Alexandra and Brianne explore the hidden epidemic of verbal abuse. Hear Alexandra’s story of marriage, trauma, and recovery. Gain insight into how to identify and escape verbal abuse. Learn ways to process the experience and regain joy. From understanding the danger of verbal abuse to setting healthy boundaries, this podcast offers a necessary and empowering journey of healing.
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If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction, depression, trauma, sexual abuse or feeling overwhelmed, we've compiled a list of resources at secretlifepodcast.com.
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To share your secret and be a guest on the show email secretlifepodcast@icloud.com
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SECRET LIFE’S TOPICS INCLUDE:
addiction recovery, mental health, alcoholism, drug addiction, sex addiction, love addiction, OCD, ADHD, dyslexia, eating disorders, debt & money issues, anorexia, depression, shoplifting, molestation, sexual assault, trauma, relationships, self-love, friendships, community, secrets, self-care, courage, freedom, and happiness.
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ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Alexandra Eva-May is a divorcee, podcast host, wellness warrior, mental health advocate, new mother, survivor of infertility, writer, blogger, motivational speaker and recently, a best-selling author of the book, Her Awakening. You can grab your copy on Amazon!
For more info: https://www.thesplendidpath.com/
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Create and Host Your Podcast with the same host we use - RedCircle
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Get your copy of SECRET LIFE OF A HOLLYWOOD SEX & LOVE ADDICT -- Secret Life Novel or on Amazon
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HOW CAN I SUPPORT THE SHOW?
Connect with Brianne Davis-Gantt (@thebriannedavis)
Connect with Mark Gantt (@markgantt)
Transcript
[0:00:00] Alexandra: So for me, like, for a long time after, like, any kind of conflict with a man is just like hugely triggering. Because my experience was this will lead to someone saying these awful things to you.
[0:00:18] Brianne Davis: Welcome to the Secret Life Podcast. Tell me your secret, I'll tell you mine.
Sometimes you have to go through the darkness to reach the light. That's what I did. After twelve years of recovery in sex and love addiction, I finally found my soulmate myself. Please join me in my novel, Secret Life of a Hollywood Sex and Love Addict. A four time bestseller on Amazon. It's a brutal, honest, raw, gnarly ride, but hilarious at the same time. Check it out now on Amazon. Welcome to see your life podcast. I'm Brianne Davis-Gantt. Today, I'm pulling back the curtains of all kinds of human secrets. We'll hear about what people are hiding from themselves or others. You know, those deep, dark secrets you probably want to take to your grave. Or those lighter, funnier secrets that are just plain embarrassing.
[0:01:19] Brianne Davis: Really, the how, what, when, where and why would it all. Today. My guest is Alexandra. Now, Alexandra, I have a question for you. Duhn, Duhn Duhn. What is your secret?
[0:01:33] Alexandra: So my secret is that when I was married, I was suffering verbal abuse silently within my marriage and I didn't tell anyone that it was my secret.
[0:01:45] Brianne Davis: How long did that go on for?
[0:01:47] Alexandra: It was over the extent of the marriage and the marriage wasn't very long. I was married for about a year, I guess, that we were together, living together. The marriage continued. Like, we didn't get a divorce right away, but we were together for about a year and it went on throughout kind of the whole time.
[0:02:03] Brianne Davis: How long were you guys together, though, before you got married together?
[0:02:09] Alexandra: We were together probably before the marriage, I think it was six or seven years.
[0:02:14] Brianne Davis: Oh, wow. So you waited.
[0:02:19] Alexandra: We started dating when we were, I think we were like 23, 22, 23. So young. Yeah, and then we just kind of dated. We even lived together for three years before we got married. And then we got married and then it started happening. So it was crazy.
[0:02:39] Brianne Davis: You know, that's so fascinating because I thought, honestly, you were going to say after you said that you guys were together for like six months and then you got together and got married and I was like, oh, did you not know the person? Because I feel like a lot of people rush into things not knowing. But you knew the person.
[0:02:56] Alexandra: Yeah. And the thing with what I experienced, he could be that way with, say, friends or even family members, but he never did it to me. So in my young, immature, naive brain, I thought, well, he's not doing it to me, so it's okay. Well, he's never okay. And that would be like one thing I would say to any man or woman because it can happen to anyone.
[0:03:21] Brianne Davis: Yes.
[0:03:22] Alexandra: What they do to other people or what they say to other people. And in my context of man. So, like, what a man does to other people or women he will do to you in your marriage even if he's not doing it before when you're dating, it will eventually you will become the target.
[0:03:38] Brianne Davis: Can you give me some examples? Because I know people are listening out there and even if they're experienced it, there's something about we downplay it to ourselves because we don't want to believe that it's happening for sure.
[0:03:51] Alexandra: So when it was happening throughout my life, nobody had spoken to me like that or treated me like that ever. So when it started to happen that way, it just felt so foreign. I didn't know how to make sense of it. So again, yeah, I just kind of downplayed it in my mind. But it was subtle things. Like subtle, like sarcastic, jabs, passive aggressive comments. But it can also be really overt things. Like with him, like being called a bitch or being told, like, there's something inherently wrong with you. And so it's like these we sometimes say these things very loosely, I guess. But when it's targeted at you from the person that's supposed to love you the most, it's so unsettling and it just unsettles your idea about yourself.
[0:04:34] Brianne Davis: Yeah.
[0:04:39] Alexandra: It would come when there was a conflict in the relationship and he was in a place of stress and that's how he dealt with it. I understand. So for me, for a long time after, any kind of conflict with a man is just, like, hugely triggering. Because my experience was this will lead to someone saying these awful things to you.
[0:04:58] Brianne Davis: Yeah. Because you guys were together for six years and you saw him call, like, other people bitches or talk bad about other people in his life or coworkers or whatever. Right?
[0:05:11] Alexandra: Yeah, it could be, say, I have seen it. He would talk about not my female friends, necessarily, but, like, female sometimes that were strong will and he would say, called him a bitch. And at the time, like I said, it's not okay. It's never okay to use that language towards anybody, especially women. But like I said, I was young, I was naive, I was in love. And I kind of was like, oh, well, he doesn't mean it. He doesn't actually believe it. But now, looking back, he probably did. And eventually I became the target.
[0:05:50] Brianne Davis: So why do you think that happened? Because you were finally, completely committed to him and, like, the marriage. Do you even remember the first time it happened?
[0:06:01] Alexandra: Sort of like I kind of do. Yes, actually, I do. It was about, I think, three months in and I can't remember the specific incident. It's crazy. I can remember because it led to trauma. I can very much remember how I felt. And I can relive moments of the moment, but I can't remember all the details, which is kind of interesting.
[0:06:24] Brianne Davis: Not really, because we black it out when there's trauma or ptsd, when there's, like, a bad breakup or bad toxic relationship that creates trauma in our body, and we cut off some of our memory to make it easier for our psyche to handle.
[0:06:40] Alexandra: Yeah. Three months in. Like I said, it just is so foreign. And it's just like, all of a sudden, it's like being hit without being hit, and then you have this invisible wound, but no burgess to show for it. That's how I kind of look at it. So it kept happening. And then eventually, when we did split up, I had so much trauma. And I just thought it was from the end of my marriage, because it was quite sudden, which was very it was traumatic itself. But there was so much trauma for years that was just about the verbal abuse. And I didn't realize that actually till like, a year ago when I was having I would have sometimes conflict with my partner, which we do. Like in a relationship, we have conflict. And I would have these massive overreactions.
[0:07:28] Brianne Davis: Over hysterical historical hysterical historical.
[0:07:37] Alexandra: Classic trauma reactions. Like, I would need to go to an enclosed space. I would close the bathroom door. I would flee, get a fight fight or flight fight.
[0:07:53] Brianne Davis: I always ran to the bathroom and shut the door whenever I was in conflict.
[0:07:58] Alexandra: Yeah. And then it would get to the point. Also, sometimes I would fight. I would just react extreme. And then I just sat in that and we sarah and he was like, Why am I reacting? And I realized I still had a lot of trauma to work through. And my trigger, like I said, was a conflict with any man, because with ix, I would either be called back or I would just avoid conflict altogether to avoid kind of that aggression coming at you. Yeah. And for him, he dealt with stress, like I said, anxiety and anger by lashing out. I'm not saying it's okay, but it helped me understand the whole experience, I guess.
[0:08:41] Brianne Davis: Do you know if his parents fight like that or he was raised well.
[0:08:47] Alexandra: His story his dad wasn't around, and I'm not sure, growing up how his family relationship was, but I would imagine he thought somewhere that it became okay.
[0:09:02] Brianne Davis: Or when it became normalized.
[0:09:05] Alexandra: Yeah. And in his life, too, because, like I said, I would sometimes see it with friends or whoever, and people kind of they didn't expect it from us, but they just are like, oh, that's just like him. It's okay. It's just him. And I think sometimes with people that have damaging behaviors or toxic behaviors or abusive behaviors, there's not enough people that say it's not okay.
[0:09:29] Brianne Davis: Usually it's hard. It's hard. I think, when you just said earlier, and I want to go back to it, that it was like getting punched, but you don't see the bruise. And that's what I always say, like, those toxic behaviors, those toxic relationships when they're not physical, not that either is worse than the other, but it's like a million little cuts that you don't see that you're killing yourself with. Like someone's doing these little cuts all over you and you're bleeding out and you have no idea, and you can't see it 100%.
[0:10:04] Alexandra: And I'm a big reader. I try to reading things. And after our relationship ended, I read this book. I think it's called The Verbally Abusive Relationship by Patricia Evans. I believe that's the title. And she listed off all these different ways someone could be verbally abusive. And some of it's like that outright swearing at you, that kind of thing. But it's like little stuff, like yeah, like sarcastic comments about any kind of aspirations you have, or passive aggression or stonewalling gas lighting. Gas lighting. It's all kind of part of that. And I realized he didn't check off all the boxes, but it was a lot more than I even realized myself. And when I actually sat down and I remember one day after I wrote in my journal everything, I could remember all the different things he had said. And I couldn't believe the list that I compiled because I think in the moment when it was happening, I just tried to not black it out, but forget it real fast. The secret, I guess I didn't tell anybody till after because I was really ashamed. So I think and I think this is for, like, a lot of abuse survivors, whether it's physical or emotional, financial or verbal, we feel shame because we actively, I guess, chose this relationship.
[0:11:25] Alexandra: We've got along with it, and even though someone's treating us badly, we continue to stay.
[0:11:31] Brianne Davis: Yeah.
[0:11:32] Alexandra: And so there's a shame that you're continuing to stay because abuse isn't black and white. Like this person that's doing these awful things. When you're being abused, you don't look at them as, like, a monster. You look at, like, their behavior. Like, this is like when you make.
[0:11:45] Brianne Davis: Excuses and you, oh, he had a bad day at work. He lost his job. We couldn't pay that bill. You always make excuses and then you try to turn towards the moments. Oh, but he was so loving the day before. Or, he bought me that sweater or something. Yeah.
[0:12:02] Alexandra: And if you have money I realized in this episode, I even made excuse. I was like, when he was stressed, he would do this. Which is kind of an excuse because.
[0:12:08] Brianne Davis: It'S never yeah, you said it three times. She said it three times. You're still trying to justify the abuse. And you're like, I know, I understand. He's probably going through a lot. And it's like, no, he didn't.
[0:12:26] Alexandra: Even pass that. I realized what he did and that it was wrong. And sitting here making excuses. So I think you feel shame, or at least I did, because well, first of all, if you tell people, if you start telling people they're going to tell you to leave, they're going to right away say leave. And maybe you're not in a position to leave, whether it's like kids or whatever.
[0:12:46] Brianne Davis: And financial.
[0:12:49] Alexandra: You'Re just, like, not ready to throw in a towel or something.
[0:12:51] Brianne Davis: Or a love addict. There's a lot of people that stay in those relationships because they're addicted to that person.
[0:12:58] Alexandra: Yeah. And for me, well, I was raised in a Catholic family, so I had that. We were married, and I wasn't super young, but I was, like, 29, which is young, is in the marriage sector. I wasn't 50 or anything. So I also felt like I couldn't leave because I just sort of gotten married, and I felt like I was young to be going through a divorce. And there was a lot of shame with a divorce itself. And I felt so shamed that someone was treating me like this. And I let it be okay, sort of because I didn't leave.
[0:13:35] Brianne Davis: Yeah, but here's the thing, and I also is it because you were just married, too? Because it happened pretty quick. Usually it doesn't happen so fast.
[0:13:45] Alexandra: Yeah, that was kind of crazy because.
[0:13:48] Brianne Davis: I remember someone that was in a bad relationship and they just got married, and she's like, we just spent all this money on the wedding. And I was like, who cares? But it's hard to tell someone when they're wanting something to work so badly.
[0:14:02] Alexandra: Well, yeah, and like I mentioned earlier, we had been together for six or seven years, lived together for three years, and so, like, people exactly, they were like, didn't you know? Like, how could you not know? And even my mom asked me that. Like, how could you not know? And it was like, well, yeah, I saw the sign, but I was never the victim. I was never the target until we got married. And then, yeah, like you said, it happened so fast. So I felt like, how could I get married and then just split up so fast? I would feel so embarrassed about it. Even though you're right, like, who cares?
[0:14:35] Brianne Davis: Now?
[0:14:35] Alexandra: I don't care if I ever ended that relationship again, I will leave like this.
[0:14:40] Brianne Davis: But you're right, you can't tell people to leave, because I work with a lot of people, and I can't ever tell them to leave. I can say, I suggest this. This is what should be. This is how you should talk. But you can't make someone leave a bad situation. You just can't.
[0:14:55] Alexandra: And sometimes I think you're also so connected to that person, and so you protect them. That's the big thing with abuse, too. We protect our abusers. And so someone's saying you should just leave sometimes feels like a bit of an attack, even though you're not you're trying to help and you're trying to tell them, no, you need to go. But I think if you're suffering it at the time, it can feel, and then you can just turn into the relationship more. Because you're like oh, yeah.
[0:15:23] Brianne Davis: Because you're like, yeah, you stick it out, and then you kind of start blocking out other people and just trying to focus, like, fixing this relationship, which you can't fix the person. Right. Did you do that towards the end or anything?
[0:15:36] Alexandra: No, I think because I hadn't experienced abuse in my life. I was raised by relatively healthy parents, and my friends were all very healthy for the most part in life.
[0:15:48] Brianne Davis: Come on, come on, please. I believe everybody has some sort of ism. Everybody goes some place where they don't want to feel their feeling.
[0:15:59] Alexandra: That's true. Yes.
[0:16:00] Brianne Davis: Don't believe her. everybody's got problems.
[0:16:05] Alexandra: Yeah, that's true. But I just had never been abused. I guess I just didn't have that understanding. So when it was happening, it was just so boring, and it was just felt so extreme. So for me, instead of trying to fix him, I weathered it for a while, and I thought in my head, maybe this will change. I didn't do anything on my end to change him. I guess I just thought, maybe it will stop. And then just like, it didn't. And I was just like and at one point, it just like in one of our interactions, it was an episode of verbal abuse, and I was just like I had been kind of pushing it down and pushing it down, just dealing with it, and then I literally exploded. I remember that incident. I was just like, you know what? I want a divorce. And then I just got my stuff and I left.
[0:16:54] Brianne Davis: Wait, you're the one that asked for divorce?
[0:16:57] Alexandra: Yeah.
[0:16:58] Brianne Davis: So what happened that got you to a place where you were like, Enough. What was that moment?
[0:17:05] Alexandra: Well, I think it's like that fight or flight for the whole time it was happening, I was like, or avoiding. Right? Like, I was avoiding it, and I was, like, pushing it down. I guess I wasn't flying away, so I wasn't doing flight, but I was just, like, avoiding it.
[0:17:19] Brianne Davis: Right.
[0:17:19] Alexandra: And then that pushing down, eventually it kind of exploded in this incident. And that was like, the flight. Like, I want I want a divorce, but also flight because I just left.
[0:17:27] Brianne Davis: Right.
[0:17:27] Alexandra: But then I always thought in my head I might go back, even though I had said those words and I had laughed. I thought, well, maybe people reconcile, and maybe this will be the moment where he'll like, okay, I need to go to therapy and I figure this out. But he never really did, and he never really put in like, he I imagine in his mind, he thought he fought for the relationship after the marriage, but I didn't feel it. And so after we split up because it didn't there were still episodes of, like, sarcasm and passive aggression, and so I just kind of never went back. And then we had talks and stuff, but I just never returned to the marriage. And I just realized that I wanted not only more for myself, but I wanted kids. So I thought, if I'm going to have children, there's no way I would ever want them to be spoken to like that from their father. So if I want children, I need to end this marriage and seek out another relationship or whatever that looks like. And also just for me, even if I never had kids or never had another relationship, it's way better to be alone and feel sane and happy and healthy versus in a relationship where someone is making you not only not feel loved, but also, like, you start hating yourself. It was great. At the end of the relationship, I would talk to my best friend and just like, the words I was saying what myself were just so untrue.
[0:18:53] Brianne Davis: Like, what were you saying?
[0:18:54] Alexandra: So I was saying things like, I would be telling her stories, and then I would pause, like, but I'm just like, I'm not a good communicator. And she saw you, alex, my job as a teacher. I'm an elementary teacher. She's like you're a teacher. You talk the whole pace like you're not a bad communicator. Oh, okay. That's weird. Why am I saying this? Or maybe things like, I'm quite a sensitive person. She's like you're not. You're not sensitive.
[0:19:29] Brianne Davis: Isn't it so funny that we try to turn it in on ourselves? Always, like, to take responsibility for someone else hurting us. We then turn it and twist it and make it about ourselves, like, there's something wrong with ourselves. Did you do that a lot at the end or during the relationship? After?
[0:19:50] Alexandra: Yeah, it was crazy. That honestly, it was very traumatic. Obviously, I just pushed it away while it was happening, and then it was after the fact. After we split up, I had a full year of just a really dark depression. And during that time, it was just like I was just, like, saying horrible things to myself about myself. Like, no one's going to love you. Because he also told me that it's going to take a very special person to love me again.
[0:20:18] Brianne Davis: Oh, my God, I want to strangle him right now. Everybody worse being loved. Like, if you're on this planet right now and you're born, you're worth loving. If anybody's telling anybody out there, that is the most abusive thing to say to somebody.
[0:20:33] Alexandra: Yeah, it was stuff like that. Like I said, it was swearing. But it was also things like, there's something inherently wrong with you. It's going to take a special person to love you. There's something wrong with your family. So it took a long time of like, I believe these things, and then it took a while, and then I started seeing it to myself. I don't need to plug anything, but I have a book coming out. And in the book, I kind of talk about, like, I said these horrible things to myself after we split up for a long time, and I all of a sudden realized nobody's abusing me but myself. I was doing it.
[0:21:10] Brianne Davis: I was the person to me, that's so fascinating. You just said that because I had a moment like that the other night, and I haven't talked about it, but I'm the villain of my story. I'm the one that speaks to myself the worse than anybody else. And I had this moment at 03:00 A.m. That I woke up and my subconscious was like, you're a loser. You're not good enough, all this stuff. And I literally was telling my brain, like, Stop. It's not true. But when other people tell you those things, you then start to believe them.
[0:21:44] Alexandra: Yeah, and I think I wrote once, I said something like he had said words that planted invisible roots in my mind, and they were really hard to pull out. And I think that's what verbal abuse does and other abuse, but like, verbal abuse, it like, plants these roots and they grab your brain, and it's really hard to just pull them out and get them out of there because you're like, well, if they said it, there must be some truth to it. But there's not. Typically. There's not. Well, not usually. It's almost always about them. Always about them, not you.
[0:22:19] Brianne Davis: Yeah. So you went through this dark, dark place. I mean, how dark did it go for you?
[0:22:25] Alexandra: I talked about this online on social media and my blog. I went through depression and anxiety, and I was in a place like, I have suicidal ideation secretly again, that was another secret.
[0:22:39] Brianne Davis: Here's another secret.
[0:22:43] Alexandra: I remember that year after we split up, we still had the house we were trying to sell. And I'd be in that house, like, alone, and I would be coping by drinking, like, bottle after bottle of wine kind of thing, crying alone. And in those moments, I remember I had, like I thought I had written in my journal, like, I just want to, like, melt to the ground things. Like, I felt like I wanted to die.
[0:23:06] Brianne Davis: Like disappear? Yeah.
[0:23:07] Alexandra: Yeah, disappear. And I would sit there on the floor and I would like empty pill bottles. That's how I decided I would do it. And, like, every time I thought, okay, this is the time, I never did, because I didn't want to die. I realized what I wanted was to be free of what was going on in my mind. But at the time, I was suffering depression, so I couldn't logic that out at the time.
[0:23:30] Brianne Davis: No, you can't. And that's the thing. I mean, I write about it in the book too. I love that you have a book coming out and telling your story. But it's like, I write about all these moments. You think about your death, and you're like, what is it going to be like? People are going to do this. Even at the beginning of my recovery, I talk about, like, I wish I wanted to just drive my car into the middle of the median just because I didn't want to feel this pain anymore. And you don't know what to do with it. The only thing I can say, and I think that's what you're saying, is you have to walk through it. You have to walk through that pain.
[0:24:04] Alexandra: You have to. Otherwise it will continue to haunt you as long as you don't face it. If you can do it by yourself, great.
[0:24:15] Brianne Davis: I don't know anybody that can do it by themselves. Because you can't fix your brain when your brain is what's? Sick.
[0:24:23] Alexandra: Yeah, I need a therapy. Like, I need therapy. I didn't need pharmaceutical. That was something we talked about. But I decided in the moment, because event and experience created this, I thought, I can work through it in different ways. Because I hadn't been suffering, arguably, I hadn't had a chemical imbalance my whole life. So I was like, well, I'm going to try. And then that was always an option. Tosserize. But never had to. Which is I'm thankful I didn't have to, but I would have if it had continued, or if I had continued to have those intrusive thoughts. But yeah, just going through all that, I realized how traumatic verbal abuse really was. Because a lot of the trauma was from the divorce, but a lot of it was from this abuse.
[0:25:10] Brianne Davis: I think, 100%. It's those invisible cuts, those invisible emotional cuts. I always think those are the hardest ones to, like you said, rip out the roof. Like, if someone hits you, you see the bruise, but if someone verbally abuses you, you can't see it. You can't say, See right here? When he said this, it made this mark on my soul or my face. You know what I mean?
[0:25:33] Alexandra: Well, yeah, and I know this is going to sound crazy, sorry, I don't like that word, but kind of natty.
[0:25:39] Brianne Davis: She's natty. I don't mind the word crazy people at all.
[0:25:43] Alexandra: I've had people, I've used it before in reference to myself, and they got offended. So I don't want to offend anybody.
[0:25:49] Brianne Davis: We offend people here all the time, and it's okay. We're all in this together.
[0:25:54] Alexandra: Okay, good. But at the end of the relationship, I had wished that he had hit me, because then I'd have a bruise to show the evidence why I had to leave so fast from my marriage. And even during the marriage, there were moments where I was like, I wish you would just hit me. Because then I could be like, here's the bruise. Now you can see. You would for sure be like, oh, good. I'm glad you left. But verbal abuse, some people, they have a different, I guess, level of tolerance of it, too. Some people would be like, oh, he called you bitch. Like, that's not a big deal, whatever. Deal with it. Where other people would be like, that's horrible. Whereas physical abuse is very like, I think cut and dry people are like, no, leave. Which is that's why I say it's crazy. Like, I wish she had hit me, but at least then I'd have something to show.
[0:26:39] Alexandra: Everything else shows invisible.
[0:26:41] Brianne Davis: I've actually said that too. I've said that even with friendships. Because let's talk about friendships for a minute, which we never thought we were going to discuss. But even friendships, sometimes people abuse you or are a passive aggressive, like you said, and at moments, even with friendships. And I was like, I wish they just do something physical so I could get enough to work up the courage to leave. No, you should leave anyway. They're horrible up people. Like, they're abusive, but it's hard.
[0:27:12] Alexandra: And friendships can sometimes be the hardest thing to break away from.
[0:27:15] Brianne Davis: Oh, those are the worst, right? Friendship breakups are horrible. They are the worst pain I've ever been in.
[0:27:25] Alexandra: And you will never be friends again. Like, even with a divorce or a breakup. Like, maybe one day you'll get back together, but likely not. But with a friendship, if you break up a friendship, you're probably done, because it's pretty extreme because people don't break up, they just sort of save each other out. Or there's a friendship break up. I was just talking about the other day about someone who has a friend that is arguably not treating them right, like being very passive aggressive and just saying weird things. And I said, you wouldn't tolerate it from your family, you wouldn't tolerate from your boyfriend, so why are you tolerating it from your friend? I think you need to establish a boundary with your friend and talk to this person, and hopefully they'll respond and realize, oh, my God, I'm being awful. And if they don't, then that's your evidence that you shouldn't be friends.
[0:28:12] Brianne Davis: Yeah, I 100% agree. And that's what I think doing all this work for me is. It's like every relationship, it's just not about sex and love. It's literally every relationship.
[0:28:23] Alexandra: Oh, for sure. Because a friendship can really if they're not treating you, that can just be awful.
[0:28:30] Brianne Davis: It's just as bad. I believe it's just as bad. Now, you said you are now with someone, right? How is that? Obviously you've done the work, so that's the first thing you got to do the work afterwards because you'll take it into the next relationship, you'll bring that baggage. Correct?
[0:28:47] Alexandra: Yes. And arguably before that, I should have done a bit more work. Like, I had done a lot of work, and I thought I was totally healed. And then when we had these consultants, I realized, well, maybe. There's a little bit more work to do.
[0:29:00] Brianne Davis: Oh my God, that's so funny. I've literally done twelve years of intense work and I still get triggered by my husband. I'm like, there's another layer that I have to work on.
[0:29:15] Alexandra: But it's been good. He's a deharta himself, so he understands that experience. And it's kind of funny. I'm kind of happy I ended up with someone who also went through that because we can kind of understand if stuff comes up, we can talk about it. And neither one of us is going to be like, oh, you're not over it. No, it's just this really crazy thing, extreme thing happened in both of our past, so we can kind of understand that. So he's super understanding. And sometimes if I do have a trigger and I overreact, I'll talk to him after it's done and the next day, I'm really sorry. And he was like, no, I understand. It's okay. And so he's so understanding and so he's kind of yeah, he's a great guy to be with, for me, for sure.
[0:29:58] Brianne Davis: Yeah. But he doesn't fix it. That's the thing. You have to do it. You can't get into a good relationship because you won't know how to handle it because that trauma comes up. And one of the things we say is we tell each other like, okay, I'm getting really triggered. I don't know why right now. So I'm going to walk away and let's just put this on the table. Like that's what we said. We're like, time out. Something that's out. Or we use that word mistletoe, like mistletoe no more.
[0:30:29] Alexandra: I love that.
[0:30:32] Brianne Davis: It really does. Because there's something about you're going to get triggered. You're going to get triggered with your partner about family stuff, about things you haven't dealt with, your family, your friends, past relationships. And it's like you have to have that pause.
[0:30:48] Alexandra: Yeah. And he's so good too. I didn't have, I guess, many serious relationships after my marriage. He was probably the most serious, but I had like, little things going on, relationships with people, and one of them, this guy would say if anything ever came up, and not even that much, but anything, he would refer to my ex husband as like a scumbag. That also was not a healthy response and it didn't help. It definitely didn't help because I was the one that married a scumbag. But then you feel bad, you're like, Well, I loved him. At some point he's like, that's not. And so with my now partner, he definitely even if I'm talking about these things that happen, he'll never take aim at him, which I appreciate it's more. Just like the things that happen and how I'm feeling and how I'm healing and stuff. Not nothing about him really calling him names, because that's just a sabbath, I think.
[0:31:40] Brianne Davis: Oh, I love that because part of me wanted to call him a scumbag a couple of times and put an asshole like you know what I mean?
[0:31:47] Alexandra: Like I wanted to say you can actually, I think I heard about that too. In my book, I say I'm a last call in the stomach and anybody that I give that privilege to can, but not some kind of dating doesn't have the right to say that.
[0:32:01] Brianne Davis: Well, I know you have the blog with where's the blog so people can, if they want to reach out to you, if they're going through a similar thing, where can they reach you?
[0:32:10] Alexandra: Yeah. So you can find me at the splendid Path. So www dot the splendidpath.com. And then I'm also pretty present on instagram at the alexandra. eva mae yay.
[0:32:25] Brianne Davis: And one last question I have. If anybody out there is listening and they are in this type of relationship or feel like they are, they're not sure what would be your advice for them, like recognizing it, what would you wish you would have done?
[0:32:39] Alexandra: So I think if you feel like you're in that type of relationship, you might be keeping it all to yourself, which does a lot of people do. I think the first step is to book therapy with a professional. You can do that now with the pandemic. There's so many people online. You can do it online, you can do it through an app even, or in person. I think some people are doing that. But focus therapy appointment to try to work through it with the professional. So that would be number one. And then number two, I think, realize that their behavior is not about you. It is about them. It is about how they handle whatever they're handling. It is completely about them. And what they're saying is not true. It's not true. It's a way to kind of take you down to make you feel as bad as they're probably feeling.
[0:33:26] Alexandra: It's a way to like, erode your self confidence and it's not true. And you don't deserve that. And it would be better and healthier to be alone than to stay in this relationship or even seek out another one. It's healthier just to be alone and to be abused than to be with anybody. So if you're scared of being alone, like, it's tough. It can be tough to be alone. But it's so much better. And I was so much happier even when I was going through a grief, and I was like, I was so much happier because I was away from trauma.
[0:34:00] Brianne Davis: Yeah, well, and I also just had this thought, even writing it down, like, you know, you have a communication with something and it just doesn't feel right in your stomach and you're like, oh, that hurt. Or I felt something writing it down, say I felt this way when he said this, or she said this. And it's like when you start writing it down, it's almost making it like so you can look back and go, oh, then this happened. Then he called me a bitch and then he was saying how ugly my dress is and no one would love me. I don't know, I'm just calling, but there's something about writing it down.
[0:34:36] Alexandra: Oh, for sure. I think that no, that's actually what I did. That's a good point. I need like a list.
[0:34:41] Brianne Davis: Look at me, I'm like I'll proud of myself, people, you can't see me, but I just smiled.
[0:34:47] Alexandra: I need like a list.
[0:34:49] Brianne Davis: Great.
[0:34:49] Alexandra: I need a list because I was trying to make heads and tales of it and so I need a whole list and not actually after we split up because I was thinking of going back, which I made this list and it was like crazy long. Why would I go back to this? And so maybe yeah, you're right. Writing it down, making a list, and you can actually have a full scope of like, all that's happened.
[0:35:10] Brianne Davis: Yeah. And write a list right after it happens. Like, yeah, this just happened because there's something about we can our minds can twist and manipulate ourselves and when it's written down, you can't twist that because it's written down that it happened. Do you know what I mean?
[0:35:25] Alexandra: Yeah, exactly. I agree.
[0:35:28] Brianne Davis: So glad you reached out to me. I'm so glad we talked about this. Honestly, I think people need to discuss this more because I think people use verbal abuse all the time and it's an epidemic and it's not okay anymore. So thank you so much for reaching out to me. Honestly, I'm so grateful.
[0:35:44] Alexandra: Thank you so much for having me. This is so fantastic. And yeah, like you said, I agree, it's an epidemic and it starts with a young girl, a girls and teenage relationship. So it should be talked about more.
[0:35:57] Brianne Davis: Well, thank you. And if you want to be on the show, please email me secretlifepodcast@icloud.com. Until next time, thanks again for listening to the show. Please subscribe rate, share air or send me a note at SecretLifepodcast.com. And if you like to check out my book, head over to secretlifenovel.com or Amazon to pick up a copy for yourself or someone you love. Thanks again. See you soon.
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