the intersectional nature of these women’s identity. Meaning that their female identity was not the only identity they had. But also their religious identity. That it was important that they understood what it meant to have both of these identities at the same time, right? Be a religious woman, and that tending to both aspects of their identity was critical to helping these women heal.

And also, I would say, find their own power. So one area that was important was support from inside the religion. So we talked about how sometimes religious leaders didn’t meet expectations. But when a religious leader was helpful to them, that was key, right? If they could show compassion, empathy and validation, this ended up being a safe place for them to share their experiences. It’s important that religious leaders show compassion and empathy.

When a woman shares that this is happening in the marriage, right? That her partner has extramarital behaviors. And she, a lot of times, doesn’t quite know how to interpret what’s happening. We had one woman who shared this beautiful response that her rabbi had. Tracy shared: she, meaning the rabbi took me to the mikvah. There’s a river that flows out of the Garden of Eden.

Rebecca: And when Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden, they were so disconsolate and so despairing. They went and sat in that river weeping. The Mikvah is the sacred immersion in the living waters that flow from the Garden of Eden. And can be used anytime you want to reconnect to sources of renewal and creation. After the pollution that had happened to me, we went to the mikvah. There are very specific prayers. You must be completely naked.

You’re immersing yourself back into the waters of creation for purposes of rebirth and renewal. That was wonderful. And so we loved that story Tracy shared. Because here we see a rabbi seriously hearing what she has to say. Recognizing that this woman needed rebirth, of some sort of renewal. She felt so broken by her experience. And so I think that’s a beautiful story of how religion or religious rituals can heal. When leaders listen and understand the experience of the woman.

The next part is to recognize the need for support outside the religion. So this was also helpful when religious leaders understood, I would say, the extent of their expertise. When a woman shares this, she often only knows the tip of the iceberg. She’s coming in crisis. So again, she hasn’t had the time to process all the things in the history where she may have felt or sensed something.

She really, I would say, most of the time doesn’t know fully what she’s dealing with the fact that online infidelity is cheating. And plus, her husband has made concerted efforts to deceive her, and she may never know the full extent of what’s going on.

Rebecca: So when a religious leader gives advice based on one thing, she shares. Women in our study talked about how, if they couldn’t accept the statement I said about my partner emotionally abusing me. I certainly wasn’t going to tell them about the abuse.

Heidi: They kind of dip their toe in to see.

Rebecca: Yes, a lot.

Anne: If he’ll be empathetic about this, then I could tell him more, kind of a thing.

Heidi: Right, and so those who were met with compassion.

Rebecca: Yeah, so they would test whether they could trust a leader. One of the women, Nicole, said it was important that she began to understand. That what she was seeing with her partner was much more serious than just oh, I just looked at a website. It is a a breach of trust and online infidelity is betrayal. She talked about her husband’s problem and said he watched it while he was driving, which is why he got in a car accident.

He had five car accidents, and three were while watching it. He doesn’t learn. That’s why I tell him it’s not a sin. It’s an addiction, because no person is this dumb. As she learned more, she realized this is beyond the limits of a pastor. It’s dangerous. This finding, in particular, was interesting to me and Heidi, and it was that women need women for healing. What we found was that there was a lot of shame when somebody found out their husband was committing online infidelity.

And sometimes some of these women, their husbands, had other behaviors that were extramarital. And one of the things that helped these women was finding older women within their religious tradition.

Rebecca: Sometimes they had female leaders, though that wasn’t as common. Older women in the church mentored Noelle and helped her get through it. And that was one way that women went around the structure in a religion where you see many male leaders. Another one Betsy, talked about building a support system with multiple women, including a coach, a support group, and friends.

So she built herself a little village of women that could support her. And she said, it was so beautiful to have a woman cheer for me, support me and delight in my achievements, and just be fine with all my mess. That shows the beauty of healing with other women in your corner. Hearing other people with a similar experience who have also been on this same journey. And learning about how they’ve navigated their faith, how they’ve navigated their healing.

That is a key part of many women’s healing. One of our participants, Faith shared, I was like, somebody understands. And the best thing was that I could see that people were farther along in the recovery. I want to die right now, but I might be okay after this is done. That captures how these groups give people hope for the future. And as a professional, I think it’s important for therapists to know that therapy may not provide the same level of hope. That you get in a group setting.

So I think encouraging clients to find, it could be online or in person, support groups can be important as she moves through this experience of figuring out is online infidelity a betrayal, and what about other behaviors?

Heidi: Which we know you do, Anne, with Betrayal Trauma Recovery, so thank you for your work there.

Anne: Our daily support groups, yes.

Rebecca: Yeah totally. The last thing that women talked about in reference to women needing women for healing. Was how comforting it was to think about a female counterpart. To the male god commonly discussed and worshiped in their own religion. And one of our participants, Tiffany, described how this was for her. She said she started collecting art and studying Heavenly Mother. And how that was healing.

Tracy talked about how Judaism’s religious roots elevate women as equals and unified relationships with men. She explained that some words in Hebrew for God combined the masculine and the feminine. The term El Shaddai means breasts. And El, a Hebrew name for God, is directly derived from the name of the chief Canaanite male God represented by the bulls.

So you have the merging of the masculine and the feminine, often translated as God Almighty, the compassionate, strong, powerful God, the masculine and the feminine together.

It’s a religious belief that brought many women comfort to think about this feminine God. As someone who could understand her pain. It was very difficult with the traditional rhetoric in many religions, which may not necessarily deny the idea of a feminine God, but often leave it out in the discussions. And in terms of what they promote when they talk about God.

But it’s interesting that many people, even within the religious tradition. That there was room for some sort of feminine God. And that this was a significant part of their healing was turning to this feminine God.

Rebecca: Rather than a masculine God that they often felt wouldn’t understand the level of pain they were experiencing.

Heidi: About 10 percent of the women that spoke about this, but we felt like it was an interesting finding because they came from three different religions. I’m just going to read this quote. Colette said, “God is male and female. A group of pastors came here to hear me speak one time, and I made them read from the passage of the creation of Genesis. Where it says three times, in his image and likeness.

Male and female, he created them. I said, what does that say about the nature of God? One pastor said if that’s true, it changes everything. And I said, it is true, and it does change everything.

Anne: Oh, you’ve handpicked all the parts of the Bible that benefit you, but these parts you’re like, what? This is new to me. Okay. It’s been there the whole time.

Heidi: And it’s a pastor. So we loved the last theme, spiritual growth, because we don’t want women who are just entering this phase. And just starting to listen maybe to your podcast, to think that the pain and heartache are all gone. Online infidelity that they’re going to experience with this, besides the trauma, when we asked the women, how have you changed? Their answers floored us. They were not what we thought, but many of the women got really emotional during that question.

Heidi: When they started talking about their most intimate spiritual moments. Many of them came with a deeper faith, with strengthened relationships with God, who truly transformed them into new people. With a new identity, a new, better version of themselves. They felt divine assistance from God. Sometimes they were very suicidal, more than half talked about being suicidal without us ever asking any questions about it. And often in that moment, they felt God would bring miracles.

Some would have dreams, or could hear a voice or feel someone next to them. And that just gave them hope and kept them going. They had people come into their lives or resources come into their lives. I remember driving back from church late one night. It was dark, and the tears were pouring down my face. The only way I made it home was through the grace of God and his mighty protection.

I felt his presence on my right shoulder, and I remember pleading with God and praying, just take me away. So I don’t have to feel this pain anymore. And he told me it’s not time yet. It’s not time. And she said, God is there. He’s watching and powerful. So through these personal experiences, the women found meaning in their adversity and experience, at least sometimes of peace. And many, many of them gained personal relationships with God that they didn’t have before.

Previously, their experience with religion was more focused on the rituals of going to church or reading scriptures. Which many of them kept. However, they deconstructed their faith, and then built it up again.

Heidi: They focused more on God than on the religion. And they use the religion as a scaffolding to help them come to God. They learned to trust God to seek help, strength and support.

Anne: What percentage of women chose to leave faith altogether from your study?

Heidi: Two and one said she was coming back. Several did leave religion for a time, but then came back. when they had figured out their own way to reconstruct it. Either by completely changing religions, congregations, places of worship, or by changing their own perspective of the role of their own religion. Every one of them found their husband was unreliable and dishonest, and they could not trust him because online infidelity.

And so in many cases, they started looking to God for truth, not to their husbands. They detached from their husbands and put God more in that central role, often. They found a deeper need for God. Tiffany talked about her experience with the nature of God completely changing. She said, I don’t even know who that God was that I believed in before. Because I have a whole new experience, which is stronger, brighter, bigger, and more abundant than ever.

I’ve learned that Christ’s capacity to know my individual, unique, deep feelings of loss occured. The hurt, pain, confusion, all the things, is so real. The last thing that the women talked about in this spiritual transformation was recognizing The spiritual, emotional and intellectual growth changed who they were.

Heidi: Several even talked about being grateful for the experiences they had. Not all the women, but many of them, said those experiences gave them newfound confidence in themselves. They could speak, which many of them had silenced themselves. And especially, they spoke often about it, about betrayal of any kind including online infidelity.

Zena said, the biggest thing I’ve learned is discovering myself. I truly didn’t know who I was, that I am a child of God. I have worth and I have a voice, and he wants me to use it. I’m not the same person I was before. I’m a new creation in God’s eyes. The women reported also through all that personal shame they had experienced. Working through that with the help of support groups, and learning to have more grace for themselves.

Because so many blamed themselves for the whole experience. That they weren’t good enough, that they weren’t adequate enough to keep their husband tied to them. They found purpose in their suffering and went on a mission. Many of them help other women navigate similar trials, which I think you have done. And I love that so much.

I just wanted to share one last quote from a woman named Cassie. She talked about taking complete responsibility for her spirituality, rather than relying on other people. She said, I had to learn to define faith, taking out all the middlemen and the structure. This is between me and God.

While I say I still believe in having a church structure. I still see the value, but what I thought it would do for me is not what it did for me. So I had to learn to take a lot more personal responsibility for that.

Rebecca: I know many of our participants said they were grateful for the experience because of who they ended up becoming due to this life crisis. I would say, I’m not going to negate that that’s the experience. But suffering in and of itself doesn’t create that person. It’s important that these women understand that they have that outcome, because they built that. In the face of immense suffering, they chose to see purpose in their suffering.

They chose to find a way to take something awful, the worst thing that has ever happened to these women for most of them. And make something beautiful grow from that. And it’s important that the women understand that is something they did themselves. I just hate the thought of thinking that we have to suffer to become those people. But I think those women always had it in them. And that when they’re faced with a crisis, they were able to cultivate that in themselves.

Anne: I thought that for a while, and so many women do, it’s like I deserve this because I was such a terrible person. Somehow, before that, God wanted to give me this, because only such a terrible trial would transform such a bad person. Like me into the person he wanted me to be. That’s what I would hear. But you were a wonderful person. You are a wonderful person. You didn’t bring this suffering upon yourself. He cheated online and it isn’t your fault. Betrayal trauma from infidelity is so difficult.

Because you needed to be transformed. They’ll come out stronger, but not because they needed to and not because they were weak originally right?

Heidi: Right?

Anne: All of my insights are anecdotal from interviewing people for the last eight years. It’s awesome to have them in an actual published study.

Anne: So you did another study on how a husband’s online infidelity use affects his wife’s sexuality. So can you talk about the themes that came up in that study?

Rebecca: So when we published this study, we only had a Christian population. It’s important to note that it is very traumatic to discover this. Often they’ve been led to believe their husband was not viewing it or that he did not have a problem with this, and this is very. I would say psychologically taxing on a woman. She has physiological symptoms, psychological symptoms.

Many times women talked about not being able to speak for a period, like literally becoming mute for a short period. They talked about dissociating, feeling nausea, insomnia, suicidal ideation, shame. Many women describe it as the floor falling out from underneath them. Feeling disbelief and shock, feeling frozen, really questioning what they were seeing. This is a trauma response, all signs point to a traumatic response in their body.

Anne: They’re not just discovering the it, cheating? They’re also discovering his lack of integrity. So they’re also discovering that he’s a liar at the same time. Online infidelity is just as damaging as a physical affair.

Rebecca: Yes, walking in and seeing the man in the midst of viewing something was very traumatic. Sometimes women find garbage bags and garbage bags of explicit content, right? So sometimes they’re also discovering the sheer volume of what has happened. And that would be overwhelming for a woman. Who did not have any inkling that her husband had behaviors outside the marriage.

Rebecca: I wanna share a quote from Zena, one of our participants. She said that on D-day, that changed everything in my life. It shattered my heart to a million pieces, changed my foundation of what I was standing on. I was in shock. Once you find out news like that, it takes you a while to connect your feelings to your mind.

I wasn’t able to process that, and rightly, how can you? It was very traumatic. But I didn’t react in rage. I didn’t understand. Why would you do such things? I was at a total loss. It was just too much dumped on me at one time to make any sense of that. I want to discuss that because I think it’s important to understand exactly what it’s like to discover, to then have the context for what happens to her.

For some women, women had intensified desire following discovery. And this increase in desire was described by having three primary motivations. One was to control the husband’s use. One was to protect the relationship. Or it was to self soothe. And so a lot of this emotional response of any of these motivations often resulted in the woman feeling a little confused.

So Tiffany described, even though I was so shattered, I felt this intense desire. Later I read, it’s typical. People will go one of two directions, either hyper or not at all. So I was like, let’s just be together all the time. Then we spent time in cycles based on how much I trusted him, until we got to a point where we mostly weren’t physical.

Rebecca: So we noticed that some women would describe this as a similar experience of becoming hyper Now, if you are experiencing PTSD, you are in a high arousal state. An anxious state and arousal doesn’t necessarily discriminate. So to me, physiologically, it is not surprising that women who are experiencing PTSD and a symptom of arousal would also feel heightened at the same time.

Anne: I think it’s also a form of resistance, and when I say that, what I mean is they want safety and security. That is generally women’s primary motivation. They have faced this extremely dangerous situation, and the danger is coming from the person they’re supposed to rely on. So it’s confusing. But I just want to give women a lot of credit that they’re trying to be safe, and they think the safest thing to do is “meet their husband’s needs.” They are trying to stop the online infidelity.

Society has said maybe a therapist or maybe clergy has told her this. And she might be thinking, Oh, they were right, I didn’t give him enough. And that’s just the manipulation that these type of abusers tell their wives. To get them to have it with them when they’re lying, so you can see how this becomes more problematic.

Rebecca: I think that’s a great point. I think a lot of times when we maybe don’t have power in a situation. We would rather blame ourselves and think that we have control over an issue. Than acknowledge that maybe someone is abusing us. So in some ways it’s like, if maybe this has happened because I didn’t have it with him enough. If I have more I can control this.

Rebecca: We hope to fix it. Like you said, we hope to create the safety we’re looking for. Because it would be so uncomfortable to think that our partner is not safe. I think it’s much more difficult to make the leap to, this person is misusing power against me, and this has nothing to do with me. I think that’s a bigger psychological leap. So I appreciate Anne, you sharing that.

Because I was just going to share a quote from one of our participants. Samantha, that said, I want to make sure he gets what he needs from me in that department, so he doesn’t go looking again. And so you see that is a lot of women’s first reaction. if I give him enough, then he won’t need this other thing, Like we talked about in the study. On how women’s religiosity and spirituality were affected by their partner’s online infidelity and betrayal.

We also saw some of those beliefs being iterated by religious leaders. You need to have more with him. If you do this, he won’t have this problem. And so you can see that there’s a lot of context for her believing such a statement or behaving in such a way. It’s pretty much been programmed in her to think that she is the one that will fix this.

Anne: It’s also programmed in him. So many men in religious settings are told marriage is the solution to your problem. So if you’ve got a problem, you need to get married as soon as possible. And so that’s part of the abuse problem, she’s just a drug to him.

Anne: She’s not a person, so then she becomes the target of all of his angst. If he doesn’t feel “satisfied” because she was supposed to solve all of his problems.

Rebecca: Yes, so the next sub theme we had was being shut down. So some women talked about having a hyper response, and then other women were shut down. When they discovered they just completely closed off to their husbands, right? They couldn’t, in no way, be open to that. So many times following the discovery. They would say things like, get out, don’t touch me, don’t get near me.

Some women wondered if they were asexual right after the discovery, wondering if they’d ever been interested in it. Other women talked about realizing that the motivation for it seemed to always come from a sense of duty. And so we see women trying to understand maybe a lack of desire. After discovering that their husband had essentially a secret life.

Anne: Yeah, which is coercion.

Rebecca: Consent is fairly new. Unfortunately, the emphasis on consent is very new. We have a long history of women being obligated to men to please them. Even with a few lessons on consent, it doesn’t reverse the social ramifications for not abiding by those cultural scripts. So now we’re going to turn to our second theme, Heidi, do you want to take it away?

Heidi: Sure. This theme builds upon the idea of the women were struggling with the loss of their identity or trying to understand what was going on with their bodies.

Heidi: And it’s interesting to look at this perspective from a religious lens. Because there’s research that shows religiosity actually acts as a protective factor in the development of positive body image for many women. But in the case of betrayal, it did the opposite. So many women in our study indicated their sense of identity and self worth was completely shattered with the thought of their husband committing online infidelity and cheating.

Their thoughts and feelings surrounded comparing themselves to either what they saw in the explicit content. Or what they imagined might be in it. Or in the extramarital partners when that was the case. And experiencing shame about their own body. That comparison happened not only for the women comparing themselves to what they thought the women would look like or did look like.

But some men would actually say, this is Gwen making the statement. Her husband said, I see you as beautiful now, but compared to explicit content, of course not. And just hearing those words devastated her. She said, my world had turned upside down.

Anne: Mm hmm, well, and can you imagine the psychological abuse before that. She didn’t know about the it or affair partners, and he said, I’m not into it because I’m not as attracted to you as I used to be. And so her reality is that she’s just not attractive, and that’s what’s causing him to not want to be intimate with her. When she’s not aware that he’s masturbating to explicit content. And he can’t, because he’s already done it three times that day.

Anne: Even if they tried to be intimate, he couldn’t do it. That level of psychological abuse is extremely intense. Wrapping your head around, my husband was willing to let me think I’m some disgusting hag. So he had an excuse for why he couldn’t get it up. This is another reason why online infidelity is cheating.

Heidi: Right exactly, that huge hit it took on their body image. Faith was one of the women in our study, she was a middle aged woman. She initially thought her husband’s use was “because I’m old, I sag and I have stretch marks.” And Mary a young Latina woman, said that her struggles with her body image came because she knew she didn’t have a model size body.

We did have two women in our study who had plastic surgery. One was so sick for so long after that, and the other woman Anna said I don’t look at myself anymore. I don’t let myself take pictures and don’t think my body is attractive at all. I actually got a breast reduction at the beginning of last year for medical reasons. And I doubted myself so much, because basically he told me he would never look at me the same. And I was never going to be big enough anymore.

Ever since then, I feel like there’s just too many scars on my body. There’s too much now for anybody to ever want that anymore. Astra had weight loss surgery, and she said, I can’t blame his addiction for my weight problem. That was obviously something I have a problem with, but then I can’t blame his addiction for making me have the surgery. But I definitely did have the surgery, because I felt less than and unloved, abandoned and extremely undesirable.

Heidi: So this takes a huge hit, then also on their self esteem. Both struggled after the surgery in many ways. In Astra’s case, she ended up for eight years, having medical complications related to that decision. And then later on, she found out her husband had been looking at images of large women. She’s like, what? I don’t, I don’t get this.

Overall self esteem takes a hit, and they felt they were not enough. If they had been, they could control the situation. So some studies I’ve seen show that it takes a woman sometimes at least a couple of years to learn how to climax. One woman named Cassie’s husband was so upset about her inability to achieve orgasm within that first year. That he sent her to a therapist to figure out what was wrong with her and what was wrong with her body, because she wasn’t satisfying him.

Anne: She wasn’t satisfying him by not having her own orgasm?

Heidi: That’s what he was saying. yes. That’s how he described it. She said, I felt so deeply that rejection of I’m not, it was so directly tied to my performance and so directly tied to my worth. And my value as a person and in the marriage. So that rejection, again, you’re talking about layer upon layer of hurt that comes from this. The woman named Faith said, I have this past trauma. I wanted to call the shots, and I wanted to be in charge of my own body and say, it’s not okay with me.

I don’t want to do that right now, but he’d just get so mad. And I’m like, fine, just do whatever you want, which is very unhealthy. And I know that.

Heidi: So, her experience demonstrates that women wanted to control their own body. But it impacted it and their belief about themselves in such sad, really severe ways. Several later identified marital coercion.

Anne: I was thinking about an episode I did on wife rape. I talked about a church leader who was giving a church talk about how non-consensual immorality was wrong. And I thought there’s a word for that. It’s rape. I think many people worry about using the word rape because of reporting. For some reason, if you say rape, then it follows that you maybe have to report, and I’ve never talked to one woman remotely thinking about reporting.

They’re not going to report, and whether they should report is a totally different discussion. But it’s interesting to me that other people put the two together when victims don’t necessarily. Victims are like, now I know what I’m dealing with. But I think therapists or clergy worry about the reporting thing. And rather than being worried about reporting, focus on what happened.

It was rape. How would you feel the most safe in your body, in your home? What would you like to do? How can we help you? That discussion is one that I think every woman is entitled to have without anybody thinking. I don’t want to say that. Because then what if she goes and reports it?

Heidi: That is true. And in addition to that, I feel like for the religious leaders to, at the same time, be aware that it may not just be that one situation.

Heidi: It may be this complex trauma situation that’s digging up a host of things that often she never told anybody about. And so asking questions about that is important.

Anne: And what makes it complex? Just go one step further. What was the complexity caused by? People don’t quite lean into that. Because they’re like, I always wonder, why are they willing to go up to a certain thing. But they’re not willing to logically connect the next dot. They’re willing to connect the three dots, but there’s one more dot.

Rebecca: Yeah, one of the most insidious things about abuse is that it disconnects you from yourself in many ways. It’s hard to trust your gut, so often you don’t believe yourself. So when you get messages, don’t believe yourself on whether you know you’re ready for it. Always have it when your partner’s ready. There are many things happening that really divorce a woman from her own sense of knowing.

I’m going to talk about theme three, which is how women became disenfranchised. When a woman experiences her husband using. Many times her experience has been prescribed, undermined, or ignored. And her struggle to meet her needs. We’ve talked a little bit about this already, but the culture scripts.

For example, Samantha talked about how her husband told her. After we married, he said with authority, that guys need it at least once a day, and other similar things. I was surprised, but figured I’d better show up and meet his need. Because I didn’t want him to stray, especially since I knew he had a history of online infidelity.

Rebecca: I thought it was part of my new job as a wife to keep him satisfied. So I think that encapsulates how many women feel that pressure. These women didn’t have space to think about what they may want. Many times that’s not even part of the discussion. We had another participant talk about racial scripts. She is a black woman, and she said, we had to be tough. We were black women.

We came from a long line of women who were abused by husbands and mistreated, cheated on. You had to be strong. You had to be tough, and you had to go out there and do what you got to do. And I want to highlight that black women in America have survived so much.

And in many ways, I’m sure that those messages passed on from mothers and grandmothers have enabled this population to survive. That in and of itself is something that we have to recognize that many times there was no other option but to survive.

Anne: Exactly, it was the best way they knew how to resist it.

Rebecca: Exactly, yes, when you have always been in a context where you can either die or survive, you will choose survival. And, again, I think these are the cultural scripts that you’re born into. And many times there aren’t other options that are outlined for you. So there’s just one more quote I want to share about how these cultural scripts encourage that.

Rebecca: Anna grew up in a extremely conservative faith, and she talked about what her pastor told her. And she said, our pastor said, many times women go into marriage and not like anything. They are shocked with what happens, but you just need to deal with it. Okay, and you know, let your husband do what he needs to do always. Even if you don’t like it, you’ll end up liking it. You do what the guy wants.

Anne: What? You’ll end up liking it. That’s what people told her.

Rebecca: This is what her pastor told her.

Anne: Wow, wow.

Rebecca: So I think we don’t know what everybody’s religious education has been, right? But when you have a pastor saying that you may have men who are having regular intimacy.

Heidi: Her husband. He was very, very abusive.

Anne: Even if it’s just “regular,” if she doesn’t want to do it, it’s coercion. It doesn’t matter how “mild” it is. Online infidelity causes coertion.

Rebecca: Yes. But I think it’s important for religious leaders to remember that you don’t know who’s listening.

Anne: I mean, not only you don’t know who’s listening to that, that’s never right.

Rebecca: Yes.

Anne: Like ever, so it should never even be said, let alone thinking about who’s listening.

Rebecca: When I’m saying that, what I mean is I think some pastors can’t conceive of what might occur. And the truth is that, a statement like this really enables abusers.

Anne: For sure, but in every context, the only thing a pastor should say is, you are just as important as your husband. And when it comes to it, you have the right to do what you feel comfortable with, and he needs to respect that, or he’s raping you.

Rebecca: Yeah, this was something that stood out to us, because it was about half of the women talked about their experience, lacking emotional intimacy. One woman described it. Throughout our marriage, there weren’t a lot of intimate emotional connections. So I felt lonely a lot, having it without emotional connection. I don’t think it is really generally super healthy. I think I actually use it to feel connected.

You see, these women are desperate to connect and hope to get emotional intimacy sex. Then never being able to feel the emotional intimacy that can accompany a healthy relationship. The next theme is related to this, and that is mourning loss. So one third of the women reported that due to their husband’s use, he would not or could not engage with her intimately. And obviously that takes a toll on her in terms of her self esteem, her body image.

Many of them had mentioned that frequent masturbation prevented him from connecting. And you know, one woman talked about how she got married when she was young, and she thought, I’m pretty cute, right? Why isn’t he able to perform? You know, this is happening at young ages, and I’m pretty confused about that.

I think it’s interesting, because sometimes the narrative is she’s not interested in it. That’s why he does this, his behavior reaction to hers. And you actually see a lot of women mourning the connection they thought they would have in marriage.

Heidi: Yes. And they could not believe that religious leaders didn’t tell them that that might have been an outcome, especially those who’d known about the it before.

Heidi: They just understood, once we get married, it’ll all be okay. But they were like, wait a second. This is important information to know that there will be no intimate experience between us for years. Why was this information not shared?

Rebecca: So the next sub theme is about a male centric intimate experience. Many women talked about how often the marital intimacy experience focused on the husband’s preferences. And that societal norms had influenced this. Religious scripts, and explicit content, as the primary form of education for their partner. So it was focused on his pleasure instead of her pleasure. And in some cases they talked about, you know, reflecting back and seeing a grooming process.

Cassie shared in particular, clearly I could see looking back, but there was a progressive erosion of my own values. I did things in increasing desperation to fix things.

It’s important that all involved know. How important it is to create space for women to develop their own values, preferences, and not continue doing what the husband wants. So the last sub theme is abuse in marriage. So many participants recognize the different forms of abuse they had experienced in the marriage. Whether there was aggression, control, lack of consent, marital rape, it took a lot of time and processing to recognize what had happened.

One woman, Ruth, shared her husband used a lot of unwanted touch. Rape, you know, not rape in the way you think about him, like forcing himself on me. But like being asleep and him doing whatever he wanted. I learned a lot about abuse and what abuse looks like. So I think many women had no, like you’ve talked about, abuse education.

Rebecca: They didn’t know what happened, but they could process that later. One other participant shared about her experience. This is Anna, she shared, “He started getting verbally abusive and cussing and yelling at me. But people told me as a religious woman, you just need to do what your husband wants. I didn’t at the time, didn’t know that is considered rape.”

“Now that I’m out of that and everybody’s like, well, did you give consent? I was like, no, I said no many times. Then that’s not consensual.” That quote is powerful. It can seem clear to us on the outside as she retells this, but I think it’s important to recognize that many of these women have been in this marriage for a while. Women are in contexts where they haven’t clearly seen the abuse.

And so it is so crucial that they tell their story. Because if you assume that abuse couldn’t be there. Which I think some people just think watching this is such a normative behavior. There wouldn’t be abuse. But there is, and you don’t want to miss that.

Anne: Thank you so much, Rebecca and Heidi, for sharing your findings today.

Heidi: I appreciate the opportunity to let women know that research is starting to back up their experiences. And we appreciate what you’re doing at Betrayal Trauma Recovery to help the women as well.

Rebecca: We really appreciate you having us, Anne. Thank you so much.

If you’re wondering about psychological abuse vs emotional abuse, here’s what to know.

Emotional abuse is when someone manipulates your emotions to exploit you. He can use psychological abuse or emotional abuse to toy with your emotions to get what he wants. To find out if you’re experiencing emotional abuse, take this free emotional abuse quiz.

Psychological abuse is a deliberate attempt to manipulate, control, and diminish a person’s sense of reality. It can be impossible to detect, because it includes subtle and calculated tactics that undermine your mental and emotional stability.

One very hurtful kind of emotional and mental abuse happens when some men hide harmful behaviors, like secretly watching inappropriate videos or having relationships outside of their marriage. Then, they use tricks and lies to keep these actions secret. For example, they might blame others, make excuses, or try to confuse the person they are hurting.

This kind of behavior is unfair and can make the people around them feel sad, scared, or unsure of what’s true. It’s important to understand these actions so we can help people who are being treated this way.

These behaviors are not only abusive but can leave you feeling emotionally unsafe and fragmented, as you try to reconcile the lies with the reality you live. To learn more about this type of abuse, specifically related to infidelity, listen to The Free Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast.

Healing from psychological abuse is almost exactly the same as healing from emotional abuse. Either way, you’ll need to heal from…

These psychologically abusive behaviors make it even harder to recognize or confront the abuse. Learn more about what strategies to use to protect yourself from this type of abuse by enrolling in The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop.

Healing from psychological abuse is possible, here’s how to start your healing process:

Your emotional safety is very important, and it should always come first. Taking care of yourself might mean stepping away from the situation, setting clear boundaries, or getting help from a trusted professional. It’s okay to make changes to protect yourself, even if it feels hard.

Always remember, you don’t need your husband’s permission to take steps toward feeling safe. You deserve to feel happy, respected, and secure in your life. Start by reaching out to someone you trust or a professional who can guide you. You are not alone, and there are people who want to help.

Surround yourself with people who validate your reality and support your healing. This could be trusted friends, family, or specialized support groups like Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions. Betrayal Trauma Recovery is designed specifically for women overcoming trauma from psychological abuse vs emotional abuse.

Learning about harmful behaviors, like gaslighting, blaming others, and lying, can help you think more clearly and feel stronger. These actions are used to confuse or control someone, but understanding them is the first step to stopping their effects. When you know how these tactics work, it’s easier to recognize them and take steps to protect yourself. Knowledge gives you the power to break free from unfair or manipulative situations and start feeling more in control of your life.

To learn how to heal from your husband’s psychological abuse vs emotional abuse, listen to The Free Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast.

Even though his psychological abuse and emotional abuse has nothing to do with you, it has everything to do with you because you’re the victim. You deserve to live a life free from manipulation, gaslighting, and lies.

Anne: Many women ask. What is the difference between psychological abuse vs emotional abuse? So emotional abuse is when someone manipulates your emotions to exploit you. So they’re going for that emotional reaction. Psychological abuse is the deliberate attempt to manipulate and control your sense of reality. Healing from psychological abuse vs emotional abuse is pretty much the same thing. You’re still healing from the lying and deception, the gaslighting and manipulation.

Psychological abuse and emotional abuse are linked. Both happen when your husband has affairs or has a secret life, watching exploitative material or having relationships outside the marriage. He’s going to be psychologically and emotionally abusive. Grooming and blame shifting is all abuse. So on the podcast today, I have a member of our community. We’re going to call her Margaret. Something happened to her track, and I tried to fix it. And it distorted it a bit.

Her story is so good. If you’re having a hard time hearing it, you can read it here. So I want to welcome Margaret. Margaret, let’s start at the beginning of your story.

Margaret: In the beginning, I was young and married at 23. So it was kind of a quick courtship dating. I was involved in my church and met him at my work. It clicked, and he started going to church with me, he got baptized at my church. And then, you know, one thing led to another, we’re engaged, and then we’re getting married.

And looking back, I can see red flags now, because I’m much older and wiser. But at the time, you don’t think they’re red flags. You just think, Oh, that’s just a little thing. That’s not a sign of a bigger thing.

Margaret: For example, this sounds so benign, later, it played out so much bigger in our marriage. We were sitting at a table and talking, and there was a newspaper nearby. I’m talking and he picks up the paper. He opens it and starts reading, and the paper is now in front of me. And I remember thinking, Oh, I wasn’t done talking, but you pretty much just cut me off. And I couldn’t even tell you what I was talking about, but that lack of respect, I would say for years, you don’t respect me.

You don’t hear me. I’m talking, it’s not processing with you or you’re not acknowledging me. I had dated a guy before him, and I still lived at home. We were coming home, and that other boyfriend was at the door of my house. And I told him, let’s not stop, let’s just keep going.

As we drove off, a few minutes passed, and he suddenly started banging on the steering wheel. Upset with me about that, because I didn’t want to stop. That I was ashamed of him or something. And it was very startling.

Anne: I wonder if he had hoped to just drop you off. Because he was maybe meeting up with another woman. And he had plans or something like that, when you didn’t go in. And he couldn’t drop you off. He was ticked. But of course he couldn’t tell you the truth.

Maybe he could use psychological abuse or emotional abuse to batter you to the point where you’re like, let’s just go home then, and then he could go about his merry way. And meet with whoever he was going to meet.

Margaret: He just got quiet, and then was banging on the steering wheel and yelling at me.

Anne: Because nothing is what it seems with an abuser. It’s hard to figure out what’s going on, because you’re trying to resolve an issue and they are trying to meet up with their affair partner. They’re lying to you about needing to work so they can use exploitative material. And a lot of times you’ll ask questions, and they will literally never answer. They’ll just be silent.

Margaret: Like we would be having a discussion or disagreement, an argument. And he would be quiet, and I’d be like, what do you think? Why aren’t you saying anything? Oh, tell me, I have a whole party going on in my head. I just didn’t say it. So then I’d be like, that doesn’t help me. And that doesn’t help us.

Looking back, I would tell people like, trying to get anything resolved with him is so difficult because I could be talking about apples. We’re going back and forth, and he’s like, okay, we got the oranges all settled. And I’d be like, wait, what? What are we talking about?

Anne: That happened to me too. Part of that is that they’re just getting energy from the argument. So it’s not about resolving anything. I’m a good debater, so we would get to the point where it would be resolved. He would use psychological abuse and emotional abuse. Then he would start again on the exact opposite thing of what he just said, and I was like, what?

Anne: You just argued for two hours for that. No, I didn’t. It was insane. I think they just gain so much energy from that chaos. It’s fun for them. They’re having a good time. Yeah.

Margaret: Oh, yeah, because I would repeat back to him word for word what he’d said to me, like, okay, so you’re saying X, Y, Z. No, no, that’s not what I said. I said, no, those are your exact words, but that’s not what I mean. And I’d be like, say what you mean. And it would just go on like that.

Like nothing ever felt like we accomplished anything, or he’d be like, I’ll try, try to do that. And I’m like, many years of trying and there’s no change. I thought, we’re just young and have a lot of growing to do. And we got married, and the behaviors continue. I just thought we’re just immature. It’s two people from two backgrounds coming together to make a marriage work.

And my childhood was one that my parents had a very unhealthy marriage. There was spousal abuse. So I knew what physical abuse looked like. I had seen or felt threatened, or had hands laid on me in that way. I would have known that.

I could never put my finger on it, something’s off. Something’s not right. I couldn’t identify either the psychological or emotional abuse. So maybe it’s because I don’t know what healthy marriage looks like. Okay, his parents are married. He’s an only child. His parents seem to have a good marriage, so they must have been good role models for him. So he must know, it must be me and growing in the church.

Margaret: I got to pray more and learn how to communicate better and submit. To respect my husband more, and things will turn around, things will get better. I had first caught him using exploitative material when I found out I was pregnant with my first son. I had gone to bed, he didn’t come to bed, and I’m like, where is he? And we were in a three bedroom house at the time, and I went to one of the bedrooms and it was locked.

I thought, that’s odd, why is he locked in there? And when he opened the door, I could smell something, and I could see a diagonal view to the computer screen. It was exploitative material. I was shocked, stunned, and sick to my stomach. I don’t know what he told me. So I think he said he would come into bed soon, or something, and I just went to bed. The topic would come up off and on for years, because I would catch him. Back then, I didn’t know, and I didn’t understand.

And I grew up in that generation, 70s, 80s, where friends’ dads had stocks hidden under the bed, you know, of magazines. And so you’re trying, I’m trying to process, as a good Christian wife, as a woman, as a Christian family. I don’t think this is okay, but like how bad is this? And what do I do? And I did go to his mom and say, look, I think this is an issue, but what could she do?

How could I fix this? I did tell him I didn’t like it. This is wrong. I don’t feel good about this. And I think he just got better at using psychological abuse and emotional abuse to hide it.

Margaret: At one point, we did go to counseling at a church for marriage issues. And somehow, and he’s good at this, the focus became me. The person that was counseling us was not equipped for what was happening. They were not equipped for his use of emotional and psychological abuse to focus on me. The session became about me, my childhood, and my issues.

I just know that when it was over, I got in my car, pulled off to the side of the road, and called my sister. Excuse me, it still triggers me. I was so upset. I was bawling. And I said, I can never do that again. I can never go back to counseling. It was so traumatic. I was like, I would never return to another counselor.

Anne: Good for you.

Margaret: It was horrible. So that was early in the marriage. That was probably 10, 15 years in, and at this point I was beginning to question his fidelity. I would find condoms. And he would say, at the time, we had grown sons, like 20 and 19. He would say, Oh, I grabbed those from our son’s room, and they just ended up in my car. I know my sons, and I know they’re not just leaving them lying out. So what was he doing? And that wasn’t the first time I found them in his car.

I had found some early in our marriage, about four, five, or six years in, in a briefcase he had left in the garage. He worked for doctors, a large group of doctors. And it was around a lot of people, women, hospitals, that sort of thing.

Margaret: And I remember finding a briefcase in the garage, and it had a Viagra and condoms, and I was like, what is this? We aren’t using those things. Oh, he said a doctor, as a joke for his birthday, gave them to him. And as a young wife who’s just has a one year old, I’m thinking, what, would I think? You know, I want to believe him. And so I said, Oh, okay. And who am I going to ask, the doctor? No, it was just little things like that that you, I could never verify.

Anne: Blaming it on your kids, that is really, really wrong, super wrong. And they don’t have any problem with false witness, and I want to use that word false witness purposefully. They don’t have any problem bearing false witness, which is really alarming.

Margaret: I think he knew I would not contact my son and ask him. I think he knew that. And so if he knew that was a safe way to go. But that episode with the finding the condoms in the car, that’s after so many other issues. So for example, the marriage was very difficult. We were struggling. I found it out through my youngest son that he tracked me through my phone, because my son watched him watch the computer monitor. He could see where my car was going.

Later when I got home, my son very naively said, Hey, calm down, he knows where you go. I remember being like, what are you talking about?

Margaret: And I don’t remember the conversation with my ex. I don’t remember. I just remember thinking I have nothing to hide. I’m meeting my friend. I’m a mom to four. I homeschool. I don’t get out often. She and I would meet every three or four months to just have dinner. So I have nothing to hide, so I don’t know why you’re doing that. So there’s a long history of these things, spyware on my phone, hidden cameras in our bedroom.

Anne: Hidden cameras in your bedroom, do you know of trafficking that he posted online?

Margaret: I don’t know he did. He said it wasn’t a good camera.

Anne: So he would have trafficked you, but the footage wasn’t good enough, was his excuse?

Margaret: He would not speak. When I say he would just not speak, he wouldn’t speak. He would just look at me. I would just back down. He had a heart issue, almost died, life flight and everything. And when he survived, which, because the odds were against him, I thought, this is our second chance now, this is God’s opportunity. He’s going to turn this ship around, because we’ve been struggling, and he had a long recovery.

Like he didn’t trust me. He was stalking me. He accused me of things. Which I now know was him projecting. He has been having affairs. He has been having a lot of affairs and things at work. So, he almost dies. He’s out of work until he goes back to work, and they’re telling him he’s done. And still he’s using psychological abuse or emotional abuse to blame me.

Margaret: He always said it was because of this other minor issue at the job. He’d been with them for 20 years. I don’t believe that story anymore. I think he was having affairs at work, and I think it finally caught up with him. So I still did not know, I’m still believing what he tells me. And I’m like, hey, that’s okay. We’re going to be fine. God has brought us through this far, and we’ll be okay.

When my daughter was 17 and this friend of hers was on a dating app. My daughter comes to me at 10 o’clock at night with screenshots and says, Mom, my friend just sent me these. And it’s my husband’s face on a dating profile. And he has solicited pictures from my daughter’s friend. I don’t think he realized it was my daughter’s friend. And a friend saw his picture screenshot them and sent them to my daughter and said, Hey, this guy is DMing me. Is this your dad?

And she’s like, Mom, do you think somebody took his picture and is using his pictures? And when I read the words for the little bio, a little hook to get people to click on you. I heard his voice in those words. Like I could hear, I said, baby girl, that’s your dad. And it was about 10 o’clock, 10:30 at night, and I walked over to him. I’m like, you need to pack a bag, and you need to leave.

And when he saw what I was showing him with the screenshots, the look on his face, I knew that, yeah, he’s done this. He used psychological and emotional abuse to hide online dating.

Margaret: He said, but I don’t want to leave. I’m like, you don’t have a choice, or I’ll call the police. You need to leave. I’m going to call your mother. I’m going to call your father. You need to leave. That was in November 11th. I’ll never forget that. That night, he goes to her and says, I have to leave because your mother’s mad. He wasn’t saying I use psychological abuse and emotional abuse to hide my infidelity.

Anne: Yeah, duh, she’s mad,

Margaret: She was more on the ball than I was. I have to say, I have to give her credit. She was much wiser at that point to what was going on than I was. She was upset with me when I finally took him back eight months later. It made our, she and I had a very difficult relationship. And I realized now that that was the trigger for her and I not getting along at that point. Because she saw what I couldn’t see. So he moved home. We’re working on our marriage.

Margaret: We do Affair Recovery, which is based out of Austin, Texas. It’s an emergency, weekend.

Anne: For couples, someone’s had an affair.

Margaret: Yes.

Anne: Did they mention abuse at all?

Margaret: No, never. It’s always assumed, okay, at some point you’ll have to have sex.

Anne: You’re going to have to have it, which is coercion, that’s coercion right there.

Margaret: You’re a good Christian wife and you need to submit.

Anne: They really don’t know anything about rape, do they?

Margaret: No! Absolutely, I was like, okay, telling my kids, we’ve been married 29 years. He says he still wants to be married. We can make this work. I’m thinking we’re working on having a better marriage.

Margaret: It’s still always difficult. There are just all these issues. It was an issue, because he moved home and wanted me to start having it right away. I didn’t feel good about that. But I said, okay, and I can look back and see I betrayed myself. He had his own personal counselor. I had my own personal counselor. Then we have the marriage counselor.

It seemed like we could never get any resolution, we could never get anywhere. And we started the counseling sessions, and then there’s holidays. So there are these gaps in the counseling, we’re going in January, February, March, and we’re going, but I remember him telling our counselor, what do I need to do?

Tell me so I can go through the checklist. At one point, he banged his hand on the couch and said, well, I didn’t even do anything. I should have done something then. The psychological and emotional abuse were continuing in lies to the counselor.

Anne: What? Wait. So he was like, wait, I didn’t even do anything. I should have. Wow, okay, he was lying in that moment anyway.

Margaret: When I look back and say everything out loud. When I finally sat down with like my mother. I had never told my mother everything. Early in my marriage, my mother-in-law told me, don’t talk bad about him to your family, because then they won’t like him. And thinking, well, yeah, you know, I probably shouldn’t.

So I was careful about what I told to who. I would never tell my best friend, even everything, because if she knew everything, it probably would sound bad. And so I was careful about what I shared. So I went to my mother-in-law and told her, and she said, don’t be telling people.

Margaret: I saw a message on his phone before all the dating apps. It was a message on his phone about meeting someone at ten thirty at night after their daughter went to sleep. And when I confronted him, he said, oh, it was for a massage. A friend of his recommended her, and he wanted one late at night. But he told me he never went. Yeah, I believed that. And it wasn’t until years later, when we’re trying to work through the marriage issues, that came up again.

And this time when he told the story, he did go, and I said, wait, you said you didn’t go. He goes, no, I always told you I went up. I said, no, you didn’t. I was a shell of myself by the time I left. Fast forward a year, I felt like things were just not good. I felt like things were bad. I was experiencing severe psychological abuse and emotional abuse.I went to him. Then I said, if you’re not happy and don’t want to be married to me, that’s okay. I understand. I love you enough to say, okay, we can separate and divorce.

That’s fine. And he said, no, I want to be married. In February, I had a gut feeling. And February 6th is when things finally came to a head. I knew he was cheating again. I saw things on his phone. He chased me around the house because I had the phone and he wanted it back.

And he was frantically trying to delete things off the phone while talking to me. He chased me outside as I tried to go through his truck, and I was burned out a few times.

Margaret: Conveniently the next day, he deleted all the Ring doorbell video. So I had no proof, yeah.

Anne: So he knew what he was doing.

Margaret: You know, he was caught. I had found condoms in the car again. So, thank social media. I could not even tell you how I came across you, and Betrayal Trauma Recovery. It started showing up. And I started coming across terms like DARVO, gaslighting, and word salad. And I thought, this is in my marriage. This explains everything on Betrayal Trauma Recovery Instagram, yeah.

Anne: So you’re first introduced to these ideas, that maybe it’s abuse. You learned the difference between psychological abuse vs emotional abuse. Most women are shocked. Like, how did I not know? And then also totally not shocked simultaneously. It’s a relief. Because it’s like I knew something was wrong, and this is it. Can you talk me through your thought process?

Margaret: At first I was like, okay, I know what physical abuse is. You know, everybody has a clear understanding of that. So then when the whole concept of, no, this is psychological abuse or emotional abuse. I had to listen and re-listen to podcasts and go, okay, him having affairs and then coming home. T

And I’m not having informed consent to what’s happening to my body, and bringing home risks to my health. Because of his behavior. It was so painful to realize that we’d been married that long. The level of manipulation, at the end, I would just sit and he would talk, and I would just sit and hold my head, okay, okay.

Anne: Pretty violent episodes, and maybe it will help you, maybe not, reframe it to think that that is the definition of survivor right there, abuse survivor. That you survived psychological abuse and emotional abuse. And you were resisting, and that was all you could do at that time because of how scary your situation was.

Margaret: I think deep down in my core, I knew, I think that’s why physically and intimately I couldn’t respond anymore. There was a dread, and I slept on the edge of the bed with my back to him. And I would wake up in the morning in the same position wondering how did I not fall off the bed? You know, because I think I knew I wasn’t emotionally safe with him.

He has punched holes in doors. He has yelled, not laid hands on me. But there’s that fear, especially because I carried that fear and trauma from my childhood. So like, we want to avoid triggering any of that. So you’d be a good wife, and you don’t trigger that. And being the Christian woman, I was like, I wanted my marriage to work. I’ve got four kids and I’ve been homeschooling them.

And I always said divorce would stop with me because my parents were divorced. Like, I had that other family member’s divorce, and I didn’t want that for my family. I wanted the marriage to work. And so he says he’s sorry, he says he wants to be married, okay. But when you’re being manipulated and lied to, I forgive myself because I didn’t know.

Margaret: I didn’t know the extent and what I was seeing, it’s so hard. But I was willing to believe him to make the marriage work.

Anne: It was the safest option at the time, because women are really smart.

Margaret: Yeah, I’ve got kids. I’m doing homeschool. And how do I navigate going back to work? I’ve been dependent. I just stayed home for 27 years. And I finally texted a friend of mine, my good friend for 20 years. I called her, I said, well, I’m pretty sure we’re done. I can’t do this anymore. And I told her what had happened, and she started asking her friends very covertly, very secretly.

We need a lawyer. I need a lawyer for my friend. I had planned a trip that following weekend to visit El Paso to see my daughter. She had by this point married and lived in El Paso, and I flew out to see her. And that was a godsend to be away that first weekend. So I could process what was happening. To get distance from the psychological andd emotional abuse. They got me a burner phone, because I was concerned he was spying on my phone.

And I found out months later, my son came to me and said, Mom, one day when I got in dad’s car, I heard your voice coming through the speakers. Dad did something quick and shut it off. He was definitely reading my texts, my emails, listening to my phone calls. So when you realize the level that he has been going through to keep track of you.

Margaret: And I told my friends, somebody asked me, are you afraid for your life? I said, I don’t think so, but I need you to know that God forbid, I’m in an accident and in the hospital. Because I do not want him to have power of attorney over me. I don’t want him to have medical power over me. I’m letting everybody know. And I am not suicidal, and I would not run away because I have four kids, even though they’re adult kids.

I was like, I would never leave them. So I just needed people to know that, because at this point you just don’t know what they’re capable of. And he knew he was going to take a loss financially, because in the state I’m in, we get half, although he cheated me out of half of the home. Which is another story, but yeah, he was not going to be happy about that. We went to mediation, and signed paperwork, and then the final papers were January of this year.

It was a heavy grief. It was really hard in the beginning to say the word abuse. I think because in society, we just think of physical abuse as abuse. If it’s psychological abuse vs emotional abuse, or mental, like that’s not really abuse, right? Because you’re okay.

Anne: Do you feel okay?

Margaret: I didn’t, I wasn’t. I still have to return to my faith, because there are the marriage advice books and Christian marriage advice books. Reading all those things, I have good Christian friends who love me. But who would tell me things like marriage is hard, divorce is hard, choose your hard.

Margaret: And that I need. I’m like, good grief, if your marriage is that hard, choose divorce, that is not heart free. And then the whole God hates divorce sentiment. Which we now know and is becoming more widely talked about. That’s taken out of context, you know, that scripture is taking out of context, and that’s not accurate. And so now I have all those tools. Now I know, that this was not just a hard marriage.

It was an abusive marriage. Where one person was a master manipulator, a pathological liar, I survived. The last words I told him, he said, Oh, you’re always the victim. And I said, no, I’m an overcomer. I stand on that. I have been overcoming, I am overcoming, and yet it was abuse for 31 years. And so that’s going to take time, and I may always have those triggers. I’ve since gone back to that counselor, because I wanted to let her know.

And once she heard all the pieces, she goes, there was no way this was going to work. Because when she talked to his counselor, his counselor said a whole different story. He told the counselor different scenarios of what was going on, so my ex was going to his counselor and mine. And he would go to my mother-in-law and lie about me. He called my best friend and tried to talk to her and tell her stories about me. The psychological abuse and emotional abuse were so crazy.

He called my brother-in-law to set me up. He went to our pastor. The pieces started unfolding, and it was so mind blowing. So hard to believe.

Margaret: That the person supposed to have my back and do life with me would go to this extent. He was out for himself and protecting his image. Everybody was shocked. And then they think, is it because he almost died? Maybe he’s having this crisis, and I was like, no, this has gone on for years, it just escalated.

Anne: It’s interesting that it escalated after his near death experience. Because so many women, me included, are praying for something to wake him up. We think maybe a car accident would help him understand that he is psychologically and emotionally abusive, like my ex got hit by a car. I’ve actually never told that story, and I will soon, on the podcast. He didn’t die, but I did think surely this will help him understand. And even that didn’t help.

And I think one of the reasons is because they know. And they manipulate us to think they don’t understand what they’re doing. Or maybe they need to be educated, or maybe communication will improve it, but they know what is going on and know it the whole time. And so to them, this is no wake up call, because knowing has never helped them decide to change, because they’ve known every step of the way.

Margaret: Right, I don’t know if they just lied to themselves, if they’re in denial. He, even now, has never had an open, honest conversation with any of my kids about the divorce and the lie behind it, not once. One of my older sons went to him, and my son came back and said, dad said he’d put a pin in it and we’d get back to it, which never happened.

Margaret: My son tried to talk to my mother-in-law, and she was, no, no, you just don’t understand. He told my daughter in an email that he just has communication issues. And that was the root of everything. And if I had been better, as a wife, been a better listener, loved him, compassionate, it would have worked out. I don’t know how they sleep. I don’t know how they look at themselves in the mirror.

Anne: Yeah, I don’t either. I think that all that is just a lie too. And people, me included, have a hard time being like, wow, they do lie about everything. Because if they said the truth, I choose to do this, they’ve never wanted to say it in the past. Why would they start now to tell the truth? Habitual psychological abuse and emotional abuse is part of their character.

Margaret: When it’s been going on for so long, the lies now, or there’s so much, so many of them. Like I said, I caught him in that one lie. He couldn’t even keep the facts straight anymore. There’s so much of it. I have such a deep desire to pay it forward for other women who may hear themselves in my story. Hopefully, they’re earlier in their marriages, and they don’t stay as long. If you feel something’s off, go with your gut. For so many years, I’ve ignored my gut instincts.

And took him in his word, go with your gut. If something feels off, it’s probably off. And be there for other women. I now am in a full-time job. And there are two women where I work that I can encourage now, because they’re going through their own, struggles, divorces, and trauma from their own marriages.

Margaret: I know God has put me where I’m supposed to be with these women. And that has been my prayer. If I can help just one woman out there, give her the courage to stand up and say, Nope, I’m done. I’m done, and walk away. That makes me feel better. And I know it’s worth something. It couldn’t have all been for nothing.

I wanted a happy home, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. I know I did my best with what I was being told. And I can hold my head up high. The marriage was killing me, I couldn’t stay.

Anne: Thank you so much for being brave and sharing your story. It will help other women. Just hearing other women’s stories, even without my enlightening commentary, if I can be sarcastic, is so helpful.

Margaret: Yes.

Anne: When you hear someone else say it, it sounds awful, because it is awful. Going through psychological and emotional abuse is terrible. Then realizing this is exactly what’s happening to me. And it’s just as awful. And I am just as important as the woman sharing this story.

Margaret: Right, because you feel like good grief, you know, it’s embarrassing. But I was in a fog. I wanted to believe him. I wanted the marriage to work, and I have four kids. Yeah, and I’m being told as a Christian woman. That if you pray enough, submit enough, be the good wife, do all the things, he’ll come around, it’ll work.

Anne: Having been through it.

Margaret: Yeah.

Anne: There’s no way to describe it to people who haven’t. But there are good people who haven’t been through it. They still probably can’t understand it on the level that women who have been through it can.

Margaret: I agree. My mother had her own abusive situation, and I didn’t appreciate that. Until now, I’ve gone through my own. I knew it was bad. And I would never say it wasn’t traumatic for her. But it’s not until you go through your own trauma with a spouse. That you go, oh, this is why she didn’t want to be around him at the holidays. I was like, hey, this makes sense.

Anne: Yeah, everything becomes pretty clear, yeah.

Margaret: Yeah, I appreciate women going through the divorce process. And how difficult it is with the court systems. And lawyers, that’s a hard path to navigate. I attended Betrayal Trauma Recovery group sessions, early on in the whole process. And loved it, I need community. I would go to Betrayal Trauma Recovery group sessions a couple of times a week which was amazing. I tell people, you need to do this.

If you can’t afford anything else, you can afford this, especially with a marriage with betrayal and psychological and emotional abuse. I know that from last year when I started my job to this year, my BTR coach, she’s like, you’re a different person. I was very beat down, and this year I carry myself a little better, a little stronger. I’m excited for the future. I know it’s going to be good.

Anne: It will be. You’re awesome.

Margaret: Thank you.

If you suspect your husband is having an affair, is it wrong to check your husband’s phone? Does access to your husband’s phone ensure he’ll stay faithful? Jenn shares 3 reasons why checking his devices didn’t stop her husband from cheating.

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

Anne: A member of our community we’re going to call her, Jenna is on today’s episode. She’s been on the podcast before, and today she’s going to tell her story. We’re talking about. Is it wrong to check your husband’s phone? Welcome Jenna. Why don’t you just go ahead and start.

Jenna: I discovered my husband’s addiction shortly after we were married and I was obviously devastated and completely traumatized. He had withheld things from me and lied to me. That created a distrust in our relationship. And caused me to question everything he had ever told me that I had ever experienced with him. So I just, from the beginning, could not stop looking through his computer, through his phone, my husband was constantly on his phone.

Really any device or anything that I could verify or find information. I would search into the late hours of the night and into the morning. That was just a response to my trauma. And I’ve learned since then that it’s not useful, has not helped me, and it only harmed me and caused me further pain.

Anne: I wanna contrast your story with the story of many women I’ve spoken with. Who have said I had this impression that I needed to check his phone. And I checked it and realized he was having an affair. Or I had this impression that I needed to look at his computer, and I looked at the computer and saw this. Yeah, women can really benefit from safety seeking behavior, right? So today I want to cover why we call this safety seeking behaviors.

Anne: At Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we believe women resist abuse. They resist it from the very first second they experience it. They might not know they’re experiencing it, and they might not know that what they’re doing is resisting it. But it is an effort to get to safety. And at BTR, whatever you do to get to safety is healthy. And we’ve also found that some safety seeking or some types of resistance are more effective than others. So we’re going to talk about that today.

Some addiction recovery therapists, or other therapists or support groups, will try to label wanting to check his phone as acting out. Or that you’re codependent. And that you are trying to find the truth is unhealthy. Which is just more gaslighting. You’re not codependent, you are seeking safety.

Jenna: Yes, for me, looking through his computer and phone, it was the only tool I had at the time. I didn’t have any recovery resources. And I was trying my hardest to, like you said, establish safety with the little knowledge I had. And that was the only thing I knew how to do. But they did not provide me with the safety I desperately sought. For me, there were three reasons that searching my husband’s computer was not helpful.

Number one, it didn’t solve the problem. Number two, it made me feel crazy, and I lost trust in my own intuition and self. And number three, it kept the focus on him. And prevented me from creating and establishing safety for myself.

Anne: So let’s talk about that first reason for you. Why did it not solve the problem?

Jenna: It did not solve the problem, even if I found evidence of something while checking his phone and confronted him about it. He would deny it and my husband was gaslighting me. That was not motivation for him to change. It would just be me showing him these things, or I couldn’t find anything. And then because I was looking for cold, hard evidence to convince him. And explain to him and show him the reasons why he needs to get help and to change.

Instead of looking to myself and saying, what do I need to feel safe? I wasn’t listening to my own intuition.

Anne: I can see why this wouldn’t solve the problem, because it’s like talking to a two year old.

Jenna: Yes.

Anne: Okay, please don’t throw the food on the floor. And they do not say to you, Oh, you are right. I was throwing the food on the floor. That is inappropriate. I am so sorry. I will never do that again.

Jenna: Exactly.

Anne: Two or three year olds don’t say that. The way they react is not in a reasonable, mature fashion.

Jenna: Right.

Anne: Even when you presented him with evidence. It’s not like he said, Oh, wow, here’s the evidence. Facts are facts, now I will stop lying.

Jenna: Right, it’s not logical. You can’t reason with addict mode.

Anne: Because of that, that probably is exactly why you have the second reason, which is you started to feel crazy.

Jenna: Yes, for a year and a half, I searched my husband’s phone and computer, and tracked him on his devices. Trying to find something, because my gut kept telling me something is off.

Jenna: I just continually had this feeling of something is not right. He’s not telling me the full truth about something. I could not shake this feeling, so I would confront him. And say, hey, I have this feeling that something is off and you’re withholding information from me. And he would say no, everything’s fine. I would just think okay, but why am I having this feeling?

So instead of trusting myself and making boundaries for safety, I would search my husbands phone and computer. Nintey-nine percent of the time I found nothing. That just made me feel crazy, because I had this conflicting feeling with the lack of evidence. That I was not finding on the phone or on whatever device. It was a very confusing and crazy feeling to look for something that you feel like should be there, and it’s not.

Anne: At the time, I assume his behaviors were emotionally unsafe.

Jenna: Correct, they were unsafe.

Anne: So were you thinking, okay, there’s got to be a reason why his behaviors are emotionally unsafe? Did you even have words for that at the time?

Jenna: I would have these flags come up in my mind, saying like, I don’t feel like he should be doing this or saying this or acting this way or treating me this way.

That’s when I would confront him. The evidence I was ignoring at the time was the emotional abuse and irresponsible behaviors. I don’t think I would have labeled it emotional abuse. To discover if you’re emotionally abused, take our free emotional abuse quiz. I was so early in my healing process that I barely learned about boundaries.

Jenna: I knew it was not right, but I just made excuses. I bargained and tried to rationalize it and make sense of it. But yes, it was emotional abuse that I’m not sure I was aware of at the time.

Anne: Absolutely, that’s why I created the Living Free Workshop. So women can discover what is actually going on. Know his true character, and then learn how to set effective boundaries. That don’t require his cooperation. You can protect yourself without him having to do anything. That takes us to your reason number three. You were searching his phone and computer to resist abuse.

Checking your husband’s phone actually kept you from doing things that would establish your safety. Like some of those strategies that we teach in the Living Free Workshop.

Jenna: Yes, when I was obsessed with looking through his phone and search history on his computer and trying to find evidence. I spent so much emotional energy on that. I was neglecting myself and not doing the things that would provide real lasting safety for myself.

Anne: Yeah, I think it’s a common stage that all victims go through. Plus we’re given the wrong information by therapists. The therapist tells us that to set a boundary, we need to say to our husband out loud. If you do this, then I’ll do this. So, I mean, before I even got married, I told my ex, if you look at pornography, I will divorce you. That was my “boundary,” but then I married him and he looked at it. Then I didn’t want to divorce him.

Anne: So what was I supposed to do? It was confusing. And that way of “setting boundaries” didn’t help me be safe at all. In the case of searching for things on their phone and computer. Many women say their boundary is that they have access to his phone or computer. In your case, you’re saying it’s not wrong to check his phone, it’s that it didn’t help you get to safety. Because you still felt uneasy, and it didn’t stop him from harming you.

In the Living Free Workshop, women learn what a boundary is. It’s something that actually protects you. And something you do without talking to him at all.

Jenna: Yes, as I learned about boundaries, what that meant, and what a healthy boundary was. I just played around with it a little bit. I didn’t know how to implement a healthy boundary completely. So I would try, and I had this little glimpse of feeling safe and empowered. I felt like, oh, maybe this is what safety is. And maybe I don’t need to search these things. And so I would start to make some boundaries, and I would break my own boundaries.

Over time, as I began to create healthy boundaries consistently, I began to experience real safety. I could feel the difference. And when I look back, I don’t know how I made it through that time of chaos and dysfunction. The moment when I created firm, healthy boundaries, I felt that peace and that assurance and that safety.

Jenna: It was just a turning point for me and my recovery. The first boundary I remember setting and holding. That provided safety for me, I actually didn’t sleep in the bed with him because I did not feel safe. Not because he was looking at exploitative content, I couldn’t prove it, but because he wasn’t emotionally safe for me. And that was enough for me to not sleep in the bed with him.

I started to focus on what I needed to feel safe. It wasn’t checking his phone? Part of that for me was having a husband who would be honest with me. I did find out he had lied about something. I knew at that moment that I needed to hold the boundary. And I did, and I asked him to move out. And that created the most safety that I had felt during our marriage. I asked him to move out and my home became a safe haven for me. I can say that with confidence, yeah.

Anne: When I started doing that, I could feel it too. For me, I never set a boundary before the judge and police set the boundary for me.

Jenna: Right.

Anne: It was a God given boundary of no contact when he was arrested. And the judge said, you have a no contact boundary. I could have broken it, but I was like, Whoa, this is what I need to do. And I felt safe for the first time. It was amazing. Just that peace that came that I could go home, and I could breathe having that safe space.

Anne: The key to setting boundaries is safety. How can I feel safe? Like I teach in the Living Free Workshop. You don’t have to tell the person what your boundary is. You don’t have to decide your boundary beforehand. Because you can’t anticipate all the things he’s going to do. You don’t know, for example, here’s a metaphor that he’s going to throw a shoe at you. So you couldn’t beforehand say, if you throw a shoe at me.

I will throw your shoe in the garbage. Instead, you can respond when he harms you. And without saying a word to him, think to yourself. I didn’t realize he would use shoes as weapons. So I’m going to take all the shoes in the house and give them to Goodwill. You don’t have to say a word to him about it. You don’t have to get his permission. And you don’t need his cooperation. And then no more shoes will be in the house.

So he’ll never throw a shoe at you again. I mean, that’s a metaphor, but I love Living Free. Because it’s about what you need to feel safe. And you can make the best decisions for you and actually take action to protect yourself.

Jenna: Absolutely, I didn’t even understand the concept of boundaries for so long. I needed someone to guide me and show me what a healthy boundary looked like. Because there’s no way I would have learned to do that on my own. I mean, I was lost completely in the beginning. So I needed to see examples of boundaries.

Jenna: I needed to see examples of women making and holding boundaries. I needed someone to listen to me, talk through boundaries, and contemplate whether they were healthy boundaries that provided safety.

Anne: Exactly, how can we move toward actual safety? Rather than spinning our wheels, trying to get safety, but not getting anywhere, right? For our listeners, who are now wondering if it’s wrong to check your husband’s phone? And obsessively checking their husband’s phones and computers. What advice would you have for them?

Jenna: In my experience, searching through my husband’s devices and tracking where he is, and constantly being on alert. Never brought me real safety and stabilization in my life. The only thing that created stability for me was learning about boundaries. What they look like and what they don’t look like. And then interacting with other women in similar situations, but maybe are a few steps ahead of me.

You helped me begin creating safety for myself, instead of searching continually through my husband’s computer.

 Anne: Well, I’m so glad. The Living Free strategies are incredible, especially the parts about setting healthy boundaries. It also includes how to determine your husband’s true character, thought strategies, communication strategies. Everything a woman needs to know when she has that gut feeling that something’s wrong is in The Living Free Workshop.

I went through so many stages of anger after infidelity. Here’s what I learned over the years.

I realized I wasn’t just healing from his infidelity—I was also recovering from years of emotional hurt. If this sounds like you, take this free emotional abuse quiz to see if you’ve been through emotional abuse too.

Healing from infidelity means facing a whirlwind of emotions. One emotion often takes center stage is raw and overwhelming. If you’ve been betrayed by your husband’s infidelity, the anger you feel is not only normal—it’s a crucial part of your healing process.

The first wave often hits when you discover the infidelity. It’s anger directed at the lies, deceit, and complete loss of trust. This stage is about recognizing the deep sense of betrayal and questioning how someone you loved could hurt you so profoundly.

It’s healthy to feel this anger fully. Talking to a trusted friend or even attending a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session can help you process these emotions safely.

Whether it’s emotional wounds, financial stress, or strained relationships, it’s normal to feel angry about the impact of his actions.

It’s so hard to have to deal with all the hurt and harm he has caused. You’re not alone. So many other women have faced similar challenges, including me. Even so, I’m so so sorry that you’re going through this. You don’t deserve it.

Betrayal doesn’t just hurt—it also takes things away. You’ll likely grieve the marriage you thought you had, the version of your husband you believed in, or the future you planned together. This grief often takes the form of anger.

It’s healthy to mourn these losses. And to have a community that can mourn with you, like The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Community.

Many women feel frustrated with themselves. You might be angry for trusting him, for not seeing the signs sooner, or for still struggling to heal.

It’s crucial to treat yourself with compassion during this stage. His betrayal was not your fault. Listening to women share their stories on The FREE Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast can help remind you that you’re not alone—or to blame.

The final stage is when you realize that your anger can become a source of power. It can motivate you learn strategies to protect yourself.

Learning how to live in the power you’ve always had is the aim of The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. You are strong, capable, and worthy of love and respect.

As I talk with victims of infidelity on a daily basis, I am so angry. And how could I not be? It’s important to know you’re not alone in your anger at his infidelity. Every emotion you’re feeling—sorrow, devastation, numbness, or fury—is valid. At Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we’re here to walk with you every step of the way.

Welcome to BTR.ORG. This is Anne.

My children are with my ex for right now, and I’ve been alone and working a lot. I’ve been really busy. I actually think I might go shop for new clothes today which I haven’t done in years–which is making me a bit nervous! At the same time, I’m thinking, “My goodness! I might get a new shirt today!” This is exciting!!

While my children are gone, my mom’s here helping me. I have amazing parents. They are supportive emotionally and financially. I really need to put a shout out to them, especially my mom who is my biggest fan. There is no way I could do this without her support—emotionally and physically, for she tends my kids. She brings dinner. My mom is a carpenter. She can do electrical work. She fixes my toilets. So she came down and helped me assemble a desk and helped put my new office together.

I got exhausted but my mom who is 65 came over and stood on stools to drill holes in the wall for my bookcases so they don’t fall over on my kids. I was getting exhausted and she powered through! My mom can do anything! I am so grateful for her and admire her so much. Where my ex-husband used to be my partner in projects, now I still have a partner and it’s my mom.

And so I can still work on my projects and do the things I love and still have help. She is an angel and I am so grateful for her. My life is infinitely better because of her. I am also grateful for my dad and their financial assistance. I’m really, really blessed to have amazing parents.

I want to talk about some of things I loved about my ex that I have been thinking about lately. I love projects, I love improving things. I’ve got a really nice home in a nice area, in a suburb north of Salt Lake City, Utah. It’s very safe and convenient. My ex and I bought the home together.

He’s a mechanical engineer and also a patent attorney. He’s really, really smart with numbers and with problem solving with mechanical situations. I really appreciated that about him. He built a chicken coop that could withstand the apocalypse! I remember watching him work in the yard and seeing how strong he was. He could pick up a railroad tie and drag it around. I always thought he was handsome when he was out working in the yard and he had dirt all over his face.

We bought a home together, before we got married (which I don’t recommend). There were tons of rocks. We gathered them up and put them in buckets. He would put them in the bottom of the garbage can since it could only handle being about 1/3 full so it wouldn’t break.

The garbage truck would come and dump it and my ex would put more rocks in and take the can to the other side of the street. This was my idea but he did it willingly. When he was not being abusive he was so willing to help me. He worked from home the last three years of our marriage. I could come home from the grocery store and he would come and help me bring the groceries in.

He loved church which is difficult for me now because we attended together. We attended the temple and he is still attending. He hasn’t repented. There is a disconnect there. I like that he does love the Church. I just can’t figure out how come he can’t understand the commandments or obey them. It is hard to have so much anger at his infidelity and the mismatch of values and actions. It’s hard to understand that this is how narcissists groom victims. He has the appearance of really, truly loving the Church which I appreciated about him.

He liked to cook which I also appreciated about him. He wasn’t a good cook but he did it and he liked it so that was cool. And he was willing to do whatever I wanted to do. Whatever movie I wanted to watch, wherever I wanted to go, he was willing to go with me. He never really planned anything which now I wonder if he just wasn’t very interested. I did a lot of brain work planning things and he was willing to go.

He didn’t play video games. He didn’t watch sports. I appreciated that about him. When he was here, he genuinely seemed to care about his family which is why it was so shocking that after his arrest he gave up. And also for the last three months when things got really bad there was no sign of him wanting to protect his family or keep us together.

He has this child-like naiveté to him. Like he didn’t know who the Rockettes were. He didn’t know a lot of cultural references. I found it kind of endearing. I really admired his physical strength and stamina. He was an extremely hard worker with yard projects and other projects. He had a lot of patience unless he was abusive and then he would get mad and scream and yell and swear. And because I don’t know how to set boundaries with my husband that work, it feels impossible.

I’m missing the really good things about him. I’m also missing the times we worked together to accomplish things. We really got along on all major decisions–church things, where to move, what to do. Every major decision was easy for us. We never fought about that. Because he was abusive we constantly had trouble with the little things. That’s what made life difficult on a day-to-day basis.

We moved 6 times in 5 years. We started out in Spokane, Washington, and then he was laid off. So we moved in with my parents. Then we moved to Washington D.C. where he was a patent examiner. We lived there for two years. During this time, his abuse I attributed to his job in 2008. We also had to sell our house.

It was very stressful so I attributed his abuse to stress and thought that once we could sell our house and get him a new job, he would be better. Then we moved to Washington D.C. and he was in the patent office and I thought, “This is a temporary situation. We live in a small apartment in inner city Alexandria. Once he gets his career established and we can move into a home, it will get better.” I was working so hard to make things better and it made me so angry that he kept being unfaithful.

Then we moved back to Utah and moved in with my parents. This was difficult and I thought that once we got our own house, things will be better. We bought a home that I did not like the floorplan. We couldn’t fit a dining room table in the kitchen, for example. I thought that if we moved to a more permanent home where we could live forever and raise our family there, things would be better.

So then we bought the home that I am in now. Which is my dream home. I absolutely adore it and I never want to leave. We began remodeling and I thought that once it was remodeled and settled then he will be better. There would be less stress and he wouldn’t act badly. But he began to get worse. About a year after moving into our dream home. He wanted to move again. He talked about getting a new job and changing. I said no. This was our life now and it’s what it means to have a life together. He felt trapped and stuck and was angry.

I thought, “Ok. All of these remodeling projects are pushing him over the edge, so no more remodeling projects for awhile.” And he actually got worse. I was still thinking about the projects and preparing for them, so it’s not like they had stopped completely in the discussion of them. Just the physical work stopped. In fact, my mom is a kitchen designer. She had just done the plans to remodel the kitchen and take down a wall when his arrest happened. It’s a good thing we didn’t start that project.

That summer when things escalated, I remember thinking: “Things will get better when the kids are in school.” The kids got in school and it didn’t get better. I’m not sure what I would have thought. We were in our dream home. I had said no more projects until he stopped acting the way he did. There wasn’t anything else I could blame. I couldn’t blame his job. I couldn’t blame our living situation. And I couldn’t blame stress because we had the “perfect” life at that time.

There was always an excuse for abuse. There was always a reason. He’s stressed. He feels shame, shame causes infidelity. There is always going to be some reason. But, Sisters, non-abusive men get stressed and they don’t scream and swear in your face! They get stressed and they don’t use. They feel shame and they kneel down and pray and turn to the scriptures and repent! Difficult situations DO NOT cause abuse! Negative feelings do not cause pornography use. Choices do. The type of man who is safe will feel sadness and shame and stress and they will choose kindness. They will choose to obey the commandments. They will choose to protect their family. This is what you deserve and I deserve.

I want to share with you scriptures I read this morning. I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We are Christians and we study from the Bible and Book of Mormon. This passage is from the Book of Mormon. It’s from Alma 5:55-57. This is a prophet calling people to repentance and letting them know what will happen.

Yea, and will you persist in turning your backs upon the poor, and the needy, and in withholding your substance from them? And finally, all ye that will persist in your wickedness, I say unto you that these are they who shall be hewn down and cast into the fire except they speedily repent.

And now I say unto you, all you that are desirous to follow the voice of the good shepherd, come ye out from the wicked, and be ye separate…

Here is Christ telling the people to separate themselves from the wickedness. I am going to read that again…(v 57-60)

…come ye out from the wicked, and be ye separate, and touch not their unclean things; and behold, their names shall be blotted out, that the names of the wicked shall not be numbered among the names of the righteous, that the word of God may be fulfilled, which saith: The names of the wicked shall not be mingled with the names of my people.

For the names of the righteous shall be written in the book of life, and unto them will I grant an inheritance at my right hand. And now, my brethren, what have ye to say against this? I say unto you, if ye speak against it, it matters not, for the word of God must be fulfilled.

For what shepherd is there among you having many sheep doth not watch over them, that the wolves enter not and devour his flock? And behold, if a wolf enter his flock doth he not drive him out? Yea, and at the last, if he can, he will destroy him.

And now I say unto you that the good shepherd doth call after you; if you will hearken unto his voice he will bring you into his fold, and ye are his sheep; and he commandeth you that ye suffer no ravenous wolf to enter among you, that ye may not be destroyed.

Here is a commandment straight from Jesus Christ: and he commandeth you that ye suffer no ravenous wolf to enter among you, that ye may not be destroyed. (v 60)

I’m going to read that again. And he commandeth you that ye suffer no ravenous wolf to enter among you, that ye may not be destroyed.

Sisters, we love our husbands. I absolutely loved and adored my husband. For 7 years I sacrificed everything to try and help him and save my family. Here God is commanding me and commanding you: suffer no ravenous wolf to enter among you, that ye may not be destroyed.

I know a lot of you are wondering what God wants for you. God wants you to be safe. He wants you to have a peaceful home. You cannot have a peaceful home with a ravenous wolf within the walls. This is a time for all of us to stand for truth and righteousness in a way we never have before. The reason why it’s so scary is because there are men in our church who look at us like we’re crazy! There are people who say that our boundaries are not righteous or that we are not being loving or kind or forgiving. None of this is true.

The most compassionate thing you can do for your husband it set a boundary. God is commanding you to. I don’t know what that boundary is going to look like and also I don’t really know how Heavenly Father is going to help you. Your anger at his infidelity can help you protect yourself. There were so many times where I felt so alone and so scared.

And that was with amazing and supportive parents who were incredible. And so many of you don’t have supportive parents or friends and the isolation is so intense. I do know that you stepping toward faith and obeying the commandment to “…suffer no ravenous wolf to enter among you.” If you start making steps towards obeying this commandment, you will be blessed. I have no idea how.

And I’m pretty sure that before you’re blessed, things may get a lot worse. But I have to think that God keeps His promises. I also look at people like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Theresa and George Washington and our founding fathers and the suffragettes and what they sacrificed. They sacrificed their lives for truth. I’m making sacrifices and still get to stay in my beautiful home and I get to dig in my garden.

For many of you, what I am going to ask you to do is going to be hard. You might have to leave your home. You might have to be on food stamps. Some of you are facing homelessness. I just pray that you will let God lead you, that as we create an army of healthy women that will suffer “no ravenous wolf to come among us” that we can change the world.

Until next week, stay safe out there.

Navigating life after separation can be challenging, especially if you’re dealing with post-separation abuse. What is post separation abuse? Unfortunately, this is a reality for many women, particularly mothers, who continue to suffer abuse from their ex-husbands.

Are you emotionally abused? Take this free emotional abuse quiz to find out.

What is post separation abuse? Post-separation abuse refers to the continuation of emotional, financial, and psychological abuse by an ex-partner after a relationship has ended. It can manifest in various ways, often leaving the victim feeling trapped and stressed. Understanding and identifying the signs of post-separation abuse is crucial for taking steps towards healing and protection.

One common form of post-separation abuse is financial abuse. This can include your ex shutting down your bank account or refusing to pay for childcare and other essential expenses related to your children. Additionally, they withhold important financial information necessary for the divorce process. That is another tactic they use to exert control and cause distress.

Another form of post-separation abuse involves unauthorized entry into your personal spaces. Abusers may sneak into your car, garage, or home, violating agreed-upon boundaries. If you notice items out of place or signs of tampering with security systems, it is important to consult your attorney and possibly law enforcement to ensure your safety.

Post-separation abuse can also include creating chaos for your children in order to exert control over you. Such as, refusing to adhere to set schedules or neglecting to take your children to extracurricular activities. They may also send subtly intimidating emails. They are difficult to pinpoint as dangerous. But they intend to cause fear and anxiety.

At Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we recognize the difficulty of understanding post-separation abuse. And are dedicated to providing the support you need. Our community offers:

You don’t have to face post-separation abuse alone. Betrayal Trauma Recovery is here to help you take the steps necessary to protect yourself and your children. Attend a group session today, and join a community that understands your struggles and supports your healing journey.

If you’re going through post-separation abuse, consider enrolling in The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop to learn the secrets of why an ex would continue to cause chaos after divorce.

Anne: What is post-separation abuse? Marcie’s here to tell her story. We’ll talk about the post-separation abuse she experienced since her divorce. Welcome Marcie

Marcie: Hi.

Anne: Can you start at the beginning of your story?

Marcie: Before that, I’d like to share a funny story. This was when we had originally separated. I tried to send something to my husband to help him understand the situation. It happened to be something from you. And I didn’t know it was from you at the time. It just resonated with me, and I thought it would help.

And since that time in all his communication, he references you as this horrible person trying to break up families. And do horrible things for women.

Marcie: And I feel like it’s ironic that now I’m actually part of that community and maybe helping other women in bad situations, like I was and currently still am.

Anne: So he introduced you to Betrayal Trauma Recovery?

Marcie: Well, I saw something I read and didn’t know it was Betrayal Trauma Recovery.

Anne: And then you showed him, like, hey …

Marcie: Yeah.

Anne: … this will help you be a better person.

Marcie: Yes.

Anne: And since then, I am the devil.

Marcie: Of course.

Anne: And it’s my fault that you’re setting boundaries, rather than his abuse, of course.

Marcie: Yes.

Anne: I get that a lot, no worries. I’m happy to take that heat for you. So talk about the beginning.

Marcie: I met him in high school, and I was young. It was actually before I started high school, so I was very inexperienced with relationships or this type of behavior. And at the beginning, like most of us, it doesn’t start feeling wrong, it starts feeling great. This person is loving. I misunderstood controlling things as loving things.

Like, oh, you shouldn’t do that with your friend. That might not be safe for you, but it was a controlling issue. Then we married fairly young and had kids. Then a lot of these things that now I look back with eyes open and see were wrong or damaging. I was told this is normal, I’m crazy, and all the typical things that most of us hear in these situations.

And then we feel like, well, that must be true. It must be us.

Marcie: I am now, in my fifties. Our relationship started when I was 14 and we married when I was 21. I feel like it took me a long time to realize that it was such a problem. But I basically tried to appease him in every way possible, because when I didn’t, it was miserable. So that happened for a long time. And then there was the fear of not appeasing him or doing things his way.

Anne: So back then, you were doing that to protect yourself.

Marcie: Absolutely.

Anne: You didn’t know that you were resisting back then, but that was a form of resistance, trying to get it to stop.

Marcie: Absolutely, I felt like if I was what he wanted me to be, then it would stop. And of course, in whatever discussions we had about it, or arguments, it was usually my fault. Whatever reaction I was getting was because I wasn’t doing something right. Or I wasn’t being what he needed me to be. So I kept trying to resist his behavior by doing whatever I could to be the best wife I could be.

I literally ran myself ragged trying, but it was impossible. And it never really made things better.

Anne: Hmm, when did you notice that wasn’t improving things for you?

Marcie: I noticed it a long time ago. But I just kept trying, because I didn’t know what my options were. And the longer it went on, I think the more I felt like it was my fault that I couldn’t be what he needed. He kept telling me that, or that I was crazy.

Marcie: There was one point where he, this was quite a while ago, like at least 20 years ago. He said I needed antidepressants because I was hard to deal with. Before I actually left, I realized, of course, I was depressed. I lived with someone who made it impossible to function. He made it impossible to have any type of normal life. He constantly made me feel like I was inadequate, horrible, or bad at everything I did.

It was confusing. And honestly, I didn’t have much time to think about how I felt, because I was the sole financial provider for our family of eight. And I worked a lot, plus I had all the responsibilities at home. I attributed it to my busyness. Or that, I don’t know, I didn’t have much chance to think about how I was feeling. When I realized I was depressed, we tried therapy. It doesn’t work in abusive situations.

And the therapist we went to was horrible, because he wouldn’t let me talk about the past. He felt like I’m going to fix this and this magical person who’s going to fix your relationship. We’re going to build from right now, and we’re not going to go into the past at all. And that was really empowering to my ex husband, because he didn’t want to talk about the past either.

There was actually discussion before I went to the therapist about, you can’t talk about certain things. And I told him, well, if we don’t talk about those things, that are some of the major issues. How will we resolve our problems? And I couldn’t say certain things without fear of what the reaction would be when we returned home.

Marcie: And the therapist would not allow me to speak. And we did have a test. There were a bunch of questions that we were both supposed to fill out. I answered things honestly, and it came back that I was depressed. He mocked me for that, made fun of me for that. And it just emphasized that I was the problem because I was depressed. It emphasized his impression that it was my fault, and yeah, I couldn’t handle everything.

Anne: He’s like, you’re going to work full time and take care of these kids full time. Your depression is causing me problems because dinner’s not on the table. He’s an exploitative person with an exploitative character. One of the things I want women to think about is what do they want? What is the goal of him telling you that you’re depressed? Is it to get you to work harder? Or is it to get you to feel bad about yourself? Is it to get you to stop trying to get him to do something?

They usually have something in mind that they’re trying to accomplish. In your case, I think he probably worried you might find out who he was, because he relied on you for everything.

Marcie: I definitely believe that was the case. That was towards the end of our, I don’t know if you could call it a relationship, whatever it was. And I had started to question him a lot more. I had started to say no a lot more, which, by the way, for anybody before they get into a relationship, there’s a simple test.

Marcie: It’s the ‘no” test. You say no to something and see how they react. And that’s the simplest, easiest way to figure out how people react. But I started saying no. And of course, I became more problematic. I became more difficult.

Anne: He wanted you to continue to say yes. So he’s manipulative when he says, that’s why you’re saying no. Because you’re certainly not saying no, because it’s an unreasonable request I’m making.

Marcie: Most of us in this situation experience the fact. That the way we do things for them, the way we bend over backwards to make them happy, they love. It’s not a problem for them at all. So they have a hard time seeing that there’s a problem in a relationship, because for them, they get what they want. And if they don’t, they throw a fit, and then usually they do.

Anne: It’s working for them. If they can scare you enough or manipulate you enough, the victim resists this type of behavior by doing what he wants. They think that will reduce the behavior, he’s happy about that. She’s still resisting the abuse, and still trying to make things better.

She’s always trying to improve her situation. And if she’s trying to improve it by being like, if I do this, he won’t get mad at me. Or if I do this, it’ll improve things. Then he’s like, cool. But he’s not thinking about you. He’s not thinking about your feelings. He’s just trying to get what he wants out of the situation.

Marcie: Absolutely, that depression thing was such a small slice of, there’s gotta be something wrong with me. I started recording things to help me realize that I wasn’t crazy. At first, the only reason why I recorded was he keeps telling me something that didn’t happen. Or he keeps telling me that this conversation didn’t go the way that it did. We’d had circular arguments about well, yes, you said this and this is what you said.

“No, I didn’t, I never said that. You’re wrong. See, you can’t remember things correctly. Your brain doesn’t work,” all those negative things that would make me go, what’s wrong with me? Why am I remembering these things incorrectly, or why am I remembering it differently from what he said? And in my mind, I know it went that way. So the only way I could confirm that in my brain was to record the conversations.

I want to emphasize how dangerous recording can be if he found out. Because he doesn’t want that, doesn’t want to be contradicted. I started feeling empowered when I realized I’m not crazy. I’m not making this up. Sometimes he accused me of like screaming and yelling at him, and I’d listen to it.

I’m like, well, I didn’t scream and yell or this didn’t happen. Whatever it was, it confirmed that what he was saying wasn’t true. And it was so helpful for me to start seeing this as abuse or to see that, there was a problem.

Anne: Yeah, that’s very brave of you. And also really awesome.

Anne: When I went through it, one of the things I did for a very short time was write in my journal, good days and bad days. Because in my head, I thought, okay, he’s just wonky three days a month. And I did the math and I was like, oh, that’s only 10 percent of a month. Is three out of 30 in an ideal marriage, 27 days and 3 days a bad marriage. Is three days worth it?

And I did these calculations, but when I actually wrote it down, it was happening every day. I just didn’t notice it was happening every day when I wasn’t tracking it. Recording it or journaling is so helpful.

Marcie: I also journaled and feel like that was tremendously helpful. I did that before I started recording. Like what you said, to get an idea of what was happening. Quite a few years ago, I actually had called to get help for him because he threatened suicide. If I didn’t do things his way, he threatened suicide.

And so I called for help for him. They referred to someone else, and they told me about power and control wheel. Which helped me understand this too. But I also went to a therapist at that time. And I expressed to her, we’ll have these horrible arguments in the evening. And then the next day I cannot remember them.

I can’t remember what they were about. It’s like, I can’t remember anything, no matter how hard I tried. And she explained to me that that is a trauma response to help you function.

Marcie: She basically explained it to me, as if you remember these difficult situations, you might not be able to function the next day. And so that’s a trauma response. So writing them down is hard, because you have to address them. But then, like what you said, you thought it was only three times a month when it was every day. I think our brains want us to forget the horrible things, so we do.

Anne: Well, and also, the next day he seems normal, at least in my experience. I thought, well, maybe I’m crazy. He seems fine today. It wasn’t like the next day he woke up and he was terrible. He acted fine. That made it confusing too like thinking, oh, it’s fine.

In those times where you feel desperate for help, that’s a great time to take action. To call a local domestic violence shelter, or attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery group session in that moment. Because you often let it sit for a minute, and then things seem fine, and it doesn’t seem weird to you until it happens again. So you’re always living in between.

Marcie: That’s making sense. The only thing is for myself and my situation, I had a fear to reach out for help. Which probably a lot of us do. I just intuitively knew that would be crossing a line of his, which would send him into a negative way.

Marcie: And there was a time when we had this situation. Where he chased me through the house and backed me into a corner. I put my hands up, and he was so close to me that my hands were on his chest. And I said, you need to leave me alone. And after that happened, I don’t remember how it ended. But he kept telling me that I had put my hands on him, and he could call the police and say I assaulted him. Because I put my hands on him and he didn’t touch me at all.

I was trying to explain to him how that doesn’t sound right. It wasn’t the case, and he said you could call anybody and they would side with me. It was just another typical thing that he would say, how other people would feel about certain situations. And so I said, okay, well then let’s call the domestic abuse hotline right now. And he’s like, go ahead, call. He didn’t think I would call, but I did. They immediately told me, this is not a safe situation. This is not good.

But after that call, he was angrier with me than I’ve ever seen him. He explained it to me as the biggest betrayal he has ever felt from me. It was worse than if I had an affair. And I feel like that was because being found out or proved wrong was the worst thing he could experience.

Anne: Or he’s just lying in that moment.

Marcie: Or lying.

Anne: To make you feel like he feels super betrayed for you calling the domestic violence shelter, in order to intimidate you.

Marcie: Yes.

Anne: They lie so much that it’s hard to be like, yeah, that was so devastating for him. Because he told me, I’m thinking, was it? Was it devastating for him? Because he’s a liar. We just never know what is going on in their minds, since they lie so much.

Marcie: Well, in looking back, there are so many things that are lies that I didn’t see as lies. Or didn’t want to see as lies or didn’t want to believe as lies that now I know. But that brings me back to the beauty of recording. So flash forward many years from that, that first original recording to now, where four years ago. I got a restraining order, which allowed me to record conversations between him and me, or him and the children.

It’s specific for victims of domestic violence who have a restraining order. To record, so I could record and use those recordings in court.

Anne: Did he know that you were allowed to do this?

Marcie: Yes.

Anne: Okay, so he knows he’s being recorded?

Marcie: He knows he’s being recorded, but I don’t know if most of these people are like this. He’s very cocky. I think he’d forget, too. Or he didn’t care or didn’t think what he was saying was wrong. In fact, at the beginning, he definitely didn’t think what he was saying was wrong. There were recordings from when he had phone calls and supervised visits. And these were during those phone calls, and he felt okay, because this was the way he was feeling.

Marcie: So it was a right for him to let them know. But when I transcribed those recordings, things such as your mother is trying to kill me by doing this, and your mother hates me. And just things that were not appropriate for children to hear.

Anne: You’re recording his phone calls with your kids. This is one way to combat his abuse when fighting a narcissist for custody.

Marcie: Correct, and this has been going on for four years. In the meantime, because of those recorded conversations, they’ve limited his phone calls to a shorter amount of time. As well as took away the supervised visits. Which he wasn’t doing anyway, because when I stopped planning them for him, it was too much work or whatever. I don’t know. He didn’t want to pay for it, but he didn’t do it, but they took away that right and made it just phone calls.

But another important thing for people in the situation to know is that. The county in which you reside is the court where your custody issues will be heard. And I don’t know if that’s in all states, but I know in California, that’s the issue. So there are many counties that understand domestic abuse. And they try to understand that dynamic when they make decisions regarding the children.

There are other counties that do not understand that dynamic. They tend to feel that both parents should be with the children no matter what. And they don’t take into account the background or danger. So for many women who are having some big challenges within the court system, that if they live in another county, they might get a different viewpoint and a different result.

Marcie: I’ve also experienced, legal abuse where he keeps going back to court.

Anne: His post separation abuse includes him taking you back to court, even though you’re divorced and even though he has a protective order? Is his protective order still in place?

Marcie: It was made permanent. But in his communication with me previously, he threatened me that he’s going to keep going to court. He has said, this is the only thing you understand. And he’s been in contempt in some ways that have caused me to respond to things worse that have cost me money.

Anne: Yeah, it’s so frustrating that they can wreak so much havoc, and the court system doesn’t stop them. It’s a very difficult situation, and that’s why strategy, I think, is so important. And why I created The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. Because confronting them or communicating better, or all the things the therapist might tell you.

Or a guardian ad litem might tell you, or reunification therapists will tell you, do not work. So many of you have experienced the trauma of all that. And strategy, we found, is the only thing that can help us stay sane.

Anne: I mean, he’s costing you all this money. Since you were the primary breadwinner, did he actually start working?

Marcie: No.

Anne: So he’s doing legal abuse, how is he paying for his legal stuff?

Marcie: He keeps saying he’s borrowing money, but I know he’s getting it from family members. It’s just his way. He always has people take care of him or pay for him. And it ties into his narrative of how he will describe what’s happening and make me the villain.

Anne: To place him in the victim role.

Marcie: Yes.

Anne: Rather than the perpetrator. You were the primary breadwinner, did he get alimony from you?

Marcie: No.

Anne: Whew, he’s probably mad about that. He lost his meal ticket.

Marcie: He did.

Anne: Yeah, I bet that’s the thing that’s the most anger producing for him.

Marcie: Yeah.

Anne: You’re not good for anything now.

Marcie: I am useless.

Anne: Yeah, you’re completely useless to him. That’s what we want to be, we want to be useless.

Marcie: Yes.

Anne: To these guys. Let’s talk about the smear campaign he started. Smear campaigns are common with post separation abuse. Was this, I guess, during your divorce proceedings?

Marcie: Yes, all along, he leaves out small details, sometimes large details. Or sometimes totally represents things differently from how they are to be the victim. And when I originally contacted you, I asked how do you deal with the smear campaign. This is happening with my in-laws, and it was so upsetting to me to feel like I had lost my in-laws. I’m sure many women have felt the same feeling. I’ve known them since I was a teenager.

I feel like they thought of me like a daughter, and the ironic part is they knew how he was. Not to the extent of what I knew, but they knew, and several times his dad said, I’m sorry he’s acting that way. I don’t know why he behaves that way to you sometimes, it doesn’t sound right.

His mom would say similar things, things like, if he keeps treating the children that way, they’re not going to want to talk to him. They knew how he was. He would treat them that same way, but they don’t want to talk to me. My adult children have refused to talk to their father, and they feel like that’s horrible. His post separation abuse includes his lies to everyone about me.

They don’t interact with them. They barely interact with their younger grandchildren anymore. And it’s just sad, but at first it was really, really upsetting. And then I realized, well, if they’re believing him. If they’re going to stand beside him when he’s abusive and believe things that aren’t true. I guess it has to be okay that those people aren’t in my life anymore.

Marcie: Oh, that’s so hard. So, on the phone calls with the kids, he tells them things that aren’t true. Well, gosh, there are so many things that he does to them that I feel are so damaging for them. They’re not small, tiny children, but still. He plants false memories. Do you remember when we did this together, and this together? Or I have the memory of whatever it was, being miserable because he didn’t want to go, or they weren’t behaving,

Like, for instance, my youngest is 12 and my oldest is 31. My ex-husband was really into baseball. He played when he was a kid. None of the kids had done any type of baseball or organized sports. The younger children wanted to, but weren’t able to when we were together. There was always an excuse we’re not going to have time, whatever. But after I left, it was the first time my youngest son was enrolled in Little League, and he loved it.

My ex husband kept saying, remember when we used to go outside and play baseball all the time? I always wanted you to be in sports, but it couldn’t work because of mom’s schedule.

Anne: It’s your mom’s fault that you couldn’t take baseball. Yeah, Um hmm. That’s one example of manipulation being a tactic of post separation abuse. Your ex is using the kids to hurt you.

Marcie: And I think, well, before I would have fallen into that and felt the guilt. But now I think, well, okay, if it was my fault, then how come I did that after I left you? But I couldn’t do it when there were two people in the home?

Marcie: It was so much harder to do anything. But just the false memories of, we used to go out and play catch all the time, which is not true. A lot of those type of things. The criminal things or the things he did to break the restraining order. There were so many more things, but they don’t address it in the way you’d like. Let’s put it that way.

But I don’t talk to the kids about the court cases or anything like that, because I feel it’s not for them to be concerned about it. I don’t want them to be part of that. But he would tell them incorrect information about what they’re about, leave out all the important things, and tell them that Mom’s doing this because she doesn’t want me to see you. Those types of things damaged my relationship with the children.

Anne: And that’s the point. He’s purposefully doing that to do damage. It damages you and the kids, and that is the intent of post separation abuse, which is so unfortunate.

Marcie: It is very hard. Only two out of six of my children will speak with him. Of the two that do, that’s obviously where it’s the most damaging. I’m having trouble with my 17 year old because he’s trying to be the cool dad. He’s encouraging him to stay out late on school nights, not with friends, but with him, and he’s missed school. And he’s actually not supposed to see him, but that’s another thing. He’s luring them with being able to buy them things.

Anne: Does he have a job now?

Marcie: No, he does not. He gets money from family members, and he claims to be homeless. Yet he purchases things for them.

Marcie: That’s where recording comes in wonderfully, because we do have a court case that he started. He wants custody again. And I think this time I’m including a lot of recordings that I’ve transcribed, which has been helpful.

Anne: It started when you were 14, and has continued this whole time, and everything he’s done has been part of that con. And he continues to do that con. You are experiencing post separation abuse. He lies to your kids, and he lies to everybody else. So the whole thing has been the show. So if you can think of it in that overarching way of, it’s been this show. And then, how do you tell the story within that con? That might help you process it.

Marcie: When you put it in that sense, it is just a continuous con. He’s just reaching and grabbing for different cons that will work. That helps put it in perspective.

Anne: Yeah, because he’s doing the same thing over and over. Even though it’s maybe not the same lie. It’s lying in a different way, but it’s still just lying.

Marcie: Looking back at it, it feels so surreal. Like it feels like it’s not real because it’s so insane. Does that make sense?

Anne: Um hmm, totally.

Marcie: And I feel like people aren’t going to believe me, because how could that be true? How could anyone act like that? Plus, he’s saying something different. So I think I still have a lot of healing to do, which is frustrating.

Anne: That’s the purpose of this podcast. It’s a safe place where everybody gets it and believes you. We don’t care what he says or thinks, we know he’s a liar. Here, you’re 100% believed. What is post separation abuse? We know and can help. So because of that, it’s such a safe place to be. Like, I can share my story, and he’s not going to talk back to me.

Marcie: Sometimes when you share your story with people who don’t understand, they back away or it’s just too much.

Anne: With me, I’m like, tell me more. So thank you so much, Marcie.

Marcie: Thank you so much.