You’re not wrong for wanting things to be better. If you’re searching for a ‘prayer for my husband’ because you’ve been told that if you have enough faith, you can change him, you’re not alone. But here’s what most people don’t tell you…

5 THINGS TO CONSIDER AS YOU FIND A ‘PRAYER FOR MY HUSBAND’ TO HELP HIM CHANGE

1. You’re Faith is Enough

There’s something many faithful women are never told.The problem isn’t your faith. The problem is how your strong and incredible faith is being used, by people or systems, to confuse you instead of help you feel the love God has for you.

2. Prayer is Always Good, and God Loves YOU
God hears your prayers. He wants YOU to be emotionally safe and have a peaceful home. He may be leading you to see that this might not be possible if your husband is lying and refusing to follow the principles if he’s only pretending to believe.

3. The Harmful Message Behind “Pray Harder”
When spiritual leaders or loved ones say, “Just have more faith” or “You’re not a victim, you’re a co-creator”, it’s spiritual bypass. It minimizes real harm and leaves you powerless. The interview below will cover why this is so harmful.

4. You’re allowed to be angry.
Your anger about your husband’s mistreatment of you isn’t a lack of faith. It’s likely God’s way of warning you of danger.

5. God Hasn’t Abandoned You
If you feel like God isn’t answering your prayers for your husband to change, it might be because your husband doesn’t want to change, but he’s lying to you about it. That means he’s lying to God too. Your husband may be blocking you from feeling God’s love for YOU.

If you have heard this kind of messaging and need help getting out of the fog, my workshop will help you determine if you’re husband is lying about his faith in God to keep you from knowing his true intentions.

Transcript: What You Need To Know WHEN PRAYER FOR MY HUSBAND DOESN’T CHANGE ANYTHING

Anne: We have a member of our community on today’s podcast. Her name is Tracy, and she is a passionate advocate for betrayed wives. Discovering her husband’s addiction set her on a course of education about betrayal trauma, abuse, spirituality, and healing. Tracy is a devoted mother of four children, a compassionate friend, and an avid runner. Mountains and lakes are her happy place. Mountains and lakes are also my happy place, so we have that in common.

We’re going to start by talking about spiritual bypass. One of the most common ways it shows up is when abusers—sometimes supported by clergy or even therapists—frame the solution as simply offering prayer for my husband to change. That’s why there are so many effects of spiritual abuse as well.

PRAYER FOR MY HUSBAND WHEN I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO DO

Tracy: Absolutely. I’ll just give an example for myself. So my first D-Day was a month after I married. It was very traumatic, very, very traumatic. I didn’t know that I was in trauma. I didn’t know anything about trauma. There was so much I didn’t know. I didn’t have any support system or any real education.

So basically, all I knew was that I was in so much pain, in such a place of darkness. The only way out, it took me two or three days, I don’t remember. Truly being in this dark, dark pit before I realized the only way out was God. And so I went to God in prayer and said, I cannot keep feeling this. I felt like it was going to kill me.

Thinking, “I need to forgive my husband, but don’t know how to forgive him?” I am incapable of forgiving him, but I want to forgive him. And I know you can help me immediately. The darkness lifts, and I fill up with incredible comfort, warmth and peace. Now, I wasn’t healed from trauma. Of course, I didn’t understand trauma or what it meant to thoroughly heal from trauma.

Understanding HOW Prayer for My Husband BECAME SPIRITUAL BYPASSING

Tracy: Here’s where prayer for my husband got tricky. While it worked for me at that time and helped me, ultimately it became a form of spiritual bypassing and it kept me stuck in the trauma. It didn’t help me to better understand it or to come to a better understanding of my situation.

I want to compare that now to my second D-Day, about 15 years in. I found out that this was going on my entire marriage regularly. That obviously my husband had been lying constantly about it, and hiding it. Then all those pieces start to fit together. That explains so much of my experience in this marriage that I did not understand.

That happened on a Sunday night, I still remember it late at night. We were in bed talking. And as he began to disclose the reality, my situation started to descend upon me, as I came to terms with that.

I didn’t sleep that night. I think I fell asleep at 6 a.m. and slept for one hour.

And I said, I will not do this again. Because I realized I’d only been through one big cycle of this. I could see that handling it the way I did the first time wasn’t going to cut it. All that was going to do was set me up for more D-Days, and more D-Days, and more D-Days.

And so my whole approach to healing was different than that first time.

This was not going to be an event or an arrival. This was going to be a long process. I was going to let myself feel angry for as long as I needed to feel angry.

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT Prayer for My Husband: the Second D-Day Reality Check

Tracy: You know, it’s interesting because I felt more betrayed by God after the first D-Day than the second. I don’t know what it was, but something after that second D Day, I instinctively knew some truths right away. And one of them was that this isn’t God. God did not betray me here. My husband did. And I realized that many things started fitting into place quickly. One of those was God was there for me all along.

The lesson I learned was actually good and true. From the first experience, God is real.

He was warning me. After that first D-day, prayer for my husband became a constant in my life. I would pray to know if my husband was honest with me or if my husband’s lying to me. And I always thought that since I could never find evidence, or my husband would never admit anything, I guess that meant he was telling me the truth because God wasn’t putting something in my lap, right?

THE IMPACT OF DECEPTION ON MY RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

Tracy: Like throwing the evidence out in front of me. But in reality, I knew in my gut that something was wrong for years. And I knew after that second D-day, God was talking to me all along. It’s not God’s fault. It’s my husband’s fault. My husband interfered with my relationship with God.

I was a spiritual person before I married. I came to my spirituality as a kid. And strengthened it as a youth and that was always a strong point for me. It was strange for me that after I married my spirituality started to decline. And I started to feel more distant from God. And I couldn’t figure out why. Because I was doing all of the same things I’d always done.

My heart turned towards God. I wanted that relationship, but I couldn’t figure out why I was feeling so distant. And I would come up with reasons. Well, maybe it’s because I’ve had kids now and I don’t have the time to pray the same way I used to. I don’t have the time to spend as much time in the scriptures as I used to. So I guess I’m not prioritizing right. Because motherhood is difficult, but that wasn’t the reason.

Prayer for MY Husband BEFORE MARRIAGE: When Something FeLT Off

Tracy: I was careful and cautious about marrying, and I was very prayerful about it. I studied the subject and ultimately I decided, okay, I love this guy. No, I’ve got to take a leap of faith. So, you know, I said, yes. Well, I started to feel uneasy during our engagement, like something was off. There were various things that happened in a relatively short period during our engagement. That really moved me to confront my husband and ask if he had ever had any issues with pornography.

She was also feeling kind of uneasy. We were like, is this normal? Is this just like engagement jitters? But we didn’t want to be like that crazy girl who likes to give back the ring, right? And changes her mind and goes back and forth. And so we made a pact with each other, me and my friend. That if we started to feel that uneasiness, we wouldn’t act on it unless it stayed with us for more than 24 hours.

Because it might just come and go, the butterflies. I also prayed about that. I said to God, I understand that this might be normal feelings of anxiety, so I’m not going to take them seriously unless they stay with me for more than 24 hours. At one point, they did stay with me more than 24 hours. But still, I didn’t have any reason why something should be off. I didn’t have anything specific to point to.

And he looked me in the eye and he said, no, never. And I may have asked one follow up question. He maintained, no, never. I didn’t push it. I just accepted his answer, but I still had these feelings of uneasiness. My best friend, at the time, was also engaged.

When Others’ Advice Overrides Intuition and Prayer for my Husband

Tracy: So I went to my Dad, who I love and is a wonderful, wonderful man, full of lots of goodness and wisdom. But, he basically just talked me out of my feelings.

And he convinced me that I was being silly and too emotional. He said, “Your fiance is a great guy.” He’s got great career ambitions. He’s going to take good care of you. And he loves you. There’s no reason not to marry him. Spiritual bypass again. After, I found out a month into marriage. Which, the way I found out, is because my husband lost his job. He was caught using it at work.

It was awful. But I did briefly feel betrayed by God. I was like, I prayed about this, I asked about this. But again, through spiritual bypass, I let go of all those feelings. Well, after my second D-Day, 15 years in, when I tried to put all the pieces back together and make sense of it. I realized God answered my prayer for my husband.

Trusting God When THE Answers TO PRAYER FOR MY HUSBAND ChangeD

Tracy: I knew in my gut that something was off. I can trust my gut. And I can trust God. I realize my husband is the one lying to me. My Dad talked me out of my feelings when I went to him, saying I feel like something is off. I’m nervous.

I’ve never had to work through a intense or long lasting feeling of betrayal by God. I’ve realized he’s been with me. It’s people getting in the way.

I want to add one quick thing I would encourage women to consider is that sometimes we may get an answer, right? Maybe, this was not my experience. I did not get a definitive, yes, marry this guy. That was not my experience in prayer for my husband. But some women I have talked to say they have had that experience.

And so they feel betrayed when they find out. That’s understandable. Like, sometimes we can get an answer to something, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the answer for the rest of our lives.

Things can change. People can still make choices that change circumstances. I like to think about life as not something totally planned out. Where God is pulling these puppet strings. But rather, those change-your-ending books.

Endings CAN Change & God Doesn’t Want Abuse

Tracy: I don’t know if you ever had any of those. But you would start to read the story, and then there was a choice that you would have to make. Then depending on that choice, you would skip to a certain point in the book. And then you’d come to another choice. So depending on the choices made, the ending of the story would change.

I can pray about something and get an answer that is good for me right now. But tomorrow, my husband can make a choice that changes circumstances, and the answer to prayer for my husband may change. Does that make sense?

Anne: It does. Because many women think back to the answer to their prayers and think, but I’m supposed to be with him.

Instead of saying, I need to set this boundary, because I’m not safe. They think God wants me to be tolerate abuse. God never wants you to be abused, ever. So if you’re trying to sort that out. I’m telling you here, that God does not want you to be abused regardless of what answers you had from prayers in the past.

Anne: For me, I never asked whether I should marry my ex-husband. But I definitely felt like it was the logical right decision, which I made happily. And now looking back, I can see that my life’s work would not be possible without him.

He introduced me to everything I needed to know, to run Betrayal Trauma Recovery and to continue to run BTR. So I’m actually super grateful for the experiences. Because I would never do what I do now without the experiences he gave me. Which were all horrific, but also now I have a PhD in evil.

SPIRITUAL PERFORMANCE V. REAL CHANGE

Anne: Let’s talk about how prayer for my husband is problematic when a man exhibiting abusive behaviors.

Tracy: So my husband, leading up to that second big D-Day, threw himself into spirituality. He was becoming involved in our church community, very service oriented. And was reading the scriptures for like a certain amount of time every day.

He was, on his commutes to work. He was listening to sermons and keeping track in his little calendar journal, of acting out points. And he convinced himself that this was all serving him well. Because he had longer periods of abstinence between acting out events than ever before in his life.

He was going a whole two weeks between acting out, for a period of months. And he was convincing himself, because he was doing all these things, that he was progressing. But did they actually help him progress? No.

He fooled himself into thinking he was making progress. But he still lived in lies, secrecy, and abusing me. See, he told himself, no, this is good. Because I will tell what’s been going on after I’ve like six months or a year of sobriety under my belt. And it will be this awesome thing, and she’ll be so excited for me.

But the thing is, he was just spiritual bypassing me and keeping me stuck in abuse.

PRAYER FOR MY HUSBAND AND A False Sense Of Recovery

Tracy: In about the period of one to two years post that second D-Day, He was doing all of the right things on paper for recovery. He’d done a formal disclosure. He had gone to a 12-step group, and was still going to it. He’d done the repentance process through our ecclesiastical leader. He was doing all of these right things, but that was just it. He thought that he was done.

Like, that’s all taken care of, so can we just put a bow on it and lock it up in the closet and never talk about it again? So addicts can even use “working recovery” as a form of spiritual bypass. Where they convince themselves that they’re doing so great, but they’re really not.

Anne: A lot of women are manipulated to ask, “Is he in recovery?” Because that answer can be manipulated to be yes with box checking. So victims are like, he’s in recovery because he goes to his weekly 12-step meeting and he’s going to therapy every week, but then you’re not safe yet.

Instead of setting a boundary immediately and saying, okay, I need to get to safety now. And then watch from a safe distance to see if these abusive behaviors stop. I’m still in prayer for my husband and hoping that they’ll stop sometime in the future.

Tracy: Yeah, when we’re in that terrible trauma and we just want relief. It’s easy to latch on to the idea of there’s a cure or a fix or a place of arrival. Well, once my husband gets to this place, like this many years of recovery or whatever, then we’ll be good. This really will be all behind us.

WHEN PRAYER FOR MY HUSBAND IS USED TO DISMISS ACCOUNTABILITY

Tracy: When I think about am I safe, it’s am I safe now? Am I safe to say, engage in this conversation? My question is not, am I safe to recommit to my husband that we’re going to be together forever, and divorce is never on the table? No, it’s am I safe right now to continue engaging in the relationship the way that I am right now?

Anne: Yeah, that makes much more sense. Figuring out if you should stay together after infidelity isn’t necessarily the most important thing. So let’s talk about some other examples. A man exhibiting abusive behaviors may use to manipulate his victim, in terms of spiritual bypass. It might be, “I used the atonement, Jesus took away my sins. What, you don’t believe in Jesus?”

They’re imposing what seems to be their devotion to their religious beliefs into prayer for my husband as a legitimate solution to abuse. In this case is simply taking the name of God in vain.

Tracy: Well, that’s spiritual abuse. Why haven’t you forgiven yet? Can’t you move on? Why are you being so un-Christ like? I mean, it’s just straight up spiritual abuse.

The day after my last D-Day, I was expressing how much pain I was in. He looked at me and said, I can’t tolerate this cruelty and walked away from me. Calling me cruel, suggesting that somehow I’m devoid of compassion, so I’m falling short of some spiritual standard. Me expressing my pain is actually a good healthy thing for me to be doing. It doesn’t mean I’m not compassionate.

WHEN SPIRITUAL LEADERS’ ADVICE EnabLES Abuse

Tracy: And this can happen with ecclesiastical leaders as well, both for the abuser and the victim. Bishops or pastors who tell men, well, you just need to pray this away. And they tell wives to pray harder. Or you need to immerse yourself in the scriptures, and then that will give you strength to overcome this.

Like, why haven’t you forgiven yet? You just need to forgive.

Anne: As if the forgiveness is the problem rather than the ongoing abuse.

Tracy: And that’s why we need to separate ourselves to a degree or to several degrees. To get a level of safety, but asking someone who is literally living in abuse. And being currently and continually harmed to just forgive as if that’s going to make them not be affected by the abuse.

FORMS OF VICTIM BLAMING IN PRAYER FOR MY HUSBAND

Tracy: New Age teachings can go wrong too. It’s the same teaching. What you just said, the way we create our own reality, is a form of victim blaming. There is the teaching that everything I feel or experience originates with my own thoughts, so that I am creating my feelings with my thoughts and prayer for my husband. That nothing is happening to us from the outside.

That can be very victim blaming, and victim blaming is very dangerous because that will make it more difficult for them to find safety and heal.

So these are some common things you might hear. It happened for a reason. Nobody can hurt you without your consent. I wonder why you created this experience. It’s just your karma. There are no accidents, no victims. There are no mistakes. Don’t look back. What’s done is done. Don’t be a victim. Your feelings are an illusion. Be strong.

Debunking THE MYTH “We Create Our Own Reality” THROUGH PRAYER FOR MY HUSBAND

Tracy: We create our own reality, so you shouldn’t do that. You should not write or think about something so negative, or else you will draw negative things into your life. The faulty thinking is that somehow if our belief is strong enough, if prayer for my husband is good enough, if our energy is high enough, like our vibration is high enough.

Then we will only attract good things, and we can somehow avoid attracting negative things that will bring us down. That’s magical thinking, because we exist within these human systems. And these natural systems that we don’t have control over everything within those systems. We can have the most positive thoughts, be kind, and take all kinds of precautions for our safety, and still be deceived, or still be victimized in another way.

Trauma symptoms are not the result of negative thoughts. New Age People think it happens like this. You have a negative thought, it leads to negative feelings and perceptions, which leads to bad things happening. But if I had been more skeptical and thought about negative potential consequences. It can help us do things within our power to help us stay safe.

Anne: This would be like if you feel anger, that’s a negative emotion, so you’re going to draw more anger to you. An idea like that. Rather than realizing anger is a gift to us that can help us take action to keep us safe.

Gratitude Is Not The Cure-All For Abuse: Understanding The Meaning

Tracy: Absolutely. That’s at the core, recognizing we have great power within our humanity and within ourselves. There’s so much light within us, and if we tap into that, there’s so much empowerment there. And that’s great, but that we also have limitations.

And so with spiritual bypass, like prayer for my husband, with this new age bypass especially, there’s this emphasis on we can transcend the human experience, basically.

Learning to disassociate and fooling ourselves into believing that’s transcendence. That we’re beyond pain. But that’s not the point. We’re not meant to transcend the human experience.

Anne: It reminds me of a lunch with a gratitude coach. she wants to partner with BTR and at this lunch, she said, “If you can be super grateful, then any experience you go through is beneficial to you, useful to you. And I was like, that’s not helpful women stuck in this abusive situation, and all they’re trying to do is be grateful for their situation. And what it’s teaching them, rather than actually getting to safety.

So I told her this would never be a good fit for my audience. Although it’s good when you’re in trauma to see the things worth being grateful for. You know, y I’m grateful that I have food today. I’m grateful that I don’t have to sleep on the street. I’m grateful that I have a blanket that I enjoy. You don’t have to say, I’m so grateful to be in this abusive situation.

Tracy: No. No, you don’t. In fact, there’s power in recognizing that you’re not grateful to be in that situation.

THE Danger OF TOXIC POSITIVITY IN PRAYER FOR MY HUSBAND

Tracy: This is a common thing, is this toxic positivity, which is the excessive or ineffective overgeneralization of a happy and optimistic state all the time. Denial, minimization, and invalidation of genuine emotional human experience. So, that would manifest as hiding what we feel behind a positive front. Dismissing my emotions, feeling guilty for the negative emotions I feel, only positive prayer for my husband, and minimizing other people’s experiences.

Trying to distract them from what they’re feeling, encouraging ourselves or others to reframe their experience. Which, that’s not always a bad thing. Sometimes that can be very helpful, but we have to be mindful of timing. And then also shaming others for feeling negative emotions.

When I was in serious trauma. I just found out about everything that had been going on in my marriage for 15 years a month before. So something triggers me, and I cry, and I left the room because I was with family. I was with extended family, my parents, and a sister and, you know, her family, and it was embarrassing.

I didn’t want to make them uncomfortable, so I left the room. But I could not stop crying, just sobbing. And my Mom followed me, and she said, “You know Tracy, you just need to put a smile on your face for the sake of your children.” And that was not helpful.

The Need For Safety & Stability

Tracy: So now I’m a bad mom because I’m crying in front of my children? And I had no control over that trigger in that moment. The trauma was too fresh. It was too recent. Not only was it not helpful, it was also very shaming. Also, she told me in the same conversation, “You just need to put the past in the past and look to the future in prayer for your husband”.

Anne: Let’s skip right to, Oh, put on your happy, positive attitude about it and everything will be okay. But if you keep crying, then it’s for sure not going to be okay. But that is another way of telling a victim it’s her fault. A month after you don’t know if it really is in the past.

Tracy: You’re still living it. Yeah, I was still not safe. She wanted me to skip healing. She wanted me to pretend nothing was wrong. Whereas what I needed was safety and stability. And after I’d found safety and stability, I need to go through the long, messy process of grieving to go back to the past. And acknowledge it, validate it and feel what we need to feel.

Pressure To Move On IN PRAYER FOR MY HUSBAND

We have this societal intolerance, this cultural intolerance for feelings of helplessness and loss of control, which leads to victim blaming. People who have an inability to tolerate their own difficult emotions are not capable of tolerating the pain and suffering in others.

So, they’re impatient for us to just move on, or just pretend everything’s fine. Victims remind us of our own vulnerability. If she was victimized, I could be victimized, and that’s scary. So I pretend she wasn’t victimized, she just made a bad choice, or she just put herself in a bad situation.

And so if I cannot make that same bad choice or put myself in that situation like she did, I won’t have to feel helpless.

Victim Blaming & Self-Blame

Tracy: Victim blaming is a convenient way to avoid taking responsibility for our own actions if we have played a part. So often, abusers will do this, or people who have contributed to secondary trauma, exacerbated the trauma. They’ll continue to blame the victim because it’s a way to avoid taking responsibility for their own part and the victim’s pain or injuries.

And then also that there’s self-blame that happens oftentimes. Where we as victims desiring a sense of control, blame ourselves. Because then we’re like, well, if I had just done this, then that wouldn’t have happened. So, if I can change the way that I am or the things that I do going forward, then this won’t happen to me again.

And we see this oftentimes, I think, in a betrayal trauma community. They’re safety seeking behaviors, essentially. It’s, if I am just the perfect wife in all of these different ways, then he won’t betray me again.

Anne: In some 12-step circles, women are told you have to keep coming to 12-step meetings for the rest of your life or this will happen to you again.

Tracy: Yeah, as if doing that has any bearing whatsoever on his choices. Like it doesn’t.

Anne: I think it’s ironic because they talk out of both sides of their mouth. They’ll be like, you have no control over him, but this will happen to you again if you don’t keep coming to meetings the rest of your life. I’m like, what?

Tracy: It doesn’t make sense. Like, you can’t have all of these things be absolutes at the same time.

Perception Vs. Reality

Anne: Rather than thinking, how can I change my inner thoughts so that I can change reality, I think if victims are most interested in truth. What is the truth? In our case, what we’ve been perceiving incorrectly is that we’re in a relationship with a really good guy, who has a few small problems rather than the reality that he is an abusive person.

Is it true? Regardless of how he looks at church, regardless of how good of a provider he is, are these behaviors that I’m experiencing abuse?

Tracy: Yes, exactly.

Positive Thinking As A Form Of Spiritual Bypass

Tracy: More important than positive thinking. Because while positive thinking can be helpful sometimes, it can keep us in dangerous situations.

I know a woman who experienced incredible betrayal trauma. A very sad story. And a friend wanted to be helpful. Let me help you reframe this experience to just look for the positive, imagine the good that can come of this.

That’s not what she needs right now. Because I knew enough about her situation that what she needed was safety. She was not safe. Immediately jumping to, what are the lessons? Or what are the blessings that could come from this?

Worst Case Scenario: Abuse & Minimization

Anne: Everyone wants a happy, safe marriage. And so women have already been operating on that for years, where they’re like, okay, he can change. I will be patient as he changes. I will believe in Christ’s atonement. So they’re saying, I will be patient. Because I want this positive outcome. But when it comes to abuse, the worst case scenario is not divorce.

You’re currently in the worst case scenario, abuse. And nothing will feel good. There’s nothing that’s going to feel peaceful. There’s nothing that’s going to feel right when it comes to abuse. Every effort you make to work towards safety will feel like, ugh, I don’t want to do this.

Tracy: Truthful thinking is often painful. The reality of our situations hurts. So, it is tempting to minimize the pain of it and pretend it’s not as bad as it is.

Post-Traumatic Growth Vs. Spiritual Bypass

Tracy: For me, allowing myself to feel as broken as I was, that’s a starting place. And then diving into learning to have more compassion for myself. And giving myself grace for the things I’d been through. Where I had been victimized, and then integrating the story. So it’s like I can think back on my story, even the story I’m in right now, still, and not feel ashamed of it.

Not feel this intense pain about it. It’s part of who I am now, and I wouldn’t be who I am now if I hadn’t been through that. This new humility where because I feel so much compassion for myself, it naturally extends to others.

I just feel compassion for all my fellow human beings, whatever struggles they’re going through. It’s changed my perspectives on almost everything. It affected basically every part of my life.

Using Spiritual Bypass Means Post Traumatic Growth Isn’t Possible

Tracy: Surround yourself with safe people who can be patient with you, who can see you up close and personal, and not turn away.

Anne: I think when women realize they were a victim. They don’t have to go to 12-step for the rest of their lives. There is no way to heal when using prayer for my husband as spiritual bypass. There’s nothing they did or can do that would have avoided it. And then learning new skills, learning new things about themselves. This can be a reason to learn and grow more.

Trigger Warning: Positive Post

Tracy: Exactly. And it’s not a straight and narrow path. It’s a long, winding, loop de loop kind of path. When I was in deep trauma, it was difficult for me to hear overly positive reflections on betrayal trauma from people at the other end of the tunnel. It felt painful and unrealistically optimistic. Like I couldn’t trust that these women were actually at peace with all that had happened. And I resented they were not giving justice to the pain they had endured.

For me, for hope to feel legitimate, I have to hear and feel how dark it was before. If I just see an after picture, then I doubt the reality of the before picture. I have to see them side by side to fully appreciate and trust the miracle of the healing that has taken place.

Not everyone here knows my story, or is witness to the depths of the pain and trauma I have experienced. The hopelessness, fear, confusion, paralysis, anger, loneliness, anxiety, depression, and deep sorrow. I do not ever want to minimize the pain and trauma of anyone, by glossing over the struggle and only celebrating the healing.

Growth From Betrayal Trauma

Because the struggle is real, and it is hard. And I believe in honoring the moment we are in, and the emotions that we are feeling. Because doing that is a key part of finding genuine peace and healing. But it’s hard to accept and honor where we’re at from a place of self compassion and love if we feel that others are not honoring it with us.

Tracy: So, please know that I still hold a place for those of you in the depths of the struggle. It’s okay to struggle. It’s okay to feel whatever you are feeling. And I don’t judge you for any of it. I see you and I love you. So, after that lengthy disclaimer, I can finally say that I am grateful for my betrayal trauma.

I woke up at 5 a.m. after a disturbing dream and couldn’t go back to sleep. And I was lying in bed and realized that I am grateful for it. I never thought I’d get to this point. I wasn’t sure if I ever even wanted to get to this point. But I am here, and I am glad.

I am grateful for the person I am becoming because of what I have experienced. And I like me. I have learned things and grown in ways I am not sure I could have without experiencing the trauma of betrayal. Does this mean I would go back and choose to do this again? I don’t know. I’m not sure.

Does it mean I would wish anyone else to be blessed with betrayal trauma? Hell no. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Does it mean God predestined me to be betrayed by my husband, assigning this trial to me? No, I don’t believe that for a second.

The Good & Bad Of Betrayal

Tracy: He hasn’t condemned me for missing those warnings. He has loved me and helped me learn from the experience. And through the experience, I have learned that he wants me to be safe and to know happiness, and I have learned how to trust and rely on him to keep me safe and at peace. And if I miss another warning and fall into darkness again, he will be there to lift me up and guide me back to light and healing.

None of the good that has resulted for me through this trauma takes away from the bad. I view them side by side. If I didn’t give full validation to the bad, I wouldn’t fully appreciate the good. Why would I want to cheat myself of greater joy by glossing over or denying the darkest parts of my journey?

I will do my best to honor whatever moment I am in, knowing that things can always be changing. And I am not defined by any one moment. I don’t have to feel sad, or lonely, or angry forever. Just as I don’t expect to feel happy and positive all the time for the rest of my life either. The beauty is in the flow.

Choosing safety

And I think the gratitude and joy that we can feel if we allow it to come naturally, as opposed to chasing it is more genuine. That’s my experience. It was not helpful for me growing up as a child in a culture and family where I was constantly told I needed to choose to be happy. To choose not to let things bother me, and that I just needed to smile more. The ultimate spiritual bypass.

It wasn’t helpful. It didn’t help me to be a happy kid. And in trauma, when I was legitimately a victim of a terrible thing, it was re-traumatizing and therefore actually stunted me a little bit. Until I recognize what goes on and set boundaries around people who were not safe.

First of all, my own experience growing up, there was an absolute aversion to the word “feminist”, to the point that I never did any learning about it, I accepted that feminism was a bad thing. I grew up hearing the word feminazi used by people close to me. Which is a really derogatory, mean thing to say.

Even in my adulthood, when I started opening myself up a little bit to some ideas in feminism, I thought, is there another term we can use? Is there another term? Is there another word we can use? But now, I have come to embrace and love the word. I consider myself a feminist. Not just a feminist, I consider myself a radical feminist.

Feminism Vs. Spiritual Bypass

Let’s see what Sarah Bessey says about it. She says, page 13 of her book, Feminism is complicated, and it varies for each person, much like Christianity. It’s not necessary to subscribe to all the diverse and contrary opinions within feminism to call oneself a feminist. God is the source of truth.

Christians can still thank God for the good works associated with feminism, such as the gaining of status for women as persons under the law. Voting, owning property, and defending themselves in a court of law against domestic violence and rape. As Canadian theologian John D. Stackhouse, Jr. says, Christian feminists can celebrate any sort of feminism that brings more justice and human flourishing to the world.

No matter who is bringing it, since we recognize the hand of God in all that is good. Modern Christian feminism is alive and well, from social justice movements to seminaries and churches to suburban living rooms worldwide.

The Radical Notion Of Equality

Tracy: At the core, feminism simply consists of the radical notion that women are people too.

Anne: I was talking to someone about it. They were uncomfortable about the word feminist. And they said, well, I just don’t want it to swing too far. And I said, the pendulum cannot swing too far on equality. Like what? That we always have to keep women a little below men. No, it can swing as far as it needs to swing. Currently speaking, women are not believed. Women are not taken seriously.

When they experience this extreme emotional and psychological abuse and oppression, they are blamed for it. If we talk about our experience, we shouldn’t talk about it in that way. And if we complain about it, we’re complaining too much about it. If we stay silent about it, we are in denial. There’s no way right now to appropriately protest it without being blamed in some way.

Tracy: Right. Because it sounds radical.

Anne: Yeah, it sounds extreme, right? Oh, she’s using this word abuse. It’s not that extreme. And you’re like, no, that’s actually what it is. And I’m not being extreme. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t think it can go too far when it comes to equality. So until women can be equally believed, as equally understood, as equally taken seriously. The pendulum has not swung far enough.

Tracy: I love Sarah Bessey, she names one of her chapters: “Jesus Made a Feminist Out of Me”

Feminism: Women Are Equal To Men

Tracy: This was part of the transformation, the post-traumatic growth. It was tapping into this truth. That society had been suppressing in me for most of my life leading up to that point. On page 111, she’s talking about a difficult experience for herself, which had to do with pregnancy, but for me, it was betrayal trauma.

And she says, but the truth remains, regardless of the circumstances unique to us. The voice of God has a habit of breaking through the noise of our lives, giving us a turning point. So that we mark the rest of our lives differently from that moment on. When we talk about these moments in our lives, we begin our stories with the words, and then everything changes.

And that was betrayal trauma. And I’m a feminist now. Jesus made a feminist out of me. That was a natural result of healing in my life. It was a result of stopping the spiritual bypass.

Anne: For women uncomfortable with this word feminist, I want you to consider who is telling you that feminists are bad? What is that about?

Tracy: It’s because it’s a disruption of the status quo. It infringes on power structures as they are. It’s a threat to patriarchy.

Patriarchy & prayer for my husband

Tracy: I agree, though, with Sarah when she says patriarchy is not God’s dream for humanity. For a while, even after I began to embrace feminism. I still was like, but is there a way to make it work within patriarchy?

Is there a way that patriarchy is still the right way and like, and we just have to tweak this or tweak that in prayer for my husband? And ultimately, no, I believe that patriarchy is the result of the fall, like that’s not how God intended men and women to interact.

Men are legally in charge, they’re the organizers of society. And for most of human history, women didn’t have much power. I mean, they weren’t counted as humans. You’re literally treated as property. Which is the ultimate spiritual bypass. You don’t have freedom because God made it that way.

You can’t vote, you have no say in how the laws are actually written that affect you. Results in a terrible, terrible experience for women and girls. But I would say it’s not healthy for boys and men either. Like, it’s not what God intended. It also sets these strict gender roles. I don’t think they’re helpful to men either.

It’s comfortable for them because it was made to be more comfortable for them, but it’s still not the way God intended it.

HOW RIGID “Gender Roles” KEEP WOMEN STUCK

Anne: So you’ve got the class in charge, men. They can define these roles. So they want to define the situation that is the most comfortable for them. And so they’re telling women, well, you would be most comfortable if you acted like this. If you did this, rather than letting the women have a voice. The most logical way of doing a partnership with a husband and wife, would be, okay, we’re going to marry.

Let’s sit down and talk about each of our talents. What are the things we enjoy and what are the things we’re good at? So I might say, I’m good at yard work. I’m excellent at gardening. I love being outdoors. I’m not so good at cooking and organizing food. That’s just not one of my talents. It’s not something I’m interested in, right? And then he would say, okay, these are the things I like. I also like being outdoors. I also like doing yard work.

Great. We can do that together. And I also don’t like cooking. At that point where there’s this thing that’s like, huh, we both don’t like cooking, then the answer is not, well, you’re the girl. So you have to do it. Sometimes it sounds spiritual…like telling women the answer to their marriage issues is simply prayer for your husband. It still removes shared responsibility.

Protecting Women’s Choices For Their Lives

Anne: We want to protect women’s ability to choose the kind of life they want. That includes freedom from the idea that prayer for your husband is her primary job. Many people can hold a job, be a parent, and take a shower. And doing their laundry and eating.

So this idea that women must do basic household tasks. Like laundry, cooking, cleaning and stuff like that. Because a human isn’t capable of doing basic self care things. And having talents, exploring their talents, and doing anything else is ridiculous.

But everyone should be free to explore their own talents and what they’re good at. And what they’re interested in, and also be able to do regular household tasks. A person’s mission in life should not be just basic household tasks that everyone needs to know how to do.

Tracy: Right, and if both the husband and the wife approached marriage in that way. Approached life in that way, then they could work that out together and form some sort of equilibrium. But forcing people into these specific gender roles, there are plenty of men who don’t feel comfortable being shoehorned in that way either.

Anne: They don’t know how to fix the air conditioner. And so what do you do? You call an AC guy to fix your air conditioner. But then to say to a woman, well, you’re a woman, so you should be forced to cook.

Working Out Marital Tasks

Anne: It’s like, no, you’re not forcing me to fix the air conditioner. So what can we do to work this out? There are so many other options. If we’re willing to accept that God created each of us as individuals with talents to do his work. He hasn’t just said all women I created you with one job, domestic labor and prayer for your husband. Sorry, it’s your only option.

Tracy: Once you move beyond, when her children are young and at home, women talk about feeling empty. Like, where’s my purpose anymore? How sad is that?

Anne: My Mom, she’s only worked outside the home for a very short time, but she’s very handy. She knows how to tile, she’s a kitchen designer, she does electrical and plumbing and all kinds of things. And she remodeled our house a ton. She’s helping me remodel my house right now. In fact, that is the construction you can hear in the background if you’ve heard any of it. My Mom is out hammering and finishing my basement right now.

She’s interested in construction. She loves it. Is she the best person at making dinner every night? No, that’s not one of her talents. But that doesn’t make her a bad mom. If she couldn’t explore her talents, and told to just be happy making dinner, that’s spiritual bypass.

the Role “Biblical” Womanhood in prayer for my husband

Anne: She’s an excellent, amazing mom, and loves construction. I’m grateful that even if she didn’t work in the construction industry, she could explore her talents. Even not working outside the home. So I’m not trying to say that women have to do it in a certain way or a way that they feel uncomfortable with. But having a man look at you and say, well, you have to clean the toilet because you’re a woman. That’s your job, is crazy.

Tracy: It is.

Anne: It can be anyone’s job.

Tracy: Yeah, she talks a lot about this in Chapter 6, Patron Saints, Spiritual Midwives, and “Biblical” Womanhood. She says, the phenomenon of being a stay at home mother is relatively new and unique to the prosperous. Right along with daycares to provide child care.

It’s a mark of our privilege to decide. Or to adjust our household budget to keep one parent at home full time with the children. I believe it is a worthy pursuit, good work, holy work. I hope so, it’s my own daily work. But it’s not the same thing as Biblical womanhood, is it?

If a woman can enjoy the title in Haiti, or even by the woman hailed in scripture. The same way it can be by a middle class woman in Canada, then Biblical womanhood must be more than this.

Jesus Defends Women’s Choices

Tracy: I love the example she gives of Mary in the story of Mary and Martha. I had never read this story before. Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus as a pupil. This is on page 19. She says, “The daughters had never had that spot. Even after Martha tried to remind her of her duties and responsibilities to their guests, Jesus defended her right to learn as his disciple.

He honored her choice as the better and said it will not be taken away from her.”

And what is she doing right there, but defying gender roles and cultural standards. Christ is honoring and encouraging her in that. So I never understood the story that way. Because in the church culture I grew up in, it was very much, no, to be a good woman, you do it this way. You fit this role, you think this way, you feel this way. You know spiritual bypass.

Anne: This is similar to spiritual bypass and new age bypass. Religion and society tell women As a strong woman, I should bypass painful things and remain in prayer for my husband.

Benevolent Patriarchy And Spiritual Bypass

Anne: If you’re a real, true, righteous woman, then your husband wouldn’t be looking at porn, because your prayer for your husband would be powerful enough, and he wouldn’t want to do that. If you had enough faith in Jesus, you can create miracles in your family. There’s this intersection here between spiritual bypass and feminism.

Tracy: That actually reminds me of benevolent patriarchy, which is what exists in my church organization. It says, “we’re going to put women on a pedestal. We’re going to talk them up. We’re going to talk about how wonderful they are, how spiritual they are, how incredible they are, how they are more inclined to righteousness than men are.”

“They don’t have to work as hard for it. It just comes more naturally to them. But we don’t want to hear what they have to say. We don’t want their unique experiences. Because if their unique experiences contradict what we’re saying their experience should be, they’re not valuable anymore.”

Anne: They’re more spiritual and better, but they can’t be trusted to lead.

Tracy: Exactly. It doesn’t make sense. It’s very much a, as long as you’re falling in line and holding up this system, then your voice is valuable. And we will let you speak in prayer for my husband.

But if that same woman says, well, this is my experience, and this is what God is teaching me. But it contradicts the status quo or infringes on the comfort of men. Then, suddenly, her voice is not valuable anymore. Suddenly, her access to the spirit must is impinged a form of spiritual bypass.

Asking Too Much & Holding Men and Women To The Same Standard

Anne: Wonky, she’s gone off the deep end. She’s a little cray cray. When women get labeled crazy or gone too far, usually it’s when they’re saying something that is right in line with church doctrine. So for example, most churches say abuse is wrong. But then they’ll be like, well, this woman is making this up, or she’s being too loud, or she’s talking about it in a way that’s not the right way. It’s like, but what I’m saying is exactly in line with what you profess to believe.

Tracy: Stepping outside the church for a minute, just into a secular place. That reminds me that we had the first wave of feminists with suffragettes, getting the right to vote.

Then we had the second wave feminists in the sixties and seventies. And then we had the third wave feminists a few decades later. We’re really just saying, look, we want to hold men to the same standard that we’ve been held to all along.

And men resisted that, society resisted that, and labeled the feminists as a problem.

Women In The Workforce

Anne: On that note, I want to talk about women in the workforce. So many women, when they divorce or are considering a job or something.

Many women think, okay, well, I want to be a therapist. Or they think, well, I’ll work at the library or at the school, or something that fits with, how can I be a mom? And I just want to shout out to women considering, how can you become more independent or use your talents better, or wha tever you feel like you need to do. There are so many needs for women in politics, in policing or in law, like becoming lawyers, becoming judges.

I want women to open their minds to like, you can do anything, and you can help the world in so many ways.

Pursuing Ambitions Despite Spiritual Bypass

Tracy: As a kid, I had all those kinds of ambitions. I remember wanting to be a doctor, lawyer, teacher. Wanting to be an architect. I wanted to be a writer.

But as I got older, I forgot about all of that. Because at my core, I believed that I couldn’t. And because of the way it was talked about, it was the way it was modeled for me. I was told, yes, you need to go to college and get a degree, so that you can get a job if your husband gets hit by a truck someday. That’s literally what I was told. It wasn’t so that…

Anne: …so that you can fill the measure of your creation.

Tracy: Exactly. It was always a backup plan. Like I had all these ambitions, and yet I felt these limitations made it very difficult to actually pursue any of that. because i was focused on prayer for my husband.

Spiritual Bypass And The Struggle For Independence

Tracy: And I ended up doing what my culture told me to do, which was get married young and focus on prayer for my husband. I barely graduated from college before my first baby was born. And didn’t get any real work experience, so although I have a degree, it’s sad. I feel embarrassed even talking about it, because it feels like a worthless piece of paper to me. Because I’ve never used it, and I have no serious career work experience.

I’ve had little jobs here and there. But I was not set up to think about my life in terms of, oh yes, I could pursue a career. Because that could be a fulfilling thing for me. And beyond that, so many women in our community, for sure, feel so trapped. It’s just another layer to the difficulty of their situations.

Because it’s difficult to see a way out when they have been financially dependent, and they feel so helpless. There are opportunities, and I love when women figure it out. But, oh, it adds so much more difficulty.

Anne: Like, let’s say now at 40, you decided you would go to law school, you could do that, right? But then you’re 15 years behind the man who went to law school at 25. So that’s what makes it difficult, but that doesn’t make it impossible.

It’s Never Too Late

Anne: Women may think they’ve lost they’re chance to do that thing that you feel like in your heart, you always wanted to do. It could be that you want to be a painter, literally like paint people’s houses, not like an artist. It could be that you want to run a yard care business. I don’t know, whatever you enjoy, it is not too late.

Will you be behind your male counterparts, who started when they were 25? Yeah, but I want women to know that if they start now with whatever they want to do. If they want to go to med school and finally graduate when they were 60, they could still be a doctor for 20 years from when they’re 60 to 80. You know, there’s always options. And I want women to realize that it’s not too late for you.

Tracy: I see women go through the struggle because it’s a struggle. But then I see them do it, it’s incredible to see. Also, it sets a wonderful example for your children.

HONORING CHOICES IN PRAYER FOR MY HUSBAND

Anne: Yeah, now that being said, so many women want to stay at home and I honor that choice as well.

I remember when I had my son and I was thinking about going back to work, because at the time my husband didn’t have a job. My son was nursing. And so just the thought of leaving him to work horrified me.

I did not want to do that. So I want to honor women who are like, no, no, I need to be with my children. This is what I need to do.

Supporting Women’s Choices

Anne: Because those things are important, and supporting women in their choices and what they feel they need to do in their lives. Our aim here at Betrayal Trauma Recovery is to support, validate, encourage, and be there for you regardless of what you choose.

We care about you and love you and validate you and want you to do what’s right for you, whatever that is.

Tracy: Yes, for women unfamiliar or a little uncomfortable with the idea of feminism.

You don’t have to align yourself politically with a particular brand of feminism to call yourself a feminist. There are pro-life feminists. If that’s an issue for some women. Yeah, just don’t be afraid of the word. There’s no shame in the word.

Women Deserve Peace & Safety

Anne: It can mean many things to many people, but the cool thing is you can define your own type of feminism. You can define the way you want to promote equal rights for yourself in your own life, and also for women throughout the world. It can help us overcome spiritual bypass.

This podcast more than anything is to help women come out of the fog of emotional and psychological abuse and coercion. And be able to live lives of peace and safety.

That is what women deserve.

Have you ever felt like your marriage keeps cycling between calm and tension? You’re not alone. Many women spend years searching for answers, while being told to communicate better, manage stress, or meet their husband’s needs. But those explanations don’t solve the issue, because this isn’t random conflict, it’s a repeating emotional cycle of abuse.

This cycle follows a familiar rhythm. Tension builds, an incident erupts, then comes remorse or brief kindness.
The “honeymoon” leads to calm, and the pattern resets, leaving you doubting yourself instead of seeing the manipulation.

In this episode of the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast, we show what the emotional cycle of abuse looks like in real life.
You’ll hear a woman’s story who once believed more patience and prayer could fix her marriage, but it never did.

This conversation exposes the emotional cycle of abuse and helps women find a path to emotional safety. To discover if you’re emotionally abused, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

Transcript: What is the Emotional Cycle of Abuse?

Anne: If you’ve ever wondered why your marriage feels like a constant loop, moments of peace, followed by tension, followed by something that breaks you. You’re not imagining it. You’ve probably searched for answers. You’ve likely been told it’s a communication issue or somebody has unmet needs, or that you just need to try harder, be calmer, or maybe even pray more. But none of that explains why it always circles back to pain and unresolved issues. What you’re living through isn’t chaos. It’s a pattern, a deliberate repeating cycle,

And when you finally see that pattern for what it is, an emotional cycle of abuse, that’s what today’s episode is about. Today I have a member of our community. We’re gonna call her Jamie. Here’s a part of her interview.

Jamie: I just knew I can’t do this. There’s a concept called Pain for Love, it was the first time I heard anything that sounded close to what I was experiencing. It was that you’re emotionally at a zero, then they would act out. And then you start getting angry and explode, and they realize, oh, I have got to calm you down.

Anne: So the therapist called this Pain for Love, but didn’t explain it as a cycle of emotional abuse. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Welcome, Jamie.

Jamie: Hi, thank you, Anne. It’s so nice to be here. Thank you.

Understanding The Early Signs of An Emotional Cycle of Abuse

Anne: Let’s start at the beginning.

Jamie: At the beginning of my relationship, it was amazing. I met my husband through a mutual friend from high school. In phone conversations with her over a couple of years. I knew about him. He knew about me. So when we met in person, it was so much fun. I felt so good.

He seemed to have a lot of energy, I kid you not. Two weeks after we met, he took me with a big friend group to Cancun. And he would buy me things. He seemed interested in the same things. We went to a lot of Christian concerts, and he tagged along with us. It was so much fun, and we enjoyed it. I can say that when we got married, the light switch just flipped and a lot of that stuff stopped. But looking back now. I can see red flags, that I didn’t know or understand.

Anne: When we’re in it, it’s not a red flag. It’s more of a hiccup. It’s not like someone’s screaming, and yelling is not bad. No, it’s not bad. And there’s nothing that we did or didn’t do back then, because even with a good person, like a genuinely good person, you might have a hiccup. They might be some kind of fluke thing that happens. You can’t tell if it’s a fluke or not until you’ve known him for a couple of years.

Jamie: That’s right. It’s a pattern of behavior, and the pattern of behavior only comes with time. For me, we were young, so I expected natural time and maturity to happen, and that those little hiccups wouldn’t be what they turned out to be.

When Affection Turns Into A Control Tactic

Anne: Right, growing together.

Jamie: Yeah. And that never happened at all.

Anne: You’re processing it the best way possible. So, let’s talk about things that you noticed, but maybe didn’t process as red flags. Did you ever notice something was off? Talk about how you defined it at that time, not knowing that you were dealing with the emotional cycle of abuse.

Jamie: One of the incidents that happened, not someone I was in a relationship with, but just dating to go out and date. He ended up holding me against my will for three days.

Anne: Oh, yikes.

Jamie: That was a year and a half before. I had been in therapy. I was in a good place when I met my husband. So three months into dating my husband, we decided to exclusively date. The only thing I noticed was the F-bomb. And my husband used that in conversational speak. I don’t and never have, but he was, and I was like, okay, I don’t want him to think this is him because I’m having a reaction to that. So I actually shared with him what had happened to me.

I was vulnerable and shared this traumatic event with him. And I said, “Hey, when you’re using that, I’m having a reaction. I feel it. It’s probably the last little bit that I’ve got to work through.” And then he turned around and used the F-bomb over and over. He weaponized it, then told me, “Well, you are the one who has the issue with that. I’m not changing the way I use anything. You are the one who has the problem with that. So that’s your problem to work through, not mine.”

He weaponized my vulnerability

Jamie: And at the time I was like, oh, I guess he’s not wrong. At the time, I didn’t think it was that big of a deal because I was like, maybe he’s not using it more. Maybe I’m just more perceptive of it, you know?

But no, he absolutely weaponized it and did it over and over and over. At the same time, I would say to him like, these are actual examples. “I really love it when you open the door for me. That makes me feel good and special. Thank you for doing that.” And he quit. He withheld it. That one he never really had a reason for or excuse other than, well, I’m just not that type of guy to do that.

Anne: So, this was after you thanked him, so he opened the door for you. Then after you thanked him, he was like, because she appreciates this and it means something to her, I’m for sure not gonna do it.

Jamie: I rationalized that away as, I guess that’s not that big of a deal if he doesn’t open the door. It’s kind of weird that I told him that I liked it. Now he is not doing it. But of course at the time I just, okay, no big deal. And didn’t think that type of behavior would continue, but it did. In little ways and in big ways, and still to this day, it is that way.

So he withholds anything that I tell him is good. He continues repeatedly to do something that I tell him is bad, and then blames me for the reaction of pain, hurt, and anger. After that for a really long time.

How an Emotional Cycle of Abuse Keeps Women Off Balance

Jamie: He’s so good at making me believe that. I did believe it was my fault a long time. I thought I was in a good place, but maybe I’m not. And he is a healthcare professional, so I trusted him. He’s gotta know what he is talking about in some things. I didn’t see it as manipulation at the time.

Anne: Each thing that would happen felt isolated. The F word thing, that’s just about the F word, the door thing. It’s just about doors.

Jamie: That’s exactly right. And still to this day, that’s exactly how he wants to categorize it. We have three kids together. A boy, girl, boy, ages 20, 18, and 15, and the 20-year-old was a baby and in a stroller. I knew something is wrong and I couldn’t put my finger on it, so I found a counselor. I remember going into his office and he was like, okay, y’all hug each other.

Anne: So this was couple counseling.

Jamie: This couples counseling. And so I gave him a hug and he is like, well, I usually see the problem if there’s a problem giving a hug, but y’all don’t seem to have a problem giving a hug. I’m not sure what’s going on here. And then he would give us like little homework assignments. And I would have this hope that maybe if he does the homework assignment and I do my homework assignment, that we would come back and things would get better.

The Role of Counseling and Church Advice in Continuing the Emotional Cycle of Abuse

Jamie: That was a waste of time and money. It ended up hurting me. Because I had expectations that maybe this could help us, and I’m like, what is going on? He told me he doesn’t wanna have sex with me, and it was my fault. I felt, if I left it up to him, we would have sex a handful of times a year, birthdays and Mother’s Day.

All three of our kids were conceived on my birthday or his birthday. I had been trying to engage with him, and I would get nothing from him, blank stare acting, dismissive, silence. He’s pursed his lips so much now over these years that he has wrinkled mad and angry pursed lips, and just sitting there sulking in silence.

And then I discovered some pornography, and I was devastated and in a really bad, bad place. So I reached out to the pastor and I’m like, we need help. And the pastor ends up telling me that I am not letting him lead. I’m like, “I am letting him lead.” And he goes, “You just don’t like where he’s leading.” And he ends up telling me that I am not an obedient wife, that I need to forgive, love, and serve, and that I’m not being obedient.

Anne: Obedient my eye. You were totally loving and serving this man.

Jamie: Yes, in every way possible. And then of course, this whole time he’s so good at spinning it to make it feel like my fault. At those times, I believed it. And like, okay, we need help, and you need to be more obedient. I left completely devastated and had to leave the church. Because I could not return to that pastor until he left.

Emboldened Husband lashes out, calling me a liar

Jamie: I was so brokenhearted and devastated, and my husband was like, “See, I told you you’re the problem. It’s not me.” And things went downhill from there.

Anne: When they are enabled, they go downhill pretty quickly, ’cause they’re given permission to be worse. I wanna point out the stonewalling was a lie. The blaming you was a lie. Even when he goes into the pastor and says that stuff about you, that’s a lie. So it’s lie after lie after lie, but you don’t know that it’s a lie.

Jamie: Most of the time his lying was under the radar, but there were times where I picked up on it. There were times where I’m like, oh, I just caught him and a lie. That’s when he would lash out at me and say, “You are calling me a liar. I don’t know why you’re with me.”

Anne: I’m smiling a little bit. ‘Cause in the Living Free Workshop, that’s one of the strategies I teach. If they try to manipulate you through saying something like, “You just think I’m a liar.” Say, “Oh, I never thought about that.” ‘Cause the reason they do that to us is a manipulation tactic.

So we’re like, “No, I don’t think you’re a liar.” So that we’ll back down. And sometimes they’re saying the exact thing that if we just agreed as a Christian, that “agree with thine adversary quickly.” I’ve found that a simple, “Hmm, maybe I do think you’re a liar. I need to think about that more.” Strategy removes you from manipulation.

Emotional abuse is mentioned in addiction models

Jamie: You’re right, exactly right. And I felt like, I didn’t say that, you said that, but I am pointing out to you right here that you lied. That definitely is a tactic that worked a lot on me for a while.

Anne: It works on all of us.

Jamie: I finally Googled emotional abuse. And the first things that came up were the addiction models. And I’m like, oh yeah, emotional abuse and the addiction model, like pornography addiction, sex addiction.

Anne: Sorry. I’m actually shocked that they talk about the emotional cycle of abuse, because they usually avoid saying it’s abuse.

Jamie: I absorbed that like a sponge. I ordered him the book and the workbook, and I did a phone group, and many videos about pornography addiction. I did find a counselor through that women’s group online, and we started doing counseling with him. He never mentioned anything of it being abuse, ever.

Anne: This is still couple therapy.

Jamie: It was supposed to be, because we were going along the lines of that workbook, following those guidelines where you do dailies with your spouse, and after two times I’m like, I can’t do this. I didn’t know I was seeking safety for myself. I just knew I can’t do this. We shared a lot of the material we were learning.

The “Pain for love” pattern

Jamie: And there’s a concept called Pain for Love. And I just went, oh my goodness, Pain for Love. And the concept there I attached to, because it was the first time I heard or read anything that sounded anything close to what I was experiencing. It was that you’re emotionally at a zero, so you’re fine. But then they would act out, act out, act out, and then you start getting angrier. And then kind of explode and they realize, oh, I have got to calm you down and I’ve got to bring you back down. So he would show up to love me and bring me down, and then return to being his normal self.

Anne: Wait, wait, hold on a minute. This is the first time I’ve heard of this concept before, but you’re essentially describing domestic abuse where he grooms, deescalates the victim so he can maintain control, coercive control.

Jamie: Yes.

Anne: Then as soon as he feels like he can relax because you’re under his control, then you can just go back to being miserable.

Jamie: Yes, when I heard Pain for Love, I felt like you have to get to this big level of pain before they’ll show up and love you, and they’ll love you for a little bit, and then leave and go back to causing pain.

Anne: I’m so shocked that someone would say this to a woman and not realize how she’s gonna interpret it. I don’t know how he intended it, but the way we interpret it is, this is how I get love. Is that how you were interpreting it?

Jamie: Yes

Finding Clarity After Naming the Emotional Cycle of Abuse

Jamie: The concept is that I would have to get in so much pain, and then he would realize, I need to love my wife for a couple of days. Then rinse and repeat. Yeah, I believed until one of the ladies from my group suggested you and your podcast. I had the podcast on my phone, and then one day I’m like, I’m gonna listen to all this.

And my mind was blown. Now, I’ve listened to every one of your podcasts. It was eye-opening. No one had ever told me to seek safety for myself before. Everybody puts the emphasis on him. We gotta help him, love him, encourage him, and we’ve gotta give him the space to do what he needs to do all while hurting me, and nobody ever addressed that, ever.

And then I started my Betrayal Trauma Recovery group sessions. I’ve been in now for about 16 months. Only through what I’ve learned through BTR do I know that I’ve been doing a lot of safety seeking behaviors and that it was the best way to get yourself back after emotional abuse.

Anne: Yeah, the whole time you are doing the right thing. You are going for help, but it’s insane how no one we ask for help, except for BTR, knows it’s abuse or defines it that way. You found that emotional abuse article that led you to sex addiction therapy, but then they didn’t continue to talk about that.

They didn’t say, oh, you found us through emotional abuse, because this is the emotional cycle of abuse. And if you’re emotionally abused, we need to make sure that you’re safe. That that doesn’t even enter the conversation is so crazy to me.

Jamie: Yeah, me too.

Finding out about an affair

Jamie: I came across you, and my life is now completely changing in the direction it needs to change. But only because of what I’ve learned here. I have started seeking safety for myself, and it’s changed everything. And seeking safety. I now feel more confident. When we were dating, he mirrored me and love bombed me.

He wasn’t being his genuine, authentic self. He was doing whatever he needed to do to convince me he was the guy for me. Now I look back and I can see there was a lot of abuse and betrayal trauma in my marriage.

Anne: It’s been a lie, just an emotional cycle of abuse. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Jamie: Yes, I wish I’d known this a long time ago, but I know it now. My youngest son wanted to go shopping. My husband had told me he was going to go into the business earlier that morning. We own our own healthcare business together. My son says, Hey, I forgot something in dad’s car. Can we go get it? We stopped by, he had locked the doors and taken my key off my key chain.

My son called him, he answered the phone, but then put us on mute for like two minutes, and then two minutes later he’s like, hello, hello, can you hear me? So he comes and opens the door, and we went in. We heard the back door open. My son headed back there, and I immediately knew then that my husband was having an affair. My first thought was to protect my son, so I just said, Hey, let’s go. We are leaving. We get in the car and my son says, “Mom, aren’t you gonna confront Dad?”

Seeking safety for myself

Jamie: No, this is not for you to be a witness of, and I care about you and we’re gonna go. And he just didn’t understand why I didn’t wanna confront Dad. About a month later, he walks into my room and says, “We need to talk about divorce.” About a month after that, he hands me a handwritten piece of paper with a settlement offer. The bare, bare minimum and wants to walk away with our business free and clear without giving me a dime. He thinks that’s fair.

He was like, I think this is fair. If I didn’t think it was fair, I wouldn’t have written it and handed it to you. So during this time, I’m still in groups. I’m still getting support. And there’s financial abuse in the divorce process. I had an appointment with an attorney, and the attorney tells me, “Oh, he filed.” Which I didn’t think he would do, but makes sense if he’s trying to start a new life with his affair partner.

He’s still in the house, but in the next day or two, we’ll have a temporary hearing for him to move out. I put boundaries into place that I’ve learned from the coaches at BTR from your podcast. From the Living Free Workshop, I’ve learned so much, and it has totally changed my life. And although I wouldn’t wish this on anybody, because this is so hard. I’m grateful and thankful that I have the tools I need to move on and get safe for my kids.

I feel like since I’ve learned everything through BTR, I’ve been on a fast track to healing. I haven’t had that. BTR has been a godsend to me to escape the emotional cycle of abuse.

Feeling thankful for a changed life

Jamie: He isolated me 22 years ago in the middle of the country, and BTR has reached me and changed my life and my kids’ lives. I’m so thankful, I’m thankful for the coaches.

I’m thankful you have the courage to turn this around and be a light for other women. I want all of them to know, like you say in the podcast, you didn’t want another woman on earth to go through this. And I don’t either. I know that I have to walk through some pretty big storms and fire before I’m on the other side, but I’m here and it’s what I’ve been waiting for. I’ve learned how to handle those trauma responses better that I was trying to do with the other therapist, and it never worked ’cause it wasn’t addressing the real issue. It’s changed my life.

Anne: I’m so grateful to hear that. ’cause I have, of course, my bad days. It’s really hard to do this work, as you can imagine. I’m so sorry about what you’re going through. And then also so grateful that what we’re doing is making a difference. It’s drastically different than anything you’ll get from a therapist or a couple therapists or a sex addiction therapist, because we can see what’s really happening.

And it’s crazy to me that like no matter how hard a woman tries. No matter how smart she is, and no matter how resourced she is, if she can’t see what is really happening, no one else will help her. It’s so heartbreaking to me.

Jamie: Right. For so many years, I was trying to tell my truth. I said it, and nobody got it. And then I come to BTR and this is the truth.

On the fast track to healing

Jamie: This is what’s going on, and it’s changed my life and my family. I say I’ve been with the group for 16 months and listening to the podcast for almost two years. That two years compared to 25, that feels like fast track. I think I got the tools I needed to handle what was coming, because I have always said, God knows what we need well before we know we need it. And I think he put this into place to help me, ’cause I feel like I’m not alone.

There are so many other women going through this, I’ve have been through it. I’ve listened to their stories, virtually held their hand and given them hugs. The coaching has been amazing, and it has changed my life. I couldn’t be more thankful. I know that’s a God thing.

Anne: I think so too. I feel like every day we hear about miracles of someone who says a prayer or something and finds us randomly somehow. It’s not that we’re not here, it’s not that we don’t have the tools to help women, it’s that there are so many other options for therapists or influencers or whoever else, and so finding the right information is so difficult to find a way out of the emotional cycle of abuse.

I’m grateful to all the listeners who helped. Other women find out about it. I’m trying to get Living Free into every woman’s hands. ’cause at least for me, if I had it at the beginning or if you would’ve had it 25 years ago, can you imagine the difference that would’ve made?

Jamie: Oh yes, very helpful. Always everything is geared towards it’s a we problem. Or he has this problem that we have to help him through.

Getting over the shock of a calculating husband

Jamie: Never addressing my pain, ever. And now, like you said, I can’t unsee it.

Anne: It’s just so calculated. It’s actually really shocking if you’re listening right now and you’re like, is my husband like that? Is this an emotional cycle of abuse? Living Free will help you see what he’s like, and then you can make the decisions based on that.

Jamie: Absolutely, that’s exactly what happened with me too. That helped me see exactly. And it helps me process moving forward, and especially the whirlwind I’m going through right now. What to expect, because I now can see him for what he is. And my husband is also one of those who wants to place intent over impact.

Anne: It was their intent to do whatever they wanted without worrying about the consequences.

Jamie: That’s right.

Anne: I actually think intent matters more, and this is the reason. Someone who really genuinely cares about you, who doesn’t wanna hurt you, they’re thinking about you. And maybe they get a gift, and it’s a little offensive, and they’re like, I’m so sorry. I was trying so hard. And I missed the boat. But their intent was good. With these guys, they’re like, well, I bought you a present, didn’t I? Like, why am I not getting points? They don’t actually care about us.

Jamie: That’s exactly right. There is no thought of me.

Finding a safe place

Anne: It’s like my sweet 12-year-old, I love him, and he is gigantic. His arms and legs are so big. If he thinks about where he’s going, he’s not gonna hurt anybody, because he’ll be aware of where his arm is, and it’s not gonna whack someone accidentally. But if he’s just clumping through the house, not thinking about anybody, someone will get hurt.

So if you are not aware of the people around you and what you’re doing, you’re going to hurt people and. If you don’t think about other people at all, that is intent. And it is the basis of the emotional cycle of abuse.

Jamie: I agree.

Anne: Thank you so much, and thank you for your support. It’s because of clients like you and other women who listen to the podcast that we can continue to do this work. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Jamie: Thank you. The work you’ve done and are doing is a godsend. BTR is a safe place, and they’ll take you where you are, how you are. At the moment, they’ll give you tools, you can use them, and be safe. Just having a safe place is priceless. It is so worth it.

If your husband lies about small things, here’s why it’s not a small problem. Many women in our community describe the same beginning: they start noticing little lies, inconsistencies, or half-truths, but they dismiss them because, overall, he seems like a good guy. He’s involved. He apologizes. He’s trying. So the lies get minimized, explained away, or pushed aside.

One of the hardest parts of living with deception is that clarity doesn’t usually arrive with a big confession or undeniable proof. It comes in fragments, small moments that are easy to dismiss, especially when your goal is to hold your family together. When a husband lies about small things, it often points to something much bigger, but that pattern can be hard to see while you’re still inside it. In this episode, Anne shares the French Fry Analogy to explain why lying, gaslighting, and blame-shifting about “small things” can be a major red flag.

Before reading on, here’s something many women don’t realize: lying can be an emotional abuse tactic. That truth explains why so many thoughtful, capable women stay confused for so long—not because they’re in denial, but because it’s nearly impossible to see clearly when you’re living in a pattern that alternates between hurtful behavior and reassuring gestures, between small lies and moments that seem like progress.

To discover if he’s using any one of the 19 different types of emotional abuse, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

Transcript: When He Lies About Small Things, This Brilliant Analogy Offers Insight

Anne: I have a member of our community on today’s episode. I’ve been calling her Jenna to protect her identity. You’ll hear in this interview that Jenna didn’t come to clarity because her marriage suddenly got worse. She found clarity when she finally had language for the patterns and she could see how the small lies really revealed something much bigger.

So let’s get into it. Welcome, Jenna

Jenna: Thank you, Anne.

Anne: Jenna and I have been interacting on social media for a long time. On social media, we take the concepts I teach here on the podcast and make visual representations of these concepts, usually through infographics. But every once in a while, I do a video. One of the infographics I posted was an epiphany for Jenna. It helped her see that her husband had been lying about small things, which distracted her from realizing he was also lying about big things.

Speaking of social media, on Facebook. I’m also on Instagram @btr.org__, TikTok @btr.org, and if you search btr.org on YouTube, you’ll find me there. If you want to comment anonymously on any particular episode, let’s say this one, go to our website, btr.org and in the search bar put in the title of the episode. So for this one, it would be, my husband lies about small things.

This episode will come up. You can see the transcription and scroll down to the bottom. And comment anonymously about what you think. I always love your comments. And I interact with women on the website all the time. I also interact with women on social media.

My Marriage Was Not Healthy

Anne: So you’re following me on social media, we’re interacting online and then you see this infographic. What happened next?

Jenna: It resonated instantly with me. I thought we had hard times, but things are still getting better. I thought we were on that upward trajectory. But when I saw it on Instagram. It just suddenly clicked for me. It has two different graphs. One says, “What I thought my marriage was” and it shows a graph that goes up and down, but it has a trajectory that’s going up. Then, it says, “healthy, hard, healthy, hard.”

Anne: Yeah, it’s kind of like a stock market graph. It’s going up in general and healthy is when it goes up and hard is when it dips down. And when it goes back up, it goes even higher.

Jenna: It captures the experience I had exactly. Then, underneath what I thought my marriage was, it says what it really was. Instead of the healthy and hard healthy and hard points, it’s actually grooming and abuse, grooming and abuse. The grooming just gets more extreme, and the abuse stays the same. So it’s not that the marriage is improving. It’s that the grooming is just improving, and abuse is still there.

Anne: The abuse is actually probably getting worse, but you can’t go lower in a graph. So I created this infographic because that was my experience.

RECOGNIZING EMOTIONAL ABUSE PATTERNS WHEN MY HUSBAND LIES ABOUT SMALL THINGS

Anne: I thought as we did addiction recovery, and we went to all these therapists, and we did 12 step for wives of pornography addicts…. all the stuff that we would take a step forward and then two steps back. Because the addiction recovery industrial complex told me “He’s going to have relapses” and “progress, not perfection.” I thought, “Oh, we are improving over time, but of course, it’s not just going to be a perfectly straight line to success. We’re going to have ups and downs along the way.”

But when I finally took a step back and realized it was abuse, and that my husband lies about small things as part of that pattern, I saw that we weren’t actually moving forward at all. I was just going around in circles. What I thought were setbacks were really just more lies, more grooming, and more emotional abuse.

Let’s talk about the factors that would lead a woman to think that these are the regular ups and downs of either marriage in general, or the ups and downs of being in a relationship with a man addicted to exploitative material or maybe has a mental health issue.

Jenna: I think the actions he did were positive. He was going to church. And he participated in an addiction recovery group. He did all the things that you would think of when you think of improving. Even times when he would apologize. Or times when he would not gaslight me. I thought that was positive and thought maybe that was improvement.

Anne: Congratulations, you didn’t lie. I’m so proud of you!

My Husband Was Lying & I Was Sticking It Out

Jenna: Seriously, it would be like, oh wow, he took money out of my wallet. And didn’t think I saw, but he didn’t try to convince me that he didn’t do that. As long as you’re going to a group, to therapy, to church, there’s this idea that just doing those things equals I’m a good person.

Anne: I think there’s also the societal idea that everything is fixable. As long as you’re willing to work on it and go to therapy. Of course, there’s going to be a solution. Many people go straight to whether their abusive husband needs therapy or an addiction recovery program. Rather than thinking, “Whoa, we need to get you emotionally and psychologically safe.”

Why Does My Husband Lie?

I was talking to my uncle the other day about my ex, telling him some details. And he was shocked. And then at five o’clock in the morning, the next day he emailed me and said, “Anne, your ex needs a treatment program.”

I just laughed, I was like, “That’s what I thought. And so that’s why I got him into a treatment program.” Because he’s abusive and he lies, treatment didn’t help him. And no one told me it was abuse, which is why I’m doing this podcast.

Jenna: Yeah. I think there’s an idea that marriage is hard. No one’s perfect. As long as he’s working on it by going to a treatment center or going to therapy or whatever he may be doing. As long as he’s doing those things, you just have to stick it out. Those kinds of ideas, at least, were in my mind, and made it difficult for me to even consider the option that maybe not all marriages are this hard. Maybe not all marriages are abusive. I think that’s one idea that kept me stuck.

I Learn His Lies, Gaslighting & Manipulation Are Abuse

Anne: Even if you know it’s abuse, then you’re like, “Wow, it’s abuse? Okay, we need to get him into therapy because he’s abusive because he has childhood trauma or he feels shame.” I don’t think they realize that’s not why he’s abusive, number one, and therapy will not help. Most therapists think, “Oh, I can help.” They don’t realize they’re going to get manipulated and gaslit themselves.

I don’t know if it’s an ego thing, but therapists don’t tend to realize they are unable to help abusers. Because the prevailing opinion of everyone is that therapy will solve this, I work so hard to educate all women about this.

So I hope the infographics help. I took many of them, and I put them in the back of Trauma Mama Husband Drama, which is my picture book for adults. It’s available at btr.org/books. And It’s also available on Amazon. It’s a picture book. So it’s also this visual representation of what it’s like to be emotionally and psychologically abused and coerced, and not realize what’s happening because of his lies.

Teaching these concepts in a way that women can actually apply is my top priority. And social media is so important, because I can post those visual representations there. As you’ve been interacting with me on social media, what’s your take on why these are so helpful for victims?

I Seek & Find The Truth

Jenna For me, learning the term betrayal trauma was incredibly validating and empowering. It gave me language for what I was experiencing—especially in moments when my husband lies about small things and I couldn’t explain why it affected me so deeply.
The infographics do something similar. They capture my experience in a way I sometimes can’t put into words. They give me a simple, visual way to understand what I’m feeling and to share that understanding with others. It’s therapeutic, clear, and approachable—and the fact that they’re visually engaging makes them even easier to take in.

Anne: Yeah, having it be cute doesn’t hurt. So the process is like, I have an idea in my head, I podcast about it. Then I draw like a pathetic stick figure. And then my amazing friend, who’s an illustrator and graphic designer, brings these to life. She’s incredible. And then she and I go back and forth through so many different iterations to make sure the concept is clear,

And then I always revisit them. Maybe six months, or a year or two years later, I look at it again and I’m like, “Oh we need to alter this a little bit.” I’m always getting feedback on them and making updates. So when you say an infographic I created that I posted, it helped you realize your husband’s lies about the small things. Indicated a much bigger thing, that warms my heart.

Infographics Helped Me See Reality

Jenna: It was so easy for me to overlook the experiences I’ve gone through that were emotionally abusive, and think, he doesn’t punch me. He doesn’t hurt me physically, but emotional abuse affects your body and spirit immensely. It’s not that bad. But when I see it in the infographic, it’s so obvious. It’s apparent what I am experiencing is emotional abuse. It’s damaging, and I’m being sucked into this abuse cycle of grooming and devaluing. It just makes it so clear for me and helps me navigate my next steps to safety.

I took the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Workshop. The workbook that comes with the workshop had so many visuals and beautiful artwork. It captures the reality of my situation. It’s simple and easy to understand, and helps me digest my own experience. I appreciated that.

Anne: I’m so glad to hear that. That’s awesome. I’ve taken so many trainings or workshops. And I was so confused most of the time. I always felt like, Am I doing it wrong? Is it me? And then I realized, no, it’s just not detailed. It’s unclear. It doesn’t give me a way to process it. It doesn’t give me a way to interact with it. And so just like everything else at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, I test everything for years, years, and years.

With the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Workshop, I first used the strategies myself to deliver my kids and myself from abuse. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. So I duplicated that success. With other victims, we created a workshop out of it. We ran that workshop live for a few years to get feedback, to know where were victims getting stuck? What parts weren’t clear?

The Betrayal Trauma Workshop Is Invaluable

Anne: Then we created all the videos for the format. It’s now online, and those videos are incredible because it has visual representations for all these concepts to help women get it. And then I continue to tweak it, tweak it, and tweak it. I have a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction. So I’m obsessed with making sure the content we produce is clear and helpful. And that the services we provide are exactly what women need.

Jenna: Yeah, the workshop for me was invaluable. I felt like I learned so much about specific actions I could take and specific situations. It was super helpful.

Anne: I am so glad to hear that. I hear that every day from women, how much it helped them. If you’re listening and interested, you can learn more about The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Workshop.

The French Fry Analogy

Anne: As Jenna and I were interacting on social media, she shared something that made me realize the French fry analogy would really help her name what was happening in her marriage. This analogy illustrates why, when a husband lies about small things, it’s often evidence that something much bigger is going on.

He comes up to you and says, “You know what? I have been eating at McDonald’s too much, and it’s not healthy for me. It’s bothering me. I don’t like it, so I’m just letting you know that I’m not going to ever eat at McDonald’s again, ever. You, as the supportive wife, would be like, sounds great, honey. This is not that important. You’re like, okay, you do you. Good for you. He doesn’t say anything else about it.

Three weeks later, you have to use his car for something. You get in his car, you’re fumbling around with a quarter, and it falls down in a crack. And as you’re trying to get the quarter, you find a French fry. That French fry is unmistakable. It is a McDonald’s French fry. You get your quarter out, you get the French fry out, and you go to your husband and you say, “Hey honey, I lost this quarter and when I found it, I also found this French fry.”

Now if he’s a super healthy person, he might say, “I know I told you I want to stop eating at McDonald’s, but I went to McDonald’s three days ago when I had that long drive. And yeah, one of them fell down in the crack. And as far as me falling off the wagon, I feel really stupid about it.

AN ANALOGY FOR EMOTIONAL ABUSE WHEN A HUSBAND LIES ABOUT SMALL THINGS

Anne: This is not an abuse episode. The situation where he wanted to stop eating McDonald’s and then he fell off the wagon is not that big of a deal. He wasn’t trying to deceive you. He wasn’t trying to hide it from you on purpose. When you asked him about the French fry, he readily admitted he fell off the wagon and went to McDonald’s.

Now let’s pretend the whole scenario is the same, but instead, when you find the French fry. And you take it to him and say, I found this French fry. He says. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t see a French fry.” And then you’re like, “This French fry, this one right here. I found this in the car.”

And he’s like, “Well, one of the kids must’ve got in my car and dropped it in there.” With that same scenario, if he starts to gaslight he lies, he’s not a healthy person. Even if this is just about a French fry. Deceit, gaslighting, and turning the tables would be psychological and emotional abuse.

And to take it even further, if he said, “Why are you going through my car? Why are you trying to check up on me?” Maybe even, “I never told you I wasn’t going to eat at McDonald’s. Of course, I’m going to eat at McDonald’s. Why would you even think I wouldn’t eat at McDonald’s?” So there’s the French fry analogy. How has this analogy helped you?

Experiencing Your Husband’s Lies

Jenna: I think it captured what was happening for me. Like you said, they were small, or they felt small at the time. When my husband lies about small things, it didn’t immediately register as something serious. Back then, I didn’t even know he was using exploitative material.

He would make up stories about hobbies or abilities he actually did not have. Then, to me, he would deny he had made up those stories. So I would just let his lies go. Now I realize how big they were. But I can look back and see the pattern of different French fries I found.

Anne’s EXAMPLE: WHEN A Husband Lies ABOUT SMALL THINGS

Anne: My ex did that too. There was this period where we were at dinner parties or social events. I would look out of the corner of my eye. And he was like doing these Tai Chi moves. And he would talk to people about how much he loved Tai Chi. Like he was some kind of Tai Chi master. So after a while, I was very curious.

So I said, “How do you know so much about Tai Chi?” And he kind of avoided answering me. And so I got real specific and I said, “Did you take Tai-Chi in college?”

“No.”

“Did you take it in high school?”

“No.”

“Did you take it at a gym?”

“No.”

“Have you read a book about Tai Chi?”

“No.”

“Have you ever taken a Tai-Chi class anywhere in any way, shape or form?”

“No.”

“Have you done Tai Chi in a park?” You know how there’s like those old people in a park? “Have you done Tai Chi in a park?”

“No.”

“Maybe on vacation?”

“No.”

Ah, I was dumbfounded. He lies, so I don’t know why he didn’t just lie, but in this moment, for some reason, he wanted me to know. I still don’t know why he wanted me to know, because he had no problem with lies when he wanted to. And finally, and maybe this was a lie too. He said, “I read an article about at once.” Like one article is what he said. And he lies about that? Maybe he never even read one article about it. It was crazy.

So, instead of just saying, I read an article about Tai Chi and I’m interested in maybe taking a class sometime. No, one article apparently made him an expert in Tai Chi.

WHEN YOUR HUSBAND LIES ABOUT SMALL THINGS, IT’S NOT HARMLESS

Anne: So if he lies about traveling to London or Tai Chi or French fries, it indicates something serious is happening, but it’s so hard for us to recognize that.

Jenna: For me, I feel like I didn’t have proof. Everything inside me said something here is wrong. It is not normal that my husband lies about small things, like going on a trip to London. My brain would say he’s not using exploitative material, because he’d said he wasn’t using it. I can think of way worse things he could be doing. Maybe this isn’t that big of a deal.

I think it was easy to rationalize it, to say, this isn’t necessarily a good thing, but because he’s told me he loved me, it’s still progress. Back to that upward trajectory graph in the infographic.

Anne: Yeah, totally. After I was separated, I was talking to my dentist. And I said, “I didn’t realize it was abuse. I mean, he had stopped screaming and yelling in my face. And I saw that as progress.”

And my dentist was like, “What? What are you talking about?”

I know my dentist well. I went to high school with him. He just looked at me and he was like, “A good person would never do that”. Like ever. My dentist couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that victims are manipulated to think he lies about this one thing. He realized he couldn’t scream and yell in your face. So then he lies to you. That’s not progress.

But now taking a step back, it’s a gut punch to realize that he wasn’t changing and things weren’t improving. That upward trajectory wasn’t happening. He was just changing up his abuse tactics.

I Struggle To Create Safety

Jenna: When I look back on my experience, I thought these little breadcrumbs were big improvements. The little things he would do I would see as progress. I imagined myself standing outside my house in a hurricane, like lightning, rain and crazy wind. My hair is flying everywhere and debris flying all around me. I imagine the storm around me being the abuse I experienced.

Then I imagine putting my hands over my head, just a little bit as progress. That’s a small improvement from not having any protection, but it’s something. The only thing that created safety for me was walking to my house, stepping inside, and closing the door. I could look out the window and see the crazy storm that was going on outside, but it wasn’t hurting me anymore.

I think that’s the only time I could see the abuse for what it was. Because in the moment, I felt that at least my hands are over my head, I’ve got a little protection. I didn’t understand how much danger I was in until I was safe. And I could look back and see how dangerous it actually was.

Anne: Oh, I like that analogy. I wonder if part of it is the adrenaline of the chaos. Like you might not realize how cold you are until you get inside. And then you’re like, “Oh, I was really cold and miserable.” But in the moment, you’re just trying to make it down the mountain or survive.

One Day At A Time Survival Mode

Anne: Which is why people call abuse victims survivors. Because every day they’re surviving in this mental, emotional, and psychological life and death situation. Even if they’re still in the abuse, because they’re surviving one day at a time.

We need to ask ourselves. “Wait a minute, do I just want to be in survival mode every day? Do I want to be in that type of chaos all the time? Or do I want to actually be safe and rest in my warm house with a cup of hot chocolate?”

And so to help us make our way to safety, that French fry analogy comes in handy especially when a husband lies about small things. Because if something happens, we can think to ourselves, “Okay, if this were just about a French fry, would it still be severe and intense, emotional and psychological abuse?” If someone is willing to completely deny, he lies, gaslights, and blame shifts about a french fry, which is not that big of a deal. That’s a big warning sign that they are emotionally and psychologically dangerous.

I want all the listeners to consider things that you may have thought, that’s not that big of a deal. When he lies and denies you had a conversation about changing the oil or picking up milk from the store. Not only is lying is emotionally abusive in and of itself, it’s only the part of the iceberg you can see, and there is a way, way more beneath the surface that you can’t see.

Social Media’s Role In Figuring Out EMOTIONAL ABUSE WHEN A HUSBAND LIES ABOUT SMALL THINGS

Anne: Why has following Betrayal Trauma Recovery on social media, interacting with me and engaging with other women, been useful to you?

Jenna: I love listening to the podcast, and getting bite-sized pieces of information. I can get on, take in one small topic, a quote, or a thought, and sit with it. It gives me something to think about and helps me understand emotional abuse in a way I can actually process, especially when my husband lies about small things.

Anne: That reminds me of one of my good friends in real life. We were friends long before I started podcasting. She’d been in several abusive relationships, but for me, talking to her was always awkward. Because for her, it felt safer to pull away from the pain and not consider it could be emotional abuse. So as we would talk, I would think, “I have the perfect podcast about this. I should tell her about it.” But I would hold back as much as possible.

Our sons were on the same baseball team. So we’d sit together every week and chat while our sons played baseball. And at one game, she told me about her ex, and I was thinking, “Oh, this is abuse. How can I help her understand, since she’s not interested in listening to the podcast?” She loves Instagram. So I said, “Hey, I’m on Instagram. Let’s follow each other.” And the next week at the baseball game, she was like, “Oh, I’ve been learning all this stuff. I realized my ex is abusive.”

And in my head I’m thinking, I know. I’ve been trying to tell you that. I was actually a little frustrated and confused, apparently she wasn’t interested in listening to me to educate her about abuse in person.

I Start Healing With Daily Instagrams & The BTR Workshop

Anne: When it came down to it, the only thing that mattered to me was that she started opening up to the idea that these men she had been dating were abusive. Then I saw the beauty of it.

Because she’s not into podcasts. For her, the little bite-size pieces helped her realize what’s happening when her husband lies about small things. Some women have a hard time leaning into the pain, because that doesn’t feel safe. And so just a little bit at a time is helpful to them. Every woman is different. On social media, we’re all equal. We can interact with other women who’ve been through it. Thanks for sharing that story about how my post on Instagram helped you.

What else has helped you connect with yourself?

Jenna The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Workshop was super helpful. I found them healing and so sacred. They helped me connect with myself and visualize stepping into safety, when that’s scary for me in real life. It helped me visualize myself becoming empowered and accepting that I don’t know what’s going to happen. Also loving myself. There’s one where you revisit your younger self and express love. I felt like it was so healing and powerful for me. I love and value the meditations.

Anne: Yeah, I remember you messaged me right after you did the, “I am just right” meditation. And you said you were crying. I assume those were good tears?

Jenna: Oh, definitely. Yeah, it was the healing tears, where you just had that moment. You feel love for this part of yourself that needed that love. I just loved it.

Anne: I wanted to do those betrayal meditations so that women could process their emotions differently. Which is similar with the infographics and metaphors.

Abuse Education Is Available Through the BTR Podcast & Workshop

Anne: Different types of content or services speak to women in different ways. I’m proud of Betrayal Trauma Recovery. Through Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we’ve created so many avenues for women to get educated about abuse. This podcast is obviously the best way to educate yourself about abuse. Because this podcast is mostly victim stories. And hearing other women’s experience. And realizing. Holy cow, my husband lies about small things, too. It’s so validating.

Then having those visual representations of the concepts I teach on the podcast with the infographics on Instagram and on our social media channels is so helpful. The interaction is what makes social media so powerful. And Betrayal Trauma Recovery is the only organization that teaches the strategies of how to get to safety in such a detailed and practical way in The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Workshop.

And then, of course, we never leave any woman alone in this journey. To get help implementing the strategies you learned in the workshop, to get help actually applying the concepts you learn on social media or through this podcast.

We have online group sessions with coaches that I personally trained. In our Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions, women share from the heart and get real-time face-to-face feedback from our coaches and other women in the group session. Our team is incredible. We are here for you!

Our Whole Goal Is To Help Women Understand Abuse

Anne: We really care, and it’s my goal and the goal of the whole Betrayal Trauma Recovery team to help every woman understand this. We don’t want anyone trapped in abuse. Like you, Jenna, you’ve been able to apply this stuff and get shelter from the storm. I’m so honored to hear your story. Thank you so much for coming on today.

Jenna: Anne, thanks for all you’ve done for creating Betrayal Trauma Recovery. I love this community. It’s been so helpful to me. I’m really grateful.

This episode makes sense on it’s own. However, if you want to hear more episodes with Jenna:
1: Is It Wrong To Check Your Husband’s Phone? – Jenna’s Experience
2: The Best Way To Explain Betrayal Trauma
3: How To Recognize Victim Blaming – Jenna’s Story
4: When He Lies About Small Things, This Brilliant Analogy Offers Insight (THIS EPISODE)

When most people hear the word “controlling,” they imagine something obvious, like intimidation, yelling, locking doors, or constant threats. But often, the hidden signs husband is controlling your life are much quieter, even ordinary. They show up as concern, charm, or “helpfulness.” And sometimes, the most confusing part is this: a controlling husband may accuse you of being the controlling one. He twists reality until you start questioning your own motives, wondering if maybe he’s right. To discover if you’re emotionally abused, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

By the time the patterns become clear, many women already feel stuck—trapped between who they were told he was and who he’s revealed himself to be.

What Are The Signs A Husband Is Controlling? 7 Questions to Ask

If your husband has ever accused you of being controlling, it’s likely that he’s the one controlling. So before I get to our guest interview, here are seven questions to help you uncover the signs husband is controlling.

1. Does his version of romance mean, he’s just pressuring you?
2. When you raise concerns, does he dismiss these concerns or maybe blame shift or play the victim?
3. When you say no, does he push past it, punish you, or guilt you so that you give in?
4. Does he lean on you to carry his load, so much that you have to put your own load on the back burner.
5. Do his kind gestures or gifts come with strings attached?
6. Does he act like two different people: kind in public, but demeaning in private?
7. Have you noticed your world shrinking? Less time for hobbies, friends, family, any outside support?

Control is a domestic abuse issue, so it’s not about just one incident. The key is to look for patterns over time. If you see signs husband is controlling you and need live support, attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session today.

Transcript: How To Know If Your Husband Is Controlling in Marriage

Anne: We have a member of our community on today’s episode. We’re gonna call her Candace. Candace felt nervous, so she actually prepared a written version of her story. She’s going to read sometimes, and then sometimes I’ll ask her questions. Here’s a poignant part of her story that illustrates the signs husband is controlling her.

Candace: Before I knew him, he worked at the library on campus, and looked up my information on the library database, my phone number, and where I lived. He drove by my house with the excuse he had come to town for a haircut. I would say that was stalking. He would then quote Bible verses to me that a wife’s body is not her own. A wife needs to submit to her husband. I felt sick to my stomach, started questioning my own sanity, and said to myself, I’m broken.

Anne: We will get to that part of her story in just a minute. Welcome, Candace.

Candace: Thank you, Anne for having me.

Anne: So Candace, let’s start at the beginning. How did you feel about your husband when you first met him?

Candace: We met at college in my second year, and he knew me before I knew him, because he worked at the library on campus. He looked up my information on the library database, my phone number, and where I lived. Once he found my information and I was in his sight, as a good catch. He drove by my house with the excuse later he had come to town for a haircut. I would say that was stalking. In my gut, I did not want to date him, and when he first asked me out, I said no.

Early Signs husband is Controlling in Dating: When Romance Comes with Pressure

Candace: But the next time he asked me, he asked me for a coffee, and I said, “You need to ask my dad.” Thinking my dad would say no, and that would be the end of it. My parents raised me in a Christian home, it was kind of implied. You needed to make sure the guy asked your dad before you went out. My dad said yes,

Anne: Was there something about him that you thought your dad would say, she can’t go out with this guy?

Candace: In the past, I had dated some other guys, and my dad was like, no, that one’s not good. So I’m thinking my dad’s just gonna say no, and it’ll be the end of it. And I won’t have to worry about it. But my husband was a very smooth guy, and he fooled us all. When my dad met him. He thought he was a professor, a smart person and stuff.

We started dating, and I began to think this is my one chance. No other guy would want me, so I better go for it. He checks all the boxes. He’s a Christian, he’s nice to me. He loves me. He’s kind, and he would come to my work and leave notes on my car. We would go to the movies. We would hang out with my friend and family. I didn’t know to look for signs husband is controlling.

When we played games. he was always very attentive and wanted to do everything with me. Then one time he invited me to his house. He was renting while still in college. And he made me supper. Then afterwards, we started watching a movie. He jumped on top of me, and I thought two things.

Confessions and False Hope: Signs Husband Is Controlling Before Marriage

Candace: One, get off me. I just want to watch the movie. And two, but he made me supper, so I better be good. I felt I couldn’t say no to his advances. Our clothes stayed on, but I still felt so violated after that. We dated for about a year. Then we were engaged for 10 months. My soon-to-be husband confessed an addiction to pornography before we married. Beginning when he was a teenager, looking at images on his computer.

But he assured me that once we married, that would go away. Because there would be no more guilt, since he had a wife and could have all the sex he wanted. I remember going to my mom and telling her about what he confessed to me. I remember her saying to me, “It would be something that I would have to deal with for the rest of my life. And was I ready to do that?”

I wasn’t even sure what it meant, so I said yes, I can do this. He loves me and it’ll be okay. I soon found out that no matter how much sex I gave my husband, he was still struggling with pornography. I would say the more sex I gave him, the more he got into the pornography, and he was good at keeping it a secret from me. He was very smart and very technical. He built his own computer, so he knew all the tricks to wipe his computer of his history going to these pornography sites.

From Compliance to Control: The Patterns That Shaped Me

Candace: In the first few months of our marriage, My husband confessed to me. He had fallen into temptation on his computer. I said, why would you do that when I was in the bed next to you? You could just ask me and I would give you sex. I grew up in a Christian home, went to church every Sunday. My parents homeschooled my siblings and me. We lived a pretty sheltered life. We were not a touchy feely sort of family. I knew they loved me and never doubted it. I was a very compliant child who always helped everyone, especially my mom raising my younger siblings.

And I was a mom to my two youngest siblings and was good at doing the laundry, cleaning and making meals. One thing that stands out for me about my childhood is that I wasn’t allowed to show my feelings. If I was angry or sad, I was told to go to my room until I had a better attitude. So going into my marriage, I was always very compliant, didn’t complain, and if something needed to be done, I would do it. I thought I was not that smart or worthy, so I should be thankful that my husband picked me. But if I looked back and thought about it, I had put myself and my brother through college.

I had a job, my own car and insurance, and no debt. My dream was to always be a mom to homeschool my kids. I married for that and wanted that the whole first year into my marriage. I think it was a few weeks after the honeymoon, when my in-laws came to my husband one day and said I needed birth control. Was this evidence of signs husband is controlling?

Signs Husband is Controlling You Through Rage, Manipulation, and Fear

Candace: This would be too much for my husband if we had a child right away. I did not listen to them, and I got pregnant early in our first year of marriage. I miscarried in October, about 10 weeks along in my pregnancy, and I felt devastated and blamed myself.

My husband was happy that I had miscarried. He didn’t have to feed and care for another person, and that hurt me all the more. My miscarriage, my husband’s rage started to come out. Rage is one of the other signs husband is controlling. I don’t remember what the fights were about, but one time he was angry about something, to the point where he was about to put his hands around my neck to choke me. Another time early into our marriage. I was so scared of his rage that I locked myself in the bathroom and called his parents to come. Once they arrived, my husband is sitting at the piano playing as if nothing would ever happen.

My husband got fired from his job. His story was that he got angry about having to work late, so he did something to one of the work vehicles so it wouldn’t start.

Another event that stands out in my mind while we were living in the trailer park with our neighbor beside us didn’t like us for whatever reason, and one day I decided to go over with a tin of cookies as a peace offering. My husband came with me. We went up to the door. My husband knocked, and the neighbor didn’t come to the door. So my husband yells, I know you’re in there. The neighbor answers the door, and I hand the cookies over and say something nice.

When Others See The Signs Husband Is Controlling

Candace: I don’t remember what my husband says, but the neighbor takes offense and closes the door in my husband’s face. At this point, he’s angry and bangs on the door. The neighbor opens the door and tells me to get my husband off their porch. All I could think was what just happened? And why did my husband become so angry?

Anne: If you had to guess right now, what would you say happened with the neighbors?

Candace: I think she knew something was off with my husband. She, from the get go, did not like us living beside her and renting. And if he had his vehicle over on a little patch of a grass, she would yell at him. I don’t know if she was in tune with that.

Anne: Or maybe she’d caught him looking in her window? So he had told you he had a thing with pornography. Did he end up going to a program?

Candace: So my husband decided to get help for his pornography addiction. Pornography is one of the signs husband is controlling. He joined an online men’s program specifically, and he had a mentor in that program. He also talked to our pastor about it, so our pastor was aware of it as well. And we also had an older couple in our church that mentored both of us. I’ll never forget, she said, “Just give your husband more sex. Why are you withholding that from your husband?”

Once our fourth child was born, I went into deep baby blues, and one night I had just finished nursing and headed back to bed. At 4:45 in the morning, my husband wanted sex and just raped me.

When Signs husband is Controlling Intensify Behind Closed Doors

Candace: For years after, he would make jokes about it, saying 4:45, 4:45. I didn’t think it was rape at the time, I thought it was my wifely duty to make sure my husband got sex whenever he wanted. I felt used and dirty, I did not understand it at all. But in my body, I knew something wasn’t right. I discovered that anything I did tell him, he would save and then pull it out again whenever it suited him. This lack of respect for me was one of the signs hisband is controlling.

We started having more fights, and it was usually around me not communicating right. He started to see a therapist for his depression, but also for our marriage. Since I didn’t communicate properly.

Anne: Oh, my word, I’m so sorry. I hear these stories every day, and it’s still heartbreaking every time. It’s awful. When he started seeing the therapist, was this his idea?

Candace: It was his idea, yes.

Anne: As you’re sharing your story, I think many women think, well, if he would just get into a program or go to therapy, maybe we could solve our problems. Did you think that at all before he went to the program or before he went to therapy?

Candace: Because he had struggled with depression, I thought he needed help. I didn’t know enough about the pornography and his secret sexual basement to know how to deal with that. So when he started going to therapists, it was just for the depression. Then he was like, maybe you should come to for our marriage, because we were starting to have more arguments and such.

Anne: Okay, and when he started going to therapy for his depression. Did you think things are gonna get better?

He ripped up My written Thoughts

Anne: Can you take me back to your mindset back then? Not knowing what you know now, obviously, ’cause we don’t know. All of us were in that stage. I thought this therapist will help us. What was your feeling about him going to therapy?

Candace: Yeah, I thought it would help. Our first session, my husband complained about me not communicating well. I thought I’m naturally a quiet person and prefer to listen to people instead of forcing my opinion. The therapist told me I was to go home and write down my thoughts that I wanted to share with my husband. The next session, these thoughts were on a paper, ready to read to the therapist.

My husband and I started reading it. And I don’t remember what I had written. But my husband got so angry that he walked out of this session and left without saying a word. He was gone for about 30 minutes, and a therapist didn’t know what to do. And said to me, This has never happened to him before. It wasn’t really a shock to me, because that’s what my husband would do if he didn’t get what he wanted. He would drive off and then come back as if nothing had happened. Yet, another of the signs husband is controlling.

So once my husband finally returned to the therapist’s office, the therapist said it would be best for my husband to rip up the papers I had written and throw them into the fireplace. So, my husband did that right there. It made me feel like nothing I said mattered. It was only about my husband.

We also attended some conferences. One of them was about prayer.

Told I needed to dwell on my husband’s good traits

Candace: I had an encounter or vision that I was in a bright area with light all around. The light felt safe and warm. And then Jesus wrapped me in his arms, and I felt completely safe and at peace. He said, “I’ve got you.” My husband did not have anything like that, which I thought was so strange.

Anne: Were these marriage conferences?

Candace: Yeah. The first one was, the second was a conference specifically for couples dealing with infidelity and pornography addiction. And at that conference, we had a couple that mentored us. I’ll never forget what the wife of the husband mentor said to me. She gave me a notebook and said I needed to write down all the good traits of my husband and dwell on those things instead of being negative.

I never did that. We are also part of a Bible study group that met once a week. We had one night the topic of forgiveness, and I asked the leader, “How long do you have to forgive someone if they keep hurting me with the same thing over and over and over again?” They didn’t have an answer for me. Back home, my husband was so upset with me. Because he said I had put it on him, and I was like, I wish I hadn’t said anything. But at the same time, I wanted to know. What do you do? And at that point I still didn’t know about signs husband is controlling and boundaries.

Anne: Did you ask that in front of your husband at the time

Candace: Yes, yes I did.

Anne: He was there and he heard the question? Okay.

Candace: But I didn’t say any names or stuff like that. I just said in general.

Signs husband is controlling: every vacation my husband has a Blow up

Candace: I was a busy mom looking after four kids now, homeschooling them. I did everything that needed to be done, when your husband doesn’t help with housework. He worked all day. And then came home and be on his computer or phone. If I asked him to do something, it took forever, so I became independent and did everything around the house. So it’s my job to run the house, even do the outdoor work. I did it all. I rarely left my kids alone with my husband. If I did, it was only for a short time. I took my kids everywhere with me.

There were two times that he watched them. That was when my one child broke their arm walking around the outside of the trampoline. And another time, my child cut their forehead deep enough that it needed stitches. But because my husband didn’t think it was too serious, he didn’t do anything. I told my husband to take our child to the hospital to get the arm x-rayed to see if it was broken. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been checked out.

As the kids got older, we went on family trips. And every vacation, my husband had some kind of blow up over the strangest thing. One time we camped and he got all upset with me that I didn’t have my phone with me. And he tried to text me. He said he was almost going to call a missing person search on me. I was so confused since it wasn’t a big camp. I was at the beach fishing with my nephews, and why would I have my phone on me at camp?

We still had fights every couple of weeks about him not getting enough texts from me.

Things start to fall apart during Covid

Candace: He would then quote Bible verses to me. “A wife’s body is not her own. A wife needs to submit to her husband.” It made me sick to my stomach, and I started questioning my own sanity and saying to myself, I’m broken. There must be something wrong with me. But I don’t like sex and never have our entire marriage. My husband also liked having long discussions late into the night. And sometimes even. woke me up to have a long talk about something that he felt was important to talk about. I always felt worse after the long talk and questioned myself, whereas my husband was always so happy.

Things started to fall apart when COVID hit, and my husband moved back home and had a home office. He loved being at home and could come down whenever he wanted to check on us, have lunch with us, go for walks. I hated it. I was now seeing more signs husband is controlling, and he loved having control.

It got so bad, He would pick all the movies he could watch, the music, we could listen to. If my friends came over, he had to sit with us and dominate the conversation. And if we went anywhere in the vehicle, he would pick the music. If I put earbuds in to listen to something else, he would get upset with me. so I wasn’t allowed to do that. He would control the temperature in the house with his phone, so if I changed it, he would put it back. I started to have conversations with my sister about what was going on and how I was feeling,

Anne: Did your husband know?

Candace: Yes, he’d say, “Hey, I love you. You are just depressed.”

I recognize the abuse

Candace: At this point, my sister starts sending me YouTube videos to watch about narcissists, and I start going down the rabbit trail. I started listening to a podcast, but something was still missing for me. And then she had you on Anne as a guest on one of her podcasts, and right away that was the piece missing. You told it like it was. Pornography is abuse, and that’s exactly what I’d experienced. I started to become a little caterpillar, eating it all up. At some point in my journey, I moved out of the bedroom and slept upstairs with my kids.

I bought a mattress and just moved it around from room to room. My kids wanted to have me up there, because they started to have bad dreams. And were afraid to come out of their rooms when my husband was in the house. My husband now became a spiritual leader, and had to read the Bible to us at every meal and pray for us if we left the house. It was crazy. He said he had found the Holy Spirit, and now truly knew what it meant to be a Christian.

He told me I needed to forgive and move forward, because he no longer did pornography, and I could trust him. A week later, he gets my phone and reads all my messages to see what I’ve been saying to my sister. Trust, huh?

Anne: Really quick, did you tell him you were listening to BTR or tell him anything about BTR at the time?

Candace: No, I did not tell him. I kept that all very quiet.

Anne: Okay.

Going to my husband’s therapist: signs husband is controlling

Candace: My sister warned me too. She said, the more you tell him, the more ammunition he will use, because he was still seeing a therapist, and he’s just giving him more tools for his tool belt that he can use against you.

Anne: Yeah, increasing tools.

Candace: Then he confessed he read my phone, but it was okay if I wanted to open my own bank account. And I was like, thank you. I’m glad I have your permission now.

Anne: Wow.

Candace: So my husband then wants me to meet with his therapist of 15 years. And at first I said no, because he had built a relationship with him for a long time and it just didn’t feel right. I didn’t wanna repeat my words being ripped up and thrown into the fire again. But my husband persisted and said his therapist worked with couples all the time and marriage problems. So I met with his therapist without my husband, and I say to the therapist, my husband always has the right words, and no one will ever believe me.

The therapist says he’s not going to be fooled. And proceeds to tell me how I need to encourage my husband and welcome him back when he punched through the door yet again. Another therapist doesn’t see it. It was only about saving the marriage at the cost of losing more of myself, to lift my husband up.

I never had another session with the therapist and instead kept listening to more and more BTR podcasts. My sister warned me not to go to another session or couple session with my husband.

Finally a therapist believes me

Candace: And she then recommended a therapist that deals specifically with abuse. The first session I go to, I say to the therapist, “My husband Is a words guy and always has the right words to say. I can never get it right no matter what I say. And no one will ever believe me if I said I’ve been abused.” Or believe signs husband is controlling.

And she shows me an apple and said, if I cut this apple on the outside, you would see all the marks I’ve made. But if I take that same apple and drop it on the floor or bang it against the table, it still looks fine from the outside. If I cut open that apple, you would see it’s all bruised inside. That is what you are going through. I said to her, “All I have to do is survive until my youngest is 18 years old.”

And she says to me, after I tell her more of my story, that I probably only had about two years before my husband did something more drastic to keep me stuck. Because he’s going to realize I’m pulling away even more. And his outbursts are becoming more and more potent, and using words against me, by saying, “I promised I would stay for the kids, divorce is not an option, we’ll go bankrupt. We made a covenant before God about marriage. Are you breaking that covenant of God?”

By October I found out what boundaries are, and I put it through Christ to protect myself because my body was now shaking. Or it felt like my skin was on fire, burning my flesh.

my husband smashes my kid’s pumpkin

Candace: I asked him not to touch me, not make comments about how beautiful I look, was that he loves me so much, stepping over those boundaries. Then he had another blow up after returning from a business trip. We had carved pumpkins. My oldest carved a Disney character from a movie. My husband said it was a devil pumpkin and wanted me to get rid of it. I refused and said it was not a devil pumpkin. My husband then took the pumpkin and smashed the pumpkin in the driveway.

My oldest was devastated and confused about why he would smash that pumpkin. And not our youngest siblings pumpkin carved a witch on it. I was still sleeping upstairs and had moved in more permanently to my second oldest child. I went to my therapist again and told about the pumpkin smash and other blow ups that were happening. M y therapist said I didn’t have years, but months now before it would escalate again.

So in November, my husband was on another business trip. My kids and I packed up all we could with the help of some friends and family, and moved to my parents’ house. One of the friends that helped us move commented later about how shocking it was to see my kids looking very happy. Instead of sad and crying, it’s like they knew it was bad enough. My dad and I met with my husband 5 days later to discuss things. My dad, being very insightful, put a no trespass order on his place. So, my husband could not stalk us.

The Moment I See signs Husband Is Controlling Everything

Candace: My dad also had my husband sign a paper that said he would continue to look after the kids and I and not cancel my credit card or my phone. My husband kept saying to my dad, people don’t understand, I don’t understand why my wife wants to leave me. My husband would send emails picking days that would work for him to see the kids, and I responded back by saying they didn’t wan to visit with him at this time. I also found my kids and I had nightmares a lot now, and I wasn’t sure what that was.

Our bodies dealing with the trauma. At the end of December, I sent my husband an email saying he had three options. One, let the kids and I move back into the house, and he finds his own place to live. Two, we sell the house and both find our own places. Or three, both hire lawyers and duke it out, so to speak. He sends back that he wants to talk things out with me, and he doesn’t like to get into a legal battle. He then removes me from our joint email account, so I can no longer have access to our bank account, credit card or phone bills, nothing.

And then over the next month, he removes me from other things we shared on our phones or deletes messages he sent to me on our app. and lies to me that it’s normal for things to disappear on the app after a while.

Anne: When he started doing this, were you surprised? That happened to me too. It happens to so many of us.

Signs Husband is Controlling: Financial Manipulation and Legal Traps

Anne: But before it happened in my mind, I still hadn’t wrapped my head around what I was dealing with. So when he shut down the bank account, I was in shock. When you started seeing signs husband is controlling access to accounts, how did you feel?

Candace: Yes, I was definitely in shock after he started shutting me from the email account, because I’m like, why? Why would you do that? We’ve had this joint one for years.

Anne: Especially after he’s just said, Hey, let’s just talk. We can work it out. It’s like what? You’ve just said.

Candace: Mm-hmm.

Anne: Everything will be okay, and then you do that.

Candace: Yeah, and the thing was, he said about the email too, that was an alias for mine actually. And I’m like, that doesn’t make any sense to me. Because then said, well, I’ll just forward you stuff. So he forwarded me stuff from that email address. I’m like, you can’t tell me it’s an alias for your other one. It just didn’t make sense to me.

Anne: It didn’t make sense ’cause he was lying.

Candace: Exactly. So in January, I go to the bank to get access to the joint account. Something was off at the meeting with the banker. And then I find out later, my husband has closed our savings account. And I only have access to the checking account. Two weeks later, I get a message from his lawyer saying I have to the end of the month to seek my own lawyer. I can’t go into detail right now.

Anne: So he lies to you and says, Hey, let’s just work it out. Can we just talk? In the meantime, he is getting his own lawyer.

He’s forcing the kids to visit him

Anne: In the meantime, he is shutting down all the bank accounts, moving money, doing all the things. And then when he is ready, he is like, okay, now you have to get your own lawyer. But before he is like, no, let’s just chat. Everything will work out. It is deliberately lying to you so that he could prepare.

Candace: Very deliberate, yeah, so I can’t go into too much detail right now. All I can say is we’re going through hell. Every step along the way has been difficult. Trying to protect my kids, who are forced to visit their dad. My husband is good at playing the victim, and he keeps saying, I have no idea. My therapist says your kids are of the age, so they can choose whether or not they go.

But because I’m in this collaborative process and they say that I have told my kids that their dad is this horrible person, I need to tell my kids that he’s so lovable, and we need to go there and have a great time with your dad.

Anne: It is like reunification therapy basically.

Candace: It is just so frustrating right now.

Anne: I’m so sorry. It’s an extension of the abuse. And he probably knew that and prepared for that, and then got you stuck in it.

Candace: Yeah, and my lawyer, I didn’t share a lot of information because I knew it would get back to my husband . So probably like three or four meetings in my lawyer said, I just wanna have a talking with you one-on-one. I get the impression that this is not going right, and that you’re not happy with this process.

Court ordered to send the kids to their dad’s

Candace: And she’s like, I wanna hear your story. So I was like, here’s what’s happening. I said, my kids and I are trying to get out of this safe. And she says, okay, that makes a lot of sense. She is more on my side now, but at the beginning, and I was the only one in the room fighting for myself. Everybody in that room was all about my husband and what he needed, and he was just a great guy, and I had turned the kids against him.

Anne: I am so, so sorry. It is awful, and it’s happening with everyone. Women trying to get to safety, can’t get to safety because they’re court ordered or put through this process that makes it worse, and they miss these signs husband is controlling. And you wouldn’t think it wouldn’t be like this, but it’s really bad right now. I am so sorry. I’m glad you know what’s going on. That is great, but it’s almost like more traumatizing to know what is going on and that you can’t get help.

Candace: And it hurts so much because I’m like, this is a person I trusted. How can that person I thought I could trust be so the opposite, like my husband is lying to me. And to him, it’s all about the money and those kids. Because he cannot get to me anymore, he wants those kids. Every weekend, the kids have to go to his house.

My youngest son right now, he said, Mom, I used to love weekends, and now I hate them. Here’s the other thing that gets interesting. I joined BTR and started attending the BTR sessions. I met Coach Jo, and Coach Sharon.

Our family wizard works to help signs husband is controlling

Candace: I also listened to the podcasts and had listened to Coach Jo’s story. Then I enrolled in the Living Free Workshop. My eyes were finally open, and I could see the signs husband is controlling as I go through all this legal stuff.

And the message has been so helpful. Like you say in the workshop. And I talked with Coach Jo, my lawyer, and his lawyer recommended Our Family Wizard. My husband made a big stink about Our Family Wizard. But I was like, “No, we’re doing this Family Wizard.”

I’ve sent him two messages on there, and I love it. I think it’s a great way to do parenting and figure out the scheduling and all that. I was like, this is so easy to use because I am not technical at all. Yet, my husband, who’s very technical, doesn’t want it because he is not in control.

Anne: Well, it also, he has to be accountable. Every thing he writes or does is documented. And you can’t say, oh, I didn’t get it, because it says when you got it. Or you can’t say, yeah, I’m reading the messages, because it says if you read it or not.

Candace: Yes, and I love that feature, ’cause I can just go in, I’m like, “Nope, he hasn’t seen it yet. Nope, he hasn’t been on yet,” But the lawyers agree with it. Then my husband went to his lawyer and said, “I’m really concerned about BTR. Because it talks about abuse and DARVO and all this stuff.” I was then told I needed to get off that.

I’m not allowed to have a support group

Anne: Wait, who told you you couldn’t listen to a podcast and go to a support group? Your lawyers?

Candace: His lawyer, because he had said BTR was abusive. And he was really concerned, because it wasn’t teaching me good things. It was teaching me that pornography was abuse. I put it on my credit card.

Anne: So quick, this issue of the credit card is a concern for many women, so we actually made a change. Any charge for our services will be listed on your statement as help.btr.org. That actually goes to a dummy wellness site, talks about hormones on there. So if your husband sees help.btr.org and he goes to that site, it doesn’t even have any information really. You can check it out.

We couldn’t do a totally random site. It had to be recognizable, because for a while we did like a completely random site, and women did not recognize the charge. And then they ended up disputing, and then they were like, no, wait, I do want your services. So as she talks about this, know that now any charge for our services will be listed on your statement as help.btr.org. Which is that dummy wellness site. Getting abuse education is bad for abuse victims, apparently.

Candace: Apparently, but he was allowed to have whatever group he wanted, but as soon as I had a group, oh no. That was not allowed. Yeah, it made no sense.

Anne: Heaven forbid you find out what he is doing. They’re like, oh shoot, that is what I do. She’ll know exactly what I’m doing.

Candace: Yes, I’m from a Christian background.

Still walking and going forward

Candace: I have done the meditations in the workshop to calm my body. The first one, I don’t even know what the right word is, but I could picture myself with the lights. It was so peaceful, and it felt so wonderful to have that feeling again after being in this fight and flight mode so much.

Anne: I am so glad. I’m so glad you found Living Free helpful. It took me a long time to create all the illustrations. And the videos in that format. ‘Cause it’s so drastically different than anything a therapist will tell you or anything, like a court professional will tell you, they’ll, I’ll say stuff like, make sure you communicate clearly. Apparently, if you were the world’s most perfect communicator, your problems would go away with this guy. So, because it’s so drastically different, I was like I really need to do visuals so women can process it.

Candace: I was like, oh, that makes so much sense now, I’m very visual. And to picture that in my mind what was happening.

Yeah, and I also remember being in a group session with Coach Jo, and she said to me, “Imagine you’re walking up a mountain, but you’re like going around it because you can’t go straight up. You have to go around it. And on one side of the mountain, you’re on the light. It’s very bright, sunny, and beautiful, but on the backside it’s very dark and shadow, and sometimes we’re on the bright side and sometimes we’re on the dark side. You’re still going up.” And that has stuck with me, where I’m still walking and going forward.

Signs husband is controlling: I still question myself

Candace: But there are times where it is super hard and there are times where it’s like super good and I’m just like, wow. Like I’m so thankful.

Anne: I think that’s another thing that Living Free really helps women understand and see signs husband is controlling. The reason it’s gonna be hard, and the reason it’s gonna be very hard, is because of their character and the way they interact. They’re in that cave and doing what they’re doing on purpose. So there’s never gonna be a time, unfortunately, where they realize that what they’re doing is hurting us because they know they’re doing it, and that was hard for me to understand.

Candace: Well, I did go over it with my daughter a couple of times. Because I find that I still question myself at times and say, “Would it have been better to stay in the marriage and keep my head down?” A very close friend of mine sent me this, and I just wanna read it.

She wrote, “I know how much of a struggle it can be making the hard decisions. I’m sorry, you’re having to walk the road of even having to make them. Yes, your kids are hurting, and so are you. Do you honestly think they’re hurting because you left your husband, or because of what your husband has and is still doing? Staying wouldn’t have made it any better. If your kids are getting to an age where it was obvious something was going on, it would’ve hurt no matter what. And that’s not your fault. That’s a consequence of your husband’s choice.”

having Him out of my space made the biggest difference

Candace: “God has you, and he is in all the details. It doesn’t make sense now, but hopefully someday it will.” That really spoke to me that day. There will be hard days, but there’s also good days ahead.

Anne: It’s hard to see who they are until we actually get some distance, and then once we do, it’s so shocking. It’s hard for our eyes to process it. I felt like, and I’m not sure if you feel like this. Even though it’s so hard right now, at least not having him in my space, it made the biggest difference.

Candace: Yes. The biggest thing for me is now that I’m out of that and living here. I feel okay with myself now.

Anne: Oh, that’s great. Also to know that you were always okay, and there was never anything wrong with you. You just needed to get away from the harm. The thing that was hurting you would stop. You didn’t have to go through a year of therapy, and so many women who are going through therapy or some kind of program or whatever, with this abusive man thinking they’ve got something wrong with them that they need to work on.They might have some things that aren’t healthy that they may be doing as a result of being abused, but safety is the treatment.

Candace: Right, yes.

Anne: Candace, I appreciate you taking the time to share your story. Thank you so much.

Candace: Thank you so much for having me on.

Have you noticed that your husband now criticizes the very traits he once loved? Narcissists groom victims by presenting themselves as safe, loving, and trustworthy at first, to gain trust and lower a woman’s defenses before causing harm.

When women understand three common ways narcissists groom victims, they can begin to see what’s really happening. Grooming often works quietly. Emotional abusers use a cycle of praise, pity, and confusion to keep women questioning themselves instead of questioning his behavior. This is why grooming feels good at first, because the intent stays hidden until the damage is already underway.

To know if it’s grooming, you’ll also need to know if he’s using any one of these 19 different emotional abuse tactics. Take our free emotional abuse quiz to find out.

1. Narcissists Groom Victims With Compliments He’ll Later Use To Attack You

Narcissists groom victims with compliments that feel personal and sincere. Early on, they pay close attention to what matters to you, what you feel good about, and what you’re insecure about. Later, they use those same things to criticize, confuse, or control you.

This is why many women don’t see red flags before a relationship or marriage begins. At first, it feels like he truly sees you and appreciates who you are. Over time, you realize that what felt like love and admiration was actually preparation.

2.Narcissists Groom With DARVO

DARVO means Deny, Attack, and then Reverse the Victim and Offender roll. This is when someone who is truly hurting you claims that you are hurting them.

3. Narcissists Groom Victims With Sob Stories

Playing the victim is a common tactic narcissists groom victims with. The truth is that many, many people have had traumatic childhoods and it’s not a reason to abuse anyone. In fact, many people with traumatic childhoods are the healthiest people you’ll ever meet.

Abuse is a choice. When a narcissist says he’s lying (or any other abusive behavior) because of his traumatic childhood, he’s just trying to groom you into thinking he has a good reason or excuse. He’s also trying to make you feel sorry for him. He’s NOT choosing to be a healthy person. If he was, he wouldn’t have done it in the first place. To hear Chelsea’s entire story, read on or listen to the full podcast episode above.

Full Transcript: 3 Ways Narcissists Groom Victims

Anne: Today, I’m joined by a member of our community. We’re going to call her Chelsea.

Chelsea shares how her husband was grooming her in ways she couldn’t see at the time, and how his true character revealed itself gradually. It wasn’t obvious cruelty at first. He was charming, praised her, and even showed empathy.

As Chelsea shared her story, I noticed three familiar ways narcissists groom victims in the things her husband did repeatedly to confuse her. I want to briefly name these so you can listen for them as the conversation unfolds.

First, early compliments that later became weapons. Traits he admired at the beginning were eventually used to criticize.
Second, DARVO—deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender. When confronted about harm, he claimed he was the one being hurt.
And third, sob stories designed to pull empathy, which later became excuses for harmful behavior.

So listen for these as Chelsea shares her story. Welcome, Chelsea.

Chelsea: Hi. I’m so glad to be here. Betrayal Trauma Recovery has helped me so much.

Anne: When you first met your husband, or maybe when you first got married did you recognize his behaviors as abuse?

Chelsea: No, I definitely didn’t. I guess everything’s hindsight 20/20, but at the time I was a single mom of two kids myself, so I don’t know if it was just insecurities. It happened slowly, and it circled around insecurities I had so I didn’t really notice it at first.

Anne: When did you start recognizing like something’s not quite right?

1. Narcissists Groom By Giving Compliments They Will Later Attack You With

Chelsea: I would say it was like, a few months into dating. I guess the biggest thing for me was all the things he originally complimented me about or liked about me, he made comments about that in a derogatory kind of way. So, I guess that’s why they recognize it as abuse. I remember being emotionally distressed but not really understanding why.

Anne: So, he kind of changed his tune? So, I’m just using this as an example. Maybe he said you’re so beautiful, I’m so attracted to you, and then later maybe he was like you’re not attractive to me.

Chelsea: Yeah, a couple of examples early on where I was single and I have a really good co-parenting relationship with my ex-husband. I had the perfect situation for me, I had my kids during the week and on the weekends.

I was 25 years old back then; this was five years ago, and I kind had the best of both worlds. I’m a very social butterfly, life of the party kind of person and I love to wear red lipstick. That’s just a small example because he did end up using that against me a lot. It was like one of those weird off to the side things, but stuff like that.

He complimented me that I am so fun, and he likes how I do my makeup and stuff like that. And then even like how I am a good mom. Then fast forward a few months, it all slowly started going downhill.

He started saying things like you have children at home, why are you acting like this? And why do you wear makeup like that? That’s really how the very beginning of it started.

Recognizing The Abuse

Anne: This is the first way narcissists groom victims, by giving us compliments. And we’re so grateful to have someone see us. Notice us appreciate us. Then later they use those same things that they once complemented us about against us. So later they weaponize what they learn about us, and then they use the thing that they complimented us about against us later. These narcissist husbands don’t want us to leave.

Which is such a betrayal. So many victims don’t see any red flags before they get into a relationship or marriage, because the grooming is so specific to us. They’re very good at manipulating us to feel like they truly see and appreciate us in the beginning.

Then they purposefully compliment us, then later weaponize it. So at the time, were you thinking, okay, once we’re married, then he’ll go back to realizing how great I am.

Chelsea: Yes and no. I got getting pregnant about a little less than a year of dating, and that was a whole fiasco. Right before I getting pregnant, I tried to cut it off. It took me years to realize it was abuse. So that definitely never really came into my mind, but it was so emotionally tumultuous.

I don’t know if that is a good word to use. I was like I can’t do this anymore. The way he would degrade me or like the way fights would go. I was like, I don’t want to do this anymore. And then that cycle of abuse was already in play. That wasn’t really any different than after we were married, but I tried to break up with him.

Narcissists Groom Victims Off & On To Keep Them Hooked

I actually moved away, a couple hours away, for a job. This will help me cut it off because it’s really hard to cut things off with an abuser.

To me that was like my way; you know, emotionally I was having a hard time cutting it off because he would always come back around. I thought if we’re physically not in the same place this should be good.

Well, he came to visit me on the weekends. It would always be this big whole thing. Narcissists groom victims using the cycle of abuse, and that definitely was happening still. Then I ended up finding out I was pregnant.

https://youtu.be/gvxpK9yloco

In hindsight, I tell the story sometimes now; I have multiple kids and this instance was like the only time I remember just like falling and sobbing on the floor. At the time, I just had started this new job, I was trying to start this new life.

I think it was more of that subconscious knowing that what was really happening underneath all of it was the abuse I was going through. How that was just going to make it so much worse, and it did.

Anne: So, you were married because you were pregnant, essentially?

Chelsea: Basically, yeah. Like he ended up begging for me back and like wanting to make it work and of course, add a pregnancy in there and you’re already vulnerable. Like in these cycles, at least that’s how it was for me, these cycles come around and add a pregnancy in there and it’s like, I really want this to work now.

Horror Honeymoon With an Abuser

I already have two other kids. I don’t want to have another kid and be a single mom. At that point, I still really wanted to be with him, but I was like fighting that war with myself. I just wanted to believe him when he said he wanted to make it work. So yeah, we ended up getting married, and even our wedding night was just horrible.

Anne: A lot of people have horror honeymoon stories or wedding night stories. Yeah, that’s awful.

So, you’re married and you’re pregnant. So many victims of emotional and psychological abuse, try to resist the abuse. By trying to stop it through common marriage advice, like loving serving, forgiving. Like being more understanding, thinking that if they act differently, it will protect them from the abuse.

It’s a really common form of resistance to abuse. What was your experience with this type of resistance to the abuse?

Chelsea: So, we end up getting married after the baby was born, he was a few months old at the time, because all this whole drama played out for a while before I ended up moving back and everything. But I didn’t notice, I moved back and that’s when I quit my job and like pretty much left my career.

I had a corporate career at that point, to be with him and be a stay-at-home mom. That’s like really what I thought I wanted at the time.

Anne: Yes, that is common, narcissists groom victims by making them dependent on them. Really quick, what’s his job?

Chelsea: He’s in the military.

Anne: Okay, so he’s got a stable, respectable job.

Narcissists Groom By Making Them Fully Dependent On Him

Chelsea: Yes, and that was used against me all the time. So then things really turned once I was fully dependent on him. That’s when things got even worse. At that point, we did some counseling and things like that, just like typical stuff. It’s crazy looking back on it now because, I don’t know what I was thinking. I think I really was just going through the motions. I don’t know any other way to describe it.

Anne: What did he seem like to the counselors? Did he seem like a really upstanding good guy to the counselors?

Chelsea: Yeah, and even through the years, like he will admit that he has “problems,” it would always be like yes, I have problems but it’s not me. As ironic as that is, you know what I mean?

Anne: If you just love me for who I am and help me out, but they’re your fault, because you’re not understanding and because you’re not patient and because you’re not forgiving or something.

Narcissists Groom By Blame Shifting

Chelsea: Or he would always blame my family because he came from like a very well-off family, and I didn’t. So, he always tried to make it seem like you know, I have a lot of trauma from my childhood. Which I feel like that plays into it, at least for me personally, and ending up in a situation like this, to begin with.

He would use that against me. Like well, you’re the one who has mental health issues. You’re the one who has trauma. Like it’s clearly not me, the only issues I have is, you know, the cheating or the prostitutes or whatever the case may be. Like, you are the one who is basically “crazy.” That was just really hard because I think in a way, I believed it.

Anne: Yes, narcissists groom victims by blame shifting. So, when did you recognize that this was abuse?

Chelsea: Oh, gosh, you know, not until probably the last six months to a year before I ended up leaving, which was earlier this year. I didn’t realize it was actual abuse. This is something he would say too, I was abusive. I’m not an abuser.

Anne: I play tennis, but I’m not a tennis player.

The “Toxic” Lie That Narcissists Use To Groom Victims (& Therapists)

Chelsea: Yeah, then he would even be like and, a lot of things he would say to like multiple marriage counselors we went to over the years were like, well, I used to be the abusive one but now we’re equal. Now we’re just toxic because we’re equal. Like that really came into play the last couple of years before I ended up leaving.

Anne: Because an abuser would never admit that he’s abusive.

Chelsea: Yeah, I think that’s part of it.

Anne: Then they believed him, right. You know what, this is a catch-22 because they admit they’re abusive, and suddenly they’re like a saint. Wow, this is a man who can really be honest and stuff.

In that way, you’re thrown under the bus because it’s like he’s changed what’s wrong with you? And then if they won’t admit it, and they just present as this really great guy, then they also are like, he’s a great guy. Like it’s a lose-lose. Either way, the woman isn’t believed. It’s a toxic lie narcissists groom victims with.

When Therapists Don’t Call Out Abuse

Chelsea: Yeah, and I will tell you something that happened when I was pregnant before we got married, and I was going to counseling or like therapy. I wish sometimes that they would call it for what it is. My therapist made it known that she did not like him, like as much as she could in a professional way, you know.

In hindsight, I’m thinking why didn’t she just tell me that was abuse? Instead of telling me, that’s not okay. You know, she was very adamant about that, I could see the conviction in what she said. But now in hindsight, why didn’t you just tell me I was being abused?

At Betrayal Trauma Recovery, there’s a lot of validation in group whenever I would have a situation the BTR coaches would tell me “this is what’s happening.” That was very validating for me.

Anne: Yeah. That’s what we do here at BTR. Validate. How did you find BTR?

Chelsea: The podcast.

Anne: So you start listening to The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast. And then did you start attending Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions?

Chelsea: I binge listened the podcast and I was like, Oh, this is my life. I knew I needed something to help me. So then I went to BTR Group. I tell everyone about BTR

Anne: You mentioned, it was really validating to attend Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions because the coaches were saying. This is abuse and you found that to be really validating and helpful. Why do you think having a group of women who really understand what you’re going through is so helpful for healing?

DARVO Is A Way Narcissists Groom Victims

Chelsea: I remember, I think my first session, I don’t even remember the incident that was happening, but I told one of the coaches. What was happening and they were like, that’s DARVO. And I’m like, I don’t even know what that is. And then when she told me, I was like, oh my gosh, like my mind was like blown because I was like, this happens to me constantly.

How did I never know there was a term for this? That gave me strength because they would label things .

Anne: So this is the second way that narcissist groom, their victims. To deny that they’re abusers then to attack their victim. And then to claim that they are the victim and there’s an acronym for this and it is DARVO.

So DARVO stands for DENY, ACCUSE (Or ATTACK), and then REVERSE the VICTIM and OFFENDER ROLES for example. Prominent people who are accused of rape,

Bill Cosby is a good example. Someone accuses him of rape. He denies that it happens. Then he attacks the victim and says, no, no, no, she’s just trying to get money. She’s just trying to get attention. I’m the victim here because she’s trying to ruin my life. So the victim offender role gets reversed.

So again, deny, attack, and then reverse the victim and offender role. This is the second grooming tactic of a narcissist. that we’re going to talk about today.

BTR Group Sessions Can Help You Process Trauma & Abuse

Chelsea: Yeah, now that I talk to more people about this openly, I say the same thing. I think that’s what it got to. It was like I could tell him he was abusive all day long, you know, that went on for 6-12 months after I put a label on it, and that didn’t really help because he would just deflect like he did everything else before I put a label on it.

I do feel like there’s a lot of validation, when I went to Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group, whenever I would have a situation in group, and they would tell me what it was, that was really validating for me. This is what’s happening, and it’s like okay. Because they make us question our reality so much.

Anne: I just want women to know that like, you don’t need someone else to tell you, although yes, it’s helpful, that’s what we do here at BTR. It’s abuse, it’s abuse, it’s abuse all day long. Because I’m like, I just wish women had that inside of themselves, but I’m so grateful that we’re here to help validate.

Chelsea: I think that goes hand-in-hand with the narcissist thing. Like people always want to know is he a narcissist? And I’m like well, it doesn’t really matter. The label doesn’t matter because how is he treating you?

I Get To Decide if I Want to Be In This Situation

Then I kept going through the process of moving out and everything, and something aside from the support and everything. Hearing everyone’s stories was really impactful for me, because I realized I didn’t know what the goal was.

I knew it was supportive, but I didn’t know like how it would be. Once I saw that they aren’t really persuading you to do one thing or another, and it’s more about making your own decisions and deciding for yourself what you want to do or what’s happening.

Hearing other people’s stories and realizing wow, I get to decide if I want to still be in this situation 5, 10, 20 years from now or not, you know. That was very enlightening for me, hearing other people how long they had to go through it. Like, that was a real wake-up call for me.

Anne: I think that’s one reason why women are afraid to join Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group they’re afraid that if they find out it’s abuse, or if they acknowledge it’s abuse, that they’ll have to get divorced from this narcissist. For example, and they’re just not quite ready to do that yet. Or some other version of that where they feel like they’ll go down a road they don’t really want to go down. A lot of women worry about that. What would you say to a woman who’s concerned about that?

Find Validation in the BTR Group Sessions

Chelsea: From my experience, I mean, I can’t say because like I had already planned on leaving when I did join, but from the stories I saw, I remember just really seeing how people could find even that little bit of safety. Like, no they weren’t ready to leave or maybe they don’t want to leave at all and knowing they could have support.

Their feelings are valid, what they’re going through is valid, and even just finding the strength to be able to stand up for themselves or self-care. I always remember them asking what our self-care was for the day, and I remember being like I don’t know, I don’t ever do self-care, you know.

It’s so important even when you’re in that situation, you’re so like spun out trying to survive and like keep your head above water. It’s like a breath of fresh air to be in a group where you’re understood and validated. Regardless of if you are planning to leave or not.

Anne: We wanted to make sure it was safe for everyone, no matter where they are in their process and no matter what their goals are at BTR.

Our goal is safety. We just want to help women feel validated and make their way to safety in whatever way that it looks like for them. So that’s our goal here. The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop is to help women gain safety.

Narcissists Groom Victims With Gaslighting

From your perspective, why do you think it takes so long to understand that you’re being abused? Maybe someone is pointing it out to you. Why do you think it takes maybe someone saying hey, that’s abuse for victims to understand that they’re being abused?

Chelsea: For me personally, I think it’s the art of gaslighting or the manipulation involved where for so long before anyone has even become aware. Maybe you nobody knows this is what you’re going through. Narcissist husbands use gaslighting to groom victims.

The abuser told you that it’s you. I wish I could tell more people because anyone I talked to their first thing has always been go to marriage counseling and I’m like marriage counseling was so detrimental for me. It’s was like we go into session talking about the infidelity or like, the abuse, and everything, and somehow, we ended up talking about forgiveness and the five love languages.

Anne: I hate The Five Love Languages. That’s so funny that you say that. Anytime I hear somebody talking about his love language is this or my love language. I am like, ugh, throw that book in the garbage.

Chelsea: That can end up being used. Basically, just that you’re not giving me enough of this, so I treat you this way.

When Narcissists Groom Therapists

Anne: Yeah, this is my love language, and I deserve it. Right? Or I’m entitled to this because it’s my love language. Of course, they’re always going to say their love language is sex.

Chelsea: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I’m just like, how did we start these sessions with this, and five weeks, six, eight weeks later we’re talking about how I need to forgive, or I need to put more positive bids into our marriage or just any of these marriage counseling things. I’m like this never; none of this got to the root of the problem.

Anne: It’s nonsense when it comes to abuse, but the weird thing is, marriage counselors in general don’t assess abuse first. They just literally go right into positive communication or let’s do a date night every week or you know, whatever.

If it really was an abuse situation, which all of these are, there’s no way you’d be telling somebody to go on a date with their abuser every week or even do the other things they say. It’s literally crazy.

Narcissists Groom Victims With The Unwitting Help Of Therapists And Counselors

Chelsea: To me, it’s the opposite of safety. You’re asking me to be vulnerable and to forgive someone who has not shown me that they’re a safe person.

Anne: Or trust someone who’s completely untrustworthy.

Chelsea: Yeah. They end up using that against you because, they’re the marriage counselor so you need to work on this. It’s like they bring up this list of things the marriage counselor told you to do and they’re not even working on whatever they told them to do.

Anne: Well, it’s hard to tell them what to do, because it’s like, don’t cheat. And they’re like, well, I haven’t cheated since I did last time, and I’m not going to do it again. So, what else can you say. That’s it.

Chelsea: Have more positive communication or whatever. I think that’s what makes it go on for so long. It feels almost like a video game or something. Like, you have to go through all these levels before you’re like okay, I’m not dealing with this anymore.

That’s how it feels to me. He made it seem like that too. Like, when they’re in the bargaining phase or whatever, they just start begging you to try one more time or try something different. So, it’s like, how many levels do I need to go through before this just isn’t going to work?

Narcissists Groom Victims As Part of the Cycle of Abuse

Anne: That’s part of grooming. It gives you hope that change might be possible, right?

Or they’re willing to work on it. It’s essentially just a grooming tool to hook you . Grooming is what is confusing all women about the abuse. There are these times where they “genuinely” want to work on it they’ll go to therapy, or they seem to understand.

They have these moments of what Looks like true introspection where they apologize and “I know how much I’ve hurt you and I don’t want to break our family up and, this is the most important thing to me in the world” all that is is grooming and grooming is abuse. I think people are seeing like, okay, it was good.

I think people are seeing like okay, it was good, and then it was bad. We were happy and he was nice, and then it was awful. They’re not recognizing that that nice part, that good part, that part that he’s “understanding it” or he’s cherishing you is abuse too.

Chelsea: This is my case, but I also think it’s a lot of people’s. The abuser doesn’t think they’re doing that or see that they’re doing that. So, it’s like unintentional. It’s almost like I can’t call that abuse because he’s not doing it intentionally.

Anne: So, this is confusing, right? Because you’re like, this is good. They were nice, they were kind, so are they good?

Narcissists Groom In Order To Maintain Control

Anne: An abuser’s goal is never real peace. An abuser wants control. He wants something from you. That’s the difference.

In those moments when he seems genuinely caring—when he sounds interested, repentant, or emotionally present, it can feel convincing. But there are strings attached. There is always a goal.

He becomes especially kind, attentive, and affirming when he wants something—sex, compliance, admiration, forgiveness, or access. That goal-oriented kindness is what makes it grooming. Narcissists groom victims by using affection as a tool, not as a reflection of who they truly are.

Once he gets what he wants, the tone shifts. Devaluing follows. Sometimes discarding follows. That’s because the connection was never about mutual care, it was about extraction.

Genuine love doesn’t work that way. When someone truly cherishes you, their kindness doesn’t depend on getting something from you. They don’t turn affection on and off based on access or advantage. They think you’re amazing whether or not they benefit. There’s no hidden agenda, just appreciation. That absence of strings is the difference between grooming and real love.

Narcissists Groom Victims To Protect Themselves & Exploit”

Anne: When you say that they don’t intend to hurt me or they don’t intend to be abusive, right? So, a lot of people will be like well, they don’t know they’re abusing me, so how can it be abuse? That’s not what defines abuse. What defines abuse is that it’s harmful to someone else.

So, they don’t have to know what they’re doing in order for it to be harmful to you. The abuse is the harm. It’s not necessarily their intent. But if their intent is completely selfish and goal-oriented then it’s exploitative, and it’s abusive.

For example, their intent might be I just don’t want her to know the truth because if she found out the truth, she would kick me out of our apartment. So, the intent is not to get kicked out of the apartment. They’re not thinking, I’m going to abuse her, I’m going to lie.

The only thing they’re thinking is, I don’t want to get kicked out of the apartment. So, their intent is to deceive so that they can maintain their entitlements so that they can exploit you and so that they can maintain their status. None of that is ever thinking oh, I’m going to abuse her on purpose. Narcissists groom victims to protect themselves and exploit.

Chelsea: That was so good because that’s something in so many conversations I’ve had. What happens when, you said like getting kicked out of the apartment. When that conversation is more like I don’t want to lose you? Because I think that one’s really hard because then there’s the implied value as their spouse or partner or whatever.

A Narcissist Does Not See His Victim As A Person

Anne: In moments like that, when he says, “I don’t want to lose you,” it’s important to understand what that really means. An abuser doesn’t see his victim as a whole person. He sees a collection of things he wants—sex, domestic labor, financial stability, access to children, or social standing. Narcissists groom victims by making them believe this is love and care.

So, when they say I don’t want to lose you, what they’re saying is I don’t want to lose it. I don’t want to lose someone who’s going to vacuum the floor, or lose any money and have to pay you alimony or child support or anything. I don’t want to lose the privilege of looking like a great guy at church and showing up on Sunday with my wife and kids, my reputation.

My guess is if you really pressed this and said what is it about me specifically that you don’t want to lose? I don’t really think they would be able to answer it. I don’t recommend people asking questions like that because they could come up with an amazing answer and all you’re doing at that moment is handing your abuser a shovel to further groom you with.

The abuser is in a trench, they’ve dug it through their own viewpoint, and they’re really entrenched in there. We never want to give them a shovel to dig themselves any deeper into that trench. Questions like that are going to just be handing them a shovel. They’re either going to groom you more or they’re going to abuse you in some way, devalue you in some way. Either way, it’s abuse to you and it’s an unsafe situation.

It’s Not Your Fault

You would know if they valued you already, you would feel it. If they really genuinely valued you, and it would be consistent over time. You would not have abuse and then grooming and then abuse and then grooming. You wouldn’t feel like you were married to Jekyll and Hyde.

Chelsea: Yeah, that’s what was hard for me for so long. I thought this vulnerable victim-part of himself that he would show me with him, and then start getting the whole picture and that all was part of him. The big part for me, I know everyone’s different.

I stayed so long because I in a way I guess I was codependent and that I felt bad that he suffered so much, that he had these issues. And I’m sure there was a lot of grooming as well.

Anne: Yeah. Well, think about like a girlfriend who’s been through really hard times who is like a good friend of yours. Like she’s kind, she’s supportive, she validates you. She does not use her difficult story or her difficult upbringing as a weapon to abuse you or to excuse her mistreatment of you.

She doesn’t use it to try and get people to feel sorry for her. Her response to her trauma was post-traumatic growth where she was like, you know what I’m going to go to college, and she’s just an incredible, amazing person. There are so many people who have had very difficult situations in the past, they’ve had trauma in their childhood, and they don’t abuse other people. They make really good choices. They think that is not the kind of life I want.

Narcissists Groom Victims With Sob Stories

So let’s stop right here to point out this third way to recognize how a narcissist groom. Number three is that they try to get people to feel sorry for them. They want to say, “ell, I was abused as a kid and my life was really hard. I know someone who went through that, and they don’t abuse their wife. None of that is a reason.

Think about yourself. You went through a very difficult situation, and maybe your upbringing was bad, I’m just saying the general you, and do you lie and manipulate people? We just need to remember that all these sob stories, told in this context, narcissists groom victims with sob stories. That’s their only purpose. The purpose is to make people feel sorry for them so they can get away with bad behavior.

Chelsea: Yeah, for sure, and he groomed me very early on, but I told you how it all started. Well, I would say a month or two even before that was when the grooming began. In hindsight, where he started opening up about his childhood and stuff. Or things he had done in the past, like with his ex-wife that brought him so much shame. All this other stuff he said and cried and everything. And now, I’m like a major red flag, major red flag, but in hindsight that was clearly when the grooming began.

It’s A Red Flag When They Start The Relationship With a Sob Story

Anne: Exactly. Narcissists groom victims by getting people to feel bad for them. So that’s another thing for all the listeners, is that if you start the relationship out with them trying to get you to feel bad for them, then you can just stand up and get an Uber and go home. You don’t want to start there.

If you’re early in your healing and you lead with how victimized you’ve been when you show up on a date, that can work against you. I’m not talking about getting validation at BTR or with close girlfriends, those spaces matter. I’m talking specifically about how you present yourself to someone you’re interested in dating.

That’s dangerous because then they’ll be like, oh, I can just tell them I’ll never do that to you, and I’ll never leave you and that is like giving someone a shovel. They groom victims by telling them they would never do that. I would say abstain from dating while you’re feeling that vulnerable until you can get strong enough that you would never lead with that in a relationship.

Chelsea: We don’t realize that it’s grooming even from day one.

I Am Whole. I Am Working My Way To Healing

Anne: A great way to start a date would be like my life is great. I love it. Even if it’s not. Then people are like well, you know you’re not vulnerable or whatever. But I’m just saying get yourself to your place where you feel like I am whole, I am working my way to healing, I’m doing really well.

That is a good place to start dating from, I think. Rather than I’m trying to date to get someone to help me or I need something. I think that’s just too vulnerable of a place for us especially when we’re in trauma. That it just sets us up for more victimization.

Chelsea: Yeah, that’s so good. I’ve done a lot of deep dives on my own story, you know, over time, and I still have revelations like all the time about things I’ve been through.

Anne: Even now, like seven years later, I’m still getting insights about like, why did I think that, or this is what was really happening. There are insights that we have over time where we’re like oh, that conversation wasn’t even about that.

Narcissists Groom with Misdirection

One thing I’ve come to recognize is that my ex would pick fights with me late at night, then leave the house claiming he needed to cool down. At the time, I believed that explanation. Now I’m certain that wasn’t why he left.

He left because he had something else he wanted to do. I don’t know exactly what that was, maybe acting out sexually, maybe something else entirely, but I do know this: he needed an excuse to leave. So he created one. He picked a fight so he could justify walking out.

In the moment, it felt real. It felt like an actual conflict. Looking back, I can see there was nothing to fight about. He manufactured the conflict to make his exit look reasonable.

That’s one way narcissists groom victims through misdirection. They create a false reality so you focus on the argument instead of questioning why it’s happening at all.

Many women experience this. They think, He’s not attracted to me, or I upset him and he stormed out. They don’t realize he may have decided he wanted to leave and simply needed a trigger. Maybe he criticized her cooking, knowing she’d react, so he could say, See? I need to go.

Chelsea: Yeah, I felt that it definitely happened to me a few times. I don’t know what he was doing, but that’s a very good point.

BTR Group Sessions Can Help You

Anne: Do you have anything you’d want to share with women who might be hesitant to join Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions—or who are listening for the first time and wondering, Is this really for me? Maybe they’re thinking this sounds extreme, or they’re not sure it even counts as abuse, especially since narcissists groom victims in ways that don’t look harmful at first.

Chelsea: I get like being hesitant because I think it’s like admitting it, admitting this as a problem. It’s almost like taking a huge step in itself, and maybe that’s where the resistance comes from, but for me, it was just so helpful.

There were times when an incident would happen, and I’d have to wait a week so my therapist, or maybe some don’t even have a therapist. Maybe your friends or family don’t know what’s going on. I know I didn’t always want to be calling them every time something happened.

I remember it was once I finally, joined, it what a relief to know anytime there’s an incident I could get on the same day. Sometimes I didn’t even need to talk about it, but being in that space where I felt safe and not alone. It’s such an isolating experience to be going through this. Even just sitting and listening helped because it made me not feel crazy. It made me not feel so alone.

Support The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast

Anne: Our community is incredible, and I always say that when one of us has an epiphany, all of us have an epiphany. When one of us gets to safety, it makes it better for everyone. We’re all working on deliverance together. And together, we can make this world a safer place, starting with our own home and then spreading it out to other women across the globe.

I’m so grateful that you found us, and I’m grateful that shared your story. Thank you so much.

Chelsea: Thank you for having me.

Anne: If this podcast is helpful to you, please support it. Until next week, stay safe out there.

If you’re searching for a support group for marriage problems because your husband’s behavior is starting to scare you, or because traditional counseling hasn’t helped, you’re in the right place. Most women who find BTR begin exactly where you are right now: scared, unsure, and trying to figure out who they can safely talk to when their marriage feels confusing or frightening.

But here’s what almost no one tells you:

• Not every support group for marriage problems is emotionally safe for women.
• Not every counselor understands.
• And not every institution knows how to help you.

Today’s episode explores why the struggle to find the right type of support group for marriage problems is actually a systemic issue. You’ll hear from sociologist Dr. Nicole Bedera, whose research exposes how universities often fail women who are scared, even if they follow every “correct” path to get help.

And then you’ll meet Haley, a woman whose college experiences mirror what so many married women face in counseling offices, churches, Title IX, and even courtrooms.

Their stories may not be about marriage directly, but the patterns are heartbreakingly similar, where women are

• seeking help
• blamed or minimized
• told to “be fair” to the man who hurt them
• pushed into silence
• left without the clarity or support they needed

If you’ve been wondering where to turn, or what kind of support group for marriage problems can actually help, here are five truths from this episode that will help you find the right support.

1. A Support Group for Marriage Problems isn’t usually Built for Clarity

A lot of marriage-based groups focus on:

• communication skills
• mutual responsibility
• serving each other

But since you’ve already tried these things, more of it likely won’t help clarify what’s actually going on if you’re confused about what’s going on in your marriage,

2. If You’re UnSURE what’s Going On With Your Husband, It’s Likely Not A Marriage Problem

Women often think:

• “He isn’t always like this.”
• “I’m probably overreacting.”
• “He’s stressed. Maybe that’s all this is.”

But confusion is information. Your body senses something is amiss before your mind has language for it. Any support group for marriage problems or helper who tells you you’re “too sensitive” or “too emotional” is not equipped to help you.

3. Institutions Often Protect the Person Hurting You

This is the clearest thread between Nicole’s research and the stories we hear from married women every day. When women are confused, universities, churches, pastors, counselors, or courts, don’t support women who need answers. They act as a mediator between two parties, but if he’s lying, it will just be more of the same.

The best support group for marriage problems will break this pattern and give you clarity, without you having to communicate with him more, especially since communicating with him hasn’t cleared up confusion in the past.

4. WHEN Manipulative Men Use Systems to Their Advantage, a support group for marriage problems is essential

This is one of the hardest truths women aren’t told, but one of the most important. When a woman is confused by her husband, it’s usually because he’s lying to her and …

• charming counselors
• throwing her under the bus with church leaders
• appearing calm while you appear shaken
• using systems to make you look “unstable” or “dramatic”

That’s why Haley’s story matters for married women too. Her abusers used university structures the same way husbands use counseling or clergy, to stay in control and keep the woman quiet. A safe support group for marriage problems knows these patterns and can help you navigate them.

5. The Best Support for Marriage Problems Is Confidential

A true support group for marriage problems should:

• protect your confidentiality
• help you trust your instincts
• give you clarity
• never push you toward something that scares you

Women deserve to have clarity about what’s going on, long before they ever step into a counseling office or try to get help from an institution that may not understand. We understand and you can receive live support, attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session

As You Listen to This Episode…

Notice how both women in these interviews talk about trying to get help in all the “correct” ways and how each system responded, they were…

• doubted
• blamed
• minimized

If marriage counseling, recovery programs, support groups for marriage problems, religious leaders, Title IX offices, or courts have left you confused or unsafe, today’s episode will help you understand why. If you need clarity in your marriage, here’s my Clarity After Betrayal workshop.

Transcript: When You Don’t Know Where To Turn For Help

Anne: We’re gonna start with Dr. Badera. She’s a sociologist, an author of the book, On The Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors. Her research focuses broadly on how our social structures contribute to survivor trauma. Nicole puts her work into practice at the Center for Institutional Courage. After I get done talking to Nicole, I’ll have Hailey share her story. Welcome Nicole.

Nicole: Thank you. I’m so excited to be here.

Anne: I’m excited too. Listeners to this podcast are trying to get clarity after betrayal. They often start by searching for a support group for marriage problems. And most of the time, they can’t get clarity because the people they go to to get help aren’t able to help them because they don’t know what’s going on. Your work focuses on students trying to get help on college campuses, but I think it really intersects. Because in both cases, they don’t get the information or support they need. Can you talk about your research?

Nicole: I focus on what happens for students still in school. Victims report to most of the Title IX office most of the time. You might have heard about it in the news.  It’s been everywhere over the past 10 years, but it’s quieted down quite a bit recently. I spent a year inside one of those Title IX offices interviewing the victims, perpetrators, and school administrators who had the most control over their cases.

So in that setting, all knew something was wrong. They might not know how to label it, or how to label it in a way that the system would recognize. That’s something survivors deal with a lot. Especially since a lot of this stuff is just made to feel normal for women.

Seeking help through the Title ix office parallels seeking a support group for marriage problems

Nicole: There’s this idea that this is what you should expect when you go to college. And so there were some that they weren’t sure what was going on, but they knew that something had affected usually their education. Or they felt unsafe, unsettled, and they ended up in my study because they went to their school for help. Either through the victim advocacy office, which on a college campus, can help survivors with whatever they need, but many things that have nothing to do with the perpetrator.

Including things like they need an extension on an assignment, or there’s a specific class they want to take, but their perpetrator wants to take it. So they’re trying to coordinate to figure out when they can take it in the semester that they won’t be in the same classroom, things like that.

Or they went through the Title IX office to try to report what happened to them, to try to seek some kind of safety or justice. But many themes are not that different from all the other places that maybe you’ve considered going to for help.

Anne: When a woman has a situation where she needs help, but she doesn’t quite know where to go to find help, it’s so heartbreaking for me. I see this often with wives trying to figure it out after their husband’s betrayal. We usually do couple therapy, or maybe like addiction recovery, trying to figure out how can I start to feel safe again in my marriage. Why do you think this idea of safety and how to feel safe again is just so hard for pretty much everybody to understand? Like what do you mean she feels unsafe and what are we supposed to do about it?

The Primary concern of the title ix office

Nicole: There are a couple of issues that we run into. One of them is that a lot of the systems that we think are going to help, won’t help. If you think about a college campus, for example. Students are told, if you’re experiencing sexual violence, sexual harassment, or any kind of gender discrimination, come to the Title IX office and they will help you.

But that’s not what the Title IX office is concerned with. Their primary concern is what do we do with this perpetrator. Sometimes doing something about the perpetrator would help if the school would, which they often hesitate to do. But a lot of the time, that’s not meeting a survivor’s need in a real way.

That’s the same issue that comes up if you go to a couple therapist or support group for marriage problems. I think many people who’ve tried for help at any of these institutions have an experience where you’re coming in for something really tangible for yourself. So an example I gave earlier is you are, let’s say you’re a victim in a university setting, and you show up on the first day of class. And you see your perpetrator is in class with you, and that the class will discuss sexual violence as a topic.

So this just feels impossible for you to be safe in this environment, because it’s going to remind you of your trauma. You might have to watch your perpetrator interact. It’s going to be just a place where your body and mind respond to the traumatic experiences you’ve already had.

Anne: And the trauma you continue to experience because the likelihood of him gaslighting you through this whole thing is like off the charts.

the System focuses on what it means for the perpetrator

Nicole: You’re right. It’s unlikely that if you’re in that class with your perpetrator. You and your perpetrator will share the same public narrative about why you can’t sit next to him in class. And so the perpetrator might disparage the victim, might tell lies about what happened to avoid accountability.

You’re right. A victim in that scenario reasonably is just thinking, I just want this guy out of my class, right? I want to take the class I want to take and complete my degree on time. Why is this affecting me in this scenario? Most people, if you think about it rationally, would say, that’s a reasonable set of requests. You know, you’ve already experienced a sexual assault. That’s enough of a burden. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice your education too.

But in our current university system, there is no way to get that outcome. And so instead, when a victim comes forward and says, “This is what I need,” the entire system is focused on, “But what would this mean for the perpetrator? Is it fair to him? Is this going to be too much for him?” That happens within a support group for marriage problems. The focus can be on the perpetrator.

This is one of the stories I start the book with. Even if the system works as it claims, it can’t fix it. There is no version of a sexual assault response in our society that can intervene in two weeks. We don’t really have a version of that right now. That’s a big part of why coming forward is so harmful, because they will tell you to wait. They will re-traumatize you. They will force you back into communication, into being in the same room with your perpetrator.

Metaphor of hot stove with women in scenarios including a support group for marriage problems

Anne: I help all sorts of women in all sorts of scenarios. But one that I’m thinking of right now is a woman with a protective order, and he continues to violate the protective order. And she keeps calling it in, and then they have to have a hearing about it. And the hearing isn’t for like three months. In the meantime, there’s no protection for her.

To hear the prosecutor talk about the date of the court hearing, rather than to hear somebody say, “I care about you. We’re going to do something so that he can’t come around you anymore.” That’s what she needs to hear. But for some reason, that’s like beyond their comprehension.

Nicole: I use this metaphor putting your hand on a hot stove. Right now, our systems just tell the victim, pretend it’s not burning you. Just keep being burned while we decide what to do. And if it is burning you and you can’t handle it, there must be something wrong with you. And a better system would say, let’s turn off the stove. We’re just going to turn it off and we’re going to take a minute to figure out what to do next.

Anne: This happens in marriages all the time. Because the support group for marriage problems, the professional counselor, clergy, or any number of people she’s going to for help, don’t identify that “the stove is on,” to use your metaphor. They’re like, “Something’s wrong with you because you’re burned for no reason.”

Nicole: Right. Or let’s try to evenly manage this. There’s this real temptation in a lot of these systems to say, “Well, why don’t both people come to the table and offer something?”

victims just want to feel safe

Nicole: And so that would be akin in the same metaphor to saying, “Well, why don’t we have the stove turned down a little bit? And why don’t we have the person with their hand on the stove stop complaining they’re being burned?”

And that doesn’t make sense. We as a culture are comfortable asking for more sacrifices from victims, as long as it’s in the name of giving an advantage to their perpetrator. But we know that abuse takes place when there is a power inequity. And so if that’s the reason we’re saying both people have to do something or the victim can’t get what they need. Because we want to give a benefit to the perpetrator, that will always deepen that inequity. It’s always going to deepen that power disparity, and that can make the abuse worse.

Anne: My eye is twitching. The other thing I think is interesting when it comes to reporting or not reporting. For me and many women who have been through it, reporting wasn’t the issue. We just wanted to feel safe. I didn’t necessarily want my ex husband to go to jail.

I just wanted him to leave me alone. In my personal case, I had a protective order. The criminal court said, “Do not talk to him, you have a protective order,” but the civil court ordered me to talk to him because we share children. So for eight years, my ex abused me post divorce. A man I have a protective order against, who I do not want to talk to. But the civil court forces me to talk to him because of my kids. I didn’t want to report his abuse, so he went to jail.

the Title ix debate

Anne: I think that’s the thing that people have a hard time with, especially with custody cases, where the judge is like, “Well, I can’t take away custody because then I’d be calling him an abuser. And then what? He’d go to prison.”

Victims want to be safe. And in many of these civil cases, especially with kids. The safe parent, the mother, is seeking a support group for marriage problems, she is not trying to throw him in jail. And same thing in college, victims are just asking that he doesn’t go to this class, maybe he transfers schools. But for some reason, they equate it to prison.

Nicole: That’s exactly right. And I want to say that this is a new problem. And the Title IX debate is actually the center of why this is happening throughout society. So, a little history, in 1972, a law passed. And that law said sex discrimination is illegal on college campuses that receive federal funding.

And that’s all schools, to be clear. Even Harvard accepts a lot of funds from the federal government to keep their doors open. They would have a very hard time keeping their doors open without those federal funds. And the law itself is just a single sentence. The law isn’t super clear about everything that’s included and not included.

So there were a series of court cases to try to figure that out. One of them was in 1980, Alexander v. Yale, and that was the first court case that said that sexual violence should be illegal on a college campus, that it should be something that schools should do something about, and they should have their own internal proceedings to manage sexual violence.

Colleges don’t follow the law and women seeking a support group for marriage problems

Nicole: And the focus here wasn’t about sending people to jail. That’s what you could call the police for, if that’s what you wanted. This is specifically for scenarios where victims’ educations were impacted by their sexual assaults, intimate partner violence, stalking, or whatever they experienced.

And so, the Department of Education had argued that schools need to do something to ensure that violence doesn’t interfere with the quality of education you receive from the school, including things like if there’s a known perpetrator on campus. Let’s say he’s a professor, let’s say he’s withholding good grades unless students provide sexual favors, which is what that 1980 court case was about.

Part of what Title IX would require is removing the perpetrator from campus, because obviously no woman can get a fair education from that person. And so the focus is on restoring those educational rights. The issue was that schools just didn’t do it. And so every few years, the Department of Education would remind schools that they had to do something about sexual harassment and violence, and they just didn’t do it. And for the most part, it didn’t capture much attention until the Obama administration.

Anne: Was part of their justification for not doing their job them thinking, “If it was bad enough, she’d call the police.”

Nicole: Certainly. Inside Higher Ed conducted a survey in 2015, where they asked university presidents, do you think campus sexual violence is a problem on your campus? And the vast, vast, vast majority said, “No, that’s a problem at other schools. We don’t have to worry about it,” which is not true.

The Law captures national attention

Nicole: By the way, we have yet to find a university that doesn’t have sexual violence as a problem. And so, yes, that’s part of how they justified it, “We don’t want to handle this, this is a criminal act, not a civil act.”

But that’s not what the law said. And so, the Obama administration sent out another one of these reminder letters, and for whatever reason, it became hotly politicized. And in that moment, a group of Harvard professors, law professors, wrote an essay saying the Title IX approach the Obama administration required wasn’t right. Because it didn’t allow the same kind of due process protections that the criminal justice system does.

So exactly what you’re saying, that’s what they said. And to be clear, a lot of these Harvard Law professors were not specialized in issues of gender based violence. And the average lawyer gets very little training during law school about sexual violence or harassment, especially in civil settings. So they were just wrong. They were just flat out wrong.

But this argument captured the national attention. It went viral. Other judges and lawyers think there are due process protections on college campuses that never existed before. Prior to this moment, if you faced student disciplinary proceedings on a college campus, your only rights were to know your accusations, and what the violation would be, and have some chance to respond, but there were no rules about how you would do that. So some schools did it in writing, some did it through hearings, some weren’t doing much of anything.

A guest speaker example

Nicole: And so, this new idea that anything involving sexual violence must be held to a criminal standard of due process. It is only a few years old. It’s not too late to reverse it, and we should, because the stakes are so different. I call it “Accumulated Fantasies of Disaster.” Where, exactly like you’re describing, a victim says, “I need one thing,” and sometimes on college campuses, that is safety for their kids.

Married people live in student housing on college campuses with children, living in essentially the dorms, but family dorms. And that’s often what they’re looking for. I am trying to escape an abusive marriage. I need a support group for marriage problems. My partner is still on campus, and we’re still living in the same dorm. And is there another unit I can move into with my kids as I go through divorce proceedings, as I go through a custody battle, essentially saying exactly what you are.

“Well, if we do that, it could lead to all these other issues for the perpetrator down the line.” And some stories that I heard during my time in the field were really unreasonable. For example: A guest speaker who came to a campus sexually harassed a woman.

The guest speaker was CEO of a company. And he stalked and sexually harassed her since meeting her. He had no other tie to the campus community. So from a legal perspective, the university had no obligation to him. They don’t have to let him come back and speak again. They don’t even have to let him come on campus if they don’t want to, because he’s not a student. He’s not a professor. He has no rights to this space.

Men accused don’t have bad things happen to them: finding a support group for marriage problems

Nicole: But instead, the Title IX investigators wrapped themselves in knots to think of all of these horrible things that could happen to him if they took the victim’s wishes into consideration, which was just, please don’t invite him back to be guest speaker again. I don’t want this to happen to anybody else.

And they said things like, “He could get a bad reputation, he could lose his job, he could be incarcerated.” And it’s not true. Because a lot of these proceedings are private. They can’t hand private files to the police.

That’s illegal. That’s not how it works. People have privacy rights. Educational documents, in particular, are really private. But that’s what they’re thinking. They’re saying, “If you come forward, every bad thing will happen to this person.” And yeah, we’re talking about a CEO. Who’s going to fire him, himself? It doesn’t make sense.

Anne: Also, heaven forbid, a bad thing happen to a rapist.

Nicole: I completely agree. I think we can all see from just examples in pop culture, presidential races, whatever it might be. Men accused of sexual assault tend not to have bad things happen to them. Women seeking a support group for marriage problems face this as well. If anything, I argue they tend to get benefits. The Johnny Depp trial is a great example. He made an entire comeback. He was having a hard time finding work in Hollywood because of his own behavior on set. Now he’s getting this second chance. Because he’s known as a perpetrator of domestic violence, which he never refuted, by the way.

Accumulated fantasies of disaster

Nicole: He never refuted that he had physically harmed Amber Heard. He never said that. And he simply argued that she deserved it, which worked.

Anne: That’s insane, it’s wild. We should see through it, but we don’t, because we come to a place from victim blaming first. I kept seeing people worry about worst-case scenarios…accumulated fantasies of disaster about what might happen to perpetrators. And how bad it’ll be if we say out loud what they did.

But I interviewed the perpetrators, and those things didn’t happen to them. If anything, many of them enjoyed these accountability proceedings. Because, like we’re talking about, there’s these contradictions in them. Court proceedings constrain the victim’s behavior. They don’t allow the victim to do X, Y, and Z, or it’ll hurt their credibility. While simultaneously, forcing them to be in contact the perpetrator regularly. And that’s something perpetrators enjoy.

Anne: Yeah, they like it.

Nicole: Yes!

Anne: Sorry, we need to focus on this. I created a strategy workshop. It’s called the Living Free Workshop, Click on that link and learn more. It helps women see why abusers like this enjoy it. And what these types of abusers get out of it. So that women can use strategy to protect themselves and find emotional safety in a support group for marriage problems. Because we don’t enjoy it. That’s what you discovered. I’m like, yes, they enjoy it. And it’s because they never lose.

Nicole: Even if they lose, the losses are hollow. They expelled one student for intimate partner violence while I was on campus.

The dean of students facilitated a perpetrators transfer

Nicole: So it is rare, I was on campus that year. But what that expulsion meant was because of this rush to protect the perpetrator. This rush to make sure nothing bad happened to him. The Dean of Students had already helped facilitate his transfer to another university by the time he was expelled.

It was close enough, he didn’t even have to move apartments. And they had slowed down the proceedings for two years. Originally with the hope that he would graduate before they had to hold him accountable. But he didn’t graduate for a whole host of reasons. Instead, the victim had to take a leave of absence, for those two years. Because he was so violent and so dangerous that she couldn’t safely be on campus.

And so they told her, you know, the same thing we’re talking about before. Until he’s been through this process, we can’t offer you any kind of assistance. So if you can’t handle being here, you’re the one who should leave. And that’s one of the big things that I hope people take from all these conversations. It is that every time we do something like this to protect a perpetrator, every time we say, “I’m going to be fair to both people, I’m going to invite both of you to this place, and anybody who can’t handle it, don’t come.”

What you’re really saying is the perpetrator is going to be here and the victim won’t. Because you’re not giving them anything that’s possible to do. Victims can’t turn off their trauma and peacefully coexist. Even if they do manage to share space with the perpetrator, it always takes a toll, and that’s unfair.

Everything is backwards: victim blaming and finding a support group for marriage problems or victims

Nicole: It’s not right. Everything is totally backwards.

Anne: Yeah. Well, the other issue that people don’t recognize is that he is still going to be abusing her. It could be a basketball game, whatever. The way he acts, the way he’s lying about her, the way he’s like, “Oh, she’s so crazy.” That is abuse. And he’s still doing it right now. So you haven’t stopped the abuse. It’s not like this happened in the past. She still needs some sort of support group for marriage problems or victims of emotional abuse.

Nicole: And I would argue that even if nothing happens, that still is a continuation of the abuse as well. Because I think of all these scenarios where the perpetrator and victim are forced to share space. Again, kids are a common scenario. And everybody watching wants to see this cartoon villain of a perpetrator that doesn’t exist. And so instead they say, “He seemed nice, he was friendly to you, you seem like you’re the one who’s overreacting.” And that’s part of the plan too. A big part of that abuse is showing they can follow social norms, and treat people appropriately.

And ultimately, it still leads to often, in this case, other people blaming the victim, questioning their legitimacy. That’s a lot of what perpetrators do in these proceedings. They come in and they don’t scream and yell. They’re not physically violent in that setting. And so people think, “Oh, he must be fine.”

Anne: It’s called grooming, and grooming is abusive. So that IS the abuse. And they don’t realize they’re abused too, because he’s lying.

No one is helping victims transfer to a new school

Nicole: A good point.

Anne: The same thing happens everyday with the courts with civil custody cases. that part where you said the university helped him transfer his stuff to the new school. No one is helping the victims do these things. No one’s helping wives in these scenarios. They have to find their own support group for marriage problems.

Nicole: And that was one of the most glaring disparities of all. And there’s actually an academic concept that I think would be helpful to your listeners. It’s this idea of institutional betrayal. And institutional betrayal is defined as an institution’s actions or inactions that exacerbate trauma.

So when they behave in a way that makes the traumatic experience more traumatic, and that’s one of the big things. How violent and traumatic an experience is for a victim is not set from the end of the violent event. It actually depends on everything that happens afterwards.

So, you know, if you tell your friends, do they believe you? Do they take your side or your perpetrator’s side? Do you get control over what happens after the violence is over? Or is somebody reporting to the police against your will or putting you into these scenarios that you don’t want to be in against your will?

Abuse is ultimately a violation of autonomy. And so every time an institution violates our autonomy again, that’s going to trigger those traumatic experiences. We find survivors experiencing institutional betrayal show the same traumatic symptoms as a sexual assault victim a second time in studies. It is an equal severity to that original act of violence.

Institutional betrayal is overwhelming

Nicole: Which is why it’s important that our institutions get this right, and for our friends and families to get this right too. Because a lot of people find this overwhelming. And I think it is overwhelming to think, “Wow, I thought the worst was over, but I could actually encounter something just as bad when I seek help,” is really overwhelming.

But on the other hand, if we do get it right, we actually have the capacity to make this violence less damaging to victims. And that’s the place where I come out on a hopeful side. Survivors who, when they seek help and get it, have fewer traumatic symptoms. The traumatic impact of that original event is lessened. So that’s got to be our goal here: to step out of these damaging patterns just because it’s the way things are, or it’s what we’re used to, and oh, it would take work and change to do something different.

Those aren’t good reasons. We should do the right thing because the stakes are really high. And we could really help a lot of people.

Anne: I talk with victims every day. When couples therapists don’t help them, when clergy don’t help them, when police don’t help them, when the civil court system doesn’t help them, and when a support group for marriage problems doesn’t help them, my eye twitches.

Nicole: I wanna say one of the things about institutional betrayal and the reasons why I think it’s important that people know how institutions can harm victims is that institutional betrayal can’t happen to the same severity if we already have some distrust for the institution.

Setting realistic expectations when seeking a support group for marriage problems or victims

Nicole: One of the key components is going to get help, and thinking you’re going to get it, and then not getting it. And so setting realistic expectations, not to lower the bar for these institutions, to know what can happen.

Anne: That’s what the Living Free Workshop is for, anticipating. If you talk to clergy about this, this is likely what’s going to happen. Like know these things beforehand.

The Living Free Workshop helps victims anticipate, because this has been driving me crazy for years. In my state, at the bottom of every article about domestic violence, every single one, there’s like a “Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline and then call our state domestic violence hotline.”

And everyone thinks that’s the solution. They think reporting is the solution. They don’t realize that’s not the solution at all. In fact, one victim that I know, she recently had the department that oversees victim services contact her. And they were like, “Hey, we heard that you had a bad interaction with a police officer in this certain county.”

We’re going to interview you. So she told them, ” Yeah, I’ve been working with this domestic violence shelter. I have a victim advocate.” She told him the whole story. She’s been working with a victim advocate at our local domestic violence shelter for over two years. They reviewed her case.

And they got back to her, and guess what they said? They said, “Oh, your case is really, really bad. You need services. Have you contacted your local domestic violence shelter?”

Nicole: Oh my.

Go to a confidential community

Anne: So it was like a full circle, you know. People in general think how we have to do is put this phone number on the bottom of a newspaper article and problem solved. And if she called that number and she’s still in this mess, it’s her fault because she didn’t use the services correctly.

Nicole: So I think one of the questions I get a lot is, if a lot of these systems aren’t trustworthy, where can we go? And the response is to go to a confidential community like this one. That is different than a domestic violence service. You want one that’s confidential, because your group won’t call the police. The court can’t subpoena you. So if you have questions to try to make sense of all the options in your community, they can work through that with you without things snowballing out of your control.

But that’s what I would say. Make sure you’re going somewhere confidential that will give you a lot of options, not just one option. Anywhere that’s pushing you back to one option is probably not the right place. I talk about these broader trends in how survivors lose their autonomy and become re-traumatized when they’re trying to find a good support group for marriage problems.

What we’ve been talking about this whole time. Which is when a victim says, “I’ve experienced this, I’m dealing with these consequences, and I need help with these consequences.” They’re recast as punishing, and everything is focused on, “But that could be bad for the perpetrator.” That is one of the biggest red flags.

Because you can’t just make that stuff go away. Like, trauma is trauma. It’s a physiological process. We can see evidence of it on the body.

Recognizing consequences are not unfair to the perpetrator

Nicole: You can’t just say, “Oh, you’re right. I don’t want anything bad to happen to my perpetrator.” So it goes away. That’s one of the ones to think about. Conflation between addressing the consequences that are inevitable, that will happen due to the action of sexual violence, or coercion or harassment, or whatever it is you’ve experienced, and acting as if recognizing those consequences is inherently unfair to the perpetrator.

Anne: I was trying to explain this to someone once, and I said, “Can you imagine if a man had a business partner and that business partner stole a bunch of money from the business, and the guy couldn’t hold him accountable in court? And then everyone around him was telling him, “You have to attend church with this guy.”

Nicole: Right, it’s suddenly so clear. It’s suddenly so clear that it would be unfair.

Anne: And people say to me, that’s crazy. This is completely different. And I’m like, “What I’m talking about is like 50 billion times worse.”

Nicole: Yeah.

Anne: Thinking about it in terms of a man being forced to interact with someone who hurt him, they can’t even talk about that because they’re like, “that would never happen.” Women need to find a support group for marriage problems that understands this.

Nicole: I mean, gender is such a big part of it, right? It is. Yeah. On a Title IX case, you would call it complainant and respondents, when those roles are reversed, usually in a retaliatory complaint. Where a real act of violence happened, the victim tried to report it, and the perpetrator responded by filing a second complaint saying, “Actually, I’m the true victim.”

retaliatory complaints by perpetrators: help from a support group for marriage problems or victims

Nicole: So again, a classic example of this is Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard, where he doesn’t argue that there was never any violence. He says she deserved it. Actually, she’s the abuser, and I think I’m the true victim. And the goal of these retaliatory complaints is really to muddle the narrative, to confuse any investigators and to try to intimidate the victim into dropping their original complaint.

In those cases of retaliatory complaints, what I found is that the university didn’t care anymore about due process. When women were in the role of the accused, they faced a lot of consequences. I would actually argue punishment because they didn’t do anything. It can’t be consequences for their actions when all they did was report something someone else did to them.

It really is a gender issue. There is a real sense that we should take the side of the man, no matter what he has done, because he is a leader, because he should have male privilege, or you know, whatever it might be. He’s the more important person, and so we should protect the more important person.

And sometimes that comes out in really overtly misogynistic, obvious ways, and sometimes it’s a little bit more shielded in something more, called himpathy. So this concept of empathy comes from a philosopher named Kate Mann. And what it means is excessive empathy given to men at the expense of women.

What this can look like in practice is somebody saying something like, “Well, you know, sexual abuse is horrible. It ruins the victim’s life. The best we can do is try to make sure it doesn’t ruin two lives instead of one.”

Empathizing with the perpetrator

Nicole: It’s truly unbelievable if I didn’t have the direct quotes from the administrator saying it. But it’s treated as this righteous thing is this idea of I’m a good person if I can empathize with even the most sort of deplorable people in our society. And it’s not hard to empathize with men in these cases. Our culture trains us to do this. The difficult thing is to empathize with the victim.

Anne: Sorry, I can’t even, I can’t, I can’t. No wonder people don’t love me at church because I don’t sympathize with abusive men I’m like, I don’t care about him. And people are like, so offended.

Nicole: Yeah, people are offended.

Anne: And I’m like, why are you so offended? He’s a rapist. Why do you care about him? She needs a support group for marriage problems or victims.

Nicole: I think that’s the place we need to get to, especially in this moment in society where most people are empathizing with the perpetrator. So this framework I was thinking about where everybody’s saying, “Oh, you know, I’m going to empathize with the perpetrator because it’s a hard thing to do.”

Something administrators would say is, “Everybody’s going to side with the victim, because we all know rape is wrong. And so she’s going to have everybody in her corner. He doesn’t have anybody in his corner. So I’m going to be the person to show up for him.”

And so what we need at the bare minimum is a whole group of people who will show up for the survivor in that same way to recognize the real reality, which is the perpetrator has so many people in his corner.

Victims may lose friends, family and have to switch schools

Nicole: The victim is the person who’s getting pushed out of her entire social group. One of the things that’s so traumatic about sexual violence is a lot of people lose all their friends, a lot of their family. They might have to switch schools or change jobs, because everybody is focusing on being “fair” to the perpetrator.

None of this is fair. If what we’re doing for the perpetrator means the victim has to leave, it’s not fair. When we have an entire society where none of these systems are good at holding perpetrators accountable, it’s hard for people to imagine what that looks like. When we know that we can’t trust a lot of these systems, we have to handle this as individuals and as communities. Because the trauma is going to leave a lifelong impact for the victim. It’s never going away. And so if we say, “Well it’s been five years, why isn’t she over it yet?”

That’s just not how it works. And I do think it’s really reasonable to say, “If you perpetrated a sexual assault, The bare minimum of consequences is if you see the victim in the grocery store at your new job. You turn around and you walk out and you go to a different grocery store, you get a different job.”

This is very, very reasonable to ask for.

Anne: 100 percent,I appreciate this conversation. Nicole, I’m so grateful you’re doing this work. Thank you so much for spending the time to talk about finding a safe support group for marriage problems and victims today.

Nicole: Thank you for having me on. This has been great. These are the kinds of conversations that people need. I’m so glad I got to be here today.

Anne: Yeah, thank you.

Hailey’s Story of reporting on a campus

Anne: So now a woman we’re gonna call Haley will actually share her story of reporting on a campus. Hers is specifically related to my faith, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and what she experienced at BYU. But I have heard stories like this from Jewish women, from Catholic women. We see these patterns everywhere. Including in a support group for marriage problems. Welcome Haley.

Haley: Hi, thank you.

Anne: Before we start, I received my associate degree from BYU Idaho, a million years ago. And when I went there, I loved the honor code. It helped me feel safe. For example, I felt so safe that my roommates weren’t allowed to have men in our apartment after 10:00 PM. Is that what it is? I don’t even remember.

Haley: I think they bumped it up to midnight. I felt the same way as you. I chose to come to BYU because I wanted to be in a safer environment and I knew I was signing an honor code.

Anne: I appreciate that, and I want to be clear: I don’t know exactly how the honor code operates today. This won’t be an anti–honor code discussion. Instead, we’re examining how institutions implement the honor code—and how that implementation harms victims of abuse in multiple ways.

Haley: Like you mentioned, I had two run-ins with the honor code office. One my freshman year and one my senior year. And both times I was left feeling very alone, like I did something horrible.

I felt a responsibility to speak out

Haley: I felt like that my freshman year, and kept my mouth shut. Because I was embarrassed. I felt totally ashamed alone, so I kept quiet. I felt like I was in a different place when they called me in again. To put me back on probation at the end of my Senior year. I felt like it was my responsibility to speak out against what was going on.

I had to wait to speak out until I got my diploma. Initially, I started just because I wanted to see if there was anyone else out there who felt the same way I did. I knew I had a few close friends and a few close family who had been through the honor code office and were treated poorly. So I gathered all our stories together. Really, it was like a support system. Even if five people could see it and feel like they weren’t alone, that would have been good enough for me.

I know that you’re doing the same thing, allowing people to share their stories is healing for everyone. There’s something about being anonymous. You feel safe. Being able to tell other people what happened to you, and having other people say, “I am so sorry. I had no idea. I’m here for you.” I think it is healing.

Anne: Yeah, it is so healing. I’m so grateful that so many women are willing to share their stories on my podcast. And I’m grateful that you’re here sharing yours today.

The first time a perpetrator you had a restraining order against, was the one that turned you into the honor code office. And the second time it was your abusive ex-boyfriend.

experiences with the honor code office

Anne: Talk about how that felt to have the honor code office used as a weapon by abusive men.

Haley: I had moved 2,000 miles away and started school. The first time I got called in, I was told that I was called in by a man from my past who had really hurt me. It was hurtful to sit on my counselor’s couch and tell her this was years behind me. Tell her who this man is, how he made me feel, and how I was scared of him. And how I wanted to put everything that had happened 2,000 miles away in my past behind me.

I sat on her couch crying and said, “Please take my side. Please have my back. Here’s how he’s affected my life for years now, and I really need you to have my back. Especially now that I’m sitting here telling you who it was that reported me, I really need your protection.”

And she responded and said, “It didn’t matter how I got caught. What mattered was that the Holy Spirit wanted me to get caught.” As a freshman, 18 years old, I was already terrified to be in there. Sitting across from the stranger I didn’t know, asking for help. And she told me it didn’t matter. That just felt sick. It was pretty discouraging. No offers for a victim support.

And then the second time with the ex-boyfriend, it was frustrating because I told her, “Look, I have not talked to this kid in over a year. I’m so sorry for what happened. I’ve already dealt with it with my Bishop. I don’t understand why he can come in and jeopardize my future, my education and my diploma.”

Blame for the problem: parallels with help for finding a support group for marriage problems

Haley: She took his side and told me, “Well, he’s the one that came in, and he came in on his own goodwill, and you didn’t.” It was frustrating too, because he was Elder’s Quorum president at the time.

Anne: For our listeners, that is a calling within the church that puts them in charge of the men’s organization.

Haley: And she brought that up and wanted to remind me of his position in the church. And she told me that the spirit wasn’t in my home. And so it was harder for both parties to keep the commandments. So an ex-boyfriend turned me in. And having his calling thrown in my face was pretty hurtful.

Anne: Wait, so she blamed you. Because apparently the Spirit’s not in your home. I’m being sarcastic here. The reason he acted poorly is all your fault.

Haley: Right. I mean, she’s accusing me, asking if I am going to church, what my calling is, and what my relationship is with God. But she wanted to remind me of his position in church, and then put me in my place. And just for all those reasons, it was so hurtful.

Anne: That is awful. I’m so sorry. I bet you felt so validated when people started sharing their stories, and women feel that with a good support group for marriage problems as well. Because you ended up reading thousands of other victim stories about the honor code office. What were some themes that you noticed?

Theme’s in dealing with the Honor Code Office

Haley: I noticed a lot of people who don’t even want to talk to anyone about what happened, which is scary. Another theme is that when they go into that office, they feel like it is their fault. I have had so many people say, my counselor told me that this is because I did this. This is because I wore this. I said this.

Anne: If he’s using sexual coercion, getting him out of your apartment by 10:00 PM would have been almost impossible. They might say, “It’s your fault you were raped because you let him stay longer than 10:00 PM.” I mean, there are so many elements with sexual coercion. People really don’t understand.

Haley: They did try to separate the Title IX office and the Honor Code office. People are still unfortunately not reporting. Because they’re still afraid that when they go in there, somehow to get looped into the honor code office. And in a lot of cases, it still has. BYU says their policy has changed, but unfortunately, the policy is not what’s practiced.

Anne: We see that with bishops too. The policy is: We have no tolerance for abuse in the church. And yet victims say, “My husband is using pornography. He is lying to me. He’s having sex with other women.” They need an understanding of what safety looks like in a support group for marriage problems. In The Proclamation to the Family, people who engage in infidelity and abuse will be held accountable. And instead, a bishop might say, what are you doing wrong? How could you help the situation?

Have you heard any stories where the victim had a good experience going to the honor code office?

Advice for victims

Haley: I do have stories where women went in and said, “Here’s who it is, here’s what he’s done.” And BYU has expelled them. Someone that I’m very close to has a story very similar to this. Even though they expelled the man, she never heard from the honor code office again. And that’s another issue too.

If you are a woman and finally do have the courage to go tell BYU what’s going on, and let’s say best case scenario, they do kick this student out of school. I can’t speak for the whole school in general, but a lot of these students are still saying they’re not there for me. For the most part. They just don’t feel like the university in general has their back with this.

Anne: So from your own experience and from reading all these stories that you’ve received, what would you want current students who are sexual assault victims to hear?

Haley: I would first want them to know that they are not alone. I don’t know how comforting that can be for everyone, but I know at least for the people I’ve talked with, just hearing that this isn’t just happening to them. And there are other women out there who are feeling this way too. And people that you can turn to and trust and share your story with is really important. Like what happens with a good support group for marriage problems.

Overwhelming and heartwarming to connect with others in a support group for marriage problems or victims

Haley: Also, we do not want these stories to discourage students from turning in these kinds of cases. BYU does have a victim advocate that does a good job, from what I’ve been told at protecting students. I just want every sexual assault victim to know that it is not your fault, and that every time they speak up for what has happened to them, they’re speaking up for all the women behind them.

It’s been overwhelming and so heartwarming to see even other female students who will comment and DM me. Like, if this is your story, message me. I will take you out to lunch. I want to talk to you. I’m here for you. If you ever need anyone, send me a message to this Instagram. I just want them to know that there are people out there who care so much, love them, and want them to be on campus.We love the church and the school. We don’t want to leave.

Students know what they signed. So we’re not here to fight the standards on campus. We are really just looking for protection for our students within the honor code office. Something has to change.

Anne: I’m so grateful for you sharing your story and grateful for anyone willing to have an ongoing layered conversation about these topics and finding a safe support group for marriage problems.ƒ It’s not like we just talk about this issue once and then it goes away, right? It has to be an ongoing layered conversation in order to make meaningful change.

Haley: Right. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. It was so good to talk with you. I would love to meet you one day. I really enjoyed our conversations.

If you’re searching how to deal with angry husband, it’s probably because you’ve already tried everything—being understanding, being patient, being quieter, being “better,” being the emotional shock-absorber for the whole house.

And yet… nothing changes.

Before you take another step, here’s the most important truth you need to hear:

Your safety—emotional, physical, spiritual—is the priority.
Everything else is secondary.
His “anger issue” is not yours to decode.

So many women spend years trying to figure out why their husband is angry:

• Is he stressed?
• Does he need therapy?
• Did I say something wrong?
• Is it childhood trauma?
• Is it me?

But here’s what women discover in our Betrayal Trauma Recovery community again and again:

Men who don’t want to be angry, aren’t. Men who use anger to control the people around them use anger as a tactic.

Can He Control His Anger? Watch What He Does in Public

One of the clearest signs something deeper is happening is this: He has no trouble keeping it together in public.
Around friends, coworkers, church members, your kids’ teachers… he’s calm, charming, composed.

But at home? He unleashes.

If you’re living this split reality, there’s definately something deeper going on. You’re not imagining it.

I Used to Think My Husband Had an Anger Problem

How to deal with angry husband? I thought my husband needed anger management. He even took multiple courses, including anger boot camp. Nothing changed. Because he didn’t have an anger problem. His problem was something else entirely.

How to Deal With Angry Husband: 10 Questions That Reveal the Truth

If you’ve been wondering how to deal with angry husband, start here.
These 10 questions help clarify whether his anger is situational… or something that’s eroding your sense of safety.

If you answer yes to any of these, it’s worth paying closer attention to the pattern—not the excuse.

1. Do you often feel hurt, ashamed, or embarrassed after his anger?
2. Are you afraid to upset him because you fear he’ll leave you or punish you emotionally?
3. Have you spent time searching for clues about why he’s angry—as if there’s a hidden code to crack?
4. Has he made subtle or direct threats?
   (Example: “Touch is my love language… I get depressed when you pull away.” Translation: Give me sex or pay for it later.)
5.  Do you find yourself trying to predict his moods and make things perfect for him anticipating his anger?
6.  Have you tried describing how angry he gets to other people, but they don’t seem to understand?
7. Do you feel confused about what’s true versus what he claims when he’s angry?
8. Have you ever used sex to smooth things over or prevent him from becoming angry?
9. Do you feel emotionally abandoned because of his anger?
10.  Do you feel like sometimes you caused his anger?

If any of these hit close to home, it’s important to know your husband’s anger has nothing to do with you, other than the fact that he’s using it to control you.

So actually… How to Deal With Angry Husband?

Well, it’s sort of a trick question.

Women in our community start feeling clearer when they shift from:

❌ “How do I help him?”
to
✔️ “How do I help myself and my kids be safe, emotionally and physically?”

That shift changes everything. Our daily online group for women who have been betrayed in this way can validate and support you.

Your Next Step Toward Clarity

For deeper clarity, my Living Free Workshop walks you step-by-step through understanding what’s really going on, without pressure for you to do anything, without therapy jargon, and without being told to “just work on the marriage.”

You’re not asking for too much. You deserve emotional safety and peace.

To discover if you’re actually experiencing emotional abuse, take this free this test has 19 emotional abuse examples that women often miss.

Transcript: How to Deal With Angry Husband

Anne: Welcome to Betrayal Trauma Recovery. I’m Anne. I have Janice and Cameron on the podcast today. They’re gonna share a part of their story about how to deal with angry husband.

Janice, why don’t you go ahead and let’s start with your story.

Janice: Thank you, Anne. I appreciate it. I was a victim of domestic abuse, but I didn’t recognize it. All of those years, while in that marriage, we would reach out to counselors, pastors.

Usually we’d go to a pastor first and they would treat it like a marital problem. And most of the time, the attempts to get help made things worse. It really just boggled my mind that everywhere I turned to get help, whether it be the courts, law enforcement, counselors, nobody knew how to deal with our situation.

I came through a church where the pastor didn’t know what to do. He thought that I should just get out of the marriage. And when he told me that, I thought, well, this man doesn’t know Jesus. I went to a church that believed more like I did, and they told me, well, you need to submit as long as he’s not asking you to sin.

And the more I submitted or obeyed or bowed down to him, the more things would get worse.

Submission was taught Like obedience

Anne: Yeah, I went through a similar experience. I felt like I was like facing this problem head on. I just don’t know exactly what the problem is. And everyone I went to for help didn’t tell me what it was. And so I did everything right. But the people supposed to help me did not help.

You mentioned your pastor said, “You should consider divorce,” And you thought to yourself, this man doesn’t know Jesus. I actually hear that a lot. Women hear my podcast and they think I’m like pro-divorce or maybe not Christian or something. When I very, very much am. And I think Jesus doesn’t want women abused.

Janice: Absolutely. I had actually grown up in a pretty liberal church, and then after marriage I moved to one with strict teaching on men’s and women’s roles. Submission was taught like obedience. And then of course all the years I became a homeschool mom, listening to things like Focus on the Family. Where they talk about how your children will be better off if you stay married, that a divorce is so painful and hurtful to children, and my own parents had divorced.

So I really did not believe in divorce. And it got to the point that my daughter, who was 12 years old at the time, said, Mom, why don’t you just get out? And I said, God hates divorce. I kept asking myself, what does God say about divorce and marriage? But I had about a million things in my head that I had come to believe, put there by my husband. He would say things like, You need to submit. I’m the head of this house. He would use scripture to keep me under control.

Interpreting abuse as only physical

Anne: How did you realize that submitting to abuse or evil wasn’t what Jesus wanted?

Janice: I don’t even know if I came to that recognition until after I got out.

My ex was a physician, so we worked with a psychologist one-on-one for a week. I had been telling myself, this is not abuse. He doesn’t mean it. He just flips out and he really can’t control it. It’s like a little nervous breakdown, but I realized he used everything against me, and that is not physical violence. Before that, I interpreted abuse as only physical, and I had had some incidents, but they were few and far between. We could go years with no physical abuse, but then when they did happen, I would get shoved or blocked in a room.

it did build up and was worse there towards the end than in the beginning.

Anne: Me too. I think I only had maybe three like episodes where he actually touched me, and he didn’t really even harm me except for the last time when he got arrested, he sprained my fingers. But for me, the emotional and psychological abuse was way worse.

And that’s what took me forever to wrap my head around. And that’s what’s hard is that if we don’t recognize what’s happening and we go to get help from like a therapist or the church. They don’t recognize it, so they’re not gonna help us.

Janice: Their church is not understanding, just like victims. We don’t understand the dynamic, so how can we expect them to understand?

How to deal with angry husband: Quoting scripture and praying doesn’t make someone righteous

Anne: Yeah. Church is especially problematic when it comes to abusers because they go to church and they read their scriptures and they pray and they know how to act like a God-fearing man, you know? And so you can’t wrap your head around that. They’re intentionally lying and manipulating you, and neither can the people at church, but just because they can quote scripture and pray and they sound righteous.

If they are lying, if they’re using inappropriate media, if they’re having affairs, if they’re screaming at their family all the time, if they’re like throwing their weight around because they’re selfish. ‘Cause they don’t wanna have to cook dinner, they don’t want a dirty toilet. They’re not righteous, no matter how many scriptures they can quote. They should be studying scriptures on betrayal.

Janice: Yeah, and they know that. Jesus talked about wolves among sheep, right? So I think that they know that and they will actually use the church for their own gain. I mean, Paul talks about it in his epistles.

Anne: You and I both have physical abuse as part of our story, and with mine it was extremely minimal. I’m not trying to minimize his abuse.

I’m just saying like one time he pushed me into the bed, but it didn’t hurt me. It was just scary. And then there was all the punching walls and physical intimidation, which is also physical abuse. I just didn’t see it as that at the time, I could tell that he was getting really mad because he wanted me to back off and I wouldn’t back off.

Emotional abuse is dangerous, how to deal with angry husband?

Anne: I would just keep going and I thought like maybe he’ll punch me and then at least I’d have a bruise. I know a lot of women who think that, ‘ cause without the physical violence, you’re still being severely abused. It’s just so much harder to figure out. How to deal with angry husband?

Janice: I would much rather he hit me. To me, the emotional abuse can be so much worse than physical, depending on the type of physical abuse.

Anne: Well, yeah, ’cause it’s really clear if someone punches you in the face. But the manipulation and the gaslighting, like impossible to figure out sometimes. And that’s not our fault. It’s his fault. ‘Cause he is like literally hiding stuff.

Also, there are many stories, and I’ve talked about them on the podcast like Susan Powell and Leah Moses, Michael Haight, and the dentist from Colorado. I’ve done episodes about the warning signs your husband might kill you. They were not physically abusive and then they killed their family members suddenly. It’s not like they had a history of physical abuse before they committed murder, but they did have a history of emotional and psychological abuse.

Janice: Yes, that’s the thing . I’ve got a friend whose husband was just emotionally abusive, just emotionally abusive for years. She left and went to her parents’ house, so he stormed in and killed her parents and left her for dead.

Anne: That is awful. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. Oh yeah. I mean, that’s the worst case scenario. And not making light of that at all, but like it’s also the worst case scenario to be continually emotionally and psychologically abused.

If you obey the commandments you should be blessed

Anne: There’s no silver lining to abuse, and that’s why it’s so traumatizing. It’s traumatizing, just that the person you trusted with your life betrayed you. How to deal with angry husband?

Janice: Abuse in and of itself is a huge betrayal of the bond that we are supposed to have. It is our most intimate relationship, and so there’s nothing like that.

It’s such a deep wound. One day I’m saying, Lord, nobody knows what’s this feels like. Nobody understands what I’m going through right now. And it felt like the Holy Spirit dropped all over me and I could feel Jesus saying, I know. I know what it’s like to be betrayed by somebody I love. I know what it’s like to have somebody that I trusted turn on me.

He was betrayed. So we have a God who understands when we are experiencing betrayal trauma. People, they don’t appreciate us. They see us more as objects and possessions than partners, and so it’s just a really difficult thing to deal with.

I still had a lot of faith, but I also really questioned God’s goodness. If he’s good, why is he allowing this to happen to me?

Anne: Yeah, especially if you followed the council of your church and you were doing what you thought Jesus wanted you to do. If you obey the commandments, you’re supposed to be blessed.

It’s really hard to feel any blessings when there’s an abusive man standing between you and the blessings that God wants to give you. In terms of the church, like Jesus said, that if you lust after a woman, you’ve committed adultery. And so here at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we view pornography use as abusive.

how to deal with angry husband: Abusers have mindsets of entitlement

Anne: And I’m coming out with a book soon that talks all about that. In addition to all the other reasons why lying and betrayal is a domestic abuse issue, and a lot of people disagree with me, they don’t think that pornography use, or lying about pornography use, or an affair is emotional and psychological abuse.

But I’m like, you’re just not educated about emotional and psychological abuse, and I wasn’t either. So …

Janice: Definitely they go hand in hand. Because the heart behind domestic abuse is basically objectifying as possessions. And that is exactly what pornography does. It’s looking at women as objects. I mean, pornography changes and rewires the brain and the way that men can have intimacy with women .

Abusers have mindsets loaded with entitlement, pornography is also an entitlement issue. Like I can look at anything I want to any time. There are no rules for me when it comes to this department. It is definitely the same mindset that you see.

Anne: Yeah, which to me means that if you are in a relationship with an active pornography user, you are in a relationship with an abuser.

I say this all the time: Drug addicts abuse drugs. Alcoholics abuse alcohol. Sex addicts abuse people.

So people are the thing that they abuse. I’m just so frustrated with like therapists or clergy because they say the solution to addiction is connection and they’re asking a victim of abuse to support her abuser, and that is unethical on all sorts of levels. I also don’t think it’s doing the abuser any favors. Like I don’t think he’s actually gonna get help with that approach.

He’s choosing his behavior

Anne: It took us a long time to wrap our heads around the fact that he was emotionally and psychologically abusive.

What would you share with women who were in the situation that we were in at one point?

Janice: Well, you remember I talked about going into this program to learn how to deal with angry husband and I told the guy who was facilitating our week long intensive, I said, he just loses it. He can’t control his anger. He just flips out and he starts breaking things.

And he goes, well, wait a minute. So when he is breaking things, who stuff does he break? Does he break your stuff only or his stuff and everybody’s stuff. And I said, well, it’s mostly just my stuff. Then he says, does he flip out on people at work like that? And I said, no, not really. He said, well, then that tells me that he’s got control over this.

He’s choosing this behavior. A lot of times the truth is ugly. We have to admit that ugly truth before we can embrace beautiful truth. And the truth is that he uses kindness to manipulate. It’s not that he’s losing control at all. It’s that he’s using, whether it be anger or kindness, he’s using both to control. And that was a painful eye-opener to me. It was a very needed one for me to finally move towards healing.

Anne: Yeah, that was a big one for me too.

Well, Janice thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate you sharing your story and your thoughts.

Janice: Well, thank you for having me. I enjoyed it.

Attributing his good traits to me

Anne: Cameron, go ahead.

Cameron: So I got married really young and I had no idea hes love bombing me. It felt flattering. He was saying all the sweet things, and he talked trash about every woman he dated before me, how disgusting or nasty his exes were. And part of me felt special.

Like, wow, he thinks I’m different. One morning over breakfast, he was like, I think I need a break. But like the night before he told me he wanted to marry me, I was devastated. And then a week later, he shows back up saying, I made a huge mistake. And the relief, I mean, I don’t, I don’t think there’s anything more intoxicating than the relief that follows emotional torture.

I took it as a sign that he was the one. He’d say things like, I stopped looking at inappropriate media because of you. I’m closer to my family because of you. I’m doing better in school because of you. He attributed all his good traits to me.

Anne: I’m so glad you brought that up, because then when he doesn’t do well in school or he starts looking at pornography again, then he blames you because you weren’t helping him be a better person anymore. How to deal with angry husband?

Cameron: Yeah, he was just setting me up to blame me for not doing that stuff later.

how to deal with angry husband: His Little abusive accidents?

Anne: Before you got on to interview, you were telling me about like the covert physical abuse. Like he would never punch you in the face, but he’d sort of like pretend like he couldn’t see you and step on your foot and stuff like that. Can you talk about that?

Cameron: The whole time there were these little accidents, opening a door when I was standing too close, so it hit me. Accidentally tripping me. I was like, wow. He’s super strong and big and he just didn’t see me there.

Anne: Yeah. It’s like a threat.

Cameron: Totally, his anger was always looming over me. I never knew when he was gonna lose it or how to deal with angry husband.

Anne: Yeah. I experienced that as well. My, um, ex punched a wall a couple times and then that hole in the wall, like it just sat there and every time I saw it I thought, wow, he’s capable of that.

Cameron: I totally know what you mean.

Anne: . Like he could destroy stuff, but he never destroyed anything that he cared about.

Cameron: He told me I just lost control, but he didn’t hit his beloved TV. And I’d think, okay, but if you really lost control, wouldn’t you have hit me? So clearly you have control.

Anne: If I lost it, is there excuse? That’s a serious threat. That’s like even worse because he could really hurt somebody if he loses control and punches stuff. I don’t think they realize that it actually makes them look worse if they say they lost it.

His anger is out of control

Cameron: I know he might like rip one of our pet’s heads off or something. Anyway, one 4th of July, we were driving to his brother’s lake house and he goes, my parents emotionally abused me. I need you with me at all times while we’re there. So I tried to stay near him, but of course there’s all the kids running around and I’d come and go and check in.

But at one point, one of the kids needed my help in the garage. He found me, got mad and punched a hole in his brother’s garage wall. I mean, crazy town. His brother’s all furious and I’m so embarrassed I’m like, it was my fault. I made him mad. His brother shrugged, like, whatever. My husband apologized and said he’d fix it.

Later my mother-in-law asked where he was and I said, he’s in the garage fixing the hole. And I remember thinking, why is no one asking? What the heck is wrong with him? And it wasn’t just them.

I reached out to our pastor, my family, I said, I mean, “Sure his pornography is a problem, but his anger is out of control.” And everybody was like, be a better wife, have more sex, be patient, use I statements, read The Power of a Praying Wife, avoid the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

Anne: I also tried to avoid the four horsemen of the apocalypse, like trying not to stonewall, trying not to criticize what he is doing, you’re supposed to tell him your feelings, but you can’t tell him your feelings. So like if you say something, you’re crazy and then if you don’t say something, you’re crazy. How to deal with angry husband?

A whole unfit mother campaign

Anne: Like if I go to therapy, there’s something wrong with me. If I don’t go to therapy, there’s something wrong with me. How to deal with angry husband?

Cameron: Yes, that! How can it not be overwhelming when they tell you, you have to be absolutely perfect so he can like be nice. And I did everything they told me. And because he was so charming in public, so helpful and humble and worship-team perfect. No one believed me.

He’s telling everyone I was lazy, dependent, a whole unfit mother campaign. Telling people I partied every weekend. Left him with the kids.

Anne: They told me, “You’re trying to ruin your family.” Did they use that one on you?

Cameron: I didn’t hear that one, but the one I heard over and over and over was, “She doesn’t realize how good she has it.”

Then there was the sexual coercion, which I had no idea what that was until I found BTR. If I wasn’t in the mood. Mostly because he’d yelled at me like 10 minutes before, he’d sulk, ignore me, punish me with silence. I realized he only loved me when I gave him exactly what he wanted, and I didn’t wanna poke the bear, didn’t want the sulking or the anger or any more holes in the wall.

And anytime I brought up help, he’d say, I’m gonna change. I’ll find a program next week. But the minute I was like, when? He’d explode. Then came the counselors. Ooh, the counselors one told him I was controlling. Another one said his needs weren’t met, that he should demand more from me. That same one told me my husband was just frustrated because of my anxiety.

How to deal with angry husband: He’s an addict because of low self-esteem

Cameron: Then my husband starts seeing this revered CSAT ’cause he now has a sex addiction. And that guy is like, he’s an addict because of his low self-esteem.

Anne: The sexual addiction thing is so problematic. It’s not that pornography isn’t addictive and it is not that he is not a pornography addict. But in relation to you, he’s emotionally abusive. How to deal with angry husband? His addiction isn’t your problem, his abuse is your problem. But when his addiction comes into the mix, people are like, oh, he’s willing to be vulnerable. He is willing to talk about his addiction. He is willing to go to a treatment program, so things are gonna get better.

After I’ve interviewed so many women, I found that is like rarely the case. Because she’s not experiencing his addiction. So as I’m listening to your story, I’m like bracing myself.

Cameron: I know, right? So my husband comes home like, this isn’t about you. It’s about me loving myself. And I’m sitting there thinking, okay, so you’re gonna go on a three hour beach run every day while I raise our seven kids alone.

I thought his family would care, nope. Within days of me asking them for support, I became the villain. I was crazy. I had borderline personality disorder. They actually told me, we know he has a temper, but you married him. You knew, so that’s on you.

Anne: So wait. Their contention was that you consented to emotional abuse because you married him, because that’s not the thing.

Cameron: Right. Totally.

Focusing on emotional safety

Cameron: And during that week, I prayed harder than I’ve ever prayed in my life. Sat at my computer and I typed in everything I was feeling. And one of your podcasts popped up. That’s how I found BTR.

Anne: That’s amazing. How to deal with angry husband? I’ve heard that from so many women who were like praying and they sat down on their computer and they found BTR. I am so grateful that you found us. Our group sessions, and the workshop focus on your emotional safety only. That’s it.

Cameron: Yeah. It’s so different than any other type of therapy or program and it’s so much better. It actually makes sense. After I found you everything shifted. I started learning your strategies in the workshop and how to use boundaries that actually worked. Unlike that dumb CSAT that had me set the stupidest boundaries. From BTR, I learned that nothing he did was because he felt ashamed or had low self-esteem.

It was because he chose abuse. I started doing the meditations in your workshop. They helped a ton. I went to like six group sessions a week. I could finally think again. And I could feel my own feelings instead of the ones he assigned to me.

So grateful for btr

Cameron: I started to trust myself. Meanwhile, he’s losing weight, and everyone is suddenly so worried about him. Women coming up to me like, he looks so thin. Are you guys okay? Our kids are falling apart, and no one even asks them how they’re doing. And the church board completely bought into all his lies.

They were like, why won’t you let him come home? Can’t you talk to him differently? Don’t say things that make him mad. It was awful. Truly awful. I would’ve never made it through without the workshop and the BTR community, the coaches, the podcast, everything.

I don’t know what I would’ve done without BTR. I’m so grateful.

Anne: Yeah, that’s why I created BTR, because when I went through it, I couldn’t find help. I had the same experience that you did, like going to tons of therapists that couldn’t help. trying to find out how to deal with angry husband.

Thank you so much, Cameron, for sharing your story today.

After the discovery of betrayal, life may feel overwhelming. Here’s what I learned about recovery after betrayal from interviewing four women who experienced betrayal in their marriage.

Recovery After Betrayal: Here’s What No One Tells You

1. Name it. It’s important to name betrayal as domestic abuse.
2. Emotional safety first. It’s important to put your emotional safety above anything else.
3. Drop the shame. His betrayal and his lies have nothing to do with you, and you didn’t cause it.
4. Observe, since the betrayal couldn’t have happened without all his lies, it’s important to watch his behavior and make sure it matches his words.
5. Your body knows. Many women live with insomnia, digestive issues, chest tightness, and anxiety long before they understand that betrayal is happening. It’s important to listen to our bodies.
6. Anger can help you. Anger can power your next steps toward emotional safety.
7. Grief comes in waves. There’s so much grief involved with betrayal, and it’s really important to be with people who understand.

Quick FAQ on Recovery After Betrayal

How long does recovery after betrayal take?
Longer than you want, shorter than you fear. It’s nonlinear; measure by stability and peace, not calendar dates.

Do I have to leave to start healing?
No, you can start with simple emotional safety strategies and see what the next day brings. To learn more about emotional safety strategies after betrayal, enroll in The Living Free Workshop. To find out if you’re experiencing emotional abuse, take my free emotional abuse test. It has a lot of emotional abuse examples.

What if therapy made things worse?
You’re not alone. That’s why we have our daily, online Group Sessions. You deserve emotionally safe support to recover from betrayal.

Transcript: Recovery After Betrayal

Anne: After interviewing four betrayed wives. Here’s what I learned about recovery after betrayal.

Number one, name it. It’s important to name betrayal as domestic abuse

Number two, emotional safety first,. It’s important to put your emotional safety above anything else and take steps to learn how to heal from emotional abuse.

Three, drop the shame. His betrayal and his lies have nothing to do with you, and nothing you did or didn’t do was the cause of cheating.

Number four, observe. Since the betrayal couldn’t have happened without all his lies, it’s important to watch his behavior and make sure it matches his words.

Number five, your body knows. Many women live with insomnia, digestive issues, chest tightness, and anxiety long before they understand that betrayal is happening. It’s important to listen to our bodies.

Six, anger can help you. You’ll likely go through stages of anger after infidelity. Anger can power your next steps toward emotional safety.

And number seven, grief comes in waves. With betrayal, there’s so much grief involved, and it’s really important to be with people who understand.

Before I get to their interviews, I want to go back in time. When I went through this, I felt overwhelmed. I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t know where to turn.

Doing my dishes seemed impossible as a single mom. It seemed completely overwhelming. A place like Betrayal Trauma Recovery, this place I founded didn’t exist. I didn’t wanna get divorced, and so I went to 12-Step. My 12-Step sponsor told me my character defects were the real problem. She said that if God removed those defects from me, I would have my best chance of saving my family.e character defects from me, that was my best chance of saving my family.

Going back in time

Anne: During that time of recovery after betrayal, I was crying a lot. And I just found this recording of my son, who pulled out a vacuum and like had the vacuum handle as the microphone. Watching that video took me back to that place, although I’m not gonna show you the video. Here’s the audio recording of that.

6 Year Old Son: When you’re feeling sad. It’s okay to cry whenever you’re feeling sad. It’s okay to cry, it’s okay to cry. If someone’s mean to you…

3 Year Old Son: Telling me to

6 Year Old Son: …cry.

3 Year Old Son: Ends up crying again

6 Year Old Son: Stop you’re interrupting it.

3 Year Old Son: No I’m not.

6 Year Old Son: Yes you are.

3 Year Old Son: No I’m not.

6 Year Old Son: And if you are a little baby. You can still cry. If you’re really, really old, you still can cry. If you’re really, really, really young, you still can cry. Yay! I love you Mom.

Anne: He was so brave and so strong now he’s over six feet tall. And he is doing really well. And he is such a good person.

I love my children, they are so close to me. I don’t think I would’ve ever had the relationship I have with them if my ex-husband had stayed in our home. So I’m reaching out across the void to you. And if you are overwhelmed, let me sit here in this overwhelm with you. If you have no idea how you’re going to pay the bills, if every option seems terrible. I’ve been there.

Trying To Survive during recovery after betrayal

Anne: I felt like I couldn’t even say anything during recovery after betrayal. Speaking the truth was getting me in trouble, and I didn’t know how to do anything else. There was no other option for me. It was maddening. After a year of 12-Step, I started realizing it wasn’t addiction. My husband was abusive. And then I started podcasting and interviewing women who listened and wanted to share their stories too.

I meet women every day who are in that place. Where they don’t know what will happen. They’re trying to survive the best way they can. I’ve interviewed you in those moments, and I’ve also interviewed you after the fact. You know, years later when you’re feeling better. So today I have four women from our community who will share their stories: Charlotte, Luna, Rhonda, and Cassandra, so they know because they’ve been part of Betrayal Trauma Recovery.

I developed the Living Free strategies, and I teach them now. Our team teaches women’s strategies in our Group Sessions. We also have The Living Free Workshop, and they’ve benefited. So many other women have benefited from the support they receive here at BTR, so they’re gonna share experiences today. Charlotte, let’s start with you.

Charlotte: Anne, I’m so sorry. I heard your podcast, but to hear your story today, my heart just breaks. Prior to our engagement and subsequent marriage, he disclosed to me that in his teens and twenties he had struggled with pornography and compulsive sexual behaviors.

I was young and naive

Charlotte: And I was young and naive, so I said, well, that’s fine. It’s in the past. And for the first year he was “sober”, if you will. I had no idea. But during our second year of marriage, I felt a disconnection during recovery after betrayal. I remember thinking, I don’t believe what you’re saying. You’re saying one thing, but I’m feeling something different.

So I think what I picked up on was there was a real disconnect emotionally. . He was saying all the right things, but I didn’t feel it in my gut. And it was shortly after a wedding anniversary. I caught him in a lie, and things started to unravel.

Three weeks later, I found out the truth. I felt devastated. I was angry. It was brutal. I would hear the outright lies, it doesn’t make sense to me. I think gaslighting is absolutely abusive. What was crazy making for me was on one hand here was this respectable, responsible man that I admired, respected, trusted.

My husband is a trained therapist, and at the time he worked in clinical mental health. On the other hand, here is this hidden life that I didn’t know about. At that point, the gaslighting and the betrayal trauma just increased exponentially, the longer the woman is subject to that man living a lie.

The third year of our marriage, I caught him in another lie. And the shame, because even though we as women haven’t done anything shameful. So many of us feel ashamed of what our husbands have done. And I can’t make a decision right now. So then I’d watch and wait and see what happens. Is he angry, defensive, blaming? Is he evasive?

He lied to everybody about whAT HAPPENED

Anne: Yeah, I was in that boat too with me, the psychological abuse was so extreme. There was literally not one interaction that I had with him where he didn’t gaslight or blame me. But I didn’t want to get divorced during recovery after betrayal. So I waited and I watched, and it was really disturbing to watch his decisions. He shocked me and shut down our bank account.

He lied to everybody about what happened. Every single choice he made was like a nightmare, and in fact, he’s still lying about what happened years later. He’s an attorney, and back then he became a mediator too. When I found out, I was just devastated. I thought he was full-blown gone.

Charlotte: The gaslighting and the blaming are so emotionally and psychologically damaging. That the person that you’ve trusted that’s supposed to have your back is actually the one that’s tuned against you in such a vicious way. So sorry.

Anne: Ditto, Charlotte, I’m so sorry about everything you’ve been through. It’s so difficult. Knowing what you know now, if you could talk to your younger self, what would you tell her?

Charlotte: Well, you know, I would tell her it’s not her fault. I think I would reiterate that to my young self. You know it’s not your fault. Whether it’s pornography use or other acting out. It’s not my fault that I trusted, it’s not our fault if they’re compulsive liars, deceive us and gaslight us.

Anne: Yeah, thanks Charlotte for sharing today. We love having you in our community.

Charlotte: Absolutely I’m so grateful for BTR. I can’t tell you how grateful I am, thank you.

Discovering Husband’s so-called addiction

Anne: All right, Luna, your turn. Thanks for sharing today. Why don’t you start with discovering your husband’s so-called addiction.

Luna: So like the slowest, most drawn out discovery story you’ve ever heard. We were married. I had a feeling really early, like even on my honeymoon, something’s not quite right. But at the same time, just thinking, “Oh it’s not a big deal. I really don’t know what husbands are like. This is my first experience.” I just dismissed those feelings.

I was pregnant with our first son. It happened to be the same year that our house was wired for the internet, and I was big, tired, and struggling with my body image. And then my husband was in the office at home, and I remember thinking “What’s happening in there?”

But at the same time, just thinking, “Whatever he wants to do in there, I don’t care.” And told myself that for oh, another three years, kind of embarrassing to go through the slow discovery.

Anne: Oh, don’t feel bad. Everyone goes through that period where they don’t know what to do. Where they’re trying to figure it out. I sure did. It’s totally normal. That’s why it’s awesome that you’re part of our community, so you can feel like you’re not alone, right?

Luna: Definitely, so then our son was born, and I remember being awake to feed him in the night. I noticed the light was on in the home office, and I just thought, “Oh wow, my husband’s awake too.” And I walked right over and opened the door. But like instantly felt this horrible flood of emotion. It felt so tangible, and I saw pornography on the computer screen, so now this thing is right in front of my eyes.

Recovery after betrayal: I COULDN’T GO THERE

Luna: But I shut the door and walked away. There was an awareness on his part that I had seen what happened, but my mom was in town. And she was with us for another week. Like I just couldn’t, I couldn’t go there.

Anne: Mm-hmm

Luna: And then I really didn’t go there, just going through the motions and coping, and existing and busy life. It just kind of dragged on.

Anne: Did you have a religious background or ethical background that caused you to think that pornography in and of itself was wrong? Or was just an icky feeling from finding that he was viewing pornography?

Luna: Definitely, the spiritual upbringing was the first thing that made me feel uncomfortable about pornography. That feeling was like just a confirmation of what I believed.

Anne: So what happened like years after not talking about it?

Luna: Well. I like to say, “I got a gift.” It wasn’t in a pretty package with a matching bow, but it was a gift to me. And that’s the gift of anger. I ended up being a very angry woman, lived with this constant low level irritation and blow-up over little stupid things. And thinking like, “This anger scares me.” I was okay being sad. And I was okay being lonely and being depressed, but the anger terrified me.

Feeling the effects of trauma

Luna: I had chest pain, I had insomnia, I had anxiety especially at night. I would lay in bed at night, and just feel like my heart is going to fly out of my chest, and feel so anxious about the reality of my life that I had coped with for so many years.

And so it was working through owning the reality of my life, where now suddenly I began to feel the effects of that trauma. It was really traumatic to pull my proverbial ostrich head out of the sand. It was the shock. I remember thinking, Can we go back, because dealing with what is actually happening in my life felt worse. It really did for a while.

Anne: Yeah, I felt the same way during recovery after betrayal. I felt the most trauma after I recognized that what I had experienced wasn’t addiction, but abuse. I mean, I had been experiencing his emotional and psychological abuse for seven years. But because I thought it was addiction, I didn’t process what I was going through. And then after we separated and I started to see what it really was, the trauma just kept coming in waves and waves. And it was intense for a long time.

Luna: I was a little bit offended with God that this was my story. I didn’t deserve it. I never asked for this to be in my story, and here I was, and how was that okay with him? So I was on the outs with God for trauma as well. I remember thinking like, “If I stay, then at least I can keep an eye on him. And I can sort of be there to protect my boys.”

Recovery after betrayal: I didn’t know where else to go

Luna: That sort of became, “If I stay, then I can make sure he’s moving forward and my kids don’t end up growing up with a pornography addict for a father.” Because you know whether our marriage makes it, that was a big question. I thought, well if I stay, I can make sure he’s doing the work and moving forward, and then that’ll make him a better father for my boys. And so I’m staying to keep an eye on him. Not the best reason, of course, to stay in a little while.

The bottom line for me is I didn’t know where else to go. It really was the catalyst that forced my hand. And made me say, “I need help. I have to get help. Something has to change inside of me, I can’t live like this.” And that’s when I found you. One of the things I love about your stuff is it’s small bite-sized serving of hope. A couple of things to take action on or to reflect on.

Anne: Absolutely, yeah, I created it in bite-sized pieces because when I went through recovery after betrayal, I couldn’t really process information. I couldn’t read, I was so overwhelmed. I just needed to take one tiny step at a time.

Luna: Exactly, in the middle of the trauma, like I couldn’t even read two pages. You give women something that they could chew, and they could swallow, and it would just carry them through one day. Maybe help them take one step, and we just need something to hold onto.

Anne: So that’s why I decided to do a podcast. Hearing other women’s stories helps us process what we’re going through.

There’s a life beyond pain and trauma

Anne: The podcast is just one episode at a time. You can listen while doing laundry. You can listen while vacuuming. With Living Free, you just do a tiny bit at a time if you want. The total runtime is like two hours 50 minutes, so you can do it all at once or a little bit at a time, however it works for you.

Luna: I love that it’s so manageable for women in trauma. With your stuff, there is a way for every woman to move forward. It’s not about whether your relationship is restored. But knowing there is peace available, and regardless of what ends up happening in your marriage, there’s a way for you to move forward. There’s a life for you beyond this pain and trauma that you’re dealing with right now.

Anne: Yeah, and you’ll have women who will walk through it with you during recovery after betrayal.

Luna: Exactly, you know, however your story ends, there is hope. The pain I experienced was so difficult and so altering. But at the same time, I felt like I found a way through. I knew I had to share it.

Anne: Well, thank you so much for sharing it. You sharing your story will help other women, so thank you Luna.

We don’t know which way is up or where to turn

Anne: Okay, Rhonda, you’re up next. Would you mind sharing what helped you heal from betrayal trauma?

Rhonda: It’s really hard Anne, because a big part of trauma and abuse is the chaos inside of ourselves. We don’t know which way is up or even where to turn. Coming to a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group is a great place to go, because I immediately feel understood. There’s not a whole lot of explanation that has to happen. When you come to BTR, you see a lot of nodding of heads.

Anne: Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of head nodding and heart emojis going up in group sessions for sure.

Yeah, you know, when I went through recovery after betrayal, I really wanted a quick solution. I wanted my family to be like put back together again really fast. Many women feel guilty or pressure to have some sort of timeline for healing. How have you felt about that as you attended Group Sessions?

Rhonda: One of the things I love about BTR is that BTR coaches use methods that have been tried, that work for everybody. But another thing I love about BTR is that every individual is different. Timing is different. And so a lot of freedom to figure out really what is best for me just being guided by the coach. That’s unique to each situation, but it’s not fast for anybody. The BTR coaches, it’s a synergistic group. It’s a bunch of ladies who come from all different situations who really understand, but approach healing from a different perspective.

Recovery after betrayal: Everything is turned upside down

Rhonda: I can get the little gems from each of the coaches. And when I could put a name to what’s going on, abuse, once you’ve labeled it and recognized it, all those actions they land on him, not on you.

Anne: Yeah, it helps know what you’re actually healing from when you’re in recovery after betrayal, like you said, abuse. Yeah. So for women listening who are hesitant to call it abuse, they’re maybe thinking he’s got like childhood trauma or maybe an addiction. Maybe they’re looking for a men’s program, like to get their husband into. Do you have any thoughts for them?

Rhonda: You may label it as, you know, just a little problem that he has, something that he’s trying to overcome. But we can’t get rid of the effects. Everything is turned upside down and chaotic, because that’s what abusers do to us. It’s so scary to label it correctly, because of what the future might bring.

You get to decide, and you get to decide again tomorrow and the next day. And the next day, your path will lead you. You don’t have to be afraid of your path. If you don’t want to get divorced, you don’t have to get divorced. If you don’t want to be separated, you don’t have to be separated.

I love doing the BTR Meditations. The different topics and guided meditations help me let go of all the heavy things and focus on peace and calm. I do the meditations, because sometimes we can’t get our minds and bodies to do what we know we need to do. Meditation really helps with that. And meditations allow our minds and hearts to start to release some of the pain.

Meditation helped

Anne: Oh, that is so great to hear. At some point in my recovery, meditation was like the only thing that helped, which is why I wanted to include it in the Living Free Workshop. I’m so glad you’re finding those meditations helpful.

If you’re listening and you’re like, where are these meditations? You can go to btr.org/livingfree and find the meditations inside the Living Free Workshop. But they provide immediate peace when you can’t sleep or need peace right away. I mean, it’s really good to feel that peace, especially when we didn’t do anything wrong and you feel terrible. But we’re always doing the best we can. We’ve been doing the best we can the entire time.

Rhonda: I love that. I love that. We’re always doing the best that we can. We say, “Oh, I was such an idiot then.” No, no, I was not such an idiot. I knew my body had stored what my mind and heart couldn’t process. And sometimes the miracle is just recognition. But sometimes the miracle is physical healing.

Anne: Yeah, I have talked to so many women who had like autoimmune disorders or physical problems. And once they separated themselves from emotional and psychological abuse, their symptoms just cleared up immediately, which was an absolute miracle. So many women pray for a miracle, maybe a physical miracle of healing.

This garden is a miracle

Anne: We were gardening. And my son said to me, “Mom, this garden is a miracle. It’s so beautiful,” and he said, “Do you know what makes the miracle happen?”

And I was like, “What?”

This is the same son that you heard earlier on my recording. He said, “We do these little actions of planting these little seeds and watering, then we hope it will grow and fruit something good. And then the miracle occurs.”

And I was like, ” Wow, you are so wise.”

When I thought about the Living Free Strategies, I thought about the Israelites. There was a miracle that they could leave, but they actually had to like pack up their bags and physically walk out. God didn’t just like, you know, teleport them to the promised land.

They had a lot of work they had to do to get there, which was miserable. But eventually they did get to the promised land. So as we’re thinking about miracles, always remember the planting of the seed or that we need to pick up our bags or whatever it is that we need to do, even though it’s not our fault, to receive the miracle into our lives.

I think the most important thing is to focus on, not the outcome, but a state of being. Like we want the miracle to be emotional safety, not necessarily saving our marriage or getting divorced. Then we take steps toward emotional safety, and we can see the miracle occur in our lives. And we’re not tied to any outcome. We hope for emotional safety for you and your children.

recovery after betrayal: Feeling Hope for my life again

Rhonda: Anne, you pointed out that if we put our work towards a state of being rather than a specific outcome, God’s will grant that for us as we work towards it. And that’s where talking with people who are safe, like BTR coaches. That’s a huge miracle.

Anne: I’m so happy to hear you say that I hear so many women who come to BTR groups, like it’s so hopeful. I feel hope for my life again. Yeah, and that’s why I appreciate so many of you writing a five-star review Apple podcast for this podcast, or doing an review on Spotify, or reviewing one of my books on Amazon.

Because as you help get the word out, other women can feel this hope too. Because all of us have felt that overwhelm and just absolute sadness during recovery after betrayal.

And then when women find BTR through that. They tell me over and over again, I just wish I had found it sooner. I wish I had known sooner. So thank you to those who help me get the word out, so that we can help other women find it as soon as possible, so that they can have this information.

And that being said, I always tell women, “You found BTR at just the right time for you.” Like, let’s trust in the timing of the universe. It brought you, Rhonda, to us right at this time. Thank you so much for sharing today.

Rhonda: Thank you Anne, it’s a pleasure to be with you and I love BTR.

Survival of betrayal by two different men

Anne: Thank you. All right Cassandra, it’s your turn now, go ahead.

Cassandra: Yes, I am a survivor of betrayal, betrayed by two different men. But the emotional infidelity of one that I was engaged to at the time was terribly wounding for me. I didn’t understand what was wrong, really. We went to two different couples therapists to try to get help for what I now call emotional domestic violence through his infidelity, and it was unclear if it was a physical infidelity. It was absolutely clear it was at least an emotional infidelity. I was just called too sensitive or overactive, and neither therapist could see it.

But at the time, I was too dependent on him to leave. I just couldn’t imagine life without him. And eventually he broke up with me. Which was a great gift he gave me at that time. And then another man’s sexual infidelity, which was incredibly painful, though thankfully by that time I was in a different place. I was more independent on my own, so I could end the relationship.

Anne: With your experience with the therapists who weren’t able to identify the abuse in the betrayal, did you feel betrayed by them as well?

Cassandra: I felt angry. I felt enraged, but because they were in an expert position and I was struggling, I didn’t know for sure. I mean, I guess I can look back and say that they tried the best they could, but I think that healing from betrayal needs to be looked at from a domestic violence lens.

Support groups have been powerful

Cassandra: Now, looking back, I think they lacked insight. They lacked training, they lacked perspective. It certainly was therapy induced trauma. So gaslighting, it felt traumatic at the time, and yeah, it felt like a betrayal.

Anne: As you know from group sessions, so many women have that experience of the therapist not recognizing this as domestic abuse during recovery after betrayal, which is what it is, yeah.

Cassandra: Yeah, in group, we shared stories about how many therapists had blown us off. I think the most was six. Group is where we’re feeling safe, so we can define what fits and what doesn’t, to know where to get ready. Group is very helpful to talk about what it’s like to be betrayed and unhook the blame of self that the addict, the person doing the betraying, can place on us or the therapist who doesn’t understand, or the judgmental culture.

So definitely support groups have been really powerful. I think part of the problem is we don’t talk about it. So to hear women talk about things they did at the encouragement or coercion of their sexually addicted husband that made her feel uncomfortable, regretful, or ashamed. Like looking at pornography with her husband. She didn’t want to, but she did it because he was so insistent.

Anne: Yeah, what you’re describing is sexual coercion.

It can be overwhelming

Anne: So in group or individual sessions, women are really lucky at BTR to have coaches who understand. Our team understands to relieve us all from the guilt of being coerced when we didn’t understand what was happening during recovery after betrayal.

Cassandra: Yeah, I hear that a lot. We talk a lot about what the sex addict does, and all that can also evoke great shame. I can’t believe he did that. I can’t believe he did that to me, we feel so much guilt and shame. Sex addicts can be relentless, and it can be threatening, or blackmail, or chronic manipulation, and it can be overwhelming.

And I think that’s one thing that is missed in the conversations of so-called, you know, pornography being an okay way to explore sexuality, and there’s no harm caused by it. For me personally, I only worry about the labels as much as they help me. Part of healing from Betrayal trauma is trying to get our stories out there.

Anne: Thank you so much.

One of the first and most powerful steps in understanding how to recover after being cheated on is naming what’s actually happening. Many women don’t have the words at first. Lies, secrecy, and deceit separate you from your own sense of reality, leaving you to wonder: Is it me? Am I overreacting? Is this normal? That confusion is part of betrayal trauma.

The truth is, betrayal trauma is real, and naming it doesn’t make the pain bigger, it validates it. If you’re wondering how to recover after being cheated on, Shelly’s story proves you’re not alone, and healing is possible. Support your healing with Betrayal Trauma Recovery’s Group Sessions.

This episode follows Shelly’s Story
Part 1: What If I Can Never Trust My Husband Again?
Part 2: How To Recover After Being Cheated On (THIS EPISODE)

7 Things Every Woman Should Know About How to Recover After Being Cheated On

Are you trying to recover after your husband cheated on you? If he cheats on you, his lies, secrecy and deceit separate you from your own sense of reality. Here are seven things women need to know about this.

1. Recovery begins with identification.

Betrayal trauma is what you’re experiencing. Naming it helps connect the dots between what happened and how it affected you.

2. Intimate lies are domestic abuse.

The harm doesn’t start once you find out about his cheating. It begins when he starts deceiving you. Recovery begins with accepting this truth.

3. Your body will tell you the truth.

Many women experiencing betrayal trauma have physical symptoms like insomnia, stomach issues, chronic pain. Your body always resists, even if your mind doesn’t quite understand what’s happening.

4. Recovery isn’t about him even though the need to recover is entirely about him.

Recovery takes knowing how to focus on our own emotional safety.  Take our free emotional abuse quiz to find out if you are a victim.

5. Self-compassion is a turning point.

Recovery means treating yourself like you would treat a friend.

6. Ignore bad advice.

People might tell you to just move on or don’t give away your power. That’s not helpful if you’re trying to heal from this type of trauma.

7. The right support makes recovery from this type of trauma possible.

It is important to find a support group where women understand what you’re going through because they’ve been through it too.

Transcript: How To Recover After Being Cheated On

Anne: I have Shelly, a member of our community, back on today’s episode. I interviewed her six months ago. I asked her to come back and check in. And let me know how she’s doing now. Welcome back, Shelly.

Shelly: So we’re at about a year and a half now since the initial D-Day and it’s still difficult, but we’re still together. We’re still working through things. I’ve had no more D-Days since the four or five months of D-Days I had. Nothing new has come to light. But it’s hard. That’s sort of where I am at the moment.

Anne: Will you talk about any epiphanies that you’ve had as you’ve been learning how to recover after being cheated on.

Shelly: There’s been a lot of deepening in my understanding of objectification, as a social issue, and the conditioning everywhere. Society subjects men and women to that conditioning. How human souls are made into objects and literally sold for the purpose of use in a sexual way. And it’s dark. Last time, I gave you a bit of a backstory. There’s a long line of betrayal trauma history in my life, being born into that. And for me, understanding my own power and choice has been freeing.

Eighteen Months Into Healing: What Recovery After Being Cheated On Looks Like

Anne: Like how did you see it before and how are you seeing it now?

Shelly: So listening to our original podcast the emotions I felt. When I was going back, to when I was young, and then when I was in an abusive relationship. It wasn’t a relationship. I was a victim of abuse in my teens with a much older man. The emotions I felt then were quite powerless. Just listening to that, it felt powerless. Whereas when I fast forward to now. I can feel there’s a difference. Like, I have choice. I didn’t realize that I had choice then. Like I didn’t understand it.

I wouldn’t say naive, because I wouldn’t understand because I was so young and being coerced in such a horrific way, that I didn’t see anything beyond that. Whereas now my adult self understands all this stuff. And actually, through everything I’ve listened to on your podcast and understanding that betrayal is abuse. I feel the foundation now that I didn’t have before, an understanding of what betrayal trauma is, where I’m standing in a place of power and knowing how to recover after being cheated on. I’m in a different space. I felt that, just listening through my own story in the podcast that we did before.

Anne: For our listeners, we recorded this the same day her previous episode aired. So she listened to it and now we’re talking. It’s a different type of experience than talking with a coach, therapist or group session. Because you’re listening to yourself from the outside in a way that you wouldn’t normally. Can you talk about your experience as you listened to yourself share your story on the podcast.

Listening to Yourself: A Surprising Step in How to Recover After Being Cheated On

Anne: Do you feel like it enabled you to feel for yourself in a way that you hadn’t before?

Shelly: I do actually, because I disconnected so much. I had a strong sense of dissociation before. And that has changed. I feel it is important, because that’s reconnecting to the self. Where the dissociation was before, it was like someone else’s life that I recounted or told a story about somebody else’s life or a different lifetime. It didn’t feel connected to me.

So having that connection back and feeling those emotions for my own story is important. In being whole, and rebuilding myself, it was helpful. I felt really emotional. I felt the heartbreak for myself. And I have empathy for myself, which is a strange concept. I feel for myself, my own story. I was able to release it.

Anne: I imagine it will take you a while to process hearing your own story. It’s not like you’re gonna have all the epiphanies all at once. It will happen over time. But I think it’s beneficial for women to hear themselves and recognize how human they are. If they heard someone else share the story, how much compassion they would feel for that person, and love and lack of judgment.

Shelly: Exactly.

Anne: It might be something they’ve never experienced for themselves before, partially due to all the abuse they experienced. The abuse in and of itself separates us from ourselves. That’s how abusers manipulate their victims. Abusers do not want us to process it in a way that we can feel or understand it.

Why Seeing Things As They Really Are helps and shows how to recover After Being Cheated On

Shelly: Yeah, they disempower you, so you haven’t got the power to step out of it, change it, or even see it. Having that compassion for yourself and hearing it as if you are listening to a friend is huge. I’ve always struggled with self-love. I completely understand why now, because it’s been throughout my entire life. Hearing that if I was sitting with a friend and told me my story, I would have nothing but love for her.

What I’m dealing with right now is that I’m heavily processing the current stuff with my current partner all the time, which has such a huge impact on me every day. Things still trigger me. There are still moments where it feels overwhelmingly hard.

Anne: In the past, you didn’t understand what was happening to you, so processing it in real time was not available to you in any way, shape or form. But processing your situation now that you have the information in real time, you can talk to other women. You went to BTR group sessions. You can process it, which makes a difference.

Shelly: Yeah, that’s definitely part of it. I’m also aware of positive coping mechanisms that I’m doing. There’s a general sense of awareness I wouldn’t have had before.

Anne: Once you’re aware, you can start looking at it more objectively in terms of not being manipulated like we were before.

Shelly: Yeah.

Anne: Which helps us make better decisions in the long run. It takes a minute to figure out how we feel and what we wanna do. We’re just a lot more capable of making decisions that are in our best interest when we have this type of information. It’s just impossible without it.

Embracing the Hard Truth that Sets You Free: His Cheating Isn’t About You

Shelly: Yeah, learning how to recover after being cheated on is like being in a dark room with a blindfold on and then suddenly walking out into the light and seeing everything for what it actually is.

Anne: How has that felt? Being able to see things for what they really are?

Shelly: It’s liberating. I’m glad that I see now, but it’s painful process. I wouldn’t change it.

Anne: I think some women, and I was one of them, want to unsee it a little bit, ’cause it is so painful. But once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And so there isn’t anywhere to go but forward.

Shelly: Yeah, I understand wishing to unsee it. I can totally get that, because it’s such a traumatic thing to go through. I’m glad I’m not living in the dark anymore. I’m glad I’m not living in an illusion of this perfect fairytale in my head. I would never want anyone to go through this. But I’m glad that I’m now living informed as to who I’m with and where I am.

Anne: The Living Free Workshop intends to help women see the truth.

Shelly: Yeah.

Anne: It doesn’t give any instructions in terms of like pack a bag and move out. Nothing like that. It’s more safety principles and how to get enough space to observe.

Shelly: Yes, I loved the group sessions. Feeling that connection with people, seeing the same faces, feeling familiar with the coach. Each coach had a different sort of energy and beauty about the way they held the space. I found that helpful. I remember in one of my shares talking about how this has affected me and my self perception, my physical self perception.

Getting Beauty treatments to feel better physically

Shelly: I basically started to starve myself. Because all the women he was looking at. He disclosed they were all thinner than me. Some of them were younger than me. Some of them were actually older than me. But I started to really look at myself. I had very low self-esteem anyway, but this completely smashed any esteem I had about myself. And getting beauty treatments, anything that I could just to feel better physically. And in this one particular group, I shared that.

Many of the women started to cry and could completely understand, completely resonated with what I was saying. I found that so devastatingly sad that this is one of the consequences of their behavior. Their choices impact the way we internalize, or think, we think it’s because of us. It all boils down to that belief, I’m not enough. Having that connection, not feeling alone, and not feeling like I’m the only one doing this. It was powerful, but equally heartbreaking. Actually across the world, this is something that is happening to women after experiencing something like that.

Anne: I think it brings it home that it’s not about us. To see that so many women have been exploited in that way, manipulated in that way, is so heartbreaking to realize how systemic it is.

Shelly: Yeah, my partner, I remember having a conversation with him. “I cannot understand how you could look into my eyes at the end of the day, knowing that you’d done that.” He said, “I just thought, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

Keeping secrets is the root of the pain in between. The damage that’s caused in a relationship, not having transparency.

Secrecy is Abuse: how to Recover after Being Cheated On

Shelly: That as soon as you’re doing something that you know will hurt your partner, you’re already hurting them.

Anne: Right.

Shelly: Whether they know it or not.

Anne: And just the absolute lack of understanding that not giving your partner a choice. Using deceit is abuse. It’s control, it’s harmful, and you’re already hurting her if you are not giving her a choice in her own life.

Shelly: Exactly, I did not know who I was with. I had the image of who I thought he was. Who he was saying he was. I did not know the person I was with, and I didn’t have free choice in that.

Anne: Exactly, and for any man to think that sounds okay is horrifying. I guess there could be women who feel this way, but I don’t know of any woman at BTR who would feel comfortable, thinking her husband didn’t know. Unless it was for her own safety, saving some money, as in classic domestic abuse escape strategies. Women in general who are victims of abuse, before they understand they are, would feel bad, thinking their husband didn’t know something he needed to know.

I think that’s why it’s just so incomprehensible to us that somebody would’ve made these choices for us and completely disrespected us in this way.

Shelly: It’s dishonoring someone’s soul that you’re professing to love. That is not love. It’s dishonoring me. Betraying me. There were lies about other things. There were lies about money. It’s not honoring the person you love. And I can’t consolidate those two things in my head, or in my heart and that was a part of learning how to recover after being cheated on.

My mind is still on high alert

Shelly: Because if I love someone, then I’m gonna honor them by not doing things that hurt them. I won’t do that.

Anne: I’m so sorry about everything you’re going through. The time you’re in right now is so difficult, trying to sort out what to do next. And learn how to recover after being cheated on.

Shelly: Yeah, I’m still on high alert a lot of the time, which is exhausting. I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. And I’d rid myself of constant pain and fatigue, and lived my life in a happy space. So since all this came out, all the symptoms of Fibromyalgia flared back up again. If anything else came to light, that would be it. I couldn’t physically do it or emotionally stay within the relationship. Because I have nothing more that I can possibly give beyond what I’ve already given, beyond what I’m giving now. I can’t just relax.

Anne: That’s absolutely understandable.

Shelly: It’s logical, isn’t it? If someone can spend so many years lying to you. There’s always a chance they’re going to do that again. I still am not in a place where I can say I fully trust him. My mind is still trying to protect me, questioning, why won’t my husband fight for our marriage? I’m still on high alert, and I don’t know however long it takes or what that’s gonna look like to heal.

Anne: I’m interested in seeing what you think of Living Free, because the intent was to help women feel they don’t have to work so hard. ‘Cause I’m hearing that in your voice. This exhaustion, of the process of seeing if he’s gonna make the right decisions.

The Living Free Workshop is intended to reduce women’s burden

Anne: So the Living Free Workshop is intended to reduce that burden. And help women observe, so that the burden is all on him and not on us.

Shelly: I definitely feel it. I’m definitely carrying it.

Anne: So the strategy of Living Free is learning to give ourselves enough space. So that we can live our lives, be peaceful, happy and observe. It teaches how to recover after being cheated on. And not carry the weight of it. If you want to come back and share your feedback.

Shelly: I very much would like to do that.

Anne: I will tell you a little bit about it. So it doesn’t overwhelm you.

The workbook comes with it. You can print it, I recommend women buy it on Amazon.

I wanted to see the two page spread layout. Which you don’t get to see if you print it on your own printer. But anyway, the Living Free Workshop is 55 lessons. They’re very short videos. Most of them are three minutes, and the shortest one is 30 seconds. So it’s tiny three minute increments to process it. The longest video is six minutes long. There’s only one that’s that long. There’s a question underneath, and if you don’t wanna answer it, you can just push an X and push enter and go to the next thing.

If you don’t wanna fill out the workbook, you don’t have to fill out the workbook, but it is good to have it in front of you, sitting there, so at least you can see what I’m talking about. So even if you’re not gonna fill it out, just having it in front of you helps.

Meditations help regulate your nervous system and show how to recover after being cheated on

Anne: I have a master’s degree in education. I set it up like that. So women have time to process how to recover after being cheated on in between each one. Especially with the self-esteem issues, to remove the manipulation and negative things that we’ve absorbed through their abuse and replace it with truth. Like, you’re beautiful, you’re capable.

Right now might be a great time for the Meditations to regulate your nervous system to help you feel more peaceful and centered. That’s what the Meditations do to help women who, like a lot of women, can’t sleep. They can’t stop thinking about it, that sort of thing. So to help get all that out. I wrote them for myself. Because talking about stuff at some point wasn’t that helpful for me. I talked about it so much.

So I wrote those meditations to help me, so that I could get all the stuff out without having to talk about it. ‘Cause I talk about this all day long, every single day, and I have for 10 years. So there had to have been something different for me. I’d say if you do the Meditations and then schedule the next interview, that way it can give you some time to think about, did it help?

Shelly: Yeah, definitely. You need to get this stuff out. That’s important. But I also think there is a point in your post traumatic growth where you have to go inward. Going in is also an important part of the healing process too. So yeah, I appreciate the access to those. It’s been crazy, it feels divine.

Anne: Totally. Thank you so much and I look forward to talking to you again soon.

Shelly: Yeah, thank you so much.

Women who have discovered their husband’s lies often wonder, “What if I can never trust my husband again?”

The first step to knowing if you can trust your husband again is to determine the truth about what’s going on. It may be that he’s using invisible emotional abuse tactics. To uncover if his lying is emotionally abusive, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

This episode follows Shelly’s Story
Part 1: What If I Can Never Trust My Husband Again? (THIS EPISODE)
Part 2: How To Recover After Being Cheated On

Getting Support While I Determine If I Can Trust My Husband Again

Most women need support as they work to figure out what’s going on. To get support from women who understand, attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session TODAY.

Transcript: What If I Can Never Trust My Husband Again

Anne: I have a member of our community on today’s episode. I’m going to call her Shelly. She’s here to share her story of wondering what if she can ever trust her husband again? Welcome Shelly.

Shelly: Hi, thank you.

Anne: So Shelly has experienced betrayal trauma in multiple relationships. Let’s start at the beginning.

Shelly: Okay, so I was actually born into betrayal trauma. I didn’t know that until recently. But my biological father cheated on my pregnant mother. So literally all that stuff in her body, all those hormones, feelings, and emotions when she was pregnant with me were going into me too, with so many me too examples. She sank into deep postnatal depression after my birth. And then, and obviously, betrayal trauma.

And she couldn’t fully take care of me. My mother neglected me as a baby, not through any fault of her own. Because she wasn’t able to cope emotionally with what she was going through. When I turned seven, she met my stepdad. Who I didn’t trust. I had this sense that there was something wrong, even as a child.

And later, when I was in my teens, he was also leading a double life. He watched pornography, and made advances towards some of my male friends. When I was a teenager. This led me to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire. Because a much older man groomed me in his forties when I was around sixteen. I believed I was in a relationship with him, but now I understand it was not, I was his victim.

Teenage Trauma & Abuse

Shelly: He abused me on every level you can imagine. He was an addict. And chose to use explicit material every day, like degrees beyond comprehension. He made no effort to hide this and was completely open about it. He humiliated me. I had betrayal trauma from infidelity. I was a young teenage woman, and he took photos of me and showed them around. Even now, I know they’re still in the world. Years later, after leaving him, I found out from friends that he’d shown them.

He tried to make money off those, I don’t doubt that. I got pregnant at 19, and left him to protect my son. He beat me while I held him, this wasn’t unusual at all. He worsened the violence when I was pregnant. So when I had my son, I think I’d just turned 20, I was in the hospital for a week and he was having sex with someone else.

I was with him for a very short time after that. And then I fled, and I left all my family and friends behind. And I left the county to try and find safety for my son. While learning to be a mother, I was also going through what I didn’t understand was PTSD, which I now understand. It was only years later that I understood this.

Anne: Have you ever considered yourself a victim of trafficking with that man who took pictures of you and disseminated it as online?

Shelly: I do now,. I was not comfortable. Because I saw the photos that he was like parading around, and you can see how uncomfortable I was. I have a son who’s not much younger than I was now.

Grooming & Exploitation

Shelly: I was a child, and he was friends with people in that world. I remember him saying to me, I could have you in prostitution if I wanted to. He said it like, I look after you so well, I’m not putting you into that world. Look how well I treat you. There was definitely the whole relationship, grooming, it was an abusive relationship. It was someone preying on someone who was young and naive. There are so many types of exploitation.

Anne: Your story sounds similar to trafficking victims. They’re not aware of grooming. They think it’s a relationship, but they don’t realize he’s targeted them for this purpose.

Shelly: A hundred percent, yeah. I’m aware of that now. But it took me a few years to, in fact it was fairly recently. I actually looked back and was like, that wasn’t a relationship. I was just, it was like trafficking. He used me and my body in any way he desired. He cheated me, lied, and now I’ve heard he’s in the industry.

Shelly: Yeah, so I don’t have any contact with him. I disappeared, feared for my life, and ran away.

Anne: He now is, but it sounds like he was at the time too.

Shelly: Yeah, and he was around a lot of people in that sort of lifestyle.

Anne: The exploitation business.

Shelly: Exactly, he completely exploited me. I stayed there for four years with him through mental, emotional, physical, he’d used humiliation. He used to enjoy humiliating me in that way. It took a long time to get over. But then you can’t heal them.

Finding Safety & New Relationships

Shelly: You fall into another relationship and you’re abused again.

Anne: I’m so sorry. That sounds awful.

Shelly: Yeah, it was years later. So since I had my son, I was looking for a safe family. I just wanted to bring my children up in a happy home. So I fell into another relationship with a man I believed I loved. Later, I found out he’s a complete pathological liar. He wasn’t violent with me. So I thought I was safe, because of my experience before. I didn’t recognize what he was doing to me as abuse, but he was verbally vile to me a lot.

He broke my identity apart. He told me who I was and who I wasn’t, and chipped away at me. He’d go out all night, not come home, be full of lies. I knew, my heart knew he wasn’t loyal to me. So because of my past, I thought I had trust issues. And the men I’ve been with have propagated this idea. They’re like, oh yeah, you’ve got trust issues. This is the damage that you’ve got because of your past.

Anne: Did he tell you you had trust issues as a way to manipulate you?

Shelly: Yeah, completely. At the end of the relationship, I turned into a detective. And found out I was still breastfeeding my daughter when he had an affair with someone else. And the way I found out was so horrific. I got an itemized phone bill, and there were thousands of the same number.

My instincts told me something wasn’t right. So I got this itemized phone bill. I rang and a woman answered, and I just knew.

He Tells So Many Lies

Shelly: When I confronted him, the gaslighting went, like, through the roof. He pulled out all the stops. And so I called her with a completely open heart. And believed my husband lied to her too. Because I knew he was a liar, he was good at it. I’d seen him lie to people around us, and just think, like, why? I don’t understand why you’re lying about this stuff, when there’s no need to.

He was just pathological with it, and I approached her. I messaged her. And said look, I believe he’s married and lying to you too. And she didn’t reply for a while, but then when she did, she sent me 17 screenshots of their messages together.

I had a baby that was one years old, that I was breastfeeding. We’d not long been on our first family holiday. And he messaged this woman with my daughter sitting on his knee whilst we were on holiday. She verbally attacked me and called me every name under the sun. I approached her with no venom.

He is lying to you as well. Because this is what’s actually happening. He is married. And she, the abuse I got off her was horrendous. She threatened my 16 year old son, messaged him and threatened him, she was awful. And, yeah, I lost a stone in two weeks after that.

I stopped eating. I was in what I now know to be, strong betrayal trauma. My whole world was falling apart.

My Friend Becomes My Partner

Shelly: That’s when my now partner came along. I regarded him as a close friend. We’d been close for 20 years, even though we hadn’t seen each other all the time because we lived in different counties. He came along and he was like, he’s lying to you because he was pulling me back in. This guy twisted my head to the point where he called this other woman crazy, saying she was a stalker.

He tried to pull me back in, and my sons, my oldest sons, said, mum, he’s lying to you. It was really hard to get out. It seemed like an orbit that I was in. I’d get so far away from him mentally and emotionally, and then he’d pull me back in. I’d be questioning what was real and what wasn’t. Again, my now partner helped so much with that.

Maybe a year later, my now partner opened his mouth and confessed that he’d always had deep feelings for me, which I’d always felt deeply for him. We’d known each other for 20 years, so it was like, suddenly everything in me lit up. It was like everything switched. All my ex’s power over me went, and suddenly I was full of love and light. So, we had the most beautiful love story.

I had a fairytale level love story, like star crossed love that had been going on for 20 years. Neither of us ever spoke about it. And we’d been in different relationships. We went to each other’s weddings as friends. There was never anything lustful. It was always deep heart, caring. We share children now from past relationships.

Can I Ever Trust My Husband Again?Discovering Another Betrayal

Shelly: So I actually felt for the first time in my entire life that true love healed me. And that everything I’d been through before was leading to this, and it was like trials of fire to get to the other side. Or the island in the ocean of where stormy weather doesn’t go, but I’d found my safe space, I’d found my person.

Anne: I’ll quote a country song from Rascal Flatts, “God bless the broken road that led me safe to you”. Like all these things, they were worth it.

Shelly: Yes, exactly,

Anne: I found you.

Shelly: Fast forward seven years, I find out that he’s hiding an addiction. I don’t actually believe it’s an addiction. He made a choice and hid it from me. The betrayal trauma I feel now is actually so much worse than anything I experienced before. Because he was the light at the end of the tunnel for me. And this relationship made me believe in true love again. And then, all that came crashing down on my first D-Day.

https://youtu.be/CVU-eI3SgeQ

I had many D-Days after the first admission. I thought I had damage and trust issues. That was my narrative that I’d believed. And I actually said to him, I’m so sorry I have trouble trusting you, of course I didn’t know if I could trust my husband after that. Because I’m damaged from my previous traumatic experiences with my other relationships, and even how I entered the world. And he took that, and he allowed me to believe it was me. So I felt uncomfortable leaving him. in the house on his own.

Realizing The Extent Of The Lies

Shelly: I felt uncomfortable with him at work, but I put it all down to trust issues. I’m damaged, I haven’t dealt with the trauma in my past, so I’m ruining my perfect relationship with my trust issues. Which actually everything I asked him, even at the points where I asked him, turned out to be true, and it was completely vindicated.

So what has actually happened? So I was carrying this, I’ve got trust issues, I’m damaged for so long. I believed those people around me who were just lying. I released myself from that, and I woke up within myself and realized I don’t have trust issues. I’ve just been around loads of people lying to me, and I can feel it.

Anne: Yeah, you have a superpower.

Shelly: Yeah, suddenly that thing I’d been carrying for so many years has suddenly lifted. I’m not damaged, I’ve just been around people that have treated me really badly.

Anne: Was that a relief to you in some ways?

Shelly: I felt relief, because like I said, I thought I damaged my perfect relationship. So it was like a double edged sword.

Anne: At the time, you were being manipulated to think that you had problems, that this was your fault, but now that you know the truth and look back. And you’re like, oh no, he was gaslighting me. He really was lying to me. Can you tell me more about why you didn’t want him at home by himself? Or why you were worried about him at work?

Shelly: It was just a feeling. It was literally just a feeling. There was no concrete evidence at all. I didn’t have anything. He was very good at keeping that separate, completely separate.

The Pain Of Gaslighting

Shelly: I just had this nagging feeling, an uneasiness of him being at home alone, an uneasiness of him when he is at work.

Anne: What an amazing gift…

Shelly: Yeah,

Anne: …to you. I’m so grateful that you were strong and brave, and nothing was wrong with you. Even if you had “trust issues”. Because, like, why trust people when they’re not trustworthy?

Shelly: Exactly.

Anne: But in this particular case, your warning system is going off, and now you’re more confident in it because you found out the truth. But to know that he was weaponizing that against you, that’s why it hurts so badly.

Shelly: Yeah, and like being in a relationship where he would lecture me on trusting him and how important trust was within the relationship, knowing that he was lying to me.

Anne: That is so devastating. That is absolutely, it’s so bad. Sorry, I don’t know why anyone can think this form of abuse is not severe.

Shelly: No, I know. It’s abuse on every level. I described it as a spiritual crime to him. It feels like a spiritual crime against another soul. It goes so deep for me and everybody experiencing this. I don’t understand how anyone can literally look themselves in the mirror knowing everything they know about themselves. And just carry on like it’s fine.

Anne: And I can see why that was the most traumatic, because you trusted him the most, and he lied to you on such an intimate level.

Can I Trust My Husband Again: He Withheld Information

Shelly: Yeah, I asked him, just plainly, often, whether he was using explicit material. And always he’d be like, No, I only have eyes for you. I only have eyes for you. It wasn’t like it just never came up. I asked him a lot because of these feelings, my instincts. So it was, there’s no, oh, I thought you’d be fine with it. It wasn’t that at all. He knew where I was with that. And he still chose to hide that from me. It seems pretty clear at this point that I couldn’t trust my husband again.

Anne: Which is abusive on so many levels, especially on a intimate level, coercion. When women say, I feel like I was emotionally raped. Basically, and people are like, what, and we’re not kidding. That’s exactly what happened. Because we would not have maybe made those choices or done the things that we did. Had we had the information that they were purposefully withholding from us.

Shelly: Exactly. And the coercion has only really crystallized for me quite recently. Because this has been going on for a year now.

Anne: So it’s been a year since he told you.

Shelly: The D-Days, yeah, I always say D-Days because there was so much that we took a long time for full disclosure. And it just got worse and worse, the things being disclosed.

Seeking The Truth

Anne: Tell me more about that. Was he disclosing them to you because of therapy or how did the other disclosures happen?

Shelly: No, after the first disclosure, we tried to make it light. And smoked and was like, sometimes. I pulled away and was like, you said you never did that. Instantly my heart was broken. Then he started to lie and minimize, he said. It was only three times in our relationship that I’ve done that.

The thing is, once I switched on to the fact that he was lying to me and had lied to me, I could see it, and I could literally see him snaking around in front of me, lying to me. It was my warning system, and not letting it go and saying things like you said this, and that doesn’t add up. And okay, tell me this then, so what is it? There’s more I could feel it, I could feel it in my body every time he was lying to me. And I could see it.

So there were a lot of lies after the first admission. Who went through for about four months, maybe a bit more serious, like minimizing half truths. Outright lies with him shifting around and tripping himself up and saying something he hadn’t said before. Or saying opposite things, saying two different things, two different sides of one story.

And I said to him, you’re not even allowing me to heal, because you’re not telling me the whole truth. So after four or five months of this. And I was on it, I was on fire. I was just calling it the BS knife, because I was so sharply cutting through all these lies, my husband couldn’t be trusted again.

He Gives A Full Disclosure

Shelly: It culminated in going away and staying in a hotel room. And he was like, okay, I’m gonna tell you everything. He literally listed everything from childhood, told me stuff like when I wasn’t around. About him looking at other women just gave me what I felt was a full story. And it was incredibly traumatic.

Anne: Were you interested in that, or was this like a way of grooming you, or can you talk a little bit about that?

Shelly: I wouldn’t leave it until I got the full story. I needed to know everything. I needed to know who I was with. And it felt like pulling the truth out of him. It was my instincts that were telling me, you’re still not telling me the truth. There’s more and more. We had many horrific bombs dropped in my lap, with more and more truth, it got worse and worse.

Anne: So how are you feeling now?

Shelly: Like I said, it’s been a year. I did have moments where I was like, I don’t even know if I can love you anymore after this level of lies. I don’t think I can trust my husband again. But because of the work he’s done, a lot of meditation. He had a lightbulb moment when we listened to something, and it said the body doesn’t know the difference between what the mind is thinking.

So, if you’re reliving your trauma all the time, he compartmentalized and kept this in a separate dark box. And then he was the good dad and he was a good partner. In all the other boxes, he was full of light and this wonderful man, but then he had this dark box where he kept all that stuff.

What If I Can Never Trust My Husband Again: Partner’s Realization & Efforts

Shelly: So he literally gave that energy to another person. When he’s supposed to be committed and loyal to me. My husband was proving I couldn’t trust him anymore.

Anne: On that note, he’s “such a good dad.” It was a feeling that you had, that something wasn’t quite right. But I want to talk about the other types of abuse that you experienced for a minute, the gaslighting and the emotional and psychological abuse. Do you think that even though it wasn’t overt, because I guess he wasn’t screaming in your face, he wasn’t, overtly calling you names that would have been obvious to you.

But do you think that might have been what you were picking up on? Even though you didn’t know that you were picking up on it because you couldn’t see it and couldn’t tell. But do you think that was what you were picking up on?

Shelly: Yeah, I do. I reckon my instincts were warning me, and self protection was kicking in.

Anne: So you and your partner were together in a committed relationship for how long when he disclosed his use?

Shelly: Seven years. So it’d been going on for seven years.

Anne: Why did he disclose it? That’s a question I always ask, because they could be repentant at this point where they’re like, oh my word, I can’t live like this anymore. I’ve got to come clean. I’ve got to change. That’s a possibility. There’s also a possibility where they want to hurt you. I’m not saying that’s your situation, and I’m not trying to convince you of that.

Why Disclose Now?

Anne: In my case, when my ex-husband was in addiction recovery, and was doing so well. Then near the end, there was a sudden turn where he started telling me he was using. Before that, he was lying to me about it.

When I look back, I’m like, I think he might have been having an emotional affair. There was something going on, and he wanted me to be the cause of the demise of our marriage. And so he was like, starting to be overtly aggressive and abusive. And then also just tell me he was using, because he knew that was a deal breaker for me.

And so that’s one of the questions I want women to think about is why now, because that might help as we’re trying to heal or determine, what do I want to do? Is this safe for me? Is it not safe for me to ponder that question? If my husband lied to me the whole time, why is he telling me the truth now?

Shelly: So I questioned him on that, and he said he felt it was getting to a point where it was out of control. He didn’t ever feel good about himself, because of what he was doing and living this double life. But he was scared to tell me the whole lot in one go. He didn’t have the strength to tell me everything in one go.

I don’t believe he was trying to hurt me. It seemed like he was lightly slipping the truth in. And then he was like, now I’ve got all hell to deal with. So then he was trying to backtrack and minimize, and giving me non-truth and half truth. How could I ever trust him again after this?

Can Ever Trust My Husband Again? I Think He Wanted To Change

Shelly: So I don’t believe he was trying to hurt me with that. And I think that he, maybe subconsciously, wanted to change. I hope that’s the case. I definitely don’t believe he was using that to try and hurt me, because he’s not vindictive in that way, and he always wanted to look after me. He knew me in these past relationships, he was my friend, and he came along like this knight in shining armor. And just wanted to protect me.

Then had this realization that he’d been exactly the same, and which he’s actually struggled with. We’ve spoken in great depth about the conditioning and objectification of humans. But obviously from this perspective, he was part of that, and he’s horrified with himself, and I believe that’s genuine.

He was in groups of friends that were, it was just normal, it was just, this is what guys do, it’s just normal. That might be fine. If you’re in a relationship and you’re fine with that, then that’s fine. But this isn’t, and it wasn’t, and he chose that because he knew my stance on that. He knew he was lying to me, so this wasn’t normal and okay.

And to consenting people and the coercion thing, realizing that I hadn’t been giving full consent. We’ve also spoken about that a lot, so he’s horrified with himself. Which I think is good. But, does that change whether or not I can trust him again?

Anne: Yeah, that is good.

Challenges In Counseling

Anne: I wondered about therapy. In my opinion, the likelihood of it worsening is too risky.

Shelly: I had the exact same feeling, actually. I wasn’t sure that any form of counseling would be helpful. Because of the tendency in society to normalize this stuff, and as long as you’re not physically cheating with someone else, then what’s the problem?

Anne: You’re like, oh, the lying. But yeah.

Shelly: Yeah, I was very apprehensive about any form of counseling. We went to the doctors, he wanted me to come with him. We sat with him. A female doctor, and he started talking and breaking down. He said he didn’t understand how he could do this to me. And struggled with his mental health and self perception. He was advised to take counseling. And they offered him a woman counselor on a screen, video calling, and I was like, I’m not comfortable with that.

I’m not comfortable with that at all. We’re like, we’re talking about, you’re looking at women on the screen. I’m not comfortable with you having counseling with a woman on a screen. That’s like in this space, I don’t feel safe with that. So he requested a man, and luckily he did end up with a really. good counselor who he was able to express where he was with in a safe place without it being normalized. I felt I was on my way to trusting him again.

And the lady doctor, when we went together, she said, do you want me to point you in the direction of addiction services? And he was like, I don’t actually think I have an addiction. It’s more of a choice that I decided to stop, where he didn’t go down that route.

Validation & Healing

Shelly: We both had counseling separately and thought about couples therapy. But again, my instincts were not fully on that either. So we haven’t, we’ve done a lot of work together just between us, in meditations, and in just hearing each other. A lot of it’s been me, speaking my heart and my pain. Sometimes, he’s struggled to deal with the anger, because he’s got a tendency to defend himself. So he’s working through that now.

But his determination to make it right has given me hope and stuck me here. Actually, the full disclosure of everything he did, he could have easily not told me, is that it’s been the truth that’s kept us together.

Anne: Can you talk about your journey to find Betrayal Trauma Recovery and want to share your story?

Shelly: I was talking to him and I said to him, there’s so much help for you, that it literally feels like there’s no help for me. It was only recently that I’d found out that this sort of trauma has a name. And then I was starting to look into betrayal trauma, and then connecting all the dots from the rest of my life previously.

It was actually him that was looking for ways to help me, and he discovered your podcast. And the first one he found was women saying, “This is the best way to heal from betrayal trauma.” And he was like, I want you to listen to this. And that was how I found you. I wanted to share my story, because I think that is another step forward in healing in our journey. Putting this out because I’ve kept it very close to my heart and it’s been hard.

What If I Can Never Trust My Husband Again: Finding Support & Community

Anne: As part of your journey to healing, to find a community with women who have been through this? Who all worry about if they can trust their husband again.

Shelly: And feeling so validated in a world that normalizes this stuff and it’s everywhere. Feeling so validated for feeling so strongly about this and feeling so heartbroken about this. That validation has given me so much. There are other women wondering if they can trust their husbands.

Anne: Let’s talk about that validation for a minute. Can you talk about the difference in knowing that women are horrified and traumatized? And they’re experiencing emotional and psychological abuse on these intense levels. And that almost all society doesn’t recognize this type of trauma. What’s your feeling now that you realize you’ve been completely normal and that there are so many other women who feel the way you do?

Shelly: I feel like there’s an army of women out there that I’m part of. Before, I felt isolated and we would talk to friends. It would be like, I didn’t speak about this, about my personal experience with friends, but just in conversation. Oh yeah, as long as they’re not cheating and come back to you at the end of the night. It’s the validation that this actually affects people much more than is spoken about. Because people don’t talk about it. It’s giving it a voice.

Anne: And that’s why I do this podcast to give women like you the opportunity to share your story, share how you feel, share how this affected you.

Belief It’s Possible To Trust My Husband Again

Shelly: Yeah, that is a powerful thing. That’s a powerful thing, because before I knew of my emotions, I felt like I was on my own in that. I wasn’t, there are many others who also wonder what if they can trust him again.

Anne: I am so grateful that you’re a member of our community and supporting me in my healing process. I am honored and have been honored through the years to hear all these stories. Women who share these stories are in a vulnerable place, and it’s such an honor to like, sit with you. I know I was in the same spot. Maybe a different spot, because my husband’s character, was deceptive.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, about how I believe people can change. And, that makes this job hard, right? Because how do we know if someone is or isn’t when they’ve lied to you all these years, right? How can you tell if you can trust him?

So that place where you are right now in your healing process is a vulnerable spot, but it is okay to be there. And there’s no way to get out of it other than to go through it, because you want to make the right decision for you and your family. And we get that.

Shelly: Yeah, and you have to feel every layer of grief to release yourself from it. And it’s a hard thing to face, because it’s not anything that anyone would choose to feel. But that, the only way out is to go in, and that’s the process I’m in. And it feels like I’ve been doing it forever now.

Reflections On Change & Trust

Anne: Hopefully not forever, right? It’s been so interesting. My process, I feel so good now. But there were, I don’t know, 14 years where I felt like this is going to be forever. So I totally understand. I wondered if I could trust him again, and found out I couldn’t. Shelley, if you’re willing to come back and share how you’re doing in six months to a year.

I would love to have you come back on and share what’s going on, what you’ve learned through the process. So if you’re willing to do that, I would love to talk to you again.

Shelly: Yeah, definitely up for that, yeah.

Anne: Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing your story, and keep in touch.

Shelly: Yeah, I will do, thank you.

When you can’t shake the feeling your husband is lying, you start living in two realities at once. The version he presents… and the version your gut keeps whispering about.

Most women tell me that whisper eventually becomes impossible to ignore.

I’ve interviewed over 200 women who discovered their husband’s lies—affairs, double lives, hidden behaviors, shifting stories.
Almost all of them said the same thing: “I wish someone had told me what was actually happening so I didn’t waste months—or years—trying to make sense of the confusion.”

The Subtle Signs Your Husband Is Lying (That Most Women Miss)

Before you hear Stacey’s interview—where she discovered her husband was living an entire double life—you need something women rarely get:

A framework that makes sense of your confusion, before you…

• go through one more circular conversation
• spend years in couple therapy
• doubt yourself one more time

If you’re wondering whether your husband is lying, you do not need more conversations that go nowhere.
You need answers. Fast.

If You Think Your Husband Is Lying, Start Here

My Clarity After Betrayal Workshop ($27) gives you the exact tools women told me they wished they’d had before they went to clergy or therapy for help.

It helps you:

• recognize when conversations are meant to confuse you
• stop second-guessing yourself
• see what’s actually going on in your marriage
• know your next steps with confidence

This is the foundation. Without knowing these things, the women I interviewed said they went around in circles for years after they discovered his lies.

👉 Get Clarity After Betrayal

When Your Husband Is Lying, It’s Not Your Fault You Don’t SEe It

The women I interviewed on the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast described the same unmistakable patterns:

1. The rehearsed pauses

In my interviews, I heard about a moment when she asked a simple question… and he paused.

She remembered his blank look. His delayed answer. His strange shift in his tone.

Turns out he needed that time to think about which version of the story he was going to share. Which version put him in the best light and kept her in the dark.

2. The “You’re overreacting” deflection

Women told me about how he redirected the focus onto her tone, her timing, or her memory so she stopped noticing the inconsistencies in his story.

3. The polished image

Many women discovered that her lying husband often looked impressive everywhere else. He appeared:

• deeply spiritual
• charming and respected
• responsible and accomplished
• gentle, “could never hurt anyone”
• values-driven

This is partially why his lies were so difficult to comprehend. The disconnect between how he was perceived and who he really was left most women feeling more isolated than the lying itself.

Why It’s So Hard to Trust Yourself When Your Husband Is Lying

When women began to ask questions, many describe an internal battle:

• “Maybe I misunderstood.”
• “Am I too sensitive?”
• “I shouldn’t push him.”
• “Is it just stress?”

But here’s the truth: You don’t start questioning your reality unless something is already destabilizing it.

If your husband is lying, he’s consistently creating tiny confusions constantly, shifting explanations. Because of that, it’s natural for women to doubt themselves. And that doubt isn’t a flaw, but it is a signal.

What To Do When Your Husband Is Lying: You Need Answers, Not Circles

Trying to “get to the truth” with him if he’s lying can keep you trapped in cycles of:

• confusion
• self-doubt
• temporary solutions that don’t pan out long term

You deserve to know what over 200 women told me they wished they’d known. That’s why I put together my Clarity After Betrayal workshop.

Stacey’s Story: The Day She said out Loud, “My Husband Is Lying”

On my podcast, Stacey shared how she spent years trying to make sense of her husband’s inconsistencies, until she discovered he had an entire second life she didn’t know about.

Her answers didn’t come from more conversations with him. It came from recognizing the pattern behind the confusion, the same pattern hundreds of women describe.

And once she saw it, she couldn’t unsee it.

Transcript: I Think My Husband Is Lying To Me

Anne: I have a member of our community on today’s episode. We’ll call her Stacey. She’ll share her story. Welcome, Stacy.

Stacey: Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Anne: Can you start at the beginning? Did you recognize your husband’s behaviors as abuse when you began your relationship with him?

Stacey: No, not at all. You were the first one that made me ever consider it abusive, just from listening to your podcasts. Before that, it had never even crossed my mind

Anne: Let’s start with that. What types of behaviors were you experiencing that led you to want some help? What made you think,”My husband is lying to me?”

Stacey: Well, he had an affair. About five years after the affair, things weren’t moving forward. I couldn’t figure out why. And that is the first time I heard the term gaslighting. And that’s when I started to search more for answers. I realized the extent of what had happened, and how I had been emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually abused, I mean everything he said was practically an example of emotional abuse. Just the extreme gaslighting that had gone on and was still going on.

Anne: Learning how abusers gaslight can help figure out what’s going on. Had that gaslighting and manipulation happened throughout your whole marriage? Once you knew what you were looking at and looked back, did you recognize it had been happening the whole time?

Stacey: For sure. I discovered he was looking at online explicit material just about a month after we married. And I think that’s when I knew I didn’t marry who I thought I had. But I felt stuck, because the next day after I found out he was looking at it, I found out I was pregnant. And that’s when I just thought, there’s nothing I can do, I’m stuck.

When You Can’t Shake The Feeling Your Husband Is Lying

Anne: So what persona did he use to manipulate you? Of course, this is going to hurt you because lying is emotionally abusive.

Stacey: Well, he’s super spiritual, and we did all the religious things. I just thought I married a spiritual, religious, truthful person. I didn’t think he was capable of the lies and betrayal that ensued.

Anne: So how long between discovering it and when you discovered the affair? That you figured he was lying. Was that, I’m guessing, like 10 years or something?

Stacey: Yeah, 10 years.

Anne: Oh, see, I’ve become a psychic now that I’ve been doing this for so long. So 10 years, and how did you discover the affair?

Stacey: Our marriage was just falling apart. I could not explain why. And I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I thought it was me. He called me mean throughout our marriage. And also unattractive. Stuff like that. So I thought, you know, it’s just me. We ended up moving. I thought maybe it was our neighborhood and we moved across the state.

And after we moved, nothing changed, and it still kept falling apart. Then I heard him one time on the phone, and he was talking to someone. I heard him saying things that just really sounded wrong. Like he said, you know, we just met the wrong way. We can’t continue our relationship, we just started wrong, and I’m like, oh my gosh, he’s talking to a girl, and he is having an affair and he’s lying to me.

Because it had crossed my mind, and I had brought it up to him before, asking him if he had an affair. I said, my brother and his friend actually said it sounds like you’re having an affair.

Uncovering the Affair SHe WasN’t Supposed to Know About

Stacey: He was so defensive about it and was like, I can’t believe your brother would ever accuse me of that. That’s so ridiculous. I can’t believe you’d ever think that. And now looking back, he was having an affair at that exact moment and lying to me. But he was so good at making me think I was crazy to even consider that.

So anyway, I overheard him on the phone and I thought, Oh my gosh, he is having an affair. And he turned the corner and saw me listening to him, and his face just said it all. It just said it all, but he talked his way out of it. I said, who are you talking to? And he just stared at me. And then finally, like a half an hour later, he finally answered and said, it was the guy from work. I just feel bad.

Because I was talking about me and you, and how we started wrong, and how we were just friends and shouldn’t have gotten married, but that was my first clue. And then later on, I found him texting her about a month later.

Anne: It took him a minute to figure out a story to tell you that he thought you would believe. One that made you look bad.

Stacey: Absolutely.

Anne: Let’s talk about that stare for a minute. He just stares at you in space, right, for a little bit. Kind of a lack of blinking, would you say? Sort of a flat affect on his face?

Stacey: Yeah, absolutely.

Anne: Had you seen that ever in your marriage before?

Stacey: I guess from time to time. I can recognize it now for what it was.

The “Stare of a Liar”: Recognizing That Frozen, Blank Look

Stacey: To me, it’s so obvious now, looking back on it. Like, of course, he’s trying to come up with a lie. Why wouldn’t he just answer me if he wasn’t going to lie? But I wanted his story to be true. So I would accept it, because it was so much easier to think, okay, ah, he’s not having an affair. It’s okay. It’s just me. I’m the one that needs to change.

Anne: I saw this stare recently with a neighbor kid. Which I thought was interesting. So he had been singing a very off-color song, and my son picked up on it and he was singing it. I’m not sure he knew what he was saying, my son. So when this neighbor kid came over, I said, “Hey, that song is not okay.”

You cannot sing it around my kids. You shouldn’t be singing it at all. This is a nine year old kid. He stares at me with this blank stare for a minute, for a while, doesn’t say anything, nothing. And then after, I don’t know how long, he says, “Oh, that song, that song’s about social distancing.”

And I was like, no, that’s a lie. That’s not true. You just took a minute to come up with what you thought was a plausible story. But that’s not the truth. You need to go home. And I sent him home. Because I was done. This is ridiculous. I think it’s interesting that an adult man, 40 years old, 50 years old, is still doing that.

Stacey: Right.

Anne: And thinking, okay, if I don’t make any moves, like no sudden movements, right?

Seeking Help When You Know Your Husband Is Lying

Anne: I need to get my story straight. They’re not thinking about you in that moment. How they hurt you or anything about you. All they’re thinking is what is she going to believe? It takes some energy when your husband lies to you.

That’s why they’re sort of frozen there for a second, because there’s a lot happening inside their head. And they’re trying to keep their face pretty still, so they don’t give anything away while they’re working out how they’re gonna lie to you. Or they’re working out how to manipulate you.

Stacey: Absolutely.

Anne: Yeah. I’ve heard that called like a narcissistic stare before. I’m going to call it the stare of a liar.

Stacey: Yeah, yeah, cause it’s a definite look.

Anne: Many women have seen this over the years, but they don’t know what to make of it. And they don’t know what they’re looking at, right? When they see it. So five years go by after this affair. And things are just not getting better. And then you go looking for help. While you are experiencing the stages of deliverance from abuse. How did you find Betrayal Trauma Recovery?

Stacey: I went to just Apple podcasts and searched for betrayal trauma. And that was the same time too. It took about five years to ever even hear the word betrayal trauma. I had been to plenty of counselors, religious counselors and leaders. I’d been to groups that my church put on. I hadn’t heard of betrayal trauma before either.

The Subtle Signs Your Husband Is Lying (That Most Women Miss)

Anne: After that initial incident, where you found out about it a month after you were married. Did you see any other use, or that was it? And then he hid it well after that.

Stacey: He let me in on enough truth that I wouldn’t know he was lying to me. So I always knew he had a online explicit material problem or would view it, but he would say. I look at it once, every three to six months, and that’s all. I don’t have a problem. Or every once in a while he’d talk to our religious leader and he would tell me that, and so I thought, oh okay, he’s honest with me, I didn’t know he was lying to me.

And I used to say, “You know, if you look at it, tell me or if you’re struggling, let’s talk about it.” But it was interesting, because in our relationship he rarely initiated intimacy, he just wasn’t affectionate. And I’d always think, what is wrong with me? Everyone else I hear about their husband can’t keep their hands off of them. What’s wrong with me and come to find out he was he was lying. He was masturbating once a week.

And he had never brought that up, so it’s like taking care of himself. And not interested in an emotional relationship with someone else.

When Your Husband Is Lying About His “Progress”

Anne: Your experience is actually more common when it comes to a user. So many women think , he just wants it all the time because he’s into this gross stuff. I would say generally speaking, you get one or the other. Someone who wants to have it, like, more than is healthy. And then the other situation where they just don’t seem interested, they don’t initiate, they’re not planning dates. They’re not interested in you as a person.

Like, they don’t get you gifts for Christmas. Where it’s like, who am I to you? I remember asking my ex once, while we were married, how do you show me that you care? And he had that blank look on his face for a minute, and then guess what he said? I mow the lawn.

Stacey: Oh.

Anne: And I was like, you mow the lawn anyway. You, you would mow it for yourself. So that’s not a thing. Did you go down the addiction recovery route for a while?

Stacey: Not at first. I thought everyone looks at it, and he just does it sometimes. During that time, after I found out about use before I found out about the affair. My sister-in-law left my brother over it. And I talked to her and said, “This is so ridiculous that you’re leaving him over this.” I got really mad, and it ruined our relationship. And now looking back. Wow, I have a different view now. We went to addiction recovery after I found out about the affair.

Using Language From His Program To Lie Even More

Anne: Is this with the church, like a church program? Okay, did you find his behaviors got any better, that he used to groom you?

Stacey: A little bit, yeah. He did go to addiction recovery group a little bit, like throughout the course of our marriage, but he would just kind of go to a meeting here and there, and then he would say he didn’t need it. And it wasn’t helpful to him. But when we started going after the affair, it made a little difference, not a lot.

Anne: And I would say that was grooming. Where you think it helped a little bit would be that he could use the language he learned there to groom and lie to you. He was able to weaponize those things to make you feel like he was getting better when he actually wasn’t.

Stacey: Yes, totally.

Anne: We find that therapy, addiction recovery, even clergy meetings, if they want to hide their behaviors. They’re going to use that to groom, and they’re going to learn the language. Some guys even use the language of mindfulness. Or yoga, or I’m so emotionally healthy. Like, I think a real red flag on any dating platform is that someone says they’re interested in emotional health. They had a woman partner who was like, hey, we need to be healthy.

And they’ve been to therapy, learned the language and weaponized it. Because if you meet a man who’s like, “Oh, my previous spouse was emotionally unhealthy. She wasn’t caring. She wasn’t this, she wasn’t that.” Then that new partner will be like, well, I’m caring. I’m understanding. And that is just grooming right out of the gate.

How He Used Therapy Lingo To Hide The Truth

Anne: They like weaponizing this therapy language, the recovery language, like, I’m not the enemy, online explicit material is the enemy.

Stacey: Right.

Anne: I’m not the enemy, Satan is the enemy. And I agree, Satan is the enemy, and online explicit material is the enemy, but you are on that side. You’re behind enemy lines. You’re dangerous to me because you are lying to me.

Stacey: Yeah, it’s interesting what you’d say about him using therapy language, because he would use these terms. And it would drive me crazy. Because I’m like, you sound like a record, like you just learned these terms, and now you’re going to use them on me. I just felt like, not a human. I’m, no, I’m a human with emotions. You can’t just use these pre-recorded terms with me.

Anne: So we come from the same faith tradition, where we believe Satan tried to overthrow God in the pre-existence before we came to earth. In our faith tradition, we believe Satan understands God’s plan. Like he understands the commandments. He understands all of it. He just doesn’t apply any of it. And I think that’s what these guys are like. They understand the therapy language, and all the clergy stuff.

They read the Bible, and know all the scriptures. But it doesn’t actually lead them to repentance. Similar to Satan. He knows all these things. He just doesn’t ever repent. It never changes, and I think without the application, without actually having a change of heart. And actually being converted. Of course Satan’s gonna stay the same no matter what he knows.

Her Husband Was Lying to Clergy and Therapists Too

Anne: So the scary thing about addiction recovery, therapy, reading your scriptures more or anything like that is that if you’re not going to apply them. You just become more and more dangerous.

Stacey: Absolutely.

Anne: So when did you realize that common marriage advice, Christian marriage advice, like love, serve, forgive, be understanding. When did you realize that that was not working?

Stacey: Right after I found out about the affair, we started going to a counselor. He actually said, “Okay, what happened is not good, but we’re gonna move forward now.” And he said to me, “You can never talk about the past. I don’t want you to bring it up. When you do, you’re just damaging your future, if you bring up the past to your husband.” He actually told my husband, if I wouldn’t stop talking about it, that he could just get up and leave and like …

https://youtu.be/j8CvkDrWyRc

Anne: What?

Stacey: … leave me. This is a counselor.

Anne: He doesn’t know that stonewalling is apparently emotional and psychological abuse, I guess, this guy.

Stacey: It is horrible, horrible. And my husband, of course, loved this counselor. And so when I would talk about the past, he’s like, “No, you’re burning down the cornfield.” This is what he said. He said, “You have a cornfield, and every time you talk about the past, you burn it down, and then you guys have to start over.” So it was really on me. And it wasn’t on my husband at all. It was like, okay, you made a mistake. Let’s move forward. You’re forgiven.

The Spiritual Pressure Women Feel When Their Husband Is Lying

Stacey: He was from the same faith background we were from, and also our religious leader at church had referred this counselor. So my husband was stuck on the religious aspect of this religious leader referred him. So he must be who we need to go to. And I kept saying like, this is not helpful. This is damaging.

Anne: Let’s talk about the spiritual abuse. So here you are being lied to by your husband and abused psychologically and emotionally. With your counselor, who is a religious counselor, with your bishop, who is your religious leader.

So you’re being abused by these men who are trying to tell you what your experience is and trying to coerce you into thinking that you’re not being abused. Did you get it from family? Like, were you facing spiritual abuse on all sides?

Stacey: Not necessarily from family, but I have to say that not one family member has ever told me that maybe I should leave my husband. Everyone has brought into the situation, forgive, what would Jesus do. It’s all, repent, read your scriptures, pray, God will get you through this.

Anne: What would Jesus do? I’m always thinking. He says, depart from the wicked, is what he says. He says, separate yourselves from wickedness. So, what would Jesus do? He would say, get thee hence.

Stacey: Yeah.

Anne: So, I need to get myself hence from this.

Finding Validation and The Truth

Anne: When you found Betrayal Trauma Recovery, is this like a revelation?

Stacey: I can’t even tell you, just listening to your podcast and feeling like I’m not crazy. Second of all, I’m not alone. There are other people who have been through this, because it’s such a lonely place to be. There aren’t many people you can talk to. I feel like it’s so hard, even though it is my story. It’s not only my story. So I can’t talk about the truth about him to everyone, because then I tarnish my husband or make him look bad. Like, nobody knows what’s going on.

Because you can’t talk about it. So it’s such a lonely place. When my husband is currently lying to me. And then for me, all these therapists will make me feel even worse. So just to have someone I could connect with just to listen to podcasts and feel like I’m not alone. And wow, I’m not crazy. That was so, so big.

Anne: I’m so happy you found us. We always want women to find us, because when you’re in that fog of abuse and being abused from all sides. It is so hard to figure out what’s going on. And even if you want to tell people. I’m not saying you should. But let’s just say you got it in your mind. That you were going to get up in your meeting and from the pulpit, say, everyone, I’m being psychologically abused. They wouldn’t believe you.

So you can start telling people, but then people just look at you like you’re crazy. So it’s so nice to be part of a community where you’re immediately believed.

The Power Of Community When Your Husband is Lying

Anne: And not just believed, you don’t even have to explain it. We just get it, it’s so freeing. And then I think the more we validate each other and empower each other, the stronger we get over time.

Then it makes it so much easier to see he’s lying all the time. And helps us make decisions about what to do to get to safety.

Stacey: Absolutely.

Anne: The purpose of this podcast is not to proselyte. We’re all here sharing from our own experience. So the point of me talking to her is sharing my own experience and views. And we respect that everyone has different views around here. As you’ve heard on the podcast, women come from all religions, different paradigms, or no religion. Everyone is welcome here.

So where are you now in your situation? Do you feel like you’ve established some peace? Or do you feel like you’re still being cycled through the abuse?

Stacey: It’s still a cycle. I have established more peace. And definitely recognized my relationship for what it is. I can recognize patterns and behaviors. That before I wouldn’t have recognized what they were. But it’s really hard. It’s so hard. I’ve never been able to make a concrete decision to stay or go. Sometimes I almost wish I could find him in another affair, so that I could have that reason of, okay, I can leave.

But right now it’s like this in between, where I feel like exactly what you’re saying earlier. He’s aware of what he needs to do, but he hasn’t fully made that commitment. He still blames me. It’s so hard. I have kids, and now it’s been seven years.

Anne: Seven years since the affair?

Stacey: Yeah.

Anne: Okay.

How Her Husband’s Lies Impacted Their Children

Stacey: And sometimes I think back, wow, what if I would have been strong enough to just leave then? Well, how different would my kids’ lives be? I’ve been so intent on giving them married parents and a family. And then I think back and I’m like, “Wow, maybe I’ve made a big mistake staying together.” He did a good job of lying to me to keep me invested.

And modeling this kind of behavior to my kids of what’s okay in a relationship, that’s really hard. So I’m in this limbo where I just never am fully committed to stay or go.

Anne: It’s really hard. Many women have prayed to know, do I stay or go? And then many women avoid praying about it because they don’t want an answer. Because either answer is terrible. Number one, if it’s stay, then you have to stay in an abusive place. Number two, is that God telling you to stay? Because I’ve had so many women say, I prayed about it, and God wants me to stay. And I’m thinking, I’m not here to doubt your spiritual impressions.

But simultaneously, the abuse messes with women’s minds so much that sometimes they can’t even ferret out what they’re feeling. And what they’re feeling is it feels bad to divorce. So they’re feeling like, I know when I think about divorce, it feels wrong. That must not be right. So I guess God’s telling me to stay married? And with that, I want to say, no, no, no.

If the answer you’re getting is this terrible, awful feeling when you think about divorce. That does not mean God is telling you not to divorce. And the reason why is because divorce will feel bad no matter what.

The Impact Of His Lies On Decision Making

Anne: I would encourage women to consider that if you get a terrible, awful feeling when you think about divorce. Consider that it is not God telling you not to do it. After you say, okay, no matter what, it’s going to feel awful. Then how do you sort out what God wants you to do? And I have no idea.

Stacey: I don’t either.

Anne: I just don’t want the abuse to make the decision. Because the abuse is, you’re not good enough, you can’t do it, all these things in your head. That have been in your head forever, that you don’t even realize aren’t even you. They’re just shadows of the abuse from over time. So it’s very, very hard to sort out what to do when it’s hard to tell what is lies and what is the truth. But I do think God will lead, direct and guide us as we make our way toward safety.

And if we say, hey, this is what I want. I want a peaceful, happy life. Please guide me and direct me toward that. What do you want me to do? What’s my next step? I think he’ll guide us wherever he wants us to go. But just as a wholesale overview of that bad feeling. You’ll feel that regardless, even if divorce is the best thing for you.

So all of you listeners now that are like, well, I was thinking about divorce, now that you said that. As a woman of faith, I believe God has a path and way to safety for you. I just don’t know what that looks like.

The Workshop Will Give you Clarity

Anne: And that’s why I put together The Clarity After Betrayal workshop. And this is where we get to take a sigh of relief, that there are safety strategies that work well. And if you know what they are before making these decisions, they can help you get to safety one safe step at a time, and give you tools to see if your husband is lying. My workshop gives women answers.

These strategies work, whether you’re married or divorced, to give you enough space to observe what’s going on. I’ve seen so many miracles in so many women’s lives and in my own life. He’s there for us, but it’s hard and scary.

Stacey: Yeah, I like the idea of just kind of praying for the next step, just one step at a time.

Anne: Have you reconciled with your sister-in-law, your brother’s ex-wife?

Stacey: No, they ended up getting divorced, and I haven’t talked to her in years. I think about it and I’m kind of scared. Just how the relationship was left, but I think I should just go and tell her I’m sorry for the things I assumed and now have such a different view.

My brother lied about her so much, and he never took responsibility for his actions.

When He LIes About Whose Fault it is

The whole reason he used online explicit material was her fault. It was because she didn’t want to have it with him, or she wasn’t interested in it as much as he was. And so he had no other option. It was just what he had to do. And I’ve never heard him say otherwise.

Anne: Yeah, I’m so entitled to it that I have to have it. This is my wife’s job.

Stacey: Right, and if she won’t do it, it’s entirely her fault. They’ve been divorced ten years now , and nothing’s changed.

Anne: Did he get remarried?

Stacey: No, neither of them did.

Anne: Your brother’s an abuser.

Stacey: Yeah, I’ve got them all around me. Now that I can see it for what it is. A lot of the men in my life are, absolutely.

Anne: Now that you see that, have you noticed any men that are healthy?

Stacey: Sometimes I think, do they even exist? Like, are there mentally stable men out there? I’m trying to think.

Anne: That question is also scary. And the reason why that’s scary is that you’re going to need help. And if you don’t have healthy people in your life and can see it for what it is, it’s scary to start doing that on your own.

Stacey: Absolutely.

Anne: Many women, once they figure out what abuse is, they’re think, “I don’t know a man who’s not abusive”. I’m happy to say that I have several men in my life that are not abusive but supportive. And the more I learn about abuse, the more I’ve been able to recognize healthy men.

The Reality of a Husband’s Lies

Anne: Of course, I’m not married to them. So I don’t know for sure. But in terms of my interaction, and then also what their wives say about them. I think there are healthy men out there, is what I’m trying to say. I also think they’re not common. In the state where you and I live, one out of every three women has experienced physical abuse. So then emotional and psychological abuse, even more. The statistics are that eight out of every ten men in our state use it.

Stacey: Wow.

Anne: So then you’re looking at 8 out of every 10 men as an abuser essentially. Is willing to manipulate, willing to lie, willing to throw somebody under the bus to save their own reputation.

Stacey: Scary statistics.

Anne: If you could go back and talk to your younger self now that you know what you know from listening to the podcast and being a member of our community, what would you tell her?

Stacey: I wish she could see her worth and know that she’s a worthy person, without someone else needing to tell her that she is. I wish I could tell her to recognize red flags, like lies and see them for what they are. There are so many red flags looking back. Even if I saw them, I think deep down it’s like I’ve never felt like I deserved better. That’s sad.

When Your Husband Is Lying: The Value of Women In Faith

Anne: In our faith tradition, we have this theme, we stand up in the young women’s organization and recite. It says, “I am a beloved daughter of heavenly parents with a divine nature and eternal destiny. As a disciple of Jesus Christ, I strive to become like him. I seek to act upon personal revelation and minister to others in his holy name,I will stand as a witness of God at all times.

I will stand as a witness of God at all times, in all things, and in all places.” This is more focused now on service than when we were growing up. Ours was like, I am valuable, yeah. This one actually doesn’t sound like that anymore. So we grew up with this, like I am a valuable daughter of God. Why do you think that didn’t sink in for us?

Stacey: Why? I think sometimes if you just recite something over and over, you don’t really spend the time to think about what you’re saying.

Anne: I also think it’s how we were treated.

Stacey: Oh yeah, absolutely.

Anne: So if they say you’re so valuable, but then you’re not actually treated as you’re valuable, like they’re not listening to your opinion. They’re not believing you. They’ll pay for your brother to go to college, but they won’t pay for you to go to college. Your brother can choose a career of any of these 5,000 careers, and you need to pick a teacher. Because then you would have the summers off for your kids, and you need to cook, sew, clean and do laundry.

Gender Roles, Expectations, and Your Sense of Self

Anne: And your duties are relegated to childcare, cleaning, cooking, and he, what does he want to do? He gets to be an engineer, an astronaut, like what are his dreams and hopes? And yours should be laundry, so I don’t know what, you know, like nobody ever says like, what do you want to do with your life?

Stacey: No.

Anne: Like what are you interested in? Who are you as a person? What talents has God given you apart from he’s given you the ability to be a mother, right? So it’s like were you actually treated like you were valuable, and so in our hearts and minds we’re thinking okay, we’re valued. But we’re only valued if we look like this, or if we do this thing, and if we do it well. And you know what, I’m not super great at cooking brownies.

So maybe I’m not as valuable as the congregation brownie baker. I just wonder if that’s part of it. The way that we internalize the culture around us. Oh, this is how you get valued as a woman. If you want it, you’ve got to be cute, you’ve got to be in shape, and you have to play the harp.

Stacey: It’s so true, that’s interesting you bring that up, because a week ago at church we had a lesson about things of value, and how we treat things differently on how much we value them. And we came home from church, and I said to my husband, I don’t feel valued. As a wife, as a human. For me, it was such a big epiphany. To just think, I’ve spent these last 20 years with someone who doesn’t value me and constantly lies to me.

How Bigger Societal Patterns Shape Men To Justify Lying To Their Wives

Anne: They don’t cherish us.

Stacey: Right, yeah, how differently would my life turn out if I was with someone that valued me, truly?

Anne: That’s why we have to learn to value ourselves, because nobody’s doing it for us.

Stacey: Right, exactly.

Anne: When we do, and we’re like, no, I’m gonna do this thing. Everybody around us is like, “What? No, no, no. You’re not valuing your husband.” I think the heart of this is also just, flat out misogyny. I think that’s the problem with a lot of the addiction recovery situation, is that they’re not acknowledging this super solid bedrock foundation of misogyny.

Stacey: Absolutely.

Anne: That is so firm, so strong, and so deep that it’s going through the clergy, the therapists, and the community, and it’s making it very difficult for women to value themselves. And then when you start doing it, then you’re the crazy apostate lady. I enjoy that role though. Now in my congregation, I am like the witch lady almost, you know what I mean? Like, don’t let your kids get too close to her.

Stacey: How have you been able to keep your faith in your spirituality? That is something I’ve struggled with so much through this. Because I feel like my religion has spiritually manipulated me into feeling like I’m not as much value. I need to forgive, move on. And it’s real. I’ve struggled with my spirituality through this. Is there things that have helped you?

Seeking God’s Help When Your Confused

Anne: In our particular faith, we study from the Bible and also from the Book of Mormon. And I love studying from both of these books about my Savior. And having a tangible book that I can study from and consider what God is telling me has helped me. Sometimes I think like, what am I doing this for? All these men don’t get it. But as I study, I feel God’s love for me.

And the other thing that’s interesting is that both of those books are I think misogynistic at their core due to the historical situation, right? Women aren’t writing them. They’re not interpreting them from the perspective of women. And so that’s another thing that I do. Actually, in my own journal, I pray and ask Heavenly Father what He wants to tell me, and then I write down the impressions I receive. And I consider that my own personal scriptures.

So even though it’s still on that solid seemingly immovable bedrock of misogyny. I do think the Lord’s words come through. The other thing I love about the scriptures is that God does not like wickedness. Over and over, both the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Book of Mormon stories over and over of deliverance.

So the gospel is a gospel of deliverance. The ultimate deliverance would be salvation, returning to live with God. But I also believe He has a deliverance for us here in this life, that he wants us to be delivered from all of the lies and evil.

The Call For Women To Seek Deliverance

Anne: You know, the Israelites were enslaved by evil, by Pharaoh. And they prayed, and they watched, and they hoped for the time they could be delivered. And then when Moses made that possible, they started moving, they started making their way. At that point, they could have just sat there and been like, oh, it’s too hard to get all of our stuff together.

It’s too hard to walk out. Pharaoh’s going to follow us anyway. But they didn’t. They got up, they packed up all their stuff. They started making their way, and Pharaoh followed them. And then the Red Sea parted and they walked through. I mean, can you imagine the faith it took to walk through these two pillars of water? Thinking it could fall on you at any second. I don’t know if I would have been like this, this seems like a bad idea.

You know walking through here, but they did it, and I think God is calling women to do that now. I feel like God is calling women to separate themselves from evil. To have faith, pray for deliverance, hope for deliverance, and start making our way out. And when we see that moment, whenever that is, to pack up our stuff metaphorically speaking. Make our way, and then when he parts that Red Sea, we have to walk through that.

And for me, that was when my ex got arrested. For some women, they have some kind of epiphany about the extent of the lies. I’m not saying all this leads to divorce. I’m not pro divorce, but I am pro deliverance from evil and I am pro deliverance from abuse.

God Delivers Us From Evil

Anne: God seems to call us all to consider deliverance. To separate ourselves from evil. We also know in the last days that there’ll be a big separation. A separation of good and evil, the wheat and the tares. I think that’s happening now. And the easiest place to do that is in our own homes to ensure that our home is a place of peace. And that’s confusing, because at church, when they talk about, separate yourself from evil.

They never talk about it in terms of your own home. They’re always talking about it as like the evil in the world. So like these evil people out there. And I’m thinking, I’m not worried about the “evil” people out in the world. I’m already separated from them. So I don’t know what you’re talking about. You know, I’m not like hanging out with them.

The people in my circle are healthy, happy, honest people. So we’re trying to separate ourselves from evil. We need to look in our own six foot radius.

Stacey: Yeah, that’s big.

Anne: The Lord has a plan for us. I don’t know what it is exactly. I’m just going to do my part. So I just think, I don’t know the answer to so many of these things. Of course, I don’t. Why would I? But I think that’s what’s helped me. I. keep my faith, because I just can’t imagine God doesn’t have a plan for our deliverance. If He’s had a plan for oppressed people’s delivery since the beginning of time.

Stacey: Yeah, that’s something to think about. I like that a lot. It’s good, good stuff.

Reconciling Your Faith With the Reality of His Lies

Anne: I have many friends who have left their faith, and I don’t blame them. There’s no judgment for me, because I think I don’t know why I still believe and you don’t. But like we’re still sisters. Did your sister-in-law leave the church?

Stacey: Yes, she did, yeah.

Anne: So I think that would be another thing as you attempt to reconcile with her is to have a soft place in your heart for that. And be like, it makes sense that you would do that after all the abuse you suffered from my brother, from my family, from other church members, like, I totally get it. I can see why you would do that. Because that’s going to be a further bridge to reconciliation.

Rather than, like, well, I’m staying in the church because I’m more righteous and have more faith than you. After all the misogyny I’ve experienced and all the terrible things, but somehow I’m a better person than you because I can put up with it or something. Like the women who have said, hey, I am done. I’m not going to listen, you shouldn’t get divorced, you’re a bad person, and stuff like that.

Like, good for you for standing up for yourself. Good for you for saying, I don’t have to take this anymore. I don’t have to take this abuse. I’m not doing this anymore with a husband who is so full of lies. So in terms of like how I feel about it, I think every woman can make her own way to safety in whatever way that looks like for her. And sometimes, frankly, I’m confused about why I still believe, like I do.

When Your Husband Is Lying & Blaming the Messenger

Anne: I’ve suffered tons of oppression from men for my views, especially now that the podcast is so big and that I seem very threatening to many therapists or other people. And my views seem threatening. Some people see me as some sort of like ultra crazy podcaster that their wife started listening to. And after she started listening to this whack-a-doodle podcaster, our family was ruined.

Stacey: Well, what’s interesting about that is yes, of course, the husbands don’t like us finding you. Because we find the truth. We understand the abuse for what it is. And when we confront them and say, ah, I listened to this podcast and she said this. So yeah, my husband is not a fan of the podcast because it totally exposes him for what he is, a lying selfish person, and he doesn’t like that one bit.

Anne: I become this crazy like an extremist who’s podcasting from my basement, who, you know, believes in aliens. I’m not, I don’t believe in aliens, but I mean people have that view of it, right?

No, actually like this is pretty mainstream, like basic abuse stuff. If you talk to any abuse expert, they’ll be like, yeah, of course. This is not extreme. It’s not out there. There’s nothing about it that is counterculture. I mean, our faith tradition says we do not tolerate abuse. It’s just so, so threatening to an abuser, for a victim to find out the truth about what’s going on.

The Power of Truth, Community, and Finally Seeing Clearly

Stacey: Yeah, it blows his cover. They can’t get away with what they used to get away with. It’s confusing to them, because behavior that’s worked in the past doesn’t work anymore. When we can recognize his lies and see what’s being done and how we’re being manipulated, it has changed my relationship. It has since I’ve started listening to the podcast, and being able to recognize it, and feeling more self worth.

Because of all the gaslighting I have felt like I’m the crazy one, that there’s no validity to my thoughts and emotions. Being able to recognize that my thoughts, emotions, and feelings are valid. It gives me a lot more strength to stand up and recognize that, yeah, I have worth and my thoughts, they’re not crazy. They’re actually less crazy. They’re the truth. That’s what they are. They’re true.

Anne: Well, and from a spiritual perspective, that is God telling you that you are of worth, and listen to that part, listen to how much he loves you and cares about you. And you don’t have to put up with literal chaos and pain coming from someone who enjoys wickedness. We were talking about submission before, like on a previous episode. And essentially, if you listen to your abuser and submit yourself to him.

Okay, I’ll be more available or, okay, I’ll lose weight or, okay, I won’t ask you questions. And I’ll, I don’t know, whatever they want, that’s unrighteous. You’re submitting yourself to evil, which God never asked us to do, ever.

After Betrayal, Lean on The Strength of Others

Stacey: Yeah, right.

Anne: The cool thing is the more of us there are, the stronger we become, and the less weird it is. And so we just need to keep walking forward. And when one of us gets to safety, it helps all of us. Thank you so much for spending this time with me today. I appreciate your time.