Betrayal Trauma Recovery

Difference Between Psychological and Physical Abuse — **Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse – What You Need To Know** Jun 10, 2025
If you’re wondering about psychological abuse vs emotional abuse, here’s what to know.

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

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

The Link Between Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse

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

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

**Grooming**: Acting overly kind or loving to distract you from their deception or to lower your guard.

**Gaslighting Through Deception**: Insisting that behaviors you suspect (like inappropriate texts or suspicious accounts) are harmless or fabricated by your imagination.

**Blame-Shifting**: Making you feel responsible for their choices—whether it’s pornography use, emotional affairs, or other betrayals.

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

Identifying Psychological Abuse And Emotional Abuse:

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

**Lying and Deception**: Repeated lies or withholding the truth to maintain power and secrecy. Your husband might make promises he has no intention of keeping, or lie to cover up deeper issues, like infidelity or pornography use.

**Gaslighting**: Making you question your own reality or memory. For example, he might say, “That never happened,” or twist your words to make you feel irrational.

**Manipulation**: Using grooming, love bombing, hoovering, or fear to gain control. He might send flowers or plan amazing dates. Or he might play the victim or focus on your weaknesses to deflect attention from his own harmful behavior.

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

Steps To Heal From Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse

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

1. **Seek Emotional Safety**

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

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

2. **Build a Support Network**

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

3. **Educate Yourself on His Tactics** **To Make Healing From Psychological Abuse Possible**

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

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

4. **It Has Nothing To Do With You (and Everything To Do with You)**

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

Transcript: Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse

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

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

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

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

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

Disrespect & Lack Of Communication

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

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

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

https://youtu.be/3sJNedeS4es

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

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

Silent Treatment & Gaslighting

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

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

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

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

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

Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse: Energy From Chaos

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

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

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

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

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

Struggles With Exploitative Content

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

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

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

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

Failed Counseling Attempts

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

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

**Anne:** Good for you.

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

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

Psychological vs Emotional Abuse: Lies In The Face Of Hard Evidence

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

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

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

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

Hidden Cameras & Stalking

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discovering The Dating Profile

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

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

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

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

Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse: Attempting Affair Recovery

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

**Anne:** Yeah, duh, she’s mad,

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

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

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

**Margaret:** Yes.

**Anne:** Did they mention abuse at all?

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

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

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

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

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

Pressure & Self-Betrayal

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discovering Infidelity

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

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

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

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

Social Media & Realizations

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

**Anne:** So he knew what he was doing.

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

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

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

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

Emotional & Physical Safety

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

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

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

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

Seeking Legal Help

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

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

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

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

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

Psychological And Emotional Abuse: Using Meditation To Heal

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

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

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

**Anne:** Do you feel okay?

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

Support & Community

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

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

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

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

Escalation & More Lies

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

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

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

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

Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse: So Many Lies

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

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

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

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

Wanting To Help Other Women

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

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

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

**Margaret:** Yes.

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

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

**Anne:** Having been through it.

**Margaret:** Yeah.

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

Hope For The Future

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

**Anne:** Yeah, everything becomes pretty clear, yeah.

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

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

**Anne:** It will be. You’re awesome.

**Margaret:** Thank you.

The Difference Between Emotional and Psychological Abuse — **Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse – What You Need To Know** Jun 10, 2025
If you’re wondering about psychological abuse vs emotional abuse, here’s what to know.

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

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

The Link Between Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse

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

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

**Grooming**: Acting overly kind or loving to distract you from their deception or to lower your guard.

**Gaslighting Through Deception**: Insisting that behaviors you suspect (like inappropriate texts or suspicious accounts) are harmless or fabricated by your imagination.

**Blame-Shifting**: Making you feel responsible for their choices—whether it’s pornography use, emotional affairs, or other betrayals.

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

Identifying Psychological Abuse And Emotional Abuse:

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

**Lying and Deception**: Repeated lies or withholding the truth to maintain power and secrecy. Your husband might make promises he has no intention of keeping, or lie to cover up deeper issues, like infidelity or pornography use.

**Gaslighting**: Making you question your own reality or memory. For example, he might say, “That never happened,” or twist your words to make you feel irrational.

**Manipulation**: Using grooming, love bombing, hoovering, or fear to gain control. He might send flowers or plan amazing dates. Or he might play the victim or focus on your weaknesses to deflect attention from his own harmful behavior.

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

Steps To Heal From Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse

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

1. **Seek Emotional Safety**

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

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

2. **Build a Support Network**

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

3. **Educate Yourself on His Tactics** **To Make Healing From Psychological Abuse Possible**

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

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

4. **It Has Nothing To Do With You (and Everything To Do with You)**

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

Transcript: Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse

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

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

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

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

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

Disrespect & Lack Of Communication

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

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

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

https://youtu.be/3sJNedeS4es

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

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

Silent Treatment & Gaslighting

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

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

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

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

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

Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse: Energy From Chaos

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

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

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

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

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

Struggles With Exploitative Content

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

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

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

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

Failed Counseling Attempts

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

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

**Anne:** Good for you.

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

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

Psychological vs Emotional Abuse: Lies In The Face Of Hard Evidence

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

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

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

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

Hidden Cameras & Stalking

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discovering The Dating Profile

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

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

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

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

Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse: Attempting Affair Recovery

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

**Anne:** Yeah, duh, she’s mad,

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

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

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

**Margaret:** Yes.

**Anne:** Did they mention abuse at all?

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

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

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

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

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

Pressure & Self-Betrayal

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discovering Infidelity

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

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

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

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

Social Media & Realizations

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

**Anne:** So he knew what he was doing.

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

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

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

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

Emotional & Physical Safety

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

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

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

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

Seeking Legal Help

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

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

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

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

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

Psychological And Emotional Abuse: Using Meditation To Heal

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

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

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

**Anne:** Do you feel okay?

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

Support & Community

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

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

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

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

Escalation & More Lies

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

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

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

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

Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse: So Many Lies

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

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

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

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

Wanting To Help Other Women

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

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

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

**Margaret:** Yes.

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

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

**Anne:** Having been through it.

**Margaret:** Yeah.

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

Hope For The Future

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

**Anne:** Yeah, everything becomes pretty clear, yeah.

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

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

**Anne:** It will be. You’re awesome.

**Margaret:** Thank you.

Is It Wrong To Check Your Husbands Phone — **Is It Wrong To Check Your Husband’s Phone? – Jenna’s Experience** Jun 03, 2025
If you suspect your husband is having an affair, is it wrong to check your husband’s phone? Does access to your husband’s phone ensure he’ll stay faithful? Jenn shares 3 reasons why checking his devices didn’t stop her husband from cheating.

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

Transcript: Is It Wrong To Check Your Husband’s Phone?

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

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

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

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

Betrayal Trauma Recovery’s Perspective On Safety

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

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

https://youtu.be/R3vXhz8MN2U

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

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

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

Ineffectiveness Of Searching Devices

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

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

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

**Jenna:** Yes.

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

**Jenna:** Exactly.

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

**Jenna:** Right.

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

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

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

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

Checking Your Husband’s Phone: Emotional Turmoil & Intuition

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

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

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

**Jenna:** Correct, they were unsafe.

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

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

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

The Living Free Workshop

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

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

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

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

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

Setting Boundaries For Safety

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

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

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

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

Checking My Husband’s Phone VS. Setting Boundaries

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

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

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

**Jenna:** Right.

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

Practical Boundary Setting

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

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

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

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

Advice For Listeners

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

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

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

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

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

Learn More about BTR Group Sessions — **Is It Wrong To Check Your Husband’s Phone? – Jenna’s Experience** Jun 03, 2025
If you suspect your husband is having an affair, is it wrong to check your husband’s phone? Does access to your husband’s phone ensure he’ll stay faithful? Jenn shares 3 reasons why checking his devices didn’t stop her husband from cheating.

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

Transcript: Is It Wrong To Check Your Husband’s Phone?

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

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

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

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

Betrayal Trauma Recovery’s Perspective On Safety

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

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

https://youtu.be/R3vXhz8MN2U

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

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

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

Ineffectiveness Of Searching Devices

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

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

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

**Jenna:** Yes.

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

**Jenna:** Exactly.

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

**Jenna:** Right.

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

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

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

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

Checking Your Husband’s Phone: Emotional Turmoil & Intuition

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

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

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

**Jenna:** Correct, they were unsafe.

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

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

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

The Living Free Workshop

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

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

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

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

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

Setting Boundaries For Safety

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

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

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

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

Checking My Husband’s Phone VS. Setting Boundaries

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

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

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

**Jenna:** Right.

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

Practical Boundary Setting

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

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

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

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

Advice For Listeners

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

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

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

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

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

Stages of Anger After Infidelity - How Anger Protects You — **Stages of Anger After Infidelity – How Anger Protects You** May 27, 2025
I went through so many stages of anger after infidelity. Here’s what I learned over the years.

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

The 5 Stages of Anger After Infidelity

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

1. **Anger at the Betrayal Itself**

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

“How could he do this to me?”

“Does he even care about the pain he’s caused?”

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

2. **Anger at the Consequences**

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

“Why am I the one picking up the pieces?”

“Now I have to heal because of his choices.”

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

3. **Anger at the Loss**

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

“I didn’t deserve to lose everything I’ve worked for.”

“It’s not fair that my whole world has changed because of his betrayal.”

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

4. **Anger at Yourself**

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

“Why didn’t I see through his lies?”

“Why do I feel so stuck?”

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

5. **Reclaiming Anger as Strength**

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

“I am powerful and my needs are important.”

“It’s time to focus on my well-being.”

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

You’re Not Alone. I’m Angry Too

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

Transcript: Stages of Anger After Infidelity

Welcome to BTR.ORG. This is Anne.

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

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

Gratitude for Family

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

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

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

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

Struggling with Anger At Infidelity and Contradictions in Faith

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

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

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

https://youtu.be/6Sl9KCv6mYg

When His Actions Contradict His Stated Values

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

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

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

Struggling to Hold On After Infidelity: Hoping for Change in a Difficult Relationship

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

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

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

Facing The Anger: Developing Inner Peace After Infidelity

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

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

How Can You Develop Peace After The Anger Of Infidelity

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

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

Why Does Inner Strength Help In Healing The Anger From Infidelity

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

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

Inner Peace & Spirituality

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

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

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

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

Angry After Infidelity: Facing The Dark Times

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

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

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

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

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

Movign On From Anger Comes With Inner Peace

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

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

Can Boundary-Setting Help You Heal Your Anger After Infidelity?

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

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

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

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

Until next week, stay safe out there.

Post Separation Abuse Wheel — **What Is Post Separation Abuse? – Marcie’s Story** May 20, 2025
Navigating life after separation can be challenging, especially if you’re dealing with post-separation abuse. What is post separation abuse? Unfortunately, this is a reality for many women, particularly mothers, who continue to suffer abuse from their ex-husbands.

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

What Is Post Separation Abuse?

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

1. Financial Abuse

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

2. Unauthorized Entry

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

3. Manipulating Your Children’s Lives

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

Get The Right Support while you are experiencing Post-separation abuse

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

Betrayal Trauma Recovery **Group Sessions**: Join one of our many group sessions for support, guidance, and understanding from women who have been through similar experiences.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery **Individual Sessions**: Receive one-on-one attention and strategies tailored to your situation with our specially trained betrayal trauma coaches.

Why Choose Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions?

**Expert Support**: Our professional coaches experienced personal betrayal trauma. They are equipped to help you find peace and protection for yourself and your family.

**Accessible & Affordable**: For just $125 a month, you have access to over 92 group sessions—providing real support at the cost of just one therapy appointment.

**Immediate Help**: Attend a group session within hours and start receiving the support you need today.

Take Action to Protect Yourself During Post-separation Abuse

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

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

Transcript: What Is Post Separation Abuse?

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

**Marcie:** Hi.

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

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

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

Early Relationship Dynamics

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

**Anne:** So he introduced you to Betrayal Trauma Recovery?

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

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

**Marcie:** Yeah.

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

**Marcie:** Yes.

**Anne:** And since then, I am the devil.

**Marcie:** Of course.

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

**Marcie:** Yes.

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

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

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

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

https://youtu.be/odtr70bY2Ew?si=xxY6fBWFYW954bV8

Appeasing Him

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

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

**Marcie:** Absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

Understanding Post Separation Abuse

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

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

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

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

Therapy & Depression

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

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

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

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

The “No” Test, Manipulation & Control

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

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

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

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

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

What Is Post Separation Abuse: Recording Conversations To Maintain clarity

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

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

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

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

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

Journaling & Trauma Response

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

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

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

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

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

Living In Between Horrible Things

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

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

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

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

Confronting the reality of Abuse

**Marcie:** And there was a time when we had this situation. Where he chased me through the house and backed me into a corner. I put my hands up, and he was so close to me that my hands were on his chest. And I said, you need to leave me alone. And after that happened, I don’t remember how it ended. But he kept telling me that I had put my hands on him, and he could call the police and say I assaulted him. Because I put my hands on him and he didn’t touch me at all.

I was trying to explain to him how that doesn’t sound right. It wasn’t the case, and he said you could call anybody and they would side with me. It was just another typical thing that he would say, how other people would feel about certain situations. And so I said, okay, well then let’s call the domestic abuse hotline right now. And he’s like, go ahead, call. He didn’t think I would call, but I did. They immediately told me, this is not a safe situation. This is not good.

But after that call, he was angrier with me than I’ve ever seen him. He explained it to me as the biggest betrayal he has ever felt from me. It was worse than if I had an affair. And I feel like that was because being found out or proved wrong was the worst thing he could experience.

**Anne:** Or he’s just lying in that moment.

**Marcie:** Or lying.

**Anne:** To make you feel like he feels super betrayed for you calling the domestic violence shelter, in order to intimidate you.

**Marcie:** Yes.

Lies & Recording Conversations

**Anne:** They lie so much that it’s hard to be like, yeah, that was so devastating for him. Because he told me, I’m thinking, was it? Was it devastating for him? Because he’s a liar. We just never know what is going on in their minds, since they lie so much.

**Marcie:** Well, in looking back, there are so many things that are lies that I didn’t see as lies. Or didn’t want to see as lies or didn’t want to believe as lies that now I know. But that brings me back to the beauty of recording. So flash forward many years from that, that first original recording to now, where four years ago. I got a restraining order, which allowed me to record conversations between him and me, or him and the children.

It’s specific for victims of domestic violence who have a restraining order. To record, so I could record and use those recordings in court.

**Anne:** Did he know that you were allowed to do this?

**Marcie:** Yes.

**Anne:** Okay, so he knows he’s being recorded?

**Marcie:** He knows he’s being recorded, but I don’t know if most of these people are like this. He’s very cocky. I think he’d forget, too. Or he didn’t care or didn’t think what he was saying was wrong. In fact, at the beginning, he definitely didn’t think what he was saying was wrong. There were recordings from when he had phone calls and supervised visits. And these were during those phone calls, and he felt okay, because this was the way he was feeling.

Differences Between Counties Dealing With Custody

**Marcie:** So it was a right for him to let them know. But when I transcribed those recordings, things such as your mother is trying to kill me by doing this, and your mother hates me. And just things that were not appropriate for children to hear.

**Anne:** You’re recording his phone calls with your kids. This is one way to combat his abuse when fighting a narcissist for custody.

**Marcie:** Correct, and this has been going on for four years. In the meantime, because of those recorded conversations, they’ve limited his phone calls to a shorter amount of time. As well as took away the supervised visits. Which he wasn’t doing anyway, because when I stopped planning them for him, it was too much work or whatever. I don’t know. He didn’t want to pay for it, but he didn’t do it, but they took away that right and made it just phone calls.

But another important thing for people in the situation to know is that. The county in which you reside is the court where your custody issues will be heard. And I don’t know if that’s in all states, but I know in California, that’s the issue. So there are many counties that understand domestic abuse. And they try to understand that dynamic when they make decisions regarding the children.

There are other counties that do not understand that dynamic. They tend to feel that both parents should be with the children no matter what. And they don’t take into account the background or danger. So for many women who are having some big challenges within the court system, that if they live in another county, they might get a different viewpoint and a different result.

Post Separation Abuse INcludes legal maniplulation

**Marcie:** I’ve also experienced, legal abuse where he keeps going back to court.

**Anne:** His post separation abuse includes him taking you back to court, even though you’re divorced and even though he has a protective order? Is his protective order still in place?

**Marcie:** It was made permanent. But in his communication with me previously, he threatened me that he’s going to keep going to court. He has said, this is the only thing you understand. And he’s been in contempt in some ways that have caused me to respond to things worse that have cost me money.

**Anne:** Yeah, it’s so frustrating that they can wreak so much havoc, and the court system doesn’t stop them. It’s a very difficult situation, and that’s why strategy, I think, is so important. And why I created The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. Because confronting them or communicating better, or all the things the therapist might tell you.

Or a guardian ad litem might tell you, or reunification therapists will tell you, do not work. So many of you have experienced the trauma of all that. And strategy, we found, is the only thing that can help us stay sane.

Financial Manipulation

**Anne:** I mean, he’s costing you all this money. Since you were the primary breadwinner, did he actually start working?

**Marcie:** No.

**Anne:** So he’s doing legal abuse, how is he paying for his legal stuff?

**Marcie:** He keeps saying he’s borrowing money, but I know he’s getting it from family members. It’s just his way. He always has people take care of him or pay for him. And it ties into his narrative of how he will describe what’s happening and make me the villain.

**Anne:** To place him in the victim role.

**Marcie:** Yes.

**Anne:** Rather than the perpetrator. You were the primary breadwinner, did he get alimony from you?

**Marcie:** No.

**Anne:** Whew, he’s probably mad about that. He lost his meal ticket.

**Marcie:** He did.

**Anne:** Yeah, I bet that’s the thing that’s the most anger producing for him.

**Marcie:** Yeah.

**Anne:** You’re not good for anything now.

**Marcie:** I am useless.

**Anne:** Yeah, you’re completely useless to him. That’s what we want to be, we want to be useless.

**Marcie:** Yes.

**Anne:** To these guys. Let’s talk about the smear campaign he started. Smear campaigns are common with post separation abuse. Was this, I guess, during your divorce proceedings?

Smear Campaign

**Marcie:** Yes, all along, he leaves out small details, sometimes large details. Or sometimes totally represents things differently from how they are to be the victim. And when I originally contacted you, I asked how do you deal with the smear campaign. This is happening with my in-laws, and it was so upsetting to me to feel like I had lost my in-laws. I’m sure many women have felt the same feeling. I’ve known them since I was a teenager.

I feel like they thought of me like a daughter, and the ironic part is they knew how he was. Not to the extent of what I knew, but they knew, and several times his dad said, I’m sorry he’s acting that way. I don’t know why he behaves that way to you sometimes, it doesn’t sound right.

His mom would say similar things, things like, if he keeps treating the children that way, they’re not going to want to talk to him. They knew how he was. He would treat them that same way, but they don’t want to talk to me. My adult children have refused to talk to their father, and they feel like that’s horrible. His post separation abuse includes his lies to everyone about me.

They don’t interact with them. They barely interact with their younger grandchildren anymore. And it’s just sad, but at first it was really, really upsetting. And then I realized, well, if they’re believing him. If they’re going to stand beside him when he’s abusive and believe things that aren’t true. I guess it has to be okay that those people aren’t in my life anymore.

What Is Post Separation Abuse: False Memories & Manipulation

**Marcie:** Oh, that’s so hard. So, on the phone calls with the kids, he tells them things that aren’t true. Well, gosh, there are so many things that he does to them that I feel are so damaging for them. They’re not small, tiny children, but still. He plants false memories. Do you remember when we did this together, and this together? Or I have the memory of whatever it was, being miserable because he didn’t want to go, or they weren’t behaving,

Like, for instance, my youngest is 12 and my oldest is 31. My ex-husband was really into baseball. He played when he was a kid. None of the kids had done any type of baseball or organized sports. The younger children wanted to, but weren’t able to when we were together. There was always an excuse we’re not going to have time, whatever. But after I left, it was the first time my youngest son was enrolled in Little League, and he loved it.

My ex husband kept saying, remember when we used to go outside and play baseball all the time? I always wanted you to be in sports, but it couldn’t work because of mom’s schedule.

**Anne:** It’s your mom’s fault that you couldn’t take baseball. Yeah, Um hmm. That’s one example of manipulation being a tactic of post separation abuse. Your ex is using the kids to hurt you.

**Marcie:** And I think, well, before I would have fallen into that and felt the guilt. But now I think, well, okay, if it was my fault, then how come I did that after I left you? But I couldn’t do it when there were two people in the home?

Impact On Children

**Marcie:** It was so much harder to do anything. But just the false memories of, we used to go out and play catch all the time, which is not true. A lot of those type of things. The criminal things or the things he did to break the restraining order. There were so many more things, but they don’t address it in the way you’d like. Let’s put it that way.

But I don’t talk to the kids about the court cases or anything like that, because I feel it’s not for them to be concerned about it. I don’t want them to be part of that. But he would tell them incorrect information about what they’re about, leave out all the important things, and tell them that Mom’s doing this because she doesn’t want me to see you. Those types of things damaged my relationship with the children.

**Anne:** And that’s the point. He’s purposefully doing that to do damage. It damages you and the kids, and that is the intent of post separation abuse, which is so unfortunate.

**Marcie:** It is very hard. Only two out of six of my children will speak with him. Of the two that do, that’s obviously where it’s the most damaging. I’m having trouble with my 17 year old because he’s trying to be the cool dad. He’s encouraging him to stay out late on school nights, not with friends, but with him, and he’s missed school. And he’s actually not supposed to see him, but that’s another thing. He’s luring them with being able to buy them things.

**Anne:** Does he have a job now?

**Marcie:** No, he does not. He gets money from family members, and he claims to be homeless. Yet he purchases things for them.

Processing The Abuse

**Marcie:** That’s where recording comes in wonderfully, because we do have a court case that he started. He wants custody again. And I think this time I’m including a lot of recordings that I’ve transcribed, which has been helpful.

**Anne:** It started when you were 14, and has continued this whole time, and everything he’s done has been part of that con. And he continues to do that con. You are experiencing post separation abuse. He lies to your kids, and he lies to everybody else. So the whole thing has been the show. So if you can think of it in that overarching way of, it’s been this show. And then, how do you tell the story within that con? That might help you process it.

**Marcie:** When you put it in that sense, it is just a continuous con. He’s just reaching and grabbing for different cons that will work. That helps put it in perspective.

**Anne:** Yeah, because he’s doing the same thing over and over. Even though it’s maybe not the same lie. It’s lying in a different way, but it’s still just lying.

**Marcie:** Looking back at it, it feels so surreal. Like it feels like it’s not real because it’s so insane. Does that make sense?

**Anne:** Um hmm, totally.

**Marcie:** And I feel like people aren’t going to believe me, because how could that be true? How could anyone act like that? Plus, he’s saying something different. So I think I still have a lot of healing to do, which is frustrating.

What Is Post Separation Abuse: We can help you understand

**Anne:** That’s the purpose of this podcast. It’s a safe place where everybody gets it and believes you. We don’t care what he says or thinks, we know he’s a liar. Here, you’re 100% believed. What is post separation abuse? We know and can help. So because of that, it’s such a safe place to be. Like, I can share my story, and he’s not going to talk back to me.

**Marcie:** Sometimes when you share your story with people who don’t understand, they back away or it’s just too much.

**Anne:** With me, I’m like, tell me more. So thank you so much, Marcie.

**Marcie:** Thank you so much.

**What Is Post Separation Abuse? – Marcie’s Story** May 20, 2025
Navigating life after separation can be challenging, especially if you’re dealing with post-separation abuse. What is post separation abuse? Unfortunately, this is a reality for many women, particularly mothers, who continue to suffer abuse from their ex-husbands.

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

What Is Post Separation Abuse?

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

1. Financial Abuse

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

2. Unauthorized Entry

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

3. Manipulating Your Children’s Lives

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

Get The Right Support while you are experiencing Post-separation abuse

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

Betrayal Trauma Recovery **Group Sessions**: Join one of our many group sessions for support, guidance, and understanding from women who have been through similar experiences.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery **Individual Sessions**: Receive one-on-one attention and strategies tailored to your situation with our specially trained betrayal trauma coaches.

Why Choose Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions?

**Expert Support**: Our professional coaches experienced personal betrayal trauma. They are equipped to help you find peace and protection for yourself and your family.

**Accessible & Affordable**: For just $125 a month, you have access to over 92 group sessions—providing real support at the cost of just one therapy appointment.

**Immediate Help**: Attend a group session within hours and start receiving the support you need today.

Take Action to Protect Yourself During Post-separation Abuse

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

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

Transcript: What Is Post Separation Abuse?

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

**Marcie:** Hi.

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

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

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

Early Relationship Dynamics

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

**Anne:** So he introduced you to Betrayal Trauma Recovery?

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

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

**Marcie:** Yeah.

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

**Marcie:** Yes.

**Anne:** And since then, I am the devil.

**Marcie:** Of course.

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

**Marcie:** Yes.

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

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

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

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

https://youtu.be/odtr70bY2Ew?si=xxY6fBWFYW954bV8

Appeasing Him

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

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

**Marcie:** Absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

Understanding Post Separation Abuse

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

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

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

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

Therapy & Depression

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

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

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

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

The “No” Test, Manipulation & Control

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

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

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

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

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

What Is Post Separation Abuse: Recording Conversations To Maintain clarity

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

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

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

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

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

Journaling & Trauma Response

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

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

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

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

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

Living In Between Horrible Things

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

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

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

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

Confronting the reality of Abuse

**Marcie:** And there was a time when we had this situation. Where he chased me through the house and backed me into a corner. I put my hands up, and he was so close to me that my hands were on his chest. And I said, you need to leave me alone. And after that happened, I don’t remember how it ended. But he kept telling me that I had put my hands on him, and he could call the police and say I assaulted him. Because I put my hands on him and he didn’t touch me at all.

I was trying to explain to him how that doesn’t sound right. It wasn’t the case, and he said you could call anybody and they would side with me. It was just another typical thing that he would say, how other people would feel about certain situations. And so I said, okay, well then let’s call the domestic abuse hotline right now. And he’s like, go ahead, call. He didn’t think I would call, but I did. They immediately told me, this is not a safe situation. This is not good.

But after that call, he was angrier with me than I’ve ever seen him. He explained it to me as the biggest betrayal he has ever felt from me. It was worse than if I had an affair. And I feel like that was because being found out or proved wrong was the worst thing he could experience.

**Anne:** Or he’s just lying in that moment.

**Marcie:** Or lying.

**Anne:** To make you feel like he feels super betrayed for you calling the domestic violence shelter, in order to intimidate you.

**Marcie:** Yes.

Lies & Recording Conversations

**Anne:** They lie so much that it’s hard to be like, yeah, that was so devastating for him. Because he told me, I’m thinking, was it? Was it devastating for him? Because he’s a liar. We just never know what is going on in their minds, since they lie so much.

**Marcie:** Well, in looking back, there are so many things that are lies that I didn’t see as lies. Or didn’t want to see as lies or didn’t want to believe as lies that now I know. But that brings me back to the beauty of recording. So flash forward many years from that, that first original recording to now, where four years ago. I got a restraining order, which allowed me to record conversations between him and me, or him and the children.

It’s specific for victims of domestic violence who have a restraining order. To record, so I could record and use those recordings in court.

**Anne:** Did he know that you were allowed to do this?

**Marcie:** Yes.

**Anne:** Okay, so he knows he’s being recorded?

**Marcie:** He knows he’s being recorded, but I don’t know if most of these people are like this. He’s very cocky. I think he’d forget, too. Or he didn’t care or didn’t think what he was saying was wrong. In fact, at the beginning, he definitely didn’t think what he was saying was wrong. There were recordings from when he had phone calls and supervised visits. And these were during those phone calls, and he felt okay, because this was the way he was feeling.

Differences Between Counties Dealing With Custody

**Marcie:** So it was a right for him to let them know. But when I transcribed those recordings, things such as your mother is trying to kill me by doing this, and your mother hates me. And just things that were not appropriate for children to hear.

**Anne:** You’re recording his phone calls with your kids. This is one way to combat his abuse when fighting a narcissist for custody.

**Marcie:** Correct, and this has been going on for four years. In the meantime, because of those recorded conversations, they’ve limited his phone calls to a shorter amount of time. As well as took away the supervised visits. Which he wasn’t doing anyway, because when I stopped planning them for him, it was too much work or whatever. I don’t know. He didn’t want to pay for it, but he didn’t do it, but they took away that right and made it just phone calls.

But another important thing for people in the situation to know is that. The county in which you reside is the court where your custody issues will be heard. And I don’t know if that’s in all states, but I know in California, that’s the issue. So there are many counties that understand domestic abuse. And they try to understand that dynamic when they make decisions regarding the children.

There are other counties that do not understand that dynamic. They tend to feel that both parents should be with the children no matter what. And they don’t take into account the background or danger. So for many women who are having some big challenges within the court system, that if they live in another county, they might get a different viewpoint and a different result.

Post Separation Abuse INcludes legal maniplulation

**Marcie:** I’ve also experienced, legal abuse where he keeps going back to court.

**Anne:** His post separation abuse includes him taking you back to court, even though you’re divorced and even though he has a protective order? Is his protective order still in place?

**Marcie:** It was made permanent. But in his communication with me previously, he threatened me that he’s going to keep going to court. He has said, this is the only thing you understand. And he’s been in contempt in some ways that have caused me to respond to things worse that have cost me money.

**Anne:** Yeah, it’s so frustrating that they can wreak so much havoc, and the court system doesn’t stop them. It’s a very difficult situation, and that’s why strategy, I think, is so important. And why I created The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. Because confronting them or communicating better, or all the things the therapist might tell you.

Or a guardian ad litem might tell you, or reunification therapists will tell you, do not work. So many of you have experienced the trauma of all that. And strategy, we found, is the only thing that can help us stay sane.

Financial Manipulation

**Anne:** I mean, he’s costing you all this money. Since you were the primary breadwinner, did he actually start working?

**Marcie:** No.

**Anne:** So he’s doing legal abuse, how is he paying for his legal stuff?

**Marcie:** He keeps saying he’s borrowing money, but I know he’s getting it from family members. It’s just his way. He always has people take care of him or pay for him. And it ties into his narrative of how he will describe what’s happening and make me the villain.

**Anne:** To place him in the victim role.

**Marcie:** Yes.

**Anne:** Rather than the perpetrator. You were the primary breadwinner, did he get alimony from you?

**Marcie:** No.

**Anne:** Whew, he’s probably mad about that. He lost his meal ticket.

**Marcie:** He did.

**Anne:** Yeah, I bet that’s the thing that’s the most anger producing for him.

**Marcie:** Yeah.

**Anne:** You’re not good for anything now.

**Marcie:** I am useless.

**Anne:** Yeah, you’re completely useless to him. That’s what we want to be, we want to be useless.

**Marcie:** Yes.

**Anne:** To these guys. Let’s talk about the smear campaign he started. Smear campaigns are common with post separation abuse. Was this, I guess, during your divorce proceedings?

Smear Campaign

**Marcie:** Yes, all along, he leaves out small details, sometimes large details. Or sometimes totally represents things differently from how they are to be the victim. And when I originally contacted you, I asked how do you deal with the smear campaign. This is happening with my in-laws, and it was so upsetting to me to feel like I had lost my in-laws. I’m sure many women have felt the same feeling. I’ve known them since I was a teenager.

I feel like they thought of me like a daughter, and the ironic part is they knew how he was. Not to the extent of what I knew, but they knew, and several times his dad said, I’m sorry he’s acting that way. I don’t know why he behaves that way to you sometimes, it doesn’t sound right.

His mom would say similar things, things like, if he keeps treating the children that way, they’re not going to want to talk to him. They knew how he was. He would treat them that same way, but they don’t want to talk to me. My adult children have refused to talk to their father, and they feel like that’s horrible. His post separation abuse includes his lies to everyone about me.

They don’t interact with them. They barely interact with their younger grandchildren anymore. And it’s just sad, but at first it was really, really upsetting. And then I realized, well, if they’re believing him. If they’re going to stand beside him when he’s abusive and believe things that aren’t true. I guess it has to be okay that those people aren’t in my life anymore.

What Is Post Separation Abuse: False Memories & Manipulation

**Marcie:** Oh, that’s so hard. So, on the phone calls with the kids, he tells them things that aren’t true. Well, gosh, there are so many things that he does to them that I feel are so damaging for them. They’re not small, tiny children, but still. He plants false memories. Do you remember when we did this together, and this together? Or I have the memory of whatever it was, being miserable because he didn’t want to go, or they weren’t behaving,

Like, for instance, my youngest is 12 and my oldest is 31. My ex-husband was really into baseball. He played when he was a kid. None of the kids had done any type of baseball or organized sports. The younger children wanted to, but weren’t able to when we were together. There was always an excuse we’re not going to have time, whatever. But after I left, it was the first time my youngest son was enrolled in Little League, and he loved it.

My ex husband kept saying, remember when we used to go outside and play baseball all the time? I always wanted you to be in sports, but it couldn’t work because of mom’s schedule.

**Anne:** It’s your mom’s fault that you couldn’t take baseball. Yeah, Um hmm. That’s one example of manipulation being a tactic of post separation abuse. Your ex is using the kids to hurt you.

**Marcie:** And I think, well, before I would have fallen into that and felt the guilt. But now I think, well, okay, if it was my fault, then how come I did that after I left you? But I couldn’t do it when there were two people in the home?

Impact On Children

**Marcie:** It was so much harder to do anything. But just the false memories of, we used to go out and play catch all the time, which is not true. A lot of those type of things. The criminal things or the things he did to break the restraining order. There were so many more things, but they don’t address it in the way you’d like. Let’s put it that way.

But I don’t talk to the kids about the court cases or anything like that, because I feel it’s not for them to be concerned about it. I don’t want them to be part of that. But he would tell them incorrect information about what they’re about, leave out all the important things, and tell them that Mom’s doing this because she doesn’t want me to see you. Those types of things damaged my relationship with the children.

**Anne:** And that’s the point. He’s purposefully doing that to do damage. It damages you and the kids, and that is the intent of post separation abuse, which is so unfortunate.

**Marcie:** It is very hard. Only two out of six of my children will speak with him. Of the two that do, that’s obviously where it’s the most damaging. I’m having trouble with my 17 year old because he’s trying to be the cool dad. He’s encouraging him to stay out late on school nights, not with friends, but with him, and he’s missed school. And he’s actually not supposed to see him, but that’s another thing. He’s luring them with being able to buy them things.

**Anne:** Does he have a job now?

**Marcie:** No, he does not. He gets money from family members, and he claims to be homeless. Yet he purchases things for them.

Processing The Abuse

**Marcie:** That’s where recording comes in wonderfully, because we do have a court case that he started. He wants custody again. And I think this time I’m including a lot of recordings that I’ve transcribed, which has been helpful.

**Anne:** It started when you were 14, and has continued this whole time, and everything he’s done has been part of that con. And he continues to do that con. You are experiencing post separation abuse. He lies to your kids, and he lies to everybody else. So the whole thing has been the show. So if you can think of it in that overarching way of, it’s been this show. And then, how do you tell the story within that con? That might help you process it.

**Marcie:** When you put it in that sense, it is just a continuous con. He’s just reaching and grabbing for different cons that will work. That helps put it in perspective.

**Anne:** Yeah, because he’s doing the same thing over and over. Even though it’s maybe not the same lie. It’s lying in a different way, but it’s still just lying.

**Marcie:** Looking back at it, it feels so surreal. Like it feels like it’s not real because it’s so insane. Does that make sense?

**Anne:** Um hmm, totally.

**Marcie:** And I feel like people aren’t going to believe me, because how could that be true? How could anyone act like that? Plus, he’s saying something different. So I think I still have a lot of healing to do, which is frustrating.

What Is Post Separation Abuse: We can help you understand

**Anne:** That’s the purpose of this podcast. It’s a safe place where everybody gets it and believes you. We don’t care what he says or thinks, we know he’s a liar. Here, you’re 100% believed. What is post separation abuse? We know and can help. So because of that, it’s such a safe place to be. Like, I can share my story, and he’s not going to talk back to me.

**Marcie:** Sometimes when you share your story with people who don’t understand, they back away or it’s just too much.

**Anne:** With me, I’m like, tell me more. So thank you so much, Marcie.

**Marcie:** Thank you so much.

What Evidence For Emotional Abuse Long Term Effects — **The Long-Term Effects Of A Bad Marriage – Florence’s Story** May 13, 2025
If you’ve endured repeated betrayal from your husband, you’re not alone. Many women in our community have faced the long-term effects of emotional abuse in their marriage. Florence, a member of the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Community, a victim of her husband’s emotional abuse for over 40 years, shares her story.

If you relate, consider attending on of our daily online support groups TODAY.

The Long-Term Effects Of Emotional Abuse

Being in an emotionally abusive relationship for a prolonged period often leaves women feeling deep loss and regret. We tend to reflect on the years spent enduring mistreatment, unaware of the full extent of our husband’s harmful behavior. This realization can lead to feelings of missed opportunities, wondering what life might have been like.

The long-term emotional impact includes grief over lost time and the struggle to reclaim their sense of self and hope for the future. The effects of emotional abuse, can be felt long term and include:

Panic

Grief

Devastation

Anger

Fury

Fear

Terror

Apathy

Guilt

Shame

Loneliness

To know if you’re experiencing any one of the 19 types of emotional abuse, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

Transcript: Long-Term Effects of Emotional Abuse in Relationships

**Anne:** I’m honored to have a member of our community on the podcast today. We’re going to call her Florence. She’s 75 years old. She’s experienced over 40 years of betrayal trauma. She discovered her husband’s infidelity just 3 days after their wedding. She is strong, insightful and courageous. Florence, can you talk about your first reaction finding out about your husband’s double life?

**Florence:** My first reaction was devastation and fear. Back in those days, women didn’t have the same options as they do today. I had just moved my two daughters and myself to a new location where I had no friends or associates. And very little opportunity to find gainful employment to support myself. In doing so, I had cut off any support systems that I might’ve had, and I was really on my own. Additionally, I didn’t know that this was the start of long-term effects of emotional abuse.

**Anne:** So were you married before this?

**Florence:** I was, this was my second marriage. And I had two daughters; they were five and eight. I went deep into a place of trying to comprehend. At that time in my life, I didn’t call myself a spiritual person. In fact, I did not have a religious persuasion, and I found myself searching. To do that, I did what I think many people do. What I’ve read is that they explore with their spouse. And try to figure out what their spouse is looking for and needing.

And of course, that leads one into probably the darkest places on earth, because it’s a world of debauchery. It didn’t take me long to figure out that was not for me.

“He apologized and swore that he would never make those choices again.”

**Florence:** I had to make a heartfelt decision and tell my husband that I could not live that kind of life. In fact, it was not the right thing for me at all. It hurt my heart. It didn’t help my heart, and he apologized and swore he would never make those bad choices again. And we started over until the next time.

And the next time I became aware of his activities, I knew enough to go for help. Then we both went through a lot of counseling. It came trailing back in. And the problem was that I didn’t realize he had regressed back to those activities. I was only experiencing the negative behavior and the abuse.

Which after 20, 25, 30 years of marriage, you get to the point where you do your own thing, you make the best of it. Because I experienced the long-term effects of emotional abuse in rmy marriage. And if somebody wants to be a damn fool and act like a child. Let them be a damn fool and act like a child. You just can’t let that run your life.

**Anne:** Did you know you were being abused? Or did you think of it as …

**Florence:** I knew I was abused and I knew he was sick. I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting, because the last year has been a year of repeated difficulties and such a challenge. And I remember when my youngest daughter was 15 years old, and she and I took a trip out west.

“I became aware of the fact that nobody would believe me.”

**Florence:** We visited a childhood friend of mine. And he asked me face-to-face, “What’s wrong? You’re not right.”

I said, “Well, my husband isn’t right, he’s sick.” I didn’t elaborate on it. How could I? I didn’t have the words for it. I remember thinking many years later, the only people I could tell were people I’d known for a long time. Who actually had some confidence in me, because I became aware that nobody would believe me. People will say, “Oh, he’s so charming. Oh, he’s such a sweet man.”

And he is. He’s a beguiling, needful child. What do you do? Go out on the street and bang a drum and say, I’m being emotionally abused by a man who can’t show me love. Or who can’t relate to me. No, you can’t do that. Nobody will believe you. So you try to create wellness within a challenging situation. And that’s what I did for years until it all broke open. For the last 10 years, I thought he had frontal temporal lobe disorder. It’s the second time I’ve misdiagnosed him in my life. This is the reality of betrayal trauma in relationships.

So obviously I’m not much of a psychotherapist. But because of his anger, I felt his actions were typical of frontal temporal lobe dementia. In fact, I actually got him to go to a neurologist. It was embarrassing and a waste of time. It’s not Alzheimer’s, I’m right? It’s frontal temporal lobe. Well, I wasn’t right. Yeah, it’s very hard when you get older. I was suffering from his long-term emotional abuse.

Things don’t work the way they used to, when it isn’t what it was when you were kids. But every now and then you get the opportunity to enjoy one another to some extent.

Long-Term Effects Of Emotional Abuse: Embracing Honesty

**Florence:** And he gave me an STD, and that was the rude awakening. He had been back to his old tricks.

**Anne:** Oh, I am so sorry. That must have been so shocking and devastating. Hopefully, it brings you some kind of solace to know that you were resisting his abuse. The entire time you were going for help. And the professionals and experts you went to didn’t give you the right information. I’m so sorry. The extent of the suffering we go through for years, and years can’t be underestimated.

You mentioned that as you got older, and it just continued to happen over and over, the long-term effects of his emotional abuse resulted in you detaching. Is that where you are now? I

**Florence:** It’s been like a fast forward of an earlier movie of everything that ever occurred. I go in a circle, and some days I am distraught and in pain, and feel sorry for myself. And then I go through days where I am so angry. It’s like a circular thing that goes around. I’ve been able to grapple with this, because now I can be honest with our friends and family. And everybody knows. The freedom to be honest and forthright makes it possible to handle.

**Anne:** Yeah, having the best support for betrayal trauma is important. What thoughts do you have for women who’ve discovered this five years after your wedding or 10 years after your wedding? What would you say to yourself?

If Florence Could Go Back & Talk With Her Younger Self

**Florence:** You can’t help them. You can’t fix them. This has been my counter argument to my husband in all his attempts to heal himself. As it was convenient now that you’re 80 and impotent, you made these choices. Also, they have a responsibility, and that responsibility is to their partner and their families.

As somebody who suffered from it my whole life, I’m saying, you can’t give me back the past 20 years. Because I didn’t know you were doing this. I knew you were being a jerk. But if I had known he went back to deviant practices, I wouldn’t have stayed. I might’ve had the chance to build a life with someone who might genuinely care and show real regard. And I miss that, and nobody can give it back to me.

That’s where the anger comes from. Although many professionals told me, oh, you need counseling. So I tried that across all mental health professionals. But I found that most therapists are not equipped to deal. And they tend to try to use behavior modification, which they’ve learned somewhere in graduate school. If you do this, then he’ll do that. And if you do that …

**Anne:** Right.

**Florence:** It doesn’t work. And I went to four sessions with one therapist, and I just walked out. I said, this isn’t good for me. I’m getting angry about this. So I quit going.

Where Does That Leave Me?

**Florence:** And I’ve also challenged my husband on the fact that the addict thing is very self-absorbing. They’re all involved in taking care of themselves and getting better and praise God. And you know, it’s like wait a minute you’re still just thinking about yourself.

Where does that leave me? I’m still dealing with the long-term emotional abuse . And it still leaves me on my own. It still leaves me wanting and, you know, wanting …

**Anne:** Yeah, I’m so sorry, awful. Having experienced this emotional abuse long-term, right, your whole life. And then not having anybody identify it for you. And having the professionals you went to for help blame you. Then make you part of the problem. When you found Betrayal Trauma Recovery when you found this podcast, how did you feel?

Long-Term Effects Of Emotional Abuse: Knowing I’m Not Alone

**Florence:** It was good to know that I wasn’t alone. Most people just don’t get it. They think your husband is a philanderer. Well, of course they are. But there’s so much more to it than that. The best thing that’s happened to me and the last year is the ability, to be honest, to speak my truth. Though I am still sad about the loss I’ve had in my life, years wasted because of long-term emotional abuse in my marriage.

There are people with worse lives. But I think people need to reevaluate who they are and what they want. And I do think that many women, myself included, were raised with low expectations and a low sense of self. So we didn’t know when we weren’t being treated well. We may have known it, but we didn’t think we had any right to do anything about it.

https://youtu.be/rnqs_ebBe6E

**Anne:** Well, I’m glad you know now that you are important and your needs matter, and deserve respect and care. Living in that alternate reality. That you lived in for so long is exactly why I wrote The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. Click on that link to get more information. So that women can see reality. That you are incredible, strong, capable and powerful. To get more information, go to that link.

And thank you so much Florence, you are brave and amazing. We all stand on your shoulders and the shoulders of the women who came before us. So thank you so much.

What Evidence For Emotional Abuse Effects — **The Long-Term Effects Of A Bad Marriage – Florence’s Story** May 13, 2025
If you’ve endured repeated betrayal from your husband, you’re not alone. Many women in our community have faced the long-term effects of emotional abuse in their marriage. Florence, a member of the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Community, a victim of her husband’s emotional abuse for over 40 years, shares her story.

If you relate, consider attending on of our daily online support groups TODAY.

The Long-Term Effects Of Emotional Abuse

Being in an emotionally abusive relationship for a prolonged period often leaves women feeling deep loss and regret. We tend to reflect on the years spent enduring mistreatment, unaware of the full extent of our husband’s harmful behavior. This realization can lead to feelings of missed opportunities, wondering what life might have been like.

The long-term emotional impact includes grief over lost time and the struggle to reclaim their sense of self and hope for the future. The effects of emotional abuse, can be felt long term and include:

Panic

Grief

Devastation

Anger

Fury

Fear

Terror

Apathy

Guilt

Shame

Loneliness

To know if you’re experiencing any one of the 19 types of emotional abuse, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

Transcript: Long-Term Effects of Emotional Abuse in Relationships

**Anne:** I’m honored to have a member of our community on the podcast today. We’re going to call her Florence. She’s 75 years old. She’s experienced over 40 years of betrayal trauma. She discovered her husband’s infidelity just 3 days after their wedding. She is strong, insightful and courageous. Florence, can you talk about your first reaction finding out about your husband’s double life?

**Florence:** My first reaction was devastation and fear. Back in those days, women didn’t have the same options as they do today. I had just moved my two daughters and myself to a new location where I had no friends or associates. And very little opportunity to find gainful employment to support myself. In doing so, I had cut off any support systems that I might’ve had, and I was really on my own. Additionally, I didn’t know that this was the start of long-term effects of emotional abuse.

**Anne:** So were you married before this?

**Florence:** I was, this was my second marriage. And I had two daughters; they were five and eight. I went deep into a place of trying to comprehend. At that time in my life, I didn’t call myself a spiritual person. In fact, I did not have a religious persuasion, and I found myself searching. To do that, I did what I think many people do. What I’ve read is that they explore with their spouse. And try to figure out what their spouse is looking for and needing.

And of course, that leads one into probably the darkest places on earth, because it’s a world of debauchery. It didn’t take me long to figure out that was not for me.

“He apologized and swore that he would never make those choices again.”

**Florence:** I had to make a heartfelt decision and tell my husband that I could not live that kind of life. In fact, it was not the right thing for me at all. It hurt my heart. It didn’t help my heart, and he apologized and swore he would never make those bad choices again. And we started over until the next time.

And the next time I became aware of his activities, I knew enough to go for help. Then we both went through a lot of counseling. It came trailing back in. And the problem was that I didn’t realize he had regressed back to those activities. I was only experiencing the negative behavior and the abuse.

Which after 20, 25, 30 years of marriage, you get to the point where you do your own thing, you make the best of it. Because I experienced the long-term effects of emotional abuse in rmy marriage. And if somebody wants to be a damn fool and act like a child. Let them be a damn fool and act like a child. You just can’t let that run your life.

**Anne:** Did you know you were being abused? Or did you think of it as …

**Florence:** I knew I was abused and I knew he was sick. I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting, because the last year has been a year of repeated difficulties and such a challenge. And I remember when my youngest daughter was 15 years old, and she and I took a trip out west.

“I became aware of the fact that nobody would believe me.”

**Florence:** We visited a childhood friend of mine. And he asked me face-to-face, “What’s wrong? You’re not right.”

I said, “Well, my husband isn’t right, he’s sick.” I didn’t elaborate on it. How could I? I didn’t have the words for it. I remember thinking many years later, the only people I could tell were people I’d known for a long time. Who actually had some confidence in me, because I became aware that nobody would believe me. People will say, “Oh, he’s so charming. Oh, he’s such a sweet man.”

And he is. He’s a beguiling, needful child. What do you do? Go out on the street and bang a drum and say, I’m being emotionally abused by a man who can’t show me love. Or who can’t relate to me. No, you can’t do that. Nobody will believe you. So you try to create wellness within a challenging situation. And that’s what I did for years until it all broke open. For the last 10 years, I thought he had frontal temporal lobe disorder. It’s the second time I’ve misdiagnosed him in my life. This is the reality of betrayal trauma in relationships.

So obviously I’m not much of a psychotherapist. But because of his anger, I felt his actions were typical of frontal temporal lobe dementia. In fact, I actually got him to go to a neurologist. It was embarrassing and a waste of time. It’s not Alzheimer’s, I’m right? It’s frontal temporal lobe. Well, I wasn’t right. Yeah, it’s very hard when you get older. I was suffering from his long-term emotional abuse.

Things don’t work the way they used to, when it isn’t what it was when you were kids. But every now and then you get the opportunity to enjoy one another to some extent.

Long-Term Effects Of Emotional Abuse: Embracing Honesty

**Florence:** And he gave me an STD, and that was the rude awakening. He had been back to his old tricks.

**Anne:** Oh, I am so sorry. That must have been so shocking and devastating. Hopefully, it brings you some kind of solace to know that you were resisting his abuse. The entire time you were going for help. And the professionals and experts you went to didn’t give you the right information. I’m so sorry. The extent of the suffering we go through for years, and years can’t be underestimated.

You mentioned that as you got older, and it just continued to happen over and over, the long-term effects of his emotional abuse resulted in you detaching. Is that where you are now? I

**Florence:** It’s been like a fast forward of an earlier movie of everything that ever occurred. I go in a circle, and some days I am distraught and in pain, and feel sorry for myself. And then I go through days where I am so angry. It’s like a circular thing that goes around. I’ve been able to grapple with this, because now I can be honest with our friends and family. And everybody knows. The freedom to be honest and forthright makes it possible to handle.

**Anne:** Yeah, having the best support for betrayal trauma is important. What thoughts do you have for women who’ve discovered this five years after your wedding or 10 years after your wedding? What would you say to yourself?

If Florence Could Go Back & Talk With Her Younger Self

**Florence:** You can’t help them. You can’t fix them. This has been my counter argument to my husband in all his attempts to heal himself. As it was convenient now that you’re 80 and impotent, you made these choices. Also, they have a responsibility, and that responsibility is to their partner and their families.

As somebody who suffered from it my whole life, I’m saying, you can’t give me back the past 20 years. Because I didn’t know you were doing this. I knew you were being a jerk. But if I had known he went back to deviant practices, I wouldn’t have stayed. I might’ve had the chance to build a life with someone who might genuinely care and show real regard. And I miss that, and nobody can give it back to me.

That’s where the anger comes from. Although many professionals told me, oh, you need counseling. So I tried that across all mental health professionals. But I found that most therapists are not equipped to deal. And they tend to try to use behavior modification, which they’ve learned somewhere in graduate school. If you do this, then he’ll do that. And if you do that …

**Anne:** Right.

**Florence:** It doesn’t work. And I went to four sessions with one therapist, and I just walked out. I said, this isn’t good for me. I’m getting angry about this. So I quit going.

Where Does That Leave Me?

**Florence:** And I’ve also challenged my husband on the fact that the addict thing is very self-absorbing. They’re all involved in taking care of themselves and getting better and praise God. And you know, it’s like wait a minute you’re still just thinking about yourself.

Where does that leave me? I’m still dealing with the long-term emotional abuse . And it still leaves me on my own. It still leaves me wanting and, you know, wanting …

**Anne:** Yeah, I’m so sorry, awful. Having experienced this emotional abuse long-term, right, your whole life. And then not having anybody identify it for you. And having the professionals you went to for help blame you. Then make you part of the problem. When you found Betrayal Trauma Recovery when you found this podcast, how did you feel?

Long-Term Effects Of Emotional Abuse: Knowing I’m Not Alone

**Florence:** It was good to know that I wasn’t alone. Most people just don’t get it. They think your husband is a philanderer. Well, of course they are. But there’s so much more to it than that. The best thing that’s happened to me and the last year is the ability, to be honest, to speak my truth. Though I am still sad about the loss I’ve had in my life, years wasted because of long-term emotional abuse in my marriage.

There are people with worse lives. But I think people need to reevaluate who they are and what they want. And I do think that many women, myself included, were raised with low expectations and a low sense of self. So we didn’t know when we weren’t being treated well. We may have known it, but we didn’t think we had any right to do anything about it.

https://youtu.be/rnqs_ebBe6E

**Anne:** Well, I’m glad you know now that you are important and your needs matter, and deserve respect and care. Living in that alternate reality. That you lived in for so long is exactly why I wrote The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. Click on that link to get more information. So that women can see reality. That you are incredible, strong, capable and powerful. To get more information, go to that link.

And thank you so much Florence, you are brave and amazing. We all stand on your shoulders and the shoulders of the women who came before us. So thank you so much.

**Patterns To Look out for in your relationship with Dave Cawley** May 06, 2025
If you’re wondering, “Is my relationship safe?” It’s important to look at patterns of abusive behavior. Physical abuse never happens without emotional abuse, so the first step is to understand the patterns of emotional abuse.

To discover if your husband is using any one of the 19 different types of emotional abuse, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

**This Is the Second Episode With Dave Cawley**
Warning Signs Your Husband Is Dangerous – Susan’s Story With Dave Cawley
*Patterns To Look Out For In Your Relationship* (THIS EPISODE)

Transcript: Is My Husband Abusing Me?

**Anne:** I’ve invited Dave Cawley, an investigative journalist and host of the *Cold* podcast, back on today’s episode. We have already talked about season one of the Cold Podcast, which we re-aired last week. He calls that episode *Signs your Husband might kill You*. It’s important for every woman experiencing emotional and psychological abuse to recognize it, and know is my husband abusing me? Because physical abuse never happens in a vacuum.

Dave and I will talk as if you’ve heard all the *Cold* podcasts, seasons one, two, and three. And if you haven’t, don’t worry. You’ll still benefit from listening to our analysis as we discuss the themes of all three seasons. Welcome Dave.

**Dave:** Thank you so much, Anne. I appreciate being with you.

**Anne:** So the three seasons of the Cold podcast, Dave, you cover in season one, the murder of Susan Powell. In season two, the Murder of Joyce Yost. And in season three, the murder of Sheree Warren. And you started season three by introducing us to a man named Cary Hartman. You describe his abusive behavior toward women in the form of what some people might call prank phone calls. Law enforcement called it an obscene phone call.

Really, these phone calls abused the women who received them. Even if they didn’t realize it. And even if they didn’t define it that way. Can you talk about why these abusive phone calls define Cary’s character?

**Dave:** Sheree Warren disappears in October of 1985. She was dating this man, Cary Hartman at the time, and at first Cary Hartman is not on the radar of the investigators.

Cary Hartman’s Criminal Activities

**Dave:** Police identified Cary Hartman as a suspect in a series of home invasion assaults a year and a half later. Where he literally breaks into women’s homes and attacks them, raping them. And so I actually start this story way before we ever meet Sheree with Cary Hartman’s first arrest in 1971.

Where he makes one of these calls, he tells this woman, basically a threat, that if he she will be harmed if he doesn’t get what he wants. And to your point, Anne, she was a victim. He abused abused her, right?

**Anne:** Yeah, at the time you interviewed her, did she recognize she was a victim of his abuse? Or did she just think like, oh, a criminal called me and I helped the police identify this guy?

**Dave:** At this point in her life, she was I wanna say about 86 years old when I interviewed her. Heidi Posnien, she’s an amazing woman, but her life experience was so different. I mean, she literally survived Berlin at the end of World War II as a child. And so her perception of how much risk she may or may not have been in at the time. I think it is different than you or I in the same situation.

And I think like many victims of abuse, she doesn’t like thinking about whether her husband is abusing her. When I sat down and interviewed her about it, it brought up bad memories even after all these years. It brought up emotions that she was uncomfortable with. You do this kind of thing.

Systemic Issues In Recognizing Abuse

**Dave:** Every day Anne, talking to people who have been through abuse. You know how difficult those conversations are. I was grateful Heidi was willing to take us there for the story. Because it allows the listener to begin to see the bigger picture. Like, what are the systemic things that are taking place in our society? That caused these kinds of things to be brushed off? It’s a minor crime, voyeurism, telephone harassment and nothing serious.

**Anne:** He has all these abusive episodes. Law enforcement doesn’t define them that way. There’s a difference between an obscene phone call, which is what they had written on their documents, right? And an abusive phone call. Like when people say something like, one out of every four women are domestic abuse victims in the state of Utah. Then women wonder is my husband abusing me and if so how do I divorce an abusive husband? They’re not saying a man abuses one out of every four women in the state of Utah.

**Dave:** Yeah, that’s a great point. I think, the investigators at the time, thought they caught him. He’s shamed, he’ll change. And if you have that perspective in law enforcement, you’ve gotta step back and look at it and say pattern wise, like what is happening here?

And with Cary Hartman, we know these phone calls escalated over time. He ends up calling thousands of women in a harassing way. Where he would try to get women to talk about their bodies, their clothing, in a way that titillated him. It’s still today thousands of victims who will never receive any measure of justice, and many probably brush it off. Eh, I just hung up on the guy.

Challenges In Addressing Abuse

**Dave:** And I think there is definitely a need to, at least from the perspective of a journalist. To think about how we talk about those kinds of situations, because we have to be objective. We have to be as unbiased as possible, but I think there’s also room for journalists to call a spade a spade. These are the actions that Cary Hartman took and you’re right, they are abusive. Let’s just call it what it is.

**Anne:** Yeah, I’m reminded of an interview I did with a man who spent, 10 years in prison for abuse. He considered himself an addict. And he said, I acted out in my addiction. That is how he described it. And I said, well, there’s another word for that. It’s that you were an abuser. And he was like, oh, I never thought about it like that. Women think that they can figure out how to deal with an addict husband not understanding that it’s abuse.

**Dave:** The, the focus on himself rather than on the person he was harming.

**Anne:** Yeah, If he’s an abuser, he hurts someone else, rather than he is an addict. He just acted out in his addiction.

**Dave:** Right, that’s a really good point.

**Anne:** Right?

**Dave:** I mean, part of the process for somebody who goes to prison for this kind of crime. If they will ever be paroled, it is usually that they have to go through some kind of therapy or treatment program. The DSM tailors this for mental health professionals trying to diagnose people.

**Anne:** It’s not about their victim. The DSM is thinking maybe we can get him to stop having this.

**Dave:** Paraphilic disorder.

Sex Offender Therapy & Its Effectiveness

**Anne:** There we go. Maybe we can get him to stop doing that, rather than maybe we should figure out how to protect other people from this person. And at least from all the victims I have interviewed, it has not worked. In fact, the domestic violence shelter will tell you that most of the time an abuser rehabilitation class, for example, makes them worse.

**Dave:** There is an argument that in some ways it might teach them to just be better about hiding it.

**Anne:** Exactly, and many accuse their victim of being an abuser, and then it gets confusing.

**Dave:** They learn all the language. They learn the terminology.

**Anne:** Exactly.

**Dave:** As far as the Sheree Warren case with Cary Hartman, as long as we’re talking about treatment. I mean, I think an interesting thing to note is that Cary Hartman ends up going to prison for 33 years in these cases. And during that time, they repeatedly require him to go through offender therapy. He needs to pass that. It is as a condition for release on parole.

**Dave:** They release Cary Hartman on parole in March of 2020. He got out of prison. And during the next four years, I lived in our community here in Utah, where I live and work. He was recently returned to prison because it was discovered he had been stalking a woman. According to the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole while he was out.

Cary Hartman’s Parole & Recidivism

**Dave:** So you have to stop and say, wait a minute. Did those 30 plus years in prison and repeat trips through offender therapy. Did they help Cary Hartman not harm people while back out in society? And it appears the answer to that question is no. So I wanna hope that those systems can work, but in this case specifically, it seems like it did not.

**Anne:** And me listening to that, at least the way you laid out the facts. As an abuse expert, I came to the conclusion that he figured out what the parole board wanted to hear. Victims wondering if their husband is abusive, might know their husband is saying what they want to hear. He went to offender therapy and eventually learned the words he needed to say. And he parrots that back to the parole board to their satisfaction, in order to be paroled.

I was so grateful they kept him in prison for so long. Because they could have let him out sooner. So that was a good part of the story, I thought.

**Dave:** Yeah, in conversations with law enforcement. People who investigated that case, or in the legal profession who tried that case in court, that came up repeatedly. They said, look, in a homicide, or let’s say a manslaughter, somebody who kills another person, they might do 10 years and get out. The fact that Cary Hartman was in for more than 30 years was a big deal, and the reason he was in so long is because he refused to accept responsibility.

And like you said, as a listener, I think it’s a fair takeaway to listen to all those years of him going before the parole board. And just slowly creeping forward.

Is My Husband Abusive? Learning From Offender Programs & Counseling

**Dave:** The little bit of accountability he would take until he reached that sweet spot where they said, okay, that’s enough. We’ll let you out.

**Anne:** Cary Hartman is a scary guy, but how much scarier would he have been had he learned faster? Let’s say he had gone to offender therapy sooner and taken accountability sooner. And sounded better sooner. He could have been let out sooner. The scariest ones to me are the ones who know that’s what they need to sound like. In terms of my listeners husbands, that’s what they sound like in couple therapy.

Or they might sound like that to clergy. And clergy might be like, yes, he’s repented. How do I help my listeners see, is this someone who is now safe or are you currently in danger? It’s so hard to idently if your husband is abusing you. At least, in danger of being emotionally and psychologically abused. In danger of an STD, being lied to is a concern when you’re supposed to trust.

**Dave:** So if I can segue off of that. In season one of *Cold*. When we talked about the case of Josh and Susan Powell, so this is a married couple. They’ve got two young sons, and there’s this extreme strife going on in their marriage. Susan is upset that Josh is controlling the money. He’s controlling her ability to spend time with friends and family, and she tries to drag him into therapy.

Doug Lovell & Manipulation

**Dave:** She tries to drag him in front of clergy. We actually have evidence from writings that Susan left behind after she was killed. She talks about, Josh says, if I call the police, if I call 9 1 1 and say he’s threatening me. When the police get here, he’s gonna be calm, I’m gonna be hysterical. And he’ll make me the one who’s irrational. She was conscious of these very things.

Moving forward, when we entered season two in *Cold. T*here’s this story about Joyce Yost being murdered by this man, Doug Lovell. Doug Lovell goes to prison. He’s still in prison and had been sentenced to death twice. He’s had his death sentence overturned twice, and part of the reason is because since he went to prison. He has built relationships with clergy, people who go to prison to work with inmates, to help them hopefully become better people.

They prepare them to be released. Doug Lovell will not be released. He is, as I said, serving a death sentence or in limbo while they figure out whether his death sentence will go forward. But those relationships and the way he talks to clergy have allowed him to essentially create a group of supporters. who, when he goes to court, when he goes to trial, are willing to stand up in front of a judge or a jury and say, I believe Doug Lovell is a man with a good heart.

I believe he’s a man who’s changed. I believe he deserves a second chance. What we know is Doug Lovell murdered Joyce Yost and has refused to return her body.

Doug Lovell’s Legal Battles

**Anne:** Right, flat out manipulation Doug Lovell used to convince some people that he has a “good heart.” The evidence would be that he tells people exactly where that body is, which he has not done.

**Dave:** Right, that’s how you show true remorse in my mind, yeah.

**Anne:** In our community, we actually call this meatloafing. It’s from The Meatloaf song I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that.

**Dave:** This is interesting, and it gets into the weeds of the court case. Lovell, there’s no question he’s responsible. He did admit to it, but that was part of a plea deal in 1993, where he was trying to get a chance for life with parole. At the time, Utah did not have a law that allowed life without parole, so the choice was life with parole or the death sentence. And he thought, if I admit to it, there’s this plea deal on the table. And I will have a chance of getting out of prison.

Before the case actually went to sentencing, though, the law changed, and the prosecutors pulled life with parole off the table. And at that point Lovell said, I don’t want to plead guilty anymore. And this is part of why that case ended up going through appeal after appeal. The death sentence ended up being rescinded because the appeals courts determined that Lovell was not appropriately advised of the rights he was giving up. So he goes back to trial in 2015.

The problem is that he’s admitted on the record that he killed Joyce Yost. That fact is not in dispute.

Tactics Of Abusive Husbands: Manipulative Letters And Emails

**Dave:** How do you go in front of a jury and say, yes, I killed this person. But and that’s where these religious leaders came in. They went before the court and said, in all those years, Lovell is a changed man.

**Anne:** Listening to the manipulative letters Doug Lovell sent those religious leaders was surreal. Because they sound almost exactly like the manipulative letters that so many of the victims I talk to receive. In fact, I have actually created a workshop to show women the patterns of these types of manipulative letters. It’s in my Betrayal Trauma Recovery Message Workshop.

So listeners, if you want to learn more about that, click that link. I show women how abusive it is, so they can identify the abuse. And then how to respond in terms of Doug Lovell. It was very unnerving to hear that these religious leaders fell for this type of manipulation. In fact, judges fall for this type of manipulation too.

There are cases in Utah where the abusive man is in jail, but he writes manipulative and abusive letters to his kids, and the victim is court ordered to show these manipulative, abusive letters to her own children. Which to talk about Susan Powell again. I mean, she was killed, but Josh Powell, her murderer, still had parental rights.

**Dave:** Yeah, so let me set the table for that a little bit. Josh Powell, after his wife, “disappears” in 2009. Within a couple of weeks, he takes his two sons, Charlie and Braden, with him. He leaves Utah and goes to Washington state. And he lives under his father’s roof. A few things happen there.

Washington State Does Nothing

**Dave:** The West Valley City Police Department has a circumstantial case that Josh murdered his wife, and that’s getting stronger as time goes forward. What they don’t have is direct physical evidence. Like a body linking Josh to Susan’s death. And so in the absence of that, the prosecutors would not give police an arrest warrant. The police are aware that these two boys are potentially at risk.

Early in the investigation, a detective from Utah contacts the Child Protective Services Agency in Washington and says, can you intervene in any way? And the state of Washington tells the West Valley City Police Department, unless there’s an allegation of like ongoing or immediate abuse happening, that’s not our job.

**Anne:** I mean, the likelihood that he killed his wife is like a hundred percent. So he’s a murderer, but he’s an appropriate caregiver for children.

**Dave:** Right, unless he’s charged and arrested, they don’t intervene, was the position at the time.

**Anne:** This letter of the law is a thing, and then there’s like, how do we actually protect people? I mean, someone who kills their wife is an abuser, but they’re not defining him as an abuser.

**Dave:** And this was the insidiousness of Josh Powell. Josh Powell was good at cloaking abuse in a way that it didn’t look like abuse from the outside, right? I think you and I rationally can sit back and say the act of murdering his children’s mother is abuse of those children until the police can prove it. The Child Protective Services workers in Washington weren’t going to do anything about it.

Operation Tsunami & Steve Powell’s Arrest

**Dave:** And so the investigation for her murder is mostly here in Utah. But there’s an aspect that’s taking place in Washington, and it culminates in the latter part of 2011. Because there’s a big police operation that we learn about in *Cold* season one called Operation Tsunami. And part of this whole investigation is the service of a search warrant at Josh’s dad’s house in Washington.

When police go in there searching, they discover Steve Powell was obsessed with his daughter-in-law, Susan. And they find all kinds of voyeur materials focused on Susan and other women. Steve Powell had been recording women without their knowledge, and among those were two neighbor girls who were underage. Under the definition of the law, this is treated as CSAM. Steve Powell is arrested at that time for two crimes, voyeurism and CSAM.

The state of Washington says, wait a minute. These two boys, Charlie and Braden, were in that house. This is an unsafe environment for those children. So they take temporary protective custody of Charlie and Braden. So it took the investigation to that point where there was a catalyst. There was an event that took place with the discovery of those voyeuristic materials. That triggered the state of Washington to take action.

Once those boys were in temporary protective custody, that didn’t mean they were going to stay there. Josh immediately starts a campaign to get custody of his kids back. And he was actually within a step or two of clearing every hurdle that the court put in front of him and was probably going to get custody of his children back.

Identifying An Abusive Husband: Josh Powell’s Custody Battle

**Dave:** And then police in Utah who were under a court seal. They couldn’t talk publicly about the case, even to other police agencies. They get permission from a judge to share evidence with the state of Washington family court, they send this information up. And it’s troubling enough that the judge in Washington says, before we give Josh Powell custody of his children, we are going to require that he undergo a psyhologial evaluation.

So they’re going to do a very invasive psychological evaluation. Looking into, is there anything happening with Josh in his mind that would put the kids in danger? Now, during this period, the court allowed Josh to visit the children. At first, the visit is required in a neutral third party secure environment. But over time, he convinces the court that he’s safe. That they can allow his kids to visit him at a home he had rented. And the judge did not revisit that idea, After this major change, right?

Requiring Josh to go through this invasive psychological evaluation. And within a matter of days during a court authorized supervised visit, we know Josh locks the supervised visitation coordinator out of the house. He murders his sons, a horrific ending to this entire investigation. They definitely know that Susan knew her husband was abusing her. She knew the answer was yes.

What about Susan’s parents? What could they do in the aftermath of that horrible event? They sued the state of Washington, the agency, and the individual social workers involved in that case. The case wound through the courts for a long time, more than 10 years before it’s resolved.

Susan’s Parents Sue Washington State

**Dave:** The individual social workers were deemed immune because they were state employees and working on behalf of the state in that capacity. They couldn’t be held individually liable, but the agency could.

Susan’s parents ended up taking that case to trial. So a jury in Pierce County, Washington hears weeks and weeks of testimony. About all the details of the ins and outs of this back and forth with the criminal investigation with the family court in the state of Washington. Long story short, they end up giving a verdict. And they say the state of Washington was negligent in allowing the children to be in Josh Powell’s custody while he went through this process.

And they awarded Susan’s parents $100 million, give or take in damages. Of course, nothing that helps them bring the kids back. But their hope was that it would inspire some kind of change. Part of the reason we know as much as we do about what happened in the state of Washington behind the scenes is the law there. It required an inquest when Charlie and Braden were murdered in 2012. And the law also required the results of that inquest to be made public.

https://youtu.be/99iqbYMJdXo

Transparency is one part of it, but the action to say, okay, these are the things that failed. Let’s fix those, is the next step. And I think that’s where often we see agencies and individuals drop the ball. They can acknowledge that yes, a murdered child is a bad outcome. But what are you going to do about it? That’s where we often fall flat.

Current State Of Domestic Violence Services

**Anne:** Just recently, within the last couple months, there’s a victim. Her perpetrator has 27 protective order violations. This is in the state of Utah right now. So she reported one of these violations in Salt Lake City, and they didn’t do anything about it. So the department over that heard about it somehow, and gave her a call. Now this is a victim who’s been working with the domestic violence shelter Safe Harbor for more than three years. And she can’t even divorce this guy.

They’re still in custody court, but the department that oversees things interviewed her and did a lethality assessment. They called her back like a week later and said, we have the findings for you. You’re at a really high risk. Holy cow, this is bad. And we’ve come to the conclusion that you need services from the domestic violence shelter.

**Dave:** That’s it?

**Anne:** And she’s like, what? I’ve already been going to Safe Harbor for three years. That’s the state of domestic violence services, it’s like going around in circles. There’s how it’s supposed to work, and then there’s how it’s actually working. A lot of victims will tell you that when they tell other people that the system isn’t protecting them. People generally assume you must have done something wrong. Like maybe you didn’t fill out the right form. How else can someone prove that their husband is toxic.

Not realizing you can do everything right and still not get the help you need. It is so difficult when trying to identify if their husband is abusive. And that’s such a fine line for me as an educator. We need to give women hope that they can move toward a better life. But also be aware of all the obstacles they might face.

Journalistic Responsibility & Impact Of Educating On Abusive Husbands

**Dave:** And Anne, I think about this a lot, because from my perspective as a journalist, I tell these stories. Part of the reason to do it is to educate, but there’s a parasocial relationship between myself and a listener. Somebody listens to me for hours talking about these cases. And I’ve had the experience many times of somebody listening, going, oh my gosh. What he’s talking about, like this story, this is my life.

And reach out to me, and in many cases, they’re asking for just somebody to hear them. But other times they’re more specific, like, help me, you seem like an expert. You seem to know what’s going on. What do I do in this situation? And I feel so ill-equipped. I want to help. So I’ll try to connect them with domestic violence resources, and I have to ask myself, did I actually help that person? It’s so hard.

**Anne:** Yeah, here at Betrayal Trauma Recovery we have Group Sessions, and Individual Sessions, and Workshops for women to learn safety strategies. Whether they’re married or not. All of these tools can help a woman to know if her husband is abusing her. I mean, it’s my mission to ensure that they get the help they need. Speaking of abusive partners in both Season One and Season Three of the *Cold Podcast*, an abusive partner plays a role.

In season one it’s Josh Powell, and in season three, Chuck Warren is an abuser. He married Sheree Warren. I can say that because I can see the markers and the things that you reported. He is also a suspect, and in every single season, every single perpetrator.

Patterns Of Objectifying Women

**Anne:** And Chuck Warren as well, has a history or patterns of objectifying women. With Cary Hartman, there ares tons of evidence of the obscene phone calls and assaults.

Like what was going on in the eighties in Ogden, by the way. Like that was wild. I was like, holy cow. I mean, season three, there are three serial rapists in Ogden. Anyway, all the guys in seasons one, two, and three show a pattern of objectifying women. Can you talk about that?

**Dave:** Yeah, all of them are different in their own ways. Josh, when I started looking into his background, his youth, and his relationship with Susan. There are a lot of indicators that Josh was, in many ways, wasn’t interested in physical touch.. But Susan, his wife, would write about this. He wouldn’t hold her hand, he wouldn’t kiss her. He would always find an excuse for it, I’m gonna get sick. So he had something going on, right?

And the problem with Josh is the evidence I talked about earlier. They sent it to Washington State in the child custody proceeding. They found it on a computer in the Powell home. The belief of the investigators at the time was that it was material belonging to Josh.

What we know is Josh Powell’s father was absolutely deviant in his views toward women generally, and to Susan specifically. There was a dynamic back and forth between Josh and his dad. Josh was aware of his father’s inappropriate advances on Susan, his wife, and he did nothing to stop it.

Doug Lovell, Cary Hartman & Chuck Warren

**Anne:** A lack of interest in your partner is definitely a characteristic of excessive exploitative content use. This is one thing help to know if you are experiencing abuse from your husband. Because they’re masturbating all the time, and they’re not into it with a real person. So even though that is a marker, in Josh’s case, there was no evidence.

Dave: Directly for him, you can understand why the police would believe it, given what you said.

**Anne:** Yeah, exactly.

**Dave:** Season two and season three, both take place in Ogden, Utah in 1985. I find it fascinating that Doug Lovell, who first assaulted and then murdered Joyce Yost, operates at the same time. Cary Hartman, we know, is attacking women. And you’ve got Sheree divorcing Chuck Warren at the time. In a lot of ways, very similar to Susan Powell, right? There’s a custody issue going on. Chuck Warren, we later find out, was soliciting who are also victims, right?

And did Sheree know about that? Probably not, so he’s lying to her, presumably, which is a form of abuse. There was a lot of that kind of dynamic going on, and part of the reason with Sheree’s case in particular. I wanted to focus on the immediate aftermath of Sheree’s disappearance. You know, the first days, weeks, months, her estranged husband, Chuck Warren, looks like Josh Powell. He looks like a really strong suspect.

He’s not forthcoming. There are stories about him having done a horrific act of physical abuse against his first wife. Sharee’s his second wife. You can understand why law enforcement is looking at Chuck.

Finding Justice For Sheree Warren

**Dave:** Holy cow, this looks like all those abuse markers, and it’s the same story we’ve seen. Then all of a sudden, Cary Hartman comes into orbit over here, and you realize Sheree had this unlucky confluence of bad men in her life. If Chuck Warren was a more standup guy. If he was a better husband.

I think the investigation would’ve more quickly focused on Cary and some steps that I believe or suspect Cary took to potentially obscure his activities. Around the time that Sheree disappeared. They would’ve looked at it much sooner than 15 years later, as we see happen. I’m not somebody who likes to stand up on a soapbox and say, every man is a bad person.

**Anne:** Me either. We do need to help victims figure out if their husband is abusive.

**Dave:** But I also like to stand up and say, guys, we gotta do better than this. Even if you are not harming your wife, your partner, you probably know somebody who is. You talked about those statistics, the one in three or one in four women who will experience domestic violence in their lives.

If I can turn that around from like a man’s perspective. How many of the guys I would consider friends are at home behind closed doors doing those kinds of things? And what behaviors am I maybe seeing but choosing not to react to? Or am I just putting those blinders like we all have a role in seeing it for what it is, calling it what it is, and standing up to it.

Gratitude & Acknowledgment

**Anne:** Dave thank you so much for all of your hard work to bring these really important stories to light. And helping victims identify if their husband is abusive.

**Dave:** You’ve been a supporter and booster, if I can say that for a long time. That’s not lost on me. You’re doing the work in the trenches. I mean, what I say when I talk about how hard that is. And I just hope for your sake, that you find ways to cleanse yourself of it from time to time, because it’s so hard. So thank you for the work you do and all the women you’ve helped, honestly.

This kind of work takes a toll on you. And while I feel a strong obligation to continue building on the work done in these three seasons of this *Cold podcast*, I also need to watch out for my own emotional and mental health. I’m hopeful I can again, as you say, help educate people so that we don’t have to keep telling these kinds of stories.

How Do You Know if your Husband Is Abusing You? — **Patterns To Look out for in your relationship with Dave Cawley** May 06, 2025
If you’re wondering, “Is my relationship safe?” It’s important to look at patterns of abusive behavior. Physical abuse never happens without emotional abuse, so the first step is to understand the patterns of emotional abuse.

To discover if your husband is using any one of the 19 different types of emotional abuse, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

**This Is the Second Episode With Dave Cawley**
Warning Signs Your Husband Is Dangerous – Susan’s Story With Dave Cawley
*Patterns To Look Out For In Your Relationship* (THIS EPISODE)

Transcript: Is My Husband Abusing Me?

**Anne:** I’ve invited Dave Cawley, an investigative journalist and host of the *Cold* podcast, back on today’s episode. We have already talked about season one of the Cold Podcast, which we re-aired last week. He calls that episode *Signs your Husband might kill You*. It’s important for every woman experiencing emotional and psychological abuse to recognize it, and know is my husband abusing me? Because physical abuse never happens in a vacuum.

Dave and I will talk as if you’ve heard all the *Cold* podcasts, seasons one, two, and three. And if you haven’t, don’t worry. You’ll still benefit from listening to our analysis as we discuss the themes of all three seasons. Welcome Dave.

**Dave:** Thank you so much, Anne. I appreciate being with you.

**Anne:** So the three seasons of the Cold podcast, Dave, you cover in season one, the murder of Susan Powell. In season two, the Murder of Joyce Yost. And in season three, the murder of Sheree Warren. And you started season three by introducing us to a man named Cary Hartman. You describe his abusive behavior toward women in the form of what some people might call prank phone calls. Law enforcement called it an obscene phone call.

Really, these phone calls abused the women who received them. Even if they didn’t realize it. And even if they didn’t define it that way. Can you talk about why these abusive phone calls define Cary’s character?

**Dave:** Sheree Warren disappears in October of 1985. She was dating this man, Cary Hartman at the time, and at first Cary Hartman is not on the radar of the investigators.

Cary Hartman’s Criminal Activities

**Dave:** Police identified Cary Hartman as a suspect in a series of home invasion assaults a year and a half later. Where he literally breaks into women’s homes and attacks them, raping them. And so I actually start this story way before we ever meet Sheree with Cary Hartman’s first arrest in 1971.

Where he makes one of these calls, he tells this woman, basically a threat, that if he she will be harmed if he doesn’t get what he wants. And to your point, Anne, she was a victim. He abused abused her, right?

**Anne:** Yeah, at the time you interviewed her, did she recognize she was a victim of his abuse? Or did she just think like, oh, a criminal called me and I helped the police identify this guy?

**Dave:** At this point in her life, she was I wanna say about 86 years old when I interviewed her. Heidi Posnien, she’s an amazing woman, but her life experience was so different. I mean, she literally survived Berlin at the end of World War II as a child. And so her perception of how much risk she may or may not have been in at the time. I think it is different than you or I in the same situation.

And I think like many victims of abuse, she doesn’t like thinking about whether her husband is abusing her. When I sat down and interviewed her about it, it brought up bad memories even after all these years. It brought up emotions that she was uncomfortable with. You do this kind of thing.

Systemic Issues In Recognizing Abuse

**Dave:** Every day Anne, talking to people who have been through abuse. You know how difficult those conversations are. I was grateful Heidi was willing to take us there for the story. Because it allows the listener to begin to see the bigger picture. Like, what are the systemic things that are taking place in our society? That caused these kinds of things to be brushed off? It’s a minor crime, voyeurism, telephone harassment and nothing serious.

**Anne:** He has all these abusive episodes. Law enforcement doesn’t define them that way. There’s a difference between an obscene phone call, which is what they had written on their documents, right? And an abusive phone call. Like when people say something like, one out of every four women are domestic abuse victims in the state of Utah. Then women wonder is my husband abusing me and if so how do I divorce an abusive husband? They’re not saying a man abuses one out of every four women in the state of Utah.

**Dave:** Yeah, that’s a great point. I think, the investigators at the time, thought they caught him. He’s shamed, he’ll change. And if you have that perspective in law enforcement, you’ve gotta step back and look at it and say pattern wise, like what is happening here?

And with Cary Hartman, we know these phone calls escalated over time. He ends up calling thousands of women in a harassing way. Where he would try to get women to talk about their bodies, their clothing, in a way that titillated him. It’s still today thousands of victims who will never receive any measure of justice, and many probably brush it off. Eh, I just hung up on the guy.

Challenges In Addressing Abuse

**Dave:** And I think there is definitely a need to, at least from the perspective of a journalist. To think about how we talk about those kinds of situations, because we have to be objective. We have to be as unbiased as possible, but I think there’s also room for journalists to call a spade a spade. These are the actions that Cary Hartman took and you’re right, they are abusive. Let’s just call it what it is.

**Anne:** Yeah, I’m reminded of an interview I did with a man who spent, 10 years in prison for abuse. He considered himself an addict. And he said, I acted out in my addiction. That is how he described it. And I said, well, there’s another word for that. It’s that you were an abuser. And he was like, oh, I never thought about it like that. Women think that they can figure out how to deal with an addict husband not understanding that it’s abuse.

**Dave:** The, the focus on himself rather than on the person he was harming.

**Anne:** Yeah, If he’s an abuser, he hurts someone else, rather than he is an addict. He just acted out in his addiction.

**Dave:** Right, that’s a really good point.

**Anne:** Right?

**Dave:** I mean, part of the process for somebody who goes to prison for this kind of crime. If they will ever be paroled, it is usually that they have to go through some kind of therapy or treatment program. The DSM tailors this for mental health professionals trying to diagnose people.

**Anne:** It’s not about their victim. The DSM is thinking maybe we can get him to stop having this.

**Dave:** Paraphilic disorder.

Sex Offender Therapy & Its Effectiveness

**Anne:** There we go. Maybe we can get him to stop doing that, rather than maybe we should figure out how to protect other people from this person. And at least from all the victims I have interviewed, it has not worked. In fact, the domestic violence shelter will tell you that most of the time an abuser rehabilitation class, for example, makes them worse.

**Dave:** There is an argument that in some ways it might teach them to just be better about hiding it.

**Anne:** Exactly, and many accuse their victim of being an abuser, and then it gets confusing.

**Dave:** They learn all the language. They learn the terminology.

**Anne:** Exactly.

**Dave:** As far as the Sheree Warren case with Cary Hartman, as long as we’re talking about treatment. I mean, I think an interesting thing to note is that Cary Hartman ends up going to prison for 33 years in these cases. And during that time, they repeatedly require him to go through offender therapy. He needs to pass that. It is as a condition for release on parole.

**Dave:** They release Cary Hartman on parole in March of 2020. He got out of prison. And during the next four years, I lived in our community here in Utah, where I live and work. He was recently returned to prison because it was discovered he had been stalking a woman. According to the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole while he was out.

Cary Hartman’s Parole & Recidivism

**Dave:** So you have to stop and say, wait a minute. Did those 30 plus years in prison and repeat trips through offender therapy. Did they help Cary Hartman not harm people while back out in society? And it appears the answer to that question is no. So I wanna hope that those systems can work, but in this case specifically, it seems like it did not.

**Anne:** And me listening to that, at least the way you laid out the facts. As an abuse expert, I came to the conclusion that he figured out what the parole board wanted to hear. Victims wondering if their husband is abusive, might know their husband is saying what they want to hear. He went to offender therapy and eventually learned the words he needed to say. And he parrots that back to the parole board to their satisfaction, in order to be paroled.

I was so grateful they kept him in prison for so long. Because they could have let him out sooner. So that was a good part of the story, I thought.

**Dave:** Yeah, in conversations with law enforcement. People who investigated that case, or in the legal profession who tried that case in court, that came up repeatedly. They said, look, in a homicide, or let’s say a manslaughter, somebody who kills another person, they might do 10 years and get out. The fact that Cary Hartman was in for more than 30 years was a big deal, and the reason he was in so long is because he refused to accept responsibility.

And like you said, as a listener, I think it’s a fair takeaway to listen to all those years of him going before the parole board. And just slowly creeping forward.

Is My Husband Abusive? Learning From Offender Programs & Counseling

**Dave:** The little bit of accountability he would take until he reached that sweet spot where they said, okay, that’s enough. We’ll let you out.

**Anne:** Cary Hartman is a scary guy, but how much scarier would he have been had he learned faster? Let’s say he had gone to offender therapy sooner and taken accountability sooner. And sounded better sooner. He could have been let out sooner. The scariest ones to me are the ones who know that’s what they need to sound like. In terms of my listeners husbands, that’s what they sound like in couple therapy.

Or they might sound like that to clergy. And clergy might be like, yes, he’s repented. How do I help my listeners see, is this someone who is now safe or are you currently in danger? It’s so hard to idently if your husband is abusing you. At least, in danger of being emotionally and psychologically abused. In danger of an STD, being lied to is a concern when you’re supposed to trust.

**Dave:** So if I can segue off of that. In season one of *Cold*. When we talked about the case of Josh and Susan Powell, so this is a married couple. They’ve got two young sons, and there’s this extreme strife going on in their marriage. Susan is upset that Josh is controlling the money. He’s controlling her ability to spend time with friends and family, and she tries to drag him into therapy.

Doug Lovell & Manipulation

**Dave:** She tries to drag him in front of clergy. We actually have evidence from writings that Susan left behind after she was killed. She talks about, Josh says, if I call the police, if I call 9 1 1 and say he’s threatening me. When the police get here, he’s gonna be calm, I’m gonna be hysterical. And he’ll make me the one who’s irrational. She was conscious of these very things.

Moving forward, when we entered season two in *Cold. T*here’s this story about Joyce Yost being murdered by this man, Doug Lovell. Doug Lovell goes to prison. He’s still in prison and had been sentenced to death twice. He’s had his death sentence overturned twice, and part of the reason is because since he went to prison. He has built relationships with clergy, people who go to prison to work with inmates, to help them hopefully become better people.

They prepare them to be released. Doug Lovell will not be released. He is, as I said, serving a death sentence or in limbo while they figure out whether his death sentence will go forward. But those relationships and the way he talks to clergy have allowed him to essentially create a group of supporters. who, when he goes to court, when he goes to trial, are willing to stand up in front of a judge or a jury and say, I believe Doug Lovell is a man with a good heart.

I believe he’s a man who’s changed. I believe he deserves a second chance. What we know is Doug Lovell murdered Joyce Yost and has refused to return her body.

Doug Lovell’s Legal Battles

**Anne:** Right, flat out manipulation Doug Lovell used to convince some people that he has a “good heart.” The evidence would be that he tells people exactly where that body is, which he has not done.

**Dave:** Right, that’s how you show true remorse in my mind, yeah.

**Anne:** In our community, we actually call this meatloafing. It’s from The Meatloaf song I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that.

**Dave:** This is interesting, and it gets into the weeds of the court case. Lovell, there’s no question he’s responsible. He did admit to it, but that was part of a plea deal in 1993, where he was trying to get a chance for life with parole. At the time, Utah did not have a law that allowed life without parole, so the choice was life with parole or the death sentence. And he thought, if I admit to it, there’s this plea deal on the table. And I will have a chance of getting out of prison.

Before the case actually went to sentencing, though, the law changed, and the prosecutors pulled life with parole off the table. And at that point Lovell said, I don’t want to plead guilty anymore. And this is part of why that case ended up going through appeal after appeal. The death sentence ended up being rescinded because the appeals courts determined that Lovell was not appropriately advised of the rights he was giving up. So he goes back to trial in 2015.

The problem is that he’s admitted on the record that he killed Joyce Yost. That fact is not in dispute.

Tactics Of Abusive Husbands: Manipulative Letters And Emails

**Dave:** How do you go in front of a jury and say, yes, I killed this person. But and that’s where these religious leaders came in. They went before the court and said, in all those years, Lovell is a changed man.

**Anne:** Listening to the manipulative letters Doug Lovell sent those religious leaders was surreal. Because they sound almost exactly like the manipulative letters that so many of the victims I talk to receive. In fact, I have actually created a workshop to show women the patterns of these types of manipulative letters. It’s in my Betrayal Trauma Recovery Message Workshop.

So listeners, if you want to learn more about that, click that link. I show women how abusive it is, so they can identify the abuse. And then how to respond in terms of Doug Lovell. It was very unnerving to hear that these religious leaders fell for this type of manipulation. In fact, judges fall for this type of manipulation too.

There are cases in Utah where the abusive man is in jail, but he writes manipulative and abusive letters to his kids, and the victim is court ordered to show these manipulative, abusive letters to her own children. Which to talk about Susan Powell again. I mean, she was killed, but Josh Powell, her murderer, still had parental rights.

**Dave:** Yeah, so let me set the table for that a little bit. Josh Powell, after his wife, “disappears” in 2009. Within a couple of weeks, he takes his two sons, Charlie and Braden, with him. He leaves Utah and goes to Washington state. And he lives under his father’s roof. A few things happen there.

Washington State Does Nothing

**Dave:** The West Valley City Police Department has a circumstantial case that Josh murdered his wife, and that’s getting stronger as time goes forward. What they don’t have is direct physical evidence. Like a body linking Josh to Susan’s death. And so in the absence of that, the prosecutors would not give police an arrest warrant. The police are aware that these two boys are potentially at risk.

Early in the investigation, a detective from Utah contacts the Child Protective Services Agency in Washington and says, can you intervene in any way? And the state of Washington tells the West Valley City Police Department, unless there’s an allegation of like ongoing or immediate abuse happening, that’s not our job.

**Anne:** I mean, the likelihood that he killed his wife is like a hundred percent. So he’s a murderer, but he’s an appropriate caregiver for children.

**Dave:** Right, unless he’s charged and arrested, they don’t intervene, was the position at the time.

**Anne:** This letter of the law is a thing, and then there’s like, how do we actually protect people? I mean, someone who kills their wife is an abuser, but they’re not defining him as an abuser.

**Dave:** And this was the insidiousness of Josh Powell. Josh Powell was good at cloaking abuse in a way that it didn’t look like abuse from the outside, right? I think you and I rationally can sit back and say the act of murdering his children’s mother is abuse of those children until the police can prove it. The Child Protective Services workers in Washington weren’t going to do anything about it.

Operation Tsunami & Steve Powell’s Arrest

**Dave:** And so the investigation for her murder is mostly here in Utah. But there’s an aspect that’s taking place in Washington, and it culminates in the latter part of 2011. Because there’s a big police operation that we learn about in *Cold* season one called Operation Tsunami. And part of this whole investigation is the service of a search warrant at Josh’s dad’s house in Washington.

When police go in there searching, they discover Steve Powell was obsessed with his daughter-in-law, Susan. And they find all kinds of voyeur materials focused on Susan and other women. Steve Powell had been recording women without their knowledge, and among those were two neighbor girls who were underage. Under the definition of the law, this is treated as CSAM. Steve Powell is arrested at that time for two crimes, voyeurism and CSAM.

The state of Washington says, wait a minute. These two boys, Charlie and Braden, were in that house. This is an unsafe environment for those children. So they take temporary protective custody of Charlie and Braden. So it took the investigation to that point where there was a catalyst. There was an event that took place with the discovery of those voyeuristic materials. That triggered the state of Washington to take action.

Once those boys were in temporary protective custody, that didn’t mean they were going to stay there. Josh immediately starts a campaign to get custody of his kids back. And he was actually within a step or two of clearing every hurdle that the court put in front of him and was probably going to get custody of his children back.

Identifying An Abusive Husband: Josh Powell’s Custody Battle

**Dave:** And then police in Utah who were under a court seal. They couldn’t talk publicly about the case, even to other police agencies. They get permission from a judge to share evidence with the state of Washington family court, they send this information up. And it’s troubling enough that the judge in Washington says, before we give Josh Powell custody of his children, we are going to require that he undergo a psyhologial evaluation.

So they’re going to do a very invasive psychological evaluation. Looking into, is there anything happening with Josh in his mind that would put the kids in danger? Now, during this period, the court allowed Josh to visit the children. At first, the visit is required in a neutral third party secure environment. But over time, he convinces the court that he’s safe. That they can allow his kids to visit him at a home he had rented. And the judge did not revisit that idea, After this major change, right?

Requiring Josh to go through this invasive psychological evaluation. And within a matter of days during a court authorized supervised visit, we know Josh locks the supervised visitation coordinator out of the house. He murders his sons, a horrific ending to this entire investigation. They definitely know that Susan knew her husband was abusing her. She knew the answer was yes.

What about Susan’s parents? What could they do in the aftermath of that horrible event? They sued the state of Washington, the agency, and the individual social workers involved in that case. The case wound through the courts for a long time, more than 10 years before it’s resolved.

Susan’s Parents Sue Washington State

**Dave:** The individual social workers were deemed immune because they were state employees and working on behalf of the state in that capacity. They couldn’t be held individually liable, but the agency could.

Susan’s parents ended up taking that case to trial. So a jury in Pierce County, Washington hears weeks and weeks of testimony. About all the details of the ins and outs of this back and forth with the criminal investigation with the family court in the state of Washington. Long story short, they end up giving a verdict. And they say the state of Washington was negligent in allowing the children to be in Josh Powell’s custody while he went through this process.

And they awarded Susan’s parents $100 million, give or take in damages. Of course, nothing that helps them bring the kids back. But their hope was that it would inspire some kind of change. Part of the reason we know as much as we do about what happened in the state of Washington behind the scenes is the law there. It required an inquest when Charlie and Braden were murdered in 2012. And the law also required the results of that inquest to be made public.

https://youtu.be/99iqbYMJdXo

Transparency is one part of it, but the action to say, okay, these are the things that failed. Let’s fix those, is the next step. And I think that’s where often we see agencies and individuals drop the ball. They can acknowledge that yes, a murdered child is a bad outcome. But what are you going to do about it? That’s where we often fall flat.

Current State Of Domestic Violence Services

**Anne:** Just recently, within the last couple months, there’s a victim. Her perpetrator has 27 protective order violations. This is in the state of Utah right now. So she reported one of these violations in Salt Lake City, and they didn’t do anything about it. So the department over that heard about it somehow, and gave her a call. Now this is a victim who’s been working with the domestic violence shelter Safe Harbor for more than three years. And she can’t even divorce this guy.

They’re still in custody court, but the department that oversees things interviewed her and did a lethality assessment. They called her back like a week later and said, we have the findings for you. You’re at a really high risk. Holy cow, this is bad. And we’ve come to the conclusion that you need services from the domestic violence shelter.

**Dave:** That’s it?

**Anne:** And she’s like, what? I’ve already been going to Safe Harbor for three years. That’s the state of domestic violence services, it’s like going around in circles. There’s how it’s supposed to work, and then there’s how it’s actually working. A lot of victims will tell you that when they tell other people that the system isn’t protecting them. People generally assume you must have done something wrong. Like maybe you didn’t fill out the right form. How else can someone prove that their husband is toxic.

Not realizing you can do everything right and still not get the help you need. It is so difficult when trying to identify if their husband is abusive. And that’s such a fine line for me as an educator. We need to give women hope that they can move toward a better life. But also be aware of all the obstacles they might face.

Journalistic Responsibility & Impact Of Educating On Abusive Husbands

**Dave:** And Anne, I think about this a lot, because from my perspective as a journalist, I tell these stories. Part of the reason to do it is to educate, but there’s a parasocial relationship between myself and a listener. Somebody listens to me for hours talking about these cases. And I’ve had the experience many times of somebody listening, going, oh my gosh. What he’s talking about, like this story, this is my life.

And reach out to me, and in many cases, they’re asking for just somebody to hear them. But other times they’re more specific, like, help me, you seem like an expert. You seem to know what’s going on. What do I do in this situation? And I feel so ill-equipped. I want to help. So I’ll try to connect them with domestic violence resources, and I have to ask myself, did I actually help that person? It’s so hard.

**Anne:** Yeah, here at Betrayal Trauma Recovery we have Group Sessions, and Individual Sessions, and Workshops for women to learn safety strategies. Whether they’re married or not. All of these tools can help a woman to know if her husband is abusing her. I mean, it’s my mission to ensure that they get the help they need. Speaking of abusive partners in both Season One and Season Three of the *Cold Podcast*, an abusive partner plays a role.

In season one it’s Josh Powell, and in season three, Chuck Warren is an abuser. He married Sheree Warren. I can say that because I can see the markers and the things that you reported. He is also a suspect, and in every single season, every single perpetrator.

Patterns Of Objectifying Women

**Anne:** And Chuck Warren as well, has a history or patterns of objectifying women. With Cary Hartman, there ares tons of evidence of the obscene phone calls and assaults.

Like what was going on in the eighties in Ogden, by the way. Like that was wild. I was like, holy cow. I mean, season three, there are three serial rapists in Ogden. Anyway, all the guys in seasons one, two, and three show a pattern of objectifying women. Can you talk about that?

**Dave:** Yeah, all of them are different in their own ways. Josh, when I started looking into his background, his youth, and his relationship with Susan. There are a lot of indicators that Josh was, in many ways, wasn’t interested in physical touch.. But Susan, his wife, would write about this. He wouldn’t hold her hand, he wouldn’t kiss her. He would always find an excuse for it, I’m gonna get sick. So he had something going on, right?

And the problem with Josh is the evidence I talked about earlier. They sent it to Washington State in the child custody proceeding. They found it on a computer in the Powell home. The belief of the investigators at the time was that it was material belonging to Josh.

What we know is Josh Powell’s father was absolutely deviant in his views toward women generally, and to Susan specifically. There was a dynamic back and forth between Josh and his dad. Josh was aware of his father’s inappropriate advances on Susan, his wife, and he did nothing to stop it.

Doug Lovell, Cary Hartman & Chuck Warren

**Anne:** A lack of interest in your partner is definitely a characteristic of excessive exploitative content use. This is one thing help to know if you are experiencing abuse from your husband. Because they’re masturbating all the time, and they’re not into it with a real person. So even though that is a marker, in Josh’s case, there was no evidence.

Dave: Directly for him, you can understand why the police would believe it, given what you said.

**Anne:** Yeah, exactly.

**Dave:** Season two and season three, both take place in Ogden, Utah in 1985. I find it fascinating that Doug Lovell, who first assaulted and then murdered Joyce Yost, operates at the same time. Cary Hartman, we know, is attacking women. And you’ve got Sheree divorcing Chuck Warren at the time. In a lot of ways, very similar to Susan Powell, right? There’s a custody issue going on. Chuck Warren, we later find out, was soliciting who are also victims, right?

And did Sheree know about that? Probably not, so he’s lying to her, presumably, which is a form of abuse. There was a lot of that kind of dynamic going on, and part of the reason with Sheree’s case in particular. I wanted to focus on the immediate aftermath of Sheree’s disappearance. You know, the first days, weeks, months, her estranged husband, Chuck Warren, looks like Josh Powell. He looks like a really strong suspect.

He’s not forthcoming. There are stories about him having done a horrific act of physical abuse against his first wife. Sharee’s his second wife. You can understand why law enforcement is looking at Chuck.

Finding Justice For Sheree Warren

**Dave:** Holy cow, this looks like all those abuse markers, and it’s the same story we’ve seen. Then all of a sudden, Cary Hartman comes into orbit over here, and you realize Sheree had this unlucky confluence of bad men in her life. If Chuck Warren was a more standup guy. If he was a better husband.

I think the investigation would’ve more quickly focused on Cary and some steps that I believe or suspect Cary took to potentially obscure his activities. Around the time that Sheree disappeared. They would’ve looked at it much sooner than 15 years later, as we see happen. I’m not somebody who likes to stand up on a soapbox and say, every man is a bad person.

**Anne:** Me either. We do need to help victims figure out if their husband is abusive.

**Dave:** But I also like to stand up and say, guys, we gotta do better than this. Even if you are not harming your wife, your partner, you probably know somebody who is. You talked about those statistics, the one in three or one in four women who will experience domestic violence in their lives.

If I can turn that around from like a man’s perspective. How many of the guys I would consider friends are at home behind closed doors doing those kinds of things? And what behaviors am I maybe seeing but choosing not to react to? Or am I just putting those blinders like we all have a role in seeing it for what it is, calling it what it is, and standing up to it.

Gratitude & Acknowledgment

**Anne:** Dave thank you so much for all of your hard work to bring these really important stories to light. And helping victims identify if their husband is abusive.

**Dave:** You’ve been a supporter and booster, if I can say that for a long time. That’s not lost on me. You’re doing the work in the trenches. I mean, what I say when I talk about how hard that is. And I just hope for your sake, that you find ways to cleanse yourself of it from time to time, because it’s so hard. So thank you for the work you do and all the women you’ve helped, honestly.

This kind of work takes a toll on you. And while I feel a strong obligation to continue building on the work done in these three seasons of this *Cold podcast*, I also need to watch out for my own emotional and mental health. I’m hopeful I can again, as you say, help educate people so that we don’t have to keep telling these kinds of stories.

How To Deal With Husband Who Hurt You Emotionally — **Warning Signs Your Husband Is Dangerous – Susan’s Story With Dave Cawley** Apr 29, 2025
If you’re searching for warning signs your husband is dangerous it’s important to know that many victims “only” experience emotional abuse until . . .

Anne Blythe, founder of Betrayal Trauma Recovery, talks to Dave Cawley, host of the *Cold* podcast series, about the Susan Powell case, empowering victims to protect themselves and seek safety now.

**This Is the First Episode With Dave Cawley**
Warning Signs Your Husband Is Dangerous – Susan’s Story With Dave Cawley (THIS EPISODE)
*Patterns To Look Out For In Your Relationship*

Abuse Doesn’t Always Mean Physical Battering

Many abuse victims do not have proof. They don’t have bruises or broken bones to show the world that their partner is abusing them.

Instead, their bruises and brokenness are hidden beneath the surface. They can be found in the way they doubt their own worth, in the way they feel they are responsible for their husband’s choices.

**Other forms of abuse, just as serious as physical battering, include:**

Emotional abuse

Psychological abuse

Financial abuse

Sexual abuse

Sexual Coercion

Spiritual abuse

Covert physical abuse

Like many women in the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Community, Susan Powell was not a victim of physical battering, as far as experts can tell. But she suffered deeply from the abusive behaviors of her husband, Josh. To see if you’re a victim of this type of abuse, take our Emotional Abuse Quiz.

Susan Powell’s Story Teaches Us That Victim-Blaming Harms

Questions and statements like:

If it was so bad, why didn’t she leave?

It takes two to tango

Why did you push his buttons?

Why don’t you work harder on making sure he’s happy?

He’s not hitting you, are you sure it’s abuse?

Even after Susan Powell’s ten year disappearance, many still blame her subtly by asking, “If it was so bad, then why did she stay?”

As Dave says, the societal focus should be on why so many men are abusing women, not why women are staying in abusive relationships.

Susan Powell’s Story Teaches Us That Anyone Can Be A Victim

Josh Powell was diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. However, even those who are not diagnosed with NPD can be narcissistic abusers. The mental and emotional toll that narcissistic abuse takes on victims is extreme. Becoming educated about narcissistic abuse. And protecting themselves through effective boundaries can help women find safety from this insidious form of abuse.

3 Tips For Seeking Safety From Abuse

**Trust your gut.** If it feels like something is off, it probably is. Don’t ignore that feeling.

**You have more support than you realize.** A lot of times, we don’t recognize how strong and wide our network is. Reach out, you might be surprised.

**If you leave, you’re going to be okay.** It’s scary to leave, but it’s not as scary as you probably think, once you’re on the other side.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group meets multiple times a day and offers women a community of supportive, validating, and knowledgeable women to help them find safety from betrayal and abuse. Join today and share your story, process your trauma, ask hard questions, and vent painful feelings.

Transcript: Warning Signs Your Husband Is Dangerous

**Anne:** I recorded this interview in 2019. At a very intense time during my ex-husband’s post-separation abuse. I interviewed Dave Cawley, host of the cold podcast. And I want to give a shout out. He was so willing to listen to me back in 2019. So thank you from the bottom of my heart for using the interview to learn more about my story and other victims. I genuinely felt like he cared about me personally and that he cared for all victims.

So thank you to Dave Cawley and all men who are standing up for abuse victims.

Dave is a graduate of the University of Utah’s journalism school. And then went to work as a field reporter in Salt Lake City. Dave joined KSL. And then in 2018, he moved into a new role as executive producer of digital content. On December 14th, 2018. KSL and Dave launched the podcast series *Cold*.

The first season focused on the unsolved disappearance of Susan Powell. That story was close to Dave because he reported on Susan’s suspected murder from the beginning in December 2009. And continues to dig for new details. *Cold* reached number one on the Apple podcast chart on the day of its release.

Welcome, Dave.

**Dave:** Thanks, Anne. I really appreciate being on.

My Personal Connection To Susan’s Story

**Anne:** The story of Susan Powell broke the year after I was married. I got married in 2008. And so in 2009, when Susan first went missing, I closely followed the story. I had a sense at that time that something was wrong in my own marriage. I wouldn’t say at the time that I could comprehend what was happening, or even verbalize that my husband was abusive.

Something about Susan’s story was calling to me. On the day Josh murdered his sons and proved himself a murderer, I was at a family dinner with my parents and siblings, and also my husband. I said, out loud, “If anything happens to me. He killed me.”

I wanted to make sure he heard me say that to everyone because I thought that would help keep me safe. Six years later, in 2015, he was arrested for domestic violence. And that is what helped me understand what was happening. From your research of Susan Powell. Can you talk about how she felt at the beginning of her relationship?

**Dave:** Yeah, I can speak specifically to the circumstances of Josh and Susan’s marriage, because I had a unique opportunity to research and study those. Certainly, I don’t know the totality of Susan’s mind at any given point in time. All I can go on are the clues she left us, what she wrote in her journal.

What she wrote to her friends in emails, messages, things like that. That we drew in to use for the cold podcast. But I will say Susan and Josh met when Susan was barely out of high school. She was very young. And if you look at Susan at that time, she was a great student.

Susan Powell’s Story Teaches Us That Abusive Men Want To Be The Center Of Their Wife’s Universe

**Dave:** She was very hardworking, going to cosmetology school easily. In my opinion, she could have walked into any of the colleges around Washington where she lived at the time. But Josh quickly, after they started dating, isolated her. And he made her life all about him and their relationship. He did it very subtly. He used the creation almost of a mythology for their relationship. That this was a very almost fated kind of thing. That they met and fell in love.

And they’re so about each other. One another when in reality, from I think an objective point of view. You can look and say, well, it was all about how she served him, not how he served her. He was not doing things in their relationship that were advancing her best interests. He wasn’t going out of his way to do things to make her happy.

But because of her age and because of, I think some of her experience dating as a teenager, when she met Josh and he talked the big talk. She kind of fell into the idea of being in love and in this relationship. They get married quickly. So within six months of beginning to date, they’re married.

And it’s pretty clear from the get go that things are not good in their relationship, because Josh can’t keep a job. And every time he loses a job, it’s the fault of the employer. It’s never his fault. Something keeps him down. And so Susan, from the beginning, has to work multiple jobs to try to make ends meet. And help Josh get in a better place where he can hold a job.

**Anne:** I mean, when do you notice the signs your husband might kill you?

Warning Signs Of A Dangerous Husband

**Dave:** They have to move in with family several times, which is not a good situation. As we later learned, her father-in-law is a very unsavory individual, to put it mildly. Then it gets more complicated when children enter the mix.

Josh and Susan move away from Washington in part to get away from Josh’s dad. And some bad things and make a fresh start. So Susan at that point, in my opinion, still doesn’t see the origin of the problems. And thinks, hey, if we just get away from Washington, if we get to Utah. And we get away from the complicated family dynamics, then Josh and I can make it work.

**Anne:** She still doesn’t see signs her husband might kill her. But almost no one does until it’s too late..

**Dave:** No sooner do they get here than it’s the same dynamic, right? Susan’s breadwinning. She can hold a job, her husband is holding her back.But they conceive their first child. And that is when Susan starts to see the problems, because Josh as a father is not helpful. That is in 2005, and then it’s a downhill slide from there for a couple of years.

After they have their second child, Brayden, Josh disconnects. And the conflict comes out into the open. Josh has been dismissive of Susan for many years. But once she starts sticking up for herself, she has things that matter to her that are of value to her in her life, her religion, and her standards.

Susan Powell’s Story Teaches Us That Victims Need Support

**Dave:** And Josh is unwilling to practice those himself, but also to allow her to practice her own religion. Do things like pay her tithing, attend church with her, things like that. And he’s also actively undercutting her to the children, talking about how bad it is that mom goes to church, and how they don’t need to go to church with mom. And don’t listen to stuff mom says. Which I think any rational person in a marriage would say is not an okay dynamic.

That is when I think Susan starts recognizing that things are not good. She starts dropping hints to friends that she feels in danger, but then when other people tell her hey, you’re in a bad situation. You need to get out of here. She will justify why she’s staying in.

**Anne:** Well, having been in that situation myself. It’s really a situation where you have two bad options. Staying in the marriage is bad, and divorce will also be bad. You’re trying to figure out which bad scenario is the least bad one. I was struck in the podcast. Susan did what she was supposed to do as a victim of abuse.

She reached out for help. But clergy told her that if you both work on your issues, this can be worked out. She wasn’t told her husband is dangerous. Since we have over 150,000 women in our community. I hear women report this all the time. Instead of recognizing his abuse they get their abusive husband into therapy or they’re told to go to couple therapy. Can you talk more about what happened when Susan went for help?

**Dave:** That’s tough. Let me speak to some of the circumstances with Josh and Susan and counseling, and we’ll get there.

Clergy & Counseling Didn’t Keep Her Safe

**Dave:** Because conversations with clergy are confidential. We’re pretty limited in knowing exactly what kind of advice Josh and Susan received. But Susan did write in a couple of places about going to see her bishop, both with Josh and on her own. You can imagine this is a marriage at a very low point.

They’re at each other’s throats. And yeah, Susan is argumentative. I mean, she’s not one to passively just go with the flow. So when she’s unhappy, she’s venting about it. Josh points at her as she’s the one causing all this conflict.

**Anne:** What she’s “complaining about,” and I have that in air quotes, is his abuse.

**Dave:** Right.

**Anne:** Right.

**Dave:** She’s not identified it as such at this point, right?

**Anne:** He’s basically saying, I’m mad at her for being mad at me about my abuse.

**Dave:** Right, in so many words, yeah.

**Anne:** Yeah.

**Dave:** Every indication I have is that the clergy they spoke to said. “We are not qualified to be your marriage counselor, so let’s connect you with services.”

So that’s how Susan originally gets involved with marriage counseling. It’s 2008, and Josh refuses to go. The counselor she was talking to in 2008 identified and said you are being abused.

**Anne:** Oh, okay.

**Dave:** And this is when Susan first understood that because her dad was in town and actually went to the session with her. Chuck Cox, Susan’s dad, talks about how afterwards she turned to him and said, Do you think that’s true? Am I being abused? And her dad’s going, yes.

**Anne:** Yes, but she doesn’t see signs that her husband may harm her.

Signs Your Husband Is Dangerous You: Explicit Content

**Dave:** I think too, Anne, what happens is specifically in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You have lay clergy, and oftentimes, especially at the local level, these people are your neighbors. It can feel very close, I think even for some of those members of clergy. To be in the business of the personal lives of their neighbors, and that’s uncomfortable.

And I don’t want to say there’s not accountability in the same way that maybe a professional clergy. But it’s a little different in that religious community. Just because of the way those relationships exist. Sometimes between the people approaching, a bishop or stake president, or something like that, as opposed to other faiths.

**Anne:** Yeah, and many times clergy, rather than tell the victim, this is an abuse situation, your husband is dangerous, you need to get to safety. They focus on helping him. Like to reactivate someone into the church or to repent. But they don’t realize it’s keeping a victim in proximity to the abuse.

I listened to the cold podcast, and surprisingly how pornography played such a large role in developing Josh’s character. Can you talk about the role that it played in his abuse before the murder?

**Dave:** Yeah, this is a very interesting topic for discussion, because we have a pretty good record thanks to the divorce filings for Josh’s parents going back into the mid 90s. So Josh is a teenager, and his mom divorces his dad. In part because Josh’s dad did a lot of things that were not good. There’s some pretty good indication in those filings, that he introduced his kids to explicit content when they were young, both sons and daughters.

Josh Powell’s Secret Double Life

**Dave:** Because of that, we know Josh was exposed to explicit material at an early age. We know Josh was actually, by his own disclosure later to a psychologist. He is arrested at one point for stealing explicit magazines from a convenience store. You see early on that this is part of his life. It’s not until after Susan disappears, and police seize computers out of their home. And those computers are scoured for evidence, we see what happened in the meantime.

After he and Susan were married, they found many very concerning images on Josh’s computer that had been deleted for the most part. They were in what’s called free space, but Josh regularly watched it on the computer. And Susan talked a lot to her friends in messages and things that Josh was protective of his computer. She was not allowed to use his computer except to do his chores, scanning his papers, receipts, and things.

She wanted to get on the internet and Facebook and things like that. He would not allow her to do that on his computer. She had to have her own computer, which he was unwilling to pay for. So that protective behavior, I think, personally speaks to Josh knowing that there’s material on this computer that he does not want her to find.

I know there are people in law enforcement who believe the catalyst for Susan’s disappearance and murder may have been her locating something like that, calling Josh’s attention to it. And saying this is a step too far. We’re done. That’s speculation, but I think Josh’s viewing of it played a role, especially because Susan writes a lot about how he wouldn’t touch her.

**Anne:** This abuse and secret explicit materials use might be signs your husband is dangerous.

Susan Powell’s Story Teaches Us To Pay Attention To Our Gut

**Dave:** He wouldn’t show the normal types of affection that you would expect in a relationship like that. He would not hold her hand. He wouldn’t kiss her. When they were physically intimate, which was rare, he did not view it as beautiful and shared. It was very clinical. I’m trying not to be too graphic here.

I want to be careful to protect Susan’s privacy. When they had intercourse, it was not something that was a beautiful and affirming experience for Susan. It was almost, I think, traumatic in itself because of the way he insisted on it being very quick and clean and then over.

**Anne:** Women in our community assume their husbands are not viewing explicit material because they attend the temple or go to church. Because they’re under the impression that the relationship is a certain way, and they’re not being given all the information they need to make a decision. Interesting, so that form of coercion is, I would say, the most common. But it’s still coercion.

I don’t think explicit material users understand that in and of itself is a form of abuse. Just thinking about Susan, how would she feel about this? Didn’t enter Josh’s mind.

**Dave:** No.

**Anne:** He wasn’t concerned about Susan at all. All of these are red flags that her husband might kill her.

**Dave:** Not in the least, yeah. Continuing through their marriage, Josh and Susan moved from Washington to Utah to escape Steve Powell. But Steve Powell continues to groom his son well into adulthood through these long phone conversations. Steve Powell was dysfunctional in his views on intimacy. He wrote more than 2, 000 pages of explicit journals detailing his desire for his daughter-in-law, Susan.

Signs Your Husband Might Harm You: Emotional Abuse

**Dave:** And so he is interested in poisoning his son’s marriage on the belief that it will allow him to spark his relationship with Susan. Which was never going to happen. Right, but because of that, Josh is being fed this constant stream of negativity. If you look at some of Josh’s writings, going back even into his teenage years, he struggled. Even dating, before he met Susan, with being close. Just being in physical proximity to a girl or a woman, made him uncomfortable.

And when he takes that dysfunction into his marriage with Susan, it’s Susan’s fault. Because he tells his dad, Susan wants it all the time. By the time their marriage really bottoms out, they are maybe having intercourse a couple of times a year, if that.

And so you can imagine, Susan feels as a 27 year old woman, a 28 year old woman, unfulfilled. By a husband who will show her no care in daily life, no care in the bedroom. Seems repulsed by the thought of giving her a kiss or holding her hand.

And going back to your earlier point about not recognizing it as abuse. Yeah, abuse carries a lot of connotation in our society. We expect it to be hitting, to be shouting, you know, slamming of doors. Well, I think it’s arguable that if you are in a relationship with somebody and you are withholding and playing these kinds of mind games, that is a form of abuse. And unless we can call it such, we can’t address it.

Abusers “Turn Tables” To Play The Victim Role

**Anne:** Yeah, right before my ex’s arrest, he started telling me that I was unattractive. And that he never thought I was attractive, and that he hated me. I was like, whoa. And he would say, I don’t love you, but I love the kids. So finally I was like, well, then you should leave.

**Dave:** Yeah.

**Anne:** And then he wouldn’t leave. And I was like, okay, this is weird. You think I’m ugly, you don’t want to have intercourse with me. and you hate me, but you won’t leave? It was so nonsensical. It was insane. All right, so we’ve talked about the psychological abuse Susan endured. We’ve talked about how she didn’t recognize it, I didn’t recognize the signs that my husband may harm me either.

I want to talk about Josh’s behavior after the murder. It’s like many abusers after divorce. They blame their situation on their victim. They continue to lie, hide and manipulate people. And in Josh’s case, he had this huge crime, and all these people looking at him and reporters trying to get to the truth.

In my case, nobody’s been trying to investigate. My ex is still an attorney, he’s still doing his job, and he’s still lying about me. So, his current congregation thinks he’s this amazing saint, and his crazy ex-wife has done him wrong. and they feel so bad that he’s this victim.

So even in this case with Josh Powell, where there’s a murder and someone is missing, and all these police are investigating. You’ve got all these reporters, and Josh is still walking around. Lightning didn’t strike him, a bus didn’t hit him, he’s not in jail. He’s got his kids. He’s still functioning.

Susan Powell’s Story Teaches Us That Abusers Reject Accountability

**Anne:** I mean, he’s not well, obviously. But he’s still free. Why do you think society is so bad at holding these guys accountable? Even though there are he is dangerous.

**Dave:** I think, in a legal sense, and especially in the United States here, we have this concept of innocent until proven guilty. That is important to remember when we’re talking about someone being accused of something criminally. But a marriage is a civil contract, not criminal. So you are married to somebody who is abusing you. You seek a divorce, and through the divorce.

The mind games that manipulative men, in particular, can work that system to their advantage. Or to try to hurt or undercut their former spouse. It doesn’t rise to that criminal level. I think many people in broader society don’t want to feel like they are passing a judgment on somebody without proof or evidence.

The very nature of this kind of abuse, that manipulation, that financial control, that emotional abuse, is that there is no trail of evidence. And even if you could take it to a police officer or prosecutor, they would say, well, what is the crime? There’s nothing in criminal statute that this violates. So that person is able to go back into society and say, well, look, I’m a good guy. I didn’t do anything wrong.

**Anne:** I’m the victim. My ex says, “She kicked me out of the house for no reason. And then she wouldn’t talk to me.” He doesn’t say, because I sprained her fingers and had a no contact order from the courts. He doesn’t tell people that part.

**Dave:** We need to, in a cultural sense, in the broadest way possible, confront our own perceptions on abuse. And start retraining ourselves.

Signs A Husband May Kill: People Don’t Believe You

**Dave:** Me telling the Susan Powell story resulted in more people than I can even tell you reaching out to share their own personal experiences. Even talking to you here, Anne, about your relationship, I think, is in a similar vein. Many women are dealing with this right now. And have never found someone who they felt safe, being very candid about what they’ve gone through.

And I think many of us hold these personal experiences close. We don’t share them. There’s shame attached to it. There’s fear of not being believed. What I personally learned was that when people are willing to share those stories with me. When women say, hey, your podcast sounded like my life.

The most important thing I can do is express belief and empathy. And say, I’m so grateful that you’re safe. I’m sorry, you have gone through or are going through this horrible circumstance. I believe you. And that opens conversation. I strongly feel that is the path forward. In trying to address why abusive men can just walk away cleanly. And say, “Well, hey, I did nothing wrong.”

https://youtu.be/agzTN-9Qpd0

**Anne:** Or, “You know, it didn’t work out somewhere. It just doesn’t work out.” People just dismiss it even though there may be signs her husband might harm her. That’s why I created this community to be that safe place. Because other places are like, oh, all guys use it. Why are you so worried about it? So here, at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we are all about safety, safety, and more safety. We will help you figure out what is going on.

And we recommend you get to safety quickly. While you don’t know what’s going on. And then, from a safe place, you can objectively observe and find out what’s happening.

He Manipulated Her

**Anne:** I get the impression that Susan didn’t know about the explicit content use until the very end. Was there any indication that she knew about it early on?

**Dave:** I doubt she did. I mean, like I mentioned, there is speculation by some in law enforcement that maybe she discovered something and that was a catalyst. I’m under the impression that Susan had no clue Josh was viewing explicit materials.

**Anne:** I’ve always wondered why reporters don’t include the alleged perpetrators pornography use when reporting crime or murder. If it was a factor? I think that would highlight how it is an element of domestic abuse. And to watch for signs the signs he might kill you.

**Dave:** And to the point about why do you not hear it reported, it’s a difficult spot. Especially early in reporting, we often work from a limited amount of information. The Powell case is unique in that in putting together the cold podcast, we had access to a lot of information that was not available to us when Susan first disappeared.

Material gained through search warrants and subpoenas, and things like that. So, when I sat down to tell Susan’s story, I was more informed than I think many of us were at the time she disappeared. About what was going on behind the scenes. Say somebody came forward and said, yeah, you know, Josh goes on the internet and looks at explicit material.

You need a nexus that ties it together. And without all the context of Josh’s journals and Susan’s journals, and all the stuff with these recordings, it’s difficult to put that together in a way where you see the broader context.

Susan Powell’s Story Teaches Us That Your Husband’s Secrets Can Kill You

**Dave:** So I’m grateful that with the rise of podcasting and some of this longer form of investigative reporting. We’re better able to make those associations clear than you’ll ever see on the 10 o’clock news. Think when you look at Josh as somebody who’s leading a double life, he clearly did not ever allow Susan to see his true self.

Josh was a narcissist, and I say that in the sense of a psychologist actually said you have narcissistic personality disorder. He created a persona. The persona of Josh as a young man, and the older he grew, the more solidified that persona became. And the inner core, the true identity of Josh Powell, was not something that anybody ever would touch because of that outer shell. Especially his wife. And so, yes, he will never concede to her that he’s viewing it.

That he’s taking all these steps. Which, in my opinion, were preparatory for killing her and cashing in on her life insurance. Others around her were not interpreting warning signs he might use lethal violence. The exterior was about, he’s the expert at everything. Nobody’s smarter than me. My kids are the best kids and can do no wrong, because they’re extensions of me.

It’s a very interesting thing, I think, with men who are abusive in this way. It’s one of the signs he might do something drastic. That they, you know, similarly tend to show some of these narcissistic traits where they have this secret life. They protect that secret life to the exclusion of everything else. And I think part of what creates this danger, right, is the idea that when you are exposed, when say a spouse discovers this, now this will collapse that entire world.

If He Protects His Secrets, It’s a Sign He May Kill You

**Dave:** And as a man exhibiting this kind of narcissism, when you face that reality of your world collapsing. I’ll just make this person who discovered it, who sees the real me, go away. I think that’s part of why we see violence, and especially homicide, come into play in those moments.

**Anne:** Yeah, I think so too. I discovered my husband’s use 18 months after we had married in the temple, and he had promised me he didn’t use explicit material, so he had been lying to me and manipulating me the whole time. That’s when I got really scared because that’s a sign of something very serious.

I think it’s interesting that he went into “recovery”. And when I say that, I mean in quotes. He became like the model addict in recovery. And we were actually public speaking about his amazing recovery, and I didn’t know that he was still lying and manipulating me. I thought I knew how to deal with an addict husband. So near the end, I was like, this is a sham.

You are a fake and not in recovery. You haven’t been, and you’re speaking to people as if you are. And that is when the violence escalated. Escalating violent is a sign he might harm you. I was like, I’m not speaking with you anymore, and quit my job. I was the PR director of a popular addiction recovery practice. And so I quit my job and I was like, no, I am done.

In the addiction recovery space, which you may or may not be familiar with. When someone enters recovery, everything in that family becomes about him and his recovery. Let’s make sure he’s okay. Let’s treat him like he has cancer. I believe that’s actually a continuation of the abuse.

If He Has No Empathy, That’s A Red Flag

**Anne:** I think they should say, okay, she’s a victim of abuse here. She’s been a victim of abuse for 10 years when she didn’t know about his use. Now we know that explicit materials use is a sign that he may use violence against women, because that’s all it is these days. Let’s treat her like she has cancer, and let’s make sure she’s safe. And then let’s wait at a safe distance to see if he is a safe person to be around.

That’s not what happens right now. When a couple goes into clergy and says he’s using they’re like, oh, okay. Well, wife, you support him, be supportive. And I’m like, what? No, no, no. That should never happen, because you don’t know what else is going on. Like get her to safety. I mean, I can’t tell you how many women spend tons of time reading books about addiction. How can I support him?

How can I make sure I don’t shame him in and on and on? And he’s like, Great. It’s all about me. The relationship’s all about me. Meanwhile, she can’t live a life, because the whole life is about him and his addiction. They have to adjust everything to fit this new reality, and it’s, as you can tell, really making me mad.

Susan’s Story Teaches Us That Therapy Does Not Stop Abuse & Manipulation

**Dave:** With Susan and Josh, he is unwilling to go when Susan is in therapy. Susan writes repeatedly that she hopes that if she goes, and he sees it improves her. He will then be willing to go. I want to go back in time and sit down with Susan and say, Susan, you do not understand the way your husband’s brain works, that is never going to happen.

The only time he ever goes to therapy is when she confronts him with, I’m leaving. Susan is the meal ticket and is doing child care, bread winning, and taking care of the house. If Susan leaves, Josh will have to work. He’ll also have to explain why his wife left, right?

He reluctantly goes along, does the minimum necessary in that situation to keep her on the hook. The idea of being supportive of your husband, you’re working together, he’s going to see how it improves me. Josh has no interest in improving. And I think many of these men who are psychologically abusing their spouses, who are violating that trust, are not interested in self improvement for self improvement’s sake.

**Anne:** When people say, well, he’s going to therapy, I’m like, but why is he going to therapy? Like, is it because he genuinely wants to change? From your podcast, we can see why it was difficult for the law to stop Josh Powell, who was under investigation for murder. Because they were trying to gather evidence. So what hope do victims like me and my community have of getting help when it’s “just emotional abuse.” I mean, it’s so scary that they’re not seeing how dangerous he is.

**Anne:** What would you say to Susan before the murder? Let’s say five years before.

Why Did She Stay? The Focus Should Be, Why Do Men Abuse Wives?

**Dave:** Susan dealt with a lot, I think, of self doubt. She knew something was wrong in her marriage, and took steps to begin extricating and protecting herself. And in my opinion, there is no clear answer why she stayed in that relationship. I hear that a lot, right? Why did she stay? Which in my opinion is the wrong focus. It should be on why do we have an abusive man perpetrating on his wife?

But for the sake of argument, if we take this question of why Susan did stay, many people want to blame the church. People that maybe aren’t from the community, or even who are, who say, well, clearly she was deluded by her religion. You have other people who want to blame it on X, Y, Z. The truth is, I think there are many influences in any of these situations. Susan feels some fear because Josh has made, I think, some threats to her in probably some very subtle ways, right?

She expresses a fear that I’m riding my bike to work on 5600 West in West Valley City, this busy road, and how easy would it be to have an “accident?” When her father-in-law writes in his journal that Josh has mentioned, boy, he sure wishes a car would get hit Susan. So, I’m looking at that saying, yeah, he’s probably told her as much, right? I wish a truck would just hit her. And she’s thinking, oh my gosh, my husband wants me dead.

So you have fear. Fear is definitely not a good sign. Susan goes to the temple and prays about it. And she has a feeling that she needs to stay. So you have all these contrary forces, emotions.

If You Think Your Husband Could Kill You, Trust Your Gut

**Dave:** What I would tell Susan is, A, trust your gut. Clearly, you were concerned enough to feel a fear, and then you basically talked yourself out of it. Second, you have more support than you realize. Susan had a network of friends and family who we see after she disappears, catalyze and become this amazing force to advocate for her and her story. And they’re still doing that now, 10 years later. That’s to me amazing. And I don’t think she recognized how strong her support network was.

The other thing I would tell her is, Susan, if you leave, you’re gonna be okay. Because, living with somebody who, year after year, undercuts you. And robs you of your positive self image, who makes you feel like dirt, like you’re unlovable. Makes the idea of going out into the world by yourself with your two children and trying to support yourself.

I have the benefit of looking at Susan from outside of that relationship and seeing somebody who is incredibly hard working, who is bright, who loves her boys. Who has plenty of admirers, who has many friends, who makes friends easily, right?

And even for somebody who doesn’t have all those things, it’s scary to leave and take that step. But it’s also not as scary as you probably think, once you are on the other side. Like, Susan would have been okay as long as she was safe from Josh. There were signs he might kill her, but no body educated her about them. So going back to your point, get to safety, do whatever it takes to get to safety. And then start rebuilding your life, and you’ll be okay.

Susan’s Story Opened My Eyes To Potential Violence

**Dave:** But seeing the impact that Susan’s story has had opened my eyes in a big way. Even today, having this conversation with you, Anne, is a continuation of that process. It’s a matter of learning and forcing the uncomfortable. And that’s my biggest takeaway. Honestly, I think seeing that abusive relationship in very close detail is, at its core, a lack of empathy on Josh’s part, not showing what I would consider a human care for another person’s well-being.

**Anne:** Yeah, there’s a lot that goes into this whole topic of misogyny, believing women and the *Me Too* movement. All these other factors that came about after the *Me Too* movement happened, after Susan’s disappearance. Then what are signs your husband might hill you?

**Dave:** And it’s not political. I think Me Too gets a little politicized. And people start wanting to say well, you know, but not all guys, and it’s like no no, no. Let’s not do that. Let’s focus on believing and showing empathy for people in bad situations who need help. That’s all.

**Anne:** Yeah, your podcast was amazing. It was gripping. If you have not yet listened, it is called *Cold*. If you have not heard it, I would highly recommend it. It is excellent.

Thank you so much for your time, Dave. We appreciate you being here.

**Dave:** Thanks, Anne.

What To Do When Your Husband Is Trying To Kill You — **Warning Signs Your Husband Is Dangerous – Susan’s Story With Dave Cawley** Apr 29, 2025
If you’re searching for warning signs your husband is dangerous it’s important to know that many victims “only” experience emotional abuse until . . .

Anne Blythe, founder of Betrayal Trauma Recovery, talks to Dave Cawley, host of the *Cold* podcast series, about the Susan Powell case, empowering victims to protect themselves and seek safety now.

**This Is the First Episode With Dave Cawley**
Warning Signs Your Husband Is Dangerous – Susan’s Story With Dave Cawley (THIS EPISODE)
*Patterns To Look Out For In Your Relationship*

Abuse Doesn’t Always Mean Physical Battering

Many abuse victims do not have proof. They don’t have bruises or broken bones to show the world that their partner is abusing them.

Instead, their bruises and brokenness are hidden beneath the surface. They can be found in the way they doubt their own worth, in the way they feel they are responsible for their husband’s choices.

**Other forms of abuse, just as serious as physical battering, include:**

Emotional abuse

Psychological abuse

Financial abuse

Sexual abuse

Sexual Coercion

Spiritual abuse

Covert physical abuse

Like many women in the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Community, Susan Powell was not a victim of physical battering, as far as experts can tell. But she suffered deeply from the abusive behaviors of her husband, Josh. To see if you’re a victim of this type of abuse, take our Emotional Abuse Quiz.

Susan Powell’s Story Teaches Us That Victim-Blaming Harms

Questions and statements like:

If it was so bad, why didn’t she leave?

It takes two to tango

Why did you push his buttons?

Why don’t you work harder on making sure he’s happy?

He’s not hitting you, are you sure it’s abuse?

Even after Susan Powell’s ten year disappearance, many still blame her subtly by asking, “If it was so bad, then why did she stay?”

As Dave says, the societal focus should be on why so many men are abusing women, not why women are staying in abusive relationships.

Susan Powell’s Story Teaches Us That Anyone Can Be A Victim

Josh Powell was diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. However, even those who are not diagnosed with NPD can be narcissistic abusers. The mental and emotional toll that narcissistic abuse takes on victims is extreme. Becoming educated about narcissistic abuse. And protecting themselves through effective boundaries can help women find safety from this insidious form of abuse.

3 Tips For Seeking Safety From Abuse

**Trust your gut.** If it feels like something is off, it probably is. Don’t ignore that feeling.

**You have more support than you realize.** A lot of times, we don’t recognize how strong and wide our network is. Reach out, you might be surprised.

**If you leave, you’re going to be okay.** It’s scary to leave, but it’s not as scary as you probably think, once you’re on the other side.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group meets multiple times a day and offers women a community of supportive, validating, and knowledgeable women to help them find safety from betrayal and abuse. Join today and share your story, process your trauma, ask hard questions, and vent painful feelings.

Transcript: Warning Signs Your Husband Is Dangerous

**Anne:** I recorded this interview in 2019. At a very intense time during my ex-husband’s post-separation abuse. I interviewed Dave Cawley, host of the cold podcast. And I want to give a shout out. He was so willing to listen to me back in 2019. So thank you from the bottom of my heart for using the interview to learn more about my story and other victims. I genuinely felt like he cared about me personally and that he cared for all victims.

So thank you to Dave Cawley and all men who are standing up for abuse victims.

Dave is a graduate of the University of Utah’s journalism school. And then went to work as a field reporter in Salt Lake City. Dave joined KSL. And then in 2018, he moved into a new role as executive producer of digital content. On December 14th, 2018. KSL and Dave launched the podcast series *Cold*.

The first season focused on the unsolved disappearance of Susan Powell. That story was close to Dave because he reported on Susan’s suspected murder from the beginning in December 2009. And continues to dig for new details. *Cold* reached number one on the Apple podcast chart on the day of its release.

Welcome, Dave.

**Dave:** Thanks, Anne. I really appreciate being on.

My Personal Connection To Susan’s Story

**Anne:** The story of Susan Powell broke the year after I was married. I got married in 2008. And so in 2009, when Susan first went missing, I closely followed the story. I had a sense at that time that something was wrong in my own marriage. I wouldn’t say at the time that I could comprehend what was happening, or even verbalize that my husband was abusive.

Something about Susan’s story was calling to me. On the day Josh murdered his sons and proved himself a murderer, I was at a family dinner with my parents and siblings, and also my husband. I said, out loud, “If anything happens to me. He killed me.”

I wanted to make sure he heard me say that to everyone because I thought that would help keep me safe. Six years later, in 2015, he was arrested for domestic violence. And that is what helped me understand what was happening. From your research of Susan Powell. Can you talk about how she felt at the beginning of her relationship?

**Dave:** Yeah, I can speak specifically to the circumstances of Josh and Susan’s marriage, because I had a unique opportunity to research and study those. Certainly, I don’t know the totality of Susan’s mind at any given point in time. All I can go on are the clues she left us, what she wrote in her journal.

What she wrote to her friends in emails, messages, things like that. That we drew in to use for the cold podcast. But I will say Susan and Josh met when Susan was barely out of high school. She was very young. And if you look at Susan at that time, she was a great student.

Susan Powell’s Story Teaches Us That Abusive Men Want To Be The Center Of Their Wife’s Universe

**Dave:** She was very hardworking, going to cosmetology school easily. In my opinion, she could have walked into any of the colleges around Washington where she lived at the time. But Josh quickly, after they started dating, isolated her. And he made her life all about him and their relationship. He did it very subtly. He used the creation almost of a mythology for their relationship. That this was a very almost fated kind of thing. That they met and fell in love.

And they’re so about each other. One another when in reality, from I think an objective point of view. You can look and say, well, it was all about how she served him, not how he served her. He was not doing things in their relationship that were advancing her best interests. He wasn’t going out of his way to do things to make her happy.

But because of her age and because of, I think some of her experience dating as a teenager, when she met Josh and he talked the big talk. She kind of fell into the idea of being in love and in this relationship. They get married quickly. So within six months of beginning to date, they’re married.

And it’s pretty clear from the get go that things are not good in their relationship, because Josh can’t keep a job. And every time he loses a job, it’s the fault of the employer. It’s never his fault. Something keeps him down. And so Susan, from the beginning, has to work multiple jobs to try to make ends meet. And help Josh get in a better place where he can hold a job.

**Anne:** I mean, when do you notice the signs your husband might kill you?

Warning Signs Of A Dangerous Husband

**Dave:** They have to move in with family several times, which is not a good situation. As we later learned, her father-in-law is a very unsavory individual, to put it mildly. Then it gets more complicated when children enter the mix.

Josh and Susan move away from Washington in part to get away from Josh’s dad. And some bad things and make a fresh start. So Susan at that point, in my opinion, still doesn’t see the origin of the problems. And thinks, hey, if we just get away from Washington, if we get to Utah. And we get away from the complicated family dynamics, then Josh and I can make it work.

**Anne:** She still doesn’t see signs her husband might kill her. But almost no one does until it’s too late..

**Dave:** No sooner do they get here than it’s the same dynamic, right? Susan’s breadwinning. She can hold a job, her husband is holding her back.But they conceive their first child. And that is when Susan starts to see the problems, because Josh as a father is not helpful. That is in 2005, and then it’s a downhill slide from there for a couple of years.

After they have their second child, Brayden, Josh disconnects. And the conflict comes out into the open. Josh has been dismissive of Susan for many years. But once she starts sticking up for herself, she has things that matter to her that are of value to her in her life, her religion, and her standards.

Susan Powell’s Story Teaches Us That Victims Need Support

**Dave:** And Josh is unwilling to practice those himself, but also to allow her to practice her own religion. Do things like pay her tithing, attend church with her, things like that. And he’s also actively undercutting her to the children, talking about how bad it is that mom goes to church, and how they don’t need to go to church with mom. And don’t listen to stuff mom says. Which I think any rational person in a marriage would say is not an okay dynamic.

That is when I think Susan starts recognizing that things are not good. She starts dropping hints to friends that she feels in danger, but then when other people tell her hey, you’re in a bad situation. You need to get out of here. She will justify why she’s staying in.

**Anne:** Well, having been in that situation myself. It’s really a situation where you have two bad options. Staying in the marriage is bad, and divorce will also be bad. You’re trying to figure out which bad scenario is the least bad one. I was struck in the podcast. Susan did what she was supposed to do as a victim of abuse.

She reached out for help. But clergy told her that if you both work on your issues, this can be worked out. She wasn’t told her husband is dangerous. Since we have over 150,000 women in our community. I hear women report this all the time. Instead of recognizing his abuse they get their abusive husband into therapy or they’re told to go to couple therapy. Can you talk more about what happened when Susan went for help?

**Dave:** That’s tough. Let me speak to some of the circumstances with Josh and Susan and counseling, and we’ll get there.

Clergy & Counseling Didn’t Keep Her Safe

**Dave:** Because conversations with clergy are confidential. We’re pretty limited in knowing exactly what kind of advice Josh and Susan received. But Susan did write in a couple of places about going to see her bishop, both with Josh and on her own. You can imagine this is a marriage at a very low point.

They’re at each other’s throats. And yeah, Susan is argumentative. I mean, she’s not one to passively just go with the flow. So when she’s unhappy, she’s venting about it. Josh points at her as she’s the one causing all this conflict.

**Anne:** What she’s “complaining about,” and I have that in air quotes, is his abuse.

**Dave:** Right.

**Anne:** Right.

**Dave:** She’s not identified it as such at this point, right?

**Anne:** He’s basically saying, I’m mad at her for being mad at me about my abuse.

**Dave:** Right, in so many words, yeah.

**Anne:** Yeah.

**Dave:** Every indication I have is that the clergy they spoke to said. “We are not qualified to be your marriage counselor, so let’s connect you with services.”

So that’s how Susan originally gets involved with marriage counseling. It’s 2008, and Josh refuses to go. The counselor she was talking to in 2008 identified and said you are being abused.

**Anne:** Oh, okay.

**Dave:** And this is when Susan first understood that because her dad was in town and actually went to the session with her. Chuck Cox, Susan’s dad, talks about how afterwards she turned to him and said, Do you think that’s true? Am I being abused? And her dad’s going, yes.

**Anne:** Yes, but she doesn’t see signs that her husband may harm her.

Signs Your Husband Is Dangerous You: Explicit Content

**Dave:** I think too, Anne, what happens is specifically in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You have lay clergy, and oftentimes, especially at the local level, these people are your neighbors. It can feel very close, I think even for some of those members of clergy. To be in the business of the personal lives of their neighbors, and that’s uncomfortable.

And I don’t want to say there’s not accountability in the same way that maybe a professional clergy. But it’s a little different in that religious community. Just because of the way those relationships exist. Sometimes between the people approaching, a bishop or stake president, or something like that, as opposed to other faiths.

**Anne:** Yeah, and many times clergy, rather than tell the victim, this is an abuse situation, your husband is dangerous, you need to get to safety. They focus on helping him. Like to reactivate someone into the church or to repent. But they don’t realize it’s keeping a victim in proximity to the abuse.

I listened to the cold podcast, and surprisingly how pornography played such a large role in developing Josh’s character. Can you talk about the role that it played in his abuse before the murder?

**Dave:** Yeah, this is a very interesting topic for discussion, because we have a pretty good record thanks to the divorce filings for Josh’s parents going back into the mid 90s. So Josh is a teenager, and his mom divorces his dad. In part because Josh’s dad did a lot of things that were not good. There’s some pretty good indication in those filings, that he introduced his kids to explicit content when they were young, both sons and daughters.

Josh Powell’s Secret Double Life

**Dave:** Because of that, we know Josh was exposed to explicit material at an early age. We know Josh was actually, by his own disclosure later to a psychologist. He is arrested at one point for stealing explicit magazines from a convenience store. You see early on that this is part of his life. It’s not until after Susan disappears, and police seize computers out of their home. And those computers are scoured for evidence, we see what happened in the meantime.

After he and Susan were married, they found many very concerning images on Josh’s computer that had been deleted for the most part. They were in what’s called free space, but Josh regularly watched it on the computer. And Susan talked a lot to her friends in messages and things that Josh was protective of his computer. She was not allowed to use his computer except to do his chores, scanning his papers, receipts, and things.

She wanted to get on the internet and Facebook and things like that. He would not allow her to do that on his computer. She had to have her own computer, which he was unwilling to pay for. So that protective behavior, I think, personally speaks to Josh knowing that there’s material on this computer that he does not want her to find.

I know there are people in law enforcement who believe the catalyst for Susan’s disappearance and murder may have been her locating something like that, calling Josh’s attention to it. And saying this is a step too far. We’re done. That’s speculation, but I think Josh’s viewing of it played a role, especially because Susan writes a lot about how he wouldn’t touch her.

**Anne:** This abuse and secret explicit materials use might be signs your husband is dangerous.

Susan Powell’s Story Teaches Us To Pay Attention To Our Gut

**Dave:** He wouldn’t show the normal types of affection that you would expect in a relationship like that. He would not hold her hand. He wouldn’t kiss her. When they were physically intimate, which was rare, he did not view it as beautiful and shared. It was very clinical. I’m trying not to be too graphic here.

I want to be careful to protect Susan’s privacy. When they had intercourse, it was not something that was a beautiful and affirming experience for Susan. It was almost, I think, traumatic in itself because of the way he insisted on it being very quick and clean and then over.

**Anne:** Women in our community assume their husbands are not viewing explicit material because they attend the temple or go to church. Because they’re under the impression that the relationship is a certain way, and they’re not being given all the information they need to make a decision. Interesting, so that form of coercion is, I would say, the most common. But it’s still coercion.

I don’t think explicit material users understand that in and of itself is a form of abuse. Just thinking about Susan, how would she feel about this? Didn’t enter Josh’s mind.

**Dave:** No.

**Anne:** He wasn’t concerned about Susan at all. All of these are red flags that her husband might kill her.

**Dave:** Not in the least, yeah. Continuing through their marriage, Josh and Susan moved from Washington to Utah to escape Steve Powell. But Steve Powell continues to groom his son well into adulthood through these long phone conversations. Steve Powell was dysfunctional in his views on intimacy. He wrote more than 2, 000 pages of explicit journals detailing his desire for his daughter-in-law, Susan.

Signs Your Husband Might Harm You: Emotional Abuse

**Dave:** And so he is interested in poisoning his son’s marriage on the belief that it will allow him to spark his relationship with Susan. Which was never going to happen. Right, but because of that, Josh is being fed this constant stream of negativity. If you look at some of Josh’s writings, going back even into his teenage years, he struggled. Even dating, before he met Susan, with being close. Just being in physical proximity to a girl or a woman, made him uncomfortable.

And when he takes that dysfunction into his marriage with Susan, it’s Susan’s fault. Because he tells his dad, Susan wants it all the time. By the time their marriage really bottoms out, they are maybe having intercourse a couple of times a year, if that.

And so you can imagine, Susan feels as a 27 year old woman, a 28 year old woman, unfulfilled. By a husband who will show her no care in daily life, no care in the bedroom. Seems repulsed by the thought of giving her a kiss or holding her hand.

And going back to your earlier point about not recognizing it as abuse. Yeah, abuse carries a lot of connotation in our society. We expect it to be hitting, to be shouting, you know, slamming of doors. Well, I think it’s arguable that if you are in a relationship with somebody and you are withholding and playing these kinds of mind games, that is a form of abuse. And unless we can call it such, we can’t address it.

Abusers “Turn Tables” To Play The Victim Role

**Anne:** Yeah, right before my ex’s arrest, he started telling me that I was unattractive. And that he never thought I was attractive, and that he hated me. I was like, whoa. And he would say, I don’t love you, but I love the kids. So finally I was like, well, then you should leave.

**Dave:** Yeah.

**Anne:** And then he wouldn’t leave. And I was like, okay, this is weird. You think I’m ugly, you don’t want to have intercourse with me. and you hate me, but you won’t leave? It was so nonsensical. It was insane. All right, so we’ve talked about the psychological abuse Susan endured. We’ve talked about how she didn’t recognize it, I didn’t recognize the signs that my husband may harm me either.

I want to talk about Josh’s behavior after the murder. It’s like many abusers after divorce. They blame their situation on their victim. They continue to lie, hide and manipulate people. And in Josh’s case, he had this huge crime, and all these people looking at him and reporters trying to get to the truth.

In my case, nobody’s been trying to investigate. My ex is still an attorney, he’s still doing his job, and he’s still lying about me. So, his current congregation thinks he’s this amazing saint, and his crazy ex-wife has done him wrong. and they feel so bad that he’s this victim.

So even in this case with Josh Powell, where there’s a murder and someone is missing, and all these police are investigating. You’ve got all these reporters, and Josh is still walking around. Lightning didn’t strike him, a bus didn’t hit him, he’s not in jail. He’s got his kids. He’s still functioning.

Susan Powell’s Story Teaches Us That Abusers Reject Accountability

**Anne:** I mean, he’s not well, obviously. But he’s still free. Why do you think society is so bad at holding these guys accountable? Even though there are he is dangerous.

**Dave:** I think, in a legal sense, and especially in the United States here, we have this concept of innocent until proven guilty. That is important to remember when we’re talking about someone being accused of something criminally. But a marriage is a civil contract, not criminal. So you are married to somebody who is abusing you. You seek a divorce, and through the divorce.

The mind games that manipulative men, in particular, can work that system to their advantage. Or to try to hurt or undercut their former spouse. It doesn’t rise to that criminal level. I think many people in broader society don’t want to feel like they are passing a judgment on somebody without proof or evidence.

The very nature of this kind of abuse, that manipulation, that financial control, that emotional abuse, is that there is no trail of evidence. And even if you could take it to a police officer or prosecutor, they would say, well, what is the crime? There’s nothing in criminal statute that this violates. So that person is able to go back into society and say, well, look, I’m a good guy. I didn’t do anything wrong.

**Anne:** I’m the victim. My ex says, “She kicked me out of the house for no reason. And then she wouldn’t talk to me.” He doesn’t say, because I sprained her fingers and had a no contact order from the courts. He doesn’t tell people that part.

**Dave:** We need to, in a cultural sense, in the broadest way possible, confront our own perceptions on abuse. And start retraining ourselves.

Signs A Husband May Kill: People Don’t Believe You

**Dave:** Me telling the Susan Powell story resulted in more people than I can even tell you reaching out to share their own personal experiences. Even talking to you here, Anne, about your relationship, I think, is in a similar vein. Many women are dealing with this right now. And have never found someone who they felt safe, being very candid about what they’ve gone through.

And I think many of us hold these personal experiences close. We don’t share them. There’s shame attached to it. There’s fear of not being believed. What I personally learned was that when people are willing to share those stories with me. When women say, hey, your podcast sounded like my life.

The most important thing I can do is express belief and empathy. And say, I’m so grateful that you’re safe. I’m sorry, you have gone through or are going through this horrible circumstance. I believe you. And that opens conversation. I strongly feel that is the path forward. In trying to address why abusive men can just walk away cleanly. And say, “Well, hey, I did nothing wrong.”

https://youtu.be/agzTN-9Qpd0

**Anne:** Or, “You know, it didn’t work out somewhere. It just doesn’t work out.” People just dismiss it even though there may be signs her husband might harm her. That’s why I created this community to be that safe place. Because other places are like, oh, all guys use it. Why are you so worried about it? So here, at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we are all about safety, safety, and more safety. We will help you figure out what is going on.

And we recommend you get to safety quickly. While you don’t know what’s going on. And then, from a safe place, you can objectively observe and find out what’s happening.

He Manipulated Her

**Anne:** I get the impression that Susan didn’t know about the explicit content use until the very end. Was there any indication that she knew about it early on?

**Dave:** I doubt she did. I mean, like I mentioned, there is speculation by some in law enforcement that maybe she discovered something and that was a catalyst. I’m under the impression that Susan had no clue Josh was viewing explicit materials.

**Anne:** I’ve always wondered why reporters don’t include the alleged perpetrators pornography use when reporting crime or murder. If it was a factor? I think that would highlight how it is an element of domestic abuse. And to watch for signs the signs he might kill you.

**Dave:** And to the point about why do you not hear it reported, it’s a difficult spot. Especially early in reporting, we often work from a limited amount of information. The Powell case is unique in that in putting together the cold podcast, we had access to a lot of information that was not available to us when Susan first disappeared.

Material gained through search warrants and subpoenas, and things like that. So, when I sat down to tell Susan’s story, I was more informed than I think many of us were at the time she disappeared. About what was going on behind the scenes. Say somebody came forward and said, yeah, you know, Josh goes on the internet and looks at explicit material.

You need a nexus that ties it together. And without all the context of Josh’s journals and Susan’s journals, and all the stuff with these recordings, it’s difficult to put that together in a way where you see the broader context.

Susan Powell’s Story Teaches Us That Your Husband’s Secrets Can Kill You

**Dave:** So I’m grateful that with the rise of podcasting and some of this longer form of investigative reporting. We’re better able to make those associations clear than you’ll ever see on the 10 o’clock news. Think when you look at Josh as somebody who’s leading a double life, he clearly did not ever allow Susan to see his true self.

Josh was a narcissist, and I say that in the sense of a psychologist actually said you have narcissistic personality disorder. He created a persona. The persona of Josh as a young man, and the older he grew, the more solidified that persona became. And the inner core, the true identity of Josh Powell, was not something that anybody ever would touch because of that outer shell. Especially his wife. And so, yes, he will never concede to her that he’s viewing it.

That he’s taking all these steps. Which, in my opinion, were preparatory for killing her and cashing in on her life insurance. Others around her were not interpreting warning signs he might use lethal violence. The exterior was about, he’s the expert at everything. Nobody’s smarter than me. My kids are the best kids and can do no wrong, because they’re extensions of me.

It’s a very interesting thing, I think, with men who are abusive in this way. It’s one of the signs he might do something drastic. That they, you know, similarly tend to show some of these narcissistic traits where they have this secret life. They protect that secret life to the exclusion of everything else. And I think part of what creates this danger, right, is the idea that when you are exposed, when say a spouse discovers this, now this will collapse that entire world.

If He Protects His Secrets, It’s a Sign He May Kill You

**Dave:** And as a man exhibiting this kind of narcissism, when you face that reality of your world collapsing. I’ll just make this person who discovered it, who sees the real me, go away. I think that’s part of why we see violence, and especially homicide, come into play in those moments.

**Anne:** Yeah, I think so too. I discovered my husband’s use 18 months after we had married in the temple, and he had promised me he didn’t use explicit material, so he had been lying to me and manipulating me the whole time. That’s when I got really scared because that’s a sign of something very serious.

I think it’s interesting that he went into “recovery”. And when I say that, I mean in quotes. He became like the model addict in recovery. And we were actually public speaking about his amazing recovery, and I didn’t know that he was still lying and manipulating me. I thought I knew how to deal with an addict husband. So near the end, I was like, this is a sham.

You are a fake and not in recovery. You haven’t been, and you’re speaking to people as if you are. And that is when the violence escalated. Escalating violent is a sign he might harm you. I was like, I’m not speaking with you anymore, and quit my job. I was the PR director of a popular addiction recovery practice. And so I quit my job and I was like, no, I am done.

In the addiction recovery space, which you may or may not be familiar with. When someone enters recovery, everything in that family becomes about him and his recovery. Let’s make sure he’s okay. Let’s treat him like he has cancer. I believe that’s actually a continuation of the abuse.

If He Has No Empathy, That’s A Red Flag

**Anne:** I think they should say, okay, she’s a victim of abuse here. She’s been a victim of abuse for 10 years when she didn’t know about his use. Now we know that explicit materials use is a sign that he may use violence against women, because that’s all it is these days. Let’s treat her like she has cancer, and let’s make sure she’s safe. And then let’s wait at a safe distance to see if he is a safe person to be around.

That’s not what happens right now. When a couple goes into clergy and says he’s using they’re like, oh, okay. Well, wife, you support him, be supportive. And I’m like, what? No, no, no. That should never happen, because you don’t know what else is going on. Like get her to safety. I mean, I can’t tell you how many women spend tons of time reading books about addiction. How can I support him?

How can I make sure I don’t shame him in and on and on? And he’s like, Great. It’s all about me. The relationship’s all about me. Meanwhile, she can’t live a life, because the whole life is about him and his addiction. They have to adjust everything to fit this new reality, and it’s, as you can tell, really making me mad.

Susan’s Story Teaches Us That Therapy Does Not Stop Abuse & Manipulation

**Dave:** With Susan and Josh, he is unwilling to go when Susan is in therapy. Susan writes repeatedly that she hopes that if she goes, and he sees it improves her. He will then be willing to go. I want to go back in time and sit down with Susan and say, Susan, you do not understand the way your husband’s brain works, that is never going to happen.

The only time he ever goes to therapy is when she confronts him with, I’m leaving. Susan is the meal ticket and is doing child care, bread winning, and taking care of the house. If Susan leaves, Josh will have to work. He’ll also have to explain why his wife left, right?

He reluctantly goes along, does the minimum necessary in that situation to keep her on the hook. The idea of being supportive of your husband, you’re working together, he’s going to see how it improves me. Josh has no interest in improving. And I think many of these men who are psychologically abusing their spouses, who are violating that trust, are not interested in self improvement for self improvement’s sake.

**Anne:** When people say, well, he’s going to therapy, I’m like, but why is he going to therapy? Like, is it because he genuinely wants to change? From your podcast, we can see why it was difficult for the law to stop Josh Powell, who was under investigation for murder. Because they were trying to gather evidence. So what hope do victims like me and my community have of getting help when it’s “just emotional abuse.” I mean, it’s so scary that they’re not seeing how dangerous he is.

**Anne:** What would you say to Susan before the murder? Let’s say five years before.

Why Did She Stay? The Focus Should Be, Why Do Men Abuse Wives?

**Dave:** Susan dealt with a lot, I think, of self doubt. She knew something was wrong in her marriage, and took steps to begin extricating and protecting herself. And in my opinion, there is no clear answer why she stayed in that relationship. I hear that a lot, right? Why did she stay? Which in my opinion is the wrong focus. It should be on why do we have an abusive man perpetrating on his wife?

But for the sake of argument, if we take this question of why Susan did stay, many people want to blame the church. People that maybe aren’t from the community, or even who are, who say, well, clearly she was deluded by her religion. You have other people who want to blame it on X, Y, Z. The truth is, I think there are many influences in any of these situations. Susan feels some fear because Josh has made, I think, some threats to her in probably some very subtle ways, right?

She expresses a fear that I’m riding my bike to work on 5600 West in West Valley City, this busy road, and how easy would it be to have an “accident?” When her father-in-law writes in his journal that Josh has mentioned, boy, he sure wishes a car would get hit Susan. So, I’m looking at that saying, yeah, he’s probably told her as much, right? I wish a truck would just hit her. And she’s thinking, oh my gosh, my husband wants me dead.

So you have fear. Fear is definitely not a good sign. Susan goes to the temple and prays about it. And she has a feeling that she needs to stay. So you have all these contrary forces, emotions.

If You Think Your Husband Could Kill You, Trust Your Gut

**Dave:** What I would tell Susan is, A, trust your gut. Clearly, you were concerned enough to feel a fear, and then you basically talked yourself out of it. Second, you have more support than you realize. Susan had a network of friends and family who we see after she disappears, catalyze and become this amazing force to advocate for her and her story. And they’re still doing that now, 10 years later. That’s to me amazing. And I don’t think she recognized how strong her support network was.

The other thing I would tell her is, Susan, if you leave, you’re gonna be okay. Because, living with somebody who, year after year, undercuts you. And robs you of your positive self image, who makes you feel like dirt, like you’re unlovable. Makes the idea of going out into the world by yourself with your two children and trying to support yourself.

I have the benefit of looking at Susan from outside of that relationship and seeing somebody who is incredibly hard working, who is bright, who loves her boys. Who has plenty of admirers, who has many friends, who makes friends easily, right?

And even for somebody who doesn’t have all those things, it’s scary to leave and take that step. But it’s also not as scary as you probably think, once you are on the other side. Like, Susan would have been okay as long as she was safe from Josh. There were signs he might kill her, but no body educated her about them. So going back to your point, get to safety, do whatever it takes to get to safety. And then start rebuilding your life, and you’ll be okay.

Susan’s Story Opened My Eyes To Potential Violence

**Dave:** But seeing the impact that Susan’s story has had opened my eyes in a big way. Even today, having this conversation with you, Anne, is a continuation of that process. It’s a matter of learning and forcing the uncomfortable. And that’s my biggest takeaway. Honestly, I think seeing that abusive relationship in very close detail is, at its core, a lack of empathy on Josh’s part, not showing what I would consider a human care for another person’s well-being.

**Anne:** Yeah, there’s a lot that goes into this whole topic of misogyny, believing women and the *Me Too* movement. All these other factors that came about after the *Me Too* movement happened, after Susan’s disappearance. Then what are signs your husband might hill you?

**Dave:** And it’s not political. I think Me Too gets a little politicized. And people start wanting to say well, you know, but not all guys, and it’s like no no, no. Let’s not do that. Let’s focus on believing and showing empathy for people in bad situations who need help. That’s all.

**Anne:** Yeah, your podcast was amazing. It was gripping. If you have not yet listened, it is called *Cold*. If you have not heard it, I would highly recommend it. It is excellent.

Thank you so much for your time, Dave. We appreciate you being here.

**Dave:** Thanks, Anne.

What Is Financial Abuse In Divorce? — **How To Protect Yourself Financially If Your Marriage Is Struggling** Apr 22, 2025
It’s shocking how common financial abuse in divorce is. Here are the best ways to protect yourself. Divorce is hard. If you’ve been married to a narcissistic abuser, it can feel even more impossible to break free. These individuals often don’t stop their controlling behavior after a divorce is filed. Instead, they escalate their attempts to assert power.

One of the most common—and devastating—ways narcissistic abusers do this is through **financial abuse**. If you’re a woman divorcing a narcissist, it’s vital to understand how financial abuse works and how to protect yourself. To discover if you’re emotionally abused, take thisfree emotional abuse quiz.

What Is Financial Abuse in Divorce?

Financial abuse is an abuser’s way of gaining and maintaining power by controlling access to money and resources. During a divorce, this often includes tactics like withholding financial support, hiding assets, or intentionally complicating legal and financial processes. To wreak havoc on their victim’s stability. The abuse doesn’t necessarily stop after divorce—it can take on new, cruel forms, keeping victims entangled in elaborate schemes long after ties should have been cut.

Why Do Narcissists Use Financial Abuse In Divorce?

Narcissistic abusers are motivated by control. They want to undermine your autonomy, manipulate your decisions, and make you dependent on them.

Anne Blythe, the founder of Betrayal Trauma Recovery, explains it clearly, “Narcissistic abusers are very calculated. They control where, when, and how they show their true colors. At home, they ‘lose their temper.’ Outside of it, they maintain a polished, socially acceptable image. Financial abuse is yet another method for them to assert power at your expense.”

When you understand that financial abuse stems from their need for control—not because of your mistakes or shortcomings—you’re better equipped to set boundaries and protect your well-being.

Financial Abuse In Divorce Tactics

Financial abuse takes many forms. These are some of the most common examples of what narcissists might do to use financial abuse in divorce proceedings to maintain control over your life:

1. Hiding Income or Assets

An abuser may attempt to conceal money, savings accounts, or investments to make it appear as though they have less than they do. This could limit the entitled financial settlement.

One victim shared, “He told us he was so poor that our church had to pay his mortgage and car payment—almost $2,000 a month. But when my lawyer looked at his financial records, we found out the truth. He spent thousands of dollars on alcohol and other bad stuff, and even putting a lot of money into his retirement account while pretending he had no money.”

2. Cancelling Credit Cards or Withholding Financial Support

It’s not uncommon for abusers to cancel shared credit cards or refuse to pay child or spousal support during the divorce process, leaving victims unable to meet daily expenses.

3. Overwhelming With Legal Delays

Dragging out divorce proceedings is another method of control. By filing unnecessary motions, refusing to negotiate, or missing deadlines, abusers increase costs and prolong the emotional strain to maintain dominance.

4. Sabotaging Employment

Some women report that abusers interfere with their ability to work—such as creating emotional stress, harassing them at work, or withholding child care arrangements—to keep them dependent on the abuser’s finances.

The abuser uses these tactics to exhaust you, and designed to make you feel stuck. The good news? You **can** overcome them.

5. Manipulating Child Visitation

They might withhold child support payments or use visitation schedules to intentionally disrupt your financial planning.

What It Feels Like

Post-divorce financial abuse can feel relentless. Another victim of financial abuse after divorce said. “For over two years, I dealt with him purposefully withholding child support and blocking me from accessing what the court decided was mine.”

How To Protect Yourself From Financial Abuse

Protecting yourself from financial abuse requires awareness, preparation, and boundaries. Here are the most effective actions to take:

**Work With a Trusted Family Lawyer**: Hire an experienced lawyer who understands financial abuse. They can help you subpoena records like bank statements and tax returns, ensuring hidden assets don’t slip through the cracks. Discuss protective measures like restraining orders, mediation, or legally established limits with your divorce attorney. These can stop further harassment or financial tampering.

**Collect and Organize Financial Documentation**: Gather everything—pay stubs, credit card statements, bank records, tax returns, and more. Keep copies in a secure, private location or store them digitally for easy access.

**Open Individual Accounts**: Set up a personal checking and savings account in your name. Immediately update your paycheck direct deposits and remove your abuser’s access to shared accounts.

**Learn Strategy**: It’s imperative that you learn how to think strategically about and communicate with a narcissist. Enroll in The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop to learn more.

**Seek Expert Emotional Support**: You don’t have to go through this alone. There are resources, like the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast or group sessions, where women who’ve faced similar challenges can offer advice and emotional support.

Finding Empowerment & Healing from Financial Abuse During Divorce

Financial abuse is one of the hardest forms of abuse to endure, especially during something as emotional as divorce. However, with the right tools, planning, and support, you can rise above it. Remember, what they do says a lot about them—and nothing about you. Focus on building your own emotional and financial security, so you can live free from their control.

If you’re struggling to process or prepare for financial abuse, Betrayal Trauma Recovery is here to help, join one of our group sessions for women or explore our workshops to gain valuable skills in navigating financial and emotional abuse.

You deserve safety, security, and peace.

Transcript: Financial Abuse in Divorce: How To Protect Yourself

I have Brenda on today’s episode. She’s going to share her expertise as a financial advisor about financial abuse in divorce. Welcome, Brenda.

**Brenda:** Hello, Anne. It’s really good to be here

**Anne:** Thank you so much for coming on today. Let’s talk about finances.

**Brenda:** Because everyone is always so excited to talk about finances, right?

**Anne:** One of the things I want to ask victims is, if you had a billion dollars, would you stay married to him? And the answer is usually no. They’re so afraid because they’re trapped. They don’t know how they’re going to take care of their kids, and they don’t want to work. They didn’t sign up for that.

Sometimes they do work, but figuring out how I support a family by myself is so overwhelming. What are the best ways to take financial stuff off the table, so women can make decisions based on their safety, not finances?

**Brenda:** I love your question about if you had a billion dollars. I think that’s very clarifying.

Gathering Financial Information

**Brenda:** And that gives an indication of, are they staying in that space, relationship or marriage because they hope things will change? Or is it simplified? Is it solely financial? And then if the answer to the billion dollar question is no, I would not stay here. I would want out. Information is power. So that’s where you start gathering information. And oftentimes, an individual who does leave an abusive relationship might have the means, they might be protected.

They might be okay financially. But someone keeps them in the dark, perhaps about their financial situation.So they might not have the financial records, they might not know what their spouse makes. They might be on an allowance. If you don’t have financial information about your family. Or if your family’s financial situation is in shape. It’s hard to know. You’re just in a space of fear because it’s unknown. Will you face financial abuse in divorce?

So the first thing is to become knowledgeable, if you can, about your true financial situation. Sometimes it can be overt. They could talk to their spouse about needing access. And depending on whom they’re dealing with, they might get it. Or, if they don’t have any access, then it becomes, let’s call it a treasure hunt. Where you’re picking up bits and pieces of the financial picture to try to understand what your options are, what your situation is.

The other piece of that, if you’re considering leaving and if leaving means divorce, is to get smart about what the rules are in your area. I’ve heard it said there are like 33 hundred counties in the United States, something like that. Don’t quote me on the exact number.

Financial Abuse In Divorce: The Importance of Financial Knowledge

**Brenda:** And there are just as many ways to be divorced. So rules vary state by state rules and rights. They vary from municipality to municipality. That at least gives people grounding or information data to start figuring out, you know, would they be okay?

**Anne:** In The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop, we have a section about finances, and Living Free is not about getting divorced. It’s about seeing reality. In the beginning, when women got to that part, they were like, does she want me to get divorced? And the answer is not yes or no. I’m not trying to push anybody in any direction, but I want them safe. And financial safety is such a huge part of this puzzle.

In Living Free, when people talk about physical abuse, many people who listen to this podcast are not necessarily physically assaulted. They’re not being punched, they don’t have bruises. They’re experiencing emotional and psychological abuse and coercion, it’s difficult to see. I want people to start to think about the threats of not having a home, not putting food on the table, not having a roof over your head, not being able to pay for gas to get around, that is a physical threat. This is why getting to physical safety is part of deliverance from abuse.

**Brenda:** Sure. It’s your basic fundamental human needs.

**Anne:** Exactly, so if they’re threatening, if you divorce me. Then you’ll never be able to take care of yourself. There will be financial abuse in divorce. Are you thinking that in your mind is a physical threat? It’s extremely physical, and I see it as physical abuse. So think, is this threat of physical harm the thing that keeps me from getting to safety?

Steps To Financial Safety

**Anne:** Being educated about your finances and what you need is one step toward not just financial safety, but also physical safety. Because if you know you can take care of yourself, that is such a relief. Even if I never got any money from him, I could keep a roof over my head, pay my bills and buy food. That sort of thing.

**Brenda:** And it lets people figure out what other information they need and what decisions they need to make. If baseline is, oh, I could… Everyone is different. I could go back to work. In our area. There are programs that help women in abusive situations retrain and get to a living wage. Is that available near you?

Do you have enough assets that you have every right to take? Every situation will be different. But unless you have the information, you can’t figure out what your next steps are.

**Anne:** When you said talk to him, that made me nervous, because I was like, whoa. You might tip him off, and then he might start hiding money, which is financial abuse in divorce. And he might start manipulating you. So aside from talking to him, what tips do you have for how they can start to find information about their finances?

**Brenda:** I’m just going to backtrack to talking to him for a minute. Yes, it could. And everyone knows their relationship and situation better than anyone else. I have had people who will get the information, and they do use a ruse. It will be, I need it to sign Susie up for soccer, or I want to go to this workshop with my sister, and learn how to understand taxes. Can I have our tax return?

The Role Of Credit Reports

**Brenda:** So it might not be overt, and they still have access to the information. I would say anywhere you can get it. If you can get logins, yes, then you can go online. However, there are flags there, because if you log into the bank account, that bank account or credit card might register the login.

They might be set so that there’s an alert. Someone logged into your account at 2:24 this afternoon. You got to be aware that that’s out there too. If. You are in such a situation where you’re cut off from all of that information. So it just as asking someone directly could present danger, know that logging into things could as well.

**Anne:** That is a good point, I hadn’t thought of that. I like the ruse idea, that, hey, I’m going to be logging into this thing, can I have the login? Because I’m doing blah blah blah, that is a reason not related to him. Not like, you seem like you’re an abuser. I’m considering leaving you, and I don’t want to experience financial abuse in divorce. Can I have the login? It’s probably the worst idea, I think

**Brenda:** You’re exposing yourself. So unfortunately, as you and your listeners all know, you’re walking a fine line, and they’re in a precarious situation, but they also usually know. I know from my own experience, I would often know the things that were going to, like tee up an issue, explosion or anger. Sometimes you don’t. And sometimes that’s another problem, right? It’s out of the blue.

Financial Abuse In Divorce: Facing Realities

**Brenda:** Hey, I just put cheese on that sandwich. I didn’t think it was going to. …cause World War III.

**Anne:** They get unpredictable when they feel like they don’t have control. And so that’s why I’m concerned about like, so many women have told me, oh, he’ll never do that. Never underestimate how much your narcissist ex doesn’t want to leave you alone. So many of our clients here at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, they’re like, oh, I’m getting divorced, but I’ve got it all ready to go. It’s going to go well. He told me he’ll always take care of me.

And then, like a hundred percent of the time, it does not. They experience financial abuse in divorce. And it goes the way he manipulated her to think it’s going to go, it always goes sideways.

**Brenda:** And the system is built for that. People often going through divorce think, I will be heard, finally. The system will protect me. I trust the system to do its job. It’s not going to. We don’t even know what the job is half the time. If you get all the way to trial, the decisions are being made by a judge who might be late for a dentist appointment.

They’re paying half or no attention to your story. And then they’re going to rule. You can’t trust the system, you can know the rules. You can try to figure out what is your bottom line? What’s your worst case scenario? Where are you protected? Where are you exposed? But circling back to like where you can get the information.

Becoming Your Own Investigator

**Brenda:** You turn yourself into a little sleuth. So your own little private investigator, do you get the mail when the mail comes in? Do bills come? You can order a credit report, and you can do that separately. So at least, you know what credit cards exist, and how long they’ve existed. That’s another way that sometimes exposes hidden debts or hidden money.

It depends on your situation in your household and where the safe conversations are. And a lot of that is, I would say, catering to the abuser.

**Anne:** I would say strategically talking to him rather than catering, but yes.

**Brenda:** Yes, so you’re figuring out. What is the information you’re looking for? How can you get it? What is a viable reason for having it that isn’t going to create a situation that’s going to make life more difficult for you? And worsen financial abuse in divorce.

**Anne:** Getting a credit report. That’s a good idea, because then you can see the stuff that he’s pulled. Can he have his own separate credit report that she can’t see some stuff on?

**Brenda:** Yes.

**Anne:** Okay, so she wouldn’t be able to see like a credit card that he applied for all by himself.

**Brenda:** Depending on the information she has, she might order a credit report for him.

**Anne:** Oh, if she knows his information, she could order it.

**Brenda:** And the question you ask is what’s the bounce back? Is he going to be alerted that there was a credit pool, but you can find that out before you do it, rather than be surprised after. So it’s just a question to ask.

**Anne:** Yeah.

Overcoming Overwhelm

**Anne:** What I have found with victims is that the whole situation is so overwhelming. Trying to make decisions, trying to figure out what to do, is so overwhelming. It feels like you’ve got problem after problem, after problem just piled on top of you. That’s why figuring out how long it will take to recover from your husband’s emotional abuse is impossible. And there’s no way to get out from under it. Talking about maybe just doing one thing today to try to reduce the overwhelm when it comes to finances, any ideas there so that it’s not so overwhelming?

**Brenda:** So are you asking in the case of someone who plans to leave the relationship?

**Anne:** No, here at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we only talk about safety. So just so that you are financially safe, so that you feel financially safe. And also so that you know how much money you would need if he divorced you, for example. So this physical and financial safety, what I’m talking about, is just being. educated about your financial situation. How much your house payment is, how much houses cost in your area, how much you could make if you got a job at the library.

You know, just basic information. I feel like information leads to emotional, financial, and physical safety when it comes to like, how much do I need to have a roof over my head? And I think regardless of what path you take to safety, you need to know this. There may be financial abuse in divorce.

**Brenda:** You’re looking at four major categories. What you have, what you spend, what you owe and what you earn. And anytime you start accumulating that information, it’s also future casting, right? You can then picture yourself perhaps in a different situation or safer situation, because you’ve got a little bit of that information.

Financial Abuse In Divorce: Building A Secure Future

**Brenda:** What can you earn, like you said, what can you earn working at the library? Were you working, and maybe you were a teacher, and your credentials are out of date? What would it take to get those back? So you can be hired. Are schools in the area hiring? Is that something you would want to go back to? So it’s all building information. So you can be more prepared if there is financial abuse in divorce.

That would be in the what you earn category. What it takes to live? You can get online, or if the newspaper still exists in your area, get a newspaper. What does an apartment cost? Do you need a car? What would that cost? Do you currently have one? Just starting to put together the pieces of what would it take for you to be secure food, shelter, clothing?

Is that available to you? What are your options there? Every little bit of additional information you can gather is more than you had before. And hopefully both empowering and putting you in a safer place, just because you are then more informed.

**Anne:** You saying that reminds me of this class I had in high school. In high school, we were paired up with a partner. Mine, his name was Tony. I remember this well. And then we drew little slips of paper for, like, your job. Different things about you and you pulled them out. That was your scenario. I was paired up with Tony because he had a car and I didn’t, and we were to go out and find an apartment. that we could afford and buy groceries and figure it all out.

High School Class About Finances & Gathering Information

**Anne:** So we would drive around, and that was so helpful. I was like, whoa, it was at that time that I personally decided to go to college. Because I had a job at the time, and I knew there was no way I could afford this apartment on the job I currently have that I do after school. And it helped me put two and two together as a teenager.

But then I’m thinking about the divorce coaching clients we have at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, because many of our coaches are certified divorce coaches. And I remember one of them was talking about one of our clients, who she thought I could never do this. I can never do that. But once they went through all the financial stuff, she realized that all she needed was an extra thousand dollars a month. That was it.

Then when she figured that out, she thought, Oh, I can easily get a job that earns me a thousand dollars a month. And I’d still afford my house. And once she had that information, she could move forward on the path she thought was the safest for her. Getting this information is so helpful. And especially if you don’t know what you want to decide, I think getting the information will help you make that decision.

**Brenda:** When their faces light up and they’re like, Oh, I can do this. I’m going to be okay. And sometimes at first blush, the first pass at looking at what it’s going to cost might not be okay, but at least then they know what it’s going to take. Maybe we can’t be in safety right now, but this is what it will take me to get there.

Personal Financial Realizations

**Anne:** You’ve had personal experience with this. Can you talk about how these issues came into play with your own personal experience? How did infidelity or financial abuse affect you in divorce?

**Brenda:** As I went through years and years of my relationship, it became more abusive and more covert. And when I look back now, I can say, Oh my goodness, what was I thinking? Who was that person? And there’s a lot of shame. There’s a lot of guilt. There’s a lot of baggage in the things that became okay over the years. And I didn’t see it until I was away from it. I knew in my heart that it was not okay to be screamed at in the street because of some small thing, right.

And called names, and repeatedly verbally abused. But it happened so gradually over time. That it was just my normal. It was what I was used to. And it took starting to step away from the relationship to look back and reframe and see how bad things were. There were times when my husband literally asked other women out in front of me, and then gaslit me. Like, oh no, it didn’t happen that way. You’re making a big deal out of it.

https://youtu.be/F1AfegOLcU4

She’s just a business connection or whatever. Which it sounds telling now, like how on earth could you stand there and watch that happen? Go home and make dinner, and put the kids to bed or whatever our normal was. And I think it was just normalized. And the only way I got clear on this is not okay. Was with people, either friends or professionals, who after a while could see and validate.

Financial Abuse In Divorce: Support & Validation

**Brenda:** Oftentimes, we’re told, oh, that’s not a big deal. Oh, he had a bad day. Oh, whatever the excuse is, it’s still an excuse. And it is not okay to diminish people, swear at people, abuse people and hide information. And then with people who are, again, professionals, the therapist who, instead of saying, this is how you accommodate him. Who say, how do we support you?

And I see you and the behavior. It’s not normal, rational or acceptable, but sometimes it takes getting permission, I think from others. Who instead of saying, suck it up, you can do this, you just have to keep accommodating. Say you are worthy, whole, valuable, and this is the only life you have. You don’t need to live it this way. Once you start getting more voices who are giving you that support, you can start to see a different reality.

You can start to see space where you can have a valuable life. Where you can control your own decisions, where you’re not always walking on eggshells waiting for the next blow up or bad thing to happen.

**Anne:** Yeah, I think so many women, at least women, who come to Betrayal Trauma Recovery, have been to a lot of therapy. They’ve asked their friends and family for help, and often, no one has told them, this is abuse. Many of them have experienced financial abuse in divorce.

**Brenda:** It’s how you can change, how you can accommodate, how you can change yourself and make it okay. But the answer I think is, it’s not okay. It is abuse, and no one deserves that.

Financial Decisions & Safety

**Anne:** Once women realize, once I realized it, through whatever way they do it. Some women learn it from listening to the podcast. There are many ways that you can realize, oh, this is abuse. Then when you’ve got the right pair of glasses to actually see reality for what it is. Then you can start making decisions, that help you start healing from this hidden abuse. Which I think comes into the financial piece. Because once you know the reality of your financial situation, you can start making decisions.

I’m thinking of another woman who thought her husband had a ton of money. And so she thought that in divorce, she would get a lot, so she wasn’t worried about getting a job. She wasn’t opposed to getting a job at all. She just didn’t think about it. Then when she found out more, she realized he was in so much debt that it was better for her to not take anything from him and just let him have his debt.

And then she was free to build her life the way she wanted, and not be saddled with all the debt he had accrued. And in her situation, that helped her move forward, realizing I’m going to go back to college and start a career.

**Brenda:** We are then working through their finances and what’s feasible, and just call it, what does it cost to live? That’s what we’re really figuring out. A woman in an abusive relationship trying to figure out what her options were. And at first blush, she looked at what now she had access to their finances. And could protect herself from financial abuse in divorce. But she looked at what they had. She’s like, oh, I’m going to have half a million dollars. I’m set for life.

Planning Ahead

**Brenda:** Let’s work through this. Let’s do the math and figure out what would it take for her to live for her kids, for their schooling, for their, all the things. And it came up to about a hundred thousand dollars a year. So half a million dollars after taxes, call it $350, 000. That’s going to get you through about three and a half years. So now you have that information, good. You’re going to be okay for three and a half years. And then what?

Or, if you don’t want to dip into that, what are your options now? For me, every little bit of information you have adds to the pieces of this puzzle you’re putting together for what your life can look like. What is safety to you? What is acceptable to you? The more information you have, the better you are able to make your own decisions. And protect yourself from financial abuse in divorce.

**Anne:** In some cases, I hear about women hiring a forensic accountant, and professionals like that help with their divorce cases. Can you talk more about specialized services like a forensic accountant? What does somebody like that do? Things that women might need to consider when looking at finances.

**Brenda:** So a forensic accountant will dig deep into the nitty gritty of the family finances. Sometimes looking for misspending, hidden money, things like that. Sometimes involved in putting values to things. So if you’re dividing things, you got to know what you’re dividing.

What is it worth? So a forensic accountant is often worthwhile when there are big financial questions or money might be hidden somewhere. It’s harder and harder to hide money. Because there’s an electronic trail, a paper trail, and tax trails, for almost every transaction we do.

Financial Abuse In Divorce: The Cost Of Financial Investigations

**Brenda:** Unless you’re dealing in cash or trade, it has a trail, so it’s harder to hide. It’s not impossible, but it’s harder. For most people, it’s not necessary if you don’t have a complex situation. Often hired, often overkill, if there’s not a lot of money at stake. So I had a client come to me about a year ago, and she was sure, absolutely sure her husband was hiding money. But when we kept talking about it, the amount she thought he was hiding.

It would have cost her so much more money to find it than it was worth. So we’ve got to figure out what it’s worth. Is it millions at stake? Are there tens of thousands of dollars missing? Then it’s probably worthwhile. If we’re talking a thousand dollars, that might have set aside. You will probably pay much more in professional fees to track that down. Than you’re ever going to get back.

As you’re approaching all this and trying to get smarter about your financial situation. Whether you’re aware of everything. Some of the good questions to ask yourself are at what cost? What’s the return on that investment? If you get that information, is it $5 or $50,000? How much are you willing to spend to get it? A forensic accountant is expensive.

The spouse took out a credit card that his wife wasn’t aware of, and spent it on pornography, and a woman in Eastern Europe he kept sending money to. So he would draw it off the credit card. She was incensed, and she was very hurt. They actually went through the divorce process, and she wanted an accounting of what he had spent. So she wouldn’t be a victim of financial abuse in divorce.

Is It Cost Effective To Investigate?

**Brenda:** And I completely understand that. They weren’t in a financial situation where they could throw money away freely. But in fact, what he had spent was about $500. It was a lot, but it would have cost so much more to trace that money. It wasn’t worth it. So in that case, she knew about it. They could use it in their discussions. She’s never going to get that money back. He already spent it, but tracing it wasn’t worthwhile.

Another woman did go through, it was 10,000 pages of credit card bills they gave her in a hard copy. But we found $250,000 that he had spent on a girlfriend. That was definitely worth it.

**Anne:** So, depending on what it is, I feel the same way about alimony, for example. If the lifetime value of spousal support is $80,000, let’s say, like $10,000 for eight years, and you spend $150, 000 getting that. You should think about the numbers here. When dealing with financial abuse in divorce.

**Brenda:** Do some math.

**Anne:** Yeah, you do some math and figure that out on the flip side of this. I have heard of a few victims who are like, I will start hiding money, and they have the impression, and this may be true. I am unschooled on this part of it. So they’re like, I’m going to start putting money here so they can’t find it, so I’m not going to get stuck paying him alimony.

Can you talk about that? Is there a way to legally protect yourself from that? For women who think there is a way to hide the money, can you maybe talk them through this situation?

**Brenda:** Maybe, but at what cost?

Legal & Ethical Considerations

**Brenda:** First of all, is there a legal way to hide money? Not really. In that case, if you’re going through divorce, you’re signing a contract on file with the court. And you’re essentially saying whether it’s mediation, collaborative process, litigation, whatever you go through. Every document I’ve ever seen says I told the truth and disclosed everything. So that’s pretty heavy.

If you’re going to hide money and you’re still okay with signing that, and then it’s found out later, you’re not in a good situation. So again, was it worth it? Is there a legal way? There are tricks that people and groups will share about how to stash away a little cash. Sometimes it might be necessary. I’ve seen partners cut their partner off and stop paying the bills out of spite. That is financial abuse in divorce.

**Anne:** That happened to me. I was completely cut off from finances, yeah.

**Brenda:** If you could be at risk and say physical safety of not being able to have food, shelter and clothing, you’re not able to live safely. Can you set aside money? Yes, the hiding it part is where it gets tricky. If the money is marital, you have a right to it. It is not uncommon. I’m here not working, raising the kids, and I don’t have anything of my own. Yes, you do. You have just as much right. You’re not being paid for your work, but it’s not his retirement account. It is marital.

There’s a caveat to everything. If he had it before you got married, that part’s not marital. But anything earned or saved during a marriage, unless it’s a gift or inheritance, because again, caveat, is marital, you have a right to it.

Financial Abuse In Divorce: Different Laws In Different States

**Brenda:** It’s not like you’re hiding and stealing if you’re taking money to ensure you can live.

**Anne:** In my case, I had paid $100,000 of his school debt when we got married. That was pre-marital assets in my case, because I was a teacher for 10 years and saved well and a bunch of stuff. And I did not get that back, because I apparently commingled it. Then my grandma, when she died, had given me a small sum of money. You’re saying if it’s an inheritance, it’s yours.

During mediation, instead of saying it’s the law, I’ll give it to her. He said, I know how much she loved her grandma, and I would never want to take that away from her. As if he was just being so nice. Instead of me realizing in that moment, he was just trying to look good when he had to give it back, no matter what.

**Brenda:** He had to give it back if it stayed in your name. If you put it in a joint bank account, not the case.

**Anne:** It was in a joint bank account. So maybe he was “being nice.”

**Brenda:** Yeah.

**Anne:** He wasn’t.

**Brenda:** Exactly, he was looking good.

**Anne:** For whatever reason he wanted to look good.

**Brenda:** I guess this is the difference between a financial advisor who you might have to help plan your retirement and what have you. And a certified divorce financial analyst, because divorce has its own money roles. They are actually different partnerships, depending on the state you live in, and can have their own money rules. Some recognize it like a common law marriage, even if you’re not married. Others don’t, and your rights vary depending on where you live.

**Anne:** Yeah.

Empowerment & Rights

**Anne:** That’s good to know. With your financial experience, what would you say to women skeptical about their financial future, victims of financial abuse in divorce?

**Brenda:** I would say you have value and rights, it is in your best interest to know them. Sometimes you’re not going to like what you learn, but you’ll have the information you need to start seeing a different future. To take control of your own situation. Even if it’s a little thing at a time, if you are not safe, and that doesn’t feel good. And you’ve been gaslit or brainwashed to believe you don’t have rights to have financial information.

Everything in the marriage belongs to the abuser, not to you. You have been told you’re lucky to be there. I would say you’re probably not lucky to be there. The more you surround yourself with the support of people who tell you that you have value, that you have worth. As challenging or huge as moving out of that space might seem. Even a little step, like a little crack in the situation, can then become bigger.

Hopefully, you’ll find yourself in a space where you are safe. Whether it’s married or not in a relationship, where you are safe and valued. Often in an abusive situation, you are made to feel small, and as though you owe something to the abuser. You don’t, you are complete, whole and valuable. You don’t have to give in to financial abuse in divorce.

**Anne:** Thank you so much for coming on today’s episode and sharing your thoughts. I appreciate it. Her website is bridgingdivorcesolutions.com. Brenda, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today.

**Brenda:** Thank you, I appreciate it. I appreciate the work you do. It’s incredibly important.

See Financial Abuse In Divorce? — **How To Protect Yourself Financially If Your Marriage Is Struggling** Apr 22, 2025
It’s shocking how common financial abuse in divorce is. Here are the best ways to protect yourself. Divorce is hard. If you’ve been married to a narcissistic abuser, it can feel even more impossible to break free. These individuals often don’t stop their controlling behavior after a divorce is filed. Instead, they escalate their attempts to assert power.

One of the most common—and devastating—ways narcissistic abusers do this is through **financial abuse**. If you’re a woman divorcing a narcissist, it’s vital to understand how financial abuse works and how to protect yourself. To discover if you’re emotionally abused, take thisfree emotional abuse quiz.

What Is Financial Abuse in Divorce?

Financial abuse is an abuser’s way of gaining and maintaining power by controlling access to money and resources. During a divorce, this often includes tactics like withholding financial support, hiding assets, or intentionally complicating legal and financial processes. To wreak havoc on their victim’s stability. The abuse doesn’t necessarily stop after divorce—it can take on new, cruel forms, keeping victims entangled in elaborate schemes long after ties should have been cut.

Why Do Narcissists Use Financial Abuse In Divorce?

Narcissistic abusers are motivated by control. They want to undermine your autonomy, manipulate your decisions, and make you dependent on them.

Anne Blythe, the founder of Betrayal Trauma Recovery, explains it clearly, “Narcissistic abusers are very calculated. They control where, when, and how they show their true colors. At home, they ‘lose their temper.’ Outside of it, they maintain a polished, socially acceptable image. Financial abuse is yet another method for them to assert power at your expense.”

When you understand that financial abuse stems from their need for control—not because of your mistakes or shortcomings—you’re better equipped to set boundaries and protect your well-being.

Financial Abuse In Divorce Tactics

Financial abuse takes many forms. These are some of the most common examples of what narcissists might do to use financial abuse in divorce proceedings to maintain control over your life:

1. Hiding Income or Assets

An abuser may attempt to conceal money, savings accounts, or investments to make it appear as though they have less than they do. This could limit the entitled financial settlement.

One victim shared, “He told us he was so poor that our church had to pay his mortgage and car payment—almost $2,000 a month. But when my lawyer looked at his financial records, we found out the truth. He spent thousands of dollars on alcohol and other bad stuff, and even putting a lot of money into his retirement account while pretending he had no money.”

2. Cancelling Credit Cards or Withholding Financial Support

It’s not uncommon for abusers to cancel shared credit cards or refuse to pay child or spousal support during the divorce process, leaving victims unable to meet daily expenses.

3. Overwhelming With Legal Delays

Dragging out divorce proceedings is another method of control. By filing unnecessary motions, refusing to negotiate, or missing deadlines, abusers increase costs and prolong the emotional strain to maintain dominance.

4. Sabotaging Employment

Some women report that abusers interfere with their ability to work—such as creating emotional stress, harassing them at work, or withholding child care arrangements—to keep them dependent on the abuser’s finances.

The abuser uses these tactics to exhaust you, and designed to make you feel stuck. The good news? You **can** overcome them.

5. Manipulating Child Visitation

They might withhold child support payments or use visitation schedules to intentionally disrupt your financial planning.

What It Feels Like

Post-divorce financial abuse can feel relentless. Another victim of financial abuse after divorce said. “For over two years, I dealt with him purposefully withholding child support and blocking me from accessing what the court decided was mine.”

How To Protect Yourself From Financial Abuse

Protecting yourself from financial abuse requires awareness, preparation, and boundaries. Here are the most effective actions to take:

**Work With a Trusted Family Lawyer**: Hire an experienced lawyer who understands financial abuse. They can help you subpoena records like bank statements and tax returns, ensuring hidden assets don’t slip through the cracks. Discuss protective measures like restraining orders, mediation, or legally established limits with your divorce attorney. These can stop further harassment or financial tampering.

**Collect and Organize Financial Documentation**: Gather everything—pay stubs, credit card statements, bank records, tax returns, and more. Keep copies in a secure, private location or store them digitally for easy access.

**Open Individual Accounts**: Set up a personal checking and savings account in your name. Immediately update your paycheck direct deposits and remove your abuser’s access to shared accounts.

**Learn Strategy**: It’s imperative that you learn how to think strategically about and communicate with a narcissist. Enroll in The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop to learn more.

**Seek Expert Emotional Support**: You don’t have to go through this alone. There are resources, like the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast or group sessions, where women who’ve faced similar challenges can offer advice and emotional support.

Finding Empowerment & Healing from Financial Abuse During Divorce

Financial abuse is one of the hardest forms of abuse to endure, especially during something as emotional as divorce. However, with the right tools, planning, and support, you can rise above it. Remember, what they do says a lot about them—and nothing about you. Focus on building your own emotional and financial security, so you can live free from their control.

If you’re struggling to process or prepare for financial abuse, Betrayal Trauma Recovery is here to help, join one of our group sessions for women or explore our workshops to gain valuable skills in navigating financial and emotional abuse.

You deserve safety, security, and peace.

Transcript: Financial Abuse in Divorce: How To Protect Yourself

I have Brenda on today’s episode. She’s going to share her expertise as a financial advisor about financial abuse in divorce. Welcome, Brenda.

**Brenda:** Hello, Anne. It’s really good to be here

**Anne:** Thank you so much for coming on today. Let’s talk about finances.

**Brenda:** Because everyone is always so excited to talk about finances, right?

**Anne:** One of the things I want to ask victims is, if you had a billion dollars, would you stay married to him? And the answer is usually no. They’re so afraid because they’re trapped. They don’t know how they’re going to take care of their kids, and they don’t want to work. They didn’t sign up for that.

Sometimes they do work, but figuring out how I support a family by myself is so overwhelming. What are the best ways to take financial stuff off the table, so women can make decisions based on their safety, not finances?

**Brenda:** I love your question about if you had a billion dollars. I think that’s very clarifying.

Gathering Financial Information

**Brenda:** And that gives an indication of, are they staying in that space, relationship or marriage because they hope things will change? Or is it simplified? Is it solely financial? And then if the answer to the billion dollar question is no, I would not stay here. I would want out. Information is power. So that’s where you start gathering information. And oftentimes, an individual who does leave an abusive relationship might have the means, they might be protected.

They might be okay financially. But someone keeps them in the dark, perhaps about their financial situation.So they might not have the financial records, they might not know what their spouse makes. They might be on an allowance. If you don’t have financial information about your family. Or if your family’s financial situation is in shape. It’s hard to know. You’re just in a space of fear because it’s unknown. Will you face financial abuse in divorce?

So the first thing is to become knowledgeable, if you can, about your true financial situation. Sometimes it can be overt. They could talk to their spouse about needing access. And depending on whom they’re dealing with, they might get it. Or, if they don’t have any access, then it becomes, let’s call it a treasure hunt. Where you’re picking up bits and pieces of the financial picture to try to understand what your options are, what your situation is.

The other piece of that, if you’re considering leaving and if leaving means divorce, is to get smart about what the rules are in your area. I’ve heard it said there are like 33 hundred counties in the United States, something like that. Don’t quote me on the exact number.

Financial Abuse In Divorce: The Importance of Financial Knowledge

**Brenda:** And there are just as many ways to be divorced. So rules vary state by state rules and rights. They vary from municipality to municipality. That at least gives people grounding or information data to start figuring out, you know, would they be okay?

**Anne:** In The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop, we have a section about finances, and Living Free is not about getting divorced. It’s about seeing reality. In the beginning, when women got to that part, they were like, does she want me to get divorced? And the answer is not yes or no. I’m not trying to push anybody in any direction, but I want them safe. And financial safety is such a huge part of this puzzle.

In Living Free, when people talk about physical abuse, many people who listen to this podcast are not necessarily physically assaulted. They’re not being punched, they don’t have bruises. They’re experiencing emotional and psychological abuse and coercion, it’s difficult to see. I want people to start to think about the threats of not having a home, not putting food on the table, not having a roof over your head, not being able to pay for gas to get around, that is a physical threat. This is why getting to physical safety is part of deliverance from abuse.

**Brenda:** Sure. It’s your basic fundamental human needs.

**Anne:** Exactly, so if they’re threatening, if you divorce me. Then you’ll never be able to take care of yourself. There will be financial abuse in divorce. Are you thinking that in your mind is a physical threat? It’s extremely physical, and I see it as physical abuse. So think, is this threat of physical harm the thing that keeps me from getting to safety?

Steps To Financial Safety

**Anne:** Being educated about your finances and what you need is one step toward not just financial safety, but also physical safety. Because if you know you can take care of yourself, that is such a relief. Even if I never got any money from him, I could keep a roof over my head, pay my bills and buy food. That sort of thing.

**Brenda:** And it lets people figure out what other information they need and what decisions they need to make. If baseline is, oh, I could… Everyone is different. I could go back to work. In our area. There are programs that help women in abusive situations retrain and get to a living wage. Is that available near you?

Do you have enough assets that you have every right to take? Every situation will be different. But unless you have the information, you can’t figure out what your next steps are.

**Anne:** When you said talk to him, that made me nervous, because I was like, whoa. You might tip him off, and then he might start hiding money, which is financial abuse in divorce. And he might start manipulating you. So aside from talking to him, what tips do you have for how they can start to find information about their finances?

**Brenda:** I’m just going to backtrack to talking to him for a minute. Yes, it could. And everyone knows their relationship and situation better than anyone else. I have had people who will get the information, and they do use a ruse. It will be, I need it to sign Susie up for soccer, or I want to go to this workshop with my sister, and learn how to understand taxes. Can I have our tax return?

The Role Of Credit Reports

**Brenda:** So it might not be overt, and they still have access to the information. I would say anywhere you can get it. If you can get logins, yes, then you can go online. However, there are flags there, because if you log into the bank account, that bank account or credit card might register the login.

They might be set so that there’s an alert. Someone logged into your account at 2:24 this afternoon. You got to be aware that that’s out there too. If. You are in such a situation where you’re cut off from all of that information. So it just as asking someone directly could present danger, know that logging into things could as well.

**Anne:** That is a good point, I hadn’t thought of that. I like the ruse idea, that, hey, I’m going to be logging into this thing, can I have the login? Because I’m doing blah blah blah, that is a reason not related to him. Not like, you seem like you’re an abuser. I’m considering leaving you, and I don’t want to experience financial abuse in divorce. Can I have the login? It’s probably the worst idea, I think

**Brenda:** You’re exposing yourself. So unfortunately, as you and your listeners all know, you’re walking a fine line, and they’re in a precarious situation, but they also usually know. I know from my own experience, I would often know the things that were going to, like tee up an issue, explosion or anger. Sometimes you don’t. And sometimes that’s another problem, right? It’s out of the blue.

Financial Abuse In Divorce: Facing Realities

**Brenda:** Hey, I just put cheese on that sandwich. I didn’t think it was going to. …cause World War III.

**Anne:** They get unpredictable when they feel like they don’t have control. And so that’s why I’m concerned about like, so many women have told me, oh, he’ll never do that. Never underestimate how much your narcissist ex doesn’t want to leave you alone. So many of our clients here at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, they’re like, oh, I’m getting divorced, but I’ve got it all ready to go. It’s going to go well. He told me he’ll always take care of me.

And then, like a hundred percent of the time, it does not. They experience financial abuse in divorce. And it goes the way he manipulated her to think it’s going to go, it always goes sideways.

**Brenda:** And the system is built for that. People often going through divorce think, I will be heard, finally. The system will protect me. I trust the system to do its job. It’s not going to. We don’t even know what the job is half the time. If you get all the way to trial, the decisions are being made by a judge who might be late for a dentist appointment.

They’re paying half or no attention to your story. And then they’re going to rule. You can’t trust the system, you can know the rules. You can try to figure out what is your bottom line? What’s your worst case scenario? Where are you protected? Where are you exposed? But circling back to like where you can get the information.

Becoming Your Own Investigator

**Brenda:** You turn yourself into a little sleuth. So your own little private investigator, do you get the mail when the mail comes in? Do bills come? You can order a credit report, and you can do that separately. So at least, you know what credit cards exist, and how long they’ve existed. That’s another way that sometimes exposes hidden debts or hidden money.

It depends on your situation in your household and where the safe conversations are. And a lot of that is, I would say, catering to the abuser.

**Anne:** I would say strategically talking to him rather than catering, but yes.

**Brenda:** Yes, so you’re figuring out. What is the information you’re looking for? How can you get it? What is a viable reason for having it that isn’t going to create a situation that’s going to make life more difficult for you? And worsen financial abuse in divorce.

**Anne:** Getting a credit report. That’s a good idea, because then you can see the stuff that he’s pulled. Can he have his own separate credit report that she can’t see some stuff on?

**Brenda:** Yes.

**Anne:** Okay, so she wouldn’t be able to see like a credit card that he applied for all by himself.

**Brenda:** Depending on the information she has, she might order a credit report for him.

**Anne:** Oh, if she knows his information, she could order it.

**Brenda:** And the question you ask is what’s the bounce back? Is he going to be alerted that there was a credit pool, but you can find that out before you do it, rather than be surprised after. So it’s just a question to ask.

**Anne:** Yeah.

Overcoming Overwhelm

**Anne:** What I have found with victims is that the whole situation is so overwhelming. Trying to make decisions, trying to figure out what to do, is so overwhelming. It feels like you’ve got problem after problem, after problem just piled on top of you. That’s why figuring out how long it will take to recover from your husband’s emotional abuse is impossible. And there’s no way to get out from under it. Talking about maybe just doing one thing today to try to reduce the overwhelm when it comes to finances, any ideas there so that it’s not so overwhelming?

**Brenda:** So are you asking in the case of someone who plans to leave the relationship?

**Anne:** No, here at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we only talk about safety. So just so that you are financially safe, so that you feel financially safe. And also so that you know how much money you would need if he divorced you, for example. So this physical and financial safety, what I’m talking about, is just being. educated about your financial situation. How much your house payment is, how much houses cost in your area, how much you could make if you got a job at the library.

You know, just basic information. I feel like information leads to emotional, financial, and physical safety when it comes to like, how much do I need to have a roof over my head? And I think regardless of what path you take to safety, you need to know this. There may be financial abuse in divorce.

**Brenda:** You’re looking at four major categories. What you have, what you spend, what you owe and what you earn. And anytime you start accumulating that information, it’s also future casting, right? You can then picture yourself perhaps in a different situation or safer situation, because you’ve got a little bit of that information.

Financial Abuse In Divorce: Building A Secure Future

**Brenda:** What can you earn, like you said, what can you earn working at the library? Were you working, and maybe you were a teacher, and your credentials are out of date? What would it take to get those back? So you can be hired. Are schools in the area hiring? Is that something you would want to go back to? So it’s all building information. So you can be more prepared if there is financial abuse in divorce.

That would be in the what you earn category. What it takes to live? You can get online, or if the newspaper still exists in your area, get a newspaper. What does an apartment cost? Do you need a car? What would that cost? Do you currently have one? Just starting to put together the pieces of what would it take for you to be secure food, shelter, clothing?

Is that available to you? What are your options there? Every little bit of additional information you can gather is more than you had before. And hopefully both empowering and putting you in a safer place, just because you are then more informed.

**Anne:** You saying that reminds me of this class I had in high school. In high school, we were paired up with a partner. Mine, his name was Tony. I remember this well. And then we drew little slips of paper for, like, your job. Different things about you and you pulled them out. That was your scenario. I was paired up with Tony because he had a car and I didn’t, and we were to go out and find an apartment. that we could afford and buy groceries and figure it all out.

High School Class About Finances & Gathering Information

**Anne:** So we would drive around, and that was so helpful. I was like, whoa, it was at that time that I personally decided to go to college. Because I had a job at the time, and I knew there was no way I could afford this apartment on the job I currently have that I do after school. And it helped me put two and two together as a teenager.

But then I’m thinking about the divorce coaching clients we have at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, because many of our coaches are certified divorce coaches. And I remember one of them was talking about one of our clients, who she thought I could never do this. I can never do that. But once they went through all the financial stuff, she realized that all she needed was an extra thousand dollars a month. That was it.

Then when she figured that out, she thought, Oh, I can easily get a job that earns me a thousand dollars a month. And I’d still afford my house. And once she had that information, she could move forward on the path she thought was the safest for her. Getting this information is so helpful. And especially if you don’t know what you want to decide, I think getting the information will help you make that decision.

**Brenda:** When their faces light up and they’re like, Oh, I can do this. I’m going to be okay. And sometimes at first blush, the first pass at looking at what it’s going to cost might not be okay, but at least then they know what it’s going to take. Maybe we can’t be in safety right now, but this is what it will take me to get there.

Personal Financial Realizations

**Anne:** You’ve had personal experience with this. Can you talk about how these issues came into play with your own personal experience? How did infidelity or financial abuse affect you in divorce?

**Brenda:** As I went through years and years of my relationship, it became more abusive and more covert. And when I look back now, I can say, Oh my goodness, what was I thinking? Who was that person? And there’s a lot of shame. There’s a lot of guilt. There’s a lot of baggage in the things that became okay over the years. And I didn’t see it until I was away from it. I knew in my heart that it was not okay to be screamed at in the street because of some small thing, right.

And called names, and repeatedly verbally abused. But it happened so gradually over time. That it was just my normal. It was what I was used to. And it took starting to step away from the relationship to look back and reframe and see how bad things were. There were times when my husband literally asked other women out in front of me, and then gaslit me. Like, oh no, it didn’t happen that way. You’re making a big deal out of it.

https://youtu.be/F1AfegOLcU4

She’s just a business connection or whatever. Which it sounds telling now, like how on earth could you stand there and watch that happen? Go home and make dinner, and put the kids to bed or whatever our normal was. And I think it was just normalized. And the only way I got clear on this is not okay. Was with people, either friends or professionals, who after a while could see and validate.

Financial Abuse In Divorce: Support & Validation

**Brenda:** Oftentimes, we’re told, oh, that’s not a big deal. Oh, he had a bad day. Oh, whatever the excuse is, it’s still an excuse. And it is not okay to diminish people, swear at people, abuse people and hide information. And then with people who are, again, professionals, the therapist who, instead of saying, this is how you accommodate him. Who say, how do we support you?

And I see you and the behavior. It’s not normal, rational or acceptable, but sometimes it takes getting permission, I think from others. Who instead of saying, suck it up, you can do this, you just have to keep accommodating. Say you are worthy, whole, valuable, and this is the only life you have. You don’t need to live it this way. Once you start getting more voices who are giving you that support, you can start to see a different reality.

You can start to see space where you can have a valuable life. Where you can control your own decisions, where you’re not always walking on eggshells waiting for the next blow up or bad thing to happen.

**Anne:** Yeah, I think so many women, at least women, who come to Betrayal Trauma Recovery, have been to a lot of therapy. They’ve asked their friends and family for help, and often, no one has told them, this is abuse. Many of them have experienced financial abuse in divorce.

**Brenda:** It’s how you can change, how you can accommodate, how you can change yourself and make it okay. But the answer I think is, it’s not okay. It is abuse, and no one deserves that.

Financial Decisions & Safety

**Anne:** Once women realize, once I realized it, through whatever way they do it. Some women learn it from listening to the podcast. There are many ways that you can realize, oh, this is abuse. Then when you’ve got the right pair of glasses to actually see reality for what it is. Then you can start making decisions, that help you start healing from this hidden abuse. Which I think comes into the financial piece. Because once you know the reality of your financial situation, you can start making decisions.

I’m thinking of another woman who thought her husband had a ton of money. And so she thought that in divorce, she would get a lot, so she wasn’t worried about getting a job. She wasn’t opposed to getting a job at all. She just didn’t think about it. Then when she found out more, she realized he was in so much debt that it was better for her to not take anything from him and just let him have his debt.

And then she was free to build her life the way she wanted, and not be saddled with all the debt he had accrued. And in her situation, that helped her move forward, realizing I’m going to go back to college and start a career.

**Brenda:** We are then working through their finances and what’s feasible, and just call it, what does it cost to live? That’s what we’re really figuring out. A woman in an abusive relationship trying to figure out what her options were. And at first blush, she looked at what now she had access to their finances. And could protect herself from financial abuse in divorce. But she looked at what they had. She’s like, oh, I’m going to have half a million dollars. I’m set for life.

Planning Ahead

**Brenda:** Let’s work through this. Let’s do the math and figure out what would it take for her to live for her kids, for their schooling, for their, all the things. And it came up to about a hundred thousand dollars a year. So half a million dollars after taxes, call it $350, 000. That’s going to get you through about three and a half years. So now you have that information, good. You’re going to be okay for three and a half years. And then what?

Or, if you don’t want to dip into that, what are your options now? For me, every little bit of information you have adds to the pieces of this puzzle you’re putting together for what your life can look like. What is safety to you? What is acceptable to you? The more information you have, the better you are able to make your own decisions. And protect yourself from financial abuse in divorce.

**Anne:** In some cases, I hear about women hiring a forensic accountant, and professionals like that help with their divorce cases. Can you talk more about specialized services like a forensic accountant? What does somebody like that do? Things that women might need to consider when looking at finances.

**Brenda:** So a forensic accountant will dig deep into the nitty gritty of the family finances. Sometimes looking for misspending, hidden money, things like that. Sometimes involved in putting values to things. So if you’re dividing things, you got to know what you’re dividing.

What is it worth? So a forensic accountant is often worthwhile when there are big financial questions or money might be hidden somewhere. It’s harder and harder to hide money. Because there’s an electronic trail, a paper trail, and tax trails, for almost every transaction we do.

Financial Abuse In Divorce: The Cost Of Financial Investigations

**Brenda:** Unless you’re dealing in cash or trade, it has a trail, so it’s harder to hide. It’s not impossible, but it’s harder. For most people, it’s not necessary if you don’t have a complex situation. Often hired, often overkill, if there’s not a lot of money at stake. So I had a client come to me about a year ago, and she was sure, absolutely sure her husband was hiding money. But when we kept talking about it, the amount she thought he was hiding.

It would have cost her so much more money to find it than it was worth. So we’ve got to figure out what it’s worth. Is it millions at stake? Are there tens of thousands of dollars missing? Then it’s probably worthwhile. If we’re talking a thousand dollars, that might have set aside. You will probably pay much more in professional fees to track that down. Than you’re ever going to get back.

As you’re approaching all this and trying to get smarter about your financial situation. Whether you’re aware of everything. Some of the good questions to ask yourself are at what cost? What’s the return on that investment? If you get that information, is it $5 or $50,000? How much are you willing to spend to get it? A forensic accountant is expensive.

The spouse took out a credit card that his wife wasn’t aware of, and spent it on pornography, and a woman in Eastern Europe he kept sending money to. So he would draw it off the credit card. She was incensed, and she was very hurt. They actually went through the divorce process, and she wanted an accounting of what he had spent. So she wouldn’t be a victim of financial abuse in divorce.

Is It Cost Effective To Investigate?

**Brenda:** And I completely understand that. They weren’t in a financial situation where they could throw money away freely. But in fact, what he had spent was about $500. It was a lot, but it would have cost so much more to trace that money. It wasn’t worth it. So in that case, she knew about it. They could use it in their discussions. She’s never going to get that money back. He already spent it, but tracing it wasn’t worthwhile.

Another woman did go through, it was 10,000 pages of credit card bills they gave her in a hard copy. But we found $250,000 that he had spent on a girlfriend. That was definitely worth it.

**Anne:** So, depending on what it is, I feel the same way about alimony, for example. If the lifetime value of spousal support is $80,000, let’s say, like $10,000 for eight years, and you spend $150, 000 getting that. You should think about the numbers here. When dealing with financial abuse in divorce.

**Brenda:** Do some math.

**Anne:** Yeah, you do some math and figure that out on the flip side of this. I have heard of a few victims who are like, I will start hiding money, and they have the impression, and this may be true. I am unschooled on this part of it. So they’re like, I’m going to start putting money here so they can’t find it, so I’m not going to get stuck paying him alimony.

Can you talk about that? Is there a way to legally protect yourself from that? For women who think there is a way to hide the money, can you maybe talk them through this situation?

**Brenda:** Maybe, but at what cost?

Legal & Ethical Considerations

**Brenda:** First of all, is there a legal way to hide money? Not really. In that case, if you’re going through divorce, you’re signing a contract on file with the court. And you’re essentially saying whether it’s mediation, collaborative process, litigation, whatever you go through. Every document I’ve ever seen says I told the truth and disclosed everything. So that’s pretty heavy.

If you’re going to hide money and you’re still okay with signing that, and then it’s found out later, you’re not in a good situation. So again, was it worth it? Is there a legal way? There are tricks that people and groups will share about how to stash away a little cash. Sometimes it might be necessary. I’ve seen partners cut their partner off and stop paying the bills out of spite. That is financial abuse in divorce.

**Anne:** That happened to me. I was completely cut off from finances, yeah.

**Brenda:** If you could be at risk and say physical safety of not being able to have food, shelter and clothing, you’re not able to live safely. Can you set aside money? Yes, the hiding it part is where it gets tricky. If the money is marital, you have a right to it. It is not uncommon. I’m here not working, raising the kids, and I don’t have anything of my own. Yes, you do. You have just as much right. You’re not being paid for your work, but it’s not his retirement account. It is marital.

There’s a caveat to everything. If he had it before you got married, that part’s not marital. But anything earned or saved during a marriage, unless it’s a gift or inheritance, because again, caveat, is marital, you have a right to it.

Financial Abuse In Divorce: Different Laws In Different States

**Brenda:** It’s not like you’re hiding and stealing if you’re taking money to ensure you can live.

**Anne:** In my case, I had paid $100,000 of his school debt when we got married. That was pre-marital assets in my case, because I was a teacher for 10 years and saved well and a bunch of stuff. And I did not get that back, because I apparently commingled it. Then my grandma, when she died, had given me a small sum of money. You’re saying if it’s an inheritance, it’s yours.

During mediation, instead of saying it’s the law, I’ll give it to her. He said, I know how much she loved her grandma, and I would never want to take that away from her. As if he was just being so nice. Instead of me realizing in that moment, he was just trying to look good when he had to give it back, no matter what.

**Brenda:** He had to give it back if it stayed in your name. If you put it in a joint bank account, not the case.

**Anne:** It was in a joint bank account. So maybe he was “being nice.”

**Brenda:** Yeah.

**Anne:** He wasn’t.

**Brenda:** Exactly, he was looking good.

**Anne:** For whatever reason he wanted to look good.

**Brenda:** I guess this is the difference between a financial advisor who you might have to help plan your retirement and what have you. And a certified divorce financial analyst, because divorce has its own money roles. They are actually different partnerships, depending on the state you live in, and can have their own money rules. Some recognize it like a common law marriage, even if you’re not married. Others don’t, and your rights vary depending on where you live.

**Anne:** Yeah.

Empowerment & Rights

**Anne:** That’s good to know. With your financial experience, what would you say to women skeptical about their financial future, victims of financial abuse in divorce?

**Brenda:** I would say you have value and rights, it is in your best interest to know them. Sometimes you’re not going to like what you learn, but you’ll have the information you need to start seeing a different future. To take control of your own situation. Even if it’s a little thing at a time, if you are not safe, and that doesn’t feel good. And you’ve been gaslit or brainwashed to believe you don’t have rights to have financial information.

Everything in the marriage belongs to the abuser, not to you. You have been told you’re lucky to be there. I would say you’re probably not lucky to be there. The more you surround yourself with the support of people who tell you that you have value, that you have worth. As challenging or huge as moving out of that space might seem. Even a little step, like a little crack in the situation, can then become bigger.

Hopefully, you’ll find yourself in a space where you are safe. Whether it’s married or not in a relationship, where you are safe and valued. Often in an abusive situation, you are made to feel small, and as though you owe something to the abuser. You don’t, you are complete, whole and valuable. You don’t have to give in to financial abuse in divorce.

**Anne:** Thank you so much for coming on today’s episode and sharing your thoughts. I appreciate it. Her website is bridgingdivorcesolutions.com. Brenda, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today.

**Brenda:** Thank you, I appreciate it. I appreciate the work you do. It’s incredibly important.

Full Therapeutic Disclosure — **What Is A Therapeutic Disclosure? What You Need To Know If Your Husband Is An Addict** Apr 15, 2025
When a woman uncovers her husband’s infidelity, she might seek help from an addiction therapist. The therapist may recommend a therapeutic disclosure. What is a therapeutic disclosure? To summarize, here are 4 things you need to know.

A therapeutic disclosure is a process that involves the addict disclosing their full history to a therapist and his wife. In theory, the purpose is to provide the betrayed wife with all the information she needs, so she can make informed decisions about the relationship moving forward.

However, at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we don’t recommend it. Here’s why

1. Therapists mis-identify why he “needs” a Therapeutic Disclosure

A therapist may suggest that your husband needs a therapeutic disclosure, but what exactly is he disclosing? If the things he’s disclosing qualify as emotional, psychological or some other type of abuse, it’s not recommended that you participate in his therapy or a therapist led disclosure in any way.

To see if any of the things he’s disclosing qualify as emotional abuse, take ourfree emotional abuse quiz.

2. A Therapeutic Disclosure may Put You In Harms Way

Because therapeutic disclosures keep women in proximity to possibly abusive behavior, it’s important to know that abusive men often use the “trickle” method to selectively “disclose”, but it’s really calculated to manipulate and control her.

3. Abuse Experts Know Therapeutic *Anything* Makes Abuse Worse

Abusive men aren’t abusive because of things like childhood trauma or feeling ashamed. They’re abusive because they choose to be. If they have problems like trauma or shame, they could choose other ways to cope, like exercising, eating too much, or even building model trains. Abuse is always a choice.

Therapy helps figure out why someone acts the way they do. But an abusive man can confuse his therapist and wife by making up lots of “reasons” for the so-called root cause. These excuses can take over and become the focus. It’s better to avoid being part of an abusive man’s therapy altogether.

4. What Should I Do Instead Of Asking For A Therapeutic Disclosure?

Instead of convincing a husband to do a therapeutic disclosure, women who experience betrayal can focus on their own emotional and psychological safety.

**Learn More About Why Lying Is Abusive:** Listen to The FREE Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast.

**Determine Her Husband’s True Character:** Enroll in The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop to determine if your husband is this type of abuser, and if you discover he is, learn emotional safety strategies to protect yourself.

**Get Professional Support**: Facing this type of abuse is difficult. There is a community of women who understand. Attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session TODAY.

Transcript: What Is A Therapeutic Disclosure?

**Anne:** It’s just me today. I’m going to be talking about therapeutic disclosures. When you discover your husband is looking at online content, lying, having affairs, or soliciting. Someone might tell you, or you may think he’s a sex addict. And if you go to addiction therapy. There’s a high likelihood that an addiction therapist, will have him do a therapeutic disclosure.

So we’re going to talk about why I think therapeutic disclosures are dangerous. And then you decide what you want to do after listening to what I have to say. So, first of all, what is a therapeutic disclosure? It is a process that involves the addict disclosing their full history to his wife. In a “so-called structured way” with the guidance of a therapist.

In theory, the purpose of a therapeutic disclosure is to provide the betrayed wife all the information she needs. For her to make informed decisions about the relationship moving forward. Now, I want to talk about all the reasons why that doesn’t make sense. First of all, their history does not include all the times they manipulated their wife over little and big things. All the lies, all the emotional and psychological abuse, and the coercion.

It does not address his abuse, which is the actual problem. If you take that to the next logical step, you might say, then I’m going to get them in an abuse program. Well, an abuse program is pretty much the exact same thing. It’s in a couple setting where the wife says, Hey, these are the things I need to see. This is what I want to know.

The Role Of Therapists In Disclosures

**Anne:** There’s really no difference. Your abusive husband can manipulate the therapist. He can take his time and drag it out. Like he has a lot of control to exploit that situation. So abuse experts understand that anything therapeutic will worsen the abuse. Because men aren’t abusive because of their childhood trauma or shame, or for any other reason other than they want to exploit people.

I know many people with childhood trauma. I feel shame. And I watch a lot of TV sometimes, or I might go for a walk. I call my sister, you know, some people use model trains. Abuse is not the only option here. There are so many other options. Nothing’s gonna stop him from wanting to exploit the situation. Except for him wanting to stop. And if he wanted to stop, he wouldn’t be like that in the first place. So abuse is a choice.

The purpose of therapy is to uncover the underlying cause of a person’s behavior. So in therapy, an abusive, manipulative, deceitful man will run the therapist and his wife in circles. He’ll give both of them all sorts of reasons. And most of these reasons are lies, and then these “reasons” take on a life of their own. So it’s best to stay away from being involved in an abusive man’s therapy, treatment, or program at all costs.

A therapist could tell you that a therapeutic disclosure is important, to “avoid trickle disclosures.” And that sounds like a good idea. If a therapist tells you we’re going to do this, so you can get the whole truth. So he doesn’t just give you a little information. here and there.

Therapeutic Disclosures & Continued Abuse

**Anne:** But what they won’t tell you is this is just an abuser lying. He’ll disclose bits of information tactically to manipulate, distress you or drag things out. They know that this process of disclosing things at tactical times gives them control. So they’re going to prolong the process for as long as possible to maintain that control. Throughout that whole thing she’s still unsafe. She’s unsafe at every point.

Not realizing she’s being lied to and manipulated, staying in contact with his constant abuse. Most often in the form of grooming. And because they’re doing this, victims undergo immense trauma for that time. Now, even if they don’t realize it, it seems like it’s going well. So many women come to Betrayal Trauma Recovery, and share six months after the disclosure or two years later. They realize what was happening.

And they realized it was all lies and manipulation. They are so traumatized that they spent that much time basically just in this fog. With a therapist possibly enabling their continued abuse. Years ago, when I started podcasting, I interviewed a C-SAT about disclosures. She disagrees with me and thinks disclosures are great. And she uses them in her practice.

When I interviewed her, it was really at the beginning. I didn’t love disclosures, but I was willing to have an open-mind. I posted the interview on my podcast, and then pretty soon after removed it. Because I realized this is problematic, and I don’t want to hurt someone’s reputation. My podcast isn’t a gotcha podcast. I appreciate everyone who has spent the time to come and be interviewed.

What Is A Therapeutic Disclosure? Community Feedback

**Anne:** Sometimes I disagree with people. And because of the way the interview goes, I don’t air that episode. Because I want to make sure I’m putting out the best information that I feel good about. I also want to acknowledge that some of you may have actually gone through this process, and it worked out great for you. If you feel that way, go to the bottom of this transcript, and comment. You can interact with our community about your experience.

If it worked for you, I’m so glad it did. I don’t want to recommend it to anyone. And I’ll tell you the reasons why, but I also don’t want you to feel bad if you did it and it worked out great for you. Everybody is different. But reading the transcript of this podcast from years ago, which hasn’t even been in circulation, right? I took it out of circulation years ago. We talked about what is a therapeutic disclosure. There are so many important points that I wanted to talk about.

Now part of that episode was that we sent out a call for questions about disclosures at that time. And women wrote in their questions. So here’s a question that we received. One community member asked. Shouldn’t it be up to the wife to know or ask anything she needs to, even if it hurts her and causes her more pain? Is pain the enemy here? Isn’t unknowingly being in an unsafe situation far more dangerous? So that was the first question.

Therapists’ Assumptions & Misconceptions

**Anne:** Now this therapist said she thought it was up to the partner to decide the level of detail they wanted in the disclosure. Which is fascinating to me that this therapist assumed this guy would somehow tell the truth. Or that she could get the level of information she actually wanted. He’s super manipulative. So putting a woman in this position where you’re giving her the impression that she can get information. If he is a liar who manipulates people, is super scary.

The woman who asked the question says, isn’t unknowingly being in an unsafe situation, far more dangerous? Yes, a hundred percent, but the disclosure itself is an unsafe situation. I’m going to talk about what to do, instead of a disclosure at the end. So keep listening, because I will give you an alternative.

This therapist said when she starts disclosures, and I’m going to do a quote here. She said, “For me, when I’m leading disclosures or doing trainings about disclosures, I encourage partners to start with the least amount of detail. You can ask more, you have a right to ask for more information, but let’s be slow and careful. That it’s not too much information for your brain. Some of this information will be traumatic for you.”

Like, you know, it’s going to be really traumatic for you. And so maybe you shouldn’t find out that it is insane for a therapist to say this. I can’t believe I had this episode up for a while.

The Importance Of Truth In Healing

**Anne:** This therapist said, “So sometimes people get caught up in the emotion, and they want to know more and more. And that’s fine if they want to know, but I always ask them. Do you want to know? Is it going to be helpful in your healing?” Why would not knowing the truth be helpful in any situation? Like you can’t heal without the truth. Because if you don’t know what the truth is about the situation, you can’t make good choices.

So why would anyone imply it’s okay? To not be aware of who your husband really is. Why would a therapist want to hide a man’s true character from his wife? Then I asked the therapist. What about safety issues, like isn’t that the most important thing? And she was like, oh, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We need to think about safety, but that was not the first thing she said. And she didn’t even mention it. Instead she was like, Does she want to know the truth or does she want to heal?

And when it came to safety, the only thing she mentioned was getting an STD test. She did not tell me how to set boundaries. And I thought. You’re not going to mention that lying is emotional abuse, or the psychological abuse, or grooming? The fact that the thing you’re doing right now, her involvement with his therapy, his addiction recovery. Is counter-indicated when it comes to abuse. And you’re not talking about abuse. That’s dangerous.

What Is A Therapeutic Disclosure? Safety Concerns

**Anne:** So when I asked her this. This was her response. She said, “I work with addicts and their partners. When I work with an addict and help him prepare his disclosure. What is a therapeutic disclosure? We’re looking at all the categories of behavior and addiction. He may not have behavior in all categories, but I want them to go through an inventory of every category. And then she starts talking about literally the details of the acting out, like specific ways he has behaved.

And she starts delineating these things, and I’m like, what about abuse? She’s still not even saying this man is abusive and manipulative. How does all the different ways he had cheated, help her know that this is abuse? So then I asked her. What about other questions that aren’t related to this kind of behavior? Like lying. So I keep trying to go back to this, and she said that’s a hard one, because addicts have lied for so long.

It’s hard for them to go through all the lies and correct all the lies in a disclosure. But isn’t that the point of a disclosure to find out the truth? You’re just going to hear me getting frustrated as I talk about this interview and the things she told me. Because it starts going around and around in circles. And I’m trying, but she doesn’t want to connect the dots. And so it got more frustrating as time went on.

Then she says something that we absolutely do not recommend. And you’ll know why at the end. What is a therapeutic disclosure? She says the addict prepares a disclosure document.

Writing Past Behaviors Down & Lying

**Anne:** So basically, you’re giving this man a lot of time. What is a therapeutic disclosure? He writes down all his manipulative reasons and craft this narrative any way he wants. To paint himself any way he chooses. Usually they paint themselves where they’re a victim in some way, they’re a victim because their dad didn’t love them enough. Or they’re a victim because their relationship with their mom is bad or they’re a victim because their dog died.

So really, this disclosure is just putting her in the position to be lied to more. And the therapist said, okay, so she’s going to get this paper of this narrative that he concocted? And that’s when she gets to start asking him questions about it. But if he’s going to continue to lie. Do you see the problem? We’re going in circles. And this is a direct quote.

She said, “Sometimes the disclosure can be a time for lies. Sometimes there are so many lies. The addict will never be able to tell the truth about them all. And the question is, Is the addict trying to live, honestly? Has he lied to her to protect her?

What? No, nope, that’s not the reason. And then she says this, and this is what I just talked about. “And usually the lying comes from a behavior much younger, and from another time. It doesn’t excuse it, but it does explain it. And then we can get to the root of it.” Like, no, he just lied because he chose to, and he’s continuing the lie because he chooses to.

The Abuser May Lie & Manipulate

**Anne:** Then I say to this therapist, she doesn’t need to worry about why he’s lying. The lying in and of itself is dangerous, and she needs to be shielded from being lied to. All she needs to understand is the type of character he has. That this was emotional and psychological abuse, and coercion. And he’s continuing to do it. So I go back to the safety issue. Because like, you’re still not getting . Like, are you going to get it in this interview?

What is a therapeutic disclosure? She says, “I think the disclosure is important, because one person has knowledge and information about the relationship that the other doesn’t.”

Absolutely, but do you think someone who is hiding something on purpose, who has for years. Who is now being forced to do it by will be like, okay, I’m going to do it now. Like, no, this is just an opportunity for more of it. So the therapist said, “This is a rebalancing of the information” and I’m like, no, it’s not. That is not what is happening. It is not a rebalancing of the information. If they’re going to continue to manipulate and lie through the whole process.

So I never really got anywhere. We just talked in circles. And then here was the second question we had from our community. Why is the couple involved in a disclosure? Isn’t that couple therapy and couple therapy is counter-indicated when there’s abuse. And the therapist was like, I would never want clients to go to couples therapy when there is abuse involved. Uh, it’s all abuse. And you were working with the couple to do the disclosure.

What Is A Therapeutic Disclosure? Grooming During It

**Anne:** Like can we put two and two together here? What is a therapeutic disclosure? It’s not necessarily couple therapy, but she is involved. She is talking about what she needs and wants. She’s telling the therapist things that the therapist will tell him. There is some communication. This is definitely a couple endeavor. I don’t ever hear of addicts doing disclosures completely by themselves. Without their wife being involved.

That might be the only scenario where this might work. If he went in completely by himself, went to therapy all by himself, his wife was not involved. But then wouldn’t he be like, I’m going to tell the truth. So we wouldn’t even need therapy. So I asked her specifically, aren’t you concerned about grooming that’s taking place during this disclosure process or during this time of therapy?

That’s not considered “couple therapy,” but basically it is because the therapist is in communication with both people. Sometimes they’ll meet together. And she said, “I’ve never seen it from a grooming perspective.”

There are a few individuals who learn a little bit. And then they use it against their partner. And at Betrayal Trauma Recovery we say that almost exclusively. So the fact that she thought it was just a few people and we’re like, um, this is on a like grand scale that this happens. So then I talk more about grooming and I talk about empathy scripts.

The Problem With Empathy Scripts

**Anne:** So, what I’ve seen with men’s programs, even abuse programs. The therapist will be like, Okay, you don’t know how to be empathetic. So I’m going to help you learn what to say. But because they’re not genuinely empathetic, the therapist is like, well, I’m going to teach them. And they’ll just have to act like it until they become it. That sounds okay in theory. But in real practice, if they are not empathetic, they are not safe.

If you’re in a room with someone who genuinely does not care about you at all. They’re not concerned about your emotional safety, your physical safety. They don’t care. They just want to exploit you and groom you. Them grooming you better with an empathy script is extremely dangerous. Because then they sound better. They can manipulate you more. So I brought this up, and the therapist said empathy scripts. Wow, I haven’t heard of that before.

Then she said, “The way I look at it is if he comes home and uses the words I gave him or taught him, I always say, this is a good thing. Now I assume his intentions are true and his intentions are good. Because he’s trying new skills, and doesn’t have his own language yet.” So do you see the problem here? If he doesn’t have the ability to be empathetic, he’s mimicking it. He may use that and concentrate on what is a therapeutic disclosure to groom.

She assumes he’s trying to connect. But maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s like, okay, I’ve got to check all these boxes to continue to exploit the situation.

https://youtu.be/FvIlEiaGPY8

Observing Genuine Change

**Anne:** So then I asked her, how do you tell the difference between practicing a genuine new skill he wants, or is he using this to manipulate her? And she said, trust is built over time, which is true. And then she said, let’s sit back and watch. Which I also agree with. So why not just sit back and watch from the beginning? Why teach him all the empathy scripts? What is a therapeutic disclosure? Why have him write out a big thing about his disclosure and all the lies?

Is it just because you want them to spend a ton of money on therapy? Like you can sit back and watch without all that. In fact, instead of putting yourself in harm’s way—to be lied to—you can observe at a safe distance from the beginning, and not spend any money to know if he’s safe or not. All right, another question from a community member.

What is a therapeutic disclosure? She asked, Why do some therapists not include the state of the family finances in the full disclosure? This is a very important piece of information for a woman to have. The therapist says, “That is something that, I’ll say, unless a partner brings it up I will forget to ask that. It’s not on the top of my brain.” So if abuse is not on the top of the therapist’s brain, do you see how they’re not going to identify the abuse?

And then the therapist says, I don’t know that it’s forgotten on purpose. I’m just not sure it’s on the top of our to-do list when we’re assessing for addiction and lies. So does this therapist think hiding money is not a lie? Because it is.

What Is A Therapeutic Disclosure? The Transactional Nature Of It

**Anne:** What is a therapeutic disclosure? Then I asked the therapist. Are there any abuse issues you have found helpful for women to ask about in the disclosure? And she said, no, she didn’t think so. And that she just saw it as a data exchange. Which confirms my theory about couple therapy or therapy in this instance. When it comes to abuse, he is basically facilitating his transactionship. That he’s like, I’m going to check all these boxes.

I’m going to write out a big document where I can craft a narrative that paints me as a victim. And if I do these things, she’ll let me back in the house. And the therapist is like, yep. Check, check, check. Sounds right, using the empathy scripts. We’re good to go. But he actually is still that exploitative person. And he used that whole process as a transaction. So the fact that she’s like, this is just a data exchange. She even uses the word exchange, which was super alarming.

All right. Another question from the community. The question from the community is, do you have any tips on how a spouse or former spouse who is not getting a disclosure moves forward? All she said basically was that it’s very hard when you don’t get the answers and don’t get the information you need. And that’s going to take a lot of time and coaching to come to grips with, she actually said coaching. Which I thought was interesting.

But she’s not acknowledging that even with the disclosure process, you’re still not going to get all the information. All you’ll get is a bunch of checked boxes and a document that he’s carefully crafted. That’s it, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.

Tips About Disclosures

**Anne:** What is a therapeutic disclosure? Prepping for a therapeutic disclosure sometimes takes six months, a year or two years of going to therapy once a week. And a victim often goes to therapy, maybe not once a week, but often to be part of this process. While he takes all this time to manufacture the narrative. That seems absolutely dangerous. And a waste of time and money.

I do have some tips about it, and I will share them with you now. I want you to think about what you know, so rather than going with your abuser to addiction therapy. Take one hour. Get out a pen and paper. And sit down at your kitchen table. And list all the things that you know. So for me, it would have been, I know he leaves the house at 10:00 PM, and I don’t know where he goes. And he gets home at like one in the morning or two in the morning. And I don’t know where he’s been.

I’ve never been able to get a straight answer, I know that. I know that he screams in my face. And I know he’s punched a few walls. I know that he doesn’t make sense. I know that he has lied to me about this, this, this, and this. So write all the things that you know. I’m not sure why they would take two years to force a known pathological liar to tell the truth. When they could just say, you already know. Let’s focus on what you know.

The Issue With Polygraphs

**Anne:** Now once you have everything you know written down. Compare that to what abuse is, and then you’ll answer, is he abusive? Observe over time to see what his character is. And that’s all you need to know. When you know who he is, because you can see him clearly. Then you’ll feel confident in your choices. But if you can’t see him clearly, it’s hard to be confident about your choices.

What is a therapeutic disclosure? Women who are going through the therapeutic disclosure process are having a hard time because they’re still exposed to all that manipulation. Here’s the last question from our community members. She asked how accurate are lie detector tests? There are many addicts who won’t do them because they say they’re not accurate. Do you use them in your practice?

If so, can you debunk misunderstandings about their accuracy and effectiveness in re-establishing trust in relationships? So I know a lot of women whose husbands have done disclosures and had polygraphs. And they’ve said they were helpful. So if they have been helpful to you, I’m glad they worked for you. This therapist said, she likes polygraphs and lie detectors. So she uses them in her practice.

She claims they have an 80% accuracy rate. And then she said in my world, that’s better than not knowing. And I’m like, if it’s only 80% accuracy, you still don’t know. So it’s not better than not knowing, because it’s the exact same thing. Again, the reason why I don’t like polygraphs is still, the focus is on trying to get him to tell you something. Rather than having confidence in yourself and what you already know.

What Is A Therapeutic Disclosure? Relying On Personal Observations

**Anne:** Anytime we’re trying to protect ourselves from his abuse by trying to get something from him. What is a therapeutic disclosure? Or having someone else get it through his brain, like clergy or a couple therapist or an addiction recovery specialist. That is how the abuser will manipulate you. The thing about polygraphs that makes me nervous is they might tell the truth about the questions that the polygrapher is asking. But there’s so much that we wouldn’t know.

I’m a woman of faith. If you’re not, you’re welcome here. But just for my own faith perspective. I don’t think there is any human earthly ability to genuinely detect if someone is lying, other than through observing them. Also I don’t think there’s a way to force them to tell the truth. I think God created this earthly life with that scenario, because it’s part of our earthly test. I think the only person who knows the truth is God.

And so, I would prefer to turn to God to pray to feel the spirit, and then observe from a safe distance to know. That’s a safer situation. Because it focuses on what you know, and what God is telling you. Rather than rely on anything the abuser is saying, or someone he is manipulating, like a therapist or clergy is saying. This therapist, this is a direct quote. She says, “The thing about the polygraph, I really want to make sure folks understand, is that it’s not a statement of truth.”

I’m reading this word for word. She said, “It’s not a statement of truth. It’s what he says is true.” And then she gives a confusing example that didn’t make any sense. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

Therapist’s Views On Polygraphs

**Anne:** And then she says this, “The polygraph is only checking what he thinks to be true. It doesn’t check his memory. It doesn’t check if he’s forgetting, it doesn’t check if his memory is wrong. So that’s an important piece that partners need to know before they go in. So, if he says this is everything and passes the polygraph, there are so many times when by virtue of exploring, investigating, or researching the data.

She’s referring to all the months he spends crafting his narrative about. Apparently, “all the addiction acting out.” Okay, quoting her again now. “So he goes into a polygraph and passes. And then the next night, the victim will say, wait, what about this? And the addict will say, oh, I forgot about that.”

So she is saying I use polygraphs, but a lot of the time. The truth isn’t included. And then she says this. “This is not them manipulating. This is them remembering one more thing.”

So they always have some excuse, apparently according to a C-SAT to not tell the truth, I guess. That just sounds like chaos and pain. What is a therapeutic disclosure? So then I tell her a few examples of women who came to Betrayal Trauma Recovery and told us their disclosure horror stories. One of them, a man went in to do a polygraph and he passed. But the things that he said were true, she knew were not true.

And the therapist said, well, he passed the polygraph, so he’s great. I don’t know why you don’t believe him. It was just a nightmare for her.

The Chaos Of Incomplete Disclosures

**Anne:** And I talked about that, and the therapist said, “Sometimes the guy is not yet out of his layers of denial enough that he’s seeing the full picture.” I think it’s more that he’s manipulating on purpose. That he’s good at lying and manipulating. And then she said, “but any disclosure is better than none.”

Basically saying that even if it’s all abuse and a mess, and he’s saying certain truths in a tactical fashion to manipulate the whole situation. That’s better than not being abused. I disagree. What is a therapeutic disclosure? I don’t think any disclosure is better than none. because the disclosure in and of itself is just abuse the whole time. I think no disclosure is better than any disclosure at all.

So then in the end I asked her, is there anything else you want to share about disclosures? And she says, “I think your community is amazing and that you’re doing a great job.” That’s nice of her to say that, even though now I’m like throwing her under the bus. And the reason why I didn’t want to do her voice is because I have no intention of harming anyone’s reputation, but I want to educate you about the dangers of disclosures.

What she wanted to say at the end was that she knows that women in our situation want to know the truth. They want to know exactly what happened. And then she said, and sometimes we need to break the disclosure into two pieces. Get the safety items taken care of immediately.

What Is A Therapeutic Disclosure? Final Thoughts

**Anne:** Uh, that’s like 10 minutes after she said you have to observe and wait to know if they’re safe. You can’t get any safety items taken care of immediately. That’s not how safety works. You have to observe from a safe distance for a long time to see what their actions are. So I don’t even know what she means when she says get the safety items taken care of immediately. That’s just not a thing.

She’s not only contradicting herself, she’s also showing that she doesn’t understand how safety works. And then she says, if they can wait a little longer, it will take a lot of time. And if you’re more patient, it’s going to get better. So she assumes you can create safety immediately. Then you need to take a lot of time to see if he’s safe, almost in the same breath. That doesn’t make sense to me.

So, what is a therapeutic disclosure? All right now, I’m going to talk about what you should do, instead of asking for a therapeutic disclosure. I know that in your desire to have a therapeutic disclosure, couple therapy or get clergy to help him. You are resisting the abuse. You’re doing everything right. You’re trying to stop this, because you want a safe place for your family.

So you’re doing amazing. You’re doing everything you’re supposed to do. This is not your fault, and this is not your problem. This is the problem of addiction therapists who don’t know anything about abuse, who are putting women in harm’s way. That has nothing to do with you.

Educating Yourself About Abuse

**Anne:** What is a therapeutic disclosure? Instead of doing a therapeutic disclosure, the number one thing is to educate yourself about abuse, so that you can start seeing the truth of your situation. You might find that he’s not as abusive as you thought. You might find out that he’s really abusive. But getting educated about abuse will help. Number two, determine your husband’s true character from your own observations.

That’s why I created The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. It takes you through step-by-step how to observe from a safe distance. You could still be in your home. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to move out to observe from a safe distance. It gives you strategies to do this, whether you’re in the home or even if you’re divorced, they work no matter what.

So that you determine if he has a safe character from what you know, and you don’t have to rely on him for any information whatsoever.

Getting The Right Support

**Anne:** And then the third is to get the right support from people who understand abuse. That could be a group at your local domestic violence shelter. It could be a therapist who understands abuse, who does not know your husband. Who will not talk to your husband. Who’s not going to have anything to do with him. It could be our online Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions. You don’t need to worry about what is a therapeutic disclosure.

Or scheduling an individual session with one of our coaches. But getting the right support so that you’re protected. Because anyone who talks to an abuser will be manipulated. So that puts you in a dangerous situation, because you’re trying to see the truth. You’re trying to see him for who he really is. So you don’t need him manipulating any more people. He’s already manipulating you. To get more information about The Living Free Workshop click this link.

What Is The Purpose Of A Therapeutic Disclosure — **What Is A Therapeutic Disclosure? What You Need To Know If Your Husband Is An Addict** Apr 15, 2025
When a woman uncovers her husband’s infidelity, she might seek help from an addiction therapist. The therapist may recommend a therapeutic disclosure. What is a therapeutic disclosure? To summarize, here are 4 things you need to know.

A therapeutic disclosure is a process that involves the addict disclosing their full history to a therapist and his wife. In theory, the purpose is to provide the betrayed wife with all the information she needs, so she can make informed decisions about the relationship moving forward.

However, at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we don’t recommend it. Here’s why

1. Therapists mis-identify why he “needs” a Therapeutic Disclosure

A therapist may suggest that your husband needs a therapeutic disclosure, but what exactly is he disclosing? If the things he’s disclosing qualify as emotional, psychological or some other type of abuse, it’s not recommended that you participate in his therapy or a therapist led disclosure in any way.

To see if any of the things he’s disclosing qualify as emotional abuse, take ourfree emotional abuse quiz.

2. A Therapeutic Disclosure may Put You In Harms Way

Because therapeutic disclosures keep women in proximity to possibly abusive behavior, it’s important to know that abusive men often use the “trickle” method to selectively “disclose”, but it’s really calculated to manipulate and control her.

3. Abuse Experts Know Therapeutic *Anything* Makes Abuse Worse

Abusive men aren’t abusive because of things like childhood trauma or feeling ashamed. They’re abusive because they choose to be. If they have problems like trauma or shame, they could choose other ways to cope, like exercising, eating too much, or even building model trains. Abuse is always a choice.

Therapy helps figure out why someone acts the way they do. But an abusive man can confuse his therapist and wife by making up lots of “reasons” for the so-called root cause. These excuses can take over and become the focus. It’s better to avoid being part of an abusive man’s therapy altogether.

4. What Should I Do Instead Of Asking For A Therapeutic Disclosure?

Instead of convincing a husband to do a therapeutic disclosure, women who experience betrayal can focus on their own emotional and psychological safety.

**Learn More About Why Lying Is Abusive:** Listen to The FREE Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast.

**Determine Her Husband’s True Character:** Enroll in The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop to determine if your husband is this type of abuser, and if you discover he is, learn emotional safety strategies to protect yourself.

**Get Professional Support**: Facing this type of abuse is difficult. There is a community of women who understand. Attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session TODAY.

Transcript: What Is A Therapeutic Disclosure?

**Anne:** It’s just me today. I’m going to be talking about therapeutic disclosures. When you discover your husband is looking at online content, lying, having affairs, or soliciting. Someone might tell you, or you may think he’s a sex addict. And if you go to addiction therapy. There’s a high likelihood that an addiction therapist, will have him do a therapeutic disclosure.

So we’re going to talk about why I think therapeutic disclosures are dangerous. And then you decide what you want to do after listening to what I have to say. So, first of all, what is a therapeutic disclosure? It is a process that involves the addict disclosing their full history to his wife. In a “so-called structured way” with the guidance of a therapist.

In theory, the purpose of a therapeutic disclosure is to provide the betrayed wife all the information she needs. For her to make informed decisions about the relationship moving forward. Now, I want to talk about all the reasons why that doesn’t make sense. First of all, their history does not include all the times they manipulated their wife over little and big things. All the lies, all the emotional and psychological abuse, and the coercion.

It does not address his abuse, which is the actual problem. If you take that to the next logical step, you might say, then I’m going to get them in an abuse program. Well, an abuse program is pretty much the exact same thing. It’s in a couple setting where the wife says, Hey, these are the things I need to see. This is what I want to know.

The Role Of Therapists In Disclosures

**Anne:** There’s really no difference. Your abusive husband can manipulate the therapist. He can take his time and drag it out. Like he has a lot of control to exploit that situation. So abuse experts understand that anything therapeutic will worsen the abuse. Because men aren’t abusive because of their childhood trauma or shame, or for any other reason other than they want to exploit people.

I know many people with childhood trauma. I feel shame. And I watch a lot of TV sometimes, or I might go for a walk. I call my sister, you know, some people use model trains. Abuse is not the only option here. There are so many other options. Nothing’s gonna stop him from wanting to exploit the situation. Except for him wanting to stop. And if he wanted to stop, he wouldn’t be like that in the first place. So abuse is a choice.

The purpose of therapy is to uncover the underlying cause of a person’s behavior. So in therapy, an abusive, manipulative, deceitful man will run the therapist and his wife in circles. He’ll give both of them all sorts of reasons. And most of these reasons are lies, and then these “reasons” take on a life of their own. So it’s best to stay away from being involved in an abusive man’s therapy, treatment, or program at all costs.

A therapist could tell you that a therapeutic disclosure is important, to “avoid trickle disclosures.” And that sounds like a good idea. If a therapist tells you we’re going to do this, so you can get the whole truth. So he doesn’t just give you a little information. here and there.

Therapeutic Disclosures & Continued Abuse

**Anne:** But what they won’t tell you is this is just an abuser lying. He’ll disclose bits of information tactically to manipulate, distress you or drag things out. They know that this process of disclosing things at tactical times gives them control. So they’re going to prolong the process for as long as possible to maintain that control. Throughout that whole thing she’s still unsafe. She’s unsafe at every point.

Not realizing she’s being lied to and manipulated, staying in contact with his constant abuse. Most often in the form of grooming. And because they’re doing this, victims undergo immense trauma for that time. Now, even if they don’t realize it, it seems like it’s going well. So many women come to Betrayal Trauma Recovery, and share six months after the disclosure or two years later. They realize what was happening.

And they realized it was all lies and manipulation. They are so traumatized that they spent that much time basically just in this fog. With a therapist possibly enabling their continued abuse. Years ago, when I started podcasting, I interviewed a C-SAT about disclosures. She disagrees with me and thinks disclosures are great. And she uses them in her practice.

When I interviewed her, it was really at the beginning. I didn’t love disclosures, but I was willing to have an open-mind. I posted the interview on my podcast, and then pretty soon after removed it. Because I realized this is problematic, and I don’t want to hurt someone’s reputation. My podcast isn’t a gotcha podcast. I appreciate everyone who has spent the time to come and be interviewed.

What Is A Therapeutic Disclosure? Community Feedback

**Anne:** Sometimes I disagree with people. And because of the way the interview goes, I don’t air that episode. Because I want to make sure I’m putting out the best information that I feel good about. I also want to acknowledge that some of you may have actually gone through this process, and it worked out great for you. If you feel that way, go to the bottom of this transcript, and comment. You can interact with our community about your experience.

If it worked for you, I’m so glad it did. I don’t want to recommend it to anyone. And I’ll tell you the reasons why, but I also don’t want you to feel bad if you did it and it worked out great for you. Everybody is different. But reading the transcript of this podcast from years ago, which hasn’t even been in circulation, right? I took it out of circulation years ago. We talked about what is a therapeutic disclosure. There are so many important points that I wanted to talk about.

Now part of that episode was that we sent out a call for questions about disclosures at that time. And women wrote in their questions. So here’s a question that we received. One community member asked. Shouldn’t it be up to the wife to know or ask anything she needs to, even if it hurts her and causes her more pain? Is pain the enemy here? Isn’t unknowingly being in an unsafe situation far more dangerous? So that was the first question.

Therapists’ Assumptions & Misconceptions

**Anne:** Now this therapist said she thought it was up to the partner to decide the level of detail they wanted in the disclosure. Which is fascinating to me that this therapist assumed this guy would somehow tell the truth. Or that she could get the level of information she actually wanted. He’s super manipulative. So putting a woman in this position where you’re giving her the impression that she can get information. If he is a liar who manipulates people, is super scary.

The woman who asked the question says, isn’t unknowingly being in an unsafe situation, far more dangerous? Yes, a hundred percent, but the disclosure itself is an unsafe situation. I’m going to talk about what to do, instead of a disclosure at the end. So keep listening, because I will give you an alternative.

This therapist said when she starts disclosures, and I’m going to do a quote here. She said, “For me, when I’m leading disclosures or doing trainings about disclosures, I encourage partners to start with the least amount of detail. You can ask more, you have a right to ask for more information, but let’s be slow and careful. That it’s not too much information for your brain. Some of this information will be traumatic for you.”

Like, you know, it’s going to be really traumatic for you. And so maybe you shouldn’t find out that it is insane for a therapist to say this. I can’t believe I had this episode up for a while.

The Importance Of Truth In Healing

**Anne:** This therapist said, “So sometimes people get caught up in the emotion, and they want to know more and more. And that’s fine if they want to know, but I always ask them. Do you want to know? Is it going to be helpful in your healing?” Why would not knowing the truth be helpful in any situation? Like you can’t heal without the truth. Because if you don’t know what the truth is about the situation, you can’t make good choices.

So why would anyone imply it’s okay? To not be aware of who your husband really is. Why would a therapist want to hide a man’s true character from his wife? Then I asked the therapist. What about safety issues, like isn’t that the most important thing? And she was like, oh, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We need to think about safety, but that was not the first thing she said. And she didn’t even mention it. Instead she was like, Does she want to know the truth or does she want to heal?

And when it came to safety, the only thing she mentioned was getting an STD test. She did not tell me how to set boundaries. And I thought. You’re not going to mention that lying is emotional abuse, or the psychological abuse, or grooming? The fact that the thing you’re doing right now, her involvement with his therapy, his addiction recovery. Is counter-indicated when it comes to abuse. And you’re not talking about abuse. That’s dangerous.

What Is A Therapeutic Disclosure? Safety Concerns

**Anne:** So when I asked her this. This was her response. She said, “I work with addicts and their partners. When I work with an addict and help him prepare his disclosure. What is a therapeutic disclosure? We’re looking at all the categories of behavior and addiction. He may not have behavior in all categories, but I want them to go through an inventory of every category. And then she starts talking about literally the details of the acting out, like specific ways he has behaved.

And she starts delineating these things, and I’m like, what about abuse? She’s still not even saying this man is abusive and manipulative. How does all the different ways he had cheated, help her know that this is abuse? So then I asked her. What about other questions that aren’t related to this kind of behavior? Like lying. So I keep trying to go back to this, and she said that’s a hard one, because addicts have lied for so long.

It’s hard for them to go through all the lies and correct all the lies in a disclosure. But isn’t that the point of a disclosure to find out the truth? You’re just going to hear me getting frustrated as I talk about this interview and the things she told me. Because it starts going around and around in circles. And I’m trying, but she doesn’t want to connect the dots. And so it got more frustrating as time went on.

Then she says something that we absolutely do not recommend. And you’ll know why at the end. What is a therapeutic disclosure? She says the addict prepares a disclosure document.

Writing Past Behaviors Down & Lying

**Anne:** So basically, you’re giving this man a lot of time. What is a therapeutic disclosure? He writes down all his manipulative reasons and craft this narrative any way he wants. To paint himself any way he chooses. Usually they paint themselves where they’re a victim in some way, they’re a victim because their dad didn’t love them enough. Or they’re a victim because their relationship with their mom is bad or they’re a victim because their dog died.

So really, this disclosure is just putting her in the position to be lied to more. And the therapist said, okay, so she’s going to get this paper of this narrative that he concocted? And that’s when she gets to start asking him questions about it. But if he’s going to continue to lie. Do you see the problem? We’re going in circles. And this is a direct quote.

She said, “Sometimes the disclosure can be a time for lies. Sometimes there are so many lies. The addict will never be able to tell the truth about them all. And the question is, Is the addict trying to live, honestly? Has he lied to her to protect her?

What? No, nope, that’s not the reason. And then she says this, and this is what I just talked about. “And usually the lying comes from a behavior much younger, and from another time. It doesn’t excuse it, but it does explain it. And then we can get to the root of it.” Like, no, he just lied because he chose to, and he’s continuing the lie because he chooses to.

The Abuser May Lie & Manipulate

**Anne:** Then I say to this therapist, she doesn’t need to worry about why he’s lying. The lying in and of itself is dangerous, and she needs to be shielded from being lied to. All she needs to understand is the type of character he has. That this was emotional and psychological abuse, and coercion. And he’s continuing to do it. So I go back to the safety issue. Because like, you’re still not getting . Like, are you going to get it in this interview?

What is a therapeutic disclosure? She says, “I think the disclosure is important, because one person has knowledge and information about the relationship that the other doesn’t.”

Absolutely, but do you think someone who is hiding something on purpose, who has for years. Who is now being forced to do it by will be like, okay, I’m going to do it now. Like, no, this is just an opportunity for more of it. So the therapist said, “This is a rebalancing of the information” and I’m like, no, it’s not. That is not what is happening. It is not a rebalancing of the information. If they’re going to continue to manipulate and lie through the whole process.

So I never really got anywhere. We just talked in circles. And then here was the second question we had from our community. Why is the couple involved in a disclosure? Isn’t that couple therapy and couple therapy is counter-indicated when there’s abuse. And the therapist was like, I would never want clients to go to couples therapy when there is abuse involved. Uh, it’s all abuse. And you were working with the couple to do the disclosure.

What Is A Therapeutic Disclosure? Grooming During It

**Anne:** Like can we put two and two together here? What is a therapeutic disclosure? It’s not necessarily couple therapy, but she is involved. She is talking about what she needs and wants. She’s telling the therapist things that the therapist will tell him. There is some communication. This is definitely a couple endeavor. I don’t ever hear of addicts doing disclosures completely by themselves. Without their wife being involved.

That might be the only scenario where this might work. If he went in completely by himself, went to therapy all by himself, his wife was not involved. But then wouldn’t he be like, I’m going to tell the truth. So we wouldn’t even need therapy. So I asked her specifically, aren’t you concerned about grooming that’s taking place during this disclosure process or during this time of therapy?

That’s not considered “couple therapy,” but basically it is because the therapist is in communication with both people. Sometimes they’ll meet together. And she said, “I’ve never seen it from a grooming perspective.”

There are a few individuals who learn a little bit. And then they use it against their partner. And at Betrayal Trauma Recovery we say that almost exclusively. So the fact that she thought it was just a few people and we’re like, um, this is on a like grand scale that this happens. So then I talk more about grooming and I talk about empathy scripts.

The Problem With Empathy Scripts

**Anne:** So, what I’ve seen with men’s programs, even abuse programs. The therapist will be like, Okay, you don’t know how to be empathetic. So I’m going to help you learn what to say. But because they’re not genuinely empathetic, the therapist is like, well, I’m going to teach them. And they’ll just have to act like it until they become it. That sounds okay in theory. But in real practice, if they are not empathetic, they are not safe.

If you’re in a room with someone who genuinely does not care about you at all. They’re not concerned about your emotional safety, your physical safety. They don’t care. They just want to exploit you and groom you. Them grooming you better with an empathy script is extremely dangerous. Because then they sound better. They can manipulate you more. So I brought this up, and the therapist said empathy scripts. Wow, I haven’t heard of that before.

Then she said, “The way I look at it is if he comes home and uses the words I gave him or taught him, I always say, this is a good thing. Now I assume his intentions are true and his intentions are good. Because he’s trying new skills, and doesn’t have his own language yet.” So do you see the problem here? If he doesn’t have the ability to be empathetic, he’s mimicking it. He may use that and concentrate on what is a therapeutic disclosure to groom.

She assumes he’s trying to connect. But maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s like, okay, I’ve got to check all these boxes to continue to exploit the situation.

https://youtu.be/FvIlEiaGPY8

Observing Genuine Change

**Anne:** So then I asked her, how do you tell the difference between practicing a genuine new skill he wants, or is he using this to manipulate her? And she said, trust is built over time, which is true. And then she said, let’s sit back and watch. Which I also agree with. So why not just sit back and watch from the beginning? Why teach him all the empathy scripts? What is a therapeutic disclosure? Why have him write out a big thing about his disclosure and all the lies?

Is it just because you want them to spend a ton of money on therapy? Like you can sit back and watch without all that. In fact, instead of putting yourself in harm’s way—to be lied to—you can observe at a safe distance from the beginning, and not spend any money to know if he’s safe or not. All right, another question from a community member.

What is a therapeutic disclosure? She asked, Why do some therapists not include the state of the family finances in the full disclosure? This is a very important piece of information for a woman to have. The therapist says, “That is something that, I’ll say, unless a partner brings it up I will forget to ask that. It’s not on the top of my brain.” So if abuse is not on the top of the therapist’s brain, do you see how they’re not going to identify the abuse?

And then the therapist says, I don’t know that it’s forgotten on purpose. I’m just not sure it’s on the top of our to-do list when we’re assessing for addiction and lies. So does this therapist think hiding money is not a lie? Because it is.

What Is A Therapeutic Disclosure? The Transactional Nature Of It

**Anne:** What is a therapeutic disclosure? Then I asked the therapist. Are there any abuse issues you have found helpful for women to ask about in the disclosure? And she said, no, she didn’t think so. And that she just saw it as a data exchange. Which confirms my theory about couple therapy or therapy in this instance. When it comes to abuse, he is basically facilitating his transactionship. That he’s like, I’m going to check all these boxes.

I’m going to write out a big document where I can craft a narrative that paints me as a victim. And if I do these things, she’ll let me back in the house. And the therapist is like, yep. Check, check, check. Sounds right, using the empathy scripts. We’re good to go. But he actually is still that exploitative person. And he used that whole process as a transaction. So the fact that she’s like, this is just a data exchange. She even uses the word exchange, which was super alarming.

All right. Another question from the community. The question from the community is, do you have any tips on how a spouse or former spouse who is not getting a disclosure moves forward? All she said basically was that it’s very hard when you don’t get the answers and don’t get the information you need. And that’s going to take a lot of time and coaching to come to grips with, she actually said coaching. Which I thought was interesting.

But she’s not acknowledging that even with the disclosure process, you’re still not going to get all the information. All you’ll get is a bunch of checked boxes and a document that he’s carefully crafted. That’s it, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.

Tips About Disclosures

**Anne:** What is a therapeutic disclosure? Prepping for a therapeutic disclosure sometimes takes six months, a year or two years of going to therapy once a week. And a victim often goes to therapy, maybe not once a week, but often to be part of this process. While he takes all this time to manufacture the narrative. That seems absolutely dangerous. And a waste of time and money.

I do have some tips about it, and I will share them with you now. I want you to think about what you know, so rather than going with your abuser to addiction therapy. Take one hour. Get out a pen and paper. And sit down at your kitchen table. And list all the things that you know. So for me, it would have been, I know he leaves the house at 10:00 PM, and I don’t know where he goes. And he gets home at like one in the morning or two in the morning. And I don’t know where he’s been.

I’ve never been able to get a straight answer, I know that. I know that he screams in my face. And I know he’s punched a few walls. I know that he doesn’t make sense. I know that he has lied to me about this, this, this, and this. So write all the things that you know. I’m not sure why they would take two years to force a known pathological liar to tell the truth. When they could just say, you already know. Let’s focus on what you know.

The Issue With Polygraphs

**Anne:** Now once you have everything you know written down. Compare that to what abuse is, and then you’ll answer, is he abusive? Observe over time to see what his character is. And that’s all you need to know. When you know who he is, because you can see him clearly. Then you’ll feel confident in your choices. But if you can’t see him clearly, it’s hard to be confident about your choices.

What is a therapeutic disclosure? Women who are going through the therapeutic disclosure process are having a hard time because they’re still exposed to all that manipulation. Here’s the last question from our community members. She asked how accurate are lie detector tests? There are many addicts who won’t do them because they say they’re not accurate. Do you use them in your practice?

If so, can you debunk misunderstandings about their accuracy and effectiveness in re-establishing trust in relationships? So I know a lot of women whose husbands have done disclosures and had polygraphs. And they’ve said they were helpful. So if they have been helpful to you, I’m glad they worked for you. This therapist said, she likes polygraphs and lie detectors. So she uses them in her practice.

She claims they have an 80% accuracy rate. And then she said in my world, that’s better than not knowing. And I’m like, if it’s only 80% accuracy, you still don’t know. So it’s not better than not knowing, because it’s the exact same thing. Again, the reason why I don’t like polygraphs is still, the focus is on trying to get him to tell you something. Rather than having confidence in yourself and what you already know.

What Is A Therapeutic Disclosure? Relying On Personal Observations

**Anne:** Anytime we’re trying to protect ourselves from his abuse by trying to get something from him. What is a therapeutic disclosure? Or having someone else get it through his brain, like clergy or a couple therapist or an addiction recovery specialist. That is how the abuser will manipulate you. The thing about polygraphs that makes me nervous is they might tell the truth about the questions that the polygrapher is asking. But there’s so much that we wouldn’t know.

I’m a woman of faith. If you’re not, you’re welcome here. But just for my own faith perspective. I don’t think there is any human earthly ability to genuinely detect if someone is lying, other than through observing them. Also I don’t think there’s a way to force them to tell the truth. I think God created this earthly life with that scenario, because it’s part of our earthly test. I think the only person who knows the truth is God.

And so, I would prefer to turn to God to pray to feel the spirit, and then observe from a safe distance to know. That’s a safer situation. Because it focuses on what you know, and what God is telling you. Rather than rely on anything the abuser is saying, or someone he is manipulating, like a therapist or clergy is saying. This therapist, this is a direct quote. She says, “The thing about the polygraph, I really want to make sure folks understand, is that it’s not a statement of truth.”

I’m reading this word for word. She said, “It’s not a statement of truth. It’s what he says is true.” And then she gives a confusing example that didn’t make any sense. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

Therapist’s Views On Polygraphs

**Anne:** And then she says this, “The polygraph is only checking what he thinks to be true. It doesn’t check his memory. It doesn’t check if he’s forgetting, it doesn’t check if his memory is wrong. So that’s an important piece that partners need to know before they go in. So, if he says this is everything and passes the polygraph, there are so many times when by virtue of exploring, investigating, or researching the data.

She’s referring to all the months he spends crafting his narrative about. Apparently, “all the addiction acting out.” Okay, quoting her again now. “So he goes into a polygraph and passes. And then the next night, the victim will say, wait, what about this? And the addict will say, oh, I forgot about that.”

So she is saying I use polygraphs, but a lot of the time. The truth isn’t included. And then she says this. “This is not them manipulating. This is them remembering one more thing.”

So they always have some excuse, apparently according to a C-SAT to not tell the truth, I guess. That just sounds like chaos and pain. What is a therapeutic disclosure? So then I tell her a few examples of women who came to Betrayal Trauma Recovery and told us their disclosure horror stories. One of them, a man went in to do a polygraph and he passed. But the things that he said were true, she knew were not true.

And the therapist said, well, he passed the polygraph, so he’s great. I don’t know why you don’t believe him. It was just a nightmare for her.

The Chaos Of Incomplete Disclosures

**Anne:** And I talked about that, and the therapist said, “Sometimes the guy is not yet out of his layers of denial enough that he’s seeing the full picture.” I think it’s more that he’s manipulating on purpose. That he’s good at lying and manipulating. And then she said, “but any disclosure is better than none.”

Basically saying that even if it’s all abuse and a mess, and he’s saying certain truths in a tactical fashion to manipulate the whole situation. That’s better than not being abused. I disagree. What is a therapeutic disclosure? I don’t think any disclosure is better than none. because the disclosure in and of itself is just abuse the whole time. I think no disclosure is better than any disclosure at all.

So then in the end I asked her, is there anything else you want to share about disclosures? And she says, “I think your community is amazing and that you’re doing a great job.” That’s nice of her to say that, even though now I’m like throwing her under the bus. And the reason why I didn’t want to do her voice is because I have no intention of harming anyone’s reputation, but I want to educate you about the dangers of disclosures.

What she wanted to say at the end was that she knows that women in our situation want to know the truth. They want to know exactly what happened. And then she said, and sometimes we need to break the disclosure into two pieces. Get the safety items taken care of immediately.

What Is A Therapeutic Disclosure? Final Thoughts

**Anne:** Uh, that’s like 10 minutes after she said you have to observe and wait to know if they’re safe. You can’t get any safety items taken care of immediately. That’s not how safety works. You have to observe from a safe distance for a long time to see what their actions are. So I don’t even know what she means when she says get the safety items taken care of immediately. That’s just not a thing.

She’s not only contradicting herself, she’s also showing that she doesn’t understand how safety works. And then she says, if they can wait a little longer, it will take a lot of time. And if you’re more patient, it’s going to get better. So she assumes you can create safety immediately. Then you need to take a lot of time to see if he’s safe, almost in the same breath. That doesn’t make sense to me.

So, what is a therapeutic disclosure? All right now, I’m going to talk about what you should do, instead of asking for a therapeutic disclosure. I know that in your desire to have a therapeutic disclosure, couple therapy or get clergy to help him. You are resisting the abuse. You’re doing everything right. You’re trying to stop this, because you want a safe place for your family.

So you’re doing amazing. You’re doing everything you’re supposed to do. This is not your fault, and this is not your problem. This is the problem of addiction therapists who don’t know anything about abuse, who are putting women in harm’s way. That has nothing to do with you.

Educating Yourself About Abuse

**Anne:** What is a therapeutic disclosure? Instead of doing a therapeutic disclosure, the number one thing is to educate yourself about abuse, so that you can start seeing the truth of your situation. You might find that he’s not as abusive as you thought. You might find out that he’s really abusive. But getting educated about abuse will help. Number two, determine your husband’s true character from your own observations.

That’s why I created The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. It takes you through step-by-step how to observe from a safe distance. You could still be in your home. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to move out to observe from a safe distance. It gives you strategies to do this, whether you’re in the home or even if you’re divorced, they work no matter what.

So that you determine if he has a safe character from what you know, and you don’t have to rely on him for any information whatsoever.

Getting The Right Support

**Anne:** And then the third is to get the right support from people who understand abuse. That could be a group at your local domestic violence shelter. It could be a therapist who understands abuse, who does not know your husband. Who will not talk to your husband. Who’s not going to have anything to do with him. It could be our online Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions. You don’t need to worry about what is a therapeutic disclosure.

Or scheduling an individual session with one of our coaches. But getting the right support so that you’re protected. Because anyone who talks to an abuser will be manipulated. So that puts you in a dangerous situation, because you’re trying to see the truth. You’re trying to see him for who he really is. So you don’t need him manipulating any more people. He’s already manipulating you. To get more information about The Living Free Workshop click this link.

What Is An Example Of Hidden Abuse — **Healing Trauma From Hidden Abuse – What Gets In Our Way? Penny’s Take** Apr 08, 2025
Hidden abuse is characterized by lies and manipulation, and it causes trauma that’s hard to recognize.

To discover if you’re experiencing any of the 19 types of hidden abuse, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

**This episode follows Penny’s Story**
*How to Start to Heal From Emotional Abuse – Penny’s Story*
*Healing Trauma From Hidden Abuse – What Gets In Our Way? – Penny’s Take* (THIS EPISODE)

What Is Hidden Abuse?

One of the biggest obstacles in healing trauma from hidden abuse is understanding what’s happening to you.

The constant barrage of lies and manipulation from the abuser can make it incredibly difficult for women to see the reality of their situation. Gaslighting, a common tactic, can distort a woman’s perception of reality, making her doubt her judgment and experiences.

Traditional therapists, clergy, and even well-meaning friends and family may not recognize hidden abuse for what it is.

Barriers To Discovering Hidden Abuse:

**Lack of Understanding:** Many women fail to recognize lies, pornography use, and infidelity as forms of emotional and psychological abuse.

**Misguided Strategies:** Conventional advice focuses on improving communication and forgiveness rather than educating about abuse and implementing safety strategies.

**Isolation:** Feeling misunderstood leads to social withdrawal, making it harder to seek support.

**Being Dismissed:** Without a supportive network that acknowledges abuse, women begin to question their experiences and feelings.

**Stigma:** Fear of judgment and the stigma of “giving up on the relationship” or not being a good wife prevents women from seeking emotional safety.

**Guilt and Shame:** Self-blame (or being blamed by the abuser) stops women from reaching out for help.

**Trying to Fix Yourself:** Believing the problem lies within themselves keeps women from finding emotional safety.

**Confusion:** Manipulation tactics like gaslighting cause confusion and self-doubt.

**Entrapment:** Continued manipulation leaves women feeling trapped.

**Pressure to Reconcile:** Cultural and religious norms prioritize preserving the marriage over individual well-being.

When You Go For Help, But They Don’t Identify Hidden Abuse

If you’ve tried to figure out what’s going on and you haven’t been able to feel more emotionally safe, there is help.

The Free Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast helps women learn more about how to spot hidden abuse.

Healing Trauma From Hidden Abuse IS Possible

If you’re struggling to heal the trauma from hidden abuse, consider attending a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session TODAY and take the first step toward a brighter, healthier future.

Transcript: Healing Trauma From Hidden Abuse

**Anne:** Penny is back on today’s episode. You can find her story in an episode called How to Start to Heal from Emotional Abuse, Penny’s story. We wanted to talk about the aftermath of emotional abuse, how it’s misunderstood by people in general, and how to face that. So welcome back, Penny.

**Penny:** Thank you. Thank you for having me.

**Anne:** So this type of hidden abuse where you don’t have someone charged with domestic violence. Why do you think it’s so hard for people to understand what it takes to heal trauma from hidden abuse?

**Penny:** Yeah, I think like you said, they don’t see any bruises, scars, or black eyes. We want to fit in and be accepted. We don’t want to be different. And so we look normal on the outside, but the inside is where the pain, results, and leftover baggage from emotional abuse is.

Things like fear, anxiety, and unsureness. Am I doing the right thing? Am I saying the right thing? And so this kind of stuff lingers with a person for a long time, or at least in my case, a very long time. And still does, even though I’ve been working on recovery for decades.

**Anne:** Yeah, the lack of self confidence is due to emotional abuse, because that was the purpose of the emotional abuse. This is why it’s so important to find a betrayal trauma support group. For years, someone intentionally undermined your sense of self, and also purposefully undermined your, I call it a sacred internal warning system, where you know something’s wrong.

Rebuilding Self-Identity

**Anne:** You’re trying to resist something that’s harming you. You don’t have the words to describe it. You’re going to the person who is harming you and telling him, “You’re harming me”, but he already knows. He knows he’s exploiting you.

So he takes that as a cue, “Okay, I need to undermine her sense that something’s wrong.” Otherwise, I’m not able to exploit her.” So it doesn’t help to share your feelings with him. He purposefully erodes your sense of self over time. And when you’re safe from the abuse and not exposed to it anymore, rebuilding that sense of self is such a process.

**Penny:** Part of the emotional abuse I was put through was with my stepmother when I was a child, and it carried with me to my young adulthood when I married early. My stepmother told me constantly, you’re dumb, you’re stupid, you’re worthless, you’ll never amount to anything. So, of course, I had a low opinion of myself going into adulthood. Even though on the outside, you may not have seen that. It was trauma from hidden abuse.

And so when I married young and married a partner who tried to control me and told me that I was in sin. Because the pastor told him that I was in sin, he wouldn’t listen to me. There was nothing to talk about, and I was wrong. And as soon as I repented, we would be back to normal, and all would be fine.

And I think it was pressure to have me confess to something, because I was too strong willed for this particular church and this particular pastor. I was too questioning. And wasn’t as docile as they wanted women to be.

Societal and Religious Scripts That Hide Abuse

**Penny:** And they actually taught that women should submit to husbands, that they should glorify God by glorifying their husbands. This is when biblical submission becomes abuse. So anything I said or did that wasn’t according to the pastor or my husband’s wishes was considered wrong. And I was told this constantly.

So, when I left that abusive situation finally at 32, I questioned everything I did and said. Because my whole life, my childhood, my young adulthood, my early 20s. I was told I was wrong and my thinking was wrong, and who I was wasn’t good enough. The trauma from hidden abuse doesn’t go away overnight. And it takes a community. In my case. I moved far away and left the church.

I stopped practicing that religion, and I surrounded myself with people who were smarter than me. That liked me and accepted me for who I was. And here’s an example of how I rebuilt it. One of my friends said, Penny, you should apply for this job. We have an opening at my firm.

This woman was college educated, and I wasn’t, and she worked in finance, which I hardly knew what that meant. And she said, “You should apply to this job.” And I said, oh no, I can’t. I’m too stupid. And she said, Penny, you’re not stupid. You’re smart, and we’ll train you. You should apply. Guess what? I applied and they hired me over 30 or 40 other resumes that they had on their desktop. I saw a stack of resumes.

Realizing Self-Worth

**Penny:** So I knew, wait a minute, maybe my stepmother, ex-husband and pastor, maybe they were all wrong. And that’s how I slowly started rebuilding my life, surrounding my life with people who believed in me and held up a mirror to me that said, “You’re not stupid, you’re not ugly, dumb, or worthless. You are able, and here’s the proof.”

And then I started college. I put myself through community college, and I started getting A’s and B’s, and the teachers started calling on me in the classroom. They held me up as an example of here’s some good thinking, here’s a person who read the work, or here’s the person who gets this idea.

And slowly over time, and I’m talking decades, with the help of friends, holding up a mirror to me and showing me who I was. I started to change my opinion of myself. But it took a long time, work, and struggle and pain. Because those old thoughts and those old scripts still played in my mind.

**Anne:** One thing I want to point out to victims is that exploitation is such a huge part of trauma from hidden abuse. It is abuse in that they want something from you, your labor, your admiration. They want you to cook them dinner, have sex with them, or go to a party with them. They want something from you. So instead of caring about you, they care about what they can get from you.

His Lies & Manipulation Will Always Be Hidden Abuse

**Anne:** And because of that, anyone who hears, you’re not good at this. If we knew what was happening, the best defense is to say, in a strategic way. I actually teach this in The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. Is to say something like, oh, you’re right. I bet you don’t want to be around somebody like me. That makes sense. Then leave. Then they’re like, wait, no, you can’t go.

We know exploitation is the issue, because if they think so poorly of us, why would they want to be around us? Why do they not want us to leave when we say, oh, okay, we’re going to leave? Suddenly they’re like, you can’t leave. And then they want to stop you from leaving by being even more abusive, which also doesn’t make sense. If you weren’t capable, powerful and talented, they wouldn’t have anything to exploit from you. I think that’s the thing they’re trying to hide.

I think they’re thinking she’s capable, smart, and awesome. If she finds out how capable she is, how smart she is. She’s not going to want to stay here. So I’ve got to hide that from her, because I want to use her talents for myself. Heaven forbid, if she used her talents for her own self and her own life. Do you think your step mom was exploiting you?

**Penny:** I absolutely do. She was handicapped, crippled and in pain. My father was no help to her at all. He didn’t provide well, or help around the house. She needed me, but there was more to it than that. These people who exploit us, who hurt us emotionally, psychologically and physically. In her case, she was bitter and angry.

Exploitation By Family Members

**Penny:** Now that I’m a much older person and look back on it, she was angry at herself. She married my dad, who was a complete loser. Her parents warned her. Her parents said, don’t marry this guy. He’s a liar. They saw through him. She didn’t. Or she did it anyway, because she wanted to get out of her house.

They not only exploit us for our labor, in her case house cleaning, babysitting, and chores. We become their punching bag, because there’s nobody else to defend us. She knew my dad was never home. So she did it when he wasn’t home, of course, and when he came home late at night, was drunk. She had hours, she had all day until 8 or 9 at night to take advantage of me and create trauma this abuse was hidden from everyone else.

They break us down and make us feel small to exploit us for our labor or whatever they want from us. Because if we’re smarter than them, yes, we will leave. And eventually I did when I was old enough and had the wherewithal. But I couldn’t leave at 8, 9, 10 or 11. I had no idea where to go or how to do it.

**Anne:** Why do you think it’s so hard for other people to see this type of trauma from hidden abuse? When a victim is either in it or healing, and they might blame her. Or say something like, you’re just bitter or you need to move on, or why can’t you get over it? Even when you’re out of it. You’re not married anymore, for example, I’m talking about the universal you.

**Penny:** Yes.

**Anne:** A victim is not in the relationship anymore. She’s relatively safe.

Healing Trauma From Hidden Post Separation Abuse

**Anne:** Most of us experience post separation abuse. I was abused after my divorce for eight years through my ex’s messages about our children. So most women deal with post-separation abuse. And that’s why you know, we’re not “moving on” because the abuse is right then, like it happened today. He wrote me an abusive message and lied about me today.

But in terms of women who are healing trauma from hidden abuse, and maybe in a stage where they need to talk about it. Or they’re trying to process what happened, and bystanders say things like. You need to move on, or why can’t you just forgive, or give your power away? Or any of these like super hurtful things, because they don’t understand that she is healing from this type of trauma.

**Penny:** Part of it is that for people like you and myself, and those who have experienced hidden abuse. We get how deep and painful those wounds are, and how they don’t go away. And those fortunate enough to not have that happen to them, they don’t get it. They really don’t.

That’s one of the reasons why we need somebody to talk to that will validate us and help us heal. And give us a safe place where we can talk about the everyday nightmares and fears that come up in routine life. Our friends, it’s quite possible they just don’t have the capacity. And someday they will.

When Therapy Makes Things Worse

**Penny:** One of the reasons to read memoirs that may be different than your life is so that you can learn what other people have to go through to survive and to succeed. I mean, that’s why I read memoirs and I think that’s how I learn about other people and how that happened to them.

**Anne:** Reading is so valuable. You can get inside someone’s head in a way that you can’t from, like a movie or other experience. To develop compassion for others. But I also think that’s why it’s so important to ensure you’re connected with other women who understand. That’s why we do The Betrayal Trauma Recovery daily Group Sessions and Individual Sessions. Because everybody at Betrayal Trauma Recovery has been through it. We all totally get it.

Even a good therapist who hasn’t been through it will have a different take. Than someone who has been a victim who understands hidden abuse on that deep personal level. What it’s actually like. Because we’ve had so many women come to us who have gone to therapy, and the therapy actually made the situation worse.

Because they didn’t understand that she was resisting the abuse the entire time. In your story, if you haven’t heard it again, her episode is called, How to Start to Heal from Emotional Abuse, Penny’s story. There’s a part, Penny, where you move out into the country. And you did that as an act of resistance.

You thought, maybe it will improve our marriage if I do this. Maybe I can make things work. The same thing with the church. But some therapists might say, why did you do that? If you knew things were so bad and didn’t like him, why did you move away?

Safety Strategies To Protect Yourself

**Anne:** And the answer is I’m resisting, I’m trying to improve things. I realize it did not improve things, but my intent was to improve things. Same thing with women who are being lied to and yelled at. They might have sex with their husband, for example, and a therapist might say, why did you do that? And it’s because I thought if I did, he would not be mad at me anymore.

**Penny:** Nobody wants to be abused. Nobody wants to be exploited. We just don’t realize, especially if you’re stuck there financially and have children. It’s hard to leave if you’re financially dependent. And they make us emotionally dependent. It’s not your fault. If you’re a victim.

**Anne:** They’ve done a lot of damage, but I think even if it’s not a therapist, just people around saying something like, why didn’t you do this? It’s just so not helpful.

**Penny:** Not helpful. It’s actually hurtful, because then it makes you feel like something was wrong with you for not doing more. I don’t think you had a choice.

**Anne:** As I interview victims experiencing hidden abuse, it’s interesting. Because I’m asking questions like, and then this happened, or tell me about what you were thinking? And that’s not to victim blame or say they did something wrong. But to help other victims realize that this thought process that all of us go through is common, and that they’re not doing anything wrong.

They are actually doing what anyone in this situation would do. Another point to make is the “right” thing to do, for example, stand up for yourself. Which you would think would work is not the solution.

Winning Arguments Doesn’t Uncover Hidden Abuse

**Anne:** Your background is that you had a low opinion of yourself due to your stepmother’s abuse. In my case, I had strong self esteem. And I thought I was super smart. And so I would fight my abuser and be like, what? No, you don’t have this right. And I would usually win our arguments. And he was confused, and he would say things like, “Wait a minute. How are you winning this argument? I went to law school.”

My ex is an attorney, and I would say, “because you don’t make any sense.” And the reason why I would say that is because he wasn’t making any sense. Because he wanted to either exploit me or do something terrible for our family. And he was trying to give me like a bogus reason. This will be good for our family, because we’ll have this awesome rally car in our driveway, and it will make our neighbors think we’re cool. Something like that.

And I was like, what are you talking about? You are not making any sense. But the reason why I bring this up is that so many women are actually confident and don’t have a low self-esteem. But it’s not keeping them from being exploited or abused, because fighting with the abuser also doesn’t actually stop the abuse.

**Penny:** Right.

**Anne:** Then you just end up in an argument.

Sometimes it ends with you just giving up. In my case, I didn’t give up. So our arguments would last a long time, until basically he would pretend to give up. And then, like literally 10 minutes later, that rally car would be in our driveway. That’s just a metaphor. You know what I mean?

When You Can Finally See The Hidden Abuse

**Anne:** So that’s what’s really hard for women too, because I think inside of ourselves, we’re thinking maybe if I would have been quieter, maybe if I hadn’t asked so many questions, maybe if I hadn’t stood up for myself more, what if I had done this or that, would it have changed things? And the answer is no, they’re going to choose to do this no matter what.

**Penny:** Yep, all of us, I think, are taught as young girls to believe in the happily ever after. And most of us take our marriage vows seriously. I did. And so I couldn’t fight, because I was under the dictate of women submit to their husband. So I could try to express my view, but it didn’t carry any weight whatsoever. And I just had to live with it until it reached a point when I realized I can’t be here anymore. This is not who I am.

This is not where I belong. The church is asking me to do stuff that I don’t want to do. My husband, I no longer respect him or love him. If standing up for yourself or fighting will get you emotionally hurt. It’s time to step back and say, you know what, I made a mistake, and it’s okay to make mistakes.

I didn’t have all the information. I did not know who he was. He didn’t show me who he really was. But now that I know, and I don’t feel comfortable, I feel exploited and have trauma from hidden abuse. It’s time for me to step back, keep my mouth shut. Until I can find a plan, because that’s how you stay safe. You have to stay safe for yourself and your children until you can make a plan.

Living Free Workshop Strategies Help You SEE Hidden Abuse

**Penny:** And that means find community, find help, whatever it takes to successfully extract with the least amount of trauma.

**Anne:** Absolutely, and that’s why I wrote The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. Because in my experience interviewing all the victims I’ve interviewed over the years, over 300 on the podcast and in person. In our efforts to resist this trauma from hidden abuse, we’ve all tried different things, but it usually falls into two categories.

https://youtu.be/8Fd34dtRiRY

Either we’re trying to stay safe by keeping our head down, thinking that if we do what he says, it will get better. Or we’re trying to fight it. That’s not right. You can’t do this to me. You need to go to therapy. I’m gonna explain this to you. Those are the two categories that resistance falls under, but it could fall under any form of resistance. But because neither of those things work, the victims need safety strategies.

What safety strategies do is they enable you to resist in a way that you’re not doing what he wants, so he can’t exploit you. But you’re also not fighting him, so he can’t fight back, really. And so it’s this interesting middle place. Where it took me so long to figure it out is because I could not figure it out. Eight years post divorce with I’m still experiencing hidden abuse. He’s writing me messages almost every day about our children, medical neglect, all kinds of things going down.

I try to go to the court to say, hey, this is what’s happening. Please stop this. He got more custody due to that court case, and things just got worse. And so I prayed and developed these strategies, and they worked. And now I have full custody of my kids.

**Penny:** That’s great.

Education Is A Pathway To Seeing Hidden Abuse

**Anne:** So I think having safety strategies is important, but many people don’t understand that. They think, oh, everything would be fine between you and your ex. If you just take him seriously or, and it’s like. That’s not what’s going on here. It’s so much more.

**Penny:** I think it’s important to surround yourself with people who think highly of you and support you. Because the people who say those things again don’t get it. And it’s not helpful to hear. When you, even if you had left sooner, or done something different, you did the best you could. Nobody submits to abuse willingly, nobody. And so those people just don’t get that. And it’s not helpful.

**Anne:** In your healing, I love that getting more education was part of your healing process. Can you talk about how your college education helped you heal?

**Penny:** It helped in many ways. One, I was a waitress, right? I was financially at the bottom of the food chain. I couldn’t work enough hours in one place to make enough money to live in San Francisco at the time. It was expensive. So I worked two or three jobs at a time to make enough money to pay rent and have groceries and stuff.

I was much older than the people around me. I was living in a roommate situation with somebody five years younger than me. And all these people had college degrees, and the people I lived with were pursuing a graduate degree. They had what I looked at as cool and interesting jobs. So I said to myself, I need what they have. I need a college degree. And I started going.

Going To College Builds Self Esteem

**Penny:** And so it did two things for me. Number one is I vowed never again to depend on a man to support myself. I didn’t like living in a roommate situation, I wanted my own home that nobody could take away from me. Because now this was two homes, one I left home at 16. I ran away from home, so that’s one home lost. And second, I left my marriage and left my home and everything in it to my husband, my ex husband.

So that was two homes I lost, and I vowed I would never lose another home. So the college degree, first of all, as I started accruing classes, I could only take two or three classes at a time. Because I worked during the day and went to school at night. I started getting A’s and B’s. Going to college built my self esteem.

And I went to school with other adults who were also working during the day and going to school at night. Everybody had a different story. Some people were immigrants. Some people just didn’t have the money to go to school during the day. They were married, and now they’re going back to college. So it boosted my self esteem and my value, my thinking about how smart I was.

And number two, I was able to work in finance with a college degree, which is a rewarding career that allowed me to make enough money to own a house. And eventually, I remarried and have a partner who shares expenses with me. But had that not happened, I could maintain this lifestyle on my own. And so that was my goal.

Balancing Education & Responsibilities

**Penny:** And it created the college degree, created financial independence and huge self-esteem for me. And since then, got a master’s degree. And so again, graduating for a second time is huge. It’s a huge honor, thrill, and achievement. And I’m proud of that. It took a lot of work. It took a lot of time, sweat, loss of sleep, and loss of money, right? Because college costs money. It wasn’t free.

I also paid for it out of my own income, as opposed to taking out loans, which was pretty important nowadays because student loans can really create financial problems in the future.

**Anne:** That’s wonderful. For women who doubt themselves, they’re listening to this podcast and thinking, great, good for you, Penny. You did this. But I’m never going to do that. I have kids, they’re little, or I have this going on. And what type of encouragement might you give them?

**Penny:** I would say yes, I was lucky in that or unlucky. I was unable to bear children. I didn’t have children when I went through this. So that was the good luck, bad luck, right? Bad luck. I couldn’t have children. And also good luck, I didn’t have children. I was able to go to school at night. I didn’t have any responsibilities besides getting up for work the next morning.

But I would tell them that to find a way or wait until the kids are older and all in school. And see if they can find an online program that they could take maybe one class at a time.

Steps To Improve Your Life After Hidden Abuse

**Penny:** And even if it takes you 10 years to graduate college, if you can do one class at a time. And start accruing credits and grades, A’s, B’s and C’s, and improve the C to an A and B to an A. You’ll start feeling such a boost of self-esteem and pride. And say to yourself, I’m a quarter way through college. I’m a halfway through college. I’m three quarters of the way, or even a certificate.

Like maybe some colleges offer like certificates. That’s maybe an 18 month program for, I don’t know, dental hygienist or nurses aid or something like that. Some certificates then allow you to move up the food chain financially and get a respectable position. Maybe in a large organization that provides benefits. So you might have to shelve it now if you have little children dependent on you and can’t afford daycare. But when they get to school, you could do that.

And I think you could also go to your community and say, Hey, can we do a trade? Can you watch my kids this night so I could go to class? And I’ll watch your kids that night, so you can go to bingo, right? So there’s always a way to do it. It gets easier when the kids get older, I think. But make it your goal, set your mind on it, and don’t stop until you have that goal. Your certificate, your associate’s degree, or your bachelor’s degree.

**Anne:** And even if it’s not school, like you said, like a radiologist tech or something like that, or just a job, even if it’s not school.

Believing In A Better Future

**Anne:** I think the thing that breaks my heart the most is when victims feel like, and for good reason. They can’t do anything about their situation. And it’s a fine line between victim blaming, which we do not do here at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, and letting victims know that having experienced hidden abuse is not your fault. Nothing about the situation is your fault, and it has nothing to do with you. There are things that you can do that will improve your life.

They’re not going to change him. They have nothing to do with him. But you can take tiny steps. I talk about those in The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. There are tiny little baby steps that you can take that are free, that are just minute. But I think that’s why some people accidentally victim blame. Because they realize, yeah right, there’s nothing she can do to stop him from harming her or her kids.

She can even get divorced, and he can continue to do that. And so how can we help her make her way to safety? And most people don’t have an answer for that. They can’t figure it out, except you need to do this differently. Rather than realizing that some safety strategies are simply because someone’s never heard it before. And they didn’t know it was possible or they didn’t feel it was possible for them.

And so the thing I want to let everyone know is that there is a better life possible for you. I don’t know what that looks like. I don’t know how that’s going to come to be. But I want women to believe it’s possible.

Processing What I Learned

**Anne:** Because when women believe safety is possible, they believe they can improve their lives somehow. And believe they can heal trauma from hidden abuse and readily apparent abuse. That is when the magic happens, when they start taking steps to improve their lives. And also start taking steps to get themselves out of a situation that they absolutely did not cause and had nothing to do with them in the first place.

**Penny:** Yep, I agree.

**Anne:** Is there anything else you wanted to cover?

**Penny:** I would love to mention to your listeners that I wrote a memoir of surviving both an abusive marriage and abusive childhood. And how I made a recovery, became successful, happy, and rebuilt my life. It’s called *Redeemed, a Memoir of a Stolen Childhood*, by Penny Lane, and available wherever you buy books.

It’s inexpensive, and available at most libraries. So I’d love them to look at that, and I hope to inspire people to make some choices. And to know that I’m nobody special. I’m just a kid from Queens, a runaway from Queens, and that if I could do it, they can do it too.

**Anne:** Yeah, thank you. And to hear her story on the podcast was amazing too. She only told a small portion of it, and hearing her whole story and how far she’s come in, her memoir would be awesome. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom accrued over the years in thinking about this. And it’s so inspiring to talk to victims who have taken something so difficult and made it into something beautiful.

Encouragement To Move Forward

**Penny:** Yeah, I think it is possible, and I want to tell your listeners that once you start making the baby steps, to stand up for yourself and change your own life. And to stand up to people who abuse you, oppress you, verbally attack you or denigrate you. You will start feeling a power and strength in your soul that you’ve never felt before. And so I encourage you to start taking those steps. Because it’s the beginning of change.

**Anne:** That’s awesome. Thank you so much for talking with me today, Penny.

**Penny:** You’re very welcome. I wish all your viewers well and happiness and safety

How To Heal From Hidden Abuse — **Healing Trauma From Hidden Abuse – What Gets In Our Way? Penny’s Take** Apr 08, 2025
Hidden abuse is characterized by lies and manipulation, and it causes trauma that’s hard to recognize.

To discover if you’re experiencing any of the 19 types of hidden abuse, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

**This episode follows Penny’s Story**
*How to Start to Heal From Emotional Abuse – Penny’s Story*
*Healing Trauma From Hidden Abuse – What Gets In Our Way? – Penny’s Take* (THIS EPISODE)

What Is Hidden Abuse?

One of the biggest obstacles in healing trauma from hidden abuse is understanding what’s happening to you.

The constant barrage of lies and manipulation from the abuser can make it incredibly difficult for women to see the reality of their situation. Gaslighting, a common tactic, can distort a woman’s perception of reality, making her doubt her judgment and experiences.

Traditional therapists, clergy, and even well-meaning friends and family may not recognize hidden abuse for what it is.

Barriers To Discovering Hidden Abuse:

**Lack of Understanding:** Many women fail to recognize lies, pornography use, and infidelity as forms of emotional and psychological abuse.

**Misguided Strategies:** Conventional advice focuses on improving communication and forgiveness rather than educating about abuse and implementing safety strategies.

**Isolation:** Feeling misunderstood leads to social withdrawal, making it harder to seek support.

**Being Dismissed:** Without a supportive network that acknowledges abuse, women begin to question their experiences and feelings.

**Stigma:** Fear of judgment and the stigma of “giving up on the relationship” or not being a good wife prevents women from seeking emotional safety.

**Guilt and Shame:** Self-blame (or being blamed by the abuser) stops women from reaching out for help.

**Trying to Fix Yourself:** Believing the problem lies within themselves keeps women from finding emotional safety.

**Confusion:** Manipulation tactics like gaslighting cause confusion and self-doubt.

**Entrapment:** Continued manipulation leaves women feeling trapped.

**Pressure to Reconcile:** Cultural and religious norms prioritize preserving the marriage over individual well-being.

When You Go For Help, But They Don’t Identify Hidden Abuse

If you’ve tried to figure out what’s going on and you haven’t been able to feel more emotionally safe, there is help.

The Free Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast helps women learn more about how to spot hidden abuse.

Healing Trauma From Hidden Abuse IS Possible

If you’re struggling to heal the trauma from hidden abuse, consider attending a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session TODAY and take the first step toward a brighter, healthier future.

Transcript: Healing Trauma From Hidden Abuse

**Anne:** Penny is back on today’s episode. You can find her story in an episode called How to Start to Heal from Emotional Abuse, Penny’s story. We wanted to talk about the aftermath of emotional abuse, how it’s misunderstood by people in general, and how to face that. So welcome back, Penny.

**Penny:** Thank you. Thank you for having me.

**Anne:** So this type of hidden abuse where you don’t have someone charged with domestic violence. Why do you think it’s so hard for people to understand what it takes to heal trauma from hidden abuse?

**Penny:** Yeah, I think like you said, they don’t see any bruises, scars, or black eyes. We want to fit in and be accepted. We don’t want to be different. And so we look normal on the outside, but the inside is where the pain, results, and leftover baggage from emotional abuse is.

Things like fear, anxiety, and unsureness. Am I doing the right thing? Am I saying the right thing? And so this kind of stuff lingers with a person for a long time, or at least in my case, a very long time. And still does, even though I’ve been working on recovery for decades.

**Anne:** Yeah, the lack of self confidence is due to emotional abuse, because that was the purpose of the emotional abuse. This is why it’s so important to find a betrayal trauma support group. For years, someone intentionally undermined your sense of self, and also purposefully undermined your, I call it a sacred internal warning system, where you know something’s wrong.

Rebuilding Self-Identity

**Anne:** You’re trying to resist something that’s harming you. You don’t have the words to describe it. You’re going to the person who is harming you and telling him, “You’re harming me”, but he already knows. He knows he’s exploiting you.

So he takes that as a cue, “Okay, I need to undermine her sense that something’s wrong.” Otherwise, I’m not able to exploit her.” So it doesn’t help to share your feelings with him. He purposefully erodes your sense of self over time. And when you’re safe from the abuse and not exposed to it anymore, rebuilding that sense of self is such a process.

**Penny:** Part of the emotional abuse I was put through was with my stepmother when I was a child, and it carried with me to my young adulthood when I married early. My stepmother told me constantly, you’re dumb, you’re stupid, you’re worthless, you’ll never amount to anything. So, of course, I had a low opinion of myself going into adulthood. Even though on the outside, you may not have seen that. It was trauma from hidden abuse.

And so when I married young and married a partner who tried to control me and told me that I was in sin. Because the pastor told him that I was in sin, he wouldn’t listen to me. There was nothing to talk about, and I was wrong. And as soon as I repented, we would be back to normal, and all would be fine.

And I think it was pressure to have me confess to something, because I was too strong willed for this particular church and this particular pastor. I was too questioning. And wasn’t as docile as they wanted women to be.

Societal and Religious Scripts That Hide Abuse

**Penny:** And they actually taught that women should submit to husbands, that they should glorify God by glorifying their husbands. This is when biblical submission becomes abuse. So anything I said or did that wasn’t according to the pastor or my husband’s wishes was considered wrong. And I was told this constantly.

So, when I left that abusive situation finally at 32, I questioned everything I did and said. Because my whole life, my childhood, my young adulthood, my early 20s. I was told I was wrong and my thinking was wrong, and who I was wasn’t good enough. The trauma from hidden abuse doesn’t go away overnight. And it takes a community. In my case. I moved far away and left the church.

I stopped practicing that religion, and I surrounded myself with people who were smarter than me. That liked me and accepted me for who I was. And here’s an example of how I rebuilt it. One of my friends said, Penny, you should apply for this job. We have an opening at my firm.

This woman was college educated, and I wasn’t, and she worked in finance, which I hardly knew what that meant. And she said, “You should apply to this job.” And I said, oh no, I can’t. I’m too stupid. And she said, Penny, you’re not stupid. You’re smart, and we’ll train you. You should apply. Guess what? I applied and they hired me over 30 or 40 other resumes that they had on their desktop. I saw a stack of resumes.

Realizing Self-Worth

**Penny:** So I knew, wait a minute, maybe my stepmother, ex-husband and pastor, maybe they were all wrong. And that’s how I slowly started rebuilding my life, surrounding my life with people who believed in me and held up a mirror to me that said, “You’re not stupid, you’re not ugly, dumb, or worthless. You are able, and here’s the proof.”

And then I started college. I put myself through community college, and I started getting A’s and B’s, and the teachers started calling on me in the classroom. They held me up as an example of here’s some good thinking, here’s a person who read the work, or here’s the person who gets this idea.

And slowly over time, and I’m talking decades, with the help of friends, holding up a mirror to me and showing me who I was. I started to change my opinion of myself. But it took a long time, work, and struggle and pain. Because those old thoughts and those old scripts still played in my mind.

**Anne:** One thing I want to point out to victims is that exploitation is such a huge part of trauma from hidden abuse. It is abuse in that they want something from you, your labor, your admiration. They want you to cook them dinner, have sex with them, or go to a party with them. They want something from you. So instead of caring about you, they care about what they can get from you.

His Lies & Manipulation Will Always Be Hidden Abuse

**Anne:** And because of that, anyone who hears, you’re not good at this. If we knew what was happening, the best defense is to say, in a strategic way. I actually teach this in The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. Is to say something like, oh, you’re right. I bet you don’t want to be around somebody like me. That makes sense. Then leave. Then they’re like, wait, no, you can’t go.

We know exploitation is the issue, because if they think so poorly of us, why would they want to be around us? Why do they not want us to leave when we say, oh, okay, we’re going to leave? Suddenly they’re like, you can’t leave. And then they want to stop you from leaving by being even more abusive, which also doesn’t make sense. If you weren’t capable, powerful and talented, they wouldn’t have anything to exploit from you. I think that’s the thing they’re trying to hide.

I think they’re thinking she’s capable, smart, and awesome. If she finds out how capable she is, how smart she is. She’s not going to want to stay here. So I’ve got to hide that from her, because I want to use her talents for myself. Heaven forbid, if she used her talents for her own self and her own life. Do you think your step mom was exploiting you?

**Penny:** I absolutely do. She was handicapped, crippled and in pain. My father was no help to her at all. He didn’t provide well, or help around the house. She needed me, but there was more to it than that. These people who exploit us, who hurt us emotionally, psychologically and physically. In her case, she was bitter and angry.

Exploitation By Family Members

**Penny:** Now that I’m a much older person and look back on it, she was angry at herself. She married my dad, who was a complete loser. Her parents warned her. Her parents said, don’t marry this guy. He’s a liar. They saw through him. She didn’t. Or she did it anyway, because she wanted to get out of her house.

They not only exploit us for our labor, in her case house cleaning, babysitting, and chores. We become their punching bag, because there’s nobody else to defend us. She knew my dad was never home. So she did it when he wasn’t home, of course, and when he came home late at night, was drunk. She had hours, she had all day until 8 or 9 at night to take advantage of me and create trauma this abuse was hidden from everyone else.

They break us down and make us feel small to exploit us for our labor or whatever they want from us. Because if we’re smarter than them, yes, we will leave. And eventually I did when I was old enough and had the wherewithal. But I couldn’t leave at 8, 9, 10 or 11. I had no idea where to go or how to do it.

**Anne:** Why do you think it’s so hard for other people to see this type of trauma from hidden abuse? When a victim is either in it or healing, and they might blame her. Or say something like, you’re just bitter or you need to move on, or why can’t you get over it? Even when you’re out of it. You’re not married anymore, for example, I’m talking about the universal you.

**Penny:** Yes.

**Anne:** A victim is not in the relationship anymore. She’s relatively safe.

Healing Trauma From Hidden Post Separation Abuse

**Anne:** Most of us experience post separation abuse. I was abused after my divorce for eight years through my ex’s messages about our children. So most women deal with post-separation abuse. And that’s why you know, we’re not “moving on” because the abuse is right then, like it happened today. He wrote me an abusive message and lied about me today.

But in terms of women who are healing trauma from hidden abuse, and maybe in a stage where they need to talk about it. Or they’re trying to process what happened, and bystanders say things like. You need to move on, or why can’t you just forgive, or give your power away? Or any of these like super hurtful things, because they don’t understand that she is healing from this type of trauma.

**Penny:** Part of it is that for people like you and myself, and those who have experienced hidden abuse. We get how deep and painful those wounds are, and how they don’t go away. And those fortunate enough to not have that happen to them, they don’t get it. They really don’t.

That’s one of the reasons why we need somebody to talk to that will validate us and help us heal. And give us a safe place where we can talk about the everyday nightmares and fears that come up in routine life. Our friends, it’s quite possible they just don’t have the capacity. And someday they will.

When Therapy Makes Things Worse

**Penny:** One of the reasons to read memoirs that may be different than your life is so that you can learn what other people have to go through to survive and to succeed. I mean, that’s why I read memoirs and I think that’s how I learn about other people and how that happened to them.

**Anne:** Reading is so valuable. You can get inside someone’s head in a way that you can’t from, like a movie or other experience. To develop compassion for others. But I also think that’s why it’s so important to ensure you’re connected with other women who understand. That’s why we do The Betrayal Trauma Recovery daily Group Sessions and Individual Sessions. Because everybody at Betrayal Trauma Recovery has been through it. We all totally get it.

Even a good therapist who hasn’t been through it will have a different take. Than someone who has been a victim who understands hidden abuse on that deep personal level. What it’s actually like. Because we’ve had so many women come to us who have gone to therapy, and the therapy actually made the situation worse.

Because they didn’t understand that she was resisting the abuse the entire time. In your story, if you haven’t heard it again, her episode is called, How to Start to Heal from Emotional Abuse, Penny’s story. There’s a part, Penny, where you move out into the country. And you did that as an act of resistance.

You thought, maybe it will improve our marriage if I do this. Maybe I can make things work. The same thing with the church. But some therapists might say, why did you do that? If you knew things were so bad and didn’t like him, why did you move away?

Safety Strategies To Protect Yourself

**Anne:** And the answer is I’m resisting, I’m trying to improve things. I realize it did not improve things, but my intent was to improve things. Same thing with women who are being lied to and yelled at. They might have sex with their husband, for example, and a therapist might say, why did you do that? And it’s because I thought if I did, he would not be mad at me anymore.

**Penny:** Nobody wants to be abused. Nobody wants to be exploited. We just don’t realize, especially if you’re stuck there financially and have children. It’s hard to leave if you’re financially dependent. And they make us emotionally dependent. It’s not your fault. If you’re a victim.

**Anne:** They’ve done a lot of damage, but I think even if it’s not a therapist, just people around saying something like, why didn’t you do this? It’s just so not helpful.

**Penny:** Not helpful. It’s actually hurtful, because then it makes you feel like something was wrong with you for not doing more. I don’t think you had a choice.

**Anne:** As I interview victims experiencing hidden abuse, it’s interesting. Because I’m asking questions like, and then this happened, or tell me about what you were thinking? And that’s not to victim blame or say they did something wrong. But to help other victims realize that this thought process that all of us go through is common, and that they’re not doing anything wrong.

They are actually doing what anyone in this situation would do. Another point to make is the “right” thing to do, for example, stand up for yourself. Which you would think would work is not the solution.

Winning Arguments Doesn’t Uncover Hidden Abuse

**Anne:** Your background is that you had a low opinion of yourself due to your stepmother’s abuse. In my case, I had strong self esteem. And I thought I was super smart. And so I would fight my abuser and be like, what? No, you don’t have this right. And I would usually win our arguments. And he was confused, and he would say things like, “Wait a minute. How are you winning this argument? I went to law school.”

My ex is an attorney, and I would say, “because you don’t make any sense.” And the reason why I would say that is because he wasn’t making any sense. Because he wanted to either exploit me or do something terrible for our family. And he was trying to give me like a bogus reason. This will be good for our family, because we’ll have this awesome rally car in our driveway, and it will make our neighbors think we’re cool. Something like that.

And I was like, what are you talking about? You are not making any sense. But the reason why I bring this up is that so many women are actually confident and don’t have a low self-esteem. But it’s not keeping them from being exploited or abused, because fighting with the abuser also doesn’t actually stop the abuse.

**Penny:** Right.

**Anne:** Then you just end up in an argument.

Sometimes it ends with you just giving up. In my case, I didn’t give up. So our arguments would last a long time, until basically he would pretend to give up. And then, like literally 10 minutes later, that rally car would be in our driveway. That’s just a metaphor. You know what I mean?

When You Can Finally See The Hidden Abuse

**Anne:** So that’s what’s really hard for women too, because I think inside of ourselves, we’re thinking maybe if I would have been quieter, maybe if I hadn’t asked so many questions, maybe if I hadn’t stood up for myself more, what if I had done this or that, would it have changed things? And the answer is no, they’re going to choose to do this no matter what.

**Penny:** Yep, all of us, I think, are taught as young girls to believe in the happily ever after. And most of us take our marriage vows seriously. I did. And so I couldn’t fight, because I was under the dictate of women submit to their husband. So I could try to express my view, but it didn’t carry any weight whatsoever. And I just had to live with it until it reached a point when I realized I can’t be here anymore. This is not who I am.

This is not where I belong. The church is asking me to do stuff that I don’t want to do. My husband, I no longer respect him or love him. If standing up for yourself or fighting will get you emotionally hurt. It’s time to step back and say, you know what, I made a mistake, and it’s okay to make mistakes.

I didn’t have all the information. I did not know who he was. He didn’t show me who he really was. But now that I know, and I don’t feel comfortable, I feel exploited and have trauma from hidden abuse. It’s time for me to step back, keep my mouth shut. Until I can find a plan, because that’s how you stay safe. You have to stay safe for yourself and your children until you can make a plan.

Living Free Workshop Strategies Help You SEE Hidden Abuse

**Penny:** And that means find community, find help, whatever it takes to successfully extract with the least amount of trauma.

**Anne:** Absolutely, and that’s why I wrote The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. Because in my experience interviewing all the victims I’ve interviewed over the years, over 300 on the podcast and in person. In our efforts to resist this trauma from hidden abuse, we’ve all tried different things, but it usually falls into two categories.

https://youtu.be/8Fd34dtRiRY

Either we’re trying to stay safe by keeping our head down, thinking that if we do what he says, it will get better. Or we’re trying to fight it. That’s not right. You can’t do this to me. You need to go to therapy. I’m gonna explain this to you. Those are the two categories that resistance falls under, but it could fall under any form of resistance. But because neither of those things work, the victims need safety strategies.

What safety strategies do is they enable you to resist in a way that you’re not doing what he wants, so he can’t exploit you. But you’re also not fighting him, so he can’t fight back, really. And so it’s this interesting middle place. Where it took me so long to figure it out is because I could not figure it out. Eight years post divorce with I’m still experiencing hidden abuse. He’s writing me messages almost every day about our children, medical neglect, all kinds of things going down.

I try to go to the court to say, hey, this is what’s happening. Please stop this. He got more custody due to that court case, and things just got worse. And so I prayed and developed these strategies, and they worked. And now I have full custody of my kids.

**Penny:** That’s great.

Education Is A Pathway To Seeing Hidden Abuse

**Anne:** So I think having safety strategies is important, but many people don’t understand that. They think, oh, everything would be fine between you and your ex. If you just take him seriously or, and it’s like. That’s not what’s going on here. It’s so much more.

**Penny:** I think it’s important to surround yourself with people who think highly of you and support you. Because the people who say those things again don’t get it. And it’s not helpful to hear. When you, even if you had left sooner, or done something different, you did the best you could. Nobody submits to abuse willingly, nobody. And so those people just don’t get that. And it’s not helpful.

**Anne:** In your healing, I love that getting more education was part of your healing process. Can you talk about how your college education helped you heal?

**Penny:** It helped in many ways. One, I was a waitress, right? I was financially at the bottom of the food chain. I couldn’t work enough hours in one place to make enough money to live in San Francisco at the time. It was expensive. So I worked two or three jobs at a time to make enough money to pay rent and have groceries and stuff.

I was much older than the people around me. I was living in a roommate situation with somebody five years younger than me. And all these people had college degrees, and the people I lived with were pursuing a graduate degree. They had what I looked at as cool and interesting jobs. So I said to myself, I need what they have. I need a college degree. And I started going.

Going To College Builds Self Esteem

**Penny:** And so it did two things for me. Number one is I vowed never again to depend on a man to support myself. I didn’t like living in a roommate situation, I wanted my own home that nobody could take away from me. Because now this was two homes, one I left home at 16. I ran away from home, so that’s one home lost. And second, I left my marriage and left my home and everything in it to my husband, my ex husband.

So that was two homes I lost, and I vowed I would never lose another home. So the college degree, first of all, as I started accruing classes, I could only take two or three classes at a time. Because I worked during the day and went to school at night. I started getting A’s and B’s. Going to college built my self esteem.

And I went to school with other adults who were also working during the day and going to school at night. Everybody had a different story. Some people were immigrants. Some people just didn’t have the money to go to school during the day. They were married, and now they’re going back to college. So it boosted my self esteem and my value, my thinking about how smart I was.

And number two, I was able to work in finance with a college degree, which is a rewarding career that allowed me to make enough money to own a house. And eventually, I remarried and have a partner who shares expenses with me. But had that not happened, I could maintain this lifestyle on my own. And so that was my goal.

Balancing Education & Responsibilities

**Penny:** And it created the college degree, created financial independence and huge self-esteem for me. And since then, got a master’s degree. And so again, graduating for a second time is huge. It’s a huge honor, thrill, and achievement. And I’m proud of that. It took a lot of work. It took a lot of time, sweat, loss of sleep, and loss of money, right? Because college costs money. It wasn’t free.

I also paid for it out of my own income, as opposed to taking out loans, which was pretty important nowadays because student loans can really create financial problems in the future.

**Anne:** That’s wonderful. For women who doubt themselves, they’re listening to this podcast and thinking, great, good for you, Penny. You did this. But I’m never going to do that. I have kids, they’re little, or I have this going on. And what type of encouragement might you give them?

**Penny:** I would say yes, I was lucky in that or unlucky. I was unable to bear children. I didn’t have children when I went through this. So that was the good luck, bad luck, right? Bad luck. I couldn’t have children. And also good luck, I didn’t have children. I was able to go to school at night. I didn’t have any responsibilities besides getting up for work the next morning.

But I would tell them that to find a way or wait until the kids are older and all in school. And see if they can find an online program that they could take maybe one class at a time.

Steps To Improve Your Life After Hidden Abuse

**Penny:** And even if it takes you 10 years to graduate college, if you can do one class at a time. And start accruing credits and grades, A’s, B’s and C’s, and improve the C to an A and B to an A. You’ll start feeling such a boost of self-esteem and pride. And say to yourself, I’m a quarter way through college. I’m a halfway through college. I’m three quarters of the way, or even a certificate.

Like maybe some colleges offer like certificates. That’s maybe an 18 month program for, I don’t know, dental hygienist or nurses aid or something like that. Some certificates then allow you to move up the food chain financially and get a respectable position. Maybe in a large organization that provides benefits. So you might have to shelve it now if you have little children dependent on you and can’t afford daycare. But when they get to school, you could do that.

And I think you could also go to your community and say, Hey, can we do a trade? Can you watch my kids this night so I could go to class? And I’ll watch your kids that night, so you can go to bingo, right? So there’s always a way to do it. It gets easier when the kids get older, I think. But make it your goal, set your mind on it, and don’t stop until you have that goal. Your certificate, your associate’s degree, or your bachelor’s degree.

**Anne:** And even if it’s not school, like you said, like a radiologist tech or something like that, or just a job, even if it’s not school.

Believing In A Better Future

**Anne:** I think the thing that breaks my heart the most is when victims feel like, and for good reason. They can’t do anything about their situation. And it’s a fine line between victim blaming, which we do not do here at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, and letting victims know that having experienced hidden abuse is not your fault. Nothing about the situation is your fault, and it has nothing to do with you. There are things that you can do that will improve your life.

They’re not going to change him. They have nothing to do with him. But you can take tiny steps. I talk about those in The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. There are tiny little baby steps that you can take that are free, that are just minute. But I think that’s why some people accidentally victim blame. Because they realize, yeah right, there’s nothing she can do to stop him from harming her or her kids.

She can even get divorced, and he can continue to do that. And so how can we help her make her way to safety? And most people don’t have an answer for that. They can’t figure it out, except you need to do this differently. Rather than realizing that some safety strategies are simply because someone’s never heard it before. And they didn’t know it was possible or they didn’t feel it was possible for them.

And so the thing I want to let everyone know is that there is a better life possible for you. I don’t know what that looks like. I don’t know how that’s going to come to be. But I want women to believe it’s possible.

Processing What I Learned

**Anne:** Because when women believe safety is possible, they believe they can improve their lives somehow. And believe they can heal trauma from hidden abuse and readily apparent abuse. That is when the magic happens, when they start taking steps to improve their lives. And also start taking steps to get themselves out of a situation that they absolutely did not cause and had nothing to do with them in the first place.

**Penny:** Yep, I agree.

**Anne:** Is there anything else you wanted to cover?

**Penny:** I would love to mention to your listeners that I wrote a memoir of surviving both an abusive marriage and abusive childhood. And how I made a recovery, became successful, happy, and rebuilt my life. It’s called *Redeemed, a Memoir of a Stolen Childhood*, by Penny Lane, and available wherever you buy books.

It’s inexpensive, and available at most libraries. So I’d love them to look at that, and I hope to inspire people to make some choices. And to know that I’m nobody special. I’m just a kid from Queens, a runaway from Queens, and that if I could do it, they can do it too.

**Anne:** Yeah, thank you. And to hear her story on the podcast was amazing too. She only told a small portion of it, and hearing her whole story and how far she’s come in, her memoir would be awesome. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom accrued over the years in thinking about this. And it’s so inspiring to talk to victims who have taken something so difficult and made it into something beautiful.

Encouragement To Move Forward

**Penny:** Yeah, I think it is possible, and I want to tell your listeners that once you start making the baby steps, to stand up for yourself and change your own life. And to stand up to people who abuse you, oppress you, verbally attack you or denigrate you. You will start feeling a power and strength in your soul that you’ve never felt before. And so I encourage you to start taking those steps. Because it’s the beginning of change.

**Anne:** That’s awesome. Thank you so much for talking with me today, Penny.

**Penny:** You’re very welcome. I wish all your viewers well and happiness and safety

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What Is A Sex Addict? What You Need To Know Nov 15, 2022

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What Does The Bible Say About Narcissistic Abuse? Sep 27, 2022

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Strategies For Divorcing An Abusive Husband With Wendy Hernandez Sep 20, 2022

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The Truth About Clergy Misconduct Aug 30, 2022

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This Is Why Emotional Abuse Is So Hard To See – Macie’s Story Aug 23, 2022

Emotional abuse is invisible, he may never yell, scream or say "mean" things. This is why it's hard to see.

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Is Emotional Abuse Considered Domestic Violence? Evie’s Story Aug 09, 2022

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What Is Covert Emotional Abuse? – Nadira’s Story Jul 26, 2022

He may not hit, yell, or seem like a mean, angry bully - but covert emotional abuse leaves invisible scars.

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3 Signs of Spiritual Abuse To Look Out For – Liz’s Story Jul 12, 2022

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The Best Books About Emotional Abuse In Marriage Jul 05, 2022

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The Truth About The Causes of Sexual Addiction – Cindy’s Story Jun 28, 2022

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What Does The Bible Say About Boundaries In Marriage Jun 21, 2022

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What To Do When Your Child Watches Inappropriate Things Jun 14, 2022

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Christian Help For Infidelity: When You Don’t Know What To Do May 17, 2022

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How To Know If Your Husband Has A Sex Addiction May 10, 2022

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Why Does My Stomach Hurt During Sex? 5 Possible Reasons Mar 08, 2022

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Your anger is not bad – it may be helpful Feb 22, 2022

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How To Help Your Daughter In An Abusive Relationship Feb 08, 2022

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What Does The Bible Say About Cheating Husbands? – Lisa’s Story Feb 01, 2022

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Should I Prepare For Divorce? 4 Things To Consider Jan 25, 2022

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Cleanbrowsing DNS – How One Mom Protected Her Children Online Jan 18, 2022

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Can In-Home Separation Help Me? – Lindsay’s Story Jan 11, 2022

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Is Infidelity Abuse? What Most Therapists Won’t Tell You Dec 07, 2021

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Find Your Voice – How To Heal After Emotional Abuse Nov 16, 2021

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Finding Out My Husband Betrayed Me With Men – Savannah’s Story Nov 02, 2021

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What Does The Bible REALLY Say About Divorce? Oct 26, 2021

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How To Teach Your Kids About Healthy Choices Oct 12, 2021

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Am I Over My Ex? The Best Way To Know Sep 21, 2021

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What Lack of Intimacy Does to a Woman – Maria’s Story Aug 24, 2021

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Teaching Children How To Set Boundaries with Kimberly Perry Aug 17, 2021

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Rethinking The Betrayal Trauma Process with Barbara Steffens Aug 10, 2021

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50 Things You Need To Know About Betrayal Trauma In A Relationship Aug 03, 2021

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The Best Way to Leave a Narcissist Husband Jul 20, 2021

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Unintentional Gaslighting From Your Husband? – Charlotte’s Story Jul 13, 2021

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The Link Between Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse

Identifying Psychological Abuse And Emotional Abuse:

Steps To Heal From Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse

1. Seek Emotional Safety

2. Build a Support Network

3. Educate Yourself on His Tactics To Make Healing From Psychological Abuse Possible

4. It Has Nothing To Do With You (and Everything To Do with You)

Transcript: Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse

Disrespect & Lack Of Communication

Silent Treatment & Gaslighting

Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse: Energy From Chaos

Struggles With Exploitative Content

Failed Counseling Attempts

Psychological vs Emotional Abuse: Lies In The Face Of Hard Evidence

Hidden Cameras & Stalking

Discovering The Dating Profile

Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse: Attempting Affair Recovery

Pressure & Self-Betrayal

Discovering Infidelity

Social Media & Realizations

Emotional & Physical Safety

Seeking Legal Help

Psychological And Emotional Abuse: Using Meditation To Heal

Support & Community

Escalation & More Lies

Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse: So Many Lies

Wanting To Help Other Women

Hope For The Future

Transcript: Is It Wrong To Check Your Husband’s Phone?

Betrayal Trauma Recovery’s Perspective On Safety

Ineffectiveness Of Searching Devices

Checking Your Husband’s Phone: Emotional Turmoil & Intuition

The Living Free Workshop

Setting Boundaries For Safety

Checking My Husband’s Phone VS. Setting Boundaries

Practical Boundary Setting

Advice For Listeners

The 5 Stages of Anger After Infidelity

1. Anger at the Betrayal Itself

2. Anger at the Consequences

3. Anger at the Loss

4. Anger at Yourself

5. Reclaiming Anger as Strength

You’re Not Alone. I’m Angry Too

Transcript: Stages of Anger After Infidelity

Gratitude for Family

Struggling with Anger At Infidelity and Contradictions in Faith

When His Actions Contradict His Stated Values

Struggling to Hold On After Infidelity: Hoping for Change in a Difficult Relationship

Facing The Anger: Developing Inner Peace After Infidelity

How Can You Develop Peace After The Anger Of Infidelity

Why Does Inner Strength Help In Healing The Anger From Infidelity

Inner Peace & Spirituality

Angry After Infidelity: Facing The Dark Times

Movign On From Anger Comes With Inner Peace

Can Boundary-Setting Help You Heal Your Anger After Infidelity?

What Is Post Separation Abuse?

1. Financial Abuse

2. Unauthorized Entry

3. Manipulating Your Children’s Lives

Get The Right Support while you are experiencing Post-separation abuse

Why Choose Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions?

Take Action to Protect Yourself During Post-separation Abuse

Transcript: What Is Post Separation Abuse?

Early Relationship Dynamics

Appeasing Him

Understanding Post Separation Abuse

Therapy & Depression

The “No” Test, Manipulation & Control

What Is Post Separation Abuse: Recording Conversations To Maintain clarity

Journaling & Trauma Response

Living In Between Horrible Things

Confronting the reality of Abuse

Lies & Recording Conversations

Differences Between Counties Dealing With Custody

Post Separation Abuse INcludes legal maniplulation