Many women quietly search how to prepare for divorce long before they say anything out loud. Preparing for divorce isn’t just paperwork. It’s emotional, strategic, and deeply personal.

Below are four essential steps to help you prepare for divorce with clarity.

When women start researching how to prepare for divorce, they often focus only on legal logistics. But emotional and communication strategies matter just as much. It’s important to understand…

One of the most overlooked parts of learning how to prepare for divorce is predicting how your husband will react.

Why this matters: Divorce often changes dynamics. A man who seemed calm in marriage may become reactive when he realizes he is losing control.

Knowing likely behaviors ahead of time allows you to:

Strategic preparation reduces chaos. The Living Free Workshop walks women through identifying patterns so they can anticipate reactions before filing papers.

Preparing for divorce can feel isolating. Even strong, capable women feel shaken. You may need:

A support group like Betrayal Trauma Recovery provides emotional support tailored specifically for women navigating betrayal and separation.

The team at Betrayal Trauma Recovery are not just certified divorce coaches, they’re trauma-informed coaches who understand the emotional toll of deception, gaslighting, and chronic instability.

Divorce may be a legal process, but it’s also an emotional journey. Having the right support can make the difference.

When researching how to prepare for divorce, many women feel fear about the unknown:

Worry is normal. But listening to stories from other women who have walked this road can provide strength. The FREE Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast shares real experiences from women who navigated divorce and found clarity, safety, and stability on the other side.

Hearing those stories can help you see that divorce isn’t the end of your story.

Anne: I have asked my friend Debra Doak author of High Conflict Divorce for Women, Your Guide to Coping Skills and Learning Strategies for All Stages of Divorce. So for women wondering how to prepare for divorce, this interview is for you.

Welcome Debra.

Debra: Thank you. I’m thrilled to be here.

Anne: So many women who have been through a divorce are like, ah, things would have gone so much better if I would have known this. Or if I would have known that.

Debra: We don’t know what we don’t know. And as traumatized women, we often either underreact or overreact. Both of those things can put us in a poor position when it comes to divorce. We’re also often the lower earners, or stay at home parents, and can get hurt quickly in this process if not prepared, get caught off guard. We’re also more likely to make emotional decisions, instead of strategic decisions looking out for long-term well-being.

And as we know, we are also likely to trust when trust isn’t really deserved. When you trust an untrustworthy person in divorce, sometimes that can come back to bite you.

Anne: A lot of women aren’t interested in doing the Living Free Workshop, even though it’s for married, separated and divorced women. It’s just about strategy, but they don’t want to do it because they think. I only need to think about strategy in the worst case scenario. They want to focus on their marriage working out.

Debra: When women are trying to make that stay, wait, or go decision. Having been through betrayal trauma myself, we take baby steps. Let’s get copies of financial documents, get a little more in the loop on finances. Let’s start setting a little money aside. So we kind of just put the tip our toe in the water of getting ready.

Debra: While we’re going to give 150%, 100% to the marriage, and maybe 50 or 40 percent to setting yourself up just in case.

Anne: Yeah, that’s exactly what the Living Free Workshop is about, how to observe from a safe distance. While determining his true character, what reality anticipates is what’s going to happen next. Also focusing on your own goals. So there is a section of Living Free that educates women about divorce. If they’re not interested, they can skip that part. But it’s just basic divorce education, which is important for every woman to have no matter what her situation is.

Debra: Yeah, definitely is. I mean, preparation makes any divorce go more smoothly. Because when we act out of fear, we don’t make good decisions. And so even if you don’t have a high conflict person, divorce can still be very conflicted. In the case where you’ve been with an emotional abuser, you need to be prepared for what could happen. There’s a great test to see if he’s emotionally abusive, click here for that.

The sense of entitlement that’s allowed them to behave in the ways they’ve behaved during the marriage. It is also a sense of entitlement that can cause a switch to flip when the woman decides to divorce them.

Anne: Yeah, it’s hard to even wrap your head around the fact that they might flip that switch. And that happened in my case, it happens in almost every case I see. Where a woman was manipulated to think he would always pay child support or alimony.

Anne: And to be in the position where he’s not even remotely, the person you thought he was, is so alarming. And because we’ve all been through that stage where we think, he’s not going to do that to me. That’s not going to happen to me. I think all women, I mean, in high school or college, or somewhere, we all need education about divorce.

Debra: For the women who don’t believe it’s going to happen to them. A common, what I call, dirty divorce trick is spousal starvation, and suddenly he reroutes that paycheck. Now you don’t have gas and groceries. What are you going to do? I hope your husband is a nice guy and negotiates fairly throughout, but what harm would it do if we had a little emergency savings account? What would it hurt if you took a few steps to protect you just in case?

Anne: Yeah, because as you start getting healthier and setting boundaries. They will either improve, and they’re going to get it, or they’re going to get worse. But it’s not going to stay the same.

Debra: It’ll change one way or the other. Either they will have a sense of guilt, remorse and empathy. Or, like I said, that sense of entitlement will come bubbling to the surface, and suddenly it becomes their money. And how dare you? So we just ask the what if questions. You’ve had a friend that went through a bad divorce. What if your husband did that? Maybe take a few baby steps to protect yourself.

Debra: In this day and age, it seems like betrayal is rampant. Sometimes it’s financial betrayal. And sometimes they actually don’t know for sure. They don’t have any proof, but a wife knows the truth. She may not know the facts, but she knows the truth. When you’re with an emotional abuser, there’s often financial abuse involved. So women may not have access to information about their marital finances. That makes it hard to get started if you don’t even know what’s on the table to be divided.

If you don’t have access to your own money. So that makes things really hard. Often the abuse will still keep her in a one-down position. And she still feels like she doesn’t have the power and voice to stand up for what she deserves.

Anne: To all my listeners, this is important. They’re going to get mad no matter what. So please don’t make decisions thinking, okay, he’s going to get mad if I do this. So I’m not going to do it to avoid making him mad. He’s going to be mad, no matter what. So just do whatever you want. That’s very, very important. Because so many women are trying to stop the abuse by doing what he wants. And that is not going to happen.

Debra: Not at all. Not at all. Women in abusive situations need to start creating this exit strategy in stealth mode. So that when he gets crazy, she’s at least got a few things in place. So she has copies of financial documents in a safe space, because they disappear. She’s got some money set aside because money disappears. Those kinds of things.

Debra: There are no winners in divorce. So everyone walks away feeling like they didn’t get what they wanted. One thing I see often with betrayed women is expecting the court system to mete out emotional justice. He cheated on me, so why do I have to do with less? Why do I have to live in a small apartment? Why do I have to drive a used car? Whatever the what if is or why. And unless it’s something really egregious that’s going to shock the court, there’s no emotional justice.

What we want to come away from a divorce with is a settlement where we made intentional decisions. And that we can feel good about. So we had all the information we needed, and every choice was intentional. Sometimes you will give up something that you were entitled to in order to get something else. And that’s okay, as long as it was an intentional decision as you prepare for divorce.

So we just don’t want to come away feeling like we were missing information or a victim. Because what that does, and you’ll get this, it impacts their ability to recover from it afterwards. Divorce can be a bump in the road. It doesn’t have to be your destination. And so the more empowered you feel during the process, even though crappy things are happening, and he’s mean and unfair. And you may not get everything you want. If you can feel like you were informed you’re going to recover and move through that healing phase so much faster.

Anne: Yeah. that’s the point of the Living Free Workshop.

Anne: On our BTR Team, our coaches are betrayal trauma coaches. They’re also certified divorce coaches, so they can walk you through this and help you implement the Living Free strategies. They can help you prepare and stealth mode. Like she was talking about. The other thing our coaches do is help you work through those emotions.

Debra: Yeah, when we talk about preparing for divorce, I talk about two people you need on your team. And that’s, I call a BFF backup. This is the person you can call at three in the morning, who can pick your kids up from school. Who knows what you’re thinking before you do. When they say, how are you? And you say, I’m okay. They go, no, you’re not. So you need a BFF backup and a taskmaster. Your taskmaster friend is someone who might not sit with their arm around you, but there’s someone who will research attorneys for you.

We’ll do all the real estate legwork. We’ll go to the grocery for you. Someone who will do the things that you’re too emotionally crippled to even deal with. And then you need a safe place to share and be real. Because emotional regulation is key during this process, and by regulating or managing your emotions, I don’t mean stuffing them.

What I mean is having some place safe with a coach, a super healthy friend or family member to get that stuff out. So that you can be strategic in your planning, and you want to have a safe place to get those emotions out. And then you also want to get the affirmation that what you’re feeling is normal as you prepare for divorce.

Debra: Women say, I can’t remember where my keys are. I’m crying all the time. Of course you are. Of course, you feel that way. Look at what you’re going through. In divorce care, they tell you that sometimes, I think 80 percent of your brain can be occupied with thoughts about divorce. If you think about a computer, 80 percent of your computer’s RAM is busy processing thoughts about the divorce. And only 20 percent is available for your daily living. Of course, you’re going to forget your keys.

Anne: Here are two concrete examples. I wasn’t able to read written instructions well. And so I asked a friend whose daughter was in my son’s preschool at the time. My son and her daughter were going to the same preschool, and we would get these emails or texts about what was happening. I couldn’t process them. I would try. I’d look at them and I’d be like, Oh, something about a hat. You know, I couldn’t figure it out. And so I asked her, I said, I can’t process written information in these emails and texts. So keep this in mind when your preparing for divorce.

If something is important, will you please call me or send a text and say, send him in a hat like the simplest text possible? Just one thing, so I didn’t have to read the explanation or whatever, and she was happy to do that for me. And so she would call or send me a very simple text. Now, a lot of people don’t have a friend like that, but I think they can develop a friend like that.

Anne: There might be someone who goes to church with you, someone in your neighborhood, another woman maybe who has been through it, who you didn’t realize who could help you out. It’s scary to ask, but I have found that a lot of people say yes. I think the scariest part is actually asking.

Debra: It is. People will tell you, if you need anything, let me know. But they don’t know what you need. But they really do want to help. If you have a leaking faucet, someone wants to fix it for you. Someone wants to help you go over your documents. Someone wants to help you do those things. They don’t say that out of routine or ritual. They want to help. Because they just don’t know what you need.

Anne: I think another traumatic situation here is the person who used to fix your faucet. And the person who helped you with your legal documents is your husband. There’s this other element of I need help, and the person who is helping me isn’t here, and what do I do? I’m alone! Like, he used to fix the faucet. That is also really traumatic through this time.

Debra: It is because for your support, you need a coach, an attorney, a financial person. But you need to think ahead, so that you can keep yourself more centered and stable.

Anne: This is why you need all these people in your corner. Because you’re rightfully and normally reacting to a really, really hard situation when you’re preparing for divorce.

Debra: Exactly, it’s normal. Of course you are. Let’s get you set up for success.

Anne: Because if you say you should be able to handle this, why can’t you read? Why can’t you blah, blah, blah. You’re just going to get more and more depressed and overwhelmed.

Debra: Right, yeah. Just to know that it’s normal. There are things you’re going to have trouble with. So how can we put measures in place to fill those gaps until you’re ready? And it might be a month, and it might be six months, but let’s think through who can help you. And that’s one of the things your taskmaster can do. Your taskmaster can find other people. Well, who can fix my faucet? Who can cut my grass? Who can do these things? Your taskmaster friend can do that.

Anne: What do you believe are the most important things for listeners facing a high conflict divorce to know ahead of time?

Debra: First of all, self care. When we’re going through a stressful time, one of our first tendencies is to cut back on self care. Because we have our normal life. Plus, now I have to fit in attorney appointments and financial appointments. And like I’ve added to my daily stress. And so we tend to cut back on self care, but what you need to do is double it. Because especially if you were in an abusive marriage, you developed coping mechanisms to get through the day with that partner.

Those aren’t going to work anymore during divorce, so you have to make sure your tank is full. So increasing self care is important. We talked about safe people and a support team. You cannot do divorce alone. It’s too hard. You’re too traumatized. So get the right people around you as you prepare for divorce.

Debra: Work on regulating your emotions so that you can make strategic decisions. Get the right help to process them. Vent to safe people. Because you want to make decisions you feel good about. Again, you may not get everything you want, but you at least want to feel empowered and informed. Shut down your social media. Block everyone he’s friends with. If his family supports him, block them, unfriend them. Don’t post anything. Live like a nun, especially if you’re going to be in a custody battle.

Anne: I could not agree more. I deleted all my social media accounts, and I would highly recommend that for people.

Debra: Don’t be out at a concert with a cocktail in your hand. Just don’t do it. Even though it’s fun and you want to show your friends that you went to the Jimmy Buffett concert, don’t do it. And then be careful of Switzerland friends. Those are people, they love both of you. He’s a great guy. We just want to be friends with both of you. No, absolutely not. And you don’t have to be cold or cruel about it, but take a step back. If you run in the same circles and you’re around them, just be very cautious what you say.

Don’t discuss your divorce. Don’t discuss your partner. We talked about Switzerland friends, shutting down your social media, those kind of things. If you don’t keep control of yourself and what you say and do, it could be used against you. So it can hurt your case. If you’re preparing for divorce you need to keep this in mine, if you act out or send that email or send that text. Those things could be used against you. So it’s not in your best interest.

Debra: Other people can get hurt when you’re not managing your emotions, and specifically your children. It’s the hardest thing to model healthy behavior to your children while you’re under this stress. It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do in your life. Yet it’s the most important thing. And then finally, and you talked about this, we can’t make good decisions when we’re crying, and we can’t think about it. And our brain isn’t working right.

So being able to maintain that sense of calm and clarity and focus on our purpose. Focus on the end game instead of living in the moment. Is critical to making good decisions as you prepare for divorce.

Anne: Did you watch Marriage Story?

Debra: I did. The emotion of it didn’t surprise me, the hurt, you know, the pain, the anger. What surprised me was how realistic their portrayal was of how our legal system creates litigious situations. When they don’t have to be.

Anne: It was interesting that he had an affair, so there’s a betrayal. I listened to Pop Culture Happy Hour. They reviewed it, and they were like, this is a situation where you’ve got a nice man and a nice woman, and this is how divorce goes. They didn’t weigh the betrayal at all. It carried no weight in terms of fault. Instead, they focused on the idea that the couple had grown apart or weren’t really compatible.

And I thought this is why so many women feel so betrayed in general. Because society in general doesn’t understand this. Although it showed the legal system well, I don’t think it got to the heart of the cause.

Debra: I agree. They glossed over the betrayal, and I think that’s just so indicative of culture. Culture says, eh, no big deal. Or culture says, well, you know, she wasn’t sleeping with him, so what’s a guy supposed to do? That patriarchal attitude is still so prevalent in society that nobody blinked at that.

Anne: I know, I thought the part where her attorney, Nora, said you have to be perfect, and he doesn’t have to be perfect. It was so spot on.

Debra: Spot on, the judges need to hear what they want to hear, and see. This is important as you prepare for the divorce, the judges and magistrates are looking for something from you, and you better present it.

Anne: Well, yeah, I mean, it’s so traumatic. There are so many reasons why divorce is so traumatic that it just overwhelms your brain, you know?

Debra: There are so many reasons, and they’re always individual. But there are three common themes: money, kids, and conflict. So often, women have been kept out of the loop in terms of finances, or stay at home moms or lower earners. And they’re worried, can they support themselves? They’re often worried about the impact this will have on their children. And they’re worried about the conflict, because we know that when we’re married to abusers, they don’t like to be told no.

Sometimes you have to pick your hard when we’re on the fence, and work through that decision. Because it’s also hard to stay married to an abuser.

Anne: The thing that so many women appreciate about Betrayal Trauma Recovery Services is that our goal is to give women information. And then to validate and support them. So there’s never going to be a time when someone comes to Betrayal Trauma Recovery, where we say you have to get divorced. We give women the education they need, give them their options, and then help them assess what’s right for them. Can you talk about how Betrayal Trauma Recovery coaches support women through making their own decisions?

Debra: The first thing a Betrayal Trauma Recovery coach will do is help a woman seek peace and safety. So helping them observe their partner’s patterns of behavior, helping them set the boundaries they need. And determining if they need to set the next boundary, the next boundary, and the next boundary. So when the boundaries aren’t working and they have to set tighter or stronger boundaries, that’s when we start to see separation or financial separation or start to take those bigger steps.

And so when they get to that point, that’s when the word divorce starts coming up in their mind and they start thinking, Hmm, I wonder if this will have to be the next step I take. So you can pray your husband recovers. And simultaneously, get yourself knowledgeable about what it would look like if I took this other path toward divorce. And for many women, we go back and forth for a long time. When I prepare divorce, how will I know when it’s time to go?

Debra: You will have a crystalline moment of clarity. There comes for most women, a time when the heavens open up, a spotlight shines down, and you know, today’s the day. When that happens for you, when you have that moment of clarity, I want you to be ready and not afraid. So if we have all this information, you will be prepared for what divorce will look like, and you know what you’re stepping into.

When the heavens open and the spotlight shines on you, and you know today’s the day, you’ll simply nod your head and say, okay. I’m not scared.

Anne: And that day might never come.

Debra: It might never. It might be next week, a year from now or it might never come. But if it does, you’ll be ready.

Anne: There are so many things that those who have gone through divorce wish we had known long before we even started considering it. Because it would have helped prepare us. So at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, like I said before, our coaches are certified divorce coaches. They can help women anticipate things, and women can get assistance through group sessions or individual sessions. Can you talk about the difference between group and individual sessions here at BTR?

Debra: Sure, Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group is where you can get help tackling a particular high level issue. For instance, can you give me a few tips on how to talk to a six year old about this? And so, in three or four minutes, a BTR coach might give a couple of high level tips about age appropriate conversation, great.

In an individual session, they can look at your finances. Look at your budget. Talk through a strategy to get back to work. They can help you make negotiation decisions, get into the meat of it. Talk about how to pick the right attorney for your case, who else you might need on your team. Like, they can dive into the details of your particular situation that probably aren’t appropriate for group. And so you can get really individual stuff there in order to prepare for divorce.

It makes a big difference to actually look at your spreadsheets and numbers, especially if you haven’t been involved in your finances. Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions can educate you about some of that.

Anne: Exactly, and some of that’s kind of DIY in the Living Free Workshop, or if you need help implementing those strategies, you can do Group or Individual Sessions.

So, if a woman is listening and she thinks divorce might be in her future, what are some of the first steps that she should take?

Debra: The first thing I want to say is what you shouldn’t do. Please do not tell your spouse. I don’t want you to put that out there until you can get educated about it in the workshop. Just make sure you aren’t deciding not to divorce, because a fear that’s not rooted in truth is standing in your way.

Debra: A woman who lived in the San Francisco Bay area where it’s expensive. She thought I can never ever afford to leave. There’s no way. I’m miserable, I want to leave, but I can’t afford to. And when she looked at the numbers, her budget was only short a thousand dollars a month. Then she thought, I can find a way to earn two hundred and fifty dollars a week. So is that fear holding you back?

Make sure it’s not a false fear that’s holding you back. I’m not trying to get you to decide, I just want you to have truth. At Betrayal Trauma Recovery, it’s all about truth. All truth all the time.

Anne: Yeah, and it’s painful, especially when so many of us come from a religious background. So it feels like maybe “betraying” our husband. I’m going to say that in quotes, because obviously we’re not, because he betrayed us. Also in so many ways it feels like we’re betraying God.

Debra: So that’s another one of those fears. Decide to face our fears. See if they’re real. Because regardless of the conflict and regardless of the parenting. For the most part, divorce is breaking a legal contract about money. That’s what many decisions will be about. That’s what the law is written about. So, understand the money involved as your preparing for divorce.

Do you have access to your tax returns, your husband’s pay stub, or W 2? Do you know how much is in your retirement account? How much your house is worth? What’s the balance on your mortgage? Do you know what your monthly expenses are? It’s good to have the financial information before you consult with an attorney, so that an attorney can estimate of spousal support and child support.

Debra: That’s what we need to help fill in our budget. If one of your fears is, well, I’ve been a stay at home mom, I don’t think I can support myself. Well, then the income line in your budget will be mostly child support and spousal support. So that’s important information to know. So gather some of the financials before you consult with an attorney. That way, that meeting will be much more productive for you.

Anne: If a woman decides she wants to divorce, she’s prepared. She’s worked with a Betrayal Trauma Recovery coach. She’s done everything she needs to do, and she’s ready to do it. When is the right time to tell her husband that she wants a divorce?

Debra: You are an expert on your husband. One of the preparation steps, and you’ll go through this in the workshop, is setting up a bank account. And making sure you have emergency funds, because a dirty divorce trick abusers like to play is move their paycheck and not give you access to any money. So if you think that’s the case, you tell him the same day you file the paperwork.

Anne: So many women in our community, me included, did not think our husband was like that. And then we found out that he is like this. It was shocking to us during the divorce process. Like in my case, he shut down our bank account. And really, the abuse starts to be very overt. Where perhaps, before it was covert. For me, it was shocking and upsetting, but it was also like, I guess, I made the right decision.

Debra: It’s confirmation, yeah.

Anne: Yeah, because it was like, whoa, when divorcing an abusive husband, he’s getting more and more deliberate and harmful through this, not less. And it will hurt you, but you can also think, Oh, okay, this is another sign that I’m making the right decision.

Debra: We, as women, have such a tendency to wait until the bullets start flying before we put on our armor. And I want women in abusive relationships to know, if he says, don’t worry, I’m going to be fair. Don’t worry, I’ll always take care of you and the kids. If this is a person who’s been deceiving you for a decade, I’m not sure we should take that statement at face value. Let’s prepare for divorce and assume it’s not true. And if it turns out that he negotiates in good faith and takes care of you, that’ll be a bonus.

Anne: Because this is someone who looked you straight in the eye and said, of course, I’m faithful to my marriage vows and had an affair.

Debra: Let’s just make sure we have on our Kevlar vest just in case. So the best time to tell him is when it’s done. This is another thing a Betrayal Trauma Recovery coach can help with is preparing you for that conversation. One alternative is not to have the conversation. If you are already separated, you can simply file and have him served. If you want to have the conversation, the conversation is very simple. It’s, this is a decision I’ve made, it’s what I need to do for me.

Debra: When he rails against it, you can say, I hear you’re mad, I hear you’re upset, I hear this isn’t the way you wanted it to go. This is the decision I’ve made for me. He’s gonna throw accusations at you, and you don’t need to defend yourself. You don’t need to explain why you chose to do it. Or you don’t have to tell him all the ways he hurt you. You simply repeat, this is a decision I felt like I needed to make.

Anne: Yeah, because as I explained in the Living Free Workshop, if you try to explain it, or you’re hoping somehow, you can get some resolution with an emotional abuser like this. It’s not going to go that way. He’s going to use it to abuse you more.

Debra: Correct, we don’t mention divorce when we prepare until we are doing it. It is never a threat. It’s never an incentive. It’s never a punishment. So, this conversation is only a notification conversation. Then he may throw declarations, you’ll never get a penny, you’ll never see the children, I’m getting full custody, you’ll be homeless. Whatever these declarations are, my best response is to say, we’ll see, that’s it.

This is not a time where you’re going to negotiate, don’t fight back, don’t explain, you simply say, this is a decision that I feel like I need to make. If he throws those accusations or declarations out, you simply say, we’ll see, and that’s it. that’s the end of the conversation.

Anne: Yep, I learned the hard way, which was why I was so passionate about writing the Living Free Workshop. Because I didn’t want any other woman to learn the hard way.

Anne: But I totally get it. If you’re listening and you’re like. I don’t want to do the Living Free Workshop. I’m not interested in learning about this. I get it. Because I was there for a long time too. In my own experience, I just wish I had known what I know now. That’s all. And that’s why I want to share it with you. Especially because the strategies in the Living Free Workshop feel so counterintuitive. It’s not like anything a therapist will tell you or anybody else. It’s completely different.

Debra: Yes.

Anne: Can you go deeper about why it’s important to work with someone who understands this abuse dynamic when they’re getting a divorce. Instead of just getting support from like a regular therapist, or even trying to get emotional support from your attorney or sister?

Debra: I just demonstrated one of them, helping you plan for that conversation so that it goes well and you can stay as safe as possible in that conversation. If you let your emotions, or your amygdala, your fight, flight, or freeze, reflex, drive what you’re doing in the divorce. You won’t fare as well. If a coach can keep you calm and emotionally regulated, so that you can make informed strategic decisions. You will do a lot better emotionally, financially and relationally.

You’ll be a better mom through the process. You’ll help your kids navigate the process better. Your attorney is not an expert on the emotions in divorce. They’re an expert in the legal process.

Anne: Many women want to talk to their attorney a lot, getting validation from their attorney. Or even want their attorney to be their therapist, which is an expensive way to go.

Anne: The Living Free Workshop and Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group are much less expensive than an attorney’s hourly fee.

Debra: And they’re better at it.

Anne: Yeah.

Debra: Just to say that. They’re better at supporting women in trauma when they prepare for divorce. An attorney is not skilled at it, trained at it, and they haven’t been through it.

Anne: Don’t look to your attorney for emotional support or validation or anything like that. It’s not what they’re trained to do, and it will be frustrating and extremely expensive.

Debra: And they won’t help you be a better mom, stay grounded, and make the best decisions for you. They’ll tell you what the law says about how it works. Mediation can be a decent choice, but you have to be prepared for that. And you need someone strong in your corner helping you prepare for mediation.

Anne: To get more information about the Living Free Workshop, click this link. It’s amazing. It’s helpful. You also need support. And that’s what Betrayal Trauma Recovery group sessions are all about. Group sessions you can get in every day. It’s an amazing resource. So thanks for your help today. Debra.

Debra: I love it. I love it. Betrayal Trauma Recovery is an amazing organization. it’s what I wish I’d had.

Anne: Yeah, me too.

Are you seeing things in your marriage or a relationship that feel a little intense or puzzling…and you’re not sure if they’re normal or actually signs of a toxic relationship?

If so, it’s important to pause and look at the pieces of the puzzle together to see what they might be telling you. To discover if you’re in a toxic relationship take our free emotional abuse test.

Here are five things that might seem “normal,” but aren’t:

When you’re in a relationship with someone who seemingly shares and cares about your values and interests, it’s easy to be swept up by the intensity of it all. Especially if the relationship seems to happen at the “right” time, and things move forward quickly.

But this level of intensity and pace doesn’t give you time to slow down and really think about why you seem so compatible.

It might seem caring for your partner or husband to want to know where you are all of the time. But is it reciprocal or does it feel one-sided, like he needs constant visibility into your life, while parts of his remain just out of reach?

Many women in these situations describe a quiet, hard-to-explain feeling that something isn’t adding up. Like he’s keeping close tabs on them… while also keeping options, information, or even other relationships carefully hidden.

Think about it…in healthy relationships, partners are usually aware of the reasons why one partner isn’t in a good mood. They typically communicate about bad days at work or when they’re not feeling well. But in toxic relationships, that level of trust and communication often isn’t there, because one partner doesn’t want it to be.

Everything’s fine, until it’s not, and then, it suddenly is again…
And you’re left trying to figure out what changed.

Things that don’t seem like a big deal, suddenly are signs of a toxic relationship.

For example, you miss a turn on the way to his best friend’s birthday party… and suddenly it’s not about directions anymore. He’s accusing you of being disrespectful, or doing it on purpose because you don’t want to go. Or you might simply ask him to help with the groceries, and suddenly he’s angry because, “you don’t respect his time and all the things he has to do.”

Things feel tense, confusing, or even cold behind closed doors…but in public, he seems calm, kind, hardworking, and completely put together.

For example, during counseling or around friends, he might appear thoughtful, patient, and willing to work on the relationship. He says the right things. He looks sincere. Other people may even be impressed by how hard he’s trying.

But when you’re alone again, it’s different.

The warmth disappears. The tension returns. And you’re left trying to reconcile the version of him everyone else sees…with the version you live with every day.

If you relate and you need support, we’re always online to help you. Go to btr.org/group/ to see my daily support group schedule.

Anne:  I did an interview with a member of our community. We’re going to call her Iris, She talked about how his toxic patterns showed up in her marriage and what happened when she started using the strategies she learned in my workshop. Here’s that interview.

Welcome, Iris.

 Iris: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Anne: Let’s start at the beginning of your story. Can you talk about how you felt when you first met your husband?

Iris: He was very charming, and he seemed extremely sincere. Now I understand that he was love bombing me and was trying to make things go fast. It was very intense. And he preyed upon me at a time when I was really ready to get married and have kids. Everybody was getting married and having kids. So he went right for what was the most vulnerable part of me. And we met through a young adult single thing in our group. He proceeded to be very attentive.

Anne: When you say young adult, single thing, that sounds a little bit like my faith. What’s your faith background?

Iris: it’s the Catholic church. It’s actually Theology on Tap, which is at a brew pub, and you can buy a drink and mingle. And then they have a speaker.

Anne: Kind of Matt Fraddish.

Iris: Yes.

Anne: I actually know Matt Fradd in real life.

Iris: And I don’t go to the Catholic church anymore. But that was a huge part of our marriage and, we were really in a circle of pretty devout people. Which also I think contributed to my willingness to submit to him.

Anne: When you say submit, can you talk about that a little bit more?

Iris: Hindsight, there were red flags before we married. There were early signs of coercive control. It dates me, but cell phones weren’t the norm yet. And he bought me a cell phone so he could reach me more easily. He was pretty volatile. He asked me to marry him within a month or two and I deferred and we dated longer, but he was just intense. Then he would be very sorry. He would cold shoulder me at points. He’d be angry for things that were weird, wasn’t very flexible. Now I know these were signs of a toxic relationship.

We went through nine months of marriage prep. So many Christian circles focus on the idea that the man is the head. I saw that in my parents’ marriage too. My dad made all the decisions. My mom was independent in some ways, but she still did what he wanted.

I think I expected marriage to look like that. The husband leads and the wife follows. Even though I was independent, had a master’s degree, was over 30, and had traveled, I still lived in a huge Christian community where that model of marriage was everywhere.

Anne: And you just mentioned nobody actually says that, but they actually do say that, it might not be in so many words. It might not be so directly, but they like actually say it. And if you call ’em out and say, “Hey, you said this.” They usually deny it. “Of course, I didn’t say that.” And you’re like, “What? You did.” That’s the part that’s really confusing. The therapists come in or the clergy comes in, or the friends and family, and they gaslight you too. It’s like, “You’re putting words in my mouth. I didn’t say that.”

Especially when they find out what he is really like, and you’re like, “What?” “You told me this.”

“Well, I never did.” And they for sure did. It’s almost like no matter what you do, you can’t win. There are friends of mine and maybe friends of yours too, who are amazing and they’re like, “Oh my word, I said the wrong thing.”

That is so validating. I feel like when I meet people like that, it’s easy to be like, “It’s okay did the ‘wrong thing’ too. I was doing the best I could and I didn’t know that he was abusive. And I didn’t know what was happening, and didn’t recognize signs of a toxic relationship. So I can’t blame you either.” But, for the other people who continue to not believe us and deny that they said or did certain things. ‘That’s harder. Cause it becomes this almost group of unhealthy people that you’re dealing with, rather than just the one unhealthy person.

Iris: Right.

Anne: Did you end up going to couple therapy?

Iris: In the Catholic Church you do Pre-Cana, which is pre-marriage counseling, and they saw some things that were concerning. He was very intent that he could change things. They would categorize it like how we were different. I think she said to me, “Life might always be kind of hard for him.” ‘Cause that’s what she was seeing..

He works very hard, so he seems very sincere. And he met with the man in the couple we met with. And read books and was very sincere. They said to us, “Oh, we’ve never seen somebody work so hard to try to improve themselves so that they’re ready for a marriage.” He impressed them, and I remember feeling exhausted by that point. And it was a mask. I now know that these were signs of a toxic relationship.

Anne: Like you shouldn’t have to work that hard. to be normal. They are hard workers, because it would be very hard to pretend all the time.

Iris: Right, and that’s how he lives. He has a mask all the time. We had this huge Catholic wedding, like an hour and 20 minute long mass. And it was that night the switch flipped. And he was angry. He cold shouldered me. We’d waited till our wedding night, and he said things that were incredibly humiliating.

Iris: Then the next morning he would hardly talk to me. And we left the beautiful hotel. We were to go to a morning brunch at my parents, with guests who were from outta town and our families. And he was furious because people had decorated our car. And he had to stop at a car wash to rinse everything off before we even got to the wedding brunch.

Anne: I used this story in my book.

Iris: You did?

Anne: Yes, this story. Someone else had the same story.

Iris: Isn’t that amazing? Like how these Chucks do the same thing to us and have all the same signs of a toxic relationship.

Anne: ‘ Like Twilight Zone. Cause you never gave me that story.

Iris: isn’t that amazing? I feel like that in group a lot. I’m like, “Oh, that happened to me.”

Anne: BTR has been like me trying to fit all the pieces together. And as I’ve tried to fit all the pieces together, things became very clear. And I’ve become very good at seeing in the dark. So this piece of the puzzle I was trying to get it to fit.

Like why did he do that? I’ve never met you before, but I spent a lot of time piecing just this piece. With the other pieces that I had of other people’s stories to say, what was this about? I’ve spent so much time with this story in my brain and what it meant. I’m like, holy cow.

Iris: Thank you. Thank you for somewhere to tell it, because it was something that felt so shameful for such a long time, rejected, and humiliated.

Iris: So we went to that wedding brunch, and I knew he was on edge the whole time. Other people didn’t necessarily see that. We got back to the house we were making our home together, which was his house. And he was angry, he didn’t want to go on our honeymoon, but I was like, I’ve been planning a wedding. All I have been thinking of is being able to go rest on a beach. So he agreed to go, and it was a really a horrible week. He was just fighting. His anger and unreasonableness, were more signs of a toxic relationship.

It’s so hard, because he can make it feel like I’m also participating. We finally came home after the week, and at several points I thought maybe I should just fly home,’because it was awful.

How would I even ask somebody to come and pick me up? What would I say? What would I do? Feeling so humiliated, like we had this big wedding, we’d done all this preparation, so we finally came home and I remember the first morning after we’d gotten home. He got up, he didn’t even talk to me. He grabbed his mountain bike, and he went mountain biking all day. That was a pattern that repeats throughout our marriage, where he just does his own, yeah.

Anne: I had a mountain biking all day incident as well that I wrote about in my book. All of a sudden I’m like, what is happening? This is Twilight Zone, yes.

Iris: No way. The Chucks, it’s the Chuck thing, which has been the most powerful thing to learn.

Anne: Surreal that they’re all the same. I think that’s one of the powerful things about our group sessions is that the women are so different. We all react differently and we’re all doing the right thing. Because all of our personalities are different. So some of us want to protect ourselves by being quiet and sitting back and that’s the right thing for us.

Some of us want to fight the guy, because that’s how our personality is. But they do all the same things. It doesn’t seem the same, because we haven’t acted the same. And I think the thing that like really helps it all come together is when you realize they’re so transactional. That they’re going to manipulate you in whatever way works for you, all signs of a toxic relationship.

So if you’ve been trying to protect yourself in a certain way, they’ve been countering your protection methods in a certain way. And then when you change up the way you’re trying to protect yourself, they almost become like a different person. But they’ve been that same exact person the whole time.

It’s just that they’re so transactional that they’re like, oh, that’s not working anymore. I have to do this other thing. And this whole new set of problems comes out so they can be super, super nice or super aggressive. But the whole time, it’s manipulation and lies.

Did he ever go through a time where he seemed like he was really great?

Iris: I got pregnant right away, so I probably would’ve left, but then I was pregnant and trying to navigate that. When I found out I was pregnant with my first baby, I went to therapy right away, and that therapist just didn’t have the skills to recognize an emotional cycle of abuse and really gaslit me.

Then got pregnant again when my daughter was nine months old. So I had two babies, under 18 months old. That was another thing. In my faith, that I grew up with, you’re supposed to accept all babies. That was something that really kept me trapped. I knew once I was pregnant that I would always have to be linked to him.

And that was incredibly devastating and terrifying. I think the Christian, and I’m going to say trope, I don’t want to make fun of anybody, but the trope of marriage that you just have to work hard enough and it will all be fine. That really was so damaging when signs of a toxic relationship are present.

He did tell me early in our marriage that he had struggled with porn. He did the Every Man’s Battle stuff and everything like that. Also he confided in me that he’d used some at work. He has a security clearance and was about to be interviewed with a, polygraph.

He was afraid they would ask him something like that. At the time, he was abusive our whole marriage, but it was the most intense. I didn’t even have the wherewithal to understand that. It was disturbing, it made me feel awful. But I didn’t have any brain space to process what to do with that. He downloaded it on me to get it off his chest.

Iris: After my second baby was born, he was probably seven months old, I tried to leave to go to a mom’s group. My ex-husband was angry with me because of my daughter, who’s my older one. I was working on potty training her. And I let her wear pants without underwear. She pooped and he was furious. He came up behind me in the bathroom and pushed me against the counter and said, “Next time, make sure she wears underwear.”

So he was abusive all of the time, disrupted my sleep, and would wake me up in the night angry if I coughed. I had to sleep on 18 inches of the bed or less, without moving to not anger him. The reaction I had was to kick him to get him to back up. That’s when he grabbed me by the throat and started to strangle me. And I know now, but I felt terrible later. All I wanted to do was leave. I got my coat and I got in the car and I left. My children were still in the house with him. I just wanted to get away.

I went to the mom’s group like everything was fine. But I was dissociated and in trauma. I had gone to my therapist then within a day or two and just poured everything out. And her response was, other women have it worse. And I was so humiliated, like feeling somehow I had caused this. Even though like I knew, I have education. I was in my thirties, I knew that wasn’t right. But the abuse had taken so much of my strength. That kept me so trapped for so long. It made it harder to open up.

Iris: And we went to so many marriage therapists, who just aren’t equipped. Because Chuck is charming, and they just don’t understand the dynamic except for one therapist who we did not go back to. They didn’t see the signs of a toxiC relationship.

But she was crazy. So we went in, it was this dilapidated house. She was far back in the house. The door was open. We went in and sat down. Literally a dog with sores and the cone of shame came out, and she was like, I’ll be right there. Chuck was like, so wigged out. She came out and talked to us for a little while. She also had paranoid notes tacked up on her wall. Anyway, she talks to us for a little while, and Chuck is so wigged out, so Chuck is walking out. And before we leave she says, I want to give you something.

And she hands me a page, and it has books on it. So I went home and ordered it, and then it came and I didn’t read it, like I couldn’t read it. I didn’t read it for the longest time, because it was just so painful. But that was the only therapist who saw the signs of a toxic relationship.

And then I found out the next week she lost her license, in the newspaper. Anyway, she was the only one who saw the abuse and handed me a key.

Anne: So she handed you a clue.

Iris: A clue, and she was right. I had gone to other therapists over the years. I looked just crazy, because I would just cry. One therapist had different offices and I would always go to the wrong one. because I had no short term working memory available. Chuck disrupted my sleep. I’d be in the shower, he’d bring the baby in screaming and put them on the bath mat and I’d have to get out and take care of the baby.

He’d drive angry, the list goes on and on. I just didn’t have the words to explain. We went to a mom’s group event where dads were invited. And he was angry at me the whole time, but only I knew that. And then I had to get in the car and drive home with him. So it was really intense. And then at about the seven year mark, he decided that marriage worked for him.

It was such a delight, such a relief to have him gone for two weeks. He came home from a business trip. And he said, “I realized it’s been you the whole time. You’re really the one that I want to be married to.”

Anne: Oh

Iris: Right.

Anne: Wait, he was having an affair.

Iris: I don’t know.

Anne: That sounds like something someone would say if they just broke up with someone. Because they’re like trying to choose between the person they’re having an affair with. In my book, I put the pieces together.

Anne: After interviewing over 200 women and hearing their stories. I’m pretty good at knowing what happened. I think in this situation, he’s having an affair and she breaks up with him. He’s feeling bummed about it. He might say out loud to you, I decided I want to be with you.

Iris: Mm hmm

Anne: You don’t have the context of the affair, of him breaking up with her. So this really weird out of the blue statement, “I’ve decided I want to be married to you.” When he’s been married to you for seven years is odd. It also feels like a relief, “Oh, maybe he just didn’t want to be married to me before, and now he’s choosing me.”

But you don’t realize what a weird out of place thing that is, because he makes you feel better in that moment. I don’t know if that rings true to you, but it seems that would be the order of events that would precipitate out of the blue, telling you, “Oh, I’m choosing you now.”

Iris: Yeah, it didn’t make me feel better, because from the day we got married, he was horrible. it was awful.

Anne: So you’re like, great. Now this awful person really wants to be married to me.

Iris: It felt like a lie. Now that I understand how Chuck works, like there was something he wanted, he didn’t really love me. Somebody who really loved me and realized they were wrong would’ve not said that. I think they would’ve said, ” I’ve been horrible. I can see why you wouldn’t even want to be married to me, but I realized I really want to be married to you. They would’ve said something to try to heal that.

Anne: Some effort to repair.

Anne: Instead it was more signs of a toxic relationship.

Iris: I think so. And I think that’s why it felt awful. Because he manipulated me. Which I don’t think I could verbalize at that time, but he manipulated again.

Anne: Were you about to leave at that time? Was there anything about you that was different?

Iris: He knew that I was unhappy, but he was abusive all of the time, yeah.

Anne: Did you ever find out about explicit media use?

Iris: He told me, in hindsight, he’d invited a single woman that he’d never met to our wedding. Which was weird. It was a last minute thing, and I feel like she was probably a backup.

Anne: You’ve said three stories now that sound exactly like other stories. I have heard this before. Your story includes all the classic, down to the detail.

Iris: Wow

Anne: Of inviting someone else to the wedding.

Iris: The Chuckness of it.

Anne: You got a winner.

Iris: He’s a doozy. He told me later that he didn’t actually want to get married. Then when I look at inviting this woman to the wedding, he didn’t admit that for many years. But when he did, I was like, oh, so she must have been the escape hatch. If he didn’t go through with marrying me, he would’ve had someone in the wings.

Iris: I suspect he continues to use porn. He is in cybersecurity, and he always had three computers in his office. So I wonder if one of those he used. I don’t know. I’ve always been curious about what that was. I don’t think I was as tuned into that until I was leaving the marriage. And then there wasn’t much that I had access to. There wasn’t anybody that seemed to have that language who I could talk to.

I just felt really helpless, and he was very manipulative and very controlling, the love bombing, he is very good at. The other part was that I was super reactive at that point. So I felt very guilty about my responses to his behavior. Even though it was less intense and further apart. But the reality is that those first seven years, in the bedroom, total coercion, marital rape, and everything now that I have words for, had happened.

By that point, like there was very little he had to do to make me comply, to try to stay out of his way. I would try to have a separate life, while maintaining that Christian marriage appearance. It took me a long time to see these as signs of a toxic relationship.

Anne: We would probably call it like survival mode. You are trying to survive and that’s why a lot of people use the word survivor when they talk about abuse victims, because every day you’re just trying to survive.

Iris: Yeah, daily. Navigate all of the things that are happening that just don’t make any sense. And I don’t have the words for. I think during the pandemic, I started to see your Instagrams. And it was like, oh, that’s what’s happening, those are the words. That’s what this is. And beginning to be able to label things and feel like I’m not alone. Then, wanting to join group, but then being afraid. What if it doesn’t help, I don’t want Chuck to know I’m joining? Just feeling do I really want to do that? because I felt like if I go through that door, I can’t go back.

Anne: Can we talk about that for a minute? because a lot of women have told me that. I followed you on Instagram, or I listened to the podcast, and I didn’t start attending group sessions because I knew it would change everything. What is it about BTR that is different in that way? It’s different than maybe therapy or something. Is it because you’re going to finally get help to look at it. Seeing the signs of a toxic relationship can be scary at first.

Iris: This can make me cry. I think, because no one had helped. So I think there was an element of, I could try this and probably it’s still not going to help.

By that point, looking for help for so long and thinking, I don’t know that anything will help. then being so vulnerable and beaten down. I think there’s a sense of like, does anybody really want to help me? Do I deserve help? because it certainly seems like it’s my fault. So being very afraid to join a group. Like it’s terrifying the first day.

Anne: Once you did attend a group session? Were you surprised at what happened?

Iris: Yeah, the first day I joined, you hear that zoom beep and you are in group and feeling so afraid. But I was so welcome. it was like I could take a breath, even though really I was crying so hard. Hearing everybody talk, hearing the coaches talk, feeling like the words made sense. I didn’t share that first time, but just crying afterwards.

Like there’s somewhere that gets this. There’s somewhere where there are other women who understand this. I’ve never met anybody who knows what’s happening to me.

In my story, something that’s amazing was that when my daughter was a baby, there was this show on daytime TV called Starting Over House. It was a reality show for women to go to this house and start over. They had two coaches, and I remember watching these women go, and they had all different kinds of problems that they were trying to grow from or whatever. All I wanted was to take my baby and join that house.

It was a reality show. I’m sure it would not have been really super helpful. But I just wanted to have people love on me and help me figure out my marriage. That’s all I wanted. So when I came to Betrayal Trauma Recovery group, I’m not kidding you, two of the coaches looked like those two coaches on that show. It just felt like it was a prayer answer.

Iris: So Sharon and Renee, two coaches loved on me and made me feel like I wasn’t crazy. And helped me to slowly unravel what had been happening and what had happened to me, and find my voice. I joined in the spring, I was already starting to take steps in my marriage to not engage with Chuck.

By July, he was angry with me all of the time. Which I’ll come back to in just a minute. But , before I had joined, he had done some really angry driving in the car. He’d been angry one day when I had locked the door to the master bedroom, because I like to pray and meditate. And then I had gotten in the shower without unlocking it. Because I just want privacy from two kids, a dog and a Chuck. He banged on the door for as long as I was in the shower, and I could hardly hear him, but it scared the pants off of my kids.

I felt like I didn’t know what to do. When I joined group, I finally started to have some strategies and observe him. Sometimes I forget all the things that happened. Right before I joined in February, he bought a new car and asked for money from his father. Then he came to me and said, “I didn’t spend all the money on the car. I saved some, so either you can go to marriage therapy with me.”, which he’d been threatening, and I didn’t want to go to marriage therapy with him because we’d been many, many times.

Iris: He said, “Either you go to marriage therapy with me, and I’ll buy a car for our daughter, or I’m going to divorce you. Not long after that, I ended up joining group. Then he said, “I used that money to file for divorce. I hired an attorney, and how do you want me to serve you your papers?” At that point, I had enough skill to say you can have me served, thank you. And it was super calm. And then I actually jumped in group and was able to just process. One of the things that was so amazing was that everything happening to me in real time,

I could then go in a group, get support, be in my closet, my car, or at the library. The more I went towards health and boundaries, the angrier he got. So he actually continued to ask me for two months how I wanted my divorce papers. I can see how divorce and emotional abuse were intertwined, he was using the threat of divorce to try to control me.

I would say, “You can have me served.” And he would say, I don’t want to pay $400. He did that until I got a paper in the mail and I thought that I was being served. I didn’t think I could be served in the mail, which you can’t in my state, but it was actually that they were going to kick it out of the system. I took that paper to an attorney, because I had been interviewing attorneys. That kicked off the divorce process. Because I was served.

Anne: That whole time he is asking, “How do you want to be served? And you’re like, “Just serve me.”

Anne: He’s trying to get you to do something to stop the divorce. He threatens you—if you don’t toe the line, I’ll divorce you. When you’re like, okay, go ahead and divorce me, then he’s escalating. Using all the tricks and signs of a toxic relationship that worked before. He reminds me of my ex, who said that. Then he didn’t file. Because he thought that would instigate me repairing. Or me doing the thing I was supposed to do. And when I didn’t do it, I don’t think he wanted to file for divorce. It’s just that he couldn’t figure out how to control me anymore.

He was like, well, I guess I have to make these things happen. And it sounds the same in this scenario, where he’s trying to get you to do something. Because a normal person, if they’re like, how do you want me to serve you? And you say, oh, just serve me. They’d be like, okay. And they would serve you.

Iris: Right, it was control. I was so thankful I could go back in group and have the framework, putting my lab coat on, doing one step at a time. Getting shored up so that I wouldn’t be bowled over by his behavior.

I finally hired an attorney, and my attorney notified his attorney. Chuck came to me and said, “Well, that’s not fair. You didn’t tell me you had an attorney. And now we both have to decide to dismiss the divorce. I can’t just decide myself.”

Anne: Like not to get divorced? After he’s filed, he’s like, wait. Now that you’ve responded to me serving you with divorce papers, we actually have to get divorced.

Iris: Right.

Anne: That sounds like my Chuck too.

Iris: Really, it’s like they’re all going by the same playbook. I think realizing that these are all the signs of a toxic relationship was huge. And it allowed me to understand that my job was to be strategic.

Chuck does a lot of stupid as a strategy. That attorney he hired in July, by the time our status conference was in October, he’d used all of his retainer. Which was $5,000, and nothing had happened yet. Because he is a Chuck and likes to call his attorney to talk. So then right after the status conference, he fired the attorney and then went pro se for a while.

I was so thankful that I had BTR, that I could do group. I could do the Betrayal Trauma Recovery individual sessions to get ready for each big barrier or battle with him, so that I went in calm and focused. It really allowed me, in my divorce process to understand that this was the best thing for me. Even though he was trying to control me. It was finally the door out. And he kept coming back to me and asking, “Do you really want a divorce?” And I would say, “You could move out.” But he never would.

One of the other things was that understanding that there was going to be so much out of my control and really focusing on what was in my control. In my coaching sessions with Renee and with Sharon, being able to determine what my top priorities were. My priorities weren’t numbers. My priorities were big picture. And then I said, these are the things that are most important and this is what I want to work towards. And it helped me. I feel like things worked out well for me.

Iris: So having enough money to restart and go back to school. Having stability for my kids, not selling the house immediately so that my daughter could finish high school. Like those were the big picture things. And because Chuck just wants to fight, it was the 11th hour literally.

He hired an attorney again, just weeks before our divorce was final. But we ended up settling like an hour before court. I was able just to hang on, to understand it was going to be like that no matter what I did. Like I didn’t have any control over him, and I really got up that morning not knowing what was going to happen.

And being at peace in that, and that I was doing all the things that I needed to do, and to let go of that so that I wasn’t in a battle with him. That was incredibly powerful. Hard but powerful.

So it’s been final for two years. And the post separation abuse continues, and BTR’s been incredibly helpful in that. I was able to stay in our marital home for a year till our daughter graduated, and then last year that sold. So I moved out and things just lined up. In part because he was so disorganized. I think that worked out in my favor.

And I’m now in school finishing a post Master’s certificate in school counseling. And I got hired last fall as a school counselor. So I’m working full-time as a school counselor while finishing my certificate. Just having somewhere to work out the technical stuff and then the emotional stuff, to understand how to be strategic.

Iris: Because I could stay in that place rather than be in his blender. Which is what it was for 18 years. I have been able to restart my life and feel so grateful and fortunate. That I’ve had the support, and he continues to be abusive. And my daughter now is 19 and my son is 17. And so being able to talk about that and how he behaves helped me.

I know that at some point, I won’t have to interact with him as much. Or at all once my kids are bigger. But because of the type of abuser he is, because of the types of things he did to me, I know that I am at greater risk of him being dangerous to me physically.

And so being able to unpack that, but also, understanding that I have a right to safety and that I can take steps to do that and not feel bad about it.

He’s much sneakier now. He’s incredibly angry with me and feels like the divorce was unfair. Because his goal is control, he can’t control me anymore, I think is one reason why he’s angry. It is palpable when I’m around him. He seethes at me. Other people may not be able to see it because he’ll mask it until there’s nobody around. But I think it has been invaluable to me to have a community where I can process that and then take steps to be safe from all the signs of a toxic relationship.

When I finally blocked him, which was scary to do, because we have two kids. And that was easier to be able to text and call. It was just another vector for him to get to me.

Iris: So blocking him and doing email only. It felt so empowering to make that decision and be able to unpack that in group and also get the support of “Yay, you finally blocked him.” Like I’d been talking about it for so long. And trying to figure out the signs of a toxic relationship,

There are the big steps to leave abuse and there are smaller ones too. Sometimes it’s the little ones that felt really hard. Especially because then my kids would know that I blocked him. Moving away from abuse is hard. I left the house today because I have somebody cleaning my house, which I started hiring somebody. So that I can do all that I’m doing. because I’ve been in school and working full-time and parenting two teens, and it feels so empowering.

When they walked in today, I was thinking, because I was coming to talk to you and I was like, they’re helping me leave abuse. And I can say that to you. I think you know that. But he was abusive with cleaning.

He would wake me. He likes things clean. He’d wake the kids cleaning and it’s very controlling. But to have a clean house and not be abused, it’s hard to express. This is my safe space, and I get to decide how it gets clean. I get to decide how to spend my money. I get to make choices now that I couldn’t make before. I’m just so incredibly grateful that BTR, I can make choices and know that I can. Thank you.

Anne: You are so brave and so strong. Look at you. You’ve got a good job. You have enough money to be able to hire someone to help clean your house, and the lack of guilt. Because some people have the money, but they’re like, I still can’t. I should be able to, no, like look at all the amazing things that you’ve accomplished.

When it comes to divorce, if people ask me my situation, I say I am proudly divorced. I am so happy divorced. And I also say things like abuse doesn’t work out for a lot of people, but it worked out so well for me. Because everything that I have gained from learning about the signs of a toxic relationship and the strategies of protecting myself, has been invaluable. Like our confidence just grows day by day. That little voice in our heads and that little like charge that feels like I’m doing something wrong or I can’t do this or I can’t do that just starts to fade away.

And life feels so free and wonderful. I’m so happy for you. It’s wonderful. Good job.

Iris: Thank you, thank you for starting BTR and your podcasts were such a beacon for me too. Before I started group of these voices saying, “You’re not alone, you’re not crazy.” Listening to your voice, I still probably need to hear that a lot, because he makes me feel crazy. So thank you.

Anne: Well, thank you, without women like you who listen and come and use our services, we wouldn’t be here. So thank you. Our services are incredible. Our team is incredible. It’s such a safe place.

Anne: I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between BTR and the difference in our services is that it’s so real. You really have women you can see who know your story. You can talk to them every single day in person . And they’re never going to blame you or judge you. It’s never going to be that you made some kind of soul contract, like the weird stuff that you might hear from people who somehow try to blame you.

I’m like, there’s no reason to ever say any of it had anything to do with you. because you were surviving the best you could the whole time, and you were going for help, and no one gave you the right information. And none of that has anything to do with you. They are helping you deal with the signs of a toxic relationship.

That’s the crazy thing about abuse. You’re doing every single thing right and you still can’t get the right information. Despite you trying to get it for years. Some people don’t believe it, because they can’t imagine that would happen. But it happens every day with so many women all over the world. Anyway, thank you for your support of BTR.

Iris: It is really such a privilege to be in this community. I felt, loved on and prayed for fiercely.

Iris: I remember when I first started. I thought they’re giving us the weapons that we need to fight the battle. Almost under the cover of darkness. They sort of come into our homes, our cars, our closets, and give us the weapons we need to fight the evil that is happening to all of us. Like all of a sudden realizing the support, but also the education that BTR does, is invaluable, to help us recognize and deal with the signs of a toxic relationship.

I could get out of my reactive brain and really start to think, “Oh, this is what’s happening. Okay, this is what I can do. Chuck is doing this. This is what I’ve always done, but I don’t have to do that. I can do this.” It changed everything.

Anne: Well, I am so glad, thank you so much, Iris, for taking the time to share your story with me today.

Iris: Thank you.

If you’re searching for an emotional abuse checklist, you’re looking for clarity. I’m an emotional abuse expert. My team has helped over 8,000 clients identify emotional abuse and thrive. And I’ve noticed that most victims of emotional abuse in marriage have been told, “You’re too sensitive,” or “You expect too much.” You’ve probably wondered, Is it me?

Emotional abuse is often subtle. It hides in half-truths and conversations that never quite resolve. This emotional abuse checklist will give you a clear picture of the patterns. Because emotional abuse isn’t just isolated incidents. To learn more, take my free emotional abuse test.

Emotional abuse is a pattern of behavior used to control, confuse, belittle, intimidate, or dominate another person. But it likely won’t feel that way. It’s usually not obvious yelling or cruelty.

Many emotionally abusive men seem like really nice guys. That’s why having an emotional abuse checklist matters.

Use this checklist to look for patterns. One isolated moment does not mean someone is emotionally abusive. Repeated patterns do.

Your husband lies about serious matters, such as:

When confronted, he minimizes, deflects, or becomes angry.

He:

Withholding is a way of controlling your perceptions.

He says things like:

He says your valid concerns are unreasonable.

He:

Everyone adjusts to him.

He says:

When you object, he responds:

Humiliation disguised as humor is still humiliation.

He:

Stonewalling is a control tactic.

When you ask about money, he says:

He shifts accountability back onto you.

When you raise concerns, he says:

He accuses you of things that aren’t true.

He says:

He blames his bad behavior on you.

Instead of addressing issues, he says:

He attacks your identity.

He minimizes your efforts:

You feel small instead of supported.

He:

The family orbits around his desires.

He says:

This is gaslighting.

Over time, you question your memory.

He says:

He commands rather than collaborates.

He says:

Threats do not have to be overt to be effective.

He:

Unpredictable anger creates fear.

Many people imagine abuse as screaming and violence. But emotional abuse is often quiet. Controlled. Strategic.

It can look like kindness or even indifference. It can look like charm in public and cruelty in private.

That invisibility is what makes an emotional abuse checklist so important.

Emotional abusers often:

The contrast creates cognitive dissonance.

You may trust him more than you trust yourself.

Healing begins when you rebuild trust in your own perception.

The confusion, grief, and destabilization of emotional abuse can feel overwhelming. No woman should process it alone.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery offers daily Group Sessions in multiple time zones where women can:

You can also get more education about emotional abuse. Listen to The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast

Anne: We have a member of our community sharing her story today. We’re going to call her Macie. I’m so thankful to all of you who have shared your story. It takes a lot of courage, and it humbles me to hear your stories and I appreciate you.

Macie is a single mom. And let’s start with your story. Did you recognize your husband’s abusive behaviors at first?

Macie: I did not. I actually did not recognize or was even made aware. I just thought our marriage was normal, happy, healthy, that he was such a great guy. And one of the most selfless people I had ever met. And that was pretty difficult when I started to understand what my marriage really was.

He had texted that he wanted a divorce. And not knowing the magnitude of his betrayal and all those choices that he was making. Just the stonewalling, the communication dysfunction, the emotional abuse is so hard. But in my mind, that was not even possible. And because of the type of abuse.

It was the withdrawal and not communicate, control that way. Versus the yelling or control by physical demeaning. It was never like that ever. So the emotional abuse is so hard to see until I actually had the truth of the whole story. To see, oh, now I can tell where the manipulation and the blame shifting and all that was taking place.

Anne: This type of abuse, it’s not overt. Not like screaming and yelling in your face. And people don’t have the education to see it, and many therapists don’t. You’re in this relationship and you don’t know what’s going on, but you know something’s wrong.

Anne: During that time, what types of things did you do to try to establish safety and peace in your home before you found out about the pornography use and infidelity?

Macie: Again, we had what I thought was a healthy, happy marriage. I feel like a lot of it was, a lot of communication with the children. We both were on the same page about talking to them about pornography. We agreed we wanted to talk to them about it, just like we did drugs or alcohol or anything else. And we both come from families where we have a predisposition for addiction.

And so we would explain to them, it didn’t matter what. It could be something. We don’t know what it is, so we need to abstain from many things, including pornography. So I feel like we would check in as a family a lot. We had a really open communication about sex, about social media. We had our kids sign contracts, phones were away.

I feel like there was a lot of communication within the home surrounding specifically pornography. Which I feel like is ironic, now I know the truth of what he did. I do feel like that even on a spiritual level, we pray as a family, go to church, that aspect too of having the spirit with you. So those were some of the things we did. The emotional abuse is so hard now, understanding that he viewed pornography and violated my home.

Anne: Mm hmm. You’re talking about explicit media, you’re talking about healthy sexuality, thinking he is on the same page with you. And really, it was all just a facade. Emotional abuse is so hard. Did you have any sense then, like deep down, that something was wrong? Or did everything seem fine to you? I mean so many women are wondering, “Which of the following is true about emotional abuse​?”

Macie: A year into our marriage, granted we got married in the 90s when the internet was really early. So I found pornography, and at that point I felt super hurt, betrayed and cheated on. But I feel like I never saw or knew of any pornography use from him until the actual discovery of his work phone. But I would have kind of this underlying insecurity. Because there was a lot of lying going on. And I never could pinpoint the purpose.

And I learned that a part of the abuse blamed me for his lies. Because my reaction would be so much that I would maybe get too angry. So he was justified in lying to me. And it just didn’t make sense. Some of the things he would lie to me about. And I do feel like there was a lack of empathy and emotional disconnect, especially in our communication.

I now see that there was a lot of withdrawal, and it took withdraw, withdraw, and then I’d finally corner him to communicate. Even if it was just me feeling overwhelmed or stressed or that I needed extra help. And it ended up an explosion, and then that’s where it led towards the end to the stonewalling.

Macie: I had to literally text him in the home to say, hey, can you meet with me so that we can talk? And I didn’t want to overwhelm him with a conversation too long, so extremely unhealthy. There were also situations with money that didn’t make sense. But he was in charge of the finances. And when I tried to get involved, he didn’t want me to. But then it was a problem that I wasn’t involved.

So again, I see that he had control over that money, and he could do a lot of the things he did. Because I was not aware yet. He blamed me for not knowing what was going on. I read some emotional abuse quotes, but they were usually about yelling or saying “You’re stupid” so they didn’t seem to apply to me. ​And several gaps in time, he traveled a lot. He missed many flights. Or they bumped him. And again, it was him saying, hey, I’m getting bumped. So we can have a flight that we can use later for us. But really, he used it for other purposes, and disregard for me.

I did not feel like a priority, and I had an injury experience. I think that was the first time I realized how unempathetic he was to me. He just looked at me like I’m leaving town and had a broken ankle. He’s like, I’m out of here for the week and good luck. And I just cried thinking how can this be possible? Emotional abuse is so hard. But I still didn’t want to leave my emotionally abusive husband.

Macie: I have these busy children, and what is going on? I felt like he had changed, but I could never pinpoint it. I feel like if I tried to ask questions, it was always I’m this simple person. It’s you, and so I just knew I had to work hard on me all the time. Because everything was falling apart because of me. He was simple and didn’t require a lot, and he wasn’t mean and angry at me. And he just laid low and kept the peace.

He wanted me to tell him what to do, then he couldn’t mess up and I wouldn’t get upset. I did not like that dynamic in our marriage either. Because I felt like this dominant person, but I want to be a team though. I want to work together. Well again, with the withdrawal and communication. When I tried to muster up the courage to talk to him, it would end with me feeling like I don’t value him. And how hard he works, and all the things he does around the house. And I just need to be content with how things are.

I now see how sad I was not even allowed, or feel like I could even cry in our relationship. Like to him that it was that emotionally disconnected for me. I gave him all I was: my good, my bad, my stress, my anxiety, wanting to work with him together as a union. Then to see that, not only that, but also to see that he used my strengths against me to do what he wanted to do. Each episode of emotional abuse is so hard to see. When I understood the truth of the emotional abuse and saw that was what he was doing.

Anne: Many people don’t understand that stonewalling and not talking about things are forms of controlling the conversation. And people will think, well, he just can’t talk about his emotions, or now’s not the right time. Those type of abusive behaviors are controlling. They’re controlling the conversation, they’re controlling the way you can communicate. And that makes it very difficult, emotional abuse is so hard.

You can’t be on the same team when one person’s goal is to shut things down, and make sure she doesn’t find out about things. He’s gaslighting you, and so you’re thinking, well, the problem is me, so I need to love, serve and forgive more. When did you realize that this isn’t working? Did you ever get a sense before he filed for divorce? That, man, I am loving, serving, forgiving, and things just aren’t getting that much better.

Macie: I wasn’t googling, “What are the 7 signs of emotional abuse?” Or looking for an emotional abuse checklist because I didn’t even think of that. ​I would go to him with a pad of paper and have him give me a list of things that I would need to work on. And I was just trying to love him more and value him more at work, and never ask questions when he traveled.

I do feel like he used those things again. I’m going through therapy working on me, and instead it helped him do what he wanted better.

I mean, he lived two lives. So it made it easier to be like, well, okay, now I’m a good husband and a great dad. And so she’s happy, Which means she’s not going to question any of this other behavior. So it wasn’t until actual discovery that I realized his layer of lies was actually to get what he wanted. And that was really disturbing for me. Emotional abuse is so hard. Especially when you look at 21 years, you know?

Anne: So you’ve got this marriage where something’s not quite right, you’re working harder, you’re trying. Tell me how you found the work phone. Talk about what led up to that, that day.

Macie: I think that was one of the things you talk about little red flags, things going off. I did feel like he was being unfaithful. I felt like pornography was involved, but simultaneously I trusted him. He was a spiritual person. So to me whenever I had those feelings, I thought I must be the worst person for even assuming or thinking any of these thoughts.

And as I worked, I believed he was also working on our marriage together. Because he didn’t want to go to couples therapy. We’re both individually working on ourselves. And one of the things was to make a date night together or spend more time together, but there were still some inconsistencies there. And I felt like I was definitely pulling more of the weight.

Unfortunately, on Christmas morning at two in the morning, I happened to just roll over. And saw his phone, and I could see the truth of a conversation he had with a girl he had been on the phone with through the night.

Macie: And again, the betrayal of understanding the truth, I thought Christmas Eve was dedicated to the family and us. The truth is he was communicating with this person. He had been with her the week previous. He was planning to be with her after. But additionally, it wasn’t just her. When I went out of that conversation, just to see the magnitude of all that was on his phone was unbelievable and overwhelming. Emotional abuse is so hard.

I could not even believe he was capable of that, this was the same person? It was unfortunate, because of Christmas morning. I mean, that’s a day you celebrate every year, and you have so many memories attached. So I had to keep it together. I chose not to say anything. I wanted my children to experience Christmas morning as the best it could be.

Because I was super emotional, which again, as I talked about in our relationship, in our marriage, we had to be okay. So my kids didn’t see me cry ever. And so when mom’s emotional and crying, they’re like, what is going on? But Christmas morning happened.

Macie: We spent time with family. And it wasn’t until later that I actually confronted him. And everything exploded from there. My goal was to wait until the next day. But that just didn’t really happen. And so it is unfortunate for my children that I feel like a day that we celebrate, and you have memories that will never go away.

It’s like, how was your Christmas? Because that was the question following the discovery that I would get asked by every person. And it’s like, do you want to know the truth about how my Christmas was? How was your Christmas? So it was just that constant trigger.

Anne: It’s very traumatic for it to happen on holidays. It’s terrible. Emotional abuse is so hard. Hopefully, this Christmas can be the anniversary of your freedom.

Macie: Yes, and I’ve talked with the kids. So how do we embrace? I do feel like the kids triggers are different than mine. And just because their life circumstances and memories are different, and also what they know. But I feel like we’ve talked openly about what we can do, and I am really happy for them that Christmas, even Christmas morning, was great.

I think the difference changed in Christmas break for them. And that will be interesting to see how to deal with that. Because mom and dad never fought. And now dad’s arguing, and he’s this new person that we’ve never seen before with this anger. So it was a confusing time for them. And then he moved out, and again, they were confused. Like mom and dad don’t fight, and now dad’s moving out.

Macie: It was for them because the emotional abuse is so hard for them to process what was going on.

Anne: And shocking, probably

Macie: Shocking, absolutely shocking.

Anne: You’re an amazing, smart, capable woman who is able to plan and make things happen, who graduated from college. Like, you’re no dummy. And same thing with me, and same thing with all the women who listen to Betrayal Trauma Recovery. We are capable, amazing, brave, strong women. Can you tell me your thoughts on that now that you know what you went through?

Macie: Yeah, that’s a great point. I actually get asked a lot. Did you really not ever know? Like, you had no idea. And I am almost embarrassed to say I didn’t. And a lot of that was that I trusted so much in him. But I did not allow myself to trust in myself. Like, when I had my own doubts, I discounted it so easily because of my trust in him.

I also think because of the type of abuse, he’s not this loud yelling person. Like I feel like emotional abuse is so hard to wrap your mind around the idea of abuse being the ability to not communicate. Like you said, his control was lack of communicating information to me. I didn’t ever know exactly what was going on.

Sometimes even for work, I didn’t know exactly what he was doing. And I felt like those were his lay low, just kind of keep the peace, keep her happy enough. But made it really hard for me to say, well, no, I was not in an abusive situation.

Macie: He never came at me. He was supportive to me, and would even encourage me to do things. He never said a mean thing to me ever. How am I in an abusive situation? And. I think that’s when it goes back to the lies. I just see there were so many lies. And over time, and even when he would lie to me, and I would forgive him, then it would happen again. And I felt like it was this compound of lies that I was just trying to process. Like, why are you lying to me about this? If you’re lying to me about this, what else is there?

Anne: You’re saying, he never said a mean thing to me. But he did, he told you it was your fault. He told you that something was wrong with you. That is cruel. But it doesn’t feel mean, because you think it’s your fault. So many women say that. Oh, he was nice. And I’m thinking, that’s the meanest thing you could do to someone, is tell them that they’ve got a problem when it’s your problem.

Macie: I have told him that he did financially, physically, spiritually, emotionally, like all the betrayal choices he made that harm our family. The one that is the most hurtful are the times he saw me depressed. He saw me feel inadequate. And he saw me crying and I had come to him asking what it is, what’s wrong and what’s going on? He knew what he was doing, but allowed me to believe it was me. And that is so hurtful. It was like a dagger to the heart.

Macie: And then to take my strengths. Like I’m a hard worker, I want to do hard things and fix things. I would help try to problem solve with him. He was so tired. So it’d be like what’s going on? Well now I know it’s because he was out all night long, he was never sleeping. But I’m thinking what’s going on? How can we problem solve? And he would just allow me to try to help fix things. And I was running on this treadmill that was spinning so fast.

I see where had we gone to couple’s therapy, I would have sat there and been like, I’m doing all these things wrong and I need to work harder. It would not have been healthy. I know you’re familiar with Darvo.

Anne: Yeah, really quick with Darvo we have some amazing infographics that circulate around our social media on Instagram and Facebook. So if you’re not following us there, please do, because I love to interact with women on social media and hear your comments. So if you do follow us, please comment. Let me know what you think of those infographics and if they’re helpful to you.

Macie: When I look at that, it makes more sense to me. Because I would approach him with something that didn’t make sense. And then he would attack me as if like, he couldn’t believe I would believe that. He would defend himself and no, no, no. And then I’d start to feel guilty that I was accusing him or curious or insecure about something.

Macie: Then it would turn around. He became the victim. And suddenly, I was the bad person, because I had come to him to communicate. The communication started with me and ended with me being the bad person. I’d walk away being like, how is this that I just went to him to see how I need help. That I am struggling? Yet I come away feeling like I’m an ungrateful wife. I don’t value him and recognize all the things he’s doing, so it would just come back to me.

Then I’d say, okay, what can I do to make it so that he knows that I value and respect all these things, yet I didn’t feel safe. I didn’t trust him. I didn’t feel like I was a priority and was not validated. Instead, it was well, that’s your fault. That’s your fault that you feel that way. I’m a simple person. Like literally he would say to me so often, I am a simple person and I do not require a lot where you dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

Anne: You’re like, no, you actually require texting seven women, so no, you are very, very complex.

Macie: Yes, I do not know how he was able to organize all that, honestly.

Anne: So for you, what is one of the most difficult aspects looking back on your marriage now that you know the truth about the abuse?

Macie: I know he knew the truth of what he did. I got to a point where I was so down and depressed that I actually had to go into a surgery.

Macie: In my mind, I had made a deal with God that I just needed to be taken. My life to be done, because that was, to me, the easiest way to remove myself from the emotional abuse is so hard, and the situation of my kids having to deal with divorce. And that I was this problem. That if I could just remove myself, then everybody would be so much better off.

And I left letters for my kids to read. In my mind, I was totally content with being done. And when I came out of surgery, I knew that I was going to fight, I was going to fight for my family, and I was going to do everything I could. And when I found out the truth that, while I was in surgery. He had taken money from our retirement and was putting it in a bank account for a woman he was financially supporting.

That to me just blew my mind that I was ready to be done with my life. I was crying on my way up, he knew I was hurting, that I felt so bad about myself, yet he continued that behavior. And that was my low, low point in recognition. Wow, you put those two pieces together, and you see there was a major disconnect. It’s hard, because I know that there were so many lies in our marriage. Emotional abuse is so hard for me to believe anything was ever true.

I believed it was good and there were some good times, but I now know that those good times were the buttering up so that he could keep me happy enough. Signing up for a girl’s trip for me, oh, what a great husband. And that’s so nice.

Anne: But the truth was it was grooming. It’s what it was. He was grooming you on purpose to throw you off his scent.

Macie: Yeah, that is so hurtful. I got so duped in believing this person loved me, when I don’t believe there was love in this marriage. How did that happen? And how did I not know? So trying to make sense of how as a smart, capable, independent, person, I thought I had a healthy marriage. How did I miss so much? To not know that that wasn’t love that was happening in my marriage? I felt like I was loving and giving. But it was not reciprocated. And that is emotional abuse is so hard to understand.

Anne: Yeah, but it was just for him like a cover. For you, you were his facade.

Macie: It blows my mind that he is still the victim.

Anne: Pornography is abusive. But then he had all these other abusive behaviors. The control of the conversation, you’ve got sexual coercion going on because he’s not telling you that he’s having sex with other people. You know, there’s so much going on there that is seriously sexually abusive, which is physical abuse. So technically, your husband physically, emotionally, sexually and psychologically abused, And people just can’t comprehend that level of abuse.

Macie: Right, it’s mind blowing to believe, like you said, as the person I know I am. That I lived that, believing it was healthy. Like I looked at my parents and their relationship, so in my mind, I was aiming to try to do that. Even though I felt like in my communication to him. I didn’t feel like we were a team.

Macie: I felt like I was more dominant, because I tried to get him to help or communicate with me. I felt like I was constantly chasing him to try to get him to communicate with me.

Anne: He wanted you to do that. He liked that because you were taking the responsibility for the entire relationship in that case.

Macie: I was already doing everything.

Anne: So, during this time, you consider yourself a spiritual person. You’re having prayers with your husband, you’re attending church, you’re reading the scriptures. Then you find out that God has not expressly told you in so many words, you’re in an abusive relationship. You realize that for 21 years, you were not privy to the truth. How did that affect your relationship with God?

Macie: Yeah, that’s a great question. For me, there were a lot of moments along the way. As I’ve reflected on the truth. Where I can see God’s hand to protect me and even prepare me in certain ways. I had an injury that happened that at the time. My husband traveled all the time. And I was devastated. My children were extremely busy. I felt helpless and felt like, why did this happen? This is so frustrating for me. Could I have not had some inspiration to not go?

It was playing softball, and I slid into third and broke my ankles. Could I have not had something to not do that? But I now see looking back that that was in many ways, God’s way of making me stop In my tracks.

Macie: Because there were times when I felt red flags, but I never followed through with it. I just discounted it, but then I stopped and actually looked at my life. And started to see the truth of what it really was. I can’t deny that I felt God so present in my life. Not saying, hey, you’re in this abusive relationship.

But I even lost my mom. She died of cancer when I was a teenager. And I feel like even that experience prepared me to have some different strength and perspective that I even taught my kids that helped prepare for this heartache. You know, and understanding, and so I can see where, even through the divorce, there were several things that came my way.

And to come across Betrayal Trauma Recovery specifically. Because as you know, sometimes when you’re in it, sometimes a normal therapist, you’re just not getting the right information. So getting the right resources. And I feel like all those things were huge blessings. God blessing me and blessing my children and giving me strength as a mom.

Just giving myself a little leeway. This emotional abuse is so hard, I’ve had to lean on other people, and that’s been a hard thing. But I’ve been so appreciative. I’m so thankful for your resources through BTR. It’s amazing, I just cannot get enough information.

Macie: I believe God knows me better than myself. Even though what I’m going through seems unfair, I look around me and see so many people going through unfair situations. And I’m thankful for believing in something bigger than myself, that helps give me strength.

And I also feel like trusting in myself as I move forward in my life. Because my husband betrayed me and I don’t trust myself. I’m working through that, and that’s why I’m thankful for all your resources to validate what I’m feeling. And to build me and help me move forward as a broken, strong warrior.

Anne: Healing, a healing strong warrior, and you will. Thank you so much for sharing your story today,

Macie: Thanks for having me.

Anne: Is emotional abuse considered domestic violence? Yes, emotional abuse is considered domestic violence. A domestic violence survivor will share her story with us today. And we’re going to explain why. Because it’s important to understand why emotional abuse is considered domestic violence. In fact, I think it’s the most important one, because physical violence never occurs without emotional abuse.

So if everyone can learn to recognize emotional abuse and protect themselves from it. Your chances of physical harm go down drastically. To illustrate how emotional abuse is domestic violence. My book Trauma Mama Husband Drama. really helps, because it is an actual picture book. There are a ton of infographics in the back that illustrate this type of domestic violence and explain why emotional abuse is domestic violence.

It’s an extremely quick read. So if you have people around you that are having a difficult time wrapping their heads around what you’re going through, this book is the perfect way to educate them. You can find Trauma Mama Husband Drama on this link, which is my books page. It’ll just take you to Amazon. You can also find it on Amazon.

When you purchase it, circle back around and give it a five star rating, because so many women are searching for books, and they find, The Five Love Languages or Men are From Mars, books that are not helpful. So if you rate it, it’ll help women find this podcast. Which is free to everyone, even if they never purchased the book. All right.

Anne: Now, let’s get to Evie’s story. Welcome.

Evie: Thank you so much for having me. I come from a small town, so I met my husband. i had no idea his behavior was the classic example of emotional abuse. All the emotional abuse checklists I’d seen before didn’t have the subtle types of emotional abuse on them. Isolation is huge, but that was the first big hurdle he didn’t have to cross. Because I didn’t have any family or friends in this new state. Already I was vulnerable, just because I didn’t know anybody. And so it’s so much harder when your gut tells you one thing. And you don’t have anybody else that you trust to bounce those thoughts and feelings off of.

Initially, there were a lot of silent red flags in our relationship. He was jealous. That didn’t sit well with me. He was very quick to say things like, I love you. And I remember he said I was like, oh. I don’t feel that way yet. It’s been like a month or two. This is very fast. He reacted negatively to the fact that I wouldn’t say it back. And I was like, I just don’t want to lie to you.

So things like love bombing at the beginning. It made it that much harder when the love bombing stopped. Because he yanked that away from me. And suddenly it went from, wow, at the beginning of a relationship. All he could do was shower me with compliments and say how much he loved me. And now I’m not getting any of that.

Evie: And so things like that were really big, and arguing with him was very hard. He would make me feel like I overreacted to everything, and that my reactions were not valid. And that he didn’t say or do whatever was brought up. And then I also felt very intimidated.

He reminded me about other women he dated. And things he did to them when they left him. And so I remember only a couple months in. He let me know the ways he hurt other women. If I leave, what is he going to do to me?

Anne: Were you aware of any exploitative material?

Evie: I definitely knew that that was a thing for him.

Anne: Did you find that to be a example of emotional abuse, or was it like, “Oh, everybody does this?” How did you feel about it at the time?

Evie: Yeah, I don’t know that was something that was at the forefront of my mind.

Anne: So you weren’t concerned about the pornography use. That wasn’t necessarily a red flag for you. For me it’s important for women to understand that emotional abuse and infidelity go hand in hand. It’s interesting to me because women who exploitative material is an issue for them. They don’t recognize, that emotional abuse is considered domestic violence? Maybe or the psychological abuse. When they find out about the use, they know something’s wrong, because they know this is a person who has told me he’s not going to use it. So the level of lying there gets intense, but he was lying to you about other things?

Evie: Definitely, I found out he cheated on me, and I think I had always had that in the back of my mind. When that came out, that was huge for me, and there was some financial abuse, it was emotionally abusive as well. I was always very proud of my career and the fact that I was the first person in my family to graduate and get a degree. So when he put my career in jeopardy, that was the biggest red flag that this was a classic example of emotional abuse. I just wish I had the right emotional abuse checklist at the time, like yours.

When I was with him, he took my voice away in more ways than one. And one of those was that he would constantly criticize my writing and wouldn’t let me keep journals. And so I turned to writing and sharing my story to start healing and find my voice after emotional abuse.

Anne: Domestic abuse and domestic violence are interchangeable. Someone can be an emotionally violent abuser without ever laying a finger on their victim. I frequently say domestic abuse rather than domestic violence. Just so women who haven’t been hit or punched don’t think, oh, this isn’t for me because I haven’t been physically harmed.

And also, many people don’t realize that emotional abuse is a domestic abuse issue. It is under the umbrella of domestic violence. It’s also very typical that it never escalates to physical abuse.

That’s when women also get very confused. Because they try to figure out what’s wrong. At least for me and so many other victims that I know, they went through years of emotional and psychological abuse where they couldn’t quite figure it out.

And then once a violent act happened. It helped them see what was happening. So I try to help them identify emotional abuse vs psychological abuse is important. To do that you need to have examples of emotional abuse.

Evie: Yeah, the emotional abuse vs psychological abuse was important to figure out. The stonewalling and gaslighting have left a toll on me. It’s still something that I’m trying to heal from every day. It’s one of those things where some days I’ll be great, “Oh yeah, my gut was right. This is not okay.” And some days it comes back full force. And I will have the negative self talk in my head.

I shared my story in your community, so it was in front of a supportive audience. I was able to talk about my experience in your community who say, Hey, yeah, me too, because there’s so much power in knowing that you’re not going through something alone. And knowing that you can heal and grow alongside people.

I was fortunate enough to find a community which I clicked with. There were three things that I appreciated. One of them was the power to share my story, get my voice back, and share my truth and not feel suppressed. And the second one was connecting with all these other survivors. I think community was huge.

My experience, which was validated, and helped me know that I wasn’t alone. Because it’s so easy to think, wow, this doesn’t happen to anyone else. So knowing there were other women, and for me, they were all older than me. And I was the youngest one going through it at the time. It was great. And then the third thing I got out of it was education. I’m originally from a very small town. And had my story happened back in my small hometown, I would have had that same opportunity.

And so It was great to share. No matter where I was, as long as I had internet access. I think those three pieces are huge stepping blocks for any survivor.

Anne: Now, I can tell from the way you’re talking that you like the word survivor, which is awesome. I prefer the word victim.

And I’ll tell you why. not saying this to convince you or anyone else. But the reason why I like the word victim is because survivor to me feels like you survived the Titanic or something, right? Like, you got off the Titanic, and the Titanic sank, and you made it to shore, and you survived. The harm is over, but with emotional abuse and domestic violence it may continue because you share children.

And because I share children with the man who is emotionally and psychologically abusive to me, I’m actually, literally constantly a victim. Literally, I’m still technically victimized. I’m still lied about, I’m still harmed through things he says. When I say victims, what I want to say is that women can protect themselves, even though the harm could still occur because they share children or for whatever circumstance.

And so the reason I don’t like to call myself a survivor is because I’m like, I haven’t survived anything. I’m still struggling through this as safe as possible with the boundaries I have. What are your thoughts about that, as you’ve talked with other survivors?

Evie: Yeah, I think labels are important for people. You know, many people want to go by thriver too. I think it is a popular word that’s surfacing in the survivor community. But yeah, labels are personal for people, so I think whatever you want to identify as, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s your story, and however you want to be identified, that is okay.

Anne: Yeah, I agree. I feel like you can thrive, you can survive. And I’m not sure if I will say I’m technically a victim forever. And actually I’m pretty happy and grateful to have the boundaries that I have.

Anne: The Living Free strategies can protect you. I still call myself a victim because he’s still abusive. Luckily, with the strategies, I can completely protect myself and my kids now.

As you know, if you listen to this podcast, sharing stories is what this podcast is about. So if you’re interested in sharing your story, one option is to share it here on the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast. If you’re interested in sharing your story, please contact [email protected]. As women think about sharing, what are some safety tips you would recommend?

Evie: I think it’s important to listen to your intuition and figure out what is a safe audience for you. Maybe you tell a best friend, and if that goes well. Then you tell a family member, and if that goes well, maybe you tell your circle of friends. I think it’s really important to note that we don’t always get the response we’re hoping for especially with emotional abuse.

I told some family members, and I thought I would get support and love, and that didn’t happen. And it’s okay to go at your own pace. If you tell someone and you don’t get a reaction that you should, that’s not on you. That’s on them. And if you want to take a break from sharing your story, then take a break.

But if you want to keep sharing your story, keep looking for safe outlets to do so. Tell other survivors. I think that’s important. You know, those can be great ways to share your story. Because you’re sharing it with someone and people who do understand, because they’ve been through something similar. They’ll know how to support you and love you.

And so I think those baby steps are important. And if you want to get your story out there to a bigger audience. Yeah, sharing on your podcast is one way to do that. You get to share your truth anonymously. You’re also protected. You do a great job. Because you don’t have to connect your name with your story. You can share your story anonymously and still feel like you’re getting your voice out there.

It’s really just listening to your gut and figuring out, what do I need from sharing my story? And I know for me personally it was, I need to get my voice back.

Anne: Every woman on this podcast uses a pseudonym for her own protection. Before I started this podcast, I was actually public speaking about what was happening with my abuser, thinking he was in recovery from addiction. We used our real names and spoke publicly at addiction recovery conferences.

When I discovered all those lies that I accidentally promoted someone as a great guy, when he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I felt devastated. That was really, really hard for me to deal with. Having had the experience of using my real name and then doing this, I definitely chose to use a pseudonym so that I don’t have to go through that again, because that was awful. So that is one thing that I recommend for victims is to use a pseudonym. It’s helpful to keep you safe.

Evie: Yes, absolutely.

Anne: I don’t think many non-survivors listen to this podcast. If they do, thank you. I’m honored by you listening. Mostly the people that listen here are current victims of emotional abuse in marriage.

Anne: Why do you think it’s important to hear these examples of emotional abuse?

Evie: It’s so important. I’m just trying to make sure that if there is one person out there hearing my story, who needs to hear what I’m saying. That’s who my audience is. Because whether they’re not a survivor, or they are, and they just don’t want to come to terms with that yet. I think it’s so important to ensure that we’re just spreading our truth.

Anne: Yeah, that is a risky endeavor, to start sharing. The cool thing about when you start sharing is that you’ll know pretty quickly if it’s a safe situation or not. You can dip your toe in the water a little bit and see, is it safe to share with this person, with this group, or with these people? And you’ll know pretty quickly if it’s safe or not. And if it’s not safe, you can just back away.

Anne: The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop will teach you how to know if someone is safe or not. So, if you’re struggling with that right now, the BTR Living Free Workshop will help. Okay. Now back to years ago, Anne.

And then the more you share and assess your emotional safety, the more you can identify a safe group. I think probably in your case, but I’m not sure. Don’t let me put words in your mouth if this is not the case. That now you feel like your support system, not just the other survivors you’re around, but also your friends and the people you interact with, feel safe for you. Is that the case?

Evie: Oh, absolutely.

Anne: Yeah, and you’ve developed that over time. So that’s awesome. And that’s what can come from reaching out and starting to share. Has anyone seemed safe at first, and then proved not safe?

Evie: Yeah, I think that was particularly true with my family, you know, their family. And so obviously they get a little bit deeper level of initial trust and love from you. It’s just so important to have the right emotional abuse recovery

That almost hurt the most for me. Because certain family members helped me when I needed to move out. And then later on kind of used my story against me and made me the black sheep of the family. But, as hard as that was, I’m in a good place now where I’m definitely setting healthier boundaries and able to understand what is acceptable respect and love from people. And it’s never easy to cut toxic family members out of your life.

Anne: Yep, the longer you go with either no abuse happening in your life anymore. Or in my case, the longer I set pretty strict boundaries to keep me safe from the harm, the stronger we get. In healing from emotional abuse and domestic violence the most important factor is distance from the abuse.

And I highly recommend that women join a network of support, like Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group, for example. That runs multiple times a day in every woman’s time zone, which is awesome. I talked to someone the other day. He said, oh, so BTR is a women’s empowerment organization. And I said, yeah, you could call it that, definitely. We want every woman to know she is important, cared about, loved, and doesn’t deserve harm.

Anne: Thank you so much for sharing your story on our podcast today.

Evie: Thank you so much for having me.

When emotional battering is covert, each moment looks harmless on its own. A comment, joke, or a nice” surprise might seem harmless. But when you step back and look at the pattern, a very different story emerges, one where boundaries are crossed, and her reactions are used as evidence against her.

Here are seven signs of emotional battering that often go unnoticed, especially when the husband looks like a great guy to everyone else.

To learn if you are a victim of emotional battering, take this free emotional abuse quiz.

Emotional battering is a consistent pattern of words, actions, or behaviors intended to manipulate, or control a person. Unlike physical abuse, emotional battering is more subtle and insidious, making it difficult to identify and even harder to explain to others.

Worse, an abuser may manipulate others, so you experience emotional battering from people in your church congregation or even neighbors. If you’re experiencing emotional battering from by-standers regarding your husband’s behavior, you need support. Attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session TODAY.

Being married and experiencing emotional battering by your husband means navigating daily complexities that are draining and painful. Some common tactics include:

Anne: I have a member of our community on today’s episode. We’re gonna call her Kiki.

Welcome, Kiki.

Kiki: Thank you very much. I’m excited to be here. First of all, I wanna thank BTR, because when I was in the middle of a complete breakdown, not understanding what was happening to me, it was only through finding your organization and the help of your team that made me realize that I wasn’t safe. The abuse was so covert that most people couldn’t have recognized it, myself included. I had therapists that didn’t recognize it as emotional battering.

And that started a journey into figuring out exactly what had happened to me. And what had happened to my friend. I came home from work one night, and there were police vehicles all over the place. We were told she had shot herself in her husband’s car. And she would tell us a lot of times these stories, and we would look at her like. She’s crazy or she’s making things up because her husband was such a great guy.

As I started going through my own stories and learning things after her death, but I was thinking about it the other day, like, you look at the Diddy trial or you look at women who come in and they’re battered. And they still have a hard time being believed. And then you take somebody who has been covertly abused or live in a society where, if your wife isn’t pretty enough or what have you, then she’s replaceable and it’s okay.

Kiki: People have a hard time believing there was abuse involved, but I left a 35 year marriage with severe CPTSD. I had a psychotic break, and I had to put myself back together. And during all of it, my ex-husband is the hero. My kids aren’t talking to me because I had some big breakdowns and did some things I’m not proud of.

And that was like my friend’s story, she would have these breakdowns. You could be just as abused with a fist as you can with a piece of birthday cake. And I know that sounds silly. But it’s so covert, that people can’t see it as emotional battering.

And BTR and the women and the professionals that came on here really gave me that push to step into it.

Anne: Talk to me about the things your friend did that were totally normal under the circumstances. Like now that you know what you were looking at. So that we can let women who are listening know they’re not alone. If they’ve done something like this, it’s because they were trying to protect themselves. It’s completely and totally normal, and even healthy, when you’re in the situation to try to get to safety in any way that you can.

Kiki: Oh, absolutely. There are several things that come up right away. The first one was we always had holiday parties at their house. They had a beautiful pool and her husband said something that seemed very innocuous and she started yelling. You promised me you wouldn’t say that you wouldn’t do this.

Kiki: And she kind of goes off the rails a little bit, and we’re all sitting there looking at her like, what is going on right now? And so I immediately go into my people pleasing it’s okay to… and she’s yelling at me, “No, you don’t understand. You don’t understand what he does. I told him not to do this. He told me he wouldn’t do it. To you it seems innocent, but it’s not innocent.” And everybody’s looking at her.

I get her away, and then I get her calmed down. And I go back and her husband is playing the victim. “Oh, poor me, you see, she’s bipolar. She always does this. This is what I have to live with.” And I feel so bad, because at the time, I didn’t realize I was going through it myself. You don’t realize it until after you’re out of it. Another thing, he was just very manipulative. For her 40th birthday, he threw her this amazing party, and everybody was in awe and completely jealous. And she was not happy about it.

She told me afterwards, “I told him, I don’t like things like this. And it was just too much. It was way over the top.” And of course, I’m looking at her like I would give my left arm if my husband would throw me a party like this. Of course, he wouldn’t, because he knew I wanted one. Yeah, so there’s the difference. If you want it, you don’t get it. If you don’t want it, you get it.

Then every year after that, he would throw her a surprise party and he would go out of his way to get people there, and she would walk in the room.

Kiki: And we would all yell, surprise, and she would be devastated. then she’d try to put a smile on her face, and she was dying inside. Because how do you walk into the public where your husband has done this beautiful thing for you, but it’s exactly what you’ve asked him not to do?

By year seven, she just kind of walked in, and then just went off in the corner and drank too much. She didn’t want a dog, but her son wanted a dog. So on her birthday, he bought her a designer dog and invited several friends to see her get the dog. Now she loved the dog with all her heart, but it was that manipulation tactic to say. Look at what a great husband I am. Here’s this $1,500 dog and you don’t get to complain about it.

Anne: Correct me if I’m wrong. But he had effectively made her look ungrateful, unkind, uncaring. Which is exactly what he wanted.

Kiki: Exactly. He was a very charming, gracious host, and the door was always open. I lived next door to them. And she could be reactive at times. And I would hear him talking to his son on the side of the house, and he would be saying. Just be quiet. I’ll help you out. You know how your mother is, you know how your mother gets, so he’s completely not supporting her.

The biggest thing: the woman who he had a long-term affair with, they ended up getting married and they had a destination wedding.

Anne: Did you know about the affair before she died ?

Kiki: I did know about it and she knew about it. She was always concerned about it because her husband had told her it was over.

Kiki: But she would get these, Facebook or emails from an email she had never heard of before or a fake name, nobody she knew. That would say, your husband doesn’t love you. At one point, her husband even admitted it was from this woman, and of course, “I love you. I love only you. This woman’s crazy.”

So he always pitted everybody against one another, that they’re crazy. Well, he ends up marrying this woman in a destination wedding. On the 10th anniversary of her death, his new wife, who he had an affair with the whole time. Puts up a post on Facebook that says, “I’ve been keeping a secret. We actually got secretly married on the day before the anniversary of her death” And nobody says a word. There’s whispers behind the scenes, but there’s the, Jesus wants us to forgive and forget.

And I’m like, no. And that’s when I said, “Uhuh, you know what? I’m not gonna keep quiet.” And you know what? I believe it was soul murder, because that’s how abusers manipulate their victims, especially the covert type. It’s so insidious. It just eats away at your soul, and you completely lose yourself.

Anne: That is so strange. Who in their right mind, if they’re a decent person, wants to publicly say that?

Having your new wife tell the whole world that they secretly got married the day before the anniversary of when mom committed suicide. Like, that’s not hurting anyone? What? That’s like next level. How did people react to that post? Were they like, it feels like it would be like radio silence, okay, cray cray town. Or were they like, “Oh, congratulations, I’m so glad you did that secretly because she was so crazy.” What was the reaction?

Kiki: Mostly my friends and people who didn’t know her spoke out. It was almost crickets from friends and family, publicly. Several of them reached out behind the scenes or had somebody reach out on their behalf. People seemed afraid to say anything. That’s what they do is gather their minions. I’ve heard he’s sending out paragraphs of these long texts, playing the victim and putting his son in the role of, here’s Kiki hurting my son.

He’s retired from the police force, but is now serving as a bailiff. And that’s, one of the things he’s very concerned about is what if I lose my job or what if I lose face, because nothing triggers a covert abuser than being cornered.

Anne: It’s really, I would say, shocking that that’s what abusive messages sound like. Because they sound so nice and they sound like he’s the victim, really. It’s awful to think that society in general is so blind and in the dark about what these messages look and sound like.

They all look the same. Once you know what you’re looking at, you know how to see it. And my workshop covers that. I took the real life messages from five different, emotionally abusive men and use those and then how to respond to them. And most of them are just not overt. They really sound like nice guys, but when you know what you’re looking for, you’re able to see these are clearly abusive.

Kiki: Yeah, it’s really hard , these are people that we had great times with. You don’t understand that they’re being horrible and they’ve got this whole other life.

Kiki: One thing I will say is, the investigator who called me, actually two investigators called me and the one was really good. We talked about coercive abuse. He says, ” A lot of times people think coercive abuse is they lock you in the house or they take away your money. But it’s not always that way.” He says, “I understand what you’re saying.” He said, “Unfortunately, we’re not at the point in our world where it’s really illegal to be a jerk.”

But I did send all his text messages to this investigator and said, “Hey, just in case anything happens, I want you to see this.”

I don’t think she was terrified of him at all, nor was I of my husband. As a matter of fact, about a month before she passed away, she was with another friend and wanted to hire a private investigator. The friend was going to help her, and then a day or two later she wrote and she said, no, don’t do it.

Because even if I find out he’s cheating again, I love my husband and I am not going to leave him. I think she was just so convinced that she was lucky to have this guy . She didn’t understand the covert abuse. I have become this huge investigator on patterns, looking at patterns and trying to figure it all out. Because it is so sneaky and so covert, and it goes over so long. I thought I had the perfect marriage. I didn’t understand until I was out of it.

How much of myself I had lost and how some of these things that I had completely normalized, my ex-husband had me convinced that all men think this way and all men do these things.

Kiki: I got married when I was 21 years old. I had never even heard of pornography until I got married. Then we were in the military, and went to the Philippines, where sex was everywhere, so was infidelity. So anytime a husband had an affair, it was the wife’s fault. Because she wasn’t doing what she was supposed to be doing. And even within our group, there were affairs within different couples. The thing was, you don’t take sides. They’re always invited, and whoever shows up, shows up. Of course, it was always the two people having the affair that showed up. And the spouse that was actually wronged didn’t.

It always bothered me. I always felt horrible, but I thought, that’s the way the world is. And it’s really sad when you don’t know what you don’t know until it’s too late.

Anne: Isn’t it too late the whole time? You don’t know all of the emotional and psychological abuse you’re experiencing the entire time.

Kiki: No, you don’t. Until you’re out of it, you’ve lost your mind. You’re blaming yourself for everything. People are dropping out of your life. My ex-husband was married within 30 days to a woman. He’s 70 now, I think she might be 29 or 30. He is the great guy and look, I finally got away from that crazy person. And I’m sitting here in shock as to how I’m the bad person. But that’s because the people we were around, society as a whole, a lot of the times think, time to get a new one. My ex used to do things very covertly. He knew I was always very concerned about my weight.

Kiki: Of course, he made me concerned about my weight. He would come home and say, I brought us cake for dessert, and tonight when we’re watching TV, we could eat cake for dessert. And I’d be like, okay.

It was always the kind of cake, almost 99% of the time, he liked. Not the cake I liked. And we would split the piece of cake. Well, while I was eating my cake, we would be watching TV and there would be some beautiful actress on there, and he’d say something like, “Oh what did she allow to happen to herself? She just turned into such a fat pig.” Like he would say that. And here’s me sitting here.

Anne: Wow.

Kiki: So used to people talking that way, that I look and it’s this beautiful woman. I say, “Are you crazy? She’s gorgeous, she’s beautiful.” And he’d say, “Well, honey, don’t get jealous or upset. I mean, she’s not 55 years old and she hasn’t had two kids.” So suddenly that cake is just sitting there in your throat, like this lump of cement. That’s how badly I had been groomed. He would say these horrible things and say, all men think that way. That’s how a lot of people thought in the circle we were with. He told me one time. You know how they always tell on themselves?

He says, “I’m not really mad at you. I kind of respect you for finally standing up for yourself.” And I just went, oh my, he knew. It’s a game.

Anne: It’s a game of exploitation. How much can I exploit her, how much can I get from her? How can I use her without having to give very much? They know they have to give a little bit.

Anne: But like, what is the least amount I can give for the most amount I can get? And they’re not caring about us. They are using us. Their motions, as if they care, are calculated to exploit us. They’re like, what’s the biggest bang I can get for this? It’s a completely different vibe that we feel from people when they actually care about us, when they’re not transactional in the way that they interact with us.

All of this I talk about in detail in my Workshop , like exactly why this happens and what to look for, to know if they are transactional in their relationships. That means every time he says, I care about you, he’s calculated that in order to get something out of you, he’s not actually caring about you.

That’s what makes couple therapy so impossible or going to clergy so impossible, or friends. Because he’ll never actually say the truth of how he feels and what his intentions are.

Kiki: Oh yeah. I grew up where love was transactional.

I know it’s not my fault, but if I want a healthy relationship, then I have to understand that.

Anne: The plane wreck’s not your fault. It’s not your fault that the plane didn’t have supplies on it. It’s not your fault that the plane didn’t have a satellite phone. You are gonna need to stand up and start walking toward the nearest city, and I think that’s what you’re talking about. It is where you’re like, okay, the plane wreck is not my fault. None of this is my fault. However, if I don’t stand up and start moving forward, I’m not gonna survive this.

Kiki: Exactly.

Anne: That survival starts with recognizing what these liars do and what they say. If we had to boil it down—though it’s almost impossible—it’s this: if you only observed what they did with your eyes and not your ears, what would you see? Most of the time, you would see that how they act doesn’t match what they say. And that’s when women start asking an important question: is lying emotionally abusive? Because when someone’s words and actions never line up, that pattern alone begins to erode your sense of reality.

Kiki: Oh, I often say that if my ex-husband’s lips were moving, there was a lie coming out. Even though he presented as the most wonderful, generous person you ever met in your life. He controlled with size. He controlled with victimhood, the poor me. As a matter of fact, most people would tell you in my family that I wore the pants of the family.

But the reality was, it was just an illusion. I was controlled from the time I woke up through the time I went to bed. I call it death through thousand paper cuts just all day long. “Did ‘you have to put the ketchup in here like this? Why did you put the dish in here like this? Most women would be thrilled that they have a husband that wants to watch TV with them. Why can’t you come sit down and watch TV?”

I’d be like, oh yeah, you’re right. And I’d go running and never understand what was really going on. I think that happens in a lot of marriages, and it still didn’t all add up for me. I had to learn patterns, because to me, coercive meant it was mean, but it’s not always.

Anne: You mentioned they can hurt you just as much with a piece of cake as they can with a fist. The most abusive thing someone can do is tell you they love you when it’s not true. They’re using you. They love what they can get from you, but actually caring about you, not so much.

Thank you so much. Kiki, you’re incredible for wanting to set the record straight about who your friend was and why she was acting the way that she was. She was doing what any healthy woman would do, not understanding her situation, and trying to create some emotional safety for herself. In the best way that she knew how and she didn’t know what was happening and she didn’t know what to do about it.

And that’s not her fault. That’s society’s fault. That’s every therapist that they went to’s fault. If they went to therapy or clergy or whoever, who did not educate her about what was actually happening.

Because women in this situation, they do the right thing. They try to get help. They try to get information, they try to listen to their husband and communicate with him more. Whatever it is they’re trying to do, they have good intentions. It’s really unfortunate that bystanders, professionals, people outside, they attribute good intentions to someone. Meaning an abusive man who doesn’t have them. He actually has bad intentions.

So, that’s awesome that you’re honoring your friend in this way. I bet she’s looking on you and thanking you for that.

Kiki: I hope so. Yeah, I wanted people to understand who she really was and why she was the way she was sometimes, and even for her son to maybe understand who his mother really was and what was happening. Because I think that’s the biggest travesty. I’m being blamed for hurting the son, but the son is still caught in these dynamics within a system that protects the perpetrator. The truth may hurt, but lies will kill you.

Anne: Yeah, oh, that is so true.

Kiki: Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity. You’re amazing. BTR is amazing and thank you.

Anne: Thank you.

If you’ve been betrayed by your husband, you’ve probably replayed every conversation in your head. What he said. What it meant. Here are six things a cheating husband says that may seem innocent, or even remorseful, but are actually manipulative and abusive.

You deserve safety. Clarity. Truth. Take my free emotional abuse quiz to see if you’re experiencing this.

At first, this sounds like a confession wrapped in vulnerability. But let’s be clear: blaming betrayal on your pregnancy is a covert form of abuse.

He’s saying, “You made me do this.” He’s shifting responsibility for his betrayal onto your body, and your vulnerability.

This isn’t guilt…it’s manipulation.

If your cheating husband says this, it might trigger your compassion, and that’s the point. Yes, trauma is real. But past trauma is not a free pass to traumatize others.

When a man uses his childhood as a shield against accountability, he’s not trying to heal. He’s trying to keep you from leaving.

This one is tricky. At first, it seems like progress. Counseling. Support groups. Healing.

But what if he’s lying in those sessions? What if he’s telling the therapist half-truths, or worse, repeating the kind of things a cheating husband says to shift blame onto you?

Many women spend years in therapy trying to “fix” the marriage, when the real issue is that he’s abusive, not confused.

If your cheating husband says you’re the problem, he’s counting on you to believe him.

Women in these situations often over-function, working double-time to prove they’re loving, patient, faithful. Meanwhile, he’s lying, gaslighting, and keeping secrets.

This isn’t a marriage. It’s a mind game.

He might say he’s changed. That he’s not using anymore. But his actions don’t match. He’s distant. Emotionally cold. You feel invisible in your own home.

But in public? He’s pouring your coffee. Smiling like the perfect husband.

This tactic, acting loving in front of others while rejecting you in private, is covert emotional abuse.

This one is the hardest. When you finally draw a boundary or leave, the cheating husband says you’re the toxic one.

He tells your church, your family, your friends:
“She’s crazy.”
“She ruined the marriage.”
“I tried everything.”

This tactic is called DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. And it’s one of the most psychologically damaging parts of betrayal.

When your cheating husband says things like this, the trauma goes deeper than infidelity. It’s not just about sex or secrets. It’s about emotional coercion and psychological manipulation.

And if you feel confused, isolated, or like you’re slowly losing your grip on reality, you’re not crazy. You’re experiencing betrayal trauma.

This interview dives deeper into one woman’s story. Pay attention and you’ll hear how her husband used every one of these to make her thing his cheating was her fault.

Anne: Kathleen a member of our community is on today’s podcast. She’s going to share her story. Welcome, Kathleen.

Kathleen: Hi Anne. Thanks for having me on today.

Anne: We’re grateful that you’re brave enough to share your story to help other women. We’re talking about how your cheating husband says that it’s your fault. So why don’t you start with your backstory? What was your situation?

Kathleen: I guess from day one of my marriage, I felt like something wasn’t right and I could never put my finger on. We were, I thought, happily married, had a child. Then shortly after my second child was born, I just felt that something wasn’t right.

Kathleen: I found out, unfortunately, that my husband was into exploitative material, and that was just devastating. I felt like everything was over. Although I didn’t want to end the marriage, I felt like my perfect world with my newer marriage, my two sweet children, our sweet little family was just ruined.

It just was not what I thought it was. We immediately tried to get help. Unfortunately, he was lying to me. He blamed it on my pregnancy with my first and second child—something I later realized is exactly the kind of thing a cheating husband says to avoid taking responsibility. For years this went on with him dabbling in help. I just kept with it, trying to stay strong, trying to stay in the marriage. I never even thought this type of infidelity was abusive.

We kept going and we had our good times and then our bad times. When things were bad, they were very bad. Things were good sometimes, but it was really not much to hold on to. So, we went on like this for probably fourteen to fifteen years until we got help together. Through working with them over about a two year period, I started to see, that my husband just did not want to do the work to get better.

Which made us pretty much come to a halt. We separated about two summers ago for three months. He was able to come back and about two months after that, he was out for good. Since then, he blamed everything on me.

Anne: Let’s talk about those years of thinking he has an addiction and going down that route for a while. Did you ever consider you were dealing with an emotional and psychological abuser?

Kathleen: I had no idea.

Anne: And did anyone ever mention it to you? Like he’s been unfaithful, he’s abusive?

Kathleen: No, never. If anything, it was the opposite. It was, let’s help him. Let’s see what we could do to help him.

Anne: Or he’s such a good guy. We can’t understand why he’s doing this thing. Let’s get him some help.

Kathleen: Absolutely. Yeah. Or his past, you know, he had a rough upbringing, so this is why he’s doing it.

Anne: Right. Yeah. I often say, I know several people who have had a really super hard upbringing and they’re not abusers. So it’s not really a reason to be abusive

Anne: . He went for years to a well known Catholic counselor and men’s purity groups. Do you feel like they really understand that infidelity is abuse?

Kathleen: Absolutely not. We started with this one counselor, the well known Catholic counselor in infidelity expertise, and I felt like I was blamed in this situation, the same way a cheating husband says things that shift responsibility, and I just bailed quickly. Something in my gut told me, get away. Then, the last year or so, I heard that he might have changed the way he helped women and couples. I decided, let me give it another try. It was at least 15 years later. Unfortunately, it was just the same thing.

It was one session and done. No, there’s no change. It’s very unfortunate because these seem to be the people we turn to when you have a problem. It just causes more trauma for the women.

Anne: Right, what are some of the things that the priests said to you or did that was so traumatizing that blamed you?

Kathleen: In my parish? Yeah, so my parish priest actually supported me.

Anne: When you mean support, when you say supported, do you mean financially?

Kathleen: Not financially, there’s really no financial support. It was just an emotional support. He listened, he understood. He suggested I might have to separate with my husband, which I took that very seriously. Maybe four months later, we separated. After my husband went and talked to the pastor and the parish priest, both decided to take sides with him, which I don’t even know why a side had to be taken.

Anne: I can tell you why.

Kathleen: Go ahead.

Anne: A side does need to be taken. A neutral party will always benefit the perpetrator. The problem is, most of the time, they side with the perpetrator. instead of the victim. Because in an abuse situation, there’s a perpetrator and a victim. If you stay neutral and say, well, she’s got her side of the story and he has his side of the story and the truth is somewhere in the middle, that means that you believe what he is saying a little bit. These are some of the confusing factors when deciding if you should stay married after infidelity.

Maybe she’s lying a little bit rather than recognizing, no, this is a perpetrator. He’s going to do everything he can to avoid accountability and blame his victim. And a victim who’s telling the truth, who’s trying to get to safety. So, it’s really important for people to take sides, but they need to take sides with the right party.

They need to protect the victim. Any type of neutrality or even thinking, well, he couldn’t be that bad, is harmful to the victim. Since infidelity is abusive to partners, taking the right side is important.

Kathleen: Right. And that’s a lot of what I’ve been experiencing. He’s been getting into the ear of anybody who knew us and telling them how horrible I have been, the same kind of story-spinning a cheating husband says to protect himself. Getting back to the priest, the priest was the one who was spreading that I was a liar and I have manipulated the entire situation. Anybody in this situation that I was in would have taken the advice he gave. Which, I don’t even know what help he was talking about.

Anne: This is one of the ways abusers manipulate their victims. People don’t understand that an abuser claiming that his victim is the abuser is abuse.

Kathleen: Absolutely. So, this abuse has not only extended to him lying to everybody about you and blaming you, but also roping third party people. Like a priest in your parish or other people, to also abuse you through blaming you.

Kathleen: That’s exactly what’s happening now. I can honestly say that this secondary abuse is way worse than what I experienced directly from my husband.

Anne: Why would you say that is? I agree with you. I’ve experienced it as well. And I agree. But for our listeners, in your opinion, why do you think that is?

Kathleen: Well, I think, first of all, it’s my own healthy pride. I want to be an upstanding Christian and a good person. Now people see me as a liar and a manipulator, which I’m not. The other part of it is that, I’ve lost my community. I had to leave my church and go to a different church. It’s very hard because I feel like a lot of people look down their nose at me and I just try to hold my head high and have faith in God to get me through.

Anne: When did you realize that all these years of, “Something’s not quite right.” When did you realize that was just flat out emotional and psychological abuse and coercion?

Kathleen: I always knew that it wasn’t right. I knew it wasn’t healthy, but I didn’t realize it was abuse until after our second separation. When surfing the internet one night looking at abuse and decided to call our local abuse shelter.

I called and said, I don’t know if I’m being abused. From the information that I gave them about what happened to me, they assured me that I was absolutely being abused. They also helped me to see that other behaviors that had happened in our marriage were abuse that I didn’t even realize were wrong, not just the things my cheating husband says, but the patterns behind them. I mean, I’ve been emotionally, psychologically, financially, and even physically abused. I didn’t realize I was also being physically abused.

Anne: Did that shock you because you’d never called an abuse specialist before, right? You’d always called maybe a marriage counselor or, some type of clergy or some kind of addiction specialist. Were you shocked that immediately right out of the gate, these people never talked to you before? We’re like, yeah, this is super abusive and that you’d never heard it from anyone else.

Kathleen: I was, and I felt it was such a disadvantage. Going through this, it was always focusing on his infidelity. I was always searching for addiction services for spouses, the help for that, and I couldn’t find anything to help with what a cheating husband says. But all the behaviors surrounding it make it abuse.

Kathleen: It was mind boggling and maddening to know that there was nothing out there.

I never wanted to go to marriage counseling for some reason. I knew in my gut, it was not a marriage issue. It was infidelity and it was his problem . So I was grateful for that, but it was hard to find help.

Anne: When did you find Betrayal Trauma Recovery?

Kathleen: I think I found it probably about a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago. Just found BTR online and saw there was The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast and religiously started to listen because it was the only place that got it.

Anne: What did you think after years of the, help him, be gentle with him because he has these childhood problems. Let’s try not to trigger him, don’t shame him, are you a good wife? Are you giving him it when he needs it? What did you think after coming to BTR and listening? What did that feel like for you?

Kathleen: I just felt like there was a place that understood what it really was and I knew that it was the right place to get the information that I needed to educate myself.

Anne: It’s like you know it in your gut, but you don’t have words for it. You don’t have a place to process it appropriately. If you try to process it with the addiction people and they tell you, no, it’s you and you need to be patient then it halts your processing, it stops you. It’s like floating around, but you can’t ever grab it. It’s like foggy and you can’t quite get out of that fog.

Kathleen: Right. I always knew, I always had the gut feeling and I would thankfully go with my gut feeling, but I could never put my finger on where things were going wrong. I mean, I never caught him using it again, I always was asking myself the question is he using or is he not? He claims sobriety. Those claims, the things a cheating husband says, kept me doubting myself.But based on what I know now and looking back, I know he was still using. I know he was because I know the way he behaved, it’s obvious because infidelity is abuse. I know the way that he kept me at a distance.

He wouldn’t engage with me at all emotionally, which devastated me. It was like I was a stranger in our house, but outside he acted like husband of the year. He would get coffee for me in front of other people. He would act like he was just so in love when he was with me in public, which is part of the reason why people just don’t understand the situation and they believe him that I’m the liar and the manipulator.

Anne: When you changed your outward talk from did the third party people get more angry with you? Are they like, whoa, wait a minute. You’ve said he’s a addict. Now you’re claiming he’s an abuser? Did they get more upset?

Kathleen: Well, not really because nobody knew he was a user. That was secret. It was my own private secret that I lived in. My family didn’t know. Our friends didn’t know. Nobody knew. I didn’t tell people. I was very much ashamed that was in our marriage.

Anne: Okay, did you tell people when you recognized it was abuse, did you start saying, he’s abusive?

Kathleen: Once we were separated for the second time and it was pretty much out there that we were no longer together. Yes. I told people that he had abused explicit online media and that he was abusive. I was trying to get myself to safety.

My family is so supportive, tremendously supportive, even more than I even thought that they could be. I’ve had friends that I wasn’t that close with, but they understood because of their own experiences through their life. They are like a rock to me, but then a lot of people that I thought I could count on, just disappeared or sided with him.

Anne: Yeah. I’ve seen that happen too. It’s really interesting. Even a couple of friends that we had that her husband is also a user have decided to side with my ex. They’re still married. I wonder if they think, well, if we talk to Anne, she’s so intent on saying infidelity is abuse, maybe our marriage would be in jeopardy, so we don’t want to go down that route.

I’m not sure why they’ve decided to do that, but he’s still exhibiting abusive behaviors from my perspective, but of course they can’t see that. Why would you want to be friends with an abuser? That makes no sense to me,

Kathleen: Right.

Anne: Also I think we can clearly see that they’re lying and manipulating people, but they can’t see it.

Kathleen: No, and there is a part of me that has a little sympathy for the third party people. I believed my husband’s lies for years. I mean, my whole relationship was based on the lies a cheating husband says to protect himself.

Anne: Yep, and if we couldn’t see it, they don’t even live with him. Of course it would be hard for them to see it too.

Kathleen: Right, he’s good at lying.

Anne: Good at manipulation, good at grooming, really.

Kathleen: Absolutely.

Anne: A lot of women are hoping that their relationship will work out and hoping that once he’s confronted about his abusive behaviors he will get into some type of program and get help.

Anne: If they go down the addiction recovery route, many programs do what is known as a full disclosure. Where the abuser is supposed to outline all of his indiscretions, but doesn’t necessarily include all abuse episodes. Since you went down that route for a little while, did you ever have a quote unquote full disclosure with the help of an addiction specialist? Then you have to figure out if your husband’s apology is genuine.

Kathleen: No, unfortunately I did not. Anything that I found out about my husband was either me finding out by catching him or him over the years, basically, drip feeding me information and I would figure things out.

Anne: You say unfortunately. Is that something that you think would have helped you or why did you say unfortunately?

Kathleen: I say unfortunately because without any truth, there is no basis for your relationship and I never received truth. That’s part of the reason or a main reason why my marriage fell apart. If he was truthful with me, I feel like maybe we could have fixed things and worked on it better.

Anne: A lot of people get a full disclosure, but it’s not a full disclosure. So there are times where a cheating husband says he’s told the whole truth, but it’s not the full truth. And that, fake full truth is very difficult for victims because they think, oh, finally we have the whole truth.

Anne: But they don’t. The other thing I think is interesting is, fake histories that they might give as excuses. I am not about to say that your husband wasn’t actually abused, but some of them do say things like that as an excuse. For example, I know of one abuser who told his victim that he was abused by a neighbor, but she is now 100 percent convinced that he abused the neighbor.

Kathleen: I believe there could be some truth to that. I took what my husband told me with a grain of salt, but he said he was abused, I took it seriously to protect my children.

Anne: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s one thing that’s difficult to know when you’re dealing with an abusive and manipulative man who is willing to lie at all costs, is that truth that you think you know might not be the truth at all.

A full disclosure might not be a full disclosure. I want to give women who think, I wish I could have gotten a full disclosure and he would have told me the truth. If someone does not want to tell you the full truth, they might pretend to give it to you.

That might be as harmful as not knowing anything. When we’re dealing with someone who lies at this scale, What worries me is the fake truth that women think that they receive and then they feel safe because they feel like they’ve received it all when it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Kathleen: That’s a good point and I think that with my husband, the way he is, nothing that ever came out of his mouth to me was truthful. Early on, I did pray to God to let me know what I needed to know. I guess I’ll just be grateful that I know what I know and that’s all I need to know.

Anne: Isn’t that interesting. As women of faith who decided to divorce, can we talk about your decision to divorce or are you divorced?

Kathleen: Not officially. I actually separated from my husband with the intent for him to go get help. Through that time, he chose to go live with his, suspected abuser, or at least who he claims abused him. He went to live with him for over a year. It was his brother.

Anne: His brother. Okay. So he chooses to go live with the person who he has told you abused him?

Kathleen: Yes, which was a huge red flag to me.

Because he claimed this, but then went to live with him. Then he decided about a year ago that he wanted to file for divorce.

Anne: That sounds really similar to my story, by the way. My ex claimed that he was abused by his parents and that his parents were really abusive, but hangs out with them all the time, without saying that their behaviors have changed. There is no claim, they’re totally different now.

Kathleen: Right now I’m really struggling with the community thing. It’s really tough to live in a community of people. It’s even where I work. The school that I teach at is where my children attend and it’s part of a small Catholic community. There I am working amongst people who think what my cheating husband says is true…that I’m the liar and manipulator and the marriage ruiner. So, it’s tough.

Anne: That is really, really hard. I am very sorry. I pray often that the truth is known to people somehow. There are days, do you ever do this? Where you read the local newspaper, thinking that you’ll see him in the newspaper? Do you ever do that?

Kathleen: I feel like someday I will hear that he has like either a DUI or was arrested or something.

Anne: Yeah.

Kathleen: He works at a local high school, so. Always worried about that as well.

Anne: It’s so strange to think that someone who has not taken any accountability is still just walking around. Not only just walking around, but affecting your life at such a level. Especially when you are the victim of his abuse without people really acknowledging or being compassionate or empathetic about your situation. Instead, being more judgmental, it feels more isolating.

Kathleen: Right, yeah, it does. Then, you get your wishy washy people who say, I don’t want to choose a side. That’s probably one of the worst things you can say to somebody who’s abused. Especially if her abuser has covert narcissist traits. Because it’s like, “I don’t take you seriously.”

Anne: Yeah, I don’t believe you. I confront people about that. I would not recommend it, by the way. But I say, you need to pick a side. Because I’m a victim of abuse and he’s a perpetrator. Would you like to stand with a victim and stop enabling a perpetrator, or not?

Kathleen: Right.

Anne: They don’t like that one bit. People feel very uncomfortable about that. Then they think, Oh, she really is crazy.

Kathleen: It’s amazing how their crazy look makes us look more crazy.

Anne: Instead of thinking, Oh, they don’t like us, or they don’t like what we say about abuse, or they think we’re going too far when we call these guys abusers.

I think it’s more strategic to have a surprised posture, in your head. You don’t want to like insult people, like, that’s surprising to me. I didn’t know that you were here from 1830. In a time machine and that you didn’t know abusers do this and that what you’re saying is an extension of his abuse. Well, weird.

I mean it’s more strategic to have an attitude or an energy about us that is more surprise than traumatized. It’s impossible to not be traumatized when someone says something triggering, that’s obviously harmful, that’s not empathetic, or not caring at all. It’s impossible not to be hurt by that.

I wonder if we all took this, I’m shocked. A therapist wrote and said, I don’t agree with BTR’s model. I don’t think it’s abusive. So I can’t associate with you. My first email to him back was like, I’m so sorry. That makes sense. I wish you the best.

Anne: Then I thought, wait a minute. I’m not going to write this. I’m writing, Oh, I’m surprised to hear that lying and manipulation are emotional and psychological abuse. That’s what I wrote. He wrote back and said, Oh, I do. I recognize it’s abuse. I just don’t agree with what BTR says. And I’m like, Hmm? He said, I don’t think infidelity is abusive, is what he said. This is a prominent therapist out there.

Kathleen: Wow.

Anne: And I was like, Okay, whatever.

Kathleen: That’ll leave me to believe. Well, what’s going on in your world? Why are you, defending it?

Anne: Yeah. Why would anyone think that viewing someone abusing isn’t participating in abuse in some way? Or at the very least sending your energy somewhere other than your wife. What do you want to call that? If you don’t want to call it abuse.

Kathleen: I call that infidelity.

Anne: Infidelity is also abusive, right? Why are you so afraid of the word abuse?

Kathleen: I guess because it’s so strong and so many people think of it as hitting their wife, instead of what a cheating husband says. It’s so just extreme to call something abuse. I think that’s part of the problem. People need education on it.

Anne: What you went through is extreme. To say that, it’s too extreme to call it abuse. You went through years of psychological and emotional abuse and coercion. You are still a victim of abuse in your community from a perpetrator who is talking to your community about you and lying about you.

Anne: If you don’t call that extreme, what is? In terms of the way it affects you on a daily basis, that is extreme. It’s abuse. There’s no other word for it.

Kathleen: Right.

He’s still able to be in contact with me, unfortunately, because of our children, which leads the door open for him to continue to abuse me.

Anne: Exactly. You do your best to set boundaries, you do your best to heal, all those things that are healthy. It’s not impossible. You will live an amazing life, and things will get better for you over time. But they don’t understand that there’s no way to stop him from abusing you.

Kathleen: Right. It’s a shame because, our judicial system and even co-parent counseling, they just don’t understand how what a cheating husband says can hurt you. And it’s difficult because the boundaries that you set up are torn down or changed because you have to follow.

Anne: The parenting plan or something.

Kathleen: Yeah. Parenting plan or some kind of legal plan.

Anne: This is why I created my Clarity After Betrayal Workshop. Have you ever talked to the legal system or your attorney about being emotionally and psychologically abused and you need a parallel parenting plan?

Kathleen: He is very well aware. We just started a second co-parent counseling and I do want to ask if we could do a parallel parenting plan.

Anne: Yeah, it’s a difficult situation, and it’s ongoing, divorce doesn’t stop the abuse. It can protect us from a lot of things, but it can’t stop the things a cheating husband says. So that’s what’s really difficult. And so many victims now are praying and praying and praying for justice all over the world.

Anne: It feels like we pray and pray and pray and that our prayers aren’t answered.

Kathleen: It’s kind of like any relationship. There are times I feel like God is right by my side and that’s what gets me through the day. Then there are times that I’m asking, “Lord, where are you? I don’t feel you.” So, it’s hard, I always have faith in our Lord, I know He is there, but to feel Him just makes it so much more doable to get through the situation.

Kathleen: It’s tough, I couldn’t do it without my faith, I couldn’t do it without God, and I am grateful for that, but it’s hard, and I too pray for truth, I’m like, Lord, I need truth to come out soon. I need it soon. So, hasn’t been answered yet, but I know that God is always working in mysterious ways. I’m just living in hope that it will come out at some point.

Anne: Yeah, I had a discussion with God the other day. He was like, I answer so many of your prayers. You just don’t notice because you’re focused on these other ones, you know, kind of like that. And I was thinking, but I don’t care about those other ones. These are the ones I want you to answer. Answer them now. Why are you not answering them? I’m so mad at you.

Anne: It is frustrating to feel like he helped me with this and he helped me with that, but why can’t he help me so I don’t have to have any more contact with my abuser, which is a really big thing.

Kathleen: Right, That’s one of my prayers as well. I find it going to, like, sinful thoughts sometimes, which I try not to do.

Anne: Like him getting hit by a bus?

Kathleen: Totally, it is an accurate answer, it also, to me would be protection for my children because they are abused as well.

Anne: Exactly, yeah, I wonder about all those Old Testament stories of the wicked being smitten. I don’t know, but I know that the best we can do, if we’re women of faith, is to be obedient. Obedient to the commandments and do the best we can under a very difficult situation.

Kathleen: Right, and hopefully in God’s time, it will all come out.

Anne: If you could go back in time and share with your younger self what would you tell her?

Kathleen: I guess to go with your gut feeling. If you are doubting anything about what a cheating husband says, don’t second guess it. Look into it a bit more, be sure of who you marry and spend the rest of your life with.

Anne: It’s interesting though, if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you could spend time with them and not see it. We all spent years with our abuser and we didn’t recognize we were being abused. That’s why it’s important to me that women know that you’ll experience if your cheating husband says it’s your fault.

Kathleen: Right. And that is what happened. And I had some odd dreams that happened and I pretty much ignored them. Which I wish I didn’t do.

Anne: Yeah, when you have no context for it, it’s difficult to see.

Anne: That’s one of the goals of our daily online support group for betrayal trauma is to educate women all over the world about abuse, about what it looks like so that we can educate our children, so if they have a dream, they have context for what they’re experiencing.

Kathleen: Right. Yeah, hopefully it’ll be easier for my children down the road.

Anne: Kathleen, thank you so much for being brave and sharing your story.

Kathleen: Anne, thank you for the opportunity to share my story. It’s, definitely helpful to know there are other women out there that understand, and I’m not alone in this.

For many women, signs of emotional manipulation don’t stop with their husband. It often spreads outward, into families, faith communities, friend groups, and even professional support systems.

Emotional manipulation can be especially destabilizing when it comes from people a woman expects to be supportive. Friends, family members, clergy, therapists, or neighbors may unintentionally reinforce harmful patterns, leaving her feeling isolated, blamed, or unsure where to turn.

Here are seven signs of emotional manipulation that often appear after a woman reaches out for help:

1. Advice that centers on him instead of your emotional safety
Comments like, “He needs your support” don’t take into account that he might be lying or manipulating you.

2. Spiritual or moral language used to silence you.
Phrases like, just forgive or don’t keep score, pressure women to look on the bright side, when really they need to seek emotional safety.

3. Undermining reality.
Statements such as “it’s not that bad” or “you’re overreacting”, erase facts and blur the truth.

4. Discomfort disguised as reassurance
Often when someone is uncomfortable with hearing the truth, they rush to shut it down with statements like, “Everything will be okay.” When really they’re just pressuring a woman to stay silent.

5. Protecting his image over the truth
If you go for help and the people you ask for help are more worried about protecting his image than they are the truth, they might say something like, “You shouldn’t talk about your husband like that.”

6. Isolation through niceness
Well-meaning nice responses can leave you feeling alone, misunderstood, and less likely to reach out again.

7. Pressure to explain, convince, or educate
Being expected to justify why emotional manipulation is harmful drains energy that is needed for healing.

Recognizing these patterns is an important step toward clarity. Emotional manipulation becomes even more powerful when it is reinforced by others, especially at the moment a woman is seeking understanding and support.

Many women have found answers listening to The FREE Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast.

Our BTR.ORG Group Sessions are a safe place to ask questions, process trauma, and express your emotions.

If you’re unsure if what you’re experiencing is normal or toxic, take our free emotional abuse quiz to see if he’s using any one of the 19 different types of emotional abuse.

Anne: I love hanging out with my good friend, Kate.

Today we’re talking about signs of emotional manipulation, not just from your husband, but from other people he’s using to manipulate you.

Because if he is manipulating you, he’s sometimes saying things in a loving, kind way and so he’s gonna talk to other people that way, and they’re gonna be like, “He seems so nice.” This is something that almost all 200 of the women that I’ve interviewed have faced, and Kate is really good at explaining why this happens.

Kate: It’s not just religious. All culture is like, “Oh, you got to support your husband. You got to be the good wife.” I’m just like, “Support? What kind of support are you thinking? You mean like the first two years we were married where I just gave him so much love and support and it was amazing?” and then he lied.

Anne: Sometimes really well-meaning people don’t realize that he’s been manipulating them.

It’s extremely destabilizing when they don’t know what’s happening.

Kate and I are going to focus on the manipulation that comes from outsiders like therapists, clergy, friends, family, whose responses, even though they’re well-meaning can leave women feeling isolated, blamed, or unsure of where to turn.

So if you’re having marriage trouble, you need to hear this. We’re gonna talk about how you might respond to these comments.

A lot of these responses might be for our own entertainment or benefit, like in our own head. We wouldn’t necessarily say this out loud, right, Kate?

Kate: Yes!

Anne: We need to be strategic in the way that we speak. If you’re interested in learning strategy, please take my workshop, go to btr.org/workshop where I give detailed instructions about strategic ways to respond to manipulators.

Kate and I aren’t necessarily doing strategy today. We’re more doing like what you can think in your own head so that you can feel better.

So Kate, What’s a really common thing that betrayed women hear from outsiders who don’t actually understand the situation?

 Let’s just start with like rapid fire stuff we might hear from outsiders who have been manipulated.

Kate: “Oh, you shouldn’t out your husband.”

Anne: When they say, “out”, they mean you shouldn’t tell people the truth about what’s going on.

Kate: If I say at church or anywhere that my husband is a addict, I’ve had people tell me, “Oh, you shouldn’t out your husband like that.” I’m like, “What? If he didn’t want to be outed, he shouldn’t have done it.”

Anne: I know, and I shouldn’t have married him apparently.

Kate: I love my story, I get to say whatever I want. It happened to me. He made his bed.

Anne: And he shouldn’t have looked at it. So we’re even.

Kate: If he didn’t want it, he shouldn’t have done it.

Anne: Here’s another one a lot of people say, “He just needs your support.”

Kate: Blech!

Anne: Yeah, when we’re going for help, we’re telling people what’s going on, and they come back at us with a statement. Like if someone’s in addiction, they’re going to need your support and help. It feels terrible. I think in my head. Like what matters right now is what I need. I need his honesty. I need his fidelity.

Kate: I’m like, “Support? What kind of support are you thinking? You mean, like the first two years we were married, where I gave him so much love and support, and it was amazing? And then he lied.”

Anne: I supported his butt out of the house.

Kate: I supported him by doing what was best for me.

Anne: Which was best for him.

Kate: Yes.

Anne: This one I’ve actually said to people, but I couldn’t say it with a smile on my face. I was saying it out of pain. I said something like, “No one should ever ask a victim to support their abuser, ever.” It is important to point this out so women know how to recognize victim blaming.

Kate: It’s so true. What do you mean to support him? You mean what I’ve already done for so long and it didn’t work? We’ve given them so much support.

Anne: Yeah for me, I was managing things, so well. Supporting him so much that I didn’t realize how bad it was. Also those general principles that everybody tells us, like love, serve, forgive and support that are principles I believe into my core. I wasn’t willing to ditch those right off the bat and go with safety. I mean, I had to try supporting him.

So I had to try making his therapy appointments and all that to get, to gain my own realization. That it was not going to work. What do you think? Have you ever met a woman who just went straight to boundaries.

Kate: No, actually. I think it’s kind of normal. And I don’t necessarily see it as a bad thing. I see it as you have to try this one way to know it doesn’t work. It’s not just religious. All culture is like, “Oh, you got to support your husband. You got to be the good wife.” We are loving people, and we try it. Of course, we’ll want to help someone.

Kate: Let’s say our husbands were healthy people and struggling. It would be good for us to help them. But yeah, we have to learn that our help will not help them like we think it will.

Anne: Let’s say you bought a giant chocolate cake from Costco once a week. And your husband. Is like, Hey, I don’t want to eat chocolate cake anymore. Would you mind helping me? You’re like, “Sure, what can I do?” And he says, “Would you mind not buying chocolate cake from Costco every week?” And you’re like, yeah. No problem, happy to do that. And then he’s grateful. and he says, “Thank you for not buying chocolate cake. I super appreciate it.”

And that’s it. You don’t buy the cake. He doesn’t need it. No big deal. When he ate chocolate cake, it didn’t hurt you. And it’s no big deal to not buy it. But with viewing explicit content he’s essentially gaslighting you and victim blaming you saying. “I need help not hurting you,” which is essentially saying, “If you did something different, I wouldn’t hurt you”.

Kate: Exactly, it comes from the entitlement and resentments, so frustrating.

Anne: Another one I encountered was a woman who lived in my ex’s neighborhood, and I knew her from before. ” I said, I’m concerned about my kids. Can you keep an eye out for them?” I told her a little bit, and the whole time she looked uncomfortable. Instead of saying, “Of course, I’ll keep an eye out for them. This must be stressful to you!”

She said, “It’s okay. I don’t know why you’re freaking out. Your kids are going to be fine.” I couldn’t think of anything to say in that moment. I don’t know if I should have said anything. I think I might’ve said, “It’s not okay. It’s not okay.” Then I just walked off because I was super mad.

Kate: That makes no sense. I think I would have been like, “Thank you, I feel so much better! Yes, that is so helpful. Okay, not freaking out now.” Then just walk away with this ridiculous fake smile.

Anne: You know what’s crazy? You saying it’s gonna be okay erases all the facts. I appreciate you waving your magic wand of the words, it’s okay, which apparently in your mind are magic and they make facts disappear, thank you.

Kate: “You just magically made my husband better. Thanks!”

Anne: “Or the situation, is now fine. Yeah, thanks.” Other things you can think of?

Kate: Forgiveness, “Just have a little more forgiveness for your husband.”

Anne: When people say ‘forgiveness’ now, do you know Hamilton?

Kate: Yes.

Anne: ♫Forgiveness♫ I’m not singing it right because I can’t sing, but that word, when they sing it like that, it’s like this burst of peace coming through and happiness. It feels cool in the musical. For those familiar with Hamilton, you might know what I’m talking about. If you don’t, sorry, I didn’t mean to ruin it for you.

Kate: Actually, when you said Hamilton, I was thinking of the stand up comedy from Katherine Ryan. I don’t know if I can watch Hamilton now because I will be thinking of her the entire time.

Anne: Wait. When I said Hamilton, you were thinking who?

Kate: Katherine Ryan does a stand up about Hamilton. She calls out the misogynistic crap in some of the parts. It is so funny. Anyway, sorry, sidetracked… the forgiveness. I’m like, “What do you mean forgiveness?” If it was something that was in the past and the threat was over, I could maybe understand. Even then, it’s still nobody else’s business. Forgiveness is not like all of a sudden, “okay, I’m done.”

Sometimes it’s like baby steps. There are so many little things to forgive. It’s not just one big lump thing. So when someone says forgiveness, I’m like, “yes, maybe when the threat is over and I’ve had time to cool down.”

Anne: Like how is me forgiving him going to stop him from harming me? This is the truth about forgiving abuse.

Kate: Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense.

Anne: I think this is a useful exercise. Forcing forgiveness is an effect of spiritual abuse.

Anne: There are safe people who we could actually have a conversation, explain how we feel, and talk about these things. They would be like, “Oh, yes. I’ve never thought about that before and I totally see it. I’m so sorry.”

I have a super good friend who when neither of us knew what was happening, she said all the wrong things. But when I started talking to her about it and how I felt, she got it. She’s a safe person because she understood. She was like, “I can’t believe I said that stuff to you. I am so sorry. I was only trying to be helpful and I totally missed the boat.”

The problem with trying to have a witty comeback or just the right thing to say to someone when they don’t understand is number one, you could hurt a safe person. Like if you’re snarky or sarcastic, it could actually hurt their feelings, and then it could push safe people away. The second thing is that if they’re never gonna be a safe person, you’re just setting yourself up for your abuser to groom other people around you that it’s your fault. They’ll think, “What is wrong with her? She’s rude.”

Or, ” She doesn’t forgive. She doesn’t live a biblical life. Doesn’t she know she’s supposed to submit?”

Kate: ” She’s must be so mean. Oh, the poor husband!”

Anne: I think in, at least our church culture, Kate and I have the same faith, a very outspoken woman, sometimes people feel sorry for her husband. Do you think that?

Kate: Oh my gosh, yes. A million times over, yes. They will always feel way more sorry for the man than the woman. It’s obnoxious. Even my own family has done it. Everybody knows, it’s not a secret,

Anne: But

Kate: There was one time I mentioned in front of family members. He’s sitting right next to me. He knows this. I know this. It’s like my husband is enmeshed with his family in a bad way. But my sister ended up telling me, “You called out your husband?” They were feeling so bad for him, because he just sat there and didn’t say anything. He looked so embarrassed. I ended up asking my husband, “Were you embarrassed?” He’s like, “What? No.” He ended up actually writing them all a email.

I mean, he sent it before he even told me he was going to do it. He basically was like, “No, I have ruined her life. I’ve done this, I’ve done this, I’ve done this. She’s still allowed to tell whoever she wants.” It was very validating, but it’s still frustrating, because even though he sent that email, I guarantee most people would still be like, “Yeah, but she must be so controlling. Maybe she forced him to write that email?” Or, “Oh, poor, poor man.” It’s frustrating.

Anne: In our faith, it seems like a lot of the men might go in and confess to their clergy or something, and instead of getting some type of, “Whoa, this is serious. You are not following Jesus at all. Maybe we need to protect people from you because your behavior is pretty atrocious.” Instead of saying that a lot of times they’ll tell these abusers, “Oh, you’re not really that bad. You’re great.”

Kate: “Oh, you just need more church. Go to the temple. Here, we’ll give you a calling; this will help you.”

Anne: “Volunteer more. ” Yeah, exactly. If you need to process your own trauma through thinking, “Okay, these are the things I could have said.” Talk to your friends. Talk to Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session clients in a group session. because When someone says something like that to you, it causes an injury. Sometimes it can be pretty extreme. Sometimes it can be minor. It depends on where you are in your trauma healing process.

Like now when people say stuff to me, the injury to me is a lot less than it used to be. But, to validate people who are like, “Why do these little comments the nice, 80 year old woman at church tells me, or my neighbor hurt me so much?” Maybe to just validate women and say, “Of course, they’re going to hurt you. Of course, you’re going to need to process it.”

You’re going to go through this time in your head where you think, “What could I have said back to this person that could have either educated them or put them in their place?”

Anne: You don’t want to put an 80 year old woman in her place, that’s just not nice. And if they really, truly don’t want to get it, then educating them isn’t going to work. So validate that we need to process it. Then, to consider that it’s not our job, and we don’t have to worry about educating other people or putting them in their place.

Kate: I think it’s beneficial to come up with the witty comments, but not necessarily to say them, because it doesn’t ever really help. I love coming up with the funny comments, but it’s more fun to then tell it to friends afterwards. It’s more funny then because that way you’re not hurting other people. But you can still find some humor in it so it doesn’t feel so heavy.

I know that in some circumstances it is best not to say much. Because they’re going to try to make you in the wrong no matter what. There are many circumstances where I prefer to be vulnerable, not necessarily for them, but for me. Even if it’s just as simple as, “Oh, that kind of hurt my feelings.” Or, “Well, he’s hurt me a lot. I’m still processing.” I like to be vulnerable. That’s empowering for me. It actually gets the better responses from people, where they’re not defensive.

Anne: Rather than a snarky, sarcastic one.

Kate: They’re still not going to always want to learn, but it might help them think twice. But again, that’s not the reason. The reason is because it empowers me to be honest.

Anne: I think being honest is always a good idea. My concern is safety.

Anne: Could you put yourself in a place where you could be harmed by that person? We might think, “Oh, I’m not safe to say this to someone.” If we say, “I’m super sad because my husband is abusive.” If they don’t like us, however they felt before is how they’re going to feel after. It’s not like suddenly they’re going to be like, wow, I like you now, or I don’t like you now.

You’re not going to change someone who really liked you and cared about you to someone who doesn’t like you and cared about you.

Kate: Yeah, it does. I also think when it comes to safety, a lot of times I find that safety within me. Yes, somebody might make me feel unsafe, but it doesn’t make me feel unsafe to the point where I’m not going to say, “Hey, that hurt my feelings.” I’m still safe enough to do that, because it’s more empowering for me later on. It’s hard to explain. It’s hard to put this in words.

I have not come across a time where I have been honest and vulnerable, and it made me more unsafe. And I was like, I shouldn’t have done that. Because I always learned from it. This isn’t going to work for everybody. I’m not saying everybody should be like this, because there are some horrible people out there. Sometimes the best thing is to not say anything.

Anne: I think I was like that more at the beginning when I discovered about my ex husband’s addiction. I’d see somebody at Costco and they’d be like, “How are you?” I’d be like, “Really bad, I just found out my husband lied to me for six years, and he’s using pornography, and it stinks. But it’s super good to see you. How are you doing?”

After that, they’d be like, “uh?” So I would do this quite a bit in the beginning, and now I’m less like that. Number one, because I’m not living in my trauma as much anymore. If they asked me, how am I doing today? I’d be like, “Great, I’m doing great. I ate a vegetable.”

You know, it’s not like the thing on my mind. So it would be easy for me to talk about something else. I think I’ve learned to be a little more guarded, because I thought shouting it to the world would bring safety. If everybody knew, how could he do it? I realized that did not keep me safe. So for that reason, I think about safety a little differently than I thought before.

Kate: It doesn’t go over too well when you’re like, “You know what? My husband just lied to me, and so I’m a little upset. I just found out he’s a big fat liar.”

Anne: It goes over super well in Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions, or with a close friend, like Kate, who understands it.

Anne: So if you have a safe place to go, then yeah, share it there.

Kate: I think you can still be honest in those circumstances without actually saying all of it. You could just say, “You know what? Eh, I’m so so. I’m alive. I’m okay.” You don’t have to be like, “I’m great.” Then be like, “I’m dying inside.” You can still find ways to be honest.

Anne: Saying something like, “Things are really, really hard for me right now.” And if they say, “Oh, what’s wrong?”

Be like, ” I can tell you want to help and you care about me by asking me, but talking about it’s not going to help. You know what would help? If you fix my sprinklers. Or, bring me a pizza.

Kate: That one would be great.

Anne: We’re just exploring this together and that’s what the podcast is for.

If your husband has betrayed you, figuring out how to rebuild trust in a relationship can feel overwhelming. You may even feel pressure, from others or from yourself, to help him rebuild that trust by explaining what you need to feel safe again. However, that can actually put you at risk.

After all, you can’t rebuild trust for him. Trust only grows when he consistently chooses to be trustworthy.

That’s why, if your husband has broken your trust and you want to feel safe with him again, it helps to pause, take a step back, and think strategically. If you need support in the process, attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session to talk to others in similar situations.

The first and most crucial step is to understand that you shouldn’t trust someone who isn’t trustworthy. The person who broke the trust is the only one who can repair the damage by changing their actions and demonstrating their commitment to honesty over time.

It might seem helpful to tell your partner how to rebuild trust, exactly what they need to do to earn your trust back. But giving instructions like, “text me when you’re late” or “share your location” can create a dangerous illusion of progress when he complies.

He may follow your directions just enough to keep the peace without really changing. Creating a false sense of security and leaving you vulnerable to hurt again.

To find out if he’s using any one of the 19 different types of emotional abuse, take my free emotional abuse test.

The safest and most effective way to see if your husband becoming trustworthy again is to observe his words and actions over time. Here are some things to look for:

Keep reading to learn more about how to move forward with clarity, even when you’re not getting answers.

If you’re feeling confused about whether or not your husband is trustworthy, we’re always online to support you. Here’s our daily support group schedule.

Obviously, rebuilding trust after he’s broken it is so hard, and there’s another part of this that’s just as hard. For women of faith, if you’ve been praying and praying for God to help change your husband’s heart, and it’s not happening. That can be so painful, especially when He doesn’t seem to answering prayer for your husband. So if you’re interested in hearing more about this from a faith perspective, here’s my interview with Kirby Kelly.

Anne: Welcome, I have a wonderful guest on today, Kirby Kelly. Kirby is an author and speaker whose book The Fabric of Hope invites listeners into honest reflection on hope and loss without shying away from the depth of human pain.

Her perspective on healing is rooted on both empathy and thoughtful reflection, acknowledging the weight of betrayal, while encouraging steady hope and inner resilience. Kirby, I love that the focus of your book is on when things don’t go quite right. Our audience is interfaith and inner paradigm, so for those of you listening, we’re having a discussion of faith today and the betrayal that a lot of women feel when they’re doing everything right.

They’re reading their scriptures, talking to God, and it’s not going the way they hoped. They’re wondering how to rebuild trust in a relationship with their husband and maybe, even God. So let’s start with what inspired you to write this book?

Kirby: For anyone who doesn’t know who I am, hi, my name is Kirby Kelly. I’m an author, speaker, also a podcaster. We had you on my podcast so people can come over and enjoy and listen to our episode.

I wrote The Fabric of Hope because I have definitely walked through different experiences in my own life of suffering, that I did not ask for. That I did not pray for. It felt like life didn’t just hand me a lemon, but chucked a couple lemons at my face. And being Christian and believing what scripture says about God being good. That was something that I had to reconcile, was the fact that this good, loving, kind, and just God would allow us to go through things that are hard.

Kirby: As I thought about what the pattern was in my life. There were moments where there was a lot of bad. A lot of things going on in my life were difficult, but I was able to see God work miraculously, give me hope, weave redemption into those places. And although there are some seasons and situations I wish I didn’t have to go through.

I’m now able to look back with perspective and see how God used all of those things for good and how he is my hope, not my outcome. When I place my hope in Jesus, there’s real redemption that I otherwise might discard and think would never be used for good.

And knowing that a lot of people go through hard things or have gone through hard things, and are also trying to reconcile that, well, is God good? In answering these hard questions, I wanted people to wrestle honestly and wisely with the whys they ask, but also arrive at the same conclusion as me, of knowing, hey, God is a redeemer of all things, and we can live a life full of hope.

Anne: Yeah, oh, I’m so glad you brought that up. So for me, my experience with betrayal brought me closer to God. In interviewing all the women that I’ve interviewed, for some women, it takes them farther away. So our stance here at BTR is that whatever works for you works for us. If church or religion or even God feels unsafe to you and learning how to rebuild trust is not even on your radar, you’re welcome here.

Anne: So if you’re somebody who’s like, you know what, I just can’t. I just wanted to let you know that’s what this will be about. So you’re not like, I don’t want this. ‘Cause so many women, they’ve been so spiritually abused.

So they’ve gone in for help maybe with their betrayal or trauma from what is, essentially hidden abuse. And their clergy has told them that they have to submit more or they have to forgive when they’re really genuinely emotionally unsafe. So for women who have grappled with that and are grappling with betrayal, and wondering, is God there?

And they want God to be there, but they can’t feel him. I’ll just say one more thing from my own personal experience. After my husband’s arrest, I could not feel God at all. Not even a little bit. I prayed, couldn’t feel his comfort, couldn’t feel anything. I was just in intense distress for about nine months, wondering how to rebuild trust in God.

And I would go in my closet sometimes. I would wrap a blanket around me. No matter how hard I prayed, no matter how much I studied the scriptures, I could not feel him. I knew that I would at some point, and so I continued to do it. And I remember this one night, it, I woke up in the middle of the night and for literally like maybe two seconds, I felt comfort for the first time in nine months.

And it was like, okay, he’s there. I think I sat up and I was like. Was that real? Is that just me? And I felt it again and I thought, okay, everything’s gonna be okay. God knows who I am. And then I didn’t feel it again for months.

Anne: So it was really, really hard. Just knowing that, and that women are going through this, and that some women really want to hold onto their faith even when they can’t even feel God. Can you share some things that might bring them comfort?

Kirby: As you were talking, I thought of the story of Joseph. Because that’s a story of betrayal. He was betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused. imprisoned, and forgotten about. This was his life over the span of decades. Yet, God ended up using it all to save the nations from a famine, These broken pieces of his life that he probably questioned if it could ever be used for anything good, ended up being the very stepping stones that led him to great purpose.

In Genesis 50:20, he even says to the face of the people who betrayed him, and I’m not saying that you have to come face to face and completely reconcile with the people who betrayed you, but in Joseph’s story, he was able to look at the people who put him through what he went through and say, “Hey, what you all intended for evil. God ended up using it all for good.”

Joseph’s pain was real. The betrayal that he went through was real. But it wasn’t final. That wasn’t the end of his story. God was able to redeem that situation.

Kirby: And sometimes we don’t understand the things that we go through or what God has allowed us to go through, until later. And if you’re not getting that clarity at this moment, if you’re not feeling comfort, there are four things that I write about in my book that we can hedge our hope on, and sometimes they might overlap in certain seasons. Other times it might just be one pillar that we stand on. We can hope in the promises of God, we really can. And learn how to rebuild trust in Him.

Another thing that we can hope in is his patterns, and that’s why I bring up the story of Joseph. Because maybe you’re not seeing it happen right here, right now for you, your healing, your deliverance, whatever it is that you’re praying for. We can at least look at the patterns of God’s faithfulness, that he has this pattern of redemption. Maybe it’s not always on our timeline or how we expect, but we can have that hope and that confident expectation that God, you are a redeemer you can redeem this thing too.

Two other things that we can hope in is his presence, that he is with us even when we don’t feel it. That he is near to the brokenhearted and he saves those who are crushed in spirit. And then the last thing that we can hope in is his personhood.

And what I mean by that is his character. If God is who he says he is. Then that means he is kind. He is just, merciful, loving. I know that our circumstances can shout at us.

Kirby: Well, if you’re going through something bad, how can God be good? I know the Christianese answer that maybe you’re tired of hearing is that we live in a broken world, but we do. There are people who are operating out of their own selfishness, and they end up wounding other people.And it’s really sad and unfortunate when we’re the ones on the receiving end of that. God is not the author of evil. He’s the redeemer of it.

He can actually do a good work, because we see that time and time again in scripture. We also have to understand that these people were real people, and probably didn’t have the five-year plan either. They didn’t know what God was up to. I think that can bring us to a place of, okay, if they were able to get through this, that will give me strength and hope to trust in God in my own betrayal story.

Anne: Yeah, and not knowing what that resolution would be. There are so many women who have come to share their story on my podcast, and have talked about this. Many of them have ended up divorced. Many of them are in the middle of it. They don’t really know what their financial situation will be and they’re wondering, “what if I can never trust my husband again?”

They don’t know how it’s going to work out, but they testify, I would say, of God’s love and that their relationship with God improved. I welcome everyone who has been betrayed to come share their story no matter what happened to them.

Anne: I was talking to my sister, who is not a believer, and we were discussing our different views on things. And she said, “Well, you’ve never doubted.”

And I thought, yeah, I have, ’cause I’ve been like, where are you, God? But actually, she’s right. I’ve never had a time where I thought, is God actually there? I know other people have, and I totally validate that, but I’ve always known He was there. And so when I couldn’t feel Him, rather than feeling abandoned, I was actually angrier.

Like, I know you’re there. Why are you not talking to me? My experience has always been not so much like thinking He wasn’t there, but more being mad at Him. Like, if you can do anything, what is going on? My experience has been when I’m just totally honest with Him and tell Him how mad I am, it works out really great because He loves our honesty and wants to be there for us while we learn how to rebuild trust.

Kirby: Oh, absolutely. I think we need to be honest with God about what we are feeling and experiencing, honest about our pain. I think about the biblical concept of lament. Lament is like this deep sorrowful, woeful cry. From the depths of our soul.

Like you said, I feel justified in my anger, in my disappointment. I feel justified in wondering why things are going the way they are. One third of the Psalms are lament. I think that’s really telling of the human experience, because I think a lot of people gravitate towards the Psalms when it comes to dealing with hard things, needing hope.

Kirby: In seasons where they feel like they’re wavering or just trying to navigate something that’s super difficult and unknown to them.There’s even a whole book called Lamentations.

Anne: I’m just now putting two and two together. That it’s literally called Lamentations.

Kirby: This is about weeping and mourning and being like, God, what is going on? In any form of lament I’ve noticed, at least as I’ve studied the laments, because for me, three years ago, this wasn’t necessarily betrayal, but loss. My mom died. And I remember going through the laments and just being like, this is all that I feel like my heart can relate to right now is the God, why? Why are my enemies after me? And why are they pursuing me? Why is everything overcoming me?

In the laments, there’s this honest pouring out of this is everything I’m carrying and feeling and thinking. But what’s beautiful about lament and also beautiful about praise, both end in hope. Praise ends in hope. A lot of the laments, they end on this high note of hope. Of declaring and remembering, okay, but you are good, this is what you have promised, this is what you have done in my life.

This is your record of faithfulness. I’m going to cling onto this because I know that if you were able to bring resolution to those things, then where I’m at right now isn’t the end of the story. So to the person who’s like actually wrestling and maybe grew up in a church environment where you had to fake fine.

Kirby: Or you grew up in a community where they didn’t want you to bring honest questions or honest doubts before the Lord and wrestle with those things. We need to wrestle with those things and bring them to the Lord, because he’s not looking for performative Christianity. Especially when it comes to navigating the really hard human things that we go through. We don’t have to edit our emotions before we go to him.

In Psalm 62:8, we are told to pour out our hearts before him. He already knows you’re feeling it and he might be thinking, well, if he already knows I’m feeling it, do it for you. When you begin that open conversation with Him, we can get to a place where we can begin to take the steps of trusting God with the situation and to see his hand at work behind the scenes.

Anne: I think so many women who are experiencing their husband’s betrayal have prayed so much that many are sick of it. They’re like, this isn’t working. I pray for the same thing every day.  They’re not sure how to rebuild trust with someone who isn’t really changing. Also, they’ve been lied to about prayer. I’m gonna say true things that are also lies in this particular situation. So the true thing is God can work miracles. The true thing is God can change people’s hearts.

The true thing is, God can heal people. The lie is that it will happen. And when I say that it’s not that God isn’t capable, it’s that somebody might not want their heart to be changed.

Anne: So then if they hear, “Pray and God will heal you,” which was true. It sounds a lot like pray and God will heal your marriage. So, you have to stay married to this abusive man. but that’s not really what God wants. The Bible isn’t to oppress us and to force us to do things that are really not good for us. It’s for us to find God’s love and to learn how to rebuild trust.

Kirby: Yeah, it really matters contextually these promises that we’re reading about where a person prayed a specific prayer, they prayed for something and they got a certain result.

And it’s easy for us to be like, okay, if I pray that exact prayer, if I do this exact thing, then it’s going to happen exactly like it happened for these people. Or it’s going to turn out the way that I’ve always heard it taught to me. And this is why context matters. Because I think that sometimes we can read scripture and just read one verse and end up with a misinterpretation.

When I think about prayer, we’re told to ask and seek and knock at the door, and it’ll be given to you. But we’re also seeing in scripture, not my will, your will be done. So there is this dichotomy of God can do it. But will He do it?

Will He do it in the way that we expect? Will He do it on our timeline? And will He do it the way that he did it for the person sitting next to you in your small group? Or the person that you just read about in scripture?

Kirby: And that’s the providence of God, he can do anything that is within his limits of being God. But at the same time, he created man with free will.

Anne: They can be in open rebellion. God could be trying to help them and they are literally like, no God , I’m not doing it.

Kirby: And the whole point of that is because He created us to be in relationship, to give us autonomy, to give us choice, to actually choose how to rebuild trust in our relationships. Because love is a choice, to be in relationship, to give your heart to somebody else. God’s not going to overstep boundaries. He respects boundaries. And I’m thankful God is kind and gentle in that way. But at the same time, God can move in our lives. He’s moved in mine. I’m sure He’s moved in yours and can move in the lives of other people that we are praying for.

But like you said, because he has given us that autonomy, we all have that choice. And as much as that can be so frustrating for us who are praying for the breakthrough, the miracle, or the relationship to be restored. It can be warped in a way to think, well God, you’re not good for not doing this. If he’s not changing the heart of the other person, I think a prayer that we can begin to pray is, “God, what do you wanna change within my heart? What do you wanna change within my prayers?

What is something different or new that you want to do, that you want to reveal to me to start praying for?”

Kirby: I mean, keep praying for it if you want to, if you feel that conviction to, but maybe there’s a new perspective or a shift, maybe it looks different, so maybe that’s something to start preparing your heart for, but that doesn’t make it bad, it’s probably going to be greater than the thing that we’re putting expectation in. We can put expectation in God to answer, move, work, redeem, but we also need to release expectation of what that might look like, especially when other people who have their own will are involved.

Anne: I’m smiling because the way you describe it sounds extremely nice. For me, it’s more like, “God, I’m so mad at you.”

Kirby: Yeah.

Anne: You are driving me crazy. I know you can do this, and you are not doing it.

Kirby: Oh, trust me. I feel that.

Anne: And in that moment I’m so frustrated.

Kirby: That’s real. I’ve been there too, but God is so kind that even when I’m showing up with any attitude, any anger, or any emotion, whatever it is, he’s not trying to get me to the next thing, even though I’m like, get me to the next thing. He’s like, we just need to walk right now. And there’s a lot of grace in the slow down pace of trying to heal us that often we don’t realize. Until oh yeah, You were doing something deeper in this whole situation that I ever could have thought. And He’s not an I told you so kind of God.

Anne: No.

Kirby: I’m glad you see it now kind of God. And I’m thankful for that.

Anne: Yeah, and I’m like, wow, He really loves me, like literally loves me so much because I am like 98% lamentation and maybe 0.001% praise. And I don’t know what the other part is. Maybe like mild, thank you, gratitude, maybe that’s what it is. But I’m so much more lamentation than praise. So I’m happy to hear that at least that’s getting me somewhere.

Kirby: Well, hey, you relate to a lot of the people in scripture.

Anne: I was reading about Mother Teresa the other day. There’s a book, I haven’t read it yet, but I just read the book cover. So I don’t know what I’m talking about. But it was by a nun who worked with Mother Teresa for most of her life, and she said that Mother Teresa felt abandoned and angry with God most of her life.

And she personally knew her. Not angry in a, I’m not gonna do your work kind of way, but just like, why is this happening? And I thought, oh, I need to read this book, because Mother Teresa and I, I’m not saying I’m as good as she was or anything like that, but I was like, we have some stuff in common.

I relate to this and think this idea, and I’ll call it more spiritual abuse, that “righteous women,” maybe talk a certain way or look a certain way, or they wouldn’t be angry with God or they wouldn’t wrestle with some things. I think it is a disservice to women, because they don’t realize all the different options they have to interact with, because I’m Christian too, our Savior, or with God.

Anne: I think opening it up to realize that the maybe there’s more to our relationship with Him than the spiritually abused way of seeing Him, that people use so that you aren’t getting out of your lane. So that they could keep you in the spot they wanted to keep you in. I’m not talking about all religious leaders or anything. But, abusive men do this quite often. There are so many options than you knew to have a relationship with God, I think is really important for women who want it. They want to know how to rebuild trust.

Kirby: I wanna add that for women who have gone through spiritual abuse, specifically by their husbands or ex-husbands, maybe that was even affirmed in leadership in the church. And you have this anger towards this patriarchal God. The more and more I’ve studied it, God loves his daughters, He fights for his daughters, He sees his daughters, He interacts with his daughters, he invites his daughters.

And so if you can get to know God as a father, a perfect father. Not your father, not the man you married and how he treated your kids, not the father of your church.

Anne: Yeah, thank you. I couldn’t agree more. There’s so many instances in the New Testament of Christ treating women in ways that were absolutely…

Kirby: Ludicrous to society.

Anne: Yeah, and so he was a disruptor. He was definitely not the poster child for institutional obedience. That’s for sure. I love that about Him.

Kirby: You wanna know who God is? Look at Jesus. He is the word of God, the heart of God, like the Son of God walking around.

Anne: Yeah, I love that. You are amazing. Thank you so much.

If you’re typing “Celebrate Recovery near me” into Google because you’re desperate for help after discovering that your husband has been lying to you about his infidelity or his use of inappropriate material, you’re not alone.

A recovery environment only works if your husband is completely honest about his behavior. Even in cases where he’s willing to attend a program, some women discover their husband takes “chips,” confesses slips, or shares breakthroughs in group without ever telling her. Not because he’s changing, but because he’s using the system to make it look like he’s changing.

When women search “Celebrate Recovery near me,” they often think the program will help heal their marriage by helping their husbands understand the root causes of their addiction and behaviors, especially if he seems willing to go meetings. But the root issue isn’t addiction, it’s entitlement, control, and dishonesty. Most recovery programs aren’t designed to assess or confront coercive control.

So instead of getting safer, some women end up feeling more confused.

Before you invest your hope in any program, you deserve to understand the full picture. To discover if your husband is emotionally abusive, take this free emotional abuse quiz.

Many women report that once their husband joined a recovery group like Celebrate Recovery near me, he just learned to speak the language of recovery without actually changing. Instead of becoming more honest, some men become more skilled at hiding, using the right words, sharing at the right times, and appearing accountable…while the underlying patterns stay the same.

This isn’t necessarily the program’s fault. Recovery culture tends to take disclosures at face value. But for some men, it becomes a stage rather than a mirror.

The applause of a group like Celebrate Recovery near me can unintentionally reward performance. Your lived experience matters more than his report. If his recovery looks great publicly, but privately you feel scared, confused, dismissed, or blamed, that’s a sign to step back and observe what’s happening. You don’t have to announce this to anyone

A program like Celebrate Recovery near me often uses a model that focuses on his trauma from childhood or his triggers. They may encourage couples to build routines that reduce his stress or triggers, sometimes placing more responsibility on her to monitor or support his progress. These might be good tools for people who genuinely want to heal. But they don’t address lying, manipulation and entitlement.

A woman in an emotionally abusive marriage needs support that centers her emotional safety, not his recovery timeline.

Many women assume feeling worse is a sign that they’re a part of “the problem,” or they need to be “more supportive.” When his patterns of behavior become a shared problem…something you’re both expected to manage…it often creates more emotional chaos for her.

Her emotional safety needs to be addressed separately, not tied to how well he’s doing or how much effort he appears to be making. Feeling confused, blamed, responsible for his recovery, or pressured to forgive and move forward…is a sign something else is happening.

If you’re searching “Celebrate Recovery near me” to save your marriage, here’s the most important thing: his recovery is not the foundation of your emotional safety. Your clarity is.

It’s important to have your own support community in place that is educated in the dynamics of emotional and psychological abuse and can help you decide what you need for emotional safety.

If you need support in addressing what’s really happening, and whether a recovery program can help, you can start with my Clarity After Betrayal or BTR Group Sessions. They’re designed to give you immediate clarity.

Anne: I’ve talked to hundreds of women who have typed things like “Celebrate Recovery near me”, or “addiction recovery program” into Google. Especially when their husband said he was an addict and he is willing to go to a program. So if he’s willing and goes to this program, it’s totally normal for a woman to think that things are gonna get better. But over the years, I’ve interviewed countless women who tell me things actually got worse.

And I’m interviewing one of those women today. We’re gonna call her. Nancy. Here’s part of her story.

Nancy: His coworker called me. She told me she was out with some friends. And he flirted with her and tried to pick her up. We were Going to Celebrate Recovery. He supposedly had been sober for months.

Anne: We’re gonna get to her whole story, but before we do, I wanna stress that it’s important to understand that a manipulative man can use anything, a recovery program, therapy, even meeting with clergy to manipulate a woman further, and that causes a lot more harm and trauma. So before you start searching for a recovery program for your husband, it is important to consider what his recovery would be for and how abusers manipulate their victims. Most of the time, the therapist will say something like childhood wounds or addiction recovery.

When really what you’re actually experiencing is emotional and psychological abuse. And I’ve even interviewed women who have tried to find an abuse program for their husband, and they still tell me the same things. So as you listen to Nancy’s story, I think it will help put into perspective what’s really going on and what steps you wanna take next.

Anne: That’s why I created the Living Free Workshop. It helps women know what’s going on, if he’s really abusive or not. Some women find out he’s not. And then what steps to take to create emotional safety in your life. It’s much faster to figure that out first, before spending tons of time and money in therapy or a recovery or Celebrate Recovery near me program.

Living Free total run time is about two hours and 50 minutes, which is much shorter than three or four years to find out it’s not working.

So Nancy, thank you so much for sharing your story today. Welcome, can you tell us how you met?

Nancy: When I met him, he went to church. He served on the worship team, and he could talk like a preacher. So I thought he was a good guy. It was confusing, because we were play wrestling, and I wouldn’t have remembered this except I had written in a journal and I read it after everything fell apart. He held me down and said some things like, did you think you were stronger than me? Did you think I would let you go? It really scared me.

I was very close to breaking up with him, but he actually cried and apologized. So I thought, he’s sorry. It’s not gonna happen again, and that sort of thing never happened again. He realized he had to be more subtle. He did tell me about his past sexual history.

Nancy: He was in the Navy and with several prostitutes. And he was honest, it felt like to me at the time. That he struggled with porn. I thought after we married, that wouldn’t be an issue. And honestly, I don’t know that anyone would’ve told me anything different.

I wanted to serve in medical missions. He didn’t seem interested in this, so I prayed and left the relationship in God’s hands. I told him about how I prayed. And the next time we got together, he said, “He had been thinking and praying, and he really felt God moving his heart to missions. That everyone always thought he should be a missionary. It really blew me away, because I thought God had answered my prayer really fast. He knew that he was not only lying to me, he was also lying about God, and he chose it. Which makes him a really evil person.

In pre-marital counseling, I was clear that I didn’t see myself as a housewife. I wanted things to be equal, and I didn’t plan to stop working. He acted like he was on the same page and that he was fine with this. So we married. Things were not good. In less than a year, he turned me down for sexual intimacy. Which was surprising and incredibly hurtful. Especially when I realized he was looking at porn.

We went to see the movie Fireproof, and afterwards he admitted he was taking off his ring to flirt with people. I was trying to be very understanding, but I did feel hurt, and he got angry at me. He said this was the thanks he gets for staying away from porn for a couple weeks, which is not funny, but I’m laughing at the audacity.

Nancy: I think I blocked a lot of it out, because somehow things were good enough back and forth between nice, the Christian thing, and when he would be not so nice. I didn’t recognize abuse. The only thing I could put my finger on was the sexual things.

We never could solve how things were to be run. And now that we had children, he could step away and I would be forced to do more house duties, cooking, cleaning, et cetera. Because someone had to do all the things for the children. I would tell him what we had agreed before marriage, and he said, “Yeah, but I thought you would change after we had kids.”

Anne: I said the same thing. I said, I’m not gonna cook. And he was like, no problem. Then later told me, I thought you would change. And I’m like, I was so clear.

Nancy: Exactly, we’re both honest and open. It’s like, that doesn’t mean I have to change, just ’cause you thought I would change. Well, it did because we had children now that needed to be taken care of.

Anne: Right.

Nancy: The same thing I said, I didn’t wanna stop working.” And he would constantly try to get me to stop working. I was only working part-time. He wanted me to not have an escape route. We separated, but I was so exhausted and overwhelmed with a baby, 2-year-old, and a 5-year-old. We got back together pretty quickly.

Nancy: A year later, we separated again and went to couples counseling, ’cause I still had not seen how that was harmful. I was really hopeful, which seems funny after just like a week or two of separation. But his coworker called me and told me she had been out with some friends, and he was flirting with her and trying to pick her up.

I thought this would be his rock bottom, because he’s almost lost his family. Anyway, we got back together and things were up and down. I was dealing with a lot of anger and depression, social anxiety. At the time, I thought I needed counseling to deal with my issues. We were going to Celebrate Recovery near me. His stated problems in Celebrate Recovery were sex addiction and anger. It’s so crazy knowing that, how could everybody there not believe anything I was saying?

He supposedly had been sober for months because of all the addiction model stuff. We agreed that he would tell me if he ever had a slip within a certain amount of time. So at Celebrate Recovery, he went forward for a one-day chip, and that really shocked me because he wasn’t ever gonna tell me. When we agreed that he would.

After that we had sex that was definitely, obviously coercive. I don’t think I had the words at the time, but I definitely felt that way because we had an agreement and he didn’t follow it. That was the last time we ever were together.

Nancy: I took a step back, and I was observing him because I felt like we were at the best place, and I’m actually an okay person. That means there’s nothing I’ve done wrong, literally. And there’s nothing I can do to change this. It just became increasingly clear to me.

So I started looking for more information and came across BTR, but I didn’t listen to the episodes because I saw the word abuse. And thought that doesn’t apply to me. And I found a couple other podcasts. They didn’t fully explain everything, and then a really bad incident happened when I turned 30, a big birthday.

Anne: They always do it on birthdays and holidays.

Nancy: I know, I had always thrown him birthday parties. He’s an extrovert and that was something that he enjoyed and I didn’t mind, he didn’t throw me anything because I’m more of an introvert. So when I was going to turn 30, I told him that I’d like a birthday party and would like him to throw it for me. I said if he didn’t want to, let me know. ‘Cause it was important enough to me that I would throw it for myself. He said he would throw me the birthday party.

But when I wasn’t seeing any preparations, I checked in with him. And the motions he made came across like he was planning a surprise birthday party.

Anne: Like, let’s not talk about it. Or you might ruin your surprise.

Nancy: Exactly, I had said, “I will throw it for myself.” I repeated that again, that time. He knew.

Nancy: So my birthday comes up. I expect a surprise party around any corner. I come to the end of the day and nothing happened, nothing. And his excuse was forgetfulness.

Anne: I never gave you the impression I was gonna throw you a party.

Nancy: Yeah, It was always that gaslighting and blame shifting. I feel like I dissociated a little bit around that time. ‘Cause it was really hurtful, because I would have thrown it for myself.

Anne: And he knew that and he gave you the impression that he was throwing you a party on purpose to ensure that you didn’t have a party.

Nancy: Exactly, I actually believed him that it was on accident, but that was just as hurtful. Now, I believe it was fully on purpose. At the time I was going to COSA and he was going to an SAA group.

Anne: When she says COSA or SAA, she’s talking about 12-Step recovery for pornography addicts or sexual addicts. There are other programs like Celebrate Recovery near me. And the COSA is a co sex addict’s 12-Step for a wife of an addict, where she basically does the same program he does and tries to fix her character defects.

Nancy: Yeah, I’d been talking about giving him another chance to throw me a party, and they said if he already didn’t do it, you should not do that. So I ended up throwing myself a party. After that 30th birthday, I would get down around my birthday every year. I ended up telling him that, not in a way to blame him, because like I said, I didn’t think he had done it on purpose. I just thought I should let him know I wasn’t myself.

Nancy: And it was the first time I recognized what he was doing in the moment, he started to say. “That had not happened. That didn’t sound like something he would’ve done, that my memory must be a little off.” So many different ways he was trying to convince me that it hadn’t happened, and he couldn’t convince me because I knew it had happened. So he switched tactics and said that maybe he should get counseling for being abused.

Anne: He’s claiming that you’re abusing him.

Nancy: Exactly, I was so confused. I asked him, “Abuse, what are you talking about? Am I being abusive right now?”

And he goes, “No, the abuse I’ve had to endure for the last how many years.” And then I realized oh, that was gaslighting. That’s blame shifting, and I ended up leaving the room and cried on my own.

It shook me up that he could take something very vulnerable and turn it on me like that. I was talking about that incident and how he was saying I was abusive and I heard myself saying, “It was surprising he would call me abusive when he’s been so much worse.” And that was the first time I thought maybe he is abusive, and that reminded me about BTR. I thought, let me listen to that, ’cause maybe I can get some insight. That brought me back to listening to the BTR podcast.

And I vividly remember I was binging all these episodes, hearing women’s stories. It felt like my life. And it just blew my mind to realize I’ve been abused this whole time.

Anne: I’m so sorry. You were experiencing Betrayal Trauma and were not aware that recovery or Celebrate Recovery near me programs wouldn’t help you.

Nancy: It made sense. It felt like everything clicked into place. Everything else I was told didn’t make sense. I always talked about stuff. I was always looking for answers. And I never felt like I was codependent or that I needed codependents anonymous. None of that stuff seemed to fit. In fact, the advice I was given, “Don’t pay attention to what he’s doing. Only work on yourself.” While they’re also saying, “Don’t be codependent, ignore what he’s doing,” which just doesn’t work.

The addict model, like he’s struggling, he’s trying, he’s not in control. I mean, that’s like step one. You’re powerless to control your behavior. He accepted the addiction model early on, and we were in and out of groups the whole time. But I don’t believe now that he’s an addict, and I don’t think he even thinks he’s an addict. It’s a great excuse to keep doing what you’re doing. Because there’s no accountability, and everyone applauds your efforts. Even if you’re not reaching the goal, you actually have a choice.

He would say to me that he could not promise that he would never do any of the sexual stuff again. So it was like basically just saying, I’m gonna be doing this my whole life.

Anne: My ex wouldn’t promise either. He said if I promised, “I wouldn’t be on my toes. Like I don’t want to think I couldn’t do that, because then maybe I would be in danger of doing it.” Which doesn’t even make sense. Like I can legit say, I will never have an affair.

Nancy: Right, yeah. I found BTR. And the abuse model is they have a choice, and they’re choosing to be harmful and abusive. All these years he had been a liar. I stepped back and observed behavior for me to fully wrap my head around it.

I believe he feels entitled to do what he wants. He doesn’t see people as people. Or maybe it’s just women as women. Objectification is a huge thing. I don’t think he ever saw me as an equal partner or a person. And I don’t believe he ever loved me. I was a desirable object he acquired, and that was it.

When I started listening to BTR, it helped me understand abuse and the subtleties of it. Because before, I had only been thinking physical abuse or yelling insults, which my ex did not do. Listening to the stories helped me see how this plays out in marriage, even in a Christian marriage.

It was helpful to see the ways men could twist faith things, because many of these men and my ex are very manipulative. Like it has to slowly play out over time to see what they’re doing. And a lot of it goes back to intent, and it’s hard to see intent. It was hard for me to imagine my husband is lying to me.

So that was a shift too, to start looking at actions instead of words. BTR gave me a lot of insight into what I was living through and what was helpful, especially getting into the BTR groups. Celebrate Recovery near me didn’t do that.

It helps build you up so that you can go through the hard stuff. We were going to counseling around the time I started going to BTR group.

Nancy: Because of BTR, I had the words for it. I was able to express better what was happening. The counselor didn’t help my situation, of course. Individual counseling and couple counseling are unhelpful, because an abuser’s goal, my ex’s goal, was not to get better. His goal is to get whatever he wants. He’ll say whatever he needs to say to get what he needs from the counselor. We’ve gone to quite a few couple counselors. We would go into a new counselor, and he would bring up a new issue. He had never told me about me.

Anne: Suddenly you’re a kleptomaniac or something.

Nancy: Yeah, things that he thought I did that were hurtful to him, that I had never heard of before. But I felt so bad that I was hurting him without knowing it. What a callous person I am.

Anne: Not knowing he was bearing false witness and that he literally made it up.

Nancy: Yeah, completely distracted from why we went to counseling in the first place is sexual issues. Like I would have to be a safe person so he could be honest with me. Because I’m an actual caring person, I would feel like this was an actual issue that I needed to fix. And that is the part about the psychological abuse that is hard to describe. Because a lot of it could sound valid, and I thought these things were valid. But later realizing they were lies. They were lies, because he would’ve said them before.

Anne: Exactly.

Nancy: We did an in-home separation, At first. His abuse escalated the freer that I was getting. I never completely stopped working. I got a job and started after the in-home separation. He actually shut off the internet. Luckily, I prepared ahead of time. I had my own phone plan with the hotspot, So I could just switch over and just didn’t even engage with him.

It has been a process of combing through my life, and I have wondered that how many lies I won’t even know about or remember. Because, I believed him and he was so good at lying. One of the new things he said was I wasn’t being vocal enough in bed. It felt so humiliating for him to say that to the new counselor. When he had never said that before.

This male counselor wanted us to do an exercise right then on the sofa in front of him. He wanted my ex to touch like my foot or my leg, and then slowly move closer to my private areas. And as he moved closer. I was supposed to make more and more noise.

Anne: No.

Nancy: Isn’t that crazy?

Anne: That’s so creepy.

Nancy: I did feel incredibly creeped out, and I refused to do it.

Anne: Good for you.

Nancy: I wish I had just walked out, But after we left, I said, “I will never go back to that counselor again.” And we never did. I said, “What I would need to continue in the marriage was for him to be seeing his own personal counselor, to have a full disclosure with a lie detector test.” Which he said no to. And I know now it wouldn’t have been helpful. Just like Celebrate Recovery near me wasn’t helpful.

Anne: I know, thank goodness.

Nancy: Right.

Anne: Mine never did that either. And I think I would’ve just been in the abuse for so much longer had he said yes.

Nancy: Right, and then the second thing I said is that, “I wanted equality in our marriage.” And he said no.

Anne: He said no, he didn’t want equality?

Nancy: Correct.

Anne: Wow.

Nancy: So I was like, then literally that’s the end of it. And I was going to BTR group. I remember one of the coaches said to me, “It was a blessing that he actually had been honest.” At the time, I didn’t understand, now I do. And I’m so glad I asked those questions. I don’t know why he was honest. There are two possibilities. He didn’t think I would leave, because I hadn’t yet. We’d been married for almost 14 years, and he was only saying what was already true.

Nancy: I just didn’t realize it was true. Or maybe he did want me to leave. I had some conversations with his mom. Because I found BTR, and surprisingly, she said it made her realize she was in an abusive relationship with my ex’s dad. However, she still felt like I should stay. Because she felt like the Lord had taught her so much and she had grown through all these trials.

I have sympathy for her, but it’s so wrong. All of a sudden it just became very clear to me that if I stayed for the kids, it was actually putting them more at risk. And honestly, that conversation solidified that I had to leave for the kids. If you’re not sure yet if your partner is abusive, Just listen to some BTR stories and see what jumps out at you.

You are a worthy human being that does not have to be perfect to be loved and treated with respect. Reconciliation is not necessary for forgiveness, and you don’t have to forgive anyone. It’s more of a process that can happen on its own time, and no one should force it. Pay much closer attention to someone’s actions over time than the words they say. And it’s never too late to make different choices when you learn or understand new information.

I feel like having to make a choice that is wildly unpopular with people around you. Church, that I had to learn in a new way. Maybe for the first time, to not let what people thought about me affect the decisions that I make that part has been really hard because a church we were going to was not supportive at first.

Nancy: Some of them seemed supportive, and even the ones I thought were supportive, in the end weren’t. I actually got a phone call from somebody in my Celebrate Recovery near me group. She called me up to ask me if I was seeing a counselor. Because I still seemed angry. I was speechless, of course I’m angry.

Anne: Yeah

Nancy: I didn’t even know how to respond to her. I just told her yes, I’m in BTR group and got off the phone. There’s nothing wrong with being angry about the situation. I feel like church tells women they shouldn’t be angry. But Jesus was angry. There’s nothing wrong with being angry.

Anne: Yeah, I feel like if you’re not angry, something’s wrong.

Nancy: Right.

Anne: I mean, nothing is wrong with you. You might be numb, you might be sad. I went through periods where I wasn’t super angry. I was just really depressed, but on the whole oppressed, abused, exploited people, their anger is from God to help liberate themselves from the oppression. But of course, the abuser does not want you to liberate yourself. He said flat out he didn’t want you to be equal. That is infuriating.

Nancy: And now he wanted 50/50 custody. It was very upsetting, because my ex had been very non-helpful around the house and with the kids. It was hard to think that he would want 50/50.

Anne: But of course he did.

Nancy: I didn’t see that coming, and I wish I had been more prepared and could have been more strategic.

Nancy: I could not wrap my mind around that at the time. I had seen more and more abuse as my eyes were open. So I couldn’t wrap my mind around 50/50 custody. I was under the delusion that justice was in the court system. I found out, even though I know he lies, it was a big shock to listen to him lying in the Courtroom. It’s hard to witness.

It’s something I wish I had processed before, because I’m sure that was pointed out to me. But I couldn’t process that as a reality back then. The Living Free Workshop was so helpful. And going to group and getting help constantly. The Living Free Workshop is so different than anything you’ve ever been taught.

I don’t know how I would’ve made it through this, honestly. That was another thing that was really helpful. There were some scripts in Living Free to get him on Our Family Wizard, and he actually got on it easily. I was surprised. I didn’t think he would get on as easily as he did, and just not responding in any other way.

Anne: That’s the thing, they’re desperate to talk to you. With the workshop, everybody says, how am I gonna make him go on OFW? And if you do the script and stick to it and do not deviate. Legit, don’t deviate. Once you’re on Our Family Wizard, literally block him on your phone, so he has no other way of contacting you. He is desperate to get your attention and your belief, like Living Free says, yeah, they’re so transactional. And if you respond through Our Family Wizard, he will find a way to do it.

Anne: They’re like, well, this is what I gotta do to talk to her, because I’m blocked otherwise. They will move. It might take a month. I’ve had it take the longest six weeks with one woman that I was working with. Every single time he texted, she said, “Hey, I’ve responded on Our Family Wizard.”

Nancy: Right. It felt overwhelming, because he kept sending me long, manipulative messages, but I responded on Our Family Wizard. It only took me once for him to switch. Being on OFW was better.

Oh, one of the books BTR recommends, The Woman They Could Not Silence. I read it and that was awesome. It helped open up my mind to spiritual abuse. It’s been inspiring to me this whole time. What she went through being separated from her children. That book has been really inspiring.

The thought of leaving them with him, terrifying to me. We went through two rounds of court. He would make it sound like I was controlling and not letting him do things. Like why wouldn’t I let him take the kids to half of the doctor’s appointments when he never came to a pregnancy appointment? And same with field trips. He’ll go on field trips now, and I feel like it’s just to keep me from going. It. He never wanted to before.

Anne: If he was actually a good dad, he would’ve been doing it before, but since he’s only doing it now, he is just performing.

Nancy: Yes, it’s a performance because he’s getting something out of it from other people, like in in celebrate recovery near me, and it’s punishment for me because he knows how much I like being there for the kids.

Nancy: When we married, he didn’t want us to do extracurricular activities. He didn’t even want free after school activities, much less anything you would have to pay for. He was only okay with youth group attached to his job, not the free after school activities.

But since we’ve been divorced, he has them interested in hockey, which is one of the most expensive and time consuming sports there is. It’s very strange from my entire experience with him. He never talked about hockey, and he never wanted them involved. At the same time, he is not wanting to pay half of necessary expenses, like medical or orchestra uniforms. For a long time, I was not asking for half of necessary expenses. Because I didn’t wanna have to deal with him because he makes it such a struggle.

Anne: My ex is exactly like that, exactly. When my book comes out, I’m anxious for you to read it, because it was all about control. Like, if I’m paying you anything or if I’m involved in any way, I have to control it.

Nancy: Yeah, like my youngest wanted to do karate. His dad would not participate even when I offered to pay the whole thing. Other son was invited to concert band, and his dad said no.

Anne: Think about the power trip that gives him that he’s able to manipulate them away from their natural interests. And maybe hockey is something that he wants to do. Like he thinks karate’s dumb, but he thinks hockey’s interesting.

Nancy: It is a huge expense that is very draining. When he won’t even pay half of an AP test.

Anne: And that might be part of it. He’s, let’s pick the most expensive thing to drain her bank account.

Nancy: Yeah, it was a double bind to drain my bank account and control my time. And at the same time, if I have to back out of it. He’ll say, sorry, kids, Mom won’t let us go to hockey.

Anne: He’s calculating ways to set you up to be the bad guy.

Nancy: Yes, he is an expert at setting up situations, so my bank account is being drained, and I cover a hundred percent of their insurance.

Anne: With a lot of these post-separation abuse situations. They get the benefits, but they don’t have any of the responsibilities, and they can use it against you, but it never works for you. They can bend the rules in order to benefit them, but you can’t bend the rules.

Nancy: In the Living Free Workshop. It was helpful to see how to deal with narcissistic abuse in marriage and how it plays out in separation, to find a way out of it. There was one thing you said, and this is when you’re moving away from his harm. You said, “If he escalates, remember that protecting yourself from the harm is not the cause of the harm. Just like evacuating a building was not the cause of the exploding gas lines.”

Nancy: That really hit me. One of the things that keeps haunting me is did I do the right thing? He still tries to get together personally with me. It constantly comes up that he wants to get together for coffee, or would I go to counseling with him, co-parenting counseling. I mostly ignore it at this point because he’s asked so many times. I don’t even answer him. Then if something goes wrong with the money situations or if there’s a point of disagreement, he will say, if you would’ve only met with me like I’ve asked, then this would’ve already been stopped.

Anne: Yeah, we could’ve worked it out somehow, no. He would still lie.

Nancy: It’s a trap. There’s that little 2% of me left that feels like, well, maybe I should meet with him, but no, it’s a trap.

Anne: Yeah, no.

Nancy: Because he never intends to do a nice thing. He just wants to get me in front of him again. I don’t think any good would come of it.

Anne: A hundred percent, no. It might seem good, ’cause once you get there, it might seem good. He might like to turn on the manipulative lies to make you feel like he cares. I think one of the most abusive things people can say is, I love you or that I care. So manipulating you in that way is actually dangerous, and that’s probably what would happen.

Nancy: I don’t think I could keep a straight face. It would skive me out so bad to be around him and hear stuff like that.

Anne: Well, it’s just further evidence of his controlling nature, because he desperately wants to hang on to control. And so he’s increasing his lies because it’s getting away from him. That’s definitely a sign that he’s been lying the whole time.

Nancy: I completely agree. I know that this is better for them in the long run, but in the short run, that sentence helps me right now. That was probably one of the hardest things for me to come to terms with, is that he never loved me. He doesn’t love the children. None of it’s real. It’s all lies, and he still does it. It’s mind-boggling. Everything he says is the opposite of what the truth is. He continues lying as he did in programs like Celebrate Recovery near me.

As we were moving through the separation process, the boys did not want to leave and crying and like holding onto the car seats. It was horrible. I knew if I said anything to him, he wouldn’t care. Any altercation would be scary for the kids. So I started getting third party exchange people through a new church.

I actually found a church with a woman pastor, which is quite lovely. The new church was helpful and supportive, and there were several people that would help me with exchanges. And things changed, like taking the Living Free Workshop, and suddenly I felt a lot stronger. I had a new understanding and confidence, so I stopped doing the third party exchanges.

He actually met with the principal to try to get the principal to agree with him that I’m not allowed to go into the school on his parenting weeks.

Nancy: Which isn’t true. You’re allowed to visit your kid in the school.

Anne: Absolutely.

Nancy: Unless there’s a restraining order, which there’s not. We have shared custody, but he made it sound like the principal agreed with him. I didn’t think it was the truth, but it scared me at the time. And we were about to have a party, and I signed up to bring food, so I worried I would be kicked out. But the principal didn’t say anything. Isn’t that a clear example of parental alienation?

Anne: It’s a clear way of him undermining your relationship with your kids, lying, controlling, and abusing you. This is how he’s literally abusing you and your children.

Nancy: Everybody heard about this incident, and it didn’t matter. He made it sound like he had just been concerned for the children’s wellbeing.

Anne: Yeah, no.

Nancy: My being around them upset them.

Anne: Lies. That’s the issue they lie in programs like Celebrate Recovery near me and fool the leaders.

Nancy: It’s lies at times it is possible that they might be upset, but it’s not because they’re scared of me. It’s more that they’re sad about the situation.

My one son, he told me, it makes him sad to see me when he knows he has to go back to his dad’s. My daughter had a phone before we separated, but he wouldn’t allow communication between the boys and me ever. Once, my son called me using his sister’s phone. He was crying. I was only on the phone for about two or three minutes, and then the phone cut off. And they told me when they came back that he had been mad at them for calling me.

Nancy: He wouldn’t allow them to have a watch phones either. That’s one of the reasons we went back to court.

Anne: That’s the problem with court. You think if we get it in writing, then he’ll do it, but it doesn’t matter. He is not gonna do it no matter what.

Nancy: This is what I have learned. I don’t ever wanna go back to court again, because it doesn’t help. No matter what you do, they’ll find a new way to cause harm. So there’s no point in any kind of new order. ‘Cause then they’ll find a new way around it.

Anne: Exactly.

Nancy: I’m still glad I went, because before I had been worried I had to do everything exactly perfectly or something would go wrong. And then I realized he’s doing wrong things on purpose. He just says stuff to get what he wants and nobody cares. So that has relieved a lot of fear.

Anne: What would you share with listeners about what you’ve learned so far about finding help, maybe from Celebrate Recovery near me or elsewhere?

Nancy: You know, hearing other people’s stories have meant so much to me, Living Free and the BTR coaches set me up for success. They told me to transfer half of our money to a separate bank account before I even told him that I might be leaving. That was incredibly helpful because I’m not sure if it would’ve been easy for me to get the money. I never used the word abuse or narcissism to him. That played out well, because he would’ve twisted it against me.

Anne: A hundred percent.

Nancy: Getting on the parenting app, super helpful, third parties for switches. Finding people to help with the things you need is just a lifesaver. I do feel like it will be better for the kids in the future, because they can be in a peaceful setting that’s not manipulative.

So when they’re making decisions. About how they want to live and their future partners, that they know what it feels like to be in a safe place and being able to have discussions with them about men’s and women’s roles.

Anne: Nancy, thank you so much for sharing your story today. And helping others who are searching, to find something truly helpful.

Nancy: Thank you.

I hear this over and over again: betrayal trauma in marriage doesn’t just come from discovering a husband’s lies. For many women, it deepens when they reach out for help, and aren’t believed, supported, or protected.

Most women respond to betrayal the way they’ve been taught to respond. They…

And instead of finding relief, they find silence. Or minimization. Or subtle pressure to endure. For so many women, the most painful betrayal isn’t only what happens at home, it’s what happens when they finally ask for help and realize there’s nowhere safe to land.

Before you spend one more day confused, you need a clear, simple framework for understanding what’s happening. That’s why I pulled together Clarity After Betrayal. It’s the starting place women told me they desperately needed before they wasted years trying to make sense of mixed messages, gaslighting, and chaos.

Nikki’s husband betrayed her for years: infidelity, lies, constant emotional attacks. He convinced her she was “too sensitive” and “too needy,” when the real issue was his pattern of betrayal.

If you’re thinking his behaviors might amount to emotional abuse here’s some examples of emotional abuse to check out.

Anne: Today we have a member of our community, we’re going to call her Nikki. She’s from Australia. Welcome Nikki. So, tell me your story. Did you recognize your husband’s abusive behaviors at first?

Nikki: Not at all. Goodness me, no. I was 15, just had my 16th birthday when I met my husband. I was in the UK. And we’ve been together ever since. I was six months pregnant with our first child. And he bought this little black bag home. And I hadn’t seen it before. We weren’t living together at the time. And he brought it back into my little flat, and being curious, opened it, and there was all this horrible material in there.

And said to him, this is not what I want as part of my life. I knew this wasn’t what I wanted, and he said, “Oh, I’ll get rid of it, I’ll get rid of it.” And there were other bits in this bag, which just baffled me. I was just horrified, and the next day I went into labor because I was just that traumatized, I guess.

So from that point, it kind of never stopped. I would continually find magazines under the couch. I mean, we tried getting help before we’d gone to several pastors who were basically just more about the codependent model. But I’d done nothing except to protect myself from betrayal trauma in marriage.

Anne: And try to protect your marriage, right? It creates betrayal trauma from infidelity, there are so many things a cheating husband says that harm.

Nikki: Yeah, and I didn’t want our children to spend time with me and then time with him, because he’d gone down the rabbit hole. I didn’t want there to be a point where he was left with them alone.

Anne: Where do you live in Australia?

Nikki: I live in Melbourne, Victoria, but I’m from Tasmania.

Anne: Okay, how do you feel like the support is there?

Nikki: None, I have struggled to find anybody in this field that can help. So no, I never recognized the abuse, not until I started educating myself. And then it was when I came across the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Facebook page that I knew that what he was doing was abuse, and I was experiencing betrayal trauma in my marriage.

Anne: Before you found BTR, when you were trying to get help, what types of things did you do to try and like, improve?

Nikki: Yep, I thought if I looked better, if I tried harder, if I loved him more, you know, I learned the love languages. I was always trying to improve myself, and even going to counseling to try and improve something. Yeah, I took it on board, but I think that’s much more to do with how I was raised to be a better wife. And then he wouldn’t do this thing.

Anne: There is so much you don’t know, there are so many powerful truths about emotional abuse. So you knew about the watching stuff online. Did you recognize the other types of abusive behaviors, like lying, manipulation, and gaslighting as betrayal trauma in marriage? Could you identify those back in the day? Or did you not realize all that was going on too?

Nikki: I knew there was lying and manipulation. Because that kind of goes hand in hand with sneaky behavior, doesn’t it? Yeah, it wasn’t until the internet came about and you could Google this kind of stuff that I became aware of it. It wasn’t until much later in our marriage.

Anne: So when did you realize that common marriage advice, look good, love, serve, forgive, make sure dinner’s on the table, make sure the house is clean, you know, that sort of thing? People say marriage is hard work, and unless it’s abusive it’s just not true. And when did you realize that common marriage advice was not working and that the betrayal trauma in your marriage was not improving?

Nikki: Probably about 20 years ago.

Anne: And how long have you been married?

Nikki: We’ve been married about 27 years.

Anne: Okay, so seven years in, you realize, wait a minute, this isn’t working. What helped you realize that?

Nikki: I think it was shortly after we’d had intercourse, and I walked in and found him looking at stuff. I actually thought he deliberately tried to hurt me.

Anne: And when you thought that, he deliberately attempts to hurt me, you also didn’t think abuse way back then.

Nikki: No, not at all. It’s only the abuse part has been, I think, the last six years that I’ve seen his actions as being abusive.

Anne: Why do you think it takes so long for victims of emotional and psychological abuse and this type of coercion (probably because no one knows: what is victim blaming) to understand the reality of their situation.

Nikki: Trauma, I think our brain sits in trauma because the person you most trust, the person you think will never hurt you, is doing it.

And I think it’s protection. I mean, I can’t speak for everyone, I can only speak for me. Because whatever your circumstance is, there’s a part of you that needs to protect your own mind and yourself from the betrayal trauma in marriage. Your brain or your body is just not ready to realize that this is what it is.

Anne: There’s also this education factor. You don’t have an abuse class in high school. Along with math and English, right? So many people think they understand abuse because they’ve seen a TV show where a guy beats up his wife, and they’re like, that’s what abuse is. And they don’t recognize all the different covert ways in a marriage that you can be abused and end up with betrayal trauma.

Nikki: I think it’s the gaslighting as well. Because it’s been so long in my marriage. It’s like, oh, no, I must have misunderstood what he said. Oh, no, he’s right. I’ve got that wrong. Oh, okay. I thought you meant this, but you actually meant this way. Oh, all right. So you’re second guessing yourself all the time.

Anne: What were you looking for online when you found Betrayal Trauma Recovery on Facebook?

Nikki: I hit a crisis point. The crisis point brought me to the fact that I was trying to seek some kind of support basically anywhere, because here in Australia it’s like, oh you’ll be right mate. So whoever you spoke to thought you were being prissy. It just wasn’t cutting it. I just felt so deeply ashamed and hurt that I needed some kind of support and wasn’t getting it in the real world. So when I came across the group, it changed the way I view my whole life.

Anne: So you started attending the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group sessions, can you tell us about your experience?

Nikki: Knowing that I’m not alone. Because I’ve always taught our children that knowledge is power. Once you have power, you can change the way you operate, change the way you do things. So for me, that’s been the greatest thing, being informed. And then being able to research that and having the facts behind it. Which has been a great thing.

Anne: Being educated about betrayal trauma in marriage brings so much confidence. It really helps you recover from betrayal. Because the gaslighting, you’re like, Is this me? Is this real? What’s going on? And if you don’t have words for it, you can never fully define it to someone else. And so, they’ll give you typical things, like, Well, you just must be stressed.

Or maybe, don’t worry, it’ll get better. Things like that. Because you’re not able to say what’s happening with betrayal trauma in marriage. So getting educated, you can actually talk about it. Having words to describe it immediately helps people understand what’s happening. It also helps victims understand what is going on. Because there’s so much confusion.

Nikki: Yeah, for me, what I’m experiencing now, because I’ve been in this for a long time. And there’s been a lot of game playing. on his behalf, and I’ve just realized my body is actually physically, it’s started coming out. I’ve developed really bad tinnitus, which is a physical representation of what’s going on in the outside world.

Nikki: And also, I find my brain is not working the same. As I’ve got older. And I think that’s because of the trauma that’s gone on throughout our whole marriage and childhood. My brain’s got to the point where it’s like, I don’t want to work anymore. I don’t want to hold this memory, or it just phases out or disassociates, which I know is part of the trauma. But it’s frustrating.

Anne: I can imagine. How old are you now?

Nikki: I’m 47. We have five children. They’re all adults now. Thank you, God, they survived. They’re pretty good people, but we’ve got four boys, one girl. And my children growing up, they’d ask him a question, and he wouldn’t respond. They’d always be, Oh, we’re going to go to the sensible parent. Meaning that we’re gonna go see mum.

Anne: He wouldn’t respond because he was distracted or he just couldn’t focus?

Nikki: I don’t know if he didn’t know the answer. So he didn’t want to look silly, so he’d muck about. Because I think his use of online material stunted his intellectual growth. He must have been about 14, I think. And I always developed critical thinking in our children. You know, I told them to think about the wheres, whys, and what fors of any situation.

And because he didn’t develop that skill, the children kind of overtook him in their thinking and emotional development. He just really frustrated them.

Anne: That makes sense. In terms of Betrayal Trauma Recovery, the education and support you’ve received helped you make different choices about how you interact with him.

Nikki: I no longer buy into his BS. Like, if I ask him a question and I know he’s done something, I know that whatever comes out of his mouth will be a lie. I state my case, I drop it, I walk away, and I allow him time to be truthful, and no longer check up on him, because I found that, oh my goodness me, it was driving me nuts. I felt like I was chasing my whole life, and I was trying to catch him out playing detective, and it just doesn’t work.

It just, for me anyway, and I understand there is some control, especially early on when you’re still buying into the gaslighting. But now I’m at a point where it’s like, you know what, you do you. I’ve gone out and I’m back in to work full time. I’m just living my life. to the best of my ability. And the group, like the conversations in the group, and the information in the group, helped me see that betrayal trauma in marriage doesn’t mean I stop living the best life I can.

And so yeah, I’m grateful for that, because it’s given me my life back, and enabled me to take my power back as a woman, if that makes sense.

Anne: It makes sense. So we talk about boundaries to help yourself heal from betrayal trauma in your marriage a lot at Betrayal Trauma Recovery and in the BTR group. Many people who don’t listen to the podcast, I would say, or misunderstand what we do, accuse me of being pro divorce or a man hater or something like that. Or that Betrayal Trauma Recovery is just a place where if you go there, you’re going to end up bitter and angry.

Anne: You are still married. Would you speak to that a little bit and talk about how do you see Betrayal Trauma Recovery? Like, I see us as a safety first organization, right? Your safety is the most important thing, and you can figure out what that looks like in your own life. But could you talk to that point?

Nikki: I’ve never seen you say get a divorce or be a man hater. You lay the facts out as they are. Whatever a woman does with that is their choice, their option after betrayal trauma in marriage. Yeah, what you promote though is, are you safe? Are you okay?

Anne: We have to walk this fine line, because when we talk about abuse, many people want to say, well, you should only encourage them to leave, like immediately.

Then there’s the addiction recovery people. They’re like, no, you should be nice and understanding. Don’t shame them, don’t make any decisions. And know they’re sick. And how can you help them? So we’re not on that side for sure, but I’m right in this section where I want to give people correct information and say, your safety is the most important thing.

And I am not living in your shoes. I’m not living in your home. I don’t know all your specific circumstances. So I trust every woman, every victim, to make. The best decisions about her particular situation. So I think that’s one thing that I’m wondering is, do you feel supported in your circumstances and where you are right now in the Betrayal Trauma Recovery group? Do you feel accepted for the decisions you’re making?

Nikki: Yeah, people will always speak from their own inner knowledge or feelings, I think. So whatever you put out on a group. Expect that response from that aspect. You take what you can and leave what you don’t need.

Like you said, you’re the only one who knows what’s happening within the relationship. So yeah, I feel supported because I take what I need from it, because I am the only one that knows what’s happening and why I stay within my marriage. We’ve got a lot of financial obligations together. You know, we still have grandchildren that would visit, Grandad, and I’d much prefer to be around.

So I know why I stay within my marriage. And I think it’s up to every individual person to make that decision.

Anne: People who haven’t been through it, or people who have, I mean, it’s just a lot more complex than I think anybody can even wrap their head around. It’s such a complex situation and it unfolds over time. So not everything can be decided in a split second.

Nikki: Everything feels split second when you’re in it though, doesn’t it?

Anne: It does. And it feels like you have to, it feels like you have to decide or know everything. There’s this overwhelming desire to resolve things as quickly as possible, whatever resolution means or whatever fixing it means, but it’s impossible to resolve or fix quickly, right? This is a very, very long-term complex problem.

Nikki: You know, we’ve found a therapist, we’ve thrown all the money we can at him.

Anne: So you’re still with a man who’s continuing to exhibit emotionally abusive behaviors.

Anne: How do you feel right now?

Nikki: Oh boy, okay, so we’ve just had an episode, so everything’s a little bit raw for me just now. Because he’s what I think of as a surface person. He wants everything to look great on the outside, that everything’s going well, and that he’s doing underhanded things, and he gets off knowing that he’s getting away with it. So when he becomes overly nice, I then become on guard, and I wait for the next influx of abuse, emotional abuse.

He doesn’t yell, he doesn’t do any of that, he just becomes very quiet. We had, we’ll say, six months of nice. And so I was waiting for it. So we just discovered, and so we’re just going through that now, and he hasn’t gone back to see his therapist. So he’s just waiting to go back to see her, but it’s difficult, because I don’t know what she’s saying to him, or whether he’s telling her partial truths.

Have I reached some kind of peace within myself? There is peace around our marriage and our life? No, there isn’t peace. I’m making do with what I’ve got because of circumstance. And that’s awful to say, because it feels like a half life.

Anne: Do you feel like you’re progressing toward something? Even though current circumstances are what they are? Do you hope for the future?

Nikki: I’ve got a lot of hope for my future, because I’ll make the best of my life no matter what. For our marriage and for us together, we will have to make a step either away, and I don’t think it’s going to be too long down the road. There will be a conversation with my grown children.

Nikki: They know about his addiction. I just don’t think they realize how far he’s gone within that addiction. Yep, I’ve got peace in me, but within our marriage, not sure. We’ve got a few big decisions ahead of us, which will affect many outcomes for myself, my daughter, and him.

Anne: Well, that is what is so awesome. If I can praise Betrayal Trauma Recovery about BTR, is that we get it. We get it. We get how complex it is, we get that it takes a long time, sometimes. You know what the right thing is or what the thing is you want to do, not necessarily the right thing, but it’s not the right time or other factors, right?

There are so many complexities. And having someone who understands and be supportive is helpful. Should we call it that with a long-term trial like this? What should we call it? A long-term problem.

What would you tell other women? Let’s say what you went through in your early 30s, so if someone’s listening. And that’s where they’re at. Let’s say they’ve just discovered pornography for the first time.

Nikki: Oh my goodness. I’m sorry this is your journey. Get help. Get immediate help. Find a good support network. Find somebody you trust. That you can tell absolutely anything to. And will not judge. And will just be there for you.

Find that one person. And walk beside them, and let them walk beside you. Because that’s the best thing you can do for you, to heal you. And know that it’s not your fault. Know that he made choices that have affected both of your lives. It’s just not your fault, though.

Nikki: And don’t try and fix him.

Anne: Oh, we’ve all done that.

Nikki: Yep, if we just do this, if I look a bit prettier if I wear this lingerie. If I do that risky behavior that he would like me to do, that’ll make him happy, and he won’t do it anymore.

Anne: When women go down that road, they end up doing it more. Or he wants it more, right? There’s no end to it.

Nikki: Oh, he wants a bit more freaky. The indulging of their immature behaviors, their man child silliness. And I think that’s something we don’t realize, isn’t it? Is it that they get themselves stuck emotionally at the age they start using? So what you’re actually doing is complying with a teenager, a child. And so, and what happens when a child doesn’t get what it wants?

It tantrums. And unfortunately, a man tantrum has a bigger impact, because they’re disposable, to play with like income or whatever it is, you know, that’s protecting the family.

Anne: Yeah, well, and also their tantrums are way more sophisticated, right? They might not scream, yell and punch the wall, although some of them do that. But their tantrum might look nice and kind when behind your back they’re spending $10,000 of their retirement.

Nikki: Yeah, or they’ve got a hidden phone, so they’re happy to show you the phone they’ve got. And all the while feeling proud of themselves that they’ve got a hidden phone, and that’s what gets them off.

Anne: Exactly.

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

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group is that amazing place where you can be yourself and understood. Is there anything else that you would like to share about the group or about BTR that you have found helpful?

Nikki: For me, in the early stages of betrayal trauma in marriage and now as sort of, I won’t say a veteran, but I’ve been there for a while. This is the place you go to when you need to feel heard, you need to feel safe, you need to reach out. You know, or you just need somebody to say, Hey, I’m here for you. Or you need to feel loved. Because this group, for me anyway, has provided that. Get in contact. You know, try and join the group, because it’s just, if you want to feel loved, this is where it’s at.

Anne: That’s good to hear. Betrayal Trauma Recovery is love. They can make choices due to that love and confidence to get them to safety. That’s the whole goal.

Nikki: To know you’re not alone and that the crazy making that happens, sometimes this group, has helped me unravel that craziness. This is going on, and in your head, because they’ve gaslighted you so much, you’re forever double guessing your own mind, to notice that you go in there and somebody says, yep, that’s normal. My husband does that.

It’s like, it’s what they do, it’s one of their little tactics, and you just come away thinking, Oh, okay. And you can take a big sigh of relief to think, Oh, I’m not that crazy after all.

Anne: Yeah, no, you are not. You are beautiful, amazing, competent woman. It’s a cool place to be, right? It’s a cool club to be in. With all these awesome women. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to share your story today, and we’ll see you in Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group.

Nikki: Thank you, Anne.

If your husband is constantly angry, you’ve probably tried everything to calm the tension. You stay kind, patient, careful, and endlessly understanding. But what if his irritation and outbursts still never make sense? When his anger erupts out of nowhere, it can function as a tactic to control you.

Sudden anger knocks you off balance and makes you doubt yourself. It quietly trains you to walk on eggshells. The more unpredictable he becomes, the more power his anger holds over your choices, your home, and your peace.

This pattern feels confusing for many women. He often cycles back to being sweet, apologetic, or even tender. That emotional whiplash erodes your instincts. You start wondering if you imagined the problem, if he is “just stressed,” or if you somehow caused the tension. If you are wondering about emotional abuse  take our free emotional abuse quiz.

Anne: Today’s guest, Faith, a member of our community, experienced her husband’s anger and she tried everything she could to help him. Here’s part of her story.

Faith: His yelling and everything just got to be so much and I thought why is my husband yelling at me? We went to two different Christian counselors. I remember very distinctly, this is not helping. It was like trying to dissect my childhood. And I don’t understand how this is on me when my husband is constantly angry.

Anne: If your husband’s anger makes no sense, listen up. Maybe something little sets him off, something that didn’t set him off yesterday or the day before. Or maybe it comes out of nowhere. Like he says, you have the wrong tone, or you used the wrong word. And no matter how calm or kind you are in your attempt to avoid pushing his buttons. He’s still irritated, snappy, or raging, blaming you for something.

Anne: A lot of women tell me they thought their husband’s anger was about work, stress, financial pressure, but underneath those “reasons”, there’s usually something deeper going on. If he’s constantly angry, his frustration isn’t about any of those things. It’s actually about control.

For example, he might use anger to shut down your questions when he hides secret spending or late night behavior he doesn’t wanna explain. He might use it to make you doubt yourself, so you stop suspecting something’s wrong. Or train you to stay quiet, careful, and small, because that keeps him in charge.

And just when you start to notice the pattern, he switches. He’s nice again, apologetic, sweet. The man you thought you married. So of course you’re gonna think things are getting better or it won’t happen again. But that’s part of how the lies work. When your husband is constantly angry, his anger controls you through fear, and his apology controls you through hope.

Faith lived through this pattern.. From the start of our marriage, his anger got worse. And every time she tried to help, the focus somehow shifted back to her, her childhood, her reactions, her supposed part of the problem. Like so many women, she kept asking, what am I doing wrong? She tried everything, counseling, caregiving, and prayer. While he twisted her every effort to keep her confused about what was going on.

Anne: Faith, welcome.

Faith: Thank you Anne, it’s good to be here.

Anne: So let’s start with your story.

Faith: I met my husband in the summer. He was a member of my faith community. And while we were dating, I ignored so many silent red flags in our relationship. I actually even know he had mentioned that he used porn at somebody else’s home, that was a Christian family. And it just all seemed so weird to me.

Anne: He’s part of your faith community, what did you think of him at that time?

Faith: He was very dynamic, very outgoing. I actually knew that I was lowering my standards as far as some of the things I was looking for by being with him. I knew he had sexual partners prior to me. And that was something important to me. I didn’t want to marry someone who was already sexually active. So I lowered that standard. But I don’t understand why my husband is constantly angry.

He drank, he smoked. All those things I wasn’t looking for. But I felt like God wanted me to be with him. Maybe if I influenced and impacted him and his life. Then he would also be a better person.

Anne: Let’s talk about the manipulation from the very beginning for a minute.

Anne: Thinking back, when you’re going through it, you don’t recognize this. So this is not something that you would’ve known then. You didn’t do anything wrong, and you were doing the best you could. So when I say this, I’m actually trying to look more at his behaviors than what you were doing. Was there something he did in the beginning to manipulate you to think that? The reason I’m asking is, ’cause in the beginning a lot of men will say things like, “You’re so incredible. You make me a better person. You’re such a good example.”

Faith: Well, he did make comments like, I was a good example in his life.

Anne: That’s just something that I wanna point out to women. Sometimes you think that it was like a failing on your part, but it’s manipulation on their part from the very beginning. And knowing that helps you heal. ‘Cause you’re like, wait a minute, I didn’t do anything wrong. Part of what we’re going through is trying to realize what actually happened.

Faith: We actually broke up twice while dating. We argued a lot, and there were several times that I just couldn’t do it anymore. And again, I felt ignored. There was a lot of anger in him. I always wanted to marry and start a family, I was very young when I met him. I was probably about 19 and I just felt like starting over. This sounds ridiculous, at 21, 22, would just set me back in my timeline. I still felt strongly that I was supposed to be with him. There were some weird, quirky things that we had in common that I took as signs that we should be together. I didn’t see the signs of a toxic relationship.

Anne: Did those end up being true later or was he mirroring?

Faith: I don’t think that they were enough reason to marry a person, looking back. We had the same first birthday cake, smash cake. We grew up for the first year of our lives on the same street, and didn’t even know it. It was just very weird.

Anne: Like it felt cosmic at the time.

Faith: But really silly now. It was a whirlwind. I guess I just got caught up in him. Everything became about him. I just thought my husband is constantly angry at me, and it was always something that I did.

And I remember one instance where we were at church together, but he was separate from me. He was standing towards the back and I just motioned for him. It was natural to me to just motion and like point to where he could sit next to me. And he became livid with just that simple action, acting like I was treating him like a dog, telling him where to sit.

There was an instance where he was very angry. He had an old car that didn’t have air conditioning. He refused to put the windows down for me. We weren’t far from my house, so I remember vividly. I will suck it up. And I’m not letting him know that this gets to me. I could not breathe in the car.

Anne: Back then, did you think it was you when your husband is constantly angry? Like if you were different then he wouldn’t be angry, or did you just think like he’s a little crazy?

Faith: No, I always viewed it as me. That I made a mistake or I did something, or I did too much, or I was too much.

Anne: The whole time you’re trying to improve the situation, you’re doing what any good person would do. You’re like, how can I improve our relationship? So can you talk about the things you tried? It could be anywhere from wearing makeup, to going to couple therapy, to making dinner. It could be any one of various things that we try. Would you take us through all that? Before you discovered his lies.

Faith: When he proposed to me. He wanted a quick turnaround. We were engaged for about a year and a half. I actually had some cold feet. But like everything is paid for, and I just kept pushing through. And I got a job and moved out, and he was gonna then move in with me once we were married. Automatically that set me up as a provider. Once we were married, it was about five months in, he worked in a cemetery. He fell into a grave and hurt his back very badly.

Anne: Wow, that’s kind of an intense story, sorry. I fell into a grave.

Faith: I should also include that I got pregnant right away. There were conversations about him wanting to have a child and immediate.

Faith: And it was like, no, we should wait. Just get used to being married and being with one another first. I ended up pregnant, and I honestly don’t know how. I don’t know as far as birth control and stuff like that goes. It was a surprise, it was a shock. So here we are, probably a month and a half into our marriage, I find out I’m pregnant. And then five months in, he is hurt. And I’m his caregiver. I can barely even put on my own socks, and I’m having to shower him, wash him, put on his socks, and take him to therapy.

And he was on medication. And so I started to blame everything on the medication. I ignored all the signs prior to that. But the medication seemed to make everything worse. I called the police to my house before, because of his verbal aggression. My husband is constantly angry and he’s yelling, and everything just got so much worse. Even after we had our baby, it was awful. My in-laws are emotionally abusive. We actually went to our church. And our pastor recommended a Christian counselor. So we went to two different Christian counselors. I remember first a male and then a female.

And I honestly don’t remember, it’s been so long that I don’t remember why we made the switch. But I remember very distinctly, this is not helping. It was like trying to dissect my childhood and stuff like that. And I don’t understand how this is becoming turned around on me when my husband is constantly angry.

Faith: So there were several more outbursts, I would say. I don’t remember what we were fighting about. Our daughter was probably about three years old, and I had her in the shower. He was so angry that he ripped the shower head from the shower. It was one of those hanging ones. I could no longer rinse her or anything like that. Then he left. I didn’t know where he went. That was probably the last outburst I remember as a big fight. And then I think I just learned I’m not gonna push his buttons. Like if I remain calm and stop being the trigger for his anger, then he won’t be angry.

Anne: That is so hard, because none of us realize this, that is a form of control. So you’re then living in this box or this glass house a little bit or something. These parameters that you can’t cross, because those are the ones he set up. He built it around you, without you even realizing what had happened. So that you’re limited in what you can do, what you can say, and what you can express. He built all those limitations around you, manipulating you through his anger, because your husband is constantly angry.

And that’s not how we view it when we’re going through it. Because we view it as like, if I don’t do this, he won’t get angry. Rather than he got angry on purpose about these things in order to control me. So that control that you were living under, of course you did not realize it. Was he calling you controlling? How was he lying about you at this time?

Faith: I definitely know that there were times where he was saying that I was questioning him too much.

Anne: The questioning him too much is very common for someone who’s lying a lot. Then your husband is constantly angry. Because they don’t want a lot of questions. They’re very annoying to liars.

Faith: Honestly, I can’t remember even what caused the fights. He makes sure now, he even told our kids, that I hit him three times. I do remember fighting him once, I don’t even think I would call it a slap. I think it was more like a push away kind of swat. But I always recognized that I was becoming someone I didn’t like. Regardless of what was going on in the relationship.

And I also wanna mention that I learned pretty quickly. He punched a hole in a door. He had threatened verbally to bury me in my backyard. At that point, I did call the police, and he would go outside and wait for them to come. And looking back on that, I can see where police would come see a calm man, and the irrational, crazy woman is in the house, so upset, emotionally distraught.

Eventually I also learned not to even call them. Several times it was offered to me to file a PFA, but I knew it would be over. And at that point I think I was in protection of children mode. I knew that if, I filed a PFA…

Anne: For our listeners who aren’t aware of what a PFA is, could you define that?

Faith: It’s an order of protection from abuse. And my husband told me that if I did that, the relationship would be over. There would be no repairing it. And to have a young child in that, I felt very protective of her.

Faith: He was military background, military trained, and so he could disappear with her. There was a strong desire to keep my family together. And a religious belief that was anti-divorce, like divorce was not in the vocabulary.

Anne: Did you do any other counseling other than the Christian counseling that you talked about?

Faith: No, at some point I called our female counselor late at night one night. And talked with her over the phone because I was so upset. It seemed like I’m just tattling on him and getting no help. It’s not helping. And then, like I said, there was a period where things calmed. It actually seemed like it improved. I tricked myself into thinking everything healed, because his anger lessened. We actually had another child. During that time, I would’ve categorized our relationship as pretty good. There were still gaps.

There were still things like he was staying up late at night, not going to bed with me. We weren’t communicating that great. There were missing things. There were pieces of the puzzle of our relationship. It seemed like a big hole that I could not fill. I couldn’t figure out what it was. So we went to Family Life Weekend to Remember, one geared just to us. Then we went back and volunteered.

When we volunteered, I thought, and this is it. We could be like a power couple and tell what our story was and how we got through it. How we came about healing, and that was not true at all.

Anne: He was good at pretending and playing the part.

Faith: Yes, and we would come home from those things, like we would learn all of these ways of connection and we would come home from those things and he might get up in the morning and gimme a hug before I left for work the next day. And then nothing after that. I just felt like an invisible person in my own home.

Anne: And at this time when your husband is constantly angry, were you still the sole provider?

Faith: Yes, I have always been the primary breadwinner. He eventually owned his own business after he got fired. It was a couple years after he started his own business where financial abuse took off. It became apparent that he was paying himself into our joint account for a couple of years. And then suddenly, he actually didn’t discuss it with me. He said, I opened up my own account. And that’s to protect us in case I am sued by anybody.They can’t come after what we have. They can only come after what I have.

But that was very much part of what he spent on things. His money was his money. And my money was our money.

Anne: Our money, these stories unfortunately all have similar patterns. So I’m guessing, it’s so typical of a man who lies like this. Who’s taking these steps to protect his lies, that the next thing that happens is that you find something out. I’m not sure if that’s where you were going.

Faith: Yes, I was.

Anne: Okay, so let’s talk about that. Like how did you find out what he actually did with his unaccounted for time?

Faith: So ironically, I was going to counseling with my pastor at the time, me individually because something feels off. Feel off, meaning I feel like something is wrong. Something was missing, and it had to be within me. It was my problem to deal with. And so I came home from a counseling session. It probably would’ve been around the fall, Which was the same time my mom was diagnosed with cancer.

So all kinds of things in my own personal life are going on. And my husband tells me point blank that he no longer loves me anymore. But he’ll still protect me and die for me. So I take that as a twist on scripture, because in our faith, the man is to be the protector.

And I was devastated to hear that. Then shortly after that he told me that he had an issue with porn and that he needed me to help him with that.

Anne: What did he say? What lie did he tell, that you needed to help him with? Was it that you needed to give him sex when he wanted, so he didn’t look at porn. How, did he lie to you in that way to manipulate you?

Faith: The fact that I had a low drive. I wasn’t giving him enough, so I needed to be there for him when he needed me, So that he didn’t view porn.

Anne: Was this backed up by like the pastor or therapist or anyone else that enabled this type of lie to take root?

Faith: I honestly don’t know. Because at this point, I was going to talk with someone. But we were not seeing anyone together. And this was so devastating and embarrassing. I remember feeling so embarrassed. Like who do I talk to? I told my best friend. And I told the pastor that I was talking with for counseling.

I’m not gonna say that it didn’t seem like a big deal to them, but it’s like their hands are tied. There’s nothing out there. It was just like, there’s nothing out there for help. I felt so alone. I had nothing. It started to feel like, this is Every Man’s Battle.

Anne: Yeah.

Faith: And that’s like, yeah, I do have to step up and help him. So I took it upon myself that I communicated with him. I’m just not gonna tell you no. I often slept downstairs. I have several health issues, migraines, vertigo, and it would be compounded sleeping in the same bed with someone else.

So I just slept downstairs and he woke me up one night. I was in a dead sleep, so it was like, no. And he went upstairs at that point I’m awake and I decided to follow him and he was in our bedroom with a tablet and I just lost it. I was like, it doesn’t even matter, and I actually left the house for the night. And slept in my car, in my church parking lot.

Faith: We never discussed our issues. So when I surfaced the next day, I put on a happy face and pretended to be the happy family. He didn’t even ask where I went. There was no worrying, no concern for my wellbeing of where I was for the night. He blamed me that he had to take the kids to soccer hungover. I took that pretty hard too, because his drinking always bothered me. He would use scripture to say, “As long as I’m not drunk, I’m not breaking scripture.”

Like you can drink in moderation and be okay. But here he admits he was drunk, and blames me. For having the responsibilities he had as a dad the following day and for his behavior the night before. That’s when some things started to unravel for me as far as his deep character. Who he claims to be is not who he is. I started to definitely put up some walls. I was still not saying no, I just know that it was like a checklist. Just something I have to do.

I guess the phrase I wanna use is not rock the boat when my husband is constantly angry. And then, I’m going to give all the credit to God, because the scales started to fall off my eyes. I know many people criticize Focus on the Family in our circles. But God can use anything. I’m a firm believer in that. There was a man named Brant Hansen who was on Focus on the Family on my way to work. And he was talking about men being keepers of the garden, and he came to the conclusion that he was, who his wife needed protection from.

Faith: It was something about the phrase. That he was willing to die for her, but did he truly cherish and love her? And boy did that phrasing wake me up after hearing what my husband had told me. The Lord started to use that to wake me up to what I was actually living in. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Anne: Right.

Faith: Things started to unravel from there. I couldn’t go back. My husband was amping it up as far as like, blaming me for erectile dysfunction. When he was on many medications. He was drinking heavily, none of that could have influenced his inabilities. But it was all my fault. I had actually called off work one day to spend the whole day with him. I came down the steps and he said, “It would be really nice if you put on red lipstick.”

So it was funny to me that you mentioned makeup, because I actually don’t wear makeup. It’s never been something I’ve been comfortable doing. I just never liked it. That’s not part of who I am. I don’t even own red lipstick. So nothing happened that day because I was so upset.

Anne: Yeah.

Faith: I said, I feel like you don’t wanna be with me. You’re asking me to become someone else so that you can be turned on, or whatever it is that you’re looking for. It is not me.

Anne: He didn’t even know you well enough to know that you didn’t have any.

Faith: Right.

Anne: Or alternatively, maybe he did, and he was lying to really hurt you. That could be true too. Wow, I’m so sorry.

Faith: I ended up doing the things that he asked me to do. I went and bought lipstick. I went and got some lingerie, and believe it or not, it still did not go well.

Anne: Sorry, I believe you.

Faith: So that was the last time that we were intimate and I use intimate in the loosest term because there was definitely no real true intimacy probably the entire marriage. I could no longer open myself up and I actually didn’t know the language, so I didn’t know that I was putting in place boundaries.

Because I was uncomfortable sharing myself with him. I didn’t know that. At that point, it was like, I’m just a failure as a wife. I can’t do anything to please him, because my husband is constantly angry. Nothing was ever pleasant. So if we were on a date night, he would always bring up a rough topic. On this particular date night, he told me he was looking into getting a penis pump, so that he could do whatever he needed. And prevent prostate cancer. And I have a medical history of HPV, which he’s been my only partner.

Anne: Oh, yeah.

Faith: So considering that could cause cervical cancer. I seriously couldn’t even believe what was coming out of his mouth.

Anne: Right.

Faith: It’s all self, everything that came out of his mouth just sounded so selfish to me anymore.

Anne: Yeah, for good reason ‘ cause it was selfish.

Faith: So I came across BTR and Betrayal Trauma Group sessions.. I really don’t know how, I think I was just searching best betrayal trauma resources online. I didn’t even know what betrayal trauma was. And I didn’t know that’s what was going on with me.

It was definitely a God thing, because it seemed like it came out nowhere and was a much needed resource. Because you were the first to tell me exactly everything that was my experience. And I listen to you when I’m driving. I just found myself crying with you, laughing with you at times too. And I just wanna take this time right now to thank you for putting yourself out there to help others. Because without you, I would still probably think I am crazy. Because many of the groups I participate in still don’t talk about porn use as that betrayal piece.

Yes, they recognize it, I think, as contributing to a destructive relationship, would be their terminology. But the pieces that you hit on, it’s exactly everything I experienced, and it just made it all make sense. I’m not crazy.

Anne: You’re surviving crazy, but you are not crazy, and so much of it, even the parts that you think maybe you missed, or that you think maybe you allowed it, or something like that. That’s not true. It’s what he’s manipulated you to think because he’s a liar, but not because it’s actually true. And it takes a while to separate all that manipulation from the truth, when your husband is constantly angry,.

Anne: I’m so grateful my podcast was helpful. Is there anything that you would you like to share with women who are listening?

Faith: I think what I would wanna say is that you are worth so much. And it’s not your fault. It’s not on you, that you don’t have to carry the burdens on your shoulders.

Anne: Yeah, it is such a burden, when your husband is constantly angry and he’s manipulating you. But then all the extra burden society puts on you. Or therapists who don’t understand the situation or other people who give you the impression that you had something to do with it or that you played a role and you didn’t.

The first step to emotional safety is to recognize that it has literally nothing to do with you, even though it affects you very much. Because I think those two juxtaposition things where it’s like it doesn’t have anything to do with you, so it shouldn’t bother you very much.

There’s that and that’s not true either. Even though it has nothing to do with you, it does hurt you and it affects you on a very deep level. Well, thank you so much for sharing part of your story. I would love to have you come back in six months or a year to let us know where you are then.

Anne: So are you still married now? What’s your current situation?

Faith: My current situation, he actually suggested couple therapy again. I filed for divorce, last year. Our oldest daughter just turned 19, and our youngest is 15. In my state, everything is a 50/50 split. They don’t care what your story is. My daughter started to refuse to go to his house, and so I’m now fighting for her. So far, the judge has heard her without even seeing her, that 50/50 is off the table. And although they are supposed to do counseling, that’s all starting right now, is them doing counseling.

Anne: No one should ever, ever be suggesting, not the court, not anyone. Ever, ever be suggesting counseling if a husband is constantly angry or with someone who is abusive.

Faith: I know how it went for me. I feel like they’re never going to label him as abusive. It’s never going to happen. It doesn’t matter like what my experiences have been.

Anne: No, and it doesn’t matter what anyone’s are. Sorry, I just get livid about it.

Faith: I know.

Anne: Therapy never works with a liar. It never ever does. It never ever will. You’re only putting someone in harm’s way. Even if you don’t wanna call him an abuser, at the very least he’s a liar. So he is never gonna benefit from therapy.

Faith: I have been fortunate to have a dad who believes me and supports me, because I know I lived a lie. I lived with a mask that I presented to the world. And I said, “I’m not going to do that anymore.” When I investigated how bad the situation was to get a divorce, I sat my kids down and I said, “I’m going to be the one who tears our family apart.” I was crying. They looked at each other, smiled and said, “Mom, it’s about time.” So, kids see, kids definitely see.

Anne: Well, Faith, you are incredible. Thank you so, so much for coming and sharing your story, and I look forward to you coming back on the podcast to let us know how you’re doing. Thank you so much.

Faith: Thank you Anne.