The BTR.ORG Podcast - Betrayal Trauma Recovery: Recent Episodes

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There is no fear or pain equivalent to the trauma when your ex uses the kids to hurt you.

Whether it’s through the family court system, co-parenting, or simply creating chaos out of everyday situations, abusers know that one of the most effective ways to harm a woman is through her children.

If you’re going through this and need support, attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session TODAY.

When Your Ex Uses The Kids To Hurt You In The CourtroomAbusive men use the courtroom to not only torment victims, but also to manipulate court professionals and seek validation. They don’t want parenting time or a peaceful resolution, they want to win. They want chaos and enjoy the fight.

To know if your ex is emotionally abusive, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

When he uses the kids to hurt you in the courtroom, it is essential that you seek support, practice radical self-compassion and self-care, and live by boundaries.

Family court systems all over the world are broken. Outcomes are completely unpredictable. However, you can determine now to love and accept yourself no matter what happens. You can determine now to surround yourself with people who love you and build you up. You will need support and community as you face your abuser in the courtroom.

When Your Ex Uses The Kids To Hurt You, Use Your Own AngerYour anger is a powerful force that can drive you to take action. Anger is a catalyst for change. The reason why so many people fear an angry woman is because an angry woman is unstoppable—she takes action and challenges the status quo. This is precisely why abusers and oppressors work so hard to suppress women’s anger.

They know it can dismantle their control. Anger, when channeled constructively, becomes a tool for empowerment, inspiring bold steps toward justice.

When Your Ex Uses The Kids To Hurt You: Abuse By ProxyIf an abuser harms or manipulates the children to harm you, it’s known as “abuse by proxy.” This tactic involves using the children as tools to control, intimidate, or emotionally damage you, often by turning them against you or causing them emotional distress.

It is considered a severe and harmful form of post-separation abuse, with long-lasting effects on both the targeted parent and the children involved. Learn strategies to protect yourself from post separation abuse in The Living Free Workshop.

Transcript: When Your Ex Uses The Kids To Hurt YouAnne: It’s just me today. You’re about to hear something I recorded years ago. When I got divorced, I started with a pretty good custody situation. However, my ex was still emotionally and psychologically abusing me almost daily. He’s an attorney.

And he neglected the kids, undermining their medical care. He cancelled medical appointments. He refused to support any of their extracurricular activities. Every day was chaos. I went to court six years post divorce to try to get him even less custody. He got more as a result of that case.

I was devastated, you’ll hear that in my voice. At the time, I recorded this. I didn’t know what would happen. But after I recorded it, I began studying deliverance and praying for deliverance. I asked God to show me strategies that I could use to enable Christ to deliver me and my children. That study led me on a journey, and a year later, I actually got absolute, full custody of my children, with my ex having extremely minimal time.

And these strategies I employed out of court. So this was not a result of a court case. He basically signed his rights away. He gave me full deciding power, and they only needed to go with him one weekend a month. Two holidays a year and one week in the summer, which is incredible.

Because that worked, I mentored other women with these same strategies to ensure it wasn’t just a fluke. Like, was this only gonna work for me? Or could it work when your ex uses the kids to hurt you, or for any woman in any situation? Whether she was still married, separated or divorced. Would these living free strategies work for anyone? And we found they did.

Writing The Living Free & Message WorkshopsAnne: To make sure that every woman had access to these strategies, I wrote the BTR Living Free Workshop. As you listen, you’ll hear how much I wanted to protect my children from this awful custody situation. I want you to know that we were delivered.

I believe my Savior, Jesus Christ showed me these strategies through my study. Now that’s in Living Free. So if you want to learn more about The Living Free Workshop. Part of the strategy I used is in the BTR.ORG Message Workshop. You can enroll in The Message Workshop after you finished the Living Free lessons. The Message Workshop builds on the foundation of Living Free.

So start with Living Free. All right, are you ready to hear this recording from years ago, before I found the living free strategies?

Most of you know that I am religious, that I follow a faith tradition, I’m Christian. Specifically a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I am grateful for the foundation that provides me of faith and hope in God and my Savior, Jesus Christ.

For you non-religious listeners, atheists or agnostics, you are welcome here. We’re so glad you’re here, and I’m so grateful that you listen and are part of this. Because this issue affects every woman, regardless of her paradigm, her faith, or the way that she sees the world.

Parable Of The Wheat & The TaresAnne: I’ve been studying the parable of the wheat and the tares. For women of Christian faith, you’re probably familiar with the wheat and the tares. For everyone else, please indulge me. In Matthew 13, verse 25, where it says, but while men slept. Sometimes I wonder if that means that while the clergy, legal system, and basically any man who could stop the abuse, but won’t.

They will not hold the abuser accountable. They won’t believe us or listen to us. That as these men sleep, the children of the devil grew and grew until you could see their fruits, basically, is what this is talking about. Many victims of abuse try to justify not setting boundaries with the abuser, because he’s “a child of God.” Well, he’s a child of God. So I’m going to love him, God loves him. Meanwhile, your ex uses the kids to hurt you.

But in this parable, starting in Matthew 13, it clearly states that there are children of the “wicked one.” And I’ve been thinking about the way the scriptures, both the Bible and the Book of Mormon, describe men who are not obeying the commandments.

They don’t say, and he didn’t obey the commandments because he felt shame. They actually call them a word. And the word they call them is wicked. This is a common term used throughout the scriptures. Part of me wonders why don’t we use this term anymore?

And part of it is the Christian aversion to passing judgment. But Christ also asks us to decipher between good and evil. That’s part of the reason why we’re here on earth. There are those of us who have set boundaries.

Setting Boundaries When Your Ex Uses The Kids To Hurt YouAnne: We’ve removed everything the abuser can use to hurt us. Essentially, there’s nothing left for them to use to hurt us, except for one thing, our children. Your ex uses the kids to hurt you. Because they’re the dad, they can assert control that way. Every day, I hear stories of sheroes, victims of abuse, who are not believed or supported by their churches.

Every day, I hear about how their children, these children of wicked men and righteous mothers. Are dragged through chaos and pain regarding custody in the courts, because the wicked have no desire for peace. That’s not their goal. Their goal is to win.

I wonder if you would do something with me, and if our whole community will do this. And for you atheists, maybe just hold it like a moment of silence or something that works for you. Like offer it up to the universe. Will you pray every morning and night for the next 30 days that the tares can be gathered and burned? Talking about that classic parable from Matthew 13 about the wheat and the tares. I know it’s apocalyptic. It sounds intense.

We’ve also talked so much about boundaries on this podcast. The boundaries separate us from harm. No matter what boundaries you use, they can still actually be abusive. So the only thing you can do is separate yourself from the harm. You can’t stop the harm, but boundaries are definitely the most important and basically the only tool in our toolbox to get to safety.

Self sufficiency brings us peace. Boundaries bring us as much peace as possible. Even after we have essentially said, get thee hence to our abusers, these children of the wicked one, they still have a way to hurt us through our children.

Scriptural Helps & SafetyAnne: There’s nothing you can do in many cases, when your ex uses the kids to hurt you. We’re not able to command armies like the men in the scriptures to protect their families when they go to war. We don’t have that ability, but we do have an army of angels to help us. One of my favorite scriptures regarding the wheat and the tares says, behold verily, I say unto you, the angels are crying unto the Lord day and night. Who are ready and waiting to be sent forth to reap down the fields.

And then another scripture in Mormon 8 verses 40 through 41 says, Yea, why do you build secret abominations to gain and cause that the widows should mourn before the Lord. And also orphans to mourn before the Lord for vengeance upon your heads? Behold, the sword of vengeance hangeth over you, and the time soon cometh that he avengeth the blood of the saints upon you. For he will not suffer their cries any longer.

The parable of the wheat and the tares is related to Matthew 24:40. Where the scriptures say, then shall two be in the field, and one shall be taken, and the other left.

Call For Prayers For Peace & DeliveranceAnne: Will you pray with me morning and night for the next 30 days? That the tares in our lives, the children of the wicked one that are fully ripe and have the fruits to prove their wickedness. Will be removed from our lives so that we can have peace?

Here’s another scripture. In second Nephi 26, three through four, it talks about the wheat and the tares. It says, and great and terrible shall that day be unto the wicked, for they shall perish. And they perish because they cast out the righteous (women). I’m paraphrasing there, and stone them and slay them.

Wherefore, the cry of the victims of abuse shall ascend up to God from the ground against them. Verse four, where for all those who are proud and that do wickedly. The day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, for they shall be as stubble. And in Isaiah 35:4 we read, say to them that are of a fearful heart, be strong, fear not, behold, your God will come in vengeance. Even God with a recompense, he will come and save you.

Personally speaking, you may have heard several podcasts where I said I was going through a difficult thing. And I didn’t say much about it, because it had to do with a custody case regarding my children. Which I actually lost. So I wanted to share with you that I did everything right.

Personal Custody Struggles When Your Ex Uses The Kids To Hurt YouAnne: I was honest. I was forthright. I said my concerns and the people involved just did not believe me. And I saw the writing on the wall. I lost and settled the case. As a result, my children have a much more difficult custody schedule.

Something else that came out of that was that instead of going through my dad. I know I’ve talked for years about how we’ve communicated through my dad, and I’ve done no contact. It became obvious to me that the court did not like that at all. So I switched from my dad being the mediator to using the Our Family Wizard app. I don’t have it on my phone, but I do have it on my computer, and I check it every day. That’s another way I don’t get emails, phone calls or texts that trigger me.

So that it’s at least separated from me, all the contact goes through Our Family Wizard. That’s been working really well. A lot of prayer to figure out how to do this right. It’s been a process. So my custody situation is worse for my children now. Things are very hard, and I’ve just recognized that the court system, the clergy system, the religious system, really doesn’t help victims. We really do have to be our own sheroes.

Reporting Abuse Can Be UnsafeAnne: If you have physical abuse happening, reporting is a good idea, but it can be unsafe in so many ways. So if you have something criminal to report. I highly recommend you schedule an individual session with Coach Renee, who can help coach you on how to do that with your local authorities. The outcome obviously cannot be guaranteed, but to give you the best experience possible, because it’s going to be traumatic. Regardless, the court system is a mess.

I brought Tina Swithin on and Wendy Hernandez, and I’ve just been doing a ton of study on custody things. And really, the conclusion I came to is that God is our only hope, or the universe, or whatever you believe in, but for me it’s God.

Our only hope for justice is through our Heavenly Parents, and our Savior, Jesus Christ. I’ve turned my heart to Him and realize that there isn’t anything worldly that can protect me in this instance. Where I share children with my abuser. The laws require us to maintain contact with the man who harmed us. He continues to lie and abuse, harming us and our children.

So after losing this case, me Anne, I don’t know everything you guys know. I don’t know everything. I’m just like you and i’m in the process of learning, but I thought I could figure it out. Like I followed Tina Swithin’s advice.

I followed Wendy Hernandez’s advice. I had a good attorney, and I prayed, prayed, and prayed. It still didn’t go the way I wanted. So here are a few things I’ve come to grips with.

Hope & Faith In GodAnne: One part of me wonders if the reason I didn’t win and why things are harder for my children is because I believe God asked me to start this organization and to podcast here. My ex used the kids to hurt me. Maybe your ex uses the kids to hurt you.

He’s asked me to talk to you. In the past when I said, do no contact. And you guys were like, it’s hard to do no contact. The court won’t let me. I was like, no, you can do it. Now I’m thinking, man, I never had that experience when the court was like, no, you can’t do that.

Now here I am. So. I wanted to empathize and apologize if I made it seem easy. Because for six years, my custody situation was fantastic, and then my ex got remarried. And with that, he has his new wife to care for the kids. So of course he wanted to take them more, because he doesn’t have to take care of them.

Now that I’m here, my heart goes out to all of us who have been through this, and I’m sorry if I made it seem easy before. It’s not, it’s really hard. Also, for all of us who have done everything right, we’ve done every single thing. We have reported crimes, set boundaries, and separated ourselves from the harm. And we’re still not able to actually stop the harm to our children.

It is the most excruciating difficult situation. And it’s long term, and it reminds me of the people in the scriptures who are in bondage. The Israelites and in the Book of Mormon, there are Nephites in bondage. This bondage scenario keeps coming to me over and over again.

When your Ex Uses The Kids To Hurt You, Pray For DeliveranceAnne: So in addition to praying for the tares to be removed from our lives. Rather than praying your husband will change, might I suggest praying for deliverance? In the scriptures, people in bondage pray for deliverance, knowing that God is their only option. The law can’t help them, and in the Israelites’ experience, the law was the Egyptians. The law ruled them in bondage. So they have no way to get out.

I think that’s the case with us. The righteous, currently speaking, are in bondage from the wicked in their homes or out of their homes from their ex husbands. And how do we get delivered? In my opinion, we need to humble ourselves and let God know that He is our only option. That the courts do not understand this, that therapists don’t understand this, the clergy doesn’t. When your ex uses the kids to hurt you.

That we only have one option. And that is our Savior, who somehow leads us out of bondage, and delivers us. So my suggestion is to pray for deliverance, rather than to pray that your husband will change. Or pray he’ll get it, or see the light, and pray for deliverance. That deliverance can come in two ways. It can come through him repenting. That would actually deliver you from abuse. The second option for deliverance is that he could be removed from your life somehow.

That deliverance would be a miracle. Now, I don’t want to put limits on God. Maybe there are 10 other options that I don’t know about, but there are at least two. And I think praying for deliverance is what we need to do. And I think we’ve missed the boat when we pray for something else.

Praying For Custody Case & My Situation Got WorseAnne: I was praying for my custody case, and my custody situation got worse. My child support situation got worse. There was literally nothing in the last case that I went through that got better. Every single thing I wanted, I didn’t get. After we settled, all the things I thought would happen are happening now.

It just shows me that his only concern or interest was winning, not the best interest of the children. How do you negotiate or do the best thing for your kids? If every time you suggest what you think is the best thing, that other person cares about winning. They just want to contradict everything you do or say, it just doesn’t work.

It’s not going to work for kids, but in the meantime, we’re not being delivered, it’s a difficult place to be. There is a popular Instagrammer who was abused for a long time. She doesn’t recognize it as abuse, and now she’s super positive about her divorce.

She is like, I wish him well, and now we’re co-parenting together. And never acknowledged the abuse or what was happening. She is now going on to live her best life. And I’ve been really triggered by it, actually. Because I want to live the life I want to live. But I’m still faced with this oppression from an abuser. I don’t know, I just have so many feelings about it.

I have so many feelings about it, like, if I just think about it differently, will it be different? There’s that like new age thinking, you know, if you’re grateful, that will fix it. When your ex uses the kids to hurt you. Here’s a comment similar to this, that we got on the podcast the other day.

Your Comments Help Others Find Us Anne: By the way, please comment on any of the podcast episodes. Every one of your comments helps isolated women find us. I love hearing your feedback, what you think about the episodes, and your experience. If something I say on an episode or something that one of the guests says is something you’ve been through, like if your ex uses the kids to hurt you.

Please go to BTR.ORG, find that episode and comment. I want to know if this has been your experience too. So a woman commented and said, “I just wanted to reach out and let you know that I am with you too. Your words struck a chord, especially the parts about your husband lying, even when you had proof, minimizing the situation and not facing the truth. Not knowing everything is driving me crazy.

“The scenarios I am now imagining are far worse than any truth could be. And yes, how do we begin to move forward when looking back at our lives is so excruciatingly painful when faced with the cold fact that it was fake. And we were taken for a fool.”

“I hope you’re doing okay in this new painful reality we seem to find ourselves in. I read somewhere that we have three possible choices after betrayal: To become bitter, go mad or grow. And I wish you love and strength on your path.”

I’m grateful for this comment. One of the things that struck me was these three possible choices after betrayal. This Instagrammer I previously talked about who’s now facing divorce with resilience. She’s pulling her bootstraps up, and happy, and will live her best life. She’ll say things like that. Either become bitter, go mad, or grow. So I’m going to choose growth.

When Your Ex Uses The Kids To Hurt You, Accept & Embrace Your Own AngerAnne: The woman who commented on this, I’m not sure what her status is. But I think, “You have these three choices,” is a misogynistic trope. I hate to call her out, but I need to point this out when I read that. That this misogynistic trope is that women can’t be bitter or angry, that women must grow through this.

I just want to relieve every woman on the planet of the concern about being angry (bitter). If you were not angry about what happened to you, you would go crazy. When your ex uses the kids to hurt you. Like, you would be a robot. I don’t know, something would be wrong with you. Like, it is, it is It is not normal to not be angry in this situation. One of my goals is to help women embrace their anger to get to emotional and psychological safety. So please don’t ever worry about being bitter.

The anger will dissolve once you are safe. Men generally tell women not to be bitter when women are justified in their anger. And the abuse hasn’t stopped yet. When your ex uses the kids to hurt you.

So generally speaking, when a woman is still angry, they’ll say, well, she’s been angry for a long time. So now she’s bitter. And maybe she’s angry because the abuse hasn’t stopped, because she’s not safe. She hasn’t figured out how to set boundaries. She hasn’t figured out how to separate herself from the harm.

Permission Given To Be Angry & BitterAnne: Even in my case, I’ve figured out how to separate myself from harm well. It’s still happening. I have no legal recourse, no way of stopping it. People saying, “Hey, don’t be a bitter woman, angry woman, or crazy woman.” It’s simply a manipulation tactic to gaslight women into not taking steps to safety.

I want to give everyone permission to be angry, be bitter even. There aren’t these three options. It’s not like you become bitter, you go mad or you grow. Those are not the three options you have. You have one choice, one path. The path is to get to real, true emotional and psychological safety.

That is your goal. If you’re on that path to safety, you’re angry, great, or you seem crazy to some people because you move out. And they think, your husband’s so great. Why are you moving out? You seem crazy. Fine, the goal, the one possible option for you is to get to safety. I believe the actual distance you put between yourself and the harm, the safer you feel, and the less angry you will feel over time.

And that’s because your anger is a gift from God. That will help you take action, and the reason why everybody is afraid of an angry woman is because an angry woman takes action. People do not want women to take action. So, please, anger is the best. I love anger right now. I’m excited about it. When your ex uses the kids to hurt you.

Think about what anger can do for you. Can it help you get to safety and feel happy and peaceful? That’s the goal. Anger is not the goal. Think about what spurs you to action? Anger is a great resource God gave us.

The Character Of AbusersAnne: Many times in the scriptures, it talks about prophets or people angry with the wickedness of the world. They took action to bring peace for themselves and their families, and that’s awesome. Another thing that we’ve talked about many times on the podcast is that abuse is a behavior. Like when your ex uses the kids to hurt you.

If you say look at their behaviors, there’s also this manipulative kindness that can happen, grooming. When they groom to manipulate you, how do you know what it is? There’s one other factor here, and it could be that yelling at you is a sign of his abuse. Well, what if you yell at him? Is that a sign of your abuse? Or is that a sign of you trying to stand up for yourself? Are you trying to take action? When your ex uses the kids to hurt you.

I think the better way to think about abuse, rather than behavior, is that it’s a character. An abusive character means even kindness is for an alternate purpose. Even kindness has a goal behind it. It’s not to care for that person. It is to manipulate or use them. That’s what we’re looking for, is their character the character of manipulative kindness or exploitative privilege? Or is it genuine care and protection for you? I have had many conversations about the term entitlement.

We know that one of the four pillars of abuse. You can find this infographic in the back of my book, Trauma Mama Husband Drama. You can also see that four pillars of abuse floating around on Instagram and Facebook pages of Betrayal Trauma Recovery. And one of the four pillars of abuse is entitlement. This is not a strong enough word. We need a stronger word.

Exploitative Privilege, When Your Ex Uses The Kids To Hurt YouAnne: I came up with the word exploitative privilege. Which means they use their privilege as a man to exploit women. As a woman, you owe me. You owe me intimacy, dinner, you owe me to take care of the kids, and I don’t need to do any of that.

These are the things that I’m entitled to as a man. And I’m going to avail myself of these things. That is exploitative privilege to exploit their spouse, which is an abusive behavior. People who don’t have an abusive character don’t want to exploit other people. It makes them feel uncomfortable.

https://youtu.be/t-Kt15CpMdYBut people with an exploitative abusive character will sometimes be kind, because it’s goal oriented. So that’s another word that I want you guys to think about. Rather than entitlement, although entitlement can work, and if it works for you, great.

This other term exploitative privilege, I think, defines what’s happening more. That it is the exploitative privilege that misogyny affords them. Because of that, all their actions and conversations are through that lens of exploitative privilege. That is always an abusive situation. When your ex uses the kids to hurt you. Rather than a relationship with someone who sees you both as equals, both your needs are equal, both your responsibilities are equal.

Where you’re an equal partner. Someone who sees you as an actual equal partner, not someone to be used, is not abusive. Their character will not be abusive. Even if they yell because you got a flat tire or something, it’s not the yelling necessarily that is the abuse, because some of these abusers never yell. They do everything with a smile on their face, and everything they do is well crafted and looks good. But it’s the goal. What is the goal?

My Current ReflectionsAnne: So, that’s where I am in my life right now. I’m thinking about the wheat and the tares. I’m thinking about deliverance and I’m thinking about how anger can help us with that. So, will you pray with me for the next 30 days that the tares can be removed from our lives? That we can be delivered? And consider how anger can help us take action to separate ourselves from the wicked. Separate ourselves from those who would do us harm, rather than those who want peace. When your ex uses the kids to hurt you.

Because abusers goal isn’t peace. Their goal is control. Our goal is safety and peace. It really is. I don’t know of any woman who necessarily wants to control things. They just want things to be peaceful. I appreciate your prayers. If you have prayed for me, if you knew about the custody thing, now my only hope is through my Savior, Jesus Christ. That my children and I will be delivered, and that through the grace of God, we can live the peaceful life that I want to live.

That is promised to the righteous. Then maybe it’s not in this life. I also consider my situation much better than some. So gratitude definitely has a place. I am much more peaceful now than ever. Even though my custody situation is worse. And even though my child support situation is worse. I’m grateful. I’m grateful for what I’ve learned. And I hope our faith will fruit a miracle, and move a mountain.

Miracles Come Through Hard WorkAnne: My nine year old son lately has been saying the most interesting things. We’ve been out weeding the garden, for example, and he’ll say, Mom, we have a miracle here. I’ll be like, what are you talking about? And he’s like, we have a miracle of this beautiful garden. Do you know what made the miracle happen?

And I’m like, no, what? He’s like weeding, our weeding made a miracle. And he said the same thing about grocery shopping. He’s like, we went grocery shopping, and that made the miracle of this dinner.

And I said, so what makes a miracle? And he said, Mom, work, hard work. At this point, we’ve done the work sisters. So many of us have done so much work. We have worked and worked. My hope is that through our prayers and faith, we can rest in the Lord and ask him to deliver us. And ask him to remove these tares from our lives, so we can rest.

No, I don’t want us to bring on the second coming if you’re a believer in that. That sounds miserable, and I’d rather be safely dead than experience that. But maybe that’s what God’s waiting for. I don’t know.

Being able to share my own experience, has been a blessing to me personally. I’m grateful to have met all of you wonderful sisters along this journey. So thank you.

It’s both validating to hear how far I’ve come, and also sad. I’m like I look back and think, wow, I was being harmed and I didn’t even recognize it.

If you’re in a dark place and you don’t know how to get out of the chaos your husband or ex-husband is creating, learn about The Living Free Workshop.

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

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

Transcript: Why Won’t My Husband Fight For Our Marriage?Anne: I have Kirsten on the podcast today. I know her personally, and she’s amazing. She’s a member of our community. She is a divorced mom of four, and she’s also an incredible artist and writer. Who likes to write to explore being a real human being breaking through destructive personal and generational patterns. And how handling hard times with humor can make life more palatable.

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

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

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

What Is “Meatloafing”? When He Says He Will Fight For Our MarriageKirsten: We were doing an in house separation, and he said that he would do anything to fix the damage that was happening in our marriage. And I believed him. I wanted to believe him when he said he would fight for our marriage. One night he came down from his bedroom that he was staying in and asked me when I would drop my boundary of him Not being able to initiate any physical touch in our marriage.

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

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

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

https://youtu.be/qpinvaj-q2AWhy Won’t He Do This One Thing To Fight For Our Marriage? Kirsten: He did this ridiculous video called, I will do anything for love. And I could hear his voice in my head. You know, I can do anything for love, but I won’t do that. I just started laughing and walked out of the room. I’m sure that it appeared very rude to him, but I just, the ridiculousness of it. You know, 17 years of really awful behavior and damage, and he couldn’t give me this. This one thing that I was asking for him to do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anne: To establish some safety.

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

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

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

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

He Said He Wanted To Fight For Our Marriage But He Acted Like He Didn’t Anne: Where they’re like, I was about to do it, but now that you reminded me, I won’t be doing it on my own. So just let me do it in my own time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Victims Begin To Set Limits & Boundaries, Abusers May Start “Meatloafing”Anytime I start to feel like something might be wrong or my body was like, Oh, I’m uncomfortable. If I would bring it up to my spouse. He would say, yeah, you’re right, something is wrong, you need to go to therapy because you’re broken from your first marriage. I became the kind of person that would just completely take all of it in on myself.

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

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

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

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

I Wanted To Fight For Our Marriage, I Couldn’t See Through The Fog Of Emotional AbuseAnne: So compared to the second marriage, that was 20 years where the whole time, You’re in this fog of abuse, but you can’t see it, and you’re trying to wrap your head around what’s going on. Why do you think it’s so difficult for women to see this second type of abuse?

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

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

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

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

He Says He Want’s To Fight For Our Marriage But He Sees Me As Subservient Anne: Why do you think so many people don’t want to go there?

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

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

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

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

Abusers Don’t Think to Ask For Consent: They Feel Entitled To ItAnne: What helps you realize you were raped? I’m guessing multiple rapes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In My Fight For Our Marriage, I Didn’t Realize How Much I Needed To HealKirsten: Now looking back and having had so much education about , abuse and learning more about trauma and what it does to the body and the brain. I realized that I was releasing a lot of trauma into my paintings. In fact, sometimes I laugh and call my paintings horcruxes because I feel like I’ve cut a piece of my soul out and put it into the painting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anne: St. Kirsten

Kirsten: Yeah, right..

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

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

Unequally Yoked: A Symbol For My Fight For Our MarriageKirsten: It leaves marks on you. And those marks don’t go away. They can be transformed, but they don’t go away.

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

Kirsten: Kintsugi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Helps Victims Identify “Meatloafing” & Other Abusive TacticsAnne: I would really encourage you to go take a look at her artwork. Hopefully it will speak to you as it spoke to me. Can you talk a little bit about how the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group has helped you to heal?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://youtu.be/sV0BCL0RjuQHere’s What Clients Of The Best Betrayal Trauma Recovery Groups SayAnne: Let’s start with an audio recording I received.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcription: When Your In-Laws Are Emotionally Abusive TooAnne: I have a member of the BTR community on today’s episode, we’re going to call her Tania. I recorded this a few years ago.

Welcome, Tanya.

Tanya: Thank you so much for having me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://youtu.be/UD5nwqHXjuoLong-Distance Relationship ChallengesTanya: But that summer, he got laid off from football, so he had to move back to the United States where there is another league that wanted him. I just felt like, yeah, he’s moving back to the United States. Also he’s an American. I just thought, yeah, our relationship is done.

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

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

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

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

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

First Major Incident Of Physical AbuseTanya: He asked me to marry him. My friends threw a big engagement party. I left my job, left my apartment, my car, I moved to the United States.

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

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

Anne: Where’s your friend from

Tanya: A couple of them were Canadians.

When Your In-Laws Enable Emotional Abuse Anne: Would you say, where you’re from in Africa, that this was a cultural thing? That men just get mad and it’s no big deal?

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

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

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

Coercing the Victim Into Viewing Pornographic Material At In-Laws HomeTanya: This is not supposed to happen. I was so shocked that he had something like that inside his parents’ home. But I guess he was hiding, and he’s like, let’s watch. I said, no, I cannot watch it. Because I’m a Christian, so I can’t watch it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anne: So you ended up marrying him, then.

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

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

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

Sexual Coercion & Leaving Involving In-Laws In The AbuseI went upstairs and put my son to bed. Then he says, “You have to know that this marriage is between me and you. And if you want me to be closer to you, you have to understand. There are certain things that a wife should do.”

I said, “What?”

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

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

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

In-Laws Are Emotionally Abusive By Convincing Victims to StayTanya: His dad calls me. I completely understand what you’re talking about. I want to apologize, but we are Christians, and you have to understand you guys are married. We don’t believe in divorce. And I don’t want you to raise a son without a father.

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

In-Laws Are Emotionally Abusive By Accusing Victims of “Ruining” the Abuser’s LifeTanya: Three months after me being back, he was starting again, verbally abusing me. It was just a cycle, verbally abusing me. No one will believe you. You just came back from Canada. I know it’s something with you. You want to return here to destroy my career. I said, but your dad promised me. So I stayed for another three years.

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

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

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

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

Sexual Coercion Is Easier For Abusers When In-Laws Enable ItTanya: He completely isolated me from everyone at this time. Now, I wasn’t even able to contact my family members. Because I started to feel so ashamed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

In-Laws Are Emotionally Abusive By Shaming & Guilting Victims Into StayingTanya: In jail, I felt this peace coming over me. I know God took me out, of the situation. Because all these years, I was not ever, ever able to explain to anyone what was going on. When I went to church, I told them, “Listen. This is what he does sexually.

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

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

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

Finding Help To Get On My FeetTanya: When I came out of jail, I didn’t have a place to go. Because again, he isolated me from anything that I know, everybody that I know. I couldn’t go home.

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

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

Anne: Okay.

Tanya’s Current Living SituationAnne: You’re staying in an apartment with the help of the domestic violence shelter now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trying To Pick Up The PiecesAnne: What does your lawyer say about the circumstances right now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You’re Not AloneAnne: There are thousands of listeners to this podcast. And so just little old you, little Tanya, who thinks no one is listening. And that nobody cares, you’ve now just told your story to thousands of women.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcript: 5 Ways To Spot Narcissistic AbuseIntroduction To Rachel & Megan WilfordAnne: I have Rachel and Megan Wilford on today’s episode. They are cousins, and they also recently started podcasting and their podcast is called the Traumedy Show. Which is of course, a mix of trauma and comedy. Welcome Rachel and Megan.

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

Megan: Thank you.

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

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

Comedy As A Coping Mechanism For Narcissistic AbuseAnne: Anyway, instead of, starting podcasting about that at that time, I actually started a comedy blog called Coming To Grips.

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

Megan: Processing it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anne: Let’s start with that.

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

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

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

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

Anne: Can’t wait.

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

1st Sign Of Narcissistic Abuse: Making You Think Something Is An AccidentRachel: He pretty quickly he put me and his ex in a group chat accidentally a couple of months into our relationship.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2nd Sign Of Narcissistic Abuse: I’m Going To Give Him Another Chance Rachel: I end up breaking up with him at that time. Then I ended up getting back together with him a week later. I wish that I never had. Staying broken up when you are a victim of narcissistic abuse would have been better.

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

Rachel: Good question.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anne: An old friend of yours.

Rachel: Yes.

Anne: But not an old friend of his?

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

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

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

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

Anne: Were you living together?

Rachel: We were not living together now.

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

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

So to have empathy for that all around.

https://youtu.be/ZvQwP2HzjfkBlaming Problems On Self Instead Of Narcissistic AbuseRachel: Yeah, and I totally empathize with people that have kids. With their abuser, it’s really hard to break away. I’m fortunate that that wasn’t the case for me. There were a few reasons that I felt stuck. I think this event that bonded us really tied me to him. He was a big support system for me. I considered him my best friend.

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

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

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

This kind of is when I think this starts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3rd Sign Of Narcissistic Abuse: IsolationAnne: Yeah. So we’re going to call that number three. When something happens where you start to pull away from healthy people that care about you. Because this is narcissistic abuse. The isolation kind of starts.

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

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

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

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

The Downfall Of Couples Therapy & Narcissistic AbuseAnne: When you started going to couple therapy with an abuser. Which we never recommend. But because you don’t know it’s narcissistic abuse, did the therapist help you realize this is narcissistic abuse?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Confusion & Anxiety From Narcissistic AbuseAnne: You asked him for permission?

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

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

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

Anne: How often were you seeing him?

Rachel: At least once a week.

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

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

Anne: Do you want it to be more?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Megan: We need more examples of that.

The Danger Of Needing A RelationshipMegan: We don’t actually need to be in a relationship to be fulfilled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4th Sign Of Narcissistic Abuse: Future FakingAnne: Was he future faking you? Like, Oh, I’ve got this thing going on and I’m going to be doing this. This happens a lot in narcissistic abuse.

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

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

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

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

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

Megan: Me too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anne: What? Do you know why?

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

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

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

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

Anne: Was this a fake panic attack?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5th Sign Of Narcissitic Abuse: Saying They Didn’t Do Something Very Specific Rachel: And I get home and what starts happening is I start figuring out how to out manipulate him. And how to essentially coerce him into giving me more information. So I learned, with me saying, I’m going to contact her. That got him to confess things. So I kind of do the same thing. And I get him to confess when I get home from Mexico, a bunch of virtual affairs that he’d been having for years. He confesses all the ones that he can remember.

Anne: Is hat what he said?

Rachel: That’s what he said.

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

Rachel: Yeah.

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

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

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

Rachel: Yeah. No, that does make sense.

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

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

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

Engagement & Narcissistic AbuseMegan: And he was trying to decide between you and her.

Rachel: Yeah,

Anne: Did Grace know about you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anne: Yay!

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

Anne: That was epic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rachel & Megan: Thank you so much, Anne.

View Details

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0UGEHQNHKwTranscript: Voicing the Agony Of BetrayalAnne: I’ve posted the music video we’re talking about today on our YouTube channel. So after you’ve listened to this episode, find our channel on YouTube. Search Betrayal Trauma Recovery or BTR.ORG. Look for our logo and colors.

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

The Agony Of Betrayal: Help Us Go ViralAnne: So maybe with your help. We can get it to go viral. Anything you can do to help us go viral would be greatly appreciated. So go to YouTube and watch it. Like it, share it, subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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

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

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

Ralynne: Thank you so much Anne.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not Understanding The Need For Safety During The Agony Of BetrayalAnne: I’m guessing you didn’t understand the emotional abuse that you experienced.

Ralynne: Not at all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Agony Of Betrayal:Trying To Solve The Same Problem Over & OverRalynne: And I actually was let go from my job. In that meeting my boss said, ultimately he was very sorry, but I was just so sad all the time. He had to let me go. That was a huge wake up call for me. Because that is not a way I’ve ever been described in my life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Agony Of Betrayal: Not Keeping It SecretAnne: Speaking of boundaries, knowing what you know now, if you could go back in time and do it over again. Which none of us can, but we’ve all thought this, what would you have done differently?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Voicing The Agony Of Betrayal Helped Her HealAnne: So please tell our audience, what inspired you to create it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anne: Well you get a divorce.

Ralynne: Yes.

https://youtu.be/TYDJ2TJsBwMRalynne’s Healing Journey From The Agony Of Betrayal TraumaAnne: Do you feel like creating this video has helped you heal?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Community To Support Women Who’ve Been BetrayedAnne: I am so grateful for Ralynne for following these promptings to help women throughout the world find peace after the agony of betrayal trauma, to help them know that they are not alone.

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

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

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Victims of marital rape deserve safety and support.

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

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

You’re Not Codependent, You’re Seeking SafetyOften, Betrayal Trauma victims have little to no control over their own bodies, privacy, finances, and other aspects of their lives. This leads many women to engage in safety-seeking behaviors. She’s trying to protect herself, which is good! Some people want to put these healthy behaviors in a negative light. They call her codependent, misleading her.

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

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

Transcript: This is Why You’re Not CodependentAnne: I have a member of our community, we’re going to call her Felicia, on today’s episode. Welcome, Felicia.

Felicia: Thank you.

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

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

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

Felicia: It was a long distance relationship at first.

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

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

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

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

Anne: How did it transition into dating?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://youtu.be/c9JFzpp7dAYDiscovering The TruthFelicia: After twelve years of marriage. So it was in twenty, twenty one. I think it was the Holy Spirit coming into my intuition, cause I was just like, something is wrong. For some reason it’s bothering me more now, and I’m not gonna let it stop bothering me. I had gone to lots of counseling over the years, and never really found a problem with me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anne: But he wouldn’t.

Felicia: Yeah, he would never.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You’re Not Codependent, You Are Being AbusedAnne: When did you think that you might be codependent?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Am I Codependent? Asking A Counselor About CodependencyAnne: So it’s saying you’re the one with the problem because you, Felicia. Which this is not true, but this is why it’s victim blaming.

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

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

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

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

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

You’re Not CodependentFelicia: And I think it was just too much for me to look into, so I waited six or nine months. And that’s when I found Betrayal Trauma Recovery. And was like, yeah, it’s abuse.

Anne: So you didn’t stay in that codependent place forever. Women think that if their codependent then they can fix things. You find BTR. You were like, Oh, I’m not codependent, it’s really important to me that women know they are not codependent. Did you use BTR services at all?

Felicia: I did the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions, and I did the BTR.ORG Individual Sessions. The group sessions were mind blowing. Because it was the first time I’d found a bunch of other people that completely related with absolutely everything I was saying. I thought this covert emotional abuse was like a specific problem that I had that, you know, was obscure.

Yeah, everyone in the group understood and you didn’t have to get them to understand what you were talking about. It was just like, yeah, we get it.

Anne: How was that different than the therapy that you had been going to?

Felicia: All those years. I was like looking for friendships, mentorships, counselors. Who would say, “Oh I found the problem that is perplexing your whole life.” I mean, it’s dragging you down. There’s that cave analogy where I’ve been like locked in a cave with an abuser. But also like a slave, a slave who like feels they need to be there because they need to help the master because that’s going to be a beautiful relationship.

Anne: Once you can help him enough, it’s going to be great. Just hold on a little bit longer.

Felicia: Yeah, it’s going to be a good marriage. That’s what marriage is.

Understanding Emotional AbuseFelicia: And now here I am finding out that it is not the right way. And people don’t understand. I tell my friends and family pretend like this is physical abuse because it’s exactly the same. I don’t know what people think emotional abuse is. But it seems at first that it’s like an excuse or something.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery answered all of that. I was just desperate for years to find an answer. And it answered like all of that confusion that I had. I’m like, I don’t know how these other wives find out about porn and then they just go on In their marriage. For me, I couldn’t be safe doing that.

Anne: Let’s talk to women who are like, “Well, what if it’s not abuse?” who think, “Maybe I’m codependent.” or ” Maybe he’s a porn addict.”

How do you know that the Betrayal Trauma Recovery model, the abuse model is real. Because I think some women are worried, I’ve thought it’s that before and it hasn’t been that. So there’s no reason to go down this abuse thing. Because I’m just going to find out in six months that it’s not abuse, that it’s actually something else.

Felicia: I’m still kind of in that, because now that we’re divorced, the co parenting is a nightmare. And I still am like, is it me?

Anne: This is why I wrote The Living Free Workshop.

Isolation & Community RejectionFelicia: Not only that, but one humongous piece of the story is that right when I got the divorce, he turned all my friends against me. I have no friends now. It’s really hard to go to a church where you’re connected. And you have, good friends that you get together with, I told them about the abuse.

And they were like yeah, and I didn’t think they totally got it. I didn’t think they were gonna disown me. Like, these people have called me names and are not fun to see at the grocery store. So, it’s hard to believe that It’s not me, and so I’ve wondered if it’s me.

I think relationships, good marriage relationships are not confusing. There’s problems. You can see what’s going on. You can try to fix the problems and try to love each other more. But this relationship was completely confusing. There was no reconciliation. There was no now we can love each other now that we found that out. None of that. There was never any of that.

Anne: I think some women do go through a period of, Oh, now that we know this, things will get better. And if they do go to a CSAT or a pornography addiction recovery specialist, they’ll actually tell them that. They’ll actually say things will get better now that you know this. They kind of do get better for a little bit, but then they don’t get all the way better and things are still confusing.

Pornography & Power DynamicsAnne: Then some pornography addiction recovery folks, like a 12 step group or something, they’ll say, well, now you have to stay in recovery. And wife, you also have to do 12 step and you have to do this the rest of your life. Because this will always be an issue. Then do you just keep seeing that pattern over and over? And the problem is an abuse problem that keeps cropping up.

We all have healthy relationships with people who aren’t perfect. You can laugh about it. Like, Oh man, that’s funny. She sometimes is disorganized and she forgets things. She doesn’t become less forgetful necessarily. But the resolution is you learn, Oh, she’s forgetful sometimes. And that’s okay. We can work with this.

Abuse is not something that you can work with because abuse is always a power over dynamic. And so anytime it gets to a place where something feels resolved and you feel equal. Then the abuser will try to push you down again somehow. There’s never going to be any resolution possible.

Felicia: Trying to stop the porn, but it’s like the porn is a symptom of this power and control. So it’d be like if you get physically abused and you try to stop the hitting. And the solution is to stop the hitting. That doesn’t make sense. They’re hitting you because of a power and control. You’re not just gonna try to stop the hitting and be like for the rest of your life. We’re gonna just try to stop the hitting.

Anne: But you can still lie and manipulate and all kinds of other things.

Secret Sexual BasementFelicia: Yeah, I also learned about the secret sexual basement from Betrayal Trauma Recovery. It’s like, why is it abusive when someone lies to you? When you get married to that person, and let’s say you build a house together. And then after 12 years you realize there’s this basement that no one knew about.

That person got to go into the basement whenever they did, because they always knew about it. The whole family is like, what? I didn’t even know that we had this basement. That’s why it’s like abuse, because it’s It’s his choice when he wants to go. Also, why he wants to go, he knows all about it. Everyone else just has no clue that it was even in the makings of a construction. Much less what the content of that basement is.

Anne: It’s so hard, and it’s also hard when other people don’t know how to help victims identify this, right? Because they’ll go and say, my husband, to use this metaphor a little bit longer, he left, I don’t know where he’s going, I’m so confused. And instead of saying, oh, well, maybe he’s an abuser. Maybe you’re being psychologically abused, maybe he’s doing porn in the basement, you know?

They’re like, oh, he just probably needs his space, and it’s healthy for people to have space, and then it just gets so confusing.

Marriage Wisdom & AbuseFelicia: Yeah, the normal marriage wisdom doesn’t work for abuse situations. Just don’t expect so much. That doesn’t work. Give, give, give, and don’t expect anything in return. I mean, those were the things I grew up hearing about marriages. If you could guarantee me that both people were doing that, that’s true.

But the minute one person does that and the other person has no intentions of doing that. That’s what was baffling is after all these years, I’m like, I can’t believe that we’re marriage partners.

This is the person I’m supposed to be more intimate with than anyone else in the whole world. And I find out that you’ve been doing this. Against me and they say it’s not about you that porn isn’t about you. That’s also very disturbing and not helpful. I don’t know who it’s about but it’s totally done to me. When you say to your wife, I don’t want to have sex. No, thanks. I’m not in the mood. Or whatever your reasoning is, and then you’re off, having sex with yourself.

Anne: It’s not true because they are in the mood to have sex, but they’d rather have sex with the computer. They’re not being truthful when they say that. They’re not being truthful when they say “I’m not in the mood.”

When You Can’t Trust Your HusbandAnne: They’re in the mood all the time to have sex with someone else. Instead they should say, “Oh, I totally want to have sex.

I have sex so much. I masturbate every day, twice a day. When I look at porn, I just don’t want to have sex with you. That would be the truth. Then you’d be like, Oh, whoa. Instead, he’s just happy to have you think that you’re just unattractive, and somehow he doesn’t want to have sex at all because you’re the way that you are. That’s absolutely not true.

Felicia: There’s so much problem in that, when you really think about a husband and a wife. What you just said is like, can you believe that would just be a simple problem? No. There’s so much, on every level, of betrayal right there. My ex explained to me that when he was trying to get me to see what porn really was.

But when he said this, it was helpful. He’s like, it’s like going through a drive thru and ordering whatever you want. Then going and eating it in your car. You didn’t want to eat it in front of everybody because it’s kind of embarrassing that you’re a pig, or whatever. Even though it’s bad that he was trying to get me to understand that, that is exactly what it is.

Abuse Hard To RecognizeFelicia: It’s like a menu, and I wasn’t on the menu. Almost ever. I’m like barely ever on the menu.

Anne: Well, and you don’t want to be on the menu.

Felicia: I don’t want to be on the menu either.

Anne: Basically, you’re not a person to them. That’s just gross. No woman wants to be like, Oh yeah, I’m on the menu. Yay. Like, no.

Felicia: You’re exactly right.

Anne: Why do you think it takes victims so long to realize they’re a victim of emotional abuse?

Felicia: I don’t know. For me, like I said, I kind of rolled my eyes when I heard abuse. Because it’s like, oh great, everything’s abuse nowadays.

Being Labeled As Codependent Feels Empowering, but Abuse Isn’t Your FaultFelicia: Abuse is one sided. I get into a marriage and if it’s abuse, I have to be like, you have a problem with hurting me. And it’s not my fault. And it ruins our relationship, but you need to change, and I can do nothing about it. That sucks. Not only am I not gonna say it’s my fault, but you’re not gonna say it’s your fault either. And I can’t do anything about it. The powerlessness, I guess.

Anne: It’s awful. I think that’s why women sometimes like the word codependent because It seems more empowering to them in the moment than abuse. Because if you are codependent then there is something you can do about it. If you’re partially responsible, by being codependent then you can do something about it. But if you’re not responsible for it at all, you can’t. And that feels terrible. Some women are like, I’d rather think I was codependent because then I have some power in the situation.

Whereas If I say it’s abuse, then the only thing I can do is get to safety. It doesn’t necessarily mean divorce. You can work towards safety. And he could have an epiphany like we talk about in the BTR BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop and the BTR The BTR.ORG Message Workshop. At any given time, he could enter reality and realize, Oh, I am being abusive.

I’m not going to do this anymore. But if he’s doing it on purpose, you telling him, “Hey, this is abuse,” is only going to make him abuse you more. Because he’s trying to shut that down.

Power Dynamics In RelationshipsFelicia: Right, and there’s obviously a power dynamic anyway. That makes it worse now the powerful person is mad, basically.

I used to think it was wrong for me to think that my husband should treat me more affectionate, more loving. those are woman qualities. You shouldn’t expect a man to have those woman qualities. He can be gruff and, and kind of dumb, kind of clueless.

It was a thread throughout our whole marriage where he’s accidentally doing stuff to me. But because I’m extremely sensitive it causes a problem, but he’s really just like bumbling around in life. He can’t be hurting me if it’s not intentional.

He only can hurt me if he purposely did it. That was grooming, where I was like, made to believe that his intentions were always good. So I shouldn’t accuse him of doing anything that might say that he had bad intentions, because he never did.

Anne: Well, and the problem with that is the reason why they’re so hell bent on proving that their intentions are good. And that they didn’t mean to do it on purpose is because they did mean it on purpose. That is so hard for women to understand. That they want you to think. that they are doing it accidentally. Then they can kind of keep doing it because they always have a reason to do it. Oh, it was an accident.

Reasons Abusers GiveAnne: Of course I don’t think that if they said to their wives, no, I do this on purpose so I can exploit you. The wives would immediately be like, Oh, what? No, so they have to continually convince their victims that It’s accidental.

Therapists love that too. Oh, you’re doing it because of your childhood trauma. Or because of this and that, and whatever excuse they can think of, because it’s just too hard to admit. No, I do this on purpose because if I didn’t, I would have to take out the trash. And I would have to make dinner. I would have to help drive the kids around, and I don’t want to do that.

I just want to exploit her. And so I’m going to keep doing this instead. It’s absolutely more socially acceptable to pretend like you’re doing it on accident.

Community and Secondary AbuseAnne: So now that you’re divorced and you can still see that he is abusive. Because he’s still doing it. now. he’s still blaming you and causing problems and co parenting is just an absolute nightmare. What would you say to women who are starting this process of, well, I’m not sure if he’s so abusive. Maybe I can do something about it. Maybe I am codependent. What would you say to them?

Felicia: The part that I’m still wrapping my head around is my whole community of believers just abandon me.

Anne: Like your congregation or your church?

Felicia: Yeah, that’s where I had friends, and I mean, we were moving cross country. I’ve lived all over the place in his educational and career pursuit. But I had lived where I lived for a couple of years. It was going to be like our forever home. I actually found friends, really good friends, right away. I guess I’m just mind boggled that they turned against me.

They do not want to have anything to do with me and they must believe I’m the bad guy. I don’t know what they believe about me, what lies were told about me. There’s three towns where I don’t even want to go to the grocery store. Because I have friends from those towns that I have seen at the grocery store. And had a bad encounter with.

That doesn’t even answer your question at all. It’s part of the story that’s the cliffhanger. Where I’m just trying to get healthy again, and stand up for myself. Because I know I’m right. And I’m trying to be my best friend that listens to me.

Frustration Of Husband’s LiesAnne: Would you say that maybe what you’re struggling with is all of this secondary abuse that you’re experiencing? Because he has purposefully now tried to convince all of these people. And actually not just tried, been successful in convincing them that you’re the abuser on purpose, to isolate you and hurt you.

So now it’s like, oh, I thought I was so healed. I thought I understood, but he’s still actively trying to harm you. By harming your relationships with other people. He’s still actively abusing you.

Felicia: I told everyone the truth. He admitted to it and the divorce was supposed to be in agreement. I wanted to divorce him. I wanted people to know that this is because of his abuse that I’m doing this. He was saying yeah. Now my community is beating me up in the same way I always was.

They’re calling me a liar and I have like this fear now of, I’m a victim! I’m afraid of being like that. But that’s actually what’s happening. I’m another victim, and this time, it’s my whole community.

Anne: None of the abuse you’re experiencing now is convincing you, even more, that it’s abuse.

Seeking Support & FriendshipAnne: You’ve done BTR group sessions. You’ve been to Individual Sessions. So the two things to do now are get more educated about are strategy and how to deal with all the unsafe people around you. And then start praying you can make friends in your area.

People that you’ve never met before. People who know nothing about it to be on your team in your local area. You will find people. And they will be a great support to you. It might take a minute and it might be someone who’s going through it herself right now. It might be someone who you’re actually going to be an answer to her prayer.

That she’s like, I’m going through this too, and I need help. Those are the women who tend to be the most helpful in this situation. You tend to end up supporting each other because we really, really get it. And that’s why Betrayal Trauma Recovery is awesome because there’s nobody here that isn’t on your side.

Felicia: I found a new friend and she started to sound exactly like me a while ago. And so I decided to be for her what I would have wanted. I thought, his might be it. But we’re not really hanging out that much anymore. I was trying to be gentle in case she wanted to stay. I just don’t want her to go not knowing that this might be the answer. It’s not a good way to make friends talking about people’s husbands badly.

Being Honest In FriendshipAnne: Oh, that’s true. She didn’t realize he was abusive.

Felicia: I was like, do you guys have a good relationship? Is it confusing? Does he ever have any problems? She was answering them all in the red flag sense. So I was like, it might be this, you’re not codependent. She didn’t tell me no. Like, she said like, gosh, I had a feeling I should have been done with him a long time ago. They’re on their second marriage to each other. They already divorced and now they’re married.

Someone told me one time that they thought that my husband was into porn. And I was just like, ugh, I did not like hearing that. I was like, No he’s not, You don’t understand. And now years later I’m like, she was right.

Anne: In order to make a true friendship, I feel like being honest is always the best policy. So if you’re like, hey, I feel like this is abuse. And they’re not ready for that for whatever reason. And it offends them and they don’t want to be your friend anymore. Then that’s okay. Maybe they’ll be your friend later.

Because you don’t want a service project. You want a really good friend who you really get each other. If her husband is abusive and she can’t see it. You’re not going to be a good friend to her either because it’s going to be driving you crazy.

Professional Services vs. FriendshipsAnne: And that’s why professional services are so important. Because friendships really should be an equal thing, not service projects. Our services aren’t service projects. Because if we did them for free, we’d have to get other jobs. And we would not be able to help women, but they’re our job. So getting professional services is totally different than looking for a friend who’s on your level.

She’s almost doing you a favor in some ways because you would have been really annoyed all the time. You know, wait, she’s not seeing it. If she’s telling you clearly abusive things and you’re like, uh, you know it’s not going to be fun for you either.

Women Telling Other Women Their CodependentFelicia: And then I’m just gonna build another fake community of a bunch of friends. That I don’t want to tell the truth to, so that’s not good. We don’t want a big group of women deciding that their all codependent. Yeah, I can see that being honest with people, and hopefully friendships will follow.

Anne: I think that you will. It’s just a hard time. Have faith and be yourself and stay true to who you are. And things will work out eventually. I’m so sorry that you’re going through that right now. That is so hard. You’re amazing.

Felicia: Thank you so much for being beautiful.

Anne: You’re amazing, you’re incredible, you’re strong, things are complex.

You’re Not Codependent: Spreading AwarenessAnne: A lot of people don’t like me because I say their husband is abusive. Not because I know him personally, not because I’m trying to hurt their marriage. But because objectively the behaviors she is describing are checking the boxes. That any domestic abuse services would say, yes, this is abuse.

That’s it. We’re not making abuse out of nothing. We don’t even know the people. We’re just saying, Okay, this is abuse. Also, we’re not giving any excuses for it.

Maybe he does have a brain lesion. Maybe he does have PTSD from when he served in Iraq. But that doesn’t mean it’s not abuse to you.

It doesn’t mean that it’s okay that you’re being abused. So, the reasons don’t matter why you’re being abused. The thing that matters is you’re being harmed. And it’s not your fault, you don’t deserve to be harmed. You don’t deserve to be harmed because someone has labeled you codependent.

Felicia: You’re right, and I’m not gonna feel sorry for spreading that message. I want women to not be harmed in their relationships. And I shouldn’t feel bad about not wanting that. I don’t want that for myself either, which I forget about myself. But yeah, I don’t want myself to be harmed.

Anne: But it is a lonely place sometimes, it’s just such a hard road and you don’t have to do it alone. We’re here for you, Felicia, and we’re here for all women going through this.

You’re Not Codependent You Just Need SupportAnne: All I want to do is educate women about abuse so that they would know what they were facing. So they would have information. They could make the decisions. That they aren’t going to be blamed for being codependent.

They want to make them and get to safety and we can support them in doing that. And then once they feel stable and safe and that they have friends in their area. Then we’re like, We’re so glad we were here for you when you needed us. And we wish you the best of luck.

We’re here again if you need us again. Unlike 12 step or even religion that’s like you can’t leave. You know, you have to stay in 12 step or you’ll do it. We’re like, there’s nothing wrong with you you’re not codependent. You’re amazing. We’re just here to support you through a very difficult time.

And then when you’re stable and you feel good and you feel like, Oh, I’ve got friends we’re like, yay. We love you. You’re going to do great. You’re brave, strong and incredible.

Final Thoughts: Codependent Is a Victim Blaming LabelAnne: Well, thank you so much, Felicia, for sharing your story. I really appreciate it.

Felicia: Thank you so much. I can do this.

Anne: You can, thanks for helping me get the word out that you are not codependent. You’re doing great. Talk to you soon.

Felicia: Bye

View Details

If you’re wondering, “How do I know if my husband is abusive?” You’re not alone. Hearing the stories of other women can help you know what to do next. Coach Jo is a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Coach who had to ask herself that question in two different marriages.

f you relate with her experience learn about Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions here.

Your Husband Is Abusive If His Porn Use = Sexual CoercionWomen have the right to information about their partner’s sexual behaviors before choosing to be intimately involved and committed to him. A man is not giving his partner the ability to make informed consent if he withholds information about pornography use.

This is called sexual coercion and it is abusive.

An appropriate conversation would include her partner disclosing the full truth his use of pornography and other sexual behaviors prior to intimate contact.

Often, women find that they are in a relationship for several months or years with a pornography user before discovering his secret sexual behaviors.

He’s Abusive If He’s Using Psychological Control TacticsGaslighting, lying, and manipulation are all psychologically abusive tactics. Psychological abuse differs from emotional abuse in that it is intended to make the victim question her own reality.

Often, psychological abusers will take the stance that they “didn’t do it intentionally” or that it “wasn’t calculated.” Perhaps they didn’t intend for their partner to become so depressed from their abuse that she fantasizes about suicide every day…. or perhaps they didn’t intend for their partner to become so unsure of her reality that she truly wonders if she is insane… but they were intentionally choosing to protect their sexual acting-out behaviors by not being honest and forthright.

Every abuser is completely accountable for their every word and action. The consequences on victims can be overwhelmingly tragic and abusers must face the reality that even if it wasn’t “calculated”, it was still intentional.

Pornography Use is Emotionally AbusiveBetrayed women suffer from Betrayal Trauma. Betrayal Trauma is a symptom of abuse, not addiction. Betrayal in and of itself is emotionally abusive. It creates feelings of immense anguish, rejection, terror, and grief. At BTR, we understand that it’s not “just porn”. We understand that your world is crashing down around you. We’re here for you.

https://youtu.be/aljnmnAvdqcTranscript: How Do I Know If My Husband Is Abusive?Anne: I’m so excited to have coach Jo on today’s episode. She’s one of our amazing BTR coaches. All of the coaches here at BTR have been through this and are now able to live free through strategy and boundaries. I’m so passionate about only having women who have been through this on our team.

Jo facilitates Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions and also Betrayal Trauma Recovery Individual Sessions here at BTR. She’s incredible. And I’m so grateful to have her.

How To Tell If My Husband Is AbusiveAnne: Coach Jo was married to two different abusers. Let’s start with the first one. Did you recognize that he was an abuser at first?

Coach Jo: I didn’t have a clear understanding of what abuse was before we were married. Then pretty quickly it became apparent that there was something wrong, and that it wasn’t safe. I didn’t have the words for that initially, but it became clear very very quickly. It started on the honeymoon.

The second night of the honeymoon he left me in the hotel room for a couple of hours. I had no idea where he had gone. This is pre cell phone. I was distraught and wondering what the heck had happened and what I had gotten myself into.

Is My Husband Emotionally Abusive?Anne: What happened after this?

Coach Jo: There were explosions at the house, a lot of angry outbursts, a lot of name calling, a lot of breaking things. I had no idea what to do. Then we went on a trip together and got lost in the middle of the night. We were circling around looking for our exit or the connecting road, this was before GPS.

He was cussing and screaming and driving like a maniac. Every time we went over an overpass, he would threaten to drive off the overpass. This went on for probably a good hour and a half. And by the time we reached our destination, I locked myself in the bathroom and couldn’t move. There was 20 years of that kind of behavior. We have five children together.

Anne: How did you describe his behavior when you didn’t know it was abuse?

Coach Jo: I told one relative and she said communicate better, try not to trigger him, walk on eggshells around him. It never even occurred to me to ask myself, is my husband abusive?

I did bring it to clergy. Of course my husband was in the room too, and the response that I got was, “Has he hit you?” And the answer was no. Then he said, “So what’s the problem?”

Seeking Help & Not Understanding That My Husband Is AbusiveAnne: At BTR, we are interfaith, but also inter-paradigm. In fact we have women who work here from various different faiths, also who are agnostic. Wherever a client is, is where we meet them. Would you mind sharing what your specific faith is?

Coach Jo: I am Catholic, this was the only priest that I have encountered personally that had that kind of an attitude .

Anne: This particular priest says, what’s the problem? did you try to get help from anyone else during this time?

Coach Jo: About year six we went to couples therapy and did individual therapy.

Anne: So many women think that couple therapy was going to be the solution. So finally, if he agrees to it, they’re really excited about it and then surprised and so devastated to realize that it makes it worse.

Coach Jo: I kept thinking he doesn’t understand surely he doesn’t understand. Surely, he just doesn’t know a better way. I focused my energy on trying to fix him so couples therapy was my idea.

Anne: Did you know about porn use with him or affairs or prostitutes or anything?

Is My Husband Abusive? Sexual Coercion & BetrayalCoach Jo: Later on, I really understood what BTR talks about, sexual coercion. The idea that you are not a whole being and a whole person. That you are there for somebody else’s sexual gratification.

You have a person receiving sexual gratification from the humiliation and degradation of another person. Even if you don’t have proof positive that they’re watching porn, It will be very apparent in the way that they treat you, the way they look at and speak to other women as well. Really what it came down to was he did not have respect for me. He had no respect for women. He did sexual coercion, if I would not comply with his sexual wishes, he threatened to kill himself.

I found out he had slept with women in our church congregation, in the neighborhood and at the school. It was precarious and degrading not to know. I still didn’t know if my husband was abusive. I didn’t have words or definitions for it.

Coach Jo: I did file for divorce ultimately. Then it was a long, hard road.

Anne: Like you were saying before we recorded, your parents.

Family Choosing His Side When My Husband Is AbusiveCoach Jo: They ended up siding with my first husband.

Anne: Throughout the separation and divorce, you were estranged from your mom and dad. I’m so sorry. That’s so hard.

Coach Jo: If I had to rate traumas, that’s probably not a good idea, I would say that the trauma from that probably hit 10 times worse.

Anne: I’m so sorry. That’s so hard.

Second Marriage: Figuring Out If My Husband Is AbusiveAnne: You mentioned to me before we started recording that the second marriage was completely different. Really quick, before you share, at the very beginning of my marriage, I made friends with someone who had been punched.

Her husband didn’t help around the house. I think he was gone a lot of the time. I said to her, something is wrong. She said to me, “Oh, your husband is amazing. He’s so great, he comes to church, he’s always helping people out. Like, no, he’s not abusive. You don’t have to worry.”

Comparing her abuser, who was overtly abusive, in contrast to what I experienced. The gaslighting, lying, manipulation, and porn use was so different. She couldn’t recognize it, I also couldn’t, but I knew something was very wrong. I didn’t know even to ask if my husband is abusive.

Is My Husband Abusive? Early Red Flags Anne: I’m not sure if that’s what’s coming when it comes to your story, but let’s start with your second marriage. So three and a half years later, you meet your second husband. Can you talk about when you first met him.

Coach Jo: , I don’t think I had my sea legs under me from the first marriage. I felt like I failed at the first marriage. There was an eagerness to get it right, to do it again, to do it better. I asked all the right questions.

I looked for all the flags, but what I didn’t understand is you don’t ask the person your questions. You ask the question and you observe the answer.

Anne: I did the same thing, I asked all the right questions. And yes, I didn’t give it enough time to observe. What I was observing was very disturbing, but I would talk to him about it and he would give me the right answers. Is that what happened to you too?

Coach Jo: Yes. It was like a test. He knew the right answers. The answers I wanted to hear. He hid who he was and what the agenda was. I didn’t find that out until after the honeymoon

Is My Husband Abusive? Does He Use Pornography?Anne: So you’re experiencing sexual coercion. Again, just like you did in the first marriage in this second marriage. He’s also using pornography secretly and lying to you. But in the second one, you do find out that he’s using porn.

Coach Jo: Yeah, he had joined a men’s program for addicts/abusers.

Anne: Porn addicts. Did he do this on his own, or were you kind of like, hey, you should try this?

Coach Jo: I did all the research. I thought, I have to make this work. I found everything. We had a couple’s therapist. Not helpful. Zero out of five stars, it was during COVID. I kept thinking that maybe something would change if I just hung on tight. I say that my first husband was abuse by fire. The second was abuse by ice. So he would withdraw and ignore your presence. He would tell you what you were feeling, but all of it, very calm, very metered, nothing to see here.

He wanted me to function in certain roles as a companion for activities to show up and be the couple. I was useful for that. But then when I wanted to take up space and be something other than the role, it wasn’t okay. I was too much. It was obvious that it was a pain if I were me instead of the role. It took me a long time to identify that my husband is abusive.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery & Finding SupportAnne: Because this wasn’t a relationship, to him it was a show or something?

Coach Jo: It was functional. There was an image. If I was upholding the image, then that was fine. If I was asking for something more, if I was asking for something relational, there was no room for that. Early one morning we were talking. It wasn’t a conflict, he was talking about how I looked or how I presented. He said he wanted to pour acid on my face and then sloughed it off as a joke, and I was horrified.

It was through a conversation with my friend who said, listen, this is a big deal and you can’t ignore this. You really need to speak with these women over at Betrayal Trauma Recovery. They can help you, BTR was a game changer for me because it gave me language. Somebody in Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions said “wife appliance”. That’s it, that’s what I am. I’m a “wife appliance.” That term really resonated with me.

Joining BTR and getting coaching was what what I needed BTR said the porn user is responsible for their own actions. Not just the viewing of porn, but the way they treat their spouse and the other individuals in their life as a result of the porn use. And it is not my responsibility to make it comfortable for the abuser so that they can stop their behaviors. The responsibility lies solely with the abuser and not the victim. And my husband is abusive.

Traditional Therapy Enabled My Husband’s Emotional AbuseAnne: How was that different than the other program? that you were in or the therapy you were going to?

Coach Jo: Sex addiction therapy does not give you the same language. It doesn’t give you the same solution. In sex addiction therapy you’re told to communicate better, to provide a safe environment. You check in and you talk about your feelings and you talk about what’s bothering you and you talk about what you need.

In couples therapy you’re supposed to communicate better. When you’re communicating with an abuser, anything you say is used against you. Any information that you give is used to maintain that power and control. So it’s very, very high risk for the spouse

Anne: The emotional abuser exploits your emotions and the things that you tell them for their own purposes. It’s never resolving something between you. He’s just excited that you’re giving him information that he can use to exploit you. So it’s extremely dangerous to be vulnerable with an emotional abuser. And my husband is abusive.

I can’t figure out why therapists haven’t figured this out yet. It’s probably because they don’t have any other tools. They just think communication is always good. Also, they don’t think of him as exploiting the emotion. They think, well, obviously when she tells him how hurt she is, that will make a difference. They don’t realize that’s not what has happened in the past, and it’s certainly not what’s going to happen in the future.

My Husband Is Abusive Because He Uses These Deceptive TacticsAnne: Therapists haven’t figured this out yet because abusers lie. They say they care about the relationship, about the family and about us when they don’t. They’re not going to walk right into a therapist and say, I actually don’t like my wife. As well as, I want to have sex with other people.

Coach Jo: I’m sorry, I’m laughing because I can’t picture that ever happening. At least the playing field would be level, right? That you can make an informed decision. As painful as it would be, it would give you enough information to make a decision in your best interest.

Anne: Because it’s exploitative, they have a reason to lie. If they weren’t getting something from you, maybe meals, maybe childcare, and sex. If they weren’t getting something, then they probably wouldn’t mind saying, “Hey, you know what? I’m done. I’m going to go have sex with other people.” But they need to keep their exploitative privilege intact. And that is why they’re not willing to be honest. Because they’re going to lose something if they’re honest.

Coach Jo: I think that’s a difficult thing to come to terms with, the reality of, Hey, hold on a second. None of this was in my best interest. It was difficult to see it as intentional. That’s the main difference that I found, at least on a practical boots on the ground level at Betrayal Trauma Recovery.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Helped Me Know If My Husband Is AbusiveCoach Jo: You weren’t required to become vulnerable to your spouse in order to solve the problem. That is the beauty of BTR. It provides a space where you’re able to speak the truth of what’s happening. Without any background noise, without anybody trying to circumvent. What you see, you can duck out of the subterfuge take a minute to breathe and assess what’s happening. Its a space where I can figure out if my husband is abusive.

Coach Jo: It’s so helpful. If I could wave a magic wand. I would give women in these situations turning the volume down on the abuser’s voice. You could sit back and watch the actions, the attitudes, what’s actually happening and not what’s being said. You can actually assess if your husband is abusive. That would be a huge gift. Betrayal Trauma Recovery does provide that place to pause and assess what’s happening.

Anne: Without any interference from anyone else.

Even though it’s difficult information, it provides a place to process that’s safe. Then you can listen to other women’s stories as well and see that you’re not the only one. And look at the common threads. And it becomes easier to identify when you see it. You can view from a distance if my husband is abusive.

Anne: You found BTR in your second marriage, which helped you know If your husband is abusive. You saw the emotional and psychological abuse and sexual coercion. How would it have been different had you found BTR in your first marriage?

The Journey Of HealingCoach Jo: I think it would have been a game changer. I did not understand the emotional abuse the exists and things of that nature. Even engaging in an individual session or two and just throwing out some of these behaviors and saying, Hey, hold on a second. Is this okay? Is this all right? Without my spouse there. Because up until then, all of the appointments had occurred with him in the room,

Anne: Trying to identify if your husband is abusive with your abuser in the room. That’s so unethical for the therapist doing that. They have no idea what they were doing and it’s so scary.

Coach Jo: Because you can’t say anything. Like how do you speak the truth when you know there’s going to be consequences? So they never have an opportunity to hear the truth of what’s happening.

Anne: Yeah, it’s really scary actually . None of the situation was your fault. People don’t get abuse education and even if you understand it, trying to figure out how to be safe is difficult. Can you also talk about maybe what would have been different had you known about BTR going into your second marriage.

Coach Jo: It would have been a more expanded view of what abuse looks like. And then the converse, what character looks like, what integrity looks like. It’s not what somebody says. It’s what they do. Where their eyes trail, it’s all of the things. BTR really helped me to know if my husband is abusive. Character and integrity show up in every area of somebody’s life. Just being able to bounce that off of somebody.

Understanding My Husband’s Abuse & Setting BoundariesCoach Jo: I think BTR is the perfect place if you’re dating, maybe not in group sessions, but in individual sessions. It’s a beautiful space to talk about behaviors, attitudes, tone, habits and things like that. Where you can sort these things out with somebody else who gets it. Then take time to investigate and make an informed decision or as informed as you can. The gift of a pause and a little bit of silence makes all the difference in the world.

One of the things that made Betrayal Trauma Recovery different was the focus on the things that I had control over, like setting boundaries. Like what level of risk I wanted to take when I was talking with my husband. How to navigate day to day living and all of the details where the abuse permeates your life. It helped me to know if my husband is abusive.

Anne: Did you find any other resource you went to understood all the different ways that it permeates your life?

Coach Jo: I think that the underlying understanding was that they believed the mask. Truly, he was a good guy. He was just good. Not slick enough to recognize the mistakes he was making. BTR reframed it as well, he’s hitting the bullseye every time.

How is that an accident? How does he happen to say the thing that hurts you the most? Right after you told him that was painful? How does he happen to withhold when you’re having the worst day ever and you’ve got tears running down your face. That’s not an accident. But all the other programs looked at it like, oh it’s just goofy, doesn’t mean any of it.

The Importance Of Language & SupportCoach Jo: BTR looked at it and went, no, hold on a second. You can’t hit the mark right on that many times accidentally. It doesn’t work that way. And if you step back and look at it, it makes total sense. But you have to step back and look at it from a different angle. And it’s not my job to figure out why, but BTR helped me to say, Hey, what’s happening, what does it feel like? What does it look like? And then what do you want to do? It gave me choices.

Anne: I think one of the things that other professionals are maybe afraid of is the consequences of calling it abuse. And BTR is not afraid. We’re not pro divorce, we’re definitely pro safety, and pro safety means we’re not afraid of looking it right in the eye and calling it what it is. Whereas I think other people are like, if I say that to him, it might hurt his feelings. Or it might make him angry, or the marriage might fall apart, or this or that. And BTR is not afraid of the consequences of truth.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery wants you to figure out if your husband is abusive.

Who Pays The Price Of My Husband’s Abuse Coach Jo: The way I look at it is, who’s paying the price tag for these behaviors. Everybody’s okay with the wife paying the price tag for the behaviors, but nobody wants to put it on the perpetrator. That is a huge shift which is, hold on a second. I pay the price tags for my actions and you need to pay them for yours.

Anne: Why do you think that is? Why do you think the typical professional in this doesn’t mind having the woman pay the price tag, but they really have a hard time with the man paying it?

Coach Jo: There’s an image that’s maintained of the man being just a hapless victim of his own actions. Which is kind of insulting, quite frankly.

Anne: Insulting to him, you mean?

Coach Jo: Absolutely, but I’m looking at somebody that makes the same choice 10, 12, 20, 100 times in a row, and it’s a conscious decision. He actually has to make an effort to make these choices. He’s got free will and he’s exercising it. Why can’t we look at that and say, all right. Now, what are we going to do?

Oh, he’s a big, goofy, nice guy who doesn’t really understand what he’s doing. Give him a break. Just be nicer. Just communicate better. He’ll get it eventually that’s the prevailing paradigm.

Anne: Which only benefits him. It doesn’t benefit the victim at all.

Decisions After Finding Safety From An Abusive HusbandAnne: So after you had such success and healing through BTR, you decided that you wanted to be a BTR coach. Can you talk more about why you made that decision?

Coach Jo: It’s just such a beautiful community to be a part of. Seeing women grow, become strong, Make decisions that will benefit them and their families moving forward.

I absolutely loved when I was in group. Women dream again and dreaming in myself something different for my life that may or may not include marriage. That may or may not include dating, there was a sense of freedom. To be a part of that was just so special. And also helping women through the rough times.

Sitting with them, to be a comfort and to give language where none existed before. And then maybe help them focus their hope towards a brighter future. And just seeing that happen was just so beautiful. The desire to be a part of that was overwhelming.

Anne: We’re so grateful to have you. You’re such an important part of our team.

Combining Professional Skills With CoachingAnne: Coach Jo had an amazing career that she could have continued. She decided to stop and do this because she wanted her career and her work life to be more fulfilling. You have all these amazing skills that you bring to the table when you coach at Betrayal Trauma Recovery.

Coach Jo: Yeah. BTR fit with everything that I have loved in my professional career with finance. So the additional training that I’ve been able to take as a BTR coach for divorce. Some in finance and with some of the legalities were right in my wheelhouse.

Then combining that with being able to walk with women. As they go through these just courageous journeys In dealing with the abuse and transforming through all of it. It’s a fulfilling culmination of putting all the skills to good use to help women.

The Value Of Personal Abuse ExperienceAnne: One of the things I think is so important with abuse coaching is having someone who has experience, personal experience. All of the coaches here at BTR have been through this. They’ve all experienced this type of abuse, and then they also have the training so they know what it feels like to have their husband cheat on them.

They know what it feels like to tell people and not get help. All of our coaches here really understand it on a visceral level. But also educated, all of us at BTR have been through the harrowing adventure that is healing from betrayal trauma.

Helping Women Through HealingAnne: Can you talk about helping women through that as a coach? Because I think that’s another thing that perhaps influencers or therapists might give people. The impression that oh, as soon as you change this, things will go really fast for you. You’ll be fine kind of a thing.

I’m just thinking of a few influencers that I know. They have these fix your marriage workshops. They’re like six classes, each class is a half hour or so. It’s the static thing online. You check off some boxes. Like, did you tell him how you feel? Great. Box checked. Did you do this? Check. As if there’s some magic thing that can solve all these problems quickly. Or he stopped using porn. Yay. Check. It’s over with.

Coach Jo: That’s so scary

Anne: It’s so scary.

The Reality Of The Healing Process If Your Husband Is AbusiveAnne: I know this is a journey. It’s hard for me to say that because I want to give women hope that safety is possible. Also to have realistic expectations. A friend was over at my house the other night and she was feeling really terrible. She’s about to file for divorce and she is just not feeling great.

I said to her, I promise you’re going to feel better in, and then I paused and I said, are you ready for me to tell you how long? I said, definitely. At least three years. It’s like the most awful thing to say to someone. But it also kind of liberates you to know I’m not weird. I’m not crazy. There’s nothing wrong with me, that it’s taking a while for me to extricate myself from this nightmare. Because it’s a nightmare.

Coach Jo: Yeah, absolutely And the idea is not that, you go through purgatory for three years and all of a sudden you’ve arrived. It is a process. It’s like a snowball rolling downhill over time. Incrementally, you’re adding on to your confidence, belief in yourself, knowledge, and skills to be out in the world. You’re building a life. That takes time. It’s a beautiful incremental step by step process and being a part of Betrayal Trauma Recovery while you’re going through that process.

The Importance Of Community & VisionCoach Jo: BTR provides language, provides support in the form of community. And other women who are going through it with you. It also provides vision. You see they’ve been here for two years and they’re finally wrapping up their divorce. That healing that has taken place along the way, you’re a witness. Even if that’s not where you’re at on your path, it does show you that a different future is possible. It’s a baby step process.

It’s beautiful as a coach to be able to have the client look in the rear view mirror and see how far they’ve come. I think that’s one of the greatest gifts of coaching. You know, you’re going through the hard stuff, but it’s also being able to remind somebody. Remember when we started out back here and look how far you’ve come.

Anne: Everybody’s path is different it doesn’t have to include divorce. Regardless of what you choose and where your path leads you, BTR can help you on that path.

Encouragement When Your Husband Is AbusiveAnne: If someone is listening and this is the first episode they’ve ever heard of the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast and they’re thinking, I’m not sure my husband is abusive. This sounds kind of extreme. I don’t know. Maybe I should try couple therapy first. What would you say to them?

Coach Jo: Check your gut because there’s a reason why you’re listening. Do an inner inventory. Be really honest, it’s scary at first. Then, bring in points of view from women who have gone through it. Give BTR a shot. Nobody at BTR is going to push you anywhere you don’t want to go. No Betrayal Trauma Recovery Coach is going to try and direct you somewhere . You’re going to determine your path, your pace.

Anne: I had a hard time considering it was abuse. It was emotional and psychological abuse and sexual coercion that I was dealing with. I didn’t want that to be the case because I didn’t want the consequences of it. Sometimes people wonder, if I get educated about abuse, am I going to see it where it isn’t?

That’s like saying, if you’re a hammer, everything’s a nail. Am I going to say it’s abuse if it’s not that? Women listening whose husbands are not abusive tell me, I didn’t really relate. Abuse education is just abuse education. It doesn’t create abuse when abuse doesn’t exist. As we describe these things, if you relate, that is exactly what’s happening to me. You can know if your husband is abusive. Then you can start making decisions in the light of truth.

Healing From His Abuse Through The Living Free WorkshopAnne: That’s one thing we do really well here, is give women very concrete ways to improve their safety, and they can observe at a safe distance to see what the reality of their situation is, what they really couldn’t see before.

Coach Jo: The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop is excellent at defining what boundaries are, what they look like, and a practical map for how to use them. One of the most important ideas that I did not grasp during the first marriage or the second marriage was that you can’t be perfect enough to stop abuse.

So spinning your wheels, trying to get everything right, keep all the plates spinning. Do it with a smile on your face, don’t react or be harsh. Communicate things that make him feel good about himself or whatever the paradigm is. Can’t do it right enough to fix whatever’s happening with him. You can’t stop his abuse by being more perfect. Identifying that my husband was abusive was just the first step.

Anne: Or even by getting them in the right program. There’s lots of things that would apply there.

Coach Jo: Yeah, say it right, do it right, find the right instructor, the right video.

Anne: Find the right video, therapist, this, or that. It’s crazy, all the things.

Coach Jo: Have my cousin’s husband talk to him, maybe that’ll fix it.

Anne: Exactly.

Coach Jo: The proof is in the pudding. He’s been doing this for years, and people know right and wrong. I think that’s the hardest thing to come to grips with is that this is a conscious decision. Watching what’s happening and looking at that in reality and saying, Hey, hold on a second.

Making Decisions That Create SafetyCoach Jo: This is a conscious decision, and so in turn I have to start making conscious decisions. About my emotional safety, the safety of my family, what does safety look like in my context? The beauty of Betrayal Trauma Recovery is that we’ll walk alongside as you figure it out. Sometimes the spouses do come alongside. So what you were saying before, it doesn’t always end in divorce. A spouse can choose to come alongside and walk that new path.

Anne: Yeah, we have no idea what’s going to happen. I wish we did. I wish there were some guarantees. That’s what we all wanted when we started this journey. It was just something to let us know that we would be okay. And the good news is there’s a way to be okay. There’s a way to heal and away to live a life of peace. There’s a way to thrive. We don’t know exactly how you’re going to apply the principles of safety, but we do know what those principles of safety are.

And that is why I think other programs are dangerous. They assume that if you just educate him a little bit better that he’ll be able to do the right thing, which doesn’t make sense because he knows how to do the right thing. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to even act like he knew how to do the right thing. If he didn’t know what the right thing was. At BTR we help you identify if your husband is abusive.

Concluding That My Husband Is AbusiveAnne: Coach Jo is available to do Betrayal Trauma Recovery Individual Sessions with clients. She also runs several of our group sessions. Attending Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions is a great way to get to know all the coaches. And see which one you jive with, and then do an individual session from there. Our coaches are all incredible. They’re all so knowledgeable. And the most important thing, they’ve all been through it. They all totally understand what you’re going through.

Anne: You’re amazing coach Jo. I love having you on the BTR team. And I’m so glad that we got to talk today on the podcast so the listeners get to know you better. Thank you so much.

Coach Jo: Absolutely, Anne. I appreciate being on the team with you. It’s such a joy.

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Emotional abuse survivors overwhelmingly report that hearing other emotional abuse survivor stories helped them get to emotional safety.

If you’re experiencing your husband’s emotional abuse, check out our daily, online support group for women. We’d love to see you in a Session TODAY.

Transcription: Emotional Abuse Survivor StoriesAnne: Today’s episode is a montage of stories from emotional abuse survivors.

I’m also super humbled as I listened to these stories of the impact that BTR has had on women. Throughout the world then helping them recognize their abusive situations. Helping them know how loved and how cared for they are, and how much they deserve psychological and emotional peace and safety.

I honor all the women who listen to this podcast who are searching for answers. Who are genuinely trying to save their families. Not knowing what to do and getting harmful information from therapists, internet articles or clergy. Including resources that haven’t helped them understand the abuse.

https://youtu.be/VKuJBWVRQp0Honoring Survivor StoriesI want to thank everyone for listening. Above all I hope that BTR is helpful. The thought of any woman being in an abusive situation and not understanding what it is, is heartbreaking to me. Also, a thank you to all of you who have shared our material on social media or shared it with friends. In an effort to educate more women. So with that, here are their stories.

Emotional Abuse Survivor Story #1I have been in therapy for 12 years. Only now have I felt that I have the expert care and clarity that I have been searching for. You and this whole group are what I call, proactive. Where before it was just wishy washy, hit or miss, psycho-babble type of therapy. This group is exactly what women need, and I cannot thank you enough.

Emotional Abuse Survivor Story #2This group is new to me. I have been in not a good place for about three years. This is the first time that I have had other people share their stories. Where I felt so validated. I could totally relate. This isn’t just me. I’m not going crazy. I can stand my ground and create boundaries to keep myself safe. To keep my kids safe. I have multiple daily options to check in, check out, share, not share, listen. The isolation that I felt before is starting to dissipate.

Emotional Abuse Survivor Story #3I arrived at BTR in full blown trauma. Never having known what he was doing for years, and prior to we were married. Thank God that this is the place that I found. Because there was love and nurturing and education. All of the coaches are friends to walk with me and support me and I will forever be grateful.

Emotional Abuse Survivor Story #4I had been in therapy for a while, years, and at least a year with Chuck before I found Betrayal Trauma Recovery. There were no breakthroughs or anything. It was just the same cycle. Now that I know what it is, it was the same cycle of abuse. Happening over and over and over again with no real solution.

When I found BTR, I I honestly was trying to find reasons in my head as to why the group wouldn’t be good for me. Because I knew it was gonna change everything about my life. It did because I joined the group right before I initially separated from Chuck. So having BTR during that time of separation got me through. And then helped me make the decision to separate permanently and just not want to be with him anymore.

I wouldn’t be here and be growing the way that I am without BTR.

Emotional Abuse Survivor Story #5Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group has been very important for me through this journey. I can just very succinctly say that it has saved my life. Chiefly I would say just simply that. Without BTR I wouldn’t be here.

Emotional Abuse Survivor Story #6For years we’d have fights. I would go to the internet to find out how I could be better. So that we could stop having fights, I would always search.

And article after article was never right. I just knew. And finally one day I stumbled upon the BTR podcast and I don’t really like listening to them. I like to read them so I’m thankful for the transcript. I finally knew that what I was reading was right. When I had a name for what was going on in my marriage. I could finally start to work to fix it and fixing it has meant not what I thought it would. It has saved my life too.

So without BTR, I wouldn’t have a name for what I experienced and I wouldn’t have the healing.

Emotional Abuse Survivor Story #7I didn’t ever think that I would be In the position that I’m in, I was with my ex fiancé from the age of 13 for 20 years. He was living a double life. I found BTR when I was staying in hotels.

I had nowhere else to go and I booked a one on one with a coach. And I haven’t looked back. I have learned so much every single day that I hop on group. I see women that I am inspired by and women who are ahead of me in the journey. Women who are following me on the journey. We’re all on different journeys, but somehow the connection that we have and the love that we share is really real.

So thank you so much. I don’t know what I would have done without BTR for the last 12 months.

Emotional Abuse Survivor Story #8I found BTR to be really helpful. In fact Betrayal Trauma Group Sessions are really helpful at connecting with other people going through this. Not feeling alone. Recognizing that there are lots of actually super capable, strong, determined, people experiencing abuse at different stages along the way.

I found the Group Sessions to be really helpful. Also he podcast is really nice just to listen to and understand broader patterns and trends. I wish people didn’t have to find this on their own, I’m really glad BTR exists.

Emotional Abuse Survivor Story #9Discovery was in 2011, of sex addiction. There’s just no support out there for women, other than the groups that are available in that realm.

And my therapist of many years never mentioned the word abuse. I felt like I was duped, I started attending BTR Group Sessions. I learned so much from the coaches, I was terrified with a learning disability. And think I could never do this. I could never, ever, ever be free from a covert narcissist.

As I’m going through all this, the post separation abuse was just heinous. And since then, with the help of BTR through this process and as I am safe. In my new place, I’m now starting to process it even more. Because I had been so busy going through all the process of divorce and everything else.

And due to all the coaches and the love and support. They have allowed me to have such great strength. I’m realizing I am worth it. I am enough. BTR is a lifesaver and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You helped save my life and I am now free and I am now safe.

Emotional Abuse Survivor Story #10I feel like attending BTR.ORG Group Sessions helped me create some routine in my life. Additionally something I can do every single day.

It has just created some routine and structure and support in a life that I currently have. Which is very chaotic and unpredictable and challenging. And I genuinely feel like I like meeting with all the coaches because they have different perspectives. Each coach, has a different vibe.

That’s really helpful. That’s been great. I’ve only been doing this a couple months, but I’m really happy. I don’t think I’m going to stop anytime soon. It’s a really beautiful community of women who’ve been doing it for a long time. It’s really cool to see those connections and to be building them.

Emotional Abuse Survivor Story #11I’ve been through this for over 30 years of dealing with this in my life. I’ve been in BTR for five months. My life has changed more in the last five months than all of those years that I went through. I so appreciate all of the coaches just the clarity has helped me through a lot of individual sessions, group sessions.

I really appreciate that everyone has something different. Similarly all the shares help you understand other ways to do self care and stay safe. I really appreciate BTR. I can’t say enough about it. It’s changed my life.

Survivor Story #12Betrayal Trauma Recovery was literally an answer to prayer for me. After disclosure, I really didn’t know what to think about my situation.

After almost 30 years being with my husband, I felt like I was brainwashed. Also I didn’t know what to do. I prayed and I did a Google search and I found the podcast and it literally changed my life.

After a year, I feel so much more empowered and connected and validated. I have so much clarity on the trauma that I had been going through. Everything just started to make sense.

I’m a completely different person than I was a year ago. I just love this group.

Survivor Story #13BTR Group Sessions and Individual Sessions. They have all been an amazing space for me to be able to find safety, encouragement, and support. BTR has helped me and continues to help me as I’m still in this process. To be reminded that I’m not crazy and that I can watch for the signs. I can check in with myself and check in with my body.

I’m grateful to have this community. It’s been really important to help me be able to recover. And I look forward to recovering more.

Survivor Story #14Well, I found BTR.ORG through Instagram. Anne would post reels and I realized they were about me. They helped me so much. So I started attending BTR Group Sessions. It was like finally having the place where everything in my life that didn’t make sense made sense. Because there could be words put to it. I wasn’t alone and to be able to literally put the voices from group in my, in my ears. And be able to hear that as things are happening in my life.

It’s just been life changing. It’s been a great support.

Setting Boundaries When You Are An Emotional Abuse Survivor

Anne created The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop for emotional abuse survivors to understand and implement boundaries, check it out today.

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Is it possible to heal from emotional abuse and betrayal trauma? Everyday, brave women resist in a variety of ways. Penny shares her story of how she resisted abuse and finally was able to heal from emotional abuse.

Attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session today to share your story with other women who have endured the same type of emotional and psychological abuse and begin healing from emotional abuse TODAY.

Transcript: How To Heal From Emotional Abuse Anne: I have Penny Lane on today’s episode. She’s a writer, wife, and mother with an insatiable passion for life and books. Originally from Queens, she loves being outdoors. Cycling, hiking, traveling, and connecting to and inspiring people.

She has a master’s degree in industrial and organizational psychology from Golden State University. And in her spare time, she helps underserved youth learn to read, apply to college and find jobs.

Heal From Emotional Abuse And Help OthersAnne: Her book, Redeemed, A Memoir of a Stolen Childhood, she recounts how she was pressured into marriage and endured years of forced confessions, Salem style accusations, secretive disciplinary actions, and excommunication. Penny finally reached her breaking point, and we’re going to talk about her story today. Welcome, Penny.

Penny: Thank you for having me.

Anne: Why do you feel it’s important for you to speak out about your abuse and write this memoir?

Penny: For one, I feel compelled to write it. Because I met a lot of people who have childhood trauma of different sorts and they tend to be ashamed of it. And the opposite is actually true. When we talk about it is when we begin to heal from emotional abuse, find relief, solace and community.

I think it is important to write my story to remove some of the stigma involved with abuse or trauma. It will help others heal from emotional abuse as well.

Anne: You were coerced into marrying your husband. Can you talk about the abuse that led to that and then also the abuse that you experienced from him?

No Opportunity To Heal From Emotional Abuse From ChildhoodPenny: I was a 16 year old runaway when I met my husband. He was my boss. I worked at an IHOP as a waitress and he quickly saw that I was a very hard worker. He promoted me and then took me out on dates . Because I was a runaway, you know, it was basically living with a family and paying rent. I had no time to heal from emotional abuse from my upbringing.

Pretty soon he said, why don’t you move in with me? Then I was working for him and living with him. I didn’t have any friends. I didn’t have any family because I was a runaway. He started asking me to work more hours. At first I said yes, because he paid me a little bit extra and I made a lot of money waitressing. It was great.

But then he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Let’s say I worked three double shifts in a row. Even though I was 16, it’s exhausting to be on your feet in a very fast moving restaurant for 12 hours, 14 hours a day. I tried to say, no. I’m too tired. Get someone else. And he’d say, this wasn’t a question. You need to get to work. Be there in five minutes or I’m coming to pick you up in five minutes.

Manipulation and ControlAnne: How old was he?

Penny: He was six years older than me. He was 23, he left college, and was a restaurant manager for four or five years before I met him. So he was managing a staff of 30 or 40 people in a very busy, high revenue restaurant in a busy location.

And he was domineering. A little while after we started dating, he started disappearing and I didn’t know where he was. The girls I worked with said, Oh, he’s got another girlfriend, blah, blah, blah. You know, I didn’t think that was true. Half of you doesn’t believe and half of you does.

Religious PressurePenny: So one time I went along with him to where he was going, because he said he was going to church. I thought, this guy gambles, drinks, curses and I didn’t think he was a very honest guy. And I didn’t think he would possibly be going to church. So I went along with him.

And he had indeed gone to church. He went to a very fundamentalist, Bible believing, evangelical type church. This was in the 70’s, and it was quite emotionally wrought. The services were long and drawn out. At the end of the service, there was a call to walk the aisle, to accept Jesus as your personal savior.

I wanted nothing to do with that. I thought it was totally weird. Besides, I had just run away from home. I didn’t want to belong to something else. I wanted to be free.

Anne: Were you raised religious at all?

Penny: No, I was born Catholic and communion at 12, under duress. I didn’t know anything. We didn’t really do anything. else.

Forced ConversionPenny: So, long story short, once I went to the church, he would ask me each time he went. He went Wednesdays, Thursdays and twice on Sundays. He would just wait for me at the restaurant and say, okay, we’re going to church. I’d get in the car with him and we’d go. I wasn’t really given a choice .

I went two, three weeks of this, going three or four times a week. People started pressuring me to accept Jesus and the story is very compelling. I’m sure you and your readers know this. It’s don’t you want to be loved forever? Yes, of course. Who doesn’t? Don’t you want to have a forever family?

Don’t you want to have God’s love? Well, the answer to all of that is yes. I didn’t feel loved. Don’t you want to belong? Of course. I didn’t belong anywhere. Didn’t belong in my family. I didn’t have a family at the moment. So eventually I gave in to the emotional pressure of accepting Jesus and I walked the aisle

Questioning Free WillAnne: At the time, did you feel like you were doing it of your own free will or at the time were you like, I don’t really want to do this, but in order to stay in his good graces, I have to do this. Can you talk about a bit of your thought process at the time?

Penny: At the time I thought I was doing it for my own free will. But look, I was 17. And I was a runaway, working for this man, living with this man. I thought that he loved me. I loved him and this is what he’s doing with his life. In hindsight, I don’t know if it was really free will or if it was emotional manipulation and pressure.

Because I knew that if I didn’t do this, I would have to walk away from the whole package. Leave him, my job, my living arrangement. And remember I was 17 and I didn’t know how to negotiate in the world. I didn’t know how to find an apartment or find a new job.

Anne: This is also your first experience with religion.

Penny: Yes, and he is my second boyfriend. I had a boyfriend while I was going through high school and I broke up with him because he wasn’t ambitious enough. Then I started working at the IHOP and I met this man. Though here’s the interesting thing that happened. It was a bait and switch.

Abusive RestrictionsPenny: At first it was all lovey dovey and Jesus loves you and you’re part of this forever family. But pretty soon the pastor’s wife and the other women in the church pulled me aside. And said, you can’t dress like that here. And again, I was 17. It was the seventies. We wore blue jeans, platform sandals, high heels, lots of makeup, long shaggy hair, and tight clothes.

That’s what we wore, and that’s all I had. And all of a sudden, I couldn’t dress that way anymore. I had to wear skirts and I couldn’t wear makeup or wear less makeup.

Anne: Only at church or all the time?

Penny: Well, they talked to me about it at church. I really kind of didn’t have any other life. I worked in the restaurant, and I had a uniform. Then I went to church. We didn’t really do anything else. Because previously his life was drinking and going out to eat and drinking. We didn’t do that anymore because he stopped drinking and he stopped smoking.

He didn’t pressure me outside of church, but at church I was required. And I kept arguing with the pastor and saying, you guys didn’t tell me this. Like, I don’t want to change. I like this and I liked that. It was a lot. And let’s fast forward three or four months. The pastor said, I want to meet with you guys on Friday night at my house.

And so of course I was told I was off work and went to the pastor’s house and the pastor made me wait in the living room. He took my boyfriend into his study and they were gone about 10 minutes, maybe more. When he came out, my boyfriend looked very troubled.

Engagement Under DuressPenny: He looked preoccupied. And he said, Penny, will you marry me? We’re living in sin and I can’t live in sin anymore. So will you marry me?

He had talked to me about that before. My boyfriend had said to me like three or four visits after I got saved. He said, you know, we’re living in sin, right? I really didn’t know what he meant because I didn’t really have a concept of sin or hell or heaven, even though they talked about it at the church.

I wasn’t absorbing it. Like my little 17 year old brain was looking at people and looking at clothes and looking at the guitar player and looking at the piano. I wasn’t able to comprehend that. So it meant nothing to me. And I didn’t feel guilty. Like, I hadn’t been a, what I would call a terrible sinner, right?

I know now, because I’ve read the Bible, that like any sin, even jealousy is sin. At the time, I didn’t even think sleeping with your boyfriend was sin. I kind of knew it was wrong, but I didn’t equate it to sin. I didn’t feel any guilt in my heart whatsoever. However, unbeknownst to me, because he didn’t tell me yet, that my boyfriend did.

He had been stealing from his boss, he had gambled, he had drank and he had lots of sex. He felt very guilty. And so he really absorbed this Christian thing and became all in from the minute he got saved. He immediately quit drinking and quit smoking cold turkey. And that wasn’t the case for me. So then we have this meeting with the pastor.

https://youtu.be/JOgZyAWjul8Heal From Emotional Abuse While In Bible CollegePenny: He comes out and he says, will you marry me? Nobody twisted my arm physically, but again, I knew in that moment that if I didn’t say yes, I was out. I was out of a place to live, a job and out of the church.

I thought I loved him at the time and I didn’t see a lot of dangerous signals yet. Again, I’m 17. The big thing was he didn’t beat me. So I assumed I was safe. We got engaged and we started planning a wedding. The church was very, very heavily involved. Very heavily, from the get go. I did end up finding another apartment and moving out.

So I didn’t live with him anymore after that. The church would talk to us about things like birth control. And again, I’m 17, and I’m thinking, Are you kidding me? If we can’t use birth control, I could have a baby a year for the next 20 years. I said, this is ridiculous. I was pushing back and I was pushing back so much that the pastor said to me, you have a rebellious spirit. We need to send you to Bible school.

Increasing Pressure & ControlAnne: I’ve heard this before. You have a rebellious spirit thing,

Penny: So they sent me away to Bible school, literally. And you know what? I didn’t mind going because the pastor was overbearing and my then fiance, became overbearing. Because the way he looked at the world was different than the way I look at the world now.

He looked at the world like the pastor said, therefore you need to do it. No free will. No your own relationship with God, even though that’s what they preach. He became like my spiritual director and enforcer. So I had to do whatever the pastor said. Whether I wanted to or not, whether I was ready to or not.

And the pastor made me do some really strange things that I did not want to do. But again, under pressure from my boyfriend, here’s an example. The Bible says, children obey your parents. Well, that’s great when you’re living with your parents, maybe, but what happens if your parents beat you? So the pastor made me go back to my stepmother and ask her forgiveness for running away. Now I still had no opportunity to heal from emotional abuse from childhood.

Anne: Even though you ran away because your stepmother was beating you.

Submitting To Husband’s AbusePenny: Beating me, mean to me, calling me names, withholding food. I was humiliated. And again I knew, if I don’t do this I have to walk away. So I did it. He even said, if she wants, you need to move back home. And I thought, you’ve got to be kidding me. I have been gone a year and a half. I have my own apartment, job and bank account. I’m engaged. Are you kidding? Nope.

They weren’t kidding. So luckily, my stepmother said, no, I don’t have to move back that I would disrupt the family. I had a little sister and I’ve hurt my sister by running away. I wasn’t able heal from emotional abuse from childhood yet. So luckily I didn’t have to do it, but that’s the kind of thing I mean about domineering and overbearing and making me do things.

Now, as a middle aged woman, I look back and say. Why didn’t that tell me right then and there? Who’s going to be in charge of the relationship? That whatever my husband will say will be right. Not whatever I feel in my heart is right, but I didn’t see that. So I go away to Bible college for a year and it’s a wonderful, wonderful experience.

Marriage & Moving AwayPenny: During this time, things change at the IHOP. My husband quits and opens up a restaurant. The restaurant ends up failing. Now he’s out of a job and he’s out of money. He gets another job at IHOP, but it’s in Maryland. I’m thrilled to move away from this overbearing pastor. I finished Bible college. We get married after Bible college by that same pastor and immediately move away.

Anne: Really quickly, how did you like Bible college?

Penny: I loved it, and the reason I loved it is because it was in a beautiful, beautiful setting in upstate New York. I lived in an all girls dorm. I’ve never had friendships with girls my age before because I wasn’t allowed to.

Anne: You have this good experience where you’re safe, you’re housed, have food. You’re getting an education, even though it’s something you didn’t expect.

Penny: The college is a lot less focused on rules. I mean, there are rules. For instance at Bible colleges, Christian colleges in that time, I don’t know how it is today. You couldn’t wear pants. Even though it was winter, we wore long wool skirts over boots. It gets really cold in upstate.

We had long coats. And there’s rules like that, but you can live with that, right? Because of the rest of it. You’re having a great time, studying and you’re going on little field trips. In the summer, you’re a camp counselor at a Christian camp. So it’s fun. It’s fun to be around other girls my age, something I’ve never had before.

I graduate, we get married, we move away, I’m a New Yorker so I dress up. I’m back to wearing jeans and high heels and makeup and pretty dresses. I’m myself.

Struggles With Abuse In MarylandPenny: We live in Maryland for about three years, and it’s rocky. It’s not an easy marriage because he’s domineering. Everything is his way. I feel lost but I don’t know what to do because the church teaches that divorce is sin. And further they teach that if you deliberately do something that you know is sin, like divorce. You may not even be a Christian at all, which is scary, right?

Because if you’re a Christian, which I thought I was at the time, then you’re afraid of hell. You’re afraid of displeasing God. It’s a mind game. They differentiate between accidental sin, like, Oh, I fell into temptation. I committed adultery. That would be accidental sin.

Anne: Which is not accidental at all. That is 100 percent on purpose. Your penis just doesn’t fly out of your pants.

Penny: Right. But that’s what they teach. And I’m sure you’ve heard that before.

Anne: Oh, 100%. And then what? You just trip and then you accidentally have sex with, no! It’s misogynistic because it always benefits the man. The man, it’s always accidental. But women, it’s always on purpose.

Penny: Right.

Religious Manipulation ContinuesPenny: At some point, We meet up with this guy who runs a Bible study in his home. He’s in Bible college in Maryland. My then husband is an acolyte of this pastor, right?

Anne: What does acolyte mean in that context?

Penny: He loves this pastor and is a follower of this pastor. He thinks he’s the greatest. This pastor finally graduates from Bible college and he tries to get ordained. And he’s having a very hard time getting ordained. Which should have been a red flag, but it wasn’t.

Finally, this pastor finds a sect that will ordain him. He gets assigned to some rural church in the middle of very rural Michigan in a town of 200. A church that’s been around like a hundred years. It’s a handful of old ladies that are just keeping this church alive. The pastor moves away and my husband misses him so much. He arranges a trip to visit this pastor. I think, great, it’s just a one week trip.

We drive to Michigan from Maryland. We go to visit and I’m out of my element. I’ve never been in a place so rural. before. The church is weird and it’s small and I’m uncomfortable. I grew up in a city and these people are people that have never left their hometown. They’ve maybe never left the state. They’re just different. Nothing wrong with them, just different from me. So we go back to Maryland.

Unexpected NewsPenny: I go back to work and I’m happy. I’m focused on being a good wife. I don’t think about church. We’re visiting different churches every weekend. All of a sudden the pastor who lives in Michigan, his wife calls and says, Hey Penny, I found you guys an apartment.

I said, what? She said, Oh yeah, your husband told me to look for an apartment for you guys, that you guys are moving. He hadn’t asked me and he hadn’t told me. So I’m very upset because I did not want to move. I knew that place would kill me. I knew it was too weird for me I didn’t want to move, but he’s making plans.

He said, listen, I’m moving. So you need to get your head around this. I’ve given my notice to my boss. We’re moving in two months and I don’t know what to do.

Seeking Advice & Rationalizing AbusePenny: And I remember talking to his, brother’s wife. So my sister-in-law, and she’s also born again, Christian, but she lives in New Jersey and she’s an independent woman. Back then I would have called myself a weak person, because I had no freedom as a child.

I hadn’t healed from my childhood trauma. So healing from emotional abuse seemed daunting. I was scared and timid, and had never lived on my own. My sister-in-law, on the other hand, was a strong woman. She went into her marriage as a strong woman. She was already a Christian when she met my brother-in-law, and she kind of called the shots for her life.

When she got married, for example, she said, I don’t want children. In the evangelical church, that’s huge. That’s a big no no. Because that’s your job as a woman, to be a good mother and keep house. So, I trusted her. I called her up and said, what do I do? I don’t remember exactly what she said. But she somehow, in a way that I can’t even remember, talked me into it. By saying, look, he’s your husband.

This is part of God’s plan. You think you won’t like it, but God’s plan is always wonderful. And you’re probably going to like it once you get there. So I think you should go. That sort of thing. She didn’t pressure me. She didn’t threaten or ultimatum. There was no hell, nothing like that, but somehow she made it okay. I don’t remember how, probably cause I was traumatized.

Struggling In A New LifePenny: So we moved and uprooted everything we knew. And it was very weird. I was very young. We got married when I was 18, three years later, I’m 21. And we moved to this place where everybody is at least 10 years older than me.

And they had never been to college. The women never worked outside the home. They got married to their childhood sweethearts at 17, 18 or 19. And now they had a bunch of kids. And the area was very depressed. People didn’t have a lot of money, they literally stretched a giant jar of peanut butter week to week.

It was very dependent on the auto industry, so people were needy. People were very committed to the church, because really that’s all they had. I think I’m judging here. I’m making a judgment. Whereas I always looked at things wide open. Like why aren’t we going anywhere on weekends? We lived an hour and a half from Ann Arbor and two hours from Detroit. But nobody ever went to see museums, art or theater. Nothing. I didn’t fit in.

Questioning The ChurchPenny: And I started questioning things again. I didn’t like what was being taught. They were teaching some really weird stuff. The church becomes your authority and you have to ask the church’s permission before you do anything. Like buy a house, go on vacation or to have another baby.

I was trying to have a baby at the time. And instead of encouraging me to have a baby. They were having me babysit people’s children while they went away for a few days. Kind of to teach me how hard it was to have a baby.

Anne: But like, didn’t they ultimately want you to be a parent?

Penny: It’s hard to say now, yes and no. But I had been trying for three years and I was not getting pregnant.

Anne: Oh, maybe they’re trying to “make you feel better”.

Penny: Or here’s the thing, like in the church, everybody has a gift. And wouldn’t it be convenient if I had the gift of serving and I don’t have my own children to take care of? Because then I could serve the church a lot. I could serve other people in the church.

Anne: Be people’s free babysitter.

Penny: Right.

Struggles With ConformityPenny: Some people I get along with in the church and some people I don’t. And we typically had somebody over for Sunday dinner, or they had us over. We were supposed to fellowship and meet with people and have coffee with them. We weren’t supposed to have relationships with anybody outside the church.

So none of us had friends outside the church, unless of course you had family there, which we didn’t. It ended up that you only spent time with people in the church. I was not happy, but I was doing my thing. I was doing all the reading the Bible, going to prayer, fellowshipping with the women, helping out in the church and that kind of stuff.

A Wedding TripPenny: And at some point, a cousin of mine was getting married on the East Coast and I had asked to go.

Anne: You asked the church to go?

Penny: I asked my husband to go and my husband went and asked the church, went and asked the pastor.

Anne: Wow, that’s intense, ok.

Penny: Yeah. The pastors came over and met with the pastor and the elder came over and met with me and they said, Penny, why do you want to go to this church on the East Coast?

You know, I didn’t tell them the real reason. It’s boring as heck here. But I just said, My cousins, it’s fun, I haven’t been away, haven’t been back. I haven’t seen them and I want to go.

Anne: Wait, why do you want to go to this church? You’re just going for like one day, right? For the wedding. You’re not like becoming a member of this other church, right?

Penny: Oh, it wasn’t even at a church. It was just a wedding, a cousin’s wedding somewhere on the East coast. Right.

Anne: Wow. Why do you want to go to this wedding? Okay.

Penny: What they said was you pray about it. If the Lord tells you to go, that’s fine with us. Well, of course I didn’t hear voices and I didn’t hear a yay or nay. And so I decided, well, I didn’t hear no. So let’s go. So we. Packed up the car, we drove, it’s, you know, eight hour drive or something back to the east coast from Michigan.

Set Backs In My Ability To Heal From Emotional AbusePenny: We get there, we’re there for the whole weekend. We stay with cousins or grandmother, I can’t remember. And we had a great time. But as soon as we start driving, getting close to Michigan again, I start feeling this uneasy feeling in my stomach. Like, Oh, I wonder if I’m going to get in trouble for this. Sure enough, there’s a knock on the door.

The day after we get back, the pastor and the elder come and they say, Penny, tell us about your trip. I look over at my husband and he’s looking at the floor. I’m like, well, we went, we had a great time. We danced, we socialized and they say, we don’t believe you. Like, what do you mean? You don’t believe me.

He said, we don’t believe you had a good time. I said, I had a really good time. And he said, are you sure you didn’t just try to have a good time? I said, no. And they said, we think you’re lying. We think God told you not to go. So we think you’re lying about going and having fun.

Excommunication & Husband’s AbusePenny: So we’re going to excommunicate you. We’re going to discipline you is the word they use.

Anne: Did they think you went somewhere else?

Penny: No.

Anne: So this is just like a huge manipulation thing. They know you actually went.

Penny: My husband went with me and my husband’s in the room. Yeah.

Anne: And he doesn’t stand up for you?

Penny: Nope

Anne: Or defend you?

Penny: Nope

Anne: or anything.

Penny: As a matter of fact, he must’ve called the elders behind my back. To say, We’re back.

Anne: He was abusive. We know he was abusive, even though you didn’t know it at the time, right? He’s emotionally abusive, psychologically abusive. What do you think was his abusive reason for calling the elders on you and getting you excommunicated?

Penny: I think he thought that it was his job to keep me holy and keep me righteous. Therefore, anything that the pastor thought was wrong?

Anne: But you hadn’t done anything wrong.

Penny: That’s correct.

Anne: He was just trying to put you down. I’m just trying to think of his abusive reason. He goes to this wedding with you and he sees you happy and dancing. He sees, Oh my word, she could notice that I’m abusing her and that she’s so exploited and sad. I don’t want her to recognize when she’s happy. I’m going to try and shut this down. Maybe something like that. We don’t know.

I so wish I could have given you The Living Free Workshop at this point in your life, I made it so women could recognize when someone is manipulating them and help them get to safety.

Isolation & Depression Further Harm My Ability To Heal From Emotional AbusePenny: Possible. So the elder says, you’re on discipline, we’re disciplining you. Discipline means you don’t talk to anybody in the church. You don’t call them, say hi to them on the street, meet with them or come to services. You’re excommunicated. You stay home or you stay away from anybody in the church and we’ll get back to you when we think you’re repentant.

So here I am, we have a tiny, tiny apartment, it’s a studio apartment and I’m an outgoing person. I’m an extrovert, and I’m left on my own. My husband leaves for work in the morning, and you can clean the whole apartment in half an hour. I wash the dishes, do the laundry, and do the shopping. I mow the lawn, and do all the stuff.

Luckily I love to read. So I go to the library, but I’m heartbroken. I’m crestfallen and depressed. I stay in bed most of the day. Because this has happened to me and I don’t know how it happened.

I didn’t lie, I didn’t know how to change it. So I’m powerless and stuck. Again, I don’t even think of leaving at this point, right? Because now I’m three years into a marriage, into the church. I’m a good Christian and believe what I’m taught. I believe the Bible but yet, God’s not helping me

Anne: And you’re exactly where they want you.

Penny: I’m depressed and I’m not eating and I’m not sleeping. Again I call my sister-in-law or my sister-in-law calls me. She must have heard about it and she calls me. And she says, Oh Penny, you know, we’re all in sin one way or the other we’re all in sin.

Confession & Return Penny: So just confess to the elders that you lied and get it over with and they’ll take you back. It’ll be fine And so I say to myself, Oh my God, I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. That’s what I’m going to do. So I do it. I tell my husband, I’m ready to confess. He goes and tells the elders. A couple of days later, the elders come back to me and they come to the house and they’re all smiling with these fake smiles.

Cause there’s a verse in the Bible that says that there’s more joy in heaven over the one son who comes back to the faith and the hundred non believers that convert. I don’t remember the exact verse, but it’s something like that. So they say, we forgive you. And we’re so happy. This is midweek so stay away from the church . And We’ll invite you back to the church at the Sunday service.

Public Humiliation Stops My Ability To Heal From Emotional AbusePenny: And what I didn’t know, which they didn’t tell me at the time, was that when they invited me back to the Sunday service, I basically sat outside until the elders brought me in.

And then they said, congregation, we have something to tell you. We have something to rejoice in. Our sister Penny has repented of her sins and she’s been in sin for a month. Thank God, praise God. She’s repented. She’s come back to us and the Bible tells us to welcome her with open arms.

Well, a couple of people in the church stood up, a husband and wife team that were kind of newish to the church. They’d been there maybe a couple months. They got up and they said, this is wrong. And they got up and they walked out.

Anne: Were they like, we don’t want her back? So that’s why they left?

Penny: No, I think that they were upset that this happened to me.

Anne: Oh, okay. So they were on your side. Good for them.

Penny: Everybody else in the church was dead silent. Nobody said a word and everybody’s staring at me. I had no idea this was going to happen.

In those days we sat in a circle, so a great big circle. Imagine we were in like a a ballroom. We were renting an old, old, old hotel in this town, a big giant ballroom. We’re all sitting in a circle all facing each other and everybody’s staring at me aghast. He doesn’t tell them what the sin is.

Psychological AbusePenny: So you can imagine people are thinking, was it adultery? Was it child abuse? Does she need to heal from emotional abuse? Was it theft? Is she a gambler? Is she a drinker? Does she take drugs? Nobody knew, right?

Anne: I just want to pause here for a second to point out why this is happening, not necessarily to you in particular, but just in general. It’s psychological abuse to try and force someone to think that something happened when it didn’t. And then they also want to ruin someone’s reputation. It’s so hard to heal from emotional abuse when you can’t get the right help.

So they could be like, okay, the sin was you jaywalked, but we’re not going to tell people that . And we’re just going to leave it up to everybody’s imagination in order to ruin your reputation and harm you. Wow.

Penny: it was really horrific.

When You Are Living In Fear You Can’t Heal From Emotional AbusePenny: And then here’s the other thing that happens to me as a person. On the inside because I didn’t do anything wrong to begin with, and they told me I did. From that moment on I walked on eggshells every minute of every day. I could never relax because I never knew if I was doing something wrong.

And I didn’t know if I was lying because if somebody said to me, how are you doing today, Penny? But really I was nervous in my stomach, but I didn’t want to say that. Then I would run back to that person and say, I’m okay, but I’m nervous in my stomach and I didn’t want to lie to you. I was constantly going back to everybody and correcting myself. I looked like a fool. Now people don’t know if they trust me.

Anne: I want to point out, this is what an abuser would do to undermine your confidence to exploit you more or control you more. It is a purposeful tactic that someone would do to stop them from healing from emotional abuse.

Penny: I did not know that at the time.

Anne: Right. I’m just pointing that out to my listeners. So that if they’re like, Oh, this is happening to me right now. It is a purposeful thing to undermine someone’s confidence so they can’t heal from emotional abuse.

Penny: this went on for another couple of years, living in fear and turmoil and insecurity. Something else happened and I was accused and disciplined again, for a very long time, for a year. I was really broken as a person, suicidal, very broken. And when it came time, the elders decided enough.

Heal From Emotional AbusePenny: They said, you either leave or you confess. I decided to leave and that meant leaving the church. I left my husband and I left the state. Clearly I was a completely broken person. I was 31 by that point. And I basically had to start life all over again. Meaning I didn’t have a job, money, degree or career. I was scared of everybody, I thought my life was over at 31. Nobody would love me and I would just be a street beggar and maybe a waitress.

But that’s not what happened. Because once I was free I became a full human being . It’s been a powerful, powerful thing. Once I began to heal from emotional abuse, I became a highly successful and highly paid salesperson. I have a master’s degree and undergrad degree, am highly respected and retired early. I adopted a son, have a wonderful husband and home. It took a lot of work and it’s still work.

Anne: If you could go back to that 17 year old that you were and talk to yourself when you’re working at that IHOP. What would you say to yourself?

Penny: I would say don’t do it. There are many people in the world. He’s not the only one. This isn’t your only job in the world. There’s many jobs in the world. You don’t need them. You’re stronger, you’re wiser, you’re smarter. You can do it on your own.

Heal From Emotional Abuse: Get Your Life BackAnne: That’s what I want to share with our listeners is I don’t know where your journey to psychological and emotional safety will take you. It’s so different for every single person. But the important thing is that you are brave and you are strong and you can do it. The abusers want you to think that you can’t heal from emotional abuse.

They want you to think you’re dependent on them. They want you to think that you’re not smart or incapable. And that is not true. You are brave and strong. You are capable. When you heal from emotional abuse, you can do anything. So Penny, thank you for your story, and wish you well as you heal after emotional abuse. I appreciate you coming on today’s episode.

Penny: It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

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“My husband lied to me,” she repeated over and over. For a woman who finds out her husband has been lying to her for years, she always remembers the day she discovered his secret life. We frequently call it D-day or discovery day. Has this happened to you?

If you feel alone and need support, we’re here for you. Learn about Group Support Sessions.

Transcript: My Husband Lied To Me: What Is D-Day? Anne: Women who discover something awful about their husband always remember the day they found out. We frequently call D-day or discovery day, and generally they realize, “My husband lied to me.” It could stand for destruction day. Women who go through this divide time by before and after. Over the years, I’ve heard hundreds of thousands of D-Day stories. If you’re listening, I want you to think about your D-Day or how many D-Days you have. Some women have multiple D-days.

My Personal D-Day Story When My Husband Lied To MeAnne: My first D-day is when my husband lied to me and said. “I’ve used porn a few times in the last few weeks, and I worry I might be a porn addict. So I’m going to start attending 12 step meetings for sex addicts. I’m so sorry. I’ll never do it again. I will totally get on top of this.”

My second D- day is when I find out my husband lied to me many times. About all the lies he told and how much porn he used. It was shocking, but I still didn’t even know the truth.

And my third D-Day is the day he is under arrest for spraining my fingers. You can read all about the details in my book, which will come out soon.

https://youtube.com/shorts/KrRxSCGxPysCorrie’s D-Day, My Husband Lied To MeAnne: A member of our community, I’ll call her Corrie recorded her D-Day story and sent it in to share it with you.

Corrie: I just wanted to share about my D-Day, mostly because today is the three year anniversary of it. It was a Sunday, I was at church, and at that time I had a young, colicky baby.

So, church for me meant a lot of walking the halls and dealing with a sad baby. But that particular day, they had a special visitor come. I guess, from the Church’s Addiction Recovery Program, specifically on pornography addiction recovery. They came and talked to the women and men of my congregation about the Addiction Recovery Program.

I was only able to hear a little bit of it. Since I was in and out with the baby, but I was just thinking at the time, wow, I’m so grateful I don’t have to deal with that. So we went home after church, and we got the baby and my older daughter down for a nap. And I was just talking to my husband, and I said something like, “I’m glad you don’t have that problem, so we don’t have to deal with it.”

Then he has this look on his face, just this green, almost sick look. I said, “Am I right? We don’t have to deal with that, right?” I had thought it wasn’t even an issue. Before we married, I had asked him about it. But, my husband lied to me, he hadn’t been truthful. He had been living a lie. It was three days before our three year wedding anniversary. Which really pissed me off, because I was looking forward to our anniversary.

The Trust Is Shattered When My Husband Lied to MeCorrie: I can’t even remember right now what we had planned, but it just changed the whole thing, and I didn’t know what to do. After that, I just froze. I couldn’t trust my husband anymore. That trust is completely shattered, and I didn’t know where to go from there.

I have struggled with emotions, dealing with, sharing with, just feeling emotions. I grew up in a home where, especially negative emotions, were not okay. We don’t talk about real things or negative emotion. We don’t talk about depression, anxiety, or pornography addiction. I didn’t know how to handle it. So I just froze. It took me a long time, in fact, it wasn’t until this year. When my husband had another relapse, and I was done.

I started focusing on me, and that has helped me. It’s been good for me to look back on this, the third anniversary of my D-Day. And see the crushed person I was back then, and how it didn’t destroy my life.

Anne: Corrie, thank you so much for your bravery and recording your D-Day story.

Getting The Right Support Anne: If you would like to record your D-Day story, you can record it on your phone using voice memo, and then email it to podcast@btr.org. If I get enough of them, I’ll compile them into one episode and air that in the future.

If you’ve just had a D-Day, the first one or the second, no matter what D-Day it is. When you find out “My husband lied to me.” And you don’t know what to do. The first step is to educate yourself about this type of abuse, and get the right support. When I went through it, even though I went for help. The professionals I went to knew nothing about abuse.

So their help actually prolonged my suffering. The couple therapists we went to, the pornography addiction recovery therapists, even the individual therapists, didn’t help me to identify that I was a victim of emotional and psychological abuse. and sexual coercion.

That’s why I started podcasting, so no other woman had to go through what I went through. So if you’ve had a D-Day and wondered where to turn. This podcast is a great way to educate yourself about the reality of your situation. The Living Free Workshop is also a great resource to learn about how to set boundaries and begin making your way to safety.

And then to talk to women who are going through it. We totally understand what you’re going through. Our betrayal trauma recovery group sessions are the safest, professionally facilitated group sessions on the planet. You deserve appropriate support, that doesn’t blame you for any of this.

To see the group session schedule, go to btr.org/group. We’d love to see you in a group session today.

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Have you asked, “Can a husband sexually abuse his wife?” The answer is yes. When it happens, it’s difficult for a woman to understand what’s going on.

Do you need support? Learn about Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions.

Even when she does, her husband is rarely held accountable by therapists, clergy, and family – let alone the law.

Sexual abuse is a serious crime and victims suffer devastating trauma as a result of their abuser’s choices. But women can heal and find peace again with support, safety, and self-care.

Sandy, an incredibly courageous member of the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Community shares her story of intense and traumatizing sexual betrayal and rape, and how she identified it abuse. Even when it was happening to her she didn’t know her husband was sexually abusing her. Read the full transcript below.

Transcript: Can A Husband Sexually Abuse His Wife?Anne: A member of our community. Sandy is on today’s episode. Not her real name, she’s using an alias. Because she’s going to be talking about how she experienced sexual abuse. The perpetrator was her husband. We won’t go into details. Welcome, Sandy. Why don’t you just go ahead and start where you want to start.

A Husband Can Sexually Abuse His Wife By Sharing Explicit PhotosSandy: It’s hard to know where to start because I feel like the timeline is complicated. I was raped by my husband and then about a week after that happened. I found out that there were pictures of me on pornography sites. They were two completely separate incidences because the pictures happened about eight years before. I just didn’t know about them until a friend of mine told me. She said I don’t think you know this but he puts pictures of you on porn sites.

Anne: Wow. So you’re raped by your husband and then a week later, a friend says, you might not be aware, but there are some pictures of you on a porn site.

Sandy: When I heard that, I don’t even know how to describe it. It was like horror. The sentence can knock the wind out of you and just make your spirit, my soul, like just torn apart. That’s the only way I can describe it.

Sexually Abusive Men Dismiss Their Partner’s Feelings & DesiresSandy: I went home and I asked my husband if it was true, are pictures of me on porn sites? He said, yes. I look back now and I think about that as the end of everything. We were married for 13 years at that point, but we were together for 15. This person that I had loved for 15 years, it’s like he didn’t exist anymore. I didn’t know who this person was who would do this to me.

Sandy: At that point, I hadn’t identified what he had done to me as rape.

Anne: Can you describe what you thought at the time had happened?

Sandy: I knew it was not good. I knew it wasn’t loving. It was very confusing. Why it was happening, what was going on. We had just had this terrible fight. The next thing I knew, he followed me up to the bedroom and I had my bathing suit on. I was taking it off. And the next I know, we’re having sex, and I didn’t know why. I thought if I would ask him to stop, then he would yell at me more.

Clergy, Faith-Communities, & Friends Can Help Victims Of Marital Sexual AbuseSandy: I talked about this with some with some friends, and they said, that’s rape. I said he didn’t pin me down, didn’t hurt me. They said, yeah, but he didn’t have your consent. I said, no, I didn’t realize that at that point, there are actually degrees of rape. The rape hotline online support has first, second, third and fourth different grades or degrees of rape.

It was actually third or fourth degree rape. Friends and leadership from my church at the time told me, this is rape, call this hotline. They’ll point you in the right direction. You need to get help. And they kept pushing me to get help because they were very much, you’ll heal faster if you process this right away. This is sexual abuse.

Anne: That’s not very common that your church people were telling you it was rape. I actually haven’t heard a story like this in a really long time.

Sandy: Yeah, I definitely feel the Holy Spirit watching out for me, putting people in my life to really push me in the right direction.

Anne: That’s not a very common thing for clergy to help a rape victim identify the rape, especially when it’s her own spouse.

Sandy: And he didn’t punch me. He didn’t push me down.

Seeking Therapy & Reflecting On The RelationshipSandy: They were really the ones who urged me to go to therapy by myself for sexual abuse and trauma. It wasn’t one of these, “Oh, you guys need to get into couples counseling.” The church, all the friends I had, they were like, you need to heal from this before you can ever work on a relationship again. The same thing for him, they were like, he obviously has major issues. He needs to figure out what those are and get help for them before he can be in a relationship with you.

I felt like that all started me out on the right track, even though it was the harder track in some ways because I was very much just wanting things to get back to normal. I wanted my life back. Not to say that I had this perfect relationship or something like that. We definitely had issues.

Anne: Are you saying that at the time you didn’t really understand the extent of the issues?

Sandy: Yes. That’s a better way

Anne: Okay. So at the time you’re thinking, I know we have issues, but really, do I have to go through all this stuff?

Sandy: Yeah, I knew that it was bigger.

Men Sexually Abuse Their Wives By Stalking & Recording Them Without Consent Sandy: Once I found out about the pictures especially, yes, there is more going on here than I ever realized. I think I was in denial for many years because at one point I found a hidden camera in our bedroom. I asked, what is this about? He said, when I take the kids to school, you get undressed and I miss taking pictures of you. Because he was always essentially stalking me when I would take a shower or when I would get undressed.

He always had the camera and he was always wanting to take pictures. And I was always like, oh my gosh, this is so annoying just let me take a shower. But I thought he’s my husband, he likes to see me naked that’s good, right? It all was warning signs. So anyway, I found the hidden camera and I was to really angry about it. He was like, okay, I won’t do it again. That was years before I knew about the pictures online or anything like that.

Anne: When you find out about the pictures, what becomes clear to you at this point? I mean have you been going to therapy at all before the rape, before these things? Or, have you been thinking, there’s something not quite right with my relationship, something’s weird going on. Or were you thinking, oh I have a great relationship.

Men Sexually Abuse Their Wives By Ignoring Familial & Emotional NeedsAnne: Can you talk about your thoughts before the rape, and then also before you found out about him posting porn?

Sandy: It’s hard to explain because I wouldn’t say there was anything seeming super wrong. Our relationship beforehand seemed fairly normal to me. I wanted him to pay attention to me more. I felt like I’m the mother of three kids and I was a stay at home mom and I was always just wanting him to come home and spend some time with me.

He had an excuse to go do something else, and he had decided he wanted to start this new business. I was like, Why? Don’t! Don’t start this business, please. I never see you, I need you to be home. I need you to be a part of this family. He just was like if you don’t want to be a part of it, you don’t have to, but I’m gonna do it anyway.

I was, of course, upset about that, but to me, it’s It’s nothing to get divorced over, but I just thought he’s going do what he wants to do, and I’ll stay out of it if I don’t like it.

Anne: Well, ironically, going to therapy at that time, you not knowing about abuse, couple therapy wouldn’t help you a whole lot.

Men Sexually Abuse Their Wives By Overtly Or Covertly Threatening InfidelitySandy: Yeah, I had no idea and so it was just this sort of we both felt busy, had my own business, he was starting a business, I just remember thinking like, I can’t wait till we can spend more time together. Looking back at everything, it’s a weird combination of, I was begging for his attention and he was also obsessed with me. He was obsessed with me in a sexual way. It was almost like I couldn’t have his attention any other way.

Anne: Because he’s taking pictures of you all the time, and he’s doing these things that make you feel uncomfortable. At the same time, at least it’s something.

Sandy: Right, and there was one point where I even thought I wonder if he’s seeing somebody else because he never comes straight home after work. I would call his work and I would say, Hey, has he left yet? They would say, yeah, he left two hours ago. I didn’t know what that was about, so I thought I’ll just put out when he wants because then he won’t have a reason to sleep with anyone else. Looking back, that was so stupid.

Anne: We’ve all been there Sandy, no it was not stupid. It makes total sense.

Sandy: Yeah. You don’t know what else to do. Our kids were so young. Looking back, I can tell I was like in a complete state of denial, really, about everything that was going on.

In Denial & Discovery Of BetrayalAnne: I wouldn’t call it denial , because denial puts the fault on you. I would say that you were seeking safety. At the time, the safest thing to you was to have a good attitude or give sex more because the alternative seemed terrifying. I wouldn’t call it denial as just really seeking safety and the alternative was too scary. The reason why I don’t want to call it denial is because they purposefully confuse and manipulate and lie.

So it’s not like you’re in denial about something that you know. It only confirms that you were a victim of psychological and emotional abuse. It sounds like you tried the oh, I’ll have sex with him whenever he wants. I’ll try to be a better mom. I’ll try to, be better. Those things didn’t work. Then you find out about the pictures. Where do you go after that? What happens after you find out, he produces porn, of me. And he’s posting this online without my consent.

Sandy: Obviously, as I said before, I just felt torn apart. I did not know which way was up or what to do. I started therapy and the therapist was like, have people around you that help you to feel safe. Have people that you can talk to at any point, friends, family, whoever that is. Maybe it’s just one or two people.

Do everything you can to get back into doing things that you enjoy, that you find interesting. In the meantime, I was trying to figure out, okay, but how do I live with this person? Because at the time, I didn’t know that I wanted to get divorced or anything. I was just trying to figure out which way was up.

https://youtu.be/1FKUE9ep8n8Considering Pressing Charges For Sexual AbuseAnne: Did anybody at the time, did anyone indicate to you that you could press charges?

Sandy: Yeah, because I was still speaking with a person on the rape hotline pretty regularly. So I mentioned to this person about the pictures. They said I would need to get the police involved to get the pictures down, but be aware that if you go to the police, they may, in fact, press charges even if you don’t want them to. If he gets put on the sex offender list, he would lose his job. I could not make a decision, in regard to that, in my state of shock and trauma.

Sandy: I told him we need to get these pictures taken down. He said, okay, I’ll hire a private company. He told me the pictures were taken down by this private company that he hired.

Anne: One of the questions I have is, looking back now, do you think it would have been better to press charges?

Sandy: I do now. Obviously I’m not completely healed from the trauma, but I’m in a place where I can talk about it a little easier.

Going To The Police Sandy: I actually did go to the police because I had panic attacks that the pictures weren’t actually down and I thought, I don’t know. He just continues to do things that make me nervous even though we’re not married and we’re not living together or anything.

We share custody of the kids but trauma comes back and I just sometimes I freak out, right? I thought, Okay, I’m just gonna go to the police. I had the list from the company that he hired of all of the links, which was six pages worth of links to my images. This is obviously sexual abuse. When I take this to the police and they say okay, we’ll look into it.

Two years has passed since the crime. I did find out that yes, they are officially down. The company took them down, but they didn’t seem to think I could press charges. They didn’t really seem to care that this had been done and anything was told well, there’s nothing we can do.

It was two years ago, how can something be such a crime? He could have gone to jail or put on the sex offender list. So many things could have happened two years ago if I would have reported it. But now that it’s been two years, they’re like I don’t really see anything happening if we report this.

Is It The Abuser’s Voice Telling You Not To Report The Sexual Abuse?Anne: One of the things I’m trying to help women understand is that when you don’t report something immediately, there are good reasons to report and good reasons not to report. We’re never judgmental around here about women reporting or not reporting. I want women to know that sense of, I can’t report this or I shouldn’t report this for some reason is usually the abuse talking.

Generally speaking most women, once they get past the trauma and they’re feeling better, really regret not reporting. If any victim is listening right now and they’re thinking, yeah my husband did do a crime and I haven’t reported it and should I report it or not. I would submit that the most likely thing happening currently is that it’s the abuse telling you not to report.

You’re so used to this abuse voice in your head and also the societal scripting or perhaps religious scripting, like he will lose his job or what about him? I had a discussion with a friend the other day and she was like, we really need to do these things and hold them accountable out of compassion for them. So that they can change.

But I said, it’s interesting as a victim of sexual abuse, you don’t really have to, justify your actions through it’s the most compassionate thing he can change. You could also do it just out of sheer anger. You don’t have to be like I need to do it from a place of love. No, you can actually call the police from a place of anger or from a place of trauma or from a place of anything that you want. It’s fine.

Victims Can Let The Justice System Decide The Legal Consequences For Sexual AbuseAnne: I think society has said to victims you can’t be an angry, bitter woman. If you’re going to do it, you have to do it from some place of forgiveness or some place of compassion. It’s just something for people to think about that as a victim of sexual abuse you don’t owe your perpetrator anything.

Sandy: I had to get to that place because I completely agree now. I realized I did not do anything wrong. I was a victim of a crime. I need to report that crime.

That’s how I look at it now. Whereas before it was like you said. You can’t do this to him. It would destroy him and be so bad. It would be bad for his job. As well as thinking about our kids too. Besides, I did not do these things. I should not have to make that choice of whether or not he goes to jail. I was the victim. And I felt like that weight was on me to decide what his fate was.

Anne: Right, and just leave that up to the justice system, really. If someone witnessed someone stealing a car, you might be shaken up, you might pick up the phone and you might be like shaking because you saw this car get hijacked, let’s just pretend. Someone would not say to you, Oh let’s stop shaking before you call the police. Let’s make sure that you’re doing it from a place of really loving and having compassion for the guy that stole the car. Nobody says that.

Sexually Abusive Men Usually Commit to Stop, But Keep Doing It More CovertlyAnne: Talk about when you decide that you need to end the relationship and get a divorce.

Sandy: I feel like I spent about a year convincing him. That what he did was, obviously not right. He knew what he did wasn’t right, but he didn’t understand why he needed to go to therapy. He basically was like, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.

I said, no, you need to get help. In fact he had one that he spoke to for a while, and I asked to sit in on conversation to talk about some of my concerns. I realized, with this therapist, he did not tell her half of what was going on. And I said what about this and this?

I said, don’t you see there’s a pattern, with the pictures, him following me around with the camera, the camera in the bedroom and pictures online, there’s a pattern here. There’s something wrong with him. At this point I was just starting to learn about sex addiction, porn addiction, that kind of stuff. And the therapist says oh, you didn’t tell me about that. And I just thought, Oh my gosh. At that point he moved out.

Anne: Did any of the therapists that work with you or him say that he’s an sexual abuser?

Sandy: No, they didn’t.

Non-Consensual Sex Is Rape, Is Sexual AbuseSandy: At one point I was reading a book about abuse and I was like, I feel like he abused me. I’m pretty sure he has and it was my investigation, although when my mom asked about what’s going on with you guys. I said he’s been sexually abusing me.

I used those words before, but it was almost like I had to convince myself that this was abuse. Because he wasn’t hitting me. It wasn’t all the things that you normally see or hear about. The moment I remember looking up: Is non consensual pornography abuse. Is rape abuse. It’s okay, yes, of course, these things are. I shouldn’t have to be Googling this.

Anne: Is that when you found Betrayal Trauma Recovery?

Sandy: I found Betrayal Trauma Recovery through a friend who is from a different support group.

Anne: When you got here to Betrayal Trauma Recovery, were you like oh, this makes sense. Because a lot of people will Google that stuff, and they won’t find anything. And then when they find us, they’re like, Oh, finally, somebody gets it. Or did you find some other places that you felt understood?

Sandy: I think when I was Googling things, I was really just strictly looking for definitions. Definition of rape, definition of nonconsensual pornography, voyeurism. These are crimes, these are things you go to jail for it seems pretty obvious that’s sexual abuse. For whatever reason, it gave me sort of comfort to have the correct terms, to have the right labels.

Challenges With TherapyAnne: Yeah, he’s going to a therapist, you go to the therapist, and you’re like Whoa. Therapy’s not gonna work. You’ve also got that going on, where you’re recognizing the abuse, but nobody’s saying, he’s an abuser

Sandy: Yeah. So he moves out, he continued to see his therapist, I continued to see mine. It was interesting because he admits to me at that point that his therapeutic goals were just to be a better husband. Whereas my therapeutic goal was to heal from trauma. We were not going down the same path.

Anne: His therapeutic goal was not to “not be a rapist.” His therapeutic goal was not, I want to stop raping my wife and I want to stop being abusive. That is not his therapeutic goal. His goal is just to be a better husband. So you’re recognizing, wait a minute, there’s some serious stuff wrong here.

Sandy: I feel like even after he moved out, I was always trying to relay the seriousness of the situation and he never quite got that. Even when I pointed out, this is sexual abuse and sex addiction, you need to see somebody who maybe specializes in that. He just said there’s nobody in our area. I’ll just get some books and I’ll read up on it.

Anne: Did you ever confront him and say you’re abusive at that time?

Sandy: I didn’t. Essentially after a year of trying to convince him that he needs to work through these big Issues. That he needs to essentially be able to protect me from himself is what needs to happen, which he never understood.

When Men Sexually Abuse Their Wives: The Consequences Women FaceSandy: That’s when I said, I can’t do this anymore. It felt like every time I turned around, he was doing the bare minimum. He’d be look, I’m in therapy. I’m doing good. How many other guys would go to therapy? I couldn’t do it anymore. It felt like playing this game, I was done. I can’t describe it any other way.

Anne: That makes sense. What happened at that point?

Sandy: It took me a while to file because I think I wanted to make sure for whatever reason. I could tell he was getting desperate and didn’t know what do. He found a C-SAT at that point who wanted to talk to me, they’re very much we usually work together and I said my therapist says no.

Anne: I’ll interject here that a C-SAT is a certified sexual addiction therapist. We absolutely do not recommend that women go to a C-SAT. If you want to read more about that, read my book. We do not recommend the victims try to get the porn addict to go to therapy with a C-SAT because C-SAT’s don’t recognize the abuse.

They don’t view him as an abuser. Even if they did, because abusers lie. When abusers go to therapy, they end up weaponizing the therapy that they learn against their victims.

When Men Sexually Abuse Their Wives, They Are Also Psychologically & Emotionally AbusiveSandy: One of the comments I should share. This an example of how serious, or not serious, he took the C-SAT even. I guess when they first enter in, the C-SAT tells them, no sex, no masturbation for 90 days because you need to completely reset your system. And he comes to me saying, Can you believe I have to go three months without sex or masturbation and it’s swimsuit season? I was like, Oh my gosh.

Anne: But the other thing we need to talk about is that you went to a C-SAT and the C-SAT didn’t tell you this is an abuse situation.

Sandy: No, I never really saw the C-SAT. I met with her once for 10 minutes.

Anne: They’re looking at him as a sex addict, not as an abuser.

Sandy: No, they don’t. They don’t look at it as abuse.

Anne: So that is super dangerous for victims as well because what this really is emotional and psychological abuse and sexual abuse. So he’s going to the C-SAT.

Sandy: He seemed like he was committed to it, I guess is the best word. But I thought if he wants to get healthy on his own, that’s great, but I can’t stay in this relationship. I just knew it.

Mediation To Heal From Marital Sexual AbuseSandy: We decided to do mediation instead of hire lawyers for our divorce, which worked well. Thankfully, he was cooperative about it. At some point, I think I just realized that I could never trust him again. Whether he was doing the recovery or not, I just wasn’t going to be able to do that. Essentially I just had to let him go because, you can’t have an intimate partner relationship with somebody that you can’t trust.

Fast forward, and, I find out he has a girlfriend. I’m like, of course he does, because I don’t think he’s in recovery anymore. He must have given up on it a while back, Of course, we’re not married anymore. It’s none of my business at this point what he does, except that, we have three kids together and I want to make sure they’re safe. I don’t want to raise them thinking that the way he treats women is all right. That, that’s my main concern at this point.

Anne: I think it’s validating to see that their behaviors haven’t changed. The fake recovery, we’ll call it, was a grooming phase where they thought, oh, I can show that I’m a good person or I can “prove” I’m a good person. Current boundaries are awesome now that you’re divorced and you recognize that he’s still abusive and he still exhibits abusive behaviors. What have you found that is helpful for your ongoing healing?

Sandy: I’ve done a number of things.

Processing Trauma Through ArtSandy: One of them is creating sculptures that depict women either struggling or holding some emotion. Basically what I did is because I’m a ceramic artist, sculptor, I just ended up pouring my emotion into these clay women. It was almost like I couldn’t handle it myself and so I decided to make it out of clay and so women attached to vessels. That I throw and then they are engaging somehow, either climbing on them or pulling them together or looking inside them.

Anne: To process your trauma through art. Due to confidentiality reasons, we’re not going to show you her art, but it is incredible. What an amazing way to process. I gardened a lot. Some women exercise a lot. There’s so many different ways to process the and I would encourage listeners to go to our website, btr.org, find this episode and write down some of the different ways that you processed it.

Maybe you started painting your house or remodeling your house or some different way. Because talking about it is super helpful. We’d love to hear how you’ve been processing the trauma on our website.

Even When A Husband Sexually Abuses His Wife, Life Can Seem Pretty NormalAnne: If you could go back and share anything with yourself. Before you got married, like any bits of wisdom that may help you in beginning this journey with an abusive man, what would you say to yourself?

Sandy: Looking back, there were many times when I would go to him and I would think that he was hearing me or listening to me, and he just was always like, Okay, that’s fine. I’ll do better. He so avoided confrontation.

If nobody sticks up for what they believe in , it doesn’t mean a fight or a disagreement. It doesn’t have to be like anything abusive. It’s just a disagreement. Everybody has them. It will show a lot of the health of the relationship if you can have those talks without abuse, in a respectful way.

Anne: For those of us who are in a lot of fights, like me, I would say disagreements make sense. not in the way that we were disagreeing because it was just abuse. You’re talking about a man who you thought agreed with you but was really always just grooming you. I am so sorry about your experience and so glad that you’re more safe now.

Shared Custody & CommunicationAnne: Do you limit contact a lot even though you share custody?

Sandy: Really, if it doesn’t have to do with the kids, I pretty much just don’t talk to him. There’s just no reason to at this point.

Anne: It’s insane to me that the state of the civil courts is that if you share children with an abuser, the court forces you to have contact with the man who raped you. Because of the insane state of things with the family court system. That’s why I wrote the Betrayal Living Free and Message Workshops, to teach women how to deal with abusers strategically. Using the strategies, in those workshops, I was able to completely deliver myself and my children from my abuser.

Conclusion: Can A Husband Sexually Abuse His Wife? YesAnne: Sandy you are so brave and I admire your courage. Thank you so much for sharing your story today. I think it’s so important to share these stories because so many women go through them. I’ve had quite a few women tell me that they’ve had their husbands take pictures of them without their consent and post it for porn. I think porn users would be surprised to know that some of the porn that they’re viewing is of a wife who has no idea.

Sandy: Yeah, it’s very possible

Anne: Thank you so much for sharing today.

Sandy: Thank you.

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If you’re exhausted and terrified because your narcissist ex won’t leave you alone, you’ll relate to this. Anne prayed for years and her prayer was answered. She developed the strategies she now teaches in The BTR.ORG Living Free and Message Workshops. Lee came on the podcast to share about how these strategies worked for her too.

Transcript: When Your Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave You AloneAnne: A member of the BTR community, we’re going to call her Lee, is on today’s episode. She’s going to be sharing her story. And then also how she implemented the strategies in the Living Free and Message Workshops.

Welcome Lee.

Lee: Hi, thanks for having me.

Anne: Many women in this situation go through years and years of emotional abuse and psychological abuse and they don’t even realize it. So let’s talk about your experience. You married really young. In the beginning did you realize it was abuse?

Lee: No, I did not. Not until pretty much in my mid 30’s. I got married at 19 and we were really young. so I thought it was just a maturity thing and that eventually we’d get past that. There was also addiction and again I thought that was a just a thing. That we would be able to at some point get over once we grew up.

Struggles with Addiction and AbuseAnne: What were some of the things that he was choosing?

Lee: He really struggled throughout our entire marriage with pornography. Unfortunately, it just became a bigger and bigger problem. There was always pornography in our home. I think I just became immune to that part of it. So I thought, Oh, as soon as we grew up, he’ll stop drinking and the pornography will go away.

Anne: A lot of victims have that feeling. Like okay, once he can get this pornography thing under control, then he’s not going to act like this anymore. That’s hard to recognize. That all of these behaviors are abusive. They’re not going to get better. What do you think was the biggest contributing factor to not recognize it was abuse throughout those years?

https://youtu.be/LtCyxLBIxJYThe Role of Comparison in Recognizing AbuseLee: Comparison, and I feel like so many women do this, and this is something that I am so glad we get to talk about today, because I’ve been thinking a lot about it as I hear different stories from friends and family members.

Just the idea that someone else’s situation is worse than yours. Or your life isn’t that bad because you have a nicer home, or my life isn’t that bad because he doesn’t say this to me. Or he comes home at a decent hour. Hearing other people’s stories and finding one thing that might have been better in my life than someone else’s. It made me assume that it was still okay to stay in that relationship.

Anne: That makes sense to me. What were the things that you thought were better?

An Abuser’s Manipulation Often Looks Like Emotion When Your Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave You AloneAnne: What are the things you are proud of?

Lee: It’s crazy because you don’t see the things that are in your relationship at that time. He might have done the dishes one night. And I took that one night and pulled it along for everything else. He never cussed me out or called me a name. Even though he was really unsupportive, he was very generous with his time.

Anne: So, at times you’re thinking, well, he doesn’t scream at our kids, so he must be a good guy. Or he didn’t scream that one time, or the other night he was great, so I’m lucky. A lot of women don’t realize he’s abusive because they think, I’m so lucky. He’s such a great guy, that’s really common.

Lee: I also don’t think women realize how much effort and work they put in to make their spouse a good guy. And what I mean by that is. A lot of the things I was proud of were what I was doing, not him. I would make sure we were at family gatherings. And also made sure our kids looked good.

I made sure we were going to church on time. And you know, all those things that were important to me. Things that I felt were essential to building a good family, I did. Instead of looking at how much work I was putting in I included him in that. I made it like it was his, like these were his accomplishments.

I think that that’s where my mind got a little bit skewed. Like we had a good family and I looked at it like that. But I didn’t realize that so much of it was my own work and wasn’t really his work.

Shame and Pressure to StayAnne: Yeah. A lot of women do that. They attribute characteristics to him that actually she has. That comparison is interesting because there’s always going to be someone who seems like they have it worse. So you think well all marriages must have problems. But the problems we have seem “manageable” or something like that. So here you are thinking these are just maturity things or that you’re so lucky in some ways.

Were there any other factors that kept you from seeing the abuse?

Lee: Shame. I married really young and a lot of people questioned that. Also I had family and friends both tell me I was too young. I felt the pressure to stay and keep it together. I think that’s why I kept it together and stayed a lot longer. And I didn’t want to admit to anybody that I failed.

Anne: You weren’t failing. You had a spouse that was failing, but it feels like that when you’re being emotionally abused. Because you think everything is your fault, right? Or that you’re responsible for everything . So that’s common as well.

Finding BTR Support When Your Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave You AloneLee: I had just a few friends that I would communicate with about it. The problem with those friends, even though they were a good outlet for a release. They didn’t really understand my situation because they didn’t have a spouse like that.

I mean, they knew it was bad, they felt sorry for me. I could feel that they understood it. They gave me the space to be able to talk to them, which I appreciate. But they just weren’t in the same situation. And a lot of times, the friends that I did communicate with had pretty decent marriages. It made me feel again, like I needed to be more like them. I needed to maybe not complain as much, you know?

Anne: Okay, so how do you recognize that it is abuse

Lee: I ended up in a Facebook group with one of the members of Betrayal Trauma Recovery, and she was very open about it, which I’m so grateful for. And I’m so grateful for women who are open about it. The group that we were in had actually nothing to do with this topic. She was just open and shared a lot of her personal life.

Again, I’m so grateful for that. And the BTR community, opened up a whole new world for me. I started to understand that everybody’s looks different. Even still then at the very beginning. I don’t think I was ready to let go of the idea of keeping my marriage together.

The Turning Point: Abusive VideosLee: Then it started to get really bad, my husband sent me some really abusive videos. Videos of him talking to me in a very violent and perverse way.

I didn’t know what to do. I finally sent them to the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group. Within 10 minutes I had a whole group of women together supporting me and helping me through this.

Anne: With the support of the women in the BTR Group. Is this the moment you realized that woah, this is really serious?

Lee: I really believe that was the moment. It became very clear to me. I always felt like maybe I was being dramatic. So when someone actually got to witness it and said to me, this is not okay. Then they said, this is abusive. I realized that it was time, probably, to make a big change. I decide to start opening up and start talking a little bit more and sharing more of my experiences I wanted the BTR community to understand the magnitude.

Maintaining Strategy When Your Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave You AloneLee: It seems so big at the time and so scary. I worried about his reaction, my finances, and my kids. Also about this home we just rented together what would we do. We just got a new dog and there were so many things that I was worried about. I was scared. Each step was a step that I didn’t think I was capable of doing. And they told me I could. And so I kept taking that step.

Anne: What about your real life friends and family? What did they think?

Lee: I had left him seven different times before this time. I think family and the friends that I opened up to were hesitant to believe it this time too. They were excited, all of them were going to continually support me. This time would it stick because my narcissist ex won’t leave me alone.

Anne: Let’s talk about the first few months after you left. How did you get through that time?

Lee: So that was a really, really hard time for me. I would make fun of the the situation, by saying I lived in a house of depression. After work I would come home and lay on the couch. I watched the same movies over and over and over again every night. Lord of the Rings and Forrest Gump. I was just really sad and fearful and I didn’t know if I could really do it financially. It didn’t feel real to me because I had tried so many times

When Your Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave You Alone: The Power of Tender MerciesLee: While I was living in that house of depression, I didn’t really feel like I had a lot to live for. Then I bit into a delicious peach. I started looking for tender mercies. That’s what held me up along with the women from the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group. Constantly looking for those tender mercies and finding those simple things. A lot of times it feels so dark. And we feel like we need something of a greater magnitude to take us out of that darkness.

Instead of looking for those little things, that speck of light almost. And I do want to share one significant tender mercy. It’s a night I came home exhausted. I just wanted a bowl of cereal and a clean spoon. Like I said before, I hadn’t really been keeping up with my housework. There’s probably a lot of dishes and I just wanted there to be that one clean spoon.

When I opened up the drawer, there was one last clean spoon. I just remember thinking, thank you. Because that’s all I needed was a bowl of cereal and a clean spoon. I feel like it’s so important for women to hang on to those little moments every single day. To try to find something in their life that is small but so significant.

Living Free Workshop InsightsAnne: Oh, I love that story in the Living Free Workshop. We have an exercise about this. We call it the best possible tasks And best possible moments.

Here you’re calling it a tender mercy. So that’s awesome because those little things. can really give us a feeling of peace.

There’s another part of Living Free, where we’re focusing on our dreams, and what we want. Was there anything that you decided, Hey. I have a goal and I’m going to accomplish it.

Pursuing Personal Goals When Your Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave You AloneLee: I’ve had so many, but the one biggest one, this is crazy, I painted my piano pink.

In my relationship, I was always told that I couldn’t do anything, I would always want to do these projects. And he was a carpenter and he would always tell me that they were too hard. If I explained to him what I was going to do, he would tell me it wouldn’t turn out right.

He was always saying that it would look like garbage. So I was scared to do anything. I started painting this piano, I thought it was going to look like garbage. Because that’s what I had been told that anything I did was going to look like. And it is so beautiful.

I love that piano and it turned out so good and I moved into a permanent home this year, too. I want to remodel and do a little interior decorating that I’ve never gotten to do either, really. To really learn how to play that piano that I just finished painting and then set better boundaries for myself. I’m trying to work on boundaries. Then just strengthen my faith in my home and in myself, continue on with that.

Advice for Women in Similar SituationsAnne: Do you have any advice for women who might have the same fears that you did?

Lee: Yeah, you need to find support. Betrayal Trauma Recovery is a great group for that. And I know I’m on this podcast. I want everyone to know I’m not pitching this because I’m on here. It changed my life, being a part of that group. I do not think I would be able to get out of my situation without their support. And that support hasn’t ended. That support continues on and it just keeps growing.

I haven’t ended those relationships, I’ve only grown and extended those relationships. As my situation changes, I just meet new people and new women and new friendships. That I’ve created in that group. The other thing is what we talked about in the beginning, and that’s don’t compare your situation to someone else’s.

The Harm of ComparisonLee: That is so important and something that I wish all women would stop doing. I don’t think women recognize when it really, truly is doing them so much harm. Women should not look at someone else and say their situation’s worse, and mine isn’t.

I would encourage women to look more at, is the behavior acceptable? Are they happy? Is what their husband is doing in line with their beliefs and standards? And if they’re not, that’s the problem. It doesn’t need to be someone else’s standards or beliefs. It’s what they’re comfortable with. I wish a lot more women would look at that.

Anne: Meaning I’m not okay with porn in my home, or I’m not okay with yelling, this is not acceptable for me in my home, and I don’t feel safe.

Lee: You also might find someone that says that pornography is okay. I had a lot of friends tell me that, like, why was I upset? Or, I had people tell me that it’s okay that he’s drinking, we’re having a good time, those kind of things.

Again, that put a lot of shame and guilt on me. Because I thought I was taking the fun out of our lives. Or, I thought there was something wrong with me that I thought that pornography was wrong, and maybe it was okay. Maybe it was beneficial to our relationship.

Setting Personal Standards When Your Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave You AloneAnne: Having the confidence , to think other people might feel differently, but this is my home. This is my life. I deserve to feel safe. I want to be able to live a life that is consistent with my own values.

Lee: Yes, absolutely. I really wish I would have looked at those and told myself I wasn’t willing to accept that or put up with it. Now I’m going to be 35 and I know that there are so many things that I’m just not willing to put up with. Even though someone might tell me that they’re not significant enough or they’re not really a problem, I will go by my own standards.

That’s something that I’ve learned and would like to tell my younger self. Hey, don’t go by the world’s standards, I would go by my standards.

Anne: Even some women don’t go by, maybe, your church’s standards. What I mean by that is, people who might say, well, you just need to love and serve and then everything will be okay. Don’t judge or something. Those types of things that an external church or a therapist or somebody might put on you. To be like, no, tolerate this for some reason, or be patient with it for some reason. I deserve to feel safe in my own home.

The Rock in the Shoe AnalogyLee: What you’re comfortable with, right? It’s what you’re comfortable with. Would you be comfortable with a rock in your shoe? And would you continue to walk with a rock in your shoe? Or would you remove that shoe and take out that rock? Even if someone said, you could walk a little bit longer, it’s okay. No, you’re uncomfortable with that rock in that shoe. You would take the time to sit down, and take off that shoe and take out that rock.

Anne: If someone said but don’t you feel bad for the rock? What’s the rock gonna do? How is that rock gonna get around without you? You can be like, the rock can do whatever it wants. It’s not going to be in my shoe. It’s an adult rock. It can handle it. Me taking it out has nothing to do with the rock. Whatever helps women to be like, I can do this, is what works. It’s different for everyone.

Gratitude for the BTR CommunityLee: I just want to say, because I know they’re gonna listen to this, to all my Betrayal Trauma Recovery women. That helped me through this, and the ones that I’m gonna meet in the future. I am so grateful for each and every single one of you. I really don’t think I could be where I am. And I don’t think I could be going where I’m going without their continual support. So I’m so grateful.

Anne: Have you found that being away from him has enabled you to grow stronger?

Lee: Absolutely. It has made me recognize it more, too. I actually have been dealing a lot with anger lately, as well. There’s those five or seven, grief cycles. I am in the cycle of anger. The anger for me is a protection. It’s like a shield. The problem with showing anger to an abuser is, it gets them the same amount of attention they’re seeking.

Anne: They’re not looking for peace. When peace becomes your absolute top priority.

Implementing Strategies for Peace When Your Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave You AloneAnne: Many women start using the strategies and the BTR Living Free Workshop and the BTR Message Workshop. So you were really interested in implementing strategies to get some peace in your life. First of all, let’s talk about what your concerns were.

Lee: A lot of the women in the group I know experienced some alterations of reality. Because of the situations that their husbands have put them in. They like to twist your thoughts. I lived in that false reality. Anytime I had concerns where I knew something was real. He would alter my reality, confuse me and just convince me.

That what I was thinking was completely illogical or not accurate. As I went through my divorce he continued to do this, to manipulate things. I kept thinking my narcissist ex won’t leave me alone. He continued to tell me that I said what I never said. Or things that I did say he would say I never said.

That was really difficult to live like that. Always questioning my own reality and not knowing if what I was thinking was actually real. It was very confusing.

Documenting Abuse and Gaslighting When Your Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave You AloneLee: So, why I wanted to go into this is because I needed documentation of what I was saying and what he was saying. So I could trust myself almost more. And trust that what I knew to be true was truth and I had that evidence in writing.

Anne: So you have this evidence that he’s gaslighting you, emotionally and psychologically abusing you. You have this evidence that he’s trying to alter your reality. You’re thinking, I can’t communicate with him in any way, shape or form without him lying to me. Without him twisting the truth, without things going sideways.

Lee: Yeah, without crazy making because that’s what it was.

Anne: What were your concerns ? You’re thinking oh that would be amazing if I could stop interacting with him, but I’m scared it won’t work. Because what were the things at the beginning before you decided? Hey, I’m gonna try this out that held you back from even considering it at first.

Lee: When I tried to implement a little bit of this in the past, he said he was computer illiterate. Or he didn’t really know how to use technology.

The second was that he would use it to not communicate certain things about the children. While they were with him. Again, it would fall back onto, oh I was computer illiterate. So I forgot to tell you that I was going to drop them off later. Whether maybe not telling me that the kids were uncomfortable and wanted to come home. He would use it as an excuse to say oh, sorry couldn’t communicate with you.

I think that was my biggest fear was with the children. That if there was an emergency, how would we contact each other?

Overcoming Fears and Taking Action When Your Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave You AloneAnne: You were like, I really want to do this, but it just seems impossible. And I remember talking to you on the phone. And I said, the first step is believing that it’s possible. To know that you can. And then you just have to figure out the how. How did that change in mindset from, I don’t know, I can’t do this. How did that change of mindset help you to start actually looking for solutions?

Lee: How that helped me is I took away the impossibility of it and thought I need to do this. It wasn’t even that I can or can’t do it. I needed to do it. For my own sanity. I had to start implementing this. Otherwise, I just knew that this was going to be a constant cycle and a constant battle. I was going to constantly be questioning my own reality and I would just stay stuck in that cycle of his manipulation and abuse. So it just came to the point where there was no option. There was no choice. I had to do it.

Anne: So when you decide, now I know I’m doing this. Now I’m in the problem solving, how do I do it phase? What were the first things that you needed to consider before implementing it?

Lee: One of the first things that I needed to consider was. In case of an emergency, if something happened while the kids were in his care or my care. How would we communicate to each other? And I thought of a plan immediately. It wasn’t even that hard.

Connection Broken: When Your Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave You AloneLee: All of a sudden it was fixed. I think that was my biggest hurdle. If I were to be honest with myself I think it was losing that connection with him. Even though I was going through this divorce process. Even though I was so badly hurt for so many years by him. There was still a connection that I had to him, losing that was somewhat painful for me.

I sold a car and even that had a connection to him that was painful for me to let go of in a weird way. The reality sank in. That can go two ways when that reality sets in. No hope of it getting better. That can lead to wanting to run back to that bad situation. That could lead to growth.

Implementing Strategy When Your Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave You AloneAnne: So you decided to implement the strategies I was teaching at the time. The ones that are in the Living Free and Message Workshops. Can you talk about that moment?

Lee: There was a pivotal moment where I knew I needed to do that. One catastrophic day my son had actually had a confrontation with him and I went to pick him up. We had an altercation outside of his family’s house. He did end up getting a little bit physical. Later on that evening, he took my daughters. And told them he was dropping them off in the middle of nowhere.

When I came to pick up my son, I talked to him and I rolled down my window just a little bit. He was able to reach in the car and take my phone. During our marriage he was really obsessed with my phone too. He would wake me up in the middle of the night to go through my phone and keep me up all hours. He was really obsessive about it. And so it didn’t surprise me that he went for my phone again.

When I got out of the car to grab it from him, he started smacking me. Telling me to get away. Eventually, I gave up and thought, you know what, this isn’t worth it. I’m gonna walk away, and he threw the phone after that. It was after that day that I thought, you know what? I cannot live in this anymore.

Do Restraining Order and Communication Boundaries Work When Your Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave You Alone?Lee: So, that’s when I implemented what you had encouraged me to do. But I don’t know if you remember during that conversation. The other thing that you encouraged me to do, which was to get a restraining order. Finally I get that implemented and these two things came together.

Anne: Let’s talk about some common myths with the Message Workshop tools. You were concerned that he wouldn’t participate.

I had a smile on my face when you said this, because they can’t not participate. If you block them on your phone, there’s nothing they can do about it. They can’t call you. They could call you from another number. But if you have a boundary for yourself that you never answer the phone, if it’s an unknown caller. You just wait for them to leave a message. If you block them on your email and delete your social media accounts. There’s nothing they can do about that.

Lee: How the protective order works here in Arizona is once they grant you that protective order. They send it to the sheriff’s department. It just automatically goes out. So it takes away you having to sit there debating should I, or shouldn’t I. Once it’s done, it’s done.

During that time, I was able to notify him that we would no longer be communicating verbally. Everything would go through email and he did put up a fight. This was through texts and he did put up a fight and say, that’s not going to work. I don’t do good with electronics. Now we’ve been doing this since June. He can email just fine. He is not computer illiterate and is perfectly capable.

My Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave Me Alone – It’s Driving Me CrazyLee: Again, it goes back to him altering my reality or confusing me or making me believe something that’s not true. He had convinced me that he doesn’t understand, he’s not good with electronics. And that was part of my hesitation, was him convincing me he couldn’t do this. So there was no way. Like, how was I going to be able to communicate with him? When he didn’t know how to really write an email, which is what he told me.

And it ended up being not true. So, again, it goes back to that crazy making, and me questioning myself. And is this possible, based off of his lies. So he can’t call me and can’t text me. And isn’t supposed to be within a certain feet of me. He can only email me.

If he needs to contact the kids, they have their own separate phones, so he is able to communicate with them. But if he has any specific questions for me, or we’re making plans, it all has to go through email.

Women Grieve The Abuser and The “Relationship” When Your Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave You AloneAnne: And how have those been? Have they been gaslighting?

Lee: This is something interesting. Most people think if you go through email, it takes away all the manipulative communication. But it actually doesn’t. You have to still be very aware and very careful.

Anne: Yeah, that’s why learning the BTR Message Workshop tools is so important.

Lee: In the beginning, they were very emotionally filled. Both of us trying to express our hurt and our pain.

Anne: I don’t think he was really trying to express his hurt and his pain. As much as he was manipulating your emotions.

Lee: Oh, of course, yes. And in me, I was trying to express hurt and pain and it just didn’t work. Now I try to answer everything with what you taught. They are great to use when my narcissist ex won’t leave me alone.

That’s it. No more than that. I have been doing that for a while now. There’ve been two times recently where I have gone out of my way to email him. And to address things that are not appropriate to address anymore. After that, I knew I made a mistake and then I got back on course.

I do not need to go into these pages of explanations or reasonings or even comforting him. I just need to respond very simply. Another thing you taught that I love is the broken record.

The Broken Record Technique: A Strategy For When Your Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave You AloneLee: One of the things is right now he’s on supervised visitation and he keeps asking me to pick up the kids. I have one line that I say to that, I’m sorry, you can’t do that right now. Then he’ll say something like, well, it would just be easier and nobody else has time to pick them up today. And I just say, I’m sorry, but you can’t do that right now. He might come back with something else. I just keep repeating it until finally he’s exhausted and doesn’t even ask.

And it’s just that you pick a line, you stick with that line. And every single time they come at you, you use the same line over and over again. Until finally they run out of questions. They run out of things to say, and they’re exhausted.

Anne: Yeah. That’s why the tools in the BTR Message Workshop are specific lines, statements to write over and over. The message workshop clearly explains why and how to use them with real life examples from real messages. From women like you who have applied it. Anything you see now that “shows” he can communicate as a good person is grooming and manipulation. This and a lot of other strategies can apply when your narcissist ex won’t leave you alone.

Lee: There still is a big part of me that hopes that he is a good person. But like what you’re saying, there is trickery to it. Yeah, I always tell people. I can’t really give him anything because he is a give an inch take a mile kind of a guy.

When Your Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave You Alone – Freedom from Phone CallsAnne: How has it felt to be free of his phone calls?

Lee: So good, I don’t have that pit in my stomach anymore when I see his name. My phone isn’t something to fear anymore. I’m not sitting there wondering if he’s sent me a text message on my phone. Now I can go to my phone and it’s not a place of worry. The other thing is so much comfort in knowing the things that I say and the things that he says. Also being able to go back and know that my reality and what I know is true.

I have that evidence now, and that is such a gift for me because I really do struggle with that still. Even outside of our marriage, I really do struggle with confidence in myself and trusting myself still. Because of 15 years of somebody questioning my truth or making me question my truth.

Lee: Now. Again, it’s that rebuild. I’m rebuilding that trust in myself and knowing that what I’m saying is truth because I have proof.

When Your Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave You Alone – BTR Message Workshop Strategies Can HelpAnne: So, if you’re interested in using the strategies in the Message Workshop to eliminate that fear and worry from having to communicate. And have the proof that Lee is talking about. These concepts will work for women in any situation, even if you’re still married.

We describe it when a protective order is in place, but you don’t need a protective order to implement them. You don’t have to be separated. Maybe you’re co-parenting, you can just know the concepts. and then use them in whatever way works for you.

When Your Narcissist Ex Won’t Leave You Alone, Use The Living Free Workshop Anne: If your narcissist ex won’t leave you alone, the BTR Message Workshop builds on the strategies you learn in the Living Free Workshop. So, enroll in the Living Free Workshop first.

So you can get those foundational strategies. The Living Free Workshop uses an amazing workbook. If you want to you can dig really deep level and process things. Some women don’t even use the workbook the first time through, or they never use it. They just run through all the videos super fast and they don’t even answer the questions below the videos.

There’s no right or wrong way to do it. And once you’re done with the Living Free lessons. Whether you’ve busted through it without doing any of the exercises or questions. Or whether you’ve processed it on a deep level, either way, the message workshop will be available to you. Because you will have an overview of the Living Free strategies.

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Lindsay, a member of the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Community shares her experience doing an in-home separation, Lindsey offers valuable insight to empower listeners. If you need support, learn about Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions.

Why Choose In-Home Separation?Sometimes women want to separate themselves from their abusive husband’s behaviors, but for one reason or another can’t physically move to another space.

In-home separations offer temporary safety (if your husband respects the separation agreement), while not causing financial strain on the family.

Further, in-home separations can preserve the current family dynamic if children are struggling to adapt to a more intense separation.

An in-home separation is rarely a situation that a couple can/wants to maintain long-term. Eventually, the abusive husband will choose to change and become non-abusive and honest, or will simply continue on the destructive path of betrayal and abuse. When your in-home separation isn’t providing you with the safety that you deserve, it may be time to ask your husband to move out, for you to move out, and/or consider filing for divorce.

It’s important for victims to understand that abusive men hitting benchmarks (going to therapy, attending support groups, etc.) does NOT mean that they are changing. As women become empowered, they are better able to understand what real change looks like.

Transcript: In-Home SeparationAnne: I have my friend with me today, Lindsey, not her real name. She’s actually here in my basement where I record. I was talking to a woman at a conference and she said, I wasn’t meant to live one day at a time. And I thought that’s so true. Like I want to be able to plan. I want to be able to have peace. I want to be able to have emotional safety. There are obviously painful things that happen. No matter how hard we try, we can’t avoid them.

The Concept of Betrayal TraumaLindsay: Because whether it’s betrayal trauma or whether it’s a child dying, whatever your trial is, that is way too hard. It’s not fair.

Anne: Yeah. What about your situation left you feeling hopeless

Lindsay: When I discovered that there’s this thing called betrayal trauma. On top of that, not just betrayal trauma, but also there is secondary trauma and it’s real. You can have secondary trauma from ecclesiastical leaders, from therapists, therapists out there, resources out there that claim we help with betrayal trauma and yet they don’t.

Lindsay: It’s real and yet I have nowhere to turn because I don’t know who is safe.

Anne: That’s why I created Betrayal Trauma Recovery.

Trusting Your Gut & Finding SafetyAnne: Since then, have you developed a system where you can feel like, this is how I would know if someone’s safe or not?

Lindsay: Mainly trusting my gut. I mean, learning to trust myself and to trust God. When I feel safe, I feel peace. And if there’s something that isn’t safe or that feels off, it’s almost like a little flag goes off in my brain that says, wait, this is either totally unsafe or I just need to learn more. Ask some more questions and figure out what’s going on. Because sometimes people say things in a way that is unsafe, but they didn’t intend to say it that way.

Anne: Like me! I did all the time. In fact, right when Lindsay got here, she was like, look at this new pamphlet! And I was like, ah! They took the word abuse off! And I went on a, what, how long was it? Maybe four minute rant about how mad I was that they removed the word abuse. And then I was like, I gotta calm down. I said a prayer, and I’m feeling fine now. And do you feel safe now?

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Anne: But I bet while I was on the rant, you were like, Oh, this can’t be good. Right? You were kind of like, Oh, no, we can’t record with her like this. And I was recognizing it.

https://youtu.be/ZcCaYcaS5eATriggers & Emotional ReactionsAnne: It’s funny, it’s funny when I get triggered. I don’t know if you think it’s funny when you get triggered. When I get triggered, I think it’s funny because I can see it. I’m like oh, I know I’m doing this and I have to make that mental shift to say what would be the most helpful thing to do right now? So I apologize that I went on my rant.

Lindsay: It’s been helpful for me to reevaluate my perspective on life. It’s really a hard process to do, that is to say, I am questioning everything. Thinking about what I understand about my world, my higher power, relationships with my family and with my friends. Yet that process of questioning has been, in a lot of ways, very healing for me. I can feel the growth that I’ve had over the last two years.

Anne: Yeah, that’s what I experienced too. And I loved that. Looking back, I didn’t so much like it when I was going through it.

Lindsay: Absolutely not. It’s so hard.

Anne: It was miserable.

Growth Through HardshipAnne: But looking back, I’m like, wow, I have changed and I have grown so much, and I’m still growing.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Anne: It’s almost like the growth happens in this other place, and then you look back. You’re like, whoa, I changed. How did that happen?

Lindsay: It happens in a way that I didn’t expect. I don’t see it coming and and then it happens and it’s this beautiful amazing thing. Yeah, it’s pretty cool. One thing that I love about this process is you talk about sweeping my side of the street. It’s totally not about that because that can be a really dangerous metaphor to use. If you take that out and you just say this isn’t about my side of the street it’s taking the situation that is already happening.

About awful, terrible, ugly, hard, painful and saying, I can either sit here and live in the unmanageable. Live in it, and that’s okay to do, or I can take it and give it purpose. I can take my suffering and give it something meaningful.

Pain With PurposeLindsay: Pain with purpose is much more tolerable than pain that’s totally meaningless. Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, it’s this idea that if I don’t have any reason, this pain is just happening, and it’s just going to keep happening, and there’s no reason for it, and I can’t do anything about it. I mean, I’ll go crazy. I will. And I may still go crazy.

Anne: You’re not crazy yet.

Lindsay: But to have purpose to it, and for me to say, no this is not my fault. It’s not fair and I can’t control it, but with God, I can make something beautiful out of it.

Anne: For me, it was definitely Betrayal Trauma Recovery.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Anne: Because everything that I have now, my children, my house, BTR that I founded is because of what I went through.

I would not have anything else. It’s everything that I love and care about and hold dear to my heart now. I’m super grateful that I went through it because there’s no way I could do what I do without it. People who haven’t been through it have a hard time wrapping their head around the realities of what happens. I also think it’s super cool how for all of us who have been through this, to be able to understand each other and empathize with each other, but also disagree.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Anne: And have different experiences. That certain things are helpful for some people that aren’t helpful for others. And leave a space open for that.

Anne: Knowing that emotional health looks pretty much the same. Honesty, accountability, kindness, you know, all that stuff looks the same, but we can get to it from many different ways.

In-Home Separation ExperienceAnne: So on the topic of in-home separation, which some women may use to establish safety. Lindsay has done both an in-home separation and now is separated out of her home. Can you tell us why you felt unsafe in your own home?

Lindsay: So when he went through two months of acting out behavior without disclosing it to me, that’s when I felt unsafe and knew I needed to change something.

Anne: Did you feel unsafe before you found out he was lying to you, or was there something in your gut that you knew was wrong and you just didn’t have quote unquote evidence until you found out?

Lindsay: I definitely felt uneasy, that’s for sure, and I knew that he wasn’t communicating with me, but until I really had the direct evidence, I didn’t want to move forward yet. And it was only a matter of months.

Anne: So once you determined that you felt unsafe and that your husband’s behaviors were unsafe, mainly that he had been lying to you, why did you choose an in-home separation for your boundary at that time?

Lindsay: At that time, I knew I felt unsafe and I knew that something needed to change. It was actually Almost a month between me knowing that there was dishonesty happening and me actually coming to the conclusion that an in-home separation was the boundary that I wanted to move forward with, mostly because I just didn’t know what to do.

How Can An In-Home Separation Help In Situations Of AbuseLindsay: I was, you know, Totally at a loss, but I had some really amazing experiences with meditation that helped me come to the conclusion that I really needed to have safety within my home, and I needed to have a place in my home that could be my safe place. For me, the easiest way that I could envision that happening would be to have an in-home separation where I could have my bedroom be that safe place.

Anne: I’m going to talk about safety for a minute.

A lot of women listening might think, okay, he was lying to you and so you felt unsafe. Were there any other evidences that you felt unsafe. Which there doesn’t need to be, but I want to talk about this because a lot of women think, well, he’s not yelling at me. He’s not punching walls. He’s not screaming in my face.

So, yeah, I’m safe. When emotionally they might not be safe because they’re trusting someone or they’re interacting with someone who’s lying to their face. Talk about how you came to realize that you deserved more than just, well, he’s not yelling at me.

In-Home Separation Is A BoundaryLindsay: My husband is in a lot of respects, a good husband and a good father to my children. You know, he’s respectful. He helps around the house, does all the right things on the surface. He doesn’t put me down. Obviously, the lying is abuse in and of itself. But for me, it was just these little red flags. Each one of those in and of itself isn’t totally wrong. But when you look at the big picture and you look at red flags like not communicating. He’s not telling me what he’s thinking.

Anne: So at the time when you’re telling your family, I don’t feel safe. I’m going to have an in-home separation. Were they like, why don’t you feel safe? I’m confused. What is he doing?

Lindsay: Yeah, absolutely. And honestly, even to this day, it’s something that I’m not sure I have words to capture exactly what it means. Which is hard because in a certain sense, you want to feel justified when you’re talking to your family or when you’re talking to your friends about the actions that you’re taking. And so that’s been a struggle.

It’s kind of a back and forth and just a continuing conversation with my parents, with my siblings, with other people who are aware of what’s going on. Just trying to share with them how I’m feeling. When I do come across podcasts or if I come across a quote that I feel captures what I’m feeling, I’m more inclined to share that with them to help communicate, but it’s hard.

In-Home Separation Allows Time For ObservationAnne: Do you feel like you’re better at communicating how you feel now than when you first started the in-home separation?

Lindsay: Yes and no. In some ways, obviously, I’ve definitely grown and read more, listened to more. But in other ways, no. It’s still something that’s hard to describe to somebody who hasn’t experienced it themselves. For me, one of my personal boundaries for myself has been to say, it’s okay for me to not be able to describe what I’m feeling to somebody. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean that my feelings are unjustified.

Anne: Both that and then also, it’s okay that I can’t explain all my reasons why I feel unsafe. But my decision to set a boundary I don’t have to justify it to other people. It’s okay. It’s just a tough position to be in.

Lindsay: Yeah

Anne: So you were doing an in-home separation for how long?

Lindsay: About a year.

Anne: Okay. And during that time, all you could see is he doesn’t seem to be interested in meetings or therapy, and that was your indicator that you were probably unsafe? Because you’ve got somebody with a history of lying to you and someone with a history of using porn.

Lindsay: Exactly.

Indicators Of Abusive BehaviorAnne: Okay. I’m thinking right now that those of us who can clearly see through their behavior, right, they’re very irritable, are kind of lucky, maybe? I mean, not, but yes. Behavior can be more extreme. But the weird thing is, it doesn’t mean you’re in any less danger from being lied to.

Anne: And the spectrum of these abusive behaviors is so vast. It can look so different. Okay. So, you’re doing an in-home separation for about a year. You’re living upstairs and he’s living in the basement. I am personal friends with you, in the same area. So I know you’ve been making an effort to have friends come over in the evening when you’re lonely, and you’ve just been learning new skills on how to navigate a life where you’ve been separated in your home.

Then you find out he’s been lying again, he’s been using porn again. We’re already doing an in-home separation, so now what do I do? Talk about how you felt in the process that you went through to determine what steps to take next.

Red Flags During In-Home SeparationLindsay: I actually need to back up a little bit, because that process started a little bit before I knew that he was lying to me. I had some other pretty bad experiences. Big indicators that something was really wrong.

Anne: Can you tell us what those were?

Lindsay: I had a conversation with him shortly after one of his therapy appointments. He was on his way out the door, so it was not a good time to be talking, but I had just asked him about how his therapy went.

He was sharing with me about being in a slump and had shared that with the therapist. The therapist was working with him on determining his motivation for recovery, trying to do pros and cons of working recovery. Then he shared a question that the therapist had asked him, how long do you think this is sustainable to stay in this slump? He told me that his answer to the therapist had been something like, Well that depends on my wife.

Anne: That depends on Lindsay.

Lindsay: Yeah. And I was like, oh, that’s not okay with me. I don’t know if I could put words at the time to why that wasn’t okay with me, but that did not feel right.

I want his recovery to be his own. for him to be motivated to do it for his own well being. Not to work recovery as long as I’m not making his life unbearable or harder.

Anne: Yeah, so it’s like well if she doesn’t bug me anymore then now then maybe forever. It just depends on Lindsay.

Considering Moving From In-Home Separation to Out-Of-Home SeparationLindsay: It came across really as a big, big red flag for me. At that point, that was actually the first time that I had ever considered the reality or the possible reality of an out of home separation. And that scared me. It terrified me. So the thought had been planted a couple weeks before.

Anne: Before we go on, can you put in words why, if all other behaviors seem healthy, why lying and porn use to you is unacceptable?

Lindsay: Yeah, absolutely. The lying. It just is a really not okay foundation for any relationship, because if he’s lying about this, who knows what else he could be lying about. Yes, on the surface, the things that I see and experience seem to be okay, but who knows?

Anne: It would be interesting to see if someone else were in your situation.

Lindsay: Right? It would be so different.

Anne: If she was like, well, no, these things are really bad. These other things that maybe for whatever reason, you’re not recognizing or whatever. That would be interesting to know.

Lindsay: Yeah. Oh, I’m sure it would be very different.

Anne: Or if she was like, I agree. Who knows?

Pornography Is Not OKAnne: Gail Dines was on the podcast. If you have not heard that episode, please listen to it. She’s amazing. She was saying, Women, even if nothing else is going on, you cannot accept porn in a relationship, period. It is an abusive act and is not okay. I’m proud of you for saying, even though I don’t exactly know how these behaviors are affecting me, I know that it is and I will not accept it. That is a really brave thing to do.

Lindsay: For me personally, pornography is something that goes against my values, my spiritual belief system. That has been very clear from the start. This is not okay. But I didn’t know that anything could be done about it. I was told by clergy what felt to me like contradictory statements. Like, recovery is possible, sobriety is possible, and yet addiction is going to be a lifelong thing. I didn’t get how those two things that felt to me like opposites could both be true.

Anne: It’s possible for him to change, but if he doesn’t, it’s actually possible for you, the victim, to find peace and happiness. It takes a long time to figure out what that looks like and how that’s going to go.

Exploring Boundaries & In-Home SeparationAnne: Because lying and pornography are unacceptable to you, then you start this process of determining what is my next step for safety. I’ve already done an in-home separation, and it seemed to work. It kept me safe for a little while, but it didn’t motivate him to change, which wasn’t your point. Your point was just to keep yourself safe.

Now you’re realizing, I’m not any safer. How do you decide that you need to increase your boundaries yet again? Because you’re still unsafe.

Lindsay: Yeah, that was a long thought process for me, because realistically, the boundary of an in-home separation has a wide range of levels of connection, even within that. I thought about it, and I realized I had pretty much explored that range at least as far as I knew how. We had a period of time fairly early on in the in-home separation where things were awful he was acting out every week and telling me about it.

Anne: When you say acting out you mean using porn and masturbating?

Lindsay: Yeah, so that was happening on a weekly basis. It felt to me like it was endless. That was really hard for me.

Low Contact During SeparationLindsay: At that point in time, our in-home separation was very low contact. Like, I would very much schedule the times when I would be seeing him. It would be family dinner with the kids. Outside of that and maybe a few other things, I was pretty much saying, okay, text me if you’re going to walk through the upstairs. So I know that you’re walking through the upstairs.

Things like that where I would very much know where he was and where I was and that those were separate places. Versus when things were a lot better. We did spend time together, he still slept in the basement and I still slept upstairs. I still maintained my bedroom as my safe space. So he wasn’t going in my room. If I was in the room at all, ever. I had felt like I had explored that range.

Out of Options & Making DecisionsLindsay: I felt like I was out of options. That’s a hard place to be because I don’t like making decisions from a place where I feel like there’s no other options. That was a place where I had to sit for a while to think about, okay, have I really explored all my options?

Anne: I think that’s really interesting because people don’t understand that women married to emotionally abusive men want the relationship to work. That they try every single option. Every single one. And it’s only when they are out of options that they think, alright, I have to do this because I’m out of options. Before, when you did the in-home separation, that seemed like the only option at the time, right? Or the best option.

Lindsay: It did seem like the best option. I did feel like I had a lot more options when I was making that decision.

Anne: What options were you considering at that time? You were considering an out of home separation, an in-home separation?

Lindsay: Honestly, I didn’t even consider an out of home at that time.

In-Home vs. Out-Of-Home SeparationAnne: So it was just options within an in-home separation?

Lindsay: Or just within a relationship where I could say, okay, I need to not go on dates or I need to have variations in the space? The amount of space that I have emotionally and physically.

Anne: Then when his abusive behaviors continue now you’re thinking, I’ve exhausted all those in-home separation options and now my only option is an out of home separation. Does this out of home separation include variations?

Lindsay: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because I know that there is a huge range of options in terms of does he still spend time at the house? Does he spend time with the kids? Is it really just a different place to sleep? Or is it like we’re living in different states? There’s a lot of options within that.

Lindsay: It felt like I was at one level and I was jumping up to like five levels higher in terms of, you know, my boundaries, yeah. And that’s a big jump to make.

Anne: I was talking with you while you were trying to make this decision. You would text me and call me and be like, am I thinking through this straight? Are these boundaries appropriate? What do I want to do? You finally decide, yes. I am going to ask him to move out.

Family’s Confusion & JudgmentAnne: Your family, again, was confused.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Anne: They were like, why are you asking a perfectly capable, non violent man who holds down a job, who is active in our church, who is seemingly a good dad to move out? This is confusing to us. At that time, did they understand it? Any more or were they still baffled?

Lindsay: I don’t know if I can make a good judgment on that, honestly, because I was in such trauma myself. My perspective on what they were thinking and feeling is probably very skewed.

Anne: Eventually you move forward, regardless of what your perception of how other people felt. You’re currently separated with him out of the home.

Assessing Safety In SeparationAnne: How have you felt about your level of safety now? It’s so difficult to assess your safety in this situation because both scenarios feel unsafe. Having them stay in the home feels unsafe because they’re lying to you and using porn and it just feels uncomfortable and it’s against your value system.

Then secondly, having your children’s dad move out, financial ramifications that this might cause, emotional ramifications, the fact that this could result in divorce. Which you don’t want, feels unsafe too. So it’s like, which “unsafe scenario” do I choose and why? The decision is very complex. It’s not easy at all. But since you asked him to move out, have you felt, generally speaking, more emotionally safe?

Lindsay: I would say I’ve felt more at peace. I don’t know if I would say more safe because realistically, I don’t know. I felt a lot of unease around asking for the out of home separation simply for the financial aspect of it. That was another reason why I hesitated for a long time. The conclusion that I came to, and it worked for us, this doesn’t work for everyone. I asked that he cover the cost with extra work. He come up with a cost so that it doesn’t dip into our normal finances.

That gave me a lot of peace going into it saying this is possibly temporary. It could be temporary. And if it is temporary and he does end up moving back in, we end up reconciling and our relationship moves forward in a healthy way. It’s not going to impact us negatively in terms of our financial future.

Husband’s Dishonesty & ExpectationsLindsay: My husband in particular, one of the roots of his dishonesty is he wants to fulfill people’s expectations of him. I made a very conscious decision. I’m not going to outline a plan for him. I’m not going to outline what I need to see. In order for this to be better.

Anne: Yeah, that’s exactly what I teach in the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. That women don’t make a list of all the things they want to see, and I explain exactly why you don’t want to do that. The type of list that’s not going to help you get to safety would be something like, I need you to go to group every week, I need you to go to therapy every week, I need you to do this, I need you to do that.

They can fake all of that. They can check off all those boxes, but it doesn’t mean anything.

Anne: It’s a good idea to just say, I don’t know. I’ll keep praying. keep pondering, keep observing and I’ll see how it feels. Yeah. as your friend, I feel like his behavior right now shows that he’s more concerned about his own comfort, than your safety.

Lindsay: Well, absolutely. That’s why we’re in this place right now. That’s the heart of it.

Anne: Yeah. I’m mad. I’m mad because I’m your friend and I care about you.

The Long Process Of HealingAnne: And this process to determine whether or not someone is going to actually learn and apply and practice and live healthy behaviors takes a long time.

Lindsay: It took me a while to come to terms with the fact. That simply because I had started to do my own healing didn’t mean that he has, that he’s ready, and he’s committed.

Anne: I think that’s why safety first is the best way to go. If you’re thinking, I need to establish safety for myself and for my home. And I don’t exactly know how to go about that, but safety is the top priority. I’m going to continue to set boundaries until I feel safe, whatever that looks like, then you’re never going to go wrong.

Lindsay: It’s my goal is to keep moving in that direction.

Conflict & Prioritizing Safety In BoundariesLindsay: One thing that I feel. maybe some caution around the word safety is the idea that any relationship, whether it’s marriage or just with a friend or a family member, you can’t expect there to be no conflict. You can’t expect there to be no risks. So I feel some caution around the word safety simply because I don’t want to be so focused on the goal of safety that I don’t open myself up to deep, meaningful loving relationships.

Anne: That’s interesting, because I don’t feel that way at all. I feel very safe with my close friends and family, but we’re getting in fights all the time. But it’s a safe space. I’m not abused. I’m not lied to, accused of things and not gaslit. Is there conflict? Totally, I’m very confrontational. As are many of the people around me.

Lindsay: That makes sense with your background and personality. For me, who I am naturally, I know this about myself, I’m naturally conflict averse. I’m careful about me pushing safety too far.

Anne: Or you confusing, I think might be the better word. Confusing safety and peace with a complete and total lack of conflict.

Lindsay: Maybe. Because safety can mean not being in pain, to some people.

Anne: For sure, but I wouldn’t say I’m in pain. I mean, I have conflicts that hurt my feelings or whatever, but it’s resolvable. With a safe person, you can resolve it. I guess what I’m saying is the pain can be resolved, not quickly, but like rather quickly. Like, if you get in a conflict, you can resolve it. Within a week, which is great. These other conflicts with your spouse or ex spouse are unresolvable.

Pain Of Growth in RelationshipsLindsay: I guess what I’m saying is, it’s not just like pain from getting feelings hurt, but I want to be open to the pain of growth. The growth in a relationship. That may come from conflict that lasts for a while.

Anne: Right, but that doesn’t mean you’re unsafe.

Lindsay: No. But to some people, and in some situations, the idea of being in pain, period, may feel unsafe. So, for example, in my relationship with my parents, I have a lot of growth to do there. I feel like that is the pain of growth, saying that, okay, I’m in pain. It’s okay for me to feel the pain of saying, I’m wrong sometimes.

Anne: Yeah, totally. But that again, safety is about, is this person lying to you? Are they trying to manipulate you? Are they hurting you on purpose to try and take the attention away from their unhealthy behaviors? So if the person is. genuine, they really genuinely care for you.

They’re not trying to manipulate you. Like my mom for example. I’ll just bring her up. She really wants me to do certain things and she tries to convince me in a lot of different ways. Could I call it manipulation? Maybe, but not really because she’s very direct about it. I don’t like those shoes you’re wearing. I don’t want you to wear them. Let me tell you the 17 reasons why they’re ugly. Then she’ll tell me that over and over and over. Right. And I’m like, I like those shoes.

Is Conflict Abusive?Anne: She’s doing that because she genuinely loves and cares about me, which is so different than coming from a place of, I’m trying to hide things from you. Also I’m trying to make sure that you don’t confront me about my abusive behaviors. I think safety with people, even if there’s conflict, is totally achievable. So we can agree, we can maybe agree to disagree.

Lindsay: Absolutely. I’m definitely okay with that.

Anne: I’m like, wait a minute. No, you can get to safety. You really can.

Lindsay: I do believe that. I just know that from my perspective where safety has been a very unclear thing to me and to people who are around me, it can be misinterpreted very easily.

Anne: Maybe I need to go back and fix all my podcast episodes. Because I’m always talking about safety and people are like, well, that means that we never get in an argument or that means this. I’m like, no, it doesn’t. It’s never meant that. But I’m wondering now, are people interpreting this differently than, than how I intend it? Which they do all the time.

Does Safety Mean No ConflictAnne: But that’s really interesting. There’s no way we can ever have a life free of fear or conflict. And actually we don’t want that. Right? Which would mean someone is lying or someone isn’t.

Lindsay: But I used to think that that’s what I would want. I used to think that if I was in conflict in a relationship that things were not okay. That relationship is not okay.

Anne: I think it depends on what you’re having a conflict about. You’re having a conflict about your shoes. Right. That relationship is fine. If you’re having a conflict about whether or not someone is stabbing people, that is not okay. It’s not going to be okay over here. What are your next steps? Are you feeling like you want to just settle into this?

Lindsay: No, I don’t. I don’t want to settle into this because this is not my ideal. So for me, on the relationship front, it’s a waiting game. Wait and see what happens. Right. See what he does, see how he acts. I don’t think I mentioned this earlier, so I’ll mention it now.

Trusting Higher Power For GuidanceLindsay: The key to that, for me, is developing and keeping my relationship with my higher power, such that I feel like I can trust my higher power to let me know if something is off. Because realistically, I don’t know if he’s lying to me. I don’t know if he’s acting out. There’s a lot that I don’t know. However; I have had multiple key moments in my relationship with my husband where I know that my higher power has made me aware of things that I did not know.

Anne: Do you feel like your relationship with God, has improved over time?

Lindsay: I still struggle with connecting with my higher power on a regular basis. I still struggle with having the motivation to want to do the things that I know I need to do to keep that connection strong.

Boundaries & Out-Of-Home SeparationAnne: Boundaries are hard, especially having your husband move out is a very difficult boundary. If you could go back in time and talk to your younger self, to tell her some things about boundaries that you have learned. What would you tell her?

Lindsay: That it’s okay not to know what you’re doing. Because realistically, I don’t know that I would have learned the things that I needed to learn in order to set these boundaries any sooner than I did. Even if I told myself anything, any advice I could have given myself. And that’s okay. It’s okay to make mistakes. It’s okay to not have it down right now. It is something that’s gonna take time.

Anne: I agree. I am now such an expert at boundaries, but I didn’t set a boundary at all before my ex was arrested. That was God telling me, let me help you out. You clearly are having problems, and just let me do this for you. I feel like that’s what happened. Then I was like, thank you! I can breathe now, and then I could figure out how to set boundaries.

I’m just so grateful. It’s basically kept the boundary that God gave to me. Thank goodness. I don’t think I ever could have done it otherwise. Going back in time, I’d be like, you’re really, really bad at boundaries. That’s what I would have told myself.

Advice for Women Considering An In-Home SeparationAnne: For women right now who are considering a separation, either an in-home separation, or an out-of-home separation. Do you have any words of wisdom you could share with them?

Lindsay: I just know what I did. Reach out to somebody who may be a little bit ahead of you on the journey, and then the people that are right there in the trenches with you. It helped to talk it out. It helped me clarify what my thoughts were and my feelings were.

Also being open to guidance from my higher power. I can’t honestly say It’s something that I knelt down and prayed about because that’s just not the place I’m at right now, but connecting in other ways.

Anne: Yeah, this is a tough journey. It’s intense. It’s unpredictable. I think peace is a good goal to work toward. I do think it’s possible and boundaries make that possible.

Final Thoughts & GratitudeAnne: I teach women how to create and hold healthy boundaries in the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. A great big thank you to my friend, Lindsay. I’m so thankful for her. She’s a great example to me of someone who sets boundaries and is doing the best she can to be as healthy as possible.

I genuinely admire her and I’m grateful for her friendship.

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Have you been searching for the best support for betrayal trauma? Are you alone right now? Scared, heartbroken, and sick over the betrayal and emotional abuse that you are enduring?

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions occur multiple times a day, in every time zone. We know getting dressed sometimes feels overwhelming and impossible to traumatized women. That’s why the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions are the best support for betrayal trauma victims. Come as you are and know that you will be loved and validated, never judged.

Transcript: The Best Support For Betrayal TraumaOn this week’s episode, I asked our coaches to see if Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session Clients would want to stay after their group session and share their feelings and experiences with our podcast listeners. Some of them wanted to talk, and others wanted to write their thoughts and have me read them. Additionally I’m also going to read some reviews that we’ve received.

Therapy ChallengesBTR Group Session Client #1: I probably listened to the podcast for about four years before things got to the point that I clearly had to take action. In fact, the Betrayal Trauma Recovery coaching combined with the podcast were the two things that saved my life. I went to three therapists who told me it was all my fault and I needed to go do my family of origin work and stop trying to control my husband. Who was just continuing to stomp all over everything that was sacred that I was trying to build with him.

I felt like there was a severed artery. He, the therapist and I sat there, it’s spewing blood all over everybody and nobody said a word and it felt just like gaslighting to me. I think therapy was very abusive. I was definitely abused by three different therapists because of that codependent model.

It’s infuriating that women are made to feel this way when they’re trying to get help. Chiefly, that’s all we did for the last two to three years. Additionally we “worked” together with S-Groups and CSATS. Then It just got worse. Everybody said, “Read this book.” And I thought, “I don’t need a book. I need help.”

I felt this mentality too, that like, we’re going to go to therapy and everything is going to get fixed . And that’s just kind of ridiculous . I was a failure in therapy three times, and I was considered a failure in recovery as well.

BTR: Finding Safety, Value & GrowthClient continues: We have to feel safe, feel heard and feel valued however, I did not feel any of that until I found Betrayal Trauma Recovery. Betrayal Trauma Recovery really just was pivotal in my healing. Things can turn around with TheBetrayal Trauma Recovery abuse model and the truth. My heart sheds a tear for every new woman that comes into Betrayal Recovery Trauma Group Sessions, conversely, my heart jumps up and down because she’s here.

I was able to do Betrayal Trauma Recovery Individual Sessions to work on really hard things to get up the guts after listening to the podcast for four years. I’m filled with gratitude.

The Power Of Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group SessionsAnne reading for BTR Group Session Client #2: I was desperate for help and searched the internet for answers. I came across a BTR podcast about gaslighting. This is what I’d been experiencing in my marriage for 26 years and there’s a name for it. It was a literally mind blowing revelation to me. That led me to the Betrayal Trauma Recovery website, where I went on a podcast binge and listened to everything.

I started attending Betrayal Trauma Group Sessions. My life began to get exponentially better. Thank you, Anne and the Betrayal Trauma Recovery coaches for being exactly what I needed.

BTR Group Session Client #3: Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions have definitely helped me know that I am not the only one who has experienced emotional and psychological abuse and sexual coercion. I did think I was alone and so isolated for over two decades. Finding the group and hearing so much of my story and other women’s stories as well, has really helped me feel connected and less isolated. Now I know that I have language and I am able to know exactly what I’m doing with the truth.

To help my life move forward, the groups and coaching have really changed me, above all I am so grateful that they’re here and willing to share and give coaching to improve all of our lives and to seek safety first.

Messages Of Thanks And SupportAnne reading for BTR Group Session Client #4: My husband lives in an upside down world and I am not able to make sense or understand what he has done. No right sided person could stand to be in an upside down land. I am getting better every day.

Thank you for Betrayal Trauma Recovery. Thank you for investing in us. Your kids are blessed to have such a strong, deliberate woman for their mom and role model. Keep sharing. Keep advocating. You have impacted a lot of lives.

BTR Group Session Client #5: The skills that I’ve learned in Betrayal Trauma Recovery originally concentrated with my abuser, but the skills that I got and the education that I’m receiving transitioned to so many areas of life. Now I am able to use the restored intuition I have to see these people who feel entitled to my life, my skills and my story to use for themselves. Additionally I’m grateful, I have those skills.

Anne reading for BTR Group Session Client #6: Anne, your faithfulness and perseverance is encouraging, inspirational, and motivational every day. Right now, it doesn’t seem like there will ever be a different side to my story because I am in the thick of it. While listening to one of your podcasts I thought to myself for the first time that this pain won’t own me forever, I will own it one day.

I would not know that if it wasn’t for you and the most excellent coaches at Betrayal Trauma Recovery.

https://youtu.be/126Il6pSQPIThe Impact Of BTR On Family And FriendsBTR Group Session Client #7: Betrayal Trauma Recovery has been an amazing godsend for not just me, but my family, because it’s providing a safe place for myself, and then also my mom, to process the abuse that was happening in our respective relationships and get to safety. In addition to a number of my friends as well. So I’m extremely grateful for all the Betrayal Trauma Recovery coaches here.

Anne reading for BTR Group Session Client #8: I want to let you know that Betrayal Trauma Recovery was a lifesaver for me. It was barely over a year ago that I found your organization.

Wait, I didn’t find you. God brought me to you. It changed my life. I just want you to know how much of a difference you make in the lives of hurt women, above all, please don’t stop doing what you’re doing. There are a lot of women out there who desperately need what Betrayal Trauma Recovery has to offer. I know this because I was one of them.

Coaches Are The Best Support For Betrayal TraumaBTR Group Session Client #9: Group Sessions for me are allowing me to feel less alone and be inspired by amazing women.

BTR Group Session Client #10: Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions and podcasts and books have been amazing for me. Being able to go to people that understand.

I had no idea about my husband’s porn use, and then for 10 YEARS after I found out, I spend years and years of therapy with my husband. The therapists repeatedly asked me, “What are you doing?” “How can you support him more?” And even “Why are you crying? This has nothing to do with you.”

Family minimizing or believing him on even money issues and different things.

All of their “help” put his problems ON ME. I spent an entire year with one therapist trying to explain and teach her and giving her books. Another therapist worked with me to figure out how I could stop my husband from accessing pornography.

When I found BTR, it was a miracle to NOT be blamed in some way for something that is out of your control, that a grown adult person is doing, and doing to you. I love being able to attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session every day and getting on when I need to. The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast really makes things make sense. I’m really thankful.

Thankful is an understatement. God bless. And may this expand to churches and governments and countries. Thank you so much.

The Importance Of Safe And Structured SupportAnne reading for BTR Group Session Client #11: I stumbled across a video on YouTube the other day, and as I was listening to it, I thought I recognized your voice. it turns out it was you! It was Anne. I knew I recognized your voice as you have a one of a kind voice, by the way. That you’re on YouTube means that you are reaching more people, and that is awesome.

BTR Group Session Client #12: For me, Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions have been with me through the whole entire process from first figuring out what was going on in my life to navigating post separation issues and custody issues. I just can’t put enough value on the practical advice and the emotional support and secondly the community with other women. It really helped my growth into the future.

Anne reading for BTR Group Session Client #13: I like attending BTR Group Sessions with women who have walked in my shoes who can understand my situation also I greatly appreciate the expertise of the coaches.

Finding BTR: The Best Support For Betrayal TraumaBTR Group Session Client #14: I remember the day that I first found Betrayal Trauma Recovery. I was sitting on my back porch, desperately seeking some kind of help for my soul. As a result, I listened to Anne calling betrayal what it really is, and acknowledging the pain and trauma that it really causes to us women.

That podcast changed my life. Initially I burst into tears as I listened feeling healing validation. Finally, someone was calling pornography use for the betrayal and harm that it actually is. Someone was seeing how abusive it is. Finally, someone had put together all the pieces of the puzzle and so many things finally began to make sense. That’s what makes it the best support for betrayal trauma.

It was my first moment of validation and clarity then Anne set me on my path of strength and healing right at that moment because she was brave enough to share her own strength and healing. Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group is the best support for betrayal trauma. It is the most healing place that a woman can possibly be after experiencing betrayal of any sort. It’s a safe, sacred, and healing space.

The abuse-informed and trained coaches are amazing, loving, and wise. And they all remind us that there is healing to be found as you navigate through this experience of betrayal trauma. I just want to give a big forever thank you to Anne, the betrayal trauma coaches, and to BTR.

Client Reflections on The Best Support For Betrayal Trauma**Anne reading for BTR Group Session Client #15: I attended Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions at the most crucial point of my discovery of infidelity. These sessions carried me from day to day and gave me strength. I had so much in common with the other women in The Group Sessions, because these are caring, articulate women. I have so much good to say. The format is the most clear and safe and ethically run support group I have ever been a part of.

BTR Group Session Client #16: I’m very thankful for BTR. I feel that God led me to the website when I watched my first video on pornography and how it affects your relationship. I am a firm believer that pornography is infidelity. The BTR Group Sessions have been so instrumental in my life because I’ve been attending for the last four months. I can get on every day and feel immediate love and support and validation from the coaches and the ladies in the Session.

I just can’t thank The coaches and Anne and BTR enough for helping me through this journey. BTR is the best support for betrayal trauma. My future is positive about my life. my future. Because I know I’ll always have BTR and I know they’re going to help me get through it

Empowerment Through The Best Support For Betrayal Trauma**Anne reading for BTR Group Session Client #17: Unconditional Support and the feeling that you all get it because you have all lived it. In this case these are women who understand women with similar issues and women who support each other.

BTR Group Session Client #18: Betrayal Trauma Recovery has helped me put the appropriate names to what I was experiencing and that would be abuse. It took me a long time to label what I was experiencing was indeed abuse. The Group Sessions help you feel like you are not the crazy one. A lot of us come from traumatic backgrounds, and so it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one.

There’s inclusivity . And I just really appreciate that BTR says pornography is abuse, period, because it’s so easily pushed to the side as a non issue and it’s affecting so many, really pure, noble women. It helps me feel empowered to take the next step in my journey, whatever that step might be also I just want people to know that they’re not alone. They can listen to their intuition and that’s not them going crazy.

By coming to BTR and sharing that in a vulnerable way, in a safe way, you feel more empowered after you leave the session. Every time.

The Value of The Best Support For Betrayal TraumaAnne reading for BTR Group Session Client #19: BTR Group Sessions are always there when I need them. The women and coaches in the group know exactly how painful and challenging every single day can be. The validation and guidance is invaluable.

BTR Group Session Client #20: I feel because of this group, I’m going to get my life back. This is a place that actually helps women and empowers them. And I feel a lot more empowered because of this group and I’ve been gaslit my whole life, up until Betrayal Trauma Recovery. I didn’t know what the truth was, now the coaches and all the women are vulnerable and speak their truth. I finally could find a place where I could identify what was going on for my body to hear what was going on.

My whole life I’ve been told what I’m feeling and what my intentions are and I’ve been searching my life for trying to figure what has been going on. This group has changed my life. I finally had a chance to hear the truth and be safe in fact, this group gave me safety and the chance to decide for myself what I want. That is why it is best support for betrayal trauma.

Clients Who Found The Best Support For Betrayal TraumaAnne reading for BTR Group Session Client #21: Betrayal Trauma Recovery has been a lifeline for me that is indescribable. Thank you very much. In BTR Group Sessions, I felt accepted and respected. I love the fact that I can get help from home as I’m sometimes unable to leave my house. The coaches provide helpful, insightful feedback.

They’re knowledgeable, kind, patient, and have helped me stay grounded in reality. The other women in Group Sessions provide much needed community and validation. BTR has been a godsend that I can share what I’m going through with other women that understand. It’s been amazing.

BTR Group Session Client #22: I’ve been attending BTR Group Sessions. I discovered BTR through Google. I Googled the Best support for betrayal trauma. And this was after how many years of being in the codependent, model therapy groups out there.

They basically have been following the Alcoholics Anonymous models recommended by my husband’s CSAT. It’s really the only one group where you actually have well trained, the most educated coaches who actually facilitate the group. I’ve had to stop attending another group because they allowed cursing and the rules were not really well thought out.

So to have a place that has rules, that has structure, that has guidance, and then you have the safety protocols, and then anonymity is the best investment that you can make. Especially for betrayal trauma. I’ve done years of research and just going through different rabbit holes, even suffering trauma from a very invasive local, so called betrayal, trauma CSAT.

The Power of BTR Group SessionsClient Continues: I listened to the podcast and I said, “I’ve got to attend one of those BTR Group Sessions and check it out. I’ve done all the other support groups. It doesn’t hurt to try. Right?”

To hear yourself in the stories of others, the coaches have been through trauma themselves. That to me was just such a huge bonus to actually speak to women who went through what you’ve gone through and they survived and they’re thriving.

Now they’re helping all of us to have all of that in one package. I’ve paid so many memberships and I’ve been to so many meetings. So I know it’s not out there except at BTR, it’s the best support for betrayal trauma. It’s not about being ready because in trauma, you’re always going to feel like you’re not ready. So it’s almost like you’ve just got to take that medication that you need right now, even though you don’t feel like it.

It’s the medication that you need, like as we speak, and it’s the most healing. No one’s here to judge you. No one has you under a microscope. You know, everybody’s very much in your shoes, walking the same journey, you will find yourself finally healing. It is one day at a time, one session at a time.

Gift Of Finding Betrayal Trauma RecoveryClient continues: It’s the best gift. It’s been seven years since I discovered my husband secretly used pornography. So it’s not too late. If you discovered your husband’s infidelities, whatever it is that you discovered, or 10 years after discovery. Even if you divorced or separated or even widowed, but you’re still suffering from the trauma and you still want to heal, you want to connect heart to heart and mind to mind with other women and connect with the coaches.

That’s my lifeline to sanity and serenity. At the same time, I am a mother of eight children and my children need me. I need them to know. That they can conquer this and they can move on and build beautiful, successful lives because we are worth it.

BTR Group Session Client #23: Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions are amazing. I love to have a place where I can reach out for help and know I’m not alone.

The Healing Power of The Best Support For Betrayal Trauma**BTR Group Session Client #24: I am very grateful to BTR. I didn’t know what went on in my life and how extensively I was experiencing abuse. BTR has given me courage, additionally the coaches continually help me to move forward and to strengthen me and to guide me. They’ve saved my life. The encouragement has been incredible and I am just beyond blessed and I couldn’t have done this without BTR and the coaches and the women at BTR.

They have been a godsend. I have made great friendships through this. BTR has just strengthened. I’m not alone. I didn’t feel alone attending the Group Sessions. I highly recommend BTR, it’s the best support for betrayal trauma. It is lifesaving. And thank you, Anne, for your podcast.

BTR Group Session Client #25: I found The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast very soon after my husband’s first disclosure of porn use. He disclosed that for the first time, five years ago. So for five years, other than BTR, I had almost no one to talk to or confide in.

I’m Not CrazyAnne continues reading: Because. other professionals or people I tried only made it worse. I often used to fall asleep listening to the podcast, I knew I wasn’t alone and I wasn’t crazy. I would calm down as soon as I heard her voice. God used Betrayal Trauma Recovery to help keep me strong even as things got worse and he used porn, solicited compromising pictures from women online and started a three year long affair with a 19 year old.

All while gaslighting me and lying about me to his family, friends, and other people we went to for help. You’re the only thing that kept me sane during that time without you and your podcast, and the services at BTR, I would have been much more vulnerable to abuse, and depression. Thank you.

BTR Group Session Client #26: When I first discovered the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast, I felt so validated. It took me several months to attend a BTR Group Session, because I was afraid that I would become an angry, bitter woman who hated men. And I found that to be the absolute opposite of what has happened.

I have felt completely empowered, validated, heard and seen. I have felt seen when I couldn’t see myself. It’s the best support for betrayal trauma.

The Best Support For Betrayal Trauma Recovery: Trauma MamaReview of Trauma Mama Husband Drama: Anne says exactly what I didn’t know I needed. Trauma Mama Husband Drama is very informative and extremely easy to read. I’m so grateful. I found it. The most helpful was the simple definitions in the back that gave me a voice and made me feel supported. BTR Group Sessions help me so much too. I’m so grateful for ALL the amazing resources at BTR.ORG.

BTR Group Session Client #27: BTR has been a group that has completely changed my life. It was something I didn’t even know was out there. I didn’t even know I needed, but it has been God sent.

It’s life changing. The coaches are your sister and they walk with you. They help you all along the way. It’s also been good to watch the other ladies in here. You have a group of people that completely understand where you are and what you go through. You are inspired by their walk. To see the growth that they’ve done, and the knowledge that we need to move forward to heal, whether we decide to stay or go. BTR just really helps to heal us one step at a time and from the inside out, so I’m so appreciative of this group.

Best Services & ResourcesBTR Group Session Client #28: I discovered Betrayal Trauma Recovery just within the last month. I am more than 10 years post divorce. I’m now hearing words that my soul has longed to hear. For many decades, as I walked this journey, just without the resources that I needed. I’ve experienced more healing at BTR.

The podcasts give me vocabulary and tools and affirmation by attending the group sessions. I feel affirmed, clarity and appropriate sadness. I’m very grateful for finding BTR, I really appreciate the professionalism of the group sessions. There are safeguards in place, so I feel like it’s a safe place to come. It is simply the best support for betrayal trauma.

BTR Coaches love us and they’re so well trained. I’m very, very grateful for BTR.

BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop Client: For me, The Workshop has been so beneficial. A light bulb for me that I was living in a place that wasn’t really reality. And going through The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop, seeing the visualization and building upon what I already learned in Group Sessions took me from a place of being stuck to moving me to where I know God is carrying me and going to take me.

The workshop helped me understand the past 20 years of my life and why I became stuck, and now that I’m out of that cave, I’m never going back. At this point I’m living in the light and once you’re in the light it’s not going to happen any more. The Living Free Workshop built upon what I already knew, confirmed it solidified it and it’s taking me to the next level. So thank you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfCHBEGbkQIAttend The Best Support For Betrayal Trauma Group Session Today

Every victim of betrayal and abuse deserves a safe place to process trauma, share stories, ask questions, and make connections with other victims who get it.

Attend a Betrayal Recovery Recovery Group Session TODAY and receive the best support for betrayal trauma.

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Porn is abuse. Just ask the women who are harmed by their husband’s pornography use. Countless sex addiction therapists, clergy, and mainstream media continue to perpetuate the destructive lie that porn isn’t abuse. Listen to Kathleen’s story about why her husband’s porn use was absolutely abusive to her.

If you need support check out our Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session Schedule.

They say I’m too extreme when I call pornography ABUSE. Think about it, women go through years of psychological and emotional abuse and sexual coercion. Their own husband is lying to them and lying about them. If that’s not extreme, what is? I think that is extreme. It’s abuse. There’s no other word for it.

Anne Blythe, Founder of Betrayal Trauma Recovery

Transcript: Porn Is Abuse: Emotional & Psychological AbuseAnne: 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 and sharing your story. It helps us to feel heard. We’re talking about how porn is abuse. 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.

Discovering Pornography AddictionKathleen: I found out, unfortunately, that my husband was into pornography, 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. He, unfortunately, was lying to me about the cause of his use of pornography. He blamed it on my pregnancy with my first and second child. I later found out that he was addicted to porn since he was a child. 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 really thought about leaving the marriage. I didn’t realize his porn use is abusive to me.

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.

Porn Is Abuse: Realizing The Emotional And Psychological AbuseAnne: Let’s talk about those years of thinking he has a porn addiction and going down that route for a little while. Did you ever consider that 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 using porn, have you ever considered is he 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

Challenges With Clergy Who Don’t Recognize AbuseAnne: . He went for years to a well known Catholic counselor and men’s purity groups. Do you feel like they really understand that porn is abuse? And that his pornography use is abusive to you, his wife?

Kathleen: Absolutely not. We started off with this one counselor that was the well known Catholic counselor in porn expertise and I felt like I was blamed in this situation 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.

Pornography Is Abuse: Taking SidesAnne: 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.

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 really harmful to the victim. Since pornography use is abusive to partners, taking the right side is important.

Secondary Abuse And Community ReactionsKathleen: 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. 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: 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.

Pornography Is Abuse: Recognizing The Full ExtentAnne: When did you realize that all of these years of Something’s not quite right and he’s got this porn issue. When did you realize that was just flat out emotional and psychological abuse and sexual 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. 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 pornography 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 porn addiction, and I was always searching for pornography addiction for spouses, the help for that, and I couldn’t find anything. But all of the behaviors surrounding it make it abuse, porn is abuse.

Finding Support and Betrayal Trauma RecoveryKathleen: It was mind boggling and maddening to know that there was nothing out there. Especially with the, growing numbers of pornography abuse, the only thing I could find for women was that. Sometimes women abuse porn as well, but that wasn’t my situation. Somebody mistreated me in a marriage where pornography was used and was part of it, porn is abuse.

I never really wanted to go to marriage counseling for some reason. I knew in my gut, it was not a marriage issue. It was a porn issue and his problem . So I was grateful for that, but it was really 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 happened to find BTR online and saw that there was The BTR Podcast and religiously started to listen because it was the only place that really 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 sex 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.

Porn Is Abuse: Lying, Manipulation, GaslightingAnne: 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 pornography 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 porn again, I always was asking myself the question is he using or is he not? He claims sobriety. 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 porn 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.

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

Kathleen: Well, not really because nobody knew he was a porn 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 pornography 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.

https://youtu.be/xrGAbqxclZ4People Who Are Uneducated About Abuse Don’t Know That Porn Is AbuseAnne: 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 porn 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 porn is abuse, maybe our marriage would be in jeopardy, so we don’t really 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 lies.

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.

Importance of Truth & Full DisclosureAnne: If they go down the pornography addiction recovery route, many CSAT programs do what is known as a full disclosure. Where the abuser is supposed to outline all of his sexual 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 a pornography addiction specialist?

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 they claim to have 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.

Discovering The Truth Is DifficultAnne: 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 sexually abused by a neighbor, but she is now 100 percent convinced that he sexually 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. This is why porn is abuse.

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.

Porn Is Abuse Because Of The LiesKathleen: 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.

Navigating Community Judgment And IsolationKathleen: 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 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. Because it’s like, I don’t take you seriously.

Siding With The AbuserAnne: 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, porn is 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.

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

Kathleen: Wow.

Anne: Who said, I just don’t think porn is abuse. 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 sexual 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. 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 sexual 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.

The Ongoing Struggle With AbuseAnne: 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. 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 The Living Free 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 abuse outright. So that’s what’s really difficult. And so many victims now are praying and praying and praying for justice all over the world.

Faith And Frustration In the Face Of AbuseAnne: 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.

Hopes For Divine InterventionAnne: 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. 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.

Educating Future GenerationsAnne: 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 porn is abuse.

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 Betrayal Trauma Recovery 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.

Anne: You are not. There are lots of us. So, welcome to the club no one ever wanted to be a part of.

Kathleen: Right, thanks for the welcome.

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Many victims spend years, even decades, struggling to identify the abuse in their relationships. BTR Group Sessions can help you on your journey to healing.

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Emotional abuse affects your body in a variety of ways. Many women in The BTR.ORG Community have experienced devastating emotional, physical, and mental symptoms. Here’s Joyce’s story.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions are here for you if you’re experiencing negative health affects of emotional abuse.

Transcript: Emotional Abuse Affects Your BodyAnne: I have a special friend who came to my house today. She is in my basement recording with me. We’re gonna call her Joyce. She’s a member of The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Community, and I know her in real life. The story takes a dramatic turn.

We’ll start with her story and then near the end we’ll talk about how all how emotional abuse affects your body and your health. When you met your husband, soon to be ex, Joyce how would you define his behavior?

Joyce: We met on Tinder and I had actually canceled our first date because I was getting very exhausted by dating.

But when I got home from my first date, I thought he was so nice because he told me that he had picked a smoothie place because it was public and it was short and there were cameras. He thought that would make women feel safe. In my mind, I thought, oh that is so considerate. This guy is looking out for women’s needs. Awesome.

Anne: Man

Joyce: Within a month, we were dating, and within three months, we were engaged.

Anne: I, too, had a very quick engagement. Ah.

Even First Time Emotional Abuse Affects Your BodyAnne: When did you start recognizing that some of his behaviors weren’t what you were looking for?

Joyce: You know, I struggle with ignoring my first instincts. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Even while we were dating, there were times where I was like, that’s a little odd. I am better at doubting myself than doubting other people. I remember he got really angry at a bill on one of our dates. He thought they had overcharged us and he apologized to them after. It was not something I was comfortable with and didn’t really know how to address.

If I’d known better or was more comfortable with accepting that something is a red flag, I would have made different choices. Even first time emotional abuse affects your body.

Anne: We’ve all been there. You just don’t know what you don’t know, right? Right. Yeah. You get married and when you start recognizing things are really kind of strange, what reasons do you give for this behavior?

Joyce: Yeah, it happened really fast.

Honeymoon Red FlagsJoyce: On our honeymoon, in fact, we went to Hawaii, his choice. At a restaurant, I ordered a ginger beer, which is a non alcoholic beverage, it reminded me of my childhood. My dad would get us ginger beer around Christmas, it was fun.

The drink cost six dollars, it infuriated him that I had spent that kind of money on something. He wasn’t yelling, but he was very stern in the restaurant. When we got into the car, he wouldn’t speak to me.

A tactic that he started using then and used throughout our marriage was to say, “Help me understand why you made that decision, Joyce. Why did you do that?” I said, “I don’t understand what the big deal is. I I don’t know when I’m coming to Hawaii again. It’s our honeymoon. I just thought it would be fun. Why you’re so upset about a drink.” He apologized.

I think that’s one of the few times he apologized for an overreaction. I know it’s triggering to say overreaction, but it is actually an overreaction. Oh, for him, yeah.

Joyce: Yes, for additional context, I paid for the meal. I was not putting an expense on him, I was paying for it. The next morning I was still feeling unsettled, emotional abuse affects your body. He was still asleep. I went for a walk around the block and I thought, okay, this must be what marriage is like. It’s going to be fine. It was in fact, not fine.

Anne: It was not fine, but you didn’t know that. Right, you didn’t know that.

https://youtu.be/twBoXh_OABAMarriage & Emotional Abuse Isolation BeginsAnne: Did you tell anyone about this back then?

Joyce: No. For context, this was his second marriage. He was married before, very briefly in his mid twenties. Other people potentially inferred he was the issue. He said he was very uncomfortable with us talking about things to other people.

He started putting restrictions on what I could and couldn’t say to people very early on. The restrictions increased. Anytime he caught me talking to someone, or if I said anything out of line, it would result in a serious argument.

Anne: Okay. An emotional abuse episode. But you didn’t know to call it that back then? No.

Joyce: Yeah.

Anne: What did you think about him? Did you think it was you? Did you think it was him? What was your thought process back then?

Joyce: I one hundred percent thought it was me. Absolutely, I thought it was me. I’d never been in a long term relationship. He seemed more well spoken than I, and he framed himself as more intelligent.

He’d been married before. Right, more experienced. I felt, I thought, oh, it must be me. I don’t know what I’m doing. He would frame my friends and family as weird or odd. I didn’t have good influences. I didn’t know how to appropriately, in his words, behave.

Anne: for the amount of time I’ve known you, you are always behaving appropriately. I can’t even imagine what he would be talking about.

Emotional Abuse Affects Your Body: Sexual CoercionAnne: Did you know about any porn or infidelity

Joyce: Yes, shortly before we got engaged he told me that he had a porn addiction that had surfaced after his first marriage. He told me it was not a problem while he was in a relationship.

Only when he was not in a relationship did he have this problem. In other words, in my mind, if he’s getting his needs met, if you know what I mean, then it’s not a problem. I just responded with empathy and I said, I know it must be so difficult. Is there anything I can do to support you? He said, that’s it.

That’s all you need to do. I did go into the marriage knowing he had a porn addiction.

Anne: Did he use that against you? Threaten, like, you know I have a porn addiction if I don’t get sex?

Joyce: It was definitely implied that if he was getting his needs met, then he would not have that issue.

The pressure definitely was on me and if I didn’t comply with what he wanted, then I was the instigator of his porn addiction at that point. He would use it as a tool to manipulate me in other ways. Like if he wanted privacy, he would accuse me of spying on him, which I was absolutely not doing. I would just come in to see him and say, Hey, how are you doing?

Psychological Abuse Affects Your BodyHe would be in his office. He said, I don’t like it when you do that. If I’m in here, you have to knock. If I don’t give you permission to come in, don’t come in. Otherwise I feel like you’re spying on me, which out of context is insane. In the marriage, it just made me feel like, oh my gosh, I’m the worst wife ever. That he thinks I would spy on him.

Anne: He knows by now that all wives observe their husbands. So, he had something going on that he didn’t want you to know about.

Joyce: I do believe that now. I have no proof of that. I never spied on him. Never opened his phone, his computer, anything like that. I have no evidence of that, but his behavior would suggest that, yeah.

Anne: Well, and he told you that.

Joyce: Right. Misplaced trust as it turns out, but that’s how I thought about it.

Anne: Had you done any research about pornography addiction? Did you know how it affected people or how they acted when they were using it

Joyce: All of my information on that was just anecdotal stuff you just pick up along the way. People talk about it. in passing and whatever he told me, which was not much.

Anne: Okay, not like, oh, I’m going to research a ton about this.

Joyce: This is why the accusation of spying was really jarring for me because I try so hard to give people emotional space and I didn’t even research porn because I thought, well, he’s an adult. He can talk to me about it. We’ll go from there.

Exploiting Your WeaknessAnne: Do you think you’re naturally that way to give people space, or do you think some of it was him manipulating you to back off?

Joyce: I think there was an element of that, I had some abuse from a caretaker when I was growing up, that made it easier for him to feed into. It’s like your insecurities. Yes. I had insecurities.

Anne: He was exploiting your weaknesses. Instead of loving you and supporting you in your weaknesses.

Joyce: Interestingly, when I opened up to him about the abuse, said that I must be exaggerating. That didn’t happen. He, in fact, did not believe me, which is very odd.

Anne: Yeah. Or not so odd since he was an abuser.

Joyce: Right. And that actually makes more sense now. I thought, why don’t you believe me? Why would anyone tell you that?

Anne: What do you do to try to solve quote unquote, your problem that’s really his problem?

The Pain Of Emotional Abuse Affects Your BodyJoyce: I went to therapy. So much therapy, including couples therapy. None of which helped, because it wasn’t me. I spent years, I went through three therapists, personal therapists, in our marriage. I was convinced it must be me. The first one was not super helpful. She just told me to journal, and never gave me any other insights. The second one I called to cancel a session.

I was distraught after an abuse episode with my husband. I couldn’t deal with it. My husband called me to try to, “work it out.” My dad was listening at the door. I think he started to get an idea that things were abnormal. They weren’t marriage growing pains or things like that. He talked to me after and said, he’s putting everything back on you. Is that normal?

I made excuses and said, no, no he’s right. I’m overreacting. I went back the next day. I found a different therapist, because he wasn’t comfortable with me going to that one anymore.

Anne: Okay. I think it’s really telling of the state of therapy that so many therapists have a really difficult time helping people identify abuse. They don’t want to make the wrong decision, like, maybe this person is the abuser, so I don’t want to say they’re being abused. Even if that person is the abuser. Wouldn’t getting their victim away be helpful?

Joyce: Yes, I honestly think it probably stems from people being afraid of lawsuits or losing their license and ability to practice. One hundred percent because their license is a marriage and family therapy license. They could lose their license or be sued. They can’t really help people identify abuse, which is awful.

Undiagnosed Abuse Affects Your BodyAnne: People can go to therapy for years and years and years and not know they’re a victim of abuse. That none of it is their fault and that they don’t even need to be in therapy.

Joyce: That’s probably why there’s such rampant abuse, and such negativity toward women. Right.

Anne: If he did go to a therapist, it wouldn’t help him though.

Joyce: My soon to be ex, he went to therapy, probably just to tick off the box. He went to two sessions, said he didn’t like the person, so he was not going to look anymore.

Anne: Right. Well, even if he had found one, I mean, mine went to therapy consistently for seven years and the therapist loved him. They thought he was awesome because all he did in the session was convince them that I was crazy.

He didn’t get any help for himself. I became more and more of the enemy, because what he was telling the therapist wasn’t true. You can’t get help if you’re not willing to tell the truth. He loved going to therapy and lying to the therapist and having the therapist tell him what an awesome guy he was.

Joyce: Makes me so angry.

Anne: Thank you. Sometimes you gotta hear it. You heard it from her. She knows me in real life and apparently in real life, I also am not crazy.

Joyce: Very sane.

Realization That He Was The ProblemAnne: When did you realize that your efforts to fix yourself, they’re not helping your marriage and they’re not helping you?

Joyce: Horrifyingly, I only really realized that within the past six months. I felt like a more capable person than I had been in a long time emotionally. The fog was lifting. I was thinking, wait a minute, this is not me. I’ve done all this work. I’ve been doing this work for years. Things started to click that no, it isn’t me. We don’t have children. We have dogs. I was taking one of our dogs to the vet and the words came into my head.

“You can’t rely on him.” That is the first time I realized that I cannot rely on this person for anything. To be emotionally available, to treat me with any degree of kindness, to be an equal partner in a marriage. There was no equality in our marriage ever. That was a really stark realization. It was at that point that I started thinking, okay, so what are my next steps? I didn’t know what to do. I talked to my family.

Yeah, once you realize there’s a problem. The next problem is figuring out what to do.

Finding Help For Emotional AbuseAnne: That is where BTR comes in. First, educating women about identifying emotional abuse, psychological abuse or sexual coercion. Then helping women know what to do. If you’re wondering, what do I do? The Living Free Workshop is a great place to start. If you have kids, it is really important to know how to communicate with them. The Message Workshop is important.

Most women who come on the podcast have listened to the podcast and they meet me through BTR. We met in an unusual way. We have a new member in our congregation, my junior high choir teacher. He asked me where my husband was. I said, I’m a single mom. He found out that I do abuse stuff. He said, my daughter is in this situation and maybe you can help her. I said, have her call me.

Joyce: This choir teacher is my dad. Right, so I did not know her at the time.

My dad had been concerned for some time, but it was, like I said, only recently that I had been having conversations with him about it. My spouse had isolated me from family and friends. They were not allowed to come to the house. There was limited time that I could spend with them. If left for more than a half an hour, he would start calling and checking in, seeing when I was going to come home.

Physical Intimidation Affects Your BodyJoyce: My soon to be ex had gotten angry and told me that I was holding him back in life. That I was like the person who abused me. I said, why would you say that to anyone who has been abused? That is not okay. I said, if that is how you feel, we should not be married. He got furious. He broke a TV tray.

Anne: Physical abuse in the form of physical intimidation, people aren’t educated about that. They don’t know that it is physical abuse.

Joyce: Yeah

Anne: Right

Joyce: It was scary, right next to one of our dogs. I said, stop, you’re scaring everybody. Please stop. He turned it on me and said, this is your fault. You’re the one making everyone upset. This goes on for a couple of hours. My spouse had been showing me a video of one of our dogs on his phone.

We were sitting in bed. I leaned over, looking at this video, and then some time went by, a few seconds, maybe a minute. I felt him grab my face and shove me back. Hard, I had a shooting pain in my neck. I asked him why he did that. He said, oh, you were in my personal space, he was very calm. He wasn’t angry. This one frightened me because he wasn’t angry.

Anne: Would you say overall, just for our listeners, 99 percent of the abuse was emotional and psychological, and sexual coercion, right?.

Joyce: Yes, he crossed a major line. I don’t know if there was some residual anger. I really don’t know. His physical attack truly affects your body.

Anne: Knowing a little bit of the story, I think he’s sensing that he’s losing control. He’s trying to assert control again.

Physical Abuse Affects Your BodyJoyce: Yeah. I knew that was a turn in our marriage for the worse. The escalation in behavior that I felt was inherently violent. There was a violent undertone. Not to mention this, this was physical violence now. I have an injury, I told him, Hey, that really hurt. I have some pain. Why did you do that? Can you please promise me never to do that again? He said, I’m sorry, your neck is hurting.

That’s the only apology, by the way, I ever got.

He said that I need to stop talking that way, because if someone heard me, they’d accuse him of doing something wrong. They would take away his guns. The minute he brought the guns up, there was a shift in the atmosphere. I thought, okay, this is a problem. I don’t know what to do, if that is where his head is at. Not that he just did something uncalled for and physically injured someone he says he cares about.

He’s worried about losing access to firearms. That’s a problem. I’m trying over the next couple of weeks to sneak things out of the house so that I can leave. As I mentioned, I don’t really have much time or space to do that where I’m not being observed. It’s not going well. I had been meeting my dad for lunch when I was at work. I was starting to tell him things are very bad. Then my dad gives me your number and I call you.

Teaching Safety Principles To WomenAnne: We deal with emotional and psychological abuse here at BTR, and safety is up to the woman who’s going through it, our only goal is safety. Divorce isn’t going to solve the problem in so many cases. If you get divorced and you share children, the abuse will continue after divorce. Finding safety is different for everybody.

All this to say, I teach women, safety principles and how to be safe and what safety looks like, have them take The Living Free Workshop, consider their options, take small steps to discover what’s right for them. I knew she’d be calling me the next day, and I could not sleep, I was thinking about all the things her dad had said, over and over. I felt like it was the spirit telling me, she cannot go back home.

She can only be at work once a month, sometimes, or maybe once a week. If she doesn’t get out tomorrow, she’s going to die. Like she’s in serious danger. Having a friend of mine have her son murdered, murder is an issue, like the Josh Powell story, he was never physically abusive that we know of until he murdered his wife. Then he murdered his children.

Michael Haight, I talked about him on the podcast earlier. Same thing with the dentist that I talked about. They’re not murderers until they become murderers. By that time you’re dead and they’re not.

Urgency And Alarm BellsAnne: Alarm bells are going off in my brain. I’m not the kind of person who says, you have to get out right now. That’s not how I do my job. I’m thinking, this is weird. The panic bells are going off for me, even before I talked to her based on what her dad had said.

Joyce: Right. My spouse was being nice. I don’t know, sometimes you just feel like something is different. I felt like that and I couldn’t put my finger on it. To validate what you were feeling, I definitely was sensing something.

Someone was going to ask me, did he do anything? Did you say anything? No, but I’ve been married to him for several years. He was odd. When I went into the office around noon, I called you and you said, would you be able to leave work right now? I don’t really think I thought about it. I think I just said yes, let’s do this.

Anne: The things that she described check off all of the boxes on the lethality assessment. I was thinking it should be a no-brainer for her to get a protective order if we go to the domestic violence shelter, I remember you saying, what am I going to tell him? I said, you never have to talk to him again, ever.

You don’t have kids with him. You literally never have to talk to him again. Just leave work, come, leave all your stuff at home. We can figure that out later. We’ll get you a protective order and then you can go back with a police escort and get your stuff. I’ve been trained in the state that I live in, I know what I’m doing, I also know how hard it is.

Seeking Protection From Abuse Affects Your BodyAnne: It was still Shocking to me how bad the local services were. We do Individual Coaching Sessions and BTR Group Sessions every day and women get help in the form of support and validation. All our services are online. We help victims navigate local services since they’re usually so bad, and what they can do next. I have never had somebody in my car driving them around.

Joyce: I was pretty much in a state of shock the entire day. I was terrified. Absolutely terrified. I was afraid of what was going to happen when he found out. Just grabbing the lifeline, hoping that it was going to work out. The anxiety and fear really affects your body.

I let my work know that I had an emergency and needed to leave, I met you. We left my car somewhere, and drove to a resource center, which we struggled to get into.

Anne: They wouldn’t let us in.

Joyce: We got in, eventually someone came to the desk. They handed me some paperwork. I’m not really sure what the paperwork was.

Anne: It was to get services as a victim of domestic abuse. We walk into this domestic violence shelter, which also gives services. Not because she needs shelter, she can live with family, but because that’s the place you go when you need local services. There were no services. I said, “She needs a protective order right now. She’s checking all the lethality assessment boxes.”

They’re acting like, we don’t even know what that is, she needs a protective order! They said oh, thanks for the paperwork. You’ll hear back from us in a couple of days. Both of us look at each other.

Hospital Visit: Emotional Abuse Affects Your BodyAnne: We know he’s coming after her and he’s tracking her. He has left the house. That’s one of the lethality assessment boxes to check that I’m talking about. I’m thinking we need a protective order now. This is going to become an incident. We need police protection now. She was saying, Oh, we’ll call you in a couple days. I was like, no, no, I can’t take her home.

At this moment, I am the domestic abuse expert, and Joyce, is like, out for the count. Emotionally, physically, she’s just like, what is happening? All of the stress and fear really affects your body. My husband’s coming after me, he’s got guns.

I made a decision to take her to the hospital. I know the ER has social workers, security and people that can help her. That she will be safe there for hours. Hopefully she can just sit in this ER and be safe and he won’t know where she is until things can get settled. Then at least we know she’s safe for a while.

Joyce: The hospital’s probably the best thing that could have happened, because I had not received any treatment for my neck for a couple of weeks because I didn’t dare. They were extremely kind. They asked a lot of good questions. It was probably the least stressful experience I’ve had with a doctor, which is bizarre. They didn’t pressure me for anything, hey just asked me questions and they said, this is what we’re going to do.

They got me in and scanned to make sure there weren’t any severe injuries. I told them what happened. The social worker came in. Eventually a couple of police officers came in as well. They were all really good, matter of fact and extremely patient.

Emotional Abuse Affects Your Body: Safety ConcernsJoyce: I was an absolute mess. Meanwhile, Anne was coordinating with my dad to make sure that he was safe. Obviously, I’m worried about my safety, I’m also worried about my family’s safety.

Anne: She has reconnected with friends. We’ve been hanging out now that she’s my neighbor. We’ve been going to the movies. She came to my daughter’s play last night. She’s amazing. At the time I met her, she had been isolated and in the fog. The nurse asked her who is this? While pointing to me. She cried and the nurse said is this your friend? Joyce just nodded.

Then, the nurse said, is she your best friend? Joyce said, yes! I thought, I am! I am her best friend right now, I am also her only friend right now. She’s been so isolated. The emotion of that moment and knowing that you didn’t have anyone else except for your family. I had to leave because my son had a band trip. I was a chaperone.

The bus was leaving. I called a friend, Leah Moses, who is such a dear friend of mine, can you get to the hospital? I can’t leave Joyce by herself. Thank goodness Leah could go. I left Joyce at the hospital. Before I went home, I drove past Joyce’s dad’s house. I’d just seem like a soccer mom driving by in a minivan. Guess who’s in the driveway. Two of our city police with her dad.

Police InterventionAnne: She didn’t have a protective order, we couldn’t get one. Her husband is on speakerphone with our city police. This police officer says to her husband, you are not welcome in our city. If you come here, we will arrest you. Do not come. Her husband responded, oh, really? Can you tell me what’s going on? This doesn’t sound like Joyce. Maybe she’s having a mental health crisis.

I thought, he’s a full-on abuser. This is exactly what they sound like. This is what emotional and psychological abuse sounds like. He sounded nice and calm. Then he said stuff about your dad. I’ll call him Bob. Is Bob okay? Is his health okay? I don’t think he would be like this. He’s always welcomed me to his home before. What’s going on? I’m so confused.

Then the officer said, “You are not welcome here. You will be arrested. Do not come, and hung up.”

Immediately after, your husband texted your dad, and your dad pulled out his phone. There’s a text saying, “Hey, Bob, are you doing okay? What’s happened? I’m confused. Why are the police calling me?” I’m thinking, you know full well why they’re calling you. I was thinking block him, don’t talk to him. I said if he shows up, and the police are nodding their heads, do not talk to him. Don’t open the door.

The police were amazing. I was so grateful that they did that and your dad felt better. A protective order is just a piece of paper, but with it you can call on the police. The police telling your husband, “You’re not welcome here.” Is just as effective as a protective order.

Support & Gratitude Affects Your BodyJoyce: Your friend was amazing, I just want to say thank you to her.

Anne: Yeah, she’s amazing.

Joyce: To come help someone out when you’ve been through that, I can’t even imagine. I was very lucky that day. I was at the hospital for several hours. Eventually they discharged me. I called my sister and she was able to come get me. The rest of the day, I was just a mess. I was scared. To some extent angry at myself, which I’m only saying because I think that is probably common.

I was angry that I couldn’t find a way to get out without a fuss, I felt so guilty for all of the people who had been put out by the situation. I felt like I should have been able to handle it. But the truth is, I couldn’t. If I could have left, I would have. I really did have no way of getting out. There were cameras all over our home. As you said, we knew he left because I got an alert telling me. I don’t think I could have gone out any other way. It had just affected my body too much.

Anne: He also would not have been surprised because you didn’t even know.

Joyce: No this was not the plan. I was starting to think oh, I need a plan, but I definitely didn’t have a plan. I now have a protective order. The Victim Advocate has been amazing. An officer went to my spouse’s house, asked him about the incident, and I think he still must have thought he didn’t do anything wrong.

Consequences & Emotional Abuse HelpHe told them exactly the same thing I told them, and that’s an assault. He’s being charged with assault, and because of that, the courts put in place a protective order. Which has helped me relax a little bit. All the stress affects your body so much one day I’ll be able to fully relax. That day is not here yet, I’m just trying to take everything as it comes. I am so grateful to have met you. Thank you for being there.

Anne: Thank you. You didn’t put anybody out. I’m just grateful I was there to help you. The abuse had affected your body so much. I mean, that is serious stuff. To have the honor of helping you. Thank you. I think everyone felt that way. It was an honor to assist you in your time of need, you cannot do this alone.

For women listening who may be making steps toward emotional safety using emotional safety strategies, but intend to remain married. If you don’t have anyone, our BTR Group Sessions are awesome. Reaching out for help is also a way to really realize if it is abuse.

If you’re wondering, is this abuse? Is it not? Being educated about abuse does not create abuse out of thin air. It helps you realize whether or not the thing that’s happening is abuse. The abuser does not want you to find out that it’s not you, it’s him.

How Emotional Abuse Affected Joyce PhysicallyAnne: The title of this episode is How Emotional Abuse Affects Your Body. Can you talk about how abuse affects your body when you were going through it and you didn’t even know? Then about how abuse affects your body now during the recovery from these emotional injuries? I say emotional and psychological injuries because although her neck was injured, you had many emotional and psychological injuries as well.

Joyce: The neck injury I could not excuse or reconcile in any way, shape, or form. It had taken a turn into physical violence. I don’t think you will come back from that.

Anne: Right. This is seven years in, this isn’t like the first few months into the relationship.

Joyce: It took a turn that I was not expecting. Throughout the marriage, the psychological, emotional, and financial abuse was pretty severe. I’m gonna be dealing with that for a while. Longer than I’m dealing with the neck injury. My body was telling me something was wrong before I let myself accept that on a mental level.

Abuse affects your body in so many ways, my hair was coming out in chunks whenever I washed my hair, just like handfuls of hair would come out. I talked to my doctor about it. She said, Oh, it’s probably stress. Great. Awesome. I don’t know how to fix that. My nails, like my middle fingernails, split constantly no matter what I did.

I was exhausted, constantly exhausted. My spouse put a lot of shame and guilt on me for us not being at our optimum health. I am in worse physical shape now than when we got married. Part of that was he wouldn’t let me go to the gym. I had restrictions and didn’t have my normal avenues of being healthy.

Health and Recovery After Abuse Affects Your BodyJoyce: My body was just breaking down under the psychological, emotional, and financial abuse. I’ve got a heart arrhythmia which is getting better. My dog, he was my dog before we got married, is now with me. He was diagnosed with a heart murmur a couple years ago, and they don’t really know what caused it. My dog had a vet checkup about a week ago, it’s gone. He doesn’t have it anymore.

He was subjected to emotional abuse as well. I’m just really grateful he’s out of there. Any living being in that household was suffering. They don’t have any other explanation for why his murmur is gone, but it’s gone. Abuse effects your body as an animal as well. They said he’s in good health. I wasn’t paying attention to my health. Sometimes you have to just stop and listen to your body, if it is telling you something is wrong, maybe that is your sign.

Anne: How are your nails now?

Joyce: They’re short, but there’s no crack. Nothing.

Anne: It’s not cracked and you’re not bald.

Joyce: And I’m not bald.

Anne: Have you had your hair fall out lately?

Joyce: No.

Anne: And you’re not as tired?

Joyce: No, I’m not as tired. I’ve lost 15 pounds and my diet is not amazing right now. I have more energy. I am taking my dog on a walk. He’s getting more exercise. I’m getting outside with him. He’s healthier. I’m healthier. The major change in my life is being out of that environment. If my health wasn’t a good enough indicator, his definitely is.

Ongoing Support and GratitudeAnne: I talk to your dad. He went to my daughter’s play last night. He’s helped my daughter with her singing because he’s a choir teacher.

Joyce: He loves doing that. He says my vibe has improved, so much better. The fact that they actually see me, they’ve said, is a huge improvement. People are saying, you look really good. I say, yeah, thanks. I’m not getting torn down every minute of every day.

Anne: Right. When I picked you up at your parents house to go to the domestic violence shelter to try and get the protective order, I think you apologized. I said, I know you’ve been abused. I know that I should not tell you what to do. Apologizing already! You’re not doing anything wrong! She was in this cave of lies.

Joyce: It was bad. He forced me to apologize. I really couldn’t win on any level. As an example, a few weeks ago, I had a breakdown. I realized at 2 a.m. I hadn’t flushed the toilet, I was just petrified for a few minutes. Then I realized, oh wait a minute, I’m not going to get reamed about this. If I was still with my spouse, he would yell at me for being careless and unhygienic.

Then he would remind me every time I went to the bathroom for at least a week to make sure I flushed it. He would occasionally just happen to be in the bathroom to make sure that I was doing it. Just a glimmer of why I was so overly apologetic for what I felt was a problem to other people. He wouldn’t let me clean, and so I felt like being in that house with him affected my body so much.

Overcoming Psychological TraumaAnne: For me, for a year after I was fighting with my ex in my own head. Like I was talking to him. I was having arguments with him in my head, I had to be like, Oh, he’s not here anymore. I don’t have to have an argument with him anymore. It’s this period of time where they haunt you, even though they’re not around. Do you feel like that’s been happening at all?

Joyce: Oh, yeah. It’s not arguments, in my case. It’s, why did you do that? Can’t believe you did that, you know better. Incessant negativity about anything. I find myself trying to preemptively prepare for an argument if traffic is bad and I’m going to be late. I get physically tense and panicky. Abuse affects your body in reliving it as well. I’m trying to remind myself more, you don’t have to do that.

It’s going to be a slow process. I just never want to talk to him or see him again, I really don’t. I hope that this doesn’t happen again. I’m technically round two for him.

Anne: Because that’s probably what happened in his first marriage. By the way, I messaged his first wife on Facebook, I gave her my phone number?

Joyce: I don’t know, but I haven’t heard from her. If she doesn’t want to talk about it, that’s no problem.

Anne: We need to get her on the podcast. .

Joyce: I don’t believe he was honest with me about what happened in that marriage. Things he said about her were not true.

Gratitude & Moving Forward Out of AbuseJoyce: I just want to say thank you for all of the work that you’re doing.

When we first met, you told me that you were grateful for your abuser because BTR wouldn’t have happened without him. I told you that was BS. I do not have the intelligence, fortitude or skill to go out and create an organization that helps women. You do podcasts; you do all of this writing. That is you. It’s not him that comes from you. You are a wonderful, special person who is making a huge difference in the world.

I’m not overstating things when I say that. I think you might have saved my life and I’m so grateful. To people who are listening to this, there’s never a good time. You might feel totally alone and you might be horribly isolated. I speak from experience, but there are people who can help you, don’t give up.

Anne: They will become your best friends.

Joyce: Two steps forward, one step back is still one step forward.

Anne: She now lives in my neighborhood, I’m going to have her back on in six months or a year. To see how things are going. Right now, I’m helping her through the divorce process. I can’t personally help everyone that listens to the podcast for obvious reasons. If you need support, The BTR Coaches are here for you.

Our coaches are online ready to help you in daily group sessions and individual sessions. Joyce, you’re brave, you are strong, you’re incredible, you’re beautiful, you’re an amazing person!

Joyce: Oh, thank you.

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Has your husband betrayed you? You are not alone. Anne and Miss C share insights on healing from betrayal through recognizing betrayal, understanding manipulation, and finding support.

If he’s betrayed you, there are resources available to support you. You are not alone, check out the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session Schedule.

Transcript: If Your Husband Has Betrayed You, You Are Not AloneAnne: Miss C, a member of The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Community is on today’s episode. She is technically still married, although they’ve been separated for two years. She has two children. One is a teenager and another is a preteen. Let’s start with your story. Talk about how things first started and if you recognized your husband’s abusive behaviors at first.

Miss C: I don’t think that I did recognize his abusive behaviors at first. I think in a way I was the perfect person for his abusive behaviors. I grew up in a home where my father was very detached. He adopted me. My mom and I came as a package deal. There’s a lot of provision, but not a lot of love. My mother is also a very broken person. She grew up in an alcoholic home, a lot of domestic violence.

There were a lot of behaviors and things. I learned, to love people despite it. I didn’t really question if this behavior or these words or any of this stuff was abusive. It was just when I married my husband. I think we were about two years in. We were in the ministry, he was a youth pastor. I had noticed a charge on one of our cards. I asked him, you know what is this? He was just very easy about it.

He said something like, “Oh, it’s just a fraudulent charge. I’ve already called the credit card company. I’m working on getting it refunded.” I assume it’s a charge for porn, yes. I’m not even sure exactly what it was. I’d never seen it before. It is something x rated. I think that was my first instance with it.

Confronting The BetrayalMiss C: Then another one happened. I went to him again. What is this? What’s going on? Do we need to change this card? This time he wasn’t as easy with it. He was a little bit more agitated, a little more ugly about it. My questioning it, I think that was the seed for me then. When I started to realize the doubt, possibly this is not just an error. Maybe there’s something more. He was acting so weird about it.

Maybe he wouldn’t shut down the card. He was like, we don’t need to shut it down. The first time he said it was fraud. We’re just going to take care of this. I think his exact words were, “You just need to get off my case about it.” We were still in the ministry. We lived considerably far away from my family. I didn’t have children at the time and would go home and visit for a week or two at a time.

I had gone to visit and I came back. There was a VHS videotape that I found. Really dates me there. I remember handing it to him, I knew that it was a porn tape because of the name. That’s when it blew up. Unfortunately, that night we were heading to a youth activity.

Public Outbursts & Feeling AloneMiss C: We were fighting all the way to the youth activity. We get there and there’s a youth team that’s waiting to come together in prayer. He and I are fighting. We pull up and he just loses it, jumps out of the car and starts walking down the road.

Anne: That is a really common abusive thing to do. Did you know that? I don’t know if you know that. Jumping out of a car to say, I’m not going to take this anymore. Sort of, I’m not going to participate. It’s a strange form of control that most people aren’t aware happens. I just want to point that out if other women have been like, oh he has jumped out of the car and stomped away.

Miss C: Yeah, it’s a rural area. There isn’t any mistaking that he’s walking down the road. I’m so embarrassed because he’s basically throwing this temper tantrum walking down the road. I’m not gonna tell people what’s going on. The youth leader was like, what’s going on? He knew something had happened, he’s upset. He went and talked to my husband. They came back. I thought I was stuck.

I didn’t know what to do at that point. We’re miles and miles away from support and family. We’re brand new to this ministry, this is our livelihood. He’s supposed to be the leader of the home. What am I supposed to do? There’s so much shame. You definitely don’t want to betray your husband by saying anything to anybody. It didn’t die, it just became this ugly thing between us that slowly deteriorated the ministry and us. I felt so alone.

Truth Sinks In Anne: Did you go down the pornography addiction recovery route at all at this time? He needs help, let’s get him some help? Was there any of that? Did you go down that road?

Miss C: Not at first because it was so shocking and not how you picture you’re going into the ministry. You’re in the ministry,. spreading the gospel to teenagers and watching teenagers get saved. I think I just threw myself into the ministry.

Anne: Did you think if we pray enough, if we work on the ministry enough, it’ll just kind of go away?

Miss C: I hoped that he would love the ministry enough to give it up for it. I dove in. This is what we came here for. This is what we’re going to do. I love doing this. You say that you love doing this. We even did a purity conference.

Anne: Did you think, wait a minute, he’s a hypocrite, at all? Did you think if he does it enough, it’ll save him?

Miss C: I think at that point I did still look to him and respect him as my leader. I believed that this was just a struggle. He just needed to dig in. It doesn’t define him, it’s not what it became. No, I don’t know if it became that, or I just opened my eyes more.

Anne: It was that way all the time, and then you realized more what was going on over time maybe?

Miss C: I stopped, for lack of better terms, making excuses for it.

Church Principles Anne: When you say leader, so your faith background is different than mine, can you explain that a little bit? Is that the typical, like, uh, We submit to a man because he’s the head or something like that. Can you explain that for women who might be in a different faith paradigm than you are?

Miss C: Sure. I grew up believing that the man was the head of the household, but not in a misogynistic way. Like he says everything, he does everything and I just got to abide by it. I was taught we were still equal, that we still were responsible for what we brought to the marriage. Ultimately the decisions were by him. I could weigh in, definitely, and did. I was not un-opinionated, but I did grow up with the man being the head of your household.

Anne: Okay, so even though you thought we’re equal, it wasn’t technically equal because you didn’t have equal say?

Miss C: It’s hard to answer that question because I’ve heard this phrase before where the man is the head, the woman’s the neck. We can turn the head any way we want. I do know that my husband absolutely respected the way I thought. There were a lot of times when it came to decisions, he would want me to weigh in, especially relational. You have a better understanding than me. Can you tell me what you think about this? Tell me what you think about that.

I would say that he was very fair in that way. When it came to things like money and things that he was just going to do, he just did them.

Anne: Maybe he just didn’t care about the other things. Who knows?

Pornography Addiction RecoveryAnne: Talk about when you went down the, pornography addiction recovery route for a little while because clearly that did not work. We know that ends. We know the end of this. Let’s talk about once you knew it was a porn thing. How did things go with that?

Miss C: I think we had been married 24 years by the time the divorce is final. I would say we were separated quite a few times throughout our marriage and it all was pornographically related. When we got back together, the longest time that we kind of stayed together, I got pregnant with my son shortly after us getting back together. Bringing kids into the picture changed the picture for me.

Maybe that has a lot to do with growing up in an emotionally abusive home. I had a tolerance for myself, but then you bring an innocent into the picture and I had zero tolerance.

Anne: For the abuse?

Miss C: For any kind of abuse.

Anne: In this case, if you don’t know what’s abuse, maybe the nonsense, you might call it, right?

Miss C: Right. Because I don’t think I start calling it abuse until probably the last five years. that I really actually realized the way he was acting, the way he was treating me and the children was abusive.

Anne: So before you used the word abuse, what word would you use?

Miss C: Addiction. It was his addiction. His addiction.

Anne: Okay. Pornography addiction. Okay.

Alone With Husband’s BetrayalMiss C: Right. Then we were back together and had our son, he was only nine months old, when it reared its ugly head again. I was working overnight at a hotel and the hotel was right across the street from the apartment buildings and they had an especially scary night. My work was in the night.

I went down to the end of the hallway and I was trying to call him. No answer, no answer, no answer. I got home the next morning and the computer was sitting on the coffee table. I flipped it open, he had just closed it, not shut everything off. There it was in my face. I was really angry this time.

I responded in a way I had never responded, I woke him up, plunked the laptop on his stomach. He just was really cocky, said that he left it there on purpose, wanted it to end. He didn’t want it to become an issue. And my response to that was, I took everything that was on the long dresser and threw it at him one at a time.

Anne: He wanted what to end? He wanted his porn use to end. So he left it out there so you could catch him.

Miss C: Yes. That’s what he said.

Anne: Because he can’t stop using by himself. Seeing that, he kind of said, it’s your responsibility to help me stop.

Miss C: I guess so.

Anne: A little bit? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Betrayed And Seeking Help So You Are Not AloneMiss C: I left for a week or so, took my son and left. I told him he had a lot to think about. When I came back, I came with an arsenal. I said, this is what’s going to happen if we’re going to stay together. I’m not going to do this game that we did before. I’m not doing it. The first place he went to was a Celebrate Recovery. He completed it. They do it like in one year. Then the following year, I went to A Heart’s Restored. It was in the same church.

I went through the program, and he had to be gone. He stayed home then. They asked me if I would co-teach the next year, and I co-taught the next year.

Anne: At any point during this time, did they call anything abuse? Or point out the abuse, or say these behaviors are abusive?

Miss C: No, the Hearts Restored group centered on, it’s going to sound terrible, but it wasn’t. It really did center on our relationship with God and the things that were broken within us that allowed these behaviors to continue.

Anne: Kind of a codependent model a little bit?

Miss C: Maybe, because what I did actually work out was a lot of stuff in my past. My grandmother dying from alcoholism. How alcoholism affected my parents, my mother, my stepfathers, it’s connected. There was actually a lot of freedom for me gained from those things.

Anne: You found it to be helpful for your own personal. improvement in your own personal healing, even if it didn’t point out the abuse at the time.

Miss C: Right.

Alone, Betrayed & AngryMiss C: He had fallen again. This time, instead of going to a celebrate recovery, because he was just, no I’m not going to do that again.

Miss C: He started meeting with a pastor for an accountability.

Anne: Okay for his “porn addiction.” Did this pastor point out to you that this was abuse at all or was abuse ever mentioned during this time?

Miss C: No, because unfortunately this pastor had his own hidden closet agenda. He actually was In some of his own personal sins in regards to something along the same lines.

That also came out within a year or two of this. I remember the first meeting we had with him. We just talked about why we were here and what we were hoping for, for counseling. He sat back and he leaned back in his chair and he said, Missy, this is nothing new under the sun.

This is very common, and I just remember immediately just feeling hot, and pretty much everything he said after that, I don’t even remember. We got out to the car, and I remember my husband looking at me and saying, Go ahead, I know you’re mad. I said, It’s not anything new, it’s not that big of a deal, but it is to me.

This is not right. He did counsel with him for a while, and I don’t remember anything beneficial ever coming out of that. And so then the next thing was, Covenant Eyes.

Feeling Alone & ResponsibleMiss C: Covenant Eyes entered our story. The biggest mistake that I made with Covenant Eyes was I became his accountability partner. Not good. That just became a cat and mouse game. Something would pop up in a report and he would blame it on spam or phishing. He opened up his email and it’s some ad on the side that’s triggering it.

It’s just constant. It was just a game. I can’t tell you how many times we went from flip phone to smart phone to flip phone to smart phone because he would get exhausted with the flip phone and say he’s fine. Then he went to a smartphone and he would fall and, seriously, we must have owned 10. It’s just disgusting how much money we probably threw away.

Miss C: The last and final one we went to was Purity Boot Camp. It was at another church. He finished the boot camp, graduated, went to the next level of the boot camp. It was while he was at this boot camp that everything just fell completely apart.

Anne: During this pornography addiction recovery period of time, can you talk about what you did to try and establish safety and peace? Talk about during that time, how you’re, I’m sure making this effort, right, to love and serve and forgive and support him and whatever you need to do to help him with his addiction.

Nothing Is Working, You Are All AloneAnne: When do you start kind of realizing this is not working? Or maybe you don’t, maybe you don’t realize it until it does fall apart. I don’t know. Talk about that.

Miss C: I think it was a slow process. It erodes. I think it’s probably the best way to describe it. It erodes. It didn’t erode my faith in God, it eroded my faith in him.

I think it wasn’t necessarily the porn that did it, it was the lies that it takes to keep the porn alive. There’s a lot of lies, financial lies. Where were you, lies. The bus was “always late”, or traffic was always super heavy. He’d get home really late, hour, hour and a half past time.

That’s because he would pull over and watch porn. I don’t think I had peace.

Anne: Maybe peace is around the corner. If we go to this camp, maybe we’ll have peace. If we pray more, maybe we’ll have peace. Was it sort of that kind of place?

Miss C: I think for a long time, it was this, we’re in this together, you’ve got this, let’s pray, let’s make sure that we’re being careful about what’s going to be on TV.

We downloaded apps like Common Sense Media that would take things out, swear words and scenes and as long as we kept your eye on the prize. A lot of my effort went into that, one of the faults that I realized I started doing was I got in the Holy Spirit’s way.

Trying To Help & Feeling AloneMiss C: As long as I created this perfect environment for him, you know, sun, moon, and stars, everything risen and aligned. Then he wouldn’t be stressed because that was one of the things he said. I don’t go look at porn because I want to look at these women. Porn started when I was 17 and it became this salve or this balm for rejection.

Anytime I feel rejected or stressed in my life, porn won’t reject me. I’m going to go to it. I thought if I created this environment of perfection, then he wouldn’t do that. That’s why I say, I don’t think if I had peace, I was just constantly like running and keeping everything perfect and straight.

Anne: I view those reasons why they use porn, not as an actual reason, but as a way to manipulate us to make us feel sorry for them. There could be someone else who didn’t have peace as a kid and they didn’t look at porn. They don’t give you some sob story. You know what I mean? Now it’s, wow, I did not realize all the ways he elicited my compassion were not legitimate. It was actually him manipulating me into managing him and to feel sorry for him and not hold him accountable.

And it’s hard to recognize, to admit to ourselves, wow, we played into that manipulation rather than setting boundaries.

Miss C: Absolutely. There were so many times that I would feel this compassion. He would be standing there, you know, talking about himself. What came on board in the midst of all this was a mental illness diagnosis.

Anne: Okay.

Feeling Sorry For HimMiss C: So in the midst of all this came a suicide attempt, then several weeks at hospital for therapies and a diagnosis and medication.

Anne: Okay, this is also making you feel sorry for him, I’m sure.

Miss C: Yes. He’s mentally ill. This is why he struggles. He’s weak. He needs me to step up to the plate. I’m going to have to, take on some of the stresses. Help with some of the finances and this kind of stuff. Keep the kids quiet. Don’t let them be too rowdy when he gets home from work. He needs things to be quiet. He doesn’t like things to be out of control or whatever. I didn’t have peace until I left.

Anne: Let’s talk about when things fall apart. You don’t recognize it’s abuse. You’re just doing the best you can. not feeling peace, but trying to get to safety. You’re trying to get help.

Then what happens when things fall apart? I’m guessing even when they fell apart, you didn’t exactly realize this is an abusive relationship, even in that moment. Let’s talk about how you get to that point where you recognize he’s an abuser. Start with the falling apart and then how you came to recognize it.

Miss C: We had separated the first time with children. We had just gotten into a fight again about the pornography. There were just phenomenal, colossal lies. There were points where I would catch him in the act of something. I would focus on making him pay. Stand up and be accountable for what he had said or done, within this lie.

Lies & BlameMiss C: He would present evidence to the contrary, but then make me feel really bad. Like, are we going to struggle with this our entire life? I mean, for example, he had gone to a video store, rented some videos when I was gone. I saw the charge, asked about it. Why did he go to video store? We can rent movies on TV. Why’d you have to go to video store? He was like, I just wanted to get some Westerns. They remind me of my dad. I called the video store. Can I get a copy of this receipt?

No, we don’t do that. I called him back and I said, I need proof. You know where we’re at. I need proof that you’re not lying. He went to the video store. He came back with a handwritten receipt. I called, I said, I need to know. He gets me on the speakerphone with the company, the video store. The guy answers and he said, I just came in and got a paper receipt from you. Can you explain to my wife that you can’t send receipts or you can’t do receipts over the phone or anything like that?

He’s like, Yeah, ma’am, we can’t do any, we can’t do any of that. What I sent is what we got. I’m sitting there. He hangs up and he turns to me. Kids are crawling around us. Are we going to struggle with this our entire life? Are you just not ever going to trust me? I started crying. I felt bad. Am I so horrible that I can’t even trust him for the smallest thing? Am I gonna struggle?

Using Repentance To ManipulateMiss C: I found out that was a lie. He came clean with it and let me cry. He let me apologize to him, and they asked him to forgive me with the children crawling around us. But he knew it was a lie, and he forgave me.

Anne: That’s evil.

Miss C: It is evil. So things like that kept happening and I finally had enough and we got into a just a giant fight about it. He found a roommate and left us just before Christmas. Just left.

I didn’t even know what to do. He cut us off financially because he had everything in his name and just left us. About, I would say, two months after he left he started realizing that, “I should have done this.” He stepped back in a few months and came to one of the visits with the kids. He claimed to have this Jesus moment and cried and begged my son to forgive him, begged me to forgive him, and promised that he was gonna do everything that he’s supposed to do. He wanted to come back home.

I said no. You don’t just get to come in here and say all the things you need to say and come back home. I’m gonna have to see real proof. He reinstalled Covenant Eyes and found two accountability partners. He went back to his group and was all in and I bought it.

Misapplied Christian PrinciplesMiss C: I didn’t want the kids to grow up without a dad and he was showing repentance. I knew it was my place then to forgive and restore and step back in, step back up to the plate. We got back together and four months later. It was porn, again.

Anne: How do you feel about those sort of misapplied Christian principles forgiveness and love, and what do you wish you knew about those principles that was misapplied? Misapplied in this scenario that you didn’t know at the time?

Miss C: I think one of the strongest ones that I do know is when this all blew up, and I just had my moments of anger and just having to throw things against the wall. One of the things that I was most angry with was, and here I’m just a good little Christian girl taking it. Feeling like I should take it because for better or for worse. I’m supposed to stand by him. This is the covenant that I made. It’s almost, I don’t know, self harming. It’s like, I chose him, so I have to put up with the abuse.

Anne: When do you start calling it abuse? When do you recognize that, wait a minute, all this porn, all these lies, all this gaslighting, This has not been, I mean, sure, he’s probably addicted to pornography, right? Sure, he’s addicted to these things, but this isn’t an addiction issue. This is an abuse issue. I have an abuser on my hands. When do you start recognizing, whoa, I’ve been looking at this through the wrong lens?

Miss C: I think it did start to turn when he had that come to Jesus moment, supposedly, and how quickly he turned on and off his Jesus.

God Is There, You Are Not AloneAnne: You start recognizing, wait a minute, this is grooming. This is not sincere repentance.

Miss C: I remember saying one day when we had gone and had communion. I remember sitting there in communion, when I have communion it’s me and God. I’m just thinking and asking the Lord to help me, to remind me of things that I should repent of, just me and God. I don’t open my eyes. I don’t pay attention to what anybody else is doing. It’s just me. This moment I remember opening my eyes and looking at him.

He’s not, his head’s not even bowed, not even in the moment. He’s holding the cup. I remember asking him later, I said, what does communion mean to you? What does that symbolize to you? I said, do you realize that in that moment watching you not participate in communion, I realized in the 20 some years that we’ve been together that I’ve never seen you fall on your face.

Anne: When you say fall on your face, what do you mean by that?

Miss C: It’s an act of submission. I’d never seen it.

Anne: Do you mean like completely totally submit himself to God’s will?

Miss C: Not in our home. Not sometimes they’ll have altar calls. I just had not seen a genuine call. He got really mad when I said that, but it was things like that. Those were the evidences.

BTR: You Are Not AloneMiss C: I started to turn my head away from what was actually happening and watching all of the things he wasn’t saying. Those were the things that I realized in the moments when he would make me cry. He would get very ugly. He would sit there and tell me he liked to make me cry. It made him feel powerful. I would tell him, that’s really sick that you’re saying that. He didn’t want to be made to feel ugly that way, so if I cried, he would just leave.

He would leave the room. It started to become things like that. I started actually looking up, what is it? What does this mean? Why would someone treat you like this? I stumbled across Betrayal Trauma Recovery. I finally said to myself “You are not alone.”

Anne: We see the most progress with women healing when they listen to the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast every week, when they attend Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions as needed, and when they take some space to apply the things they’ve learned outside of group. How did you find Betrayal Trauma Recovery? What happened that made that possible for you?

Miss C: I think like anybody, when you’re going through something, you’re looking for help. You’re looking for anything to guide you to the next step, because it’s all so confusing. There’s so much shame connected with it. It’s not, how do I make spaghetti sauce with friends or anything like that. You go incognito and do searches. I looked online and typed in different things. There were multiple helps out there, books.

You Are Not AloneI happened to come across a video for a course that talked about pornography and trauma. It was the first time I had ever seen those two words put together. It was that word that actually drew me in to Betrayal Trauma Recovery No one else said that. Recognized, acknowledged that to go through this and to repeatedly go through it, basically almost alone, is traumatic.

Miss C: You’re constantly questioned how you feel as a woman, as a mother, as a wife. It hits you on every level. I remember, it’s been a while, but remember watching the first two or three episodes. I remember feeling yes, yes, it acknowledged the pain, the shame and the betrayal. Finally feeling like, “You are not alone!” It acknowledged the true trauma of it too. To put the word trauma to it really opens you up and speaks of a pain that goes beyond what anybody has ever described before.

It’s almost like oh, well your spouse is looking at other women and it’s harmless. At least he’s, It’s coming home to you and it almost belittles it. It was so refreshing to have someone, for once, put the word to the pain that I already felt.

Anne: At that time, did you start listening to the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast?

Miss C: You know, I wish I could pinpoint exactly. It was several things. I remember delving into stories and reading, and I can’t remember if I actually clicked on a podcast, but I do remember there were stories that were told.

Recognizing AbuseAnne: All of our podcast episodes are transcribed so that you can either listen to them on Apple podcasts, listen from our website or read them from our website. For people who would prefer to read, they’re there. After finding us, you started thinking about the word abuse. Was Betrayal Trauma Recovery also your first introduction to considering that what you had been experiencing was abusive?

Miss C: Yeah, I think to actually hear it put that way, it’s also along the same lines as the trauma. It almost goes hand in hand. It helps you to realize that this is something that is happening to you and something that hurts you. I think we endure it, for better or for worse, so this falls under the worse part. You don’t really categorize it as abuse because who wants to admit, I’m abused, who wants to feel that way or think that way, or even accept the title.

Anne: Once you start considering that you’re abused and things are falling apart for you, what happens now?

Miss C: I think actually the separation is what started me realizing that this was abusive. Once you actually step outside of looking at it. This is my bed. I need to sleep in it. You step outside of it and you realize that you’re being abused. You’re able to recognize all that follows from being abused and how it affects you. How it affects your children because of the decisions you make to make it work.

Waking Up To Being AloneI definitely know that as I started waking up to the truth of what was going on, instead of it being, okay, I’m just going to stand by my man, I’m going to pray for him, I’m going to be that help that I’m supposed to be. To realizing I’m a being abused by this person. Through me, he’s also abusing our children because it’s giving a false narrative to what marriage is as God intended it to be.

Anne: Do you think that you would have been able to recognize the extent of the abusive behaviors had you not separated?

Miss C: No, absolutely not.

Anne: Talk about why. I agree. After my ex got arrested, I had this period of no contact, that was when everything became very clear to me. I thought, if I wouldn’t have had that separation time, I don’t know if I ever would have recognized it. Will you talk about that for yourself? And how that period of separation helped you kind of come out of that fog?

Miss C: Well, I think it’s probably indicative of all abuse victims. When you are in the abuse, you go into survival mode. You do what is necessary for the love of your family, your home, your children to make peace. In making that peace, you absorb the abuse, you take it. There isn’t healing. You can’t even look at healing or even look at what’s really happening to you when you’re just surviving.

Manipulative ApologiesAnne: Yeah. I think the other thing is when you’re being abused, you can’t see that you’re being abused. It’s kind of a catch twenty two, right? Because if they’re kind to you in a moment of grooming and they’re nice and they say they love you. That does not feel like abuse. That feels pretty good. It doesn’t feel like grooming at the time. It is grooming, but you don’t recognize it as part of the abuse.

Anne: You think, Oh, he’s Jekyll and Hyde. You don’t realize. The good guy is actually still the bad guy. Does that make sense?

Miss C: Oh, absolutely. For you to say the phrase Jekyll and Hyde, I can’t even tell you how many times I use that phrase when I would talk to my friends or family about what would go on. They would see him at church or in social situations. He was so helpful and so like loving towards me and the kids. I would say that many times. I’m like, that’s, you know, Jekyll or Hyde. I don’t know which one’s the evil one. I don’t know.

That is many times how I described it, and what you said too, about not being able to recognize the abuse. I think when you’re being told by this person, oh I’m so sorry, I love you, I don’t mean to hurt you, I’ll do better next time, I recognize this isn’t good and I’m not easy to live with. Those were the things that I was told. That kind of almost puts it on me. When it’s so manipulative to tell somebody, I know I’m not easy to live with, you’re so loving, kind, forgiving and encouraging.

Grooming & BetrayalIt puts it back on you. I need to be more loving. I need to be more encouraging and you get to be a monster.

Anne: It’s also very misogynistic because the wife is to sacrifice her happiness, her needs, her interests, her whatever, in order to make sure that he’s a decent person. That’s just crazy. So what happens next?

Anne: I’m assuming, tell me if I’m wrong here, that he starts to groom again while you’re Separated here because we see one of two things when women set a boundary. They separate and they get one of two things. They start grooming. Oh, I’m gonna be better. I’m, sorry I’ll get into a program, you know something like that. Or they just literally give up and abandon their family and don’t try to do anything. I’m guessing it was one of those two things. Maybe I’m wrong. I can’t wait to hear.

Miss C: I actually had a mixture of the two at first. It was abandonment in finances and it was abandonment in just spending time with the kids. I was spinning my wheels like, okay, we need to make sure we get together and the kids want to see you.

It would be him who, you know, he had headaches, stomachache, he was tired. The week was too long and you know, the kids were desperate to want to connect with him. And then when he would call to talk to them. He would call maybe once a month and I would mention something to him. Hey, you know, like probably should call the kids like every other day.

Relationships With ChildrenMiss C: Like you’re not here. He said, he actually had audacity to say that he doesn’t like calling them because they barely seem interested in talking to him.

Anne: Because it was all about him. Is that what you’re saying?

Miss C: Right. Yeah.

Anne: Oh, yeah. Because they’re not asking him about how his day was.

Miss C: Right. He said they don’t talk to me, they don’t answer my questions, they don’t seem interested in talking to me. It just feels like a waste of my time. I remember I came back with, this isn’t about you, you’re supposed to be asking them about their day, how they’re doing, what’s going on, this isn’t supposed to be fulfilling for you. It’s you showing that you’re interested in their life as a father, and you’re trying to be there in any way you can.

Anne: Yeah, they don’t have the capacity to understand that, I don’t think.

Miss C: No, then he would vacillate between the two. I didn’t know which one I was going to get, to be honest. There would be times when, as long as he didn’t feel slated by me in any way. Things were fine and child support would come and helping with shoes and school and this kind of stuff would come.

I stepped on his toes wrong and then he just would go. Turn like a spoiled child and not speak to me and not help with money. It was continuously abusive and manipulative, even though we were separated.

Anne: Post separation abuse is really common. I wouldn’t say it’s really common, I’d say it’s the norm.

Divorce Decision & Feeling AloneAnne: A lot of people will say, all you need to do when you have an abuser is to get divorced. They don’t realize that there is ongoing abuse even after divorce or during a separation. That’s very difficult.

When did you make the decision that you were going to get divorced?

How did you make that decision, right? Because that’s a very difficult decision for a Christian woman who has been trying to “help her husband” for all these years. Let’s talk about all those factors.

Miss C: I didn’t come by it easy. That’s absolutely for sure. I think it probably, we separated twice, was from the point that I first separated to the point that I knew that I was done was about three years. There was quite a bit of just being so unsure. One of the things that I brought up numerous times with different people that I took counsel with was that I don’t want to be displeasing to God. I know that I’ve made this covenant.

What do I do with this covenant, this promise that I made? Oh, that just tore me up.

Anne: Was there a way that you resolved that? How are you feeling about that now?

Miss C: Yeah, well, my story is a little bit different in the fact that it just didn’t end with him constantly being abusive with porn and being narcissistic or anything like that. My story ends with, at the time that I found this out, we had already been separated for a solid year, but I definitely was on the path to divorce.

Husband’s Behavior A NightmareMiss C: I will admit pre finding out what I found out, we had made the decision between us because we didn’t want to drag the kids through a court process. We didn’t want to bring the government into our life and our children’s lives. We had decided to stay separated until the kids were of age and then divorce then. I figured we could make this work between us, figure out finances between us.

I really think that 99 percent of that was going to be me giving a lot, out of love for my kids. He really was a nightmare. I mean, there were months when we just decided not to do visitation because he would have mental meltdowns and mental temper tantrums.

You know he didn’t want to come to church and the kids wanted him at church. It was always something with him. He was such a child. I dreaded. Visitation weekends because I knew I would just have to put up with him until it was over and there after it was over I always had a headache. I wouldn’t allow him to come to our home because the home that we had before we separated was just not right. The atmosphere was not right and I knew it was him.

I wanted a space where the children were secure and safe and that being our home. I’d never allowed him to come to our home. All of our visitations were at a restaurant or movie or park or something like that.

When I Recognized, You Are Not AloneAnn: If you could go back in time, do you feel like that? Let’s not involve people, let’s just try to settle this between ourselves was a bad idea? Would you do that again? Or were you like it was okay. It turned out okay, or were you like man, I should have just gone for it back then. What are you thinking about that now?

Miss C: I will say there’s a lot of elements of bringing in help that I had a lot of preconceived ideas about.

Anne: Talk about that.

Miss C: I really believed CPS was evil, to be honest.

Anne: For our listeners who don’t know, she’s talking about Child Protective Services, which is a government agency. That is supposed to protect kids, but we have heard some horror stories. Yeah, I know what you’re talking about.

Miss C: Right, I really believed that. I’m going to invite the bad guy in and this is going to be horrible. Of course I was mortified and I didn’t ask for them. Once we proceeded, the way we had to proceed, she was assigned to me. There were a lot of things that I’m now looking back at where I see they happened the way they had to happen. I can’t sing her praises enough. She has been as close to a friend as she can be because of her professional position.

Anne: So you went from thinking that CPS was evil and you were terrified of them to being very grateful for their help.

Miss C: Absolutely, she jumped right in and I mean, she knew the games almost like the back of her hand. She had resources available to alleviate those places and offered them before I asked for them.

Fear Of Government Agencies Kept Me AloneAnne: Why do you think victims are so afraid to get help from the police, for example, or from a government agency, CPS, maybe a domestic violence shelter, or maybe other various and sundry agencies. Why do you think victims are so afraid?

Miss C: To be totally brutally honest, I really believe it’s because we definitely don’t feel like the government has your back if you are a believer.

Anne: I’m a believer and I have never thought that. That’s why I’m asking. I’ve been a believer my whole life and I’ve always been very pro-government. I don’t know if I’d say pro-government, but I’ve always thought, I can call the police. The police will help me. I can go to this agency, this agency will help me. For me, I did not have that experience. From your experience, that’s what you’re saying. Growing up you thought, this isn’t a good idea. They’re not going to help me.

Miss C: I think to understand where I come from in that capacity, my parents did foster care my entire life from the time I was 13, all the way up. We had a lot of, social workers coming in and out of our home. A lot of experience, of course, listening to your parents and dealing with the social workers. To be really honest, we’d never had a really great experience with social workers.

Then my only experience with CPS workers were because of relatives that struggled with addictions and had children taken from them. That’s on the complete opposite end from where I was coming. In a way it was probably a little bit naive, thinking that they’re just going to make things harder.

Civil Court: You Are Not AloneMiss C: So I actually took my husband to civil court for two purposes. One was to gain physical and legal custody of my kids. The other was to impose child support. I remember when I was appointed a guardian ad litem for the kids, because she was going to interview us and talk to us, them separately, then me and then my ex. She was going to give recommendations to the court in regards to the civil case. I remember also feeling fear.

Oh my goodness, like, can I be who I am? Can I speak freely of my faith? Will she deem my faith as crazy and side with my ex? Because I know there are some people that don’t believe in a deity. Of course I struggled with that. Again, she ended up being wonderful.

Anne: That did not end up being the case.

Miss C: Not even close.

Anne: That being said, I’ve never been afraid, but I have heard some horror stories. Like a guardian ad litem who made it worse or a custody evaluator. I have heard horror stories, but I’ve also heard really great stories. I think it feels like a crapshoot.

Husband’s Betrayal & Abuse Anne: I’m like, pray, pray, pray, right? For God to be with your lawyer, to get the right guardian ad litem, to get the right custody evaluator. Let God be the warrior because the family court system is really tricky.

Miss C: It is tricky and so far I feel blessed in that capacity.

Anne: That’s so great. Part of what I’m wondering, and the reason why I’m bringing this up, is this fear of outside help. I’m wondering if it’s part of the way that the abusers isolate their victims to say the outside world, perhaps the government, perhaps agencies, perhaps whatever is evil and they’re scary and you don’t want to get help from them.

You don’t have anywhere to go. Do you think that was part of it a little bit?

Miss C: Oh, absolutely. I remember when we would talk about getting a divorce, we would talk about a divorce and he would bring up stuff like that. He wanted me to be alone. They’re going to pull our kids in one direction and another direction. If I dare bring up anything about the pornography, they’re going to label him a pervert and like just all these different things.

Right away, of course, if you bring anything up that has any impact on the kids, that’s going to resonate with me. Being afraid of asking them for help, I wasn’t afraid when we had to go to the police. That was a knee jerk reaction, I knew it was going to be okay when I talked to them.

Pending Situations & EncouragementAnne: Miss C has some situations that she can’t talk about right now because they’re pending. If you’re thinking, is there something going on that we didn’t hear about or that we don’t know, the answer to that is yes. We can’t talk about it now.

Miss C: Well, I think if anything I probably would want to talk about is that if you are sitting on that cusp and you definitely don’t know which way to turn, you feel all alone. You feel full of shame because your husband has repeatedly abused you with porn, that you are not alone.

That there are other women out there, there are people who do care, and you don’t have to sit in the dark by yourself. More than anything, in the darkest times that I had, it may sound cliche, and it may sound hard, and it may feel weird in the beginning but you have a father. You don’t have to talk in thees and thous, and you don’t have to have all the right words to say. He is your Father, you can go to him, tell him how awful this is, how much it hurts you, and how much you need him.

Faith & MedicationsMiss C: One of the verses that I clung to many, many times was he heals the brokenhearted and he binds up their wounds. I can’t tell you how many times I prayed and I asked him to heal this part of me that was broken. Heal the part of me that sees myself as a failure, that feels ugly and unattractive. Jealous of these women who get their attention and he looks at them in a way that he doesn’t look at you.

You can ask your Father to help you heal that part, to bind up the wound that is caused from that. Whether you’ll choose to admit it or not, every time that they take you there. Whether you find out or whether you don’t, or you just suspect something is wrong. Your Father’s there and He can hear those and He can bind them. He can pull you close and you are not alone. You are not alone.

Anne: I appreciate you saying that there have been so many times where I have cried and I haven’t been able to stop crying. You’ve probably had that experience too, right? Currently speaking, maybe my listeners have heard it in my voice lately, but I’m on Lexapro. It’s an anti-anxiety, anti-depressant medication. I’m a little less emotional lately, so I don’t tear up at all when I’m on this. Normally, I’d be like, I know how you feel.

Feeling Alone & GriefI’m the same. I felt that way too. Right now, because of the medication that I’m on, I can’t cry. I remember when I would cry and cry, could not stop, go in my closet, lay in my bed and my pillow would be soaking wet. I remember not being able to feel comfort from the Spirit and praying, Heavenly Father, please help me.

Please send someone to help me. Feeling this black void of nothingness. I kept praying, reading my scriptures, obeying the commandments and believing. Even though I believe, help Thou my unbelief sort of thing. The fog did move eventually.

Miss C: You know what that is though? Those are layers of grief. That’s why they feel that way. It’s just layers upon layers of grief. You’re not going to feel anything while those layers fall off except grief. It’s a part of the healing process. We mistakenly think God is not near. It’s not that’s not true. It’s grief. You are not alone.

Anne: I haven’t thought of it that way before. That is a good point. I do know, even though I didn’t know to call it grief, that the only way was through it, you couldn’t avoid it. You couldn’t get around it. You could watch TV and you could eat popcorn, which helped, but really there wasn’t anything that could make it go away.

Miss C: No, because all of those are distractions. Our kids can distract us. Our friends can distract us. The TV can distract us. Our phone can distract us. But you take all of those away. Everybody goes to bed. TV gets turned off, there’s nothing on your phone that you haven’t looked at a bazillion times, and then you’re in the dark and you’re alone.

Medication & AnxietyAnne: Yes, and it is awful. With me, when things have been really difficult, it’s so stressful. Medication has helped. I don’t have anything clinical going on. The year that it was so stressful, I was on medication. I have something going on right now. It’s also really stressful. When I talk about it with my doctor, under doctor’s supervision, decided to go back on an anti anxiety medication.

It’s a catch twenty two for me because I still can feel emotion. It’s not as deeply, so I’m very like content and happy and calm most of the time, which is great. There’s not that level of, I don’t know, depth of gratitude that I have felt in the past and emotion. As soon as I make it through this, I’m going to go back off.

Miss C: I felt the same way. Like it, was actually really explained pretty well to me, is that when you go through years and years of abuse. Your body learns to run on this flight or fight process, constantly. Then when you have peace, like I did when I finally moved away and had my own space, the peace was just as painful because now my body is still going fight or flight. I would have anxiety attacks. I would pull up to church and be unable to get out of the car.

Anxiety, I Just Felt So AloneMiss C: My kids would go running in. They had their classes. They were excited. I would sit in my car and cry. My family would come out just concerned and I couldn’t tell them anything except this is anxiety. I’m having a full on anxiety attack and I can’t stop this.

I have to just go through this and it was so hard because I could tell they look at you like you’re a little bit nuts, like they’re concerned about you. You’re losing it. I’m concerned, but unless you’ve been on this side of an anxiety attack, you can’t understand, it’s such an out of body experience too.

Anne: Did you ever take or consider anxiety meds?

Miss C: It’s a plant based supplement. It absolutely helps. Yes.

Anne: For us, it’s like, whatever helps. There was a time when I decided I’m not where I was a couple of years ago when I was going through a difficult time. I mean, you, my listeners have heard me go in and out of difficult times this whole time and I thought, should I go back on medication? I thought, no, I shouldn’t right now. Right now I need to feel this. This is the time where I need to experience this. This recent one, I definitely was nope, I need to go back on it.

There’s no judgment here. It’s, whatever you need to do to take care of yourself. Self care, so that you can take care of your children, your job, your life, and being gentle with ourselves to make sure that we are healthy. It’s super important when we’re going through this. God loves us will guide and direct you.

Victims, You Are Not AloneMiss C: Yeah, I definitely think that going along with being gentle with yourself about medication is to be brave enough not necessarily to physically walk away. Because, I don’t know, you might get mad and walk away. In this season you’re gonna be hit with loads of advice on how to handle it, how to walk it, how to process it and how it affects your kids. I remember the one phraseology which to this day will set me on fire is to not be a victim and don’t teach your children to be a victim.

You remember that character where he’s got flame shooting out of the top of his head? That sets me on fire because to me, whether you like to acknowledge it or not, we are victims.

Anne: Yes.

Miss C: We’re victims. I’m sorry that that makes life uncomfortable for you, and you don’t like to think about the things that we’ve been through, but we are victims. We don’t live the life of a victim. We don’t look for ways that things are going so bad for us. We’re not looking to walk around like Eeyore and woe is me and everything bad that’s happening to me.

We are processing through the pain and suffering. Healing from what has happened. Seriously, it sets me on fire when people say that

Anne: I could not agree more You’re like I’m not acting like a victim. I am a victim.

Miss C: Yes. I know it’s meant well. I think the hardest thing for some people is it’s as hard to watch someone go through a tragedy and whether they’ll say it or not. Yes, and you are not alone.

Moving Past The Betrayal & You Are Not AloneMiss C: I really believe it’s generational in a way where it’s like, we don’t want that to touch our life. It’s too hard, ugly. It’s uncomfortable. We really just want you to get better and move on.

Anne: I think it’s also a control thing. They can tell you, Hey, you got to do something about this. But when you’re an actual victim, there is obviously a lack of ability to stop the harm. The only thing you can do is try to separate yourself from it. You could build a big wall around you. You could do all these things and the person can still act abusively toward you. For those of us who set a ton of boundaries. Our abuser is still abusive. There’s nothing we can do to stop them from being abusive. You just feel so alone, but you’re not alone.

All we can do is try to protect ourselves the best we can. I don’t think other people can wrap their heads around that. I think they think, well, eventually, they won’t bug you anymore. Or you can just pretend like they don’t exist or something. You’re like, no, if someone’s punching you in the face all the time, you’re going to have a bruise.

This is an interesting thing. I like it when people are like, well, now that you know what it is, when they hurt you, you can just like get better faster. You can be like, that was just abuse. No big deal. They’re an abuser, whatever.

Setting Boundaries With BTR’s Help, You Are Not AloneAnne: If someone punches you in the face, The bruise is going to take however long it’s going to take to heal. You can’t say to the bruise, hey bruise heal faster. I know that he was crazy when he punched me in the face. The bruise is going to take faster to heal. No, it’s just going to take the amount of time it is to heal. Even if you’re divorced, even if you’ve set all these boundaries.

If there’s a traumatic incident that happens with your ex. During a parenting exchange or a court case, they’re lying. They say things that aren’t true or something, It’s like a punch to the gut. You’ve got a bruise, it’s going to take some time to heal.

The cool thing is the more confident we get, the better we get at setting boundaries, the more we understand what’s happening. I do think we become a little bit like, Superheroes, and we can heal a little bit faster, which is cool, but we still have to heal.

Miss C: Right, and we get better at being able to, block those mental and emotional punches, because we now recognize them. I think that goes back to what you and I talked about before, when you get space, you get clarity. And you start to see, what does the Bible say? Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay. You actually really start to see those clearly, especially when they speak now.

Anne: Yeah, I agree. This is the one, it’s been five years. he’s a jerk. I don’t know why.

You Are Not AloneMiss C: That goes all back to it’s these stigmas that come with relationships and with divorce and with what everybody believes is how it’s supposed to go. The fact that it makes people uncomfortable. I really am going to dig in because like I said, my story goes a little bit deeper. I definitely believe that there needs to be something out there on what is the next step.

What do I do? How do I get through this, get up the next day, get up the next morning? How do I make it through that afternoon? Because sometimes it literally is all you can do to do the next five minutes. You’re in so much pain.

Miss C: I’m so thankful for Betrayal Trauma Recovery, because there is healing in coming together. I think there’s going to be more and more women that are going to become more brave. To be able to come together and meet each other in a way that we all have great friends. You are not alone. I have phenomenal friends, but to have someone and look in the eyes of someone that knows. There’s healing in that too.

Anne: The other thing I appreciate about the community is that We’re all learning collectively, right? Like when you said that’s a layer of grief, I was like, oh, I hadn’t thought about it that way before. And because we’re talking about it and we’re honest with each other and we’re being vulnerable with each other, collectively, we’re able to learn more quickly. We are not alone.

Generational Silence & WisdomAnne: I think back in the forties and fifties when there wasn’t an internet. If women tried to reach out, it was probably pretty hard for them. It wasn’t common for a woman to be like, hey, my husband’s looking at porn, help me. I mean, there was part of society you didn’t really tell. I mean, I’ve talked to many victims who were perhaps in their early seventies or late sixties and they didn’t tell anybody.

For a long time, now they’re able to talk to people about it. They could only learn in this isolated silo and they knew, okay, this doesn’t work. Collectively now, as we speak the truth, as we’re vulnerable with each other, with safe people, that’s the cool thing. We don’t have to be vulnerable with our abusers, but we can be vulnerable with each other, collectively. Yes, you are not alone.

We are learning so much and becoming so much more enlightened, I guess, and safe. I am going to use the word powerful, and when I say that I don’t mean that we’re like trying to take over the world. But I mean like own our own power and our own voice and be able to say, Wait, I know what to do. I know how to do it. I can do this.

Miss C: It’s biblical. To bear one another’s burdens indicates the ability to do it. So you can’t bear a burden if you’re weak, and it’s not physical strength we’re speaking of. You know, so yeah, I think there’s power in that too. Absolutely. I know there’s a scripture and I can’t think of it, but where it talks about the fact that we’re supposed to speak truth. Exactly, you are not alone.

You Are Not Alone: Join The Betrayal Trauma Recovery CommunityMiss C: I’ve heard this phrase many times, The church is supposed to be a hospital for the broken. I believe the church is where two or more are gathered together, that there’s healing there. I really appreciate that you said that about the ladies who kept quiet their entire life, you know what, I really believe that they believed in their mind that it was their fault. That’s abusive too.

Anne: Well, and now the cool thing is. We have so many women, various ages, right? In the community, in Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group or ones that I’ve talked to who are in their sixties or seventies or however old they are, whatever, you know, all different ages. We have 30 year olds and 20 year olds and you know, everyone, but I really appreciate the wisdom of the women who bore it alone for a long time. They’re sharing, they’re really strong. You are not alone.

Miss C: Yeah, I would love to listen to that and to hear their story. Did they stay? Did they not stay? How that went for them. I bet you there are some huge nuggets of wisdom.

Anne: Yeah. Speaking of that, if you’re listening and you’re like, that was me, I didn’t speak out and I finally found Betrayal, Trauma Recovery, or I finally told somebody when I was in my late sixties or early seventies or eighties or whatever age you are, if that’s you, we’d love to hear your story.

You Are Not Alone AnymoreMiss C: I just wanted to make sure you are not alone. I really do believe that you might feel like you’re betraying your husband to speak to someone about your betrayal. That’s okay. You can talk about it. It’s not betraying your husband.

Anne: Yeah. In fact, it’s helping your husband because it’s accountability. It’s speaking truth.

Miss C: Absolutely.

Anne: Truth is painful sometimes. Truth is hard. Truth Might lead us down a road that makes, it seem like it’s more difficult. I believe it always leads to more peace in the end, even if it gets harder before it gets better.

Miss C: I cannot sing that praise hard enough. I will tell you the last two years have been hard. They’ve been hard financially, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. They have been so hard. I will take that over one more day living the lie. I would, in a heartbeat because now at least the hard is normal. You know, it’s just a normal hard and I’m okay with that.

Miss C: Right. I’ll take this. It’s so much more peaceful than when you’re living this chaotic lie and there’s so much chaos and there’s so much manipulation. You just feel so alone.

There’s so much lying that goes on for pornography to exist. It’s, it’s meant to be that way, a destroyer of the home. It’s like a invisible tornado constantly happening.

Seeing The Betrayer’s ManipulationMy ex would play head games with the kids. He would get them in this manipulation mode so that what he was doing could seem less heinous.

Like he would get, you know, Oh, they’re such awful kids. They’re so disrespectful. They don’t respect me. They don’t listen to me. Then I find out a year down the road that my son had gotten after him twice because he found porn on his phone. Those two had animosity between each other all the time.

I couldn’t understand it. Then I asked my son, but he was too young at the time to even put the two together. I would say son, why are you so disrespectful to your dad? Why when I ask you to do something it’s, yes ma’am, and you’re helpful and you’re thoughtful, and when your dad asks you the gloves come off.

He would do the same thing. He would say, that kid’s so disrespectful. You spoil him. It was always our fault. Then you come to find out he confronted him a couple of times and told him, don’t you dare tell your mom. He left his phone on the bed with

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BTR.ORG Coach Sharon shares how spiritual abuse effected her. Although spiritual abuse can be subtle, Coach Sharon experienced intense spiritual abuse.

If you’re experiencing spiritual abuse, we’re here for you, check out our BTR.ORG Group Session Schedule.

Similarly, The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop helps women seeking to reclaim anything about themselves from their faith to their goals, gain autonomy after spiritual abuse.

Effects Of Spiritual AbuseAnne: I’ve invited Coach Sharon, part of our BTR coaching team to come on today’s episode. Sharon and I have been sharing our innermost feelings about the work that we do. How it really feels so urgent to share the truth with women about spiritual abuse and what they may be facing. Welcome, Sharon.

Both of us have gone through quite a lot lately, and sometimes when we’re faced with this level of evil, really. I mean oppression and people really trying to harm other people, it gets a little overwhelming at times. As we share today, I want all of you to know that everyone is always welcome here.

We are interfaith no matter what religion you’re a part of, and no matter if you don’t have a religion, you are welcome here. Sharon and I are going to be sharing from our faith perspective today. This is our own personal experience, not necessarily to proselytize to you.

We hope that you find it helpful and just wanted to let you know that. Again, everybody’s welcome. One of the things Sharon and I talk about is that bringing the light in the light of our savior, Jesus Christ.

Well, Sharon and I are Christians, helps us do this work and sort of push out the darkness when we’re feeling overwhelmed. Sharon, in your experience being a BTR coach, she facilitates BTR Group Sessions as well as BTR Individual Sessions.

Emphasis On Interfaith Inclusivity When Talking About Spiritual Abuse As you have the opportunity every day to help women. They’re in the darkness, they don’t really know what’s going on. Can you talk about that and how that feels?

Coach Sharon: Yeah, coming into light is important. I mean, when you’re living in darkness and you don’t know the truth, it’s a difficult place to be. When you don’t know what the truth is, when you don’t know what the diagnosis is, when you don’t know what the problem is.

Then you don’t know how to keep yourself safe. You need to know what the truth is in order to come to a place of safety. Women come into BTR not knowing what truth is, feeling like their truth, even though there’s something on the inside, I think you call it the internal warning system, that internal navigator, it will direct you.

It will show you that there’s something going on. But knowing to trust that internal truth is difficult, especially when you don’t have words for it, when you don’t know how to define it, when there’s been no basis forever making you aware that there could even be evil.

You feel crazy, you feel like this is just me. I must be alone. There must be something wrong with me. A lot of women come into BTR feeling that way, like I’m just in the dark and there’s no light. It’s hard to navigate in darkness. It’s hard to perform any task.

The Impact Of Light & Truth In Healing From Spiritual Abuse Well, if you’re doing it in darkness. BTR turns a light on and exposes abuse. It exposes emotional harm and psychological harm and spiritual harm and so forth, and helps women to get to a place where they can actually get safe. The Living Free Workshop, you referenced that darkness in terms of living in that dark space, the workshop calls it the shadow and living in that shadow or living in that dark place or that cave.

It’s a hopeless existence. So coming into light, coming into truth helps you to bring your life into a better place.

I was thinking about that scripture that says men prefer darkness rather than light because their ways are evil. Now, I mean, I don’t think the Bible was specifically just referring to men, but at the same token, the principle is true. Darkness is the preferred way because evil can live in darkness, right?

There’s no evil in light where there’s light, there’s truth, and truth comes in a variety of different forms. But if we don’t expose ourselves to truth, then we stay in darkness.

For example, I think in scripture, but I was thinking about the text that says, and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. But if you don’t access truth, financial truth or physical truth in terms of nutritional truth or there’s lots of different truth that we need to expose ourselves to, but my people perish for a lack of knowledge.

Truth Overcomes The Effects Of Spiritual Abuse If you don’t have the knowledge, then you don’t have the truth. If you don’t have the truth, then you don’t have safety. So coming into truth is really important.

Anne: For women of faith. Truth is important in general, just like in their bones. My guess is truth is important to agnostics and atheists as well. Logic or just reality. I think for all of us, truth is important for women of faith. When we think about truth coming from God maybe or truth coming from scripture or something.

Can you talk about how so many abusers twist that so that it keeps the victims in the dark? They weaponize victims true desire to know truth or to know God in order to exploit them or harm them. It gets really confusing, I think for women to think like, well, I went to scripture or I went to my faith leader to get help.

It didn’t really help me and I was truly seeking help. It’s not because the word in and of itself is inaccurate or the word in and of itself is harmful, but it’s because so many of the evil interpretations of it or the evil applications of it have harmed victims. Can you talk about that for a bit?

Coach Sharon: Yeah. I love that you say that. That was my experience when you consider scripture was firmly rooted in my heart as a child. I grew up knowing that scripture was good. It was how we were taught to live our life.

The Power & Misinterpretation Of Scripture Scripture being firmly rooted in my heart root, my thoughts governed my actions. It’s how I lived my life, but it cultivated not abuse, but a soil for faith like that foundation created in my life, a rich soil that was faith.

I had something planted in that good soil with something that was evil, it grew mindsets and strongholds and things in my life that God never intended to be there.

It’s not that the word was bad, the word was always good, the teaching was always good, but the seed was a negative seed. It produced negativity in my life opposed to what God intended to be able to grow in that part of my life.

I heard this quote I want to read. Can I read this really quickly? Yeah. It says the word is God and God is his word. The word of God, scripture is God. It’s who He’s, and God is his word. It’s his character. We come to know God by what is read in the Word, and if the word is poorly translated, then God is poorly known.

So it’s just we come to know who God is by his word. I mean, think about everything the Bible says in terms of God’s word.

Weaponizing Faith Against Victims He said his word over everything. Proverbs says that a good name is of great riches and he has exalted his word over everything. So the word is who God is, right? So if you have a word that is poorly translated, then God can’t be correctly known.

I lost God when I said I do. I didn’t have a God because the God that was being portrayed to me was one where there was classes and I was in the second class seat.

In this new position that I was in, I didn’t have a voice in this space. I was expendable in this space. My thoughts, my feelings, my value were all secondary in this space. It made me feel as if I had no God, which was very damaging in terms of my life because it was the foundation in my faith. Those words can be really detrimental in terms of how women process.

Anne: Can you share what you thought back then? Because guessing back then you didn’t think, God doesn’t love me, I’m a second class citizen. I’m guessing that that type of articulated thought wasn’t there. Were there ways that you kind of did some mental gymnastics to kind of be in that space?

Coach Sharon: Yeah, so my thought process was this was part of the cross. This was suffering. It was the way of suffering. We’ve been called to suffer and sometimes suffering and marriage is what God calls us to, that we’re called to a life of suffering.

Mental Gymnastics In Spiritual Abuse The suffering wasn’t extensive. It wasn’t like anyone was abusing me, especially since I had no definition of what abuse was. So this was just godly sorrow. This was my cross. That’s that song. Must Jesus bear the cross alone and all the world go free?

No, there’s a cross for everyone and there’s a cross. For me, that was my cross. I would submit to things that I knew were harmful and that were wrong, but I would justify them. This is what God wants for me, and I can show him my love through my obedience, through me not complaining, by me, forgiving by me overlooking.

In that I’m showing God my love. Because there are so many scriptures that speak to the truth of being obedient, which I think is a godly principle, is being obedient. Because everything is not rightly divided, when we are talking about scripture, we’ll take one scripture and that’s it.

Wives are to obey their husband in all things, and that covers everything. There’s never any more dialogue or anything that goes into unpacking that. Then those things can be used as a weapon against women to silence them or to make them believe that this is correct.

Anne: At the time when you silenced your own internal warning system, God’s telling you something’s not quite right here. You’re feeling it. Well, I want to say he’s kind of reframing it for you, right? Do you feel like the abuser reframed it in terms of this is your suffering, or because you had no other context for it and it wasn’t your fault, right?

The Challenge Of Recognizing Spiritual Abuse Because you hadn’t been educated about abuse, the light had not been shined on it. Do you think you were the one that reframed it? Sorry, I don’t mean to blame the victim in that sense. None of it was your fault, but I’m just trying to figure out how we can help other women who might be grappling with this.

Women who are reframing it in a way because they have no light, they have no ability to reframe it any other way because there isn’t any other context for it. Do you know what I mean?

Coach Sharon: Absolutely. I think it was a combination of things. I mean, it was me preferring to stay in what was comfortable. It was easier. It was familiar. I wanted it with all of my being. It was easier for me to redefine it, reframe it, call it something different.

Then I didn’t have to move. It allowed me to stay where I was comfortable, even when I knew that there were things that there’s no way when I would think about concepts of grace. Isn’t God a God of grace, of compassion, of love? How are you reasoning this out? It was just like, ah, you can find a way.

You can find way to make anything fit if you really wanted to. I think a lot of it was me refining it and not wanting to really see it for what it was. Of course, I think that my husband at the time wanted me to believe that as well.

I think that it served a purpose for him, for me to believe that I was rebellious.

Internal Conflicts & Rationalization That this was really me, that it was all me. He played a part in that, but I also just believe that evil is always there. Let’s take away the chuck. Let’s take away Sharon.

I think that there’s always that internal evil trying to speak voices that influence us to go in the wrong direction. I don’t think that that is always, it can come through the voice of a person, but I think that evil is always right there. You’re not good enough. You’re not this, you can’t do it. God doesn’t love you.

Those evil voices are always there. So I think it was a combination of things all working together as a perfect storm to keep me stuck.

Anne: It’s interesting when you said I was comfortable, I was stuck. Guess what else it came from? You are really, really good character and your pure nature, because the thing you really wanted wasn’t to be comfortable in abuse, but the thing you really wanted was a peaceful family.

It was coming from this place of goodness, and I think all victims who are trying to figure this out. It’s not like we hear every day victims being like, oh, my family and marriage doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care. I’m just comfortable here. I like my pillow and I really like my couch, so I’m not doing anything.

No, no, no, no, no. That’s not where they’re coming from. They’re like, this is hard and I’m suffering, but my family is important to me. The unity that I feel, the kind of life that I want is a life of wholeness and goodness, and I want to get there with my family.

Desire For Family Unity & Spiritual AbuseSorry, I’m not trying to invalidate what you said, but I know you really well. I’m just thinking of comfort. I don’t know if that is the right way to describe it.

Coach Sharon: I wanted my marriage. It’s just like I had a vision for what my life was supposed to look like in terms of my family and so forth. When I say comfort, I’m not talking about the luxuries of life. I’m talking about the purpose of life. I’m talking about what I gave myself to and believed in.

I wanted, wanted to hold on to what I felt like my destiny was, and my destiny was connected to a unit. It was connected to a person. When I say the person, I’m talking about my family.

Anne: Do you mean like the church because he was a pastor.

Coach Sharon: Just metaphorically my family, but yes, the church as well. I felt committed to what will this look like to others? How will this harm others? What will this mean if I walk away from this in terms of the people that will be hurt to see that this has happened when we’re supposed to be something that represents what a good marriage is supposed to look like?

What will that mean to them? So all of that played a part with me staying and feeling like, no, I need to try to do this. It was an uphill battle, and I begged God to change circumstances that just never changed.

Shattered Dreams & Seeking Spiritual SafetyI knew at some point, there’s no way this will ever get better, because there was no enlightenment.

I am in no way stating that I didn’t have a role in the harm that was played in it. I did, but it wasn’t a systematic denial of personhood. It wasn’t like I wasn’t allowing a person to be a person, that there was a continual determination to not allow a person to be heard.

Or to have an opinion in so many different areas where they stopped having the ability to weigh in or be a part of their own life. To not have the ability to weigh in on your own life is to rob you of your identity. Faith doesn’t even do that. God gives you the ability to choose even when the choice is a bad choice.

I set before you life and death. No, don’t set anything before me. Just give me the good thing. You can choose me or you can choose not to choose me. No, just make me choose you. He gives us the gift of choice.

When that’s taken from us in a relationship where you can’t choose what you want to do or to have a voice in your parenting or to make a choice about what you like or dislike, what’s important to you, your values, that’s taken away your personhood, and that’s not a holy thing.

How Spiritual Abuse Effects ChoiceAnne: In my experience, that never occurred where I felt like my personhood was taken from me or that I didn’t have a say. I always felt like I for sure had a say. What I felt like was that I couldn’t do anything. It doesn’t matter. I can’t make progress in my own life.

The things I wanted to do, I could not accomplish. I was saying them out loud. I was attempting to do it, but it was like I had an anchor that was dragging me. But then the other issue is after I separated and after I got to safety, I started seeing all of the ways that my person had actually been taken from me.

Even though I didn’t realize it at the time I was in the dark. There were so many things that I had the incorrect information or knew what was going on, I would’ve made a different decision.

Because I had been kept from that information on purpose, he had purposefully withheld it from me. That in and of itself, even if women feel like, oh yeah, I get to have a say. Yeah, I share my opinion even if they feel like that, if they don’t know what’s really going on.

They’re saying that based on a foundation of just nothingness because they think that they have a say because they’re talking, because they’re making decisions based on what they know. But because there’s this huge lie that they don’t know about that really takes away their agency, it takes away their ability to self govern.

Manipulation & Withheld Information Are Part of Spiritual Abuse It takes away that bodily autonomy that you’re talking about, and that makes me really sad. There’s victims in both situations. Ones who feel like I have no say, I have no voice, and then others who feel like they do, but they don’t realize that their foundation that their voice is coming from is based on a lie.

Because they might tell somebody, oh, yeah, I use my voice and I tell my husband all the time, Hey, I don’t want you to do that. He’s like, okay, no problem. But you didn’t know that he’s sleeping with prostitutes or you didn’t know that he’s been lying to you about the bank account.

Coach Sharon: Going back to The Living Free Workshop, I think you call it the cupcake, right? So it’s that belief that you actually have something that you’re happy to have it, that you’re rubbing on your face, but it’s not reality. It’s really not reality.

You think that it is and you’re so happy to have it, but it’s not what you think it is. It’s actually the shadow. Going back to that principle again, it’s really important for it to be authentic for that space to be authentic. The experience is different from relationship to relationship, and that’s what I like about BTR.

Though we are all at different places in terms of how we came to be where we are, the experiences may be different in terms of the day-to-day. The abuse, the control, all of those emotional, psychological behaviors that keep us stuck, that’s where the similarities lie.

Understanding Coercive Control In Spiritual Abuse I mean, for some women, it is that coercive control, whereas for me, it was very over. It was, no, you can’t have this.

At the end of the day, the harm is still the harm. Whatever they experience, the harm is still the same.

Anne: Absolutely. I think the intent is still the same, even if it looks a little bit different from one victim’s experience to another’s, the intent of the abuser is the same. It is to control the narrative. To exploit and to manipulate the situation to get what they want without you figuring out.

Wait a minute, this isn’t good for me. I think they know. I mean, I don’t know for sure, but they always try to spin it. This will be good for us. It’s not that way. It is not good for you. I think they probably know it’s not good for you, and that’s why they need to manipulate you to do it.

Because if it was good for you, they’d be like, Hey, let’s both eat a salad for lunch. Great. I’ll make the salad for you. Cool. Instead, if he’s like, I don’t want to make the salad and I know it would be good for me. I know that she’s allergic to lettuce, but I’m still going to make her make the salad and eat it because it’s good for me, even if it’s bad for her.

Coach Sharon: I remember this from Patricia Evans when she talks about how a person will root themselves in another person. They’ll kind of their reality in somebody else, and their truth becomes your truth because you cease to be a person. You become an extension of them.

The Universal Patterns In Spiritual Abuse They really know when they say, this is good for us, I’ve actually heard that said, I know what’s good for us. There is this belief that we’re now one, so my thoughts, my feelings, what I’m experiencing is your experience.

I kind of sit there like, huh, how is that possible? Really confused as to how that could be believed, but there really seemed to be a belief that you’re an extension of them. Over a period of time, you can lose the ability to be able to give voice right in your life because you’re an extension of that person. It’s amazing how that can just manifest itself in so many different weird ways

Anne: For women who don’t want to lose their faith. In the face of spiritual abuse like this, there are many women who are spiritually abused through scripture or through church. They try to get help from their pastor or their clergy, and it’s just so traumatizing that they lose their faith.

They feel good about it. Some of them feel more free than they’ve ever felt, and they feel like this feels good to me. For those people, that’s great. However, you feel better and wherever you are going, we support you here.

Spiritual Abuse: Betrayal & Loss Of FaithThis isn’t about that, but I do want to talk about women who don’t want to lose their faith, but they’re hanging on by a thread because of all the spiritual abuse. It angers me that something that could be very comforting to them.

Because I’m Christian, I believe Christ can heal them, right? Christ can come and save you and help you heal from spiritual abuse. So for the women who want to go there, but they just feel so traumatized.

Retaining Faith Despite Spiritual AbuseEveryone is welcome here. So if you’re agnostic or atheist or you’re a different faith, then Sharon and I, you are welcome. We’re just sharing from our own experience, hopefully something that we share will be helpful to you.

Women who don’t want to lose their faith, but they’re hanging on by a thread because of all the spiritual abuse. It angers me that something that could be very comforting to them and also because I’m Christian, I believe Christ can heal them.

Christ can come and save you and help you. So for the women who want to go there, but they just feel so traumatized, what are your thoughts for them?

Fresh Perspectives After Spiritual AbuseSharon: Stay curious. It’s just like going back to the scriptures again. Read the scriptures through fresh eyes. Throw out everything you thought you knew and rebuild yourself with the power inside you. That may mean that everything is ripped away so that it can be rebuilt better.

I remember God speaking to my heart, not audibly, but saying, I’m going to take everything away from you so that you can see that you had nothing, so that I can give you everything. Everything had to be stripped away. Everything that I thought I knew about God, about salvation, about my faith.

I learned so much in the hardest season of my life, discovering who God is personally—not who someone told me he was, or what I thought he was, or what I sang about, or what I learned.

No, this was what I experienced. I got to learn that brand spanking, and new. I had to be curious and I had to determine I’m not going to let go. I’m not going to give up. I’m going to hold on and allow God to find me. I couldn’t find him. I was just like, I’m lost.

I’m right here. I don’t know where you are or how to get to you.

Personal Growth Through Spiritual Challenges This is bad, but I just reached my arms up like, dad, find me. Find me. Hey, find me. He found me. We give so much to being strong. There’s so much power in being weak and I learned how to be weak and say, Hey, I need you to look for me. In that weakness, I found strength. I really found him. Be curious also, community. Have a good community.

If the community you have is not a community that is validating the truth, keep looking for a community. There’s a community out there. The community finds truth, and while some institutions have failed, many good ones exist.

I still believe in the church. I still believe in good women and men of God who carry light, love, validate, and support women. Many of them have supported me. I just had to get over the spiritual abuse.

Don’t give that up in terms of your pursuit of your faith with all that has been lost. Don’t give that up too. I mean with all that has been taken, hold on to what’s meaningful to you. You have to hold on, and my faith wasn’t up for grabs me and God was going to go through the trenches, but that was not an option for me to let go.

I knew at the point that I let go. My life was over. BTR was a resource that God used to save me. In my mind, it was God’s way of bringing truth to my life, but God brought that truth to my life. If I were X him out, then that resource would not have been made available.

The Importance Of Supportive Community He gave it to me. But you can be curious. There’s so much more love that God has for us than what is sometimes displayed in religion. He’s so loving and so compassionate in terms of his willingness to find us right where we are. All this work of trying to get to him and get perfect and get this and be enough. I can’t live without you is enough

Anne: For me, it was the same way. There was no option for me to decide that faith wasn’t for me. That was not an option for me. I remember it was probably about a nine month period where I could not feel comforted, I would pray, but I couldn’t hear him.

I would pray, but I couldn’t feel him. It felt so terrible and I just kept trying. I kept reading my scriptures and then sometimes I’d talk to clergy. They’d make me feel worse, so I’m not doing that. I believe in God. I don’t believe in you. This dude that was telling me this wackadoodle stuff that I was like, no, but that period for me was really, really hard and I wouldn’t say it ended with a vision or something.

It wasn’t like at the end of this nine months, suddenly it parted. God came down and was like, oh, I love you.

When You Can’t Feel God’s Presence I’ve been here the whole time. No, that didn’t happen either. But there was at some point, and I don’t really know when that was when I started feeling comforted again, when I started being able to feel his spirit with me. It was such a dark time and remembering that gives me, it’s just so creepy.

One of the things that I thought of as I was looking back on that time was that my feeling was that God was there. He was trying to get to me, but my abuser kept swatting him away. My abuser kept oppressing me. He kept saying things that weren’t true and frankly, I’ve felt like that recently as well. I’ve started feeling God’s comfort. Spiritual abuse is real.

Everything is going to be all right and then there’s some action on someone else’s part through no fault of my own. Then someone else’s action is like swatting the blessings away a little bit or swatting that comfort away and hit after hit after hit. At least with the abuser, he just kept knocking me down.

I started to kind of reframe it in that God is here and he is with me and he’s protecting me, but of course I’m going to feel terrible and it’s hard to feel comforted when you’re being metaphorically knocked down all the time.

Dealing With Spiritual Abuse & Its Implications On Faith Sharon: Really, it’s a war, this warfare to reclaim your identity. It’s a struggle and a war that I think that only sheroes in our community really know the hell that you have to fight to bring yourself back from. All the different layers pain that you’re now in the process of trying to figure out. How do I even get myself to a place of healing? It’s turmoil on a lot of different levels, but recapturing that essence.

It is not a journey that you undertake by yourself. There’s help for us. I don’t understand what broke or when the reality of God’s love for me came back or when I was able to pray. The spiritual abuse was so intense. That was horrific. Every prayer would take 25 minutes to get out. I kept restarting it, but for whatever evil kept trying to block me.

The Battle To Reclaim Identity After Spiritual AbuseI’m glad you kept going. I’m glad that you stayed in that fight and even now that staying in the fight. I know it’s not easy being on the front lines of this battle and you’re on the front lines doing this every day and no one knows what it takes to be on the front line.

It’s easy to click on a podcast or to listen to a workshop and appreciate it and go away. There was no sacrifice, but someone has to pay a sacrifice, a price for everything that someone else enjoys. A lot of us understand that you’ve paid a great price to be able to bring this content and I really thank you.

Anne: Thank you. It’s really interesting with The Living Free Workshop and The Message Workshop, I look at it now, it’s incredible. I almost feel like it just appeared out of thin air. I forget how hard I worked for years to get it to the point where it is. All the study I did, there was a time when the strategies in Living Free and The Message Workshop were in beta.

I had used them to deliver myself and my own children, but I wasn’t sure that I could duplicate it. I didn’t know, and so I worked with other victims to see, does this actually work? Can we apply it? And as I worked with other victims applying these strategies, they were like, holy cow, this works.

Strategies To Overcome Spiritual Abuse Helping them get to safety was also another process. It took a while. I’ve seen stuff floating around on social media and it doesn’t make me smile, but I just think, wow, do they not understand it at all?

Because it’ll say, six steps to a better marriage, take this six part workshop and you’ll be great. In Living Free and the Message Workshop, I’m like, this will be very hard. It’s not good marketing because I’m never like, oh, this is the solution to all your problems.

Just do this and you’ll be happy and everything will be good. I’m like, no, no, no. These strategies work, but employing them and experimenting with them. When I mean experimenting, I don’t mean that they’re experimental because I already did all those experiments to duplicate it. The principles absolutely do work, but when women find it and it’s new to them, then these principles are new to them.

The experiment isn’t the principles themselves. The experiment is how do I apply these in a way that works for me in a way that takes me to safety, and that’s a process.

It’s just not like any other type of marketing where it’s like, this will solve all your problems. These principles are good, true principles. They will help you. We will also help you on that path, but this journey is difficult and we will walk with you through it.

Anne’s Goal To Reach Other Women I think also comparing it to therapy, which is really interesting, or at least couple therapy or a pornography addiction recovery program.

Well, the problem there is the therapist doesn’t know that the abuser’s manipulating the therapist. No matter how much work you put in, it’s not a correct principle to be basing all of the work on.

You said the work has to be based on truth. So when it comes to pornography, addiction, recovery or couple therapy, if there is not a foundation of truth there, it’s not going to work. In The Living Free Workshop the principles are going to work no matter what.

If you take living free, you may end up going down the path where you separate, you may stay married. Regardless, you will be able to see more clearly what’s happening. You will be able to make decisions based on reality rather than this manipulated, contrived, false narrative that they’re trying to tell you in order to exploit you.

Sharon: Yes, because The Living Free and The Message Workshop identify the diagnosis, the problem, right? Therefore you get the right results. If you don’t start at the right place, then you get to the wrong destination. I think that what makes it powerful in terms of the resources that you’ve made available is you understand what the issue is.

Focusing On Real Issues The issue is spiritual abuse. If you start at the right place, not an issue of forgiveness, not addiction. If you start at the wrong place, you wind up at the wrong destination. Because you are able to rightly determine this is what the real issue is.

This is the stuff of real life that you’ve actually lived and now take in your work and put it in these different tools and forms to now help other women get to where they need to be.

The expansion of it I think is wonderful. I started with the podcast. Those podcasts saved my life. I didn’t have at the time The Living Free Workshop or The Meditation Workshop.

Then the podcast was my lifeline to greater understanding, and then as you built upon those things. I now had more tools and greater tools to equip myself and they worked. I can see it in how I remember communicating.

The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast Helped Heal Me From Spiritual AbuseAnne: Getting to safety when an abuser does not want you to is never going to be easy ever. I’ve worked with victims now for over 10 years, and all of the coaches who coach at BTR have been through it themselves and they’ve worked with hundreds of victims, so now we can see the patterns.

Even though the road is going to be difficult, the BTR podcast and The Living Free Workshop and The Message Workshop and the meditations that we have here, they help make it safer.

The sad thing is, and therapists won’t tell you this, and I don’t think that you’ll get this anywhere else. The sad thing is even though it makes it easier, it’s still going to be hard. Thank goodness it makes it easier because it’s so hard. It’s painful. It’s difficult on so many levels, legal levels, emotional levels, physical levels.

Am I going to be able to eat? Am I going to have a roof over my head? There’s just so many layers of danger. I think people just don’t want people to know either that or alternatively they want to say something like, well, it’s just too emotionally dangerous or It’s going to be too hard, so don’t get to safety.

Just give up. For women who are like, wow, Ann, this isn’t very motivating. You’re telling me it’s going to be so hard. We want to say to them it’s worth it, but what would you say to them. Sharon women who were thinking, oh, wait. It’s going to be really hard. Then maybe I don’t want to do this.

Difficulty In Achieving Emotional Safety After Leaving Abuse Sharon: Yeah. I would say life is hard. The life that I lived was a hard life. It was hard. I mean, life doesn’t get easier. We get stronger and circumstances of abuse, when there’s abuse, when there’s harm, it doesn’t go away.

You delay it, and I wasted a lot of time trying to delay what ultimately the direction I had to go in anyway. I lost so much waiting for something to happen that was never going to happen. For something to come, that never came from waiting for a deliverance that was quite frankly just not going to happen.

I was going to say, hold on. It did happen. You were delivered. This is the truth. Your wife is for you. She’s trying to assist you. She sees something you don’t see.

There are blind spots that you need to pay attention to. I thought that there was going to be some kind of divine intervention that was going to make all that clear so that the road ahead there could be unity. So I waited for that, not realizing that there’s choice, that it comes down to what you choose to believe in, what you choose to deal with, and I waited and I wasted.

The Personal Cost Of Waiting for Someone To Save YouI wouldn’t necessarily say wasted because there were lessons that I learned and things that came out of that in terms of experiences with my kids and so forth. The trauma that was suffered as a result of me waiting is something that scarred me deeply. I can’t get those years back.

I can’t get that time back in terms of my life, and it would’ve been better for me to just embrace the hard. Life comes with hardship, but we can do hard things. I say that in group, you can do hard things. Life requires for us to do things that are hard, but we can still move forward.

Anne: It reminds me of the Israelites, right? They prayed for deliverance and Moses came and Pharaoh was like, yeah, you can go in our time. We can go at any time the laws of our country, the laws of our society, everyone is like, yeah, you can go.

I guess is what I’m saying. We don’t have to wait for Pharaoh to give us permission, but at that point, the Israelites had to pick up their stuff. They had to get their bags and all their animals or whatever they needed, and they had to stand up and walk out of there, and same thing when it came to the Red Sea.

Deliverance From Spiritual AbuseThey get backed up against the Red Sea, Moses parts, the Red Sea, and then what do they have to do? They have to walk through it. There was no point in this deliverance, and I love the story of Moses. I went to Jerusalem and studied deliverance. I saw with my own eyes the landscape and stood on Mount Nebo and looked down at the promised Land and it helped me build living free.

That’s where I got the strategies I used to deliver myself and my own children from abuse. It really just struck me that there is no point in that story of deliverance, not one where God picks them up off the ground and physically moves them.

Every single time they have to leave Pharaoh’s land and they have to cross the Red Sea, and then they have to wander around in the wilderness. Then they wait at Mount Nebo and then they have to actually go down into the promised land.

They have to walk down there. There’s no part in that story where they don’t have to work, where they don’t have to move, and I know a lot of women are praying for a lot of different things. One of the most common ones, and I’m going to say it out loud here and it’s okay, everyone can take a gasp that I said out loud.

Accepting The Hardship Of New Beginnings I know so many of us think can he just get hit by a bus? Let’s get divine intervention to stop him? It is very rare that they get hit by buses. If ever in the story of deliverance with the Israelites, when they’re at the Red Sea. They start going through and that pillar is stopping Pharaoh’s army from going through. Then at a certain point the water does fall on them and kill them, so I guess in that story, they are killed by the Red Sea.

However, those Israelites are still wandering around in the wilderness. They have nothing to eat. They have to rely on manna, so it’s not like that solved all of their problems. There was not just one thing that happened that solved all the problems.

Sharon: Yes, it’s very similar to the Israelites coming out of Egypt in terms of the deliverance story, especially when you think about how they wanted to go back.

It’s just like sometimes coming out of the cave is painful. The way of life that you had is just like this was better than that because it’s a new life and going into something new. There’s going to be growing pains with anything new, with anything new.

Trusting God In The Journey To Heal From Spiritual AbuseIt’s hard in the beginning, but then you adjust to the hard. Just like everything when you’re first learning how to navigate it is difficult, and we shy away from hard, and the Israelites did too. They thought it was going to be easy and it’s nasty food and this is not familiar to us. We didn’t like this. We want to go back to Egypt.

Yet this was a better life for them, but they were not able to see it. Then because they weren’t able to see it and move forward. They stayed stagnant for a long time wandering in a place that God never wanted them because they refused to live in reality, this is where you are.

This is the circumstance right now. Trust me, trust me and move forward, and that can be a difficult place to be. I see that in group a lot. When women get this truth, they listen to podcasts, they come to group and it’s like, now what am I supposed to do? I don’t have the money, I don’t have a house.

I don’t know how to do this, I don’t have any answers, and I was there, but moving forward is sometimes moving forward with no answers. It’s trusting and believing the same God that gave you revelation, that D-Day that sometimes we don’t know or don’t need. You trust that the same God who brought you here will lead you to your promised land, and that act of faith, as you said, is hard.

What Do To If You Want To Heal From Spiritual AbuseIt sounds good on paper, I trust you, sounds good, but living this out, this is a whole nother type of situation. It’s not an easy thing

Anne: At BTR because we live in reality, we will be with you. We will hold your hand the entire time. We have resources that will bring you light and truth and correct principles and strategies. Based on those principles that will help you get to safety as quickly as humanly possible and make it easier than it would be without them, but it’s still going to be a hard road.

We can hold all of those truths at the same time because we know there aren’t any quick fixes. It worries me when people think, just get divorced and then your abuse problems go away.

They don’t realize that this is a life long-term problem that will continue post-divorce. Not to say you shouldn’t get divorced, but divorce does not solve your abuse problem. So you have to be strategic as you start making boundaries about what you decide because it’s going to be complex no matter what.

The Journey To Heal From Spiritual abuseSharon: Yeah. Well, Ann, can I ask you one question? What would you say in terms of being the author of all things BTR, where would you say it would be good for women to start in terms of their journey?

I know there were so many different roads into our community. Where do you feel like it would be a good place for women to start? Would it be with the workshops or the podcast or group or sessions? Can you just speak to that?

Anne: That’s an interesting question because everyone’s path is so different. The paths are all pointing towards safety. Women have listened to the podcast for years without using any of our services, and the podcast itself has gotten them where they needed to go.

They felt good and they felt supported in real life. They met a good friend that lived down their street who helped them through it. There are people who never heard the podcast, who came to Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group.

There are women who think, I don’t think I’m being abused. I don’t think this is for me. This seems kind of too extreme, and then a year later they think, oh, this is abuse.

Individual Paths To Emotional SafetyThey’ll be like, this is the only place we’ll get what I’m going through. Some women start learning about abuse and listening to it, and they realize, I think it might be abuse. Now that I hear what abuse is, that isn’t what I’m experiencing.

I mean, that’s also a possibility. If someone’s listening right now and they’re like, where should I start? This seems so complicated. Listening to the podcast is a great start. BTR Group Sessions are a really good place because you can start listening to other people’s stories.

I’m a super introvert, so groups make me a little bit nervous, but I did go to group at the beginning of my journey and it helped me to hear other people and see myself in that and be like, oh, okay. This is what’s happening.

Living Free is also a really good place to start because it gives very foundational principles for where your journey is going to take you and also very practical things that you can do like now every day to get to safety. You can implement them immediately, and it gives really clear visuals for how to do that.

I think it’s the most clear thing in terms of what to do, so if you’re listening and you’re thinking, what do I do? I just need somebody to tell me what to do. If you’re thinking that, I would say The Living Free Workshop is the right place to go.

BTR Can Help You Heal From Spiritual AbuseIf you’re thinking, I know I’m being abused, I need support: BTR group. If you’re thinking, is this abuse? I’m not sure, then the podcast is a great place or even BTR Group Sessions is a great place to start figuring that out. I wish I could just say, everyone do this thing first.

That would be really cool, but everybody’s different and everybody comes in with a different set of expectations or a different desire about what they want to do. Some people come to BTR and they’re already divorced

They’re looking for safety tools. My main concern is the women who don’t know they’re being abused on the top of my mind with everything that we do here at BTR, I’m always thinking about them.

How can I help a woman who is being spiritually abused, who’s trying to read scripture, who is praying to figure out how to make my marriage better? She doesn’t know it’s abuse. How can I find her? She’s at the top of my mind because once people have access to our resources will help them through that process.

I’m really happy that we have the tools for them, but every day I wake up and I think there’s somebody out there that doesn’t know there’s someone out there who thinks it’s her fault. There’s someone out there who thinks that she’s just ugly and worthless and that’s why her husband doesn’t love her, and that is not true.

Healing From Spiritual Abuse Takes Community SupportIf that’s you, you are beautiful. You are powerful, and you are so important. You’re important to God. You’re important to me, and I don’t want you to be blaming yourself or to feel bad for absolutely no reason, and for some ridiculous reason.

Everyone you’re going to for help, therapist, clergy, whatever, if they’re telling you it’s your fault because everyone is just in this soup of abuse. I hope to be a light to you, I want to find you. Whether you use our services or not, I don’t care.

I just want you to know that I care and I believe God cares. So if you’re listening and you feel the same way that I do, please share our information with people. Please get the word out about the podcast because that’s it. So when you ask that, I’m like, I don’t know how they’re going to utilize our services.

I’m grateful that they’re all available to people, but my main concern is, can I get to you? How can I find you in your hour of need? Especially women who are praying for it, and I hear stories all the time of women who are praying and they’ve been praying for years.

Then one day they do an internet search or they find something on social media, and that’s how they get to us. I’m so grateful they found us, whether a friend shared something or they typed in a search and an article popped up. I thank God they got here.

Coach Sharon Is Here To Support YouSharon: Yeah, I am too. I’m glad that we have so many different points of entries and for all the work that you do to make sure that we’re loved so well. Thank you so much, Anne. It was such a pleasure being here and talking with you today.

Anne: Thank you, coach Sharon, and thank you for being online available to support women as they’re going through this. Every day. You do several group sessions and you’re available for individual sessions to help women. Thank you.

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Emotional abuse is abuse. Period. You can find safety and peace again after emotional abuse - learn more here.

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Divorcing a narcissist is a nightmare. Anne Blythe, M.Ed. continues her heartfelt conversation with June from the BTR Community one year after she shared the first part of her story. Here the next chapter of her journey divorcing a narcissist.

If you need support while experiencing narcissistic abuse, learn about BTR Group Sessions here.

This episode is Part Two of Anne’s interview with June:

He Blamed Me for the Emotional Abuse – June’s Story Part 1

Divorcing A Narcissist – June’s Story Part 2 (THIS EPISODE)

TRANSCRIPT:June’s One-Year Follow-Up: Divorcing A Narcissist Anne: I checked in with June one year later to see how she was doing. This interview happened one year after the episode you heard last week, but still a long time ago. You’ll hear my today voice popping in from time to time talking about The Living Free Workshop and Message Workshops that I developed years after this time. I actually use these strategies and tools to completely deliver me and my kids from abuse without going to court.

If you didn’t hear the beginning of June’s story last week, listen to that first. It’s called He Blamed Me for the Emotional Abuse June story part one. Then come back and listen to this interview, which we did one year later. Welcome June. It’s been a year since we spoke. How are things going for you one year later?

June: We left off last time going through the court process of the custody issues and the divorce proceedings. We have since concluded at least custody for now because my husband appealed the custody from the family court and he appealed it to the circuit court, which in my state is the next higher court. It took us six to nine months to get into the circuit court to have that case heard.

That was an eye opening experience for me. I feel like we’ve had all of these issues, divorcing a narcissist is horrible. All of this bad behavior, all of this conflict between us and it really hasn’t been between us. It’s been him finding the gray areas in the order and exploiting those in ways that might be small and minor, but when you add them all up, it takes its toll.

Experiences With Her Ex’s Divorce DemandsThere shouldn’t be any changes or at least any big changes and get this part over with and we can move on. In the circuit court it was just a different experience. The judge had a lot less patience. The judge labeled the conflict as marital fighting and just conflict between my husband and I rather than abuse. That is very, very problematic. I brought two witnesses.

The judge really didn’t want to hear from them, so he didn’t hear from them at all, which was a problem. I can say that I’m happy with the outcome. For the most part, the custody didn’t change too much. A lot more freedom, discretion and leeway is in the order. In The BTR Community that translates to a lack of boundaries in our new order. I know that is going to be a problem.

It already has been a problem. That’s what I’m dealing with right now. Currently it is just an order for custody. I’m still the primary parent. I have the kids 75% of the time, which is great. I feel that my influence on the kids and having a safe and stable home environment for them and a connected parenting relationship with them is super important.

When they’re going through this, their dad does get a certain amount of days each month and it’s when he wants to see them. He can get a certain amount of days. That creates a bit of a problem.

Husband’s Narcissistic BehaviorAnne: We’re personal friends, so we talk a lot about this. One of the things that surprises me, and I’d like to know how you feel about it, is that so many of the things that your soon to be ex does are just not smart. He doesn’t seem smart at all. He just seems narcissistic, clueless and way more confident in his own abilities than he actually is.

At the same time, he’s able to exploit all these little areas of the law and he actually is really smart at the same time. He is a doctor, he’s not a dummy. How do you reconcile this crazy, nonsensical, irrational behavior and all of the bad choices that he makes with this ability to exploit the law in a way that works for him? This is a huge part of divorcing a narcissist. He’s sort of like this evil genius kind of thing. How do you feel about that?

June: I definitely feel that is such an accurate representation of reality of what is going on. There are times that I feel his chaos and disorganization is really, really to his detriment. Obviously it is to the detriment of the kids. It affects them. It’s chaotic. He can’t show up for appointments on time, he can’t get the kids to where they need to be on time. He won’t return things that they need, important things.

For instance, when has the kids on vacation, the court order says that the kids call me on the middle day at a certain time. Up to this date, I have never received that phone call at a certain time.

Concerns Children’s Safety He does not let me talk to them. Honestly, as a mother, as a person who he assaulted, as a person that is very well aware of the effects of trauma, abuse, narcissism and how those things all go together and create really the perfect storm. That could be disastrous.

I worry about my kids during those times, I worry that he’s snapped, they are not okay and they’re not safe. I almost feel like it’s happened so much at this point it’s purposeful. He must know that I worry and that’s why he does it, the control. He’s definitely spiraling.

I’ve had several people in the community come and tell me that they have seen problematic behavior from him. People tell me that they have heard things that have happened at his previous workplace. I’ve had two people tell me that they’ve heard that he assaulted a female in his previous workplace. He has since lost his job because he missed several days of work, missed shifts and didn’t show up on time.

There were several other people that complained of his treatment of patients, how he was medically treating them. Some of that is also really an indication of his unhealthiness

Anne: Because with a lot of abusive men, they pick and choose. They’re very together at their job at church, they look really good. At home is when they lose their temper, they don’t lose it anywhere else. It’s a display of control at home. You’re saying his dysfunction is starting to leak out into his public persona?

Narcissistic Dysfunction June: Yes, the dysfunction definitely is. Now that is something different than the anger and abuse. I even feel like sometimes he uses the dysfunction as a ploy to get people to feel sorry for him. He’s this broken down dad that just wants his kids so much and he’s just floundering without them

Anne: He’s a single dad and it’s so hard for him because he is a victim.

June: Yes, and I feel like that’s very much what’s going on now. On dating sites, for example, He’s on all the dating sites. He clearly says, I’m a single dad. Here’s a bunch of pictures of my kids, and by the way, I have my kids 50/50. Somehow that’s supposed to mean that he is a better dad or people can trust him more,

Anne: But that’s a lie. He doesn’t have them 50/50.

June: That is a lie. He does not have them 50/50.

Anne: Mine says the same thing. He’s got these pictures of him as a dad and he’s also got this Christian for life, I love Jesus stuff going on on his dating profiles. Okay, but he doesn’t obey the commandments, whatever. I think that’s really interesting because if he did start dating someone, they would soon see that he didn’t have them 50/50. He’s really not setting himself up for a good relationship.

June: Exactly right. I think that a lot of these guys see mechanisms that can give them instant trust. Yes, being a Christian is one thing that can give them instant trust. Being a single dad is one thing that can give them instant trust with whoever their next person will be.

Financial Revelations In Divorcing A NarcissistAnother thing that I found very interesting in court this past time is that we were going over support of course, because that’s all wrapped up in custody. He testified that his church, my church, has been paying for his mortgage and car payment and that is almost $2,000 a month. This person is a doctor. He makes $24,000 a month, well over $300,000 a year.

He said the church paid for his expenses because he is so broke. That he cannot even pay for these things. In preparation my lawyer subpoenaed all of his bank records, all of his pay stubs, everything like that, all of the financials. The intern went through it and categorized things by item. It turns out that he has spent thousands of dollars on liquor, hundreds of dollars on pornography.

Anne: When we say liquor, I just want the audience to know that June’s soon to be ex and June are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Alcohol is something they do not do. His clergy is paying his house payment while this man is going out and buying alcohol, which is really, really a big deal.

June: And he had contributed tens of thousands of dollars into his own retirement during this time that the church was paying for his expenses

Anne: Acting like, oh, I’m going through so much help me. Right?

Financial Status Of Narcissistic HusbandJune: And my ex-wife took all of my money. Really anyone that has gone through the courts would know. It’s a straight calculation. After this, I became very, very disturbed. I know the process, a little bit of receiving church welfare. My dad was a bishop. He had to help people meet their urgent and emergent needs on occasion. I began to really think, I need to know the story of this.

I need to know how far this went. The bishop was the same bishop that was spiritually abusive to me. This bishop had very, very clearly taken aside. Financially he had even taken a side in this divorce where he chose to support my husband and not me. He is paying these expenses, thousands of dollars a month for these things.

He has really enabled him to continue legal abuse and also continue really unhealthy behaviors and to pay for those.

Anne: If he had been paying you the $2,000 a month, you could have purchased groceries. I mean it’s crazy. Sorry, just for our listeners, steam and fire is coming out of my ears right now.

June: Really if he had just paid his own mortgage and his own car payment, then maybe he would not have as much money to pay his lawyer. Then we could move on and get everything wrapped up and not be in constant legal battle

Anne: And not have to go to the next higher court up and all that business.

Seeking Support For Divorcing A Narcissist June: Exactly. I became very alarmed, like I said, and as soon as court was over, I began my research. In my research, I reached out to the congregation that he currently attends. The leader of it, a bishop, by this point the previous bishop had been released from that position. A new bishop was put in

Anne: For listeners who are not familiar, all of the clergy in the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are volunteers. Someone is asked or called to be the leader of the congregation for a period of usually around three to five years. Then a new volunteer is called and it just rotates around. You’re saying that the old bishop was released and a new volunteer bishop was called?

June: Exactly. I felt safe reaching out to this new bishop because he was not the same one that I spoke about on the earlier podcasts who was very spiritually abusive. To this new bishop and to the leader above him, which is a stake president, and to the area authority, the person above him just to get some answers.

I had emailed a couple times with no response and explained the situation in emails. I just wasn’t getting any response. And so I just kept kind of adding more people to these emails, trying to get some sort of answers on how long has this been going on? The thing that really concerned me is that I didn’t verity anything. Because we are married, I am still the property owner on things that the church paid.

Deciding To Meet With New ClergyI’m still on the loan for the house. I’m still on the loan for the car that is still legally my property and nothing was verified with me. In that process I learned mine and my children’s records had been transferred back to that congregation.

Anne: When June says records, I am so sorry for people who are like, we don’t want to know the workings of your church. The it will help understand the context of why this is such a big deal. That’s why we’re explaining it. The congregations are set up in geographical areas, you do not choose what congregation you go to. It’s called a ward, each congregation has a boundary to it.

You can have your records transferred in or out depending on your situation. What she is saying is that she had her records transferred out with the impending divorce and that the records were back with that congregation where her soon to be ex is going. Where your records are is where you attend church, so you find out that your records are in his congregation.

June: Upon finding that out, I just set up a meeting with the bishop because I figure,

Anne: Oh, he’s my bishop, right? This is my congregation. Yeah, he’s my bishop now.

June: Yes. I set up a meeting, I went and talked to him. I brought up the misuse and misappropriation of fast offerings, which are tithes in a way. It’s like a collection plate in another church or another religion. I brought this up to the bishop.

Meeting With Clergy About Divorcing A NarcissistI told him I have documentation of the discretionary spending that the church would not approve of. Why is a man that is making $300,000 a year receiving this assistance when I know for a fact that we have people living in dire poverty in the congregation. We met for about an hour. The bishop listened to me.

He stated that he doesn’t know when this started, but that he did make a couple of payments for my husband. He did not verify any of this because he felt like there was a need and he just took him at face value. I also talked to him about the history and the abuse, the betrayal, the trauma, the assault, all of those things. And he was very gracious to listen and we had a very, very good discussion.

I felt very, very hopeful after meeting with him. We talked about how to deal with some of these behaviors of my husband and if this bishop had any interest in doing that because it was never dealt with.

Anne: You mean like a church court or holding boundaries or some things like that?

June: Yes, but now that I’m in the ward and my children’s records are in the ward, how to navigate that situation,

Anne: Especially if you have a protective order.

June: I did., yes. He said he really didn’t know anything about the situation or anything like that. He said that he was more interested in current things that were happening, current abuse. So I described some situations and post-separation abuse, post-divorce abuse is a lot harder to really identify. It can just look like someone just being a jerk to the other parent. Describing what it’s like while divorcing a narcissist is difficult.

Protective Orders & Church Policies While Divorcing A NarcissistI did describe situations of my husband swearing at me at drop off in exchange, purposely keeping the kids from talking to me. Situations that I would say are very much in this gray area that one or two things by themselves don’t really do anything. I said, I’ve been living this for over two years and I can tell you it’s just repeated abuse. It’s just in a different form. It was very interesting to hear his take on that.

I asked him what kind of training he received for dealing with abuse and trauma. He said that he has the spirit and that’s the training.

Anne: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Because narcissists seem like they’re telling the truth and so it unquote feels right. Yes.

June: I tried to gently push back on that a little, and I just said, okay, but you realize that when you gave him this money, you would’ve had that same discernment, the spirit and it didn’t work right. You understand that, and I could see the wheels were turning. I could see that he was thinking about that. I also took in the policy on abuse.

The church has come out with a policy, I think it was in March of 2018, and it’s very, very clear. There’s a very clear directive that abuse is not to be tolerated. That people who come reporting abuse in any form should be believed and that false accusations are just not the norm. In fact, they are very, very rare. And so I really came with that policy in hand

Conversations About Repentance & Church’s RoleAnne: Before you go on, the false accusations are usually from the abuser, right? The abuser is usually saying, I was abused.

June: I could refer to it at different points in our conversation. I said, now that I’m reporting this, is it your intention to look into this and to handle it in a way that is conducive with the church’s own policy? Again, I felt like he probably had good intentions, but he said, well, yes, I’ll bring him in here and I’ll talk to him. Every story has two sides.

Anne: The abuser is never going to be like, oh yeah, I was the abuser. And then he is going to say, okay, then let’s go forward with the policy. If the abuser goes in and says, no, that’s not what happened. She’s the abuser. Then they’re just left confused and they’re like, well, I don’t know what to do and I don’t know what this policy means now,

June: And this is where I feel like the behaviors of my husband and the acting really come into play.

Anne: You mean his hypocritical slash, I’m the victim slash, I’m a good guy stuff.

June: Yes. I described this actually for the bishop, I said, I was married to this person for over a decade. This always goes the same way. I said, he will come in here and he will say, I’m so sorry, I just feel so horrible and I’m just damaged. I said, then he will start crying, and my husband is a very big guy. To see a grown man cry is shocking. Because it is so shocking, we think, oh my gosh, this is so shocking.

Telling Clergy About Husband’s Narcissism He must be in complete and utter turmoil. Then because we’re distracted in our thinking and not centering on the subject matter of what we wanted to talk to him about, it kind of gets swept under the rug, and that’s that. I said, I’ve seen him do this so many times

Anne (00:21:23): He also starts blaming you and telling him how abusive you were and all the bad things you did, but if you haven’t listened, she ended up with a night in jail. So I’m sure then he pulls that out. She went to jail.

June (00:21:35): That I kidnapped the kids. Remember the arrest has now been expunged, and so legally I do not have to say that I have been arrested anymore, but usually to build my credibility, I’m very upfront with that. There’s not a lot of shame there for me at all anymore. So I really did tell the bishop that I was very concerned because not only does he come in here and act like this, but he’s also looking like it.

He looks disheveled and remember people are telling me he doesn’t look so good. I said, everything that you’re seeing and that you’re hearing will be telling you that, oh yeah, maybe he does have a plausible story. Maybe this is the truth. That is what I think is so harmful about this situation in particular, is that he is using his own unhealthiness as a means to be able to prove his story.

Advising Clergy To Ask Victim About RepentanceThat he is so despondent and just in despair at what has happened when that is not the truth. I was very clear also, I told the bishop, I will be the first person to know of true repentance by my husband. I will be the first person to see it, I will be able to see and clearly be able to identify change behavior.

Anne: If you want to know if someone’s repented, ask the victim.

June: Yes. I got into a really important discussion with him about that, and I’m so glad that I did because I asked him, how do you assess for repentance? How do you assess change in behavior? Do you ask the victim? Do you ask the person that it was directed to? He said, well, yeah, of course we would.

Anne: But you’re like, but they never have have with me.

June: Exactly.

Anne: From all the women in our community. I can’t remember one of them being asked when they’re still married and they’re both in the same congregation. If they’re in a separate congregation, they don’t call the victim.

June: Exactly. I had a really important discussion with him about that. I also said that at one point in the marriage with a previous bishop, this was a completely different bishop that my husband had admitted to infidelity and that we had gone to the bishop. We were trying to work through it. This was sort of at the codependent phase of my process

Anne: When you were doing the codependent stuff.

June: I was doing the codependent thing with my husband and really trying to connect, thinking the more that we could connect, the less that he would have these behaviors.

Anger & Its Legitimacy In Divorcing A NarcissistAnne: The more you attach to your abuser, the less he would abuse you during that stage.

June: We did go to the bishop several years ago, and this bishop actually did call him to a church disciplinary council, and it was very small. It was just talking to a few of the leaders about the nature of the harm that was done. At the time this bishop said, I would invite you to come, but I feel that you’re just too upset and too angry, and there is no place for that there.

Anne: What? There’s no place for the victim to tell her experience.

June: Yes, there’s no place for your anger within the council because it’s a council of love and we want to be able to feel the spirit.

Anne: Oh, you don’t have any right to be angry and your anger is unjustified basically. This is so crazy.

June: I didn’t end up going at all. Like I said, this was several years ago. I didn’t end up going. I relied solely on my husband to tell me what the outcome of that particular event was. He said that the brethren had prayed about it and everyone had the spiritual experience that he was changed and that there was to repentance. I still kind of wonder what actually happened.

Anne: Yeah, you don’t know what went down.

June: I don’t know. I told my current bishop that I felt like that was harmful. The more that I’ve proceeded and progressed in my own healing, the more that I have recognized anger is such a healthy thing.

Understanding Divorcing A Narcissist IssuesAnne: Is totally normal. How else would you be?

June: Exactly. It’s completely normal. And I said it even kept me safe. It kept me safe from being with this person intimately, emotionally, physically, spiritually. It kept me safe at that time, and that is the only thing that kept me safe.

Anne: Yeah, because you sure weren’t doing it.

June: Exactly. Like I said, I didn’t realize it at the time because I was in this codependent model of therapy.

Anne: We’ve all been there.

June: I told this current bishop that the anger that I was labeled with and that being harmful was really, really nothing compared to the harm that I had suffered. In my marital vows being betrayed and in putting my unborn child at risk. I was 37 weeks pregnant at the time that my husband was intimate with another person, all of these lies, deceptions, betrayals and, of course, I would be angry.

Of course, I would be so upset and distraught and everything else. We had another discussion about legitimate anger and I said, I don’t see anger as a bad emotion. No emotion is bad. They just have different purposes and different meanings.

Anne: Well, and it also depends on what caused it. If your abusive perceptions of the woman who should make the meal are causing your anger. Then she doesn’t make the meal and that’s why you’re getting mad. The abusive perceptions are what’s causing the anger rather than healthy perceptions.

I think it also depends on if your perceptions are coming from a healthy place or if your perceptions are coming from an entitled, objectification, power, control, and manipulation place too.

Discussion Of Legitimacy Of Anger In DivorceJune: If they come from that place, that means that is abuse. I would say the abuser who’s angry because he’s entitled to a hot meal and the wife didn’t get it together that day and he flies off the handle, that’s abuse. That is past the point of anger into abuse.

Anne: For people who don’t know about abuse, they think, well, they’re both angry. They don’t recognize the difference between the two. Yeah,

June: Exactly. We had another really important discussion of that mechanism of abuse and violence really, and betrayal trauma. I took the time to educate him a little bit on betrayal, trauma on how women feel in this situation and how devastating it is and how expendable if felt.

When the betrayals reached a point for me that my boundary was divorce and separation. Not to mention I was unsafe, I was assaulted and that was just a boundary for me that I had to do what I did. I tried to explain that to him, I felt like it was eye opening. I felt like it was a good conversation.

Anne: It was eye opening for you or him?

June: I felt like it was eye opening for him. I had this conversation about a week ago. It’s difficult to describe what it’s like divorcing a narcissist

Anne: It’s been a week, but my guess is that over time he’ll ponder it and he’ll either move closer to the truth and he’ll get softer toward you and more protective of you, and he’ll set more boundaries around him. Or he’ll get farther away from the truth, start treating you worse and start treating the abuser better. It’s going to go one way or the other.

Church’s Financial Assistance PoliciesThe more he ponders it, he’s either going to start making excuses for the falsities and dig himself deeper that way, or he’s going to get better. Only time will tell.

June: Exactly. He did say that it’s very clear that he needs to speak with my husband, and he said it’s clear that he does not feel like giving him any more assistance would be appropriate without verifying and looking at his financials closer. It’s hard because in our particular religion, we have these donations set up for the needs of people, and I was always very happy to tithe and to give extra to help meet these needs.

I was under the impression that there was kind of a requirement for this to be temporary, to help people in emergency situations, you get employment somewhere else, take a second job or something like that.

Anne: Or in long-term situations with a widow for example, you would be a good candidate for a long-term situation. You’re a single mom of four. I would be a good candidate. Widows would be good candidates. It’s not that it’s always going to be short-term. There are going to be cases where it’s appropriate to have long-term help, but he’s not one of those guys.

He’s not disabled, he’s not a widow, he’s not mentally or physically disabled except for with his narcissism. He’s a doctor.

Most Painful Time Of Divorcing A Narcissist June: Exactly. Conversely, when you compare this to the time in our separation that I was so destitute because he had paid nothing in support for almost five months. I had gone to the bishop and asked for a couple of food orders, which the church has a really great welfare program for food where they deliver food to people in local congregations.

I had asked for a couple of orders until wage garnishment could go through, and the Bishop gave me a couple of orders for me and the kids. Then all of a sudden cut me off completely and said, you don’t need this anymore. I’m not giving it to you anymore. I still hadn’t received any child support checks. I still hadn’t received any sort of support. The despair that I felt at that time when that happened is still so painful.

It is still one of the most painful feelings that I could describe. I didn’t survive because the church helped me. I survived in spite of them not helping me. That has hurt me for years.

Anne: When they’re simultaneously helping your abuser.

June: Yes.

Anne: Obviously not cutting him off.

June: No, I tried to blow the whistle in my local congregation. At the same time I was doing this, I had also called church headquarters, got the name of someone that I could speak to in the auditing department, and I shared my story with them. They were horrified about my story.

Anne: That’s great news.

Don’t Know Ultimate Result Of Speaking Up June: It is great news. They did say that they’ve had problems in this area before that they would see about investigating it. It seems like I really kept running into these brick walls. And on top of that, it was everyone that I spoke to or had the chance to speak with, were men. They had never been in this situation.

Anne: I want to tell a story here because you don’t know what the fruits of this will be. When I was a teacher, there was something that went down that was not right. I wrote the superintendent. I just wrote a really short email and said, Hey, this is going down. It’s not cool. I didn’t hear anything for probably six months.

Then all of a sudden this superintendent showed up and had a meeting at our school with all of the teachers, and I was the facilitator of that meeting. I was the one who had brought it up in the first place. I had all of the teachers testify of what had happened. A couple of people resigned because of the email and because of what I did. I didn’t really see it immediately.

A lot of women call somebody, they write somebody, they go to a meeting, they speak up and the person just looks at ’em weird and they’re like, that didn’t go well.

You don’t know what the long-term effects of that will be. It might not be that someone resigns or that someone gets fired. It might not be that big, who knows? I don’t want this glazed over look that we get from male leadership, clergy, pastors, therapists, whoever it is to stop us from speaking unless we go in and have these meetings.

Returning To Church As A Divorcing WomanEven though my guess is you were pretty terrified after all of the abuse that you’ve been through with clergy. I’m so proud of you and I want to encourage women. Our safety’s on the line, our emotional safety, our reputation. People call us crazy. People call us man haters. We need to keep speaking up. We will never know the extent of influence that we have.

June: More than ever, I feel so strong about that. It is easy to get discouraged. It is very easy to say, well, they listened to me. They didn’t take action right away. That just means that they’re never going to,

Anne: I don’t think that’s true. If enough of us went in and spoke, they would take action eventually. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year. But if every woman who has been through this in every church or in every paradigm or with every single therapist spoke up, we could change the world.

June: Yes. So after this all happened, I also made the decision to just start attending this congregation and it kind of came out of the blue today. I had someone invite me and I trusted this person and sat by her and I went, and I could not have had a more positive experience when I went to church today.

Anne: For our listeners. She has been avoiding church.

June: For years, for over two years..

Anne: In our church, if you don’t go, it’s sort of like you’re the guilty one. See, she’s the problem because she’s not coming to church. Victims are labeled with that all the time.

Positive Experience With Church MembersJune: Since this happened, I’ve definitely dealt with my share of flying monkeys in the congregation, and that’s a term where people do the bidding and the dirty work of the narcissists by spreading rumors and lies and gossip. Let me tell you, all those people were there. I have done a lot of work. I’ve gone to the BTR groups, I’ve done guided meditation and I have done all of this work on healing.

I’ve read books today. I can say that I went there and I was really strong and felt for the most part, unaffected emotionally. I felt that my boundaries were my boundaries and that those people and what they say or what they think really didn’t have to affect me. And I do not for one second want to make it seem that we have a choice all the time for these things not to affect us.

I am saying that healing takes time and that healing can happen. You can get to a place where it will be okay. It will be okay for you. Actually, my husband’s affair partner was also in the ward.

Anne: Also your really good friend before he had an affair with her.

June: Yes. My really good friend who was also in the ward, it was her mother who was teaching one of the lessons today. I was like, oh my goodness, what are the chances? But it was a wonderful lesson. It was on mental health challenges and the stigmatization that doesn’t need to happen. She taught the lesson. It was fantastic. I added some things because I work in the area of mental health.

Verified Lies & Affair While Divorcing A NarcissistWe got to talking and she didn’t know who I was and she wanted to know who I was. In the parking lot afterwards, I told her who I was.

Anne: She’s probably heard horrific stories about you. She just didn’t know you were the one that she had heard these horrific stories about.

June: Yes. I just said to her, I believe that your daughter and my husband had an affair. I said, I don’t want you to feel any way about it. I’m just telling you that I’m the wife. She said that she was very aware that they had a relationship and she didn’t know that he was still married. We kind of became friends and talked about our similar career interests.

There is no way I could have had a conversation like that two years ago when this was fresh. There is no possible way. Today I had a conversation. It was a very difficult conversation with someone that I would’ve never dreamed I could have a conversation with before. It’s a lot like the conversation that I had with the bishop.

I would’ve never dreamed I could have such an impactful and pleasant and peaceful conversation while saying exactly what I needed to say.

Anne: This is also a testament to being away from your abuser for years, that you’re talking about it. You didn’t have as many boundaries. The manipulation and fog that they can create is really dark. The longer you set the boundaries for safety, emotional, physical, psychological, sexual safety. The longer you set those, not only do you get more and more out of the fog, so do other people.

Setting Boundaries For Narcissistic Behaviors & ResultsJune: Yes. And I feel that that has really been also a roadmap to trying to co-parent with a narcissist. We are still having major issues, major issues and issues where the kids’ safety has even been a concern. Issues of abusive things going on.

The more that I am in these situations and the more that I just do not react and just set those boundaries, set the boundaries for safety, the more that I find it not affecting me as much. Now it’s hard because I do see some of this affecting the children, and that is a big challenge. It breaks my heart.

They will use the children to hurt you when they can’t hurt you directly anymore. I feel that that is what is happening, that is horrifying. It’s horrifying.

Anne: It is. Yeah. Well, and the boundaries you have to set are really rough too. For example, I set a boundary that my children go out in the clothes that they came in with. The reason I set that boundary is because he was stealing my clothes. I would send them out in nice clothes and he would send them back in hand me down rags from his family.

I asked repeatedly, please send them back in the clothes I sent them out with. And he said, it’s impossible. He was like, well, you wash their clothes. He just did all these things. Finally, I just said, okay, I’ll send them back in the clothes you send them in. I saved some of his clothes from when they came back in their rags. One day I sent them out in his rags, and we’ve been doing that ever since.

Discussing Boundaries While Divorcing A NarcissistIt breaks my heart. My children do not want to put those rags on, and I don’t want to send them out of the house like that, but that is the boundary. I said, you guys, I’m so sorry. Your dad’s choices hurt everyone. They hurt me. They hurt you. I am sorry that you don’t have snow boots when you go to his house. That’s his job and I’m divorced from him. The challenges of divorcing a narcissist are immense.

I don’t need to babysit him anymore or make sure that your needs are met when it’s his job to take care of you. It’s so hard to make those choices. I don’t think that women can start making these boundaries unless they have a lot of support.

When I say support, I mean someone who understands this type of abuse to help them set the boundaries, because otherwise, that type of boundary seems really hard. I seem like I’m this awful, terrible person who’s sending my kids out in rags, and I had to make that decision based on assessing my values, assessing the consequences of his behavior to his own children.

Do you think you could have set the boundaries that you set without The BTR Community without Betrayal Trauma Recovery?

June: Definitely not. When I first started learning about boundaries, it was a foreign concept to me. I was never taught this growing up or my faith. I was never taught this in college even. It has really been a learning process. When I started learning about boundaries, I inevitably made mistakes along the way as everyone does.

Support From BTR Group Sessions While Divorcing A NarcissistAnne: How did The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Community help you progress in your knowledge and your application of those boundaries?

June: I could come with a scenario. I could come with a real life problem and be directed into what my values were, what my boundaries should be around those values. What that ultimately looks like in practice and being supported, being supported in whatever boundary I chose. That was my boundary and I was going to be supported in that, and I knew I had backup, and that was huge.

Anne: The other thing that’s so hard about boundaries is, let me read you this quote I just saw. So this is a line from ancient Sanskrit scripture. It says, you are only entitled to the action, never to its fruits, which I think is really good. That’s how boundaries are. And that’s why people are so afraid to set them, because you set a boundary and you have no idea what the consequences are going to be.

You just have to know that what I’m doing is for my safety, and this is what feels right now. You can always adjust, I set that boundary and maybe that wasn’t the right thing to do. Next time I’ll do it differently. Right? Like you said, you’re going to make some mistakes. Things will need to adjust. My boundary that I set, I didn’t want to get divorced.

Difficulty Communicating With A LiarI didn’t think divorce was going to be where that led, I needed no contact. I cannot have any semblance of communication with this person without him lying to me, manipulating me, trying to pull one over on me, nothing. There can be no communication without that. I didn’t know what the consequences would be. Some women set a boundary and their husband thinks, wow, I’ve been abusive.

I’m sorry. We don’t know what the consequences are going to be. That is one thing that you need support for. You need support to know, even though this could lead to something awful or good. We have no idea, if we focus on the now and the safety in the moment, then it will always lead us down the right path.

June: Exactly. Boundaries can change. When I first started in this process of going through litigation for custody it is expected that we co-parent and communicate. I took what that judge said very seriously. I would write detailed email updates every month with the kid’s appointments, how they were doing with pictures, all of these things to him and do it very quickly.

This last court date, I found out that he used a lot of that against me. A lot of it was sadly very, very sadly used against me. This judge didn’t really care about that so much. He actually made a comment that these people are divorced. They’re not going to co-parent, who cares. While I am totally and willingly invested in co-parenting with a healthy person, I doubt very much that that can happen when divorcing a narcissist.

Now I’m left renegotiating, alright, where does this leave me as far as communication and how much do I want to have?

The BTR Message Workshop HelpedAnne: Yeah. The BTR Message Workshop teaches these tools and the phrases to use to ensure that the communication is safe and is leading towards safety. We found that these tools work whether or not you’re married or divorced or separated, these tools work no matter what stage you’re in.

June: My emails to him are short, to the point, unemotional, straightforward and full of facts. That’s it, nothing else. Nothing else needs to be there. My communication is polite but brief. It is the communication that I would have with someone like a boss or a coworker or something like that.

Anne: The reason why I love having women from our community on the podcast is because everyone can benefit from hearing other women’s stories. As you listen, if you relate and you would like to come on the podcast and share your story, please email us at podcast@btr.org.

June: It’s very, very important. I can not stress this enough. It is so important for women in this situation to do research on divorcing a narcissist. A lot of these guys that have porn issues and infidelity issues, have narcissistic issues as well. You do not see that until, I often say, I was married. I could manage this behavior. I could manage him a little bit because I kind of knew how to work around these things.

Anne: I’d say the same of me managing it. Yeah.

Abuse Escalation While Divorcing A NarcissistJune: Yes. A friend told me when I was being severely abused every day, verbally abused, emotionally abused, spiritually abused. She was aware of the situation. She even said to me, just make sure what is in your future because it can and it will get worse. At the time, I thought, there’s nothing that could be worse than going through this constant and daily abuse every single day.

I felt like I was losing my mind, I didn’t know which end was up, I didn’t know reality. I had such a fog, fear, obligation, and guilt I was really, really just not a healthy person. Now I begin to see what she was talking about. Yes, the abuse is worse because now it is directed towards my children. Now it is directed within the community. Now it is directed in different ways that are so much harder to prove.

It’s like if you went into court, do you think a judge is really going to care that he sends your kids in rags?

Anne: No.

June: I mean, the judge that I went to, he would say, get out of here,

Anne: Or Why are you so judgy? Or whatever. That’s not the thing that I think is abusive. The abusive thing is stealing my clothes, not respecting anyone’s time and all those things. He has plenty of money. He could buy him boots or whatever, but he doesn’t.

Manipulation Of Proceedings When Divorcing A NarcissistJune: Right. And the thing is that I feel like a lot of the family court professionals, judges, things like that, have really been desensitized. They hear horrific cases of abuse. When a dad can’t get the kids somewhere on time or can’t return their clothes, it just does not register with them as the abuse that it is. It is abuse because we feel it. We know that.

I think these things are purposeful because he knows no one’s going to care. He knows I care because I can’t afford to go out and buy a new coat every time that he forgets to return theirs.

Anne: Exactly. Yeah. Well, you’ve got a doctor for an ex or soon to be ex, I have an attorney.

June: Yes

Anne: They know what they can and cannot do. And so they go right up to that line and they don’t cross it.

June: Yes. And going back to your original point, that is very much within their realm and their playbook of abuse and narcissism. They know what they’re doing and they not only know, but they exploit that in a way that sometimes is unbelievable. It’s unbelievable. Yeah, I do feel like things have gotten worse, this is what happens when divorcing a narcissist.

I have spent probably close to a hundred thousand dollars trying to get divorced. I’m still not divorced. That is the reality of divorcing a narcissist. That is the reality.

Anne: That’s financial abuse.

Escalation Of Abuse In Divorce ProceedingsJune: It is financial abuse. It’s legal abuse. It’s everything. Things are worse. The difference is that now I’m not in that constant state of abuse in my own home. I can deal with this other abuse. Now I feel like I can function. I am a functional adult. I’m not only surviving, but I am thriving despite all of this other abuse. It’s horrible, horrible abuse still, but I’m able to handle it.

Anne: So you’re not finished with your divorce yet, but do you have some tips for our listeners? I want you to start way back with even listeners who are not thinking that divorce is in their future. Even listeners who are thinking, No, he seems to be understanding what I’m saying. He seems to be getting better because you and I both went through a phase where we thought, oh, things are getting better. He understands.

I’m not saying that listeners who are in that phase are going to get to the divorce phase. Maybe he will continue to improve, and if so, both June and I are very happy for you. That’s great. We wish that would’ve happened for us and it didn’t. Let’s start there. Even for women in that phase, what tips do you have about what is coming, what to expect and things that you wish that you would’ve known?

June: It would’ve been very helpful for me to know that really the natural progression of these cases when they are taken to court. If a dad goes back and asks for more time, whatever. Any information about divorcing a narcissist would be helpful. The court will oftentimes just give him a little bit more time. Like I said, my situation was that there has been all this bad behavior.

Narcissistic Husband’s Lying in CourtSurely he won’t be rewarded with a big change. He wasn’t rewarded with a huge change, but it was enough of a change that he could exploit the lack of boundaries, like I said, and now that’s what we have. Now that’s what I’m going to deal with. Be prepared for them to paint a picture of you that is literally unrecognizable.

He lied about many, many things. He said all of these things about me not caring for the kids or the kids being dirty and all of this other nonsense.

That’s very hard. It’s very hard when I feel like so many times I have literally been the bigger person. I have invited him to the kids’ events, made sure to save a seat for him and been very aware and doing the emotional labor to include him in those things. To have that used against me is horrible. It feels horrible. It’s a betrayal on its own.

After this last court date, like I said, I was in shock. I was in some trauma because I know what boundaries, the lack of boundaries would do to my husband in this situation. It’s only going to get worse. That was very hard. If I had expected that a little bit more, I think it would’ve been maybe a little bit easier. You talked to me right afterwards and I was pretty distraught. Now I’m feeling okay about it.

Divorcing A Narcissist: Documentation In Preparation For FutureI feel like I’ve gotten some good coping skills and that documentation is going to be huge. So the other thing that I learned is that documentation is key. It is paramount. You have got to document everything. That can be a challenge sometimes. One thing that I’ve learned that has helped me immensely wherever I am is I use the BTR boundary log.

Anne: The boundary log is a log that is available to women who have taken The Living Free Workshop that teaches all of these strategies about how to think about it, how to set boundaries, and how to communicate. The boundary isn’t just an independent book that you would buy, it’s for you specifically for women who have enrolled in The Living Free Workshop.

June: Yes, that has been great. Anytime there is some kind of an issue, the kid’s not getting somewhere on time, an offhanded comment, him swearing at me, him forgetting to return one of the kids’ items and refusing to go get it. I just write that down and that is my log. The way that you document your evidence is very, very important. Keeping a timeline of those things in real time is huge.

Another thing that I’ve learned is that I think that a lot of times the narcissistic ex is really in the mindset of winning. This is about winning for him. I don’t think that he really wants the kids asking for 50/50, and mind you, he hasn’t gotten it. He keeps asking, acting like he wants it. I think that this is about winning for him. It’s not that he actually wants to have the kids but that he wants the appearance of wanting the kids.

Husband’s Public Persona BackfiresOn dating sites, it says that he has them 50/50. Sometimes I think that you can use that to your advantage. I am aware of a woman who allowed her ex to say that he had 50/50 when in reality it wasn’t, and he didn’t actually want it. He just wanted to be able to say that.

June: However you can make that and use that to your benefit, I think is important.

Anne: Before you move on, I want to stress that you might get really upset in court about things like, oh, they’re saying this thing and I don’t want that thing to happen. The reality is once that paper is signed and the divorce decree is done, what happens may be very different. You might think, oh, okay, I got everything that I wanted, or I didn’t get anything that I wanted, or whatever it is.

In reality, it might not even function like that. Just note that what they really want is the appearance of things. If they’re saying things, but it’s really not affecting the way you and your kids live, oh, for heaven’s sake, let them say it. That’s a type of battle that’s not worth fighting. This is like win-win because they get to live their lie and you get to get away.

June: Yeah, that’s exactly right. Part of me thinks that once we get the divorce finalized, divide the property and everything. Maybe things will calm down a little bit. I’ve often said I can deal with whatever crazy schedule we have, whatever he is going to do to me for the amount of time that he gets the kids every month, then fine. Most of the time I am peaceful, and that’s everything.

Build Community Support For Divorcing A NarcissistThat’s another tip that I want to share, please build your community and engage in your self-care and get to know the ropes. I can’t stress that enough. If I had the choice not to go through the court system, I would do that because this has been traumatizing. It is awful. It makes you feel victimized again and again and again. I feel like the narcissist. Really press on that.

Anne: The court system tends to work better for them than it does for the victims, and mostly because the victims are telling the truth and they’re willing to lie about anything.

June: Sometimes I find myself almost shocked at the stuff they would lie about. It’s almost so obvious that you don’t think they would lie about it. You will be shocked at what it’s like divorcing a narcissist. You don’t think that you’re going to have to prove it wrong. I mean, why would you ever think that you had to prove reality? Well, with a narcissist, you do.

Anne: If you can get away with not proving it by not getting in the argument about reality in the first place, that’s the best case scenario. There’s no way they’re ever going to say, oh yeah, you presented all these facts. Okay, good point. That’s never going to happen.

June: Now that we’re done with custody, I have asked my husband if it is possible at all for us to just reach a settlement in terms of the divorce and property. I filed on grounds and in my state grounds go to fault. I did file a fault divorce as opposed to a no-fault divorce. A fault divorce, if proven, can influence equitable division of property at this point.

Husband’s Sabotaging HimselfNow that it’s been two years, I am more than willing to forego that whole process and move on with my life. Not having to go through all of that to be able to prove grounds and establish grounds and fault. I asked him recently if he wanted to come to a settlement. We don’t have that many things to divide up.

I can’t imagine why we couldn’t come to some sort of reasonable agreement, which is what the courts would do anyway, really divide everything.

He told me, no, I intend to go through the courts for this. The reason is beyond me, and I’m still trying to figure that out. When we start digging into affairs, adultery, abuse, cruelty, when we start digging, we will deposition people. That’ll be people from church, people from his old workplace, people from the community. I imagine that that will bring up things that he probably does not want to see the light of day.

I cannot, for the life of me understand it, I sat here and I tried for about a week to figure out what he is thinking and why on earth he would be doing this, wanting to do that. Doesn’t he realize what’s at stake? Well, I finally figured that because to him, he feels so entitled and because to him, he has really gotten rewarded for lying.

He came into court and told completely falsified story. He really hasn’t felt the consequences of that. I almost feel that his response was also a peek into how delusional his thinking is and how entitled and untouchable he really feels.

No Longer Afraid Of Narcissistic HusbandHe has not felt the consequences of his actions. I feel that his response was really indicative of that, that he doesn’t think there will be any consequences.

Anne: Do you think there will be? Are you more hopeful about him having the consequences of the property settlement? Or are you, after what you’ve been through, thinking oh my gosh it’s going to go bad too. Well, it can’t go bad because the worst thing that can happen is they divide everything up equally. He’s willing to spend a ton of money to try and avoid the inevitable, really.

June: Exactly. Let me just cut my losses and get out of this. I don’t want to have to go through depositions. Do you think I want to sit here and go through all of these women? I have no desire to do that, but because now I can kind of see the writing on the wall and I can say, okay, I guess if this is what you’re going to want to do, that’s what we’re going to be doing.

It’s kind of a bluff game. I think for him it is well, I’m going to make her so scared that I’m going to actually do this. In my case, I don’t have anything to be scared about. I feel like that’s a very interesting point, I feel that never, never underestimate reasoning with them. I thought for sure that we would be able to reason and reach a settlement especially when he has things like this at stake.

While divorcing a narcissist their entitlement gets in the way of their self-preservation, if that makes sense.

Hope For The Future After Divorcing A NarcissistAnne: Yeah, I agree. And they just make really, really poor choices. Wow. Well, we’ll see how it goes. It’ll be interesting to see over the years, especially with our ex’s because we have very similar ones. They’re both very professional. They’re both supposedly active in church. They both show up in the white shirt and tie kind of thing. It’ll be interesting to see over time the consequences that happen.

The good news is, even if we don’t worry about them at all, which is hard because they’re still dealing with our kids. June and I are getting exponentially stronger and more and more firm in our boundaries. The safety in our homes is increasing and we’re healing more and more. We’re finding more peace and safety in our lives. That’s exciting. Any woman can find that even if your ex is not as horrific.

Even if you’re considering whether or not you need to set boundaries with your current husband.

Even if they’re not showing these types of horrific behaviors, you still get to decide, how am I going to think about this? What boundaries do I need to set? How am I going to communicate? All the information that you need to know in order to make really good decisions is in The BTR Living Free and Message Workshops that can take you through these strategies.

This interview was actually years ago, and I’m talking about it now after getting to safety. When I did this interview, I was not completely safe like I am now, but now I’m a hundred percent safe and I use the strategies in The Living Free Workshop.

View Details

One reason women can’t figure out the truth in their marriage is that their emotionally abusive husband blames them. Has he blamed you for his emotional abuse? When June found BTR.ORG Group Sessions and received the support she needed, she realized it wasn’t her fault.

In this episode of the podcast, Anne Blythe sits down with June, a member of The BTR.ORG Community, to discuss the emotional and psychological abuse that June endured during her marriage and the continued manipulation and control after her separation. June is the mother of four children with special needs this adds another layer of complexity to her story.

Anne introduces the episode by sharing details about the ongoing emotional abuse and manipulation faced under the guise of co-parenting. Using the strategies in The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop, she’s now completely free from the abuse.

This episode is Part One of Anne’s interview with June:

He Blamed Me for the Emotional Abuse – June’s Story Part 1 (THIS EPISODE)

Divorcing A Narcissist – June’s Story Part 2

Transcript:Anne: June and I did this interview years ago. At this time, my ex was abusing me and my kids on almost a daily basis under the guise of co-parenting messages that were emotionally and psychologically abusive. He was undermining my children’s medical care, their extracurricular activities, and their school work. I constantly had a pit in my stomach.

Although I was actively trying to figure out how to deliver myself and my children from the abuse, the answers hadn’t come yet. When I listened to this episode again, I could hear the anger and frustration in my voice. I was doing everything right, at least everything I’d learned up until that point. I did everything the typical therapist and clergy told me to do.

Everyone told me that I should get over it and move on. They couldn’t wrap their head around the fact that I was still being emotionally and psychologically abused and my children were being undermined. Yet I was being blamed by the court and guardian ad litem.

Thankfully after years of study and prayer, I discovered emotional safety strategies that completely delivered me and my children from the abuse when I implemented them. I didn’t even have to go to court.

My children and I no longer have to deal with my emotionally abusive ex, and I still use these strategies. I wanted to make sure that my experience wasn’t a fluke and that these strategies weren’t just specifically for me. I tested the strategies for years with other sheroes who confirmed that they worked for them too.

Being Blamed For The Emotional AbuseOnce we knew they would work for any woman in any situation, I created the Living Free and Message workshop. In our BTR Group Sessions, women come to ask questions about how to implement these strategies and find support there.

Make sure you check out the Group Session schedule at btr.org/group. I’m still angry that women trying to get to emotional and psychological safety are thwarted and blamed at every turn. I think we should all be angry about that. In this interview, a member of the BTR Community, June shared her story.

June found out that her husband used pornography and had sex with multiple partners. He continued to do it after they were separated and going through the divorce process. At the time, June’s four children were very young and all of them have special needs to varying degrees.

We’re going to start by talking about the challenge of having special needs children when your husband is emotionally and psychologically abusive. Then she shared her story of how she met her husband and how she discovered the truth. You guys are going to be really curious about June’s story. June, let’s start with you talking about your children.

The Challenges Of Parenting Special Needs Children When You’re Being Blamed For His Emotional AbuseJune: I have four children. They range from age nine to three, two boys and two girls, and they each have some level of special needs. My 9-year-old has autism spectrum disorder, sensory processing disorder, auditory processing disorder and also ADHD.

He’s probably been most impacted as far as special needs go and on the disability range. My other children have speech and language issues, and all of my children have been affected by trauma. Which is really important to note because the treatment for trauma impacted children as well as special needs children can overlap sometimes.

In my own home and in my own parenting, I do a lot of things to address that; things to help them feel safe, things to help them process that trauma and process those emotions. It really is no different, many times the work I do with my profoundly impacted child as opposed to the rest of my children that have suffered the trauma is the same.

Anne: Let’s talk about your nine-year-old son who is on the spectrum for a moment. Would you say that some of his behaviors have escalated due to the trauma in the home? Do you see that? They’re a little bit correlated.

Impact Of Emotional Abuse On Children”s Behavior June: I see that my son who has autism can have a very hard time processing those things. He can have a more difficult time than the other kids processing the actual separation and divorce. He can tend to perseverate on that and ask why. Any answer that I give him won’t necessarily satisfy him.

Kids on the spectrum and kids with special needs in general, can all have sleep issues and insomnia and anxiety. I definitely have seen that increase in my son. Yes, to answer your question, some of the behaviors have escalated.

Anne: You’d mentioned sleep, when your son or all of your children are having sleep difficulties due to the trauma? How do you practice self-care in a situation that is extremely stressful and difficult?

June: I feel like it’s very important to teach my kids what emotions look like and how we process emotions. I would say, if I’m angry about something or if the kids are angry about something.

Strategies For Managing Emotional Abuse & Blame We will go outside and we will say, I’m angry and that is okay. Giving them those ways to process and handle those emotions is very healthy. It is very healthy for me to have that self-care time and that alone time should I need it. I do find ways and carve out little moments during my day that I can do that.

Self care is so important not only for anyone who’s going through a divorce due to abuse or separation or difficult time.It’s also just for a parent in general of a special needs child because oftentimes you never get a break.

It is important to take that upon yourself to learn how to get yourself some relief when you need it and be able to implement that in your daily routine. The things I do, I mean of course I love bubble baths, but when I’m out and about and dealing with a crisis situation with one of my kids, I can’t really go home and take a bubble bath and just stop everything.

I will practice mindfulness driving in the car like pulling over for five minutes to do some deep breathing.

I will do some grounding exercises and the most important thing is that I’ve taught my children how to do these things too.

They know little exercises there’s one that’s called Take Five where we go through the five senses, we pick out five things that we see. We pick out four things that we hear, three things that we touch, two things that we smell, one thing that we taste, and there’s definitely a neuroscience behind it.

The Legal Challenges Of Being Blamed It switches your brain into getting out of the fight or flight symptoms and into a more grounded state. If any of my children are experiencing anxiety, we’ll do these simple exercises. We’ll do teddy bear breathing and all of these little cute names that we have for the things that we may do to help.

Anne: For women who are separated and or divorced, like June and I, do get a quote, “break” every other weekend when my kids go with my ex. June is in that same situation right now where her children go with her soon to be ex every other weekend. A lot of people think that divorce solves the problem. It does not. The abuse continues.

We still have to learn how to deal with it. In my case, the abuse is that he’s still lying about what happened. He’s still manipulating people. Also, there’s some physical things that are happening with my kids when they come home and they’ve felt physically unsafe with him. June is in that same situation.

There’s this dichotomy of really enjoying the break and having that be a time of self-care, but also really worrying about our children. When my children (who are neurotypical) come home their behaviors have escalated. It takes a while to get back to normal. They have trouble sleeping or they have trouble with school or trouble with getting up in the morning. It throws their whole schedule off.

There’s this dichotomy between I like the break but I want to protect my kids and it’s really hard. What to do with your emotions when the children are with an abusive dad?

Challenges Of Co-Parenting With An Emotionally Abusive Ex-HusbandJune: Yes, and I do want to say that any child that is going through the divorce of their parents experiences trauma even in the best of circumstances. That is traumatic for a child and the impact of trauma, regardless of what it is, even if it’s a minor trauma, major trauma, it really depends on how the child perceives it and the impact is really the same.

Even though your children might be neurotypical, you can still do things to address the trauma that they may be facing, even if it is, like I said, in the best of circumstances. I really identify with what you’re saying. It’s so important to take that break when your children leave so that you can catch up on things that you need to do.

Cleaning for me is like self-care because so often I’m running day to day with the kids and we’re going to appointments and therapies and school and all sorts of things, and sometimes I don’t get a chance to clean something the way that I would need to.

I’ll do that on my weekends and I also take that time to be very reflective and to plan my week because I know I have a big week coming up. On my weekends, I will often look for chances to increase my own learning when it comes to my children with special needs. No one can be blamed if you just need to rest.

Continued Emotional Abuse Post-Divorce I go to advocacy seminars, disability symposiums, trainings, and parenting classes. Many times in your own community, these things are completely free. You just have to know where to look.

Get involved in your community services board if your community has one, which most communities do. There are lots of organizations, nonprofit organizations in general that will offer these sort of things: National Alliance of Mental Illness and mental health organizations.

There are a lot of places that will give you free training for children who have special needs or just general children who have trauma or parenting neurotypical children with no trauma.

It breaks my heart to know that my children might be feeling unsafe. We have been in that situation before and if they have disclosed that they have felt unsafe or they’ve been uncomfortable with something when they’re not with me. I have really struggled on how to handle that, some things I will bring up to him and say, Hey, the kids have mentioned this. It very easily gets manipulated.

The next time that he sees them he will say, I never said that and you shouldn’t tell mom that, or something like that. In those situations, I’ve really just started to teach my kids what gaslighting is without badmouthing him at all. That way I can’t be blamed for it.

I just let them know if someone tries to convince you that something didn’t happen that really did happen or that they didn’t say something that they really did and you know that to be real. That’s gaslighting and they appreciate learning that terminology.

Addressing Children’s Special Needs When Being Blamed For Emotional Abuse They come to me and say, this person was gaslighting me today. I also try to give them and teach them the tools that they need to handle any situation that they might feel unsafe in.

If they are made to watch a movie that is inappropriate or scary, we will role play and I’ll say, what can you do in this situation? The answers that they come up with are great. They say, I can leave the room. I can say, I don’t want to watch this, I tell them I can be blamed for it not being allowed. You can go in your room and play Legos, or close your eyes and think happy thoughts.

Giving them the tools for handling those difficult situations that I have no control over is so important. I do the same thing for my autistic child that I do for the rest of my children, they can all use those tools and effectively implement them in the situations that they’re in.

Anne: Yeah,I have found that has really helped too. Teaching them about gaslighting, they come home and tell me there was a gaslighting situation or this is what happened, and it was really weird, Mom. We felt really uncomfortable. I am so grateful that they’re starting to see that and that they can tell me how they feel about it.

They have words now to describe what is happening to them. By the way, a lot of people ask when I tell them the situation, they’re like, what? He still can take the kids every other weekend even though he’s done this, this and you had a protective order and he was arrested?

When Legal Proceedings Blame The Victim A lot of people don’t understand that in many ways the law protects abusers and it’s super traumatic when you start going through the divorce process thinking, oh, we’ll finally feel peace. You start realizing that maybe your attorney or the judge or other people don’t understand abuse. What they’re deciding is actually keeping your kids in a harmful situation.

A lot of people don’t realize that. Then there’s also the abuser’s family who is supportive of him and thinks he’s great. My ex hit my son in the face while playing a video game. My ex’s mother, he lives with his parents, used it as an opportunity to tell my ex (My son overheard.) that my son should be blamed because he must be an addict, which hurt him so much.

He said, I feel so unsafe around grandma. She doesn’t understand the situation. She didn’t even hear the whole truth of it, but immediately she threw me under the bus and supported her abusive son. He came home and told me that. In your case, it even came down to clergy and your faith community.

I just want to put out there that a child with autism or I have another friend who has a daughter who has Down syndrome, can have a Mom who is going through this with her abusive spouse. Many other women that I know have a disabled child while an abusive husband in the home is currently lying and manipulating. He’s currently angry.

What It Feels Like To Parent With An Emotional Abuser He’s currently looking at porn and a lot of people see the disability and women feel free to talk about the disability, but they don’t want to talk about what’s happening with their spouse. Can you talk about in the past when you didn’t understand you were being abused and the situation in the context of having a child with special needs?

June: There was definitely this intersection where I was handling the situation with my children that have special needs and really trying to learn what I could and advocate for them in the school system and educationally. Also, I was very wrapped up in my marriage failing and why my husband was doing these things and what I could do to help that situation.

We went to marriage counseling and I went to counseling on my own. I learned all I could about problematic sexual behaviors, porn use, affairs. I really delved into it all and took it upon myself to try to understand how I could possibly save our marriage and our family and help him.

The Impact of Emotional AbuseI very much wanted him to succeed and to be a healthy person because I believe that abusive people can change and I believe that people can make mistakes and right those wrongs. I began to learn about abuse.

It was very clear that this situation I was in was taking away from my ability to be the best parent I could be for my own children.

I spent so much time in trauma over and over and over again, Trauma from daily verbal abuse and from emotional manipulation, sexual coercion, spiritual abuse to awful degrees. It impacted my ability to advocate and look into the issues that were going on with my own children and to really be present for that.

Once I realized that was the case saw that this intersection was happening, it was a collision, I couldn’t do both. My son didn’t talk until he was about five years old. He used sign language up until that point. When he did start talking, he jumped right into speaking full sentences and parroting people and echoing what other people were saying.

My son heard the names my husband called me. When I realized that my son would repeat that very soon because he was talking. They were subjected to hearing it, was the point for me that this is not getting any better. In fact, it’s getting worse and this is normalized for my children. I would not be blamed for continuing to expose him to that.

Learning From A Childrens TherapistHow it was impacting my ability to also parent my children in a healthy way was the basis for preparing myself that I might have to be a single mom one day.

Anne: Have you seen your children’s behaviors improve since you started setting a boundary around your husband’s abusive behaviors?

June: Yes, I love talking about this because it is truly amazing when you receive the help that you need and you receive the care and the love and that you feel like you belong somewhere and you feel like people understand you. When I left my marriage, my children and I had all received services at a center for abused women and their children.

Part of this was I would go to a support group and the kids would go to children’s support group. It was led by child therapists and social workers, and I took advantage of their amazing training. I would meet with the child therapists alone on a different day to ask them, how can I help my children going through this very, very difficult and traumatic situation?

I was not to be blamed. The things that I learned from that and the things that my children learned just from going to a support group like that with other children who were experiencing similar things were amazing.

Encouragement For Women In Similar Emotionally Abusive Situations One of the things we did was to implement a safe space in our home. We set up a little tent in the corner of one of our rooms. It has pillows and it has all sorts of sensory things, bean bags and smelly candles and Play-Doh. It’s like a designated space for working through those things that they feel.

We also use time-ins instead of time-outs, if one of my children is having some difficult behaviors or being very irritable or not getting along with the other children. Instead of putting them in timeout, their behavior is a call for help and their behavior is communication. The first thing about trauma-informed care is that all behavior is communication.

What my child is communicating with me at that time when they are acting out is that they need help processing what they’re feeling. Instead of being blamed they are being helped.

I take them aside and we do an emotional check-in or we’ll play a short game about what they felt that day. Tell me a time that you felt brave, or lonely, or happy today. Those times we do that and set aside for even just a five minute conversation, can help push the reset button on their behavior.

It really gets them back on track where they need to be. That is a coping mechanism that is teaching them emotional intelligence and how to process those feelings.

Anne: For other women who have a child with special needs, who find themselves in an abusive situation. They start realizing that these fights that they’re getting into with their spouse are actually verbal abuse. Their husband is lying or using porn without their knowledge. What advice would you give them?

Challenges In Being Blamed: Leaving An Emotionally Abusive Husband June: I would definitely say to inform yourself and to educate yourself. The more empowered that you can be in your situation to identify what is going on, the better off you will be in handling whatever happens and whatever you decide and whatever comes your way. I also feel like it is essential to stress that I am a much better parent being out of that situation.

I can now focus on my children. It’s like this whole new world has opened up to me about kiddos that deal with trauma and special needs and how to best mentor them and help them through these things and advocate for them.

It takes advocacy on every level in the community, in schools, even in churches. You really have to educate other people and you as the parent are the expert on your child and being in an abusive relationship can hinder that. It can take away some of the ability that you have to really focus on the children that need it.

I cannot stress enough how much my parenting has changed. How much my life has really opened up. My eyes have opened up to a whole new world helping children with special needs or children with trauma or any child in the best and healthiest way.

Anne: As she shares her story, take deep breaths and remember that she is on her way to safety and will get there eventually, getting to safety is a journey. Also, before we start, I want to talk about how women start this journey. They don’t think their husbands are abusive. Being blamed is so painful. They think, okay, we’ve got this problem, he’s got an anger problem or he has a pornography problem, the trauma symptoms aren’t as bad.

Finding Pornography On Her Husband’s Computer Trauma symptoms are lower because a woman thinks that the situation is manageable or that things can get better. Then as she learns more and realizes that it’s abuse and starts to try to confront the abuser and the abuse gets worse, then the trauma gets worse. When you set a boundary around the abuse and it doesn’t stop, but it escalates, then the trauma becomes even worse.

For listeners, I don’t want anyone to think, oh, things are getting worse. This is really bad, and so it’s the wrong thing to do. It’s the right thing to do and it’s the only way out. June, let’s talk about how you met your husband and when you first suspected that he was using pornography.

June: I met my husband when I was in college and everything seemed great. He was the man of my dreams. I was young, in my early twenties, when he came along.

I didn’t have too much of a problem with it because he came across so well, my family liked him. He checked all the boxes that I was raised to believe meant he was a safe and worthy person. We ended up getting married, and I remember I was sitting on the bed in our first year of marriage using his computer for something, and I happened to look in one of the files and I saw a bunch of photos from a topless beach.

Recognizing When He Blames YOU For The Emotional AbuseI was shocked. It was very clear that these were homemade photos. It wasn’t like he downloaded these, this was like homemade photos taken of women on this topless beach. I had known that he had spent some time in a place that had a topless beach. He was in some of the pictures with a friend of his, so I confronted him about it and he gaslit that away and manipulated it and said, oh, he blamed his friend.

He just never deleted them from the device. Looking back, that was my first real D-Day. That was such a little thing compared to everything that has happened since, but that was definitely a huge red flag. If I could go back and speak to the former June in that time, I would teach her that that was a huge red flag and to pay a lot closer attention than she did.

Anne: Why do you think women in this situation dismiss those little experiences? They’re really big experiences, but why do we say they’re little? Not that they should be blamed.

June: I think that we want to believe in the good of people and someone doing something like that, that’s voyeuristic. I would say it’s also stalking and obviously porn, but it goes beyond that. We don’t want to believe that anyone is capable of that and that’s foreign. It’s foreign to me because I have no propensity to really do that, and so we want to believe the best in people.

The Extent Of Being Blamed For Emotional Abuse These are men that we love. We want to save our families. We want everyone to be healthy and happy. It’s not hard for someone to come in and say, Hey, these weren’t my pictures. Here’s what happened, and give us an explanation. For us to just take them at their word and believe it. Definitely throughout our dating and throughout our marriage, there was abuse all along.

I had reached out to people. I’d reached out to my parents, to friends and other family members. I told them what was going on.

He called very, very horrific names. I remember one time even when we were dating. We had been in a fight about something and I went into the bathroom, shut the door and was sitting down on the floor with the lights off. He came in there and was just yelling over me, the B word over and over and over again. I was huddled in this corner, oh my gosh, what is he doing?

We had probably only been dating a few months by the time that situation had happened, and still he had said he was sorry afterwards. There was a point when he came into my apartment and decorated my whole room with rose petals. I look back, this is a textbook abusive cycle, the love bombing, the apologies.

Then the explosion and the honeymoon phase and then building up the tension and the explosion and the love bombing. It was just very much like that, but every time he would apologize. He just blamed something else for his behavior.

Being Stuck In The Abuse Cycle With Your HusbandI would stay because he’d said he would get better and then it would happen again. Then he would apologize and I would stay and every time that he apologized, things did get better until the next time..

You become invested in how the relationship is. In the first year of marriage, it was a lot of verbal abuse. I would tell people, and nobody else really picked up on it. They were like, marriage is hard.

Anne: He must be stressed.

June: And all this while, I found out later, he was calling friends and family members and gaining rapport with them. Saying that he’s concerned about June because she seems like she’s depressed and really gaslighting me to my family, really for the next 12 years he blamed me. He had done this as the abuse was on and off just like an abusive cycle would be.

All the while he was gaining this trust of my family and of my friends when things escalated to the point that I had to leave. That made it extremely difficult for me because I did not trust some of my family at that point.

Anne: Talk about when you actually started realizing that the behaviors that you were seeing were abusive as opposed to just thinking that he had an anger problem or that he was a pornography addict. Talk about how you made that shift to realizing that these things were abusive.

Seeking Social Support During Divorce From An Emotionally Abusive Man June: There were things all along the way that I look back on, these were all red flags and I missed them. He would chat online inappropriately with women and he would tell me about it. I don’t know why I didn’t have the capacity to understand what was going on, like I said, he would always apologize and I would always stay.

It was not until I had a friend that reached out to me and confided in me about her situation with her husband who has some very, very problematic sexual behaviors, porn use and infidelity and things like that, voyeurism. She said, I just have a feeling that I need to be there for you and ask you if you’ve ever thought that your husband is like that. I don’t know what she picked up from my husband.

She didn’t really know him very well, and maybe it was things that she picked up on in me. There was definitely a change when I was going through some things privately that maybe she could pick up on. She just shared her story and that night I came home and I just asked my husband, is this an issue for you?

I started tying some of those situations together. There was a time that he had come home and I was 37 weeks pregnant. He said, this woman attacked me in my office, and I was like, oh my gosh, this sounds so dangerous. She was trying to come on to him he blamed her. Well, in reality, I found out that they had been sexting on the hospital’s messaging system.

When You’re Blamed For Your Own Emotional AbuseHe had gone to her office, shut the door and locked it, and there was some kind of sexual encounter, and I was 37 weeks pregnant. When I found that out, he shrugged it off. He had no idea what was going on, and he just blamed her. We are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We went to our ecclesiastical leader who is called the bishop in our church.

He has really no training to be able to identify abuse or handle infidelity or marital problems.

He is a volunteer. We are going to him, and now I look back and I’m thinking, this situation is just so prime for mishandling. Here we are, we’re talking to someone about this huge situation, and yet nobody really picked up on the gravity of it. We went to our bishop and learned some more things about the situation that I felt like I needed to know.

I think my bishop was kind of in shock. He didn’t really know what to say. My husband talked his way out of it. I was 37 weeks pregnant. This was my fourth child. I had three other children under the age of five at the time, one of whom had profound special needs.

Finding BTR.ORG & Feeling Relief From The BlameThere’s no way I believed him when he said it was not his fault. We had our baby and things kind of went back to normal and normal for us. Which was a lot of abuse. I just remember a few months after my baby was born, it was the summer and I had taken all of my kids to go see a movie in the park and to play.

My husband was at work and he had just been nasty to me and hanging up on me all day. I’m just thinking, what did I do? What is going on with him and how do I deal with this situation? The confusion was extremely difficult. After that, I started learning more about sexual addiction, sexual behaviors, pornography use.

I found BTR, which was a beacon of light to me in this situation. I listened to all of the podcasts every single week, I would just wait for the next one to come out. For the first time I had a label of what I was feeling. I didn’t know what this was. When I learned about betrayal trauma, I could understand these symptoms.

This is trauma that happens to someone when they are in the situation of being betrayed by someone that they trust implicitly. When I would listen to the BTR episodes, I remember listening to your story and how horrific it was, but also at the same time, I didn’t place myself in that category. I still didn’t, but the more that I listened and the more that you would talk about covert abuse, the more that connected with me up to that point.

I Was Being Blamed: Escalation of AbuseThere was no outright physical abuse yet. The covert abuse that you would describe was very, very much the same of what I was experiencing. The manipulation and the lying and the psychological harm, even the spiritual abuse. That is one thing that I started connecting with and learning about, and that opened my eyes to seeing and really identifying that I was in a very bad abusive relationship.

Anne: You’re listening to me. I’m sharing my story. You’re thinking, whoa, I’m really relating to this. When did his behaviors escalate to actual physical violence?

June: His behaviors started escalating when I started finding out more and more about some of the extreme problems that he was having. I found out about several inappropriate relationships that he had had with people at his work. He was in a very powerful position. These were people who were under him, so it was an abuse of power. He always blamed the women.

He’s actually licensed also by the state. I knew that could be a very bad situation for him as far as that goes. When I started finding out about this, he would come to tell me and confess these things. It was almost as a way of him gaining my trust.

Anne: My ex did the same thing. He would tell me part of it. The way he would say it was manipulating it so I would view it in a certain way to help him rather than me. I realized later that this was dangerous. What was happening probably should have been reported to the police.

Realities Of Divorcing An Emotional Abuser Anne: My ex did the same thing. He would tell me part of it. He would say it was manipulating it so I would view it in a certain way to help him rather than me. I realized later that this was dangerous. What was happening probably should have been reported to the police.

June: Exactly. So he would come and tell me these things and say, “ There’s an inappropriate encounter with someone at his work.”, or “This woman sent me these unsolicited pictures of her in a compromising position” or “wearing nothing”. He always blamed the women.These things all accumulated. My husband ended up moving out for two months or so.

He was in therapy with a therapist who claimed to treat sexual addiction and problematic sexual behaviors and pornography and everything. I had started therapy on my own and we had gone to therapy together with each of our therapists. They were at the same facility. We had met with them maybe once or twice. My therapist easily identified that I was in an abusive situation. His therapist did not.

Anne: Yeah, we’ve noticed that so much with so-called Sexual Addiction Experts. They do not identify the abuse and they’re not helping keep the wives of sex addicts safe at all. It’s really actually pretty scary and dangerous

June: We were really trying to work things out. He was going to SA meetings and he had shown a lot of humility and improvement. I remember thinking, if this is the man that could be with me all the time, that is who I want. He did move back in and we had a pretty good, I’d say six to eight months of progress.

Establishing Safety During Abuse & BlameThen things started to slip again, and it was more verbal abuse that started creeping in. It was more psychological abuse. It was these things that would start to come back in and I would ask him, is anything going on with people at work? These abusive behaviors are a really, really big red flag for me.

I had tied it altogether at that point, I had tied the verbal abuse to the other problematic sexual behaviors, and he just insisted, no, no, it wasn’t.

He just came to me one day out of the blue and said, I have actually been lying to you and there’s three women who I’ve had inappropriate relationships with off and on. I am using porn again, and it was like a D-Day all over again. I’ve given him my trust in thinking he’s a safe person. I’ve let him move back in.

I have overcome part of that betrayal trauma to be able to be intimate with him again and to be able to really want to work on our marriage.

When I found that out, it was a huge D date. You have been lying to me this whole time and you are not a safe person, and at that time, I asked him to move out again. He wouldn’t. He became very mean, very irate, very scary. I received a message from somebody anonymously about his reputation at his workplace and that he made people feel uncomfortable.

There was even one that described a certain situation where he sexually assaulted a female in this closet at work. Once again he blamed her. He was sleeping downstairs, and I went downstairs and I asked him about this and he demanded to see my phone.

June Discovers Even More Abuse & Her Husband Blamed Her I said, no, you can’t see my phone, and I went upstairs and he was running after me. At that point, I was very, very scared. I had just found out that this person was very unsafe.

Also had confirmation of this from someone who worked with him, and here he was running after me trying to get my phone. I ran upstairs, he pushed me into a wall. He tackled me. He got my phone. I scratched him. I’m five five and I weigh 140 pounds. He’s six six and he weighs 220, so I did whatever I could. I was very, very scared for my life because I had no phone.

I ran outside to a neighbor’s house and called the police. When the police came, they looked at him and they looked at me and he had a scratch mark. It was a male police officer and I was incoherent. I was in trauma, I couldn’t really describe anything of what had happened, I was just trying to process it myself. I had no visible bruising yet, or marks or anything that was bleeding. That did show up a few days later.

He went inside and my husband was just bawling and he blamed me for the whole thing. The police officer said, well, I have to take you away because he has these visible injuries, and so I was taken away that night. I was arrested and sat in the holding area for just a few hours and then they let me go back home. I didn’t have anyone that I could call to pick me up.

Support To Face Blame During Divorce I have no family around. Nobody really knew what was going on in my situation in my marriage. I felt very much a sense of shame and I couldn’t call anyone and say, I’ve been arrested. Come and pick me up. There was just nobody that would understand that. My husband did call one of his friends who was actually from our church. Looking back, I see that he had set this up.

The more empowered I would become, he would say the more crazy I would get to this friend, and so I think he could see that I was becoming empowered and stronger and being able to identify abuse. At the same time, he was telling people that I was becoming more depressed or more and more angry.

I retained a lawyer and I had injuries of my own, which I had someone take pictures of, and that case was dismissed, but I knew I was in a very unsafe situation. At the library I did research on domestic violence and abuse. I learned that 40% of women who are in abusive relationships, had their partner blamed them and have them arrested for abuse for fighting back.

Suddenly in the shame of that situation, I was able to understand that this was no fault of my own. I also felt more empowered and safer to reach out to people and say, look, my husband did this to me and he had me arrested. He accused me of abuse, and I slowly started gaining support of a few people just in a very close knit circle that I could trust and could see what was going on.

I Was Blamed By My Clergy For His Abuse It was just a few months after that things really started escalating. My husband started using my arrest as leverage. He said that if I ever left, he would get custody of our children have this history. He blamed me for the whole situation, he said I would be out on the street. I wouldn’t have anywhere to live. It was very much held over me. The abuse just escalated from that point. He got a free pass.

I did reach out to the bishop when I found out about more sexual incidents and many other sexual indiscretions, and my husband and I went to meet with the bishop at that point. After my arrest and after he had confessed a bunch of things to me. The bishop was meeting with my husband privately. They met for probably about 45 minutes before the door finally opened.

I went in and I said, I am really at my wit’s end. I’m thinking that this is not a safe situation and I need support. The bishop looked at me and he said, you need to be a better wife and mom and your husband has told me everything that has happened. You are angry. He called me a feminist.

Anne: Which is not a bad word, by the way. Great word. Thank you for the compliment, sir.

When Your Church Community Won’t Protect You From Abuse June: It became clear that my husband had gone in there and just said all of these things. June wants to go back to school and I don’t feel like she needs to do that. The bishop said, you don’t need to go back and get your master’s degree. What are you even thinking? You need to just be a better wife and mom and your husband is dissatisfied sexually, he blamed me for my husbands actions. You need to give him more sex.

Basically, I very clearly saw what was happening. I started just speaking my mind and I said, this is not okay. You cannot be saying this. This is not okay. My bishop started to ask me details of things that I had done sexually when I was a teenager. He said, your husband said that you were not faithful. I said things I did as a teenager have no bearing on any of this.

First of all, I’m a married mother of four and I’m 34 years old. You do not need to be asking me these questions. It was sexually explicit questioning and I didn’t even have the wherewithal to understand what he was doing. I look back now and I see that shamed me for something that I had done a long time ago.

He was trying to shame me into stopping the complaints or pointing the finger about how abusive my husband was.

When He Blames You For Emotionally Abusing YouWhen The Blame Doesn’t Stop Anne: He was trying to silence you, right, and say, look, you are the one that’s the problem. Stop causing all this hullabaloo and take your place as a wife and mother. He blamed you for the abuse.

June: The sexually explicit questioning continued. My bishop said that if I submitted myself to him that he could fix me and that he has a very special way with women. That he has insight into women and that he has a unique ability to fix them and fix their problems and help them. It was so far out that I could identify it as inappropriate.

I went there thinking that I would feel safe and protected and loved, and I knew that something was going terribly, terribly wrong. I didn’t have the language to say, this is sexual harassment. It’s inappropriate questioning. It is verbal abuse. It is blaming, it’s rationalizing, it’s deflecting. It’s projecting. I can name exactly what was happening, but at that time I didn’t.

It was so confusing to me why he was asking me these things and why he was taking the position that he did.

I eventually tried to teach him a little bit about trauma, pornography use, infidelity, and abuse and how it all ties in together. He stood up, his face got very red, he yelled at me.

Secondary Emotional Abuse, Being Blamed By ClergyHe said, I’m exhausted and I don’t know what else you want from me. I’m trying to take care of all of these people and you’re making my job difficult and you need to listen to me.

It was very scary, I came to him disclosing that I had experienced verbal abuse. That was very triggering for me. It was very, very traumatizing. I got up out of his office and I actually ran out of the church. It was probably 11 o’clock at night at that point. Nobody else was there.

I had immediately called a friend and I called my mom and explained what happened. From that point on, I had tried to take it up to the person above him. Which is the stake president, like a hierarchy, and explain what happened. This bishop’s behavior, and his questioning was inappropriate. Things are happening in my home that are terribly wrong and I need some help.

The stake president said, I don’t believe the bishop did that. I tried. I tried to report to whoever I could report it to, but there’s really nothing else I could do.

Anne: This story is getting really intense, I’m just going to recap really quickly. She starts recognizing that her husband is abusive. Goes in to see if she can get some help from her clergy, and ends up being emotionally abused by her clergy as well. At this point, June, you’re realizing that you can’t get help from clergy and you need to turn somewhere else. What do you do next?

Moving Forward, Despite Emotional Abuse With Divorce Proceedings June: I start educating myself. I listened to BTR, I found a lot of comfort and guidance in really identifying the behaviors that I was seeing in my own home from my husband as abusive behaviors. I became empowered enough and informed enough and I did initiate separation. His behavior escalated phenomenally during that time. The name calling was getting much worse.

I had no lawyer. We had no legal separation. I had consulted a couple of lawyers, trying to figure out what the situation would be like. I do suggest that informing yourself is paramount, it’s key. When we would exchange the children, he would come into my home and yell and throw things around.

He berated me for the children’s clothing. When he moved out, he packed up all of his guns and laid them in the hallway.

The kids and I were in the house and it was very obvious that he was doing that as physical intimidation. One day he picked up the kids. He called me horrific names. My children were there. He came inside my house. He wanted to pack up some of their clothes because he said I didn’t do it right.

It was demeaning, demanding, very scary behavior. After seeing this behavior, I did not feel safe sending my kids with him. They were all in the car and I went and I got in the car with them and he grabbed me from the car and threw me on the driveway in front of my children. Then he drove away with my kids in the car. He left me lying on the driveway. I was hysterical, traumatized.

When Law Enforcement Blames The Victim He injured me. I had an abrasion on my elbow. He tore my clothes in several places. I had bruising on my hip. I called the police. The police came. It was so scary because of what had happened last time when I called the police. My injuries were visible at this point. He still had the children.

The police officer came. He assessed the situation. He talked to my husband who has a prominent position in our community, and he introduced himself with his title, which is impressive to people. I remained calm and I told the police officer what happened. I showed him my injuries and the police officer said that he could leave. The children ended up staying with me, which I was grateful for.

I still to this day have no idea how he didn’t get arrested given the injuries.

Anne: Manipulated the law enforcement.

June: That weekend he called me several times. The next day he came to my house, tried to get in the door, knocking on the door, calling friends and family of mine. He called a bunch of our friends and told them that I was crazy. Meanwhile, I am just trying to figure out how I’m going to survive this situation with an obviously dangerous and abusive person.

I had no time to call anybody to make them see my side of it. That was just not in my capacity. I had this injury, trying to figure out what in the world I needed to do to keep myself and my family safe. I was able to get a restraining order.

The Consequences Of Emotional AbuseAnne: How did you feel when you went to file the protective order? Did you feel like, what am I doing? How is this happening?

June: Yeah. I was very scared that I wouldn’t be believed first of all because that is what was happening all around me. I was being blamed as the instigator, the angry and scorned woman. Of course I had felt angry. My anger was not driving any of this. My need for safety was.

Anne: By the way, this story. I know it’s horrific and difficult for our listeners to hear this. This is really typical for abuse victims. This period of confusion and what is happening, and he’s blamed you and nobody can understand this is exactly what happened. It happened to me too, but this type of manipulation and coercion with people around is exactly what we start to see. Women can feel like they’re going crazy.

June: Yes, he left me on the side of the road several times when he got angry at me in the car. He would just pull over and kick me out of the car and I would be left there for hours, in different places in front of my children. He withdrew money from our bank account, so I couldn’t buy groceries at this point. I couldn’t buy a birthday cake for my child who had a birthday that day.

He was of course very verbally abusive, but mentally and psychologically and socially aggressive to me and in ways that I couldn’t even recognize because I didn’t know it was going on.

Emotional Abuse & Blame Began When She First Got Married I didn’t know that he was calling our mutual friends without me present and telling them these stories and painting me as this person who had all of these mental issues.

He would also very frequently embarrass me in public situations that we were together, and make jokes at my expense. He would demean me and be very sexually coercive, trying to get me to do things that I wasn’t comfortable with.

Anne: When you started recognizing the behaviors, did you recognize that he was this way all along, but you just hadn’t seen it?

June: Yes. The trauma became so much greater when I started realizing that I his abuse started from the beginning. On our honeymoon to a foreign country he told me he wanted a divorce. What was he even talking about?

He wanted to leave me in the jungle, alone, in this foreign country. I had no idea how to speak their language or anything. It was very scary. Things like that were happening, but then I would also be so grateful when he would make it right and when he wouldn’t behave in those ways.

It was like this huge relief, it’s almost like he became accustomed to the love bombing and the apology and the honeymoon period that happens.

Getting A Restraining Order But Still Experiencing Emotional Abuse The restraining order was for myself and my children. For three days I knew that we were to be safe and secure and left alone. I was unsure if he would even abide by the restraining order. Then, I did make the decision to file for divorce at that point. I went to my parent’s house with my children.

My parents live in a different part of the country, but legally I knew that I needed that protection. I needed to go ahead and file for the divorce and be away from the situation. My children and I left in the middle of the night. We had nothing really packed. We drove for a few days and lived with my parents for about four months. While I filed the paperwork for the actual divorce.

It was over the summer. The kids were in summer camps and in all sorts of activities. I received great services from a women’s center. My children received great services at the same place, and it was very much a time of healing and a time of safety and security. Now, it’s not to say that he didn’t abuse that situation.

He would call every day and demanded that it would be on video, which I did facilitate because I was trying to remain reasonable. He would call at all hours of the day, even into the night. Once I couldn’t answer my phone and he called the police to do a well child check in the middle of the night, which was very scary to my children and to me.

When Emotionally Abusive Husband Cuts Of Access To MoneyI had asked him also for money to buy diapers for my children, pay for medication and pay for food. I had very little money with me, but I had no means of paying for those things. Before I left in fact, he had taken all of the money that we had, cut me off and transferred it to an account that I did not have access to.

June: I was living on credit cards,

Anne: Took all the money away so you can’t even buy groceries, right? Yeah, that happened to me.

June: I had started on food stamps when I went to this different state. It was purely by knowing that he would not make this right. By getting the restraining order and setting boundaries, his behavior escalated. That was really an answer to me that I did the right thing, because he wasn’t supporting his children. I donated plasma to get some money. We were living with my parents. They supported me and my four children.

At that point, I really liked where we were living. We were around family. His family had also lived nearby. We had seen his family when we were out there. The kids saw their cousins and they were excited about that. I am in a state that very much expects parents to co-parent and to work with each other. It was clear that we would not be able to agree or decide on something that was reasonable together.

Being Blamed By The Court SystemWe went to court. Unfortunately, there is not a way that the law identifies covert abuse or emotional abuse.

Anne: We see that over and over again where the law does not protect victims of emotional abuse from perpetrators. If there’s no physical evidence and he’s lying and manipulating, there’s no protection for victims. That leaves all of the burden of protecting yourself on the victims themselves.

June: The courts like to give people a chance

Anne: That’s never helpful. If the court held them accountable, it would be more helpful to get the perpetrator to actually make changes and for the victim to be safe.

I think there’s a serious problem in our country right now protecting abusers and it’s scary for the victims.

June: When I walked into the courthouse for our hearing, I didn’t know how it was going to go, and I immediately saw a friend of mine. We had gone to church together and we had done a few other things. She was in a similar situation. She had divorced an abusive person who had an affair. I saw her at the courthouse and she wouldn’t look at me.

My first initial thought was like, oh my goodness, what is she doing here? Maybe she’s here to say hi to me or to support me. She was there with my husband and she was a witness.

Emotional Abuse & Blame From A FriendShe testified that I planned to kidnap my kids.

When that happened, I put it together that they were in a relationship, they were having an affair. I had some other information from a few other people, other evidences of that. I realized what was happening. He manipulated her and blamed me. She did not know the reality of the situation, she knew about the abuse. She knew about the verbal abuse.

I confided in her my fear and I said, I need to have a plan in place, and so that was the extent of the conversation. She had come to court and said that I had planned to kidnap my kids and make up the assault. My husband manipulated her and blamed me.

The damage she caused to me and my children was irreparable. That was a very traumatic moment. It was horrific to realize that while I was in this really dire situation, living with my parents, with my four kids, that he was here having an affair with her and choosing not to support his kids and actively working to discredit me with an employee of the city.

Divorce Proceedings With Husband Still Perpetrating Emotional Abuse Anne: Can you talk about the divorce proceedings and how those have gone and also your ongoing difficulties with your congregation?

June: Yes, so I came back here and trying to co-parent. My children had experienced trauma, they had anxiety. They were unsure of what kind of situation we were coming back to. I wanted to make that as smooth as I could for them. When I did get back here, I came to the home that I would be living in. It was unkempt.

He took anything he wanted, furniture, valuables. Also, he had left a piece of chewed gum as a message to me. He always said divorced women were like chewed gum. He had disassembled locks and doorknobs from the house.

There were feminine products that were clogging the plumbing of the house.

He had taken the liberty of having people in the church move my personal belongings, my intimate clothing and my children’s clothing. We had no discussion about it. That kind of set the stage for how the period of time since I’ve been back has gone.

Emotional Abuse, Blame From Clergy He does these things blatantly and there really is no recourse. I’ve asked him for some of my belongings and some of the things that he took without permission. I didn’t get any of that back. That’s been a hard thing. When I did return, I went to church. I made the effort to co-parent and keep my kids as stable as possible.

When I went back to see this bishop. I was actually with my father and he went in with me. I felt safer because my dad was there with me.

Anne: For those of you not familiar with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Instead of choosing the congregation that you go to. You find out where your congregation boundaries are and you go there.

That’s why June didn’t just go to a different church because her boundaries were those particular boundaries and that’s what everyone does within the church. I wanted to give you some background on that as to why she didn’t think, oh, I’ll just go somewhere else.

June: Yes, exactly. I went to my bishop with my father. I said, I don’t know if you know about the situation, but I’m happy to share with you the things that have happened and what my children and I have been through. We’re going to be coming to church here. He stopped me and said, I know that you kidnapped your kids.

Clergy & Church Community Did Not Help, Instead They Blamed Me For My Husband’s LiesEveryone says that you kidnapped your kids and you have got a serious issue. It was so uncomfortable. I said to him, I didn’t kidnap my own children. First of all, I had a restraining order. Would you like to see it? And I said, my husband is not paying support. He hasn’t been supporting us. I don’t think he should have a calling.

The bishop said, I don’t care about any of that. That stuff does not matter. He didn’t want to see any of the documentation I had. I mentioned to him that my husband was having an affair with another single woman in the ward, and he had no intention of discussing any of that. It was so uncomfortable. By that time I had really learned how to set boundaries and I saw that this was not a good situation.

I just stopped the entire discussion and left. The bishop didn’t hear my side of the story or look at any of the evidence that I had. He had made his mind up. There were a couple of other things that had happened from that point on in our church.

The women have an organization called Relief Society, it is for providing support for the women in the church and those who are in need and ministering to women.

When Church Blamed Her & Refused To Help I had called the president of the Relief Society and reached out to her about my situation. My husband was still not paying support. We were going to have to garnishee his wages. That could take a period of time to set up.

I was very much in need at that point, I exhausted all of my credit cards, all of my resources that I had. I was in need of food for my children and had nothing to pay for any other bills. If I can get some food for my children for the next few weeks, that is one weight that I don’t have to worry about, at least for right now.

Anne: The church has a bishop’s storehouse where members of the church who are in need can get food, and that’s what she’s talking about.

June: The Relief Society met with me. We had a discussion. I described what was going on, I did not say that my husband was abusive. I didn’t berate or demean the bishop in any way, I just explained to her my need and she called me up a few days later.

She said she had spoken with the bishop and she didn’t believe that my husband could afford to pay the support that the court ordered. The bishop was also saying this. I told her I actually have no money. It was clear that the bishop had that information from my husband. Clearly my husband said he couldn’t afford to pay for it.

Husband’s Emotional Abuse Expands To Clergy & Legal PressureHe declined to help me and my children with food. They said, I need my children to have some food. That’s it. He said, you’re not being truthful with me. You’re not being honest. Your husband said that he would never leave you or the children in this situation.

He was just believing my husband. I said, he hasn’t given me anything. I have not received anything. He took a lot of the food that was in this house. I have texts and emails of many of these interactions. The bishop came to me a few days later and wanted me to meet with one of his counselors who is actually a lawyer. I had reached out to my own lawyer at that point.

She said, that is grounds for filing a complaint against that lawyer.

That’s grounds for disbarment. You cannot do that. We have an open custody case and divorce proceedings and no one should be asking you to meet with someone else who is a lawyer. I declined to do that. The bishop said that he wanted to go over my finances and that the lawyer, his counselor would be there to help.

I showed the bishop screenshots of my bank account and the bills that that I had no way to pay. He said, you can have some food. I think I had two orders, and then I went to place an order with the Relief Society president. At 10 o’clock at night, and the bishop actually texted me back and said, there will be no more food. If you need food, you need to come in and meet with me and the state president.

Emotional Abuse Continues Through Church Community Blame These were the same leaders. One of them had abused me and the other had enabled that abuse, and so I was not going to meet with them under any circumstances alone or with someone. That was not a situation I was going to put myself in. He cut off the food and my children and I didn’t receive any more assistance in that manner from my church. I’ll tell you, that was a very, very dark time.

That was very, very difficult. The year before that we paid 10% of our income to the church in voluntary donations for tithes. Here I was now in this situation having no income for myself. M

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In the early days of her marriage, Lynea attributed problems with her husband to normal relationship challenges or her husband’s culture. Lynea finally realized she was experiencing betrayal trauma.

If you’re wondering how to recover from betrayal trauma, you’re not alone. Recovery from betrayal trauma is possible. If you need support, we’d love to see you in a BTR.ORG Group Session TODAY.

Transcript:Anne: Welcome Lynea. Let’s start at the beginning of your story. How would you define your husband’s behavior at first? Did you give any reasons for his behavior?

Lynea: We met at university and we we’re both quite young. It was my first real relationship after high school. I just was excited about going to university, we met through a mutual friend and at first I didn’t really see any behavior that was really off.

I didn’t really recognize anything that was different. He was very kind. He acted very thoughtful, made it a point to keep in communication with me regularly, so I didn’t really see anything that was off. I was young too. I was 18 or 19 years old. So

Anne: Even if you could go back in time, you might see something, it’s not anything that you could remember from your perspective now?

What’s Causing The Betrayal Trauma?Lynea: As the relationship went on, I just wasn’t happy. No matter what I had told him, I felt like even though his behavior might change for some time, and sometimes for long periods of time. It didn’t really matter.

I would tell him something, Hey, this is how you’re hurting me. This isn’t how I’d like you showing up. He would still continue to do the behavior.

Anne: You didn’t recognize it right when you were dating, but when you did start seeing it, what things were you like, Hey, that’s not okay with me. What reasons did you give for those behaviors before you knew more?

Lynea: Just talking about normal things of running a household, keeping things tidy. It always ended up in an argument. I felt that a lot of the load would always be on me to make things happen with groceries, cooking, finances, you name it.

I was always the one to do those types of things and no matter how many conversations I had with him. It seemed like it would always go back to that same thing where he would just forget about the conversation that we had and continue doing his old behavior.

Anne: I want to say “forget about the conversation.” Right. They conveniently forget about it when it suits their purposes. It was mainly about domestic labor then?

Financial Betrayal Causes TraumaLynea: Then going out to spending money. He liked to go out and party with his friends and that type of thing. I just was trying to be more conservative when it came to finances. That would always cause an argument too,

Anne: A lot of arguing that you couldn’t quite get a handle on it sounds like.

Lynea: Yeah, it just left me very confused. I just didn’t understand the dynamics of their relationship and I thought for the longest time that was me. Quite honestly, I thought I was the problem.

Anne: So at this time, are you kind of chalking it up to maybe miscommunication? What are you thinking is the Cause

Lynea: He is from another country and I thought that originally maybe it was just very hard for him to assimilate into rural Midwest small university. I thought he was having difficulties with that.

He didn’t seem like he was very happy most of the time and I felt like a lot of the times it was maybe me.

Anne: When you say I thought it was maybe me, was it because he was telling you it was you? A lot of the times we’d have the conversations in order to try to solve something and then he would start telling me that I just complained too much.

When He Blames You For ProblemsLynea: I’m not happy. It escalated over the years too. He called me names and I wondered am I the crazy one?

Anne: Did you recognize at the time the pattern of his exploitation that the reason he was doing this was so that you would do most of the domestic labor?

Lynea: I had no clue. After 24 years together I had no idea.

Anne: Me saying that right now. Are you like, oh, or did you recognize that at some point?

Lynea: I recognized at some point that he just didn’t want to take accountability or responsibility for things. If he did, it was when it was convenient or when things got so bad where he could recognize that I’ve hit my limit, then he would change for a while and there would be better behavior for sometimes several months.

Anne: He was capable of doing it, he just didn’t want to. I think that’s really interesting to bring up because they are capable of doing it. I think they’re just not genuinely that type of a person. So they’re play-acting kindness or they’re playacting equality or they’re play acting genuine empathy and compassion.

If you’re not actually like that, if you’re putting on a show, it would get really exhausting after a while because you’re basically acting all the time and even though you know how to do it, it’s not who you are. I think that’s why they can do it for a while, but then they just get tired.

Betrayal Trauma: Recognizing Exploitative PatternsIt’s also why the mask comes off when they are tired or on a trip for example, when it’s a little more stressful or they don’t have their regular coping mechanisms around.

Lynea: Yes, exactly. When he would get a little bit pressed when things weren’t comfortable for him, you could definitely see his reactions more quickly. He would be easily angered, just irritated and just not really a fun person to be around in the house. There’s always this vibe. It just didn’t feel good. It wasn’t pleasant.

Anne: What sort of things did you try in the relationship? Like therapy?

Lynea: He never was open to it. I wanted to go to couples therapy or marital counseling after we got married. He never would do it. He didn’t want to do it, so I was okay with that. I grew up in the church, so I think that this kind of had a big reason for why I was so loyal and so I stayed with him for so long to be honest with you.

I also thought patterns of where he would change for some time. He was capable of it, so it just made sense to me, well, maybe I’m the one. I was a very shy girl. I didn’t have much confidence. I’m completely different now than who I was when I met him.

I was very shy, naive for sure, and I wasn’t very good at speaking to other people. I felt like I didn’t have a lot of relationship skills and so I thought really truly that it was me, I thought that I was having a hard time communicating.

Stressful Situations Reveal Psychological Abuse Causing Betrayal TraumaI thought that he just didn’t understand and that it was this man woman dynamic that I just was clueless about. So I read a lot of books. I eventually did get some therapy sessions. I was always in the pursuit of working on myself. What can I do to make things better?

Anne: Most likely it was because he’d led you to believe that you were the problem. I mean, part of it is that the abuse is the convincing of the victim, that it’s not him, but that it’s her. When did you start to recognize that this stuff wasn’t working like therapy and your self-help and stuff like that?

Lynea: Once we graduated college, we moved back into the area where I’m from. We didn’t stay there for very long. We were just really working hard on trying to find careers in our degrees and I got a job in a big city. He started a business and so we were just really working hard for several years on my career.

His business, we actually did have a pretty good dynamic working together, oddly enough. We did that together for at least five or six years. We had a brick and mortar business.

Anne: So you were in business together.

Lynea: He always wants to be perceived differently from other people. So when he’s around other people, he’s great. There are no problems. Because I worked so closely with him, I saw how he interacted with other people, so I knew that he could be a certain way and I thought maybe this was truly who he was. There again, I am the common denominator here, so I must be the problem.

Recovering From Betrayal Trauma Is Hard When You Share A LifeAnne: When did you start to recognize that it wasn’t you, that maybe it was him? Were you aware of porn use or affairs or anything like that?

Lynea: I knew that when he would go visit his friends, they would go to strip clubs and stuff. I knew that one of his friends was into some things even though he was married that I don’t approve of. I told him this, he knew how I felt with prostitution, but I never thought that he would do any of that.

Because he was always very adamant against it and because he knows the problems that it causes in family relationships because he’s gone through some hard things. So I trusted him.

Anne: That’s what he would tell you. Did you ever find out that he had participated in prostitution?

Lynea: No, I’ve never found that out, no.

Anne: So he may have or he may not have. You just never got definitive information about

Lynea: That. Exactly. It wouldn’t surprise me knowing what I know now if he did participate.

Anne: Why wouldn’t it surprise you? Knowing what you know now? What do you know? That might be a clue.

When It Doesn’t Work To Decide To Make It WorkLynea: In 2018, we decided to move back to his country in Europe to be closer to his family and for him to be also able to help his father with businesses. Our business wasn’t doing so well back in the states, so I invited him to think about doing that because he just seemed like he was very unhappy at the time.

I think that it might’ve been a good change. He had been away from his family for many, many years and I thought just this might be something that he needs. Maybe a fresh start would help him. That’s what we did. We moved in June of 2018.

Anne: Did it help?

Lynea: No, it got worse.

Anne: Sorry, I think if it would’ve helped, you wouldn’t be here, right?

Lynea: Well, in one way it helped because it stirred the hornet’s nest, if you will. Remember we were talking about under stress, somebody acts a certain way. Well, this really was out of his comfort zone, and I realized quite quickly the dynamics of the family wasn’t healthy.

He was having a very difficult time working with his father, and so I chalked up a lot of his habits going out, partying. I had a conversation with him because I wasn’t getting any younger and I always wanted to have children.

Temporary Behavioral Changes That Prolong Betrayal TraumaHe always kept delaying it, postponing it. “Now isn’t the right time.” I finally had a very good conversation with him about what I was envisioning for my future, what I wanted in a partner, what I wanted in a marriage. If this isn’t what he wanted, then no problem. We can split ways, but now’s the time. He said, no, that’s not what I want. His behavior changed for a while.

Anne: So he said, no, I don’t want to change things. I want to stay with you.

Lynea: And then I don’t think it was too much longer after that than I conceived.

Anne: So you finally are able to get pregnant, which is something that you’ve wanted for a long time. And before you do that, he seems supportive and he seems like he’s on the same page as you. Then what happens?

Lynea: And then he goes back into his old pattern of behavior. He’s still going out partying, just generally not helping out with anything. I had made a commitment to myself after moving to this new country that it was a great opportunity for a fresh start. I’m going to work on being the person that I want to work on because so much of my life, I was just doing everything for him and I don’t know how I have the strength to do it.

Become The Woman I Want To BecomeLooking back, I really don’t, but I just decided I’m going to go and play full out and become the woman that I want to become no matter what. That’s what I did. I found my own circle of friends, a new church. I found the support that I needed, the friendships that I needed, and I just really focused on that.

Fast forward, my son was born at the end of December in 2019 and the behavior just got worse. It got a lot worse. I was happier when he didn’t come home. He was traveling a lot for business. I gave him my support so that he could travel and learn a new skill.

I actually had peace in the house for once. It just really got me thinking it’s much worse, much, much worse than I originally had thought.

Anne: Why do you think it took him being away, and we find this with most victims of emotional and psychological abuse that it’s very difficult to see how bad it is while you’re still in constant contact with them while they’re still living in the house. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think that being away from him helped you see it, and if so, why do you think that was?

Experience Peace And Clarity With SupportLynea: Yeah, I totally think that being away from him helped me see it because thinking back to when we had moved to the big city and we were doing our business together. It was like the same kind of routine almost every day.

We were working a lot and then we would come home and it’d be the same dynamic and I like to have people over at the house. He never wanted to do that. Looking back, I see that he really isolated me from my friends. He most certainly isolated me from my family on purpose, and that’s been very difficult.

Now a relationship with my family is better than it’s ever been, and we are able to really discuss what has happened over the years and it makes complete sense now. It really does.

Anne: Here at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, our specialty is psychological and emotional abuse, which is horrific. Many women who’ve had physical violence say that definitely the emotional and psychological stuff was much more difficult to recover from, but just from your perspective, blocking doors or breaking things, did any of that happen?

Lynea: When we were younger, I remember some of those things happening and he was always into TaeKwonDo and I got into doing it as well. He was quite good. He got up to be a second degree black belt, and I remember that we would spar together and I just feel like he was overly aggressive on purpose.

Betrayed By Physical IntimidationSo there was an excuse as to why, but it was just that kind of thing. There was an instance, here, after I had my son that he was aggressive and he scared me and I went to block him and he said that I hit his sunglasses and he busted his eyebrow. I don’t see how that’s possible.

Anne: Well, if you’re an awesome at TaeKwonDo, maybe! I’m kidding.

Lynea: Yeah, exactly

Anne: That. Oh, we’re just wrestling around, but they do really have the intent to hurt you or are they kind of bumping you all the time or stuff like that? That’s covert physical abuse where they are sort of pushing you around and throwing their weight around. To let you know, “Hey, I could hurt you.”

Lynea: I do remember that, and I thought it was always his way of when you’re teenagers or whatever, and it’s kind of like the childish boy way of getting the girl’s attention. I just thought he never grew up in that way. I always told him that I really don’t appreciate that. We’re adults. Touch me nicely. I didn’t really understand that.

Anne: In addition to you getting therapy and trying to talk him into it, which he didn’t want to do, was there anything else that he tried or you tried maybe 12 steps or addiction recovery or anything like that?

He Never Wanted To Work On His IssuesLynea): No, he never wanted to work on his issues. He said it wasn’t a problem, but it was a problem because it was continually coming up in our conversations.

Anne: It’s interesting to me that he was like a health coach, but not healthy at all. Did that strike you at the time as maybe hypocritical or ironic or was he just so good at manipulation?

Lynea: We had conversations about that. I’m like, physically, you’re in amazing shape. You play sports, go to the gym every day and you eat well. Why continue having some of these bad habits that just don’t line up? It doesn’t really make sense if the puzzle pieces don’t fit. He didn’t like to have those conversations.

Anne: Talk about how you recognized it was him and then maybe what led you to seek safety

Lynea: The last couple of years before we moved here to Europe. I think that’s when my journey really started of being aware that no matter what I do, no matter how well I behave or how I change things up or how I switch things around or whatever I do, it’s never enough.

It’s never right. It never changes anything, and so I think that’s what gave me the courage just to live for myself. To do what I want to do and seek the things that I’m passionate about, create my circle of friends. Just moving here gave me that ability to do that and I’m so glad that I did because it really opened my eyes. I did have what I call the day of discovery. I was back home.

Shocking Discovery Of Infidelity, The Pain Of Betrayal TraumaAnne: When you say back home, do you mean in the States?

Lynea: Yes. We were traveling, my son and I went back home to visit my family for Thanksgiving. We had been there for a while and it was early November. I remember getting up and I was checking my email and I got two emails from somebody that I still to this day don’t know.

They were just letting me know that my husband’s been cheating on me nearly the entire time that we had moved to Europe. I was trying to hide it from my parents because there wasn’t a very good relationship there with them because of everything that’s happened.

I was just kind of in shock really. So I called him up and of course he denied it at first and then about an hour later he actually called me back and he confessed to it, but he said that it wasn’t anybody in particular. They’re not important. He wants to work on our marriage. He’s so sorry.

Anne: It wasn’t anyone in particular, meaning he was having affairs with multiple people or just the one person he was having an affair with for a long time was just no one special.

Lynea: I said, it’s just one person. He is like, no, not just one person. He just was very general about it.

Anne: When I said earlier, did you know of any affairs or anything? Was it just because at that point in the story you didn’t know?

Understanding The Full Extent Of Betrayal TraumaLynea: Exactly that point in the story? I didn’t know. No, I had no idea. This was my big eyeopener and then things just started clicking into place

Anne: And What do you mean by clicking into place?

Lynea: The blindfold had been removed from my eyes and I saw him for what he was. I just understood this is the reality of it, and I knew that I was going to really need some help navigating this because I had a one-year-old son living in a foreign country, zero family here.

That’s when I found Betrayal Trauma Recovery. Oh my goodness, that was a game changer for me. I know that I wouldn’t be the person I am sitting here today feeling the way I’m feeling, being able to share without the support of BTR. The first time, I was just searching online.

I remember I got a therapist from somewhere else online. I did a couple of sessions and I’m just like, Nope, she’s not getting it.

I needed somebody that understood betrayal trauma because it’s complicated, it’s complex. When I found Betrayal Trauma Recovery and I remember reading through the landing page. I just was like, this is it.

Finding Support & Validation Through Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group SessionsI attended a Betrayal Trauma Group Session for the first time and I was early. I’m always early to everything. When I joined the group session, I was thinking to myself, okay, there’s only going to be five or six other women joining this session at most.

More and more women just kept joining the session and I was seeing all of these faces pop up and these windows. Well over 20 women, with every woman, I had some understanding and it was resonating with me in some way. I just remember feeling so grateful that I’m not crazy.

For years, I felt crazy. For years I thoughtI had mental illness, depression, that I was the problem, and so I couldn’t get enough. I read a lot of the books that you guys offered on your website, I downloaded your book from Amazon as well. Everything was just making so much sense and I had never heard of anything like this.

I did one or two Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions then I realized I really need to get some one-on-one coaching. So I tried BTR.ORG Individual Sessions. Then I paired up with one of your amazing coaches and that was just such a wonderful experience. It just really helped me so much with what I was navigating.

Necessity Of Betrayal Trauma Recovery Individual SessionsGoing through divorce, trying to co-parent and also child custody. It was so valuable, so valuable because I didn’t have to sit there and try to explain to somebody that has never experienced any of this before. She knew exactly what I was talking about. She just had really good advice about how to navigate a really difficult time in my life.

Anne: I’m so happy to hear that. That is our goal here is to really help women. Because I experienced it and everyone who works at Betrayal Trauma Recovery experienced going to a therapist and then kind of educating the therapist, so we don’t get help.

We’re trying to help them help us, and that doesn’t actually make sense. So many people just don’t see this from an abuse perspective. When you got that information that he was abusive, how did you feel about that at first? Did it hit like, oh, this is what it is, or did it take a minute? Were you like, I don’t know about that. Can you talk about your journey to realizing that he’s abusive?

Lynea: I went back and forth for a long time and I’m just going to be completely honest with you. There’s even days that I have recently that I questioned that maybe it was still me, as crazy as that sounds. It is a long journey to recover from betrayal trauma.

Accepting Reality Of What Caused Betrayal TraumaAnne: Doesn’t sound crazy. All of us have been through that.

Lynea: All the truth is there. Everything’s out there on his behavior, everything over the years and it’s like I always have to go back, no, this is what you did. This is what you tried. This is your thought process behind the things. Remember the feelings. It takes a long time to get out of that cycle of thought or the abuse pattern. It’s been a journey.

Anne: Before we talk about this, I want to say that at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we’re not pro divorce, so whatever any of our clients feels like is the right thing for them. We meet them where they’re at. Your emotional safety and your psychological safety is our top priority. This is why I created The Living Free Workshop.

You decided that divorce is the best option and let him know. I’m guessing he didn’t react to that.

Lynea: I was open to giving it another chance. Remember I was visiting the United States and then I came back right before Christmas to Europe. Because of the conversations that we had that we would work on it and he needed to go see a psychologist or a therapist of his choice. My ultimatum, attending therapy, he only went to two sessions.

He said, I really like the person that I’m seeing, but that doesn’t work for me. I said, okay, well, that’s where we are. Then I think divorce is the best option. He went on to say that, and also, I don’t believe in marriage anymore.

Betrayal Trauma: Understanding Their Exploitative CharacterI said, well, there’s not much that we can debate with that. If you don’t believe in marriage anymore, then you don’t believe in marriage. I guess I don’t know really what to say to that. Then he proceeded to ask me, my jaw about hit the floor, if I would consider having an open marriage.

I said, no, no, that’s definitely not for me. He knows my values. He knows how I feel about marriage, so I said, no. I know that I’d let him know two times, if not three times I’m going to file for divorce. When he actually got served the papers, was furious.

Anne: I find that to be so awful and scary, but also very interesting that generally speaking, they don’t want to get divorced. Which leads me to the conclusion that for them it’s about exploitation. They don’t necessarily want a marriage, but they enjoy the fruits of a partner, someone who will do things for them, childcare or meals.

It’s more of an exploitative relationship where they realize you’re a powerful, awesome person. There’s things that being associated with you bring into their lives, and so they don’t want to lose that association. They don’t want to lose the access to all of your talents and your passion and all the good things about you.

Dealing With Betrayal Trauma And Moving ForwardThey just don’t want to participate in a relationship, but they want to be able to exploit you. That’s the only thing I’ve been able to figure out because if they don’t want to be married, why do they want to be married? It’s hard to wrap our heads around that.

Lynea: Yeah, it really truly is, and that’s really been one of the hardest things for me to realize that I really don’t think he ever loved me. It is a huge part of recovering from betrayal trauma. He discarded me after being with him for over two decades. That’s crazy, and I just had his son and through my pregnancy and delivery and all of that, that’s a whole other story that we could go into on the treatment.

It’s ugly and it’s very, very painful, and that’s why I just, I want to share my story and let people know. Let women know that they’re not alone and it’s not them. They’re not crazy. There’s no shame in being deceived.

Anne: Well, exploiters use your strengths against you. You’re a compassionate, caring person and they use that to their own benefit. They’re not part of a team and it’s hard to realize like, oh, I’ve never been part of a team. It’s not because you’re not absolutely amazing and worthy of love.

They’re incapable of that because their character is one of exploitation. They have an exploitative character and they also think that that’s sort of what a relationship is.

Reflecting On Recovery From Betrayal TraumaLynea: Exactly, yeah. Instead of like a partnership. I felt a lot of times that I was his competition, but I thought, well, his personality type is he’s always in it to win it. Whether it’s or just being good at school. That was his strength, so I would always kind of back off also as being his wife.

Oddly enough, I was thinking about this the other day and I’m just thankful and grateful that I could laugh about this now, but guess who’s married already? Yeah, of course. The guy who’s not into marriage.

Anne: He feels uncomfortable when he is not able to exploit someone.

Lynea: Yeah. That’s a miserable way to live.

Anne: I want all women to know this. They have a really hard time being alone because their power does not come from personal responsibility. Their quote unquote, power comes from exploiting us. Then if you think about it, who is the powerful one?

An abuser will always lead you to believe that you’re going to be nothing without him, but it’s the opposite. He is going to be nothing without us because he has nothing, because all the power that he has is stuff that he exploited from someone else. Is he going to actually clean the bathroom?

Gratitude For Growth On The Betrayal Trauma Recovery JourneyLynea: Yeah, I doubt it because

Anne: He would be a powerful person if he had personal responsibility if he cleaned the bathroom, but he doesn’t. I want to always point out to women that makes him powerless.

Lynea: Just trying to co-parent with him, I laugh about co-parenting because it’s nothing of the sort, but he’s still trying to shame me. He brings up things of the past, hints around that I’m a bad mom trying to get me back into that crazy making cycle.

Anne: You’ll get stronger and stronger. So Lynea, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us about how to recover from betrayal trauma, today and share your story. We really appreciate it.

Lynea: My pleasure. Thank you for all that you do.

View Details

In this episode of The BTR.ORG Podcast, host Anne Blythe speaks with J.R. about her struggles after discovering her husband’s infidelity and emotional abuse. They discuss problems that can occur in religious and legal frameworks, and the possible impact of complementarian ideas. The conversation underscores the resilience required to confront and navigate emotional and spiritual abuse.

BTR.ORG is here for you, learn about our Group Support Sessions.

This episode is Part Three of Anne’s interview with J.R.

Part One: My Husband Says I’m the Problem. Is He Right?

Part Two: Should I Divorce My Husband for Emotional Abuse? Can I?

Part Three: How Complementarian Ideas May Contribute To Emotional Abuse (THIS EPISODE)

Can Complementarian Ideology Perpetuate Emotional Abuse?Transcript:Anne: I have JR back on today’s episode several months back. We had the beginning of her story, which we linked to on our website, btr.org. You can go there and it lists all of the episodes that she’s been in.

We wanted to take a break to give her time to process what she had talked about all of the events leading up to her divorce, so if you have not listened to that yet, go there. Listen to that first. Her first episode is titled, My Husband Says I’m The Problem, and that aired on March 26th, 2024, so you can go back and look at that in Apple podcasts. Welcome back J.R.

J.R.: Thank you, Anne. I’m glad to be back.

Gender Dynamics Complementarian Ideas Can ExploreAnne: Last time we were talking about how misogyny is systemic through church institutions, through society, also as it relates to complementarian ideas. I’ve talked with women all over the world from every religion, from no religion. Like atheist women or women who are agnostic and they have faced the same problems, but in different ways through the court system or through their workplace.

Are you surprised at how systemic the misogyny is and how difficult it really is to get out of abuse?

J.R.: I feel like I’ve never been a super optimistic person. I’m probably more of a realist, I definitely had more hope in the justice system and in our institutions, especially in religious institutions, in just people in general.

I have to say that I’ve become pretty jaded. I mean, at this point I’m healing. I’m growing. We work in process, so I am working through a lot of bitterness about the system and the church specifically. I didn’t grow up in what I would consider this complementarian male led sort of spiritual atmosphere, but in my formative young adult years.

On meeting my husband, he taught a lot of these really toxic patriarchal teachings and then used them against me. I’ve seen it time and time again and it was very surprising to me.

Anne: For people who are unfamiliar with complementarian views or that paradigm of viewing gender roles, can you talk about that just briefly for people who are unfamiliar with that?

What A Victims Entire Story Can Tell Us About ALL The Challenges of Emotional AbuseJ.R.: What attracts people to complementarian ideas? If they have good intentions, is that it’s sort of this hierarchical structure that God put in place in the Bible, that it puts husbands as the heads of their wives. Then in a church structure, it would put men in positions of authority and it absolutely.

In many areas, it completely disqualifies women for even holding a leadership or authority position in the church. I guess that was supposed to put it in a good light, but that didn’t really put it in a great light because it’s very hard.

Anne: I don’t know if there is any way to put it in a good light, but now I’m going to ask you the question that might put it in a good light. Which is when you were first introduced to it, what spoke to you about it? Is there anything about complementarian ideas that you thought, oh, this is intriguing,

My guess is that you would not be drawn to complementarian ideas. Where you were then it makes sense that you were back then. What are the ideas are compelling about it?

J.R.: It’s interesting because I was not interested at all when it was first introduced to me. Actually, I listened to, well then I guess he was maybe my fiance at the time. I don’t even know if I was married to my ex, but he wanted me to listen to this sermon by a preacher that will go unnamed who has become the sore spot for me.

Complementarian Teachings Spill Over Into Custody CasesAnne: Is this a famous preacher, someone you could find on the internet or is this a local preacher?

J.R.: He’s famous. Can I name drop him? Is that okay? Yeah. Okay, so it was John MacArthur who I didn’t,

Anne: I have no idea who that is.

J.R.: Oh, good. Bless you. I’m glad that you don’t because it’s terrible. My ex had me listen to the sermon, and I remember we were at his Bible college at the time. We were sitting in an empty room on campus, and I watched this sermon. By the end of it, I was just bawling because I had never seen someone or heard someone be so cruel and ruthless and just not compassionate at all from the pulpit like that.

The way he talks about women and what our roles are and why we’re made the way we’re made. Basically laying complementarian ideas. At that point, I hadn’t even started my journey of starting to have children or motherhood or being a wife or anything.

I didn’t have personal experience. I just sat there feeling if I was a woman who either just didn’t want to have children, maybe wanted to be married but wasn’t finding the right person. Or maybe was struggling with infertility, whatever it was, that hearing this, it would just feel like a slap in the face. That God designed you for these things and basically apart from these things, you don’t have worth.

Examining Why Complementarian Ideas Can Be Problematic I mean, at that point, looking back, I can see why I felt that way because it all within the context of marriage and motherhood. I’m a young single woman, the way he framed it, I’m not fulfilling the purpose of my life. In complementarian style teaching the only thing you are supposed to be is a mother and a wife. I remember crying, I remember resisting, but I really loved Jesus.

My faith is very important to me, and between my ex and then the pastor early on in our marriage, I just felt like, I guess they’re using scripture. I guess that’s what it says, I guess that’s what it means. I guess I need to conform to complementarian ideas, and so I kind of did it reluctantly, to be honest.

Anne: It’s not like it spoke to you. You’re saying I resisted it, but I sort of was coerced. Would you say

J.R.: A hundred percent I would use that word, especially now that I’ve done a lot of my own growing and kind of reflecting. Yes, say coerce because I mean, there are instances, I’ve always loved music, musical theater and different things. I signed up to audition for the voice, so kind of silly. It was like this fun thing I was going to do with my mom.

Right when I first got married and my husband and pastor at the time, I remember this conversation happened at our dinner table in our home. They told me and they used the scriptures against me.

Complementarian Ideas May Excuse When Male Leadership Hurts WomenI was being told that I was being selfish, I was using worldly wisdom instead of seeking godly wisdom because I would be in the secular world or I wouldn’t be like, well, you’re not singing worship, so why would you even do this? I was basically talked into and I would say guilted and shamed into not auditioning.

Anne: Coerced. Did your fiance have a job? I just want to bring up the misogyny here, right? Did the pastor say to him, you should not work at this job because it’s in the world?

J.R.: Oh, but that’s the thing. My fiance was the only other staff member on the staff at this church, and I remember my family was really upset. It caused a really big argument and kind of a rift between me and my parents and my sister because they were like, what are you doing? This is your passion. This is what you want.

Why are you not pursuing this? And I pretty much, I parroted all of the scripture back to them, and I got very protective personally. What I experienced in this complementarianism, this sort of bubble. It was like I needed to protect my marriage because I wasn’t my own autonomous person. Well, we were, but I had to defer to him.

Really there was no me. There was only him because if there’s one, and I don’t have a say, well, who’s the one? It’s him.

What Men Mean When They Say “We’re One”I repeated all this to them, and they expressed concern. However, I am newly married and felt the need to respect my husband, that’s the basis for complementarian ideas. I embraced everything they told me, believing it aligned with the Bible. That was enough for me to decide this is my path now.

Anne: Are you surprised and shocked to find out it was just psychological abuse, not God? Another argument suggests that God created you and gave you these amazing talents.

Don’t hide your candle under a bushel. I guess the scriptures only apply to men. They don’t apply to women got this candle and they’re telling you to hide it under a bushel.

J.R.: Right? Well, until it came to leading worship in the church, which they used me for and didn’t compensate, and it was very, yeah. Oh, yeah. So to answer your question, yes, at the time I never used the term abuse. Honestly, until I started listening to BTR. There was a lot of toxicity. There was a lot of stuff I did see in my marriage, but it took a long time for me to be able to use that word and to see it for what it’s,

Anne: I think so many women when they come out of that because they’re trying to be so righteous, they really genuinely love truth and they love God. They want to do the right thing so much that they’re willing to sacrifice themselves to the idea of complementarian theology.

Fighting For Custody During Divorce I’m like, wow, women are brave and strong and powerful, and they’re making these decisions because they’re such courageous, incredible people. There’s nothing about sacrificing everything about yourself that is weak, zero things, that is super, super strong.

Realizing that I was unknowingly coerced into sacrificing it to wickedness is devastating and heartbreaking. I thought I was doing the right thing. It’s so hard to deal with all this gendered emotional and psychological abuse. I have been actively working to get Om’s Law passed in Utah because my friend Leah Moses’ son was murdered.

Some of you have seen me in the news doing that. If you go to our YouTube channel, you can go to Betrayal Trauma Recovery’s YouTube Channel, and then we have a playlist. It’s BTR in the News, and you can see all the new stuff involved in trying to pass that bill. I bring that up because even agnostic or atheist women or religious women who experience it in their faith and then also in the court system are shocked like, wait, wait, wait.

I thought the justice system would help protect me from abuse. What is going on? Why is it getting worse? Let’s start talking about that divorce. In our last episode with you, you got to the point where you were ready to divorce and your sister was helping you.

The Decision To Divorce Let’s get to that point your sister tells you. If you haven’t listened to that and you want to hear the first part, go back. You decide, I’m going to file for divorce. Talk about what happens next, sort of what your mindset was at the time. This was how many years ago?

J.R.: It was the end of 2020 that we separated. We briefly tried to make it work, got back together again, at the end of 2020, but it was January of 2021. At this point, three years ago.

Anne: Those of us who have been, I’d say out of the fog for a long time, you view things differently over the years. Three years ago, where you are in your mind is going to be drastically different from where you are today as you talk about it. Can you kind of take us back in time to your mindset and how you thought about it back then when you decided to file?

J.R.: I decided to file because I had a pretty severe mental breakdown and was in the hospital because I was suicidal, and that linked with getting back together with him. When I came out of the hospital, I still wasn’t going to leave him, but his actions in that week following that incident just solidified for me that he would never change.

Surprise & Struggle Over Custody Claims That it would never get better, that I couldn’t put myself back in that situation. Friends of ours, or they’re more friends of mine, I would say. We went to their house. I asked them if they would be present for me to tell him that I wanted the divorce, and I had written a letter and I read it to him. I know the friends who there found it so shocking that he lacked of any kind of feeling.

They’re watching friends that they know really well and that they’ve watched in ministry, start a family, all these things, and they’re watching. As I’m telling him the heartbreaking story of why I need to divorce him, and he’s just emotionless, emotionless.

I had already seen a lawyer. I had already had a lawyer come up with an agreement that included it, said that I would be the primary custodian or the primary caregiver. That he would be partial, that he would’ve partial custody.

Now I’m like, how did I miss that this is going to be an issue and he started fighting me on that. At this point in time, going back to 2021, I have three children. They are probably like three, two and less than a year old, and I have been a stay at home mom with them their whole lives.

I remember a conversation with him where I was saying something about me being the primary caregiver, and he was like, well, I don’t see how you’re the primary caregiver. I was like, wait, I am literally with them more of the time. It’s not a question.

Navigating Custody & Complementarian Ideology Anne: Also, wait a minute, all this complementarian stuff,

Anne: You’re suddenly throwing it out the window when it doesn’t suit you, because didn’t you tell me the whole time I’m the primary caregiver. They’re not the most logical folks. These abusers, they use the arguments when it suits them, but then when it doesn’t, they just throw it out the window.

J.R.: They have to grasp at straws when they realize it’s all falling apart. I’ve just seen in co-parenting with this person that they’ll say the craziest things. They will contradict themselves all over the place. You think we’re talking about the justice system, you would think it would be so obvious to anyone with a brain.

It just, for some reason, and this is why I, okay, sorry, I’m getting all over the place. I’m getting ahead of my thought.

Anne: You can go all over the place if you want to go ahead. I’ll just bookmark it for our audience and for you, we are at that. You’re surprised that he’s contesting that you’re the primary caregiver.

The Decision To Speak Out J.R.: This is why I’m here. My current husband, he is with me right before getting on this call. I was just so nervous. My stomach was so sick, I was like, I don’t know.

Why am I doing this? What am I doing? And he reminded me, he’s like me, you’re doing this because it’s important to you and the lies and the voices in your head that they don’t want you to be speaking out to be confident.

To be helping other people, to be sharing your story. All that being said, you feel crazy. It’s that C word, that horrible C word. I felt it for so long. It’s what BTR helped me to realize that I wasn’t. You feel that way with the justice system or injustice system and the people who are supposed to help. They’re just, where are they? It’s infuriating.

Anne: You’re surprised, right? Because this goes against all of his complementarian values that you are the primary caregiver. Which he’s told you multiple times about your quote “role here on Earth.” Without that you’re nothing. Talk about that, how that went down in court. You said it didn’t go well. Did he end up fighting it successfully?

Custody Decisions That Lead To More AbuseJ.R.: At the time, I was not in a great place. I had just come out of the hospital. I was just trying to get on my feet again. Although I will say I got a job. I got my kids into a daycare, got health insurance for all of us, which he never had for us all within a week.

I’m just so tired and I want it to be over. I fought back basically over the next month or two. I worked with my lawyer and my lawyer was working with his lawyer and him, and it was just back and forth, and he wasn’t going to concede to that.

To me, being the primary caregiver or having primary custody, hindsight is 2020. I now know better. If I had known better, I would have taken him to court and easily won custody, but I am still trying to be reasonable. Well, that’s not fair, because I was reasonable.

Anne: Let me put words in your mouth here, and if I’m wrong, you can correct me. You thought like, oh, since this makes sense, since any regular person I could do this with, this will probably work. Not realizing they are not normal. They’re an abuser.

Navigating Divorce & Custody ChallengesJ.R.: Yes, exactly. I just thought, I don’t have the money to go to court, I don’t have the mental capacity right now to go to court. I just want to move forward. At the time, I would say to people, I would say, he’s a fine dad.

He’s just a terrible partner, and now he’s really shows his true colors. Of course, I made him look good. I made him look like a good dad, so now we’re not together, and it’s very obvious that he’s not a good dad. Okay, we’ll do 50/50. I have regretted that every day since.

Anne: Are you still 50/50?

J.R.: Unfortunately, I did take him to court last year, and it was a brutal experience. The judge slut shamed me. My ex brought in a local politician who he somehow connected with, who for some reason sat and observed when they didn’t allow my husband to come in.

He brought people in who had a bone to pick with me, who perjured themselves on the stand. I mean, it was a mess. It was such a mess. By the end, nothing changed. They just said, everything seems to be working just fine, so we’re not going to change anything. The Ongoing Struggles of Co-Parenting with A Man with No Integrity

Challenges In Co-Parenting & Custody AgreementsAnne: I brought him to court for this reason.

J.R. : Exactly, because

Anne: Everything was working fine. No,

J.R.: Yeah. I picked up all the pieces. My big thing was I love my kids. Of course I’m going to do everything for them. I’m never going to let a custody agreement or order stop me from making sure they have what they need for school or whatever.

I’m using air quotes for 50/50 every time, I say that I’m doing 50% of the work, but I don’t have the rights to operate as though I have that custody. He would argue with me about medical things, he would argue about anything he could possibly argue about, and it was just things that I always took care of.

He was always happy for me to take care of them. But now, if I made a decision and he just felt like it one day, he would just nitpick it and he would say, that’s not, I don’t agree. We’d go back and forth and it’s like I didn’t have the right legally to do certain things because we’re 50/50.

Surviving An Abuse & Fighting For JusticeAnne: I was in the same exact boat that you are in for eight years dealing with my abusive ex. He caused problems every single day, he cancelled medical appointments, he didn’t want the kids to take any extracurricular activities.

He would try to coerce them into not doing literally simple things like baseball or taking trombone lessons, piano lessons. I took my ex to court and did not get custody even though I had a current protective order and pictures of bruises.

I was so mad. I’m trying to work for victims everywhere. I have a master’s degree and you know, stuff like that. I think like, okay, I should be able to figure this out. I’m like, if I can’t figure this out, no one can Literally, nobody can. My ex is an attorney. He just walked in the guardian ad litem, they like we’re in the same attorney club.

Oh I get it . The thing was over. I was so mad like, what, I’m doing everything right. I have all the documentation, I have everything and I can’t be free from abuse. I’m being abused almost every day by his messages.

Deliverance Through Faith & Hard WorkI started really praying and fasting about it and just pondering and just praying for deliverance. I feel like I was led and guided, I know that if you’ve been spiritually abused, that is triggering. It’s hard talking about God because that’s how a lot of women got abused.

Telling that part of the story is important because I promised God, if you deliver me, I will shout it from the rooftops. This was not me. This was an absolute miracle. My sister who’s not religious, she was like, no, you did it.

You did it through your hard work. You had the ideas. And I’m like, no, no, no, these were from God and she’s kind of mad at me sometimes because she’s like, no, you’re a hard worker. You should tell people all of the hard things that you did.

Take that with a grain of salt whether you’re religious or not, that like that’s kind of what happened. So because I was able to deliver myself and my kids from abuse using strategy and not going to court, I was like, I’ve got to let other people know.

Transformational Strategies For Overcoming AbuseFor two years after that I tested it with local people in my area, tested the strategies, helped them with their messages. Did all The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop strategies and helped them get delivered. I was like, is this just a fluke, right? Is this just me? Then I thought, I’m going to test this out

We tested it and miracle after miracle has occurred with these strategies and it makes me mad that a victim who hasn’t done anything wrong, she’s doing everything right. She’s reporting, she’s telling people what’s going on. They’re not listening.

I want to emphasize that like I was doing everything quote unquote “right.” You know, I’m a good communicator, I am a good mom, you know all that stuff. That’s not what’s going on here. This isn’t about how skilled you are at being a mom or a communicator.

This is about knowing what tactics they use and the traps that they use and how to avoid them through strategy. That’s what I teach in the Living Free Workshop. Then when you complete The Living Free Workshop, then you can take The Message Workshop and the Message workshop is tools to write strategic messages to these abusers to deliver ourselves.

Importance Of Taking The Living Free Workshop Before The Message WorkshopThe reason why you have to take Living Free first before you can take The Message Workshop is because all of the strategies build on each other. We’ve seen awesome success and I’ve trained the coaches so they can help women do it if they’re still having a little bit of trouble applying it.

Taking The Living Free Workshop helps a ton. Because the thing that I realize and you might be realizing, well you know this is not about the kids. Yeah. They don’t care about the kids. They only care about control over the kids and also control over you.

If they didn’t have the kids to use to continue to harass you or bother you or continue to be able to sort of be entertained by the chaos that they cause in your life. They wouldn’t have anything because they’re not interested in parenting, but they are going to be interested.

Is he remarried in in finding someone else to exploit, right. Marrying someone else that they’re gonna exploit and they’re gonna exploit them for childcare to take care of their kids and stuff. Is he remarried yet?

J.R.: He dates a lot. He’s moved women in women and their children into his home with my kids without

Anne: Telling me. Wow. Wow. The super righteous guy.

J.R.: He let his true colors show.

Discussion On Misogyny & Judgment Anne: He’s definitely an abuser and exploiter. Because he only uses them when it serves his purposes.

J.R.: Right. Yes. My story, like since leaving him has been pretty wild too. People have made a lot of judgments about me. I said about the judge, like slut shaming me on the stand. That’s because I got pregnant out of wedlock after leaving my ex.

Anne: Sorry, sorry. But your, your ex had sex out of wedlock just like you did.

J.R.: Right, exactly.

J.R.: There’s the misogyny at play. He can’t get pregnant. I actually wrote an open letter to the judge. I brought that point up that if our sexual activity were pertinent to the custody case for our children, then why didn’t we ask him about his sexual partners? But it wasn’t about our sexual partners, it was about the fact that I had a baby.

Which I also have taken very good care of and have proved to be a very good mother regardless of men who don’t want to take responsibility for their actions. I felt like I had to say that because of what you said about him, like being a religious guy and everything.

I know that people look at me and think, oh well is she who she always said she is? It’s like, well actually you know what? I don’t know. I’m discovering who I am because for 10 years he stamped it out of me.

Personal Growth & Overcoming CoercionAnne: It’s okay to change your mind. It’s okay to to be like, wait a minute, this was coercion and I don’t want to do this. That’s not what they’re doing. They’re not like, Hmm, you know what, the more I think about it, the more this is really misogynistic so I’m gonna make sure that I’m a good partner.

That would be growing. Right? No, they’re not doing that. They’re just finding another way to abuse or another way to coerce or their current target abusing her in a way that works.

If their current target’s not religious, they’re not going to use spiritual coercion or complementarian ideas on their current target because that’s not going to work. They’re going to try something else. I’m sorry. That’s awful. We’re getting really personal.

J.R.: Oh to I, listen, I came on here.

Anne: I’m assuming you did not end up marrying the father of this child?

J.R.: No, I believe it’s important because I have overcome a lot of self-shaming and self-hatred due to experiences after that relationship. Now, I look back with compassion because I always wanted to love and be loved.

That did not happen in my marriage. I spent a long time begging for it.

How My Last Baby And Faith Led Me To HealingOnce I got out, I was very broken and engaged in pretty risky behavior, regardless of religious views. Things that just weren’t good for me. They weren’t healthy for me. My daughter, my last baby might have saved my life honestly. I was just going down a really bad road. Of course this was all, whenever I didn’t have my children, it was 50 50.

Trying to fix what was broken and obviously it wasn’t working. I wasn’t actually healing. I got pregnant and I thought it was gonna ruin my life, but it actually I think saved me. It stopped me from continuing down the path I was on.

The father wanted me to abort and I wouldn’t. He said that he didn’t want anything to do with it. I considered adoption. He said he didn’t want anything to do with that either. Then shortly after that I met my current husband who came into my life because I am a spiritual person. I had been praying for God to send me a Boaz.

If you know the story of Ruth, it’s basically in that story Boaz is what’s called the kinsman redeemer. You know, I was in this place, I’m like, I’m a strong independent woman.

Finding Healing & Faithfulness After DivorceI don’t need a man. I prayed that God would send me someone to take up the responsibility and role my husband was supposed to fulfill. And they would fulfill what I felt like I was promised through making my vows.

Anne: Making your vows to your ex?

J.R.: Sorry, to my ex. Yeah. That one

Anne: Kind of like, I’ve been faithful to my vows now I need someone who will be faithful to the vows as well. Idea.

J.R.: You know, I’m not gonna like sugarcoat it looking back like I know everything out there and the advice I would give to women is just to wait, like give it time. I’m not advocating for like this because of my situation. Things did move pretty fast with my current husband because I was pregnant. It was kind of like, well are you in or are you out? If you stick around like I’m gonna have this baby.

I wasn’t really like messing around. We got married last year and he is a wonderful father to all four of my kids. God has done a lot of healing in me through being in a healthy relationship.

The Impact of Therapist Advice Anne: Let’s talk about that for a minute because a lot of therapists, especially the pornography, addiction, recovery community, a lot of like pastoral counseling. I’m going to say almost all therapists would say something like, if you don’t work it out with this man that you are with the abuser, then you will marry another abuser.

Also all marriages are hard and all relationships are really difficult. There’s no reason to call it quits on this one because the next one that you get is just going to be this hard. Women are like, oh, okay. Then they try to make it work because they don’ think they can have a relationship that isn’t just a hard slog all the time.

I’ve talked to friends who remarried healthy men and I don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s so easy. Not that it’s easy because they have difficult things that occur, but the relationship itself is, is that how you feel? Can you talk about that for a minute?

J.R.: I think some of what you were saying with the way therapists view needing to work out kind of your stuff before getting in another relationship. That’s really linked to the whole codependent idea or co-addicted.

Overcoming The Challenges of Abuse and Self-GrowthAnne: Which by the way, listeners, you are not, you are just right victims of abuse. But someone might tell you that like, you chose him or what about you made it so that you would pick somebody like this or something like that.

J.R.: When you take that away from it, obviously listen, we all have work to do in ourselves. We’re a work in progress. We should always be growing. But you take that piece out of it that isn’t even true and it’s like, well why, why shouldn’t I be ready for a relationship?

I was ready 10 years ago when I met this abuser and I wanted a relationship. I wanted love and respect and a partnership. Now I have children and I’m doing everything I should have been doing with my partner. Like of course I am ready.

I’m, I’m ready. I do think it’s important to like educate yourself and like be aware of things that maybe you weren’t before and so you can avoid and you can recognize red flags and all of that. Like all of that is very important.

Right. I will say my current husband did have a porn addiction, which I didn’t know about when we got married. When I found that out, I, it was devastating. I thought, here we go again. I cannot believe that I’m doing this again.

Understanding The Difference Between Genuine Repentance and Continued AbuseI’ve listened to you in the past and I really appreciate this. Where like you don’t really give your stamp of approval on like men who may seem to be doing the work, but like only time will tell sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.

I’m a hundred percent there too. I’ll share what my experience has been so far. But this is not me saying like, well everything’s good now everything’s fixed.

I’ve been able to see now how an abusive, narcissistic, toxic person who does not want to change and who never actually deals with the addiction. How that he handles it versus how someone who is genuinely repentant, he understands it as abuse, as emotional abuse.

He can see that what he’s been doing to me is just through the gaslighting and the lying. It’s manipulating, it’s how all of that is psychological and emotional abuse and he’s getting help. He’s in recovery. He’s in really good recovery right now.

I try not to be in that sphere of talking about all the recovery stuff on his end, but obviously it infiltrates my life because of him personally. I probably will never use the word like recovered but always recovering.

The Impact Of Recovery & The Challenges Of PornographyI do think he’s in really good recovery right now. I already thought we had a really great relationship. It was so much more loving and compassionate and it was so much more of a partnership than I ever had before. I didn’t even know it could get better, but it has gotten exponentially better now that he is sober and in recovery.

I’m in a good head space today, you know, so I can talk about it really in a clear way, but it’s hard. Like I’m not going to lie, it hurts to try again and then for that to happen again. It does give me hope that like, okay, it’s not that all men are like my ex.

Anne: Right?

J.R.: This man might have one piece of that puzzle, a similarity that is very painful for me. But that doesn’t mean he is that person for me.

Anne: The other issue is many people, men and women have used porn. If they’re lying, if they’re hiding it, if they’re using it, like if they don’t stop using it, anytime someone uses porn, even if it’s just once it’s an abuse episode, they’re abusing themselves.

They’re abusing the people around them trust, they’re abusing the person in the porn. They’re supplying demand for sex trafficking, right? So porn is, there’s nothing good about it and it is an abuse issue. There’s also a character issue at play.

The Impact Of Hidden Behaviors & Abuse When people make decisions over and over, they’re, that’s what determines their character. I would not say never, ever date or never ever marry someone who has used porn. I would never say that. What I would say is it is abuse. It’s always gonna be abuse.

There’s no part of it that if someone is involved with it, where they’re going to be like not abusive when they’re using it. The hiding or manipulation. If you do not want abuse in your life, you do not want someone who has these characteristics lying, cheating, manipulating. That’s what we need to look out for.

The reason I don’t date is mostly because I have no desire to like nurse someone back to health.

J.R.: Yes, a hundred percent it is. It’s not easy and it’s not fun. We’ve had lots of conversations because I felt like he robbed me of the chance to make a different decision. If I knew this I wouldn’t have married him. Maybe eventually we would’ve been together, I don’t know. But I definitely wouldn’t have married him.

Anne: That in and of itself was abusive

J.R.: A hundred percent, yes.

Conversations On Deception & Emotional AbuseAnne: You weren’t able to do this mutually because you did not have the right information. Men don’t recognize that that in and of itself is abuse is crazy to me. Like really you’re literally coercing and scamming someone into marrying you.

J.R.: He knew all about my history with it. We had so many conversations in the very, our very early days of dating of like I have texts that I’ve gone back to and like screenshotted of like me asking him once in a while just being like, Hey, is this an issue? Is this a current issue?

Please just tell me. I just need to know I, I just need the truth kind of thing. Over and over again lying and you know, I kind of feel, I kind of feel stupid but at the same time how was I supposed to know? Like I thought he was, I was telling me the truth.

It’s weird because in my first marriage it was so obvious to me that something was wrong. Something was off because he would never admit when I would confront him, I couldn’t explain what it was.

In this relationship really everything felt really good. I felt loved, I felt seen, I felt heard, I felt really good. I didn’t even question really that he was telling the truth. I’ll be honest, I don’t even know which one is harder because in a way my abusive ex with that experience I kind of saw it coming.

Navigating Trust You know, when it all came out it was like, oh this actually helps me make sense of everything because I already felt like everything was off. Finding out the truth helped me make sense in my current marriage, my current relationship, it confused things more for me.

I was like wait a second, how did you find out? I’ve always had a pretty strong intuition. I feel like I started to really gain that back.

Even though I say like everything is really great between us because of everything that I know about pornography addiction. I unfortunately had to learn a lot about it and it became such a big part of my life.

If he told me it was a part of his past, I was like, okay, but you didn’t do anything different. How is it not still a problem? You’re wanting me to believe that this was an issue. Then tell me what changed. Tell me how it became a non-issue.

Like you don’t just stop. Unfortunately that didn’t come until into our marriage. We would have conversations and then and some of the things we’d be talking about our past. Getting to know each other and some of the things that he would say, it just wouldn’t make sense.

Confronting Addiction & Seeking SupportI remember that feeling , no, no, no, no I’m not crazy. If I feel like something feels off then it probably is. I pushed and pushed. Honestly it was a brutal three days. The first night we talked about it and I basically just told him I was pushing and pushing and I said, look like I’m not taking no for an answer anymore.

I know this is a problem now it’s just a matter of you telling me the whole truth and not withholding anymore. It wasn’t even because I did not find anything on a device. It was just really, it was understanding the addiction. If you were addicted to this as a child and you spent all this time in this addiction, you didn’t just stop. I know you didn’t just stop.

The first night we were talking about it, it was a partial disclosure. The next day I guess nothing like new came out. Then the day after that it was everything. Since then I got like some of my very close friends involved who have walked with me through everything actually they’re the friends who were there when I asked my ex for a divorce.

They’re very close with me and I’ve got them involved and it’s actually the husband of that relationship who is, he’s is close with my husband. Basically he’s doing the, I don’t know how you feel or if you promote the accountability software.

Accountability & Support In Marriage: A Personal ReflectionAnne: All. I don’t necessarily because of my abuse stance you can talk about it.

J.R.: He’s the accountability partner for my husband on the software that we have on his devices. Basically that was like, this man is not messing around. Like he will call me the second he sees something. It’s not gonna be like, oh it’s his buddy.

They’re just gonna have a little chat through text and I’m never actually gonna know. My husband knows that. He loves you more than me. He’s not looking out for me, he’s not protecting me like he’s protecting you. That’s what I was missing too through my first marriage.

I didn’t have anyone really looking out for me and like advocating for me. There were people who were more concerned about keeping a marriage together than actually protecting victims. I mean there’s a lot of things that are different this time around.

I mean he’s actually following through with the boundaries and the needs that I’ve laid out for what I need to feel safe in our relationship. He is a hundred percent like not only doing them but doing them joyfully. He didn’t want to loose his family.

The Struggles Of Vulnerability & ExploitationWhich is not even his blood family. Whereas with my ex when we separated he flew across the country without letting me know he just abandoned us. There’s a lot of big differences but I’m not gonna say it’s easy. To anybody who would be listening, if I could go back, I probably would’ve stayed single a little bit longer.

Anne: That’s the other part of your story that’s really tough. He really exploited you and the situation when you were really vulnerable. You were praying I’ve, I’ve said that prayer , right when my ex got arrested I’ve said the prayer of like, I can’t do this alone.

I need help. I need help now. No one came but I think God was listening to my prayer and I got help in different ways. I didn’t get help in the form of a partner. But had somebody shown up and been really nice and and exploited that situation. I think about where you were at that time.

This is not to scare you, but story sounds a lot actually. Like my story, my ex was, I thought well it was wonderful. I thought he was in recovery. We, we actually did pornography, addiction recovery. Like we were the poster children, we would speak and I thought he was doing great.

Recognizing Subtle Forms Of Abuse & The Importance Of AwarenessI felt so connected to him. It was hard but I thought it was good. I remember talking to a friend of mine and she said, is this abuse? And she was like, no, your husband’s amazing. I had an abusive husband, he wasn’t anything like this. I thought yeah that’s true. You know like he would absolutely have encouraged me to come and share today my story.

When I hear stories like this, it sounds just like I sounded when I didn’t know what was really happening. Which is why I wanna warn everyone because I’ve gone through the internet and like taken all of our interviews down where I sounded like you sound now that’s not to say that’s not your experience.

I do believe people can change, I really genuinely do. I was hoping that was happening for me. And in my case the pornography addiction world just enabled his abuse and actually made him worse because he got better at manipulative kindness.

He got better at using therapy speak and then also better at hiding the abuse that was like in plain sight. If you knew what you were looking for. These types of stories make me a little nervous but also hopeful. I really hope that it works out. The only red flag that I can hear in your voice, sorry you didn’t ask for it.

J.R.: No, go. Go for it. I’m here.

Facing Hard Truths Anne: Is the, I wouldn’t, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have married him. Part of me wonders in that scenario, like let’s say I did it again if I could pull it off. Because back then I was not capable of doing this. But to say something like, oh okay, no problem.

Now that I know what’s going on, let’s get divorced because I wouldn’t have married you otherwise. Let’s just get divorced and then let’s date and let’s see if we get married. Now that I know the truth, part of me just thinks like knowing that in my heart and in my head was such a hard thing to know. Had I known this I wouldn’t have married.

I asked him all about his pornography stuff before we got married and he lied to me. It’s a hard thing to live with, which I’m sure that’s what you’re experiencing now.

I want it to be genuinely healthy. I’m holding it with open hands, you know, right now it seems as though it’s, it’s good, you know. I’m but I’m definitely not going to ignore the red flags moving forward.

Anne: Right. Well also that you would not be in this relationship had you not been coerced.

Overcoming Challenges J.R.: It’s a hard truth. Me feeling the heaviness of that on pretty much a day to day, even if it’s a great day, even if it’s wonderful.

Anne: Yeah, it’s hard. J.R. neither of us expected this interview to go here, right?

J.R.: Right.

We’re will get to the part where we hear the story about how she did end up divorcing and what happened through that divorce. Women are so afraid to sort of get to the edge and kind of look over it because they, they don’t know what’s there. For those of us who have done it we’re like, it’s okay. You know, it’s not a cliff, it’s just a slope and you’re will survive. Sharing your story of survival I think will help so many women. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts today.

J.R.: Yeah, thanks Anne.

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Many women married to emotionally abusive men wonder, “Is my husband holding me back?” Understanding the signs that your husband may be sabotaging your personal progress is crucial in taking steps toward a healthier, more empowered life.

Sarah, a member of the BTR Community used the The BTR.ORG Meditation Workshop to make progress. In this episode Anne talks to Sarah about overcoming the ways her husband held her back to reach her goals.

Using Meditation To Overcome What’s Holding You BackAnne (00:21): Sarah recently enrolled in The BTR.ORG Meditation Workshop and she’s been doing one meditation per week.

Sarah (00:29): Yes.

Anne (00:30): What meditation are you on now?

Sarah (00:33): I just finished the I am Loved meditation, a little more than halfway.

Writing Can Help Make Us Make ProgressAnne (00:37): I wrote these meditations because at a certain point, talking was not helping me as much as meditation or yoga because I talk all the time. I never am not talking about it. If I hit a healing roadblock talking, it wasn’t actually getting the trauma out of my body or helping me that much.

I started doing meditations on YouTube and several different other places. They were never specific to this situation, they weren’t gender specific. They weren’t exactly what I wanted, and so I wrote them. How everything has gone with BTR, it’s been, why not create the thing that doesn’t exist that I need.

Sarah (01:26): And is actually going to be helpful.

Anne (01:29): Hopefully. Can you talk about how it’s gone for you so far?

The Benefits Of The BTR.ORG Meditation WorkshopSarah (01:34): I’ve loved them. I have absolutely loved them, I love that you can do them multiple times. They only take about a half hour. I love that they are specific to me. I feel like I’ve done a lot more healing with the meditations than I have in years of therapy or groups because it’s more individualized.

It’s specific to me, and it’s what I think my pain is, and it allows me to get rid of that and be more open to the future and healing the wounds. I’ve really loved them.

Anne (02:15): In terms of BTR Group Sessions or BTR Individual Sessions, do you consider yourself an introvert? Just out of curiosity?

Sarah (02:24): Very much an introvert, very much. I need to clarify, I didn’t do Betrayal Trauma Group Sessions with BTR. I did it with another organization. If I could go back in time, I would’ve just done BTR from the get go. I think I would’ve just sped up my recovery a lot faster and I would’ve gotten to safety a lot faster if I had done BTR.

Anne (02:48): Yeah, BTR Group Sessions or BTR Individual Sessions.

Sarah (02:51): Yeah. The focus should have been to get to safety.

Anne (02:54): Totally. BTR group is awesome. It’s safety oriented, it’s the right group to go to if you want group support. It’s also really good to hear other women share their experiences.

There are some women who love BTR Group Sessions and they want to do it in perpetuity, and I think that’s awesome. For me, there was a certain point where talking wasn’t going to help me anymore.

My Husband’s Betrayal Is Holding Me BackDo you feel like you were kind of in that boat where when you’re thinking I still need to heal after betrayal and this seems like a better choice for me than therapy. Can you talk about how you thought about the difference between meditation and maybe another option?

Sarah (03:35): With group, I think it was good. I was just drowning, I had no idea what I was doing, so I needed tools to figure out how to survive, how to do life, and how to move forward.

Now that I’ve had some time, it’s been five years since my divorce and I have a lot more safety now, thanks to you. I mean, I still feel like I have a little bit of a wounded heart. It was a lot of pain and it’s a lot to go through and when you’re in the thick of it, my husbands betrayal was holding me back. For me personally, I was just ignoring the pain because I just have to survive.

Now that I’m safe, I can address the pain and everything like that, but it’s a lot to go through. Before I found BTR, I was doing other therapy and groups that weren’t as helpful.

Stopping My Ex-Husband From Holding Me Back(04:31): Once I found BTR, it streamlined my healing and it went a lot faster with the meditations. I saw it and I was like, oh, I got to do this, I got to try it. Once I did the first one and I was just bawling because I just felt so seen by my maker as a whole person. I just felt like I’m valuable.

Even after all this bad stuff has happened, I’m worth it. It’s been really healing. You can wade through the family dysfunction and generational dysfunction and identify for me personally, what I want to do for the future. I want to help my children and to help stop carrying on all of this weight and heaviness and pain.

Anne (05:24): You’ve listened to my podcast for years and you’re very familiar with my voice.

Sarah (05:29): Yes.

Anne (05:30): I’m just thinking I’ve never asked this question before. After listening to my podcast for so long and hearing my voice so much, was it a natural extension to have me also be doing the meditation or was that weird?

Sarah (05:43): No, I think it was great because I already felt like I knew you so well. You’re like an old friend. An old friend is just walking me through this path releasing me from my husband holding me back. It was great. I loved it, I found it more comforting rather than some stranger. I know your voice.

Anne (05:59): Can we talk a little bit about your story? It’s been five years since your divorce, before you knew that your husband was using porn and having affairs and lying and stuff. What did you think was going on back then?

Betrayed: My Husband’s Addiction Was Holding Me Back From PeaceSarah (06:13): Knew there was porn. I just didn’t know the extent of it. He kept that hidden really, really well. I thought, he must be in it again and that’s his thing. I’m going to do my life and we’ll just carry on.

Then things progressively got worse and worse and worse. There were several instances where I knew something more was happening, so I actually prayed. I prayed, Heavenly Father, I know something is happening. I just don’t know for sure. Help me find out.

That’s when I found out lots of bad things. He had a whole other email account and was meeting up with other women. I found out 2016, I stayed with him for almost a year and a half because he said he wanted to change. Then he just couldn’t be honest. He was truly holding me back from having peace.

(07:07): During that time, he started programs and I started therapy. We even did a couple of marriage therapy things, which was pointless, so unhelpful. I just kept finding things. He was not willing to be honest. We separated in April and I spent the night at a good friend’s house and she helped me find BTR.

She held my hand through the whole thing. Honestly, BTR has been my lifeline again. It’s the fastest healing, fastest way to safety also dealing with him after divorce because we have children together. I did The BTR Message Workshop and was a night and day difference. It reduced my stress, reduced my anxiety.

Everything is much smoother now because I know how to communicate, but still stand my ground and still get what I need.

My Ex-Husband Is Still Holding Me Back After Divorce Anne (08:03): The Living Free Workshop and The Meditation Workshop make it very clear that communication is a trap. All the things you’ve been told by the therapist or clergy or other people that you need to improve your communication in order to work things out is just not the case.

It seems ironic, you can throw all that therapy and all this stuff out the window. Communication’s not going to solve it. There are some communication strategies that will help you, but they’re still not solution based in terms of thinking that he’s going to be able to work with you.

Am I making sense? It’s like recognizing, communication isn’t going to help. Then if communication is not going to help, then what do? I do if I have to message back and I know communication isn’t the thing to do, then what?

You can’t just write back nonsense words! If you share kids, you have to communicate. It’s an interesting irony that I’m both saying. Communication isn’t going to solve anything, and also there are these specific communication strategies that will improve things simultaneously.

Sarah (09:11): I guess it’s learning what communication strategies actually work.

Anne (09:22): Because it’s strategic. You’ve learned to be more strategic?

Sarah (09:28): Yes. He has definitely played a game for years and years and years and was really good at it. I’m in that same game, so I have to learn the rules. If I want to make a move to go a certain direction, I have to play the game.

Strategic Communication Can Help You Move ForwardAnne (09:45): It’s kind of like render into Caesar, what a Caesar’s or don’t cast your pearls before swine or agree with an adversary quickly. Turn the other cheek kind of things, and that’s where I got those strategies from studying that.

What does this actually mean? Christ was saying that in relation to your enemy, so how does this actually deescalate the situation and help you be safe?

Sarah (10:14): Yes, yes. It’s strategic.

Anne (10:16): You can see what they’re doing and then you have specific tools to be able to be on his level. Because otherwise when we’re just straight up with them, they just weaponize everything against us.

Sarah (10:32): For me, I think the biggest thing that I learned from the message workshop is to identify what he’s actually doing. Previously I was getting a whirlwind of messages and I never know what’s happening. But now I know what it’s, and it’s easier for me to deal with it. Strategically.

Self-Discovery As A Path Forward Anne (10:56): Knowing you a little bit, I know that you’re extremely logical. I’m going to describe you as stoic. Tell me if I’m wrong. I can imagine that if you’re in therapy or something and they say, how do you feel? You would be like, well, it’s difficult.

Sarah (11:12): Yes.

Anne (11:12): Yes. Not that you haven’t cried, I’m sure you’ve cried, but you have more of a practical approach to life and your emotions. Regarding The Meditation Workshop, has that been a different way to access parts of yourself that you haven’t been able to access in a different way?

Sarah (11:37): Yes, I’m just right. That one for me was especially healing because you imagine your 6-year-old self and what she’s going through. The pure joy and pure love of a 6-year-old and accessing that 6-year-old and holding her, and that to me was really healing.

The very first one, I am resolute. That’s the one that was the most healing for me. I don’t even know if I have the words for it. I was bawling. It was just so healing to be heard and seen. I don’t know how else to describe it.

Anne (12:26): I think one of the reasons the first one sticks with people isn’t necessarily that it’s better than the other ones. It’s the first time that anyone does it. The meditations are set up so that the beginning goes through the same process every time for all 13 of them.

He Was Holding Me Back: Expressing The Emotional Impact Of BetrayalThen there’s a visualization that is topic specific. I did that at the beginning of every single one. The words are a little bit different, processing something else. Even though you’re going through the same process, it’s getting to the heart of that topic or that characteristic that you want to feel.

You want to feel resolute or you want to feel protected. It’s a powerful experience of things actually leaving your body that you didn’t know were stuck inside of you.

Then when you do it again the second time, you get another layer of pain out. I don’t know if it’s ever as intense as the first time because it’s just so different from anything else you’ve experienced. What are your thoughts on that?

Sarah (13:38): I do like that they follow the same format because I know what to expect. The workbook was helpful to identify certain areas of my body that I was feeling certain things. Then refer back to the workbook after the meditation is almost finished.

Sometimes Repetition Helps HealThat’s helpful to see, I might need to do this one again. Or, I’m feeling good on this one. At first, I didn’t know they all followed the same format, I was like, okay, Anne, what you doing now? That they all follow the format. There’s a purpose in it, and now I understand the purpose of it.

Anne (14:15): My thought was to get all the negative emotions out in the beginning. Get them all out and then fill you up with the positive thing that you wanted to become. Getting rid of the fear, getting rid of the trauma, getting rid of the insecurities, and also just the scripting from society. The places that says that you’re not good enough or that you’re not loved.

Then the second part, which is that topic specific visualization is about that thing. It’s about the truth that you’re going for or to feel protection or to feel like you are just right. I like the just right one. At first I was going to do I am enough, but my problem has never been feeling like I wasn’t enough.

My problem has been that I am too much. Instead of being like, you’re not good enough. It was always like, you are too much, calm down. There’s an element of you’re not good enough in that being too much.

Finding A Healing Structure That WorksThat’s why I wanted to be just right in between being too much and not enough is just right. No matter what you’re like, you’re already just right. You are the person that you were supposed to be. It feels like that with your 6-year-old self because she’s so cute. She’s so messy and energetic and, adorable.

Anne (15:42): Yeah, I mean, she’s a little bit too much and she’s a little bit not enough at the same time, and it makes her just right. She’s just delightful. The voiceover was actually done by my daughter, which if you hear it, you’ll hear her. She was very excited to be a part of it.

Sarah (16:08): I like the format because I really do feel like you get rid of the pain. You get rid of the trauma, and then you build me up so much and I can go conquer the world.

Anne (16:20): You’ve been able to do some amazing things, things you never thought that you’d be able to do. You remodeled your kitchen, that is huge. You broke down a wall. You’ve done just some incredible things in terms of BTR empowering you to do things that you never thought you’d be able to do.

Meditation Can Help Me Move Forward When He’s Been Holding Me BackCan you talk about how BTR and either the podcast or the meditation helped you accomplish some things that you never thought possible?

Sarah (16:53): Honestly, it comes down to being married for 13 years to an abusive man. It was always, oh, we got to do what’s best for the family and whatever. My desires or needs were always put underneath everyone else’s, mostly his. He was always holding me back.

Then I got divorced and listened to the podcast I realized I can do whatever I want. It doesn’t matter what that is. It’s whatever I want to do. That’s what I’m going to do. I think I always had the desire. I just didn’t know how to do the things I wanted to do.

Anne (17:25): Do you think also you had that scripting in your head that you couldn’t?

Sarah (17:29): For sure. I had wanted to remodel my kitchen for years and years when I was married. But we never had the money. Well, guess what, even after a divorce, I really didn’t have the money either, but I figured out how to get the money.

Achieving Personal Goals To Overcome What’s Been Holding Me BackWhereas if I was still married to him, I guarantee it would’ve been shut down. No, we don’t have the money for this. It’s never going to happen. It was definitely a script, a cultural script, spiritual script, I have to listen to him and do what he wants.

BTR definitely helped me realize my desires and my wants, and then I just had to figure out how to do it. I have on my wall, my miracle board, I have pictures on there that I want to achieve.I have switched them out because I have actually done them.

I’ve gone to Hawaii, I’ve gone to Disneyland, I’ve redone my kitchen. I am currently redoing my yard. These are things that I wanted to do for so long and I just didn’t know how to do them. First, realizing that I can do them, I just have to figure out how to do it. I can do it if I want. I just have to figure it out. That was the biggest hurdle for me.

Anne (18:44): I want to let people know. You’re not like Miss Moneybags or anything. You’re a high school teacher.

Sarah (18:50): I do not have thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars rolling in every month. It does not happen.

Taking Initiative To Make Progress Anne (18:58): One of the things that impressed me is your belief in yourself that you could do it because there were parts of that kitchen remodel that you did yourself.

Sarah (19:07): It was Father’s Day, and I didn’t have my kids, and I was like, I hate this wood paneling. I hate it, I just channeled Anne. I was like, what would Anne do? I’m like, change it. So I ripped it off. I ripped all the paneling off in one day downstairs in the basement, and then I had the studs showing and I’m like, oh, no, I’ve just created this huge mess.

What am I going to do? I called my brother-in-Law who has done drywall, and he came with his brother and they knocked it out in two days. Obviously I didn’t pay as much if I had some contractor come in and do it.

Okay, what else do I not like? I don’t like my kitchen. I’m going to redo that. I had to refinance some stuff to get the money to do that. I’m so glad I did because it was done. Then I had breast cancer, and I want to show my daughters that if you want something, you figure out a way to do it.

The Joy Of Achieving: How Confidence Aids HealingAnne (20:15): I was telling somebody the other day, I get what I want in general. I mean, sometimes I don’t clearly, but it’s easy for me to obey the commandments or to do the right thing, so to speak. Because I want to do it. There’s this instance where the thing I really wanted to do was the wrong thing, and that hasn’t happened to me in a really long time.

I went over to this couple who mentored me in my neighborhood, and I was like, I know this is the wrong thing, but I still really want to do it. I hadn’t done just saying it out loud and getting their help, and they prayed with me. It was so helpful being able to be like, okay, I really don’t want to do that thing. That would not be good for me.

Just voicing it so that I could have God remove it from my heart was nice, but just in general, it’s nice to know that the things that we want are good. Why can’t we do it? Going to Disneyland is not a bad thing. It’s awesome. Why would someone not want to go or fix your yard or your kitchen? How does it feel to be in your house now?

Sarah (21:16): I love it. I didn’t love it before. It’s a great house. It’s a great neighborhood. I’ve definitely made it my own. Nothing’s exactly perfect, but it’s so much better. I’m a big baker. I love to bake and I can knock a lot of stuff out of my kitchen really easily.

Gaining Energy & Momentum To Heal Do you want to know what I’ve made in the last 24 hours? I’ve made a lot, I’ve made sourdough bread. I’ve made an almond cake. I made lemon bars. I made lemon blueberry scones.

My neighbors love me because there’s no way I can eat all of that. I love my kitchen. I have a huge island now and I can work and I have a double oven. It’s what I need now. I don’t know if it’s necessarily, I need, but it’s so much easier than my previous kitchen.

My previous kitchen was from the 1960s and I’d clean it and it still looked dirty. What’s the point of cleaning if it’s still dirty now I clean it and you can see a difference, and so I keep a clean kitchen more because I can see the difference.

Anne (22:18): You feel like with these miracles or cleaning out the trauma from inside of you, I was able to accomplish my goal. I was able to get what I wanted. It feels really good, and it kind of compounds. Then you just believe in yourself more and more, and you just have more and more confidence.

Sarah (22:39): You definitely have more confidence because you’ve done it. You already know you’ve done it. I feel like it’s the Harry Potter moment when he conjured the patronus. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Conquering What’s Holding Me Back – The Power Of Healing In Achieving Goals Sarah (22:50): I already did it, so I knew I could do it. I knew it was me, so I just did it. So that’s how I felt. I can do things. It’s also healing. The trauma and all of the pain gives me the energy to do it and the creative drive to do what I want to do. When you’re just in the drudges of everything. If you don’t heal after betrayal, if you don’t take the time to address it.

Sarah: Healing the trauma and all of the pain gives me the energy to do it and the creative drive to do what I want to do.

Anne: Well, and I think that’s the thing that so many women describe, especially before they know what’s going on, is they describe feeling stuck in a healthy relationship. I don’t really know because I’ve never been married to a healthy man, but I assume it’s that you have these goals and that you progress toward them and you’re able to accomplish them and it feels good.

Together in this partnership, you’re making progress throughout your life and you’ve got ups and downs, but together you’re on the same path. When you’re with a pornography user, someone who’s emotionally and psychologically abusing you, you’re a victim of sexual coercion. You feel stuck all the time.

Emotional Abusers Holding Victims Back You can’t make the progress that you wanted to. I know that you bought that house with your ex and then you got it in the divorce. Even with that house, there was stuff that you wanted to do and you couldn’t figure out how to do it. It kind of just feels like they’re this big anchor that’s chained to us and we’re just getting dragged backward instead of being able to progress forward.

It’s not a partnership. It’s sort of a counter-ship where you’re making progress and they’re kind of holding me back.

Sarah : Yeah, because everything’s about them. It’s not about us, it’s not about our relationship and our goals. It’s his goals, his desires, his wants, so there is no progression really for me. He’s constantly holding me back.

Anne: They’re not going to care that much about whether or not the kitchen’s clean if they’re just looking at porn all the time. If they’re never home to be in the kitchen. Have you noticed since starting the meditations that things have changed? Were surprised because the meditations are a relatively low amount of effort.

The Surprises Of Starting Meditations You just listen and then go about your day. Have you noticed any changes that have surprised you? Like things in real life that you did differently that you were not expecting?

Sarah: My thought process is different. I’m more gentle with myself. The thing that’s coming up in my mind is the just right meditation with the 6-year-old. I’s okay if I made a mistake, that’s okay. I got to it, but guess what? That’s okay. I got to figure out how to fix it and then not do it again rather than beating myself up.

I should have done better. Changing my thought process of it’s okay, it’s all right. I can make mistakes. I’m going to do this differently next time so that I don’t make the same mistake. I don’t get as hard on myself as I used to. There’s still things that I want to change about my life as everyone does. It’s more of a gradual progression rather than a steep incline.

Anne: It’s also seems to be more gentle process when you hear someone say, don’t think bad thoughts about yourself, and then you’re like, okay, I’m not going to, and then you think something and then you’re like, I’m thinking that again. Oh, stop thinking that.

It’s not necessarily violent, but it’s like you’re confronting yourself this way. You just naturally change your thoughts in sort of a gentle way, and even if you had a thought like, oh, I’m so dumb.

What’s Really Holding Me Back? Changing Thought Processes Then you think, oh, sweetie, you’re so cute. Instead of being like, oh, I wasn’t supposed to tell myself I was dumb. I’m so dumb for calling myself dumb.

Then you go through that process. The other thing that I tried to purposefully build into that specific meditation was just mistakes. She knocks something over and makes a mess. Mistakes that we make that we’re like, oh, I don’t want to do that again. I’m going to make a different choice.

Then there’s also just mistakes that you can’t avoid. There’s just stuff that happens that nothing that you did could have avoided it. I think there’s this feeling that I need to learn all of these things so that I can avoid doing this in the future. I hope the meditation helps people feel like there’s also stuff that is going to happen and it’s okay, and I couldn’t avoid it, and that’s fine too.

Sarah: I definitely agree. Sometimes life happens and you can’t really avoid it. You give the strength to to keep moving forward

Anne: And being gentle with yourself as you’re like, ah, that happens. Today I got a full glass of milk and for some reason I set it on the floor. I don’t know why I did this, and then I stood up because I was on the couch, which I could have just put it on the table next to the couch. That would’ve been a good idea, but no, I didn’t I stuck it on the floor and I stood up and of course knocked the whole thing over.

My Abusers Lack Of Grace for Mistakes Is Holding Me Back I think the hard thing about that is there’s no grace for mistakes. With an abuser, you accidentally forget to deposit the check on time and a bill bounces or something. Instead of being like, oh, it’s okay, you intended to deposit it, how can I help?

I remember I did that once and I’m actually really good with finances and stuff. I’m very responsible, and that happened this one time and he was so angry. Then said things like, do I need to take over now? So now I have to do everything?

It was just a mistake. I forgot to deposit the check and I thought I had, this isn’t something that I do every day, the way they talk and stuff, there’s just no grace.

Sarah: My abuser wouldn’t give me a lot of grace, but it required a lot of grace on his part. He’d asked for a lot of grace. It’s ironic,

Anne: And we give it,

Sarah: Yeah, totally give you a lots of chances,

Anne: But not so much to ourselves. No.

Anne: You enrolled in the BTR Meditation Workshop, what did you think before you used the workbook? Were you kind of like, wait a minute, I’m supposed to fill something out during a meditation? Did you think it was a little bit weird or were you like, cool, I’m all for it? Can you talk about your thought process with the workbook?

Expressing Trauma On Paper Sarah: The workbook is really helpful because it gets things out of your head and onto paper and you have to see what is really there, what is the pain or what is the trauma saying? What are the words that need to come out, and sometimes they’re vile, they’re evil.

I’ve had an array of responses and it’s interesting for me to see it on paper like, oh, I really have harbored a lot of pain. Getting it out on paper gives it a voice and it’s easier to get rid of once you see it on paper. I am a big journal writer. Even when I first found out everything that he did, I was like, I got to get this out of my head.

Otherwise I’m going to go crazy. and so I wrote in my journal a lot. For me, it’s very helpful to have things on paper. It gets out of my head and I can see it. That’s holding me back. It’s a coping mechanism. I think the workbook is really helpful, seeing where it is in my body and what it’s saying, what it looks like.

Anne: Has it been hard for you to just go with whatever came in your mind?

Sarah: At first, it was. At first I was like, okay, this is weird

Anne: For people, if they’ve never done the meditation before, do you have any tips for how to just sort of let go

Sarah: Do it a couple of times, do the same meditation a couple of times. Don’t be judgmental. Just let it happen. Don’t overthink it. Just let it come out the pen or the pencil.

Visualizing Physical Representations Of Feelings To Let Go Of What’s Holding Me BackAnne : I encourage people literally, whatever you think, put it in there. It could be the craziest thing, like a giant hourglass full of marbles that is sitting in your living room. Whatever you think of, just go with it. If it doesn’t work out, it’s okay. Just do it over again in a minute. There’s no wrong answers. What’s the weirdest thing that it looked like? Like a blob or a color.

Sarah: Green, slimy, sticky gooey blob, and I don’t know if that’s the weirdest, “That’s holding me back?”

Anne: Is that the most common thing for you or is that just one time?

Sarah: I have had some sharp shards of glass, but mostly it’s sticky, goopy, slimy

Anne: Stuff. Mine’s usually black goop like tar. One time I had this chunk of cement come out that was the exact replica of the shape and size of my body. I was floating in the air and it just fell out, hit the ground, and when it hit, it shattered into a bunch of pieces.

The light came and just cleaned it up. That was weird. It was like my entire body was full of cement, that’s holding me back. I think that’s super interesting.

Also, when I do the light part, I go into this mode where I picture sort of a subatomic physics sort of idea. Where all of my atoms separate from each other and there’s space in between all of my atoms, and then I kind of picture them shaking or vibrating. Then they open up a little bit and anything unhealthy just comes out of them and gets pulled in, and I always love that part.

Health Benefits Of Meditation & Emotional Release I feel so much better afterwards. I just feel like it healed my body too. How do you feel about the meditations in relation to your health?

Sarah: I wish you had done this years ago. I feel lighter. I’ve read,The Body Keeps the Score, and you can’t separate areas of your life. You are a whole person and everything blends into every other part of your life. It makes sense.

If you’re in a relationship that’s abusive, it tears down your body physically. It just does. You can’t separate the stress from different areas. The trauma keeps holding me back. It just doesn’t work. Releasing the trauma and the pain and the memories has been helpful. I feel better physically than I did years ago.

Anne: When you get to, I am healing the healing meditation that has a whole section about physical healing, healing your physical ailments. I’m thinking, “What’s holding me back?” You’re in this sort of mausoleum kind of place and this lady comes and you lay down on this stone that can heal your body.

You’re a woman of faith, you’re a Christian. For any women who are kind of nervous. That makes me nervous. It’s going to let something that I am not sure into my life. Can you talk about that you’re a Christian and how you felt about meditation in light of your faith?

Meditation & Christian Faith: Aligning Spiritual Practices Sarah: I visualize it as accessing the atonement. That’s how I see it. For me, the meditations help me access the atonement better. I believe Christ can heal all things. The meditation is a visual way to see that atonement, to see Christ healing me.

Anne: In terms of your faith, has everything been safe for you? Has everything felt safe? Has there been anything that felt uncomfortable that didn’t really mesh with your values?

Sarah: Well, the meditations have aligned with my values, my religion. People say it’s prayer and meditation. They kind of go together, so it’s just a different way of doing meditation. To me, it’s more effective to do meditation rather than prayer. Now, I’m not saying prayers are bad for this specific situation.

I think these meditations are very helpful. There’s a purpose behind them, whereas my prayers are my wants and desires or gratitude or whatever my prayers are. They’re helpful as well. I’m not saying one or the other. I don’t feel uncomfortable doing the meditations even though I’m a religious person, that wasn’t holding me back.

Ensuring Meditation Aligns With Personal Values Anne : I am too. I was hoping that Christians would, if they wanted to, envision that light as Christ. So many women have had spiritual abuse be a part of their story, and many women have decided that religion isn’t for them. Because they’ve had so much spiritual abuse.

I support a woman getting to safety however she needs to get to safety. I wanted it to be very just open to interpretation. And make sure that all of the visualizations aligned with, I would say general Christian principles or the general principles of being a good person.

So that everyone would feel comfortable. Hopefully there isn’t any part of it that makes someone feel uncomfortable.

I can’t anticipate everyone’s experience and everyone’s situation, but for the most part, I tried to try to make sure that it was vague enough and general enough. Then also alternatively specific enough, in the I Am Brave meditation, it is interesting because you actually confront the abuser.

Do you remember that one? Yes. In a safe place, and that one might make people a little bit nervous, but he’s contained so that you’re safe. How did you feel about that one?

Sarah: Wow. The things I wanted to say to him and to actually hear. I think there’s always things that we want to say and to actually be heard. We could say it all we want, but that’s not going to affect him at all. In this way it did. I felt validated for my feelings and for the way that he treated me. It was freeing.

Is He Still Holding Me Back? Visualizing Confronting Emotional Abuse Safely Anne: He doesn’t change his behavior due to that, but he’s sort of forced to listen to you. For women who maybe nervous about meditation and don’t know if it’s for them what would you tell them?

Sarah: Give it a chance. What’s holding me back? Maybe if this is your first time doing a meditation, do the first one just a couple of times. Be curious rather than shut it down right away. I have actually told the women that I know that I’ve been in abusive situations about the meditation workshop and how helpful it has been for me.

I tell lots of women because this has helped my healing a lot, just give it a chance.

Anne: Which is awesome for you because there’s so not woo woo. Your room isn’t full of crystals and you’re not burning incense all over the place. You’re a high school teacher. Straightforward.

Sarah: I tell it like it is. Sometimes my bluntness gets people offended.

Anne: My mom, she is really cute. She was hesitant to try the meditations, she was like “What’s holding me back?” I’ll have to have her come on to talk about it. She took it and she was just crying the whole time, which is not like my mom at all. She called me and was like, oh my word. I didn’t know, it was so good. I was just crying and crying, and a lot of people have said that. It’s just like, let so much pain out, crying in a good way.

Has The Fear of Meditation Been Holding Me Back? Sarah: It’s a healing crying. It’s not a distressed crying.

Anne: The fact that my mom liked it, she’s not woo-woo either. I hope that there’s something for everyone no matter what their personality is, no matter what their experience. t was everything that I wanted, and then I was just trying to be mindful of maybe what everyone else would like.

Anne: I think everything at BTR is because I needed it, I had to figure out, “What’s holding me back?” The Living free Workshop, it’s because I needed a strategy. I tried everything that everybody else said and it didn’t work. The Message Workshop, same thing there. No matter what I did, I could not figure out how to get myself out of his emotional and psychological abuse.

Even if you said it was abuse, there wasn’t anyone who was like, okay, now we know this. Living free is for women who don’t know what to do. It’s very practical. Let’s all let go of what’s holding me back.

Let Go Of What’s Holding Me BackIt’s cool to have all of those resources that I wish I had, but everything was based on all of the obstacles that we face, legal obstacles, obstacles with clergy, just one right after another. It seems like they never end, but I feel like now I’ve written my book, which will be coming out soon. It’s like all of the stuff that I learned right now, I just want to apply it and talk about it all the time.

Now that it’s all built, because the good part is knowing that it works and seeing how it helps people.

Anne: I’m so glad. Well, thank you so much, Sarah, for taking the time to talk today.

Sarah: There’s just such a need, so many of us. I think you’re going to help a lot of women. You’ve already helped me.

Sarah: Yeah, my pleasure. Just keep going. One foot in front of the other. You’re doing great work for all the other women out there. Keep going. Try the workshops. They are very helpful.

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Fairy tales showcase the double standards confining women. Fairy tales often vilify women’s anger, undermine their pursuit of financial independence, and set unrealistic expectations.

These biases shift the focus from abusers to women, making them see themselves as the problem. Join Anne and Jane Gillmore as they continue their discussion about misogyny and fairy tales.

This episode is Part Two of Anne’s interview with Jane Gilmore

Part One: 5 Ways Fairy Tales Brainwashed Women Not To Recognize Abuse

Part Two: The Double Standards Confining Women In Fairy Tales (This Episode)

Vilification of Women’s Anger: Society often labels women’s anger as overreacting, in stark contrast to men’s anger, which is seen as justified. This double standard shifts the focus from the abusers to the women, conditioning them to see themselves as the problem rather than addressing the root cause of their frustration, thus confining women.

Confining Women- Financial Independence Double Standard: Women are often condemned for seeking financial independence, a desire that is celebrated in men. This contradiction highlights the gender bias in societal expectations, undermining women’s right to financial security and autonomy.

Absurd Societal Expectations: The expectation for women to set boundaries calmly is unrealistic and unfair. It parallels the absurdity of asking women to call the police without anger if they witness a crime, illustrating how these societal scripts demand unrealistic levels of composure from women, even in distressing situations, thereby confining women.

Confining Women- Misogyny in Cultural Narratives: Stories like “Beauty and the Beast” perpetuate misogynistic tropes by suggesting that men need women to become better people. This harmful narrative places undue responsibility on women for men’s behavior and personal growth, reinforcing gender roles that confine women to supportive and transformative roles without considering their own needs for autonomy and respect.

Telling Women They Were Made For Service To OthersAnne (00:00): Last week, Jane and I wrapped up our talk discussing the Little Mermaid and how, in the Disney remake, they don’t rush into marriage right away. Instead, they use a black screen saying “a few years later” to imply they’ve been dating and getting to know each other.

My thought on this? They’re skipping the peaceful part because peace isn’t as entertaining as conflict. They don’t want to show a calm courtship where people genuinely connect, preferring to skip right past it. That’s where we’re picking up today.

Jane (00:46): Getting to know someone, building a relationship based on trust, respect, happiness, and support isn’t the story.

Anne (00:54): It’s boring. And you cover that with a “years later” black screen in two seconds.

Jane (01:01): Going through Disney’s catalog, one that is genuinely delightful is Encanto. I really liked that one. It was cute and real. The characters didn’t look like tiny, skinny, white stick figures. The women had diverse stories, reflecting that we’re not all the same.

I genuinely liked that one. But others, not so much, even Frozen, which is Disney’s nod to feminism, doesn’t quite hit the mark. Yes, it features two sisters not focused solely on men, but Ana turns out to be a Disney version of the manic pixie dream girl. She’s funny, clumsy, chatty, charming, and essentially there to ‘fix’ him. He starts off angry, violent, and mean.

Frozen’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl Doesn’t Overcome Misogynistic FoundationAnne (02:07): Christophe starts out really violent and mean.

Jane (02:09): He’s angry with her, doesn’t like her, and treats her meanly.

Anne (02:14): Oh, yeah, I see what you mean. But it’s not excessively mean.

Jane (02:18): He’s not beastly mean, but he is mean to her. He doesn’t like, respect, or think she can do anything. He doesn’t share anything with her, just dismissive and rude. So no, he’s not the beast. Disney’s moved past that, but scratch the surface, and you find a man who doesn’t look at her, take her seriously, or think she’s anything but stupid and incapable. Thus confining women to a set of certain characteristics.

Yet, she tumbles along happily. And slowly, he becomes a better person because of her. That’s the manic pixie dream girl’s role, to fix men. Meanwhile, Elsa has a different story. She doesn’t focus on a man, which seems feminist because for the first time, a Disney princess doesn’t need marriage for a happy ending.

Her story revolves around her dangerous power. She learns to use her power for others, not for herself, because using it for her own dreams is cruel and wrong, making her wicked. Using it for others lets her live a life of service and become a hero.

Confining Women: How Discounting Women’s Anger Confines WomenAnne (03:41): This reminds me of the advice women often get about setting boundaries without anger. Men do terrible things, emotional and psychological abuse, and sexual coercion, confining women. In therapy, it’s,

“Yes, set boundaries because his behavior is unhealthy, but do you need to be so angry?”

We’re told to set boundaries with compassion. If someone is hijacking a car and you call the police, would anyone say, “Make sure you’re not angry when you call”? Thus confining women to only being pleasant even in an emergency.

Jane (04:43): Because it’s particularly women being angry with men. That is so reprehensible that women anger immediately means they’re crazy, oversensitive, or overreacting. When men get angry, they’re just reacting. But when women get angry, they’re seen as overreacting and unreasonable just by being angry.

This myth essentially tells women that when someone’s cruel to them, they’re the problem if they’re angry, traumatized, or show visible signs of trauma. It’s not about the abuse or the man who did it; it’s about them needing to fix themselves, and then maybe they can fix him.

These structural institutions are designed to make women believe that when they’re abused, they’re the problem. So they continue to submit to the abuse, telling themselves they just need to try harder, instead of getting rightfully angry and furious, thus confining women.

Societal Expectations Oppress WomenAnne (5:51): Abuse is one thing. Then there’s the overall societal system of oppression that supports these ideas, keeping women from being true equals to men, from being taken seriously, expressing valid views, taking up space, and not being exploited for domestic labor. Once again confining women to a set of certain actions.

Jane (6:21): Absolutely. For instance, the fairytale princesses reinforce the idea that women wanting money is avaricious, while it’s admirable for men. But wanting money is about security. Having my own money means I don’t need a man; I might choose one, but I also might not. This idea is threatening because it means women can be independent and make their own choices, challenging all the myths that perpetuate abuse.

Anne (07:21): Exactly, exploitation and oppression continue.

Jane (07:24): One way systemic issues work is by making women do all the unpaid or domestic labor. There’s no joy in it like white singing while she works, because domestic labor is so much fun, and I love it, making me a good woman that a handsome principal would want to marry.

Cinderella does what the evil stepsisters want, seeking a handsome prince because he’s wealthy. They’re after the jewels and beautiful dresses, which supposedly makes them evil. But Cinderella, by not wanting those things, proves she deserves them by actively not wanting them. That’s the setup for women.

Challenging The Notion That Women Are The ProblemAnne (08:05): It’s like when an abuser says, “Well, if you wouldn’t have said something, I would’ve done it.”

Jane (08:10): Yes, exactly.

Anne (08:11): And you’re like, “Well, you didn’t do it. So then I said something. What are you talking about? If I wouldn’t have said something, you would’ve done it, so it should be done. But now that I said it, you’re not going to do it. So what?” It’s this circular insanity.

Jane (08:24): Yep, yep. But if you point that out, you’re being oversensitive and hysterical. So, you just get stuck in this logic loop that you can’t escape from until you’re able to step back and look at the myths and say, well, this is the story you’re trying to tell me.

And that story is just rubbish. It’s like beauty standards. They’re completely impossible to meet, designed to be impossible. You’re too skinny or not skinny enough. Too white or not white enough, too busty or not busty enough, too pretty or not pretty enough, too submissive or not submissive enough. You’re trying too hard or you’re not trying hard enough.

The point is, those standards are impossible to meet so that it can always be your fault if something goes wrong. And those fairytale princesses are part of that myth, but they’re everywhere. And you said before, your kids, my kids used to do this too. “Oh, why do we have to talk about feminism again, mom? Can’t we just watch a movie?” And I get it, but these ideas are most dangerous when we don’t see them.

Recognizing Dangerous Ideas About Confining Women in StorytellingAnne (09:33): I say it’s fine if you watch it, as long as we deconstruct it so you can start seeing this everywhere. But watching it without deconstructing it is dangerous, and I’m not going to allow that.

Jane (09:45): Absolutely. The most dangerous ideas are the ones we don’t realize we have. So, if they’re floating around in the back of your mind and you’re not able to look at them and see what they are and where they come from, that’s when people can use them against you.

And we all have them. I can’t remember if I said this the last time I was on with you, but I talk about this a lot because I’m such a feminist and I write about this and do this as my work, study, and play all the time. And still, when my kids were seven and nine,

My daughter had to say to me, “Hey, why is it my job to unload the dishwasher and my brother’s job to take the rubbish out?”

And I’m like, “Oh, darling, that’s the patriarchy.”

But I didn’t realize I was the one assigning the tasks and I didn’t see it. that. And if you don’t know what to look for, how can you fix it?

Playing the “What Would Make This Okay” GameAnne (10:39): You’re a woman after my own heart because I do those same things where I want to rewrite or redo something. So, I just want to play this game for a second, if you don’t mind. I want everyone to buy this book. It’s incredible. It’s called Fairytale Princesses Will Kill Your Children, so please get this book.

The game I want to play really quick is one I play with my kids, which is, what would make this appropriate? What would make this okay? And for Beauty and the Beast, my kids didn’t want to watch the new one. They hate the old one. And I said, “Let’s watch it.” I wanted to watch it with them. And of course, they’ve changed it.

(11:24): They didn’t, so we were all horrified. But then we played the game of what would’ve made it okay. She’s in the woods, her dad is sick and injured, and

He comes along saying, “Look, I know you think I’m scary, I have this castle here. We can take your dad there and hopefully get him better.”

She takes him there, it’s super nice, no problems. He looks scary but he’s fine, and lets her go. She comes back and he’s super nice. How hard can it be? And you know what changed him? It wasn’t her, but the spell. He was a jerk. The evil witch cast a spell on him to be a nice person. Take out the part where he’s confining women by by imprisoning her.

That’s when he realized, “Wait a minute, I’ve been a jerk. I need to be nice.”

Confining Women: The Gender Dynamics In Decision Making and StorytellingIt was that realization that changed him, which I know sounds like a woman changing him, but let’s overlook that. But really, how hard is it? Just think about it for two seconds. So the fact that producers aren’t aware of this blows my mind. It’s baffling why these issues still arise in mainstream movies from companies that should care but obviously don’t.

Jane (14:57): The issue might stem from the predominance of men in decision-making roles. It’s not that all these men are abusive or misogynistic, but there’s a common experience among women. When there’s a guy that just seems off, most women immediately understand when you mention it. But men?

They often don’t see it, making you feel silly for bringing it up. This lack of understanding can make it challenging for them to tell stories that resonate with these experiences. Most stories are told from a male perspective because most writers, showrunners, directors, and producers are men, thus confining women.

They simply don’t grasp what it’s like to feel threatened by someone just giving off bad vibes.

Going back to your game, I absolutely agree it would be a great game. What I’d like to see is not the Beast being the beast because an evil woman made him that way, but because he chose to be that way. What saves him is his own decision to change, without needing a woman to do it for him.

He shouldn’t rely on therapy as a manipulation tool but decide to be different on his own, without making the women in his life responsible for his improvement. Confining women to the role of saving men.

Anne: This is a common topic in our daily, online Betrayal Trauma Recovery Support Group.

Discussing The Beauty And The Beast NarrativeAnne (15:19): Or even the evil witch in Beauty and the Beast, she shouldn’t be responsible for casting a spell to make him a better person.

Jane (14:57): I could talk about this for hours. The evil witch myth in fairy tales often portrays women with power as the villains, whether it’s through wisdom, experience, magic, or beauty.

Anne (15:19): Or even money, like an evil stepmother, right? She has the money.

Jane (15:25): Yeah, and what makes her evil is age or power. Age is a form of power, although we don’t usually acknowledge that in women. But that’s what makes an evil witch: a woman with power. In reality, when they used to burn witches, tens of thousands of women were killed and tortured for being witches.

Any woman with knowledge or power could be accused of being a witch and killed for it. That was reality. In those stories, any powerful woman becomes responsible for what a man does. That’s wrong. So, in Beauty and the Beast, a good man is cursed by a powerful woman into being a bad man, and it’s his fault. Then Beauty comes along and saves him.

Anne (16:12): Wait, was he originally a good man who got turned into a bad man? Because in the Disney movie, she puts the spell on him for being terrible and not nice to her.

Jane (16:23): What’s interesting about Beauty and the Beast is the many versions of the story. Almost every culture has one, and the similarities are amazing. In some versions, he’s a good man cursed by an evil witch. In others, he’s not bad, just a typical, spoiled young man from a wealthy family, and then he’s turned into a violent, abusive man.

Unpacking The Evil Witch Trope In Fairy TalesAnne (16:56): So, in the Disney version, when she needs help and he doesn’t help her, not knowing she’s an evil witch, it’s almost her fault he becomes so angry and bitter.

Jane (17:14): Because it’s always a woman’s fault when a man is angry and bitter. The number of women I’ve talked to about their abusive partners often say, “It’s not his fault. His mother was awful to him, or his ex did terrible things to him, and now he can’t trust a woman, except for me.” She’s got to prove she’s not like other girls.

Anne (17:39): That’s such a bad thing, that she’s not like other girls. Like what? That she has a voice and that she expects not to be exploited.

Jane (17:47): Or she’s not like the woman who turned him into this because she’s a good woman. She’s going to be nice to him, love him better, unlike the evil woman who made him this bitter, angry, misogynistic mess. This trope runs through so many stories, and it’s not just the Disney Princess stories.

When you start looking, all those romance movies, rom coms, and books from hundreds of years ago to tomorrow’s romance content, those tropes are woven into them. They’re sanitized now, so they’re not immediately recognizable, and you have to dig a bit deeper.

But underneath is always the same thing: a beautiful unselfish woman will save a hopeless or bad man from himself by being beautiful and unselfish, and then they get their happily ever after.

Jane Gilmore’s Plan To Interview Men Convicted of Rape(18:47): I also want to mention “Happily Ever After” as a goal. What is that? What does “Happily Ever After” actually look like? Thinking about what makes me happy, I’m planning to do a doctorate this year. I’ll be talking to men convicted of rape about their perceptions of women, sex, and sexual violence.

There’s nothing happy about this topic, but achieving it and hopefully discovering something we can use to reach boys and men before they end up in prison for such crimes will give me a sense of achievement like nothing else. If “Happily Ever After” means just sitting back like some Stepford wife, pretending everything’s perfect, that’s not happiness.

Happiness is so much more, and women have so much more they can do and achieve. Sometimes, it can come from having a beautiful home and happy children, which can bring pride and happiness. There’s nothing wrong with that at all.

Of course, having a beautiful home and family can bring peace and happiness, but that’s not abuse. It’s not about doing it to serve someone else because you’re scared of their reaction if it’s not done right, constantly trying to make them happy.

Acknowledging Women’s Strength To Rebuild After AbuseThat’s not for your happiness; it’s because you’re being controlled by someone else. But choosing to do that because it genuinely brings you pride, joy, and a feeling of fulfillment, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s a sign you’re living your best life. But “Happily Ever After” isn’t about never facing problems or not having to work hard. It’s not expecting everything to be fine forever. That’s not happiness; it’s an illusion.

It’s interesting that many women don’t know what they want. Many want to be wives and mothers, which is awesome. But then, some think about working after their kids are out of the house because they feel they need something else, and they’re not sure what steps to take next. And that’s okay. Not knowing exactly what you want to do is alright. It doesn’t mean you can’t start with something.

A lot of this comes from being trained from babyhood that it’s wrong to think about what you want. We do a lot of awful things to boys and men in the name of gender roles, but one thing we tell them is to consider what they want and pursue it. But we tell girls and women that doing so makes them selfish, which is seen as bad.

So, it’s often really hard for women to think about what they want, what makes them happy, and their place in the world. We have to unlearn a lot just to learn that about ourselves. No one should underestimate how difficult that can be, how much work it takes, and how much you have to overcome.

Confining Women From Financial Independence(22:43): At a recent conference discussing my book, I had to remind myself to encourage people to purchase it. It’s challenging for a woman to stand in front of hundreds and assert, “Buy my book. The effort I’ve invested deserves your financial support.” As a writer, that’s your purpose.

You’re there because they’re interested in your book; naturally, you should prompt them to buy it. For him, this comes naturally, but for me, it doesn’t, and I have to work on it. I openly admit I’m being deliberately selfish in asking this because I’m rejecting the fairytale princess role.

Instead, I’m actively pursuing my ambitions, seeking financial security, and asking for support. This approach may make you uncomfortable, but it’s crucial to question why. I understand it’s hard to shake off these ingrained lessons, but dismantling these restrictive structures is essential. We’re not here solely to serve others.

At BTR, our six coaches work tirelessly as their full-time job, contributing to their household income. As a single mom of three with no financial support from child support or alimony, I rely entirely on my income. It’s surprising when we receive messages criticizing us for charging for our services.

However, to provide these services, I need financial independence. This criticism often stems from women who, due to financial control by an abusive partner, can’t access the help they need.

Exploring How Money Can Help Stop Confining WomenThis situation highlights the deeper issue of women’s financial independence and the ability to use their resources freely. It’s more than just the frustration of not being able to work for free; it’s about women lacking autonomy over their resources.

The notion that your role is to unconditionally serve and depend on a man is daunting to overcome. Yet, achieving emotional and psychological safety is a journey worth embarking on for many abuse victims, introducing them to a world of independence they hadn’t considered before.

The transition to viewing oneself as deserving of compensation for services, rather than serving without reward, is challenging yet necessary. Like many, I face questions about my fees for speaking engagements, but I remind others that my work sustains my basic needs allows me to continue my advocacy.

This question of compensation, surprisingly, is seldom directed at men in similar situations. Who would expect a father, solely responsible for his family’s financial well-being, to offer his services for free?

Anne (26:47): Full-time, eight hours a day, right? Yep. Full-time.

Overcoming Internalized Beliefs About Confining Women To Achieve True StrengthJane (26:50): You know, if a guy’s a single father, he’s often hailed as a hero. The bar for men is so low sometimes, I swear it’s in hell, and they still can’t meet it. But when a man says the service he provides, whether it’s my job, your job, or anything else, is valuable and that he works hard at it, it’s totally fair for him to ask for support to continue providing that service.

I get that many women, because of what we do, might not have the money. I try to work with that as much as I can, but offering my services for free would leave me homeless and unable to provide them. It would also feed into the myth I’m fighting against: that women shouldn’t want things like financial independence from a man or a decent house that’s theirs alone.

Anne (28:13): When we talk about physical safety, like in the Living Free workshop, it’s not just about being hit. Physical safety means having shelter, food, and being able to afford basic needs. If worrying about affording an apartment, food, or childcare makes you question your safety, then his actions are indeed a threat to your physical safety.

Jane (29:40): The myth starts when a relationship heads towards marriage, suggesting a woman’s role is to serve him rather than the relationship serving both. Being in that unsafe situation, wondering where you’ll live or how you’ll eat, is terrifying. Many of these situations are actively confining women.

The Importance Of Learning To Live Free From AbuseI’ve worked in domestic violence and seen women face the choice between violence or homelessness. It’s hard to climb out, but possible with work and self-belief. Some amazing women do it; it’s astounding that many do, showing incredible strength and courage. These women, overcoming beliefs of incapability, try and most succeed.

Watching women rebuild from abuse shows their immense strength. I wish I could show women who doubt their ability the strength of those who’ve rebuilt their lives, starting from thinking they couldn’t and proving they could.

Anne (32:05): Yeah, it’s incredible. Our Living Free workshop focuses on thinking a little differently about situations to make progress toward living free and feeling peace. It’s not just about escaping psychologically or emotionally abusive relationships at BTR. We also focus on post-divorce issues, dealing with emotional and psychological abuse due to co-parenting.

Every domestic violence shelter says divorce is the answer. I say it might be one step on your journey to safety. But for those of us who suffered severe emotional and psychological abuse post-divorce, like my eight years of post-divorce abuse, knowing how to live free from this is crucial.

So, check out The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop. To learn more about Jane’s book, Fairytale Princesses Will Kill Your Children, go to janegilmore.com. You can also find it on Amazon. Jane, I’ve loved talking with you. Thank you so much for joining the podcast again.

Jane (33:16): Oh, thank you. It was so nice to be here. I love talking with you too. I always really enjoy our conversations. Thank you so much for inviting me.

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Did you know the underlying themes in fairy tales brainwash women and girls to not recognize abuse?

Fairy tales are, of course, a staple of many childhoods, offering stories of magic, adventure, and often, (apparently?) love conquering all. However, a closer examination reveals an unsettling undercurrent: these tales inadvertently lead women and girls to not recognize abuse.

This episode is Part One of Anne’s interview with Jane Gilmore

Part One: 5 Ways Fairy Tales Brainwashed Women Not To Recognize Abuse (This Episode)

Part Two: The Double Standards Confining Women In Fairy Tales

1. The Damsel In Distress SyndromeFairy tales often feature a damsel in distress, rescued by a prince or male hero. This trope subtly suggests that women are dependent on men for their salvation, often enduring suffering from an evil woman until a man resolves their situation. This narrative reinforces the notion that women should be passive and patient, even in abusive scenarios, awaiting rescue rather than taking action.

2. Glorification Of Sacrifice And SufferingFairy tales often glorify characters, particularly women, who endure hardship and experience abuse with grace and patience, suggesting that suffering is noble and leads to a happy ending. This dangerous message can lead individuals to believe that tolerating abuse is virtuous and a necessary path to true love or happiness.

3. Romanticizing Situations Where Women Don’t Recognize AbuseSome fairy tales romanticize relationships that are abusive from the start. Characters who engage in stalking, kidnapping, or other forms of abuse are frequently depicted as men who despite these negative somehow change throughout the ordeal, which never happens in real life.

4. Lack Of Consent And AutonomyThe theme of lack of consent runs rampant in many fairy tales, with female characters often having little say in their fate or relationships. This lack of autonomy and consent is a form of psychological abuse that teaches women and girls to accept a passive role in their personal and romantic lives.

5. The Redemption Of AbusersFairy tales frequently conclude with the redemption of the abuser, suggesting that love can change abusive behavior. This narrative is harmful and unrealistic, as it can encourage individuals to stay in abusive relationships under the false hope of changing their partner.

In this episode, Anne interviews Jane Gilmore, a writer, speaker, and feminist, about her new book titled Fairy Tale Princesses Will Kill Your Children. Jane explains that the book was inspired by her realization of the deep misogyny and harmful messages present in classic fairy tales, particularly those aimed at young girls. What are the unhealthy themes in fairy tales that condition s to not recognize abuse?

• Women are often pitted against each other
• Non-consensual acts painted as desirable
• Stripping of women’s agency and promoting silence as virtuous
• Fairy tales often portray women as threats and villains, not men
• Women are responsible for fixing violent men with love and servitude

Why Didn’t I See it? How Beloved Fairy Tales Betrayed UsAnne (00:00): I have Jane Gilmore back on today’s episode. We interviewed her a while back. I hope that you got to listen to those episodes. They were incredible. Jane is a writer, speaker, and feminist. Welcome back, Jane.

Jane Gilmore (00:18): Thank you, Anne. It’s so lovely to be here.

Anne (00:21): Your episodes are incredible. I love talking to you. Jane’s back on today to talk about her new book, fairytale Princesses Will Kill Your Children. I love the title of that, the Little Mermaid is one of my personal nemesis. Let’s talk about this new book and how it helps women understand how fairly tales teach women not to recognize abuse. Jane, what gave you the idea that this book needed to be written?

Jane Gilmore (00:55): Well, I’m living in Melbourne and we had such a long lockdown during the first part of Covid, basically two years we were in and out of lockdown. You start just going into really weird places when you’re at home that long. I watched the Snow White movie on the Disney Channel. I haven’t watched it since I was a kid and haven’t really paid much attention to fairy tales since, they were horrific.

This is a children’s movie, for little girls and the misogyny is so deep, but it is more than that. It is this idealization of women being not just helpless and submissive, but actively participating in other people abusing them. I am thinking, oh, this is just because it’s old. This is not what they really like.

Why Do Fairy Tales Teach Us Not to Recognize Abuse?(01:45): I started looking into them and the five stories that I chose for this book. Which I retold along with an essay about Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and The Little Mermaid. But when I really start looking into them, it is so clear that these fairy tales teach women not to recognize abuse. Snow White is about making other women the enemy. Beauty is obviously about consent.

Cinderella is about women’s unpaid labor that, not just uncomplaining, but enjoying our manipulation to serve mostly men. The Little Mermaid is about staying silent in the face of somebody diminishing you constantly.

Anne: So many women go through this and desperately need support, which is why we have our daily, online Betrayal Trauma Recovery Support Group.

Jane: Yeah, women do need support to see how these themes affect their daily lives. In Beauty and the Beast is coercive control, if you love him enough, he will turn into your handsome prince. This angry, dangerous, violent man just needs you to love him more. And if he doesn’t turn into your handsome prince, it’s your fault for not trying harder.

Analyzing Misogynistic Themes In Classic Fairy Tales(02:48): And that’s what these fairytales are about teaching women and girl not to recognize abuse. They’re telling little girls that the way to be a good woman, a proper woman, a fairytale princess, is the defining characteristic of what they call unselfish. Which is to not ask anything for yourself, to not think that you deserve respect, kindness, agency, money.

To even ask for those things, to even want those things,even if you don’t ask for them, makes you morally culpable. Oh, aren’t they pretty? And they get the handsome Prince and everybody gets married and lives happily ever asked her, and isn’t that wonderful? The underlying message is that, it is wrong for you to want anything for yourself, including self-respect.

Anne (03:36): I have so much to talk to you about and so many questions. I want to tell a quick story of a friend of mine who finally divorced her first abuser. She started dating and she met this man and she told me how wonderful he is and how great he is, and his ex was just such a gold digger.

I said, “Whoa, what? Okay, red flag there, right? You’ve got another abuser on your hands.”

Challenging The “Tales” About “Gold Diggers” And AmbitionAnd he said, “She’s such a gold digger, she just wanted me for my money.”

Then she says, “Because he has a lot of money, but I don’t care about that. That’s not what I’m interested in. I just want a good relationship.”

They went on a trip and he said, “Get anything you want, what would you like to buy?”

(04:23): And she said, “Oh, no, no, no, I’m not like that. I’m not into your money like your ex, I don’t want anything.”

She thought she had a great trip and he was so kind and nice and that everything went really well.

I said, “He’s already groomed you to say that you don’t want money or need anything. And if you marry him, you realize you’ll be like, Hey, I’m going to the grocery store. And he’ll be like, what again? You just married me for my money, like my ex, he’s setting you up for this.”

Of course, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I should have kept my mouth shut.

I said to her, “If you’re going to continue dating him, if he says that again, what would you like? Say, oh, I want this and buy something expensive, something that’s like 150 bucks, not super expensive, even if you don’t want it, if he says get anything you want and then you get something, try it out. See what happens.”

Examining Gender Stereotypes And Dynamics In RelationshipsI said, “Never ever say I’m not a gold digger. I’m not like that.”

Say, “Oh, that makes sense that your wife wanted a roof over her head in groceries. Most women do. Yeah.”

Jane Gilmore (05:39): To me the warning sign is always, if you take the word that they’re trying to get you to prove that you’re not like gold Digger is a perfect one. Is there a role equivalent? Is there a word that can apply to any gender? Because if it’s just about women, it’s tying into, are you a good woman?

Are you not like other girls? Are you going to prove to me that you can be all the things that I can use to manipulate you? And Gold Digger is such a good one because in men that’s called ambition and it’s a good thing.

Anne (06:07): The other one is that she said the same woman, his ex never gave him any sex.

I said, “Anytime a man says that to you, this is how you respond. You say, oh, I’m glad that she did what she wanted to. I love it when women do that.”

Jane Gilmore (06:40): Yes. There is a study that found women become less interested in sex, the longer a relationship goes on. If you flip it around and go, what if it’s men become less sexually appealing in a relationship? In the long term because they do less to earn your respect, trust, joy, sense of fun, and your desire.

You are constantly on edge and afraid. Nobody feels sexy when they’re walking on eggshells all the time.

Themes That Don’t Recognize Abuse Found In Fairy TalesSomebody is saying to you, ‘This is your fault. You are not interested in sex, you are not trying hard enough.”

They are not taking any of the blame, this is our relationship and we share in what goes on here. Again, massive red flag.

Anne (07:37): As you studied all these different princess fairytales, what were some of the overarching themes that you saw?

Jane Gilmore (07:51): I was a bit surprised about some of them, not because they were shocking, but because I didn’t realize how deeply embedded they are in this fairytale princess myth. One of them is this constant idea that men are not responsible for anything really, that the villain is always other women. They are not teaching women to recognize abuse.

The wicked stepmother, the wicked stepsisters. The man is either the prize that you get for being unselfish, the handsome prince, or he’s the father who has no responsibility at all.

Every fairytale princess, her mother dies when she’s a baby except for a sleeping beauty. And the mother doesn’t come into the story at all and the father is the king who might send people out to run a mission or something, but he’s never responsible for his daughter. He marries another woman because of course he couldn’t be expected to bring up a child on his own.

We Need To Recognize AbuseAnne: When I wrote The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop, I want to highlight that we’ve all been exposed to these types of myths our whole lives and what we can do to get them out of our heads. Women have really enjoyed the analogies in Living Free and how it’s replaced these societal scripts that caused everyone not to recognize abuse.

Jane (08:40): Yeah, it takes a long time to dig through all this stuff. The evil stepmother becomes the villain and there is no point in the story where the men who make choices that affect women’s lives have any responsibility for those choices. Snow White for instance, the original story by the Grimm Brothers is shocking. Snow White is seven years old in the story. She’s a seven year old child.

She’s taken off to the woods by a hunter under orders from her evil stepmother and the hunter is ordered to kill her. In the original story, he’s supposed to cut out her heart and lungs to take back to the evil stepmother. If she can eat them she won’t show visible signs of aging, the most wicked thing any woman can do is visibly age and still expect to have a place in the world.

(09:31): Snow White is seven she finds the Seven Dwarves. She immediately takes on all their domestic labor. She sings songs about how wonderful it is that she gets to do all the work to look after seven men and how much she loves it. Next, she’s poisoned by the evil stepmother and they think she’s dead. They put her in a glass box and a handsome prince comes past and sees a dead child in a glass box. All of this glorifies when women and girls don’t recognize abuse.

The Abusive Conclusions Of Fairy TalesHe says, oh, ‘That’s beautiful. That’s mine. I want it.” The Seven Dwarves immediately recognize, of course he’s a rich, powerful man, he should have the beautiful dead girl that he wants. Then he says to her, “Brilliant, you’re awake. Now you can be my wife.” And she says, “Thank you. Yes, I’d love that.”

That’s the Snow White story. And that is the one that I rewrote. I didn’t change the plot at all. I just rewrote it to point out all these things about just, wow, little girls and little girls still dress up as Snow White. They want to be like Snow White.

This idea that other women are the thing that is going to put young girls in danger, which we know is just not true. I’m not saying that other women don’t have their problems. They absolutely do. We can get into all kinds of discussions about that, but other women are not the threat to your life. Other women are not going to commit the kind of abuse against you that your male partner will.

Nowhere in the fairytale Princess’s story is the handsome prince ever the problem. The story ends when they get married and the marriage is never a part of the story. It’s why the mother dies at the beginning of all of fairytale Princess stories because marriage and children and the relationship itself is not the fairytale princess myth.

The myth is to be good, beautiful, submissive, kind, and unselfish. Do everything you can to prove how much you deserve a handsome prince, then your story ends. Women are being told not to recognize abuse and be quiet about it.

Fairy Tales About Women That Set Women Up Not To Recognize AbuseAnne (11:24): What’s interesting, it’s almost like that’s where the man wants it to end, right? He’s like, “If I can set this up and be like, okay, you’re beautiful, you do all the domestic labor, you don’t have a voice. I am your savior and I can do no wrong.”

We end there with marriage, he owns you and you have to do whatever he says because of coverture laws. You’re literally his property, back in the day when these were written, and you’re my domestic slave. That is a happy ending for him.

Jane Gilmore (12:00): These are the stories that we all grew up on, and it’s not even just the Grimm brother stories, which were horrific. The Disney stories, Disney Plus has over a hundred million subscribers. If I’ve got little kids and I’m saying, “Okay, God, I just need an hour to myself.” Put them down in front of the electronic babysitter. I know it’s not ideal, but we’ve all done it.

Come on. And you think, well, the Disney Channel, they’ve got to be safe there. Then you have a look at Sleeping Beauty, which in the quintessential fairytale Princess, Sleeping Beauty is the first published one I could find, from Italy in about 1500. Her name is Talia, Talia has the Curse to make her fall asleep.

​​(12:50): It’s not a handsome prince, it’s a king from a neighboring country. Comes in and finds her asleep, looks at her. He tries to wake her up, and fails. He impregnates her. Now we know what the word for that is, right? That’s rape. Rape. That’s rape.

If You’re Not Teaching Consent You Are’t Teaching Women To Recognize AbuseShe eventually wakes up after she’s had twins. She is so delighted to find that while she is unconscious, she is impregnated by somebody she doesn’t remember and has babies. He meanwhile has forgotten about her, and this is specifically in the story, he remembered her and came back presumably to do it again.

Jane Gilmore (13:28): Yeah, yeah. Finds her and the babies. She says, “How wonderful to meet you. Finally, the father of my children, I’m in love. Let’s get married.” He says, “Okay, sure. There’s just a bit of a problem. I’ve already got a wife, but nevermind. Let’s go back to my place and we’ll find the wife and I’ll kill her and then we can get married and everything will be fine.”

The original story, called Sun, Moon, and Talia, it’s available online. It’s not under copyright anymore. They go back to his place, he tries to kill his wife or he says he’s going to kill his wife, but then she tries to kill Sleeping Beauty first and the children because

Anne (14:02): She’s the bad one, not him.

Jane Gilmore (14:04): She’s the evil one, not him. He’s the hero of this story. She fails in her attempts to kill Sleeping Beauty and the children, she does this by telling the servants to kill the children and serve them up to Sleeping Beauty and the King as dinner. The servants say, “Maybe we won’t kill and cook the babies.”

No, they tell the king. He sets his wife on fire and burns her alive, and then marries Sleeping Beauty and they live happily ever after. Such a cute story.

Anne (14:35): This is horrifying

Sleeping Beauty’s Teaches Women Not To Recognize AbuseJane Gilmore (14:37): So bad. And obviously Disney sanitized this a lot because we would never let our children watch that movie. Essentially it’s the same story. She’s asleep, she sleeps through her entire story. This is how much agency that story wants to give women.

You are unconscious while we tell your story. Handsome Prince comes in, kisses her while she’s asleep, which is Disney’s version of rape, and she wakes up and, oh, my handsome prince, how wonderful. Let’s get Married. That’s her story, the idea that a woman needs to be conscious, talking, having a personality, having ideas, having thoughts, having feelings, and desires for a man to fall in love with her is abhorrent.

Sleeping Beauty must be unconscious for the Handsome Prince to want her, is all the agency that is given to little girls in this story.

Anne (15:31): I love your stuff, Jane. You are so smart. You say it and I’m like, “That is so good. Why didn’t I think of that?” Love it.

Jane Gilmore (15:40): Honestly, this is how I spent most of lockdown, reading through these stories thinking, what does that mean? Where does it come from? That’s the original story that comes from, WOW. That was my pandemic experience.

Anne (15:53): It is shocking. Disney tries to be inclusive and modern and whatever. When the new live action Beauty and the Beast came out with Emma Watson. I thought, surely they have fixed this, to not be so absolutely terrible. To fix the Stockholm Syndrome part, which it’s not a thing.

Women are just trying to survive. They’re not falling in love with anyone. Surely they have fixed this, but it is exactly the same as their cartoon.

Modern Adaptations Still Don’t Recognize AbuseI thought, what is happening? Did they not notice? In my head, I have it rewritten so it works perfectly so that they could fall in love and she not be coerced and or abused and or treated badly, and it would make sense. I couldn’t believe that they did the same thing over again.

They seem like they’re trying to be committed to not being misogynists. I just couldn’t wrap my head around that. What year did that come out, 2017, that’s almost after #metoo.

Jane Gilmore (17:06): I had exactly the same reaction when I watched it because Emma Watson’s surely going to fix all this. Right? I had exactly the same reaction as you. It is absolutely a story of control and abuse in both of them. He’s so angry and he’s punching walls around her and he’s terrifying her.

The solution for this is for her to love him more, do more to turn him into the handsome Prince. He has no responsibility at all to change his behavior. That’s up to her. If she loves him enough, his behavior will just magically change, but he has no responsibility at all.

That’s the story Beauty and the Beast is telling women. When a man is so angry and violent around you, that you are genuinely terrified, even before he’s physically violent. Then it is your responsibility to try harder to please him. When I started going into these stories, as I said, I watched the Snow White movie, and I was just so horrified by it that at the time, I wasn’t planning on a book or anything just for my own satisfaction.

Reimagining Fairy Tales Through a Feminist Lens(18:29): I had to rewrite it. And then because I get obsessive about these things, I couldn’t let it go. And I started looking at some of the other movies and I started rewriting them as well, but I couldn’t. When I got to Sleeping Beauty, I couldn’t rewrite the same plot.

I could not write a story about a woman where she is unconscious throughout her story. I changed it, and I am far from the first writer or feminist to ever do this. There’s a long and very glorious history of feminist rewriting fairy tales to point out how horrific they are. I wanted to show what women’s stories can be like if they’re not that horrific.

Sleeping Beauty, I actually just went, okay, I’m going to do the full feminist fantasy. What would the Sleeping Beauty story be if it was written by Women for Women about the sort of lives, in an ideal world, that we wish we had?

(19:20): I went to the full extreme of the Snow White story, which I rewrote according to the Snow White plot. Just to point out how horrific it is, and that is a whole lot of fun. It felt redemptive. I felt I’d taken control of it. The next one I did is Beauty and the Beast, and I went back and forth between rewriting it so that she had a good outcome, a good story.

Rewriting Fairy Tales to Undo the BrainwashingI thought how do I write this so that she has a good, equal, respectful, and happy relationship? In all of these fairytale stories, the prize at the end for the Fairytale Princess is marriage, is a man, is a relationship. There are so many other things that women want, that we do, that we work for, that we take pride in.

This is the reality of that violent, controlling, abusive man. Yes, I should actually write this and then I should publish it. People may disagree with it, they may not like it, they may not read it, that’s fine. Let’s do more and put them out into the world.

(20:19): There are so many stories about the Happily Ever After endings, and I didn’t want to write another one. I rewrote a couple of them with a happy ending that didn’t relate to having a good relationship with a man. It is about other things that women can want, but with Beauty and the Beast. I thought maybe I do give her the ending of the relationship, but a realistic one of what a relationship actually looks like. When you start with a man who’s frighteningly angry at the beginning, who is controlling and abusive fairly early on, and then you get married.

What does that relationship actually look like? How does that really end? It does not end happily ever after. There’s just no way that relationship ends happily. That one took me to some pretty dark places actually, and I was a bit hesitant about publishing it. It ended the way I know too many of these relationships do.

How Little Mermaid Teaches Us Not To Recognize Abuse(21:20): This is when I start to think, actually, you know what? I really do need to publish these because this is the point of what I’m doing, pointing out what these fairytale princesses are telling little girls and young women about what they should expect from their lives, what they should hope for, what they should plan for and dream of.

This is the reality of that violent, controlling, abusive man. Yes, I should actually write this and then I should publish it. People may disagree with it, they may not like it, they may not read it, that’s fine. Let’s do more and put them out into the world.

Jane Gilmore (21:58): Next, I went on to The Little Mermaid and I watched the Disney movie, which is all very cute and awful. Then went back and read the Hans Christian Anderson version, the original story.

If you want to be truly horrified, read the Hans Christian Anderson story.

It’s an entire short story written to tell women to keep quiet. If you are in pain, stay silent. If you are bleeding, don’t upset people by telling anyone about it. In the original story, they cut her tail to turn it into legs, and every step she takes feels like she’s walking on knives.

She leaves a trail of bloody footprints behind her with every step she takes, but she smiles and dances for the handsome princes because that’s what he wants her to do. It’s whole message is for women to be quiet and not recognize abuse.

Sometimes It Seems Healthy, But If You Look Closer It Still Teaches Women Not to Recognize AbuseAnne (22:54): Wow. Can that be interpreted? I mean, I’m not trying to justify the story. Like I said, the Little Mermaid is my nemesis, I don’t like it. In the original version, could that be interpreted to say it’s going to be painful to you if you try to change for a man? Or is that not, that’s not how it could be interpreted.

Jane Gilmore (23:14): Oh, look, I wish that was the case. I wish I could say yes. I wish I could say yes, and that’s what we’re aiming for here. No, it’s absolutely about women. You will experience pain in trying to change for a man, and that will only work if you stay silent about it, and eventually he might love you.

The interesting thing in the Little Mermaid, is he falls in love with somebody else who’s a proper woman, a real woman. She can praise the handsome prince and agree with him and laugh at all his jokes. The little mermaid kills herself. I swear to God, this is what happens in the original story.

She throws herself off the side of the ship and angels come to her and say, it’s okay because you chose to die rather than cause pain to the handsome Prince and his new bride. You get to live as a sort of spirit guide for the next 300 years, and if you do enough, you will eventually go to heaven. That’s her salvation for failing to win. The handsome Prince is 300 years of silent, unrecognized servitude to the world to earn her place in heaven. People don’t recognize abuse in this story.

Modern Attempts Don’t Stop the Abusive FoundationsAnne (24:26): Like a nun. Yeah. If you can’t get a husband, then the next best thing you can do is do service to the world in another way. Yes, whatever we do we must not recognize abuse.

Jane Gilmore (24:35): Yes, but you have to die so that nobody can see you or hear you doing it. You do it as a ghost. It’s staggering. This is the Little Mermaid story. Now, obviously, again, Disney sanitized it and it has the happy ever after ending.

Anne (24:50): Well, even the Disney version is just awful. You have to give up your voice for a man to like you. He falls in love with her. My kids, they hear me say this stuff, right?

They’re like, “Mom, why do we always have to talk about misogyny? Why can’t we just watch a movie?” And I say, “Because it’s blatant. I have to point it out to you.” Anyway, they loved at the end of the new one, the one that just came out where it says years later. Did you notice that?

Jane Gilmore (25:21): I haven’t seen that one. I was honestly reaching the point where I just couldn’t take it anymore. I’d done these five stories and I’d literally watched dozens and dozens of Disney movies.

Trust, Respect, And SupportAnne (25:31): Totally, totally. In the new one at the end, instead of getting married, she can talk and they don’t get married. I mean they don’t want to recognize abuse, from the past version. Then, spoiler alert, it says years later. You assume that they’ve gotten to know each other and then they decide to get married.

Jane Gilmore (25:52): Again, marriage is the happy ending and they’ve tacked on this little bit at the end.

Anne (25:57): Exactly. My kids thought it was really funny. They were like, “Yeah, right, just throw in, years later, and it solves everything?” They were being really sarcastic about it. It is better.

Jane Gilmore (26:08): Because it’s not the story, that’s not the getting to know somebody and the developing a relationship of trust and respect and happiness and support. That’s not the story.

Anne (26:18): That’s boring, and you cover that in years later. It seems these fairy tales are made not to teach women to recognize abuse, black screen. That takes two seconds. Jane and I are going to pause the conversation here. We’re going to continue our conversation next week, so stay tuned.

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Have you ever asked, “Is it wrong to want to leave my emotionally abusive husband?” Many women in the BTR community yearn for emotional and psychological safety. If you’re asking yourself this same question here are some things to consider:

This episode is Part Two of Anne’s interview with Karen DeArmond Gardner.

Part One: The Fear of Starting Over and How to Push Through It

Part Two: I Want to Leave My Emotionally Abusive Husband (This Episode)

1. What would you tell someone else if they asked?Pretend like you’re having a conversation with someone else. Listen to your own story as if you’re someone else. What would you say to this “other” person? Would she be wrong for wanting to leave an emotionally abusive husband?

2. What would a domestic abuse expert say?Since most therapists, clergy, and almost everybody else doesn’t understand the ins and outs of domestic abuse, especially when it comes to emotional and psychological abuse, they’re not the right people to ask about whether or not your desire to leave your emotionally abusive husband is appropriate.

Anne Blythe, M.Ed, Producer & Host of the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast helps women assess their level of emotional safety everyday. At BTR.ORG emotional safety is the top priority. So rather than asking yourself if it’s wrong to leave or even if you should leave, Anne would support you in your journey to discover what it means to be emotionally safe and to take steps to become emotionally safe, in whatever way works for you.

1. Who told you it’s wrong to leave an emotionally abusive husband?If you’re wondering if it’s wrong to leave an emotionally abusive husband, consider why you’re even asking this question in the first place. Does the question even make sense? Who has told you or where have you picked up the idea that it could be wrong to leave an emotionally abusive relationship?

Anne wrote The BTR.ORG Meditations so that women can look inside themselves to sort out their own thoughts from the society scripting in their heads to determine what the is the best course of action to take. Start listening to your intuition, rather than people who don’t understand what it’s like to live in your situation.

1. Consider asking, “How do I establish emotional safety,” instead of, “Can I get to emotional safety?”One thing’s for sure, all women can get to emotionally safety. So it’s important to focus on HOW. Anne developed The BTR.ORG Living Free and Message Workshops for specifically this reason – to help victims get to emotional safety. To learn more about HOW, visit btr.org/livingfree

This episode is Part Two of Anne’s interview with Karen DeArmond Gardner.

Part One: The Fear of Starting Over and How to Push Through It

Part Two: I Want to Leave My Emotionally Abusive Husband (This Episode)

Whether you’re fully committed to separating from your husband, or have gone back and forth on this painful decision, consider these tips and strategies Anne and Karen discuss in the transcript below.

Dreaming BigAnne (00:00): Karen DeArmond Gardner is back, we’re talking about dreaming big and how even just daydreaming can help victims start making their way to safety. Also about The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop where we help women begin to change their thoughts in order to start making their way to safety. So we’re going to join the conversation right there.

Have You Enrolled in The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop Yet?Anne: That’s one of the things that we talk about in The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop. So we have a workshop that helps women know how to think about the situation and how to communicate with an abuser in a strategic way in order to get to safety and then set boundaries in order to get too emotional and psychological safety. One of those things is to dream.

So many women just have stopped because they think, I have to be content with this. It will never get any better than this because that’s what they’ve been told. I find it to be very satisfying to say, no, there’s so many options for you, but it’s really hard to see that when you’re still being traumatized over and over.

Let’s talk about women who are trying to heal, but they’re still being traumatized by the abuser repeatedly. Is it possible to heal while you’re actively being traumatized? We talk about this all the time in BTR.ORG Group Sessions.

Don’t Announce to the World That You Want to LeaveKaren (04:04): Leaving is not something you announce to the world. I don’t care what the TVs or movies say. You don’t announce to him, I’m going to leave you. You don’t do that. Become an actress and if you’re thinking about it, you put on the face, you react as you normally would.

You don’t let ’em know that your thinking is changing, though they’re very perceptive at noticing little nuances. It’s a matter of protecting yourself and your kids, and then when you do leave, then there’s a whole new level of trauma.

Now, I have not experienced this at all, but I have watched, I have talked to the women, I interact with them, and what they deal with after is horrible. Whether you stay in an abusive marriage for 30 or 40 years or you leave the trauma, it stays because you’ve got to deal with this man until your kids are adults.

Some of these women do it, the strength that it takes for them to stand and to raise their kids and to fight for themselves and to fight for the kids is absolutely extraordinary.

Discussion on Post-Separation AbuseAnne (05:13): Yeah, it’s rough. I had it for eight years post-divorce of post-divorce abuse, and it is just awful. I’m delivered now, which is amazing and freeing. I do think though the post-divorce abuse that a lot of people for good reason are really worried about, and they choose to stay.

For me, I found it to be better because at least it wasn’t in my house. At least it was coming from the outside and I had a safe space where I could breathe.

It’s really, really rough and sometimes safety is the healing. When you’re safe, you can kind of not always, and healing does need to be intentional, but it’s almost instantaneous healing at times when you really are safe and they cannot harm you anymore.

Because that’s such a rare situation if someone gets abandoned for example, or there are times where someone miraculously does not have to interact with the abuser anymore for any reason.

There’s still all those questions that come up and then his voice in your head and all the societal scripting and also the anger of how did other people not help me with the secondary trauma?

That’s really hard when you’re thinking about getting to safety when you are like, this is obviously emotionally unsafe for me, it’s psychologically unsafe. I need to start making my way. I need to start being the operative word there. What do you do when the start stops you, when the starting is the thing that you can’t quite do?

Should You Leave: What Do You Do When The “Start” Stops You Karen (06:55): Yeah, it is, and it’s so funny that you say it that way because the start can stop you. It is hard to know what to do. There’s a scripture that is, and even if you don’t believe in the Bible, but this part is so true, it says that God did not give us a spirit of fear timidity, but of power, love, and a sound mind when we’re afraid.

Number one, there is no love, fear and love cannot occupy the same space. It’s one or the other. It’s like taking two magnets and they’ll automatically go together. If you turn one around and you try to put the magnet together, they will shoot apart, and that’s what fear and love does.

If you’re living in fear, you’re not living in love. Love has gone out of the equation because the abusers keep you in a cycle of chaos.

How Does Gaslighting Factor In?(07:52): I don’t mean in a cycle of like he’s abusive, then he’s not. I mean a cycle, constant cycle of confusion, which is why they use gaslighting so that you will question everything that you know is true and he’ll have you questioning that and you will doubt yourself at every single turn.

How in the world do you start over when you can’t even think a straight thought that if you make a decision, what if you’re wrong? Because he would set you up for failure in making decisions and you would make a decision and then it would be wrong because no matter what you did, it was going to be wrong. Now how do you make a decision?

I mean, it sounds almost impossible, and that’s why we say hard doesn’t even begin to explain the struggle of regaining your sound mind, your correct thinking, to taking your power back, to take your love back, to even care about yourself enough that is this really what I’m worth?

Where Did the Eggshells Go?(09:04): I have no more value than to be whatever he wants me to be. And now you’ve got to work through the battle. That’s the obstacle we face is our own brain because it is brain science that our brain gets jumbled up, and how do we undo that to be able to think clearly?

That’s part of what we’re dealing with is undoing all of that. And you mentioned it earlier about when you become safe, there’s something about that that all of a sudden you recognize that the chaos is gone and you may not notice it first because it’s a strange feeling. It’s odd. You don’t feel like you’re walking around on the eggshells all the time. Where did the eggshells go?

And I don’t have to watch out for the landmines. There’s going to be a hidden landmine there that I might step on. I don’t have to worry about that. As you navigate that, it is through that your brain will start getting some clarity, but those clarity moments are sometimes hard because you have to face the hard truths that he never loved you.

Should I Leave if He Doesn’t Know How to LoveAnne (10:22): Not because you’re not lovable, because you’re absolutely lovable, but because that’s not how he operates. He doesn’t even know how to love.

Karen (10:30): He doesn’t. He can put on a good show to get you to marry him and say all the right words. He’s a counterfeit. He’s a conman. Think of a conman.

If you’ve ever watched the show about conman, and I think there was a TV show that came out this last season and I got to where it was too hard to watch the constant con going on to trick people, but it is literally what they do, and they keep you guessing and wondering what’s true and what’s not.

And that’s part of the healing process is determining what’s true and what isn’t. Am I valuable? Am I crazy? You feel crazy? That’s a word. You can feel that. That doesn’t mean you can feel unlovable. That doesn’t mean you are, because that’s how the abuser makes us feel, to feel unlovable, to feel all of these things.

And that doesn’t mean we discount them because we need to pay attention to those feelings because they’re telling us that something is off, that something is wrong because those emotions are valid. So anybody that says, oh, don’t listen to your feelings and your emotions, they’ll lie to you. No, they’re not. They’re telling you something’s wrong and to pay attention to them.

The Difficulty of Divorce, The Hope of SafetyAnne (11:46): For so many victims, I try to have this dichotomous conversation and you just mentioned it about how hard it is going to be and these are all the obstacles you’re going to face. Recently I talked to one and I was like, make sure you don’t tell your clergy because then he’s going to pull him in and he’s going to get you guys in couple therapy and you don’t want to do that.

(12:40): She had decided she wanted to leave, so I wasn’t trying to get her to divorce. She had already decided she wanted to do that, and I said, well, just go for it then. Otherwise it’s going to push you back like a year.

It Is Going to be the Most Worthwhile Endeavor to Deliver Yourself from AbuseI was trying to warn her about how hard it was going to be and all the obstacles she was going to face, which is important to warn victims about when they’re trying to get to safety. And then also talking about that and then talking about the hope, sharing that even though it’s going to be very hard, it is going to be the most worthwhile endeavor to deliver yourself from abuse. You will be very grateful that you took action in order to do that.

And for women of faith, you will see miracles along the way. They might seem really small. You might wonder, why is this happening? God cannot know because he’s not helping me. And then maybe a year later or two years later, you’ll realize, oh, he was helping me.

I just didn’t realize it. Can you talk about as we advocate for victims and as we educate women about abuse, helping them understand how hard it’s going to be, and then also giving them hope at the same time, and why those two things are so important?

Should You Leave? Your Mind Will ClearKaren (13:53): I agree. We have to tell people how hard it’s going to be when they leave, that it’s not necessarily going to get easier, but it’s not forever that what we go through. It is not forever. It is for now what you’re feeling. What you’re dealing with is normal, feeling crazy is normal, but it’s not forever.

Your mind will clear. You will as you heal, as you discover what you were in and discover more of who you are, the hope grows. And it’s hard to see in the beginning because we live by the end of our nose. We can’t see beyond our end of our nose, but it’s as if that hand gets filler, like your hand is in front of your face.

The longer you’re out, the more aware you become, the more healing you get. It gets further and further away until suddenly you see, wow, there are trees out here.

What Happened to Us Does Not Have to Define Us(14:49): Wow, when did the sky get so blue? What happened here? And everything is about hope. It’s not based on our religious beliefs or it’s the fact that hope is built within us, and it’s that where we keep our eye on the hope for our future because it will get better.

Because there was never a promise that life was going to be easy. We have evil in this world. There are evil people, and God gave us free will to choose and to not to choose, and people made really bad decisions on our behalf and to harm us. Now when we leave, we get to start making decisions, and if it’s a wrong one, okay, we learn from our mistakes.

That’s part of the process of learning from right decisions and even wrong ones. But I believe that out of the healing is the ashes. What happened to us does not have to define us. That is not who we are. It was what was done to us. It is not who we are. Hope is so important because the hard part is choosing to live again, but it’s beautiful, it’s hard and glorious and amazing all at the same time.

Do I Need to Leave to Get to Emotional Safety?Anne (16:14): I always want victims to know that it’s possible. I don’t want them to ask the question, can I leave. The question I want them to ask is how. I know that a peaceful life is possible. I know that it’s been promised to me in the scriptures, for example, if you’re a woman of faith, but just logically, it is possible to be able to choose the life that you want to live.

Instead of saying, can I do it, don’t even think that you can put that question in the trash and never ever get it out and only ask how I would like a life of peace. How do I get to emotional safety? Should I leave? How do I get to psychological safety and then just start taking one step at a time?

Karen (17:05): Yes, the question becomes, why not me? Why not me? Not why me did he choose me? Why did this happen to me, but why not me for hope, for my dreams?

Anne (17:18): Absolutely. Well, Karen, thank you so much for spending time with us. I appreciate your thoughts and I’m so grateful that you shared your story.

Karen (17:29): Oh, well, I am so appreciative to interact with you and to talk with you and just be able to shine more light on this really ugly world of domestic abuse and bring hope.

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If you don’t want a divorce, there are several alternatives to consider. The fear of starting over can be a major hurdle. After 30 years of emotional and psychological abuse, a survivor shares her story.

This episode is Part One of Anne’s interview with Karen DeArmond Gardner.

Part One: I Don’t Want A Divorce. But I Don’t Know What Else I Should Do (This Episode)
Part Two:I Want to Leave My Emotionally Abusive Husband

I found myself thinking, “What am I going to do? What’s going to happen?” I was about to turn 70, and I knew I needed emotional safety. – Karen DeArmond Gardner

Reasons Why Women Don’t Want A DivorceRegardless of age, most women feel intense fear and concern about divorce. I’ve never met a woman who wants a divorce. Women don’t want a divorce because answering this questions seems daunting:

• How will I provide for myself and my children?
• What if this was my only chance at love and partnership?
• Isn’t divorce wrong?
• What if he changes at some point, and I miss out on it?
• What if I spend the rest of my life alone?
• Where will I live?
• What if everyone believes his version of the story?
• I’ve never worked, how will I get a job?

These are perfectly valid reasons you don’t want a divorce. Anne and Karen dive into ways that you can work through these fears in this episode. Further, The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop offers practical strategies and exercises that you can practice again and again to free yourself from fear and proactively work toward confidence and empowerment.

When You Say to Yourself: I Don’t Want A Divorce?Anne (02:43): Moving from hopelessness to hope, Karen left her emotionally abusive husband.

Karen is a woman of faith, so if you are agnostic or atheist or anything else, you’re welcome here.

Everyone is always welcome. If you come on the podcast, you’re always welcome to share from your own faith or non-faith perspective. Karen and I don’t share the same faith tradition. So we’ll be talking about faith each from our own experience and perspective.

Let’s start, Karen, with your story. Can you tell me a little about your story?

Share Your Story of Starting If You Don’t Want A DivorceKaren (04:12): Ha, where do you start in your story when you left or when you got into it? I stayed 30 years in an abusive marriage, but at 20 years old, I didn’t know that. He was charming and kind, and he was funny. He was a good listener. I told him secrets I had never told anybody in my entire life, and I had no idea.

Now were there red flags? Yes. Do you pay attention to him? You do, but they excuse him. It’s like, well, that’s a one-off because he’s this guy over here. He’s always telling me how amazing I am, and so it just must be like a one-off.

We got married after two and a half months of meeting. I’m just going to tell you don’t do that. I had no idea what I was stepping into, noticing things changed, but I didn’t have anything to compare it to.

Because my father was abusive, and then the man she was currently married to while I was growing up was an alcoholic. I really didn’t have anything to compare to what is normal and what’s not normal.

Instead of Happily Ever After, I Was Asking, “I Don’t Want a Divorce?”Anne (05:45): So many women have that situation. I remember telling my doctor, my internal medicine family practice doctor, I don’t know what is okay, because I’ve never been married to anyone else, and everybody tells you marriage is hard and everybody tells you you have to work hard at it and you have to be loving and patient.

We get educated about how to love and serve and forgive and be kind and listen and all that stuff. But we get very little education about abuse, so it gets confusing. We talk so much about recognizing abuse in BTR.ORG Group Sessions.

Karen (06:18): Honestly, nobody talks about that. I mean, even today, every pre-marriage session should include a section on recognizing abusive behaviors, and it should occur separately because she won’t admit that in front of him, and vice versa.

Yet, even in this day and age, we still fail to implement this. People struggle to imagine that someone so kind, funny, and well-liked could have a dark side. I wasn’t searching for a fairytale; I didn’t even have marriage on my mind. Instead of a fairytale, I ended up living a nightmare.

Some guys, as soon as you say I do, they immediately, they turn, they strip off all the masks and the monster is there and some guys are really slow at it, and ours was slow and periodic and it was mostly verbal and emotional and psychological, but I didn’t know that.

Accepting the Intention Behind the Abuse When Thinking “I Don’t Want A Divorce”Most of what I know about what happened to me is after the fact. I still have moments and I’ve been out now coming up, it’ll be 19 years, and so I’m coming up on these anniversaries. I still have moments where I’ll read something on social media and I’m like, whoa, wow. Yes.

There’s all these tactics. There are so many, but even I am still surprised at what he did and how abusive it was.

Anne (07:52): And also I think the longer we’re out of it, we realize how intentional it was too, which is heartbreaking.

Karen (07:59): Yes, it is. I can’t tell you how many women are like, oh, he didn’t do it on purpose. I’m like, yeah, he really did. No, no, he wouldn’t do that. He just had this and his that.

You can hear the cognitive dissonance going on in their brain, and it’s part of that healing process of getting over those thoughts that have taken over the lies that we think are really true because they resonate.

Because he said it so many times and ingrained it with behaviors and reactions and punishments. Whatever words you want to use. That it is so reinforced that we think that he couldn’t help it because he said it for so long.

It’s hard to admit that this man that you shared your bed with and raised children with that said he loved you, actually purposely married you, so he would have the freedom to abuse you.

When You Don’t Want A Divorce, But You Feel Like You Don’t Have Any OptionsAnne (09:01): I think it also comes from societal scripting, some religious scripting as well. It almost confirms the abusive gaslighting that they’re telling you. Then you go to maybe a therapist or clergy or a friend, and they unknowingly are also confirming to you this false reality that yeah, you should be submitting.

That’s what a good wife would do, or whatever they’re saying that kind of keeps you stuck there and you don’t realize what’s happening.

Karen (09:36): Because sometimes you don’t know that you have an option and which to some people sounds a little bit crazy. But the reality is when you’re in the middle of it, you feel like you don’t have any options.

Anne (09:49): Also you have really good intentions. You care about your children, you care about your family. If clergy or someone else is saying to you, well, if you really care about your family, you need to forgive.

For example, or if you really follow Jesus, then you need to submit and forgive and pray for him or advice like that. That doesn’t help women get to emotional safety.

I Don’t want a Divorce! Am I really Going to Just Put 30 Years in the Trash and Start Over?You’re around 50 years old at the time and you’re thinking, I don’t want a divorce is it time for me to leave. I need to get to emotional safety, psychological safety, and you sort of see it as starting over, which is scary because people don’t want a divorce. They’ve already invested 30 years into this relationship.

Thinking, I don’t want a divorce? Can you talk about your decision to leave and the concept of starting over? How that either can help victims to leave, like, oh, I get a fresh start, or it can actually keep them stuck because they’re like, I don’t want a divorce. I’ve already invested too much.

I Was Afraid to Move, I Don’t Want A DivorceKaren (10:57): I think starting over is the part that doesn’t even enter your brain. It didn’t enter my mind because I couldn’t even think that far ahead. The time that I left six months prior to leaving was when I realized one day I had the moment when I realized I was done, he wasn’t worth it anymore.

This man clearly cares nothing about me. I was just done. It still took six months to leave because I didn’t know how to do that. I was isolated from my family. And it just happened that my mom came in December for my daughter’s graduation from college and was staying for Christmas, and it was that week before Christmas as everything came to a head.

I don’t know how I decided that I was going to leave, but that’s all that I could think of. I was 51 when I left. When I landed in Texas a little less than a month later, about three weeks later, I couldn’t even imagine life any different than it was. I felt like a little kid who someone took all the fences down and I was afraid to move.

Finding Light in the Darkness(12:14): There was dangerous traffic all around me, and I was so stuck and I was so terrified. I went from terrified of leaving him, I knew what he was capable of, I felt terrified. Now what do I do? I don’t know how to do this. I was with my family and my sister would drive me places and help me make decisions, and my brother was helping me because I couldn’t think straight.

The thought of starting over just seemed overwhelming, and I didn’t use that terminology until I got a job. About two and a half months after I left, I got a new job here in Texas. Then that changed my thinking because all of a sudden I found these people that just absolutely adored me.

They liked me. I mean, that was a big deal. They actually liked me.

Over time, as I was away from his abuse, I could feel my mind clearing as I was working at learning a new job, I was in four months of training. I could feel the shift slowly happen to where all of a sudden I could see possibilities and it was terrifying.

I was just bumbling around in the dark, and that’s what it felt like, I just literally felt like I was bumbling around in the dark because up to this point, I had part-time jobs or I had inconsequential jobs. He wanted me to work, but I always worked under my capabilities. Every job I had was never to my capabilities.

Starting Over: Remembering Who You REALLY Are(14:01): Now I have a job where I feel myself growing and learning and expanding my mind and starting to see this is so different. I’m not sure I’m really answering your question because it’s hard to put words to what I felt then.

I had no idea who I was when I came out of the marriage. I was really mousy and quiet, and I’m not that way.

That’s not who I am. I’m not mousy or quiet. I could overtalk. I could be too loud when I’d get excited. It’s only been in the last few years that the Lord has actually showed me.

He’s given me glimpses of moments in my early married life where I was that way. Because of his reaction, I learned over time that not to be loud, to not talk, to not give my opinion. It took time.

There were times when he would come at me and I would fight back emotionally or verbally. I was fighting back and I thought I always just appeased him and I didn’t. And the Lord had to open up my mind to help me to remember. He made you this way. This is not who you were. So it has helped me to accept where I am to today, if that makes any sense.

Your Personality Didn’t Cause the AbuseAnne (15:29): When it comes to abuse recovery, the advice is, what were you like before? There is a population of victims who were quiet before, and so they’re like, well, I was always quiet. And so they get a little bit confused.

You have to realize that that does not cause abuse. There are other women who are quiet whose husbands aren’t abusing them.

(16:23): Also, some women who were quiet and maybe really calm, they became more irritated or more upset because he was abusive.

They’re thinking, I must be this angry, bitter person, what he’s told her when really she was just trying to protect herself. It’s really interesting the different ways that victims end up perceiving of themselves, perceiving of their life before, and it takes a while to sort it out.

I also think it takes some distance from that person. They’ve been gaslighting you for so long. When you’re away from it, you can kind of process it a little bit better and say, wait a minute.

Yeah, I did become more loud because I realized that this wasn’t safe or I became more quiet because that was the way I was trying to survive. There’s all different ways that women react to it.

Abusers Want to Squish Our Personalities and They Want to Shift UsKaren (17:17): I totally agree. There is no cookie cutter and with each one of us, how we respond and when they bait us and how we react. Just like all abusers have, it seems like they all read the same manual and they use the same tactics. Every abuser has their own nuance to how they do things. It’s never a cookie cutter because first of all, we’re not all the same. We all are different.

You’re going to see that play out. I purposely use the word abuser. I know there’s all these other terms that we can use. In reality, what we’re dealing with is someone who is an abuser. We all have our own way, it’s our own personality. The point is, abusers want to squish our personalities and they want to shift us. Some abusers really get off on the fact that when you react, when you fight back. They can go, oh, well, look at what you’re doing, and they always point it back.

Anne (18:19): They love that they affected you.

Karen (18:21): Oh yes, for good.

They Love the Ability to be Able to Affect YouAnne (18:22): Oh, I’m so grateful. Thank you. Or, you’re stressing me out. You’re a terrible person. They love the ability to be able to affect you. That’s what they love. They don’t love you. They love the power that like, Ooh, I have the power to be able to affect her.

That’s what they really like because you are around 50 and I’ll be 50 sooner rather than later. It’s feeling very young to me right now, which is exciting. A lot of women think, I can’t do this now. My time has passed. I’m too old.

50 is not old, at whatever age, I’m too old to get to safety. This has been my life for too long. What are some obstacles that you see that women sort of put up for themselves or that other people tell them really quick?

So Many Women Think, It’s too Late for Me to I Don’t Want a Divorce(19:20): I had an abusive boyfriend in high school and he really wanted me to marry him. He told me that if I didn’t marry him right then basically, I will have missed my chance because nobody gets married after 22. He’s like, there’s these three phases.

There’s right after high school, there’s right after everybody gets home from their missions, and then there’s right after another time, there are these three phases. He is like, if you miss this phase, you will never get married. So marry me now. It was in his mind the third phase, and I said, no, thank you.

When I talk about obstacles, so many women just think It’s too late for me. It’s too late for me to have a peaceful life. It’s too late for me to get to safety. Can you talk about that in terms of starting over?

My Life Just Continues to Grow After Starting OverKaren (20:08): Oh, I would love to because I don’t, with 51, it’s starting over. For the first time in my life, I had a career and it wasn’t an amazing career. I learned all that I was capable of. Mow here I am. Because if you start to put together the date she left when she was 51, and it’s been almost 19 years, I’ll be 70 next month.

My life just continues to grow. I’ve discovered that God loves people and it’s not about our age. I mean, look at all the people he used when they were 80 and older in the scriptures like Moses and Abraham and Sarah and all of these people that he used when they were older.

That means nothing to God because it’s never too late. Even though you don’t want a divorce, it’s never too late to leave, even if you’ve been married 40 years or 50 years, because marriage, you’ll go through hard things, but it’s not supposed to be hard.

Even though You Don’t want a Divorce, Starting Over is Possible… You Will Find Your Way(21:19): It’s not supposed to be terrifying. That is not what it’s supposed to be. It makes sense that you don’t want a divorce, it’s daunting, no doubt. You think, “What am I going to do?” Depending if you’ve never worked, what’s going to happen, but you will find your way.

I’m not saying it’s easy because many women don’t want a divorce, and leaving is hard. It’s hard. Leaving is terribly hard, but so is the after because you’ve got to learn, who am I? Who you were before may not be who you are now, and that’s okay because maybe you needed some more healing. It’s who you are today.

Who do you want to be today? What do you want to do? That is some of the hardest questions to ask yourself. How can I learn to dream again? Because we’re not limited. We’re not limited by that. Yes, there’s always, we talk about youth and all of that, but honestly, think about what we were like when we were young and how little that we knew based on what we know now.

To me, about to turn 70 age is irrelevant to me. It used to bother me. I didn’t want to tell anybody how old I was, but now it’s like, no, no, I’m not done. I have so much more that God wants me to do. And I mean, I was 68 when I wrote my book. That’s awesome. It doesn’t limit him. It doesn’t have to limit us.

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Being delivered from abuse is something that all victims hope for (or pray for). Victims of emotional and psychological abuse most often put their hope in the abuser changing. In my study I began to see a pattern for deliverance from abuse. Here are the 5 Stages:

1. Things Get So Bad, You’re Daydreaming About Being Delivered From AbuseSometimes, things have to get really bad before you realize you need things to change. Maybe something big happens or things just keep getting worse and worse until you can’t ignore it anymore. It’s like waking up one day and realizing, “I can’t do this anymore.”

2. You Start to Do Something About ItAfter you decide you can’t take it anymore, the next step is to do something about it. This might not fix everything right away, and that’s okay. Trying to do something, even if it’s small, means you’re learning and getting stronger each time. It’s like practicing for a big play, trying different things to see what works best.

3. You Decide to Change Things and Don’t Go BackThis step is when you decide to make a big change and stick with it. It could be deciding not to do something for the person hurting you anymore, or maybe even moving away from them. It’s like crossing a bridge and making sure you can’t go back to the way things were before.

4. It Might Feel Weird for a WhileEven after you’ve made the change, it might feel strange for a bit. You’re getting used to a new way of living where you’re in charge. This time is for healing, finding out who you are, and starting to build a happy life. You might pick up new hobbies, make new friends, or work on your career. Little by little, things start to get better.

5. You Start to Imagine a Happy LifeIn the last step, you start to really believe you can have a happy life without being hurt. It feels like seeing the light at the end of a dark tunnel. You think about having a safe home, doing things that make you happy, and being with people who treat you well. This step is all about going from just getting by to living a great life, finding out who you are, and doing things you love.

Thinking about a happy life helps you make good choices for yourself as you move away from being hurt. It’s like a light guiding you to a future where you’re happy and safe.

Getting better after being hurt is a big journey. It’s about needing a change, making that change, sticking with it, getting used to the new way, and finally, dreaming of a happy future. It’s a way for people to get out of a hurtful situation, take control of their lives, find out who they are, and look forward to a peaceful and happy future.

Navigating the Journey From Abuse to FreedomThe BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop and BTR.ORG Message Workshop help women gain deliverance from abuse and ultimately find freedom.

• Recognizing the Need for Deliverance
• Separating From the Abuser
• Reaching a Point of Freedom and Safety

Anne’s Personal Story of Deliverance from AbuseAnne (00:00:00): Coach Janet is here, an incredible coach at BTR. She conducts individual sessions and leads group sessions too. She’s here to discuss deliverance from abuse, which aligns with BTR’s main goal: to free women from abuse in any form, tailored to their needs and situations.

For listeners of the podcast, I’ve uploaded a map on YouTube to illustrate these stages. My personal goal was to liberate myself and my children from my abusive ex. Even after eight years, it felt like he was hunting us almost daily. He constantly messaged me, undermined my parenting, canceled my kids’ medical appointments, and manipulated situations to prevent my kids from taking up sports, just so he wouldn’t have to pay for it.

(00:01:04): I was constantly stressed and traumatized. I got really angry because I thought I was great at setting boundaries. I had blocked him on my phone and email for years, yet I couldn’t figure out how to escape him.

The court and clergy wouldn’t help, and neither did other people. How could I make him go away? At this point, I wasn’t interested in him becoming a better person. I knew that was impossible after trying to get him into therapy and to do the right thing. I realized he wouldn’t be a decent co-parent or magically turn into an appropriate father, and it made me very mad.

https://youtube.com/shorts/J4S2vwdknzc?feature=shareStudying Deliverance from Abuse(00:02:05): I couldn’t find a way out. I wondered, is deliverance from abuse even possible? The goal in facing betrayal is to heal from the trauma. People often tell me, our clients, and others—not at BTR, we never say this—but others do, things like, “You’ve got to move on with your life,” or “Maybe forgive him,” or “He’s a jerk, so don’t let it bother you.”

They say all sorts of things to women in these situations. I want to stress that it’s traumatic every single time they betray you, over and over. When people ask, “Why can’t you just get over it?” it’s not that simple.

(00:02:56): You divorced eight years ago. In my case, he abused me for eight years post-divorce. They think the abuse happened eight years ago. It happened today. When he messaged me today, he lied and tried to undermine my children.

Why do so many so-called Betrayal Trauma Specialists, not BTR, but those others out there who don’t really understand, think healing from betrayal trauma is just about overcoming triggers? It’s about handling the triggers from the day we discovered he was using porn or from the month we had a tough time, not knowing what was happening, and then realizing he had an affair.

Coach Janet (00:03:40): I think this is a really important question. Many of us have undergone counseling with marriage therapy. Usually, they concentrate on our communication, healing from past events, and improving our communication skills with our husbands or exes.

We need to keep the focus on the kids. This requires a strong co-parenting relationship. The issue is that communicating with them traps us every single time. Allowing ongoing communication gives him endless opportunities to continue trapping and abusing us using whatever we offer.

Why Betrayal Trauma Specialists Fail to Understand Continuous AbuseAnne (00:04:42) The communication never improves, I wrote and recorded the Living Free Workshop to help women understand the difference between a healthy person’s and an abuser’s view of communication.

They see it as a weapon, thinking, “Okay, I can gather these things and this is how I can use it against her, or to get what I want.” The Living Free Workshop explains all this, helping women understand what’s happening so they can start to gain deliverance from abuse.

Coach Janet (00:05:18): In the Living Free workshop, lesson 26 discussed catching someone lying in real time with full evidence. “You just lied to me. This just happened.” And that gives us a sense of validation. “Oh my goodness, if I just point out these direct points, he’s going to have an aha moment like, ‘Oh, darn it. I own it. Hey, I’m so sorry. I totally just lied to you.

There was no reason to and maybe I’ll do differently.’ That never happens.” I have a client who thought she could change the outcome if she just communicated and explained it in a way he could understand, almost treating him as if he just didn’t know. If she told him and explained it to him, it would stop.

However, the opposite happened every single time, right from the beginning when they started sharing the kids 50/50 between their houses and things started falling apart at dad’s house.

The Communication Trap with Abusive Ex-Partners(00:06:39): And then she got her kids back and they’d kind of dump everything that happened at their dad’s house on her. She was headstrong, thinking, “Okay, I can call him and say, ‘Hey, I can help. The mornings are chaotic. Why don’t you set a timer?

Wake up at six so you can get the kids up at six thirty, have the lunches pre-made or teach the kids to make their own if you’re busy getting ready for work.'” She really thought it would help. Guess what? It just got worse. More chaos ensued. Then he stopped waking the kids up entirely. They were late to school almost every day.

If the kids said anything, their dad would start crying and apologize, saying he was trying his best and it was so hard. He’s working so hard and he can’t seem to get anything right. And then the kids would feel bad for saying anything, right? That’s manipulation, and now it’s all on the kids. So, the communication just doesn’t work.

Anne (00:07:51): Living free explains why, so let’s stick to that. It does a really good job at clarifying why they do that and why the opposite happens, and then what to do about it. If you define living free as having nothing to do with communication, court, clergy, or seeking third-party help.

Maybe explaining to the court that he can’t wake the kids up, or make breakfast, or perform basic parenting tasks might show that the kids really shouldn’t be under his care.

Seeking Deliverance from Abuse Through Faith and ScriptureWe’re dealing with an abuser who’s essentially a 10-year-old trapped in a 50-year-old’s body, thinking it’s playtime with the kids. But no, it’s parent time. Someone needs to take on the parenting role.

It baffles us when the court seems to think everything looks fine.

(00:08:55): He seems great, but we’re confused. We know that’s not really the case. We started thinking about deliverance from abuse. As a Christian, the concept of deliverance caught my attention, even though BTR isn’t a religious organization. Many women have suffered spiritual abuse at the hands of clergy, often due to what I believe is a misinterpretation of scripture or Christ’s doctrine.

This spiritual abuse has led many women to stop attending church, and I completely understand their decision. They’re abused, why should they continue, right? Whether you’re agnostic, atheist, or follow a different religion, you’re welcome here.

Today, I’ll talk about deliverance from abuse from a Christian perspective because it helped me understand the process of delivering my kids from this perspective. I believe you’ll learn something if you’ll bear with me, but I’m not trying to convert anyone.

(00:09:59): Here we go. We’re going to talk about deliverance from abuse. When I realized the court couldn’t or wouldn’t help me—they probably could but refused—I turned to my clergy. I said, “Hey, our church does not tolerate abuse. What are you going to do about it?” They just stared at me, blinking, clueless about how to help.

They wanted to, but they simply didn’t know how. I started praying, reading the scriptures, and thinking, “Okay, in the scriptures, Christ always delivers.

Anne Blythe”s Personal Journey Toward Deliverance From AbuseHe saves people from their enemies, over and over.” I figured through my Savior, Jesus Christ, I could find deliverance with enough faith. During my study, I read many deliverance books from different religions.

(00:11:01): In my faith, we don’t have a deliverance ministry, unlike other faiths and evangelicals. I’m not very familiar with it because it’s not my faith, but I read a book by a Catholic and an evangelical about casting out devils. Often, when people think about casting out devils, they imagine it as removing them from a person rather than from their presence.

You might not have a devil inside you, but one could be around you. How do you get rid of them? A lot of my study focused on this. I’ve written down all my studies at the end of “Living Free” for a visual of those scriptures if you’re interested.

So, there’s the casting out devils part and the deliverance part. I think, one of the best stories of deliverance is Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt.

(00:11:59): So, I actually went to Egypt and Jerusalem because I wanted to study deliverance from abuse and figure it out. Within six months of returning from Jerusalem, I and my children were delivered. My ex-husband gave up custody and the final say over my kids.

Now, they don’t have to go with him at all if they don’t want to. The parenting time schedule is only one weekend a month, from Friday at six to Sunday at six, with no midweek visits and only two weeks in the summer. They only have to spend two holidays with him the entire year.

The Israelites’ Story as a Metaphor for Abuse SurvivorsI think I could’ve gotten even less. I mean, I could’ve made him take less, but I needed a break. I included that. My oldest son hardly goes anymore.

(00:12:51): I think my other kids will probably visit less and less over the years. Last year, they only went for Christmas and didn’t even stay the whole time. They ended up coming home early, and that’s possible because we’ve been delivered. We can do whatever we want now, which is pretty exciting.

I have this map of the children of Israel delivering themselves, and I want to discuss some of it. Coach Janet, you can see this. Number one is where they were. When visiting Jerusalem, I was surprised. I went on the Nile, and it’s this huge river.

I’m just going to make up numbers here, but let’s say 500 feet on either side of the Nile, you have the most luscious, beautiful farmland where they can grow a ton of stuff because the water’s right there, and then suddenly, it turns into a very scary arid desert.

(00:13:52): If you look at this map where the children of Israel are, oppressed under Ramseys’ rule, they’re actually in that lush delta. It’s prime farmland with plenty of water. They’re not living in a hole; they’ve been here for hundreds of years, born and raised without knowing anything else.

These Israelites have never been to the Promised Land. They don’t know what it looks like; they know nothing about it. Even though they’re enslaved and oppressed, it’s all they’ve ever known. They’re not exactly hungry; there’s plenty of food and shelter.

Understanding Deliverance from Abuse Through the Lens of the Israelites and MosesThe environment isn’t bad for them. When Moses comes, saying he’s going to try to deliver them, he finds a people who haven’t seen anything else but their current condition. I won’t dive into how Moses gets to this point, but when he decides to deliver them, he realizes that they don’t even know what they’re missing.

(00:15:01): The plagues, the seven plagues. He sends frogs and fire from the sky, turns an island into blood, and all that. In my opinion, it was partly to make Ramseys let them go, but I also think it was for them. If it hadn’t gotten really bad, I don’t think they would’ve wanted to leave because they didn’t know anything else. And it probably seemed pretty scary to them.

They most likely didn’t want to be oppressed anymore, but maybe they were thinking, “Can’t he just be nicer to us? Maybe we can work it out so we only have to work 10 hours a day instead of 16.” I wonder if they were trying to negotiate with Ramseys in their minds, like, “Moses, why are we going? Maybe we can work this out.”

They had to go through those plagues too. And I think for all abuse victims, there’s a stage where things get so bad that they know they have to do something.

I’d call that the first phase of deliverance from abuse where they don’t want to do something; they’re hoping something will work out, but maybe they feel like they have to. Then, in this phase, they try pornography, addiction, recovery. How many of your clients have tried some kind of recovery program or couple therapy or something like that?

Insights from a Coaching SessionCoach Janet (00:16:29): I can’t think of one client that the spouse hasn’t tried something either anger management, sex addiction, csat, couples therapy or all of the above.

Anne (00:16:43): And why do they do that? Because they don’t know anything else. Because they’re afraid. They want Ramseys to be a little nicer. Maybe they want to work fewer hours, or they want better food. Maybe they think with a few concessions, we can live together in peace.

Coach Janet (00:17:00): The land holds goodness. This is the man they’ve built a family with; they love him. He isn’t horrible all the time because they’re still in the fog of abuse. They haven’t even had the chance to feel enough relief to realize the extent of the abuse.

Anne (00:17:21): And they also think there’s some good, rather than realizing the good is also bad, which living free explains really well. In my opinion, that was just as much for them as it was for Ramsey. Finally, Ramsey says, “Okay, I’ll let you go.” Then, they have to pack up all their stuff. This, I think, represents separation.

They have to pack their entire lives into carts. They’ve never been anywhere else, they don’t know anything else, and they have to load it onto carts and such. And when you think about Ramsey, he’s like, “Wait, no, no, no, you can’t take all those animals and you can’t take this cart, but maybe you can take this.”

There’s going to be a point where they’re trying to figure out who takes what as they start making their way out of Egypt. Now, I want to show you something.

Navigating the Exodus: A Journey of Survival(00:18:12): Okay, can you see my cursor? Yes. Alright, here’s the delta, and this right here is the promised land on this side of Jerusalem. They should’ve just walked straight across this Upper Sinai Peninsula and come right over here. That’s not the path they took. Instead, they start heading down here, and at some point, Pharaoh changes his mind, saying, “Never mind, I want you back.”

I think when you first move out before you’re divorced, your trying to figure out your escape, right? You’re wondering, “Will I manage to get a divorce?” Many women in our community face very long, difficult divorces where they desperately want to leave but can’t.

There are women who attempt to start the divorce process, then don’t go through with it, move back in, and later realize they indeed need to move out.

(00:19:13): Women find ways to stay permanently separated, and it’s actually fine because they’ve established solid boundaries. There are many different scenarios. In some cases, through setting boundaries and emotional separation, and by living freely, he might actually change to the point where living with him becomes possible.

This isn’t through a couple’s program, pornography addiction recovery, or anything formal. It’s by you setting boundaries for your own safety, and then he might choose to change. I made all this up, so I’m going to stop saying “I think” and just say, this is what happens.

Divorce and The Red Sea Crossing Analogy: Deliverance from AbuseThis is my interpretation of deliverance. But when they get to the Red Sea and find themselves stuck with Pharaoh after them, it’s a moment of truth.

(00:20:14): They can’t go back. Going back means risking enslavement or oppression again. He’s right behind them. This period, I believe, signifies a kind of divorce. Interestingly, as the Red Sea parts, some women manage to cross, permanently separating them from him unless they choose to remarry.

Looking at this map, I find it fascinating that they chose to cross here rather than taking a seemingly easier route across the Sinai Peninsula. I think the reason is that once they crossed the Red Sea and the waters fell back, returning became impossible. Without GPS or a clear map to the Promised Land—assuming they didn’t have one—they couldn’t simply turn back and recross the sea.

(00:21:16): When that divorce happens and it’s done, I don’t know any woman, at least in our community, who’s like, “I think I want to marry him again.” I think they feel that in some ways, like, “Oh, it’d be nice not to have my kids go back and forth. It’d be nice not to have so many financial problems.

It’d be nice not to worry about this stuff.” I don’t think they ever believe, deep down, “I think I made the wrong decision.” They regret the consequences. The consequences are tough, but they don’t actually regret divorcing him.

Delivering Yourself from Abuse by Picking Up Your StuffCoach Janet (00:21:55): Yes, I agree. When they’re still stuck and haven’t crossed the water, many of my clients have kicked him out. He’ll go to a program, learn something, and then she’ll let him back in, only to kick him out again.

Eventually, he’ll find a couple’s therapist. “We have kids together. We need to communicate effectively to be good,” they say. And they’re facing this court process, filled with fear, thinking, “Oh my goodness, I have no choice.

I must do this.” They try couples therapy, but often it doesn’t work, or the court process is too difficult. I have client who was told she had evidence that he wasn’t a good person or father and that she would get full custody.

However, in court, it didn’t go as planned because her now ex-husband was so smooth, charming, and could afford the perfect lawyer, leading her to lose. Many clients struggle to make it to the other side.

Anne (00:23:19): The water has topped the bottom of the Red Sea for thousands of years; it’s not flat. No one has ever driven or walked across it, so expect lots of rocks and mud. Even if the sea parts and you see a way forward, even if you’re about to get divorced, you still have to pick up all your stuff and start trekking through literal mud to reach the other side. And it’s scary.

You’re constantly fearing that the water could crash down on you and kill you. The court could crush you while you’re waist-deep in mud. We don’t know how long it took the Israelites to cross the Red Sea through the mud, but it might have taken days.

Overcoming Fear and Finding FreedomThankfully, the Lord kept the Egyptians at bay with a pillar of fire, preventing them from advancing. Before women make that crossing, they’re at a point where they’re thinking, “I don’t want to go through that mud.” Imagine being an Israelite, staring at all the mud and the looming threat of the water crashing down on you at any moment.

My guess is, although it’s not specified in the scriptures, some people might have proceeded simply because Pharaoh’s forces were behind them, leaving them no choice. However, I’m guessing there were also those who really didn’t want to do it.

Coach Janet (00:24:40): And they didn’t know what was on the other side

Anne (00:24:43): Even if they were going to survive getting through it. I mean, we know so many women in our community who don’t know if they’re going to even survive divorce

Coach Janet (00:24:52): And they don’t know what’s on the other side. They’ve never tasted freedom and can’t imagine what that land looks like. They might freeze at the Red Sea, see the parted waters, and still struggle to take those steps through the mud.

Anne (00:25:09): Well, a lot of people say, “I wish someone would save me.” They pray all the time, kneeling at their beds, saying, “God, save me. Please, save me.” And God’s like, “I want to save you. Pick up your stuff, get out of the house, start walking across the mud.” They think, “I don’t want to get my feet dirty.” I mean, it’s more intense than that, but basically, they don’t want to step in. They might say, “No, I don’t want to do that.

Navigating the ChallengeI don’t want to move. I don’t want to give up my lifestyle.” For those of us who were young moms, we generally have 18 Christmases with our kids before they turn 18. Those of us who are divorced end up with just nine. Thoughts like that are so heartbreaking. We didn’t sign up to be a mom and only have nine Christmases with our kids before they move out.

Coach Janet (00:26:02): This analogy compares the Israelites approaching the Red Sea, uncertain of what will happen next. Their lives had to worsen to the point where it propelled them to conquer their fear. As they watched the waters part, they faced the daunting task of trudging through with all their possessions, worried the water might collapse on them.

They had no idea what awaited on the other side or if their enemies might also cross. This scenario closely mirrors our clients’ experiences. Often, it’s the gift of hitting rock bottom that leaves no choice but to pick up their bags, pack, and leave, despite not knowing what lies ahead or how difficult passing through those waters will be.

Anne (00:27:10): Yeah, it’s really hard. We talked about my belief that they passed here so they couldn’t go back. Now, in our lives, unfortunately, water doesn’t fall on them and kill them. We go through divorce, and they’re still chasing us. That’s so frustrating because no domestic violence shelter prepares you for that.

All domestic violence shelters want to do is help you do two things: get a protective order and get divorced, if they have services available for you. A protective order does squat if you need to co-parent, making things very difficult. So, let’s talk about the other side.

Post-Divorce Struggles and Seeking SafetyThen they get to the other side and start this 40-year wilderness journey, wandering around. In this first part, they’re getting manna from heaven. They don’t know where their resources will come from. Some of them are like, “Why don’t we just go back?”

(00:28:09): Egypt had so many resources, and it’s maddening that we’re worse off now than before. We have no food. We’re not being oppressed in the traditional sense, but our situation still oppresses us. Unlike the Israelites, Pharaoh actually makes it across the river and continues to pursue us.

We wander around. This period feels like it’s post-divorce. You don’t really want to go back, but you miss the resources, the food, the shelter, and the comfortable house. Now, we’re living in a tent in the middle of nowhere. We wandered around in the wilderness for a while. When I went to Jerusalem and looked out the bus window, there were actual dirt devils everywhere.

(00:29:07): I was like, “What?” Some were bigger than others, but following that pillar by day to figure out where to go, I thought, “Oh, I can totally see this happening.” Fascinating to me.

And it was hot. I was there at the end of April, beginning of May, and it hit a hundred degrees. It was so hot that the shade shielding them from the sun felt like tiny miracles. In my faith, we call them tender mercies as they received manna. Women feared they wouldn’t be able to eat or live.

The Emotional Journey of Post-Abuse RecoveryLet’s talk about that. It amazes me that they’re okay. Going through really hard times, I remember only wanting maybe a pair of shoes when I was in that stage. Speaking of that stage, it’s surprising how most women manage to have enough to eat and a roof over their heads, despite it being very tough.

Coach Janet (00:30:19): All the clients I can think of feel euphoric at this phase because they’ve survived the divorce. The waters didn’t crash down on them. At the beginning, their exes are almost like hurt puppies whimpering, “I can’t believe you left, come back.”

And the real post-divorce abuse hasn’t really started in full swing. For the first time in however many decades, they can breathe. They’ve built a safe home for themselves and their kids; they have food, shelter, and water. It’s like living for the first time because they can’t even remember life before their husband.

There was so much abuse that this little window feels like a reprieve before the storms start coming. Have you heard any clients say things like that?

Anne (00:31:33): I’ve heard women say, I can breathe again or at this stage, something like I went outside and I could see color. Have you heard that?

Coach Janet (00:31:45): That they can taste food or they sit there for hours like, wait, what am I supposed to eat? I have the option of choosing what I’m going to eat. It’s like learning to live.

Seeking Answers at Mount Nebo: How to Gain Deliverance from AbuseAnne (00:32:00): And I think they’re amazed because they receive manna from heaven. They have what they need, even if it’s not what they want, and their lifestyles may have drastically changed.

They’re not starving. Generally, they might not eat the same foods as before or might eat something they don’t love, but living on rice and beans keeps them from starving.

It feels really good at first. Then, after a while, they think, “Wait a minute. Is this it? Will I live on rice and beans for the rest of my life? Will I deal with this man forever?”

During this 40-year wilderness phase, women also try to figure out their careers and how they’re going to work, leading to the final stage of deliverance from abuse, wondering how he will finally leave them alone.

(00:33:02): I wandered around for a while and visited Mount Nebo, where the Israelites first laid eyes on the promised land, a sight they had never seen before. Mount Nebo sits right here, overlooking the promised land across the Dead Sea. That reminds me of the Great Salt Lake near my home in Utah, my own topography.

Being in Jerusalem felt very weird, but I quickly felt at home, incredibly so. The terrain resembles Utah’s, with Utah Lake and what we call the Jordan River flowing into the Great Salt Lake, which doesn’t drain. Hence, the Great Salt Lake is much like the Dead Sea, extremely salty, where you can easily float. It’s just the same. Then I headed to Petra, reminiscent of Zion National Park, a favorite spot for many of us.

Seeking a Promised Future(00:33:54): It was weird. I felt like, “Oh my word, I’m an Israelite. I feel at home here.” The place was very desert-like and kind of cool. Okay, I’m up on Mount Nebo. I’ll share a maybe not-so-funny story. While there, “I’m going to talk to Moses.

I grabbed my scriptures, and on the tour I was on, I was like, “Leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to any of you. I’m going off by myself.” And they were like, “She’s weird. This lady is cray cray town.” I’m like, “I’ll be back, and don’t anyone look for me.”

I tried to find a place where I could pray and talk to Moses. By the way, I’ve never talked to Moses before, this wasn’t something I regularly did, but I thought, “I’m trying to deliver women out of abuse.”

(00:34:41): Moses knows about this. I’m going to chat with him, fumbling around these ancient ruins where I probably shouldn’t be. I’m trying to find a place to kneel but just can’t find the right spot. I end up sitting on these 3000-year-old stones, likely part of a fence, where I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be sitting.

And there I am, praying, hoping Moses will come and talk to me while I read the scripture. I thought he’d say something, but when I open the scriptures, they’re not even remotely related. I’m like, what’s he trying to say? No, it’s not working. No, I didn’t talk to Moses, just so you know. It didn’t turn out that way.

Navigating the Promised Land(00:35:31): As I looked off at the promised Land at that time in my life, I thought I now knew what I wanted my life to be. I believed I had this miraculous decree, what I thought would be best for my kids and me, giving me the final say.

He couldn’t have any say in what the kids did or didn’t have to go with him where I didn’t have to deal with him at all. I stood on man’s evil, looking out there, thinking I couldn’t get there.

Now, the reason why the Israelites couldn’t get there was that it was full of other people, and they needed to kill all those people in the Bible to get rid of them so they could enter the promised land, which seems ethically wrong since they hadn’t been there for 400 years.

(00:36:22): You know what I mean? Parts of the Bible just don’t make sense to me. Anyway, in our case, we can’t kill him. That’s exactly what they were planning: to kill them and then live the life they wanted. Now, I’m not proposing murder.

Listeners, please don’t think that’s what I’m suggesting. I know we’ve all thought that if he just got hit by a bus, everything would be okay. My kids are safe now, alright, but why is he still blocking me from the promised land, to stick with this metaphor?

What do you think frustrates women the most in this situation when they can see the solution? They know what it should look like. They know how to set boundaries, but they can’t achieve it.

Strategies for Peace and ResilienceCoach Janet (00:37:09): I think about a client I’m considering cutting ties with; communication was her biggest challenge. Her court experience, where they portrayed her as gatekeeping and keeping the kids away from him, fueled a mix of fears. She feared him and what he had put her through.

She constantly worried about not explaining every detail to him, felt she had to hold his hand through the parenting process, and remind him about early out times, even during his parenting time. Essentially, he was living rent-free in her brain.

To sever that cord, she doesn’t have to communicate with him. In their case, they’re using Our Family Wizard. You message when you’re dropping the kids off, and that’s it. Convincing her that no other communication would lead to anything positive was a huge struggle.

Anne (00:38:30): I developed the message workshop’s tools from years of working with clients. First, you learn the general strategies and specific phrases that work, although applying them can be tough. Let’s turn back to this map. Here, discussing divorce, you understand there’s no going back.

Another issue is that many women, justifiably, fear the trauma from court experiences, worrying they’ll be targeted again, though not always. Chronic litigators exist. In fact, Carmen from the message workshop, who I helped, had been divorced for 10 years and her ex had dragged her to court for custody five times.

Finding Liberation(00:39:29): She hit rock bottom and reached out to me for help. Recently, she texted me, saying, “Anne, you’ll never believe it. I think I’m out. I’ve tried everything—communication, all sorts of things. Nothing worked for 10 years. Since I started doing this, he hasn’t messaged me.

I don’t know what’s going to happen with this case. It’s not moving forward; nothing’s happening.” And I’m thinking, “Really? She thinks she’s done. Give it a minute. We’ll see. I mean, I know these methods work, right? I’m never quite sure when it’s truly over. In my case, I knew it was over when he signed the paper, and I signed it.

I knew I’d been delivered.” And some women feel the same. They’re like, “He moved to Texas, and I knew I had deliverance from abuse.”

(00:40:19): Instances like that happen. At other times, they just stop writing, leaving you wondering, “Well, he hasn’t moved, what’s going on?” It might take a minute to figure out, but he really has.

He’s checked out; he’s done. I want women to think about this point: crossing this “red sea” means you’re not going back to court because court is expensive. If you don’t initiate it, which we never recommend any victim do after the divorce is over, it’s very unlikely he’ll take you back to court.

Some people do, but for the majority, it’s pretty rare. They want to threaten you with it, constantly. If you just say, “Okay, no problem, I have an attorney on retainer,” and let them know, that’s one of the strategies we cover in the message workshop.

Strategies for Living Free: How to get Deliverance From Abuse(00:41:10): They’re like, “I’m supposed to scare you. This isn’t scaring you.” Once you realize court is over and there’s no going back, starting to offload that fear, which we discuss in Living Free, really helps. When you reach this point, you can look at it and see it.

Sure, some people might fear returning to court, and it could happen, right? There are no guarantees, although it’s unlikely. Seeing that and cutting off communication kind of sends the message to clear out the promised land because it turns into scorched earth. I now understand that I’ll never have a normal relationship with him. And it’s not because I can’t have a normal relationship; it’s because he’s incapable of having one.

(00:42:06): And once you finally understand that’s not an option, I’ll stop thinking this conversation will be the one where he gets it. In this case, we’ll say our relationship is dead. You can’t have a relationship with someone incapable of doing it.

Once you reach that point, once you kill the relationship in your own mind and body and think, I can’t communicate with him like I would with a normal person, you’ll know your deliverance from abuse is close.

Coach Janet (00:42:46): I thought about stopping the communication and trying to explain. I have a client who wasn’t afraid, but she couldn’t let go of wanting justice. She wanted to show him directly how he’s affecting the kids and make him take responsibility.

Then she realized he was even using that against her. It was almost like he purposely abused the kids to get to her. There’s no justice. She decided to let it go.

The Temptation to Argue and Communicate with AbusersAnne (00:43:35): What you’re looking for is deliverance from abuse. It’s impossible to move on when you’re being abused, but in order to be deliverance from the abuse, justice is a trap.

(00:43:51): Truth and communication are traps. They’ll use justice as a weapon against you. They’ll keep acting just to prevent you from getting justice, forcing you to keep coming back. Letting go frees us. In my case, I did care about justice, but living the life I wanted mattered more.

My ex, being an attorney, blocked that life for me. I expected a certain lifestyle, thinking I could take yearly trips or buy new shoes, but that didn’t happen.

(00:44:52): Part of it was letting go, which then enabled my delivery. I don’t want women to think we’re asking them to just move on, but rather, would you like deliverance from abuse? I invite you, as Christ would, as your savior.

He’d say, as your savior and deliverer, do you want to be delivered? And we’d say yes. Then he’d ask, do you trust me more than Satan? Hopefully, we’d say yes. Christ doesn’t even let evil spirits speak in the scriptures. It says he doesn’t allow them to speak.

Finding Deliverance From Abuse He doesn’t want to engage with these guys either. He’s not thinking, oh, maybe if I talk to him, I can help him. No. In fact, I believe it’s either the second or third temptation of Christ, where they’re on the building and he’s like, Satan, throw yourself off the building.

(00:46:00): I truly believe the temptation was more about communication than throwing yourself off a building. After all, no one finds the idea of throwing themselves off a building tempting. You know what is tempting? Arguing with someone about how absurd it is for them to suggest you throw yourself off a building.

If it were me facing Satan, I’d be like, “Satan, what’s wrong with you? Why would you even suggest I throw myself off a building? And Christ could do that and win the argument because it’s probably the stupidest temptation in the universe.

It’s not tempting at all. He doesn’t get trapped by the real temptation, which is the temptation to argue. Instead, he says, “Get lost.” There’s no reasoning with Satan, and throughout the scriptures, it’s all about separating yourself from the wicked. I feel like Christ is inviting us to be delivered.

That’s what I’ve included in “Living Free” and the message workshop. To achieve it, he’s given us some guidelines, and if we follow his teachings, he will deliver us.

It will take a lot of effort. I mean, even if he saves us, we still have to walk through the mud and cross the desert. There’s no deliverance from abuse story where God just picks them up with a helicopter or something.

Anne (00:47:31): Even though he saves them, he drops them off. There are miracles, like manna being a miracle and parting the Red Sea.

From Mount Nebo to Seeking JusticeLet’s look at one of your clients who’s at this point. They’re on Mount Nebo, looking down, seeing it but not doing it.

They keep thinking, “I didn’t do it,” because they’re either giving themselves reasons or maybe they’re giving you a reason why they didn’t. I once asked someone, which I think came off as offensive because I didn’t mean to blame the victim, “I don’t care why you did it, when will you use these tools?”

She couldn’t give me an answer at that moment. I wasn’t trying to call her out; I genuinely wanted to help her. What can we say to victims struggling to apply it?

Coach Janet (00:48:29): Thinking of a client and three things sets off pure anger for the situation where she wants to communicate her anger and fear. If she doesn’t reach out, will he take her back to court, or could she could get in trouble.

And then there’s the justice piece, feeling so worn out from the unending abuse, like being tumbled by waves, coming up for air only for another wave to hit. The exhaustion from trying to communicate, whether through Our Family Wizard or some other way, overwhelms her.

She realizes it doesn’t matter the reason, because every form of communication and every “why” leads to a different trap. End of story. Close the box, put it down, and walk away.

Anne (00:49:57): Walking away is really hard because, first, you should feel angry. We all should. If we didn’t, what would we be, robots? That’d be weird. I mean, some people don’t feel angry, and that’s okay. If you don’t, you’re not weird. Shine on, my friends.

The Path to Healing Coach Janet (00:50:13): There’s plenty of anger.

Anne (00:50:14): Shine on if you’re not feeling angry. Mostly, it’d be weird not to feel angry. You should be angry, seek justice, and fear is natural. These people are dangerous; they’ve hurt you and your family. Don’t let those feelings prevent your recovery.

It’s a trap that can hinder your healing. Yet, you can be angry, seek justice, and feel afraid, and it’s thrilling. Use the tools from the Living Free and message workshops to heal. Share your feelings with a safe coach, like a BTR coach, or with other women in BTR group sessions.

(00:51:13): You can share them with your mom, your sister, or any other safe people in your life. You can also share them with God. The Living Free and message workshops focus on deliverance from abuse, but they don’t tell you to let go, move on, or stop giving away your power, or all that stupid stuff everyone suggests. I say, hold onto your anger.

It’ll serve you well. Yes, you should seek justice, and I promise, you’ll get it, and it’ll be thrilling and loved by everyone. I’ll be like, “Yes, justice. I love justice.” The cool part is, if you do the exercises, have you heard about the power stance?

It’s supposed to make you feel better. Similarly, using the tools makes a difference. At first, I was so mad and didn’t want to do it.

(00:52:02): There were so many of those tools that I thought, “What? I’m supposed to write this? This is ridiculous. This is stupid. I don’t want to do this.” But I did it, I pushed send, and thought, “I don’t want to do this.” Yet, I kept doing it. Eventually, it started becoming kind of fun.

Strategies for True Deliverance from AbuseIt wasn’t because I was trying to become less angry. I became less afraid, not because I was trying to, but because I was starting to actually live free since I wasn’t being abused anymore. The only way to get justice, the only way not to be angry all the time, and the only way not to be afraid is if you’re not being abused.

It’s the only way out. You can’t continue to be abused and not be afraid. It just doesn’t work like that.

Coach Janet (00:53:17): And finding that peace where you’re not being abused, you’ve stopped putting yourself in harm’s way, took my client some time.

She saw the benefits, but when she started using strategic messaging, he just shifted tactics to attack her from a different angle. You have to play it from all angles. She struggled a bit before she could finally walk away.

Anne (00:54:08): And for good reason, they’re purposefully setting traps to catch you. It’s not your fault if you think, “Oh, I’ve stepped in the trap again.” You’re just walking like a normal person. Then, you begin to identify the traps. However, at no point is it your fault. You shouldn’t have to look out for traps. It’s entirely his fault.

(00:54:31): When you sign up for Living Free and join the Message workshop, don’t expect to be perfect. I once thought I nailed it until I actually developed the workshop and started working with other women. Looking back at my messages, I realized I missed the mark multiple times.

Lessons from the Living Free WorkshopNow, after helping other women for a long time, I’ve become really good at it. But it’s a skill you need to learn, and it’s not always fair. It’s like surviving a plane crash in the mountains.

It’s not your fault, but if you don’t figure out how to find water and make your way down to a city, you’re going to die, regardless of fault. Wanting to be saved, regardless of whether it’s your fault, isn’t your fault at all.

(00:55:27): You need to learn these skills to achieve deliverance form abuse. From a faith perspective, these skills work universally and aren’t spiritually based. In creating the living free and message workshop, I made them secular so everyone would feel comfortable, which is crucial since many women have experienced spiritual abuse.

I decided to remove any spiritual bias. Personally, I believe these principles, which I discovered in the scriptures through prayer and study, including casting out devils and deliverance from abuse, will have an extra special effect for women because of Jesus’s kindness, mercy, justice, and love.

I’ve been delivered using these principles and have seen other women find deliverance from abuse too, which truly makes me happy. They were always there; it’s just that men wrote the scriptures and interpreted them. Often, they tell women only to love, serve, and forgive.

No, we’re going to read the scriptures ourselves and take from them what we will.

Coach Janet (00:57:01): Absolutely. And we must stay kind to ourselves as we process with our clients, as they work through messages, trip, fall, and get stuck in traps. We should see these as learning experiences. Each time, I learn not to repeat the same mistake and just keep going.

Support from BTR CoachesAnne (00:57:25): And I think too, there’s nothing like a learning experience to realize, “Oh, he’s really wicked. He’s truly evil. This is really scary.” That’s the other cool thing about being kind to him in the message workshop.

(00:57:45): There’s nothing mean or literally nothing in there. It’s how Christ teaches us to deliver ourselves. Christ does it this way. You can find examples of Him doing this throughout the scripture, which is really cool. This is also why we have the best coaches at BTR.

They’re amazing. They validate women who’ve been victimized, they’re kind and gentle, and they help women meet them where they are. They navigate women safely through experiences that aren’t their fault. And I appreciate the listeners.

I’m not a coach. I’d probably just say, “Stop doing that. Stop. Do you want to get deliverance from abuse or not?”

Coach Janet (00:58:34): Get over here right now.

Anne (00:58:36): And they’re like, oh, wow, Ann, she’s intense. I am a little bit intense, but I really, really want you have deliverance from abuse. Is that so bad? That’s my fault that I want that.

Coach Janet (00:58:49): No, that’s your gift. You’re right where you need to be, right? Doing what you need to be doing.

Anne (00:58:56): Yes, I’m so grateful for the BTR coaches. They can really help women apply these concepts in a gentle way that benefits everyone. So, thank you, Coach Janet, for being here as I pontificated about the stages of deliverance from abuse. Yeah so many women go through this and desperately need support, which is why we have our daily, online Betrayal Trauma Recovery Support Group.

The Message Workshop StrategiesCoach Janet (00:59:14): Thank you for having me on and discussing this. I love the map and how you walked us through the deliverance from abuse process, and the Living Free workshop benefits any woman at any stage. If she’s overwhelmed in the fog of abuse but wants to escape, Living Free makes it so simple.

The lessons are very short, like your best friend holding your hand and guiding you through each step. You can rewatch it if you feel like you missed a concept. Just go back, watch it again, print out the workbook, and follow all the steps at your own pace. It really simplifies the process, and I wish I’d had it at the beginning of my divorce.

Anne (01:00:10): These strategies work if you’ve decided, “I don’t want to get divorced, but I also don’t want to be abused.” They’re a safety strategy for any woman at any stage. These strategies and tools work with both Living Free and the Message Workshop. The Message Workshop specifically targets separated women using Family Wizard. However, the principles still apply if you’re living in the same house.

If you grasp the fundamental strategies and tools, you can apply them in your communication. I aimed to make them simple because everything about abuse is overwhelming.

I believe it’s the only way out, whether you stay married or divorce, at any stage. Thank you. Coach Janet is incredible. She’s available for individual sessions, and she facilitates our daily group sessions. We’d love to see you in a session today. Coach Janet (01:01:39): Thank you so much, Anne. Have a good night.

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Dr. Debi Silber and Anne discuss the concept of forgiveness in relation to emotional abuse and intimate betrayal. Forgiveness is a word we try to avoid at BTR because it’s so often weaponized against victims, but can it help victims of intimate betrayal on their journey to healing?

This episode is Part Two of Anne’s interview with Dr. Debi Silber.Part One: Healing From Betrayal Trauma With Dr. Debi Silber
Part Two: Is Forgiveness Helpful For Victims of Betrayal? (this episode)

Forgiveness Is, Forgiveness Is NotForgiveness is an oft-weaponized concept, used to silence and blame victims. Here at BTR, we choose to see forgiveness as another tool that victims can use to establish emotional safety. As you work toward healing and peace, remember that you’re not alone.

The Power of ForgivenessI study the Bible, I’m Christian, and if you don’t or you’re agnostic, all the listeners out there just keep listening.

I’m not going to give a religious lecture or anything, but just for my own personal experience, it really struck me that in so many scriptures about forgiveness, it’s actually about debt. Talking about you’re forgiving someone of their debt, and it’s really true of abusers.

They really do owe you a lot, right? They owe you justice. And they owe you not just an apology, but a living amends because of the damage that they’ve done for years and years.

They could owe you financially, they could owe you in relation to other relationships with family members or children, and that’s part of what hurts is that they owe you this great debt and they are not paying it back.

The More You Try to Get Them to Pay it Back, the More Control They Have Over You(03:44): And the more you try to get them to pay it back, the more control they have over you. They actually love that, right? Because they’re like, cool. She is still attached to me. She still wants something from me, and so they can hold it over your head.

And I find it interesting that clergy generally sees forgiveness as a way to reconcile. Forgive, and then you can talk and you can have peace. And I’ve started seeing forgiveness as a way to actually move farther away from the person.

Because once you forgive them of that debt and say, okay, I know you do owe me all this. As a woman of faith just for myself, I think, well, I could try to get it from you and you are not healthy and not safe.

Or I can turn to God who will give me what I need and he loves me and he wants to give it to me, and he’s not going to hold anything over my head. Turning away from the person who is literally indebted to me and releasing that debt and saying, okay, you might not pay it.

Anne’s Understanding of Forgiveness(04:50): I’m going to turn to God and hope that he pays it. And from my Christian perspective, from my savior. Now, other people can think of it in different ways, but I just thought that was a really interesting idea that forgiveness can actually move you farther away from abuse and farther away because you’re not expecting anything from them anymore.

You can consider what they owe you. If it’s money, if it’s a relationship, whatever it is, you can consider it to be cursed, right? Even if they gave you that thing that they owe you alimony, I don’t know what it would be, right? A car payment.

If you consider that to be cursed as a way that they can use to get their hooks in you, then it’s a little bit easier to say, you know what? You don’t owe me anything. I am going to turn to healthy people myself, my faith, something else not for justice, but I’m going to forgive that debt and I’m going to look elsewhere for that thing that I need.

Is this Worth My Health? My Sanity?Dr. Debi Silber (05:49): And I look at this really from a, I’m in health for 30 plus years, and when you are banging your head against the wall trying to get someone to understand and to see. You’re proving and you’re explaining and you’re not getting anywhere.

This person at this point in their life and their current level of consciousness, they’re either incapable or unwilling to do anything different. Then you want to take a look and say, is this worth my health? Is this worth my sanity?

Is this worth me really compromising every other aspect of life because it’s tainting everything? When you look at the widespread effect of really how it’s affecting you physically, mentally, emotionally. How it’s affecting how you show up at work and at home and with your family in all these places, here’s where I really look at the motivation to forgive.

Again, having nothing to do with the other person, but we’re giving them so much power and if we’re giving them so much power, well what’s left for ourselves and our own growth. Looking at it like that and knowing what the body is physically doing when we’re expecting and hoping and waiting on anything external, that’s always a recipe for disaster.

Instead of knowing I can only control myself, any attachment I have is, and any expectation is potential for me being really let down, really disappointed and really sick, and that’s just not worth it.

https://youtu.be/3u9c-O20Ju4National Forgiveness DayAnne (07:38): We have strategies to do this in The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop, and Dr. Silber has strategies that help with reframing things like this in your mind so that you can feel peace regardless of where he is, which is the point.

For us, it’s specifically in the relationship usually while you’re still trying to make your way to safety. So you founded National Forgiveness Day. Can you talk about how that happened?

Dr. Debi Silber (08:13): There were so many people that were struggling in so many ways from things that happened throughout their lives, and it was actually a social experiment. I wanted to see is it possible to move to more forgiving and free with intention? That was the intention.

Then when we were kicking off this 21 day forgiveness journey, I thought what would really amp this up? I thought of the idea of this National Forgiveness day a day to really do this.

Just today I got an email from somebody, she’s in her late eighties, and for 70 plus years, she’s had digestive issues because of a family betrayal. And through forgiveness, through this 21 day experience, the gut issues are gone.

You don’t want to think you have to be in your late eighties to do this work. I mean, I’m so impressed with her that she did, but that’s what can happen.

Intentional & Deliberate Forgiveness(09:17): So we had example after example of people who forgave themselves for being too hard on themselves. Or always making choices that weren’t in their best interest or choosing that person or sticking around too long or forgiving the hurt that they caused someone else.

Everybody has their own thing and it didn’t have to be the most triggering of their experiences. I actually encouraged them to start with something a little smaller like the coworker who snubbed you, something like that.

The idea of intentionally and deliberately working on this for our sake, it made such a difference and it was just so great to see.

The Treatment Really is SafetyAnne (10:02): That’s awesome. I have such a hard time sometimes I don’t even want to say the word forgiveness on the podcast because there was so long where even if someone mentioned it, it was just like a knife to my heart. And so if that is where you are at, it’s okay.

It’s okay. And there will never be a time, at least at BTR where we say you have to forgive because the treatment really is safety. We talk about this a lot in BTR.ORG Group Sessions.

I have found so many times that part of the reason why women are having a hard time with forgiveness is because they are not yet safe. They’re still currently incurring an injury. If somebody is hitting you on the head, that’s not really the time to even think about forgiveness, right?

You need to make sure that you’re not getting hit on the head first, at least listeners here to BTR. If that is hard to hear and difficult, it’s probably because you’re still being actively injured and you need to make your way to safety. That’s a really good indicator that safety has not been established in so many cases.

Safe & ValuedDr. Debi Silber (11:14): We are totally on the same page with that. I remember when I was doing my research. There was a study I read, and it’s said, if you feel safe and valued and you forgive, you feel better. If you do not feel safe and valued and you forgive, you feel worse.

Then in my research, I kicked it up a notch and I said, well, what would happen if we changed the word forgive to rebuild or reconcile? And it would sound like this, if you feel safe and valued and you reconcile, you feel better.

If you do not feel safe and valued and you reconcile, you feel worse. I think that’s really what we’re both speaking about. This has everything to do with our sense of safety and security and forgiveness. The way I’m suggesting it is having zero to do with that other person. That doesn’t mean you’re rebuilding, you’re reconciling.

No, it is only for your own freedom. Rebuilding though, however, has everything to do so much to do with that other person. If that person is unwilling and capable of doing anything different and you are just rebuilding or reconciling just to make things easier.

Even forgiving to make things easier, I would say check the reasons why you’re doing that. If you do feel safe and valued, that’s a whole different thing.

Dealing with False Narratives and Seeking PeaceAnne (12:44): For women who are dealing with post-divorce abuse from not just the abuser, but also other people who believe his story. They are struggling because when he’s telling this false narrative, the people listening to him and believing him, they don’t realize that she’s currently being abused.

This act of lying about her, false witness, basically is an act of abuse, and they just think he’s telling his side of the story.

(13:51): They don’t see that as an act of abuse. Maybe if it just was from him, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. I mean, it’s always going to be a big deal, but you can see the abuse coming from him, but then it’s coming from other people.

Family members or neighbors or other acquaintances. And I think this kind of goes back to that debt I was talking about.

You would think that he owes you a debt of telling people the truth about what happened, and he’s not repaying that debt. He’s actually incurring more debt in lying continually.

For women who are experiencing that now, do you have any thoughts for them about how to maybe reframe that so they can have a feeling of peace if that’s occurring in their lives?

Navigating Through MisinformationDr. Debi Silber (14:30): Yeah, I totally do because this is an experience that I experienced myself. So recently I just did on a podcast episode, and it was with one of our members who moved through all five stages from betrayal to breakthrough.

When she first came in, she could barely function. She tells the story I brought her on because of her transformation. She was with such an abuser.

That was exactly the scenario. So much so that all these women, he was telling all these women about her in the most negative way, and none of it was true. When I posted her podcast episode to share it, because I was so proud of the changes she made and everything, people were responding a few people from the community.

They said what a liar she is, and I can’t believe it, the hatred. It was purely because exactly what you said, they all believed him.

The Power of Resilience Amid Adversity(15:35): I was deleting comments, and then they were even coming after me. Why do you believe her? All this stuff. And I had a conversation with her. I said, wow, this must be so hard for you. You’ve done such tremendous work to heal from such craziness just with him, and now you have to deal with it from all of these other people.

But the healing she did was so, it really was so tremendous that she saw them differently. It’s not that it didn’t hurt, but it didn’t take her down the same way it did earlier. And that was a testament to all of her healing. But they were coming after me. They were coming after her. I mean, it was exactly what you’re talking about. I had never experienced that.

The Abuser’s ContradictionAnne (16:22): We actually experienced that all the time. Here at BTR, it’s a very familiar thing. I get so many messages from angry husbands who think that it’s BTR’s fault that their wife has finally set boundaries and started making their way to safety. I think it’s really interesting because they always say two simultaneous opposite things at the same time.

When they write, they say, number one, that it’s my fault that I have caused this and that I’m such a bad person. And number two, they want to convince me that she is the bad one, right? So she’s a liar, she’s abusive, she’s terrible. You don’t know that kind of stuff.

I think, wait a minute, abuser, if she really is like this, if she really is abusive and terrible and hurtful, and all the things that you’re claiming, you should be thanking me. Your letter should be thanks to BTR, this awful, terrible, lying, crazy woman, she finally stepped away.

Dynamics of Emotional Abuse(17:28): I’m so grateful. Thank you. They don’t say that it’s my fault that the marriage fell apart and all this stuff, and that she’s terrible, and I’m thinking, you are not making sense. You should be thanking me. And that’s part of the clue that it wasn’t her. And also that it’s not BTR, that it’s your abuse that caused this problem.

It’s your abuse that made her want to get to safety because she felt terrible due to your behavior and due to your character. Any woman who’s been through it has felt that where this person wants to control you with coercion, control, emotional and psychological abuse. So they act like they hate you, but they also don’t want you to leave. It’s very confusing.

If They’re Blaming, They’re not Taking any Responsibility for Their BehaviorDr. Debi Silber (18:18): That’s the type of betrayer, by the way, and who has zero intention of doing anything differently. You can tell because if they’re blaming, they’re not taking any responsibility for any of their behaviors. If nothing changes, nothing changes.

It’s just such a shame because there’s such an opportunity for that person to wake up and say, what the heck have I been doing? Why am I acting like this? Let me just let me do the work and become someone I’m proud of.

Anne (18:50): Debi, thank you so much for spending time talking with us today.

Dr. Debi Silber (18:53): Thank you so much.

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Dr. Debi Silber’s groundbreaking research at The PBT Institute offers more hope to betrayal victims than ever. She’s discussing the five stages of healing from betrayal trauma and more. Healing from betrayal trauma may feel like a distant hope right now. And that’s okay. But know that healing is possible.

This episode is Part One of Anne’s interview with Dr. Debi Silber.Part One: Healing From Betrayal Trauma with Dr. Debi Silber (this episode)
Part Two: Is Forgiveness Helpful For Victims of Betrayal?

The Five Stages of Post Betrayal Transformation:* Stage One: Initially, we rely heavily on our physical and mental strengths, often overlooking our emotional and spiritual sides. * Stage Two: This stage involves a profound disruption of our physical, mental, and worldview framework, highlighted by Discovery Day, the most daunting phase, signifying the collapse of our known reality. * Stage Three: Our survival instincts kick in as we tackle the practicalities of our recovery path. * Stage Four: We acknowledge the disappearance of our former normalcy. Although the betrayal cannot be reversed, we reclaim control over our existence and choose how to use our experiences. * Stage Five: The ultimate phase in overcoming betrayal trauma showcases our resilience and personal evolution. Our focus shifts to bodily recovery and prioritizing self-care as a crucial part of our healing process.

To learn more about Dr. Silber’s research and how it can help you, listen to her previous interviews with Anne:

From Betrayal to Breakthrough
Will I Ever Trust Again?
Transformation After Betrayal

https://youtube.com/shorts/rPAbFmxqoDsLearn About Post Betrayal TransformationAnne (00:00): Dr. Debi Silber is the founder of the PBT, which stands for Post Betrayal Transformation Institute. Debbie is a holistic psychologist, a health mindset and personal development expert, and is a two-time international bestselling author.

Her recent study was about how we experience betrayal and it made three groundbreaking discoveries that change how long it takes to heal. Welcome, Debi. I’m so happy you’re here.

Dr. Debi Silber (03:16): Thanks so much. Looking forward to our conversation again.

Dr. Debi Silber’s Research on Healing from Betrayal TraumaAnne (03:20): Last time you were here you talked about your PhD study and the groundbreaking discoveries you made in the five stages. Can you list them out then we’ll have the link to the full episode in our show notes?

Dr. Debi Silber (03:37): The first discovery was that betrayal is a different type of trauma that needs a different way to heal. If you’ve been through traumas, death of a loved one disease, even natural disaster and betrayal. You will notice there is a big difference.

The difference is the shattering of the self in betrayal, rejection, abandonment, belonging, confidence worthiness, trust. That’s not really affected in other traumas and in betrayal it is. So that type of healing needs its own name, which is now called post betrayal transformation.

The Second Discovery: Post Betrayal SyndromeThe second discovery was that there’s this collection of symptoms, physical, mental, and emotional, so common to betrayal.

It’s known as post betrayal syndrome, and you could be walking around with symptoms that you attribute to just daily stressors or aging or whatever. It could definitely be from a betrayal, even if it happened decades ago, time won’t heal it, a new relationship won’t heal. It healing heals it.

The third discovery revealed that, to fully heal from symptoms of post betrayal syndrome to a completely rebuilt state of post betrayal transformation, we must navigate through five proven, predictable stages.

And what’s even more exciting about that is we know what happens physically, mentally, and emotionally at every stage. We know what it takes to move from one stage to the next. Healing from betrayal trauma is entirely predictable when you move through the five stages.

A Hesitation to Start Healing from Betrayal TraumaAnne (05:10): I love talking about that. When we’re talking about that healing from betrayal trauma, I have found that some victims are hesitant. I want to use the word hesitant to begin a healing journey because maybe they feel like somehow they’ll lose something if they heal somehow.

Not moving forward to healing to them signals that it mattered, that it had meaning for them. Can you talk about the hesitancy to heal and maybe where that comes from for some victims?

Dr. Debi Silber (05:57): Yeah, that’s very real. So many of us have so much invested in staying exactly in the space and place. One of the biggest reasons being it’s so familiar, it’s what we know. We don’t have to really think about it.

We don’t have to do anything new or different when we start making changes. First of all, people around us typically don’t like it because they like to knowing where you stood and they don’t like not knowing. But we are venturing into the unknown.

We’re venturing into a new space. I’ve seen this so often with people that come into the PPT Institute where people will actually sabotage their healing.

They don’t want to outgrow, let’s say their support group or they don’t want to outgrow their betrayer so they will sabotage their healing so that nothing changes when they truly embrace the idea that they can’t undo what happened, but they control what they do with it.

There’s a Very Real Grieving ProcessThere’s a very real grieving process that happens. It’s so shocking to people because they’re like, I thought I was doing really well. Why am I so sad now? That sadness is something that’s so unexpected for so many people, but it’s really because you’re moving forward.

So the hesitancy, so much of it has to do with the unknown because it’s so unfamiliar. But there’s so much that happens when you’re willing to move into that space.

Anne (07:23): I also think from a victim blaming point of view, you’re hesitant to heal and that’s why you’re not rather than thinking of it in that way, I want victims to think about safety. How they just have this innate need and desire to be emotionally and psychologically safe and because of the abuse. What they’ve experienced doing something different or doing something new sometimes often can feel unsafe.

So instead of thinking, why am I hesitant? Why wouldn’t I want to heal? Which is sort of a question that might make you feel bad. To think, well, of course I would be concerned about my emotional and psychological safety.

I’ve just been abused for years and of course I want to be careful about what I do next, and I took risks in order to make my relationship work.

A Non-Self Blaming POV(08:23): I gave of myself, I was adventurous and I got really hurt, and now safety is my top priority. So I’m not going to jump in with both feet into healing per se. I’m just going to stick my toe in to make sure that this journey is safe.

As we consider this and aim to reframe it, how can we assist victims in understanding that healing from betrayal trauma is a journey, not a risky proposition with potential for further injury. There are no guarantees, but how can we reframe their perspective to help them recognize that their hesitancy stems from a desire to be safe?

Everything We do is to be SafeDr. Debi Silber (09:10): Think about it. Everything we do is to be safe. So often our intention, we’ve been through so much, we don’t want to take a risk of being hurt again.

This is one of the reasons why typically we will keep people at bay after we’ve been betrayed our hearts were so broken. We don’t want to take the risk of that level of vulnerability and being hurt again, so much of what we’re doing is to be safe.

What I would really invite everybody to consider is when something is a little bit different, your body is so much more perceptive than your mind, so what’s your body telling you about it?

Does it feel open and expansive and sort of freeing or tight and closed? For example, when we teach people how to rebuild trust, we go with most of the most basic feeling so and learn and remember what trust could feel like.

What Does Trust Feel Like to You? When Healing from Betrayal Trauma(10:15): For example, if you see two babies giggling or your dog wagging his or her tail, whatever that is for you, what does that feel like? Maybe that feeling for you represents trust. Then on the other hand, what does a lack of trust feel like?

What does abuse feel like? How does your body register that and sort of lock both of those feelings in? Yes, those feelings may be a bit extreme, but as you are moving through your day check in. Which feeling as you are doing something, the dipping your toe in that feeling, which feeling does it feel closer to?

Anne (10:55):So there’s an amusement park near my home. It’s literally like 10 minutes away, so we always get season passes. For a few years, I would just walk around there and watch people and they were having fun, they were smiling, and I felt like I was in a fishbowl sort of in that their reality was different than mine.

Manufacturing the Feeling of Being Alive(11:46): I remember that at one point I went on one of the roller coasters. My kids were young, so I usually didn’t do that. We just usually would walk around and I felt so alive, that feeling of being alive, I felt like I could breathe again, and it was such a different feeling. I started crying.

I just went on a roller coaster. It wasn’t that big of a deal, but I felt like, oh, I’m alive. I can breathe. And it felt so different and it was basically the same place, the same situation, sort of manufacturing that feeling of being alive. I think if we can somehow, when we’re not feeling it, can really help us get unstuck.

Unfamiliar, but not necessarily badDr. Debi Silber (12:26): It’s a great point, and it’s so true. Your body is letting you know what you’re experiencing, and I’m not saying something that’s terrifying do that, not at all.

There is a feeling of something unfamiliar but not necessarily bad. Maybe on the other end of that experience is just this whole new insight that you didn’t know you had. Or this new level of confidence, or you see a new side to yourself.

And so often when we’re afraid and too hesitant to do anything that feels different, we don’t get the benefit of that, and that’s where a tremendous amount of growth is.

That’s not saying that everybody has to do it at the same level. You choose a level that really feels comfortable and right for you. Even if it’s the most incremental changes, one degree at a time, you’re only moving in one of two directions further or closer to everything you want.

If you do no more than just check in as you do that thing. Say that thing, wear that outfit, eat that food, whatever it is. Which direction is it bringing you towards that feeling of being more open, expansive, free, happy or closer to that feeling of tight constricted and something doesn’t feel right.

Enroll in The BTR.ORG Living Free WorkshopAnne (13:53): We have several exercises like this in The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop that we have where it’s just little tiny incremental things that you can do just today. One of them is noticing one thing that you would be doing even if you were Oprah or even if you were Reese Witherspoon.

If you’re standing there and you’re watching this most beautiful sunset, it’s the same sunset for Oprah, and it’s the same sunset for Reese Witherspoon. It doesn’t get any better than that.

And so there are these moments where you can think, even if my life were perfect, I couldn’t get a better sunset, I would still be watching the same thing. There’s something in that that helps you feel a little bit of peace, a little bit of joy and a little bit of expansiveness in that moment that can help people move forward.

Experiencing Joy: Healing from Betrayal TraumaDr. Debi Silber (14:46): I love that point, and it’s really important to just experience that feeling of joy because so often if you’ve been abused and for years, decades, we forget what joy could feel like, but everybody has their own experience. It could be the simplest thing.

It could be that cup of hot coffee or tea, whatever it is, but tap into what that feels like. Then just kind of question, how could I expand this feeling or have this feeling more often?

Because the more you experience that feeling of joy in a way that feels safe and comfortable for you, the more you’re going to want to experience that again, and then it sort of grows.

And now instead of flooding yourself with stress hormones and chemicals which wreak havoc on us physically, besides mentally and emotionally, now you’re flooding yourself with endorphins that creates healing and repair.

https://youtu.be/EkieMWRbvsoBTR is like an Emergency Room for Healing from Betrayal TraumaAnne (15:45): I’ve been on Debi’s podcast, she’s been on mine. We have remarked that BTR is sort of like the emergency room. You come here because you’re not safe, you’re not stable, you’re currently experiencing abuse. You’ve got to figure out how to make your way to emotional and psychological safety and get to safety so that you can observe from a safe distance. Our BTR.ORG Group Sessions really help women in this phase.

And then as you’re observing kind of feel like, okay, I can make some decisions now. And Debbie’s an expert at post betrayal transformation in where you’re generally safe and stable. Then you’re healing from betrayal trauma.

Well, let’s just talk post-divorce for a minute, maybe five years, maybe even 10 years out, and they’re still hurting. Some victims in this scenario don’t know that they were abused.

They don’t understand that they’re an abuse victim. They’re continuing to be an abuse victim because their ex is still lying about them, still gaslighting, still saying things that are untrue. People are believing what they say.

Post-Separation Abuse & “Forgiveness”(16:52): It’s really hard to heal in that scenario because you don’t know that you were victimized and you’re feeling like maybe I could have done something better or different. And then there’s a whole new level of trauma when you realize that you were a victim of abuse and maybe still are, even if it’s an ex.

A lot of people when you’re out of the relationship and still struggling, say things that are really hurtful and are confusing and that are not helpful about forgiveness.

Like, Hey, why don’t you just forgive? Or, he’s such a nice guy now I don’t know what the problem is. You keep thinking about the things he did to you, but he’s changed when he really hasn’t changed.

You have these feelings that come up when maybe clergy says, well, the answer’s forgiveness. Or a friend says the answer’s forgiveness, and that just doesn’t feel right. The victims think that’s not it.

Can you talk about why forgiveness is such a triggering word. Why most people who are talking about it, right, maybe clergy, say forgiveness is your answer. They’re not talking about it in the right way and they don’t want the victim to apply it in a way that’s actually helpful to them.

They just mean let it go and reconcile. Perhaps not necessarily use it as a way to free yourself from pain. Let’s just talk about that for a bit.

Understanding the Stages of Healing from Betrayal TraumaDr. Debi Silber (18:18): There are a few ways I want to dive into this question. One is it really has so much less to do with the amount of time post-divorce, let’s just say, than what stage are you in as far as the five stages from betrayal to breakthrough?

The scenario you described that is clearly someone stuck in stage three, and that’s the most commonplace.

We get stuck and there’s so much anger, there’s so much frustration and sadness and pain and the days and months and years are going by, but there’s very little healing as far as the person who’s been betrayed. Things are compounded, but nothing is really healing.

And stage three is very action oriented, but action oriented around the problem. It’s when we move to stage four, that’s where transformation begins. By the way, that’s when we are realizing it has really nothing to do with them.

I Can’t Undo This Experience, But I Change How I Move Through It(19:21): I can’t undo this experience, but I change how I move through it. And instead of us giving that person the benefit of our thoughts and our energy and everything, we sort of harness that back and say, you know what? You don’t really deserve that.

I do, and I’m going to use it instead for my own healing and repair. Look at it like this. Best case scenario, we have a hundred percent of our energy.

If we are dedicating and devoting 30, 40, 50 plus percent to what are they doing? Who are they with? How are they experiencing, why are they lying? And everybody thinks they’re so great and all of this. We only have the remainder for our own healing and repair.

So logic has so little to do with healing from betrayal trauma. Here’s where logic really makes sense because when you realize how much energy we’re devoting towards the problem. That’s when it’s debilitating to us because if we were to take that, use it for ourselves, that would move us into stage four.

Stage Four: We’re More Interested & Invested in Our Own Healing from Betrayal Trauma(20:24):That’s just one thing that I want to say off the bat because in stage four, it doesn’t matter what that person is saying. It doesn’t matter who that person is with, we know the truth and we’re more interested and invested in our own healing and repair.

Let’s get to the forgiveness piece When it comes to forgiveness, if forgiveness is done for the wrong reasons, it backfires every time.

How you were saying the clergy with their suggestions, that really has nothing to do with how we feel about the whole forgiveness process. You’re right, you said it. It’s so true. Forgiveness has nothing to do with that other person.

Really what we’re doing is we’re releasing ourselves from the power all that pain has over us. So forgiving doesn’t mean we’re condoning the behavior, we’re setting ourselves up for it to happen again, we’re giving that person a free pass. We’re weak, we’re a sucker.

No, it means we’re releasing the power all that pain has and that connection we have to that person, to that problem, to that pain so that we can heal.

And that’s when forgiveness is very powerful. But if we’re just doing it because it’ll be easier, that’s what everybody else wants, and nothing has changed, that is a recipe for just more challenges and stress related illness, a hundred percent.

Anne (21:47): Debbie and I are going to pause the conversation here, but we will continue it next week, so stay tuned.

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If you’re trying to heal from your husband’s emotional abuse, here are three important factor to consider. These factors will have a significant impact on how quickly you’ll be able to recover.1. Has His Emotional Abuse Stopped?The first factor that affects how long it will take to heal from emotional abuse is making sure the emotional abuse has stopped. Emotional abuse includes a variety of behaviors that come out of his exploitative privilege. If he thinks his “needs” and “rights” are more important than yours, chances are he’s emotionally abusive.

Is he currently doing any of the following?

• Lying
• Blaming you for things that aren’t your fault
• Stonewalling
• Criticizing
• Gaslighting
• Using pornography / infidelity

If the emotional abuse is currently happening, whether you’re still married, separated, or divorced, if his emotional abuse hasn’t stopped or you haven’t put enough distance between you and his abuse, your healing from it can’t begin.

1. Have You Learned How to Separate Yourself From His Emotional Abuse?Healing from emotional abuse takes as long as it takes you to learn how to separate yourself from the abuse. If you have the right information, healing time can be reduced significantly.

The good news is, you’re strong and capable. The only thing holding you back has been having the correct framework for what’s been happening to you. It’s not your fault. No one teaches the general public about how to separate from emotional abuse.

The other good news, you’ve come to the right place. Betrayal Trauma Recovery specializes in teaching women how to recognize emotional abuse and exactly what to do if you’re experiencing it.

• The FREE BTR.ORG Emotional Abuse Quiz is a great place to start to both get educated about emotional abuse and see if it’s happening to you.

• The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop teaches victims of abuse exactly what’s going on and exactly what to do to make her way to emotional safety.

• Do You Have the Appropriate Support to Heal from His Emotional Abuse?Healing from his emotional abuse takes time, but the duration of the healing process can be significantly reduced when you have appropriate support.

Appropriate support comes from women who have experienced their husband’s emotional abuse and have developed emotional safety. It’s validating and empowering.

You’ll heal faster if the support doesn’t blame you for any of the abuse or suggest that you somehow caused it or enabled it.

Betrayal Trauma Support Group, a daily support for women who want to heal from emotional abuse is the safest place to both learn about and heal from emotional abuse.

On the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast, emotional abuse expert Anne Blythe shared her insights on how she developed specific strategies to heal from emotional abuse as quickly as possible.

In this episode, Anne covers these points about Emotional Abuse:* Anne shares how she discovered effective strategies for healing from emotional abuse quickly. * The strategies are completely different from couple therapy and addiction recovery. Those modalities usually suggest that victims had some part to play. BTR strategies assume that victims are strong, brave, and capable. * The strategies Anne teaches in The BTR.ORG Living Free and Message Workshops are effective in to heal from emotional abuse because they put emotional safety first. * These strategies are legally sound, nonviolent, and socially acceptable. They’ll make you look great in court (if you end up in court). * Abusers always escalate the emotional abuse when a victim begins to live free. These methods are the safest way to begin the journey to healing from emotional abuse. * Strategies applicable to those married, divorced, or separated. * IF you’ve benefited from The BTR.ORG Living Free Strategies, Anne would love to talk to you. Similarly, if you have questions about the workshops and want to talk to Anne personally, message her assistant at podcast@btr.org. She’ll be happy to talk to in a podcast episode so that everyone else can benefit from hearing your questions or thoughts. * Those struggling to apply the strategies in a way that works for them can schedule with a BTR Coach for help, specifically Coach Janet and Coach Brianna if you want help implementing The Message Workshop tools. * The BTR.ORG Workshop Strategies – especially the Meditation Workshop can bring you immediate peace and comfort.

Personal Notes:* Anne is committed to helping women heal from their husband’s emotional abuse. * She could really use your support right now through prayers, podcast follows, and social sharing. * Anne is so grateful from the support she receives and the feeling of belonging the BTR Community has brought into her life and the lives of so many of her sisters who have shared their insights.

https://youtu.be/0dV3vEKQ0lgAnne: Many of you have listened to the podcast for a long time and you took the Living Free Workshop. When we used to run it live, there were several issues with the live version. One of them was in four parts, and so people missed a part and they got behind.

How to Recover from Emotional Abuse: The Evolution of Living FreeI decided that we were going to do it online. Let me give you some background on Living Free. I developed the strategies in Living Free and the Message Workshop as I was attempting to deliver myself and my children from my abusive ex.

I had been divorced and he was still being emotionally and psychologically abusive, like post-divorce for eight years. My life was very difficult. Every single day.

I lost a big court case to him. He got more custody. I mean, things were just hard. He was counter parenting. He was canceling my kids’ medical appointments.

Emotional Abuse Post-Divorce(00:51): Many women still experience emotional abuse even after divorce. For example, my ex wasn’t paying half of what he was supposed to pay from the divorce decree. He justified it through constantly undermining me and our children.

So those of you who are married, when we were married, he was difficult the whole time, but I didn’t realize it. I thought back then that boundaries meant telling him very clearly how upset I was with his behavior. Also, maybe giving him an hour long lecture, which didn’t help me be any safer.

He never changed his behavior. We’d go to a lot of therapy. We’d do a lot of pornography, addiction recovery stuff, so that didn’t help. As I started BTR I started thinking, how do we really genuinely get to safety? What is the path?

Anytime any woman who is experiencing emotional and psychological abuse and sexual coercion, if her husband’s using pornography or if he’s having affairs. If you try to go the therapy route or the pornography addiction recovery route.

Why This Workshop Helps Heal Emotional Abuse(01:48): Over the years dealing with thousands of women that come to BTR and just my experience helping people, that doesn’t tend to get us to safety.

In fact, we end up being more and more unsafe. Especially because we’ve been vulnerable with someone who’s just weaponizing our emotions against us. As I’ve been the executive director at BTR for eight years, I’ve been podcasting forever.

I thought, we need clear action steps and they need to work. We ran Living Free for a couple of years live. I found that live, it was really hard for people to understand the concepts.

When I decided to change living free into a video workshop, it was really nice to be able to film the scenarios so that you could see it in the New Living Free Workshop.

There are examples of men who will have this same facial expressions that your husband is giving you. So you’re actually able to see the concepts and process them a little bit better.

Transition to Online Video Workshops(02:58): Those of you who have been waiting, thank you so much for waiting patiently. I wanted to get it right. The other thing I wanted to do was make sure that the concepts worked. So over the years as women have practiced these strategies, we’ve kept in touch with them.

I’ve made sure to talk to them in person. I’ve made sure to see, did it work? Did it help you get to safety ? All the reports back are that the concepts are amazing and that the strategies work. Same thing with the Message Workshop.

I worked with women over two years personally writing their messages, helping them so that we could see does this work? Yes, it does. I know it works. Any effort that we take to get to safety is awesome.

We could resist it in ways that are effective. We can resist it in ways that aren’t effective, but resistance in and of itself is great.

Testing and Proving How To Heal Emotional Abuse(03:55): As we try to think, how can I resist abuse more effectively? That’s where Living Free and Message Workshop come into play.

In the upcoming months, I’m going to have the women who I helped write their messages on the podcast so that you can listen to their stories and listen to the experiences that they had. It was an incredible time to be with them on their journey to safety.

The messages they received were traumatizing. I sort of got secondary trauma from being like, wow, how are we really going to get you to safety? So it was through their help that we developed this and so many women are so brave to experiment to try new things.

It’s not really that hard for the women who I helped to be willing to be sort of test cases for the Message workshop and the Living Free workshop because they’d already tried everything else.

Effective Resistance Against Emotional Abuse(04:52): They tried everything. The therapist had told them they had tried everything that Clergy had told them, and there wasn’t really anything else to try. This is that. It’s totally different than anything else, because it’s strategic.

I, along with my kids, achieved complete liberation from my ex outside of court, proving it works better than anything else. The other issue is that whenever any woman starts to make her way to safety, the abuser is not going to like it.

No matter what type of strategy you use to resist abuse, the abuse will escalate slightly. The only way it doesn’t escalate is if you’re not actually getting to safety. If he feels like, oh, this is the same thing, I’m still able to exploit her, then it’s not going to escalate that much because you’re not actually getting safe.

He’s still actually just exploiting you. So for a lot of women who think he’s not so bad, he’s really good, and then they keep having things happen over and over and then we start using the living free end message workshop strategies,

Abuser’s Reaction When You Start Healing From Emotional AbuseAnne (05:57): They do see a bit of escalation like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I actually can’t exploit her anymore. The women feel better because they’re actually getting to safety.

It is kind of a delicate dance at that point to continue to use those safety strategies through that phase until he finally is just like, oh, I’m never going to be able to exploit her again. These strategies are effective while you’re in a marriage.

They are effective after divorce. They are effective if you are separated, and the good news is they’re all in line with just general good person principles. So they’re kind, I want to put kind in quotes. They don’t involve violence.

They don’t involve behavior that society in general would frown upon. It’s all upstanding behavior. If you have in writing or if they recorded it or if they somehow documented it, you would look great in court.

Applying the Strategies Across Different Situations(06:57): So that’s also really cool. I so appreciate your patience. So many of you have been waiting for this. I just wanted to get it right and so that’s why it took so long. It matters to me that they are tested, that they are proven.

It mattered to me that they would actually work. I know the principles are correct and true principles. My job is to educate you in a way that makes sense. And then there’s the second part, which is application.

The application is where it always gets tricky because it might be different for everyone in their own situation. Application with any principle is an experiment. As you enroll in the Living Free Workshop, as you enroll in the message workshops, just so you can have a base understanding of these safety strategies, keep in mind that the way you apply it is going to make a difference.

If you’re having trouble applying it in a way that’s working, then please schedule a session with one of our coaches.

Educating and Applying Workshop Principles(07:57): Coach Maddie and Coach Brianna are specifically trained to help people with their messages, and then any of the coaches can help with the strategies and living free in BTR.ORG Individual Sessions.

If you have enrolled in the Living Free workshop and you’d like to come on the podcast to share your experience, or if you enroll and you have questions and you want to talk to me about it.

I would love to talk to you about it on the podcast so that we can kind of keep an open discussion about how to apply it and learn as a group as you guys start applying this stuff.

So please email my assistant at podcast@btr.org if you’d like to talk about it on air with other people, and I can answer your questions. We can talk about your specific situation, enroll and then email her at podcast at Betrayal Trauma Recovery and then we can talk on air and that will help everybody.

Anne’s Journey from Emotional Abuse Crisis to Expertise(08:44): You can go to btr.org/workshops to get more information, and I cannot wait for you guys to enroll. You’ll love it. I also want to talk about social media. When I started BTR, I was crying in my basement. I just felt so much pain and I was so scared and so worried.

In the process of the last eight years, I’ve become an expert on emotional abuse through reading and studying, but also experimenting and applying the principles to my own life, delivering myself and my kids from the abuse.

It’s been so fun to help the other women with their messages. I decided, okay, I’m going to be the one that does the social media videos and I’m going to start posting. It’s hard. I don’t want to post about what I ate for breakfast.

The Mission to Reach Women Who Need Help Healing From Emotional Abuse(09:44): That just doesn’t interest me. I don’t want to share stuff I’m doing personally in my life, apparently besides the most personal parts, haha.

This is serious stuff, I want to reach women who need help. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do for the last eight years.

It is my personal mission to make sure that every single woman who cannot figure out what’s going on, who is praying, who is concerned, who is thinking, what therapist do I go to or what program can I get for my husband.

How can I heal my marriage, so that they get correct information about what’s actually going on. My heart is heavy. Thinking about all the incorrect information floating around about emotional and psychological abuse. Especially sexual coercion, especially when it comes to the pornography addiction recovery community and couple therapy community, and how they approach this in a way that they just do not recognize the abuse.

Challenges in Addressing Emotional Abuse(10:52): So I’m on social media doing these videos. If you’re on social media and you wouldn’t mind following and sharing the stuff, I would appreciate it. If not, that totally makes sense. Social media stresses me out.

It’s a little bit scary, but it has been an awesome opportunity to interact with women all over the world and hear their stories. It’s very humbling to know that there are just so many women who need help. I’m grateful that you found BTR.

I’m grateful when any woman shares the message of truth about abuse, about how abusive pornography, addiction or pornography use in a marriage is so that we collectively can reduce the amount of suffering to women throughout the world.

I would love to save marriages, and make families whole. I used to refer to some men’s programs for abusers. In seeing the aftermath of it, they weren’t solving that root cause of his abuse, and in so many cases, the men were weaponizing the stuff they learned in these programs.

Anne’s Reflection on How Men’s Programs Don’t Stop The Emotional Abuse(12:00): You’ll see that if a man wants to change, this is what he’ll do and you can see it in living free really, really clearly. He will of his own free will take action after eight years of witnessing women and talking to them about how did it go in this men’s program?

How did it go in this type of therapy? How did it go? Usually at first, they think it’s great. Usually at first they’re like, oh, it worked really, really well. And then I talked to him a year later and they’re like, oh, my word. I didn’t know he was still lying to me.

The therapist said that I could trust him and I couldn’t, or in some cases he did a polygraph and he passed the polygraph, but they still felt uncomfortable. Then later found out that he lied really well because he passed the polygraph, but he was still lying. Women’s emotional and psychological safety is my absolute top priority.

https://youtu.be/Zph1yh2jOjADisillusionment with Men’s Recovery Programs(12:56): I just don’t recommend men’s programs anymore. It’s just not something that I think a victim of abuse should ever even have to consider. Rather than think about how can I help my husband be a better person, really need to focus on their emotional and psychological and sexual safety.

Hopefully, as a result of her getting to safety, she can observe from a safe distance and he will realize as he wants to change. That is the best case scenario, and as described in Lundy Bancroft’s book and the verbally abusive relationship and basically all really solid abuse books.

That’s the only route, I wish there was another one. I tried to figure it out for a few years, I did., I thought, can a program do this? I tested it out. It didn’t, and I feel bad about that, but probably all of you were curious too, right?

Marriage vs. Pre-Marriage Counseling Discrepancies(13:52): All of us were. If I could go back in time, I was hoping so much for a program to save my family, and now I don’t think that ever would’ve existed. The hope is, I hope that he figures it out because when it comes to these behaviors like, don’t lie to your wife, is pretty low bar.

It drives me crazy when people are like, oh, well, you’ve just set the bar too high. All men use porn, and if you want to be in a marriage then you kind of have to deal with abuse. I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think all men are abusive.

It’s not too high of a bar to expect that your husband doesn’t lie to your face. I don’t think it’s too high of a bar that you expect your husband genuinely cares about you and that he’s not just manipulating you to exploit you.

Programs for Emotional Abusers Don’t Work(14:39): I mean, that’s the very lowest bar to think that these men haven’t heard it somewhere before, like church or therapy or their work, sexual harassment training. Really, do we think these men are that ignorant and if they are, you see the concern there?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how, at least in my faith, they would for sure be like, okay, if he doesn’t treat you well, if he lies to you, if he uses porn, do not date him anymore. Break up. But if you are in a marriage then they don’t give the same advice.

They’re like, well, he’s a good guy and he’s trying to get help, or he’s going to get better. I’m wondering why the difference in counsel between pre-marriage and after marriage, it’s mind boggling to me.

Before you’re married, if you said, does this guy know that lying is wrong? They’d be like, well, if he doesn’t know it’s wrong or if he knows it’s wrong and he does it anyway, you should not date him anymore.

Dealing with Abusive Behavior Without External Programs(15:41): But after marriage, oh, he didn’t learn that anywhere. No one’s ever told him that lying is bad, so he needs to go to a program that’s just not true. He for sure knows, and he’s choosing to do it in order to be able to exploit you.

These issues are complex. They are long-term. I feel like the strategies in the BTR Living Free Workshop and the Message Workshop really accurately describe what’s happening and will give you actual action steps that work that don’t put you in danger, and that also leave space for him to change.

They leave space to just observe, to see does he want this? Is this the kind of lifestyle that he wants? That was one of the things that was, I think the hardest for me was when I was observing from a distance, and I mean at first I thought somebody needs to tell him he doesn’t know.

A Woman’s Safety From Emotional Abuse as the Central Focus(16:42): After a while, I thought, of course he knows because he would act so awesome sometimes, so he knows what to do. He just doesn’t want to lose his exploitative privilege. It was heartbreaking to watch him continue to make those choices as I was waiting for him to make different choices, which he didn’t make.

I ended up divorced and then being abused for eight years after. I have heard stories of people who use these strategies and then he realizes, which is cool. Neither of those scenarios involves trying to get him in a program or trying to help him change.

Center on a woman who is getting to safety from emotional abuse, emotional, and psychological safety, so those workshops give those action steps. Very clear step.

I also did the meditation workshop because there were so many times where I was so stressed out. I was crying and I couldn’t stop or I couldn’t really feel anything. The meditation workshop helps women feel peace and loved immediately when they need comfort and they can’t get comfort any other way.

Relief through Meditation Workshop(17:56): That is also available through btr.org/meditation. Anyway, sorry. Just a lot of information today, but I’ve had so much going on. I’ve been so busy for the last three or four years developing these things, testing them, trying them out with women, and I’m really tired actually.

I’m really tired. If you’ve been listening for a while and you’re so inclined, I would appreciate your prayers. Especially as I embark on new things like social media and I’m almost done with my book. It’s been a hard road and I’m really tired, and as much as I want to rest this second.

I hear a woman in need or I get a message on social media or someone emails or I find out that someone that I know in real life is going through emotional abuse. Then my exhaustion sort of gets set aside and I think, how can I not help?

Appreciation for Support For Healing from Emotional Abuse (18:58): There’s no way. There’s no way I could see a woman in pain and in need who needs these strategies and not be there. Because I can’t help everybody personally, that’s why I developed the workshops, and that’s also why we have coaches here.

They’re so well trained, they’re incredible. I cannot be everywhere at once. I wish I could be though. I’m just of course exhausted. I think you’re probably exhausted too.

Emotional abuse has a way of doing that. As much as it’s very energizing to help emotional abuse victims is also just exhausting to be dealing with abuse all the time, so thank you so much for your prayers.

Thank you so much for your well wishes and your support. It has meant so much to me over the years. I am here, working hard. I will continue to work hard, so, so glad that living free and message workshops have finally launched.

Request for Prayers and Continuing the Mission(19:55): I’m so glad to finally have the energy, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t have learned these things and I wouldn’t have had the time or the ability to learn these strategies and then also experiment with them with women.

Had you not supported BTR by listening, so thank you. One of the main ways that you can help get the word out is just by following the podcast, just click follow on Spotify or Apple Podcast.

That helps a ton sharing social media if you feel like I do and you don’t want any other woman to suffer, those are really good ways to help out. I love your comments.

It’s not often that I fish for validation, I guess, but I could really use your prayers right now. I’ve been in really tough spots. It’s you, the listeners, the BTR community who have got me through it.

Gratitude for Listeners Who Are Likely Experiencing Emotional Abuse Themselves(20:53): You tell me or you tell the coaches. It was BTR that helped me get through this hard time. You helped me get through the hard time of being on the front lines every day, interacting with women all over the world who are going through this.

It’s such an honor to be on these front lines and to hear your stories, to sit with you in the pain. It is an honor to know you. It is an honor that you listen, and I’m so grateful that we work together to make this world a better place. Thank you so much.

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In a world that has normalized pornography and romanticizes unhealthy relationships, parents need help to learn how to teach healthy sexuality to their children. Luckily, there are resources to help parents teach healthy sexuality in a way that works for everyone.

This episode is Part Two of Anne’s interview with Dina Alexander.Part One: The “Sex Talk”: What YOU Need to Know
Part Two: Learn How to Teach Your Kids Healthy Sexuality (this episode)

3 Ways Parents Can Teach Healthy SexualityWhen it comes to teaching healthy sexuality, it’s important to make sure the resources you use really help your kids:

• Initiating open & honest conversations to teach healthy sexuality. Conversations relating to various aspects of sex, body image, pornography, the potential influence of media, and relationships.
• Teaching media literacy. As children and teens begin to understand the intents and impacts of the media, they may be better equipped to seek out and develop healthy relationships and a healthy understanding of sex.
• Emphasizing the importance of healthy relationships. In the BTR community, we understand how difficult it can be to teach healthy relationships when emotional & psychological abuse have been present in your home. However, Educate and Empower Kids has a wide variety of resources available to assist parents in teaching these concepts. Not only do they have incredible resources for children, but for parents as well.

Removing Sexualization to Teach Healthy SexualityAnne (00:00): Talking about “modesty” is one way to bring up healthy sexuality. Well, I think about a professional surfing competition. For example, a women’s professional surfing competition, their uniform is going to be a swimsuit.

(03:05): If you’re going to be like, well, I can’t interact with people or I’m not going to take this seriously. If you don’t teach your kids, this is not a sexual situation. This woman is a competitive athlete. I think it’s so anti-porn to be like women exercising in competitions, women on track teams, women doing gymnastics, whatever. This is not a sexual situation.

This is their uniform that they’re wearing to do a sport and that needs to be respected. It’s crazy to me that there are men who are so conditioned to view women as sexual objects that they think of surfing as a sexual situation or track or the hurdles. It’s not. The hurdles is not sexual.

She’s just jumping over hurdles. We need to take that analogy way too far. That’s another thing I want to talk to my kids about is if you use porn, you might start thinking that there’s sexual things going on all over the place. In your head, you might make it sexual because you’re watching someone in a surfing competition or a track or any other scenario.

The Impact of Media on Perception on Healthy SexualityDina Alexander (04:16): Our brains are conditioned that way for everybody who’s like, oh, porn is not addictive. If you don’t believe that, that’s one thing, but also to think that it does not change your brain and affect you.

I always refer back to the few months, I don’t know how long ago, maybe 15 years ago. I read romance novels for a few months and I could see that I was starting to objectify people.

It did not take long for me to start thinking of other people as sexually available before they had just been other people that I walked past or worked out next to in my little community center gym.

Again, these are great, great discussions to talk about how media, social media, television, videos, porn. How they are just so powerful to our brains and that we are getting different messages about sex all the time, but that we have to really stop and think, and so that’s why this is such a great discussion to have over and over again. Now is always the time to talk to teach healthy sexuality.

“I want my kids to form their own ideas and opinions about what is amazing about sex.”Dina Alexander, Educate and Empower Kids

(05:19): You’re watching sports, okay, maybe you pause it and talk about isn’t that an amazing athlete? Look at her do the high jump. Can you believe that she is able to jump that high? Are we talking about how powerful and important and special our bodies are.

But, also talking about what is it that might cause us whether we’re walking past Victoria’s Secret at the mall or something else that what is it that affects us? Because each of us, it’s individual and helping our kids see that within themselves and identify what impacts them and what is healthy and what is not so that they can form.

Because to me, what really angers me about pornography is that it forces on our kids this idea of what is sexy and what is not hot and what is not.

I want my kids to form their own ideas and opinions about what is amazing about sex, what is amazing about their body and their partner’s body, not what this industry of McDonald’s sex is saying is sexy and wonderful. So that’s why I think that’s just a great discussion.

Teach Healthy Sexuality: Discussing Media Manipulation and Its ImpactAnne (06:29): Yeah, it is. Nothing about it is unquote sexy. It’s just gross and violent and vile and evil and exploitative.

Dina Alexander (06:41): It’s abusive, like you said. I love that you said that. To put that in that context for our kids, to help them to see how manipulative it is, because that right there is a great discussion.

Maybe this is an easy sex talk for a parent who’s intimidated of looking at different media and seeing how it manipulates us. A movie I liked, but I cannot watch again, is Interstellar.

To me, it’s a fascinating movie, but to me it is so emotionally strong and in a sense manipulative, because I get so involved in this movie and the sadness and this and that. It’s a tool that is used that media is so powerful.

Whether it’s by music, whether it’s by what we’re seeing, whether it’s by an explosion or whether it’s by a naked body, and helping our kids see how this is meant to manipulate us, and at the end of the day, it’s about making money, right?

Navigating the Challenges of Pornography in Modern Relationships(07:35): It’s not about educating us, helping us feel good about ourselves, helping us to have great sex lives. It’s not, it’s about manipulating us to make money, and so boom, it’s so important for our kids to see that because this is their future. This is what they are going to be seeing around them.

So my youngest right now is 17, and I remember when I first started this a decade ago, talking to my daughter and saying, Hey, it’s very likely that the boys you go out with are going to have an issue with pornography. She had four boyfriends in high school.

Three of them happened to be a member of our church. I’m a Latter Day Saint, and they all had an issue with pornography.

Anne (08:15): Didn’t we have your daughter on the podcast talking about these? It’s also something that comes up in BTR.ORG Group Sessions a lot.

Dina Alexander (08:18): Oh, yes. That’s right. Thank you. Then, but also having to now tell my sons, when they started dating. Saying, the days have changed because that industry, that porn industry is now targeting our daughters so much that you are going to need to have those discussions when you’re dating.

When you’re thinking about marrying your partner, you’re going to have to have discussions about porn and how that has affected your and your partner’s ideas of sex.

Whether you’ve seen porn once or five times or 50 times, it is going to affect how you think about sex and how you think about your own body. You’re going to need to have those discussions that it’s our sons need to be aware of that as well. Now, it’s no longer just preparing our daughters.

30 Days of Sex Talks for Ages 12+Anne (09:03): Alright, Dina, so I’ve got 30 Days of Sex Talks for Ages 12 Plus, the Second Edition in my hands, and I’m just going to randomly flip this thing open and see what we’ve got and let’s just talk about this concept here as we close today. Does that sound like a plan? It’s my favorite book to help me teach healthy sexuality.

Dina Alexander (09:50): Sounds great.

Anne (09:51): Alright, here we go. So I’m closing my eyes and I am randomly doing this. Hopefully we won’t get your least favorite one. Alright. Oh my word. You’ll not believe this. Page 17, “Pornography,” literally, that was just completely random.

Completely random. So when I’m looking at this book, I can see a couple things. There are some definitions, for example, so it’s got the definition of pornography, how to start the conversation.

Exploring the Interactive Features of Dina’s E-Books to Teach Healthy SexualityDina Alexander (10:23): The Kindle version, these are all clickable links. If you buy the book on our website, you can choose to buy the Kindle version or another kind of ebook that is good for any kind of tablet or laptop. So then those are linkable.

If you buy the print version, then you would have to type in the name of the article. Most of these are articles going back to our website that have just a little more information or if you want to go a little deeper on certain topics. That’s why we have these additional resources. But like I said, if you buy it from the website as a PDF or as a Kindle, those are all clickable links.

Anne (11:04): Awesome. So one of the sections is questions for your child. What an great way to teach healthy sexuality. So you’ve got a start the conversation and then you’ve got some ideas and then questions for your child. Let’s just read run of ’em randomly. Okay.

I’m going to close my eyes and I’m just going to point to one of these questions. Here we go. Ready there. Okay. How do your friends feel about porn? That’s a really good question. When you got feedback from parents, how did they feel about this question section?

Thoughtful Questions to Teach Healthy Sexuality to KidsDina Alexander (11:32): They loved it because we don’t just pick typical questions of, oh, okay, what do you think pornography is?

Where have you seen it? It’s like, yeah, those are important foundational questions, but again, we want to create this big picture for helping our kids understand the world around them. Especially something like pornography or in the lesson proceeding.

It’s just about more different media and how it affects our sex life. These are simple questions. How do your friends feel about porn? It’s typically not as threatening because you’re not putting your child on the spot, you’re letting them just think about what are the attitudes around sex?

That’s been one of the most eye-opening questions for me to ask my kids what they’re hearing at school. For my daughter, for my two sons, it has been amazing and sometimes scary.

When I did a few years ago, I did a little thing on predators for my YouTube about how to identify predators, et cetera. I had my son at the time, my middle son who was 16, edit it, and he goes, Mom, everything you said in there was right.

Helping Children Identify Harmful Behaviors(12:41): And I said, what do you mean? In my mind, I’m like, well, of course it’s right. But he said, I had a kid in my class one time show me pictures of nudes of his girlfriend, and I asked him, what are you doing with those? How did you get those?

And he started telling my son how he got those, and he said, Mom, it was everything that you had said in that predator conversation. It was the grooming her, giving her compliments, making her feel special, blah, blah, blah.

And so that right there, great conversation with my son about predators, but helping them to see that these things are going on around them.

Unfortunately kids are learning predatory behavior at younger and younger ages, thanks to pornography again. Is just a simple question that for any of these topics.

When you go to the masturbation topic, abusive relationships topic, or the positive aspects of sex section in this book, asking them what they’re hearing in school. Asking what their friends are talking about is eyeopening. If we don’t teach healthy sexuality, they will learn it from somewhere else.

“We want our kids to understand that we’re a safe place.”(13:46): But my youngest now, again, who’s 17, him telling me about kids, talking about their recent sex-capades of their body count in the locker room. Talking about, oh, that they’re dating and now they have moved on the fifth or sixth date have moved to oral sex.

These things are just helpful to us as parents to get that understanding of what our kids are going through, what they are experiencing. It is up to us to teach healthy sexuality.

And also it typically helps us realize, okay, I need to talk about these because everyone else in a sense is talking to our kids about sex in some way. We want our kids to understand I’m a safe place. I’m not going to be angry or judgmental. If you’ve heard something, if you’ve experienced something, I’m here to love you, give you information and help you be a strong human being.

Helping Children Understand the Abusive Nature of PornographyAnne (14:37): Well, and for me, always teaching them that these things are abusive. So this is pornography, but it’s not just wrong. The reason why it’s wrong is because it’s abusive. It’s not wrong because your pastor said it’s wrong.

It’s not because it’s embarrassing, it’s wrong because it’s abusive to another human being. In order to engage in that type of behavior, predatory behavior, you are being abusive, you’re harming someone, and that is so, so important for people to learn.

I think back in the day, well, if I use porn, it’s going to hurt me. Maybe I’ll go to hell, but at least I’m not hurting anybody else. They didn’t realize 10, 15 years ago.

But anytime you do any of the behaviors surrounding porn, deceit, hiding any of those things, using using manipulation, you are abusing someone and that makes you an abuser and you need to stop in order to be healthy

You can learn how to teach healthy sexuality.Dina Alexander (15:35): And that we can do better that just because again, other people are doing it, our neighbor, our friends at school, our friends at lunchtime, that we don’t have to do that. And that again, that there are simple ways that even that our kids can stand up and say to their friends, that’s not cool.

That’s bigger than you have any idea of, and I love that you said that about just, again, teaching our kids that it’s abusive because that’s what I love about our books is we’ve made them very open so that you can put your knowledge, your experience, your research, your values into each conversation.

All of us have different things that we want to emphasize, that we understand that we’ve been through. To teach healthy sexuality we just get on this whole other level and we want our kids to get it. And so that’s where these can be such powerful discussions.

“We took them to that place of safety and openness.”(16:26): One of the best side effects of when we were preparing these books way back was how great the conversations were. We would set out to have a five minute conversation, maybe 10 minutes, and our kids would come back to us with such great questions. It was a great opportunity to teach healthy sexuality.

The discussion usually went 30, 40 minutes because they had such insightful questions, because we took them to that place of safety and openness.

And also we were asking these questions from the books that were, again, not just typical, okay, do you understand penis and vagina? It’s like, okay, great. They get that there’s so much more to sex these days that we want them to understand that full amazing picture.

Anne (17:08): Or the full just blah picture. I mean, it’s great. I simultaneously tell my kids sex, for some people feels really good and it’s awesome. And for me it was just not great. I didn’t like it. And maybe your dad is abusive. Most likely, yes, that is why, but I have never had sex with someone who wasn’t abusive.

Teach Healthy Sexuality: Inaccurate Media Portrayals of SexDina Alexander (17:30): But I love that they’re getting that picture. That they’re understanding all the pieces to it, that it’s not like television. It’s not this amazing screaming simultaneous orgasm every time, and everyone lives happily ever after that again, that there is –

Anne (17:45): It’s like never like that for the people who are like, oh, sex is beautiful. I’m always like, is it? I don’t know. It’s fine. It’s fine. I’m not anti-sex for sure, but I just didn’t enjoy it at all because of my situation.

To let our sons know and our daughters that sex can be, I hear from other people, I believe you, that it can be great. That’s awesome. Shine on, good for you.

But if there’s abuse involved, it’s not going to be fun. It’s not going to be enjoyable. It’s going to be miserable for somebody. And also the person who even is the predator in that situation, it might feel good for that moment, but they’re not getting what sex was meant to be about.

Understanding Abusive SexDina Alexander (18:33): There’s just no way for an abuser or a predator like that to not go to that dark place after maybe they got off, but then they go back to that dark cave. So again, it’s –

Anne (18:44): Well, it’s all about them.

Dina Alexander (18:45): Absolutely.

Anne (18:46): It’s all about them. It’s about that hit and it’s about their orgasm and it’s about their relationship to themselves, but it’s never about the we.

Dina Alexander (18:55): That’s a perfect analogy for porn because it’s never about the partner. It’s always about themselves, my own orgasm, my own pleasure, and what I’m going to do to you, not what we’re going to do together and create and share together as sex partners.

So that’s exactly right. And again, helping our kids see the ins and outs, but I think also helping them understand the power that they have within them to have good relationships. Also to help to create that life for themself by empowering them with this kind of knowledge, to understand that full picture, that yes, sex can be amazing, but sex can be horrific if not done kindly.

Sex Is Not One-Size-Fits-AllAnne (19:42): Or just boring. It can also just be boring. I remember telling my ex, is it okay if I read, can I just read during this? Because this is so boring.

Dina Alexander (19:56): Oh man. I would’ve loved to have seen that face when you said that.

Anne (19:59): Yeah. I was like, what’s going on? I just feel like you’re just like this hairy bear and you’re literally, you’re poking me with a stick on the inside and it’s just not that fun. I’m sorry. Would you want to get poked with a stick? No, no. Anyway, he was always so offended when I was just like, this is just whatever. Why is this happening?

Dina Alexander (20:20): I love you. I love you.

Anne (20:28): Alright, well, you’re amazing, Dina. Thank you so much for spending time with me today, and talking about how to teach kids healthy sexuality Dina,

Dina Alexander (20:41): Thank you so much for having me. I loved it.

View Details

Wondering how to have the sex talk with your kids? Here are a few ideas to help you be a safe place for your kids to turn for sex education.

Dina Alexander, founder and CEO of Educate and Empower Kids shares what YOU need to know as you prepare to have the sex talk with your kids. Topics include sex, pornography, and body image.

This episode is Part One of Anne’s interview with Dina Alexander.Part One: The “Sex Talk”: What YOU Need to Know (this episode)
Part Two: Learn How to Teach Your Kids Healthy Sexuality

The Sex Talk: What Every Parent Needs to Know“I want every parent to know: You can do this. You’ve got this. You don’t have to be an expert. And you don’t have to be in the field. You don’t have to have a training in sex education to cover things that they’re learning about on the playground, whether that’s anal sex or oral sex or masturbation or pornography or addiction, social media. All those things are just so interrelated with the Sex Talks and anybody can do it with just a little bit of study and a lot of caring for their child. You can do this.”

Dina Alexander, Educate and Empower Kids

What Resources Can Help You Have The Sex Talk With Your Kids? Dina offers incredible insights and empowering encouragement in this episode. Are you eager to have healthy, open discussions with your kids? Here’s how Educate and Empower Kids can help you with the sex talk:

• 30 Days of Sex Talks for Kids (referenced in this episode)
• Parent Resources, including questions & answers, tips, videos, and lessons
• The Educate and Empower Kids Video Library

Wherever you are on your journey to teaching your children about healthy sexuality, remember that it’s never too early or too late.

At BTR, we understand how sensitive and difficult this topic can be for mothers. Remember to offer yourself compassion and support as you navigate this aspect of parenting. Attend a BTR.ORG Group Session today.

Anne (00:01): Dina Alexander is the founder and CEO of Educate and Empower Kids. It’s an organization determined to strengthen families by teaching digital citizenship, media literacy, and healthy sexuality education, including education about the dangers of online pornography.

She’s the creator of Noah’s New Phone, a story about using technology for good, Petra’s Power to see a media literacy adventure, How to Talk to Your Kids About Pornography and the 30 Days of Sex Talks and 30 Days to a Stronger Child programs.

She received a master’s degree in recreational therapy from the University of Utah and her bachelor’s from Brigham Young University. She tries to be a great mom and loves spending time with her family and she lives in New Mexico. Welcome, Dina.

Other Resources to Help Educate Your Kids About Healthy SexAnne (02:15): So Dina and I have known each other a very long time. We’re personal friends. We know each other in real life and over the years she has sent me all the books that Educate Empower Kids has produced, and my children love them. My daughter is always pulling them out. I think she likes nonfiction better than fiction, so she’s always like, I want to read Wade’s Story.

Dina Alexander (02:38): She wants to figure out life, not just fantasy, right? I’m glad your kids like them.

Anne (02:48): Please go out and get Dina’s books. My kids like them so much that I’m kind of sick of them. Isn’t that good?

Dina Alexander (02:55): Yes. We all have that as moms, you get this book, you love it, and then after the 10th time you’re like, oh my gosh.

Anne (03:02): That’s how good they are. I’m like, do we really have to read this body image book again every night for four months? Can we just read Little Red Riding Hood or something? And she’s like, no, we need to learn about positive body image. And she’s seven years old.

30 Days of Sex Talks for KidsDina Alexander (03:16): She’ll never regret it though. As an adult, she will be able to say to her friends that still all hate their bodies, wait, didn’t your mom talk to you about this? And then be sad for her friends whose moms did not teach them to care for their bodies and love them as they should.

Anne (03:29): Yes. So they’re that good. They’re that good that even when I’m sick of them, my kids still want to read them. So that I think is the biggest endorsement that there is.

Dina Alexander (03:38): That’s hilarious. I love it. Love it. Thank you friend.

Anne (03:42): So Educate and Empower Kids just came out with a new edition of 30 Days of Sex Talks. It has the same topics, but it’s more in depth. Can you talk about the feedback that you received between the first and second edition and why you decided a second edition was important?

You Are The Best Source of Sex Education for Your KidsDina Alexander (03:55): The first edition came out 2015. We did a couple of updates over the years, just fixing some of the language, but we find that parents are just still very intimidated by these topics, and so we gave a little more information. Some of it is a little bit more of helping them understand that they are the best source of information.

None of us have to be experts, but that you as the parent love your kids more than anybody else. And so part of it is helping parents realize you can have these conversations, but also just giving a little more background and giving a little more information, even though they are a little bit fuller, let’s say each layout has more information.

That doesn’t mean you have to cover every single piece because I think that’s the great part of our books. You’re going to see some of it where you’re going to go, okay, I’ve covered a couple of those. Oh, but there’s five more pieces that I can add if I would like to just really prepare and empower my child with knowledge.

Helping Parents Overcome Fear of The Sex TalkAnne (04:54): So talk about the feedback that you get from parents. My situation’s a little different. I do this for a living, right? So we’re talking about it all the time at my house, so my kids are really familiar with it. Say they can talk about masturbation, they ask me questions. Things are very open around here. What’s a typical parent when it comes to how do they talk to their kids about sex?

Dina Alexander (05:13): I would say you’re not typical, but parents are getting there. When we first started this, so people are just terrified and I thought it was like a Christian problem because I’m a Christian and it’s not. My atheist friends, agnostic friends, Muslim friends, Jewish friends, everybody scared to talk about some aspect of sex.

Moms AND Dads Can Have The Sex Talk With KidsSo that was kind of the first eyeopener for us in creating these. We have come a long ways. We started writing these books about 10 years ago, came out in 2015, and even just in that short amount of time, parents in some ways, their eyes are more open to understanding, oh my gosh, my kids are being bombarded by so many messages.

So we have made progress, but I would say a lot of parents, they want to leave this topic to dad and just this topic for mom. Whereas I believe that mom or dad, you can talk about any of these topics appropriately as you build that relationship, as you continue that connection with your kids that it doesn’t matter how intimidating a topic is or just because other parents aren’t talking about it, that we can’t address these.

Parents: The First & Best Source For The Sex Talk(06:22): It’s really important that we be that first best source. And I think just again with your background, your research, my background, my research, yes, we have spent a lot more time talking and sharing that knowledge with our kids, but that’s why it’s 30 days and 30 topics.

These are big topics, but that we’ve broken it down into tiny pieces because I want every parent to know, you can do this. You’ve got this. You don’t have to be an expert. And you don’t have to be in the field.

You don’t have to have a training in sex education to cover things that they’re learning about on the playground, whether that’s anal sex or oral sex or masturbation or pornography or addiction, social media. All those things are just so interrelated with the sex talks and anybody can do it with just a little bit of study and a lot of caring for their child. You can do this.

If you don’t say anything, they won’t notice” Isn’t a Thing When it Comes to Sex EducationAnne (07:20): Can you talk about the reasons why talking about sex is intimidating to parents? I mean, I’m guessing one of them is maybe if you don’t say anything, maybe they won’t notice.

Right? The classic if you’re changing your clothes and you don’t want someone to see you, let’s say you’re at the beach, you’re changing of your wet swimsuit into regular clothes, and you can do this without anybody seeing you, but you’re not going to yell, don’t look over here, don’t look because the second you say, don’t look, what does everybody do? Everybody turns their head.

And so I think some parents have that same kind of idea that we don’t want to bring attention to this. We don’t want to be like, don’t look, and then everyone will look and then they might get the wrong information.

So there’s that, and then there’s just parents who are just felt uncomfortable in general talking about it, maybe because they don’t talk about it with their friends or their spouse or other people. So can you talk about the different barriers to feeling comfortable that parents might have?

The Generational Guilt & Shame of Talking to Your Kids About SexDina Alexander (09:32): Because all of us have something when you look at say, the 30 Topics we have, or when you think about, okay, what are the things I need to cover in a sex talk? All of us have something that we’re think, oh, yeah, I can talk about that. But we also all have something that we’re like, oh, I don’t want to talk about that.

Often I would say it’s because a lot of us have had either some kind of sexual abuse in our life, some kind of trauma, something deeply embarrassing and or our parents were very uncomfortable.

Maybe they told us nothing, or maybe they were a lot of parents that thought it was healthy to not just talk about sex, but to add a little dose of shame in there. And so that’s really common in that our parents’ generation thought that that was part of the healthy sex talks, just a little bit of guilt.

More Myths About “The Sex Talk”(10:18): Let me just throw in a little bit of why would I buy the Popsicle if you’re given the whole ice cream truck away for free kind of attitude. And some of us had that. We don’t want to put that on our kids, but we’re not sure how to avoid it because maybe that’s just in our brain.

So there’s those types of backgrounds that people feel uncomfortable, whether it’s about one thing, whether it’s about five things, but also a lot of parents are just afraid, like you said, that they’re going to create an inappropriate curiosity.

We have a lot of parents who think, oh, if I start talking about this, then they’re going to look it all up. Or heaven forbid, if my child knows how pleasurable and amazing sex is, they’re going to go out and start having sex tomorrow. And these are just kind of silly.

Curiosity is a Good Thing(11:03): Just because our daughters know they have a clitoris and know how lovely and wonderful that part of our body is, it doesn’t mean they’re immediately going to go out next week, find a boyfriend and get laid. And so we have to think about what do I want for my child? I know that I want my kids to have a great sex life when they’re adult.

They’re mentally, physically ready, and so I’m going to teach them the positives of sex. I’m going to teach them how amazing and wonderful. I’m also going to teach them that curiosity is a good thing. That’s how we have survived as humans for thousands of years. We have to be curious.

Now, I’m also going to teach my kids though that there is an appropriate way to use that curiosity and that there are the right places and that mom that I have the answers for them.

Giving Children Correct Information About Sex Will Help Them Make Healthy Decisions(11:53): I’m also going to let them know that there are a lot of very unhealthy messages that are incorrect, that are harmful online, and that a lot of times their friends, however, well-meaning and lovely, their friends often will have incorrect information.

So I’m not just going to say curiosity is good and leave it at that. I’m going to explain the world around them. I want to give them a good picture of what the world is so that they can make good decisions. So that’s knowing their bodies, understanding how their bodies work, understanding how the opposite gender works, et cetera, so that they can make those good healthy decisions.

Pornography is Not A Healthy Conversation About SexAnne (12:32): Around here we talk about how being educated about sex is important, but how pornography is not sex education. It will harm your sex life. It will harm your spouse. And it is abusive to the people in it and it’s abusive to you.

And if you are a child and you are exposed to pornography, you are a victim of sexual abuse, you have been sexually abused by the pornography and that it’s going to be confusing because there might be something interesting about it. Your body might respond to it.

That doesn’t mean that you’re bad, but it also doesn’t mean the thing is good at the same time talking about you don’t really want to be sexually aroused by violence against women. That’s just not going to be good for you in general. So if you are a little bit because the person is or something that you need to consider, this is really bad.

Practical Examples for Talking About Sex(13:30): I’m not bad. Not the victim who’s being exploited and the porn is bad, but just the situation where my natural instincts are being literally used against me to harm me is such a dangerous situation that I don’t want to touch this with a 10 foot pole.

I mean, my kids, they’re terrified of drugs, and I don’t mean terrified. Terrified in general walking around. What I mean is if someone offered them drugs, they are going to be like, are you kidding me? Never. I’m not doing drugs. That is such a bad idea. And they feel the same way about pornography. Even if they see a hint of it, they’re like, that is not good. I’m not doing that. It’s so dangerous. I don’t even want to touch it with a 10 foot pole.

Then there’s also issues of just interacting. My son’s 14 now and then I have a son who’s 11 and interacting with girls, going swimming with their friends and a situation where they are going to be interacting with women who have bodies.

Why does that woman have a stomach? (14:32): There’s an amusement park right by our house, and it has a water park there. And so we go there frequently because it’s literally 10 minutes away from my house. So we go there, and one time my oldest son said, Mom, I just feel uncomfortable here because these women are wearing bikinis and I feel a little uncomfortable.

And I said, well, did you know that they’re not wearing it for you? And he’s like, huh. I said, why does that woman have a stomach? He was like, he just kind of looked at me and I said, well, what would happen if she didn’t have a stomach?

(15:05): Her stomach is showing, but so is yours, right? So let’s talk about this. Why does she have a stomach? Is it for you to stare at? And then he was like, it’s so that she can eat.

And I’m like, and why does she have legs? Are her legs for you to stare at? Are they for you or are they for her? And so now my son is like, oh yeah, her legs are not for me. Her stomach’s not for me. She wasn’t created for me. She’s not doing this stuff for me. She’s just doing her own thing. And I can respect her and give her space and look her in the eyes and treat her like a person.

We Need Our Sons to View Women as PeopleThis is a human being in front of me. Just because she’s wearing a swimsuit at the waterpark does not invalidate her as a human being who I need to take seriously, who I need to listen to and respect. And I just think stuff like that is so much more important than like, oh, okay, well if you see a woman in a swimsuit, I bounce and don’t look at her in the face.

And I’m like, what? You’re teaching your kids not to treat other people with respect, which is the opposite of what we want to do. We need our sons to view women as people.

Talking about Sex is Natural & NormalDina Alexander (16:21): And it’s just very unrealistic anywhere to think that you’re going to have people stay covered up all the time. I love that you are teaching that with your son because yeah, I understand how you might be uncomfortable. We’re human. We’re going to look at people’s bodies – that’s natural and normal. They’re curious. They want to see, oh, do all boobs look alike?

Again, that’s natural for a lot of kids. So I want to validate. But I also love that you’re teaching because a person is dressed a certain way, whether they’re head to toe covered because of a religious reason, or maybe it is because they’re at a water park, that they are still human and that they’re still deserving of our attention and our concern and our kindness. And like you said, looking him in the eye and focusing on them as a human being.

Healthy Sex is About Mutuality and Love (17:12): And that is such a great way to combat the effects of pornography because all of our kids are going to see pornography as much as we protect them and train them and listen and learn. They are going to be exposed as adults, as kids, wherever. And we want them to still be able to see humans as people and not as something for me to devour, not as something for me to get off on. It’s just great education and it’s not something to be done once. And so I love that you had that conversation with your son.

Anne (17:47): We’re going to pause the conversation. Dina and I will continue our conversation next week, so stay tuned.

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In an informal survey of sex addicts, they relayed that fantasy about sex was mainly about control. They admitted that when they couldn’t control sex, it was frustrating. If you’re married to a man like this, here’s what you need to know.

Manipulative Men Enjoy Fantasy Because They Can Control Every DetailAny domestic violence expert will tell you that the heart of abuse is control. Abuser’s are more interested in a specific outcome than their wife’s well being. So as they’re likely to use manipulation and control to achieve the type of sex they fantasize about.

If your husband is fantasizing about sex in such a way that he finds mutual, loving sex to be frustrating, here are some key points to consider:

• Manipulative Scenario: In fantasies, individuals can dictate every detail of a sexual encounter, creating unrealistic expectations that can lead to frustration and dissatisfaction in real-life interactions.
• Lack of Mutual Experience: When one partner imposes their scripted fantasies on the other, it diminishes the mutual aspect of intimacy, turning it into a one-sided performance rather than a shared connection.
• Coercive Nature: Expecting a partner to conform to specific sexual scenarios without regard for their desires or needs can create a coercive dynamic in the relationship, eroding genuine care and mutuality.
• Deceptive Patterns: Concealing the influence of pornography or unrealistic expectations in sexual encounters can undermine trust and lead to hollow and unsatisfactory experiences for one partner.
• Addiction and Control: Sexual addiction can fuel a need for control, manifesting in manipulative behaviors that prioritize self-gratification over mutual respect and emotional safety.
• Recognizing Abuse: Understanding the link between addiction, control, and abusive behavior is crucial for individuals in relationships where manipulation and coercion are present.

If your husband is frustrated after sex, it’s likely fantasy is a factor. And if fantasy is a factor, it’s likely control is a factor.

The problem is that women who experience hollow, unsatisfying sex with their husband might not know it’s because it’s because he’s spending a lot of time in fantasy about sex.

Why Fantasy is Generally About ControlWhen someone is addicted to sex (ie pornography), there are other elements at play that harm healthy sex because . . .

• sex addiction is abusive.
• addicts often seek control for self-gratification, leading to a reality versus fantasy clash, causing anger towards a partner.
• control in addiction often comes from feeling out of control in life; both exerting control and feeling controlled are unhealthy.
• women are still often conditioned to prioritize an abusive partner’s satisfaction over their own emotional and sexual safety.

Abusers Gain Control Through ManipulationMany people want healthier, happier lives, and they make plans to change up when they wake up, when they go to bed, and how to prioritize their time. Many victims, for example, feel ashamed and sad, and want some control in their lives and they begin working out, going to therapy, or talking with friends about their feelings.

Many women enroll in The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop to learn how to live free from the effects of this type of betrayal.

If Your Husband is Using Manipulation to Play Out His Fantasies, It’s a Sign He’s AbusiveAnne (00:00): Kathy Kinghorn’s the co-owner and CEO of therapy, Utah. Kathy’s an expert in sex and pornography addiction. Welcome, Kathy.

Understanding Why Sex Addicts Use FantasyKathy (04:11): Active sex addicts have specific traits. If you ask them, what’s the best thing about your last relapse?

The lust hit of course, but that’s not accurate. It’s the control. Let me explain this a little bit more.

(05:17) We have two reward centers in our brain. We have one that’s called anticipatory. So right now, if I said, “Hey Anne, do you wanna go to lunch tomorrow?”

I have more saliva in my mouth right now just broaching the subject of getting one. When I’m anticipating, my body’s already going.

Once we get there and I take that first bite of my hamburger, the Consumer Reward Center kicks in. I’m consuming it in the moment, enjoying it. Two different reward centers. Once you get into an addiction, the hit from the lust and the hit from the acting out really diminish over time. The quality isn’t there, the intensity isn’t there. So the Cons, conservatory Reward Center can actually go completely offline in an addict’s brain.

An Psychological Abuser’s Desire for Control(06:22) They can say in all truthfulness, I hate looking at porn. I hate it. I mean, I do it to get off. But Kathy, I promise you I’m not getting anything out of it. All that’s telling me is that Cons, conservatory Reward Center has gone completely offline.

So the anticipatory one, that’s the one they wanna hang on to as long as they can’t. As I’m anticipating, going back to my analogy, if I’m gonna anticipate that burger, it might be the best burger I’ve ever had, and I can make that burger out to be anything I want as I’m anticipating it.

So I wanna lengthen this time as long as possible. Oftentimes you’ll get a spouse who sees an energy shift, and they may use a different word, but they see a shift in their spouse, they’re detached, they’re disconnected in maybe a different way or maybe the same way, but because it happens so frequently, what’s happening is that Anticipatory reward center is part of the addiction cycle.

Anticipatory Reward and Abusive Behavior(07:37) They’re starting to get really into that fantasy, trying to enjoy it, and trying to let it slowly percolate for them. They want to control that moment as much as possible.

The interesting thing to me on this too, Anne, is that when you’re dealing with somebody with an active addiction, there’s a lot of things they don’t know. There are a lot of things that are confusing to them. Empathy. There’s no way an active addict understands empathy. There’s no way they understand boundaries. Genuinely, I’m not letting them off the hook. I’m just saying hard concepts for them to understand. There are a few topics, and this is one of them where when I say it’s control, boom, they get it.

They know it. It’s a truth for them. If they weren’t conscious of it before, they are now, and they’re like, yeah, actually it’s the control. I like having that control. It’s not that they just like it. They’re using it as much as they can in the hopes that when they actually do consume it, it’ll be better than ever.

When Sex is a Fantasy, Reality is MiserableAnne (09:04): Here at BTR, rather than calling sex addicts, sex addicts, I just put them in the category of abusive. The reason I do that is because their actions are abusive. It’s interesting to me that in you saying this, control is what abuse is.

Coercive control, control of how someone views you, making sure that you’re controlling the narrative. So the gaslighting, the manipulation, also being able to control how sex works. They’re super abusive. It’s interesting to me that they know they’re controlling and they know they’re an addict, but they don’t know they’re abusive. Do you know what I’m saying?

Kathy (09:55): The control there’s for their own pleasure,

Anne (10:00): Right? Right. If the scenario doesn’t take place the way they plan, then it’s not as pleasurable to them. So whether they’re gonna do it with someone else, like act out with porn or act out with a prostitute, or if they’re gonna abuse their wife in order to do it, if it doesn’t go the way they want, it’s not as enjoyable to them. But because they can’t feel empathy, they’re also gonna be pretty angry.

Identifying Control in Emotionally Abusive RelationshipsKathy (10:30): It can’t go right. And I think it’s important for the spouse to know that because let’s say that a husband comes to one of your followers and he says, I’d kinda like for you to show up in lingerie at the front door and I don’t know, just spice it up. And the spouse goes, I’m okay with that. Why not? That aligns with my values. It’s between me and him.

So he opens the front door and there she is, and she’s in a red lingerie, and she says, Hey, baby, instantly you’re gonna see anger usually, and here’s why. It’s because they’re in fantasy. They fantasized about this forever. You can’t be in fantasy. In reality, at the same time, he might try to tap the anger in, but what happens is a real person can’t be a fantasy. If they have a problem with fantasy, it’ll show up in their anger.

Anne (11:33): Well also, if they have a problem with control, it’s gonna show up. Right? They’re not controlling because they’re angry. They’re angry because they’re controlling. They expect that things should go a certain way and that really that their wife’s not a person, but sort of an extension of their own fantasy, and she’s not doing what she’s supposed to do.

The Relationship Between Fantasy and AngerKathy (11:58): I’m sure you’ve heard people say you’re just in denial, but I think it’s better to finish the sentence. You could say, I think you’re denying reality

Anne (12:08): When you say, I think you’re in denial. Are you talking to the addict when you say that?

Kathy (12:12): Yeah. They’re denying reality, and there’s two ways to move in the world. You can be in reality or not.

Anne (12:23): It’s pretty clear. I love that. Yeah.

Kathy (12:26): Think about in fantasy, they’ve control, but here’s the problem with it, Anne. They don’t just have control. They’ve perfect control in fantasy. It’s perfectly scripted. They’re the director and the editor, and it’s perfect. Once you get into reality, now you’re the creators and it’s messy and complicated and unpredictable.

But what happens is for a lot of different reasons, they’ll have a fantasy, and obviously we don’t have time to unpack all the reasons, but the fantasy’ll be their favorite and they’ll go back to it again and again and again. And if you interrupt them halfway through it, let’s say they’re kinda driving down the road and they’re in their fantasy and they get a phone call.

They hang up the phone, they don’t go back to where they got interrupted. They have to go back to the start, and they want that perfect script, and then they’ve perfect control, right? Within the fantasy, whether they’re pleasing 10 women or the victim of 10 women, they’ve perfect control in how that plays out

Anne (13:42): In their own heads. And then real people get hurt in the process

Fantasy is a Struggle for ControlKathy (13:50): For sure.

Anne (13:51): Why’s control the most important thing rather than truth or

Kathy (13:57): Because by definition, if you’re an addict, you are out of control in some area of your life, potentially all of it, you’re out of control. You don’t know when you wake up, if you’re gonna stay with your stated values or if you’re gonna end up being three hours late back from lunch because you’re cruising around downtown Salt Lake, you really genuinely don’t know.

What happens is you’re out of control. So you wanna take unhealthy control because you know can’t control yourself. I know that doesn’t make sense. It’s like

Anne (14:36): The reason it doesn’t make sense is that if they need to take control because they don’t have control, then why don’t they take control in a different way? Why do they act out with control instead of being like, “Okay, I’m going to wake up every morning at five and work out”? There are other ways to be controlling. “I’m going to make sure that my house is clean. I’m going to help my kids get to school on time.”

Kathy (15:00): Problem is, I think there’s dark forces involved and they wanna control us in a super unhealthy way.

Anne (15:09): I agree.

Kathy (15:10): You’re not gonna have a healthy solution when you’re involved in unhealthy behavior. You could think, you know what? I need to do X, Y, Z, and that’ll help me move away from it. And oftentimes men do. Men do make the choice to control themselves. But think about it. When we’re in victim, it’s also because I’ve lost all control and everybody’s picking on me. Control shows up in a lot of interesting places. So I’m either a victim of not having any control of my life or I’m gonna control everybody in my life, but either end of the spectrum is unhealthy.

Fantasy Enables Unhealthy Control and ResentmentAnne (15:55): Let’s talk about that one end of the spectrum for a minute. I have no control. When they play the victim and they’re playing the victim in that case, but they are actually not the victim, and they are actually the opposite.

They’re trying to control things, but they’re claiming that they’re being controlled. “My wife is so controlling when she’s saying things like, ‘Hey, this isn’t fun for me. I don’t enjoy it. If you’re gonna act this way, I don’t wanna have sex,’ which is a totally reasonable thing to say.” And then he comes back with, “You’re so controlling. You wanna control sex.” So why do they claim to be controlled when their attempts at control are not working?

Kathy (16:39): It’s because they just have an unhealthy relationship with what healthy control looks like. And again, I’m not justifying their behavior, but I do see individuals who believe here is how it is to be a man in the world.

Anne (16:56): If your wife tells you, ‘Hey, it really, really hurts me when you look at porn,’ someone has told them, at the very least, your wife, does she not count as someone?

Kathy (17:06): Absolutely. If they continue either lying about it or looking at it, then it’s likely at some point they’re gonna lose that relationship.

Anne (17:16): I think the reason I bring that up is so many wives, they think maybe he doesn’t know that it’s bad. And one of the questions I ask is, well, have you told him it is? And they’re like, yeah, multiple times. And I’m like, and has he gone to therapy? Yeah, he’s been multiple times.

And has he ever been to church? Yeah, he has. Has he ever watched a TV show where someone got put in jail for lying or committing fraud? Yeah, he has. So the idea that they didn’t know that that is wrong, lying to your wife, it’s almost should a wife really have to tell her husband, ‘Don’t lie to me’? I mean, it seems like that’s pretty basic.

I just worry that women will spend more time educating their abuser rather than getting to safety when he’s already had so many opportunities to be educated about it. It only keeps her in the abuse cycle. It doesn’t really help her get to safety because that’s what keeps her stuck.

Maybe because people tell women that they can say something 17 times, but if they say it the 18th time, it’s gonna make a difference. I worry that women will focus more on how can I get him educated rather than how can I get to safety? So in that case, if a woman is focused on safety, how would knowing that this is all about control, help her to get to safety?

Misconceptions About Communicating with AbusersKathy (18:44): I think to understand that an active addict isn’t an active addict just when he is looking at pornography or whatever his sexual behavior is, that’s not the only time. It comes out in a variety of ways. It comes out with resentment, anger, control, instead of just thinking, well, he said he’s always had an anger problem.

It’s like connect the dots and go, okay, controlling and anger are part of an addiction. It’s not his personality. It’s not other things. It’s part of having an addiction. Resentment is part of having an addiction.

Identifying Safety for Victims of Men Who Use Fantasy to ControlAnne (19:30): So how does that help her get to safety?

Kathy (19:35): Everything needs to be unpacked and looked at? And oftentimes, more often than not, he’s going to need professional help in some way to understand what safety is for her and him. It’s highly likely that neither one of ’em knows clearly what safety feels like.

So for example, she might go, I feel safe when I know he’s happy. So that’s not her understanding safety, right? Any more than when he says, well, I feel safe when my wife goes to bed at nine and I can just be up at night. I’m not hurting anyone.

Anne (20:15): So how does it help her get to safety?

Kathy (20:18): To have her examine what is safety for her? Who taught her that that is safe? I have so many clients that say, well, my mom’s just said to just have sex with him. And basically mom’s saying, keep yourself safe. Keep having sex with him.

Anne (20:36): I’m like, Kathy, it’s 2024. And people are still saying this.

Kathy (20:43): Oh yeah, for sure.

Anne (20:44): Really?

Kathy (20:46): I literally just had a client over the Christmas break. Yes. That’s not uncommon. And if it’s not out and out said, it’s certainly implied, but it’s still said.

Challenging Outdated Advice and Recognizing How Fantasy Can Harm Victims of Emotional AbuseAnne (21:01): It’s like shocking to me that people are still in the mode where they don’t recognize it as abuse and sexual coercion and sometimes flat out rape. Right. That their mother-in-law is sexually coercing them. Is crazy.

Kathy (21:17): Yes. Oh my gosh. Yes.

Anne (21:18): Kathy, thank you for being patient with me. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and my goal is to get the word out to everyone that this is sexual coercion. It is emotional and psychological abuse. It hurts my heart when I get past my anger and my annoyance.

I think the thing that really is happening is that I’m actually devastated that there are still women that don’t know, devastated that women are still trying to get emotional safety and psychological safety and sexual safety, but they don’t know what that means. They think, oh, if I have sex with them more, I’ll be safe. But they don’t know what it means.

They don’t even really know what they’re looking at or experiencing. That’s what hurts my heart. And I think that’s kind of like today I’m like, why is this still happening? Why is this a thing?

Kathy (22:10): Well, I love your heart and your listeners love your heart.

Anne (22:13): You’re awesome. Kathy, thank you.

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J.R. is back on The BTR.ORG Podcast sharing her story. She struggled to know if she should divorce her emotionally abusive husband. Then she struggled to know if her her religious beliefs allowed her to divorce him for emotional abuse. She also struggled with whether or not she wanted to divorce him. If you relate to this, hopefully this information and her story will help you.

This episode is Part Two of Anne’s interview with J.R.Part One: My Husband Says I’m the Problem. Is He Right?
Part Two: Divorcing Your Emotionally Abusive Husband: What You Can Expect (this episode)

Should I Divorce My Emotionally Abusive Husband?Here at BTR, your emotional safety is our number one priority. If you’re wondering if you should divorce your emotionally abusive husband, that’s a question only you can answer, but here are some things to consider:

• Should any woman be married to a man who emotionally abuses her?
• Should any woman be married to a man who genuinely doesn’t care about her well being?
• Should any woman be sacrifice her emotional and psychological safety for other perceived values (ie money, child-care, religion, etc)

Can I Divorce My Emotionally Abusive Husband? Some women wonder if they can get divorced if it’s “just” emotional abuse. Unfortunately, some inaccurate religious scripting or societal scripting has given women the impression that they’re not able to divorce an emotionally abusive husband just “emotional abuse”. Here are some questions to consider.

• Does God love you? Would He want you to be abused in anyway: emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, financially, sexually?
• Can you go to college or get a job? (Psst: The answer is YES!!)
• Is it good for your children to witness a woman think that God doesn’t love her or that she’s incapable of taking care of herself or her children?

Do I Want to Divorce My Emotionally Abusive Husband?So many women in this situation have a hard time deciding what they want to do because they share children, they remember the good times, they think about the so-called good qualities about their husband (often not realizing it’s just part of his manipulation). Here are some questions to consider when women are wondering if the want to divorce their husband due to his emotional abuse.

• If you knew exactly what he was like when you met him, would you marry him now?
• Do you want to be married to someone who you would not want to marry?
• Do you want your children emulating his behaviors or character?

Anne breaks down why victims feel crazy during this stage of the process. If you want to talk to one of our coaches today about your situation, attend a BTR.ORG Group Session today.

Anne (00:01): We talked about the beginning of J.R.’s story in last week’s episode. J.R. why do you think it takes victims so long to understand that they’re being abused? All of these years that you went to therapy and you went to help with clergy and they further abused you. Why do you think it takes so long?

J.R. (02:02): That’s a great question.

Anne (02:04): I want to say it’s not the victim’s fault, that’s for sure.

Why is it So Hard to Identify the Emotional Abuse?J.R. (02:06): Yeah, it’s obviously, it’s not the victim’s fault. I think maybe for some people they might say nobody even tried to tell me or warn me, but I will say I did have family and friends who were concerned about my relationship, but I saw them.

I had such a high view of the marriage relationship because of the spiritual upbringing and because of sort of the twist that my ex put on it through the theological training in school that I just saw all these people as their opposition to my marriage.

It’s a spiritual attack on my relationship. But I will say that my relationship with the church and religion has become very complicated because I do attribute a lot of the way of thinking that kept me for so long in that relationship to spiritual or religious teachings that I think personally I believe are not biblical and don’t actually align with what I believe Jesus teaches.

But when you’re told that from so many sources that you are supposed to be able to trust and people who are supposed to be leading and being guided by the Holy Spirit, it’s really hard to undo some of that indoctrination.

Realizing Your Husband is Emotionally AbusiveAnne (04:05): Yeah, I agree. And also you care. It’s really sad how perpetrators know how to take the things that women really, really care about and weaponize it against them. It’s benefiting the abuser and it’s not benefiting her at all.

And to realize that God loves us, he genuinely thinks we’re delightful and funny and fun and awesome, and he created our talents, and some of us might not have cooking talents, and that’s okay because we have other talents, and when we were created for the good of humanity, including ourselves, we’re part of that.

And so it’s so sad to me when these have all just been subjected to what would benefit him to our expense. It’s so hard to see that. So you find BTR and you realize, whoa, he’s abusing me. You’re listening to the podcast. Can you talk about what steps you start to take at this point?

Attending Couple Therapy With An Emotional AbuserJ.R. (05:20): I think at this point we had already been seeing a therapist together, which I do not recommend. I mean, obviously I didn’t know that I was in an abusive marriage, an abusive relationship, but now hindsight never go to couples therapy with an abusive person.

But we were seeing a couples therapist who actually, I will say even before I found BTR, she feels like this guardian angel sent from heaven because

I think that God moved me all the way across the country to meet this therapist because she started seeing us and when we started talking to her, the pornography thing came up, but it wasn’t the crux of why we were there. But she immediately started talking about betrayal trauma and had him write a therapeutic disclosure.

A Therapist Who Identified the Emotional AbuseAnne (06:34): Was she a pornography addiction recovery specialist?

J.R. (06:38): I don’t think she was certified, but she herself had walked through this type of betrayal,

Anne (06:50): So she knew kind of enough to do a disclosure, which we don’t recommend here. But not enough to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we got to stop the couple therapy.

I Became Aware it was Emotional AbuseJ.R. (07:01): And I would say with the disclosure, I don’t think any of this was a great way to go about this. The route that my story went was incredibly painful and I think unnecessarily so because when she had him do the disclosure, I just knew in my heart that he wasn’t going to be honest and told her as much in one of our meetings.

I said, I don’t even want to hear this because I know that it’s going to be a bunch of lies. I think it started to wear him down. It started to poke holes in his facade.

It started to get me thinking, and I think that’s probably how I did find your podcast. I started to become aware of this concept of betrayal trauma. And so searching for resources found BTR, and then I got partial disclosure after partial disclosure. It was very painful.

It was all right around the time that my third child was born, and about a month after my third child was born, things were pretty rocky between us, me and my ex. And one night it just came out of him like a flood. He told me his version of this is the whole truth.

Partial Truths, Trickle Disclosures – Key Tactics of An Emotionally Abusive Husband(09:59): I like how you said his version, this is a common pattern that they’ll say, this is the whole truth, and they’ll tell a really kind of horrific thing that they’ve done. Sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh.

J.R. (10:11): It’s horrible.

Anne (10:12): And then you think, wow, that has to be everything, because he’s like, I’m getting it all out on the table, and then you find out later it was not because there’s something else he doesn’t want to say. So he tells you his version of this is the whole story?

“That’s the device I use to look at porn.”J.R. (10:26): Yes, and actually we’re sitting in our living room. He points across the living room at a computer that was actually used for ministry related purposes and specifically with kids’ ministry. So it wasn’t even his own personal computer, but he points at this computer, this laptop, and says, that’s the device that I use to look at porn. So it was never on my radar. No one was monitoring it.

It was never something that I ever would’ve even thought that he was using for lots of reasons. I mean, it didn’t belong to him. And not only did it not belong to him, it belonged to a church and it was being used for kids’ ministry. So it’s a great place to go looking up porn. I think I got up and I think by the next day I had purchased tickets for me and my kids to fly back home to Pennsylvania.

Separating from an Emotionally Abusive Husband(11:33): And at the time, we were just going to separate. At this point, once again, divorce, it’s not even an option. It’s not on my radar, but I knew I needed space from him. I needed to get away from him. I needed lots of distance for me and my children.

So we actually bought tickets for him, a ticket for him as well. Mine was just a one way because I didn’t know when I would return to Washington. His was both ways so that he could help me get there with the kids. I would’ve been flying with three kids, three and under. So he flew with me and then was going to get right back on the plane and go back to Washington and we were going to separate.

Navigating an Emotionally Abusive Husband Being Manipulative During Separation(12:23): And long story short, it didn’t take too long into our separation for me to realize that I was never going to go back to Washington. If he wanted our marriage to work and if our marriage was going to work, he would have to come back to Pennsylvania where my support system was so that we could potentially salvage our marriage.

So I told him that and he spent a considerable amount of time negotiating, didn’t want to lose his job at the church out there, didn’t want to lose his position of power and authority, didn’t want people to know the truth, spread some lies about what was really going on between us, made it seem like I was going through postpartum depression, and that’s why I was away.

People from the church were texting me and telling me to use this essential oil and to eat this kind of food and oh, the baby blues are so hard, aren’t they?

“I wasn’t going to be heard unless I had men vouching for me.”(13:38): And it was a very difficult time. And throughout it all, it was becoming more and more clear to me how bad the situation was, and I was becoming a lot more realistic about the fact that it was not going to change. So we were supposed to be separated for six months and that didn’t happen. I was living with my parents temporarily with my three young kids in a very small house. We went through this whole thing with the church out there that he was working with.

Of course, I had to have men in church leadership speak on my behalf and stand up for me in any way to even be heard. That whole thing was very complicated as well. I feel very grateful for those men and I love them. I feel like they are like brothers to me, but it was very eye-opening to see that I wasn’t going to be heard unless I had men vouching for me.

So when he realized that the church out there actually gave me his stipend and released him from his position, he realized that he had nothing else out there.

Anne (15:12): Good for them. That does not happen very often. So that’s great news.

When It’s All Just ManipulationJ.R. (15:17): Yes. I think once we got over the hump, once they actually heard me and listened to what was going on, I do think they handled it very well. So he came back to Pennsylvania, got a bunch of praise and glory for coming back to his family to make things right, and he was the big hero for coming back. And I was like, you just came back because you didn’t have anything else out there.

You tried so hard to salvage a life that you knew your wife and children were never going to be a part of. And then when that didn’t work, you came back. But he made some steps that I guess kind of looked like progress to me when he moved back here. In hindsight, it was all just manipulation just to get what he wanted, which was for us to be living together again.

“I Moved Back in With My Abusive Husband”(16:18): So we moved into an apartment together again to try to salvage the marriage. It was way too soon. I had to set boundaries. I had set the things that I needed to see during our separation for me to be able to move towards reconciliation with him. And he didn’t meet any of those. I mean, he bucked against everything, but I so desperately wanted it to work that I still moved back in with him.

We were only living together for about two months, probably a little less. And the thing that finally made me leave him for good unfortunately, was being hospitalized just to clear the air, wasn’t physical abuse from him, but it was a mental breakdown and I was suicidal and committed myself to the ER.

What Happens When An Emotionally Abusive Husband Doesn’t Go Away After Separation?Anne (17:22): I’m so sorry to hear that. I did want to say that so many women, when they do let him back in the house, things get way worse. Maybe he’ll promise that things will get better and maybe not necessarily physically. He didn’t put you in the hospital by punching you in the face, but mentally you were in such bad shape after six, seven weeks of being with him in your home, in your vicinity, that that’s where you were at. I mean, that’s how bad things got.

I always want to warn women it’s going to get worse. Lundy Bancroft talks about if that happens, then they think they have to assert even more control or they’re going to lose control of you again. So once they get you in their vicinity again, then at the very least the emotional and psychological abuse is going to ramp up.

“Why am I going crazy?”(18:16): But it might not seem like that to you because it might seem very nice. They might seem kind, and that’s when you really think you’re going crazy because you’re like, he’s not yelling at me, he’s not angry. Why am I going crazy? I’m not sure what his behaviors were, but some women experienced it like that because he’s being great. He’s doing the dishes and he is doing the stuff.

And in my ex’s situation, he was reading scriptures every night and initiating family prayer and that kind of thing. And I thought, I’m genuinely going crazy. What is happening? I always felt like my sanity was hanging by a thread, and I was like, is that thread still there? So as you’re hospitalized, is that your indication to you about how bad it is?

Processing the Self-Blame Helped J.R. Leave Her Emotionally Abusive HusbandJ.R. (19:00): Yeah, once again, grew up in a very religious home. So most of the time felt like, oh, well, I just need to pray more, or I just need to read my Bible more.

And that just wasn’t doing it, obviously, because my mental health matters and I needed more than that, but I wanted so badly to make it work, not so much because I loved him, but because we had children, and obviously this wasn’t the case, but I felt like if I left him that I caused our children to be in this quote broken home, which I hate that term, but that’s what it is, what people would see it as.

So I think being hospitalized, having that breakdown, realizing that I didn’t want to live it, took that for me to say, well, if I’m not around for my kids, that’s not what’s best for them either.

Anne: I wrote The BTR.ORG Meditation Workshop for women who are going through this type of absolute mental trauma – because there’s a point where you’ve done as much as you can. You just can’t do anymore. The Meditations help women heal without any effort. Women don’t have to do more, they can just relax and listen and it will heal them.

“If you stay with him, you’re never going to get better.”J.R. (20:12): Yeah, I started to think if staying in this maddening relationship is abusive, relationship is what’s best for my children, they might not have a mom by the end of it. I remember being at my sister’s house after being hospitalized. My sister was really amazing.

She took a week off of work just to be there for me and my children, whatever I needed. And I remember being at her house. She cared for all the kids, hers and mine. They were just going in and out of the bath. There was eight of them, so just one after the other. And I just remember her saying, J.R., if you stay with him, you’re never going to get better.

She was talking about my mental health and my depression and how I felt, and it seems like such a simple statement, but I needed to hear it in that moment. And it was like, yeah, if I want to get better for, and at the time, it wasn’t even for my own sake, it was for my children’s sake. So if I want to get better for the sake of my children, I cannot be with this man. That’s the bottom line. That’s when I filed for divorce and felt really confident about that decision.

What Would J.R. Say to Her Younger Self?Anne (21:42): So JR and I are actually going to talk more about the divorce part and then what happened after and what she’s been dealing with since at a later time. But to conclude now, J.R., if you could go back in time and talk to your younger self, what would you tell her?

J.R. (22:03): I would tell myself that you are so smart. You are so worthy, you deserve better. And I would tell her, trust your instincts. Just trust yourself. That’s the biggest piece I’m still fighting with. Honestly. Just trust yourself.

Re-Establishing Trust With Self After Leaving Your Emotionally Abusive HusbandAnne (22:28): It’s hard to reestablish that after I would say his and society sometimes, or a misogynistic church. They’re systematic, intentional dismantling of that, trying to dismantle it for you so that you wouldn’t trust yourself. Being up against that is really hard.

And that’s why I have people like you J.R., on the podcast to talk about it because it is, I think, so much more systematic than people realize. There’s so many places that try and talk us out of it, and if you follow it, they call you crazy or she’s too much or she’s not enough, or all the things that really, they want to trap us.

And so being able to see that for what it is is so difficult. So thank you so much for sharing your story so far. I can’t wait to hear the rest of it. Listeners, stay tuned because it won’t actually be for a couple of months. Sometimes we do it like the next episode, but in this case, we’re going to wait a couple months and then revisit. So thank you so much for sharing this part of your story, and I cannot wait to hear the rest later. Thank you.

J.R. (23:41): Thanks, Anne.

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J.R. spent nearly a decade “working on herself”, trying to be a better wife to improve her marriage. She didn’t know she needed to learn about emotional and psychological abuse to realize that she wasn’t the problem. If you’re husband says your the problem, there may be something else going on.

This episode is Part One of Anne’s interview with J.R.*Part One: My Husband Says I’m the Problem. Is He Right? (this episode)
Part Two: Should I Divorce My Husband for Emotional Abuse? Can I?***

Could I Be The Problem in Our Marriage?Many victims may blame themselves for the emotional and psychological abuse because that’s what the abuser wants them to think. Convincing her that she’s the problem is part of the psychological abuse.

You’re Not The Problem (His Emotional Abuse is the Problem)You are experiencing emotional and psychological abuse and/or sexual coercion if your partner:

• Uses gaslighting to contort your perception of reality
• Commits sexual betrayal, including secret pornography use
• Establishes a pattern of manipulation and table-turning
• Blames you for their choices
• Creates an environment where “walking on eggshells” is required for emotional survival

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKes84VS8GEJ.R. talks about how she experienced both relief and dread when she realized she wasn’t the problem. If this resonates with you, we’d love to see you in a Betrayal Trauma Support Group Session today.

Full Transcript:Anne (00:01): Welcome to Betrayal Trauma Recovery. This is Anne.

Today we have a member of our community. We’re going to call her J.R. She is a 29-year-old mother of four. She spent almost a decade of her life in a psychologically abusive relationship. Welcome, J.R.

J.R. (01:41): Thank you, Anne. I’m so happy to have this opportunity.

Anne (01:45): You said that you attribute the beginning of the end of your abusive relationship to BTR. Do you want to start kind of there and then we’ll start at the beginning.

When J.R. Discovered The BTR.ORG Podcast, She Still Thought She Was The ProblemJ.R. (01:57): In 2020, I discovered The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast. To be honest with you, I was trying to rack my brain to figure out how I found the podcast, and I really can’t remember. I feel like it’s a God thing for me. I was going through some things with my ex-husband. I’d known about his pornography use throughout our relationship. We had been through a lot at that point regarding his addiction, but I never would’ve used the term abuse. I would not have been able to classify it as emotional abuse because I didn’t have the terminology.

I just remember actually at that time, we were living in Washington state and I was driving through this gorgeous Oregon countryside mountains, just really beautiful landscape on my way home from dropping a friend off at the airport, and I was listening to just episode after episode of the BTR podcast, and I just remember this feeling of, well, to be honest, it was dread.

Identifying Gaslighting & Emotional Abuse(03:19): It was like, oh my gosh, this is me. And it was the first time I was hearing anyone really describe what I was going through. I think in the past I had seen myself as the villain because what I didn’t know at the time was my trauma response was very explosive, very intense.

So I always felt like the villain in certain situations with my ex. But hearing some of the women talk on the BTR podcast and just hearing you, Anne, talk about safety and gaslighting and emotional abuse, it was becoming clear to me that that was my situation.

Simultaneous Relief & Dread When You Realize You’re Not The ProblemAnne (04:04): Well, I’m so glad that listening to the podcast helped you. I’m guessing simultaneously relieved that someone could describe what you were going through and then also, wait a minute, it’s this bad. Can you talk about that?

J.R. (04:21): I had moved across the country with this man and our two children, pregnant with our third child. I had just dropped off the last of, we had some visitors all right in a row because I had just given birth to my third child.

We had some visitors. I had just dropped off the last of the visitors and I was driving back to my home with this man. So yes, there was the relief in like, oh my goodness, I’m not alone. And I finally feel understood. I finally feel seen.

But the dread was I am driving back to this place and I don’t know what I’m going to do. My children were there. I had no idea what I was going to do. So there was a sense of dread, and I’m driving right back into this situation.

When Physical Battering Isn’t Present, So You Figure You’re The ProblemI hear a lot of the women on the podcast talk about their husband’s anger and whether it’s verbal assault or even physical.

(05:22): But with my ex, I didn’t really see a lot of those signs. I didn’t see anger. I didn’t see any sort of violence or undertones of being agitated. It was so covert because he just immediately from the beginning of the relationship began gaslighting me and creating this alternate reality for me.

I just believed him right away. And I feel like maybe he didn’t need to go to another tactic as far as being more aggressive, or maybe that’s just not his flavor of abuse. I’m not really sure why, but I didn’t see him as an angry person. I just thought I was the problem.

“I knew he was lying to me, but I could never prove it.” We would get into these fights, but he wasn’t actually fighting back. It was just kind of me basically fighting with a wall because I knew that there was something going on between us. I knew he was lying to me, but I could never prove it.

And so he just kind of capitalized on that and made me believe I was crazy. And so actually from the very beginning of our relationship, I started seeking therapy and have gone to multiple therapists on and off over the past decade or so, most of that being me, looking for what’s wrong with me, how do I change me to make this work?

“He took my honesty, and used it to his advantage.” Anne (07:07): In terms of how you were viewing it at the time, you would define his behavior as problem solving. He seemed like he was engaging and that he was talking to me and that he was reasonable and that I just had some serious problems that I needed to work through. He had manipulated you to the point of that, is that what I’m hearing?

J.R. (07:29): Yes. I think that’s really accurate. And actually even where you say manipulating, that stirred something in me to remember when we first started dating, I have a very keen self-awareness, and I told him flat out, I’ve struggled with jealousy in the past and it is something that I am really trying to work on and grow in and move through, but I just want to be upfront with that.

That is a struggle of mine. And so I think right there, he took my honesty and used that to his advantage.

Abusers Weaponize Your Vulnerability To Make You Believe You’re the ProblemAnne (08:07): So in that way, he weaponized your vulnerability against you, but you were not aware of this at the time?

J.R. (08:15): Right. I had no clue honestly, for so much of our relationship, because of a lot of my spiritual background and upbringing. I saw him as this tool in my life that God was using to bring about sanctification in me. So I just really was like, okay, this person is a mirror pointing out the things in me that need to change, the ways I need to grow. And I was thankful for that.

Identifying Spiritual Abuse Anne (08:45): Spiritual abuse. Was he using spiritual abuse or was he quoting scripture or saying God wants you to change or anything like that? Or was that just how you were sort of interpreting in the moment?

J.R. (08:56): I think it was mostly coming from my own values and convictions. What they taught me. I don’t know that he was really explicit about it, but I think he definitely capitalized on that. And he was a church leader. He was on staff at our church.

And so really the spiritual abuse, I think it did come from him, but it sort of, I would say trickled down from our pastor who he was on staff with. It felt like the perfect cocktail that just worked in his favor against me to keep me right where he wanted me.

J.R.’s Thoughts on Therapy Anne (09:43): So because you spent so many years in therapy thinking that it was you that had the problem, rather than realizing what was going on, what are your thoughts about all that time that you spent in therapy?

J.R. (09:56): I don’t regret it. I think I’ve been able to do a lot of personal work on myself that has really made me a better mother, a better friend, just a better person in general. So I don’t regret it.

But I met my ex in 2011 and 2012 is when I started in therapy and when I started I would’ve said I would not talk to any therapist who wasn’t Christian based and had this a religious specifically Christian background. And that was something that was very important to me.

And now when I look for a coach or a therapist or counselor or someone even that I’m just going to go to confide in or to get advice from, I’m very wary of Christians. Which is really sad because I still have a very firm faith in my spiritual walk and my spiritual journey is very important to me. And so I lost a lot of trust in the church community and in Christians who are in positions of influence because I saw so many that could have helped me.

And I felt like in a lot of ways there were key players throughout my story that not only didn’t help me get to safety, but actually very firmly rooted me deeper into the abusive relationship I was in.

When Clergy & Therapists Enable Emotional Abuse (13:08): Therapists only know what you tell them, right? And so if you go in and you’re talking about your jealousy, for example, or things that you’ve sort of integrated into you, maybe things that aren’t even true that you’ve integrated that the abuser has told you they’re only going to go with you there, they’re not going to say,

Hey, wait, stop, who told you that? Why are you thinking this? Is it true? They’re just going to go where you go.

And so an abuse victim can end up not ever identifying the abuse even after going to therapy. And then similarly with the church, they don’t identify the abuse. In fact, they add this layer of spiritual abuse sometimes of have you prayed hard enough or do you have enough faith or have you submitted, were you in the type of Christian Church that wanted you to submit to your husband? Was that a thing with your faith?

Submission to Your Husband – Does that Make Him Right J.R. (14:02): Growing up? Not so much. But when I first got married to my ex, so we dated for about four years, and then we got married right before he graduated from college, and he graduated from a very reformed evangelical Christian college, and he got sort of inundated with this certain type of theology and doctrines and that he sort of fed all of that to me. And I was just so excited and passionate about Jesus that I wanted to do what I felt like I wanted to find.

Well, what is God’s will and if that’s God’s will, then I’m going to do it. And that kind of led me as an adult. I kind of flipped 180 from what I grew up being taught.

So I grew up around very strong women, women who were very, very opinionated, very loud, and then I kind of flipped over to, oh, the only good type of Christian woman is a submissive one. I need a quiet spirit, I need to be shy. Maybe not shy, but timid. I need to be meek. All of these things.

And I really struggled with that because it didn’t resonate with who I felt like I was, who I felt like God made me to be, but I just latched on and believed that that was my role in life and that I just wasn’t very good at it.

“You’re so good at being you. We’re so good at being ourselves.” Anne Blythe, Founder of BTR.ORG

Anne (15:46): That breaks my heart because you’re so good at being you. We’re so good at being ourselves, and that’s who God made us to be. I think. So it breaks my heart when women are trying to contort themselves in this misogynistic view of who they are, that because they’re being spiritually abused, they want to do God’s will because they love God. What gets lost in that is God loves us, God loves you, and he created you for you not to be subservient to someone else.

And it really gets lost when that spiritual abuse comes into play. So you’ve talked about how you went to therapy. You’ve talked about how you really were manipulated to altering the way that you viewed yourself and religion to try to survive this situation thinking because he told you this, that it would make things better.

The Moment You Realize You’re NOT The ProblemJ.R. (16:52): I guess I would say it wasn’t until 2020 that I finally realized it didn’t matter what I did. It wasn’t going to change. It wasn’t going to quote unquote work because he was the problem and I was believing for so long that I was the problem. So really, I spent so many years and adding child after child into this mess of just banging my head against the wall.

And I remember when I was a stay-at-home mom for the beginning of my children’s lives, and I remember just saying things to him, it’s hard to do all of the things in a day that you want to get done in the house, make the meal, keep the house clean, do this and that with the kids and all this stuff.

And so I said, I can’t do it all, but what is one thing that would mean a lot to you that when you come home from work, it’s like, oh, I’m so thankful that this thing is done.

The Belief That “Divorce is Not an Option” (18:05): And I would ask him things like that because I wanted it to work, and I was convinced that I was the problem. I think I knew it wasn’t working, but it was so ingrained in me that divorce is wrong. Divorce is not an option. That I was like, well, it’s got to work. So if it’s not working, I’m not doing the right thing or I’m not trying hard enough because if I put it on him, then I can’t control it anymore.

Then I feel hopeless. Well, if it’s up to him and he’s not willing to change, then I’m just stuck in this horrible marriage forever. It made more sense to me to just take it upon myself because at least then I had some sense of control.

When You Realize That ABUSE Is The Problem, Not YouAnne (18:55): I think a lot of women feel like that because for me, realizing I was a victim and saying I am a victim of abuse was simultaneously liberating. I can’t do anything about it.

And then also horrifying. I can’t do anything about it at the same time, and it is horrifying to realize that this situation, there’s nothing that you could do to improve him.

You can improve your own life and your own situation once you know that you’re a victim of abuse, but you cannot improve your quote marriage or the situation with your family, and that’s devastating to realize because then what do you do?

That’s the next step. During this time, did you ever discover porn use? Infidelity? Can you talk about that for a little bit?

Is His Pornography Use the Problem? J.R. (19:50): At some point in 2012, I found pornography on his phone, and I can remember it so clearly. I was sitting in his car and he had run back into the house that he was living at at the time to grab something. He came back out to the car and I just was sitting there staring and showed it to him. Just didn’t even say anything.

I just showed it to him and he just sitting there just looked me in the eyes and denied it, and it took me aback. Looking back now, it’s like, now I’m not going to lie, Anne.

It’s really hard not to be very hard on myself and almost mad at myself because right then and there, I knew what was in front of my face. I saw it with my own eyes, and this man is sitting there just lying through his teeth about something that it’s like, why would you even lie about that?

(20:55): I have it right in front of me. He kind of pushed back for a little bit, but eventually I’m just like, well, I don’t really care what you say. I’m seeing it in front of my face, so I don’t know why you’re trying to pretend this isn’t what it is.

So that was the first time, but I didn’t have the knowledge, the understanding of what this really was and how it really worked to think anything more than, obviously I was crushed. I was devastated, but I just thought, okay, I guess this is just maybe a part of me thought this was just going to be everybody.

The Discrepancy of Abusive Men and Their Public Personas Anne (21:33): Did you find that finding porn, but then his behavior at church and the persona that he portrayed at church, what did you think about that discrepancy?

J.R. (21:46): So at the time, he wasn’t in any kind of church leadership. He was still in college. He went to a Bible college. It was almost trendy. It’s for the guys to talk about accountability and –

Anne (22:06): his “struggle” with porn?

J.R. (22:08): – if I hear the word –

Anne (22:10): “struggle”

J.R. (22:11): YES!! ARG!!!

Pretending It’s Not A Problem to SurviveJ.R. (22:13): Yes, I didn’t like it, but I just was like, well, this, that’s what it is. It’s a struggle and he’s trying and you don’t know what you don’t know. I found that. And throughout our dating relationship and then our engagement, I would say it would go months at a time where I wouldn’t find anything.

He wouldn’t say anything, but then it would always be me discovering something on his phone.

So that would happen. And whenever that would happen, I would get all upset and we’d have this big blowout and I would just decide, well, he’s not going to be honest with me about this, so I need to let it go and stop thinking about it because I’m going to drive myself crazy.

Because I didn’t see getting out of the relationship as an option. I didn’t know about setting boundaries. I didn’t know how to reach out for help. So I just thought, well, I guess I just have to pretend things are fine in order to just survive.

Having to “just survive?” That’s The Problem.Anne (23:29): Well, and that’s why some people call abuse victims survivors is because you’re surviving and everything that you do in this scenario is to survive. And so that’s where the term surviving comes from. I’ve always not liked that term. It feels like you survived something that you didn’t. You’re still in the middle of, right. I’m like, I haven’t survived anything yet. I’m still on the boat and the boat is still sinking. I don’t feel like I’ve survived. But that is why some people use that. I like the term victim. It’s just pretty straightforward. But other people don’t like that because they feel like it’s maybe unempowering, but I feel like it’s very empowering.

Once you realize no one’s coming to save me. We’ve got to get myself to safety because this is not going to turn out well unless I start making my way to safety. J.R. and I are going to pause the conversation here, but stay tuned. We will continue it next week.

View Details

The global severity of human trafficking and sexual exploitation is clear. Melea Stephens is on The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast to explain what you can do to stop human trafficking and sexual exploitation.

Here at BTR.ORG, we deeply appreciate the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) and the important work they do. Learn more about NCOSE here.

Help Stop Human Trafficking & Sexual Exploitation TodayYou can join the fight today. Start by:

• Subscribing to NCOSE emails
• Subscribing to NCOSE Updates & Actions alerts
• Reading and sharing the 2023 NCOSE Dirty Dozen List
• “Lending Your Voice”

BTR.ORG Stands with NCOSE in Fighting Against Human Trafficking & Sexual ExploitationAt BTR, we know how deeply personal and painful the realities of the sex trafficking industry can be. When a spouse secretly uses pornography, solicits a sexually exploited person, or sexually assaults or coerces a partner, the results are devastating.

We are here for you. Attend a BTR.ORG Group Session today.

Full Transcript:Anne (00:01):
Welcome to BTR.ORG. This is Anne.

I have Melea Stephens on today’s episode. She is on the National Center for Sexual Exploitation, also known as NCOSE board. They do amazing work on sex trafficking. So if you’re really interested in being involved, NCOSE is the place to get real information about how to help with that. Melea got involved with NCOSE because for over 23 years she has been a practicing therapist and she has seen young children be addicted to pornography. She wanted to help make sure that we protect kids.

Melea lives in Alabama, so she’s currently working on passing a bill in her state. We’ll also talk about how you can get involved in helping out in the location where you are. So stay tuned for that. Can you tell us about what’s going on in Alabama right now?

What is a “Filter Bill” and Can it Stop Human Trafficking?Melea Stephens (02:16):
Thank you for having me. Last legislative session here in Alabama, we worked to pass what we essentially would call a filter bill. It’s a bill that would require tablets and smartphones to have the filters defaulted on. One of the names that it’s had was the default to safety bill. We’ve had different names at different points. Utah passed a similar bill a few years ago. We have wanted to pass it in Alabama and several other states are interested in introducing it as well.

One reason we wanted to promote this bill is that we know 47% of young children have their first unwanted early exposure to pornography on smartphones and tablets, and it’s just a common sense protection to have preexisting filters that are already on smartphones and tablets defaulted on versus putting the burden on caregivers and parents to try to go through 30 some odd steps on many devices to try to figure out how to activate existing content filters.

Helping Trafficking Victims is Something We Can All Do (03:17):
We have Supreme Court precedent that says that it is preferable for protections to come at the filter level on devices. So we know the courts would uphold this bill. We’re pretty confident that it would be very enforceable. All it is simply doing is asking that three major companies, which would be Amazon with the Kindle, the Apple products, and Google with their products that have smartphones and tablets that a software update would happen, which is a very simple fix.

We’ve talked to software experts who work closely with device manufacturers and they say this would happen in a matter of hours. That they would just do a very simple update that would allow for phones that are activated in Alabama to have the default on instead of off with the content filter so that parents or caregivers don’t have that responsibility of trying to figure that out.

Broad-based Protections for Young Children(04:16):
And it automatically has broad-based protections for young children so that they’re less likely to stumble across pornography at an early age. And people would say, well, you can get around that. Kids are going to find ways to get around it. Obviously kids can begin to try to figure this out, but when we’re talking about very young children who aren’t even thinking about pornography that stumble upon this content and it is very traumatic to them to not understand what they’re looking at and the way it affects their brain and then how it affects their behavior and their development. This gives them extra years of innocence and safety and protection.

“Anytime a child is exposed to pornography, that’s sexual abuse of that child.”Anne Blythe – BTR.ORG

And I had the honor of speaking to different parent groups. I have spoken to schools and churches that are in some of the areas where kids really don’t have involved parents. Those children, child on child harmful sexual behavior is just rampant in those communities because children are just handed devices. No one’s looking out for them. Very early on they can become addicted to pornography. They act out what they see because that’s what children do.

Fight Human Trafficking to Stop the Cycle of Abuse & Trauma(05:23):
They copy what they see, and then there’s a cycle of abuse happening and a cycle of trauma. So I especially think about those children. When I think about this bill, we’ve been excited. There was a great response last session. We had 67 bipartisan co-sponsors in the house, and it passed through committee with bipartisan support. We got to the Senate, it passed through committee with bipartisan support. It was poised to be passed through the Senate and become a law for the governor simply to sign.

But we had one person in the Senate who refused to allow it on the calendar because it really only takes one or two people that set the calendar and they blocked it because there was a lot of opposition that we had to fight along the way. And that’s been true in every other state. There’s been opposition from big tech and telecommunications companies have shown up at all of our hearings with their lobbyists as well.

Why Does Big Tech Fight Against Protecting Children? (06:25):
Even though our bill has zero to do with companies like AT&T or Verizon, they’re not held liable and it’s explicitly stated in our bill, but they would show up because unfortunately, big tech and telecommunications companies and the pornography industry will sometimes band together to fight common sense protections for kids. It’s really sad, but that’s one of the things we dealt with and unfortunately this gentleman that blocked it, we assume that there was pressure from lobbyists and one company in particular. So we’re going to do it again this session, and I’m grateful.

I don’t feel discouraged. I’m very encouraged because the draft version we have this session is even better. I think has even more protections built in, and we have major support across the state. So I’m excited about getting the ball rolling again this session.

Money, Power, & a Resistance to Any Form of Regulation Anne (07:19):
What’s the real reason they don’t want to do it? Because they’ll say all kinds of reasons that aren’t really real. What do you think their legit reason is? Is it just simply money?

Melea Stephens (07:28):
Money is a big factor. We know that historically, if you look it up, Google, AT&T, or Verizon, do they get back channel profits from pornography? They do and they have. There would be potentially a loss of revenue that way. But then you have big tech. Big tech hates regulations. They do not want to be restricted in any way, shape or form.

They don’t want to give up an inch of their authority to determine what they do when they do it. So I think money, power and a resistance to any form of regulation, which this really is to me, it’s like a safety feature on a car or something requiring that they have proper antilock brakes on a car, something that’s very reasonable. And in this case, it’s just a simple software update. All the technology is there.

Can the Government Stop Unwanted Pornography Exposure? Anne (08:19):
I hope this does not sound too political, but I’m a patriot in saying I’m really grateful for all of the government services that we have. We have roads, we have a military, we have things in place to keep us safe, and that’s only something that the government can do because the government is all of us.

So I am so grateful that we have these opportunities that we can pass things to protect us because no company is going to do that for us. We need to do that through the government because nobody’s going to willingly do that. Although some companies have willingly done some of the things right. I’ve seen NCOSE has worked well with some companies, so that has been exciting.

A “Very Tooth and Nail Fight” to Help VictimsMelea Stephens (09:06):
Absolutely. Yeah. There’s opportunity. Companies respond to positive communication and sometimes negative pressure. We have what’s called the Dirty Dozen list where we name and shame the main promoters of sexual exploitation. We have had tremendous success because once things are brought to light, it’s been refreshing that several companies have changed their corporate policies to better protect citizens, to protect them from sex trafficking or from unwanted exposure to pornography.

This has been a very tooth and nail fight all along the way, the opposition will say, well, you should just be fighting the pornography instead of asking the manufacturers to do this at the device level, which I agree. And we are. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation along with many of our allies are constantly fighting the pornography industry to make changes there. But here’s the truth about that is it goes back to our government. I wish our government was stepping up in this issue because the laws on the books on a federal level would prohibit the production and distribution of hardcore pornography, which is the majority of pornography that’s on the internet.

The Truth about Federal Obscenity Laws(10:23):
And it also, our laws prohibit the distribution of all pornography, be it softcore or hardcore from being on our internet. But our Department of Justice for many years now has not been enforcing federal obscenity laws. So that leaves us having to take this gulliver approach to tackling this issue of illegal pornography through corporate strategies, through legislation, through lawsuits. We have lawsuits against PornHub that we’re winning right now. We’re gutting the mind geek and the PornHub industry because of lawsuits that we have with survivors.

So we’re having to go at every different angle, but this is one of the most practical, simplistic things we can do to protect children. And as I’ve talked to families across the state of Alabama, they really, really want to see this passed, and they’re very upset that it was blocked last session. Whether they’re democrat, republican, it doesn’t matter. I think the main part of this is that there’s opposition from big tech, the pornography industry and telecommunications companies, and to everyday citizens that want to make a difference and make an impact when it comes to fighting sex trafficking and sexual exploitation in general.

Going Upstream to Fight Human Trafficking & Sexual Exploitation(11:38):
Yes, at NCOSE, we understand that you’ve got to go upstream. I don’t know if you’ve heard the metaphor or the analogy of you’re seeing people floating down the river that are drowning and you rush in to try to pull out as many as you can, and you’re struggling to get as many to safety as you can, and you do this for a long time until you’re exhausted, but you’re not able to get to everyone.

And so eventually you come to this idea of like, I’ve got to go upstream and figure out who’s throwing people in the river. And so you go upstream and you find out there’s someone that’s shoving all these people into the river, and in this case, that’s the pornography industry because today’s mainstream pornography, as you know, is highly addictive and changes the way that they operate. It changes their belief system.

Fighting Human Trafficking at the Root Level(12:25):
It gives them permission, giving beliefs about rape and sex buying and things of that nature. People become objects. So we’re raising up a generation of kids to have a different type of sexual appetite, and it’s creating a world of harm.

So we fight things at that root level, and we know that if we don’t address that issue in addition to sex trafficking, we’ll be just putting out flames forever. If we did not have rampant hardcore pornography, if it was restricted to just the adult bookstores like you had back in the eighties with soft core porn, as bad as that was, if we just lived back in that world, that’s what the laws on the books say our world should look like when it comes to pornography in the United States.

Striving for “A Shift in Cultural Expectations” There should be nothing on the internet, nothing on cable, satellite tv, all that stuff. And if we just live like that and our children were able to flourish freely without feeling like they’re going to be exposed to pornography around every corner, can you imagine how different our world would be if they were able to go through their developmental years without that atmosphere?

So that’s what we strive for is a shift in cultural expectations. But then there are also very practical things we’re doing to interrupt the cycles of things that are feeding sex trafficking. So we’d love for them to come and look at our website.

The Truth About Sexual Exploitation & Human TraffickingAnne (14:07):
I really recommend NCOSE because so many people are talking about sex trafficking these days. And I have a really interesting story that is super alarming. So one of my friends was on an airplane and she was sitting next to a man and they started talking about politics a little bit and he said, I’m voting for this person because of his record on sex trafficking because he is going to protect the children.

And her ears perked up. And she was like, oh, really? Tell me more about this. And he said, yeah, there’s just these people who are stealing these kids and we’ve got to stop it. Then she said, well, what do you do for a living? And guess what he did for a living? What? He owned a strip club.

Melea Stephens (14:52):
Oh my gosh. You’re kidding. No.

Use NCOSE Resources to Work Toward Ending Sexual Exploitation & Human TraffickingAnne (14:55):
Everyone wants to end sex trafficking. Everyone wants to end pornography. I mean, everyone that listens to this podcast. Sure.

Melea Stephens (15:04):
Yeah.

Anne (15:05):
So here’s a man who is an actual literal sex trafficker. He owns a strip club, and he’s talking about this nameless, faceless group of people who’s kidnapping kids when we know who they are, it’s PornHub. We know who the pornographers are. It’s very obvious. Getting involved with NCOSE is so awesome because it makes it very clear what’s happening so that you can say, okay, this particular senator, they’re the ones blocking this bill so we can write to that particular senator and we can make sure that this bill gets passed.

So I love that NCOSE clears out all the confusion because at least this man who owned the strip club, he was loving saying, oh yeah, we got to stop sex trafficking as a way to distract from the fact that he was a sex trafficker.

Finding a Anti-Trafficking Organization You Can Trust Melea Stephens (15:55):
Talk about denial and hypocrisy or else just a really good marketing scheme there.

Anne (16:01):
That is scary these days. So I love that. NCOSE is a very reputable organization that has been around a long time.

Melea Stephens (16:08):
They really do their research, and they are very careful about the details before they speak out. That’s one reason I’m always hesitant when I’m a spokeswoman. I want to make sure I do my best to present the facts accurately because they have such a high standard when it comes to what they share and what they do. They’re very intent, and I respect that about them, and they will correct themselves if there is something that they find out is inaccurate, but they do things with a lot of integrity and they get a lot done with a very small budget in a small group of people.

Join the NCOSE community to Feel the Momentum & Fight Human TraffickingAnne (16:43):
Well, that’s the other thing that I love about NCOSE, because so many people when they talk to me about it, they’ll be like, nobody’s doing anything right? And I’m like, well, every year NCOSE with their dirty dozen list, they make progress. It’s so amazing to be a part of that because you can feel the momentum.

And as much as pornography is this overarching exploitative, abusive, systemic problem that is affecting every single woman that listens to this podcast and so many families all over the world, and it’s horrific, it needs to be stopped. It’s an abuse issue, and there are people who do not want to stop it, and they want people to get distracted.

I also think that the pornographers and the exploiters, I think they don’t want people to know that progress is being made. I think they want people to think that it’s a lost cause. So either it’s fine and what’s your problem? We should just let this go. Or the alternative, which is there’s nothing you can do.

What the Human Trafficking Industry Doesn’t Want YOU to KnowMelea Stephens (19:14):
They want it to seem that it’s a right and it’s an entitlement first and foremost. They don’t want people to know that it’s illegal. Pornography is illegal. They want people to feel that this is a free speech issue when it’s not protected speech, but you would think that’s the case given everything that they do. And they have all these organizations that are under misleading names, such as this Free Speech Coalition, various names that make it sound like they’re anti exploitation as well.

They have some groups that sound like, but they’re actually the pornography industry putting up a false front to try to get in and sound like they’re being benevolent and they’re actually doing everything they can to undermine decency in society.

So you have to really do your homework and dig deep when it comes to these issues, just like in our state and in other states that this filter bill was being presented, several groups came in acting like they were pro-family pro children presenting Trojan horse bills that sounded anti pornography and people fell for it. It’s a very sneaky opponent. Thankfully, the law is on our side, science is on our side, and as we educate the public about the harms of pornography to the brain and relationships in society, as we educate the public about what the law actually says, they’re empowered to push back against this evil industry.

NCOSE is the Place to Get YOUR Information About Human Trafficking Anne (20:49):
So look over here so that you don’t actually accidentally support a sex trafficker or a pornographer. NCOSE is the place to get your information from. They’re trustworthy. They’ve been around for so long, and they really do their homework, and they know who the specific people are. They talk about specific things that are happening that we know about that are actionable, and that’s what makes us so effective.

Melea Stephens (21:32):
Well, thank you so much. Enjoyed my time with you.

View Details

Learning how to set boundaries in an emotionally abusive relationship may feel confusing and overwhelming. But here at BTR.ORG, we know that with the proper tools – including support and self-compassion – you can master boundary-setting and begin your journey to emotional safety and healing.

Elizabeth, a member of the BTR.ORG community, is back on the podcast, sharing the second part of her story. As she learns and grows, so do her safety boundaries. Tune in and read the full transcript below for more.

This episode is Part 2 of Anne’s interview with Elizabeth.Part 1: Is The Cycle of Abuse a Myth?
Part 2: How to Set Boundaries in An Emotionally Abusive Relationship (this episode)

Boundaries in an Emotionally Abusive Relationship Should Establish Greater SafetyHave you ever tried to set boundaries expecting more safety and security, only to feel more exposed to harm than ever? That’s because traditional boundary-setting models simply don’t work in abuse scenarios. Strategies like:

• If/Then Statements (“If you yell at me, I will move sleep in another bedroom);
• Statements of Values (“I want a healthy partner who treats me kindly and non-abusively); and
• Ultimatums (“If you don’t stop gaslighting me, cheating on me, and lying to me, then I’m filing for divorce”);

Have been touted by relationship “professionals” as solutions to emotional abuse, when in reality, they usually keep victims exposed to harmful situations.

The BTR.ORG Boundaries Model Actually Works in Emotionally Abusive RelationshipsWe created the BTR.ORG Boundaries Model because we want victims to actually experience greater emotional and psychological safety.

Effective Boundaries in an Emotionally Abusive Relationship are:* Courageous actions that evolve to fit the needs of the victim * Often unspoken * Essential to emotional and psychological safety.

Boundaries are NOT:* If-then statements given to the abuser verbally or in writing * A statement of ones values, or of what a person hopes for or needs * An expected behavior with an attached consequence or threat.

https://youtu.be/9aa5bgEY3bYHow Do I Learn to Set Boundaries in My Emotionally Abusive Relationship? Establishing effective safety boundaries is new territory for many women who find BTR.

If you’re wondering how to begin this process, ask yourself these questions:

• What actions can I take today to begin creating more emotional & psychological safety for myself?
• How will I learn effective strategies to keep expanding my emotional & psychological safety? (The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop teaches you, step-by-step, exactly how to establish and maintain effective boundaries in an emotionally abusive relationship)
• Where will I seek support as I begin the process of establishing safety boundaries? (We recommend BTR.ORG Group Sessions)

Full Transcript:Anne (00:01):
Welcome to BTR.ORG. This is Anne.

Elizabeth, a member of our community is back on today. We’re going to continue the conversation that we had last week. We were talking about how she was going to move back to Canada, so if you haven’t listened to last week’s episode, listen to that first and then join us here. We’re just going to jump right in.

Canada’s laws are much more effective when it comes to domestic abuse. Did you end up moving to Canada?

Elizabeth (01:56):
I did.

Anne (01:57):
Okay. And was that before or after your divorce?

Setting Boundaries Requires StrategyElizabeth (02:00):
After. I didn’t have a green card. I was just authorized to work in the United States, and he had thought I would continue to pursue my green card and he could help me so that I could remain in the United States. So I didn’t tell him that I had changed my plan and that I changed the plan to, I’m actually going to move back to Canada where I’m a citizen.

So for a couple months he believed that he still had a certain amount of control over me after we were separated, and then I pursued to do everything legally and upfront. When he found that information out, he was obviously very upset, but it protects me. I’m not a citizen there and I don’t have any support.

“This guy sounds like a coercive controller”Anne (02:40):
And at that time, in that instance, protected you from prolonged legal abuse in terms of the divorce, but maybe not in terms of custody. I have a feeling that you’re going to bring up custody because this guy sounds like a coercive controller. This type of abuser really enjoys chaos and pain, and they will even hurt themselves because it’s so fun for them to see someone else in chaos and pain. And so it’s very strange.

They do things that seem really stupid because it’s hurting them, but it’s also hurting you, and it also seems very smart. And women in this situation are usually like, how can you be so smart and so stupid at the exact same time?

Elizabeth (03:31):
It is a question that’s crossed my mind.

Anne (03:33):
So let’s talk about the post divorce abuse. What happened after?

The Bank Record Subpoena ProcessElizabeth (03:39):
They asked, do we want to subpoena his bank records? And we had never shared banking. I’d never looked at any of that. They said it’s just something we typically do during divorce. So I was like, okay, sure. And his bank records showed when we first separated the first couple months after, he was at a college bar every second night.

So he was right back into the kind of behaviors that he’d been used to. I just said that because when we first were moving away, I think he was busy with his own thing, so he wasn’t as intent and wasn’t as involved. But then maybe something changed in his life. And when we were, in fact, across the border, he started to really just harass me a lot through the parenting app. And we had created this parenting plan when we lived in the us and when the borders finally opened and we moved to the area we moved to, we had no real concept of the impact it would be on my daughter, who was two at the time, barely two.

That Moment You Realize You Need To Set Boundaries(04:36):
But it was a rigorous, rigorous schedule for her. And I worked full-time. She was in daycare, and two nights a week she’d have to be away from home for 12 hours. We’d have to meet him at this neutral location. It’s dark, it’s raining, the roads are bad. He had no intent.

As much feedback as I gave him that this was so hard on her and can we please possibly figure out a different way for him to get that one and a half hour visit by extending his weekend visits or something? He just wouldn’t budge and he could see the difficulty for her in terms of her sleep schedule.

Anne (05:14):
And for you. Because it was hard for you too. And he’s thinking, awesome, awesome. It’s hard for her and it’s hard for the baby.

When You Set Boundaries With An Emotional Abuser, You May Find They’re “All Talk, No Action”Elizabeth (05:23):
Exactly. I’m sure he knew and he didn’t care if it was hard on me, then she was just kind of a byproduct of that or whatever. So that went on for about six months, and then I just said, enough, you can take me to court, but I’m decreasing this to one night a week on her weeknights, and this is where I find him to be kind of a lot of talk, but then no action.

I think if you get down to the truth of everything of what he actually wants, it’s not that extra one and a half hours. It was more that, like you said, it was kind of impacting our lives and we had no free time. We’re exhausted all the time. We’re bending to his will. And so that’s been the main thing, still kind of a lot of crazy making in that he’ll say, you never give me any time, dah, dah, dah.

Setting Boundaries is Empowering!(06:11):
But then there’s evidence of all through the parenting app. And the parenting app has been so great because it’s all there. It’s all documented and you’re not having to fish through to find, and it’s very validating to look back and go, oh, this is all the times I offered, or these are all the things. So it contradicts itself. And now here we are three years since we moved, and I can just say you’re contradicting yourself. Well, now I don’t even really say that much. He knows.

But at first I was overexplaining and deflecting, and now I don’t do any of that. He doesn’t really try to make up any extra time with her so that it’s kind of playing itself out. And the less I engage, the less of a rise he gets from me. The more I have cut down any interaction on the app to the bare minimum, he kind of shrinks away. That being said, now he won’t let me talk to my daughter when she goes away on the weekends. So that’s a way to kind of unquote make me pay.

The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop Teaches YOU How to Set Boundaries in an Emotionally Abusive RelationshipAnne (07:11):
So the strategy that you used, that’s one of the concepts that we teach in The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop. It’s how to think about the abuser so that you are in a state of mind to be able to respond to them in a way that protects you, how to communicate with them, and then how to set boundaries the way that is effective, where they can’t actually cross them because it’s all you. And these types of boundaries that we teach in the workshop, they’re never anything that you say.

Elizabeth (07:44):
I love that.

What Will The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop Teach You About Setting Boundaries?Anne (07:45):
Because women who take the workshop will learn this with an abuser if you tell them, Hey, I don’t like it when you wear green, just for example, they’ll be like, sweet, now I know how to bugger. I’m going to wear green. It’s never a way to solve the problem. You’re always just giving them a sign how to harass me. It bothers me when you do this. They’re like, great, thanks for letting me know. I’ll keep doing it. We never ever want to tell them what our boundaries are or what we need or what we want or anything like that, because that only puts us in more danger.

So The Living Free Workshop talks about that, but one of the things that you said is a really important principle that we teach in The Living Free Workshop, and it is, do not believe them. So many times these abusers will say, well, I’ll take you to court. And you’re terrified, right? You don’t want to lose your rotter. Yes. So you think, well, I better do what he says, or he’s going to take me to court.

When You Set Boundaries, He May Threaten Family Court – Here’s What to Do:Elizabeth (08:39):
And that went on for a couple of years. For me.

Anne (08:42):
The better way to respond is, oh, okay, sounds good. This is my attorney’s phone number. Have your attorney contact him. Just be like, oh, alright. That sounds good. Here’s my attorney’s phone number. Let me know how it goes and leave it at that. Some of them will take you to court, so just know that it’s not always going to end up like that.

But the majority of them, they just want to make you do what they want and they think threats are going to get them that, but they don’t actually want to spend the time and energy to take you to court because in reality, their actions very rarely match their words. And that goes the same for promises. Of course, I love you. I’m not going to look at porn.

And then it goes the same for threats too. Usually if they’ve threatened to harm you physically and in your state, that enables you to get a protective order, get it, because that will always help you. And the criminal route is always better than civil for protection. So if you can get some kind of criminal action, that’s always going to help you more. So that’s good that at this point, more or less, you’ve been delivered because you stopped believing him.

The BTR.ORG Boundary Model Teaches You How to Set Boundaries in an Emotionally Abusive RelationshipElizabeth (09:54):
Exactly. And I just advocate for myself and my daughter, and like I said, I have the documentation to support decisions and all of that, so I’ve just kind of protected myself that way. What you said about the boundaries, I think of that all the time, and I share it with other people because I learned it from the podcast. It’s an actionable, it’s not words because many people think it’s a lot of words to describe your boundary, and I love that. It’s an action, an action you take.

Anne (10:21):
Yeah. That’s the only thing that will actually protect you. And if you tell them your boundary, it’s a big giant flag that says, Hey, this is how to abuse me. So you never, ever, ever want to tell them once they’re an abuser. Of course, in the beginning you’re trying to figure out is this abuse what’s going on?

And instead of asking him or talking to ’em about abuse again with living free, we recommend that you just observe, just watch. You don’t have to ask him, Hey, are you abusive? Or This is abuse. You don’t have to bring it up. You can just observe and you could see that he’s abusive. If you see that he’s abusive, you don’t have to tell him you need to get to safety, but you don’t need to say anything about it.

SAA and COSAElizabeth (11:04):
He’s heavily just projected that towards me. So the parenting app, I had to go through some of the documentation recently, and I think it was over 30 counts of being, he accusing me of being a parental alienator and a narcissist, and I don’t comment. I learned that early on too. I’m not here to diagnose him, but I will comment on his behaviors at times, but I really refrain from that as well. No point to it.

But yeah, he’s very heavily projects on me that I’m mentally unstable and where I was living, like I mentioned there just, it’s in the northern states near the Canadian border, and I just couldn’t find anything in the city I was at for support. And so I mentioned he started SAA, they did have a group, and then I found a COSA group of about four or five women in that area.

How Did Elizabeth Find BTR.ORG?(11:58):
I just didn’t find that I got much from it, and so I just started looking for podcasts and different information, and I stumbled across BTR and where I was being so isolated, it was what was my main support really, and just starting to connect the dots. I did read some books as well, but I would say the podcasts from BTR were the main thing that kept me rooted in reality, where I was like, yes, this is what matches, because like you said, certain parts of COSA, there were certain things that I was like, yeah, sort of.

But then listening to the podcast and the different people you would have on was kind of the main thing that rooted me in reality of what I was experiencing. It was like a big, yes, this fits with what I’m experiencing. That’s kind of what helped me in a lot of my decision making. His counselor even said to him at one point, he said, she’s reading these books. He didn’t know about the podcast. She’s reading these books. And she kind of silenced him and said, she’s becoming empowered. It threatened him that I was learning what I was learning then I was no longer kind of trapped in the chaos.

“This makes sense as to what I already know.”Elizabeth, BTR.ORG Community Member

Anne (13:09):
Was the BTR podcast when you found it, was it kind of revelatory? Was it something totally new that you hadn’t thought of or heard before? Or was it something that you did know inside but you just didn’t know you knew it?

Elizabeth (13:22):
Looking back, I would say the latter for sure. From working in healthcare, I have some knowledge of mental health knowledge from books I’ve read and things like that. And so I think as I started to listen to it, I’m like, yes, this makes sense as to what I already know. I talked about the addiction side of it and attachment. I knew about attachment kind of.

Omar Minwalla’s “Secret Sexual Basement”So it kind of brought everything together at that time. It was like in 2018, and you had the gentleman on who’s written a couple books, he talks about the secret sexual basement. Those episodes were around that time and just starting to kind of put pieces together. It was like I knew that this was ill treatment, but I didn’t think it was as calculated as it was.

Anne(15:57):
I think the thing that is really interesting is that women, when they find the podcast, they’re like, yes, they knew it, but they didn’t have words for it, or they couldn’t really bring it to the surface.

“How did I not know? How did I not understand?” And then I think the other interesting thing is that they’re, how did I not know? How did I not understand? That’s how I felt when I read Why Does He Do That? I was like, how am I a college graduate with a master’s degree who doesn’t want to be abused?

I’m not afraid of divorce, and how can I not realize I’m being abused? This is crazy. So it’s both a, I knew it, and then how did I not know it at the exact same time? And it’s such a strange place to be where at least I felt so stupid that I didn’t see it.

But then also not stupid at all because I’d never been educated about it. And all of the abuse checklists are like, does he control your transportation? And you’re like, no. Does he trap you in a room? No. I mean, maybe he might trap you in a room. I’m not saying that he wouldn’t. I’m just saying the classic abuse checklists didn’t seem to fit my situation. It was just confusing.

Secret-Keeping is Power OverElizabeth (16:40):
The idea of secret keeping, secret is power over. That really resonated with me. I’m like, yeah, because at first I thought he didn’t realize that it was painful for me, or he didn’t realize the depth of his actions, the impact of his actions. But then I kind of circled to the fact that I didn’t really matter to him, is what I kind of came to.

Anne (17:03):
Well, it’s even the opposite. He does it on purpose.
He uses your feelings against you to control you rather than listens or caress about your feelings. So the only reason he pays attention to your feelings is to be able to manipulate you, control the situation, control the narrative, and that’s where women, well-meaning awesome, caring women, they don’t know what they’re dealing with.

And so of course, they’re going to share their feelings with their husband because they think in sharing their feelings, they’ll be able to resolve the issue. But with an abuser, sharing your feelings is literally offering them a list of how to manipulate you better. And so that’s why it’s so important to know what you’re looking at. So Elizabeth, if you could go back and talk to your younger self, what would you tell her?

As You Set Boundaries, “Trust your gut” Elizabeth (18:00):
It’s kind of cliche, but trust your gut. How do you feel around that individual that you’re with? That was a big one for me. I never felt calm or always felt like something wasn’t right. I would teach myself and I teach my daughter. How do you feel when that happened to you? The feeling attached to being around someone or how their behaviors make you feel, and then boundaries, because he was sometimes snide or joking, and I’ve experienced this with other people I’ve dated.

If you put up a boundary that he, in the beginning would be like, oh, yes, you’re right, I should have that boundary. But then I felt like there was undermining surrounding, it kind of diminishing me, invalidating me, and those things I just pushed aside. I was like, oh, when I brought it to him, he did say he would go along with it, but there’s the whole understanding of boundaries and the response to them.

Learning How to Set Boundaries in an Abusive Relationship Can Change Your Life For Good (18:50):
I watch my own daughter give a no if she’s having a video call, no, I don’t like that book. Or no, and I watch the response, and I’m like, oh, I know that. Of course you like it. You just don’t know. You do get this constant kind of harassment almost. So I think just that knowledge about boundaries, it shouldn’t be something that they come around the back door and harass you about, obviously, or make snide remarks about or attack your character if it’s something that you have made clear that you stand for or that align with your values.

Anne (19:26):
Thank you so much for sharing your story. I appreciate the time that you’ve taken to talk with us today. Thank you so much, Elizabeth.

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Although it might not necessarily look like a cycle, emotional abuse shows up in patterns. If you know what to look for, understanding the cycle of abuse can help you understand your situation.

“I felt like something was off…but I didn’t know what to look for.”

Elizabeth, like many victims of hidden abuse, felt unsettled early on in the relationship. But she didn’t have the language or professional support to identify that her abusive husband was putting her through the devastating cycle of abuse. Tune in and read the full transcript below for more.

This episode is Part 1 of Anne’s interview with Elizabeth.Part 1: Is The Cycle of Abuse a Myth? (this episode)
Part 2: How to Set Boundaries in an Emotionally Abusive Relationship

The Cycle of Abuse Makes You Feel CrazyLike many women, Elizabeth sought professional help early on in her marriage because she felt crazy in her relationship. If you are feeling crazy in your relationship, please know that gaslighting, blame-shifting, secret intimate betrayal (including porn use), and sexual coercion are abuse issues and must be treated as such.

Understanding the cycle of abuse can help you identify what’s really going on, early on.

What is the Cycle of Abuse?The Cycle of Abuse Consists of Four Main Phases: Grooming: this phase is often called love-bombing. We also refer to it as “manipulative kindness”. This phase can last minutes, hours, days, weeks, years, or in some cases, decades. Abusers groom victims by presenting whatever version of themselves seems most safe, secure, “attachable”, and healthy to you. * Tension: this phase is often very painful for victims. Women experiencing abusive tension often blame themselves, feeling responsible for the abuser’s neglect and verbal abuse – because it’s starkly different from the grooming behaviors that the abuser used to manipulate them into the relationship. * Action: the action phase is unique to each abuser, but consists of the harmful behaviors that constitute hidden abuse, including: gaslighting, manipulation, intimate betrayal, financial betrayal, etc. * Denial:* women are often on the cusp of setting safety boundaries, including separation or divorce, during the denial phase. Abusers use gaslighting, manipulation, and blame-shifting, to “erase” the harmful behaviors of the cycles before – but often, victims come to a place where they’re simply done with the pain and confusion of hidden abuse. Tragically, this is also the phase where abusers tap into a deeper level of manipulation and coax the victim into the grooming phase, where the cycle starts all over again.

BTR.ORG Is Here For YouThe good news is that many, many victims are identifying the cycle of abuse in their relationships, earlier and earlier.

If you’re realizing, maybe for the first time, that you’re experiencing emotional abuse, please know that you are not alone. Consider attending a BTR.ORG Group Session today.

Full Transcript:Anne (00:01):
Welcome to BTR.ORG. This is Anne.

We have a member of our community on today’s episode. Her name is Elizabeth and she is going to share her story. Welcome, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth (01:34):
Thank you.

Anne (01:35):
She’s been a podcast listener for a long time. It’s always an honor to have podcast listeners on, so thank you so much for supporting the podcast by listening to it. Let’s start with your story. Tell me about the beginning. Did you recognize your husband’s abusive behaviors at first?

“It felt like such a change from when we were dating.” Elizabeth (01:54):
I noticed some things before we were married regarding his behavior, specifically with social media. There was an instance when he omitted some information and I didn’t, of course at that point consider it abuse. I just addressed it with him, was honest upfront and he was agreeable and said that I was right, and I thought, that’s it, that’s solved. And I felt like he heard me and we kind of moved on.

Once we were married, I noticed that some of his responses to me, I just felt like there was a lot more contempt. He kind of was less agreeable if I brought things to him, and that’s when I started to have some questions and feel quite out of sorts because it felt like such a change from when we were dating.

Anne (02:46):
Do you mind me asking what was the nature of the information that he withheld before you got married?

The Early Stages in the Cycle of AbuseElizabeth (02:52):
We hadn’t been dating that long. I had a trip planned with a couple of my girlfriends to go to Europe. and it had already been for quite a while and I was going to be away for a couple months. I had felt like I wanted to pursue the relationship and he said, do you want to be exclusive? And it was a big yes for me.

So when I was away, I felt like communication was difficult. I felt like it was hard to pin down, and he had said he was going to go camping one weekend and I had this gut feeling that he may be going camping with someone he worked with who was quite a bit younger than him, and I don’t know why, but I just had this gut feeling and I asked him if he did and first he said he went with just my dog.

“At first he was understanding, but then he became quite pressuring that I get over it”(03:36):
He was taking care of my dog. And then he said, oh, I went with some coworkers. I found out the truth much later. 6 months later. He went on a one-on-one camping trip with a 21-year-old when he was in his mid thirties.

So that’s obviously a red flag. But I was already pretty invested. He denied anything happened and I kind of worked through it. And at first he was quite understanding, but then he became quite pressuring that I get over it in his words after a few days of him listening to my concerns that he withheld that information. That was the situation. But nothing had happened between them that –

Anne (04:17):
You knew of.

Elizabeth (04:18):
Exactly.

What Actually Happened on the Camping Trip?Anne (04:19):
Did you ever find out later that there was something that happened between them?

Elizabeth (04:23):
He told me that she shot him down and said, no. Looking back now and the knowledge I have, I think there was a certain amount of grooming going on with that coworker and that she maybe saw him as an older brother type and in the reality there was a different motive on his end. So I think it probably confused her quite a bit if I was to put myself in her shoes.

Anne (04:48):
Totally. So had he been able to he would’ve.

Elizabeth (04:51):
Yes. And he said that.

Anne (04:53):
He said that at the time, back in the day or –

Elizabeth (04:57):
Six months later.

Is Lying Part of the Cycle of Abuse? (Spoiler: Yes) Anne (04:58):
I was going to say, that doesn’t sound like something he’d say right away. It’s really interesting to me when they decide to lie and not tell you information, and then when they decide to tell you the information, it’s almost this calculated time that is meant to hurt you, not necessarily a time to bring you closer when they feel like you’re maybe having a great day or something’s going well for you or something like that because it’s calculated to hurt you. So can you tell me the nature of when he told you this?

The “Trickle Disclosure” Can Keep Victims Stuck in the Cycle of AbuseElizabeth (05:31):
I definitely identify. There has been times when that’s the case. I used to call it the trickle disclosure. That’s kind of what I got in my relationship was, oh yeah, this flashback came back to me and it would be gut wrenching for me. And looking back, I think he did do that sometimes in that way to keep me kind of destabilized a bit.

“He was afraid I was going to leave him.” But this particular instance for this situation, I think he was afraid I was going to leave him. So he told me about this camping trip and the fact that he lied, omitted and told me at that point that now we had everything out in the open. We were still dating. And so that was like, okay, now you know everything. It was a lie.

Looking back, he did that when I first met him two days in. He lied, but I thought, wow, how vulnerable. He told me this difficult part that he had cheated on a past partner, one partner one time, it’s grooming. I had no idea what grooming was. It was a way to have me kind of trust him to say like, oh, he was upfront and told me this information, and it’s all there is. All the skeletons are out of the closet and they weren’t. But it was a way to kind of silence me a bit.

Manipulative Truth: A Key Piece of the Cycle of AbuseAnne (06:42):
I’ve been thinking of a name for this, but I don’t have one yet. But manipulative truth, which is never the whole truth, but they make you think, no one who is a liar would tell me this thing. So they must be telling the truth, but they’re telling a part of the truth that is the top of the iceberg. And if they were to tell the truth, they’d say, well, I’ve cheated on every partner. I still masturbate every day and I still look at porn and I have every intention of cheating on you because I don’t really want to be with one person. And then they say, now everything’s out on the table.

Elizabeth (07:19):
So it creates a false sense of safety.

Why Do Emotional Abusers “Test” Victims? (Is This Part of the Cycle of Abuse?)Anne (07:22):
Exactly. And they do it on purpose. I think the other issue there, if it was before you were engaged, was it test? If I tell her this partial truth, that seems horrific and she’ll still get engaged to me, this is the kind of girl I want to marry. She believes me.

Elizabeth (07:38):
Exactly.

Anne (07:39):
So they’re going to tell a partial truth that feels really true in order to test, is this the kind of woman that I can exploit sometimes, and that’s not your fault. It has nothing to do with you. It’s really, really, really scary and sad and awful. That is their intention from the beginning. That’s what was always so alarming.

Elizabeth (08:03):
It was mind blowing it to have that level of that it was that planned and calculated.

Anne (08:09):
What types of reasons did you give in the beginning for this behavior that seemed kind of off?

Abusers Use GASLIGHTING to Stop Victims from Identifying the Cycle of Abuse Elizabeth (08:14):
Initially. I think there was some self-blame, and that’s kind of the work I’ve done in my own journey. I sort of thought, well, maybe the problem lies with me. And he agreed. He agreed that the problem was probably me. I had said, well, I had done counseling in the past and I think I should take it back up. And he said, yeah, I think you should too.

So he really let me kind of go down that road of I just need to do my own work, that it was my neediness or anxiousness or this or that, that was the problem. And that there was nothing had changed really on his end, but I just felt this sense of it was sort of night or day.

We moved to a different town and it was kind a college town. There was younger women around in this college town, and I feel like maybe he was triggered from his own past because before I met him, he’d kind of been in a city where it was a lot of college students, young women around, and he was in a kind of party atmosphere and I didn’t know all the extent of it.

When Therapy Harms, Instead of Helping Victims Identify the Cycle of Abuse(09:14):
So when we moved to this new city and we were newly married and his behavior towards me changed, he helped me in that way of thinking it was me. So I started counseling and he did come to some of those early counseling sessions as well with me, and that’s when we found out there was an addiction.

Anne (09:29):
He came to confirm to the therapist that it was your problem. Did you find the therapy to be helpful in this particular situation?

“Something doesn’t feel right, something has changed.” Elizabeth (09:37):
No, I’d say no. I think she was just trying to figure things out as well. Also, I was pregnant, so the goal was to kind of help reduce my anxiety. I was feeling very anxious in the pregnancy and I wasn’t able to put my finger on what was going on.

So it felt very crazy making, and that’s what I internalized was coming from within me and that I had nothing to worry about. And here I was quite worried and that impact on my unborn child, and so she was just basically trying to support me with my anxiety. Well, turns out my gut is pretty sensitive, and so then I kept picking at the wound kind of thing and just bringing my concerns to him over and over. Something doesn’t feel right, something has changed.

Anne (10:23):
Did they diagnose you with anxiety or anything like that?

Pathologizing Victims Instead of Helping Them Identify the Cycle of AbuseElizabeth (10:27):
No. Okay. No. We used it as a diagnosis just for insurance purposes, but I’ve never had a diagnosis of anything.

Anne (10:34):
Okay. That’s good. So many women get diagnosed with something during this time because instead of their therapist saying, oh, this is your internal warning system telling you something, something’s wrong. You are reacting in a totally normal way. You are great. Let’s figure out why your warning system is going off. Instead of saying that they’re happy to be like, oh yeah, you’re just another crazy woman who’s having too much anxiety and you’re hysterical for no reason.

Elizabeth (11:06):
That’s the only message I was getting.

Is Secret Pornography Use Part of the Cycle of Abuse? (12:25):
So the therapist doesn’t help you figure out what’s going on. She doesn’t help you figure out that he’s abusing you. And then you realize he’s addicted to pornography without the help of that therapist. How did you discover his pornography use?

Elizabeth (12:40):
I kept asking, something has changed, what has changed? And I thought, is it because I’m pregnant? Again, a lot of focus on myself, but I knew something was different. I asked him. It’s never been on my radar. And I said, do you look at pornography? Because something in the conversation led me to ask the question and he said, yes, I do so that I don’t bleep other women. And it shocked me. It’s a moment kind of etched in my memory because I was in shock that he had never offered that information. That conversation had never come up.

Odd logic

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In the aftermath of an abusive marriage, many victims still have to work toward physical safety – but after physical safety has been achieved, there is a spectrum of emotions to process.

Vicki is on The BTR.ORG Podcast in the final installment of her three-part interview, sharing her joys, insecurities, fears, and hopes in the aftermath of her thirty-year abusive marriage. Tune in to the podcast and read the full transcript below.

This episode is Part 3 of Anne’s interview with Vicki.
Part 1: Walking Away After 30 Years of Narcissistic Abuse
Part 2: This is How You Know It’s Time To Leave
Part 3: Here Are My Emotions in the Aftermath of Abuse (this episode)

But I’m Safe Now – Shouldn’t I Be Happy All The Time?Many victims experience a level of guilt or frustration with themselves for feeling negative emotions after they’ve achieved a level of physical safety, post-divorce. It can be helpful to understand that all emotions simply are – they’re not good or bad. So when you experience things like:

• Fear
• Frustration
• A lack of desire for relationships
• Apathy
• Anger
• Grief

Understand that you are normal – these emotions are part of the healing experience.

“It’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with you. You are healing.”

Anne Blythe, Founder of BTR.ORG

BTR.ORG Is Here For YouFor many women in our community, it can be difficult to articulate the complexities of the many levels of healing to someone who has not experienced covert abuse. Consider attending a BTR.ORG Group Session today so that you can process your experience with other women who understand.

Full Transcript:Anne (00:01):
Welcome to BTR.ORG. This is Anne.

Today we have Vicki back on the podcast today. She’s been with us the last two episodes, so if you haven’t heard the beginning or middle of her story, go there first, listen and then join us here. Let’s just jump right into the conversation. Where are you in the journey to safety right now?

“There’s nothing wrong with you. You are healing.”Vicki (01:44):
Well, physically safe. Yes, emotionally still struggling and it has very much so affected my ability to have relationships with other people. I don’t date at all. As far as being able to have a bonded relationship where we go hang out, we will call each other up and just be besties. No, I haven’t been able to do a thing like that.

Anne (02:15):
It’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with you. You are healing. I don’t date and there’s nothing wrong with me. If I were unquote better, I still wouldn’t date because dating’s dumb. There’s nothing wrong with you. I bet it will come with time.

Vicki (02:34):
I did, of course, BTR Group Sessions.

Anne (02:37):
Vicki, if you could go back and talk to your younger self, maybe you at like 16, what would you tell her?

“If something feels off, assume it is.”Vicki (02:45):
I would definitely say if something feels off, assume it is and do not let what someone says dismiss something that feels off, because every time I would express something being off, there would always be this perfect little explanation that was, I feel like rehearsed just in case, and so I would dismiss it. I would just teach a 16-year-old self. Just go with what you’re feeling. If it feels off, it is. And then the other thing I would teach them is we teach people how to treat us by what we tolerate. The most important thing that I learned was it is not compassion to provide a convenient environment for someone to continue sinning and hurting others without any consequence. That’s not compassionate.

“This is a choice he made over and over and over again”Anne (03:42):
It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault for unquote tolerating it because there are a lot of people who are, I’m going to say kind and someone makes a mistake and then the person doesn’t continue to abuse them. This was a choice that he made over and over and over and over again, and the only thing that you lacked was one thing. It was the knowledge that what he was doing was abuse, and it was the skills to know what to do when you’re being abused. So two things, sorry, two things, but I don’t think your compassion was the problem because once you know it’s abuse like, oh, this isn’t going to help.

Vicki (04:37):
Right. Well, and the other thing is the lies. I didn’t know that every day I was being lied to heavily – had I known that the reality I was living in was a manufactured false reality than I could have made better choices and better decisions, but since I didn’t lie, I couldn’t wrap my head around somebody else who cared about me lying to me, so that just wasn’t even in the realm of my comprehension.

“You did everything you could.”Anne (05:06):
It’s so difficult when there’s nothing you could do because you don’t know. It’s not like you knew something and you didn’t do it. You did everything you could. Thank goodness when you saw it with your own eyeballs and you did know, that you did take action. You are brave and strong. How did you find BTR?

Vicki (05:31):
There was another incident of clergy betrayal that happened and I was just so frustrated and I started searching on the internet for just resources for betrayal trauma. I didn’t even know that was a term, but I was like, this is the trauma that I’m experiencing is the constant betrayal over and over by this person and that person shouldn’t be betraying me. So anyway, that was what I was doing. Internet searches on betrayal trauma, and that’s when I found it. I found some other good books and other resources too, but this was the one that just jumped out and it was like, oh my gosh, where was this 10 years ago? Where was this? 20 years ago? There was nothing to help women, and so that’s why I’m just like now, oh, I just want to get this word out so I don’t want even one girl to go through what I did.

Why did Anne start BTR?I started BTR because was I was so concerned that any woman would go down the pornography addiction recovery path rather than the abuse path. She needs to know it’s abuse. She needs to treat it like abuse from day one. They use porn – abusers use porn. Porn is abusive. Even if a woman thinks, well, he was abusive in other ways, but he doesn’t use porn, the likelihood of him actually not using porn is almost zero. He might not know, but he does.

Vicki (08:14):
Yeah. I recently met a lady who was saying that he was physically and emotionally abusive, and I’m like, yeah, he was also a porn addict.

Anne (08:21):
He was using porn.

Vicki (08:22):
If you were able to do the research, you would find that that’s true. For sure. I just told her he was, don’t worry about it. She goes, well, yeah. There was the one time I took his phone and he freaked out at me. Yeah,

Anne (08:35):
Exactly. When you found BTR, did you start listening to the podcast or what was your experience with BTR?

“I just wish I would’ve known this before.”Vicki (08:41):
Oh, I just started devouring the podcast and I would just cry and cry because I was like, oh my gosh, I’m not the only one that’s validating and sad at the same time, so devastating and healing because there were so many and just all of the information. I was like, oh, I just wish I would’ve known this before, just over and over and just so grateful that it’s there. I just hope that so many other people are finding this while they’re still in it so that they can get education about what’s happening.

Anne (09:20):
I do find even post-divorce for women who are divorced and they never knew they were abused. They didn’t even know porn was happening, and they’re still struggling When they find us, I do think that it facilitates healing faster because they realize it was abuse. Then they’re like, oh, yes, because it’s again, a sad commentary on the state of abuse education that a woman can be abused, get divorced from an abuser, continue to be abused, and still not know she’s being abused. The number one reason women don’t get out of abusive relationships is because they do not know that they are in one.

Vicki (10:00):
Yes.

“I feel like you have a very bright future.”Anne (10:01):
I feel like you have a very bright future. I sense this. That right now you are still struggling and that you’re worried about yourself in terms of relationships. Would you say you have other worries like financial or otherwise, or is your main worry relationships?

Vicki (10:22):
Yes, relationships.

Anne (10:24):
The reason why I have hope for you is this. You seem solution oriented.

“You were just trying to solve problems”(10:30):
Your whole marriage, you didn’t know it was abuse and you were just trying to solve problems, and so now that you recognize like, wait a minute, I want better relationships. I want a good friend that just the desire and the faith and the forward movement, I’m not your coach. I’m not your therapist or anything, but I am going to give you a suggestion, write on a piece of paper, one close emotionally intimate relationship. Not a boyfriend. I’m thinking like a friend that’s a girl, like a neighbor. Just write that and then kneel down and pray and say, Heavenly Father, I don’t even know how to do this. This is what I want because I feel like I’m missing something, but I don’t know how to heal. I don’t know what to do I don’t know if it’s me. I don’t know if it’s other people. The amount of things I don’t know about this would fill the universe. I can’t heal myself, so I need you to help me, and I also maybe need a friend to show me how to do this. I don’t know how to do it, and then stand up and tape it on your wall, and that will be the beginning of your miracle board.

Vicki (11:49):
Okay.

“We just need to take one step”Anne (11:50):
Try that out. See how that goes, because feel like when we know what we need and we know what we want, we just need to take one step and then the next step will be revealed, and then we take the next step. Maybe you’ll get the impression to call somebody in your congregation or go to a movie by yourself. Maybe there’s someone else that’s going to be sitting there by themselves. You never know. You have a bright future and God loves you.

“The reason why you were abused has nothing to do with you.”Vicki (13:24):
It’s very comforting to have that faith that I don’t think that this is as good as it gets. I think it’s getting better. That does give me hope and optimism to continue. I’ve never gotten mad at God, been like, why did you give me such a creepy husband or anything like that It’s just been like, wow, I must’ve been kind of arrogant. When we sat down to plan my life, I must’ve been like, yeah, bring it on. I got this.

Anne (13:53):
No, no, no, no. All you have to do is look around you. There are other arrogant women who have perfectly loving husbands, so no, that was not the reason. The reason why you were abused has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with the abuser.

Vicki (14:14):
Abusers, I feel like are more and more common because it worked. They get away with it, and more and more people are like, yeah, I could control all kinds of things and all I have to do is be abusive.

Anne (14:30):
All I have to do is be willing to not live according to truth.

“I have hope for your future.”(14:36):
I have to be willing to lie so that I can maintain power so that I can maintain the power over – I have information that she doesn’t have. And I have to be willing to threaten people. I have to be willing to do really awful things for power, for money, whatever the thing they want to do is, and it’s scary, but thank goodness there are people in the world. You’re not willing to lie. You are a person of principles and God loves you and he will bless you. I have hope for your future. I just sense that you really do have a bright future ahead of you in this life. In this life,

Vicki (15:14):
And that’s the thing I have no problem about next life. That is not a problem for me at all, but I’m super skeptical that there will be anything good in this life.

Advice for Moving ForwardAnne (15:25):
That’s why I think maybe a miracle board is what I’m suggesting. Little goals, like maybe some shoes that you really like that maybe you can’t afford right now. Put that on your miracle board and maybe you’ll be like, oh, my word, they’re on sale. What? I can buy ’em now. Right? So if there’s three things that you desire a friend, some shoes, a pot that will help you to cook this thing that you like better, I don’t know, whatever the thing is, maybe put three things on that and just say, Heavenly Father, I really need something good, something small, but something good to happen. I need help hoping for this because right now I don’t have any, I don’t know, but my guess is he’ll come through because I feel like it’s the little prayers that I say where I always get an answer. So I lost something and I pray and I find it. I always get these little prayers answered, and I’m so grateful because it helps me know that the big prayers that I said for so long that my husband would be a normal person that was not answered, but I did still know that he knew who I was and that he was aware of me through the answers to the little things, and the little things can build on each other and build on each other.

Building a Joyful LifeWe can build a really peaceful, happy, joyous life on all those little things. The simple things, like one friend.

Vicki (16:54):
Well, I appreciate, that’s really good advice.

Anne (16:57):
You didn’t ask for advice, so now I’m feeling kind of bad, but anyway, I am so grateful that you took the time to share your story with us. Vicki, thank you so much for talking with me today,

Vicki (17:08):
And thanks for all the work you do with BTR.

View Details

Every victim faces a unique moment when she has had enough, when she realizes, “It’s time to leave.”

Vicki shares her powerful story of liberating herself from an abusive marriage when she reached her own moment of realization. Vicki’s story offers a beacon of hope for survivors facing similar challenges. Tune in to The BTR.ORG Podcast and read the full transcript below for more.

This episode is Part 2 of Anne’s interview with Vicki.Part 1: Walking Away After 30 Years of Narcissistic AbusePart 2: This is How You Know It’s Time to Leave (this episode)Part 3: Here Are My Emotions in the Aftermath of Abuse

As You Prepare to Leave Your Abusive MarriageWhether you’ve been married for days, weeks, months, or years, we want you to be safe as you prepare to leave your abusive marriage.

As you’ll hear in Vicki’s story, her abusive ex-husband reached new and terrifying heights of violence and intimidation when he realized that she was on the precipice of change. This is common in abuse scenarios.

Victims can prepare to safety leave an abusive relationship by:* Creating a safety plan with a BTR.ORG coach or local domestic violence victim advocate * Reaching out to safe folks and letting them know the plan, and ways to offer support * Pack an emergency bag that is hidden and easily accessible in case the need arises for a quick exit

BTR.ORG Is Here For YouFor those currently on the path to freedom, Vicki’s story stands as a testament to resilience. It reinforces the message that leaving an abusive marriage is a courageous act, requiring careful planning, support systems, and a commitment to one’s safety. Vicki’s journey, serves as an inspiration for victims taking the first steps toward reclaiming their lives. You are not alone, and there is strength in breaking free. Consider attending a BTR.ORG Group Session today.

Full Transcript:Anne (00:01):
Welcome to BTR.ORG. This is Anne.

Vicki is back on today’s episode. We started her story last week, so if you didn’t hear that, listen first and then join us here. Today we’re talking about how Vicki did not have strategies for communicating with her abuser post-divorce. So many victims don’t have these strategies, so please check out our Living Free Workshop. These safety strategies, thought strategies, communication strategies, boundary strategies, work, every listener to the podcast needs to take that workshop so you have the right idea about how to communicate safely and what to do.

The ever-changing goal posts of the abuser(02:13):
When did you realize that all of your hard work and you know, all the things he had manipulated you to do that you didn’t know that it wasn’t working out like he said it was right. Like so an abuser will be like, well, if you would only do this, this, and this, everything would be good. And because they’re liars, they always move the goalposts. So if he’s like, you’ve gotta have dinner ready by five and you know, da da da, and then you do all the things and then he still acting terrible. And then he says, well, and you have to lose weight and you have to work out. And you know, I don’t know all the things he says. There’s never a time where he is like, oh good, yeah, you did do that. Okay, now I am happy. Now we’re great. That never happens with an abuser.

Vicki (03:01):
No.

“I was like, ‘why am I doing this? No sane woman would put up with this.'”Anne (03:02):
In essence, we’re believing these, I wanna say promises like if you do this and you do this, things will be good. And they never are. When did it come to the point where you realized, wait a minute, there’s not anything I can do that’s going to manage him or make him happy. Was that the same point you thought he was mentally ill? Or was this before?

Vicki (03:22):
Probably. I mean, it was several months. He had lost another job. When he had gotten that job, he said to me, this is the last job I’m ever gonna get. And I was just like, and so what’s your plan after that? And he was just like, I don’t have one. I’m just not doing this again. If I lose this job, I’m not getting one again. So then when he lost that job, I was just remembering what he had said back then and he was just completely worthless. I started realizing there was zero motivation for me to remain in that relationship because it was all for him and nothing for me. So that was kind of me coming out of the fog. I was like, why am I doing this? No sane woman would put up with this. And then I’m like, well, you’re sane, so why are you putting up with it? It took me several months of just gradually realizing that there was nothing for me in that relationship. So that when it came to the point where he was just so scary and threatening me and everything that I was totally able to just be like, okay, bye .

He’s losing jobs, she’s working to survive.Anne (04:30):
So he was losing jobs all the time. Were you working?

Vicki (04:33):
I stayed at home until my youngest went into first grade and then I was working 35 hours a week at their school. I was the only one working and he was staying home, quote unquote, looking for jobs online.

Anne (04:50):
Okay.

Vicki (04:51):
Month after month, ,

Anne (04:53):
Then he’d get a job, then he’d lose it. So you were consistently working and he was kind of going back and forth. Yeah,

Vicki (04:58):
And you know, when I was a stay at home mom, I did things at home to earn money as well.

“He’s just mean.”Anne (05:04):
At this point where he doesn’t even show any interest in getting a job again, you’re like, wait a minute. He isn’t contributing to the household income. And he’s not doing things around the house. He’s not even helpful. He’s just mean. So I am done. It’s very sad to me that you lived with this for so long and you, you just didn’t know. Like no one told you?

Vicki (05:27):
No.

Anne (05:28):
I’m shockingly blunt with people and so I’m often telling women that they’re being abused and a lot of times it’s just like in real life they haven’t come to BTR. They weren’t searching. And so they do not like me. ’cause they’re like, who is this lady? My husband’s great. I don’t know what her problem is. The reason I do that is because I feel like a lot of women are in your situation. And it was mine too. The second someone told me that, I was like, oh, and had someone told me sooner than I would’ve done something about it sooner, I just didn’t know. I was in shock that I had spent seven years going to therapists in the pornography addiction recovery industrial complex, including 12 step groups. Yeah. And no one said, I mean they mentioned every once in a while, but it just did not click that this is abuse. Did you talk to clergy? Did you ever go to therapy before?

“Therapy was a completely taboo subject”Vicki (06:29):
No. Therapy was completely a taboo subject.

Anne (06:32):
You couldn’t even go by yourself?

Vicki (06:34):
Oh no, no, no, no. That was completely not allowed. And any suggest of me wanting him to get help or take medicine or anything like that was, oh, that was just, you know, it would invoke rage. So no, I had zero therapy before I knew nothing. I never read a self-help book. I knew nothing about what I was going through until after. Now I have read pretty much everything that could be found. I have a comment about the 12 step recovery. So like right after, of course the clergy was like, yeah, you should go to this. You know, if, if that’s what you were dealing with, you should go to this porn addiction recovery for the wives, you know, because you know, the divorce wasn’t final or anything. And I guess they were thinking maybe that it would heal the relationship or something if I did. But I went to two sessions and on the second one I literally walked out when the facilitator said the words sisters, we can love them into changing. No. And I was like, 30 years of blood, sweat and tears. No. No, if that wasn’t enough love to make him change, then no, don’t ever say that. And I was done.

Anne (07:48):
That poor woman doesn’t realize that that is exactly what the abuser wants her to think.

Vicki (07:54):
Yep.

“She is exactly where he wants her”Anne (07:55):
She is exactly where he wants her because if she thinks that love and service and stuff will help him change, he can exploit her all he wants. Yep. It is so dangerous. It is one of the most dangerous things to say to a victim of abuse. I’m glad you walked out. Good job. So the therapist says to you, just someone you randomly meet that your husband drives to and starts yelling at like, this is a crazy story, Vicki, sorry. I’m like, wow, this is like God’s intervening in a serious way. She’s like run for your life and you never look back. What about the intervention? When did the intervention with your kids take place?

The beginning of the end.Vicki (08:34):
The night before the incident at the therapist, he took my phone away, he locked me in my room and put me on a chair and was basically like, if you try to stand up, you will be hurt. I was being held hostage in my room, so I couldn’t call for help. And then he proceeded to tell me the ways that our lives were gonna be ended, et cetera.

Anne (08:58):
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Ended like he’s gonna kill you?

“Where’s your wife?”Vicki (09:00):
Yeah. It was pretty much, I mean he didn’t say it in that exact way, but it was like, if you died at the same time as me, how would that make you feel? Things like that. So I was just crying and crying and my daughter who could not get ahold of me knew that he was being crazy and scary. So she called the police and they came and did a welfare check. And of course he goes to the door, huh? Is there a problem, Officer?

Anne (09:26):
Uhhuh

Vicki (09:27):
And they go, well, we just got a call that there might be a problem here. Where’s your wife? They made him go, get me out. And of course it looked like I had been crying for 12 hours straight. So the woman took me in one room and the man took him in the other room and basically after that little small interview, separate interview, they said, Okay, you can either go in the police car in handcuffs to the police station, or you can go in an ambulance to the psych ward, you pick. And of course he picked the ambulance to the psych ward. Then he was there for just a few hours and they let him go. So I don’t know what happened in the psych ward, nobody talked to me.

“So they let a dangerous person out.”Anne (10:09):
You know, there’s no diagnosis for abuser in the DSM, as it turns out. So what are they gonna do? Diagnose him with being an abuser? So they let a dangerous person out.

Vicki (10:24):
The system is so messed up. It’s, so when that happened, that’s when my adult kids are like, okay, we’re getting her out. And when they found out that he was dragging me to the therapist, one daughter was at my house packing bags.

Anne (10:36):
Okay.

Vicki (10:37):
And another daughter was getting the three minor children to safety. Another, you know, son was doing this. They all –

Anne (10:46):
Jumped into action.

Vicki (10:47):
Yes.

Anne (10:48):
Good for your kids.

“I never went back to my house. Ever.”Vicki (10:50):
And I didn’t know, but the son that was with me, because there was my son, myself and my ex that were at the therapist, he took me away and we just left car keys for the other car in the parking lot. We left them at the desk and then we just left. And I did not know at the time that they were abducting me , but I never went back to my house. Ever.

Anne (11:17):
That’s good.

Vicki (11:18):
After that, my brothers moved me out of that house.

“The second you realized [this was abuse], you were able to take action”Anne (11:22):
So Vicki is a intelligent normal, you’re not perfect, right? But you’re an intelligent, capable woman who has two brain cells to rub together. Congratulations. And this crazy event of your kids getting involved and the him driving to therapist and screaming around is the first time that you register that you’re being abused. This says nothing about you and says everything about the state of women being educated about abuse. Right. Because had you been educated about abuse, you would’ve known this is not rocket science. So that’s why I do this podcast is to get the word out. Like this is what abuse is, this is what it looks like because the second you realized it, you were able to take action. It’s so, so important for women to know what’s going on, to know the truth. Yes. Were you able to get a protective order ’cause he was being some wackadoodle?

Vicki (13:42):
Yes. We all got protective orders.

“I always recommend that you go the criminal route”Anne (13:44):
Okay, that’s great. When it comes to divorce and custody, I always recommend that you go with the criminal route because criminally with a protective order, with other criminal processes that the justice system can take, they are more reliable for keeping victims safe. Even though it’s not perfect. And even though it doesn’t always work right, it’s just more reliable than divorce. I’m not saying don’t get divorced if your divorce attorney says, no, no, no, don’t get a protective order because then it’ll be harder to divorce him. A lot of divorce attorneys say that. I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Get the protective order. Get it. Yeah. Because then if he breaks it, you can call the cops. They will actually take action and if he breaks it, they can do something about it. They don’t always do something about it. Check and see what the laws are in your area if the police are reliable, you know, that kind of thing. But even if in a divorce court they say, Hey, you can’t go to her house, there’s no way for the civil side, the divorce side, to enforce it. And since it’s not enforceable because it’s just a civil decree, that means kind of nothing. The criminal stuff is always going to keep you safer.

Vicki (14:56):
Agree.

Anne (14:57):
So because you guys had protective orders, did you get full custody of the kids or did he still have some custody?

How did clergy respond to Vicki’s situation?Vicki (15:03):
I did. And part of that was just because he was unemployed and because I had the protective order, et cetera, I was able to get legal services and he didn’t have it. And so he didn’t really fight me and that’s how I got the, the full custody. So I feel really grateful for that because he later did try to come back and and get it, but he never did.

Anne (15:28):
That’s good. Yeah. Wow. During this time, you know you’re being abused and you’re telling people you had some bad experiences it sounds like with clergy, where they were like, wait, wait, wait, let’s get him help rather than your safety is our top priority. Can you talk about that?

Vicki (15:43):
Thankfully, the first clergy I talked to didn’t say that. He was like, just promise you’re never going back to him. And all he knew was just like the one last little incident. So that was super helpful. After that, there were several different clergy who treated me kind of like I was a pariah because I had done the unthinkable, which is to abandon my marriage. And I didn’t get some good help from those, but I had already made the decision to leave the marriage by the time this was happening. So they were just chastising me after the fact.

When clergy re-traumatizes victimsAnne (16:20):
That is awful. I’m so sorry. I had one of my bishops clergy tell me that I was the abusive one for going to the doctor to get medical care for him, physically spraining my hand.

Vicki (16:34):
Wow.

Anne (16:35):
Like I was the abusive one for saying he was abusive apparently. I was like, yeah, okay.

Vicki (16:40):
That’s, wow,

Anne (16:41):
That’s fun.

Vicki (16:42):
Mind blowing.

Anne (16:43):
Yeah, it’s insane. How long ago was this?

Vicki (16:46):
It’s been over a decade.

Anne (16:48):
So you’ve been relatively safe. Did he kind of just like leave you alone after divorce?

Vicki (16:55):
Oh no, no, no,

Anne (16:55):
No, no. Okay. So let’s talk about post. Post-divorce abuse.

“Before I told him that I was divorcing him, it was all flowers and roses.”Vicki (17:01):
Yes. It’s really interesting how much an abuser can still abuse when the entire family has protective orders because we still had a house to sell and a divorce to do. And I thought parent time, you know, and all of this stuff. I couldn’t just like have no contact whatsoever. And so I just put in the protective order that we could have email contact about the business things only. Well, he violated that and first, before I told him that I was divorcing him, it was all, you know, flowers and, and roses and you know, when can I come back and when are we getting back together and, and all of that stuff. But then as soon as I told him that I was done, then it turned to just hostility and tons of preachy, gross stuff.

Anne (17:52):
Spiritual abuse kind of stuff?

“I was constantly in fear.”Vicki (17:54):
Yes. Oh so much. Every scripture, everything telling me what a terrible person I was and it was just so awful. And I put up with it for months, even after pretty much everything was all taken care of and I didn’t need to anymore. And finally other people talked to me and they were just like, why do you even still talk to him? And so I finally did just cut off all contact. But it did not stop him because once he lost that outlet, he figured out so many other ones, including my parents, who eventually had to get a stalking injunction against him. He stalked the kids at school. He did get arrested for violating the protective order several times, but it didn’t stop him. He used court as much as he possibly could to traumatize us. So I was constantly in fear. I mean it wasn’t fear it was going to happen of being served new orders, you know, new mm-Hmm. a new process that I had to appear in court.

Anne (18:54):
It’s sad that the court does not realize that they are an extension of abuse. Yeah. They should just be like, this man is abusing her through filing things.

Vicki (19:08):
They don’t do it. No. So until my youngest turned 18, I was definitely continued to be manipulated and, and bullied and just traumatized. You know, just things that he would just find ways to just infiltrate.

“I think the goal needs to be safety”Anne (19:23):
It’s awful with the death of my friend’s son, Om her ex murdered her son. It was really interesting because we know that domestic violence shelters can’t do much. I mean besides like stalking injunctions and protective orders, it seems like the goal of the domestic violence shelter is to get you to admit you need to get divorced and file for divorce. And then they’re like, oh great, she’s on her way. Right. They don’t realize, like I think the goal needs to be safety.

Vicki (19:55):
Right.

Anne (19:56):
And if she is not safe and the protective order doesn’t do it and a stalking injunction doesn’t do it, does this man need to be put in jail?

Vicki (20:06):
Right.

Anne (20:06):
Does he need to be imprisoned?

Vicki (20:09):
Well, he did need to because of many other things that haven’t been discussed. He has committed crimes and he has not served a day.

Anne (20:19):
Has he ever been charged?

Vicki (20:21):
No.

“He’s still out on the streets harming people.”Anne (20:21):
It’s frustrating. Yeah. You know what’s happening and other people know what’s happening and he’s still out on the streets harming people.

Vicki (20:30):
Yeah. I was actually told by the assistant attorney general of the state of Utah, there is no doubt whatsoever that he is guilty, but you don’t have the right kind of evidence and he’s gonna get away with it.

View Details

Walking away after decades of narcissistic abuse? Chances are you’re experiencing grief, fear, anger, loneliness.

The spectrum of emotions that victims of covert abuse experience over decades of cruelty is almost impossible to describe to someone who hasn’t experienced it. Vicki shares her story poignantly in this vulnerable unfolding of her painful journey of 30 years of abuse on The BTR.ORG Podcast.

Vicki’s story, like many others, begins with the deceptive allure of Prince Charming that soon morphs into a domestic climate where walking on eggshells becomes the norm. Tune in to the podcast and read the full transcript below for more.

This episode is Part 1 of Anne’s interview with Vicki.Part 1: Walking After 30 Years of Narcissistic Abuse (this episode)Part 2: This is How You Know It’s Time To LeavePart 3: My Emotions in the Aftermath of Abuse

Are you in a multi-decade long relationship with an abuser?Many victims find BTR.ORG after years, even decades of abuse. Some experience deep feelings of shame and self-loathing for “staying so long”.

At BTR, we understand the complexities of relationships, of identifying abuse, and how difficult it can be to make the decision to leave once you do identify abusive behavior.

Initially dismissing her husband’s alarming behavior as the byproduct of external hardships, it was also very difficult for Vicki to identify that she was experiencing abuse.

You are safe here.You will never experience judgment or pressure here at BTR. We understand that each situation is unique and each individual knows her own situation best.

Consider attending a BTR.ORG Group Session today – a safe community where you can process your experiences is often a good place to start your healing journey.

Full Transcript:Anne (00:01):
Welcome to BTR.ORG. This is Anne. Today we have a member of our community on today’s episode. We are going to call her Vicki. She is going to be sharing her personal experience and what she has been through. So welcome, Vicki.

Vicki (01:38):
Hi. It’s great to be here.

Anne (01:41):
I don’t know if great to be here. Is the exact right way to put it, right?

Vicki (01:47):
Well, if it’s gonna help anybody, then yes.

Did you recognize your husband’s abusive behaviors?Anne (01:50):
Yes, yes. What you’ve been through is terrible. But a lot of victims who come on the podcast to share their experience, find it as like a step on their journey to peace in that they’re able to like really share their story with a community of women who get it and that can benefit from it. So we’re really grateful for you taking the time to share today. So let’s start at the beginning of your story. Did you recognize your husband’s abusive behaviors?

Vicki (02:24):
At first, no. I mean, of course at first he was Prince Charming, you know, so there wasn’t anything to notice at first. But then very shortly after we were married, I started noticing things that I was like, Hmm, I’ve never seen that before. Where did that come from? But this went on for months and years, without me being able to say, wait a minute, that’s not okay. That’s totally abusive. So definitely did not recognize it.

Finding ways to live with “strange” (abusive) behaviorAnne (02:58):
How did you define these? I’ll just put in quotes, strange behaviors or things that you were like I don’t feel good about that. How did you define that behavior at the time? What reasons did you give?

Vicki (03:10):
Well, I just thought that he had a lot of bad things happening to him through no fault of his own. So he was really discouraged and it made him touchy. And so in my mind I was just like, well, after all, this behavior’s understandable since, you know, he’s so demoralized because of these tough breaks he keeps going through and, and you know, I just like excused it. And you know, later I found out that all of the things that I called tough breaks were literally just consequences of his choices and behaviors.

Anne (03:45):
But you didn’t know it at the time?

Vicki (03:47):
Oh, no, no, no, no, no. He kept everything so covert, , and hidden from me.

Anne (03:57):
Okay. Yeah. Let me guess. Was one of them that getting fired from a job?

Always everyone else’s fault…Vicki (04:01):
Oh yes. That was definitely one of them. On more than one occasion, he went through 10 jobs and every single time it was because there was a quote, departmental restructuring, or his boss was a horrible jerk or something like that. It was definitely not due to behaviors he was doing on the job, on company time with the company computer .

Anne (04:25):
Right. .

Vicki (04:27):
It was definitely not that.

This is how abusers control the narrativeAnne (04:29):
I mentioned on another interview recently that the situation usually begins for them in their head with what other people do in response. It doesn’t start with them. So they do something wrong. You know, they use porn on their work computer and then their boss starts treating them badly, maybe because they’re like, you’re a bad person. When I say badly, I’m putting that in quotes. Like, you’re not a good employee, you’re going to need to leave. And that’s where they start the story. The story starts with my boss started looking at me weird and treating me bad and not giving me projects, and then he fired me.

Vicki (05:05):
Right. And I have no idea why.

“He was mean and impatient and would rage constantly”Anne (05:07):
Mm-Hmm, . Yeah. It usually starts after what they’ve done in the beginning of how someone else is responding to their behavior. But what about his behavior toward you? Was it still just like that? Can you talk about how you felt about his behavior toward you?

Vicki (05:24):
He was just mean and super impatient and would just rage constantly. And I recognized that it was harsh or overreacting or having a tantrum, but I didn’t say that to him because if I did, I would’ve gotten punched. Then that did happen. And yet I didn’t recognize that me needing to carefully avoid being punched by, you know, keeping my words at a minimum and not defying him, I, I didn’t recognize that me needing to avoid that was abuse. You know? So if you said to me, does he physically abuse you? I’d be like, no, no, because I knew how to keep him from doing that. So like when I tried to call him out on inappropriate behavior, he would yell, shut up. You know, and, and sometimes I didn’t shut up, you know, no, I’m not gonna shut up. That’s not okay. And of course, since I didn’t shut up, then I would get know the warning that what was gonna come next. And so I, I would shut up.

“I just thought it was him having a bad temper”Anne (06:30):
Did you recognize that as abuse?

Vicki (06:33):
No, I just thought it was him having a bad temper. I did not ever identify that as abuse.

Anne (06:41):
Physical abuse never happens without emotional and psychological abuse.

Vicki (06:45):
It was much more severe than anything physically.

“The threat [of physical battering] is ‘keeping you in line'”Anne (06:48):
So you’re being emotionally and psychologically abused for sure. Which you don’t realize you’re also being physically abused, which you don’t realize. Especially because you are being so abused, you’re doing exactly what he wants. So he’s resorting to the physical abuse less because he is threatened you with it. So the threat is keeping you in line enough, I guess.

Vicki (07:13):
Yeah.

Anne (07:14):
But nobody else in your family knew about it or they didn’t recognize it as physical abuse either?

Vicki (07:19):
My extended family, no. My children, yes, they all knew.

Anne (07:23):
Okay.

“As soon as anybody started getting onto him, we would move. He would uproot us immediately.”Vicki (07:24):
But yeah, like, like I said, all of my neighbors, church members, family members, they just looked at us. What a cute ideal family, you know? They’re so great. They’re such a nice couple. That’s all they saw. And we would move so often that I never had a support group in the neighborhood and all they would see was the surface stuff. But as soon as anybody started getting onto him, we would move. He would uproot us immediately.

Anne (07:54):
My ex did that too when we were together. We moved six times in five years. I think he knew people were onto him. Maybe, I didn’t know that. But I think he did. I think that is a certain type of abuser does want to move frequently because they want to make sure that they can keep that mask on. Right. Yeah. So he was one of them. In terms of church, was he a like upstanding, I, I’m using, I’m putting this in quotes. Yes. Did the church view him as a upstanding member? Like did he get leadership roles?

Vicki (08:27):
Paul was in a leadership calling. He wore his suit and tie like a badge. That was his disguise. He had most of the people, most of the time completely fooled. I, looking back now, I can see sometimes how people reacted to him. And I’m pretty sure there were some people that didn’t fall for it, but I did until the very end the fog started lifting.

Discovering secret pornography useAnne (08:55):
Were you aware of porn use?

Vicki (08:57):
Not until after I left. It escalated to a point where my adult children did an intervention and after that my daughter took me to a therapist that she had been seeing and he said, you know, your husband is a porn addict, right? And I was just like, no, that’s no way. He’s so opposed to that. He thinks that’s just a terrible thing. And he’s like, no, no, he is really? So we had two computers and my son, who is a programmer, ran programs and found, deleted files and there was evidence on both computers. And I was just like, are you kidding me? . So then, yes, doing all of the back research, I realized how many lies I had been told the whole time.

30 years of abuseAnne (09:49):
How long was your marriage?

Vicki (09:50):
It was 30 years almost.

Anne (09:52):
And when did you get married? How old were you?

Vicki (09:54):
I was 19. Yes. I got groomed from day one. He used a very tricky tactic to make me think he was Prince Charming.

How did Vicki “manage” the abuse?(11:23):
So as he is using porn, without you knowing, I mean you’re knowing that you have to walk on eggshells in order to avoid abuse, not knowing that you’re being abused the entire time. Can you tell us more about the types of things you did to sort of quote unquote manage his abuse?

Vicki (11:41):
It’s really sad and I did not even realize this. It, it’s so funny because I literally would fantasize about him being dead and how easy it would be to raise eight kids all myself, with him being dead. Like, and that didn’t even clue me into something being amiss . I don’t know, I, I would be like, why, why do I think that that’s so dumb of me? And I, I would justify it by being like, but he is just so tortured and it’s okay for me to not want him to keep having to go through this, you know, existence with it being such torture for him. . And yet he wasn’t being tortured at all. I was.

“He wasn’t getting all the stuff for free that he thought he was entitled to.”Anne (12:20):
You were. He was just saying he was tortured from what, like he was abused as a kid or his dad didn’t love him or what?

Vicki (12:26):
‘Cause of losing jobs and not being treated like he was stellar all the time by every person in his sphere. ,

Anne (12:38):
He wasn’t getting all the stuff for free that he thought he was entitled to. Right.

A domestic climate of walking on eggshellsVicki (12:41):
Yeah. What I did that was so sad was like, I, I just had my kids like, okay guys, dad’s gonna be home. You know, everybody just has to not fight. We can’t have this, you know, and like I had them all like trained little walking on eggshell kids because they knew they would get, get hurt if there was any problem. And so all I did was spend my entire marriage making him have his life exactly how he wanted. I mean, I’d have the dinner on the table, whatever he said he wanted to do, we would facilitate that ASAP. There was nobody else was allowed to have a want or a need. If anyone expressed a want or a need, they got, oh, you’re so selfish. You’re, you’re so needy. You’re such a drama queen. You’re just on and on.

“Your strengths and your talents and your effort were exploited for an abuser.”Anne (13:31):
Do you realize how capable you are and how amazing you are that you were actually able to do that? I hear women say this like, so I had dinner on the table and so I had this and this done. And I’m like, oh wow, you guys are amazing. Like I was the world’s most incapable victim apparently. ’cause I could not pull it off, you know? I am like so in awe of how talented and dedicated and just hardworking women are. And then saddened to see, and you too, right? All the lost time that your strengths and your talents and your effort were exploited for an abuser. And so that’s what the painful part is. It’s not that like you’re ashamed that you worked hard or that you’re ashamed that you are smart. There is a little bit of this shame I think that women carry once they realize that these really good things about them were exploited. But for the use of an abuser rather than for your own life,

Vicki (14:35):
Right.

Anne (14:36):
For yourself and that lost time, it’s like difficult to grieve.

“I hate that now my kids are struggling as adults because of their trauma from me.”Vicki (14:41):
Yeah. And that’s the sad thing. Yeah, I’ve been safe for years, several years, and I’m still going through so much grief. Little things will trigger and just be like, oh, I just . I hate that I was so gullible or I hate that now my kids are struggling as adults because of their trauma from me. You know? Instead of being like, no, you’re not gonna treat my kids like that. You’re out of here. I didn’t do that. It was like, okay, now you guys have to manage your behavior and not be a kid. It it was on them.

Anne (15:17):
Yeah. It is so painful. I’m so sorry. I want to like reframe it and be like, you were so strong and so brave. You were doing everything you knew how to do. You didn’t know anything else. If someone would’ve, an angel would’ve come down from the heavens and said, Vicki, this is abuse. Stop doing this. You would’ve done it.

Vicki (15:39):
I would’ve.

Anne (15:40):
Yeah. You didn’t know.

“I had to get permission from somebody that I believed had authority”Vicki (15:42):
When someone finally did say that to me, I left. Like I never went back to the house once – after that I was done . So I just had to get permission from somebody that I believed had authority, who happened to be a therapist. This was part of the intervention. This is what I realized. I, I was like, you’re mentally ill and you’re scary. I can’t live with you anymore. You’re gonna need to go get yourself into some kind of residential treatment program. I thought there was such a thing as that. I don’t know , because you can’t come home with me in your current state of mind. And so he drags us down to this counseling office and just without an appointment, starts yelling at all the staff and saying, she won’t let me go home until I see a therapist. And there was thankfully a lady there who was willing to talk to him and she got him in another room filling out and take paperwork. And then she told me to run for my life. She said he’s not okay. Go. And that’s the last time I, I was with him. So I just had to have one person tell me that it was okay to go.

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Sammy shares her experience taking the BTR.ORG Meditation Workshop as a woman of faith, finding healing and hope after betrayal trauma and emotional abuse.

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You deserve peace, calm, and stillness. Lily shares how The BTR.ORG Meditation Workshop has helped her find peace despite outer chaos.

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Pat shares how BTR.ORG's brand new Meditation Workshop has helped her find healing and empowerment after betrayal and emotional abuse.

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Rachel Moran is back taking a deep dive into male entitlement to women's bodies - and its severe ramifications, including homicide.

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The term consent is dangerous. Rachel Moran shares her expertise and offers hope in correct language that protects sexual autonomy.

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Uncover the secrets of gaslighting as Dr. Robin Stern and Anne explore emotional abuse, exposing manipulation tactics and offering insights for victims.

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Gaslighting expert, Dr. Robin Stern, shares her expertise on the podcast - including detailing the three types of gaslighters.

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Join Anne and Paige as they discuss the importance of nutrition and therapeutic activities for pregnant women navigating betrayal trauma and abuse.

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TW: sexual abuse, sex trafficking, sexual violence.

A husband filming his wife in the shower without her knowledge or consent, and selling the video online.

A boyfriend coercing his seventeen-year-old girlfriend for photos.

A man prostituting his long-time partner, then gaslighting her into feeling guilt and shame so that she feels unable to escape or press charges.

What does sex trafficking really look like?

It’s a depraved conglomeration of psychological, emotional, sexual, and physical coercion and abuse. It’s the disempowerment of women and children. And it’s all around us. Dr. Stephanie Powell from NCOSE is on the BTR.ORG podcast; read the full transcript below and listen to this important episode now.

Let’s Define Sex Trafficking: Force, Fraud, Coercion “By age alone, when you’re under the age of 18 and someone has used you for commercial sex, you’re automatically considered a victim of trafficking in a court of law. If you’re over 18 years of age, you have to prove force, fraud, or coercion.”

Dr. Stephanie Powell

Understanding the “Coercion” Piece of Sex Trafficking I think what happens oftentimes is that people only think of sex trafficking victims with the force and the fraud – so that coercion piece is a little hard to understand because people go, well, why didn’t they just leave? What needs to be understood is that there is an emotional bond that one may have with their trafficker.

That emotional bond may be because their trafficker was a boyfriend or very good friend, or it could have been a girlfriend or it could have been a family member. Not to mention that it’s like brainwashing. I’m coercing you because if you leave something bad is going to happen to somebody you love. And by the way, this is your fault anyway because you chose to do this.

Dr. Stephanie Powell

Coercion can include:

• Threats (subtle or overt)
• Gaslighting
• Blame-shifting
• Manipulation
• Emotional withholding
• Financial abuse
• Spiritual abuse
• Sexual blackmail
• Abusive persistance

The Most Important Take-Away “If you’ve experienced sexual coercion and exploitation – whether or not it has resulted in sex trafficking – please know that it is NOT your fault.

What I really want to express to those women today is really understanding that it’s not your fault. You’ve been exploited.

It wasn’t something that you shared in and said it was okay; someone took advantage of you, and the really worst part, it was somebody that you trusted. And so when it’s somebody that you trusted that used you in that way, honestly, it is no different than a victim of sex trafficking that’s dealing with a trafficker or a pimp because lots of times, it was their boyfriend that ended up pimping them out or they got talked into it because it was showing love. The bottom line is it could really make one feel worthless: I shouldn’t have done that, I should have known.

And what I want to say to you is, you did what you were supposed to do. You trusted the person that was the closest to you, you were a wife, and so therefore this is no fault of your own. It is something that they did, meaning the husband that shouldn’t have been done. So don’t beat yourself up over it. Try not to.”

Dr. Stephany Powell

BTR.ORG Is Here For You NCOSE is an incredible resource for victims of sexual exploitation. Here at BTR.ORG, we are available to help you process your trauma and begin your healing journey – attend a Group Session today.

Full Transcript: Anne (00:00): I have Dr. Stephanie Powell on today’s episode. She is the Vice President and Director of Law Enforcement Training and Survivor Services at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. Dr. Powell gained insight into the world of sexual exploitation and trafficking through her 30 years with the Los Angeles Police Department, coupled with her passion for education and her heart for community. She’s an incredible leader who uses her considerable skills and insight to educate the community about the complex and often misunderstood world of sex trafficking and to create positive change for victims. She’s been a powerful speaker and a tenacious educator and advocate for change, and one of the premier experts in this field. She’s been featured on CNN, HLN as well as local media in the Los Angeles area. Welcome, Dr. Powell.

Dr. Stephanie Powell (00:53): Yes, thank you so much for having me.

Sex Trafficking Defined Anne (00:55): On social media, we saw a post from Fight the New Drug where you were talking about how sex trafficking is not only when victims are held against their will, and a lot of people don’t understand that. So can you start with the definition of sex trafficking?

Dr. Stephanie Powell (01:13): Well, when we talk about sex trafficking, I think it needs to be understood that by age alone, when you’re under the age of 18 and someone has used you for commercial sex, that by age alone you’re automatically considered a victim of trafficking in a court of law. If you’re over 18 years of age, you have to prove force fraud or coercion. I think what happens oftentimes is that people only think of sex trafficking victims with the force and the fraud because sometimes, so that coercion piece is a little hard to understand because people go, well, why didn’t they just leave? And so I think what needs to be understood is that there is an emotional bond that one may have with their trafficker.

Understanding the “coercion” piece of sex trafficking So that emotional bond may be because their trafficker was a boyfriend or very good friend, or it could have been a girlfriend or it could have been a family member. Not to mention that it’s like brainwashing. So if you leave, I’m coercing you because if you leave something bad is going to happen to somebody you love. And by the way, this is your fault anyway because you chose to do this. So that’s what human trafficking looks like. Someone can enter at the age of 11 or 12, but someone can also enter at the age of 21. It’s not so much where people will think, it only happens with children, it happens with adults as well.

Anne (02:51): When you say any commercial sex act of someone younger than 18, that age just automatically says this is a victim of sex trafficking. Could that be perhaps a boyfriend and a girlfriend? Let’s say they’re 17. Let’s say he’s got a camera and then he records her and posts it online without her knowledge under any circumstances. If she’s under 18, is that going to be a commercial sex act?

Dr. Stephanie Powell (03:19): It could be considered a commercial sex act if they’re getting money by the posting, but by the mere posting of itself, and they’re under the age of 18, You’re looking at child pornography.

Do sex trafficking victims always KNOW they’re being sex trafficked? Anne (03:33): Child sex abuse material.

Dr. Stephanie Powell (03:35): Yes.

Anne (03:36): Okay. So do you find that some children under the age of 18 are unknowingly participating in sex trafficking? They think they’re just having a good time or something like that and they don’t realize what is going on?

Dr. Stephanie Powell (03:54): Yes. So under the age of 18, they could be unknowingly participating in child sexual abuse material. And so that’s why kids, when I’m talking to teenagers, I tell them, if you’re sharing pictures that you wouldn’t want to share with your grandmother, once you push send, you don’t have any control at all over that picture. So you could get yourself in trouble by sending it. You can get yourself in trouble by not only sending it and sharing it, but by sending it. Because unfortunately, the person who told you they would not share it with anybody else could possibly share it with somebody else. And so then now unfortunately, that image has gone viral.

“They can post it without your consent anywhere online” Anne (04:46): And they can also post it without your consent or without your permission anywhere online for non-commercial or commercial purposes.

Dr. Stephanie Powell (04:53): Exactly. And then the scary part is once it goes to one source, other sources can scrape it off, and that’s how it ends up going viral. So it could be different social media sites that image has now gone to.

Anne (05:09): So listeners to my podcast are women who are married to or have divorced men who they identify as sex addicts. And in several cases that I know, I’ve heard of women who are married and they are being recorded by their husband without their knowledge and they don’t find this out for sometimes years. And then they also find out that he has been posting these videos of them perhaps in their bedrooms or in their shower online for profit. And so she has been a victim of sex trafficking in her own home by her own husband. Can you talk more about why this is sex trafficking and why it’s so dangerous for women?

“It’s not your fault. You’ve been exploited.” Dr. Stephanie Powell (05:57): Because of the fact that that photo has been used or video has been used for purposes of commercial sex and not to mention the exploitation aspect of it. Unfortunately, for women, I think where the danger may come in is for themselves where they will start to blame themselves, if only I had known. And the danger part of it is the depression aspect of it, the blaming themselves, lowering their own self-worth. And what I really want to express to those women today is really understanding that it’s not your fault. You’ve been exploited.

It wasn’t something that you shared in and said it was okay, someone took advantage of you, and the really worst part for them, it was somebody that they trusted. And so when it’s somebody that you trusted that used you in that way, honestly, it is no different than a victim of sex trafficking that’s dealing with a trafficker or a pimp because lots of times those women, it was their boyfriend that ended up pimping them out or they got talked into it because it was showing love. The bottom line is it could really make one feel worthless and that they shouldn’t have done that they should have known. And what I want to say to them is, you did what you were supposed to do. You trusted the person that was the closest to you, you were a wife, and so therefore this is no fault of your own. It is something that they did, meaning the husband that shouldn’t have been done. So don’t beat yourself up over it. Try not to.

When husbands traffic wives Anne (07:58): In your experience with the LAPD, did you ever see any cases like this, and if you did, what types of legal ramifications were there for victims when their husband was the trafficker? Can you talk about that if you have experience with that?

Dr. Stephanie Powell (08:14): I didn’t see any cases where when we talk about videos, but I have had cases where the husband was the trafficker and he was prostituting out his wife, so he was pimping out his wife.

Anne (08:28): Did it make it harder to prosecute when she was married to him? Were there complications due to the relationship or in your experience, was it just kind of the same?

Dr. Stephanie Powell (08:37): The consequences when it is a husband or even a boyfriend is that there is an emotional bond, and so because of that emotional bond, oftentimes women did not want to testify. It’s no different than when you’re dealing with domestic violence where they felt that what their husband did to them was wrong, but what they don’t want is to see them go to jail. They don’t want to see them punished, and it’s like the woman ends up taking the hit meaning, I’ll just deal with this. I’ll just deal with my own pain internally, but I don’t want to see anything happen to him. So it becomes that caregiver archetype where I’ll sacrifice myself in terms of my feelings and my hurt and my pain because I don’t want to see this happen to him.

“You feel love toward him… but for him it was an opportunity to exploit you” Anne (09:38): There’s also, at least from the women that I’ve observed, they’re wondering if he can get better or that he can get treatment or something and not be that way anymore. And so in testifying against it, or even taking the evidence to authorities to have him charged, they don’t want to do that just in case he’s going to get better, then they can stay married and their family can stay together. That type of an idea when it comes to that, I think the idea of for you, you feel love toward him, right? Because you felt like this was the relationship that you had, but for him it was an opportunity to exploit you and he’s been exploiting you in that way and probably a bunch of other ways. Can you talk about why this is a situation that is that rather than seeing it as a relationship, perhaps you should consider that it’s just an opportunity for exploitation and maybe talk about what exploitation is in this circumstance?

Dr. Stephanie Powell (10:37): This circumstance, the exploitation is that somebody, what they did was took videos without someone’s knowledge and exploited them by benefiting from it, benefiting from it financially or benefiting from it in that they had the opportunity to share it and to see what the results of that were, whether they were positive comments or whatever it may be. But it is using an individual, and I think that sure, there are women that do not want to see that person go to jail because I think that there’s a possibility that they might get better. I think what we often, and we’ve all been through something, it may not be that, but as women, we’ve been through something where we stay with a person and think, okay, well, they’re going to get better.

“Can he get better isn’t really the question that I think victims should be asking” Anne (11:31): Yeah. An example I’ve been using lately, I’ve been trying it on a little bit and I haven’t quite flushed it out yet, so if you have any ideas, they are welcome. But the idea of someone who has a very severe contagious disease like Ebola, they’re saying, Hey, I want to be close to you. I want to be in close proximity to you because I want to make sure that our family stays together and stuff like that. You would be like, okay, you need to stay away from me because if you’re close to me, I could get this infectious disease. I will interact with you again when you are completely healed and when there’s no danger. Can he get better isn’t really the question that I think victims should be asking or survivors should be asking.

(12:21): I think that victims need to say to themselves, is he safe? Right? Just like someone with Ebola, you would say, is this person non-contagious right now? Not, can they get better? Not how long is it going to take any of that, but are they currently safe enough to be in close proximity to and if they’re still exhibiting any of these abusive behaviors, and then there’s also the grooming on top of it, so they could just be telling you all the right things and doing all the right things in order to groom you, to continue to exploiting you. It becomes a very precarious situation that is dangerous for women.

“You life is not actually about him – it’s about yourself” Dr. Stephanie Powell (13:02): And what I would add to that is with the Ebola example is it’s not him telling you I’m safe with Ebola. It’s if the doctor says it’s safe, if the research says it’s safe, the idea of it’s safe not coming from the person who’s infected because that’s going to be the same person that says, I won’t do this again, and then they do it again. I think the key is, and sometimes we don’t want to hear this, but sometimes you got to be selfish. You got to look out for self. I think we’re taught as women that to be a wife, it’s really unconditional love is supposed to be really important. You always put your husband first, and I think we got to reserve a little bit of ourself for ourselves. I can’t give you everything and then have nothing of my own.

Anne (14:00): Well, and also acknowledging that it is your life. It’s your life. It’s not his life that you are sharing with him. Your life is not actually about him, it’s about yourself. And if you choose to share it with him, that’s fine, but you don’t owe him anything. You’re not attached at the hip. If you separate, it’s not like your two circulatory systems are combined or something, and if you get some physical distance from this person, he’s going to drop dead, right? I mean, you really are your own person and this really is your life, and if you choose to share it with him, that is a thing that you’re choosing, but it does not necessarily mean that he’s become a part of you, even though it feels like it, especially when women separate and me included, it felt like I was cutting own leg off. It felt awful, but I did survive. My circulatory system was not combined with his. So just thinking of how to realize that your life is important to you and you’re the only person who is going to advocate for your life the way that you will because you’re the only person whose life it is.

“If you give everything of yourself to a person, when that person walks out the door, they have taken all of you with them.” Dr. Stephanie Powell (15:16): Yeah, absolutely. At the end of the day, really you are all that you have, and if you give everything of yourself to a person, when that person walks out the door, they have taken all of you with them. And if you don’t have enough of you to be able to gather up to get strength, it’s going to be devastating. I’m not coming from a standpoint of this is easy, it’s not easy, and it goes back to you did what you were supposed to do in terms of loving and trusting someone that you wanted to spend your life with. You did your part, they didn’t do their part, and really understanding that what I think is really important ladies to understand is you are the prize. They messed up, they crushed or tried to crush the prize, and they need to go. So at the end of the day, even though you may feel that it’s your loss, it really is their loss, and you probably aren’t going to feel this way at first. At the end of the day, you will figure out that it’s their loss and you’re going to be fine because you kept you in tech.

Anne (16:44): We’re going to pause the conversation here. Dr. Powell and I are going to continue next week, so stay tuned.

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Even when we deeply understand the effects of misogyny, whether because we or someone we love have experienced male coercion, manipulation, and violence, it’s important to understand how misogynistic thinking may have subtlety infiltrated its way into our thoughts.

Abusers and their enablers benefit from exploiting women – and the root of that exploitation comes from misogynistic attitudes and beliefs. Dr. Jessica Taylor is back on the BTR.ORG podcast. Listen to this episode and read the full transcript below for more.

“I’m Supposed to Do Most of the Work Around Here” One subtle way that misogyny burrows its subtle way into our lives is by forcing women to take on the emotional, mental, and physical tasks of a household and family.

Abusers may use:

• Weaponized incompetence (acting or exaggerating that they don’t “know how” to accomplish a task well in order to exploit you into doing it)
• Male entitlement (because you’re a woman, you’re supposed to do it)
• Emotional & psychological abuse and/or sexual coercion (threats, intimidation, anger, manipulation, gaslighting – this may include creating a climate where you “walk on eggshells” in order to avoid being abused

Consider This if You’re Exhausted & Carrying the Burdens: “If women listening are thinking, yeah, my husband wants me to be the stopgap in our relationship, I’m the one that needs to apologize. I’m the one that needs to be compliant. I’m the one that needs to set up the things and plan the stuff and make sure everything goes smoothly, but he just gets to call the shots and doesn’t have to do the work. That is a sign that the situation that you’re in is an emotionally and psychologically abusive one because he’s expecting other people to close that gap.”

Anne Blythe, Founder of BTR.ORG

Misogynists Only “Look” a Certain Way “[Abusive men are] learning to disguise [their misogyny]. They’re learning to make it sound more socially desirable and acceptable, but those views and those values, they’ve not gone anywhere. They’re learning how to communicate them and as you say, maintain their power and their control without outing themselves.”

Dr. Jessica Taylor, author

When society believes that misogynistic men only look a certain way – that is, that they are obvious and overt with their hatred of women – it’s easy for manipulative misogynistic abusers to fly under the radar.

Abusive men often manipulate:

• Clergy
• Family court profesisonals
• Health care providers
• Media and journalists
• Work colleagues
• Friends and family
• Mental health care specialists

and others into believing that they are “great guys” who would never subscribe to hateful thinking and abusive behaviors.

There’s Not One “Abusive Man Look” Many women find themselves in denial that they themselves could be abused – and even further deny that their husband fits the profile of “abuser”. This is simply because societally, we’ve been so conditioned to see both abusers and victims as fitting a very specific description.

Understanding that misogyny and abuse are choices made by men regardless of:

• Age
• Sex
• Background (trauma, no trauma, etc)
• Economic status
• Education level
• Race
• Whether or not they use substances like drugs and alcohol
• Religious activity level

Can be life-saving.

BTR.ORG Is Here For You Deconstructing internalized misogyny and accepting that the hatred of women is one of the key reasons that men psychologically abuse and sexually coerce women, can be difficult and lonely. We are here for you – attend a BTR.ORG Group Session today.

Full Transcript: Anne (00:00):Dr. Jessica Taylor is back on today’s episode. If you haven’t heard the past few episodes with her where we introduce her, go back, listen to those first and then join us. Here we are starting the conversation talking about male entitlement, exploitative privilege. James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits, he had this quote in his weekly email blast, and I thought it really related to this. He said, “Ambition is when you expect yourself to close the gap between what you have and what you want. And entitlement is when you expect others to close the gap between what you have and what you want.” And I think that’s kind of the heart of misogyny, is that they want to be able to have a clean house or have children or all the things that men might want, and they expect women to close that gap. Instead of saying, if I want my toilet to be cleaned or if I want my children to be cared for, or if I want this and this and this, I need to do that.

Abusive Men: “These are the things I want, But I Want Someone Else to Do All The Work” (01:04): I need to show up to the school and pick up my child. I need to give my child good medical care. They think I want to be able to call the shots. I want to be able to say, these are the things I want, but then I want someone else to do all the work. I want to be able to get what I want and not have to actually do the thing. So had that man been able to have his wife pick up and take their daughter and do whatever he said he would’ve been happy to have his daughter stay with his ex, right? But because she wasn’t doing what he wanted and they weren’t acting the way that he wanted them to, then it was like, okay, well then I’d rather hire a nanny. I would rather hire someone else to do this because he was not going to do it. If women listening are thinking, yeah, my husband wants me to be the stopgap in our relationship, I’m the one that needs to apologize. I’m the one that needs to be compliant. I’m the one that needs to set up the things and plan the stuff and make sure everything goes smoothly, but he just gets to call the shots and doesn’t have to do the work. That is a sign that the situation that you’re in is an emotionally and psychologically abusive one because he’s expecting other people to close that gap.

Patriarchal Culture: “Women are there to serve men” Dr. Jessica Taylor (02:32): It’s such an interesting quote, isn’t it? I really like it. And I think that the sense of entitlement also comes from the misogynistic belief of men as individuals and also patriarchy as a culture that women are there to serve men, they’re there to have sex with men, they’re there to look after men, they’re there to care for every need of that man, and that when you step out of line and it’s a very specific stereotype, you have a very specific role as a woman in a patriarchy. You’re supposed to be desirable, you’re supposed to be attractive, you’re supposed to be sexually available, but not too desirable, not too attractive, not too sexually available because then you’ve gone too far the other way into empowerment, and there’s a term in psychology in some of the research around this, around sexualization of women called sexy, but not a slut.

“You’re supposed to be everything that man wants you to be” (03:27): So it’s like you’re supposed to be sexually available. You are also supposed to be sexually chaste. You’re supposed to be everything that man wants you to be. If he wants you to be almost like virgin, then that’s what you are. If he wants you to be easy, that’s what you are. If he wants you to have sex with him every day, that’s what you are. If he doesn’t and he wants you to only behave in a certain way, that’s what you are. That’s that level of entitlement as well is that you are supposed to fulfill the role of the inferior woman at all times, and you’re supposed to do what you’re supposed to do. And then that includes the being domesticated. So it means cleaning for him and cooking for him and looking after his kids and being like the family referee, the family secretary, the family accountant.

“They’re getting it from story books and fairytales – misogyny runs deep” (04:09): Some of these men are literally living lives where they do not know they’re born. Women are just doing everything for them because they are almost being made to do that. They’re expected to do that, and it’s the way that we’ve socialized these men and boys and women do that. Women socialize, men and boys like that as well. So moms are doing this. It’s not just dads where they’re getting these messages. They’re getting it from their moms too. They’re getting it from wider society. They’re getting it from the media. They’re getting it from story books and fairytales, misogyny runs deep. It’s all the way through this issue, and then we see it almost manifest in all of these different behaviors and experiences that women and girls are living through and that sense of entitlement that you just talk about, I think it’s a great way of explaining it.

The Woman They Could Not Silence Anne (05:00): This is really highlighted in the book, The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore. It is an incredible story of Elizabeth Packard who endured immense trials in the 18 hundreds due to her husband putting her in an insane asylum. It is amazing. But what really struck me about her story and the story of women being basically property for the majority of history until the late 18 hundreds when they abolished curvature laws, is that up until that point, this is like the late 18 hundreds women were property. They did not have rights. And so at least in America, emancipation Proclamation to free enslaved people was in 1863, and women in America are not emancipated from their husbands until the late 18 hundreds, like 1890s. So 30 years after. The Emancipation Proclamation is when women are granted freedom from their husbands and they’re not necessarily enslaved to their husbands.

“The history of marriage: you basically own a woman” (06:12): I think that historical fact is very, very important. Just like at least in America, everyone celebrates that emancipation date of enslaved people. Why are we also not celebrating 1891 when the state of Indiana passed a law ending curvature laws? Because when a woman was married, she was not even entitled to her own wages. She was not entitled to her own. When I use the word entitled, I mean she actually, it was hers, right? She could not have her own wages. She could not have property, children. Everything belonged to her husband. And then I’m also reminded of the biblical story of Jacob, and even in that biblical story, he works for seven years to purchase Leah, and then he works another seven years to purchase Rachel. The history of marriage as basically you own a woman. It’s actually really early in our time. That was only the late 1890s where marriage kind of shifted from property to partnership. I think that’s an important part of the story.

Women couldn’t develop CREDIT until 1975 Dr. Jessica Taylor (07:18): Do you know, I was so interested listening to that because in the UK that law didn’t change until 1975 that you just explained. Up until 1975 in the UK, women were not allowed to get a mortgage or have their own bank accounts, or there was discrimination that stopped them from getting things like their own credit card until 1975.

Anne (07:49): Same thing in the US with credit cards.

Dr. Jessica Taylor (07:52): And then in 1995 or 1996, the law was officially changed so that a woman didn’t have to perform what was known as wifely duties for the man in marriage. So if you were married to a man in the uk, there is no way that you could be abused or raped by your husband because he owns you, so you had to have sex with him when he wanted. There was no way of reporting your husband for anything because you were his property. And was 1995 or 1996 in the UK when that law changed, and it was only after the year in the mid nineties here, that you could actually report or even describe your husband as raping you or sexually abusing you because prior to that, it didn’t exist. I was a kid then.

Women’s Liberation Day Anne (08:51): Wow. Yeah. I don’t understand why I am all for social justice and racial justice, and I’m so happy that we celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, but why are we not talking about this? Why is there not Women’s Liberation Day from in the UK in 1993 when women were finally liberated from slavery from their husbands? That’s crazy that there’s not a national holiday for that.

Dr. Jessica Taylor (09:26): I ask similar questions in that misogyny is the last form of oppressive discrimination that is literally ignored. So I think there’s much bigger and more accepted movements around things like gay pride and around Black Lives Matter, but feminism, women’s rights is seen as a joke. It’s seen as a bunch of women. They’re hysterical and emotional, and they’re moaning about everything and making out that their rights are being rolled back. So it is so interesting the way that we have framed women as so inferior and unreliable for so long that there is no equivalent movement. There is no equivalent, like you say, there isn’t a day that marks how important that is, that women were liberated from that form of abuse and that form of slavery essentially in their relationships. There is no data mark that. There’s no data mark. Isn’t it brilliant that in the nineties in the uk, we changed the law and it meant that men could not demand sex and intimacy, whatever they wanted.

Anne (10:37): That’s literally a sex slave.

“It’s part of the contract of marriage that you would give that man sex whenever he wanted it” Dr. Jessica Taylor (10:39): Yeah, I know. And there was just nothing you could do at all because it was part of the law that when you got married in the UK up until, as I say, the mid nineties, it’s part of the contract of marriage that you would give that man sex whenever he wanted it. Interestingly as well, that sort of change in the law there in the nineties in the UK is little known, even professionals in this field. I’ll often talk to people in the UK and they were like, really? Was it the nineties? I didn’t even know that was a thing. I didn’t know that that was a law. I didn’t know there was any change that was made, and it’s just not spoken about. It always makes me think about the fact that that means that as we were saying, because this is only the nineties, it’s not a long time ago. It’s 30 years ago or less than 30 years ago. That means that there are women living right now that were in those marriages at that time. They were married at that time. They were under that law at that time. That meant that they had to give sex and essentially they had no consent. There was no consent was there because there’s no need for consent if you are contracted by marriage to be required to have sex with a man.

“We have to act like we respect women while still maintaining the ability to exploit them” Anne (11:57): Well, and you think about it historically too. I think this is why the perpetrators are getting smarter. It’s because for 5,000 years they’ve had these entitlements to sex, household labor, whatever, that women were made or created to serve them. And now that that’s not politically correct, the actual genetics of it, when I say that, I just mean the historical traditions or the way they think has not actually caught up with it. So instead of actually respecting women and actually seeing them as equals, they’re like, huh, okay, well, we have to maintain it somehow, this power structure, because it works for us, but we cannot be so overt about it. We have to be subtle. We have to use the right words. We have to act like we respect women while still maintaining the ability to exploit them. That’s why it’s very difficult in 2023 when you have a professional husband who is educated and smart and wants to look good to his neighbors and wants to show up at church and look great, or wants to show up at the community meeting and be the good guy that they are going to talk and act a certain way so that they maintain their power because they’re not going to maintain their power if they say, oh, women are just here to serve me.

(13:33): Everyone would look at them like, what? That’s not right. They’re maintaining it in different ways than they have in the past,

Abusers maintain power and control – but use subtlety to disguise their misogyny Dr. Jessica Taylor (13:41): And they’re learning to disguise it. They’re learning to make it sound more socially desirable and acceptable that those views and those values, they’ve not gone anywhere. That they’re learning how to communicate them and as you say, maintain their power and their control without outing themselves.

Anne (14:04): Exactly. And I do want to say at the same time, I have met so many healthy men who are not this way. I know from their actions and the way they treat me and the way that I feel around them from my internal warning system, that I have actually more hope for men than I ever did before because I see the men who are healthy, who really do respect women. So that’s not to say that this episode is all about how all men in the world are like this. I think that’s another thing that hurts women, is for women to think that all men are like this. And so if they do want to be married, for example, that they have to sort of settle for an abuser because there’s no other option. There are healthy men out there, and the more we understand what this looks like and feels like, the more we’ll be able to recognize and separate ourselves from men who are dangerous to us in emotional and psychological ways from men who are healthy and men who can be a good partner or a friend or someone who is not going to harm us.

“Not All Men” = “Defending a Point I Did Not Make” Dr. Jessica Taylor (15:10): Hard on that is because not all men is used to derail these conversations for women. The whole, yes, I agree. Not all men are like that, and they’re like, yeah, I know. I didn’t say all men did I? Do you know what I mean? You end up having to go back to people and go, I never said that. So you’re defending a point I did not make.

Anne (15:28): Absolutely. The only reason I bring that up is I hear a lot of women saying, well, I want to be married, for example, and since there’s never going to be a man out there that is going to be completely respectful of me, I’m going to stay married to this man. So that’s why I say that. But not to say it’s not a huge problem.

Dr. Jessica Taylor (15:50): Obviously there’s amazing men out there are. I mean, some of the people in my life that are my biggest supporters who have been there for me through things and have just helped me so much have been men. I’ve still got guys in my life right now that have elevated me, listened to me throughout my whole career, everything that I’ve done, they’ve been the one at the back going, keep going, you’re amazing. You’ve got this. I believe in everything that you’re doing, and they’ve listened and they’ve opened doors and all sorts of things, and they’ve never ever made me feel uncomfortable. And I know 100% that is a safe guy. I know that I can feel it same as you. So these guys are out there. They are. But I think that for some women, the fear of being alone and living a single life terrifies them so much that they’re always thinking if, oh God, if I leave this guy, how am I going to find someone else? And actually the first thing that needs to happen is you need to be safe and well on your own alone.

“Being on my own has got to be better than this” Anne (17:04): Yes. Yeah. Well, I think the idea that you have to have a man or something is also a misogynistic idea.

Dr. Jessica Taylor (17:12): Absolutely. It is. And it means that you are always scared of living life alone. And there’s nothing wrong with that. And I know loads of women that have been through long abusive hard marriages, and then they get into 50 and 60 and going, do you know what am I doing? I’m wasting years here. I’m miserable. I don’t need to do this. I could be out there on my own and it terrifies them, but at some point something happens and they say, do you know what? Being on my own has got to be better than this. It’s got to be healthier than this. And it’s a big leap. It’s a big scary jump. And I know that I had to make that, but I was much younger. I was 28. I remember that. I remember lying in bed and thinking, even if you are on your own for years and years and years, or even for the rest of your life, it has to be better than living in this.

“But what if ALL men are dangerous?” (18:10): You cannot stay in this. This is awful. This is destroying you. And I meet women all the time that are going through that same thought process. But you’re right. Then it comes down to, but what if I don’t find anyone? But what if all men are dangerous? And what if I find another purpose and then another perp and then another perp? And the thing is that can happen. I think the message I would want to get across there is that that has got nothing to do with you. That is not your fault. That is statistically is just very likely because there are so many abusive man there are that you are very likely to then meet another guy, even if you meet him for one date and he turns out to be an absolute horrible, horrible person. You could meet him literally for two hours.

“There’s nothing I need a man for” (18:57): Or it’s a guy that you get into a serious relationship with and you’ve been together for a few months or a few years, and then you realize, oh no, I am back in abuse. How has this happened? This guy’s got total control over me. How has this happened to me? Again, it doesn’t matter. It’s so common that you are likely to be surrounded by perpetrators, and it does mean that I think the fears of women who are thinking, but what if I never find a safe man to have a life with? I think they’re valid fears, aren’t they?

Anne (19:28): I agree. I am not dating and I don’t want to date, and I don’t want a partner necessarily. I mean, if somebody came along, that would be fine. But my thinking, what if I can’t find a healthy man is not even in my brain because I don’t care if I never have sex again. That’s fine, right? I’m okay with that. There’s nothing I need a man for. There’s no worry in my mind or in my heart that I quote won’t be able to find a healthy man. If I don’t find one, great. I’m fine. I’m happy. I love being a mom. My kids are amazing. I love my career. I have really good friends, and I don’t mind so much romance. Actually, kind of even just saying the word romance gives me the heeby-jeebies a little bit. It’s like a little bit creepy for me. I’m just not really that interested in it.

Are we putting ourselves in danger by believing that romance is a need? (20:29): I would be interested in a partner if that person kind of came my way, but I do think women put themselves in danger when they think it’s a need. When they think it’s something that if they don’t get it, they’re going to be somehow missing out. You can have a beautiful, wonderful life with amazing relationships with people that are intimate, and maybe not sexually per se, but my relationship with my kids is beautiful and my sister and my friends, and I really appreciate that. And if I can meet all of my other needs through friends and work and other things, then my life is so fulfilled. So I just don’t want any woman out there thinking, I need a man or I’m not going to be able to find one. You don’t need to find one. You can stand on your own two feet and you can meet your own needs and you can also meet other people because you do need people. You do need friends. You do need relationships, but you don’t necessarily need a sexual partner with a man. Finding a healthy partner to have sex with is so overwhelming, and so that just seems impossible that that’s why I’m like, nah, I am not going to worry about that. I can think about that.

Dr. Jessica Taylor (21:50): I’m not surprised at all.

Check Out Dr. Taylor’s Books Anne (21:52): This conversation has been amazing. Dr. Taylor has three books. They’re all available on Amazon. Check them out. The one you may be most interested in listeners is called The Indicative Trauma Impact Manual, which may help you figure out yourself as you are responding to the abuse that you may be currently experiencing, and that might help you reframe or understand your responses to abuse rather than thinking that it somehow has something to do with you or that you’ve caused it. Dr. Taylor, thank you so much for spending so much time talking with us. We really appreciate your time.

Dr. Jessica Taylor (22:55): Thank you so much for having me and for listening, and yeah, it’s been awesome. So thank you and I’ll talk to you again.

View Details

Have you experienced the terror and stress of the family court system?

Dr. Jessica Taylor is back on the BTR.ORG Podcast to discuss how and why abusers terrorize victims via the family court system. Listen to the episode now and read the full transcript below for more.

Do Abusive Men REALLY Want What They’re Fighting For? Abusive men fight tooth-and-nail for several key “things” in court battles with their victims, generally including:

• Child custody
• Parenting time without having to adhere to any mutual rules regarding the children
• Property
• Child care (either fighting to pay less, or be paid out more by the victim)
• Alimony (similar to childcare)
• Financial assets

Many victims are shocked and confused when abusers vehemently put up a fight for things that they never expressed interest in before (time with the children) or are morally entitled to (perhaps property you owned prior to the marriage).

It’s important to understand that abusers often seek opportunities to disrupt your emotions and keep you in a state of panic and stress by fighting for what they know you care about – rather than accepting a divorce situation that is mutually agreeable.

“He just wanted to win” “I’m reminded of another story of a woman who had a very young child within a year and she was not married to the man and she actually crossed from Canada into the US to get away from him. Then he fought her and fought her and fought her. She kidnapped the kid and all this stuff and was in court just the whole time and she was terrified. So she stayed in America, tried to fight it in court, the stress of it maybe, maybe not, I don’t know. But she ended up having brain cancer and dying. And the second that she passed away, he stopped all the court stuff and didn’t want to see the daughter.”

Anne Blythe, Founder of BTR.ORG

But Why Is He Doing This? Why would someone put so much time, effort, and money into the family court system if they weren’t actually invested in what they were fighting for?

In the words of many victims in the BTR.ORG community, “Why is he doing this to me?”

While every situation is different, we have generally found that men who use the family court system to further abuse their wife, ex-wife, and/or children are motivated by:

• The “joy” of winning and watching the victim “lose”
• Feeling in control of the victim
• Knowing that they (the abuser) is at the core of the victim’s thoughts and feelings

BTR.ORG IS Here For You At BTR.ORG, we know how absolutely exhausting it is to seek justice and safety in the family courts, only to feel further gaslit and lost. We are here for you as you work toward peace. Attend a BTR.ORG Group Session today.

Full Transcript: Anne (00:00):I have Dr. Jessica Taylor back on today’s episode again. This one is absolutely related to what happened to Leah, an ongoing custody battle. Again, this was recorded before Ohm’s death. Sorry, I keep bringing that up, but it just happened this week for me. I know that this is going to air much after that, but it was just very eerie. So if you did not listen to last week’s episode, listen to that first and then join us here. I would say the most common that we see here at BTR is through the Pornography Addiction Recovery Industrial Complex, which is what I call it. They’re found out for their porn use, for example, or their affairs or soliciting prostitutes, sex addiction therapy, and then they start telling people, yes, I am a sex addict and I’m getting treatment, but now I’m just concerned about my wife. She also needs to get help because she’s experienced this traumatic event in finding out that I’m an addict and needs help.

“She needs to go to S-Anon or COSA because she’s codependent” (01:00): And everybody’s like, oh yeah, she needs to work on her side of the street. She needs to go to SANON or COSA because she’s codependent or something like that. And then she has to go to unquote treatment too for his sex addiction. In the meantime, she’s being literally emotionally and psychologically abused, trying to care for her husband who is sick. Apparently I’m using quotes for sick too, because he’s got this sad addiction and she is not in any way, shape or form seen as a victim of sexual abuse. She’s not been able to give consent for her sexual relationship. She didn’t even know any of this was going on. She wasn’t able to process any of it. She’s been lied to deceived emotionally and psychologically abused the whole time. It is really bad and she’s getting that from the sex addiction therapist. She’s getting it from maybe marriage and family therapist, and she also might be getting it from clergy.

(01:58): And so it just gets super, super hard to see what’s going on when you have what feels like all these professionals and people who seem to care about you, trying to hold your family together, kind of in you. You’re the glue because you’re sort of healthy in this situation, but you’re almost as sick as he is and he’s not bad. He’s just sick. It kind of reminds me of that section in the maid, the Netflix show, The Maid, when the dad is just trying to say he’s not the enemy, the alcohol is the enemy. Do you remember that part?

“I’m not working on anything. This isn’t my problem. These weren’t my actions. These aren’t my choices. I’m not getting involved.” Dr. Jessica Taylor (02:32): I haven’t seen that, but that makes a lot of sense. It feels very familiar. It’s this type of thing that you hear a lot, and I wonder if the example that you just gave was, I think that’s just another way that we force women to take responsibility for men’s actions and for men’s abuse. It’s like a way of roping her back in and being like, you are a problem as well and you need to work on this stuff too. And it’s like at what point are women allowed to go? Do you know what? No, absolutely not. I’m not working on anything. This isn’t my problem. These weren’t my actions. These aren’t my choices. I’m not getting involved. He needs to deal with his own problems. He needs to take full accountability, which means not spreading that accountability to me.

Anne (03:18): Yes. Also, this man is currently right now psychologically and emotionally unsafe. I need to distance myself from this because continued gaslighting, his continued lying about me, he’s continued to see his continued manipulation. Even if it sounds nice, is emotionally and psychologically violent to me, it is harming me. I am currently in an unsafe situation. Some of the pornography addiction recovery therapists, for example, will require that a woman not consider divorce for a year until he’s been in treatment. Rather than saying, okay, you’re currently unsafe, let’s get you to safety. I’m not saying that necessarily means divorce per se, because also divorce does not solve the problem if you share kids because if you share kids who can continue to emotionally and psychologically abuse you even post-divorce. So I’m talking actual emotional and psychological safety from the very beginning, and I don’t know what that means.

“Women have to make these strategic decisions about what is going to give them the most emotional and psychological safety” (04:22): I don’t know if it means divorce or not. I’m not saying that, but I do think a lot of abuse professionals think that divorce, oh, we just got to get her out of there. And I’m like, well, that also doesn’t solve the problem. I was severely emotionally and psychologically abused post-divorce for eight years because I share kids with my abuser and all the women listening. That’s why they’re afraid of getting divorced too, because they think, well, maybe I’ll actually be safer and I can manage it a little bit better if I remain married, but then try to set up boundaries in marriage. Maybe I can make sure that my kids won’t have to go every other weekend. My kids will be safer. Those sorts of things. So women have to make these strategic decisions about what is going to give them the most emotional and psychological safety. But it’s really tricky when other people and professionals, the court system doesn’t understand it. Luckily the UK is way better than America in understanding coercive control. So that’s good news for you guys.

UK Law & Coercive Control Dr. Jessica Taylor (05:22): Yeah, well, I’ve got quite a lot of colleagues in the US and we have many conversations that go along that route until I sort of explain what it’s actually like here. And they’re like, oh, I see. Because a lot of it’s lip service. It sort of don’t get me wrong, almost the academic understanding is there. So we have a definition of coercive control. It’s included in law, it’s accepted as a thing that exists. So in that way, yes, I accept that we’ve made progress there, but when you actually attempt to demonstrate or prove coercive control or you need to help a woman who is very clearly being coerced and is in a very psychological and emotional abusive relationship with somebody, you will get the same sort of dismissal, not believing her pushback, reframing her as the problem, making her take responsibility, telling her that you need to get therapy together. I don’t know, I think we’ve done similar recently in the UK around misogyny where some of the police forces are saying, oh, we should be able to charge these men with misogynistic crime.

Anne (06:34): Oh, kind of like a hate crime.

“Misogynistic Hate Crime” Dr. Jessica Taylor (06:36): Yes, yes, exactly. So it’s misogynistic hate crime. So that would include coercive control, domestic abuse. So essentially they can say that it’s aggravated by the misogyny and then it makes the sentence heavier. It makes the system almost work better. But the problem with that is that that all sounds brilliant, but it just doesn’t work in real life because the majority of these professionals, whether they’re working in the family court or whether they’re in police or whether they’re social workers or whoever they are, they still couldn’t even define misogyny. Most of ’em can’t spell it. They don’t really know what any of it is. I dunno what it looks like. They’re misogynistic themselves. And also, and I always make a point of saying this, that statistically these professionals that are working in these environments are just as likely to be being abused. So especially the women, they’re going home to an abuser at the same rate as the general public. All of the research suggests that professionals in these roles are just as likely to be being abused as their clients, and that means that the men in those roles are just as likely to be perpetrators as men in the general population. So this means that they have their own biases, their own experiences, their own issues, their own conclusions, their own self-blame that they then put on women who are trying to get help.

Domestic Abuse Victims & The Justice System Anne (08:00): Right now I have a friend who her soon to be ex has a protective order and her victim advocate is saying, you need to report these additional crimes that he’s committed. She’s trying to get divorced from him and her family court attorney is saying, no, no, no, do not report it because then you’ll look bad and it will affect your divorce negatively. She’s getting different advice from two law professionals and the two judges who work for the same county are going to view her domestic abuse completely differently even though they work for the same county and they’re both supposed to be on the side of justice.

Dr. Jessica Taylor (08:41): Yeah, this happens in the UK as well. I mean, the way you’ve just described that if somebody outside of our field of work listen to that, they’d be like, that’s absolutely ridiculous. That’s because it is. But that is what we are seeing here too. So it’s this sort of like, don’t bring up the abuse, don’t report the abuse when you’re going through the divorce or the custody type hearings or child contact hearings because it’ll make you look bad. It makes you look like you’re accusing him and it’s going to make everything harder. But you have a right to report that stuff to keep you safe and if you wanted to, and it’s appalling that you have to almost play a game to try and keep you and the kids as safe as possible, which might actually mean that you can’t even report what you have a right to report.

“They know full well that their ex or partner is going to be able to successfully manipulate every [court] professional in that case” (09:29): It’s just wild. And like you say, these are judges sitting in the same areas, in the same courts supposed to be working towards the same aim, which is justice and safety and protection. It’s impossible. It’s impossible to do this while so many women are terrified of going through, as you say, going through the divorce process, going through a custody process, going through any kind of family assessment type process, because on top of that, they know full well that their ex or their partner is going to be able to successfully manipulate every professional in that case.

Anne (10:07): My personal opinion, and I don’t know how you feel from your professional point of view, is that these types of abusers do not respect civil divorce decrees. They just kind of do whatever they want because there is no enforcement or not very good enforcement. So if they don’t do something that’s in the civil parenting plan for example, then it’s very difficult to enforce it. Whereas a protective order or some other criminal type things are easier to enforce. So my personal opinion, currently this could change is report go with what the criminal people say rather than the divorce people because the criminal prosecution and criminal action could actually have a consequence that could keep you safer than your divorce decree. Maybe, maybe not. I mean, that’s my current way of thinking about it, but I don’t know. Do you have any thoughts about that?

“It’s ME on trial now” Dr. Jessica Taylor (11:05): That’s so interesting. I would be inclined to on paper to agree with what you’ve just said, but I also accept how tentative and you’re being about it, and I get that totally. Because in the UK for example, if you there lots and lots of women going through this where they keep trying to tell the truth in their divorce hearings, in their child contact hearings and things like that. And then what happens is that the whole thing gets flipped over on them and they’re the abuser and they’re fabricating it and they get accused of parental alienation, they get accused of fabricating abuse and things like that. And then suddenly those women are like, oh my god, it’s me on trial now. And I did not expect this to happen. I’ve worked with women around the world. I worked with a woman a couple of years ago in Australia who went through exactly this experience and then all of a sudden she realized this case had been turned upside down and suddenly it was her on trial, not him. And then they decided to remove her, completely remove her access to her daughter and said that she was unsafe mom and that she was lying about this coercive control, lying about the abuse and that by continually talking about it and bringing it up and trying to report it, she was actually going to harm the little girl and all this sort of rubbish.

Anne (12:25): She was taken away from her.

“He did it purely to harm his ex-wife.” Dr. Jessica Taylor (12:27): She was removed completely and she had no access to her whatsoever and they were refusing to give her even contact and access because she was saying she was so harmful. I’ll tell you this story, just it has a really good ending, thankfully, because I remember working with her and the little girl was removed just before Christmas and I honestly thought that that woman was going to end her life. She texted me several times and was like, I can’t do this. I’m not living without her. I dunno how this went so wrong. I just wanted to divorce him. I would’ve been happy with shared contact. I dunno how the hell this happened. And it just changed her life and he did all of this out of control in spite he had no interest in being a full-time parent to that little girl. Not a chance. He was a businessman.

(13:11): He was out and about all the time. He was always traveling. He had absolutely no interest in that child. He did it purely to harm his ex-wife. And within a few months that child had been palmed off to childcare to nannies, nurseries, schools, afterschool clubs. That kid never saw her dad. And it was only after a few months of the school, every now and then reporting being like, she’s not getting picked up, she’s not being looked after, she’s not looking well, she’s ill. And then he moved her out of area and nobody knew where this child had gone. And I was so absolutely just gobsmacked blown away that something happened. I dunno exactly how it happened. She got a good lawyer, the woman got a good lawyer, and they managed to actually get that child back and fully removed from the man that happened in 2020. So the little girl is now eight and they’re doing really well and they’re super happy. But the horror that woman has been put through.

Anne (14:18): Well, and the child, right? The woman and her child.

“The second that she passed away, he stopped all the court stuff and didn’t want to see the daughter” Dr. Jessica Taylor (14:22): Absolutely. The little girl. And I know that it took ages for the little girl to sort of recover from all of that trauma. And I remember speaking to the woman a few times and she was like, she’s just not the same anymore. I was like, you have to give her time. You’re going to have to just be there and just give her time because she’s just been through just life changing. And I remember her saying to me, do you think she’ll grow up and remember this? And I said, yes, likely it’s likely at that age she will have memories of all of this. And she was saying, oh, I hoped that she wouldn’t have any. And she’s young enough not to have any memories. I know. I think she will at that age.

Anne (14:59): I’m reminded of another story of a woman who had a very young child within a year and she was not married to the man and she actually crossed from Canada into the US to get away from him. Then he fought her and fought her and fought her. She kidnapped the kid and all this stuff and was in court just the whole time and she was terrified. So she stayed in America, tried to fight it in court, the stress of it maybe, maybe not, I don’t know. But she ended up having brain cancer and dying. And the second that she passed away, he stopped all the court stuff and didn’t want to see the daughter.

Dr. Jessica Taylor (15:46): Oh my God, that’s horrific.

“Just purely out of control” Anne (15:48): So she basically for the, I think it was until her daughter was 11, maybe was in court just with this awful, awful court case. The daughter would have to go and be with him in Canada from, I mean, it was so bad. And the second that she passed away, he was like, oh, nevermind. I don’t want to see my daughter, her husband, the woman’s husband who was a really good man and was trying to help her figure it out. He is now the full-time dad. She calls him dad, and he’s the one who takes care of her, but they’ve never even wanted to file for adoption or anything because they’re just too afraid that I think he is her legal guardian, but they’re too afraid that he’ll say no.

Dr. Jessica Taylor (16:32): And he probably will, he’ll probably would say no, just purely out of control.

Anne (16:37): Interesting though, because he works pretty well with the husband now that she died. He’s like, oh yeah, no problem. Yeah, he signed the stuff for the legal guardianship and stuff. He just doesn’t want to do the official adoption.

Dr. Jessica Taylor (16:50): Is that misogyny or is it that he feels like he won in the end and she died and because –

Anne (16:57): He killed her?

“The system is failing left, right, and center” Dr. Jessica Taylor (16:58): Yeah. Oh God, that’s an awful case. And women are just going through so much and the system is failing them left, right, and center.

Anne (17:09): Exactly. And that’s not to say had she wouldn’t have died, we don’t know what would’ve happened with her cancer, but it was just very interesting to see that when she did die, he was like, oh, nevermind. We don’t have to do the court case anymore. She doesn’t have to come live with me.

Dr. Jessica Taylor (17:24): Yeah, because you would think if that’s what he really wanted, that as soon as she died, he would be like, right now I get full custody of my kid that I’ve been fighting for 11 years.

Anne (17:33): He would be on the plane.

Dr. Jessica Taylor (17:36): Yeah.

“They just want to win” Anne (17:36): That day if that were me, I’d be on the plane like, oh, this thing I’ve been praying for has happened. Oh, we’re finally reunited. I’m so grateful to have you. Even when she would go, when she had to go back up to Canada to be with, he didn’t really pay attention to her and she knew it and she didn’t like it, but it’s interesting that that wasn’t at all what happened and they act that way and so they can win the cases. But just like the man you described, they’re not getting picked up, they’re not really taking care of them, they don’t really care. They just want to win.

Dr. Jessica Taylor (18:09): Oh, absolutely. It really is just a big power game and it speaks to what is at the core of emotional, psychological abuse and of sexual coercion. It’s all about power. It’s all about control. It’s all about breaking you down and being able to control you in the way that they want to. So it makes sense that if that is the way they think and the way they behave and what they get out of that, then they are going to continue that whichever way they can. And as you say, for those of us with children with perpetrators, which includes me, it’s very, very difficult. You realize you are attached to these perpetrators for, I mean in some cases the rest of your life because you’ve got kids with them and in a good scenario just until your kids are 18, 20 years old or whatever, and that you can completely cut off.

“They will just find a way of manipulating the situation so that they can play thier power game all over again” (19:08): But in reality, you never really can completely escape those perpetrators. You’re attached to them for a very long time and their perpetrators, they’re going to find ways of harming you over the years, even as those decades pass. And you can understand the amount of trauma that causes for women who are attached to these perpetrators. With children, it’s years and years and years of trying to keep yourself psychologically safe, trying to keep yourself emotionally healthy, trying to move on, trying to process everything that happened when you were together and the horrible post-divorce mess that lots of us have gone through. And then years down the line, there’s still things that crop up. There’s still things that they might stick their all in or be difficult about. I mean, just examples like getting a passport for your child so you can go on holiday or I dunno, the fact that your kid needs somewhere to stay for a bit or they want to go to a different college or university or there’s so many things or they might have a health problem and you are both required to help them. I dunno, it could be anything, but they will just find a way of manipulating that situation so that they can play their power game all over again.

Anne (20:28): We’re going to pause the conversation here today, so stay tuned because Dr. Jessica Taylor and I are going to continue our conversation next week.

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Is gaslighting just another popular buzzword or is it a calculated maneuver that abusers use to keep women stuck?

Dr. Jessica Taylor, author of Why Women Are Blamed for Everything and Sexy But Psycho is on the podcast. Read the full transcript below and tune in now for more.

Abusers Use THESE PHRASES to Gaslight YOU Wondering if you’ve been a victim of gaslighting? Dr. Jessica Taylor and Anne share some of these common phrases and conversations that abusers may use with victims to distort their reality and cause them to wonder if they’re capable of discerning truth:

• I’ve asked our family and friends to pray for you.
• You’re overly emotional.
• You’re mentally unwell.
• Have you been taking your medication?
• Have you considered going to therapy?
• No one is going to believe you.
• No one is going to support you/like you/believe you/listen to you.
• I know you care about our family, and ever since you started ______ (listening to this podcast, reading this book, talking to this friend, etc), you’ve been disconnected/too “feminist”/hurting our family, etc.
• The light in your eyes is gone – I think you’ve lost the Spirit.

Abusers Use THESE PHRASES to Gaslight Advocates Advocates include YOUR family, friends, clergy, victim advocates (such as DV workers), medical care providers, and others:

• She hasn’t been taking her medication.
• Please pray for her – she needs all of our help right now.
• She’s been acting unusual lately.
• I’ve done all I can.
• I’m worried she’s losing her mind.
• I’m scared she’s going to leave the Church.
• She’s been violent with me and the children.
• I think she’s cheating on me.
• I love her so much, I wish she’d come back to us.

BTR.ORG Is Here For You It’s scary, isn’t it? When you realize that you may be a victim of psychological violence.

We are here for you. Attend a BTR.ORG Group Session today to process your trauma in a safe place.

Full Transcript: Anne (00:00): It’s interesting to me that I was on sort of this kick about how the media does not get it right long before the murder of my friend’s son. So we cover it here again. This interview happened before the murder of my friend’s son. So as you listen, keep that in mind. I have Dr. Jessica Taylor, the author of Why Women Are Blamed for Everything and the newly released Sexy But Psycho. She has a PhD in forensic psychology and is the director of Victim Focus. Welcome, Dr. Taylor.

Dr. Jessica Taylor (00:37): Thank you so much for having me.

Anne (00:40): Dr. Taylor is amazing and I’m gonna have her start by introducing her organization, Victim Focus, and then also talking a little bit about her books.

What is Victim Focus? Dr. Jessica Taylor (00:48): Victim Focus is six years old. We work all over the world. We have tons of free resources, you know, of understanding abuse, misogyny, violence, grooming, sexual violence, domestic abuse, assault, harassment, victim blaming, rape myths, beliefs, narratives, stereotypes. It’s, you know, I wanted to create this hub of just everything that could be useful to women and girls who’ve been subjected to male violence. So that’s what it’s become and it’s just growing and growing and growing. And then as part of that, I wrote Why Women Are Blamed For Everything. After I did my PhD and the PhD in forensic psychology specialized in the psychology of victim blaming of women and girls who’ve been subjected to male violence and how women and girls are like convinced to self-blame as well. And the trauma that, that obviously then compounds because you’ve already been through so much.

Why Women are Blamed for Everything & Sexy But Psycho (01:51): And then you’ve got this added level of victim blaming from maybe your friends, your family, your ex-partner, whoever it was even services and professionals. And then on top of that, you’ve got almost like this social grooming for you to take responsibility for what happened. I wrote Why Women are Blamed for Everything because of that. And then after that I wrote Sexy But Psycho. Why Women Are Blamed for Everything looks at the psychology of victim blaming and self-blame of women all around the world. Sexy But Psycho looks at the way that we convince women and girls that they are mentally ill when they are trying to disclose abuse, trauma, violence, rape, assault, child abuse. It’s very, very common for you to be, you know, reframed as having a personality disorder or mentally ill. So that’s what Sexy But Psycho is about. And then this week on Monday we released the item, which is the first ever trauma informed manual of mental health that has absolutely no disorders or medicalized language in it.

“[TV] just sensationalizes violence against women and girls” (02:52): And it’s like an A to Z of every possible trauma response and coping mechanism that is likely to happen when you’ve been through trauma. So it’s been a wild journey. I started doing, you know, TV and Netflix and stuff a couple of years ago. And generally speaking, if I’m commissioned to do TV, which is I do probably two or three series a year now, it’s because a producer is usually asked for like a victim voice, like somebody who will stand up for the women in that documentary because that happens so little and there’s so much true crime type doc stuff out at the moment and it just sensationalizes violence against women and girls like murder and rape. And there’s very rarely a voice like mine that’s constantly reminding the, the viewer, the audience that this is what it would’ve been like for this woman and this is how terrified she would’ve been and this is why she felt like this. So it’s been amazing to do that as well.

“It was not as helpful as people think that it’s going to be” Anne (03:48): That’s wonderful. I’m so grateful that you’re doing that. And I wish more people would do that. Right now I’m on sort of this kick where at least in America currently a lot of the news will say there was a domestic disturbance. Like they were having a fight. And then he killed her rather than saying he was abusive. And he killed her. And then it’s interesting ’cause at the bottom of that article they’ll say like, call the National Domestic Abuse hotline as if calling a number is . You know, I mean it will help for sure, but those of us who have dealt with it and are living it, we’ve called those numbers, you know, and it was not as helpful as people think that it’s going to be. But even just the reporting of it prior to linking to that at the bottom is very misogynistic and sort of like the alleged or that she was a part of it somehow.

Mutualizing and Neutralizing Dr. Jessica Taylor (04:41): Well, I, I call that mutualizing – mutualizing and neutralizing because it’s like, you know how you just gave the example of like they are having a fight or it is a domestic, it’s like it reframes this whole system of power and control and abuse from one person to the other as this mutual neutral, almost like a relationship problem that is almost, I dunno if you ever hear people say, oh, it’s like six of one and a half dozen of the other, it’s like, oh, you know, it’s, they’re as bad as each other type narrative. And that’s absolutely not true in abuse. There is the point of abuse like this is that it is systematic. It’s about power and control. It’s about the perpetrator getting something out of controlling, destroying, breaking down that woman. It, it’s not mutual, but the language, like, you know, the examples you just gave minimizes it and trivializes it, doesn’t it?

“Instead of listening, they accused us” Anne (05:36): I’m so grateful for women like you who are sounding the alarm about this. Why do you think it took some of us so long to understand what was actually happening? For example, that when we said, Hey, this is what’s going on, and then instead of listening, they accused us. But we didn’t figure that out for a long time. When I say we, I just mean women in general. Like from the beginning of time . I feel like now there are many, many women who understand this and they can see it for what it is. But there are also so many women who still can’t and therapists and institutions and court systems and others that cannot see it. Why do you think it took so long for some of us to recognize what was happening?

“Lots of women and girls grow up in abusive households” Dr. Jessica Taylor (06:25): I think there’s multiple answers to this. I mean, the first answer for me is that we are groomed from birth as women and girls to tolerate, accept, minimize, normalize, and even sexualize the violence and abuse and power that’s used against us. And that is a insidious, careful global considered process. And it’s very successful. Which means that lots of women and girls grow up in abusive households. They’re abused by dads granddads and uncles and brothers, which my research has shown repeatedly. You know, that brothers and and dads are very likely to be the first perpetrators against a woman or girl. And then you go on and get into these relationships and these men and teenage boys then dehumanize you harm, you, abuse you, assault you, rape you, whatever it is. But you have been so successfully groomed from birth that it’s either normal or that if they do these things, it’s your fault.

“Lots of [us] have been through male violence where you don’t even know you’re in it” (07:25): You must have caused them to do that. And so you internalize it over a period of time. There is nothing to sound the alarm about, there’s nothing to disclose, there’s nothing to report. Because to you, that’s your normal, that’s your life. And lots of women listening will recognize that sort of at some point, all of us have been in a situation like this. When you, if you’ve been through this, which I’m assuming lots of your listeners and you and me mm-hmm. have have been through male violence where you don’t even know you’re in it. Like you’re living in it every day. And you’re, to some extent, like your life is at risk, like some of the violence and the abuse can be life changing. And yet you still haven’t really clicked in to what it is you are living in and how it’s deliberate, it’s systematic, it, you know, the perpetrator, your partner or your ex wants that to happen.

“You will very often question everything that’s ever happened to you” (08:13): They’re enjoying it, they’re taking something from it. And so it takes a long time. The other thing I think that means that it takes ages for us to click in and to realize what’s going on is that perpetrators will often do a great job of convincing you that it’s you with the problem. They will gaslight you, they will reframe you as mentally disordered that you don’t remember things, right, that you overreact, that you are overemotional, that you’re hysterical, you know? And so you will very often question everything that’s ever happened to you. Like, did it really happen like that? Or like, am I, am I overthinking it? Am I overanalyzing what he just said? Or like, was it really as bad as I’m making out? Maybe I’ve remembered it wrong, maybe he’s right. And I think that we have created over millennia a culture of convincing women that they’re just mentally inferior and they don’t remember things, right. They don’t understand things, they’re over emotional. They overreact to everything. And it means that we second guess everything.

Emotional & Psychological Abuse & Sexual Coercion Anne (09:18): Here at BTR, we focus on emotional and psychological abuse and sexual coercion. Not that that doesn’t involve physical assault at some point or another ’cause it can, but we wanna focus on that because I feel like it’s easier to see the physical abuse even if you don’t understand it. For example, if someone punches a wall, right? You might not think you’re being physically intimidated per se, or that that’s physical abuse, but it is. So people can be living in that, women can be living in that and not recognize it. And the emotional and psychological abuse and sexual coercion is so difficult to see because it’s all of those manipulation tactics and deceit. And so for so long because you weren’t necessarily getting punched in the face or you know, tied up or something like that. I would say most of our listeners are in that category where they haven’t necessarily been punched in the face or experienced a physical violence.

Emotional & Psychological Violence (10:17): This type of emotional violence of trying to completely dismantle somebody’s reality is extremely emotionally violent and it’s extremely psychologically abusive. And that is what is so concerning to me. It also is concerning to me that you never have physical violence without emotional and psychological abuse. You know, it ramps up and it starts from psychological and emotional abuse. So if women can recognize the psychological and emotional abuse, my hope is they can get too emotional and psychological safety, which is super important. But that’s also the foundation of safety because if you’re psychologically safe and emotionally safe, chances are you’re also going to be physically safe as well. I mean, maybe not, but my audience is people who are being abused by their partners. So I guess I’m not talking about like on the street, some random person coming up to you, right? Yeah. So if your partner or if your husband is going to physically abuse you, you can know they’ve also emotionally and psychologically abused you.

Dr. Jessica Taylor (11:24): Yeah, definitely. Because I mean, even if you’ve been physically assaulted, the likelihood is that they’ve already sort of set the scene for that behavior anyway through emotional manipulation and coercion. And then once they’ve committed that assault, they will then slip right back into that emotional and psychological manipulation

Anne (11:44): Or continue it.

“Years and years of almost just total mental destruction” Dr. Jessica Taylor (11:46): Absolutely. In order to either cover what they’ve done or convince you it wasn’t that bad, or to convince you not to tell anybody, or that you led them to do that, that you pushed their buttons, that they wouldn’t have behaved like that if it wasn’t for what you said or what you did or you know, all that sort of stuff that’s gonna go on. But I identified very much with what you, with what you’re saying as well from obviously from a professional perspective as a psychologist, but also from a personal perspective because the marriage that I was in years ago was generally not at all physically abusive. There was a couple of incidents towards the end and, and then I left, but actually it was years and years of almost just total mental destruction. And I was lucky that my coping mechanism was studying and reading books and working and like I had this little escape.

The Calculated Breaking Down of a Woman’s Sense of Self (12:38): But I think once he figured out that that was the escape, that was what he started attacking. So it was this constant like, oh, you think you’re so clever, why are you always reading those books? You think you’re so good. You think you’re gonna be something and nobody really likes you, you’re never going to go anywhere, you know, nobody’s gonna be your friend. And it was like this, like if I ever made a new friend, it was like, oh, she probably doesn’t even like you, that she probably feel sorry for you. And it’s this constant trying to break you down piece by piece. And, and for a lot of women that have also lived through that, it stays with you that stuff for a long time. You know, you question yourself, it affects your self-esteem, it affects the way that you understand yourself. It affects your confidence in your own judgment and in your, you know, even things like your ambition, your dreams, your decision making, it changes your worldview.

(13:28): It changes your view of self and of your relationships and makes you question things about yourself and about, you know, people who do care about you and stuff because somebody is like constantly got in your head that you’re not worthy or you’re worthless or you’re not good enough, or you’re stupid or you’re ugly or no one will ever want you. And in, in a way, I, I get what you mean about, it’s almost like for even people that are gonna really struggle to identify that they’re being abused, if you’ve been punched in the face or if you’ve been, you know, or something very physical has happened, there is something very tangible about that. But when you are constantly being gaslit and emotionally manipulated and you’re being put down and belittled and laughed at and being made to feel like you’re going crazy, it almost sometimes feels like you’ve got no evidence. Like you can’t really prove any of it and that nobody’s gonna listen.

Gaslighting can be obvious, Gaslighting can be subtle Anne (14:23): For listeners of this podcast, there’s some very insidious types of abuse too that I would say that the type of emotional abuse that you’re describing is also, I mean, it’s very hard to see when you’re in it. But it’s also can be kind of obvious, right? If someone’s saying you’re stupid or you’re ugly or something, there, there’s these really subtle ways of emotional and psychological abuse. Like, I love you so much and I care about you and I’m just really worried about you. Oh yeah, you haven’t been remembering things correctly or I’m concerned because, you know, I know our family is our top priority. And as you read these books, and in my case a lot of victims that listen to my podcast, their husbands will say to them, I know you care about our family and ever since you started listening to this podcast, it’s been damaging to our family.

“Subtle ways of maintaining the status quo” (15:13): And so very, very subtle ways of maintaining the status quo and not having her see what’s really going on. Here’s a really good example that I heard recently in my particular faith, you can say certain things that kind of like in general the culture was like, oh, I know what’s going on. You know, and it might not be true, but one man he called all of his wife’s friends and all of her family and everyone and said, could you please pray for her? She’s really struggling right now with her faith, which wasn’t true at all. But all he had to do was say that and to all the friends and family and say, she just needs extra prayers because she’s really struggling with her faith and you know, she’s feeling really apart from God right now. And so she could really use your help. And that was so undermining to who she was, to what she was trying to do because then as she went to friends and family for help, they were like, oh, if you’re struggling with your faith, maybe that’s why you wanna leave.

“He’s such a nice guy and he wants everyone to pray for you” (16:18): Maybe that’s why you’re saying this stuff. ’cause He’s such a nice guy and he wants everyone to pray for you. So these really subtle ways, I am concerned with abusers who are learning healthy ways of talking through therapy, through books. Yes, they’re weaponizing it, but they sound like they’re saying the right thing sometimes. And it is intended to continue to oppress women. And that’s what we see here a lot. And that’s the main thing I want to like warn women about because even the like flat out you’re never gonna do anything, you know, stuff that’s awful and sometimes you can’t see that this other stuff is so subtle and so coercive and almost impossible to see sometimes until you take a step back and look at their actions and look at what they are doing.

Dr. Jessica Taylor (17:07): Yeah. I think this is fascinating because I think you’re talking about, as you say, like a level of skill here and intelligence here from the, on the perpetrator’s side where they’re either learning to mirror, as you say, like healthy ways of communicating where they’re actually weaponizing them very successfully or they are generally quite intelligent, you know, sort of people anyway. So they’ve learned over a period of time as a perpetrator that they don’t need to use physical violence to have total control and to completely destroy somebody and keep ’em exactly where they are. Because for some perpetrators like that, they know not to cross that as well. They know that if they were to leave a mark on you or to do something physical, that would all kind of give you a way out and like you would be able to identify what was happening.

“I’m worried about my wife – she’s struggling with her mental health” (17:57): But if they can just keep you in this place that is constantly undermining you, but like doing it in a way where you can’t even completely be sure that that’s what they’re doing, that is a really difficult place to live as as a woman, you know, that you can’t figure out exactly what it is that’s happening to you because you, you’re not a hundred percent sure that is happening at all. And in terms of how this relates to my work, the closest that I can sort of get to this and my experience is that I see a lot of men that do the whole telling the family, telling the doctor, telling the counselor, whatever, you know, I’m really worried about my wife. I think she’s struggling with her mental health. You know, I really think that she needs to get some support and she really needs to be, I think we all need to support her and we need to be there for her because she’s really struggling at the moment.

“Once you’ve framed her with a mental health issue, everything can be covered up” (18:53): And I really think that she should be referred, you know, into the mental health service so that she can get the right medication and the right help and treatment. And it’s obviously, it’s all part of the manipulation because once you frame her as having a mental health issue, everything can be covered up. You know, she’s the, everything she says can be denied. Everything she says can be belittled or can be brushed away. You know, I remember I was working years ago on a helpline for women who had, who were in domestic abuse and or had been raped. I remember a woman ringing and she, she’d been having therapy with us on and off for a couple of months and it was going really well and she was getting ready to leave this guy and then he turned up at the service, and the service had a secret address. I don’t know how he found us, but he did.

Anne (19:43): When you say service, do you mean therapy?

Dr. Jessica Taylor (19:45): He showed, yeah, he showed up at the cl it’s like a, it was a center, we call them a sexual assault and rape center or domestic abuse center. So they’re, they’re essentially clinics.

Anne (19:53): So he showed up there at her?

“I could see right through this guy” Dr. Jessica Taylor (19:55): He did, she wasn’t actually in there at the mo at that time. I think she might have been at work or something like that. And he turned up and he played this sort of, oh, I’m so glad that I found this service and I’m really concerned about my wife and I just feel like I need to talk to one of you and I just need to give you this information because she’s not been taking her medication. You know, she’s on this, these antidepressants and anti-psychotics and I’m just really worried that she’s not been taking her medication. I’ve been telling her every day she needs to take it and she’s been getting delusional and she’s, you know, she’s thinking things aren’t real and she, and all this, and I’m thinking, I’m listening to him thinking, yeah, right. As if, as if I’m gonna believe that she’s very lucky that he came across somebody like me because I could see right through this guy, I knew exactly what he was setting her up. He was deliberately her up. So it sounded like all of her disclosures to us were, because she wasn’t taking this medication, I knew what he was doing and he did it in such a, like, he cried, I’m so worried about my wife and I just want the best for her. And no, all this sort of like, I knew exactly what he was doing, but it worries me that so many of these perpetrators that approach it in this way are very, very good at manipulating professionals as well, aren’t they? They are.

Anne (21:13): We’re gonna pause the conversation here and continue it next week, so please stay tuned.

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“I can’t find the words to explain how I feel – but I do know that I feel crazy in my relationship.”

So many women in our community spent years trying to to understand why they felt so responsible, alone, afraid, physically unwell, and yes – crazy – in their relationships.

Jane Gilmore explains in this riveting final interview how the media enables abuse – and consequently, causes victims to feel completely crazy and responsible for the abuse. Read the full transcript below and listen to the interview for more.

We Feel Crazy When We Can’t Explain What’s Happening to Us Have you tossed and turned at night, completely unable to find the language to describe that uneasy awareness that something is just off?

Jane describes it here:

“[His abusiveness] builds up over time. It starts and then it stops and then he’s sweet and then he’s cold, and then he disappears and you know he’s lying. But all you’ve got is a gut feeling and you’re not sure what to do with it. Any woman who’s been in that relationship will instantly recognize it. Like when you wake up at three in the morning and you feel sick and your brain’s just spinning, spinning, spinning, and you’re trying to work out what’s really going on. Am I crazy? Am I imagining this? I don’t know what to do and I’m too scared to tell anyone ’cause I’m just gonna feel like a fool.”

Jane Gilmore, Consent Educator

Covert Abuse Feels Impossible to Describe Overt abuse, the kind that the media has determined is “real” abuse – abuse that:

• Leaves bruises, blood, breaks bones
• Is clearly documentable and would immediately illicit a response from a police officer to side with you
• Damages property
• Scares children into siding with you
• Is clearly visible to other people, besides you

Is generally MUCH easier to describe than the abuse that women in our community face.

COVERT Abuse Includes: * Intimate betrayal, including secret pornography use * Sexual coercion * Gaslighting * Covert physical abuse, including physical harm that does not leave marks or is committed secretly * Covert threats * Stalking without any proof * Spiritual/religious abuse

The Media Enables Abuse – This is How “Most of the media is controlled by men, so they’re not going to be able to show [abuse] from a woman’s point of view, because firstly, they don’t understand it. And secondly, they don’t really want to. It’s not like there’s a huge crew of powerful white men in the media going, let’s make women really, really aware of the manipulations that men do to keep them under control. And this is not deliberate or conscious or planned out. A lot of it just happens subconsciously, but let’s make women feel responsible. Let’s make them be the ones that are trying really hard.”

Jane Gilmore, Consent Educator

When the media, including:

• News media
• TV shows
• Movies
• Social media
• Public forums

Depict abuse as solely overt abuse, they are ignoring a huge demographic of women who are experiencing life-threatening covert abuse. As a society, we are conditioned to depend on the media (in all of its forms) to determine what “normal” is – and the media is doing a terrible job of defining and validating abuse for victims.

You ARE NOT CRAZY – You’re Being Abused Just because the media, your family, friends, clergy, and others have de-validated your experience because the abuser has not punched you, broken down a door, or threatened to murder you – please take the abuse you’re experiencing seriously.

If you:

• Feel crazy
• Feel unable to determine reality
• Find yourself consistently preoccupied with trying to “fix” yourself in order to “gain” fidelity, respect, honesty, and/or equality in your relationship
• Feel a general kind of un-ease

You may be experiencing covert abuse – and unfortunately, as an organization that specializes in covert abuse, including intimate betrayal, we have learned that victims of covert abuse are in danger. Please seek safety. We are here to help.

Full Transcript: Anne (00:00):Jane Gilmore is back on today’s episode talking about how the media portrays abuse. This episode kinda makes me a little bit sick because my dear friend Leah Moses, her son was murdered by his father, like I talked about last week, and I did this interview before that happened, and there’s a section in this episode where I say, Hey, everybody, look for headlines of where this happens, where they don’t clearly describe the perpetrator of murder as an abuser and put examples in the comments. When Leah’s son was murdered for a brief time, she asked me to help her with media stuff. So I reached out to the media to try and correct the record, and they did not listen to me, and they did not believe me. And so then one of them actually asked me to be on the news and then decided that it was not going to be ethical, quote unquote, because it, I couldn’t be proven with court documents that she was abused. And so then they told me that, that they didn’t want me anymore, and they ran awful, awful, awful news story about how it was both of their faults. It was a high conflict divorce sort of thing. And I thought, like, wasn’t him murdering omm like the proof? It was so frustrating. Anyway, so later in this episode, I say like, won’t it be fun to gather up examples of this from all over? Not realizing when I said that, that I would have personal experience with this.

“It just makes me sick” (01:44): Like it hurt Leah so much to not only have the court not believe her for 14 years, but then have the media get it wrong. And I thought, oh, we can just correct the record with the media. And I tried, and it didn’t, I mean, there were a few news outlets who did do a good job, but like, and I’m hoping by the time this airs, which I don’t know when this will air, and I don’t know what’s happened in between this and when it airs because I schedule stuff really far out on this podcast so that everything’s organized. We can always post every Tuesday and we have a system, right? So I don’t exactly know what’s happened since I put this in the queue. But if you do, please go write it in the comments, like if something else occurred, I, I, it just makes me sick. And it was so hard. So to hear my own self say, oh, won’t this be fun was it actually, it triggered myself this week because I’m editing this and queuing it up only a week after Om’s death.

“There are real victims behind these headlines” (04:00): So Jane and I wrapped it up today with talking about how difficult it is, and then I said, it would be fun. I said to find all these terrible headlines and put ’em all in one spot. And now I know that I should’ve known, I should’ve known this before, but apparently it didn’t. That there are real victims behind those headlines who see those headlines and they hurt them very much, and it’s just an extension of the abuse. So no, I don’t think it’s fun, and I’m apologize for saying that there wasn’t really, really any way to edit it out. And so I take accountability for saying it and and apologize in advance.

So now to our conversation, a lot of women have seen like Sleeping with the Enemy or Safe Haven. So they, they think like, this is what abuse looks like, right? He’s gonna be screaming in her face, he’s gonna be spitting, he is gonna be punching walls, he’s going to be locking her in her bedroom, things like that. Why do you think we don’t see depictions of emotional and psychological abuse often in the media? And I also have kind of noticed that sometimes it’s more depicted by women like in Gone Girl.

“Let’s make women feel responsible” Jane (05:14): Yeah, it’s, again, it’s that firstly trying to make women responsible for the things that men do and to hide men’s violence, right? Remember that most of the media is controlled by men, so they’re not going to be able to show these things from a woman’s point of view, because firstly, they don’t understand it. And secondly, they don’t really want to, that it’s not like there’s a huge crew of powerful white men in the media and any country in the world going, let’s make women really, really aware of the manipulations that men do to keep them under control. And again, this is not deliberate or conscious or planned out. A lot of it just happens subconsciously, but let’s make women feel responsible. Let’s make them be the ones that are trying really hard. So some of the things that we don’t talk about when we’re looking at media about abusive relationships is it’s, it’s really easy to make it physical.

“They don’t show the sort of things that are really corrosive, but not obvious” (06:06): Oh, if, yeah, if he punches you in the face, then okay, that’s obvious. That’s violence. So they don’t show the sort of things that are really corrosive, but not obvious. I remember talking to a woman once who told me that her husband could just look at her and she would be so overcome by fear and insecurity. And she said, I would just, I couldn’t think straight. ’cause All he would do would just look at me, because once a year or so, he would terrify her. He would do something so terrifying that just wouldn’t know what to do. And then for the rest of that year, all he’d have to do to remind her of that, to put her back into that space of terror was just give her that look. And what do you do? Do you go to the police and say, well, he looked at me like . Right?

Anne (06:56): Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, and that’s what’s really difficult for women in abusive relationships in like court cases, for example, when they’re trying to say, look at these messages he’s sending me. They’re so abusive. And the court looks at them and they’re like, what are you talking about? To outsiders? It seems like just normal, but it’s not.

“Had he killed her… they all would’ve said he was such a good guy” Jane (07:13): Yeah, I’ll never forget that woman. And, and just that, what could I do? Because the rest of the time he seemed certainly to outsiders, he seemed like a good guy and had he killed her, and I honestly wouldn’t have surprised me if he had, eventually journalists would’ve gone to his friends afterwards and said, what was he like? And they all would’ve said he was such a good guy. And then the journalists would’ve reported it that way. But this was a man who was terrorizing his wife, almost never hurting her, physically hurting her, just making sure that she was always aware that he was the one in charge, that she had to obey him and placate him and be wary of him and be stepping around his feelings all the time and be looking after him. And he would just sit back and not have to do anything.

“It was so hard for her to explain to anyone what he was doing” (08:03): And then eventually, you know, slowly, slowly, slowly, she might start to forget a little bit. And so just like I said, once every year or two, he would remind her. And again, that reminder didn’t always have to be physical violence. It could just be standing over her intimidating her, making her feel small and helpless and powerless. Like she couldn’t do anything. Like she couldn’t think straight. Like she couldn’t have any choice at all, that she was just completely helpless. And he would make her feel that way just every now and again. And then just gently remind her. And it was so hard for her to explain to anyone what he was doing or why she was so miserable or why she couldn’t leave because it wasn’t obvious. And also, I think in some ways, like I’m, I’m not here to make a lot of excuses for the media, but that kind of manipulation is hard to show in a one and a half hour movie.

“All you’ve got is a gut feeling and you’re not sure what to do with it” (08:59): ’cause It builds up over time and it’s about how it starts and then it stops and then he’s sweet and then he’s cold, and then he disappears and then, you know, he’s lying. But all you’ve got is a gut feeling and you’re not sure what to do with it. And that constant back and forth and back and forth and always exhausting, unsettling, weirdness is hard to show in a movie. But any woman who’s been in that relationship will instantly recognize it. And this is where I think women really have that power of, of being able to talk to each other. ’cause If I talk to a woman who’s in that and I say, you know that thing? Like when you wake up at three in the morning and you feel sick and your brain’s just spinning, spinning, spinning, and you’re trying to work out what’s really going on? Am I crazy that I’m imagining this? Is he right? But I feel like this, but I dunno what to do and I’m too scared to tell anyone ’cause I’m just gonna feel like a fool. And any woman that’s been in that relationship will be like, I know that one. Yes, I’ve done that so many times. It’s so familiar because the patterns of abuse are so familiar. So when we start sharing with sharing it with each other, we can instantly recognize those stories.

The “Nebulous” Victim Anne (10:09): I think there might be another issue with the media. I actually experience it quite frequently that abuse victims are apparently not experts about abuse, that male therapists or male social workers or something, someone male is an expert, right? And she just thinks she’s an expert because she’s talked to all these women or whatever, yak yada yada. And they, they’re just yaking. But these women don’t really understand abuse and they’re actually endangering true abuse victims who are apparently some nebulous category of victims out there who aren’t us, who aren’t actual abuse victims. And I’ve heard that quite a bit. Can you talk about how the media dismisses that abuse victims are the most expert on abuse?

Do women lie about abuse? Jane (11:02): Yeah. And it’s based in that idea that, that women lie, right? That women can’t be trusted. And that just permeates so much of the, the culture. Women lie about abuse. They lie to get custody of their kids. They lie to turn people against him. They lie for all kinds of reasons. And actually, what really goes on, the people who are doing this work, who are there on the front lines say, it almost never happens. It’s not that it never happens, it does vary very occasionally, but 99% of the time, if a woman tells you she’s being abused, she’s been hiding it for a long time. She’s been afraid to tell somebody for a long time. She’s been ashamed to tell somebody for a long time. And when she does finally come out with it, it’s a big deal. She’s doing it because she’s reached the point where she just can’t, not anymore, but for a long time she’s been hiding it.

The belief that women lie about abuse? It’s killing us. (11:53): I think what’s happening when the media’s depicting that kind of thing is, oh, it’s really easy. Like women just make those claims all the time. And it’s really easy. It is not easy. You talk to any woman who’s been in an abusive relationship and she will tell you how hard it is to tell someone else what’s going on. It’s excruciatingly difficult. And then also, if you think about the options, if, if a woman tells you that, that a man is abusing her, you can believe her and be wrong, or you can not believe her and be wrong. And if believing her and being wrong just means that you say, I believe you. What do you need? Do you want to talk about it? What help do you need? Like, where’s the harm in that? But if you don’t believe her, if she’s finally told you the truth and you say, oh, I don’t believe you. ’cause He’s such a good guy, there’s a lot of harm in that. So that, that belief that that women would lie about it is like, we really saw that Amber Heard and Johnny Depp was where I saw that just explode.

Anne (12:58): Yeah. That was insane.

“What do you think she’s getting from this?” Jane (13:00): That belief that she was lying. And I was looking at that just going, what do you think she’s getting from this? Look at what’s happening to this woman. She is being eviscerated by billions people online.

Anne (13:15): They kept saying like, she’s doing it for like attention or something. I was like, no, she does not wanna be doing this right now.

“Why should a woman have to hide from the world because a man’s been abusing her?” Jane (13:23): Nobody wants billions of people coming after you online. If you’ve ever been on the, the receiving end of an online storm, it’s awful. Yeah, it’s true. You know, the people say, I’ll just turn your phone off. Sure. Okay. The thing thing that I would say about that is, there are five people in a room right next to you and they’re talking about you. Yeah. Walk away. Don’t stand there and try and hear what they’re saying. It’s not good. It’s not right. You know, it’s damaging, but it’s human. And as much as you can say, oh, just turn your phone off. Firstly, don’t go into, don’t participate in the world. Hide yourself from the world, what’s going on without, why should women have to hide themselves from the world because a man’s been abusing them. But secondly, that that idea that, that you can, that billions of people are saying things about you and you can just say you have the, the strength after coming out of an abusive relationship, you have the confidence to say, well, it doesn’t matter what people say about me, I know who I am now. We all know that’s what we should say. But I think it’s asking a lot of a woman who’s coming out of an abusive relationship to immediately have that kind of strength.

“The Perfect Victim Myth” Anne (14:35): Well, and then just be abused by everybody. Yeah. Right. And apparently to, to be believable, it’s impossible. So there’s always gonna be a reason for not to be believed, right?

Jane (14:48): The perfect victim myth. And it’s, we’re gonna keep moving the hoops. We’re gonna spinning them, gonna be spinning them. We’re exactly, we’re gonna keep those hoops on fire. We’re gonna have five of them. And you’ve gotta jump through all five

Anne (14:56): Of them, all of them. Right? And so, because Amber, her’s human, she’s not perfect.

Jane (15:02): Yeah.

Anne (15:03): Every little thing or even big thing that she’s done that wasn’t great, that, you know, maybe she shouldn’t have done, I’m not trying to blame her for anything, was, was apparently evidence that she wasn’t abused. I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. It was awful. It was awful. And we even had abuse experts, which really, really bothered me come out and say, well, in this case, she’s the one that’s the abuser. And I I, did you hear an abuse expert saying that?

Jane (15:35): Yeah. That case was so huge and was all over the world. And it always astounded me that the court case in the UK where the judge, not a jury, but a judge did find that he was abusive. Sexually abusive, emotionally abusive, physically abusive. That one just got dropped completely. ’cause Oh, it’s been proven in court. No, it wasn’t. And also it was proven in court that he was abusive. But again, it was just this,

Anne (16:03): Yeah. There weren’t like tons and tons of stuff going on with that.

The fact that Johnny Depp was PROVEN guilty in the UK – completely ignored! Jane (16:07): That was, that one was kept very, very quiet. And that one disappeared outta the media almost immediately. Oh, he’s guilty. Oh, let’s not talk about that. Right. But then suddenly we’ve got all these people saying that she’s a liar and it’s her fault, and he’s just a poor victim. Mm-Hmm. . So that went global. And again, I think it comes back to that idea of, of too many men can see themselves in it. Too many, not all men by any means, but too many men know that there have been times when they have not been good to the women in their lives and the way they have blamed her for it. And when they have made her responsible for the bad choices they’ve made. And it almost seemed to me sometimes, like the people that were defending Johnny Depp were not defending him. They were defending themselves. Mm-Hmm. , it’s not really his fault meant, it’s not really my fault. She’s a liar. Was not necessarily talking about Amber heard, they were talking about the women who said, you did this bad thing, or you’re lying. You’re making it up. You’re just trying to get attention because apparently having the whole world hate you is the thing that most women want.

Being abused by the court system is ALSO ABUSE Anne (17:14): Well, and no one recognized, which was really bothering me, how an abuse victim was being abused by everyone abused by the court. And so she’s, she’s experiencing these multiple, multiple levels of trauma and extreme trauma, and they’re just thinking, oh, it’s just her court case, rather than like, this is torture.

Jane (17:41): And it was deliberate. He chose that.

Anne (17:44): Yeah. To punish her.

Jane (17:46): Yeah. He, they didn’t go to court by accident. He chose that that choice was part of the abuse.

Anne (17:53): Absolutely.

Jane (17:54): And it’s really, really, really common for abusive men to use the court process and the police as part of their abuse.

“Societal misogyny is so thick that even victims have a hard time seeing through it” Anne (18:02): Absolutely. Yeah. That was really disturbing. Like when I would say to other so-called abuse experts, like excuse me. You know, and they’d be like, no, it’s obvious that she’s the abuser in this case. And I, I just, I don’t know, it was very hard, obviously much harder for Amber heard clearly. We have a big TikTok following and a big Instagram following. And we did a, a video in support of Amber. And I don’t know if we’ve ever gotten so much hate from victims, from listeners, like people who are listening right now to the podcast who were like, no, she’s the abuser. And I thought, what? You are having a hard time because people won’t believe you and then you won’t believe her. You know, it was really interesting. It showed like the just societal misogyny is so thick that, that even victims themselves have a hard time seeing through it.

Jane (18:53): And it was also, I think with, with them, because they’re actors, because they feel so distant from us that, that we lost sight of the fact that these are people just because she’s successful and rich and beautiful, doesn’t mean she’s not a person. But for, I think for a lot of women, ’cause I was really disturbed by the way, a lot of women responded to that as well. And it’s, you know, that we expect it from men. God, what does that say about men that we’ve been led to expect that? But it took me by surprise, how many women were so angry about her. And I think after a while, I think it was, they couldn’t see themselves in her. They couldn’t, you know, women who have, as you say, victims of abuse, women who have been abused themselves, were saying, no, no, no, she’s the abuser.

“That kind of abuse can genuinely happen to anyone” (19:33): And I was trying to work out what it was. She looks like this couldn’t happen to her. She looks like she’s got power and choices, and she could have just walked away. And they forget that, that that kind of abuse can genuinely happen to anyone. And although abusers will often deliberately seek out prey on vulnerable people, they will search for people that they can manipulate that wealth and, and beauty and youth don’t protect you from that. It doesn’t mean that you can walk away because those techniques of abuse and the manipulations that an abuser will use to make you feel small and weak and helpless and responsible, they can work on anyone.

Anne (20:16): Some abusers intentionally seek out very powerful women to abuse because they’ll take more responsibility. They’re, they’re very capable, they’re very able to manage things, right? And so I know of a, a woman who is an extremely smart, powerful, like, awesome pediatrician, and she was targeted by a man who was like, oh, she can support me financially, and she can, because she’s so competent, she can basically manage my whole life and groomed her to do that. She didn’t realize that that was happening. She thought she was a helpful partner, right? Until she recognized what had been happening. So, so to think like, wait a minute, this is a really smart, capable put together person. She couldn’t be an abuse victim. That’s just not the case.

“This couldn’t possibly be happening to me, therefore it must be my fault” Jane (21:07): No. And sometimes those women in some ways can be even more vulnerable because that’s not how they think of themselves, but they’re always gonna think of themselves as, as having power and having choices and being able to do things. So it, this couldn’t possibly be happening to me, therefore it must be my fault. I need to work harder. I need to do more. I need to manage this. I need to find a solution to this. And so they take on, again, they take on that responsibility. And sometimes those women can be, in some ways, easier to put in that position because they’re so used to being responsible for themselves and even taking on responsibility for other people.

Anne (21:42): I also think, not necessarily, I don’t wanna say it’s worse for capable women, but when they go for help, right? When they’re like, Hey, I’m being abused, they might tell their clergy or a therapist or someone, and people are like, whatever. Like, you’re very direct. You’re, you’re very, you know, like, like, no, that’s, that can be happening to you because you are not the type of person who would be abused, just like the media portrays abusers as a certain type of man. They also portray abuse victims in a certain way. And that is not great. I love Frozen for this reason, because Hans, Hans of the Southern Isles, right? , he’s clearly an abuser, but he does not look like it in the beginning. And they’ve sing that song about eating each other’s sandwiches. And also, Anna is smart, she’s strong, she’s capable, and she’s still a victim of his abuse. And in the end, it kind of like, then he actually looks evil in real life. It’s not a movie. So he is, he’s still gonna look like Hans of the Southern Isles, right? To everybody else. He’s still gonna look like that good guy.

“It’s really hard to admit to yourself that you’ve been manipulated, that you’ve been abused” Jane (22:50): And it’s really, really hard to think if you’re used to thinking of yourself as successful and in charge and strong and capable, it is really hard to admit to yourself that you’ve been manipulated, that you’ve been abused, that you’ve, particularly if there’s, you know, if there’s violence, how could I let this happen? How can I be that person? I can’t be that person ’cause that idea of the ideal victim, but I’m not that. So therefore this can’t be really happening. And the ideal victim, the perfect victim, again, it’s all the spinning hoops on fire in five different directions that you’ve gotta jump through. Nobody is the perfect victim. Nobody is the ideal victim. Nobody is the deserving victim. If somebody is abusing you, they are abusing you. And you don’t have to prove that, that you are right, that you didn’t deserve it. Nobody, nobody deserves to be abused and nobody is invulnerable to it. So it doesn’t say anything about you. It says something about the person who chooses to do that to you, which is where we come back to, you know, full circle to where we were at the beginning of abuse is always a choice. If he’s doing this to you, it’s because he’s choosing to.

Anne (23:59): I just have this thought because we’re talking about the media for listeners today, if you have thought of a movie or a news article or a a TV show or something that shows this example, would you mind going to our website, finding this episode and writing it in the comments? It would kind of be fun to gather up a bunch of examples from all over the world of movies or TV shows or news articles where you’ve seen the like, oh, he was a good guy and he just went crazy somehow. Where, where we see these dynamics play out, I, I think it might be fun to, or not fun. I’m always saying this, Jane, I’ve got problems , I love talking about abuse. It does not mean, I think that abuse is great. Obviously it’s terrible and it’s hurting people. Fun is not the right word. I did not mean to say that. It would be interesting, I should say that to have sort of on this post maybe a bank of comments that have your thoughts about what you observed from the media and how it has affected you.

Please share your thoughts in the comments Jane (24:59): And I think it’ll also be interesting in those comments. And I will come in and look at them because I would really love to know, we do this with kids sometimes talking about, tell me TV shows or relationships or movies where you’ve seen a really, really good relationship, a really happy equal sharing, respectful consensual relationship shown in a TV or a movie. Talk about a really good one. I don’t know if any of your listeners have seen Gilmore Girls, but one of the ones that came up was Silky and Jackson as a relationship where you can squabble and you can disagree and you can have all these things, but actually it’s equal and fun and kind. But also the ones where, where genuine the, the real dynamics of abuse are actually shown, because that’s really rare. And I’d be really interested if somebody’s got an example of, of what that looks like of a TV show or a movie or even a book where, where that kind of dynamic, where how it really plays out is actually shown. I’d be really interested in seeing that too.

Anne (26:01): Ones that come to mind just really quickly on Netflix, there’s a Lost in Space, the new version with Toby Stevens. Okay. They, their relationship seems to be quite healthy to me. I could be wrong. And then a Australian classic Bluey .

Jane (26:17): Oh yes, .

Anne (26:18): I love Bluey. I’m like, oh my word. If all children would grow up on Bluey, I think we would be okay.

Jane (26:25): Yeah. Look it, we’re really proud of Bluey down here. It’s, it’s something that we feel like it’s, it’s the gift we gave the world.

“You’re not making this up – it really is that hard” Anne (26:33): . Well, we appreciate it because my children watch it and every time I watch it, I just feel so good. I feel so happy. I feel like, oh man, the world is gonna be okay when I watch Bluey. So if you, even if you don’t have children listeners, if you are like, I really need a feel good show, Bluey, it’s on Disney plus, sorry, I am not being paid by them to advertise . But I really, really like it.

Jane (26:58): Like you, I’ve spent more than a decade working with this kind of stuff, writing about it, researching it, talking to people who’ve been through it, my own experiences of it. And I guess the thing I, I always try and remind people is that it is, it is so hard. It, you know, we say to people all the time, well, you should just leave him. He’s abusing you. You should just leave him. And of course that’s true, but it’s never that easy. And that you are not alone. That it really genuinely is that hard. You’re not making this up, you’re not pretending you are. It really is that hard. And that the reason that we do podcasts like this and all the other things that we do is because we know that. So help is there if you need it. And it will get better when you’re able to find the strengths to get away from it. And you can, but don’t ever let anyone tell you that it’s your fault or that this should be simple or why don’t you just leave because it’s always harder than that. It’s not impossible. And you, it can be done. But don’t ever underestimate how difficult it is. And, and there are people who know that and will understand that. And we’ll be able to support you in it.

Anne (28:13): Is really hard. And getting to safety is just one, one small step at a time, right? Yeah. And we’re here for you and I’m so grateful that Jane came on today and I hope people check out your website. Thank you so much for spending the time to talk with us.

Jane (28:32): Thank you so much for having me on and it was such a great conversation.

View Details

Is it my fault that my husband is angry?

That he secretly uses porn?

That he yells at the kids and sometimes hurts them (and our pets)?

That he closes off emotionally?

That he says he’s sexually frustrated?

Because I feel like it’s my fault… but I also feel like something’s off.

It’s Not Your Fault. But We Understand Why You Feel That Way. When you start to look for it, suddenly it’s almost like it’s everywhere. Women are responsible for men’s choices. We drive them to it, right? We make them so angry, so jealous that they just lose control and then it’s our fault. But actually, if you think about it, the reverse would never be true. And it’s not true. On the very, very rare occasions that women do commit violence, yhey’re monsters, they’re evil, there is no excuse. But we don’t talk about men in the same way because this idea that, that women drive men to the terrible choices that they make.

Jane Gimore, Consent Educator

Jane Gilmore is back on the BTR.ORG Podcast with Anne, explaining why you feel that way AND why none of his behaviors and feelings are your fault. Listen to the podcast and read the full transcript below.

Behavior is a CHOICE – Yes, Even Your Husband’s Behavior Abusive men will blame everything and everyone for their behavior, rather than themselves. They’ll blame:

• Their upbringing
• Their mental health
• Their wife’s sexual health and or/habits
• Their own sex drive
• Their children’s behavior
• Their “trauma”
• Their “addictions”
• Their stress
• Their church
• Racism
• Alcohol & drugs
• Their work situation
• Society
• Their parents
• Their siblings
• Poor anger management skills

But behavior is a CHOICE. It’s always a CHOICE.

How Do We Know Behavior Is a Choice? It’s Simple: When people will say to me, ‘Sometimes you just lose control and sometimes you get so angry you can’t stop yourself,’ I reply, ‘Okay, sure, but how do they behave in front of other people? Almost 99% of the time, an abusive man is not abusive in front of other people. He does it in private, which means he’s choosing, which means he can control it.’

Jane Gilmore, Consent Educator

If he can choose not to be abusive, he is choosing to be abusive. It’s that simple.

You Deserve Safety. We Can Help. We understand the pain that comes with realizing that your husband has been blaming YOU and EVERYTHING and EVERYONE ELSE for his abusiveness and sexual betrayals. Please know that we want you to be safe and experience peace. Our BTR.ORG Group Sessions are a safe space for you to process trauma and find a community of women who get it. Attend a session today.

Full Transcript: Anne (00:00):Jane and I are continuing our conversation. We actually recorded this long ago and it’s airing now. I didn’t realize that I would have personal experience with this particular topic. When we recorded this in May, my good friend Leah Moses her husband called and told me that her son had been murdered by Parth Gandhi. So you can look this up. I was on the news quite a bit and our social media covered it. The news did a terrible job. They took the court documents and they said, oh, this was a prolonged legal battle. And they couldn’t figure out who the perpetrator was, even though the proof was right there. He was a murderer. He had murdered his son. There’s no more proof. And as I looked at that and thought, if murdering your own son isn’t proof, there’s never going to be enough proof for them, not for the media, not for the courts.

How does the media influence our perception of consent? (00:58): At first. It gave me hope that maybe we could bring like some attention to the issue. And then I got kind of like super depressed. ’cause I thought, if this doesn’t help people see it, what would, I’m kind of still struggling with everything. And so sad for Leah and sad for all victims who have to go through this. Jane and I are talking about it today on the episode. I just wanted to let you know that when, when I interviewed her about this, I didn’t have personal experience with it yet. So I will be doing an episode on that later. That’s just taking me a while to process like my own personal experience and how difficult it was. If you didn’t hear my interviews with Jane before this and her introduction, then go back a few episodes, listen to that first, and then join us here and we’re gonna get right to the conversation. So today we’re gonna be talking about how media influences us and in relation to this podcast, especially how media influences how we perceive consent or how we perceive relationships and also how we perceive violence against women. So let’s start there. What is your feeling about how media influences the way that we perceive relationships?

“The idea that women are responsible for abusive things that men do” Jane (02:21): I think it’s huge. I think we really, really underestimate how much the, the things that we don’t really notice influence the way we think. And it’s, it’s, one of the things I say a lot is the most dangerous ideas are the ones that we don’t really notice that we have. So the idea that women are responsible for abusive things that men do. How many headlines have you seen about the, the jealous lover, the jilted husband, the –

Anne (02:48): Even if they just say they were having an argument as if the two of them were causing the problem and it just ended badly.

“It’s all about saying that men aren’t responsible for what they do when they get angry” Jane (02:56): Yep, yep. Cheating wife, you know, common thing in a headline, and it’s all about saying that men aren’t responsible for what they do when they get angry or when they lose control of their emotions. That men can’t be held responsible for the actions that they commit because it’s women that drive them to it. And it happens a lot in headlines, but it also happens in other kinds of media, like in the TV shows and the movies and the video games that we consume all the time where you don’t even really notice it. But if you start to look for it, you know that thing of once you’ve seen something, you can’t unsee it. When you start to look for it, suddenly it’s almost like it’s everywhere. Women are responsible for men’s choices. We drive them to it, right? We make them so angry, so jealous that they just lose control and then it’s our fault. But actually, if you think about it, the reverse would never be true. And it’s not true. Women who on the very, very rare occasions that women do commit violence and it happens. They’re monsters, they’re evil, there is no excuse. But we don’t talk about men in the same way because this idea that, that women drive men to the terrible choices that they make.

Why aren’t we allowed to defend ourselves? Anne (04:16): I think that’s really evident with self-defense kinds of things. So for example, if, if another man comes into another man’s house and the man shoots the guy in self-defense, everyone’s like, yeah, self-defense, no problem. But if a woman is being raped and she shoots him, people are like, Hmm. She committed murder. Like rape isn’t really a good reason to like murder someone. Have you ever heard of stuff like that?

Jane (04:45): Oh, definitely. Absolutely. If you think about it, say if a man went to kiss another man, like a, a sexual kiss, and the man who was being kissed reacted really badly and punched him in the face, most people, yeah, sure. But if a man might kiss a woman who didn’t wanna be kissed and she reacted with violence, whoa. And punch him in the face. Yeah. Why are you like that? So it’s when you, if you try and put it in those other situations, and it, I wanna be a bit careful of that because it can, can sound a bit like gay men go around kissing straight men all the time. They don’t. If you reverse it and go, well, would that still make sense If, like, as you say, if a, if a woman is being attacked and she fights back and she’s to blame for fighting back, well what was she wearing?

“You’re told violence is always a choice” (05:31): You know, that kind of stuff. If you’re seeing things where the person who chose to commit the violence and violence is always a choice, no matter what, you’re told violence is always a choice. If the person who made that choice is not responsible for it in the way that it’s being depicted, then something’s a bit off. And then again, you reverse it and you put a woman in that situation, would she be held responsible for making that choice? Yes, she would. Would, would you ever say, well, a woman who forced sex on a man, she had no choice. He was flirting with her. He was wearing tight little pants. He was smiling and winking at her. He drove her to it and she was just so overcome by lust at what else could she do? Like it sounds ridiculous when you put it like that, right? But that kind of thing would be, oh well yeah, you know, that can happen. Men lose control of themselves. And if she was really flirting with him and teasing him and you know, wearing a skimpy little top and showing off, well what did she think was gonna happen? He was flirting with her. He was wearing, you know, just had his T-shirt off. He was showing off all his muscles. What did he think was gonna happen? And it’s so ridiculous that it’s almost funny.

Anne (06:40): Well, I’m laughing. Yeah. After podcasting and doing what I do, I have a very dark sense of humor. I apologize . I don’t apologize actually. But yes, it’s ridiculous.

“Women are not responsible for men’s choices.” Jane (06:53): If you can do that juxtaposition and it becomes ridiculous, then you know that something is going wrong there. Because women are not responsible for men’s choices. We have to stop infantalizing men. Adult men are as responsible for their choices as adult women. And to be really clear here, I’m not talking about children or teenagers where they’re in that shadow lands halfway between child and adult. When we’re talking about adults, they have the ability to make choices. They do make choices. And violence is a choice. When people will say to me, oh, but you know, but sometimes you just lose control and sometimes you get so angry you can’t stop yourself. And you say, okay, sure, but think about in a relationship, how do they behave in front of other people? And almost 99% of the time, an abusive man is not abusive in front of other people. He does it in private, which means he’s choosing, which means he can control it.

Anne (07:51): Well, and also think about the grooming. He can groom for extended periods of time when he needs to. He can act very loving, he can act very caring. So he knows how to do it.

“The presumption of innocence doesn’t apply there” Jane (08:04): Yeah. And the other thing to think about too, in that framing of it, when we’re, when we’re talking about the media, is most of the, the news media that we see when we’re talking about violent or abusive men, it’s done through crime and court reporting, right? Somebody’s been arrested, somebody’s in court, somebody’s being charged, the police are investigating. And the court process is based on this idea of innocent until proven guilty. I would never, ever wanna mess with that because it’s so important when you’ve got the power of the state against a single individual, you need to have some way of balancing that power. And that’s why we have the, the presumption of innocence. But that’s in a court setting. And the reason we have that presumption of innocence is because the state can incarcerate you in some states, in the US they can kill you.

(08:53): You need to have something to say, well, if you have the power to take away my freedom or to take away my life, then I have to have something to balance that back. Right? But in a relationship that’s not what you’re talking about. You’re talking about two people who should be on a fairly equal level. So the presumption of innocence doesn’t apply there. You’re not talking about the entire power of the state and the police and the DA and all the people who can investigate and punish you. You’re talking about two people having a conversation about what’s going on. So the presumption of innocence there is always assuming that, that the man is innocent and the woman is lying. That’s bad in a court situation. It’s necessary but bad. And any victim who’s been in court for any kind of abuse or violence will tell you that that assumption means we are assuming you’re lying.

This is how I feel, I feel like I can’t trust you (09:47): So all I need to do is just get reasonable doubt about whether or not you’re lying. So I just need to make you into a liar. And all this is reported in the media and reported that way. So again, we’re framing it in this idea of he’s innocent until he’s proven guilty, she’s probably lying. And that’s the basis that all of this reporting comes on. And then that translates into relationships. I’m innocent till you’ve proven that I’m guilty. You are probably lying. So all I need to do is convince you or other people that you’re lying or that there’s even a possibility that you’re lying. And therefore that means I’m innocent. And that doesn’t work in a relationship where you are sharing things with each other. It’s not about proving something. It’s about saying, this is how I feel. I feel like I can’t trust you.

“You don’t need to prove how you feel” (10:35): I feel like I’m not safe with you. I feel scared, I feel unsure. I feel insecure. And having somebody else listen to that and say, well that’s really concerning that you feel that way. What can we do to help you feel better about yourself? What can we do so that you can find a way to feel better, not about proving innocence or guilt. ’cause You don’t need to prove how you feel. I feel sad. I don’t need to prove that. I just feel that. And I’m telling you that I feel scared. I feel like I can’t trust you. That’s not, you don’t need to prove how you feel. I don’t know the specific cases in the US that it’s hap where it’s happened, where the, a man who’s killed his wife or killed his children is reported as a good guy, a loving father, a good man.

(11:23): But I know it’s happened because it happens everywhere in the world. And it happens here a lot. We had a case a few years ago where a man killed his wife, his daughter, and his three grandchildren. I think the youngest was three. And he was reported as a loving father. And it was just obscene. And it, it developed this huge debate in Australia about journalists. I swear to you, debating about whether you can call a man who killed his wife, his child, and his grandchildren, whether it’s okay to say that he’s a good guy. And women in Australia were just like, I’m sorry, what? He’s just killed his family. Of course he’s not a good guy.

Anne (12:04): Why were they arguing for it?

A man who murders his family? NOT A GOOD GUY. PERIOD. Jane (12:06): Because one of the things that journalists will do after something like that happens is they’ll go and interview people in the community, like people in his church or people in his sports group or people in his, you know, on his football team, that kind of stuff. And they’ll interview people and somebody inevitably will say, oh, but he was such a great guy because they weren’t married to him, they weren’t living with him. They saw him once a week where he’s doing that really good guy act. And that was all they ever saw. And so journalists will say, well, it’s a legitimate thing to report because somebody said it. And if you search out enough, you know, people used to say Ted Bundy was a great guy. Only he was not.

Anne (12:41): . Yeah. Right. Objectively speaking is correct. Reporting to say he was not a good guy. Yes.

“He’s such a good guy who just snap – or she drove him to it” Jane (12:49): But just ’cause you can find somebody who says that he was doesn’t mean it’s true. It’s, I often say this, it’s, it’s not like I think journalists are sitting somewhere stroking a white cat and thinking of ways that they can come up to excuse the terrible things that some men do to, to women. I think a lot of it happens without them really knowing it. But it’s, particularly when it’s men that journalists feel similar to, if journalists can make sure that it’s some other, he’s not a good guy like me, that he’s nothing like me and my friends and the men that I know, he’s, he’s the, the balaclava clad stranger that jumps outta the bushes at you, then that’s okay. But if it’s, and it often is somebody that they can think, oh, that could be my friend, that could be my brother. Or even worse, that could be me.

(13:42): They’ve gotta find a way to make it either it’s not his fault. So he’s such a good guy who just snapped or she drove him to it, or there’s a way that we can make him into a monster because it’s so hard to believe. And this is not just men for all of us. It is so hard to believe that men that we love and respect and care about men who are our friends or our family or our colleagues can be abusive. But I can guarantee you, if you know 10 men, you know a man who has been abusive to a woman.

Anne (14:14): Yes.

Saying he’s a good guy is really saying, ‘Men are not responsible for these things – women drive us to it” Jane (14:15): And that is sometimes really, really hard to face up to. And it’s, it’s like the, it’s almost like it’s a not all men thing. And not all men is not, they’re not defending all men. They’re defending themselves. Not all men are abusive. What they’re really saying is, you’re talking about me and I’m not like that. And usually I find the ones that are the most offensive about that are the ones that I’m looking at going, really, why do you, why does this matter so much to you? Why are you getting so angry about this? But that need to say to everybody that it’s not his fault. He’s not a bad guy. He just snapped, just lost control for a moment. But he’s actually a good guy is about saying, men are not responsible for these things. We are not responsible for this. Women drive us to it.

(15:06): And until we can all say we are all responsible for our own choices, we are adults. I may not be able to control how I feel, but I can control what I do. You can feel anger sometimes or jealousy or sadness or all kinds of emotions that maybe you didn’t have a choice about feeling that. But you do have a choice about what you do. And if you choose to pick up a gun and shoot somebody, that is a choice. And the only person responsible for that is you. If you get really, really angry and go, okay, I’m gonna go and go to the gym and have a session with a punching bag or I’m gonna run and run and run until I almost vomit. Or I’m gonna go and talk to my friend, friend and let it all out. They’re all choices. Or I’m so angry that I’m going to hurt somebody. That is equally a choice.

He’s choosing it again and again and again Anne (15:59): Yeah. Right now, the pornography addiction recovery industrial complex that I like to call it, likes to make the cause be shame because he felt shame. Then he used porn or because he felt shame, he had an affair. And I’m like, you know what? I feel shame and I eat ice cream. like, what are you talking about? There are so many options. And he could have done this. There’s a number of things he could have done. Like that has nothing to do with it. That’s not the cause of him choosing porn. The cause was him choosing it.

Jane (16:38): And particularly with something like that where it’s an ongoing choice, it’s not just that he chose it once he’s choosing it again and again and again. And then he’s choosing to lie about it and then he’s choosing to do it again. And then he’s choosing to not try to change and then he’s choosing to lie about it again. That’s a pattern of behavior.

“True power is taking responsibility for yourself” Anne (16:56): Right. Exactly. And then he is choosing to lie that he is trying to change ’cause he is not actually trying to change. Right. So yeah, it’s, it is very, very problematic. The shame causes this or anger causes it. One idea that has been floating around in my head and I’m trying to like process it and bring it to words. So maybe you can help me. When domestic abuse experts talk about like coercive control, one of the thoughts that I keep having is recognizing how actually powerless they are. So for example, you only have power if you can have power over if you have a king. And he is supposed to be like, I rule over all of you without taking power from somebody, without stealing it, without coercing it, without manipulating it, they have no power by themselves. The thing that makes them the most powerless is that they refuse to take responsibility for themselves because true, true, true power is taking responsibility for yourself. That’s when any adult is gonna gain the most power to move forward, have a healthy life. And if someone is continually refusing to take accountability and responsibility for themselves, that is going to render them absolutely powerless. ’cause They have to find somebody else to take responsibility for them. I’m just like trying to flesh these thoughts out because victims are really powerful. They do take responsibility for themselves. They have so much power that they’ve taken responsibility accidentally for two people.

When women become responsible for their husband’s behavior Jane (18:30): Yeah. But it’s not even accidentally they’re manipulated into it. You often don’t realize when you’re in that situation, ’cause it’s, it’s like the frog and the, the boiling water. It starts slowly and you don’t realize that it’s happening. And then you look back and think, how did I become this person where I feel like I’m responsible because my husband is, is gambling or drinking or watching porn or cheating, and it’s my fault. I’m doing something wrong. So I’m gonna try and change. So he will be better.

Anne (18:58): Jane and I are gonna pause the conversation here and pick it up next week. So stay tuned.

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If you’ve felt lonely, confused, or sad after a sexual encounter with your husband, you may have vaguely wondered – was this experience actually consensual?

Jane Gilmore is back on the podcast covering grooming, manipulative tactics of abusers, and how you can know if you’re really giving your full consent to a sexual experience. Tune in to the podcast and read the full transcript below for more.

3 Questions You Can Ask Yourself Jane offers three questions that you can ask about the broader relationship if your trust has been violated – but these questions can also pertain to sexual encounters with your husband. Rather than asking yourself:

• What does he want?
• What does he need?
• Why is he doing this?
• How can I make him better?

You can ask yourself:

• How do I feel?
• What do I want?
• What do I need?

Tune in to Your Intuition When your focus is on your own safety needs and emotional well being you may find it easier to identify manipulation. Grooming that feels good and that previously would have gone under the radar is easier to detect and you’ll be more equipped to steer yourself away from situations that would be harmful to you.

Instead, you’ll be able to set boundaries that you only engage in sexual activity that is safe, honest, mutual, and consensual:

“I’m there because I want to be, not because I have to be or cause I’m being manipulated or forced into it.”

– Jane Gilmore, author and consent educator

BTR.ORG Is Here For You At BTR.ORG we know the pain of realizing that your husband has been manipulating and coercing you into sex. It’s devastating.

Our BTR.ORG Group Sessions are available to you as a safe space to process your trauma and begin your journey to healing. Attend a session today.

Full Transcript: Anne (00:00): Jane Gilmore is back on today’s episode. I started talking with her two weeks ago, so if you haven’t heard the very beginning of our conversation, go back two weeks so that you can listen to the whole thing.

(00:54): We ended last week talking about grooming again. I want to talk about an aspect of grooming that once they’re done with the grooming, once they get what they want, they sort of abandon the grooming for a minute because they’re exhausted and they got what they wanted. I want to talk about one other aspect that I have noticed and it is that the grooming is so good before sex that they’re very good at getting what women really genuinely feel like is “consent.” They feel like they are actively wanting to share touch and then after, he is upset. So for example, a lot of women think of consent as He’s kind of mad, or I’m feeling uncomfortable before and then somehow I ended up having sex and then he’s sort of happy after, cause he got what he wanted. That might be a kind of a feeling. He’s never gonna be that happy. He’s just going to be like, Great, that’s done, moving on.

Can you WANT sex if you don’t know you’re being abused? (01:49): There is another aspect of it where women genuinely feel like they actively want it, not knowing that they’ve been groomed, not knowing that they’ve been lied to. And then once he gets what he wants, then he’s just like, Oh, I don’t have to act like that anymore. I don’t have to act nice, I don’t have to act great. I can just be mean to her and put her down or whatever because now I’m not trying to get consent. They’re not acting the same way. And that can feel really confusing for women because it’s like everything was so good and it was delightful and then we had sex. And then after we had sex, you just started acting weird. Have you ever heard of the reverse? Can you talk about that?

Jane (02:27): Women who’ve just had that experience where they’re feeling that intimacy and want to maintain that closeness are like, But what happened? We were feeling so close. Again, going back to that: actions and words.

The Ebola Analogy Anne (02:39): But let’s pretend like someone has a very, very, very communicable disease. Let’s say Ebola. And they’re like, “I am actively going to try to get treatment for this.” And you’re like, “Great.” You would not have sex with them, right? You would be like, “Okay, good for you. Once you don’t have Ebola anymore, you no longer have a contractible disease, then I will have sex with you.” I want women to realize that. If they say to you, “Okay, yes. I will improve. I’m going to go to therapy and I’m going to get better and I’m going to change.” Then be like, “Great, you’ve got Ebola and good luck to you. Have fun during in treatment. Good luck with the doctor’s appointments and stuff. Look me up when you don’t have it anymore.”

Jane (03:35): Right. If you’re sitting there going, “Well, I’ve got Ebola and I promise I’m gonna go to the hospital, I promise I’ll go to the hospital, but let’s just have a quickie before I go”, no one’s going to do that.

Anne (03:45): No, no one’s going to do that. So if they say to you, “Okay, yeah, I will get better. I will get better and in the meantime let’s continue having sex”, be like, “No, you have a contagious communicable disease. I don’t know why you have it.” You don’t even have to blame him. You don’t even have to call him an abuser. You don’t need to do any of that. But you can say to yourself, This is not wise. If they’re not currently healthy enough to have sex right now today, then I should not have sex with them today.

“Take enough time to know if it’s grooming or not” Jane (04:17): “You go off to the hospital, you see the doctor, you take all the antibiotics, whatever you need, and when the doctor says you’re healthy, come back and tell me about it and then we’ll talk.”

Anne (04:26): Right. “And when you come back, I’m gonna look you in the eyeballs. And see if you’ve got any signs of Ebola.” Hopefully you educate yourself and look for those signs. And then also take enough time to know if it’s grooming or not.

Jane (04:38): Yeah. “And also, are you happy for me to talk to your doctor, the doctor that apparently cured you of Ebola ?” And if he says, “Yes, absolutely, here’s the doctor’s number. You have a chat to them, see what they say.” And the doctor also says, “Yes, I’ve checked him for Ebola and yes he was sick and we spent all this time treating him and now he’s okay.” But if he’s saying, “No, no, no, you can’t talk to my doctor. No, no, no, I don’t want you to call the hospital. No, you don’t need any evidence of that. Let’s just have sex…”

Should you talk to & believe the “doctor”? Anne (05:08): All the way across the world, I’m going to respectfully disagree with you. And I’ll tell you why – this happens a lot in the pornography addiction recovery community. So he’ll go to a CSAT therapist who’s a sexual addiction recovery therapist and he’ll groom the therapist and then the therapist will be like, “Wow, he is doing great.” . So if she talks to him and says to his therapist, “Hey, is he doing well? Is he healthy enough now to have sex with?”, it is 99% possible that therapist will say, “Oh yeah, he’s doing so well. He’s healthy now, he’s doing great.” And he is not. So I don’t agree in this case that you should talk to their “doctor”. I think that that’s actually a bad idea.

Trust your instincts. Always. Jane (05:51): Yeah. I agree with you on that. But say in that analogy, if it’s a porn thing, right? And he says, “Okay, I’m definitely cured, but no, you can’t have the password to my computer.”, and “Oh look, my browser history is scrubbed every time and I’m gonna go off and lock myself in a room for an hour and you’re not allowed to come in. But I went to the therapist and therapist said I’m fine”, then trust your instincts. Because clearly something’s not.

Anne (06:15): Even in that case. Even if he gave you the password, even if he gave you all that stuff, you have to trust your instincts because he could give you the password and he could have two phones and he’s got a secret phone somewhere that you don’t know about. Right? So trying to follow up with a third party always makes me nervous. There’s women who even require their husbands to do like a polygraph for example. And they think, Oh great, okay, he had a polygraph so now, now he’s safe, or something. And I’m like, “No , no, no, you don’t need to check his phone. You don’t need to do a polygraph, you don’t need to do all that. Just get really, really quiet with yourself and ask your sacred internal warning system, Do I feel emotionally safe, psychologically safe? Do I feel any fear inside at all?” And it’s my opinion that that is a more accurate read than asking their therapist or something. Also, here’s one other thing (sorry I’m ranting Jane, I apologize), but if you have to ask someone’s therapist if you have to get a polygraph to be like, Is this person safe to have sex with? Is that not the biggest giant red flag you’ve ever seen? That is really alarming.

The nature of abusive relationships? You stop trusting yourself. Jane (07:32): Absolutely. And I think one of the reasons that that women will often go to those extraordinary lengths, “Let me check your browser, let me talk to your therapist, take this polygraph”, is because the nature of abusive relationship is that you do stop trusting yourself. Trusting your instincts, as you said, is one of the safest things that you can do. So if you can just have that moment of just by yourself, and really, really thinking, How do I feel? I don’t trust him. If that feeling is there, you’re probably not going to be able to fix the relationship. If that feeling keeps going, if every time you stop and have that really quiet moment, Do I trust myself with him? Do I feel safe with him? Do I believe him?, and the answer is always no, then how is that going to get better? Why would you stay with somebody knowing that you can’t trust them? Cause you’ll never be able to trust them.

Anne (08:25): In that moment I want you to think, listeners, This man has Ebola.

Jane (08:30): .

“I don’t need to worry about tomorrow… I just need to worry about right now.” Anne (08:32): Maybe that analogy will stick. I don’t know. But maybe he can get better. Maybe he can’t, I don’t know. But he is not currently safe right now and that’s all I ever need to worry about. I don’t need to worry about tomorrow. I don’t need to worry about the next day. I just need to worry about right now. He’s not healthy enough to interact. Not even emotionally or psychologically, right? It’s just not a safe situation right now.

Jane (09:01): I think the thing that that can sometimes happen with that emotional manipulation that’s worth thinking about is the way they manipulate you. You lose sight of what you want. So if you’re talking about consent of both people actively want to share touch, the manipulation takes you away from yourself and all the focus goes on them. What does he want? What does he need? Why is he doing this? How can I make him better? And you lose touch with what you want:

How do I feel? What do I want? What do I need? How do I feel? What do I want? What do I need?, because all your focus is on him. And if you forget about that, if you forget about your needs that you need to be loved and respected and cared about as well and you’ve lost sight of that, that’s also a sign. Even if he’s never physically violent, he doesn’t even shout at you, it’s not overt, but you’ve lost sight of what you need because all you’re thinking about is what he needs. That’s a moment, again, where you need to go off and have that quiet moment. How do I feel? What do I want? I want to not be so exhausted all the time by wondering if I can trust him. Because it’s exhausting, right?

The desire to NOT divorce may trump the desire for safety Anne (10:12): Another thing came to mind with that. A lot of women, when they really get quiet, what they really want, and it’s a genuine desire and it’s genuinely true: they don’t want to get divorced.

(11:09): And so if they get really quiet, they’re like, I don’t want my marriage to end. I don’t want my family to fall apart. I don’t want divorce and a custody battle and all of this stuff. So if their focus is on, I don’t want chaos to ensue that would maybe happen in a divorce, it most likely would happen because abusers are very difficult to divorce. And so their focus is on that. That’s what they want rather than they want to actively share touch. Or they feel uncomfortable or they feel something else. And so this sort of bigger, broader thing that they want, which is an intact marriage, might block them from realizing the little mini things that they want. And they’re not little and they’re not mini. So I don’t mean to say that, but they don’t really want to have sex with them, but they genuinely want to remain married. So they feel like, If I don’t have sex then I’m really not going to have what I want, which is marriage. Can you speak to that for a minute?

“I want a marriage – but why?” Jane (12:24): I really understand that. I want my marriage, my family to stay together. I don’t want to be a single mother. I don’t want to have to go through all of that. I really, really understand that. But even those quiet moments when you think about what you want, I want a marriage, but why? I want a marriage to be a partnership. I want to share my life with somebody. I want to share parenting and living and working. I want to share all those things with somebody. If the person you’re with is not somebody you can share with, is not somebody you can feel like you have that equal sharing of your lives and your thoughts and your feelings with, and you know in that quiet moment that you can’t trust him and you’ve really never been able to trust him, then why do you think it’s going to change?

“If he can’t be in a good marriage with you, then what you want is not something that’s ever going happen with him.” (13:13): If that’s what you want, that really good marriage, being married doesn’t give you that. Being in a good marriage gives you that. And if he can’t be in a good marriage with you, then what you want is not something that’s ever going happen with him. You might technically have the marriage, but you’re always going to have that never really having what you want. So I think people get confused between, I want a good marriage, a happy marriage, and just the wedding. The marriage certificate is not enough to make you happy.

“All of the things that he might have that you feel like you cannot get by yourself, YOU CAN” Anne (13:47): And I also would say, “What for?” They say, “I want the marriage”, and if you ask, “What for?”, it might be real genuine concerns of financial abuse, for example. You’re thinking, There’s no way I’d be able to take care of my kids. Or there could be some very real legitimate concerns that you think, ‘What for?!’ Are you kidding me? If I didn’t have him, I don’t even know where I would live. I don’t know how I would function. So if you think, What for?, really take a look at what the answer is. If the answer is finances, then how can you improve your own personal financial situation? That’s something that you have to depend on him for maybe today, but tomorrow you don’t. And so to start taking a look at the reasons why will also help you recognize that they feel dependent on him and he wants you to feel that way, but they are not. If he’s an attorney and he makes a good living, you also can go to law school. You also can be an attorney. You also can make a good living. All of the things that he might have that you feel like you cannot get by yourself, you can.

“Women are always so much stronger than they think they are” Jane (15:02): Absolutely. Women are always so much stronger than they think they are. It feels impossible if you’re in that kind of marriage where you feel like you’re financially dependent. No, I could never look after myself or my kids without him. It’s amazing what you can do. And they’re real fears. It’s a tough world out there. And I would never dismiss it as, “Oh no, you’ll be fine, you’ll get a job, you’ll be fine.” It’s, it’s not that easy. So I really understand that maybe sometimes you might even make that decision of, Well not now, it’s just not safe for me to leave right now because I actually can’t at the moment keep myself and my kids safe. But you’re right, if you’re in that marriage where you’re thinking, Well this is not good for me, he’s not caring for me, this is not sharing a life together, then maybe instead of just picking up your bag and running out the door, then what you need to start doing is thinking about, Well what can I do to make sure that if this doesn’t get better, if he doesn’t keep those promises that he keeps making, that I can be safe, that I can give myself that choice.

“In what ways can it be replaced that are genuinely secure for you?” Anne (16:03): Well, and also, Why am I staying and how can I replace those things with something else? If you’re like, Why am I staying? And you think, Because of the finance stuff, what could you do to replace that? Not with another guy. No, no, no, no. By dating someone else? No. Are there are some career options or is there a grant? Think about the reason you’re staying and see: is there an alternative that is not a man that can actually meet this need? It’s a legitimate need. You need to have a roof over your head. In what ways can it be replaced and in what ways can it be replaced that are actually genuinely secure for you?

Don’t replace financial stability with another marriage – BUILD financial stability with your own competency Jane (16:46): And your point about it not being another man: it is really, really difficult to go from an abusive relationship to a healthy relationship because you’re, as you say, groomed to expecting a particular kind of response, and two, it’s not that you can never be in a really good healthy relationship again, you can obviously, but you need a break. You need a bit of time to re-calibrate and be around people who you’re actually good with and get used to having those kind of signals, and then you can meet somebody. But it’s really, really difficult to be in an abusive, manipulative, controlling relationship to a really healthy one because you’re so conditioned to those responses. So a guy who’s actually genuinely a good guy, the responses feel off and a bit weird.

Anne (17:29): The other reason I say that is because if you think, I need financial stability and so I need to replace it because this unhealthy man is providing that right now and I need to have it replaced elsewhere and then you replace it with another man, you are also transactional in that moment. So rather than having a human replace that need, which would put you in a transactionship rather than a relationship, how can you provide that need for yourself?

An abusive man will think: “great, she’s vulnerable, she cannot meet her own needs” Anne (18:00): As long as you can meet all of your basic needs: emotional, psychological, financial, physical, then you’re not going to be so vulnerable to transactions, because an abusive guy likes that. He’s like, Great, she’s vulnerable, she cannot meet her own needs. This is a transaction just waiting to happen. So that’s why I say, “Not another man.” I’m not saying that you’re going to be using people per se, but in a way, if you want a relationship because you need financial stability, why not just get financial stability?

Jane (18:34): Yeah. Right. And maybe if you need help, going back to friends and family is a different thing, but yeah, bouncing from one man to another, that’s not giving you that stability at all.

“I’m there because I want to be, not because I have to be or because I’m being manipulated or forced into it” Anne (18:45): No, and it’s absolutely fine to get help. You are going to need help, right? But that’s a different situation to say, “I need help while I get on my feet. I need childcare help or something while I finished this certification so that I can be a radiologist tech.” That’s different than, “I have financial needs and the 100% way I’m going to meet these is through another person”, rather than “I’m going to create some independence so that I don’t have to have transactionships anymore so that I can have a relationship because all of my basic needs are met and I don’t have anything to trade.”

Jane (19:24): Exactly. “I’m there because I want to be, not because I have to be or because I’m being manipulated or forced into it.”

Anne (19:31): We are going to pause. So make sure that you tune in as Jane and I continue our conversation next week.

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Have you asked yourself, “Is my husband manipulating me into sex, or did I actually want to do that?”

Identifying abuse on any level can be very difficult – but identifying sexual coercion in an intimate relationship can feel impossible.

Jane Gilmore is back on the BTR.ORG podcast sharing her expertise on consent – tune into the podcast and read the full transcript below for more.

Am I a Victim of Sexual Coercion? If your husband has used manipulation to coerce you into sex, you may feel confused, embarrassed, and have trouble knowing for certain what actually happened. Here are some questions you can ask yourself that Jane outlined throughout her interview with Anne that may help you gain clarity:

• Did your husband do something that you are afraid to tell others?
• Did something happen that you are ashamed to tell others?
• Did you experience fear prior to the sexual experience, or did you feel you needed to walk on eggshells around him so that he didn’t snap?
• Did you find yourself wondering, ‘is this normal’? ‘Do other husbands do this to their wives’?
• Did he claim that he was going to be in physical pain if you didn’t have sex with him?
• Did he say the right things prior to the experience, but you felt unsettled and unsafe during the sexual experience?

Did I WANT to do That? He’s gotta be somebody that you want to have sex with and that’s on him. It’s not on you to take responsibility for what he does.

Jane Gilmore, author and consent educator

You may be experiencing sexual coercion if you “want” to have sex with him because:

• A sexual addiction recovery program leader/sponsor/manual/member has told you that it’s your responsibility to provide your husband with sex.
• A religious leader/program has overtly told you or intimated that you should be having more sex with your husband.
• You’re afraid that if you don’t have sex with him, he will seek it elsewhere (even if he’s never said it out loud).
• You understand sex as a way to manage his abusiveness – if you have sex, he’ll be kinder.

In these situations, you’re having sex with your husband in order to protect yourself – and that’s not the kind of desire that is equivalent to real consent.

BTR.ORG Is Here For You Our BTR.ORG Group Sessions are a safe place to ask questions, process trauma, and express your emotions. Please attend a Group Session today and begin your journey to safety.

Full Transcript: Anne (00:01): Welcome to BTR.ORG. This is Anne. Jane Gilmore is back on today’s episode. If you didn’t listen to last week, listen to that first so you get an introduction to who she is and then join us here. We were talking about grooming and we are going to just continue that conversation. Now, grooming in and of itself is abuse. So he was abusive the entire time, but just sometimes it felt good and sometimes it felt terrible.

Jane Gilmore (01:49): And it’s also about making sure that that feeling of always walking on eggshells, he could turn at any minute. So even if he’s being sweet, you’re still a little wary. You’re still always guarding, you’re still always checking cause he can turn on a dime and you never know when that’s gonna happen. So that also part of the abuse is keeping you hypervigilant and walking on eggshells all the time. And again, if you’re looking for those signs, is this, is this abusive? I’m not sure, if you’re scared, if you never know how he’s gonna react, if you’re always thinking, well, is he gonna suddenly start if I say this or if I do this or if I wear this, is he gonna snap? Then you’re pretty sure that’s a sign that the relationship is abusive. Because in a a good healthier relationship, being afraid of somebody should not be part of it.

“Fear should not be on the table” Anne (02:39): Fear should not be on the table.

Jane Gilmore (02:41): It really shouldn’t.

Anne (02:42): For my audience, if they’re thinking, well, I’m not afraid of my husband, let me submit that you might be afraid of them using porn again. For example, you might be afraid of finding out that they’re sexting a woman that you didn’t know about. You might be afraid of finding out that he’s having an affair. So even if you, you think I’m not afraid of him punching me, for example. Or maybe I’m not afraid of him screaming in my face. Are you afraid of something? And consider that being afraid that your husband might be using porn. Or being afraid that my husband might be lying about something is fear. In my really healthy relationships with my sister, for example, or my, my parents or I don’t know. You know, just my healthy relationships. I never ever, ever, ever think I’m afraid of her lying to me again.

Being afraid is a sign that you’re being abused Jane Gilmore (03:43): And it’s also being afraid of contempt of somebody putting you down and shaming you and making you feel terrible about yourself. If I say something, is he going to tell me I’m stupid or worthless or that because of what I said that that makes me a bad person? Being afraid of the contempt is also a sign of abuse.

Anne (04:07): And the contempt can be very subtle. It does not have to be the flat out like, I think you’re stupid. It can just be like, really? I’m not sure that’s true.

What is it that you’re afraid of that makes you unable to be yourself with your husband? Jane Gilmore (04:16): Yeah, and I think that thing you said about your sister and your friends, that’s also a really good guideline. Like if you’ve got a really good relationship with a friend or a family member that you feel really comfortable and safe with, and then compare that to how you feel with your boyfriend or husband. If you don’t have that same feeling of comfort and safety and being able to be yourself and not having to walk on eggshells all the time, well, why not? What’s going on? What is it that you’re afraid of that makes you unable to relax and be yourself and be happy and comfortable around them?

All men are NOT abusive Anne (04:48): And I don’t want women thinking, well it’s because my sister’s a girl or my mom or my friend or whatever. That confusion of like, well, all men are like this. Apparently they’re not. No, not all men are abusive. It’s just because he’s a man and I don’t understand men. Maybe that is not what’s happening. There are healthy men out there that you would never be afraid that they are going to lie to you again because they didn’t ever lie to you in the first place. So that fear of like, is this gonna happen again? Am I gonna find out again that he’s been using porn? Am I gonna find out again that he has a secret credit card or that he’s gambling or some secret thing that you didn’t know and then he grooms you and says, well I’m not gonna do it again. There’s a fear there that is gonna happen because it happened one time. But with my healthy friends, it’s never happened one time. They’ve never lied to me about some really serious thing that affects me greatly. Not even once.

Are you ashamed to tell other people? Jane Gilmore (05:46): Absolutely. People can make mistakes, right? You can have a bad day, you can have a squabble, you can, something can go wrong. But there’s a huge difference between that and keeping those kind of secrets that can feel shameful. The sort of things that, another really good one, if you’re looking for, I’m not sure is this abusive or not, are you ashamed to tell people? If you’re ashamed to tell people, oh I found he was cheating on me. I found out he, you know, he said this thing to me or he did this thing and I don’t wanna tell my close friends. That’s one of those moments that you have to think, well, hang on. Why? Because if it’s that you know that your friend is gonna be horrified, why is he doing this to you? Why is he making you feel like this? What’s going on that you are ashamed to tell people about it? That’s one of the key moments. And that was something that I remember saying this to a friend of mine just recently. If he does something to you that you are afraid to tell me or that, or that you are ashamed to tell me, even if you don’t want to tell me, you need to know that that’s a sign something is really wrong.

BTR is here to help you process your trauma without shame Anne (06:48): Well, and I think also when women do go for help there, there are things that they are ashamed to say. So rather than say that, they say things like, well he gets very upset when I, you know, blah, blah blah. And then the person listening might be like, oh, that happens to me too. Those are regular communication problems. And so then they don’t know that they have omitted a key thing that would help them understand what was happening to them. So they’re not aware that they’ve omitted this thing. And so then if they listen to their, you know, friends’ advice, they might think, oh, maybe it is just a communication issue. And then they’ll work on communication rather than realizing, no, this is not a communication issue. This is an abuse issue. And one of the reasons why I haven’t been able to figure out that it’s an abuse issue is cause I haven’t shared all of the really shameful things that have occurred, which is part of why we created BTR.

Is this normal? (07:48): We have a daily group so that women can get on and just start talking with other women who are saying that same thing and they could just say it out loud and think like, is this normal? Right? It’s a safe place to say it where they might not necessarily be talking to a friend or family that they don’t really wanna share it with right this very second because they’re, they don’t wanna like hurt their husband’s reputation or something like that. They can share it maybe in a safe place and then start reaching out to people like their fa friends or family members. Cause you’re going to need support from people that you know in real life.

“I believe you and it’s not your fault” Jane Gilmore (08:27): Absolutely. And that feeling of shame is so corrosive. It does so much harm inside you that to be holding those secrets and knowing that you feel shame about it, trying to hold onto the idea that it’s not your fault and you didn’t do anything wrong, but, but when you feel ashamed of something that’s happening in your marriage or in your relationship. And so you don’t tell people because of it. It, it’s, again, it’s part the abuse because it, it makes you feel like it’s your fault. Like you are doing something wrong and you’re not. But that feeling of shame is hard to overcome. And then the longer it goes on, and the more you hide from your friends and your family, the harder it gets to say after a year or two years or even 10 years, well actually he’s been doing this to me for 10 years and I didn’t tell you. So having somewhere you can go where you can finally say that out loud and have someone say, that’s okay, I believe you and it’s not your fault, is one of the most important moments I find in women who are finally able to recognize, yes, this is abuse and yes, I need to think seriously about whether or not I stay with this man.

Trauma Mama Husband Drama Anne (09:39): Here’s a five star rating we received for Trauma Mama on Amazon. She says, “Partners of sex addicts are the victims of sex addicts and are being treated as perpetrators and the destruction is massive. I sent copies of Trauma Mama Husband Drama to some of my family members in hopes that they someday come to understand the destruction, manipulation, and abuse by my ex-husband, a sex addict. They still blame me for his behavior and don’t understand my extreme reactions to finding out about his behavior. My husband was with over 25 women, including my best friend, our children’s friends, mothers, wives of clients, multiple prostitutes that I know about. I could go on and on the money he spent on them, the gaslighting, my doctors told me they had never seen someone so gaslit. I’m not proud of this. And then when I found out I spent two years obsessively trying to understand with little to no support. It honestly took me eight years to get out of the fog. I now see his addiction as abuse and manipulation. This book shows the deep down destruction to partners of sex addicts in an easy way. I’m hoping to learn how to demand and deserve respect and find some kind of happiness.”

Thank you so much for sharing.

The Porn Addiction Recovery Industrial Complex coercing women into sex Back to the interview. When it comes to consent with sex. I talk a lot about how the pornography addiction recovery community is basically coercing women to have sex with men and also the religious, the religious community. I’m actually religious myself, so I’m not like anti-religion or anything like that. I’ll talk about the two different things and then I’d love to hear your response on both.

(11:30): But I just wanna kind of give you a broad overview. The Pornography Addiction Recovery Industrial Complex – they’ll say things like, well, he has these sexual needs and so if he doesn’t have these needs met somewhere, he’s maybe gonna act out somewhere else. So it is sort of threatening, like you kind of are obligated to give him sex because like he, he has to have sex apparently. And so if you don’t give it to him, where is he gonna get it from? Right? There’s that sort of idea. And then there’s sort of the religious overtones of like, that you need to submit that he is the head of your household. That in order for him to be faithful and to obey the commandments and to not break the law of chastity, that you need to have sex with him because otherwise it’s going to be too hard for him to obey the law of chastity. He will not be able to do it. If he’s not able to have sex with you, then it’s kind of gonna be your fault that he breaks the commandments by having sex with someone else, right? By masturbating, using pornography, whatever else he’s doing because you were not available to him and this is your duty. Have you heard of these two things before?

The systemic, widespread coercion of women and girls Jane Gilmore (12:44): I have heard of that kind of thing. It happens in a lot of different ways, in a lot of different circumstances. So say if I’m in schools, I’ll hear teenage girls talking to me about, well, he really needs it. I don’t know if you have it in the US but here, when I was a teenager, the, they used to call it the blue balls thing.

Anne (13:04): Yeah, his balls are going to fall off. This is a, this is a medical issue. I have a medical issue and if you don’t help me with it, my balls are gonna fall off.

Jane Gilmore (13:13): Yes, exactly. You have to do this for me because otherwise I’m going to be in pain. But if you go back to that definition of consent that we’re talking about at the beginning of two people actively want to share touch, then that just doesn’t work. Because also both those things that you’re talking about there is making the woman responsible for how the man behaves. Nobody can ever be responsible for how someone else behaves. If you’re talking about adults, he’s an adult. He is responsible for his behavior and his choices. If you’re gonna talk about it and share it and decide what you both want together, that’s one thing. But you can’t control his behavior. You can’t be responsible for his behavior. So if he needs sex, then he’s gotta be somebody that you want to have sex with and that’s on him. It’s not on you to take responsibility for what he does.

“There’s no man on the planet that is going to drop dead from lack of sex” Anne (14:10): And that’s also just a lie. There’s no man on the planet that is going to drop dead from lack of sex. It is just not a thing.

Jane Gilmore (14:21): It’s just not. It’s also based on that idea that, that men need sex and women are the gatekeepers of sex and men need it. And that’s just not true. Women like sex too. Women enjoy sex too. And in with good sex, and I mean consensual in that it’s shared and both people want it. Both people enjoy it. And if you are not enjoying it, it’s, and you’re not able to say why and you’re not able to talk about what you want and he doesn’t want to hear what you want or what you need to enjoy it as well, then that’s a sign that there’s something wrong. That there’s that ability to share. And it’s not easy to talk about sex. And that’s, you know, I’m certainly not gonna say, well, everybody can just sit up and say, well, I want this and then I want this. And then point A, you know that that’s not an easy conversation. But if he’s just not even interested in hearing about what you want so that you enjoy it too, then you’ve gotta think, well, what’s going on here? Because this is not sharing a relationship. This is again, going back to that transactional thing of he’s getting something and manipulating you into giving it.

“You do NOT need to WANT to do that” Anne (15:25): I have a concern about this because I think that with all of these discussions about consent and all of the discussions about making sure that she’s cared for, if an abuser listens to these conversations, they are very good at adopting this type of language and then weaponizing it. So for example, they’ll, they’ll say, oh, it really matters to me that that your needs are met too. They’re able to parrot back this information. So I worry that women will be like, oh well he’s saying this and so check, check, check. I’m safe. So one of the things I wanna talk about is being really aware of how you feel on the inside. So even if he’s saying all the right things, like do you actively want to be sharing touch with him? Do you want to, even if he’s saying all the right things, that does not mean that you need to want to do that.

“It’s okay if he says all the right things and you still don’t feel comfortable” (16:24): It’s okay if he says all the right things and you still don’t wanna do it. It’s okay if he says all the right things and you still don’t feel comfortable. So to be really in tune with, I call it your sacred internal warning system, the other thing to think about is to watch his actions. So if he is saying all the right things, but his actions are not, so for example, he’s saying, yes, it really matters that what you want is important too. While he’s really physically pressuring you to have sex and you’re not really wanting to, you’re not into it. Right? But he’s saying all the right things while he’s still plowing forward. So it does make me nervous sometimes to talk about, like, this is what he would say if he were a healthy person, cause they can always pick up on that healthy language and use it. And you, you need to know that words are not the most important thing here.

“It’s just a sales pitch, it’s a manipulation” Jane Gilmore (17:17): Absolutely. And you’re so right. It’s about what does he do if the actions don’t match the words, it’s like an apology, right? If somebody says, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll never do it again. And then they do it again. They didn’t mean the apology, the apology was just a way to make you stop talking about it. If they’re saying, I care about what you want, I’m, you have to want this, you know, this has gotta be consensual, but then they actually don’t care about consent, then it’s just a sales pitch, it’s a manipulation. It’s not actually genuinely caring about what you want and then responding to it.

Anne (17:49): Even something like, I just, I really care what you want. I, I really care. I, I’m interested, why don’t you tell me? And then she tells him and then he says, well, is it my turn now? Can I now tell you what I want? Right? And then the manipulation happens. Then he does his sale pitch, his sales pitch for the that transaction and he is trying to make that sale. Think about like, if he really heard and understood what I said, this isn’t some kind of negotiation where you say, okay, this is what I want. And then he says, well this is what I want and then somebody wins. But if he is abusive and if he is transactional, that is what he is going to think in his mind. He will think, well she won because she said she had a headache and so we’re not having sex. Rather than thinking, oh we are deciding this together.

What about nonverbal communication? Jane Gilmore (18:45): Yes, exactly. Yeah. And it really consent really is about, and this again is one of the things that we teach a lot. Consent is not just about what you say, consent can be nonverbal. So one of the things that we talk about in those classes, and again while I do them in schools, I also do them with adults. If notice somebody’s body language, notice their expression, notice how they’re reacting. If somebody’s withdrawing from you or turning their face away or their body’s all stiffened up, what does that mean? And if you are the one doing that and they’re not interested, they’re not caring, they’re not even noticing, then consent is not there in their actions. So actions and words have to match cause it, that’s also part of abuse is saying one thing and doing another. So it creates that, that what they call cognitive dissonance where you don’t really understand what’s going on cause he’s saying all the right things, but something else is happening. And now I don’t understand cause he said this thing, but then he did this thing and is that my fault? Or what’s going on? Why did that happen? That happened because he was manipulating you.

Anne (19:50): Okay, we’re gonna pause the conversation. Jane’s gonna join me again next week, so make sure to stay tuned.

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Have you said “yes” to sex out of guilt, obligation, fear, or exhaustion?

Have you said “yes” to sex after saying no repeatedly?

Have you said “yes” to sex because it was easier to just get it over with, rather than deal with the sulking, anger, threats, and punishments?

Jane Gilmore, author and consent educator, is on the BTR.ORG podcast, empowering women to understand that consent is not “giving a yes” – in fact, your coerced “yes” was the result of abuse. Read the full transcript below and listen this podcast episode for more.

What Consent IS Consent is about when both people actively want to share touch.

Jane Gilmore, author and consent educator

Your desire is everything when it comes to consent. If you don’t want to actively share touch with the other person involved, you are not giving your consent – no matter what else has transpired.

What Consent is NOT * Saying yes because you’ve been sleep deprived and will only be allowed sleep if you say yes * Saying yes after repeatedly saying “no” * Saying yes out of fear of punishment * Saying neither no or yes * Freezing or going limp * Saying “no” or “wait” after the sexual experience has begun * Saying yes in order to protect children, pets, or others from violence and/or other forms of abuse

This is the Takeaway: It’s not about giving or getting permission, it’s not about getting a yes.

Jane Gilmore, author and consent educator

If your husband or partner considers consent to have occurred after he has:

• deprived you of sleep
• sulked
• threatened you
• physically hurt you
• “persuaded” you after you have expressed that you are not interested
• continued to push you after you have said no
• promised to stop if you say no, but claims he didn’t hear you

Then you are not in a safe situation. You are experiencing sexual abuse. BTR.ORG Is Here For You We know how devastating and confusing it is to learn the truth about consent when you have experienced marital rape, sexual coercion, and sexual assault in your own committed relationship. We are here to help you.

Our BTR.ORG Group Sessions are a safe place to process your trauma. Attend a session today.

Full Transcript: Anne (00:00): I am honored to have Jane Gilmore on today’s episode. She is an author, journalist, feminist, and a consent educator. She’s been researching and writing about the causes and effects of violence and poverty for over a decade and is now also delivering consent and respectful relationships education in Australian schools. Jane has a master of journalism from the University of Melbourne and is an award-winning journalist who has been commissioned by the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Guardian, the Saturday Paper, and many other outlets. In 2014, she started the Fixed It campaign and we’re gonna be talking about that in today’s episode. Welcome Jane.

Jane Gilmore (00:41): Thank you so much for having me.

Consent in Conjunction with Pornography Use Anne (00:44): Jane has joined us from Australia, so I’m very excited to have her today. We are going to talk about consent and then she’s also gonna be joining me for another episode talking about the media. So we’re just gonna start with consent. It’s something that we talk about on this podcast all the time, especially in conjunction with pornography use when a woman’s not aware of all the sexual stuff that her husband is doing and he doesn’t give her the information in order to be able to give consent, she’s not informed enough to give consent. Let’s really dive into consent today. Jane, do you wanna just give us your overall definition of consent?

The Definition of Consent Jane Gilmore (01:28): Yeah, cause I think that’s really important. Often when we talk about consent, people think of it as a, a really binary thing. It’s a yes or a no. And when we are going into schools, particularly in talking to young people, but also when we’re doing adult education, it’s one of the first questions I ask and it’s really interesting that the answers are often very gendered. So girls and women will often talk about giving permission. It’s when you give somebody permission to touch you and boys and men will often talk about it in terms of when you get permission. And it’s interesting that non-binary and queer people will often have a much more nuanced understanding of it. Cause when we go through all of that and then we talk about it in terms of consent is about when both people actively want to share touch, you’re suddenly framing it in a completely different way.

“It’s Not About “Getting a ‘Yes'” (02:21): It’s not about giving or getting permission, it’s not about getting a yes where, and I certainly hear this a lot from both young people and from adults where somebody might say yes because they’re coerced or because they’re scared or because they’re pressured into it. But what happens after that is not necessarily consensual. But if you’re thinking about it in terms of both people actively want to share something, whether it’s touch or what you’re looking at or what you’re talking about, that’s a completely different thing. And when you think about consent in those terms, it changes all your interactions.

Anne (02:56): I love that. So say it one more time.

“Consent is When Both People Actively Want to Share Touch” Jane Gilmore (03:00): Consent is when both people actively want to share touch, consent also applies to a whole range of different things that we do. So our organization also starts teaching consent in kindergartens. I don’t actually do the kindergartens cause small children overwhelm me and frighten me sometimes. I was in a kindergarten once with one of our teachers and the kids like they were great but they were going through a handbag and sticking their fingers in her socks and it was just chaos. But obviously you’re not talking to little kids about sex. It’s interesting when you go into kindergartens and the educators will say, we’re gonna talk to your kids about consent. And the parents will freak out cause, Oh my god, what are you talking to our three year old about sex? And it’s like, no, we’re not talking to them about sex, we’re talking about consent.

It’s not about whether they say yes, but about whether they want to (03:48): And when you’re three consent is about sharing your teddy bear or can I have a hug or do you wanna go out and play? And if you can you go back to that definition of do both people actively want this? It’s a thing that three-year-olds can understand quite easily. Does your friend want to give you a hug? Does your friend want to for you to share their teddy or play with their Lego or sit down quietly? Not about whether they say yes, but whether they want to. And when you start with kids that young, by the time they’re 16, the concept of consent in sex is really easy. But if they’ve never thought about consent in those terms before, it’s a much more difficult conversation.

“This idea that getting a yes is consent is really dangerous in the hands of abusers” Anne (04:34): I’m really liking this. The actively wanting to this podcast is specifically for women in relationships with abusive men. Okay. So that’s the particular audience that I speak to. So my listeners when they’re thinking, well I didn’t want to have sex or I didn’t want to do this thing, but I felt like if I didn’t, then he was gonna get angry or felt like if I didn’t, then he was gonna blame me for going out and using porn or you know, whatever he was doing. And this idea that getting a yes is consent is really dangerous in the hands of abusers because then they’re just trying to do whatever they’re, whatever they can for her to say yes. Right? Or even just to not say no rather than trying to figure out if that’s what she actually wants. Can you talk more about that aspect where an abuser will think, well if it’s just a yes I’m going for, then I can lie to her or I can threaten her or you know, subtly threaten her and as long as I’ve got that, yes, I’m good to go. Can you talk about that?

One of the Hallmarks of an Abusive Relationship Jane Gilmore (05:45): Well it, I think when somebody thinks that consent is about getting a yes regardless of how you get it, it’s one of the hallmarks of an abusive relationship, isn’t it? Because it’s, it’s making sure that she can be blamed. Well she said yes, though it’s not my fault. And regardless of why she said yes, if she said yes because she was scared or because it was that manipulation that often comes with abuse of you have to say yes to me, you have to do this or I will withdraw the simulation of love that I pretend to give you sometimes. And now you’ve said yes, so now I can do anything I want because you said yes to it. So now it’s your fault. It’s one of the hallmarks of an abusive relationship is making the victim the one to blame and removing blame from the perpetrator. So again, that that deliberate misunderstanding of consent as well, I got her to say yes. So that means I can do anything I want. And it’s, her fault is key to an abusive relationship and understanding that it’s abusive and that what happens after that is not consensual, I think is also one of the keys to recognizing that the relationship is abusive. The basic concept of empathy: how does the other person feel and what do they want are almost always absent from abusive relationships.

The Intentional Misuse of Consent Anne (07:05): So you just said the intentional misuse. Can you talk more about the intentional misuse? A lot of women, they don’t recognize the abuse. They know it’s wrong, they don’t feel good about it, but they, they don’t wanna call it abuse because they think it’s like that he didn’t mean to do it or it’s not on purpose. So can you talk more about the intentional misuse?

Jane Gilmore (07:25): The intentional misuse of consent is something that happens a lot in abusive relationships and it’s part of the manipulation. It’s also part of the abuse because we tend to think of abusive relationships as as being physically violent and not that we don’t pay attention to, but we often don’t recognize the emotional manipulation that is so much part of abusive relationships where it’s always about making sure that the perpetrator of abuse can’t be blamed. It’s always the victim’s fault. You made me do this, you agreed to this, you wanted this, you caused this. So if you can manipulate somebody into saying yes to something, it’s a really easy way of making sure that it’s her fault, that you can make her believe that it’s her fault. And so that ability to manipulate somebody into taking on the shame and the blame for the abuse is key to maintaining that abusive relationship.

Abusers see victims as “something to be used” Anne (08:32): And the reason it’s intentional is because they could not get what they wanted without it. If they genuinely stopped and they were like, Hey, is this what she really wants do? Made an effort to figure out what she really wanted, what she was interested in, who she was, rather than seeing her as something to be used, they would realize, oh, she actually isn’t at this moment right now, very interested in that. That’s okay. You know what I mean? Like you have to intentionally think, this is what I want and this is what I’m going to say, or this is what I’m going to do to get that thing.

“You can’t share something with someone you’re trying to control” Jane Gilmore (09:10): Well that’s also, I think again about the, the nature of abusive relationships where the perpetrators of abuse don’t really see their partner as a partner, even as a person. They’re, they’re an object. They’re something to be controlled, but they don’t see them as an equal, as somebody to share something with. They see them as, I need to control this person, I need to be in charge of them. And by its nature, you can’t share something with somebody that you’re trying to control. You have to impose it on them. And in an equal relationship or a relationship with somebody that you care about and that you think about and that you understand as a person who’s desires and needs matter as much as yours, you can’t do that to somebody. You can’t force them to do something or manipulate them to do something that, that makes them uncomfortable. You can only do that in a relationship where you don’t see them as equal.

A Transactionship VS. a Relationship Anne (10:07): I often talk about how abusers are transactional. So they have transactionships, healthy people are relational and they have relationships. So for example, it’s not bad to explain to someone what you want and why you want it, right? This is not bad. I wanna go to a movie, it would be fun, would you like to go with me? We could leave at seven. Right? I mean this is just very basic stating facts. There’s no manipulation. You’re asking someone, you’re giving them the information that they need. There’s nothing wrong with telling someone what you want and giving them information. The problem with a transaction is that a relationship is you’re willing to give the information honestly, and you’re willing to hear honest feedback because they’re equal to you. Right? So you give them all the information that they need, they say, oh seven won’t work for me because I’ve got this thing, you know, but yada yada, it’s, they go back and forth in this relationship of a mutual understanding and a mutual agreement because abusers are transactional.

“They’re not really interested in a relationship” (11:08): They’re looking to complete a transaction. So they’re willing to say what they need today to get the transaction done, to get the deal done. If I tell her that she’s beautiful and that I love her and that I really care about her even though she doesn’t know that I’m married, cause I didn’t mention that, but you know, whatever, I can get her to continue dating me and then maybe have sex with me and then maybe I’ll never see her again and I’ll ghost her and she won’t even know what happened. Right? That’s a transaction. He’s wanting different transactions and he is, he’s basically deciding if I say this thing, this is what I’ll get if I do this thing, this is what I’ll get and this is what she’ll give me. And it’s, it’s not relational, it’s more just transactional. So I think that that’s also what you’re saying is that they’re not willing to meet someone where they are and give them the information that they need to make a good decision for themselves. They’re just, they’re not really interested in a relationship.

“They’re looking to get something rather than to share something” Jane Gilmore (12:06): Yeah, well they’re looking to get something rather than share something. Yeah, I want to get this, I wanna get sex or I wanna get admiration or I wanna get respect, but I’m not willing to share it. I want something for me, not something for us. And it’s one of those, you know, we look for those red flags in those beginning times when it’s, when it’s gonna be easier to leave looking for those red flags. And that to me is one of those key ones. Are we sharing things? Is he trying to get something? And if he’s just trying to get something and in that beginning it can also often be easy to be misled because it looks like positive things. He’s looking to get admiration and respect and love and sex and it’s all great, but he’s looking to get it. It’s not a shared thing. And that’s one of the really subtle differences I think between really good nurturing relationships and abusive relationships.

The GROOMING Phase Anne (12:58): Yeah, that grooming phase is interesting because they’re like, I would like to get her admiration and so I am going to act really kind and nice and admire her and that will earn me or get me admiration. That’s really good. I like that. I hadn’t thought about the sharing part, but a lot of victims will say when they share their stories, especially about the emotional and psychological abuse, that there’s this, this feeling sometimes that he’s like, thinks that she’s his enemy, like somehow that she’s trying to undermine his job or that she’s trying to hurt their relationship or you know, something like that. Like there’s this sense that he thinks that she’s his enemy rather than his partner, which baffles victims. Cause they’re like, I just wanna like have a conversation. I just wanna figure things out. Like there’s this problem and we’re trying to solve it. And because he’s not relational like that, he doesn’t want to share in the solution or share, then it really does from an abuser’s point of view, feel like an enemy. And, and this is what victims need to know, is that there’s no amount of like explaining it to him or helping him understand or pointing out all the logical points that’s going to help him realize, oh yeah, we do wanna share this because that’s not his goal. It’s her goal, but it’s not his.

Abuse is about control Jane Gilmore (14:25): No. And it’s interesting when you start looking at the psychology of abusers because it comes from, I’m certainly not being sympathetic towards abusers at all, but, but we need to understand what they do and why they do it, to be able to change. And it comes from this, this place of humiliation and fear. It’s why they need to control. You don’t need to control something unless you’re scared of it. And so this need to control the, your partner comes from fear. So they can never stop that fear and that humiliated fury long enough to, to again go back to thinking of them as a person. They’re an object I have to control because if I don’t control them, they’re not going to love me because I, I’m worth loving. They’re going to love me because I make them and I have to force them to.

“You can never ‘love someone better'” to heal them from being an abuser (15:10): And the more I can control them, the more I can make sure that they do what I want and feel what I want and say what I want. And anytime they do something that’s not that, then it’s a sign that I don’t have control. So the control, the need for control gets more and more and they’re constantly looking for signs that, that you’re slipping out of their control. So you talk to that other guy, you’re cheating on me, I can’t control you. And you can never love someone better from that. It’s just not something that you can change in other people. It’s, but often what happens in the beginning with that love bombing stage, it’s always the part you’re trying to get back to, you know, throughout the whole relationship. You remember those, the really wonderful moment in the beginning when you spent so much time together and you were so connected and it was all great. And every now and again you’ll come back to that for a little bit and then it goes back to the, but I don’t have you under control, so I’m gonna get angry and I’m gonna get scared and I’m gonna blame you and I’m gonna take it out on you. And all the, the often the, what the woman’s trying to do is say, but why can’t we go back to when it was great to when we loved each other and, and we were so happy together. But he can’t because he’s too scared.

Grooming is MEANT to feel good! Anne (16:24): Well I don’t think he can cause I don’t think he was ever there. No, I think in the beginning he was grooming in order to get, but then he got it, he got that thing then the grooming is to keep the thing, but he doesn’t have to work as hard because he now has it. So then he’s just keeping it. But that does not take as much effort as it did in the beginning. So what she’s really trying to get back to is something that she didn’t know was more intense, grooming more frequently. But she doesn’t realize that that was not, like, that was not a good thing. It, it might have felt really good to her, but it was not good for her because it wasn’t true.

Jane Gilmore (17:11): And she also doesn’t realize that what he’s trying to do is not, is not get to a relationship where, where it’s based on love and sharing. He’s trying to get to a point where she’s completely within his control. So both people are trying to get to different things and of course it doesn’t work.

Trying to get back to “how it was”? It was NEVER good – it was just GROOMING Anne (17:31): So yeah, you’re never gonna like get back to that cause you’re just gonna get back to grooming, which wasn’t good in the first place, even if it felt good.

Jane Gilmore (17:39): Yeah. So he might go back to that if he thinks that she’s about to leave and that we often see that with abusive relationships where he really believes that she’s about to leave. So he’ll either full fury, I will control you and not let you leave or full love bombing. I love you so much that you can’t leave me when I love you like this. And not to actually be willing to talk about, well, what’s really going on? Why do you want to leave? How can we fix things? It’s the love bombing or the fury.

“Grooming, in and of itself, is abuse.” Anne (18:06): A lot of women think, oh, but he’s just weird like two days a week and the other five days a week he’s normal and they don’t realize that those five days he’s grooming and then he might get kind of exhausted cause it’s really hard to like fake stuff for five days, then the mask falls off for two days. He is overtly abusive also in during that time trying to control, like you said. And then he’ll put the mask on. It will escalate over time, but it’s also sometimes not gonna be like the majority of the time, it could be the minority of the time, but that does not mean it’s not abuse. It also doesn’t mean that that grooming part isn’t also abusive. So for women who are doing calculations, I know because I did this, I actually like got a journal out and wrote down the days that he was weird and the days that he was normal, you know, and I, that’s stuff, he was actually not abusive. I thought more often than he was. But it was also because I didn’t realize that grooming in and of itself is abuse. So he was abusive the entire time, but just sometimes it felt good and sometimes it felt terrible. We’re gonna pause the conversation here and continue next week. So stay tuned.

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Do you wonder if you’re asexual? Feel like your once vibrant sense of romance is now completely extinguished? Find yourself repulsed by your partner, rather than attracted to him?

Trauma deeply affects our sexuality – Anne shares her own experiences with this subject in this short episode. Tune in to the BTR.ORG Podcast and read the full transcript below for more.

I Lost Interest in Sex After Betrayal – Is That Normal? Many women lose interest in sex and any kind of affection after betrayal and sexual coercion.

There’s nothing MORE normal than not wanting the abuser to touch you or use your body when you do not feel safe with him.

Will I Ever Have a Sex Drive Again? As Anne shares her own story, including how her crush on Indiana Jones has helped her understand her own trauma in regard to future relationships – you may find some hope that as you establish safety in your life and give yourself space to heal, peace and healing are absolutely possible.

BTR.ORG Is Here For You Losing your desire for intimate connection and relationships can be devastating. It feels like a passionate, beautiful part of you has died and often, we don’t even want that part of ourselves to be resurrected when the trauma has been significant.

These are difficult feelings to process. Attend a BTR.ORG Group Session today and find the community that you deserve on your journey to safety.

Full Transcript: Anne (00:00): Welcome to BTR.ORG. This is Anne. I’m gonna have a really short episode again today with just me kind of chatting about stuff. So can we talk about Indiana Jones? I recorded this before the movie came out, so at this point I haven’t seen it, but I realize that when this airs, it will have come out. Just no, there’s not gonna be any spoilers or anything because I have not seen it yet at this point. I grew up on Indiana Jones in my home. We had a VHS player and a tape, I think I recorded it off of TV or something of Raiders of the Lost Ark. And so there’s a period of my life where every Saturday I would watch Raiders of the Lost Ark via vhs. So I have a lot of this movie memorized and with this new Indiana Jones coming out, I’m so excited to see it.

Have media, culture, and trauma affected your sexuality? (03:55): Of course I’m gonna be there and I’m gonna love it. But I have mixed feelings about Indiana Jones in terms of maybe how media and culture has affected my sexuality. And I say that because I’m not really interested in getting married and I’m not really interested in dating. I’ll go on a date every once in a while and I am noticing lately that I have more maybe interest in sex when I say that, just that I like a hundred percent of the time, I’m not a hundred percent disgusted by it. And that did occur for a really long time. So now 90% of the time I’m 90% disgusted by it and then there’s like 10% where I’m like, oh, maybe I would wanna have sex again. And I feel like that 10% of the time when that occurs is usually due to some Indiana Jones type character on a movie that I watch .

“It represented my childhood ideas of what men were and what masculinity was” (04:52): So that’s why I’m saying maybe it has ruined my sexuality in that a lot of the shows that I watch where I’m really attracted to a man, they’re strong, they’re capable physically, I’m very attracted to manly problem solvers who are able to like save the day. I actually had the opportunity to go the part of Indiana Jones and the last crusade is filmed when they find the Valley of the Crescent Moon. And when I got there, I broke down in like hysterical crying, like I could not stop crying because it represented to me when like I, so you like go through this slot canyon, which by the way, it looks a lot like where I’m from. It looks a lot like southern Utah, so I felt like I was home there. Anyway, so I go through this slot canyon and I get to the end and here is this amazing, it’s called the Treasury and it was just overwhelming, but it also represented kind of my childhood ideas of what men were and what masculinity was and the kind of man I wanted, which what Indiana Jones like.

“There’s no Indiana Jones in real life” (06:02): That’s crazy. There are no men in real life like Indiana Jones. So I see the Treasury in real life and I just break down and start crying. I was like sobbing because here I was standing in front of the Treasury thinking this sort of represents what my dreams were. My ex-husband is very physically capable. He was really strong and like physically attractive and he could like pick up railroad ties and throw ’em around in our yard. And when he’d get dirt on his face and he was doing yard projects, I was extremely attracted to him. So I’m standing in front of the treasury and I just break down it kind of like all of my childhood dreams and hopes are just standing there in front of me and there’s no Indiana Jones, right? I’m, I’m just there and he’s not around. And it was really miserable actually in that moment.

“He would be the worst husband in the world” (07:03): I took my journal, thank goodness, and I was journaling quite a bit. The other interesting thing about the Treasury, that the actual Treasury, the one in Petra is that it is just a facade. You can’t go in it, but if you could, there’s just like a little tiny room in there. There’s not some palace inside of there. It’s just this beautiful facade and most of Petra is like that. It’s just facades, not like palace is built into the rock. And that really hit me all of the things that I thought I wanted or that I thought were cool. This Indiana Jones character was just a hollow facade and yet that type of man, like the Indiana Joneses of the world is still what I’m sexually attracted to. And it’s annoying me. It’s annoying me because I would not wanna be married to Indiana Jones. He would be the worst husband in the world.

“I’m so happy with my life” (07:59): I’ve been thinking a lot about how perhaps my sexuality has been messed up by movies, these types of men who I am attracted to for sure. But I don’t necessarily want to be and I wish I was attracted to other types of men. So in the process of this, rather than worry about it too much, I just have decided not to worry about it. And I like that. I really do. I’m so happy with my life. I love it. I love my kids. I love being a mom, I love doing this podcast. I love everything we do at BTR. It is so satisfying and maybe like when my kids move out or something, I’ll think about it and by that time I will be like 55 years old and maybe I will meet, you know, a man who is not like Indiana Jones and maybe I won’t be that attracted to him and maybe that will be great.

Are you in this situation? (09:04): I don’t know. I’m wondering if you guys have had the same situation where you know what healthy is and that’s what you’re interested in. Maybe you’re not so interested in dating like I am, I don’t know, but then who you’re like sexually attracted to is not necessarily the quote unquote healthy type. I’m not saying I’m attracted to bad guys. Like no, I’m not dating anybody. I never get myself in a pickle. I’m not saying any of that. Like I’m not like flirting with people. If you knew me in real life, which you don’t, I think you’d be like, oh yeah, she does not flirt with people. Like I do not have a problem with not dating. I think I give off like a kind of leave me alone vibe, which suits me fantastic. So there’s no like hanky pinky going on with me, but I’m wondering how you feel about how like media maybe or movies toyed a little bit with who you’re sexually attracted to and then also what you know would be better for a marriage.

Women in healthy marriages don’t relate to the BTR.ORG podcast (10:07): That being said, since I’ve never had a healthy marriage, I don’t know anything about it. And so this is not a podcast for healthy marriages. I think like an episode or two ago I talked about abuse and what that looks like. And I’m not concerned at all about women who are in healthy marriages coming to BTR and then out of thin air deciding for no reason at all that their husband is abusive when he’s not. That’s not what happens. Women who have healthy marriages, if they listen to this podcast, they’re like, oh wow, yeah, my husband’s nothing like that. If they read, Why Does He Do That? They’ll be like, wow, my husband’s nothing like this. Women who have an abusive husband, when they read, Why Does He Do That? they’ll be like, check, check, check, check, check. He’s abusive. When they listen to this podcast, they’ll be like, he is emotionally and psychologically abusive.

Do you know what a healthy marriage feels like? (10:57): That is what’s going on. This porn thing is an abuse issue. That is what’s happening. That’s not BTR ‘s fault, it’s the abuser’s fault. Like they are the ones that are doing the abusing. But because I haven’t been in a healthy marriage, I don’t know how to be in one. I don’t know what that looks like. I I, I mean I think I know what it looks like, but I don’t really know cause it’s never happened. So although I may be a self-proclaimed abuse expert, I am not a healthy marriage expert. So maybe that’s part of it because I still haven’t had that experience. Somebody like Indiana Jones, well the one in the Raiders of the Lost Ark just still seems so cool to me.

Support the BTR.ORG Podcast (11:54): I’d love to know your thoughts about this; please comment below. Now that I’m just thinking about this, it might be that I would be attracted to a healthy person. Just nobody has shown up that was available to date. That’s actually probably what’s going on. Sorry, it took me this time to like process that and think about like, why am I still attracted to Indiana Jones? This is ridiculous. You know why? It’s because a healthy man in real life has not asked me on a date. I’m guessing I would be attracted to them. I don’t know. I guess if that happens, I’ll let you know. But in the meantime, I’d love to know what you think. If this podcast is helpful to you, please support it. And until next week, stay safe out there.

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Do you recoil a little when you hear the word “forgiveness”? You’re not alone.

Forgiveness is a concept often used to silence victims and give abusers a quick slap on the wrist without any real consequences for their behavior. No wonder it’s triggering to even hear it, let alone try to practice it.

The bottom line: stop telling victims to forgive their abusers – it’s only causing more harm. Listen to the episode and read the full transcript below for more.

“Forgiveness” is Traumatizing Victims When clergy, therapists, friends, and family counsel victims to “just forgive” the abuser, they’re often ignoring the fact that the victim is experiencing significant trauma and deserves to focus on her own safety and healing, rather than channeling energy into forgiving their abuser.

“Forgiveness” usually translates to “absolution” – in other words, when victims are asked to forgive, they’re really being told to sweep the abuse under the rug so that everyone can move on.

This further traumatizes victims who need safety and support. Not trite advice.

If Forgiveness is Important to You, Consider This: If you’re a victim, the concept of forgiveness may be important to you – but it can be confusing to try to forgive the abuser when forgiveness has always meant reconciliation and absolution.

Consider forgiveness meaning “Letting Go”: seeking your own safety while accepting that the abuser is who he is. Letting go of the relationship, if necessary. Letting go of any lingering self-blame or core beliefs that the abuser conditioned you to accept.

While holding on to your boundaries, holding on to the feelings and experiences that you need to process, and holding on to your right to justice and accountability.

Say THIS Instead of “Have You Tried Forgiving Him?” If you’re the family, friend, clergy, or therapist of a victim of abuse, and you want to learn how to support her rather than further traumatize her by counseling her to forgive, try saying (and meaning) these phrases:

• How can I help you get more safety in your life?
• Do you want to hold the abuser accountable through the justice system? Can I help you to do that in any way?
• Can you give me an idea of your current level of safety?
• Can I do anything to support you?
• What resources do you need right now to feel like you can function on a day-to-day basis?

BTR.ORG Is Here For You At BTR, we know how painful it is to be dismissed and minimized by others when they repeatedly tell you to try to forgive the abuser – it’s excruciating to try to explain yourself over and over.

Our Group Sessions are a safe place to process your feelings because we get it right away. Attend a Group Session today.

Full Transcript: Anne BTR.ORG (00:00): I have Anne on today’s episode. She’s a member of our community and is a wife and a mom of three beautiful, growing kids. She was raised in a conservative Mennonite church. She’s passionate about giving voice to the experiences that sexual and religious abuse survivors face. Anne posted on social media and contacted us and we thought we need to talk with her about this issue. So her social media post said, “Saying that forgiveness is the key to restoring relationships, is placing a burden on the part of the offended, or victim, that God never meant for them to carry. God himself does not do that. Why do we force people to do it? Like it’s some kind of spiritual thing to do. It takes both repentance and forgiveness to save a relationship. The offended party can forgive all they want, but it takes repentance on the part of the offender to save a relationship and that is completely out of the victim’s control.

“No One Ever Says That Stopping the Harm is the Key to a Relationship” (00:58):John MacArthur has proven himself to not be a safe place for abuse victims in the past. And quotes like this, remind me again of how unsafe some of his teaching is. Please be discerning.” And then she posted a picture of someone else’s post and put an X through it. And it said that basically forgiveness is the key to restoring relationships rather than saying repentance is the key to restoring relationships, which nobody ever says that, right? Nobody ever says stopping the harm is the key to a relationship. And it’s really interesting that they don’t say that. And that would, oh, I don’t know, put the responsibility on the perpetrator of the abuse. And that’s kind of too hard. Apparently we need to put it on the woman. When you saw this meme and you were like, no, and you posted it, put an X through it and and said, Hey, you know what? This is not cool guys. Tell me how you began exploring what forgiveness is and how it looks.

“Forgiveness Meant That If You Forgive, It Never Really Happened” Anne Guest (02:00): So as a young adult, memories of sexual assault from a variety of sources began to surface for me. And I was a very young child when I was group raped by a group of male adults from the Amish Mennonite culture. As a result, I grew up in a culture where forgiveness was something that was very much preached and taught, but it was the kind of forgiveness where everything goes back to normal. It was basically denial based, if I can put it that way. So that’s how I grew up. And for many years I did not even remember what happened to me because obviously as you know, trauma can make somebody disassociate for obvious reasons in order for them to survive. I was no exception with that. It wasn’t until I had moved away and got married that all those trauma memories began to resurface for me. And then I started asking questions like, what does forgiveness look like? Because the first time I told someone my story about what happened to me as a child, I was told that I needed to become a victor and not a victim and I needed to forgive. And the forgiveness basically meant that if you forgive, it never really happened.

Anne BTR.ORG (03:20): Was anyone prosecuted?

The Decision to Report Abuse Is Complex Anne Guest (03:23): That’s another big part of my story that a lot of people don’t know about. About five years ago I did report it, but the county that I grew up in, there’s a lot of rumors that there’s corruption in the county and a lot of the cases involving Amish and Mennonite girls never make it to court at all. In fact, I don’t know of one that has ever made it to the courthouse.

Anne BTR.ORG (03:48): I am so proud of you for being so brave to report, especially under those circumstances. Most of the time women don’t report for good reason because reporting you get more traumatized through that. And so I’m proud of of victims who also don’t report for really good reasons, right? So I’m not trying to say that people should do one or the other cause they’re both very traumatizing and complex. Wow, I am so sorry.

“They Don’t Even Consider the Consequences to the Victim” Anne Guest (04:15): I found out years later that the way they actually went about trying to get a confession in my case was something that is not normally done. And so again, it leads me to believe that there’s corruption there because things did not go far in my case and there would’ve been multiple felonies involved with that. So it wasn’t like it was something small. Put it that way.

Anne BTR.ORG (04:40): In cases like this, and in so many cases it feels like heaven forbid the perpetrator who is a man have consequences from this that would be bad for his life. So we’re not gonna do anything. They don’t even consider the consequences to the victim that she has to bear no matter what.

Anne Guest (05:03): Correct. Victims don’t have a choice about what kind of consequences and there are always consequences.

“The More I Wrote, The More I Connected With People” Anne BTR.ORG (05:09): So you get married and you remember these things. Is that when you started talking about it and trying to get some sort of either resolution or restitution or even just a process, what had happened to you? Is this when you start getting pushback that you just need to forgive from your community? Are you still at this point active in the Mennonite community, active in your church?

Anne Guest (05:33): I began blogging about abuse in 2016 or 2017. I can’t remember which year it was, but I was still very much in the middle of working through my own story. And I began writing because I realized how much of a need there was. Like I realized that there were so many other women like me who had gone through horrific things like that. And whenever you’re in the middle of something like that, you feel so alone. Like my heart just went out to those people and I began connecting with some of them. And the more I wrote, the more I connected with people like that. I never dreamed that I would, I have that kind of a ministry. It kind of came out of the blue in, in a way. But I have been Mennonite all my life except for the last eight months. So we only recently have left the Mennonite culture and that’s a whole other story in itself that I probably won’t get into today.

What is a Healthy Definition of Forgiveness? Anne BTR.ORG (06:30): In a nutshell, did you leave because of these, these issues?

Anne Guest (06:34): Yes, I would definitely say that played a part in it, for sure, for sure.

Anne BTR.ORG (06:39): So how would you describe forgiveness first in a way that is unhelpful, that is not what God intended, and then how would you describe it in the way that it’s actually useful and helpful and healing and in the way that God intended? So let’s start with what it’s not supposed to be, but what the culture generally thinks it is and then go into what is actually useful.

“Forgiving Did Not Make it Go Away or Make it Less, or Heal Me” Anne Guest (07:05): So whenever I think about forgiveness and the things that it is not, I often hear a lot of cliches about forgiveness that are just, they’re, they’re unhelpful and honestly they’re so untrue in, in so many ways. Things like forgiveness restores relationships. I mean is that what happened when Jesus forgave the people who nailed him to the cross? Doesn’t there have to be genuine repentance in the part of, of perpetrators in order for the forgiveness Jesus extended to, to restore relationship? Things like forgiveness heals you. I don’t think that forgiveness heals you in that it takes the pain away. It didn’t take Jesus’ pain away. It definitely did not take my pain away. I mean, I would have flashback after flashback and for years I’ve had flashbacks and there was a time in my life where I forgave every single time I had a flashback.

Does Forgiveness Free You? (07:55): But forgiving did not make it go away or make it less or heal me, if that makes sense. Some people will say that forgiveness frees you, man, I’m kind of on the fence with that one because I guess it depends what you think of as free. Like what? What do you mean by that? I don’t think that forgiveness free Jesus from the suffering that he was dealing with. So what do people mean when they say that? I definitely would not say that forgiveness is freeing just because I think it gives victims a false narrative about what it does. Some people will say that forgiveness helps you not stay stuck in your past and helps you move on. All these cliches are things that just rub me the wrong way. Did Jesus move on? What is meant by moving on? How does that look? There are people who, who will say that if you’re still talking about what happened to you, then you haven’t forgiven.

“Forgiveness is One of My Major Triggers” (08:50): And my response to that is I find it really interesting that Jesus, he wasn’t afraid to show his scars after he was resurrected. Forgiveness is different than that. And then also there’s people that will say that, you know, if you can’t be around the person who hurt you, then how can you say you’ve forgiven them? And again, I come back to that whole repentance thing. Jesus loved the people who, who hurt him whenever they nailed him on the cross. But as far as having a personal relationship with them that was not there unless they repented. And also, I wanna say this too before I get much further, I find it really ironic that I’m even talking about forgiveness because forgiveness is one of my major triggers. I just want people to understand that if this, if forgiveness is triggering for them, like I totally get it. And it’s okay if you, if you just click off the podcast and not listen to this. Like I get it. I’ve been there and I even to this day, if I don’t know the person who’s speaking about forgiveness and I don’t know if they’re safe or not, I sometimes won’t even listen to whatever it is or read an article. That’s how triggering forgiveness is for me. It’s been used against me way too many times.

Forgiveness is Often Used as a Form of Spiritual Abuse Anne BTR.ORG (10:06): Yeah. As a form of spiritual abuse.

Anne Guest (10:08): Yes.

Anne BTR.ORG (10:10): I just thought of a little example that I never thought of before when you said if you talk about it then you haven’t forgiven. That’s kind of like saying if you talk about when you went to college then you didn’t actually graduate as if someone’s supposed to pretend that that time of their life didn’t happen. Right? Or you’re not supposed to talk about your pregnancy or your baby wouldn’t, didn’t get born or I mean it’s a weird thing to be like, okay, you can talk about your pregnancy, you can talk about college, you can talk about high school, you can talk about your job, you can talk about all these things, but you can’t talk about this. Or it means that you are still severely damaged or something’s wrong with you or something like that. It’s ridiculous.

Like we should all be able to share anything that happened to us regardless of whether we’re still in a lot of pain and a lot of trauma or we’re feeling better. Like I can feel fantastic and still be like, oh man, I remember the time that my husband screamed in my face.

Would You Say, “Forgiveness Heals You” to a Victim of a Crime? Anne Guest (11:24): Exactly. And the whole thing of forgiveness, healing, one of the things that I keep going back to is I keep comparing trauma to, you know, physical trauma basically, and saying that forgiveness heals you and telling somebody that after they have been hit by a drunk driver, like no, but we would not say that to somebody who is a paraplegic who was hit by a drunk driver. You know what I mean? It’s just dumb. We don’t, we don’t say stuff like that. It’s said all the time to abuse survivors. Why? I, I just wish people could understand how much these cliches hurt.

Anne BTR.ORG (12:00): I think the main reason is misogyny. I think the main reason is because they do not want the perpetrator to experience the consequences of that. They would prefer that nobody rocks the boat and that there’s forgiveness and that everybody can still be happily together and all in the same room and go to a family event or you know, stuff like that. They don’t want the consequences of that to affect him. They do not mind if it affects you.

“Forgiveness Basically Means, Let Go“ Anne Guest (12:33): Correct. So how I would describe forgiveness, I don’t like cliches and so this is gonna sound cliche and I hate that, but like when I look at forgiveness according to a biblical standpoint, forgiveness basically means to let go. And if I had to put into words what that looks like, I would repeat the words of Jesus when he was being nailed to the cross. And he said, Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing. I think that that shows how Jesus let go. He didn’t necessarily let go of the pain. It wasn’t that he denied the pain or that he, yeah, there was no denial involved, but he understood that God was just, and that God would execute justice on his behalf. And that’s why it was safe to let go. And one of the verses that like kind of started me on the whole forgiveness journey, it’s the verse in Ephesians 4 32 where it says forgive even as God for Christ sake has forgiven you. And, and I kept saying, what does that look like? What does it look like to forgive like Jesus did? And then I, I went back to the crucifixion and I was like, so what did forgiveness for Jesus look like? And again, it’s not this thing of relationship, it’s this thing of letting go and and knowing that God is going to execute justice on your behalf. That’s to me in a short nutshell what forgiveness is.

Can Forgiveness Be Acceptance That People Are Who They Are? Anne BTR.ORG (13:58): With that example of Christ on the cross, one of the thought I just had is acceptance. Accepting that this person is the way that they are Christ is all powerful, right? So in that moment he could have been like, oh, I’m gonna get myself off the cross. I am going to shock these guys into repentance or something. I’m gonna send hail down on their heads and they’ll take me off this cross. He could have gotten himself off the cross but he didn’t. He accepted that they were the way they were and he accepted the consequences of their actions. In our case, I think so many victims who are married to their abuser, in the case of spouse abuse, the woman does not want to break up her family. She really genuinely wants him to be an appropriate, kind, healthy person to be able to be in relationship with him.

(14:59): But he is not right. And so Christ’s example of accepting that that’s the situation and also accepting the consequences of that, that would mean that it is appropriate to separate yourself from the harm it is appropriate to keep yourself safe. In Christ’s case, it was okay that he died and that’s an awful consequence. But then he was resurrected in three days. God always has a plan. So knowing that God has a plan for us, it’s okay to accept reality. It’s okay to accept the consequences of this. It’s okay to to know that you have to face them head on and accept them for what they are.

Does “Letting it Go” Mean Not Reporting Abuse? No! Anne Guest (15:42): A hundred percent agree with that. And I also wanna say that like there will be people that sometimes twist things to say that letting go and giving it to God means that you can’t get the state involved with consequences. And to that I just say why then in Romans where it talks about Romans 13, it says that those who execute judgment on evil doers are ministers of God. Letting go does not mean that I don’t do my part to see that justice is done again through what God has said about ministers of God executing judgment on those who do evil. And so I just wanna make that clear that that’s not where I’m going with this at all. Because I know that there are people who believe that. And that’s how I would’ve believed at one point too.

Anne BTR.ORG (16:27): That is not the way to go. It’s that they need to be judged and that you need to separate yourself or be delivered from wickedness. Judges who appropriately protect victims from abuse are agents of God to deliver people from wickedness. My story is generally speaking, only emotional and psychological abuse and sexual coercion. One of the very few instances, it was only about three that were physical. The police actually came to my house and arrested him. They were angels of mercy. Like that is how I recognize what was happening and that is what delivered me from the abuse. So having someone recognize and hold someone accountable is a godly thing. And I don’t understand why accepting and just kind of turning your eyes away from wickedness rather than confronting it is godly in any way. I don’t think it is in any way just helping someone separate from it is what is the righteous thing to do.

Justice & Forgiveness Anne Guest (17:37): Correct. Yeah.

Anne BTR.ORG (17:38): So let’s talk about that. Why is the concept of justice so important when it comes to forgiveness?

Anne Guest (17:43): I grew up believing that there was no difference between justice and revenge. But in my own words, I would say that revenge is getting someone back, you know, 10 times worse than they what what they got you basically. But justice is different in that it’s basically a consequence. Like there needs to be consequences when wrong is done and God is both justice and mercy and we see it over and over and over again. Like he holds both of those at the same time. You can’t have mercy without justice because it just becomes injustice. And justice without mercy becomes injustice too. And so I feel like they, they go together and when we let one or the other slide, there’s a lot of injustice that happens. And I think the church particularly has really erred on the side of mercy without understanding how just God is and that truth and justice go together. And that you can have mercy and you can have justice together at the same time. And that’s what Jesus did over and over again. He held both of those at the same time. And I think we need to do that better with that too.

Religious Institutions Often Put More Emphasis on Reconciliation Rather Than Safety Anne BTR.ORG (18:51): Talk about the ways in which religious settings put more emphasis on victims forgiving than abusers repenting and how that does great harm to both victims and abusers.

Anne Guest (19:02): Yeah, like you said, churches have a tendency to try to restore relationships between perps and survivors in an effort to make the situation just go away. And I think part of the reason that they do that is because it’s feels way less ugly and it’s way less messy in a way. However, the damage that happens when that goes on is just like, it just leaves a trail of devastation in both the victim and the perp because for the victim obviously like that, we understand how that leaves a trail of devastation for them. But it also leaves a d a trail of devastation for the perp because they basically get away with it. I feel like we pat perps on the back on their way to eternal damnation while, while we shoot the wounded because our theology on forgiveness is so one-sided.

When Clergy Treats Perpetrators Like Victims Anne BTR.ORG (20:01): A perpetrator of lifelong emotional and psychological abuse and sexual coercion gets caught and then they say, oh, I’m a porn addict. I’m so sorry they’re still lying, but they sound like they’re telling the truth. And then their clergy, maybe even their therapist starts giving them gold stars, patting ’em on the back. Like, you’re being honest. Good job. Oh you’re, you are the victim cause you’ve been an addict and your dad didn’t play baseball with you as a kid and, and you felt shame like as if all the victims haven’t had those same things happen to them. And so we’re so proud of you, good job. Rather than being like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You’ve been abusive for 20 years and we just caught you. So we’re not gonna believe a word you say, we’re gonna like keep our eyes on you from a safe distance to watch if you’re really healthy for the next three years, and we’re not gonna believe a word that comes outta your mouth, that would be the appropriate response. Instead they just start getting pats on the back or good job for finally telling the truth. And we’re so proud of you for repenting when they’re just trying to sort of manage their image after they got caught. Is that the kind of thing you’re talking about?

“Complete Acknowledgement of Abuse Without Excuses & Without Minimization” Anne Guest (21:17): Yes. You explained it very well, . I think there is a lack of knowing what repentance looks like. It’s not just a simple apology as you just said. There has to be complete acknowledgement of sin without excuses and without minimization. And there has to be acceptance of all the consequences. Repentance always respects the boundaries of the victim. And they, they understand the damage that they’ve done to the point where they’re willing to give space. They are not there trying to restore relationship until the victim’s ready. In other words, it’s all in the victim’s hands. It’s, it’s not about the purp at all. And a purp will not care if the whole world knows about what he did. Like he’s not out there trying to keep his reputation intact. I think that’s a, that’s a huge one. That’s a huge red flag when someone’s out there trying to pe get people to quiet down about what happened when forgiveness is a culture strong point, while genuine repentance is a weak point, there will always be injustice that thrives in that culture. Abuse thrives when just a quick, I’m sorry if I hurt you. Is seen as repentance abuse thrives when perps can just cry A few crocodile tears and everything goes back to normal after that abuse thrives. When the right words are seen as repentance and when victims are just forced to forgive.

How Can Churches Become Safer? Anne BTR.ORG (22:46): What are some ways churches could become safer?

Anne Guest (22:51): So the thing I keep coming back to is just the lack of self-awareness that churches and institutions have. We do not do well with self-examination and collective repentance as a group. There’s so much humility that is needed and there has to be a willingness to listen to victims because how else are you gonna know there’s wolves inside your church if you’re not willing to listen to the people who are saying, this person’s not okay. I refuse to tell someone that they need to forgive. And and the reason I refuse to tell someone that they need to forgive is simply because especially if they’ve grown up, grown up in the church, they know what forgiveness is. It’s not like a foreign concept to them. But I don’t get to choose when forgiveness is a part of their story that’s up to God. And I think especially if the survivor of the victim is someone who loves Jesus and who has a relationship with God, God is going to show them when that time comes, when and what forgiveness will look like for them. I don’t need to push it. They need space to grieve and lament. And I think that’s the kind of thing the church needs to give them.

Churches Can Ask, “Are You Safe? How Can We Help You Be More Safe?” Anne BTR.ORG (24:08): Yeah, I don’t even think forgiveness should even be a topic of conversation.

Anne Guest (24:12): Yeah. No, I, I totally agree. Totally agree.

Anne BTR.ORG (24:15): I love that you said that. Like, if this is triggery for you, just turn it off because it shouldn’t even be brought up in any way, shape or form. The only thing that needs to be brought up in abuse cases is safety. Are you safe? How can we help you be more safe?

Anne Guest (24:31): Yes. And you know what? Abuse survivors will absolutely heal when they’re safe.

It’s Impossible to Heal When You’re Still Being Harmed Anne BTR.ORG (24:37): And then they’re, they’re looking at an abuse victim wondering why she’s not healing when she’s still being abused emotionally and psychologically. And it would be impossible to heal when, when you’re still receiving that harm. So Anne, thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts on forgiveness and how we can reframe it to actually help victims get to safety. Thank you so much for coming on today’s episode.

Anne Guest (25:02): Hey, it’s awesome to be on with you. Thank you so much for having me on.

View Details

Trigger Warning: In this faith-focused podcast episode, Anne and guest, Anna M. Jonathan, refer to their Christian beliefs and satanic ritual child sex abuse.

We recognize that many victims of spiritual abuse find religion and spirituality to be traumatizing, while others find religion and spirituality comforting and healing. Please know that you are welcome and loved in this community no matter where you are on the spectrum of spirituality.

How Does Spiritual Abuse Affect Victims? Spiritual abuse takes many forms. From using abusive men scripture to coerce wives into sex, to clergy counseling victims to “forgive and forget” abuse and infidelity, victims of religious abuse may find that religion and spirituality are traumatizing. Women in our community who have experienced spiritual abuse share that they are triggered when they:

• Enter a place of worship
• Hear certain verses of scripture
• Are approached by clergy or other male leadership or members of faith communities
• Hear or sing spiritual songs or hymns
• Pray

In the case of Anna M. Jonathan, a member of the BTR.ORG community, the severe spiritual abuse that she endured in the form of satanic ritual child sex abuse did not deter her from engaging in healthy religious and spiritual practices later in life.

Can Victims of Spiritual Abuse Find Healing? Many victims of spiritual abuse do find healing – some through disengaging from religious practices, and others through finding a new relationship with their Higher Power.

Victims experience trauma when they are made to feel powerless in a scary or painful situation. When this happens over and over, as in instances of psychological and emotional abuse, infidelity, and sexual coercion, victims may experience a unique level of trauma that makes healing feel impossible.

However, as victims take courageous actions to protect themselves from harm, educate themselves about abuse, and seek community and validation, healing becomes possible.

BTR.ORG Is Here For You Spiritual abuse is one of the most insidious forms of control over another person – taking advantage of, or completely ruining – another human being’s relationship with their Higher Power can’t be described in any other way but purely cruel.

At BTR.ORG, we want you to know that we trust you – however you need to heal from spiritual abuse – whether that’s by re-engaging with religious and spiritual practices in a new way, or stepping away – we understand and we support you.

Our BTR.ORG Group Sessions are a safe space for you to process the grief that often accompanies spiritual abuse. Please attend a session today.

Full Transcript: Anne (00:00): Welcome to BTR.ORG. This is Anne. Anna is back on the podcast today. We’re talking about a really sensitive subject with child sexual abuse and also satanic ritual abuse. If you didn’t listen to last week’s episode, start there first and then join us here. A trigger warning: she does talk about the abuse that she suffered as a child. It’s not graphic, but if she does share a specific event that occurred, this is probably one of the most emotional episodes that I’ve ever done. I edited out a lot of it, but before we start, I just wanna share with you my belief in God – that I believe in God, and that my savior, Jesus Christ, has delivered me and delivered my children, and that it was a miracle. I just know it wasn’t me. As I prayed and listened to the spirit and followed what it told me to do, that Jesus Christ, my Savior delivered me. I’m so thankful that there is a loving, caring, Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother and a Savior who care about me, and they care about you. And just like we cannot trust our abusers, we can trust them. Okay, now let’s get to this episode.

“Where is My Savior Here?” Anne (04:54): Having experienced abuse from your father and then abuse from your husband, but not recognizing that you were being abused, you’re being severely abused, right? But you’re not recognizing that you’re being severely abused, emotional, psychological abuse, sexual abuse. You’re going through all of this in the overarching context of spiritual abuse where they’re pulling in things from like mainstream religion, like our faith, and they’re using it to abuse you. And not only that, but taking it a step further and mimicking those things and putting them in the context of Satan. So I have some questions about that in, in that occult, when they are saying, Satan is more powerful, talk about how you came to realize that Jesus Christ for you really is more powerful than Satan when you had been taught differently. And also when earthly experience, no, kind of confirmed it, right? You’re living in this abuse, you’re trying to obey the commandments, but it was confirmed that Satan was more powerful because despite your obedience, right, despite your scripture study and your prayer and everything, you’re still being oppressed by abuse and not even knowing it. So in that situation, it would be easy to think, well, where is my Savior here? So can you talk about that struggle to understand, because your mortal experiences were filled with Satan’s powerful, even overwhelming, tangible, evil, how you came to your testimony of Christ.

Supportive, Safe Clergy Anna M. Jonathan (06:39): When we first moved to the new state, we lived in one place for 14 years, and we had five incredible bishops. And it was mostly because the first bishop we had was young, was new, a newly created ward, and he was very dedicated.

Anne (07:02): For listeners who aren’t familiar with our faith, when we say the word “ward,” what we mean is congregation and the congregations are made of all volunteers. And the bishop is called, which means sort of assigned for a period of three to five years, usually sometimes seven, to manage the ward, to manage the congregation, and then they’re released and someone else is called. So just wanted to give background so people could understand what you were saying. So thank you. Keep going.

“I Kept Working Through the Different Experiences I Had Had” Anna M. Jonathan (07:33): That’s great. And they’re lay people. He was so unfamiliar with the abuse that I was talking about of parents sexually abusing their children and their grandchildren. It just was so foreign to him. But he was willing to listen to the spirit, and he did go to the temple often, and he told me, I have to fast and pray and go to the temple a lot because I just don’t get this at all. But he was so supportive. And so in turn, he mentored the other four bishops when we, when bishops were released, and we moved into other wards in that same stake. And so we were extremely blessed in, in that way. So when I, when I moved to another part of the state, you know, the, it was a different story.

(08:25): And so this first bishop that I worked with, the question came up, how do I see Jesus Christ in Emily father? And for the very first time, I voiced how I saw them, and I said, I see them both naked waiting for me on the other side in heaven to have sex with me. That that’s how I see them. And when I finally expressed that and would be very honest with my feelings, then things started to, we started to work at really understanding the true nature of Jesus Christ and of my Father in Heaven and who they were. And started to, my bishop started to help me separate how they were really different from Satan. That they, they weren’t , they weren’t the same at all. And that took several years. That took years and years. And finally as I kept working through the, the different experiences that I had had, which also at times included some very sacred experiences.

“Who is More Powerful?” (09:31): And when those sacred experiences, I remembered them, it was like, oh, you know, and, and it was like, wow, you know, that’s a lot different than what I had remembered. I started to understand how Jesus Christ saw me and how my Heavenly Father saw me. And it started to change my perception of how I saw them. And it finally came before, right before we moved from this area. And we’d lived there for about 14 years. I could see myself with them standing with my Savior and with my Father in Heaven, fully clothed robed. And I was in a beautiful white dress. And I felt very confident standing with them, realizing that there was a horrific difference, between them and between Satan, I knew that they were both real, but still that thought in my mind always lingered there for a long time. But who is more powerful?

(10:36): Jesus Christ can be clothed now and I can be clothed in front of him. But is Satan really more powerful than Jesus Christ? And it has just been the daily scripture reading, the following the Spirit. My life has been in segments. You know, each experience was just tucked away deep inside of my soul. And finally when I was able to get in therapy and work them through and start connecting them and saying, oh, this is why this happened, this is why this happened. I could finally see Jesus Christ woven throughout my whole life, even through the most horrific experiences of Satan. I could see that he was always there. I was always being strengthened by the savior, but I had to acknowledge it. It’s been hard. It’s been hard to acknowledge that. And to also hold on to that faith, I’ve been trying really hard at times to get rid of the fear and allow the faith in Jesus Christ to be more powerful than the fear. And that’s really when I made a, a big change, is when I would let go of the fear and just strive to have faith. And it’s hard.

TW: Child Sexual Abuse Anne (12:00): Did you ever consider going a non-religious route? Like, in this struggle, is Christ or Satan more powerful? Did you ever consider thinking, well, maybe this whole thing is just a bunch of hogwash. There is no Jesus, there is no Satan, you know, this was, this is just a way to control and oppress people. I am out. Did you ever consider that route, or was that not ever a part of your thought process?

Anna M. Jonathan (12:28): I understand what you’re saying, but as I think I’ve said before, I knew that they were both real. I knew from experience that Jesus was real, and I knew from experience that Satan was real. And so no, it was never an idea of it is just all a bunch of baloney. No, one or the other had to be, had to be more powerful. Well, let me share this one, and it might help because I feel like I’m talking around so much an experience. When I was four years old, I had a, a, a green western dress that I just loved because it twirled and my father and I were at his workplace, and he worked on machinery. We were all by ourselves, secluded area. There was nobody else around. And he wanted me to perform oral sex on him. And in primary, I had learned that Heavenly Father wanted us to do good things.

“He Started Me on Fire, But Then He Saved Me” (13:28): And I knew that doing that to him was not a good thing. And so at four years old, I told him no, and I started walking for the door, and he had a cigarette lighter that he used in his work, and he started the back of my dress on fire, and I was almost to the door. I mean, it was just so close next to him, so there was no place to run. And he knew that the fire wouldn’t explode because I wouldn’t run anywhere. And then he had a bucket of water right next to him that he used in his work. And I started just screaming. And he put the fire out immediately. Well, you know, he took me in his arms and I just sobbed and sobbed. And he just then told me, he just said, do not ever tell me no again.

(14:16): And so that was impressive, . You know, I mean, it was like, people wonder, well, why did you keep doing this stuff? Or why as an adult did you stay, you know, do things that he told you to do and stuff? Well, that was when I was four years old. There’s other things that happened when I was 12 that even intensified that. Don’t ever tell me no. And so I remember after that happened you know, he told lies about how my dress got burned, and I knew he was a liar. He was my dad. That at that time, my mind was so, he, he had started me on fire, but then he saved me. And how do you, how do you rectify that in your own child’s mind, you know, in your little kid’s mind? And, and I remember saying a prayer as a four year old after that, and telling Heavenly Father, because in primary we had learned that we lived with him, you know, before we came here.

“It Was So Incredibly Traumatic” (15:15): And I remember telling him, you know, I, I don’t wanna be here anymore. I wanna come home. I wanna be with you. And I remember the Savior coming to me himself, and I, I came to about his knees, and I can remember feeling his roBe and feeling his arms down around me. And I knew that he came to let me know that I was okay, that he was there, and that I would be okay. Now, when I remembered more in detail as an adult, that experience, because I tucked those experiences away because I couldn’t tell anybody what my daddy had done because he would hurt me more. And how, how much more can you get hurt as a child than being, you know, on fire? And so I, you know, I, I know there’s a lot worse that can happen, but, you know, for me, at that time, it was, it was so incredibly traumatic.

(16:21): And so as an adult, when I was thinking about this experience and these experiences, I thought, why two things? Why did the Savior not pick me up? Why didn’t he hold me up? Was I not good enough for him? And, and it took me a long time and a lot of fasting and prayer and asking Heavenly father, and I had to get into a spot where I could really understand the answer. But the answers came eventually. And the first thing was, if he had picked me up in this mortal world, he would’ve had to put his arm under my bottom to hold me. You know, that’s just how we hold kids. And that would’ve caused a lot of confusion in my four year old mind because I was being sexually abused all the time. And so that would confuse me. And the other thing was, is if he had picked me up and held me, I would’ve thought he was taking me home and I couldn’t go home yet.

“I Realized I Gained a Confidence About me As a 4-Year-Old” (17:23): I had a lot of things I needed to still do here at mortality. And so as an adult, I, I realized that I gained a confidence about me as the four year old, because I was pretty brave to tell my dad no, was pretty gutsy of a little four year old girl. But that experience helped me. It gave me some confidence and courage. They helped me get through the things that were going to happen, you know, in the next couple of years, even after that happened. And you know, and, and there’s just, if, if that helps any, and I, there’s, there’s another thing that when I was 18, I was in what I call a tortured chamber, and it was hideous, but that got so overwhelming that I did have a near death experience, and I got to choose if I wanted to come back to Earth.

(18:22): And I begged to come back because I needed to still have my children. And I had promised others that I would be here for them. And yeah, it’s been a rough ride. That experience was not a, a happy one for me when I first remembered it years later. But as I have understood it more and more, it becomes my catalyst of why I’m here. And, and that there are a lot of people that need encouragement to know that yes, our Heavenly Parents, and I’m talking Mother is so involved in our lives. It’s amazing. And Jesus Christ and our Father in Heaven and Mother in Heaven are real. And they are true. And they know exactly what’s going on, and they are here and they are helping. And they are, they know, they know our struggles, but they also know that we’re gonna win. We’re going to be okay, and our children are too. But boy, that’s a hard one. . It’s a really hard one.

“Good Will Triumph Over Evil” Anne (19:38): Good will triumph over evil,

Anna M. Jonathan (19:42): It will.

Anne (19:42): Our Savior is more powerful than Satan. Yes. Even if our earthly experiences feel like hell, that’s one thing that I have often said, and thank you so much for sharing such sacred experiences, we, I really appreciate it, is that hell is now . It’s never gonna get worse than this.

Anna M. Jonathan (20:08): I love that, Ann. That is so awesome. You are right. And yes, hell can get hellish. You know, it can get worse and worse it seems, but you’re right. And, and even now, especially in this, these last days, you know, Satan is rampant, but that’s why we are here. That’s why you’re here and doing this incredible work. That’s why we’re here to touch lives and say, sisters, keep going forward. You, you’re doing an incredible work. And, and don’t give up. Get discouraged, you know, and throw your hands up at times. But keep reaching out to us who are here to say, keep going. It’s worth it. However it works out is gonna be okay. I just keep hanging onto my cups because I know they’re real and I know they’re true. I just want you and all the other incredible sisters know that they are here for a reason now, and you are good enough and you are gonna make it. And, you know, when you’re in the middle of it, just keep getting up every day and just keep moving forward. Just keep moving forward, even though you don’t know where you’re at half the time, , you know, just keep moving forward and it, it will work out. It doesn’t work out the way we think it’s going to allotted times, but it will work out.

Support the BTR.ORG Podcast Anne (21:42): Anna and I spent some time together crying after this. I actually stopped recording because it just really intense emotionally. So as I’ve been doing this for so long, you know, talking about pornography, it, it seems so weird to some people, like, why is she so obsessed with pornography? I’m a porn addict, apparently, right? I’m kidding. Anyway, it’s because it’s evil. It’s because it is the epitome of evil and wickedness. It’s harmful to our souls, and it’s harmful to anybody who uses it. The darkness that surrounds it is so dark and so harmful. And sisters, I just want you to be able to feel the fruits of your own righteousness, of your own good choices. When you’re married to someone who uses pornography and they’re continually emotionally and psychologically abusing you, it’s very difficult to feel the fruits of your own good choices. That is why God wants us to separate from wickedness in whatever way. It’s going to be safe for us. We cannot force someone to repent. If they wanna repent, they will, but we can get to emotional and psychological safety.

Anne (23:08): If this podcast is helpful to you, please support it. And until next week, stay safe out there.

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Leaving an abusive marriage is hard enough – but without familial support?

Anna M. Jonathan is on the BTR.ORG Podcast sharing her harrowing story of escaping Satanic Ritual Abuse in her childhood family, only to find her that her husband was also abusive. She courageously left her husband with zero support from her family, clergy, and community. Read the full transcript below and tune in to the BTR.ORG Podcast for more.

No Support From Family? Create Your Own Inner Circle When your parents and siblings don’t support you in ending your abusive marriage, working toward safety can feel daunting – maybe even impossible.

However, women like Anna work toward safety without familial support every day. You can too.

Rather than isolate yourself and make the journey on your own, create your own inner circle of safe people who can support you as you work toward peace and safety.

What is a “Safe Person”? Start with just one safe person. Is there anyone in your life who:

• Validates your feelings?
• Encourages you to trust your gut and listen to your intuition?
• Refuses to engage with the abuser?
• Offers a feeling of consistent calmness and acceptance when you are around her?

If so, consider investing trust and time in this person – perhaps you will build your community of “chosen family” with this person in your inner circle.

But What if I Don’t Even Have ONE Person? If you’re like many women in the beginning steps of their journeys to safety, then perhaps you feel at a loss, without even one person who could be considered “safe”.

That’s okay! We’ve all been there.

Victims of abuse thrive when they have opportunities to connect with safe women who offer validation and compassion – so take steps to begin building your community. Try:

• Praying or manifesting a safe person into your life.
• Attending local women’s groups – your local DV shelter is a great start.
• Attending a BTR.ORG Group Session to hear what safe women sound like, and to practice the vulnerability of sharing a bit about yourself.
• Joining our social communities online on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook to interact with other women.

BTR.ORG Is Here For You No matter where you are on your healing journey, we are here for you.

We love you. We believe you.

Full Transcript: Anne (00:00): Welcome to BTR.ORG. This is Anne. I have a really special guest on today’s episode. Her pen name is Anna M. Jonathan. She is a victim of Satanic Ritual Abuse and a Satanic Ritual Abuse Occult. I don’t know a lot about this, so I’m really interested in talking with her today. Trigger warning, for those of you who this might be a really rough topic for you, we’re not going to get graphic into the actual literal abuse. We will talk around that because I don’t wanna trigger anybody, but we are also gonna talk about how this interacted with her faith and the religion that she is a part of. She and I share the same faith tradition. We’re both still active in our church, so we’re gonna be talking about that. For those of you who are agnostic or different Christian religions or Jewish or Muslim or whatever you are, you are welcome here. We are gonna just share from our own faith experience. Welcome, Anna.

Anna M. Jonathan (04:00): Thank you.

What Does “Satanic Ritual Abuse Occult” Mean? Anne (04:01): We’re gonna start with the definition of “Satanic Ritual Abuse Occult”. Would you say there’s a difference between just satanic ritual abuse and the occult part?

Anna M. Jonathan (04:11): I think when someone hears the title “Satanic Ritual Abuse Occult, they just shut down many times. And when you break it down, it, it makes a lot of sense. You know, “satanic” is just Satan – evil – and ritual is something you do in a precise manner, and we all do things like that. We’d have rituals every morning. We’d get up and brush our teeth and eat our breakfast or something like that. So a ritual is not evil in itself, but it is, when it’s put together with the word Satan, abuse, or occult, the ritual is not a good situation. Abuse is hurting someone with violence or cruelty, and it’s could be done repeatedly. And oocult means out of view or secret or a secret society. So you’re just looking at, you know, an evil, evil things that are done in a precise manner. Abusively, undercover, basically secret.

Do Satanic Ritual Abusers Know They’re Doing Evil Things? Anne (05:16): The people who are engaging in these types of behaviors, do they know, do they acknowledge like, we acknowledge, whoa, this is evil, this is wrong. Do they acknowledge that what they’re doing is what Satan would want? Are they like, yeah, Satan’s proud of us? Or do they just think they’re doing good things?

Anna M. Jonathan (05:41): Well, and I can’t talk for all of them, but I, I can only talk for the, occult that I was involved with. From my birth. I was born into a family where my father was already a member of a satanic ritual abuse cult. And this particular occult was based really loosely on the law of Moses. And so Mosaic law, there’s different definitions of numbers and how things were done. Ceremonies were done according to ages of people, and so they would loosely follow that, but yet would use actually my church that I grew up in as the cover. So they were all good members of the church, supposedly on the outside, but they would meet together and loosely base everything on a Mosaic Law. They felt like that they were interpreting things in their own way.

How Do Satanic Ritual Abuse Occults Justify Their Abuse? Anne (06:41): So really quickly, when I hear the term satanic ritual abuse occult, I think that the people involved are like we are worshiping Satan. You know, like that they are acknowledging that they are, they talk about Satan, but you’re saying that’s not the case. The reason why it has that satanic label is because of the evilness of it. But in their actual rituals, they could be referencing God, they could be referencing scripture or in, in this case you’re saying the law of Moses. And so like a little kid might not realize like this is evil. They might think, oh, this is just a religious ceremony and is that, am I making sense?

Anna M. Jonathan (07:33): That’s how they make it out too. The occult that I was associated with, they mimicked, you know, the hierarchy in the church. You know, there was a, a bishop, a prophet and people in the church type thing or in the occult. So they would mimic certain things, but yet they were very strong to do things that made you, you know, to let you know physically and tangibly that Jesus was not all powerful. Satan was more powerful than Jesus Christ. So when I say Satan –

“Who’s More Powerful?” Anne (08:04): Oh, so they did, okay, so they did acknowledge that.

Anna M. Jonathan (08:10): It’s a power struggle between is Jesus Christ. It’s, it’s not, do they both exist? Does Jesus exist and does Satan is exist, it’s who’s more powerful?

Anne (08:21): And in their minds –

Anna M. Jonathan (08:23): Satan is more powerful because Satan is tangible, but Jesus Christ is a, you know, a thing of your imagination.

Anne (08:30): Why is Satan tangible to them? Just out of curiosity? Because you can abuse someone and that’s cause the, the violence is right there and it they can do. So they were acknowledging Satan, right?

Anna M. Jonathan (08:42): Yes.

“I Thought the Things That Were Happening… Were Normal” Anne (08:43): Thank you for explaining that. So you have written that you didn’t realize that your home was different than anyone else. Can you talk about that?

Anna M. Jonathan (08:52): I was born in the, the later fifties, sixties. And so back then you really didn’t talk you know, share a lot about the things in your home. Even up until I was married, I thought that the things that were happening to me at home as compared to being outside of the house were normal, that that’s what people did. Even though I didn’t feel good about it, I got sick a lot as a child. I was, I had mononucleosis for eight months and lots of throat issues, but I just thought I was a sickly child. My parents argued a lot and you know, I had several siblings and I just thought, well, all families are like that. All, all families struggle with their parents, you know, when you get to be a teenager, you know, everybody doesn’t like their mom and dad. Well, I didn’t like my dad , you know, and so no, no, I, and we weren’t really allowed to mingle and really talk, you just didn’t talk a lot about your family’s situation.

“I Always Really Had a Bad Self-Esteem” (09:59): And so I really was not aware until I was married and had gotten into therapy and started doing some cognitive thinking therapy that I started to realize that, whoa, something’s really wrong here. And I, I really didn’t understand it because I had been raised in the gospel of Jesus Christ in the church. And so I really tried to live the principles of the gospel in my home and do everything I was supposed to do, you know, through the teachings of the church. And just realized that I fell short all the time, that I just wasn’t that good, you know, I always really had a bad self-esteem because I just felt like I just wasn’t measuring up.

Anne (10:45): Not knowing that you had experienced this horrendous, horrendous, horrific abuse in your home thinking that something was wrong with you.

Anna M. Jonathan (10:55): Exactly. And, you know, not, not everyone in my home was experiencing the same things I was, there were some that quote were favored and some of my siblings were favored that, that they were more involved in the occult and others weren’t involved hardly at all. And we didn’t talk between ourselves. As I look back and I look at other people and I’ve learned and had education and stuff, I realize, whoa, you know, our family was really raised in a very different situation.

“They Were Starting to be Groomed in the Occult” Anne (11:29): How many siblings did you have?

Anna M. Jonathan (11:31): I, there’s eight children altogether.

Anne (11:33): Has anyone, since you’ve realized what it was that you experienced and you’ve, I assume kind of started talking about it, has anyone else confirmed your experience? How has that been with your siblings?

Anna M. Jonathan (11:50): What’s interesting is I grew up in the church. I ended up marrying a returned missionary, later realized, actually realized that it was basically an arranged marriage because my husband was a part of the occult which I wasn’t aware of that we were married in the temple, sealed in the temple. We had children and, and they were starting to be groomed in the occult. I just knew something was really, really wrong and I started going suicidal, and this was when I was married. And so after getting out of the psych unit for the first time, I was told that there was a real problem in my marriage, but divorce was never an option because I’d been sealed in the temple. It just, you know, I just kept trying to figure out what was wrong and my husband and my relationship that I was doing wrong, you know, and, and why we, we always kept hitting brick walls.

“You Learned Not to Show Any Emotions” (12:50): And so finally I started going to see a therapist, and the therapist didn’t pick up on any spousal abuse or child abuse that were both going on in our home. But I saw this therapist for four years, and he’s the one that had me read a lot of books. And I started to realize that in the occult you were punished if you showed any emotions at all. And I know that that’s not just an occult thing. I, I know that there are husbands you know, that there’s abuse that goes on where, you know, if you show any emotion then you get more, more abused. But it was traumatic, you know, if you cried at all or whimpered at all as a child, you were horribly abused, hurt more. And so you learned not to show any emotions. But this therapist started teaching me to listen to myself and to really understand my feelings and, and, and go with my feelings.

(13:57): That was such a blessing. So I really started to listen to the spirit more and started trusting my feelings, and I started to get the feeling that something was really wrong, , especially when these doctors in the psych unit were saying, there’s something wrong in your marriage. You need to get into some counseling and stuff. And my husband wouldn’t do it, but it, it was not very long after I got outta the hospital that he left and we separated, then I was blamed for keeping him out of the home. My kids wanted to see him so bad, and I just kept saying, no, there’s something wrong, you know? No, he’s not coming back in to the home. And as time went on the next few months, I ended up with a new therapist for three sessions. After two sessions, this therapist just said, would you at least try and consider divorce?

“I Had No Support From My Family Whatsoever” (14:50): And I was shocked. And I just said, okay, you know, I asked her, why, what, what had I been saying that you would think I needed to get a divorce? And she said, there were three things. First of all, you can’t stand him touching you. You don’t trust him with your children and you self-destruct in this relationship. And so within two hours after I left her office, I had a divorce attorney. I had finances to pay the attorney, and I had called my bishop, and I knew that I needed to talk to him.

From that point on, I just really had to listen to the spirit because I didn’t have any support. I had no support from my family whatsoever. I had my two visiting teachers and a sibling that lived about five hours away that we talked on the phone. And this was before cell phones.

“Those Three Women Encouraged Me to Follow My Feelings” (15:46): We talked on the phone about every day. Those three women just encouraged me to follow my feelings, to follow the spirit and to have the faith to follow it. Well, we did get a divorce, and that was extremely risky for me to do because that could blow the cover of the church for the occult because we, our family was looked at as the example family. We, we all had been sealed in the temple. All the kids had been, and we were all active and we were all, you know, excelled in our jobs and stuff.

Anne (16:25): For listeners who aren’t familiar with our faith, we attend church services on Sunday, and then we also participate in temple ordinances. When she’s talking about the temple, she’s not talking about the satanic ritual abuse occult stuff. We’ve both attended the temple, nothing a cultish or satanic happens in our temple. So I just wanted to make sure that we separated that out. So as people listen to their story and they, they hear you talking about like, we were sealed in the temple, which is a really beautiful ceremony and very peaceful. And the spirit’s there, that’s not what she’s talking about. She’s saying that she participated in that with her husband, thinking they had a good relationship. And then this, this satanic stuff was happening elsewhere. Sorry, I just wanted to make that clear for people who aren’t members of our faith.

Anna M. Jonathan (17:18): I appreciate that.

“Everyone, Even My Attorney, Just Thought That I Was Going to… Fail, Totally” Anne (17:19): Did you start talking about the abuse during this time at all? Like, like publicly, you’re saying that they didn’t want you to blow the cover. So do you have family members at this time who are trying to kind of shut you up? Or are they trying to get you not to get divorced?

Anna M. Jonathan (17:35): Well, at this time, you, you realizing that I had, I had just come out of the psych unit about eight months before this, and I was on heavy medication. I wasn’t working. I was a stay-at-home mom, and yet I was proceeding to get a divorce . And, and everyone, everyone, even my attorney just thought that I was just going to burn, just burn, you know, just fail totally. But I had the spirit of the Lord. I had the Lord on my side, and I, I can testify of that. And we went through with the divorce, and it wasn’t until after the divorce, and, and my bishop was very unhappy about it.

When Clergy is Not Supportive of Safety Anne (18:20): Sorry, your bishop did not want you to get divorced?

Anna M. Jonathan (18:23): No, when I, when I went and talked to him, you know, the, the day that I came home from the therapist and, and the doors just started opening like crazy for me to walk through the doors of divorce. And I went to see my bishop three days later and I explained to him everything, and I wanted his counsel on it, and he gave me a scripture to read out of the Book of Mormon. And I walked out of his office. He just said, if you read this scripture and do what it says, you will get your answer. And when I walked out of his office, I was so discouraged. But the thought came to me is that I had asked for his counsel, and I at least needed to try and follow that counsel and see what happened. And so I did. I went home that night and I started studying that scripture.

“I Needed to Educate Myself on Spousal Abuse & Child Abuse” (19:18): I started fasting and praying, and then a couple of days later, I went to the temple, which the temple for me was the sacred place. And I got my answer in the temple, and it was, it was definitely the answer that I was to divorce. And I was shocked because I thought something must be really wrong for the Lord to sanction a divorce. I still really didn’t understand the, the whole of the whole situation. And so I just basically did this on faith. The bishop was shocked when I told him my answer. He in fact brought me some articles the night before the divorce court about how divorce was not the answer. And I wrote him a card and just said, I don’t know why, but I know that if I don’t do what I feel impressed to do here that I will be destroyed.

(20:11): It, it’s not gonna be good. And I said, so I have to do this. I, it just, I just feel so impressed that I need to do this. And so I did. And about a month later after the divorce, I felt so much peace, but then I started getting the impression that I needed to educate. And again, and you gotta remember that this was what, 30 years ago, 25, 30 years ago. And I felt impressed that I needed to educate myself on spousal abuse and child abuse. So I went to the library and started checking out books and reading. And that’s when I realized that I was being abused as a spouse sexually. And then my, the question came to me was, if, if I’m no longer available, what does the perpetrator do? And the book, in the book I was reading it confirmed it says, oh, many times they’ll turn to the children.

When the Children Began Divulging the Abuse (21:05): And I just panicked and it’s been definitely an unfolding for me. But that’s when I started learning about my children being abused, about my abuse. Subsequently, about 10 months later, we moved to a whole other state. It’s one of those stories where I prayed one night and just told the Lord that I would go anywhere he wanted me to go. I was hoping that we would move to my sibling five hours away that had been so supportive because I had no other support from any of my family. But the answer came that I was to move to a whole other state where I knew nobody. After I fell apart and cried, wondered why, I pulled up my bootstraps and got ready. And about six months later, as we moved to another state, and when we moved and got that far away from my father, from the occult, from my former husband, my kids started talking about all the abuse from their father and their grandfather.

(22:13): And I started remembering, I started having some dreams and started remembering piece by piece, all the occult abuse. And I was in therapy for about 14 years, off and on. I, I had many therapists until I found the one therapist that did understand child ritualistic abuse, which affects you in a very different way. You, you see things in such a different way when you are in a ritualistic abuse occult. As a child growing up in it, I would work with a lot of therapists and I would get to a point and they would just think, Hey, she’s, she’s good. And then I would relapse really bad. And they couldn’t understand why. But this one psychologist, it was kind of, we were the pioneers of that time. And this one psychologist knew what she was doing and she understood it. Now she was Jewish, and so she didn’t believe in Jesus Christ.

“My Ex-Husband Kept Coming & Trying to Get Custody of the Kids” (23:13): And so I, as I remembered different things and was working through them, whenever anything came up where I had a very sacred experience, she and I would bump heads a lot. But she knew her stuff. She knew how to work these things through. And as I worked them through, I was able to eventually accept that I had been involved in a, a satanic abuse situation, which was really hard because I didn’t want to be anything around anything so hideous.

But then also realized that I was not responsible. That was another really hard thing to get over. And then to be able to put it in the past where it belonged, that it was not who I was now, it wasn’t anything that I would choose, it’s not anything that is happening to me now. And so there was a lot of healing that went on. Basically through all of that, my husband kept coming and trying to get custody of the kids.

Anne (24:22): Your ex-husband, right?

When Anna Began Filling in the Pieces Anna M. Jonathan (24:24): Yeah, I had full custody of the kids and he kept coming to the other state trying to, you know, get custody and he never did. You know, unless you experience some of it or understand some of it, it just sounds really crazy. But it, it’s real and it does happen.

Anne (24:45): It does not sound crazy to us. You are not crazy. . Did you start talking publicly about it with your family members?

Anna M. Jonathan (24:58): Well, what’s interesting is when I was in therapy working, starting to work through some things, you know, I would remember bits and pieces and I would try and put ’em together. And I remember talking to one of my siblings one day and saying, I know this sounds really crazy, but I just think this has happened, and do you know anything about it? And she goes, oh, yes. She said, yeah, this did happen. And, and we couldn’t figure out what was going on. And I kind of filled in a piece that she didn’t have any kids. And I first moved to this new state, I started having dreams, and it was dreams about my father coming into my room. The first thought I had was to call another sibling and say, can you come out and visit me? And when the sibling came out, we talked and I said, do you remember dad doing this or doing that?

“I’m Not Crazy” (25:54): And, and she confirmed to me, yes, she goes, and, and just filled in a lot of different parts. This really happened. The more things that came out that way, it was just more validating. And, and also back when I first started remembering these things, I came across an article that had been written and someone had done a lot of research about satanic abuse victims. And they had done an in-depth interview study with over 60 people. They said they could have done hundreds of more, but they limited it because it is very taxing. And I read it, it was like a 22 page document, and it was so validating. And these were people from all different denominations. And it just was like, okay, I, I’m not crazy because there are all of these people that are saying, yeah, these things happened to us.

(26:54): And they weren’t related people, you know, they weren’t like, they didn’t interview brothers and sisters. They had different people from all different families. As far as my own family, since I moved to the other state, I have had my one sibling come out and visit me when we first moved. And then another sibling moved close to me, which was great. . And then that’s all, I don’t, I don’t have any connection with any of my family right now. And so I, and I haven’t really talked publicly about this. I, I’ve talked to a lot of people individually, and I had a lot of people in my ward that were very supportive when I was in therapy, and I talked a lot to them.

Support the BTR.ORG Podcast Anne (27:40): We’re gonna pause the conversation right here, and Anna is going to come back next week, so stay tuned. Please remember to support the BTR.ORG Podcast. And until next week, stay safe out there.

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Ty and Brynlee Larson, Maya and Sebastian Laing, Lexi, and Macy.

What do these teenagers have in common?

They are victims of the alienation industry, and have had to go to extreme lengths – including barricading themselves in rooms, running away, and going into hiding to protect themselves from the horrors of reunification camps.

Tina Swithin from One Mom’s Battle is back on the BTR.ORG Podcast, taking a deep dive with Anne into the subject of the alienation industry – with a call to action for our community. Tune in and read the full transcript below for more.

Gaslighting & Psychological Trauma at Reunification Camps Reunification camp staff freely admit that the tactics they employ serve to condition children and teens to doubt their own memories and lose faith and trust in their own intuition.

By playing “memory games” with children and teens, camp staff “prove” to the court-ordered attendees that they are forgetful and cannot trust their own memories regarding the abuse that they endured at the hands of the parent who is paying for them to be at the camp.

Reunification Camps Are Human Trafficking in Broad Daylight Camps are not located in every state where children are court-ordered to attend – in order to avoid human trafficking charges, camp staff use a handy (and corrupt) loophole:

“They often cross state lines. A lot of times they are operating out of AirBNBs or in hotel suites. There are a few camps, actual physical locations. There’s one in Texas, there’s one in California. But most of the time, and the way they avoid human trafficking charges by crossing state lines, they transfer custody at each leg. So when the transport agents come in to remove the children, they have guardianship. And then when they take the children to the camp, they transfer custody to the camp owner. And then ultimately the alleged abuser is the one who maintains custody. And the people who own the camp, the way it’s written in the court orders, maintain full control of the case for at least a year.”

Tina Swithin, One Mom’s Battle

Reunification Camps & The Safe Parent Children are further traumatized when they aren’t allowed to have any contact with their preferred parent:

“In all of these cases, once the four-day reunification camp is complete, the preferred parent is not allowed in. There’s a 90-day block-out period where they’re allowed no contact. And if contact is made or attempted, the 90 days starts all over again. But it’s never 90 days. We have stories where parents have been two years, four years without their children, and some parents don’t even know where their children are two years later.”

Tina Swithin, One Mom’s Battle

BTR.ORG Is Here For You Victims of abuse face the terror of the family court system when they take courageous steps toward separation and divorce from the abuser. Tina shares that many women have written to her and expressed that they are afraid to take steps for their own safety because they don’t want to subject their children to unsupervised time with the abuser:

“A failure in this system is when victims of domestic abuse would rather stay in the relationship than risk losing their children to their abuser. That is a failure in itself.”

Tina Swithin, One Mom’s Battle

BTR.ORG is here for you as you navigate your journey toward safety. You don’t have to do this alone. Our daily live group Group Sessions are available to you.

Full Transcript: Anne (00:00): Welcome to BTR.ORG. This is Anne. Tina is back on today’s episode. Last week we were talking about reunification therapy. If you did not hear that episode, listen to that first and then join us here. She starts off this episode talking about how the reunification camps, or the reunification therapy, is paid for. It’s 50/50, meaning the protective parent has to pay 50% of the fees for putting their own child in danger and exposing their child to abuse. So not only are they punished in that they can’t see their child or that their child is taken away, but also because it’s a financial burden for them to have to pay for the abuser to have contact with their child.

Tina (03:51): It’s usually divided 50/50, but there are lots of different situations where that has gone in different directions. But we heard a story recently where a mom made a plea to the court that she could not afford the camp and was told to cash out her daughter’s college fund to pay for it.

Anne (04:09): Wow.

Gaslighting & Psychological Abuse at Reunification Camps Tina (04:11): And so on day two of these camps, the kids are forced to play memory games to show them that their memory is not always accurate and that their preferred parent or protected parent was lying and that the abuse did not happen. And so it’s professional, organized gaslighting. When I read the actual words from the people who own the camp, any psychologist who understands these dynamics would say this is gaslighting,

Anne (04:40): Psychological warfare, really, of children.

Tina (04:44): Absolutely.

Anne (04:47): So this is therapy. And also with the camps, they can actually be kidnapped and removed from their home too.

How Does the Reunification Industry Avoid Child Human Trafficking Charges? Tina (04:58): Yeah. And they a lot of times cross state lines. A lot of times they are operating out of Airbnbs or in hotel suites. There are a few camps- actual physical locations. There’s one in Texas, there’s one in California, and the way they avoid human trafficking charges by crossing state lines, they transfer custody at each leg. So when the transport agents come in to remove the children, they have guardianship. And then when they take the children to the camp, they transfer custody to the camp owner. Then ultimately the alleged abuser is the one who maintains custody. And the people who own the camp, the way it’s written in the court orders, maintain full control of the case for at least a year. In all of these cases, once the four-day reunification camp is complete, the preferred parent is not allowed in. There’s a 90-day block-out period where they’re allowed no contact. And if contact is made or attempted, the 90 days starts all over again. But it’s never 90 days. We have stories where parents have been two years, four years without their children, and some parents don’t even know where their children are two years later.

Anne (06:20): It is a systematic form of child abuse.

The Reunification Industry is Simply Human Trafficking Tina (06:25): Absolutely. And I think it’s can be even more traumatizing and abusive than what the kids have already been through. In the stories that I’ve heard from these survivors, it would break a healthy grown adult. So these kids will be the change. They are starting to age out of the system and speak out about these things. The media is finally paying attention and covering these stories, and I think it’s a matter of time before it is exposed for what it is. It’s human trafficking.

Anne (06:58): Tina was recently interviewed on a podcast called Civic. The title is called The Industry of Defending Child Abusers. It’s an in-depth investigative report of this, and it’s really detailed. It’s excellent. And I know all of you listening are really interested in this because you’re either currently in a relationship with abuser and wondering if you need to set the boundary of divorce or work toward some type of separation. Or maybe it’s post divorce and you’re trying to figure out what you’re going to do with custody in your divorce case.

We know everyone is interested in this, and I want everyone to be prepared for what they’re up against when it comes to civil cases with custody. Due to the financial abuse and the litigation abuse that you experienced through the 10 years of legal abuse that you endured, you needed to do your case pro se, which means that you were representing yourself. And so I am so proud of you and impressed by you that you did that and that you just kept fighting for your kids. That’s awesome. When you finally were able to protect your children, talk about how you felt and like what happened after that? Your kids finally don’t have to do parent time with him. How does that feel?

“I’m Still Processing the Trauma” Tina (08:26): You know, interesting that you ask because I’ve shared this with close friends and family members where I had visualized for so long what that day would feel like, because that’s what we hoped for. That’s what we prayed for. But on the day that visits were finally ended and he wasn’t even allowed to call the girls (it was no contact period), I walked out of the courthouse and I had imagined that it would just be a flood of tears and this huge relief. That juncture was around the six-year mark and I felt like I had been in shock, almost a dissociative state, and it had been six years of living in fight or flight mode. There was a period of time where I slept with a hammer under my pillow because I was in fear for our lives.

(09:23): And so to be granted peace, it probably took me about three months before the floodgates opened and I started to process what had happened. And I’m still in therapy. I mean, 13 years ago is when my case started, and I’m still processing the trauma. I often say the post separation abuse and watching what my children endured without being able to protect them, which is what nature intended for me to do, was by far more abusive than what I experienced during my relationship. And I think the family court system and institutional betrayal is to blame for that.

“Even Though There Were Findings of Severe and Chronic Abuse, Judge Pullan Gave [the Abuser] Full Custody” Anne (10:09): Do you know the details of what happened when the Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, decided to get involved with the case with Ty and Brynlee and sent people down to Provo to observe, to see if everything was going according to the law or whatever? Do you know what happened with the details of that and why they just thought, oh, this makes sense, this looks good.

Tina (10:33): I have no idea why nothing came of that, because it gave everyone so much hope to know that the Attorney General’s office was assigning someone to pay attention to this case and to watch the final days of these hearings in Judge Pullan’s courtroom. But the ruling that came down is shocking to everyone that this dad received full custody, even though there are findings of severe and chronic abuse, that Judge Pullan gave him full custody, yet he can’t be unsupervised with his own kids. The court orders that the kids are to be separated and put into two different houses with paternal family members versus their mom. And so the fact that the Attorney General was witness to that unfolding is mind blowing to me.

Why Don’t the Courts Value Children’s Safety More? Anne (11:36): Yeah. That they’re not like, “That’s weird.”, you know? I’m constantly shocked actually that people say things and then they’re like, “Oh, yeah, it’s fine.” Recently the same pediatrician that I was talking about in the beginning, gave these pictures of bruises on these children to court and testified that they’d been abused, and the Guardian ad Litem in that case and the judge both said, “Oh, yeah. Hmm. I don’t really think that that counts as abuse. No problem. 50/50 custody.”

Tina (12:14): Unbelievable.

Anne (12:14): It is shocking, especially in a state like Utah that really thinks that children are important apparently. And I’m like, apparently not. Apparently they really value men’s exploitative privilege.

Tina (12:29): Absolutely. I think that pretty much sums up the majority of what we’re all up against.

Kayden’s Law Anne (12:37): We don’t necessarily know what the solutions are, per se. There’s Kayden’s Law that I’d like you to talk about, but I’d like you to talk about the path forward on two different fronts. The first one is what women who are currently experiencing abuse and perhaps considering a divorce boundary to separate themselves from harm can do. Or if they’re post-separation, to protect themselves and their own children, if you have any tips. And then secondly, what concerned citizens could do. So if you could just point to the path forward on those two fronts, that would be great to close us out.

Tina (13:19): In terms of a parent who is still in the abusive relationship, it’s heartbreaking to me because I get the messages saying, ‘I’ve read your story,’ or ‘I watch what’s happening on your blog with other stories, and I would rather stay because I know that I have a better chance of protecting my kids.’ What a failure this system is when victims of domestic abuse would rather stay in the relationship than risk losing their children to their abuser. That is a failure in itself. But I cannot emphasize enough the importance of understanding your local system. Learning it like the back of your hand, really entrenching yourself in who the judges are, who the bad players are, who the good players are. Having an attorney that truly gets it.

The Family Court System “Requires a Tremendous Amount of Strategy” (14:15): I always struggle or hesitate to use this term, but radical acceptance- it is not a system that’s in children’s best interest. And unfortunately, it is a system that requires a tremendous amount of strategy and it shouldn’t, and that’s not fair. It’s not just, but that is the reality of what we’re up against. So really document everything, and people cringe when I say that. I always say 99% of my documentation has never been seen by anyone, but I would do it all again because the 1% that I was able to showcase in court or in custody evaluations is what protected my kids.

(15:00): And then, to reference what the solutions are, last year with the Violence Against Women’s Act passing at the federal level, it’s the first time that the federal government has recognized that we have a crisis in the family court system, and they passed Kayden’s Law. You can find out more about it at nationalsafeparents.org. I don’t remember the exact dollar amounts, but it incentivizes states to adopt Kayden’s Law in their state. And so there is a push right now in Montana. There’s one starting up in Utah, California.

What Does Kayden’s Law Accomplish? (15:47): One of the things it will do is restrict expert testimony to those who are appropriately qualified to provide it. It’s a lot of the people in the alienation industry who are pushing their own agenda, and so it will create a standard for expert testimony, which is long overdue. You would think that would be common sense in the family court system, but unfortunately it’s not. It would limit the use of reunification camps and therapies which are not proven to be safe and effective. So it’s going to address the issue we’ve talked about here today, and it’s going to require that family courts consider past abuse. Right now they don’t. They can say that just because he abused you, doesn’t mean he abused the kids, and they’re so wrong on that. They’re calling for evidence-based training for judges and family court professionals, which again, that just seems like common sense. My dog groomer is required to have a certain amount of hours to receive her certification to groom my dog, yet our family court judges to have no training – that needs to stop.

Narcissistic Court Professionals Are Harming Children Anne (17:05): I found it very interesting, I didn’t know this until you said it, that they’re being trained by the parental alienation side. They’re going to conferences where people are talking about this. They’re like, “Okay, it’s fine that I get trained by people who want to protect child abusers.” Because in Utah right now, the judges are like, “No way. Why do I need to get trained about child abuse? I know everything already.” Also, I see this quite a bit and it’s super, super annoying to me and traumatic to me that certain therapists or Guardians ad Litem, or custody evaluators, think so highly of themselves that they are flattered by the abuser. So they think that they’ve turned him into a safe person. They’re like, “Oh, here we have this man who’s been abusive in all these ways, and I, through my helpful guidance, am going to tell him, ‘Hey, you’ve been abusive and you’ve been terrible.'” And then when he grooms them and says, “I know that was wrong, I’m not ever gonna do that again.”, they pat themselves on the back as if like, “Oh, it’s so good that I was part of this case. It’s so nice now that these parents can co-parent together and these kids can be safe and they can have their dad in their life and everything is gonna be okay now because I did such a good job.”

Tina (18:27): Right. I think there’s a high level of narcissism in our family court professionals. I think there’s a range between that high level of narcissism and financial incentive that it’s in their best interest to keep these kids going through this pipeline of alienation services and all of it. So I think that’s a huge issue in the family court system.

What Can You Do To Help? Anne (18:52): So if you are horrified by this, which I hope that you are, I hope that you feel angry. I hope that you feel upset and I hope that that justifiable, righteous anger motivates you to get more educated about this. There are three things you need to do. Number one, go to nationalsafeparents.org and find out how you can support having a law like Kayden’s Law passed in your state. Go to One Mom’s Battle, which is an excellent place for resources if you are going through this yourself. And then also please, if you have social media accounts, which I totally support you if you do not, but if you do, post podcasts like that Civic podcast that I mentioned. One of the children who is involved with this, who is currently barricaded in his room, please follow his TikTok.

(19:52): Just talking to people about it and getting the word out that this is occurring. Most people who I talk to, especially in my case when I said I had a supported domestic abuse case and he pled guilty, they think the next thing is, “Oh, I’m so glad you’re safe. I’m glad your kids don’t have to go with him.” And when I say the next thing, “No, he actually got more custody.”, the shock ensues, right? Most people aren’t aware that this is happening, so helping get the word out is the most important thing. If you’re involved in your own current situation, focus on yourself. You don’t need to change the world right now, but learn through strategy and through other means how to keep yourself safe. We have our Living Free Workshop, to help women navigate just what to do with themselves, not necessarily related to their children. And then Tina’s site One Mom’s Battle is really good resource for parents.

“This is an Absolute Crisis” Tina (20:54): When everyday citizens who are not affected by the family court system link arms with us and demand better for our children, that’s where we are going to see a change. Because right now it’s so easy to label all of us as hysterical moms, and that bias is overwhelming. We really need people who aren’t involved in family court to stand with us in outrage and to reach out to their legislators and put this on their radar, that it is an absolute crisis.

Anne (21:27): It is a crisis, and our children are being hurt. I met with a legislator about Kayden’s Law here in Utah, and I just said to him, “Currently, right now today, there are safe parents who are trying to protect their own children from a known child abuser, and the court is prohibiting them from protecting them. And the more they try to protect their kid, the worse off it gets for everybody.”

Tina (21:54): Absolutely.

Support the BTR.ORG Podcast Anne (21:56): Well, Tina, thank you so much for your hard work. We appreciate everything you do to bring this issue to light. So thank you. Thank you so much for talking with me today.

Tina (22:06): Thank you.

Anne (22:08): If this podcast is helpful to you, please support it. And until next week, stay safe out there.

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Google “Reunification Therapy” and you’ll see corruption at work – because Reunification Therapy is anything but healthy and safe.

Tina Swithin from One Mom’s Battle is on the BTR.ORG Podcast to tell you what you need to know about Reunification Therapy. Tune in and read the full transcript below for more.

Reunification Therapy Disempowers Children Therapy should, first and foremost, empower children. Reunification therapy does the exact opposite:

“[The abused children] are told that nothing in the past matters. We are only focused on here and now and future movement. And then when the kids bring up, but he did this to me or this, they redirect them back to present day, the past does not matter. And, and we are talking about children who have been sexually abused.”

Tina Swithin, One Mom’s Battle

Reunification Therapy is Traumatizing “In cases where there is abuse, this is further traumatizing these children. When these children are not complying or going along with the program, then the extreme situation would be for the reunification therapist to stamp off on the case and recommend reunification camp. That’s a very extreme and further traumatizing direction that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I’m haunted by the stories that I hear.”

Tina Swithin, One Mom’s Battle

Children who are subjected to reunification therapy are re-abused by the “professionals” who are trying to gaslight them into blaming their protective parent for the negative feelings they have for the abuser.

How Do Reunification Therapies and Camps Traumatize Children? Not only are the children traumatized by the gaslighting itself, but children are:

• Often forced into participation against their will.
• Accused of lying about the abuse.
• Forced to spend time with their abuser.
• Isolated from their protective/preferred parent.

“It is traumatizing for these kids – they are cut off from all contact with their preferred parent.”

Tina Swithin, One Mom’s Battle

Abusers Weaponize Reunification Therapy Considering how harmful Reunification Therapy is, how can it possibly exist?

It’s a “lucrative cottage industry” that abusers have weaponized in order to gain access to their child victims while causing inexpressible pain to the protective parent.

And those in the reunification industry continue to push for it because it lines their pockets.

“[Reunification therapy] is a lucrative cottage industry.

And so when the judge’s calendars are overbooked and people are being forced through this system like cattle, and the judges are in this state of overwhelm, they almost have, I call it the a la carte menu on their desk: oh great, I can push this case off on this person who has the ability to dive in and investigate what’s going on. But that person is financially motivated to label a parent as alienator.”

Tina Swithin, One Mom’s Battle

BTR.ORG Is Here For You If you are in experiencing the trauma of the family court system, please attend a BTR.ORG Group Session today – you are not alone and you do not have to endure this on your own. We love you, we believe you.

Full Transcript: Anne (00:00): Welcome to BTR.ORG. This is Anne. I have a super special guest on today’s episode. It’s Tina Swithin and so many of you are familiar with her. She is the author of Divorcing a Narcissist: One Mom’s Battle, one of the best selling divorce books of all time. She has also authored three additional books in the divorcing a narcissist series: Advice From the Battlefield, The Narc Decoder, and Rebuilding After the Storm. Tina is an internationally recognized blogger, divorce coach, and champion of children’s rights in the family court system. Tina endured a 10 year family court battle representing herself and against all odds was successful in protecting her children. Tina works to raise awareness on the shortcomings and failures of the family court system while educating the public on post-separation abuse and narcissistic abuse. Tina is remarried and resides in San Louis Obispo, California with her husband and two teenage daughters. Welcome Tina.

Tina (03:54): Thank you so much. Happy to be here. Happy to connect.

What Are Reunification Camps & Reunification Therapy? Anne (03:58): We had the privilege of meeting in person in a protest that was happening in Utah about family court and how it does not protect children. So that was really exciting. You may have seen us do an Instagram Live during that time and I was so happy to meet her. So I wanted Tina to come to talk about a few issues related to family court and how in most states for a protective parent who is seeking a divorce from an abusive parent, that protective parent really has a very hard time protecting her children. On my podcast, because our audience is women who have been abused by men, I speak in gender segregated ways simply because that is our audience. But I do wanna recognize that the women can be abusive as well. However, for our listeners, since they’re all women victims of male abusers, that’s why I talk like this. Should we start with reunification camps and maybe reunification therapy?

Tina (05:03): Yes, I think that’s a, a good place to dive in and it’s a, a really hot topic right now and I was pleasantly surprised to be able to meet you in real life at the protest in Utah. And it is, it’s a big topic and it’s a really important one. It’s something that has infiltrated the family court system and is definitely not in a child’s best interest.

When Protective Mothers Can’t Protect Their Children Anne (05:27): So I have a friend who’s a pediatrician and sometimes she refers cases that she sees in her pediatric office to DCFS, which is Division of Child and Family Services here in Utah. And she’s never had a case in Utah come back as supported. Every time she reports child abuse in the state of Utah, it comes back as unsupported. And the reason it comes back as unsupported is because usually it’s the safe parent, like a safe mom that brings the child into the pediatrician’s office and that it happened at an ex-husband’s home or a scenario where they’re separated. And when DCFS goes to talk to the man who is accused of the abuse, as long as he has a reason, as long as he says, oh no, that’s not what happened. What happened was I was trying to help her with her homework or I was trying to explain to him how to do this or I’m so sorry I lost my temper, but really I am a good dad.

(06:36): As long as he can explain it and he doesn’t say, yes, I am an abuser, it comes back as unsupported. And so she just has no way of being able to help these protective moms protect their kids from abuse. In many cases that kids don’t wanna go. And so can you explain what happens in family court when the kids are like, Hey, I don’t want to go. My dad is abusive, he has hurt me and I’m not interested in going, how does the court view that when it comes to parental alienation and then what is their solution?

“This Is An Entity That Is Failing Our Kids” Tina (07:11): To piggyback on what you said about CPS or whatever the entity is called, it’s a universal problem across the entire country. And I believe there are two things at play. Number one, there is a very strong bias that moms make up abuse allegations to get a leg up in custody. So as soon as they hear that there is any type of family court case or child custody situation, they cannot close it fast enough. And so that’s a lot of what we’re up against. And then the second factor of that is that the threshold for what’s acceptable because of the horrors that they see on a daily basis is so skewed. And so the majority of situations that they’re investigating don’t even register on their scale of abuse or neglect. And it’s really unfortunate because this is an entity that is failing our kids.

(08:16): And when a mom is in the family court system, she has very few resources to support her truth and her side of the story. Most people walk into this naively believing that these other organizations are there to act in a child’s best interest. And so they walk in with this false sense of hope that if a pediatrician does report it, it’s going to bolster their case and their ability to protect their child. I tell people in family court, you know, I don’t believe that reports do anything except that it becomes a paper trail. If you get enough of them, it can start to have an impact. But you know, when moms are in family court, there are many, many challenges that they are facing. And CPS findings are just one of those.

“[Most] Abusers Do Not Abuse Children in Broad Daylight” Anne (09:15): You get an unsupported case, first of all. So your first barrier is number one, thinking that reporting is going to help, right? Because reporting, they do a very quick investigation and as long as he has a quote unquote good reason, it’s unsupported. And then you look like the bad guy for claiming he’s abusive when he’s not. And the only thing he had to do was say, no, no, no, I’m not abusive. And that negates both the victim’s account, which is the child and then also the safe parents account.

Tina (09:52): And I think a large part of the problem in family court is that it is “he said, she said” and I’m generalizing, obviously there are other pronouns that could be used in that situation, but they have the same issue that CPS does for the threshold of what’s deemed as acceptable is so skewed. And so they take someone’s word at face value and the majority of things that happen in family court are considered hearsay. And the family court system becomes annoyed with people. You know, they don’t understand the dynamics at play, that this is typically one high conflict individual and one parent who is desperate to protect their children, but they get lumped into that same category. And it’s really difficult to go in with solid evidence because abusers do not abuse children in broad daylight. They do sometimes, but it’s very rare.

“Most Family Court Judges & Professionals Have No Training On These Issues” (10:52): Usually what is happening is behind closed doors, we’re dealing with a court system that if at, at a very minimum they have the 101 training on domestic violence, but most family court judges and professionals have no training on these issues. And so when you get into the more complex topics and the coercive control and all of these other issues, it’s an uphill battle. You know, there’s a reason why it took a decade in my case to finally terminate rights. And that’s a common scenario. I tell people, if your case is not still active when your kids age out of the system, it’s somewhat of a miracle.

Anne (11:37): You know, it’s really interesting cuz on the abuse prevention side, right? So abuse advocates, they’ll go into schools or talk to kids and say like, if this is happening to you, reach out to a safe adult and report. And they think that if they get kids to report their abuse, they could be protected. But in court if a child says, I’m being abused, that child has to essentially prove that they’re being abused. If they just say, I’m being abused, and the accused parent says, no, no, that’s not what’s happening, then they’re not protected at all. And so that is the hard part is that children’s cries for help and they’re then doing what adults told them to do, right? They, they were like, okay, I went to that assembly and now I’m going to reach out and I am going to ask for help. I’m gonna report that this is happening to me. And then they are further abused by a system that just won’t believe them or discounts their accounts.

Why Don’t Court Professionals Believe Children? Tina (12:39): And these professionals who are barely trained in the 101 of domestic violence don’t understand victim perpetrator behaviors and how children present when they’re telling these stories. And you know, a a statement that I heard in the past few months that really resonated with me is that it’s easier for people to believe that a child is being coached to disclose these things than it is for people to believe that a child is being abused.

We don’t want to believe that there is this darkness in society, but it there is, and we have to start listening to these kids because as you touched on, when a child finally feels empowered, finally feels brave enough to do what they’ve been told to do, the healthy parent, the mom in most situations is accused of coaching them, or the big word in the family court system, which has infiltrated and created an absolute disaster, alienation. You’re accused of alienation and it’s a legal strategy employed by abusers to turn the table and take the focus and spotlight off of what they have been doing behind closed doors and shift the blame to the parent who is just trying to protect their child.

The Truth About “Parental Alienation” Anne (14:00): Now in so many of these cases, the quote unquote solution to this alienation. So a child is desperately trying to not have to have contact or not be exposed to further abuse in the form of just being around their abuser. The court says, no, you have been coached into saying you’re abused, you’re not actually abused. Your parent that you say is abusing you is fine, they’re a great guy. In fact, you need to like get your story straight. And so we are gonna court order you to reunification therapy or a reunification camp.

So this reunification therapy can take many forms. It can be a reunification camp where the children are kidnapped essentially and taken across state lines trafficked. Or it can be in the form of reunification therapy where they’re forced to do therapy to reconcile with their abuser, meaning the abuser still has access to them and a child is forced to improve or repair their relationship with their abuser. So can you talk about both of those forms of reunification torture, let’s call it?

Understanding the Corruption of the Reunification Industry Tina (15:24): Sure. it is, that is what it is. The way I describe it: if there is a finding of abuse and everyone’s on board and believes this is happening, it cuts off the financial flow of money because we know we cannot fix an abuser.

Anne (15:40): Really quickly. Are you saying that, let’s, let’s just pretend for a minute that they were like, oh child, you’re being abused. Okay, you don’t have to go with your dad. Your mom gets full custody, the end and the custody case is over, the divorce case is over, it’s signed and they just go their merry way. Are you saying that if that would happen, then all the custody evaluators, all the Guardian Ad Litems, all of the therapists, et cetera, that are part of this system would not be able to make money because they make money off of these court ordered requirements?

Tina (16:17): Absolutely.

Anne (16:19): So they’re all kind of in on it.

“Rings of Collusion” Tina (16:24): I think that there are some who really do believe they’re doing the right thing. You know, there is this common thought that two parents are better than one no matter what. I don’t agree with that. I think a child needs one healthy adult in their life to thrive, but that’s a large part of the bias that we are up against in the family court system. And so I think we have a range from professionals who really do believe they’re doing the right thing or they may really be doing the right thing to people who this is their financial livelihood. And from that we see rings of collusion or outright corruption. Throughout the family court system, there are a lot of people who are motivated by their own bank accounts versus what is in the best interest of a child.

Anne (17:19): One of my questions is, since it’s the Guardian Ad Litems and the custody evaluators and the therapists that get the money from this, and a judge is just given just a regular, you know, salary from the county or from the state, they’re not necessarily paid more if they send more kids to reunification therapy, for example.

Who Benefits Financially in the Alienation Industry? Tina (17:44): I think that when we’re looking at judges and why they would order this, if they are on a, a regular salary and they’re not financially incentivized, there are the range from those who believe they are doing the right thing and they’ve drank the Kool-Aid, that it has been poured by these professionals in, I call it the alienation industry. It’s a lucrative cottage industry. So the, the trainings that the judges are partaking in, they are seeing these people as experts.

And so when the judges’ calendars are overbooked and people are being forced through this system like cattle, and the judges are in this state of overwhelm, they almost have, I call it the a la carte menu on their desk that, oh great, I can push this case off on this person who has the ability to dive in and investigate what’s going on. But that person is financially motivated to label a parent as alienator.

Anne (18:47): Like a custody evaluator, for example, or regarding ad litem because if they say, Nope, this is just an abuser and the person should, the kid shouldn’t go with them, then they’re not able to charge their hourly rates anymore.

Reunification Camps Are “Further Traumatizing These Children” Tina (18:59): Absolutely. And then when the child is forced through these reunification therapies and it’s not successful because we common sense tells us you can’t force a child to have a relationship or force two people to have a relationship if it’s fractured or if there’s no bond in the first place. That has to be something that works itself out naturally, not with forced intervention.

And especially in cases where there is abuse, this is further traumatizing these children. So when these children are not complying or going along with the program, then the extreme situation would be for the reunification therapist to stamp off on the case and recommend reunification camp. That’s a very extreme and further traumatizing direction that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I’m haunted by the stories that I hear.

Anne (19:57): The logic of this, that judges have so many cases that they’re like I’m just too overwhelmed and so I’m going to just like pass this off to a custody evaluator is really interesting because if they do that, there are more and more hearings, there’s more and more to do when that happens. If they really wanted to clear their docket, they’d just be like, oh, this child is being abused. They say they’re being abused. I’m just gonna listen to the kid declare this over. You know, it’s, it’s ironic to me that if they’re like, oh, I’m so overwhelmed that they would choose the thing that makes way more work for themselves,

“Vexatious Litigants… Use the Family Court System as Their Playground” Tina (20:38): But they know that these cases are high conflict and some people don’t like that word, but it is the label that is used or that phrase. And so regardless of which direction it goes, they they’re going to keep filing. A lot of these abusive individuals are vexatious litigants where they use the family court system as their playground to continue their reign of terror and control. And so it’s not going to stop the case. They’re going to keep trying. So in the case of Ty and Brinlee Larson, we had Child Protective Services come in and make multiple findings of abuse, which as we’ve discussed, that is incredibly rare.

And not only did they substantiate the abuse, they labeled some of the sexual abuse and other types as chronic and severe. And when that happened, it completely took the case out of family court and the kids were protected and the kids did not have to see their abuser. There was actually a restraining order in place, I believe it was for 150 days. And at that point, the alleged abuser brought the case back into family court and before you know it, there were multiple professionals put into place a reunification therapist, minor’s counsel, and all of a sudden these children are being forced back into visits with their alleged abuser. And not only visits, but overnight visits.

What do Reunification Therapies & Camps Entail? Anne (22:12): This isn’t even alleged at this point, right? Because it was supported by DCFS.

Tina (22:16): Some people say because he didn’t go through the criminal justice system and he wasn’t convicted, that it’s still better to use alleged.

Anne (22:26): Oh, all right.

Tina (22:28): And, and you know, there’s a reason why it didn’t go through the criminal justice system in my opinion.

Anne (22:34): So they are court ordered to have contact with their abuser, and then when they refuse, right, they’re like, heck no, we are not going, they barricade themselves in their room, then they’re ordered to reunification camp. So let’s talk more about what this reunification therapy or reunification camp entails.

Severely Alienated OR Protected by A Safe Parent? Tina (22:58): So reunification therapy is forcing a child against their will to have contact with their alleged abuser. And I’m speaking in general terms, and if the child doesn’t want to participate or speaks out about what’s happening, then they are considered to be severely alienated and then they are subject to reunification camps.

Anne (23:23): When you say severely alienated, basically what you mean is people think these kids have been brainwashed so much by the protective parent. There’s this other parent who has brainwashed these kids, coached them into thinking that they were abused when they actually were not.

Reunification “Therapy” Traumatizes Children Tina (23:42): Exactly. So when they are labeled as severely alienated, the, the solution that these people propose is reunification camp, and these are four day intensives. They call them therapy. I cannot call this therapy. It is traumatizing for these kids, but they are cut off from all contact with their preferred parent. They are sent to this camp. We’ve reviewed testimony where some of the camp owners talk about what happens on each day of the camp. The first day. They are told that nothing in the past matters. We are only focused on here and now and future movement. And then when the kids bring up, but he did this to me or this, they redirect them back to present day, the past does not matter. And, and we are talking about children who have been sexually abused.

You know, I can’t imagine being put in a room with my abuser, let alone my abuser receiving full custody of me and me being forced to have a relationship. Everyone, I, you know, I explained this to, says it sounds medieval, how is this happening? And everyone says it sounds like a racket because it is. These camps cost around, I’ve heard anywhere between $15,000 and $40,000 for a weekend.

Anne (25:13): We are going to pause here and Tina is going to continue to talk to us about reunification camps next week. So stay tuned. If this podcast is helpful to you, please support it. And until next week, stay safe out there.

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Have you found yourself wishing that your husband would just hit you so that you had “enough” justification to leave?

Many women in the BTR.ORG Community have asked: Is it okay to divorce if I’m not sure it’s abuse?

Sarah McDugal is back on the BTR.ORG Podcast answering this question – and – short answer – definitive proof and physical violence are NOT necessary for women to seek safety. Women can trust themselves and move toward safety regardless of society’s misogynistic standards. Read the full transcript below and listen to the BTR.ORG Podcast for more.

“I’m Not Sure If It’s Abuse – Can I Still Leave?”“You actually don’t have to assess, is it abuse? Even if it’s not abuse, you could still say, this isn’t for me.”

Anne Blythe, BTR.ORG Founder

Many women find themselves stuck in a space where they have difficulty defining their relationship as “abusive” because the abuser is covert, and careful to use gaslighting and other manipulative tactics to cause the victim to doubt herself.

And in a society where women have to defend their choices to separate in order to receive the support of family, friends, clergy, and community, many women want the clarity of knowing for sure if the relationship was actually abusive.

Anne’s advice? Worry less about defining the relationship as abusive, and simply move toward safety. As you gain proximity from the abuser, you’ll be able to see the relationship and the abuser more clearly – and more easily understand the abuse.

“Is It Abuse if My Husband Doesn’t Know He’s Doing It?”Many women who are on their journeys to safety find difficulty letting go of the worry that their abuser is unaware or somehow not responsible for his abusive behavior.

Many abusers blame their abusiveness on:

• Childhood trauma
• Their parents
• Past girlfriends/wives
• Mental illness
• Alcohol addiction

Rather than taking responsibility for their actions and holding themselves accountable, abusers choose to assign the accountability to others. Many people experience childhood trauma, poor parenting, harmful relationships, mental illness, and alcoholism – and don’t abuse others.

As to the abuser not being aware? Sarah explains:

“It doesn’t have to be identified as overtly intentional to be abuse.”

Sarah McDugal, author

The abuser may not be calculating every abusive maneuver he takes – but your safety, rather than his level of intention, needs to be the priority.

BTR.ORG Is Here For YouAt BTR.ORG, we understand how difficult it is to let go of the hope that he may change and move toward safety without definitive proof. Wherever you are in your healing journey, we are here for you. Attend a BTR.ORG Group Session today.

Full Transcript:Anne (00:00):
Welcome to BTR.ORG. This is Anne. I have Sarah McDugal back on today’s episode. We ended last week with her talking about how it would be great for men to be able to have a good relationship with their children. Of course, abusive men do not have that ability and later she’s gonna go over all of the flags of abuse. You can go to her website, it’s called Is This Abuse? And it’s an awesome chart and it has tons of information, videos and stuff, to help you understand what is abuse. So Sarah’s gonna talk about that today. We’re gonna just jump right in with her talking about how it would be healthy for children and healthy men to be more involved with childcare.

Start With a Baseline of the Ideal PartnershipSarah (03:45):
In a healthy environment, both parents are gently, kindly, deeply engaged in the well being of their children. And I do not mean one parent comes home, riles them up just before bedtime, and then goes to watch a football game while exhausted Mom puts them to bed and Dad says, “Hey, I did my good dad deed for the day.” I’m not talking about one parent undermining the healthy parenting of the other one. I’m talking about that ideal.
So sometimes we can recognize the things that are wrong when we look at a checklist of what abuse looks like, but sometimes also it’s really helpful to look at what the standard should be and then note what is missing. That’s kind of the perspective I’ve been taking until now in what we’ve been just talking about: that equitable distribution of labor. When we’re talking about using your power for good, we’re talking about a set of partners, a husband and wife who are both committed to living and treating each other and their children with love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness and faithfulness and self-control, the fruit of the spirit in that kind of relationship. If that’s our baseline, then we look at what is missing, and that shows us where those things of coercive control and abusive entitlement are staring with really ugly eyes at us. Those are the things that are taking over our homes.

No Amount of Discussion Can Change an Abuser into a Healthy ManAnne (05:44):
And in that case, no amount of, Hey, can you please do this or please do that discussions are going to magically turn him into an appropriate partner or an an appropriate father.

Sarah (06:01):
Absolutely.

Anne (06:01):
Not. It’s not not gonna happen.

Sarah (06:03):
If you’re saying, oh wow, okay, so that’s what it’s supposed to look like, , my home life looks nothing like that. And you’re looking at that and going, wow, there are glaring gaps in my home, in my marriage. Then you have to assess, okay, is this abuse?

You Are Allowed to Say, “This Isn’t For Me”Anne (06:29):
And I agree with you. And then I wanna say, you actually don’t have to assess, is it abuse? Even if it’s not abuse, you could still say, this isn’t for me. Right? Like you don’t always have to determine the cause of the behavior to like, what if it’s a brain lesion or what, you know, I don’t know, it could be whatever, but you don’t always have to assess the cause to say to yourself, I don’t want this. I’m going to move towards something more peaceful. It is helpful to know it’s abuse. That’s my whole job. That’s Sarah’s whole job. We educate people about abuse. So I’m not opposed to people like finding out it’s abuse, that’s not what I’m saying. But I also think that so many women have this thing in their head. If it’s abuse, then I can move towards safety. Or if it’s abuse, then I could separate and I really wanna separate. But if it’s not quote unquote abuse and my pastor’s saying it’s not that bad and my therapist is saying, I just need to communicate better and this other thing, and I just read this book and in this book it says that it’s not, if it’s due to his childhood trauma. And so I’m going to try to like work this out longer even though I really feel unsafe, then spending any more time trying to determine the cause is not the best use of our time when we could just start making our way to safety.

“It Doesn’t Have to be Identified as Overtly Intentional to be Abuse”Sarah (07:53):
But see, this is where I wanna point out a really crucial thing, and that is it doesn’t have to be identified as overtly intentional to be abuse.

Anne (08:04):
Absolutely.

Sarah (08:06):
You don’t have to know why with complete clarity in order to say it’s happening, it’s wrong and it’s unsafe. You can spin your wheels forever trying to figure out which thing made someone be this way.

Anne (08:27):
We can also, with so many of these guys, they are so good at manipulation and storytelling and stuff. Even if they, they knew exactly what they were doing, putting on some kind of show or giving reasons for it, like, oh, I was just so damaged as a child, or I must have something wrong with me. I need help. You know, that type of thing is just so in their wheelhouse.

Sarah (08:51):
You should go get that help if you are . So if you know, if your childhood trauma was intense, then you absolutely need to be in therapy. But also I would like to know why if your childhood trauma was so intense, why would you repeat that to anyone else? Because you would know how it feels.

Having Childhood Trauma is NOT a Justification to Abuse OthersAnne (09:11):
Well, totally. And also I wish you the best of luck.

Sarah (09:15):
Yes. Right? And, and you should absolutely be getting help from that. You may not be putting me or the children in danger and passing on that generational trauma while you deal with your stuff.

Anne (09:29):
Yeah. I wish you well. I am so sorry that that happened to you. Um, the result is that you’re unhealthy now, which means that I am going to separate myself from your harm.

Sarah (09:42):
Yeah. I, and, and you have the right to be safe from harm. Your children have the right to be safe from harm. And you know, occasionally there will be someone who says, wow, you do have the right to be safe from harm. I’m gonna go work on me. And once in a while there is a family or a relationship where the abusive partner goes and does that work. But you still have the right to be elsewhere and to be safe while they’re doing it.

“Safety” Also Means Emotional SafetyAnne (10:15):
Now, while we’re talking about this, I really wanna hit home that when we say safe, we mean emotionally safe. Someone who’s not lying to you, someone who’s not deceiving you, someone who’s not gaslighting, you we’re not talking about that they’re not hitting you. Obviously if they’re hitting you get like, we don’t want them to hit you. That’s not what we’re saying. That’s not what I’m saying. Uh, but I’m just, safety is emotional safety. It’s psychological safety that the reality that they are presenting to you is reality. That they’re not always trying to undermine your reality. Like that is safety. And so many women who listen to this podcast, Sarah, you probably run into it online all the time. They, when we say safety, I think they think, okay, well I think I’m safe cause he is not hitting me. Rather than thinking, wait a minute, what is safety? Safety is being with someone who is honest; safety is being someone who cares enough about me that they’re able to say, Hey, do you wanna go ice skating? And then I’m like, no, I don’t go, I don’t like going ice skating. And then they say, okay, no problem. I’ll go ice skating and we’ll meet back up later. Right? Like, that’s safety. Not like why you don’t wanna be together as a family. What’s wrong with you? You know, that kind of thing. Like, no, that’s not safe. So we’re talking emotional and psychological safety.

What Is Sexual Safety?Sarah (11:32):
I’ll take it a step further. And that is within marriage, not just outside of marriage. You also have the right to sexual safety. And that was the freedom to say, no, I don’t feel like it. No, I’m exhausted. No, I just had a baby. No, for whatever reason, I’m simply not in the mood. And to be able to say no and not be punished for declining, not get the silent treatment, not be having someone beg and plead and coerce and persuade and or bribe. Well if you’ll do this with me, get you that. Or I’ll be nice for a few days. Any of those things that’s actually sexual coercion and depending on exactly how it’s playing out, it, it can even be rape inside a marriage for that matter. You have the right to sexual safety in that when you stood at the altar and vowed to whatever variation of vows that you would be faithful to this person with your body.

(12:45):
You have the right to live the rest of your marriage in sexual safety knowing that they are not breaking that vow on a screen with their eyes, with their mind or with their body. So that includes porn, webcams, extracurricular content of kind, all things, all the things. When we are living in abuse, we generally have brain fog, right? Very often you just don’t know, maybe you grew up watching your dad treat your mom this way, so you think it’s normal. Maybe your pastor has, has preached so many sermons about how you know that, that it’s, this is just your role or it’s your job to make sure you’re sexually available as often as he wants it so that he doesn’t stray or whatever. And so maybe it just started off where it seems really nice and then it has just increasingly gotten more confusing. And then sometimes he’s very nice.

What is Psychological Reproductive Coercion?(13:55):
We know that’s manipulative, uh, niceness manipulation sometimes he’s really awful. But then he is really nice again. And, and it’s just super confusing in that vortex. And you know, you and I have done a whole episode about the vortex before, but it can be so helpful to have kind of a checklist of things to look for, weaponizing your belief systems, cyber abuse. Because using technology to to monitor and to surveil and abuse is more common now than it ever has been. And then there’s emotional and financial and intellectual, but then we also have legal abuse, post-separation and litigation, abuse and medical and then pets and property and physical abuse. And psychological reproductive coercion is things like, um, pressuring her to conceive or if she is pregnant, forcing her to have an abortion or forcing her to remain childless because he doesn’t want the responsibility of kids like stealing motherhood from her.

(15:09):
That’s reproductive coercion. The the flip side of reproductive coercion is things like stealthing. Stealthing is where a guy either sabotages or removes his condom in the middle of sex and he’s not doing it with her consent. And he may do it even without her knowledge. It’s actually a sexual assault crime in Canada. Um, using religious beliefs to forbid, um, prevention of pregnancy or any prenatal care is a form of reproductive coercion, coercing or manipulating sex when you know that she’s fertile is reproductive coercion. Especially when you’re dealing with someone who’s not ready to become pregnant or maybe her health isn’t great. Uh, and then another aspect of reproductive coercion is prioritizing her recovery after childbirth as a lower need or a lesser need than him getting sex when he wants it instead of waiting for her to heal. So all of those related to pregnancy and conception, any form of trickery or coercion related to pregnancy and conception. Um, some of those are actual crimes depending on your area. And it’s a bit separate from just the straight mainstream sexual abuse inside marriage. And then we also have social abuse, spiritual abuse and verbal abuse. And all of those boomer around this center axis of the abuse of power. We really believe that women need to be able to know what they’re dealing with. You can make safe decisions if you’re not making a fully informed decision.

“You Can Make Safety Decisions Without Knowing Everything”Anne (17:00):
You can make safe decisions not knowing everything. You can move towards safety. I think the problem is the opposite, that women feel like they can’t move towards safety unless they have a reason. I’ve met so many brave women who I I am I was not like this. And so I’m in awe of them who didn’t maybe really understand abuse or they didn’t understand things and they just were like, you know what, I don’t want this, this is not what I want. And then after divorce they’re like, whoa, that was abuse. Check it out. Yeah. Um, and and I’m like, good for you. Cause they weren’t waiting around for like someone to give them permission to say, you know what, it doesn’t really matter what this is. It’s not, I don’t want a life, like I’m going to separate myself from these behaviors no matter what they’re called because I’m not a fan.

(17:55):
I do not have mixed feelings. Like I am an educator as you are, right? Like we educate women about what is abuse so that they know, but there’s this, this part of me that’s so sad that women need a reason to do the thing that they want to do anyway that they didn’t know that they could do. Do you know what I’m saying? There’s just this part of me that’s like, oh, I feel bad that women aren’t like, you know what, this isn’t for me and it doesn’t matter what it is. You know what I am, am I making sense?

Why Does Society Hide Abuse So Well?Sarah (18:26):
What I see as kind of a balancing thing to that is there’s, there’s two sides, and this is the same kind of thing that we were talking about earlier. There’s the reality that is, and there’s the reality that we wish would be. So what I hear you saying, and correct me if I’m wrong, but what I hear you saying is that in the reality that you wish for women could simply feel free to say this is not right, it’s not healthy and I’m not putting up with it.

Anne (18:59):
Yeah. Like I wish the reality was that society and religion and everything did not hide abuse so well. And that also said to a woman, it doesn’t really matter what you think and how you feel unless you have a good, really good reason and you can define it as in you have a black eye, right? Then you are just complaining, you know, like, stop it.

Sarah (19:29):
Do you think a lot of that might just center back on that baseline of, of gender-based control?

Anne (19:40):
Yeah, I do.

“You Are Functioning, Autonomous Adults”Sarah (19:42):
It Makes space for gender-based violence. It makes an excuse in the framework for gender-based violence. So when we step back and we start saying to women, Hey mamas, not mamas, women across the board, you are functioning autonomous adults. There is literally nothing in a healthy belief system that says you can’t or shouldn’t or are not allowed to operate as a fully functioning autonomous adult. You have an equal right to safety, to protection, to provision and to thriving in whatever capacity you have been created to be as any man. And that is your God-given. Right? So we have a lot of women who have been raised. Now certainly this is not all women, but I think you and I both see it, especially in certain aspects of faith community, we see a higher than average proportion of women who have been raised to believe that they don’t actually have a God-given right. To operate as and to function as independent individual autonomous adults that they have to ask their dad or ask their brother or ask their husband.

Anne (21:19):
Yep. And the other thing I’m thinking is it can’t just be because they don’t like it. It can’t just be like, I feel uncomfortable, I do not like this situation. They have to have a quote unquote really good reason. And so because of misogyny says you have to have a really good reason and then you say, well, this is a good reason I feel uncomfortable, I feel unsafe. You might not use the word abuse, but then they can always say, well that reason’s not good enough,

Sarah (21:48):
. Right? That’s not my reason. So it doesn’t count

“I Don’t Like This” Is A Good Enough ReasonAnne (21:51):
Exactly. So it doesn’t count. And even if we say it’s abuse, even if we’re like, Hey, I got this chart from Sarah, she’s amazing. And look, it’s abuse on all these different things we still get from clergy, perhaps therapists like, oh, well, you know, that chart doesn’t really take into account his childhood and look how amazing he is when he does this. Right? And so just, I don’t like this for some reason is not good enough in today’s society. And I think that’s what’s making me sad today that like, I want the listeners to think that’s good enough for us. If you were just talking to Sarah and me, and even if, even if it wasn’t Abu, you know, I don’t know what it, let’s pretend like we don’t know what it is we do, it’s abuse, right? Let’s just pretend like we didn’t know. I want you to know that Sarah and I would say that’s good enough that you don’t like it is a good enough reason.

Sarah (22:49):
Yeah. And I think that for me, one of the biggest goals that I have for every woman that I work with is to encourage her to recognize that she has a divinely bestowed God-given right to live her life in power and in love and with a clear mind for God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind. And the more that we can give women these tools to recognize that you have the right to use your sound mind to decide what is right and best and safe and enjoyable for yourself and your children, that we have done our job. So I just wanna throw it out there. This, we have this chart if you are sitting and questioning and asking, I don’t know if it’s abuse, if you feel emotionally or spiritually or morally obligated to go ahead and have that validated reason. I understand that I was the same way. And that’s one of the reasons we’ve got this free chart. And you can get that for yourself. You can check it out and get it, download it at I deserve to know.com/is this abuse.

Anne (24:19):
Sarah, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts today and thank you for, um, going down my little rabbit hole that I was like obsessed with today. You’re amazing. I’m so grateful that Sarah could come on today and share her knowledge with us. She’s a wonderful advocate to victims everywhere. If this podcast is helpful to you, please support it. And until next week, stay safe out there.

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When your husband doesn’t help with housework, takes a backseat to parenting (except to yell at and control the children), and controls the finances (despite the fact that you contribute financially to the family, whether by your income or the labor that you offer to keep the family comfortable), you may be experiencing coercive control.

Sarah McDugal is on the podcast with Anne, and together they’re breaking down what equality actually means in a partnership. Tune in to the BTR.ORG Podcast and read the full transcript below for more.

Equality Means That Both Partners Contribute to Domestic Labor TasksIn many abusive marriages, women do the majority, if not all, of the housework.

Abusive men feel entitled to a home life where they are served by their wife and children. They choose to see women as subservient – and may back this entitlement up with:

• Spiritual abuse, citing misogynistic scripture.
• Their income, stating that because they make money, they shouldn’t have to do housework.
• Weaponized incompetence, claiming that they don’t know how, or were never taught, how to do domestic labor, such as dishes or mopping.
• “Benevolent patriarchy,” which is similar to weaponized incompetence. Abusers may use manipulative praise to convince the victim that since she is better at domestic labor, she should be the one doing it.

When Your Husband Doesn’t Help With Housework, You Don’t Have to Internalize the MisogynyIt is very easy to internalize the abuser’s narrative when he tries to convince you that he’s right and that everyone agrees with him that it’s your job to the majority of the household tasks.

This is misogyny, and it’s not your responsibility to internalize it.

Rather than accept the abuser’s narrative, you can set and live by safety boundaries to separate yourself from the abuser’s harm.

How is Housework Handled in Healthy Relationships?“Each partner is using whatever power they do have for the betterment, the protection and the uplifting of the other partner and of the home and family as a whole.”

Sarah McDugal, author

Healthy men are equally involved in household labor.

In healthy relationships, couples divide household labor according to what they’re interested in, what works with each individual schedule, and what needs to get done.

Rather than assigning tasks based on traditional gender roles, couples take into account personal capacity and their individual talents. For example, if one spouse enjoys cooking, they may generally be in charge of preparing dinner, while the other spouse may usually take care of yard work. Spouses may take turns cleaning bathrooms, or clean them together on Saturdays.

Ultimately, couples work together to make sure that household tasks are completed, without competing and comparing who has the heavier load. Couples in healthy relationships trust each other and know that neither spouse will experience burn-out because they can communicate and care for each other.

BTR.ORG Is Here For YouAbusive relationships drain victims of emotional and physical energy. You deserve validation, support, and compassion. Attend a BTR.ORG Group Session today.

Full Transcript:Anne (00:00):
Welcome to BTR.ORG. This is Anne. On today’s episode, we have, my dear, dear friend Sarah McDugal. You can find her on Facebook. I love Sarah, she’s been on the podcast before. She and I are so grateful for our friendship. So welcome, Sarah.

Sarah (03:19):
I love your audience.

Anne (03:22):
I do too. So if you’re listening, thank you. I don’t thank you enough. Thank you. Thank you for listening. I appreciate it. Sarah appreciates it. It’s amazing how many victim warriors, sheroes, survivors, whatever we wanna call ourselves, are out there and how big the community of survivors is in general, right? Not just women who listen to BTR, but just women who are looking for answers online.

Wholeness, Kindness, Safety, and UnitySarah (03:48):
Yeah, absolutely. I was talking to my team just this week and one of them was mentioning how when she was trying to get out, the resources that exist (you guys, us), simply weren’t there. And there is such a movement…some would freak out about a movement where women and children are empowered against abuse because to some it feels like it’s the end of all the traditional things, right? But really, I see women and children and some men who have recognized that what God wants for our relationships, for our families, for our marriages, is safety and wholeness and love and kindness.
In the New Testament, we talk about the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peacefulness, patience, gentleness, kindness, goodness and self-control, self-discipline, faithfulness. And so I see the movement of, especially women, cause that’s who I work with, who are standing up and saying, “No, we will no longer tolerate cruelty, violence, deception, faithlessness.” I see it as actually moving closer to the calling of living like Jesus Christ. Not in a wholesale destruction of allegiance to marriage, but instead taking the marriage institution off of a golden calf pedestal where it is being worshiped like a pagan God, and saying “What God designed for marriage is for marriages to reflect the wholeness and the kindness and the safety and the unity that Jesus provides.”

It’s Not Anti-Family, It’s Pro-SafetyAnne (06:08):
Both Sarah and I are Christian, you’ve heard me share from my faith experience, so we’re going to be sharing today from a Christian point of view. So for listeners who are of another faith or no faith at all, whatever paradigm you subscribe to or do not subscribe to, you’re welcome here today. We are going to be sharing from our faith perspective today. And this is just to say, this is what we’ve experienced and what we hope for people from our own point of view, so everyone’s welcome. This is not an attempt to proselytize or anything like that.
I think it’s interesting that a lot of people see movement towards safety as anti-man maybe or anti-marriage or anti-Jesus. And it’s not any of those things. It’s pro-peace, right? We’re moving toward God. We’re moving toward the principles that we have learned about in the scriptures: the ones that you just talked about. What are your thoughts about the reasons why people see victims getting to safety (emotional safety, psychological safety, sexual safety), rather than seeing it as something that God would want, see it as bad?

Sarah (07:30):
That’s a loaded question, Anne.

Anne (07:33):
What are your thoughts about the TOP reason that you think that might be?

“The Fear of Loss of Control”Sarah (07:44):
Well, I think that the top reason or the foundational reason and everything else builds on this foundation, is the fear of loss of control. This reaches far outside of just the Christian faith community. It spans any potentially religious faith community as well as simply secular or political communities, all of the above. When we have a model of relational dynamic where the operation depends on one group or party or gender or segment of the population having the entitlement to exercise control and not just control but coercion to do what they want (especially to the harm of those who are being controlled), then we have an abusive relational dynamic. However, for those who are in the position of holding the control, the system works for them very, very well, right?

Do Patriarchal Systems Lead to Abusive Relationships?(09:24):
Like you said earlier, I’m a person of faith, a woman who’s rooted in the Christian faith community. But this particular thing applies across the board outside of religious stripes. So when we are looking at belief systems of any background where the institution of marriage is held higher in value based on the right of one partner to exercise control or headship over the other partner, then we are operating inside of an abusive relational dynamic.
So now let’s step back into the Christian faith community. When we have a heavily patriarchal headship model, it is very appealing to those who would be placed in the role of having all the control and having the entitlement to coerce. And I believe that that goes back to the garden of Eden, which was the offer of the serpent in the tree: ‘You will be as gods. You will have the power to take control over others.’ And that is when you step into sin: ‘You get to rule over everyone else in a way that makes you a demigod, that places you on the throne of power over other humans’, instead of working together surrendered to God.

“Welcome Invitation, Not Coercive Control”(11:26):
Now Jesus flipped that on its head. So when we look at the words of Jesus, where he says ‘the Gentiles, the others (the ones who are not my followers is kind of what he’s saying), lord it over each other. They take control over each other, they dominate each other. That’s how people do it who aren’t following me, but if you’re following me, they will know you are Christ’s disciples by how you love each other, not by how you lord it over each other.’
In that, I believe he was effectively flipping that entitlement to take coercive control over others on its head. That, Hey, I’m a follower of Jesus, so I get to tell you what to do, he’s like, ‘No, no, no, no, no. If you’re a follower of Jesus, then you’re going to be down here beside me on your knees, washing the feet of others. You’re going to be a servant. You’re going to use any power that you have to protect, to heal, not to destroy, not to control.’

(12:53):
And so even at the end of the New Testament in Revelation where Jesus says, ‘I stand at the door and I knock, and if you come to the door and you choose to let me in, I will sit down and I will be with you.’ ‘I’ll eat supper with you’, if you wanna put it that way. Jesus’ model is one of welcome invitation, not coercive control.
Back to your original question (and I’m eager to hear your thoughts as you’re processing maybe a completely different perspective on it). When we go back to that original question, ‘Why do some people feel that preventing abuse and handling abuse firmly, rescuing others from abuse is threatening to marriage?’, I believe it is because they are afraid that if marriage becomes defined as anything other than where wives and children are under the control of husbands and fathers, under the authoritative or authoritarian jurisdiction, then all hell will break loose. They’re scared that people might not actually choose love and so they tighten the grip on control. But isn’t that the risk that God takes with us in the first place if we get to choose whether or not we want to stay there, to be responsive to love?

Power Over vs. Power WithAnne (14:54):
Yeah, I agree with you 100% about the root cause of the control, the power-over model: that you have no personal power whatsoever unless you have power over someone else. It’s that feeling that you would not be a king if you did not have subjects. And so you have to be in charge in order to have any power whatsoever rather than the power-with model, which is equality where you work together and your power comes from compromise, your power comes from truth, your power comes from responsibility. Your power comes as a couple, from both of you being equally yoked, being equally invested, having perhaps different talents, obviously different strengths and weaknesses, but in terms of being equally committed to each other without deception, because deception introduces power-over because someone has more information than the other person. I think it’s threatening. It’s like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, if wives don’t tow the line, what are we gonna do?

Sarah (16:07):
They might leave me when I’m a complete jerk. Heaven forbid we should just not be complete jerks at home.

Anne (16:14):
Maybe. And what would happen if the power were equal for abusers? That’s really threatening, right?

Equality Means Letting Each Other Lead & ThriveSarah (16:21):
Yes. Because that’s how they maintain that foundation of control is by holding the power. But I do want to point out something really quick: I believe that in a healthy, thriving relationship or marriage, we can be equal without having exact 50/50 equality in the same types of power. Now, for example, in most marriages, simply by genetic DNA, it’s likely that your husband is going to be physically stronger than the wife, right? So we’re not saying, “Hey, he and she need to be equally physically as strong and need to be equally adapted to doing exactly the same tasks.” That also doesn’t mean that we have to have a very arbitrary, specific gender stereotype. Wherever he’s stronger, he does that stuff, and where she’s stronger, she does that stuff.

Anne (17:31):
Exactly. It’s not based on gender so much as it is based on individual talents, right?

“It’s Based on Individual Strengths, Weaknesses, Interests”Sarah (17:37):
So you might have any set of couples where he absolutely loves to cook and he’s really good at it, so he does that. And you might stuff where she really enjoys, I don’t know, doing yard work or, or indoor remodeling, and she just gets a real thrill out of that, so he totally supports her interest in that. Or maybe she’s the CFO of a hospital or a bank, or maybe he works as a plumber or a construction worker and she runs the local library. Who cares, as long as they are thriving between the two of them in the gifts and interests that God has given each of them. And as long as each partner is using whatever power they do have for the betterment, the protection and the uplifting of the other partner and of the home and family as a whole.

Anne (18:42):
And in that scenario, I think it’s really important to point out that there’s never a time where someone says, well you have to do this, or I’m entitled to have you do it because you’re the particular gender, right? “Well, I’m not gonna clean the toilet cause men don’t clean toilets.” or “I’m sorry, I’m not going to mow the lawn because women don’t mow the lawn.” or things like that. But it’s based on individual strengths, weaknesses, interests.

“Pretty Much Anything Can Be Discussed and Agreed Upon According to Strengths, Interests, and Abilities”(19:15):
I talk to so many people our age (Sarah and I are practically the same age), and I don’t know what’s going on now with people in their twenties who are getting married. But I feel like nobody in our generation when we got married sat down and said, “Okay, what are my particular strengths and weaknesses and what am I interested in, and what are your particular strengths and weaknesses and what are you interested in?” And then having this conversation like, “Oh really? I don’t like to cook. You do? Okay, would you mind cooking? And he’s like, “Oh no, that sounds great.” And I’m like, “I love yard work.” I bring up yard work a lot cause I love gardening and I love yard work. So if it came down to mowing the lawn or cooking, I’d way rather mow the lawn.
Just having a conversation and then realizing, wait, neither of us like to clean the toilet, so why don’t we do every other week since neither of us like it? Or “Why don’t we hire someone to clean our toilets?”, there’s a lot of different ways to deal with that. But the answer isn’t him looking at you and being like, “Well since I don’t like it, it’s gonna be your job.”

Sarah (20:13):
There’s really one job that can’t be divvied up and that’s if you’re choosing to breastfeed. When there’s only one milk bar in town, then maybe that one can’t be shared. Pregnancy and breastfeeding are the two things.
My kids are teenagers now, but even when my kids were born, there were breast pumps and bottles. Dad, grandma, grandpa could help feed the baby. We are not in 1872 anymore. But outside of those very, very particular biological constraints, pretty much anything can be discussed and agreed upon according to the strengths and interests and abilities of any set of partners.

Traditional Gender Roles Can Harm WomenAnne (21:18):
I do think that traditional, from-the-pulpit gender roles undermine God’s mission for individual strengths and weaknesses. We’ve all been given strengths and weaknesses and to say, “Oh no, no, forget that you’re really good at math and you’d be a great engineer. Forget that. God really just wanted you to do laundry and do the dishes. That’s it. That’s it for you because you’re a woman, and let’s turn a blind eye toward the fact that you’re really good at math and you’re really, really interested in it.” Did God not say don’t hide your candle under a bushel?

Sarah (22:00):
Yeah. And I don’t recall the whole list: to some he gave prophecy and to some he gave evangelism and to some he gave teaching. I don’t recall that being “To some men he gave prophecy and to some men he gave evangelism, and to women he gave the meals. Make the sandwiches.” It’s really not how Paul said it.

Anne (22:25):
For listeners who really like making sandwiches, we are proud of you. Good job. Just because Sarah and I do not like it does not mean that it’s not a worthy thing to like. It was weird when Sarah and I first met. We were like, “Oh my word. We’re like sisters that never met before.” because we had so many of the similar views and…

What Gives You The Most Desire to Wake Up & Get Going in the Morning?Sarah (22:46):
…same personality types and the whole thing.

Anne (22:48):
Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah (22:49):
I have to say I grew up doing all the things: I bake homemade bread, I can cook, I can garden, I can sew. I spent many of my classes in college bringing knitting or crocheting or cross-stitching to my college classes just to keep my hands busy cause we didn’t have fidget spinners back then. I can also drive a stick shift and change the oil. I was raised out in the country in a gardening, farming kind of family. So when I say I don’t like doing those things, it’s not because I don’t know how. And it’s not because I can’t do them well, it’s just that even though I know how to do all of those things and sometimes I find a lot of joy and satisfaction in doing those, they are not the things that give me the most desire to wake up and get going in the morning. And for some people, if that is just where you come alive, then that is wonderful. Please come live next door to me.

Anne (24:00):
Yeah, we do.

Outsourcing the Majority of Emotional, Domestic, and Parenting Tasks to Women is Not Helping Anyone(24:05):
But I, I think that that just very rigid gender role, this is what God intended for you without actually knowing who you are as an individual is really counter to everything God is about. Like, he does love you individually. He cares about you. He gave you talents, he gave you strengths, he gave you weaknesses. Cause we all have weaknesses cause we’re all human. But like discounting that doesn’t seem right for a man to be able to, to say, oh, I have these strengths. And for a woman be like, well we know you have these strengths, but they’re, you can’t really use ’em. You can’t really do it in that way. You have seven options and your options are housework, raising kids, you know, dishes, whatever. These are your seven options and they include laundry and cleaning toilets is crazy. It’s crazy.

Sarah (25:03):
But you know, that, that being said, yeah. I think that it, I just wanna throw out it just kind of a side thing. So often the traditional roles don’t just outsource all of the mental load, the emotional labor and the domestic labor to the wife. It also outsources all of the parenting to mom. And that’s one place where I think that’s really unfair to men. And I don’t mean this from a, a bitter or angry perspective at all. I mean, knowing your children and spending time with your kids is a beautiful thing as a parent. So I believe that when we psychologically, when we just mentally assume that parenting is mom’s job because dads just bring home the bacon. We are stealing the beauty of being actively involved in the psychological, intellectual, emotional, verbal, spiritual, social development of children from dads. And I don’t think that’s fair.

Support the BTR.ORG PodcastSarah (26:37):
Dads should really just have some of this heavy duty labor too. I mean, okay, yeah, but I can’t imagine having children and growing up not being able to know them. That huge caveat is I am not discussing abusive, broken down, dysfunctional relationships. I’m talking about the ideal.

Anne (27:00):
We are gonna pause right here where Sarah’s talking about the ideal. I paused it here knowing that it’s not good for kids to be around abuse. She was not trying to say that kids need more time with their abuser or their dad who’s abusive. We’re gonna go over that next week. So stay tuned. If this podcast is helpful to you, please support it. And until next week, stay safe out there.

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Psychological abusers are masters of underscoring the affects of psychological abuse and conditioning victims to wonder if they’re even victims at all.

Christine, a member of the BTR.ORG community, is on the podcast with Anne, answering the question:

How Does Psychological Abuse Affect You?

Tune in to the BTR.ORG podcast and read the full transcript below for more.

Psychological Abuse Can Affect Your Physical HealthIn the BTR.ORG community, many women experienced negative consequences to their physical health as a result of psychological abuse, including Christine:

“My body and my health have suffered so extremely because of the length of time that I sat in this abuse.”

– Christine, BTR.ORG Community Member

Victims of psychological abuse may experience:

• Brain fog
• Sleep issues
• Digestive issues
• Chronic pain
• Autoimmune disorders
• Pelvic pain
• Nightmares
• Headaches
• Poor immune function

Psychological Abuse Can Take a Toll On Your Mental HealthVictims of psychological abuse in our community have also reported that psychological abuse takes a significant toll on their mental health, causing them to experience:

• Depression
• Anxiety
• Apathy
• Eating disorders
• Obsessive thoughts
• Religious scrupulosity
• Terror
• Panic attacks

Psychological Abuse is Deeply PainfulVictims of psychological abuse face the societal obstacle of not having any bruises to show how deeply they are wounded by the abuse; however, victims like Christine describe psychological abuse as:

“Torment; just so, so deep and so continuous. I don’t feel like people really understand the depth of the sorrow and pain and darkness. I very much felt like a prisoner of war. It very much felt like I was in a cold and dark and damp cell and I was crying and nobody could hear me. All of the incidents that would happen felt like my husband would drag me out of my cell and beat me again. It is so dark, it is so demonic, it’s so evil. It’s absolutely soul crushing.”

– Christine, Member of the BTR.ORG Community

Find Support at BTR.ORGIf you are a victim of psychological abuse, or wonder if you may be a victim of psychological abuse, please attend a BTR.ORG Group Session as soon as possible. You deserve validation and support as you begin your journey to safety.

Full Transcript:Anne (00:00):
Welcome to BTR.ORG. This is Anne. I have a member of our community on today’s episode. We’re going to call her Christine. She’s a traveling nurse and the mother of five children. Her children range in age from four to 23 years old. She’s been with her husband that she has now for seven years, and this is her third marriage. So we are going to learn about her story today. Welcome.

Christine (03:21):
Thank you. Thank you so much. I’m so glad to be here.

Anne (03:24):
We’re happy to have you. You’ve been married three times. Would you describe all three of your marriages as abusive?

Christine (03:32):
Sadly yes, but I did not know that until going through this current marriage and all of the BTR resources. I did not realize they were abusive.

Anne (03:42):
For your first two where you got a divorce, looking back now like, “Oh, that’s what the cause was.”, you didn’t know until BTR.

“It’s Been Some Freedom, Being Able to Let That Go”Christine (03:50):
That is true. With my first one, I was very young and he ended up just abandoning us. And so I always just thought I wasn’t enough. I just wasn’t enough to keep him happy. And then going through BTR, I realized, Oh my gosh, he was gaslighting the whole time. All of these things that were going on, this is real stuff. So it’s been some freedom just being able to let that go. And then my second marriage, sadly, cause I had children from my first marriage and my second marriage, my husband became very physically abusive to them. So, of course, I knew that one was abuse, so I ended up leaving him and getting a divorce obviously for safety of my children.

Anne (04:33):
How did you find BTR?

BTR.ORG Resources Helped Christine Recognize AbuseChristine (04:36):
About a year and a half into my relationship with my current husband, it was just a train wreck. I had found out the week after I told him that I was pregnant with our son, that he was watching pornography and this ended up being an every-day, several-times-a-day habit. It was just a total train wreck and I was just crying and feeling desperate and kind of searching on the internet to try to find some supportive words or something. And I came upon the BTR listing on the website for gaslighting and it was the first time I had heard the term gaslighting and then it just blossoms from there. It was me finding the BTR website and finding the books and reading through them and listening to your podcast.

Anne (05:24):
So you’re familiar with my voice?

Christine (05:26):
Yes. You’ve been my best friend for so many years and you don’t even know.

Anne (05:31):
. I’m so happy to hear that. I’m so sorry to hear that.

“The Torment [of Psychological Abuse] Is Just So Deep & So Continuous”Christine (05:35):
There were so many times that one of the things I lost through this was the ability to sleep or rest at all. I would go to the doctor and my blood pressure would be normal on the top, but the bottom number would be so high. And they’re like, “Your body’s just not relaxing.” And so I would want to listen to your podcast, but I would have to listen to them just to be able to find sleep at night because the torment is just so, so deep and so continuous. You never get rest from them. But your voice would bring me to a place where I could actually get some sleep.

Anne (06:10):
Oh, that is such good news. My ex-husband would disagree with you. Well, I’m so glad you’re here to share your story.
So we’re gonna focus today on her third marriage, her current marriage. Focusing on this part of your story, did you recognize his behaviors as abusive at first? Can you talk about before you found the porn, how you felt? And then we’ll talk about after.

Recognizing the Psychological AbuseChristine (06:38):
At first, when I first started seeing red flags, we would be driving along and he would make a cat call to some woman on the side of the road. It would be so hurtful and shocking. And then I would minimize it and think, Oh, it’s just cause he’s been single so long. I just totally excused it. But I did not recognize it as abuse at all until I found BTR.

Anne (07:00):
So he was cat calling people in front of you?

Christine (07:03):
My gosh. Yeah. It’s one of my most painful memories. It was early on when we were dating and we were taking my girls going to the beach and this woman we were driving by bent over and he like yelled some obscenity at her, and I was just shocked. I was like frozen, I couldn’t even respond. It was so painful.

Discovering Her Husband’s Secret Pornography UseAnne (07:24):
So after you were married, did these types of behaviors continue? Did you start seeing other things?

Christine (07:33):
Yes. Sadly, he got to the point where he would start rejecting me sexually. And I had been trained, growing up in the church, that you always provide for your husband sexually and never give them a chance where they would not have their needs met and all of that stuff that they teach, that I’m realizing now is so wrong. So I made sure that I was always there and providing for that. And then he started rejecting me and he would say, “Oh I only need to have sex maybe once every four days.” and things like that. And it was just a total change from what I had known. I knew there was something wrong and I could just feel it very much in my spirit. Like, this isn’t right, and I had a feeling just from hearing sermons in church, maybe there’s an issue with pornography here. So I started questioning him and questioning him. And after I told him, “We’re pregnant, we’re gonna have a baby.”, a week after that, he finally admitted to it.

Misogynistic Tropes Fuel Spiritual & Sexual AbuseAnne (08:34):
I was just curious as to what denomination that you grew up in that you thought you needed to provide for his sexual needs like that was your job. That was just a general non-denominational Christian Church?

Christine (08:50):
Yeah. So you can hear that in a lot of churches. I went to non-denominational churches, Baptist and Methodist, and you’re gonna hear that message across all three of those for sure.

Anne (08:59):
It’s a misogynistic trope that is everywhere. And you know what’s interesting, it’s not just religious, it’s in secular places too. It’s all over the place and the religious circles. It’s spiritual abuse. Then in other non-religious places, like in a secular setting, it’s more like men have these needs and they’re animals kind of. So they have these sexual needs that women need to provide for, because if they don’t have these needs met, they’re gonna have to go somewhere else.

“I Am Not Responsible For My Husband’s Faithfulness”Christine (09:31):
I have learned that this is absolutely not true and I am not responsible for my husband’s faithfulness. That’s his job, and between him and the Lord.

Anne (09:38):
You mentioned that you thought he was just gonna have to get used to being in a relationship.

Christine (09:44):
I did think that he had just been single for so long, it would take time. But then I also thought I was being too sensitive and I remember praying in the beginning cause a lot of the Christian books will tell you your prayer should first be, Change me, Lord. So I was doing that. I was like, “Lord, I don’t know why this is bothering me so bad. Please change me, Father. Make me so that I’m not so sensitive.”

Center For Peace: A Program for AbusersAnne (10:09):
The interesting thing about that is that was your goal to be changed, to be not so sensitive, but all women should be sensitive to that.

Christine (10:17):
Right. Definitely. I’m just so glad to find out that what felt wrong is actually wrong. It’s very validating.

Anne (10:25):
The Center for Peace is the only program that we recommend for men. It comes at pornography use from an abuse issue rather than an addiction issue. So her husband has spent a year at Center for Peace. It’s a pretty intense program.

Christine (10:39):
It is. And you know, for the entire year I felt like as the wife I was totally surrounded by protectors and advocates and it really gave me the freedom to find my own healing while I had those protectors on board with me.

When Victims Try to “Fix” the Abuse by Changing ThemselvesAnne (10:54):
So before you found BTR and besides the prayer, did you try anything else to try and establish safety and peace in your home? Like maybe cooking more or exercising…?

Christine (11:05):
I tried absolutely everything. I spent thousands of dollars on new lingerie to try to keep things interesting for him. We also tried every single possible church-focused program. Most of them, in fact, all of them ended up being very damaging for me. And, you know, giving him wrong advice for sure. We also tried regular therapy. We did EMDR, we had psychological testing done, found out that I had extreme PTSD. I tried absolutely everything I could find.

Anne (11:39):
Looking back on that, trying every single thing you can find, what’s your feeling about that period now- all the searching that you were doing?

“My Body & My Health Has Suffered So Extremely Cause of the Length of Time I Sat in This Abuse”Christine (11:50):
I heard God’s voice in the beginning tell me that it was the right way to go, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it. And so I was like, “Okay Lord, but let’s try what my insurance will cover. Okay, let’s try what’s free.” And looking back, I wish I would’ve skipped all of it cause it was further traumatizing and it lengthened the process. I’m going through this for coming up on seven years now and my body and my health has suffered so extremely cause of the length of time that I sat in this abuse.

Anne (12:21):
So were you aware of BTR and Center for Peace right from the beginning but you thought, Hmm, let’s try something else, for years. Is that kind of how it went down? Sorry, I’m curious about this.

“BTR Was There… To Be My Advocate & My Friend”Christine (12:33):
Yes. For years. So I found you, I think, after being with him a year and a half and then I would listen to all of your podcasts. I read every book that you recommended. I attended BTR.ORG Group Sessions and they were very healing. And those sessions were absolute lifesavers. I have no doubt without BTR I would not be alive right now cause my depression and suicidal ideation were so severe during the darkest hours and BTR was there to pull me out of it, to be my advocate and my friend.

Anne (13:09):
If you could go back and talk to your younger self, maybe yourself in those two first marriages or maybe yourself a year ago or five years ago, what are the most important things you’ve learned and what do you think you’d be like, “I HAVE to tell myself this. This is so important.”?

What Would Christine Say to Her Younger Self?Christine (13:25):
If it was my younger self, I would tell myself the truth. I don’t know that I would’ve chosen marriage to be honest. If I knew the truth, I think I would have not gotten married in my life. I would’ve stayed single and focused on my career. It wouldn’t have been something that I chose to participate in. As much as there are many joys there, there’s so much possibility for danger. If I could go back to the beginning of this marriage, I would tell myself to run , get out, don’t stay, don’t try to work through it, just run, do not place my future on my husband.
I’m prepared either way and I know that I will be okay either way. I feel safe. And I know if he starts to be not safe again, that I know my exit plan. I’ve got a postnup and I’m okay. I’m ready either way.

Anne (14:11):
From your experience, why do you think it takes victims so long to understand that they’re being abused?

Why Does it Take Victims So Long to Understand They’re Experiencing Abuse?Christine (14:17):
Because victims don’t go into their love story any different than a non-victim. You’re falling in love, you’re having all of these special moments. You guys are connecting. At least you believe you’re connecting. Even though the other side is fake connecting and lying, our hearts are still intertwined with them. This is still our love story and we cannot imagine the things that are happening when they happen. It just feels like it’s unfathomable when it happens.

Anne (14:45):
It’s like your baseline is this particular reality, which is “He’s a good guy and he loves me and he cares our family.” And so wrapping your head around the actual reality that they just want what they want and they don’t really genuinely care about other people because they’re incapable of doing that, is really hard to wrap your head around.

What Concepts did Christine Learn at BTR.ORG?Christine (15:11):
Yeah, it is. I mean, especially being brought up as a little girl on Disney Princess videos, there is no Disney princess video that ends like this. We’re not prepared. And then as humans we’re really prepped for flaws in humanity. You’re marrying an imperfect person and especially as a believer, you’re gonna be like, Well, okay, I’m gonna give him grace on this. I’m gonna help him through it cause I’m not perfect either. And so I think as believers we have give them an extra step, extra cushion room sometimes.

Learning Boundaries to Seek Safety from Psychological AbuseAnne (15:44):
What are some of the concepts that have helped you the most to protect yourself that you’ve learned at BTR?

Christine (15:51):
I think for me it was boundaries. And my coach, Coach Denalee, really helped me with this one because even going through traditional therapy, they were trying to teach me boundaries. And I just thought, Well, I’m just not a person who can have boundaries. For some reason I can’t do it. But what I learned was the concept of boundaries outside of BTR is totally different. And so when I got to BTR and, even that little cartoon that you have where you’re like, “Putting boundaries is putting on your steel toed boots,” I finally got it. Coach Denalee helped me take it really slow and she took all the pressure off of it and she was like, “It’s okay. Boundaries are practice. If you don’t get it right, then you just do it again. Don’t put pressure on yourself. Just keep practicing boundaries.” That helped me so much when I got to BTR and they said, “Well how about you just don’t have sex if you don’t want to, and start with that boundary?” I felt liberated, like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t have to have sex if I don’t want to and I can do that, and that’s validating myself and protecting myself.” And it was really freeing.

“How Do I Put On Steel-Toed Boots For This One?”Anne (17:05):
That is wonderful cause I have worked so hard to try and teach boundaries in a way that actually is doable for victims. And one that will actually protect them because the other ways just don’t seem to do anything. And they don’t seem to protect and they’re impossible to do.

Christine (17:27):
They are. They end up feeling like false threats. I always start telling myself, “Okay, how do I put on steel-toed boots for this one? It was my visual that made the boundaries possible for everything.

The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop Can Help You Take Action to Get to SafetyAnne (17:40):
It’s a really good video to help understand the way we teach boundaries at Betrayal Trauma Recovery that helps women actually get to safety so that they can stop, or at least further separate themselves from the harm, cause there’s no way to stop the harm. The only thing you can do is separate yourself as much as you can.

(18:29):
We also have our Living Free Workshop which deals with what you actually do. So those are some things to think about as you’re thinking, how do I separate myself from the harm? So that’s really cool, Christine, to hear that that was working for you and that helped. Were there any other concepts that helped you that you felt like, “Oh, BTR teaches this in such a way that it actually helps”?

“[Psychological Abuse] Is Absolutely Soul-Crushing”Christine (19:02):
Yeah, I think the most powerful thing for me with BTR was the validation. Other forms of therapy and all the other groups I would go to, I would get the message, “You’re being too sensitive.” or “That’s a normal guy thing.” But when I would go to BTR, I could seriously get the pain validated. And it felt like having someone there who really got me. It would give me enough joy to make it through that day and kind of take away that feeling of like, am I crazy? That was so powerful for me. I don’t feel like people really understand the depth of the sorrow and pain and darkness. And for me, I very much felt like a prisoner of war. It very much felt like I was in a cold and dark and damp cell and I was crying and nobody could hear me. All of the incidents that would happen felt like my husband would like drag me out of my cell and beat me again. And the people that I related to the most were honestly other people who had gone through horrible forms of human suffering. So much peace and comfort listening to their stories, knowing that they had experienced human suffering in a painful way like I had. And I just feel like when we’re going through this, it is so dark, it is so demonic, it’s so evil. It’s absolutely soul crushing.

Anne (20:25):
It is. Now that I’m feeling so much better, I forget sometimes about how terrible it was. It doesn’t take me long to remember. I can take myself back there pretty easily cause it was so awful and it’s long and there’s no end in sight, you know?

Christine (20:40):
Right. We’re going through it.

Anne (20:41):
Yes, it feels so hopeless and awful and everything about your life is affected by it.

“Everything is Taken; You Have Nothing”Christine (20:49):
Everything is taken. You have nothing. Everything is taken from you. You lose everything. You lose your family. I lost relationships with my children for a long time because of what was going on. I would drive around in a car with him and I would see other people living life and I would feel like I was looking out a window at something I couldn’t touch anymore. You know? Other people are just happy and they’re going about their lives. And about a week ago, I went back to this same gas station where I had that incident and I realized I felt part of life again. Like I had my life back again. It was so huge to finally be able to feel joy and safety again.

Anne (21:30):
I remember feeling that exact same way when we went to an amusement park and looking at the people and they’re just walking by and feeling like they live in a different reality than I did.

Christine (21:40):
Yeah, exactly. It’s like they have no clue. Look at them, they’re so happy.

Anne (21:46):
I don’t know what planet they’re from, but it’s not the same planet that I live on.

“That’s Despair – I Know – I’ve Been There”Christine (21:50):
Yeah. But it’s also helped me as a nurse. As horrible as this is to go through, I would never want anyone to go through this. But I remember about a month ago, I heard the cry of despair. There was a patient and she had that cry and I said, “That’s despair. I know – I’ve been there. What’s going on? We need to help.” You know what I mean?

Anne (22:11):
That’s interesting.

Christine (22:11):
I feel like I’ve gotten my PhD in human suffering through this despair.

Anne (22:16):
As we laugh when you say that, we both kind of chuckle a little bit. Like, “Oh we have our PhD in despair.” It does feel a little like that. It’s not funny at all. It’s not.

Christine (22:28):
No.

“Maybe We’re Giving Our Daughters Hope For a Better Future”Anne (22:28):
All of the women who have been through it have kind of a little bit of a dark sense of humor I think. Is it?

Christine (22:32):
Yeah.

Anne (22:34):
It’s all you have.

Christine (22:35):
Yeah. I mean, it’s a major, major part of our lives. I will never forget this phase, I think this is my desert phase, in my life.

Anne (22:46):
. Yeah. Well, you are so strong and so brave.

Christine (22:49):
You know, I feel like the younger generation is starting to stand up more. I know that my daughters are standing up against abuse. I feel like maybe we have hope. Maybe there’s going to be a change from us speaking out and having a voice. Maybe we’re giving our daughters hope for a better future.

Anne (23:08):
And our sons.

Christine (23:09):
And our sons. Yes.

Our Despair May Shape Our Sons to be Good MenAnne (23:11):
My son is a, I’ll just say ‘feminist’ for lack of a better word. I’m not sure what word to use, but he’s always noticing things. In fact, I was listening to a song (I’m not sure if I’ve talked about this on the podcast before), but I was like, “Oh I love this song.” And he was like, “Mom, this is a terrible song.” “It’s misogynistic and it’s abusive and they’re objectifying women and it’s not good. You should not be listening to it.” And I said, “It’s a metaphor, it’s a metaphor” And he said, “I don’t care what it is, it doesn’t matter if it’s a metaphor or not. You should not be listening to this.”

Christine (23:45):
What a wonderful boy.

Anne (23:47):
That’s another thing that I’ve found, healing from trauma, is that I used to feel really the weight of the entire world on my shoulders. So it was hard to maybe go to a swimming pool. It was difficult to listen to the radio, or just everyday things I would get triggered so much. And now to kind of chuckle at my son and think, “Oh he’s so cute.” and, “But I like this song so I’m gonna listen to it.” Which I probably shouldn’t, by the way. I admit it , but just not feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. To be like, “I don’t have to solve the world’s problems and I don’t have to be on high alert all the time. I can enjoy this song despite its misogynistic overtones.” And which, again, I shouldn’t. But what I’m trying to say is, that’s huge progress for me.

Psychological Abuse Causes Intense Triggers in Everyday LifeChristine (24:35):
Yeah. That’s a huge freedom.

Anne (24:37):
Yeah. Years ago, there’s no way. I would’ve been like, “I can’t watch TV, I can’t do anything.” Because there are hints of this everywhere and it should alarm us and it should overwhelm us, but we still need to be able to go to the grocery store, you know? So it makes it really, really, really hard.

Christine (24:53):
I am so glad to hear that you’re in that phase cause I’m still healing and the world is still very overwhelming. Although it’s getting slightly better. I still don’t watch TV. I still don’t listen to much music. I’m so glad to hear it all comes back.

Anne (25:08):
And that’s okay too. There’s evil stuff out there. I’m not trying to say, “Oh, you’ll be able to enjoy the evil thing.” No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That is not what I’m trying to say. But being able to just function is really nice.

Christine (25:24):
Yeah, definitely. I told one of my patients the other day, “Oh I don’t really watch TV, I’m not into TV.” And she started prodding. She’s like, “Well, why?” I said, “Well I’ve gone through trauma, so it’s just one of the things I lost was watching TV.” She said, “You don’t watch TV yet. That’s what I always tell all my students. You may not be able to do it now, but you can do it in the future.” So not that TV is anything grand that I need to have in my life, but…

Psychological Abuse Can Make Everyday Experiences TraumatizingAnne (25:48):
Exactly. That’s why I’m like, “Wait a minute, wait a minute.” I don’t want people to get the wrong impression. It’s not the most important thing and it’s not like it matters.

Christine (25:57):
Right.

Anne (25:58):
And also there’s just a lot of just terrible, terrible stuff that you should never watch even if you’ve never been through trauma. So that’s not the type of stuff I’m talking about.

Christine (26:07):
No. Yeah. Even before my trauma, I’ve followed Christ my whole life, and I still would monitor what I allow into my eyes and ears, you know?

Anne (26:18):
Me too. Yeah.